Rich White Americans Read online

  Rich White Americans

  Virginia Dale

  Austin Macauley Publishers

  Rich White Americans

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Copyright Information

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Virginia Dale has had two other books published, Never Marry in Morocco (Fifthian Press, 1996) and The Bushy Daughters Go to War and Find Rumi (iUniverse, 2007). Both received good reviews in the Santa Barbara Independent, and she was scheduled for readings by them at the local book stores. They had several in 1996 and still have an excellent independent one named Chaucer’s.

  She lived abroad for seven years in Madrid, Spain and Rabat, Morocco, where she became well acquainted with the Spanish, French, and Moroccan cultures. She currently resides in Santa Barbara, California.

  About the Book

  Part thriller, part action adventure—this story is from the standpoint of a young woman who foils rape. It’s 1963 and Inny spends a summer in her parents’ new home in swank Montecito while waiting to finish her senior year at UC Berkeley. She’s determined to graduate, but when a senator’s stepson stalks her back to Berkeley, neither her family nor her first real love can protect her from the heart of darkness.

  “Once I started reading this five-star novel, I couldn’t put it down. What a riveting adventure of a young woman experiencing the best and worst of partying with some of the richest men in Montecito while determined to get her college degree and earn her own living. Her infectious optimism and ability to enjoy life is an inspiration. It’s bigger than real life—full of lust, love, and compassion. I can’t wait for the film version, but, in the meantime, every college girl should read this book!” – Alexis Rafael, author of Sex and the Cyborg Goddess.

  Dedication

  Dedicated to Robert and Doris Bywater, my parents.

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © Virginia Dale (2019)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

  Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Ordering Information:

  Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

  Publisher’s Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  Dale, Virginia

  Rich White Americans

  ISBN 9781641828390 (Paperback)

  ISBN 9781641828406 (Hardback)

  ISBN 9781645366225 (ePub e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019937089

  The main category of the book — Fiction / Thrillers / General

  www.austinmacauley.com/us

  First Published (2019)

  Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

  40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

  New York, NY 10005

  USA

  [email protected]

  +1 (646) 5125767

  Chapter 1

  A U.C. Berkeley buddy, Jack Smith, introduced me to Andronicus Wyland and a few of his other ultra-wealthy Montecito friends when I arrived, fresh from my junior year, in 1963, to spend the summer with my parents in their new home in Montecito. Everyone told me it was a swell place to live, with trees and spacious gardens everywhere. I was excited and happy to meet my friend’s friends.

  Andronicus was the stepson of State Senator Michael Dorland. Husky, redheaded with fleshy, ill-defined facial features, he didn’t make much of an impression on me until I started losing at a game of strip poker, which I’d never played before. We were in the sumptuous room where his family vault gleamed. You couldn’t miss it, even though it was a cavernous room. There was nothing more than a poker table and the vault in it. I had no qualms about the game, since Jack was such a good friend, and it never occurred to me that the boys would take it seriously. We were out for fun, nothing more. I loved my friends, for they were my mainstay, and I wanted to be a part of whatever party or gathering they concocted. Geoff Jones, whose father owned the expensive men’s clothing stores called Tweeds and Deeds, and another couple of boys who’d been at the posh party Jack had invited me to, sat next to him. I was meeting people for the first time, finding them amiable and, of course, a bit drunk by now. Alcoholism was rampant in Montecito, I’d soon find out, along with even more devious elements.

  My inexpensive bracelet and earrings lay on the poker table. We’d all had a few scotch and sodas, mostly straight scotch in their case, at a lavish party at another Montecito home, before we arrived.

  All I had on was my pink party dress, pantyhose and high heels. “Take it off,” said Andronicus. He curled his lip as he spoke. He narrowed his small, red-veined eyes and stared at me like a bird of prey. A vision of a white laboratory rat came to my mind, perhaps because I was a psychology major and had worked with lab rats.

  “Take me home,” I replied. I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up, putting my costume jewelry back on.

  “You lost. You have to take off your dress.”

  Andronicus took another swig of straight scotch in one of his parents’ fancy beveled glasses, leaned forward, leering at me. He couldn’t take his eyes off my body.

  “I said, take me home!”

  “You’re a bad loser,” said Andronicus.

  “I’m not going out with you next weekend either.” I started walking toward the door.

  “She’s a Cal girl. I’ll take her home,” said Jack, backing me up.

  I flashed him a warm smile. I figured I had lucked out because I went to Cal Berkeley. I wondered about other girls. I’d heard that the cards were stacked against us, but I didn’t want to believe it.

  God gave me a curvy wiggle of a butt and a cute face with a hint of mischief to top it off. People who didn’t know me thought I wasn’t what I really was: dead set on graduating from Berkeley and getting a job.

  I got into Jack’s shiny black sports car, and we thought nothing more about it. He’d dropped out of Berkeley and gone to USC, but we’d always maintained a good friendship. He was outgoing and fun, which was all I required of my friends in those heady days of the early sixties. He respected me, never pressing for a kiss or anything more than friendship.

  During the week, I applied for sales clerk jobs and landed one at Bonnie Langley’s Music Shop in downtown Santa Barbara. I’d worked summers to pay for my college clothes and make my mother happy. She was frugal, plus Daddy had had a rough go of it lately even though he was an engineer.

  Andronicus called me the next day to apologize. I stayed mad at him and said I wouldn’t go. He kept calling. He’d take me to the San Ysidro Ranch for dinner and dancing at the Coral Ca
sino afterwards. We’d have a fine time. He wouldn’t give up, and he suddenly was all charm. I finally agreed to go, because I liked eating in elegant places and dancing, too. He couldn’t be that bad. A bit rude and slovenly, unkempt, but fun was fun.

  I put on one of my favorite dresses, a white cotton pique sheath, since we were going to elegant places. Andronicus arrived on time. I introduced him to my staid parents, who shook hands with him, impressed that his father was a state senator. Then, we were off in his bright red Ferrari to the San Ysidro Ranch. I talked and laughed with him, our high spirits bubbling over. The eucalyptus trees that framed beautiful Montecito provided a lush, green background. The air was perfumed by honeysuckle and sweet-smelling flowers that grew in abundance in this lovely town.

  I ordered lobster thermidor for dinner at the San Ysidro Ranch restaurant, which was delicious. The restaurant overlooked a lovely wooded area. It was famous because John and Jackie Kennedy had honeymooned there. The other diners ate lavish meals, dressed to the nines. Its elegant, rustic setting made it a popular place to dine, plus the food was reputed to be the best in Santa Barbara. Andronicus was attentive; he made sure I had plenty to drink. Bloody Marys. I loved a good Bloody Mary in the early sixties when I was twenty years old. Andronicus kept putting his fingers in the air to attract the attention of the waiter, saying, “More drinks, and make it snappy!”

  By the time we arrived at the Coral Casino, an exclusive Montecito nightclub adjacent to the Biltmore Hotel, we’d gotten pretty drunk. I don’t remember what he said, but it didn’t matter. I was ready to dance, and dance I did – with half the men at the Casino, young and old. My Berkeley buddy, Jack, laughed at my shenanigans; he knew I loved to dance and cut up. Someone had told me not everyone found my antics amusing; they thought I was unladylike. I ignored prudes and looked down upon them for their lack of courage and ease of condemnation of others. At one point, I danced around a pole, laughing my head off. Andronicus kept buying me Bloody Marys. I was sobering up by the time he decided to take me home. Only, we never made it to my house. Instead, he parked his fire-engine-red Ferrari outside the Plow and Angel, an elegant bar owned by his stepfather, for another drink. As I downed it, he said, “Will you marry me?”

  I looked at him. He was serious. At least, he seemed serious at the time.

  “I don’t even know you,” I replied. I swished my long, dark blonde hair over my shoulders as I shook my head. “Take me home.” I’d never marry anyone as slovenly as Andronicus. Never.

  We got back in his fancy car. He drove to a large house I’d never seen before. This was my second week in Montecito, so I had no idea where we were.

  “This isn’t my house.”

  He got out, walked around to my door, opened it, and slung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes – a kicking and screaming sack of potatoes.

  “Put me down! Take me HOME!”

  He stormed up the stairs to the second story of the empty house and flung me onto a bed. I bent my knees back, preparing to stick my spike heels into his plump stomach. He landed on them, pulled my head back by my hair, and took them off. I fought like a demon, screaming and scratching his back with my long fingernails, drawing blood, but he was hefty and I slender. By the time he got my pantyhose off, I asked him if he planned to kill me. I’d heard of rape and murder, in that order. My breath was sporadic; I gasped for air.

  He just laughed.

  My life reeled before my eyes. I thought fast and said, “Look, Andronicus, I really like you. This is silly to put up such a fight. I want to do it with you.” I had to distract him.

  He let go of me to unzip his pants. I slithered out from under him, and fleet as a frightened doe, ran out of the house, taking the stairs three at a time, which split my white cotton pique sheath dress up the back. I ran like the devil himself were chasing me to the house next door, hallucinating a Methodist minister opening it, shaking his finger at me.

  Instead, a boy my age opened it. He had a drink in his hand. He was tall with dark hair. I shrieked, “Andronicus Wyland tried to rape me!”

  He looked surprised. I bolted inside, sobbing hysterically. He showed me to a bathroom, where I tried to calm myself.

  I sobbed for a few more minutes. I looked in the mirror and saw a reddened face and watery blue eyes. I wanted to go home. I splashed cold water on my face and dried it. I opened the bathroom door, where two boys my age, Jim Hopman and Bruce Washly stood staring at me.

  Jim shoved yet another Bloody Mary into my hand. “What happened?”

  “Andronicus Wyland tried to rape me! My purse and pantyhose are still next door in that house.”

  The two boys exchanged looks. “Hasn’t this ever happened to you before?”

  “No!” I took a gulp of the Bloody Mary to try to steady my nerves.

  “It’s fairly common in Montecito.”

  “My parents just moved here.”

  “You’d better tell them,” said Jim, nodding his head like a sage Buddha.

  “I’ll go get your things for you,” said Bruce, also tall, but he made no impression on me, and walked out. I was still collecting my wits.

  Jim offered me a chair, and I sat down. We both had drinks in our hands. Taking each other’s measure, he drank some more of his Bloody Mary, and I drank some more of mine.

  “He asked me to marry him at the Plow and Angel. I said, ‘No, take me home.’ He drove to that house and hauled me out of the car. He carried me up the stairs and flung me on a bed.” I sniffed and rubbed my eyes.

  “Andronicus has a reputation,” said Jim.

  “As a rapist?”

  “He’s being taken to court by the head of the Theta House at Amherst for raping her.”

  “Why didn’t Jack tell me this?”

  “You’re a friend of Jack’s?”

  “We were friends in my freshman year at Berkeley.”

  “So you go to Cal?”

  “Yes.”

  “I go to Harvard.”

  “I’ve got to go home.”

  “Where do your parents live?”

  “On Cima Linda Lane.”

  Bruce opened the door, holding my pantyhose and chartreuse-green purse my grandmother had bought for me at Kann’s in Arlington, Virginia, my hometown. She had giggled and told me I could buy anything on sale that day. My grandfather, Audus T. Davis, was head of the Washington, D.C., post office. He’d placed first in the civil service test after test and ended up in charge of the post office and two thousand employees, whose names, ages and salaries he knew by heart. That’s how we did things in my family. Fair and square. Auntie had been president of the Daughters of the American Republic for thirty years. She and Uncle Emory Starke, the head of the math department at M.I.T. were teetotalers. I was a cork sniffer myself but loved letting loose once I’d had a drink. What people thought of me was of little import. I liked my wild side and my serious, bookish side. It was fun to be yourself, with a little let-the-devil-take-the-hindmost free-spiritedness. Of course, I kept my grades up at U.C. Berkeley with an eye on grad school.

  Jim stared at me, wide-eyed. “Andronicus arranged to have the house next door left unlocked,” said Bruce. “It’s empty because the owners are getting a divorce.”

  “What!” Stunned, I could barely fathom such a thing as premeditated rape. I was also surprised to hear the word divorce. No one got divorced where I came from.

  Jim stared at me. “You’d better tell your parents.”

  “They’ll kill me!” I couldn’t imagine telling my Puritanical parents I’d almost been raped.

  “Stories like this get around Montecito pretty fast; everyone will know about it.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “Why don’t you finish your drink and I’ll drive you home,” said Jim. “Where do you live on Cima Linda?”

  “239 Cima Linda Lane.”

  He nodded his head; Bruce tried to smile, and I finished what must have been my sixth Bloody Mary that evening. In those
days, we didn’t worry about sobriety. When we drank, it was to have fun. If you had too much, you had a bad hangover the next day. No emergency room visits.

  Bruce handed me my handbag, pantyhose, and high heels. I went into the bathroom to put them back on. When I came out, Jim smiled and ushered me out of the house to his car, which turned out to be a new Chevrolet convertible, which it turned out Bruce’s father had sold him from his car dealership. I was getting used to ultra-rich kids at this point.

  Although my parents had bought a home in Montecito, they weren’t wealthy. My paternal grandparents lent them three thousand dollars for the down payment. My dad had a job in Santa Barbara working for AMF as an engineer. He’d been having trouble finding a steady job since he’d retired from the Navy, prompted by having been passed over for captain, crushing his hopes for a career in the U.S. Navy, which he adored. It was a huge blow, as he’d attended Annapolis and all the grads made captain as a rule. He was a WWII veteran, to boot.

  I got into Jim’s car; he drove toward my house; the wind rushed through my bedraggled hair, reviving my spirits somewhat. I had no idea where I was, but the shapes of shaggy pines and eucalyptus trees reassured me. Nature had always been my solace.

  Within five minutes, we arrived at Cima Linda Lane. I saw my parents’ home with its spacious driveway and breeze-through carport and said, “That’s my house.” Jim stopped, opened the car door for me and I thanked him.

  He waited while I opened the locked front door to my house. Then, he took off.

  I tiptoed to my parents’ room. Their door was shut; the house was quiet as a tomb. I knocked at the door. No response. I waited a minute. Then, I cautiously opened it an inch or so and said, “Mother?”

  I heard my parents stir in their twin beds, waking from a dead sleep. “Huh? What?” I heard my mother’s muffled voice from within the bedroom.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said.

  “Innocence, it’s late.” She used my full name, Innocence.

  “I was almost raped tonight.”