Rich Friends (21 page)

“Dan?”

“I make one stupid remark, and you blow it into—”

“‘If you were Gene?”

Dan sighed. “God knows.”

“I'm sure He does. But what do you think?”

He sighed again. “It wouldn't have happened,” he said, and leaned across letters and leases. “But this is me. On the subject I'm
meshugenah
. Both of us are.” Pause. “Gene Matheny got you here.”

She heard Gene's name, but it didn't register. Dan's admission had soothed the cranial pressure that had been with her since that afternoon in the hospital. “It wasn't your fault,” she said. “It was, but it wasn't.” This made no sense, but when did reason matter to Beverly? “What is it now?”

He consulted his watch. “Twenty of three.”

Her muscles coiled and a panic of adrenaline burst through her. The Hollywood bus had left! Five minutes ago, left. Without her. Fumbling in her purse, spreading brown leather wallet. Two ones. For two dollars no cab will take you from Beverly Hills to Hollywood. No way. Dark grasscloth and Dan's bright kudos whirling. Around her. She stood. She must get to Hollywood.

“Hey!” Dan called.

Beige silk pleats slapped against her thighs. She struggled with the knob. Her palm was wet. As the door jerked open, Dan called, “Beverly!” Georgia was a moment of fake gardenias. Another tug and Beverly was racing down carpeted hall. At the elevator she jabbed her finger on
DOWN
. Maybe it's a ten and a one, she thought, opening her purse, spilling Revlon lipstick, two zinc pennies, a Kennedy half-dollar, and a used Kleenex. She scrabbled. Dan was helping her.

“What the hell's with you?”

“The bus has gone!”

“So?”

“I told you. Alix'll be home!”

“Then you'll be a few minutes after her.”

“Anxiety symptoms don't work that way. Dan, would you lend me five?”

“For what?”

“A cab.”

“I'll drive you.”

“Your appointment—”

“Screw that!” he shouted. Then, quietly, “You think I'd let you run around like this? You really think that?” His hand started to reach for her, then fell to his side. Sweat beaded his forehead, darkening the Band-Aid.

In the dim underground lot, their footsteps echoing, he led her to a Cadillac. “The Jag's at the knackers,” he said.

He did not take out his keys.

“Dan, let's go.”

“I ever get you home late?”

“It's not exactly irrelevant that I can't leave her alone. Please, Dan?”

“Look.” He pointed to the car clock. “Quarter of. No. Twelve of. Say, fifteen minutes to Hollywood. When's she due back?”

“Half past.”

“So I can talk to you a few minutes without the world coming to an end?”

In the entry, outlined by gaudy sun, an attendant stretched his arms above his head, circling at his sides, like that drawing of Leonardo's. Beverly exhaled.

Dan took a cigar from his shirt pocket, clipping and lighting it. “The way you took off,” he said. “Five months I've been planning exactly how to knock your teeth down your throat. But now—”

“That I'm a crazy lady?”

“Whoever figured you for sane? I'm trying to apologize for being such a shit up there.”

“A first.”

He chuckled. “Don't think it came easy,” he said. “Other than that, is it so rough being with me?”

It wasn't. Besides, hadn't she been able to talk to him easily, few holds barred? “You're the only person left who understands me,” she said.

“Jamie was too young to understand you.”

She closed her eyes.

“Still as bad, isn't it?” he asked gently.

“Worse.”

“Nobody could accuse us of taking it well.” A car drove down the ramp, roaring into a space. “Did I say something derogatory before? You look good—for a crazy lady.”

He smiled. She smiled back.

“That's better,” he said, resting his knuckles on her cheek, lightly, lightly. “Buzz?”

The questioning note was clear. He meant, get back together. His features seemed heavier than she remembered, and there was a slackness below his chin. Drinking, Gene had said, and guilt. She could hear Dan's watch, time ticking away on a golden Omega, and he was waiting for her answer.

Dan tapped ash in the tray. “Worried he'll get her back?”

“No. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to. He's been very nice.”

After a pause, Dan asked, “You don't love me anymore? That the problem?”

It was. She didn't. So how could she reply?

“Well, I still do you, Buzz, if that means anything.” Another pause. “It won't be like it was.”

Like it was. Sadness choked her, and she could hardly breathe. She was thinking of the joy she used to feel with him. Irrecoverable. Unevokable, even. She had been in love with Dan so much for so long: for many excellent reasons had she loved him. Well, Jamie's death broke that up. Our guilt is shared, isn't it? she thought, and our innocence, too? There're too many questions. And the only answer I have is that Dan acted, Jamie died, and now I can't even remember love. Her pupils, enlarged by dim light, rested with bewildered misery on Dan. Smoke hung between them. How had she once seen as perfect, near to a god, this heavy-featured, middle-aged businessman who (like every stereotype in those grotesque Nazi propaganda cartoons) held a cigar in his mouth?

He stubbed it out. His eyes met hers. In the few heartbeats that they stared at one another, she felt as if her silk dress had dropped off. It was not her naked body he saw, Dan, but her naked mind.

Going back betrayed the dismembering price she had paid to come to him in the first place. Going back betrayed the love she once had felt for him. If she went back she betrayed herself.

Yet she was a passionately gentle woman. Any form of cruelty, even subconscious, horrified her. One moment in an underground parking lot when Dan read her thoughts, and the die was cast for Beverly.

She reached for her husband's hand, intertwining her cold fingers in his warm ones.

“You'll come home?” he asked. “You and Alix?”

Beverly nodded.

He started the car. “Buzz,” he said. “I'll get to the bottom of those pigeons, I promise you.”

“Mourning doves.”

“Doves, then.”

And she searched for an equal pledge of good faith, coming up with something as the Cadillac's tires squealed up the ramp. “Alix,” she said, “doesn't call you Mr. Grossblatt anymore. You're Dan.”

He laughed. He was still laughing as they emerged into the too-brilliant August sun.

And Now

Chapter Seven

1

The letter from Radcliffe came on a Saturday. Alix, who had been waiting for it, got to the mail first.

She took the unopened envelope to her room. In an ell decorated with charming blue-flowered upholstery, a private spot for her and her innumerable friends, she stood, tearing along the sharp edge. She read the letter once. She refolded paper in the envelope, locking it in a lacquer box. As she turned the tiny key, her smile was unhappy yet accepting. She brushed her dark hair. Licked a forefinger to arch her brows. Adjusted her new lime-green sweater. She went out through her private patio, thus avoiding the family room where she could hear Beverly's soft voice and Fat Sam's loud chortles. She drove her Mustang to the Book Shop, moving between paperback racks, stopping to speed-read a paragraph here and there, selecting eight of the fattest, novels all, rapidly printing Dan's charge. Home, she pressed the lock of her door, giving herself up to
Portrait of a Lady
, the longest.

Radcliffe had rejected her.

This she would keep secret from everyone until she was able to recount the facts as a comic anecdote on herself. Rejections are painful to everyone. Rejections shook Alix more than most. To her they seemed the direct result of some personal ineptitude, like a bra strap showing. At this time, 1968, she was eighteen, an immaculate girl, sharply compulsive, and—possibly because of this—she considered rejection inevitable.

Physical beauty, true beauty, is so rare that it might as well be myth. Alix possessed it. Yet when told she was great-looking, she assumed this the routine line handed out to every passable girl. She saw a lower lip too full, hair not dark enough to be black, feet unusually long and slender. She worked constantly on her appearance. Also, she was reputed to be a brain—but then, she let nobody in on the fact that before each quiz she studied far into the night. By nature she was affectionate. She was ticked off at herself for being aggressive. A natural athlete, she discounted her skill, deciding that anyone who had a mind to could get on the tennis team, say, or ski the advanced runs. She noticed only the rare few better than she.

One thing Alix did give herself.

She caught on fast.

Her most important lesson had come immediately upon Philip's departure. With a child's egoism, she had believed that like the (training) bra strap which other people could see and she could not, she must have done something to make her parents quarrel. She loved her family. The idea that her mother bore full responsibility for the divorce was as incomprehensible to Alix as the quantum theory. On Bellagio Road School's upper playground, she had voiced her belief she'd caused the separation. One of her friends had snickered. Alix had bent over on the green bench, trying to hide her tears. The others, a flock of chickens pecking to destroy a wounded sister, had joined the ugly laughter. Then, miraculously, a voice had whispered inside Alix's head:
Pretend you were kidding
. With superhuman effort she had stopped weeping, somehow managing a laugh. “Boohoo, boohoo. I mean, my mother's boyfriend couldn't have one thing to do with it, could he?” The laughter continued, but differently. They were with her again.

Alix had learned this: If you were wounded deeply, you joked your way out of it. Brown eyes sparkle, a show of perfect bite. Charming Alix. The facade, yes, oozing confidence. And since the facade is what shows, everyone, including Mother, Father, even Dan (who saw through most people) assumed here lived the golden girl, a Beverly Hills princess of the blood. When the hurt proved too great, there was always reading. Novels never left you in the lurch. Novels prevented you from thinking. Alix drifted on blue-flowered fabric to the formal tranquillity of Jamesian life.

2

Caroline, Cricket, and Beverly curved around the sofa in the family room.

Caroline and Beverly, like many childhood friends grown to different lives, kept in intermittent touch, seeing one another maybe once a year, maybe less. Alix hadn't seen Cricket since Cricket was a tiny preschooler who had napped on Alix's bed, wetting it, in the other house, the other existence.

Fat Sam chased around the coffee table, pulling down his toys. He was almost two. As Alix came in, he galloped to her, lifting his arms. “Swing,” he demanded. She swung him between her knees. Dan's slanty blue eyes set in a wide Harpo Marx face. Thin. Wiry. Funny-looking little kid. Alix was queer for her half brother. As she swung, she heard Caroline murmur, “My God. Luv, she is a
knock
out!” Alix, still holding Fat Sam, pressed her cheek against Caroline's scented pink one. “I love your suit,” she said and turned to Cricket. “Welcome.” And Fat Sam shouted, “More! More!” “Here's your train, keed.” “Chug, chug, chug,” Fat Sam puffed, guiding his Tinker Train in and out of legs. Any conversation must center on him.

CAROLINE
: How could he have grown so
much
in a year.… Here, Sam … No, luv, don't pull.… (The gold chains adorning her red Chanel suit.) Beverly, I don't see how you do it.… (Hint of that enticing chuckle.) Me, I'm too old for this game.… (After Alix removed him.) He's a funnyface.

BEVERLY
: Sam, here, play with your keys.… Sit on Mommy's lap.… Oh, it's a matter of adjusting. I always did want to be the senior citizen of the PTA.…

ALIX
: Here, Fat Sam, here's a graham cracker.… It's on your diet.… Come on, cut that out. (Caroline's chains still entranced him.) Later, I'll take you to Roxbury Park and you can pick on men your own size.… (Tickle, whisper, tickle.)

Cricket remained silent. Approximately eighty pounds of girl topped with Orphan Annie masses of yellow curls that she made no attempt to straighten—Alix would have. Small freckled hands relaxed on a nondescript gray skirt. Face innocent as if emerging from babyhood. Was she all that young? No, almost the same as Jamie. Sixteen or thereabouts.

Caroline set her daughter up. “Cricket, remember Alix?”

Cricket nodded.

“What
do
you remember?” Caroline.

“You had this real pearl necklace.” Cricket spoke in a clear soprano.

“Genuine Add-a-pearl,” Alix said.

“I figured it made you an honorary adult.”

Alix smiled. Even if it weren't mandatory here, she would have smiled. Cricket had delivered her lines with far more grace than she, Alix, could have mustered if Beverly—by some remotest chance—had pushed her. Toward Beverly, Alix felt a dangerously interwoven burden of love and resentment which surfaced in her voice however hard she tried to repress the hostility.

Lupe took Sam into the yard.

Caroline fixed her chains and lit a Chesterfield. Beverly, jogged by Alix, offered refreshments. Caroline would adore coffee, black. Cricket said no thank you, nothing, and Alix—oh, so perfect a hostess—said she didn't want anything either. The women disappeared into the kitchen.

Alix asked brightly, “Where shall we begin?”

Cricket's gray eyes questioned.

“Catching up,” Alix explained.

Cricket smiled and said nothing, content—it seemed—to watch the maid and Fat Sam in the oversize sandbox. She's young, Alix thought, shy. No-no! Just goddamn uncooperative.