Rich Friends (13 page)

So what choice was there? That smoggy afternoon they broke up.

Beverly couldn't sleep. In her bed she would listen to Philip's even breathing, the shape of emptiness filling dark hours. After six weeks Dan showed up, and in Beverly's white-faced presence, confronted Philip with the facts. Maybe Philip had guessed all along. “Is this what you want, Beverly? Him?” Philip asked incredulously. He was as white as she. Her huge, weary amber eyes closing, Beverly nodded. And two divorce proceedings were initiated.

On leaving S&G Shoes, Dan had moved to California and discovered a business made for him. Land. With unflagging energy he put a hundred thousand miles a year on his XKE, searching out Southern California for coming areas. He had a nose for it. To buy all the land that he sniffed out required leverage, and while Beverly never quite grasped leverage, she knew it involved one major concept: put up as little of your own as possible. Therefore, Dan syndicated. He got others to put up. His investors, for their cash, received 50% of the profit (in capital gains) while he took the other half for his acumen. Of course future investors required selling. But who was Dan if not Supersalesman? He entertained those in search of tax shelter (acquaintances and referrals both) at Scandia, Perino's, or LaRue, offering drinks and huge steaks, playing down the success of his previous ventures. The old soft sell. By the time coffee was poured (“Try the cheesecake, it's fabulous here,” Dan would urge), his guests invariably were begging for in. Dan, on Business Evenings, was exuberant as a boy playing football on a crisp October day.

Beverly felt strangers' eyes flicking at her. Dan's girl? DeeDee's successor? An unmarried broad who slept around? A
shiksa
? The years, two children, a Cape Cod house, an interlocutory decree, had altered Beverly not at all. She remained pure of the small retaliatory malice and petty conversation that would have enabled another woman to breeze through Business Evenings.

The worst, though: their arguments, every single one, were tethered, however deviously, to Business Evenings.

And last night's had been a horror. Shuddering, Beverly tied her robe. We're all through, she thought.

She headed for the kitchen.

Jamie was frying rounds of wiener, his beagle, a pedigreed wanderer named Boris, at his feet. “'Morning,” she said. Boris's tail thumped on the brick floor. Jamie smiled. A smile with teeth too large, still serrated, a smile, like Beverly's, that showed the gum, a completely open smile. He wore what he'd slept in, an old T-shirt tight enough to show the ladder of his ribs, and jockey shorts with a tear in the back seam. His arms were gangly, his legs knob-ankled, thin, long. At almost ten, Jamie was growing too fast. Philip was a tall man.

The kettle spout steamed—Jamie always put water on for her. “Thank you,” she said, not quite managing a smile, tipping Nescafé into a mug without measuring, carrying the dark brew to the table. She rested on an elbow, shading her forehead with her hand.

Jamie said, “I found this baby bird.”

She looked up.

“When I got the paper,” he said.

“Where?”

“The patio. The nest's in the ferns.” He cranked open a can of Heinz beans. “Think it'll be okay?”

“Why not?”

“They won't feed it, the parents, if it's been messed with.” His eyes were hazel. In the left iris floated a black birthmark, which gave him a slightly cross-eyed, questioning expression.

“Is that true?”

“I read. I used a spoon, so they couldn't smell me.”

“Clever.”

“There were two others. Ugly, naked, like worms with beaks. Sad. Really sad.”

He'd been sad, really sad, his head out of shape from the birth canal. “The parents don't think so,” she said.

“They didn't come back.”

“Oh?”

“I hung around.”

“With Boris?”

“Sure, Boris.”

“He's a bird dog.” This time her smile succeeded.

“No, really.”

She got up, giving him a hug, her fingers tightening on fragile, small-boy shoulder blades. “Really,” she said. “If you were a bird, wouldn't you stay clear of Boris?”

“I guess.” He nodded, and stirred beans into hot dogs.

“Save some for me.”

Beverly and Jamie turned.

Alix stood in the door, brushing luxuriant, waist-length hair. Beverly's breath caught. Each time she confronted her elder child, her painter's eye marveled. True human beauty is one of the rarest commodities. Alix. Fine bones, proud tilt of head on slender neck. Arched brows and wide forehead. The slightly full lower lip that rather than being a pouty flaw was the one variation necessary to validate perfection. Of Alix there was no saying, “She'll be a beauty.” At eleven going on twelve, age of tadpole gawks, Alix Schorer was home free.

Her thick-lashed brown eyes stayed on Beverly as if she were expecting something. Since the separation she always looked at Beverly as if she were expecting something.

Beverly cleared her throat. “That's a new sweater, isn't it?”

“Uh-huh.” Alix, putting down her brush, opened the cabinet for a bowl.

“Yellow's pretty on you.”

“Oh Mother!”

“It is.”

“Pretty's such a dork word.”

Jamie let his sister fill her bowl—he'd made enough for them both. He ate from the skillet, sitting next to Beverly. Alix leaned against the counter, sweeping neat forkfuls into her lovely, possibly flawed mouth. She swallowed. “Daddy gave me the money. Boris—scram!”

“Where did you find it?” Beverly asked.

Alix said, “Jamie, move.”

“The bus hasn't gone up yet.”

“Oh hasn't it?”

“I didn't hear—”

“Which proves you've got earwax.”

“When?”

“See if I care. Be late.”

Jamie ran, leaving the skillet on the Sports.

Alix turned to Beverly, “You said something, Mother?”

Beverly shook her head.

“I distinctly thought you did.”

“No.”

“Before,” Alix prodded.

“Oh yes. Where'd you get the sweater?”

“Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“It's Daddy's money.”

“Alix, please.” Beverly sighed. “I can't handle it when you're like this.” She closed her eyes.

“Tired?”

“I didn't think it'd hurt you this—”

“Mother, we aren't in the olden days. Half of everybody's parents are divorced,” Alix stated. “But you told us that you and Mr. Grossblatt wouldn't be late.” (Repeatedly Dan had asked Alix to call him by his first name: she made it a point of filial honor not to.)

“We weren't.” (Ten fifteen, and Dan's new Jaguar was digging out of the drive while Beverly's shaky fingers were pushing bills into Mrs. Elwood's plump hand.)

“Then you're an insomaniac.”

“Insomniac.”

“I was trying,” Alix said, “for humor.”

A heavy rumble shuddered down the winding curves of Maggiore Lane. Alix scrabbled in her mother's purse. “No change,” she accused.

“Take the ones.”

Beverly watched her children race up the steep drive, Alix handing Jamie his dollar—he tended to forget lunch money and allowances—and shouting amicable insults to her friends, disappearing into the big yellow bus. Jamie, pausing to pull Boris's ear, sitting alone in the last seat.

Beverly, tightening her robe, stared after the bus. It was a time of cold war, of missile crises, and most days there were unscheduled drop drills, children huddling under desks with their arms bent, protecting frail heads from imminent nuclear damage. The bus's roar faded.

Inside, in the maid's room she used as a studio, Beverly angled her easel to the window. On the board was an unfinished pastel, of a baby girl, with a small Kodacolor print of the child tacked to the upper left corner. Sandler Gallery had commissioned the portrait for her. Beverly managed on Sandler's commissions and Philip's child support. She and Dan weren't married yet, therefore she refused the money he persistently offered her. She squinted, choosing a green pastel, filling in background with the flat of chalk.
You're so fucking sensitive, how come you don't marry some starving artist
? Her delicate brows drew together, her soft mouth pulled down. She looked utterly desolate. Soon, though, a problem of highlight involved her.

2

“Beverly.”

Startled, she dropped the chalk.

“You've got something against locking doors?”

“Nothing personal,” she said, picking up the pastel, which mercifully hadn't broken. She didn't have much to spend on supplies. “Hi.”

Dan leaned against the doorjamb, one leg curled around the other, motionless. Yet from the top of his thick brown hair to shoes that zipped at the side instead of lacing, he somehow managed to appear in supercharged motion.

“About lunch?” he asked.

“S'that late? I've got cottage cheese.”

He picked up a large brown bag with numbers totaled down the side, sniffing. “Smells like deli. You holding out on me with that cottage cheese?”

She laughed, relieved. It's right again, she thought.

Inevitably generous, he'd brought enough for a medium-size bar mitzvah.

Over his thick corned beef-and-pastrami sandwich, he asked, “I ever tell you about acreage in the Valley?”

“Which?”

“Right off the Ventura Freeway.”

She shook her head. “I don't think so.”

“A fantastic location for a shopping center, a good-size one, with two, three major department stores. I've been thinking. Why not a roof over, a mall, and air condition the whole shooting match? Then that damn Valley summer won't keep customers home. Listen, you could have a double decker of shops. And indoor gardens and sidewalk cafés and some sort of recreation for kids. The minute it hit ninety, every broad for miles around would head on over.”

Dan verbally developed each piece he found, building shopping centers and tracts in the air. The land safely his (and his investors') he would begin the search for a hungry buyer. Oh, she knew her Dan.

“Why the scrutable smile?” he asked.

She reached for potato salad.

“Speak up. Who can hear you?” He used his fork to feed her. “A big one like this, and I'll retire.”

An idea so incongruous—where would all that energy go?—that she laughed aloud, potato trapping her throat, so laughter turned to coughing. He rose, pounding between her shoulders.

“That's for laughing at me,” he said. “I mean it. No more all-day, all-night shit.”

“I was tired.”

“Otherwise you're big on making friends and influencing people? You love the business, right?”

“Dan—” she started, but he stroked back her hair. “There's this new invention,” he said tenderly. “Maybe you've heard of it? They call it the comb. Buzz, you're not tough enough. It's not for you. So I'll put up this shopping center and we'll have it made.” A sound deep in his throat. He shook his head, aggravated. “The only hitch is this Alvena Earle. The owner. A crazy woman. She refuses to sell the land—now why the laughing?”

“Your test for sanity.”

“She doesn't have a pot to piss in, and there she is, camping out on Fort Knox. What do you call that?”

“Have you talked to her?”

“Five times. She gives me nothing.” Dan chuckled. “I'm the one who's crazy. I like the old
meshugenah
—she's an original.” He speared a red sliver of pastrami. “A prime location like this, May Company, Bullock's, Broadway, all the big ones want in. And with them signed, the little guys trip over themselves for leases. They're the ones who sweeten the deal.”

“How?”

“They pay higher per foot.”

“That's not fair.”

“Who told you life is fair? When I get that piece—”

“If.”

“When,” he said. “I need it, don't I?” His little finger traced her lip, moving down her throat, parting the Viyella robe, rubbing the tops of her breasts. She heard her own intake of breath and felt the moisture gathering in her eyes—her eyes always grew wet, echoing that warm, secret need of him.

“Last night,” he muttered, “I dreamed of the camp.”

They pulled apart. Silent.

“Come on,” he said finally. “Let's go in your room.”

On cool, rumpled sheets, she murmured his name, the flat of her hands hard on his back, as he went into her. And after that, there was just the slow, sure thrusting that carried them further and further from thinking about those stacks of skeletal bodies, from thinking that they, maybe, belonged in that vast, muddy hell, from thinking of anything. Under him her hips moved faster.

3

Around two, Dan left, heading for Alvena Earle's land. The San Diego Freeway to the Valley was under construction, Sepulveda Boulevard rerouted onto temporary paving, and stones hailed under the Jag. Dan drove, his mind half on Beverly, the other half working on his financial statement. His divorce had been a bitch. And trust Beverly to drown in guilt. So he let her know the truth, he'd inherited from his father approximately two million, never mentioning that this was in S&G Shoes, which for his own reasons, doubtless half-assed but anyway his reasons, he'd let be managed (or mismanaged) by Justin Winsten, his brother-in-law. S&G stock might have been Confederate bonds. Dan's latest dividend had arrived seven years previously. His own business was good. But there is a joke among land men, three of them drinking coffee and gabbing about net worths well up in the seven figures, and when the waitress puts down the check, not one can ante up. Some joke. In every deal Dan put up some of his own: always he was land-rich and cash-poor. To pay the first installment on DeeDee's community-property settlement, he'd been forced into premature escrow on the Lancaster acreage. Each month DeeDee got a thousand-dollar alimony check, plus another made out for the same, Michael's and Vic's child support. Dan wrote out three fifty for Aunt Channa's sunlit room at Ocean Park Rest Home. God knows how much Mortie's new disaster in Vegas would cost him. Last week Gary had written:
Dear Cousin Dan, My tuition amounts to
.… This, too, he'd inherited from his father, the ancient Jewish title, Rich Relation, with the duties incumbent thereon. Dan didn't mind. As a matter of fact, the knowledge he'd succeeded gave him a kick.