Dreams Are Not Enough Read online

  Barry understood that it was his obligation, as the only son, to make it up to his mother for his father’s shortcomings.

  During the long, hot drive through the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas he had been unable to entirely block the vision of his frail mother’s impending horror; yet, standing at the gaudily painted altar with Alicia at his side, seeing the tears on her luminous, flushed cheeks, his heart seemed to swell, and he accepted there had been no stepping back from the madness that had overtaken him the first time he’d seen her sipping a Coke at Ship’s Coffee Shop in Westwood.

  Love at first sight had been accompanied by the classic symptoms: sleeplessness, loss of appetite, inability to think of anything but Alicia, a constant semi-erection. They had made out vigorously in his 1950 De Soto coupé, but hadn’t gone all the way. Barry held Alicia in reverence, and also feared failure—his one experience with an aging pro on Main Street had been an unhappy one.

  Barry was exceptionally thin: standing at the altar in his rumpled gray suit, he gave the impression of a malnourished adolescent who had grown too quickly. As he shifted on his storklike legs, he could feel the sweat running down from his armpits despite the extrastrength Mitchum’s he had applied the previous night before setting out for his date with Alicia—it wasn’t until they were embracing that he had seriously entertained the idea of elopement. The hairs on his neck prickled with awareness that his cousins and sister were staring at them, and he had a momentary surge of regret that he’d invited them. Alicia brought out a hitherto dormant protectiveness in him. During the six broiling hours in his un-airconditioned car, she had worried about looking a mess at her wedding—and from the guests’ vantage point, she did. The rear of her scarlet crepe dress was puckered into ugly creases, causing its miniskirt to ride yet higher in back of her slim, shapely thighs.

  Glancing sideways at his bride, Barry found himself unable to look away. He considered Alicia gorgeous, but he wasn’t positive whether others did. From the heads swiveling in her wake he knew that most people found her riveting. True, her skirts were unfortunately short and her tops a shade tight so that the buttons pulled between her full, peach-shaped breasts, but this didn’t fully account for the zephyrs of attention that trailed her: women turned as often as men.

  Ignoring the justice of the peace, who was rumbling on about the duties of matrimony, Barry gazed at Alicia’s profile, attempting to convince himself that he wasn’t moonstruck, that she was indeed gorgeous. As usual, he was incapable of analyzing her face. Her skin assuredly was unique. Other women possessed faultless complexions, but he’d seen no other skin with this velvety incandescence. Light was not an external quality for Alicia, but appeared to emanate from within, as if an electric current flowed with the blood that now was pulsing rapidly in the subtly blue vein at her throat.

  He realized she was clutching the wilted bridal bouquet (he had just purchased it in the wedding chapel’s tiny vestibule) so tightly that the baby’s breath trembled. Edging closer, he let his arm rest in moist reassurance against hers.

  At noon, the temperature in Las Vegas was well above a hundred, and the chapel lacked air conditioning. The justice of the peace’s bulging, magenta cheeks appeared to be melting into the creases of his double chin.

  Hap, Maxim, Beth and PD were equally miserable.

  The cousins had all been born in 1938 or 1939, the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. Hap and Maxim were sons of Desmond Cordiner, the family emperor. Long before their births Desmond had been a major wheel in the Industry, second in command to Art Garrison, founder of Magnum Pictures, and after Garrison’s death he had taken over as head of the studio. PD’s father was Frank Zaffarano, the director whose sentimental, flag-waving films had made a bundle for Magnum. Barry and Beth’s father, Tim Cordiner, never rose higher than a grip. The cousins, therefore, belonged to the top, upper middle and bottom of an industry with a well-defined hierarchy. This had not prevented the friendship forged between them in early childhood from binding them yet closer during adolescence and adulthood.

  PD’s button-down shirt collar had wilted into shapelessness and large globules of sweat showed on his face. The fresh handkerchief he took out to mop his classically handsome features was impeccably ironed: his mother, Lily Zaffarano, nee Lily Cordiner, had a live-in maid and cook as well as a laundress who came in on Tuesdays to iron the voluminously skirted little dresses and petticoats of her daughters, Annette and Deirdre, but she personally attended to her husband and son’s linens. Frank Zaffarano, who had left the hilltop town of Enna in Sicily at sixteen, kept the old Italian belief that a woman’s purpose in life is to serve the men of the household.

  Hap and Maxim appeared less uncomfortable, though the blue of Hap’s sport shirt had a growing splotch between his broad shoulders.

  The brothers were both six foot three, but here the similarities ended.

  Hap, the older by thirteen months, was large-boned. He had thoughtful gray eyes, a wide forehead and a nose that once had been broken during football practice, leaving him with a rugged look.

  Maxim spotted a sheet of old newspaper on the floor and he retrieved it. As he fanned himself, his narrow, well-shaped lips curled down in an acid smile. He had inherited a smaller, handsome version of his father’s thin scimitar of a nose; his attenuated height was elegant. Women fell all over him—among the Cordiners, he had the reputation of being a cocksman.

  Beth alone seemed cool, until you noticed the moistness where her silky brown page boy curled toward her throat. Her delicate, unflushed face was lightly tanned as were the round arms bared by the sleeveless, powder-blue chemise that she wore with a strand of small cultured pearls. With her slightly too-thick legs tucked under the pew, she was the ultimate California coed.

  She showed none of the inner anguish that she felt as her twin was severed from her and joined in wedlock to this cheap-looking girl, a girl whom Beth had not known existed until five thirty this morning when Barry had tapped on her window, whispering that she should dress and come to Las Vegas for his wedding. “Beth, no noise,” he had warned through the window screen. “I don’t want Mom and Dad in on this.”

  Beth had a far more deeply ingrained sense of responsibility than her twin. As she sat on the hard wooden bench she was thinking up ways to ease the blow for their mother, who suffered from a coronary condition.

  The justice of the peace was inquiring in an orotund tone, “Do you, Barry, take Alee-sha to be your lawfully wedded wife to cherish and protect?”

  “I d-do,” Barry stammered.

  “And do you, Alee-sha, take Barry here to be your lawfully married husband and promise to honor and obey him?”

  Alicia murmured assent.

  The justice said that by the power vested in him by the state of Nevada they were man and wife.

  Alicia turned. Her lashes fluttered as Barry bent for the traditional kiss.

  The justice of the peace clomped over to lean on the front pew, assailing PD, who was closest to the aisle, with odors of rancid sweat and raw onion. “Can I bother you and the little lady here to be witnesses for the happy couple?”

  “Come on, Bethie,” PD said.

  Now a faint flush did show on Beth’s smooth throat. Nobody, not even Barry, who was closest to her in this world, was aware that she was mad for PD. Her greatest childhood treat had been to stay overnight at Aunt Lily and Uncle Frank’s house, occupying the small room adjacent to PD’s. Her adoration had turned distinctly physical during her eleventh year, when she had simultaneously attained her menarche and learned about the Italian renaissance. In her secret thoughts she called PD by his baptismal name, Paolo Dominick, visualizing him as a Medici duke clad in velvet and satin. Beth knew her love was hopeless—she was irrevocably Jewish, PD a devout Catholic, and besides they were blood relations, first cousins. Being sensible as well as pretty, she dated many boys, thus becoming the most popular senior in USC’s Alpha Epsilon Phi house.

  She and PD waited while the justice of the peace
with painful slowness readied the license for them to sign. Afterward PD linked his moist-jacketed arm companionably in hers and they went outside.

  The others were waiting in a clump to take advantage of the sliver of noontime shade cast by the parody of a church steeple that topped the wedding chapel.

  “Where’ll we go for the wedding breakfast?” Hap asked. He was Our Own Gang’s unofficial leader, originally because he was the largest, later because they respected his unerring instinct for fairness.

  “This is a no-frills elopement,” Barry replied stiffly.

  “My treat,” Hap said.

  “Ours,” Maxim added.

  Hap and Maxim took it as a given that, as the ones with trust-fund incomes, they would foot the bill for group extravagances. PD was able to accept the largesse because his father was well known as a director, Beth because as a female she was accustomed to checks being picked up. Only Barry felt a poor relation with his manhood threatened each time he was treated.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate it—” he started.

  “Come on, Barry,” Hap said. “Alicia deserves some little celebration.”

  “It’s not necessary,” Barry said awkwardly. “We’ll—”

  “Jesus Christ, will you guys quit arguing in this oven?” PD interrupted, “I’ll sign Dad’s name at the Fabulador. He has privileges there.”

  • • •

  The Fabulador, with its top-rank entertainers, opulently appointed rooms and five gourmet restaurants, was considered the best hotel on the strip. Dapper Uncle Frank must have dropped considerably more in the Fabulador’s colossal casino than the family suspected. PD led the way to the Champs-Elysées, the most expensive of the eateries, and when he explained whose son he was, the beaming captain escorted them to a large booth. Flipping open stiff white napkins for Alicia and Beth, he suggested that they start with the blue points.

  While the others tipped on horseradish, tabasco, red sauce, Alicia gripped the damask of her napkin. Noticing, Hap picked up the tiny pitchfork to pry the fleshy mollusk free, eating it without any doctoring. She watched, and followed suit. Swallowing the first oyster with a gulp, she hastily covered her mouth with her napkin. She played with the rest, twisting her fork.

  At first the cousins were a little stiff, as if Barry’s marriage had somehow elevated them all to another generation and they weren’t yet certain of the ground rules. Even Maxim’s sarcastic humor was blunted. But the champagne—a vintage Mumm’s—did its work, and by the time the eggs benedict arrived, the five cousins were back to their usual bickering jests and digs.

  “So tell me, Barry-boy,” Maxim asked, “how do you intend breaking the news to your parents?”

  “Quite simply. I’ll point out that they eloped, too,” Barry said.

  “Alas, that’s not the type of logic Cordiner parents accept,” Maxim retorted.

  Beth turned to her new sister-in-law. “And what about you, Alicia?” she inquired with the attentive smile she employed at rush teas. “How will your family feel?”

  Alicia looked down at the table. “They’re in El Paso.” She spoke too rapidly.

  At this nonsequitur there was a silence.

  Then PD asked, “You’re a Catholic?”

  After a fractional hesitation, Alicia nodded. “Uhhuh.”

  “That makes two of us, then, and we both know there’ll be repercussions. You’ve married out of the Church.”

  Her soft, full mouth quivered, her eyes looked a yet darker blue.

  “Hey, they’ll get over it,” Hap said.

  PD asked, “Barry, where’ll you guys live?”

  Currently, Barry lived in his parents’ tract house, which had three tiny bedrooms, one bathroom and thin walls. “We haven’t decided,” he said, unable to repress his shudder.

  Alicia touched his hand. “I’m pretty sure my boss’ll let us have the cute cottage in back that I told you about,” she said comfortingly.

  “Cottage?” Maxim asked. “Do you tend sheep or bake bread or what?”

  “Housework,” Alicia replied.

  Barry’s flush was so deep that his freckles disappeared. He dropped his napkin on the table. “We better get a move on, Alicia,” he said abruptly.

  “Good idea.” Maxim grinned. “I hear tell there’s a great shortage of motel rooms in this town.”

  “Really?” Alicia asked.

  “He’s kidding us,” Barry said, embarrassment forgotten in a surge of masculine superiority. “PD, thanks.”

  “For what?” PD replied expansively. “The Fabulador’s paying.”

  The newlyweds moved around the linen-draped tables, Barry putting his arm around Alicia’s narrow waist as they reached the lobby.

  Maxim said, “There goes Barry Cordiner with the hell shot out of his legal career.”

  His brother Hap retorted, “I didn’t hear anything about dropping out of college.”

  “What was so wrong with skipping the ceremony and taking the fabulous little knockout directly to a motel?” PD wanted to know.

  Maxim shook his head. “Jesus, a Mexican live-in!”

  “He’s cuh-razy about her,” Beth said, her despair hidden by a jocular tone.

  “If this doesn’t kill your mother, nothing will,” Maxim said. “Face it, Beth, on humane grounds, for Aunt Clara’s sake, your twin should’ve foregone the legalities.”

  “One thing Mother isn’t,” Beth said hotly. “A bigot.”

  “Ahh, but she wants her half-Hebe chickadees to fly high,” Maxim said.

  Maxim, PD and Hap joked about PD’s Catholicism and Desmond Cordiner’s rise from nothing to Episcopalian, never catching on to Beth and Barry’s invariable hasty changing of the subject when it came to their Judaism.

  Beth looked down at the remains of her eggs benedict. “If it weren’t for all the goop,” she said, “I’d have guessed Alicia to be way younger than eighteen.”

  “You got that impression because she’s a mite low on the brainpower,” Maxim said.

  “It’s her wedding day. And she was too terrified of us to say anything,” Hap said, leveling his gray eyes on his younger brother.

  “We all know you rise to defend the underdog,” Maxim retorted. “In this case, there’s no need, I mean, with an ass and boobs like that, who needs an IQ?”

  “Maxim, please,” Beth murmured. “She’s my sister-in-law.”

  PD gave Beth that warm smile, flashing white teeth. “That lust you hear from Maxim, Bethie, is pure envy.”

  Hap raised his glass. “To our new cousin,” he said. “To Alicia. And Barry.”

  2

  One eye cocked for a suitable motel, Barry cruised slowly along the gaudy strip.

  “I’ve never been inside a place like that before,” Alicia said.

  Though scornful of the huge neon outline of a woman on the hotel’s façade, Barry had also been awed by the Fabulador’s grand scale. “It’s crass,” he said.

  “Your family sure gave us a classy send-off.”

  “They have style,” he said, nodding.

  “Style,” she repeated slowly, as if to imprint the word on her memory.

  For a moment Barry relived that excruciating humiliation he had suffered when Alyssia had announced her occupation. Then, as she shifted across the frayed upholstery, her side snuggling against him, his anxieties and doubts fled. When he was alone with her and the world didn’t impinge, another Barry Cordiner emerged from the skinny, insecure original: a man of the world, suave, assured.

  His bride, he knew, came from a large, close-knit family in El Paso. Though she had mentioned them only sketchily—Mr. Lopez drove a big rig, Mrs. Lopez fixed sensational albóndigas soup—Barry’s mind had developed a keenly precise snapshot of Alicia’s dark and plumply pretty mother with one arm around the lean waist of the tall Lopez, their numerous offspring lined up in front of them. At eighteen, Alicia, the eldest, had no chance of college unless she earned the money herself, so she had left home to find work in Los Angeles.
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  Alicia’s poverty made it unimportant that he was starting out married life with a five and two ones in his wallet. As a matter of fact, at this moment his lack of cash exhilarated him.

  Through the dusty windshield he spotted a long, narrow motel dwarfed by a clump of tall, dusty Washingtonia palms. The trapezoidal shaped sign was emblazoned: $3, $3, $3, $3. The lowest-price accommodations that they had spotted. Slowing, he asked, “How does that place look?”

  “Perfect . . .” She trembled as she spoke.

  He drew her closer to him, wildly excited by what he would soon do to her, yet remorseful. He knew for certain that she, a good Catholic girl, was a virgin. Parking, he kissed her, a kiss that turned ardent.

  Reluctantly he pulled away. “I better make the arrangements.” Wiping the lipstick from his mouth with the back of his hand, he put on his jacket despite the heat—he needed to hide his hard-on.

  The small office was empty. Pressing the bell on the counter, he looked out the full-length window. Alicia was putting on lipstick. He smiled. What a female female she was, smearing on that junk when the minute they were together he would kiss it away.

  There were no sounds coming from behind the closed door with the brass sign: MANAGER’S OFFICE.

  “Hey,” he shouted, pressing on the buzzer again.

  Again no response. Going behind the counter, he rapped on the door. “Anybody home?”

  No answer. He lifted a key from its hook, assuaging his law-abiding soul by scribbling: Nobody around, so I took the key to #7. Pay you later.

  Parking in front of number 7, he reached for the brown paper bag containing two new toothbrushes and a small tube of Pepsodent, their total baggage. (The Trojans he’d purchased at the same Thrifty were discreetly stashed in his jacket pocket.) He carried Alicia across the warped wood threshold.

  The heat trapped inside smelled thick, as if the place had been unoccupied a long time. Kicking the door shut, he turned on the air conditioner before setting down his bride. He kissed her thoroughly, his tongue thrusting deep into her open mouth, both hands cupping the firm, gorgeous butt to bring her closer to him. With a small shoving gesture against his chest, she pulled away.