“To tell the truth, I’m not sure how I got here. And I certainly don’t know where I am. These spells hit me suddenly. As for how I’m dressed . . . I guess you could call it personal eccentricity. Uh like the way you’re dressed. Or not dressed.”
He glanced down at himself and grinned. “Oh, yes, I’m quite aware that the way my wife and I are dressed. . . or not dressed would call for explanation under some circumstances. But we prefer to make trespassers do the explaining instead. You see, you don’t belong here, dressed that way or any other, while we do-just as we are. These are the grounds of the Denver Sunshine Club.”
John and Jenny Sutton were the sort of sophisticated, unshockable, friendly people who could invite an earthquake in for tea. John obviously was not satisfied with my fishy explanations and wanted to cross-examine me, but Jenny held him back. I stuck to my story about “dizzy spells” and said that the last I remembered was yesterday evening and that I had been in Denver, at the New Brown Palace. Finally he said, “Well, it’s quite interesting, even exciting, and I suppose somebody who’s going into Boulder can drop you there and you can get a bus back into Denver.” He looked at me again. “But if I take you back to the clubhouse, people are going to be mighty, mighty curious.”
I looked down at myself. I had been made vaguely uneasy by the fact that I was dressed and they were not-I mean I felt like the one out of order, not they. “John . . . would it simplify things if I peeled off my clothes, too?” The prospect did not upset me; I had never been in one of the bare-skin camps before, seeing no point in them. But Chuck and I had spent a couple of weekends at Santa Barbara and one at Laguna Beach-at a beach skin makes sense and nothing else does.
He nodded. “It certainly would.”
“Dear,” said Jenny, “he could be our guest.”
“Mmm. . . yes. My only love, you paddle your sweet self into the grounds. Mix around and manage to let it be known that we are expecting a guest from . . . where had it better be, Danny?”
“Uh, from California. Los Angeles. I actually am from there.” I almost said “Great Los Angeles” and realized that I was going to have to guard my speech. “Movies” were no longer “grabbies.”
“From Los Angeles. That and `Danny’ is all that is necessary; we don’t use last names, unless offered. So, honey, you spread the word, as if it were something everybody already knew. Then in about half an hour you have to meet us down by the gate. But come here instead. And fetch my overnight bag.”
“Why the bag, dear?”
“To conceal that masquerade costume. It’s pretty conspicuous, even for anyone who is as eccentric as Danny said he is.”
I got up and went at once behind some bushes to undress, since I wouldn’t have any excuse for locker-room modesty once Jenny Sutton left us. I had to do it; I couldn’t peel down and reveal that I had twenty thousand dollars’ worth of gold, figured at the 1970 standard of sixty dollars an ounce, wrapped around my waist. It did not take long, as I had made a belt of the gold, instead of a girdle, the first time I had had trouble getting it off and on to bathe; I had double-looped it and wired it together in front.
When I had my clothes off I wrapped the gold in them and tried to pretend that it all weighed only what clothes should. John Sutton glanced at the bundle but said nothing. He offered me a cigarette-he carried them strapped to his ankle. They were a brand I had never expected to see again.
I waved it but it didn’t light. Then I let him light it for me. “Now,” he said quietly, “that we are alone, do you have anything you want to tell me? If I’m going to vouch for you to the club, I’m honor-bound to be sure, at the very least, that you won’t make trouble.”