Rich Friends (54 page)

“Roger loved you very much,” Mother said quietly. “He told us.”

“He wanted to get married. But now it's called a trap. No-no. I wasn't afraid of being trapped. The truth is, I was afraid of losing him, and that I couldn't bear. He wanted us to be, though, so we were going to. This Thursday.”

“You were?”

Alix nodded. “And today's Wednesday, and he's being buried. That makes me right, huhh?”

Mother moved to a seat nearer her. Alix shifted to the other side of the plane. So as not to offend, she said, “It's me. I've got this thing.”

“All set.” Her father was back. “They're phoning him from the airport.”

“What if they can't get in touch?”

“They will.”

“If?”

“I explained this was urgent.”

“Maybe they have bigger urgencies.”

“Hon, they're doing it.”

“I've got this compulsion thing.”

So he went forward again.

As the plane shuddered, braking in descent, she decided to fix herself. Yet. What if she lost the ring?

“Wear it, why not?” Mother suggested.

“Hey, clever,” Alix said, slipping on the ring. The toilet was tiny and mirrored all the way around and she used eye makeup and struggled with her hair. Airport wind had tangled it beyond comprehension. She was still pulling her wide-tooth Kent comb when Father rapped. “Alix, you need a seat belt.”

“Am I passable?” she inquired, anxious.

“Beautiful,” Father said.

“Beautiful,” Mother echoed, faintly surprised.

And Alix peered through a dust-laced window. “It's not the regular landing strip. Vliet won't be here.”

Father said, “He knows.”

“In that case I've been stood up.”

“Alix,” Mother soothed, “he's here.”

“In hiding,” Alix said, but as the plane taxied, she saw him, the jacket of his black suit flapping to show oyster-pale lining, his hand at pale hair that blew. She fidgeted by the door as steps were wheeled over, then—although the rungs were out of kilter—she hurried down, stopping a yard short of him. His dark glasses were mafioso eyes, impenetrable, sinister.

“Alix,” he said.

“So they tracked you down.” Keep it light.

“The control guy called,” he said. “Then Dan.”

“Dan?”

“Your father asked him to.”

“Philip Schorer asked something of Dan Grossblatt? I must be in a bad way.”

“I think not. He sounded sore as hell.”

A 707 shook and roared its landing path, unloading that awesome music like poison gas over them.

“I'm sorry,” she said. Loud.

“No sweat.”

“Hold out your hand.”

His palm came up, the fingers forming a cradle. She peered at dark crimson with old diamond chips that formed a star, and quickly pulled it off. She extended her arm, dropping the small, warm weight into Vliet's hand.

He was holding it between thumb and forefinger. His nails shone. “Yours,” he said.

“No way.”

“Every way.”

“You were the one who explained the rules. Female descendants.”

“In this case—”

“Please, Vliet. Don't make this only impossible. That's why we got you here.”

He dropped the ring in his pocket.

“Hey. Forever and ever,” she sang. “On the plane I did that, and they figured I was losing control. But you hear it, too, don't you?”

“Constantly is all.”

“Then why do they act like I'm a squirrel? It bugged me, keeping the ring. It's weird, in Chalet Gourmet we were talking about.… I forgot what I was going to say. I didn't get to go to Jamie's, either.”

“What?”

“I never said good-bye to my brother, either.”

Vliet's face tensed, reddening as if he were lifting a great weight. “Alix,” he said slowly, “what was in the coffin, it wasn't Roger.”

“Pumped up with silicone and all rouged and awful. Grandpa was like that. But I needed to.”

“Alix, I am sorry.”

“I shouldn't be putting this on you. Why did you want to hurt me, you know, about the funeral?”

His teeth showed in a funny little grimace of humiliation, and a United DC-7 tore apart the sky. He raised his arms for her.

“DON'T!” she yelled, then formed a quick smile. “Sorry. But I seem to have developed this morbid dread.”

“The body contact?”

“Yes. Vliet, why'd they have to cut him there?”

He shook his head.

“You still have it in your pocket, don't you?”

He fished in his pants, showing her the garnet.

She nodded, clasping her hands around her goose-bumpy arms. “You put it back?”

He showed her again.

“Know something, Vliet? You did want to hurt me.”

He took off his dark glasses, folding them slowly. “Alix, there's one thing you should know. I love you. I always have loved you. I never stopped. And mostly, you'll admit, it's been pretty damn awkward. So anything I did, or any way I acted, that's the reason. I love you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Come on, let's head for the car. We'll go anyplace you want. What's your pleasure?”

“To die,” she said simply. And looked into his eyes, which were wet and Prussian blue, exactly like Roger's, maybe she said the name, maybe she didn't, but she was pretty sure she said, “Roger, the thing of it is, I can't make it alone. I've tried, but I cannot.”

It began then.

First she stiffened. Her muscles turned rocklike, as if a gland were secreting a coagulant to harden blood in every vein, each artery and capillary. Her breath, trapped, crowded her lungs, suffocating her. Her nails dug into her palms. Her eyes felt as if they would pop from her skull. She knew she was dying and was grateful. The spasm ended. Everything went loose and she was still alive.

“Oh God,” she whispered, “please let me off Your hook.”

Vliet's face had crumpled. And she understood what had happened.

“I am so ashamed.” She held both hands over her eyes. “Ashamed.”

Beverly stepped forward. “Vliet,” she said quietly, urgently. “She'll let you help her. Here, put this around her.”

Vliet, with awkward, numb fingers, took the ends of a green blanket. Philip, on the plane steps, watched his remaining child.

(After they got Alix to Neuropsychiatric, Vliet said to Beverly, “I screwed it up, Mrs. Grossblatt. I can't handle this kind of situation.
”

“
It's been a terrible day for you.
”

“
Roger could, but I can't.
”

“
You were fine. It's difficult.
”

“
For me, impossible.
”

And Beverly said, gently, “You told her you love her.
”

“
But I do. Always, Mrs. Grossblatt. And always I've been unequal to the task.” He turned his back to her. “She picked the right one of us.
”

Beverly patted his shaking shoulders. “It's all right, Vliet, all right.”)

The airport ambulance pulled up. Alix, the blanket knotted over her shoulder, stood erect, singing quietly.

Hallelujah.

Chapter Fifteen

1

“They're English.”

“At this distance, Cricket, you must be able to see it,” Vliet said. “Old Glory's tattooed across their forehead.”

London, an October morning, raw with high clouds that threatened rain. Sixteen months of trial, testimony, and reporters had passed. Cricket had been in England five months, Vliet less than five hours, and they were passing through Rutland Gate, a Regency square (one of Cricket's favorites) from her basement flat to Hyde Park. The couple whose nationality was under fire had just emerged from a creamy, pillared house. A woman, thin, fortyish, dark-haired, and a man, thin, twentyish, with a dark Francis Drake beard. As Cricket and Vliet watched, the couple clasped hands and swung their arms.

“That's the Union Jack,” Cricket whispered.

“US of A,” Vliet whispered back. “And my money's on it.”

“Five pence?”

“You're on.”

As the couple sidestepped onto cobbled streets to avoid them, Vliet asked, “Excuse me, but do you have the time?”

“Around eleven, I think.” The woman smiled, showing too much gum as she delivered up her four words in the flat California accent that Cricket acknowledged as pure, non-regional American.

“Maybe five past,” added the bearded young man. The same accent, but anyway his smile, the smile was dead giveaway. Mother and son.

After a couple of houses, Cricket whispered, “Oedipal.”

“You mean Oedipal City in Orange County? Those grotty jeans on both of them, the expensive jackets—Cricket, I put them in the artier outskirts of Beverly Hills.”

Cricket gave a delighted giggle and fished in her pea coat. Vliet tossed the silver coin on the back of his hand. “Heads. Here. Yours.” He gave it back to her.

The sixteen months since the murders had altered Cricket in no visible manner. She never thought to let her bright hair curl in any way other than its wont, she bought her clothes used, her expression remained as guileless. She aimed her Nikon when the mood hit. She still would be accepted in a junior high corridor.

Yet changed she was. To the marrow. How could she not be?

That hot June day had marked her indelibly. And the Henderson trial, as it had become known, had left scar tissue.

The Henderson case lay in time (and notoriety) between the Manson murders and the Patty Hearst mystery. All three touched the same raw nerve. They epitomized terrifying aspects of the young. Unorthodox sexual behavior, long hair, beards, vegetarianism, heavy drugs, the philosophy of revolution, California, dusty bare feet, love-ins, communal living, and—worst of all—baffling violence for no seeming purpose, material or otherwise. Fear was not the sole province of elders. While the Henderson trial raged, students were refusing rides to long-haired hitchers, so what if they were girls?

A case célèbre. Internationally watched. All over the world newspapers, magazines, and prime time were jammed with details. No cameras were permitted in the courtroom, so there were a million sketches of Genesis and the three Select involved in the murders. REVELATION's life-style translated conveniently into headlines:
OCCULT RITES
,
DRUG
-
CRAZED KILLERS
,
BLOODLETTING
,
NEW SEX IN CARMEL VALLEY
. And into book titles:
Vengeance Is Mine
and
Revelation
so far.

And oh, the victims! A lovely, talented movie actress. RB had been presented with a special category posthumous Oscar for
One Step, Two Step
. Loomis Henderson, weeping, accepted for his star and ex-wife, bringing the Academy, always sentimental, to their feet in silent, tearful tribute. The other two victims were almost as juicy. A young doctor with the unique qualities of being a twin and belonging to Los Angeles society, who had lived with his beautiful fiancée. (Alix was described variously as daughter of wealth, tragedy-prone, heiress, child of a well-known woman artist, and currently institutionalized.) It was Lance Putnam, however, in his dual role as murderer and victim, who received the most serious attention. Hannah Arendt's article on him in
The New Yorker
was widely quoted. Sociologists and psychiatrists used Putnam as an example when writing of the phenomenon of those who willingly turn over their minds to a charismatic madman.

During the trial Genesis retained immense dignity. Under oath he testified that he had committed no crime. He was, he stated, the instrument of Higher Justice. And after that he remained silent. An Old Testament prophet in a courtroom chair. His followers and codefendants sat equally silent. The Select, in white, waited on the steps of the courthouse. After the long trial ended and Genesis was sentenced to the maximum penalty, they stood a twenty-four-hour watch, taking turns reciting REVELATION's commandments. This was just after the California State Supreme Court had abolished the death penalty. Therefore Giles Cooke was remanded to the maximum-security adjustment center in Folsom Prison. The three Select codefendants went to San Quentin. The Select returned to REVELATION.

Oddly, the media rarely mentioned Cricket, and even then with no detail. Maybe it had to do with those innocent gray eyes, maybe (as she'd always guessed) she was too small-scale to be of interest. Maybe she'd left REVELATION too early. Whatever the reason, she was covered in depth only on her one day of testimony.

Yet escape she could not.

And there was the major change in Cricket. She no longer lived in the present. The past was with her. They came to her, the quick and the dead. Orion would claw his beard, smiling worriedly at her, or RB would yawn and raise thin white arms. Roger spoke from years of boyhood and sweet young manhood. Genesis, too, came. (About once a week Cricket mailed a blue-tissue aerogram to Folsom: Genesis never replied.) She would receive Vliet, shaken and white, his clothes stained with his brother's blood. The most dread visitor, though, was Alix. How could this be beautiful Alix? This inert creature bloated in fat, the face red-spotted and dead under layers and layers of fat. The only alive part of Alix, fingers like fat moles burrowing incessantly into a loose shift. “It's the drugs, luv,” Caroline had said, hurrying Cricket away.

Thank God, though, London protected her. Memories didn't come here that often.

They had reached Hyde Park.

“Incredible,” Vliet said.

“Soccer, you mean?” On their left was a field with men in shorts running and kicking with red, strong legs.

“No. Me. My first day in Europe and what am I doing? Racing through sub-Arctic weather to feed—for Chrissake—ducks.”

“Here people walk and talk in parks. It's civilized. But I guess I should've arranged for two seats on that overheated American Express tour.”