The Seventh Royale by Donald Stanwood

Author:Donald Stanwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497697256
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

Chapter 26

“I’m convinced, Alan, that women and delusion go hand in hand. Certainly with Lucinda more than most. Oh, I was so clever! I ‘saw through her,’ all right. Clean through her and out the other side.”

Long ago, even before the coming of this crazy talking picture, Lucinda had learned to be grateful for Karl’s selective blindness. Oh, he saw enough, too much sometimes—those lost eyes searching for who-knew-what in her every move, his knowing laugh whenever they fought and her chin wouldn’t quite stay steady.

But all too soon it wouldn’t be enough for Karl to position her on the set like a tailor’s dummy; now he wanted to pull the levers and cables from the inside, making her mouth his words. Thank God he looked at her more and more through two layers, with his precious Lily increasingly on top. Lucinda didn’t mind so much, as long as a part of her could slip away, out of Lily’s skin, leaving poor Karl none the wiser.

Poor Karl. She really must love him. Why else would something crumple inside whenever she let go with a particularly wounding bull’s-eye and his face twisted so helplessly? If only he wasn’t male! Sex was the enemy of romance—where had she read that? Well, at the very least sex complicated the whole struggle. So many times, she lay in the dark dreaming of the desert island, the cottage by the seashore, and just as it seemed within reach … instead came another pink Schwanz.

She knew what to do with them, of course. How to harness all that energy, even enjoy it more often than not. But that moment always arrived when she simply wanted to be very still and stop pretending. As she had with Papa. Him smelling of stale beer, his sausage fingers fumbling. Then the wheezing weight atop her, when she would wait for it to be over, counting the broken veins in his nose.

But surely all men weren’t the same! Certainly not Elio. Lucinda had felt his gaze too, so unlike Karl’s. No self-doubts with him. At least none that she couldn’t remedy. And this business with the Royale would bring them together; she’d seen Elio and car intermingled from the beginning, set against crashing waves or in a green meadow. How lovely to curl up in all that dark Latin chest hair, fingers splayed … But she couldn’t think about that without feeling Karl’s bony ribs. Poor Karl.

No, it was best to imagine something else, totally impossible. A night with Adolf Hitler! God, what would he look like naked? Lucinda shuddered. But she couldn’t deny he was a breed apart. She’d felt it from the first. That strange energy which made Lucinda want to put a blindfold on either him or herself.

Papa had told her a story once, while she sat on his knee. All about Hansel and Gretel. She’d been horrified. That poor old woman, baked alive! Hitler’s eyes brought it all back. They were like two peepholes, opening into an oven.

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