Rich Friends (36 page)

Roger burst out, “You wanted medicine!”

“As a means, yes, a means of making the bread, Roger. Now will you serve?”

Roger clutched the black handball. If this separation were a kind of death, Roger never truly had accepted death: to him death might always be battled off—if only there were better drugs, more surgical know-how, something.

“For Chrissakes,” Vliet said, “it's not exactly news that I'm no idealistic crapshooter.”

“Who is?”

“You. Now will you the fuck serve?”

Roger served. He was hung over, his head burned with pain, but how could he give up? Vliet placed the ball in the left corner, an impossible shot that somehow Roger, with a lunge of brawn, got, placing equally well. Vliet missed. Roger grabbed for the ball, holding it in his gloved left hand. “You've put in five years. Five years! Think.”

“Six days, Roger, and think is all I've done.” Six Christ-awful days when Vliet couldn't avoid being plugged in to himself. Six days he wouldn't live again, not for every Porsche in the line. He fingered back his pale, wet hair. “The decision's firm.”

“You can change it.”

“Down there, boy, down. You fail to see we have one additional factor in our relationship. You're no longer omnipotent.”

“Omnipotent? You have all the friends. Mother, Dad. The Family. Any girl—” He stopped.

Vliet gave him a smile that only Roger could have known was painful.

“See?” Vliet said. “You think you've done me the shits, and you don't have shit in you. So you can't bulldoze me, not anymore. I'm free.”

They could hear muffled sounds of the adjoining courts. Vliet's cover-up smile had awakened in Roger a dim preschool memory. Peal after peal of night thunder, and two little boys stretched under a youthbed. Vliet had been terrified, not Roger … Roger ached to grab his brother by his long, sweaty neck and shove him onto the twelve-thirty TWA flight. But Vliet was right. Vliet had him.

Roger tossed the ball, smashing a serve. He won the second game. They rested.

Roger asked, “What'll you do?”

“Uncle Gene's about to play nepotist.”

“Waste your life in business?”

“Roger, you haven't had your psychiatry rotation yet. So here, in simple layman's language, is the answer to problems of sibling interference. Up yours!”

Roger won the third game. They had played according to historical precedent. The first game was won by Vliet, rarely the second, and Roger always endured to win the third.

In the shower room, stripped naked, Vliet said, “Roger, quit frowning. I like the markets. I'm named after them. I belong in them.”

“You never wanted them before. It's got to be Alix.”

Vliet could feel a tearing, as if Roger had ripped adhesive from his burned skin. Why the hell does he have to be so damn right? And so fucking persistent? Vliet turned an old faucet. The loose head sprayed ice water on him. He jumped back. For one moment he considered giving in to habit, doing what Roger told him, losing all that he, with Cricket's help, had struggled for. Then he thought of being a third, broken wheel in Baltimore.

He said, “Sure it is. I mean, you've swiped my girl. Fantastic-looking, heavy on the charm. Still, strictly between brothers, sackwise, she's not that—”

Roger ended the sentence with a heavy fist to Vliet's gut. Vliet slid on cracked wet tiles. The water, hot now, hit him full force. They hadn't fought physically since they were thirteen.

“Oh Jesus! Vliet, I didn't mean that.”

Vliet didn't inquire what his twin had meant. As Roger's fist flew, murder had lived in his eyes.

They showered in adjacent stalls.

Vliet turned off his faucet. “Roger?” Getting no answer, he reached around and turned off Roger's shower. “I didn't mean to put you in a bind. But Ma's in a high-grade sweat. Not only have I quit, but quit in front of the entire family. I've been absolved, though. She lays my crime on Alix.”

Roger's mouth tightened. “I know.”

“You didn't hear 'em in the bedroom last night. Ma was so bagged she forgot to be quiet. Or fair.”

“Dad gave me the message.”

“Good. Then you won't be tempted to spell out your new sleeping arrangements.”

Roger toweled across his back, jerkily, angrily.

“Christ, though, Roger, you don't help things. It was our last night. Couldn't you have showed? Or at least called? Ma fixed shrimp cocktails, the works.”

“I had to stay with Alix.” Roger winced. “She's not going to school.”

“What's this?”

“She's getting a job.”

She never would for me, Vliet thought. His mind, unused to his new jealousies, couldn't rationalize this one, so he blocked it. “How come?” he asked.

“For one thing, her family isn't interested in her coming near Hopkins.”

“They won't pay for the finest medical attention?”

“Look, I feel rotten about it.”

“You're too serious, Roger, and I fear for you. This is a psychotic situation. Last night I heard several allusions to the cutting off of funds.”

“That money's ours!”

“Not until we're thirty. So for once, forget you're so damn honest.” Vliet glowered, miming Roger's fury, then he grinned and held out his long hand.

Sheridan had insisted they shake after every small-boy tussle. Naked, patched with wetness, the brothers clasped hands.

“I'm sorry,” Roger said. This was part of the ritual.

“The hell.” This wasn't.

“I'm out of my skin about her.”

“No kidding? Who would've guessed? What an actor!”

Suddenly Roger smiled. “Hey, it's okay, Vliet?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, okay!” Roger slapped his towel at his twin. Vliet snapped back, and the two ran, towel-flicking, through shower and locker rooms. Three sedately togaed elders frowned disapprovingly: the Reed twins were grown men, large men, they made too much noise, they took up too much space, and someone should tell them to cut out the horseplay.

So Vliet, with well-concealed pain, had done what he intended. He was free of his brother, yet in a peculiar way still part of his brother. A week ago he wouldn't have believed it possible. But then a week ago he hadn't given a fart.

Chapter Ten

1

A week earlier in Arrowhead, right after Alix had explained to Vliet that they were through, Cricket had listened to the Mustang backing up the hill. She had tightened her yellow afghan around herself. Grandma Wynan had knitted this for her baby buggy, and Cricket, preferring the old and familiar, was comforted by the stretched wool.

Vliet came upstairs. He was pale. This made his sharp-tipped nose seem redder. Without speaking, he went to the pot that Alix had put on the stove, making himself Nescafé, sitting on the couch to drink. Finishing, he tossed back his straight, silky hair, drumming his fingers on his thighs. “My old lady and my brother, yeh yeh yeh,” he sang in a raucous Beatle imitation. “Not no other, yeh yeh yeh.” He broke off, his eyes desolate.

Here, Cricket thought, must be the ultimate daydream, the purest fantasy. A mountain cabin, Vliet in urgent need of comfort, and she the only one around to give him comfort. So why did she only feel this gray echo of his despair? This juvenile awkwardness?

“I'm going to get some pictures,” she said, scratching a spot on her jeans, watching the whiteness flake under her thumbnail. “Is your cold better? Will a walk kill you?”

“Let's give it a try for the grandstand.”

The chill north wind had swept away clouds. It was a brilliant azure day, with white ruffling the out-of-season emptiness of Lake Arrowhead. Along the cold, sunny lakeside path moved two shadows, a long, striding one, a small one trotting rather like a toy poodle keeping up with a borzoi. It took them a silent half hour to reach Edgewater Cabins. The windows were still boarded.

Here Vliet stopped, sneezing violently.

She said, “We better head back.”

Returning, he started to talk. Briefly, he tore into Roger. “He's just lost himself the Albert Schweitzer Award.” Vliet's major efforts, however, he reserved for Alix. He demolished her every small vanity, ripped into her charm, exposed how spoiled she was. “A narcissistic phony,” he called her. “Roger goes for slob chem-major types, the pathetic ones. How can he mix with her?”

“She's vulnerable.”

“As a cutting diamond,” Vliet said.

“She's not how she seems.”

“If you say so. And since you've got this child's unbiased eye, how long do you figure it's been going on?”

She stooped to get a pine cone. He slowed.

“How long?” he persisted.

She examined the cone. It was a sugar pine with one side crushed.

“Let's not go mute here,” he said.

“Remember at the beginning?” Cricket's head was bowed. “Roger made that joke about good-look pills?”

“Yeah, not like Roger. You're right.”

“And then at Christmas you said he was in a fierce mood?”

“With good reason,” Vliet said. “And her? Alix?”

“Always, too.”

“Sure. Why else start with me?”

“You went after her.”

“Terrific, really terrific. According to you, then, Cricket, all the time she's been hot for Roger, she's been making it with me. And you call her vulnerable?”

“She's just very complicated.”

“Why not try another description? Like cold-blooded bitch.”

“Vliet, what's the point? It's over.”

“I know, I know. She told me—is it an hour already? She kisses off well, Alix. She has the perfect good-bye smile.”

“She's covering up.”

Vliet took the cone from Cricket. He hurled it into the lake. “Go play with your damn Barbie dolls!” he snapped. “They're something little kids can understand!”

Sunlight scoured his face to almost impersonal pain. He was striding fast again, and to keep up, Cricket had to run. Her left ankle turned out. He loves her, Cricket thought, he really loves her. The Nikon banged painfully between Cricket's breasts. He didn't any of the others, but he does Alix.

After dinner Cricket tried the half lotus she'd picked up at REVELATION, one foot extending toward the fire. Her navy sock was worn. The big toenail shone through thinned wool.

Vliet, on the couch, sipped wine. That afternoon they had driven to Arrowhead Village, where, even today, he had taken his time, choosing the best in his price bracket, Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon. He poured himself another glass, then spoke, maybe their first words in an hour. Cricket possessed a unique gift of silence.

“Roger carried us both,” he said. “And here I am, chopped off. O-F-F.” Vliet put his glass on the rug, stretching his long fingers, playing on an imaginary keyboard. “The Gold Dust Twins apart, the Bobbseys separated, Humpty and Dumpty broken. Where does that put me?”

Cricket reached out to hold his hand. Shaking her off, he continued his slow, imaginary playing.

“What am I gonna do from here on in?”

“Finish Hopkins,” she said.

“Why?”

She didn't answer. She had no answer.

Vliet laced his hands over his Irish knit sweater. His eyes were closed. He saw, splashed in red paint inside his cranium:
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
. Up until now, he had handed over his free will to Roger. But this morning Alix with an easy smile had cut the invisible cord. Even when Alix and Roger were through (and Vliet never doubted that day soon would come), the cord of fraternal trust never could be reknotted. Yesterday Vliet had been filled with unwanted analyses. Today Vliet was in terror. Eyes closed, nasal passages clogged, mind slightly woozed on red wine, he lay in acute terror. He was experiencing a textbook case of the anxiety of freedom. Absolute freedom corrupts sanity absolutely. It is the root of more mental evil than money. Until now, Vliet wisely had handed his freedom over to Roger. Now, though, his decisions were his to make.

After ten minutes he said, “Like hell I will!”

“Will what?”

“Can't you follow a conversation, Cricket? I'm not going back to the Mecca.”

“Where'll you finish?”

“I won't.”

“But—”

“But. That's what's scaring the shit out of me. But Roger always pointed the way. But. He's the one who wanted to be a doctor.”

“You never did?”

“Well, for mercenary reasons,” Vliet admitted.

“That reason still holds.”

“Christ, there's other ways. A million. So many ways you could go bananas.”

“Narrow down,” Cricket said, giving advice learned at permissive Brace Ridge School.

“From infinity?”

“You have to start someplace.”

He thought a moment. “Garbage collection is out. So there's infinity minus one.”

“Keep going.”

“I don't want more school, so cancel nuclear biology.”

“Infinity minus two.”

“Not much interest in midnight cowboying.”

She giggled. “How about law?”

“That's not what I call positive thinking, Cricket. I just told you. No more school.” And his voice broke. “Get me, willya? The same guy who lectured you so magnificently on goal pursual. Cricket, what the hell am I going to do?”

He wasn't asking anything as simple as career advice. His arm went out in the involuntary, pleading gesture of a prisoner hearing a harsh sentence. She reached for his hand. This time he let her hold it.

They stood at the foot of narrow stairs, her room to the right, his to the left. He pulled the string of silver beads. Icy darkness. Spooked noises. At night, she remembered, one's hearing is more acute—part of the circadian rhythm.

“Move ass to bed, Cricket,” Vliet said.

Cricket's face grew hot, her heart pounded. Her lack of possessiveness never had meant she didn't ache for Vliet. Tonight, she thought, tonight. For Cricket, time was a sort of mobile geography, different places she would visit only once. This particular moment would recede and she would float to another inlet. Tonight never would be on the map again.