In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [98]
Enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have. For instance, the man he had seen by the pool at the Fontaine-bleau. Miles away, shrouded in a summery veil of heat-haze and sea-sparkle, he could see the towers of the pale, expensive hotels - the Fontaine bleau, the Eden Roc, the Roney Plaza. On their second day in Miami he had suggested to Perry that they invade these pleasure-domes. "Maybe pick up a coupla rich women," he had said. Perry had been most reluctant; he felt people would stare at them because of their khaki trousers and T-shirts. Actually, their tour, of the Fontaine bleau's gaudy premises went unnoticed, amid the men striding about in Bermuda shorts of candy-striped raw silk, and the women wearing bathing suits and mink simultaneously. The trespassers had loitered in the lobby, in the garden, lounged by the swimming pool. It was there that Dick saw the man, who was his own age - twenty-eight or thirty. He could have been a "gambler or lawyer or maybe a gangster from Chicago." Whatever he was, he looked as though he knew the glories of money and power. A blonde who resembled Marilyn Monroe was kneading him with suntan oil, and his lazy, beringed hand reached for a tumbler of iced orange juice. All that belonged to him, Dick, but he would never have it. Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? Why should that "big-shot bastard" have all the luck? With a knife in his hand, he, Dick, had power. Big-shot bastards like that had better be careful or he might "open them up and let a little of their hick spill on the floor " But Dick's day was ruined. The beautiful blonde rubbing on the suntan oil had ruined it. He'd said to Perry, "Let's pull the hell out of here." Now a young girl, probably twelve, was drawing figures in the sand, carving out big, crude faces with a piece of driftwood. Dick, pausing to admire her art, offered the shells he had gathered. "They make good eyes," he said. The child accepted the gift, where upon Dick smiled and winked at her, He was sorry he felt as he did about her, for his sexual interest in female children was a failing of which he was "sincerely ashamed" - a secret he'd not confessed to anyone and hoped no one suspected (though he was aware that Perry had reason to), because other people might not think it "normal." That, to be sure, was something he was certain he was - "a normal." Seducing pubescent girls, as he had done "eight or nine" times in the last several years, did not disprove it, for if the truth were known, most real men had the same desires he had. He took the child's hand and said, "You're my baby girl. My little sweetheart." But she objected. Her hand, held by his, twitched like a fish on a hook, and he recognized the astounded expression in her eyes from earlier incidents in his career. He let go, laughed lightly, and said, "Just a game. Don't you like games?" Perry, still reclining under the blue umbrella, had observed the scene and realized Dick's purpose at once, and despised him for it; he had "no respect for people who can't control themselves sexually," especially when the lack of control involved what he called "pervertiness" - "bothering kids," "queer stuff," rape. And he thought he had made his views obvious to Dick; indeed, hadn't they almost had a fist fight when quite recently he had prevented Dick from raping a terrified young girl? However, he wouldn't care to repeat that particular test of strength. He was relieved when he saw the child walk away from Dick. Christmas carols were in the air; they issued from the radio of the four women and mixed strangely with Miami's sunshine and the cries of the querulous, never thoroughly silent seagulls. "Oh, come let us adore Him, Oh, come let us adore Him" : a cathedral choir, an exalted music that moved Perry to tears - which refused to stop, even after the music did. And as was not uncommon when he was thus afflicted, he dwelt upon a possibility that had for him "tremendous fascination" : suicide. As a child he had often thought of killing himself,