Rich Friends (55 page)

“One thing we don't need, Cricket, is the family high horse.” Vliet paused, cupping his hands to light a filter tip. “Honest, feeding ducks is beautiful.”

At the Serpentine she opened a crumpled brown sack, breaking stale ends of Hovis. Waterfowl wedged through gun-metal water. Vliet, with his fluid grace, squatted, reaching bread to a pair of swans. His hair was longer now, coming over the collar of his black leather jacket. Wind shivered the silky blond strands, then each settled in its preordained place. That hair, that hair was too much. Cricket wanted to kiss it.

He stood, brushing at crumbs. “The glacial age never ended here.”

“It's not that cold.”

“It's freezing is all. Cricket, think that place is open?”

“Sure.”

And they walked around the lake to a modern pavilion. The place was almost empty. A bespectacled woman sloshed hot milk from a tin pitcher into their coffees, which they carried to curved plastic seats. Vliet drained his, grimacing.

“I can afford,” he said, “to waste a few days of my well-earned vacation. But Cricket, to live here?”

“What other place has what London does?”

“Bad food is available anywhere, and anywhere you find girls fed on cheap sweets they're as lumpish. Moscow has an equally lousy climate, East Berlin as many ruins, Tokyo is as overcrowded, and Harlem—”

“You've been here before. Why come again?”

“Drink up, Cricket. Or is the idea for me to get brucellosis alone?”

The counterwoman wiped mugs and, it seemed to Cricket, watched them.

“Actually, coffee's better with hot milk than with cream.”

“Ackshly,” he mimicked. “What's the matter? Forgotten the president's English?”

“You could've gone direct to the Georges Cinq.”

“London has a certain amenity.”

“You just said—”

“Imported from California.”

Blushing, smiling, she felt herself move on the seat. And she thought of a puppy wagging its tail with frantic joy. Vliet was grinning openly at her. She looked at the pale skin on her cup and drank. Normally London's white coffee resembled a hot malted to her. This morning it was gritty and tasted of scalded milk.

Lacing the fingers of both hands, stretching his long arms, he said, “Better haul ass back to the Hilton. My friend, doubtless, is awake and dying to ride that overheated American Express bus.”

“Friend?”

“A stewardess. On the plane we realized deep mutual interest. She's never seen London. I'm not up to the moral victory of freezing alone. We're having dinner. You, me, her. At Mirabelle.”

“I can't.”

“A date? Cancel.”

She shook her head.

Five minutes later he asked, “Big deal?” They were walking beneath autumnal branches toward Park Lane.

Not replying, she kicked through dead leaves. He let the matter drop. Even if she hadn't been going to a party in South Kensington with Herbert Kuznik, she would have declined. Not jealousy. She never had been able to work up spirit against Vliet's girls, lovely, amiable, and ephemeral as mayflies. So why, she wondered, kicking her way through sodden leaves, was the thought of facing an ephemeral lovely too depressing to bear?

After she left Vliet the thought of the thing in South Kensington depressed her, too. She went into a red phone booth, dialing Herbert Kuznik's bed-and-breakfast, asking a Liverpudlian accent of indeterminate sex to inform Mr. Kuznik that Miss Matheny couldn't make the party tonight. She wouldn't see Vliet and she couldn't see Herbert. What sort of sense did it make? And what was the difference? This was like it was.

The following morning she was examining some proofs. Rain spat at the high windows that showed only the lower half of people. Her bell gave its harsh grate.

“Come on, Cricket,” Vliet said. “Buy you elevensies.”

Rain slanted in icy lines. They bent their heads, hurrying past joined red-brick houses, ducking into an Old Brompton Road snack bar that smelled of wet clothes and coffee. At the counter a pair of girls talked soberly of David Cassidy.

Vliet shook his hair and took off his coat, ordering, “Two teas, two toasts.”

“Just tea, please,” Cricket said.

“This is my breakfast,” Vliet said. “My friend's catching up on her jet lag. And while we're on the subject, what's with your sex life?”

Cricket played with her spoon. In London she was wandering through her usual existence with her usual type of men. Herbert Kuznik was a good example. She had met him two weeks ago at the Wimpy's on Oxford Street. He was alone, eating a Wimpyburger, hunched over
London from A to Z
. Squarish of mind and body, a sophomore from the University of Arizona, Herbert was sweating out his year's sentence of obligatory dropout.

“Caroline's panting to hear.”

“Nothing permanent,” she said.

Vliet burst into laughter. The David Cassidy fans turned, approving him with green-rimmed eyes.

“Cricket, oh Cricket. That is a one-night stand. One-night stands aren't the message to take the boss's wife.”

Tea and toast arrived. He took a bite, gazing thoughtfully at her.

He said, “About Thanksgiving.”

“They don't have it here.”

“They have Guy Fawkes Day. Now will you listen?” He held out a toast triangle. She shook her head. “Go on,” he said. “It's safe. Those buns I wouldn't trust, but in my
Fodor
I read English bread is absolutely safe.”

“Vliet,” she whispered, “they can't tell you're kidding. Stop the Ugly American, please?”

“We're talking about Thanksgiving,” he said. “Cricket, think of the food. There'll be sweet potatoes, and Ma will tell us she put in orange juice, butter, and sherry and can anyone tell they're canned? And string beans with blanched almonds. Oh, and let's not forget the creamed onions. And the acres of pickled watermelon rind. Ever notice nobody eats watermelon pickles? They take them to leave on their plate. And the noble bird itself, from Van Vliet's, a hen, golden, bursting with oyster stuffing.”

“You're nostalgic.”

“If there's one thing I never am, it's nostalgic. And to prove it, we'll have a minute's silence for the vodka going down Ma's throat in the kitchen. For Chrissake, Cricket, you tell me how anyone can be nostalgic for the looks on reactionary Dad's and liberal Gene's faces as they talk Watergate? And Caroline talking to keep them from talking, and saying she won't eat this and this and this.” With a graceful movement he gathered sugar and cruet in his arms as if hoarding a feast. “Think of Grandma calling me Roger and you Em.”

Cricket sighed.

“Better,” he said. “Much better. Far from home, one should mourn one's native festivals.”

Don't do this to me, Cricket thought. She poured milk into her tea. It turned putty-gray, and when she drank, it was cold. She had caught on to what Vliet was doing. She knew him as well as she loved him. Don't do this, she thought. Please. I can't go home.

Chewing on his last triangle of toast, he glanced at his flat gold watch. “At the Royal Festival Hall tonight they're doing Haydn's
Nelson Mass
with, they say, a two-hundred-and-fifty-voice chorus. You come along and count.”

“I'm busy.”

“Again?”

“It's a two-night stand.”

Laughing, he reconsulted his watch. “Even she must be up by now.”

“Don't you like her?”

“Should I?”

“For me it's sort of imperative.”

“That, you'll outgrow.” Tossing silver on the counter, he paused behind the two girls, dropping a hand on a shoulder of each. “I couldn't help overhearing. I happen to be a very close personal friend of David Cassidy, and you're right. He does have integrity, charisma, and smashing honesty. He's the musical genius of our time. There's one problem, one tiny problem is all. Ackshly, he's a thirty-five-year-old female impersonator.”

The girls goggled, then giggled, and one cried, “You Americans!”

Cricket watched him stride past Harrod's, tall above Britishers. The rain had stopped. Shifting clouds bared a crescent of blue, but it would rain again. She should go right home. Instead, she walked among the hatted, gloved, heavy-coated crowds. Winter, she thought, balling her hands in her pockets. The memories were coming at her, fast, in double exposures.

I can't go back to California.

I can't. Her nose was red at its Van Vliet tip, and she walked faster, into a side street. At Rutland Gate she saw the American couple. Today, though, they were a threesome. An older man, bald, managed to open a
Paris Herald
against the wind. She heard him say something about the A's. Passing, she said, “Hi.” The woman smiled. The bearded young man said, “Hey there, again,” reddening as he lurched on an uneven cobble. The A's? Sure, she thought, it's World Series time. The A's. Oakland. But who was Oakland playing? Her eyes filled with tears, so much did she yearn to know. She turned to ask. The threesome were disappearing into No. 16.

She felt utterly alone, cut adrift. An exile. Which, of course, was precisely how Vliet intended her to feel.

2

By three o'clock her nose felt tight, her throat raw. “I haven't had a cold since I got here, so I'm due,” she said to Herbert Kuznik when she canceled a second time. Around four, rain started again. At five thirty, there was a knock at her door. Barefoot, tightening her robe, she answered. Vliet. Rain dripped into the hollowed stone at the threshold, and silently across the puddle he handed her a bag of Rosarita tortillas.

“Where'd you get them?” she cried. “There's none, even at Harrod's.”

He came in, taking off his raincoat. The kitchen, which was the entry, once had been used for coal storage and was paved, low. He had to bend.

“It's like this, Cricket. I made a pilgrimage to Westminster, praying long at the tomb of St. Esteban de Enchilada, and—”

“Fortnum's?”

“Caroline put 'em on a plane. I took 'em off.”

“You called her? Went to the airport?”

“No need to sob.” He crossed her narrow room to sit on a lumpy couch which opened into a lumpier bed—a Put-YouUp, the landlady called it.

“Who's in the Series?” Cricket asked.

“What does that have to do with the price of tortillas?”

“Mind?”

“Oakland and the Mets,” he said. “We forgot the pies, Cricket. French apple, pumpkin, and mince with lattice pastry on top. And this should please you. Ma's given up on Dream Whip and we're back to the real thing.” He rubbed his palms together. “Christ, this place is cold. We'll find you something plusher.”

“Like the Hilton?”

“You're not dense, Cricket. How come I'm not getting through?”

“You are,” she said clearly. “Vliet, I can't go back.”

“Why?”

“I'm happy here.”

“Really.”

She sat on the floor, extracting a Kleenex, blowing her nose.

“Let's hear it again for happiness,” he said.

“I'm.…”

“Come on. Say it again.”

“Until you came I was. No. Not really. I mean.…”

“What do you mean, Cricket?”

She massaged her ankle. “Home, I kept thinking, all the time thinking. It wasn't guilt.” She sighed. (Guilt affected only matters concerning their son.) “I couldn't escape. The trial dragged on and on.”

“We have television and papers in Seattle, Cricket. I testified longer than you did, Cricket.”

“But I knew those people. Magnificat, Bethesda, Celestial. It got very bad. I'd be driving someplace and forget where I was going, and there I'd be, on the Pasadena Freeway, heading for Mrs. Putnam's. Or on Pacific Coast Highway. Mr. Henderson lives in Malibu. He was very broken up, more than Mrs. Putnam. Of course he's old and sensitive, a director and all. Mostly, though, I'd be at Beverly's. She put up with me. Sometimes she'd get to painting and forget I was there. Her face is like an El Greco madonna, all grief and beauty. Steel and sorrow. I mean, how could anyone live through two murders? Two!” Cricket pulled out a tissue, not using it. “Before I left, they let me visit Alix.”

“They did? How come you never said anything? How was she?”

Closing her eyes, Cricket saw frantic mole fingers.

“That bad?”

“She's very fat. And quiet. Mother says it's the drugs.” Cricket paused. “Poor Beverly. Think how terrible it must be for her. She's so gentle. And a fantastic painter. Did you know she's having a big exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art next spring?”

“And so much for Beverly Picasso's career.”

“Anyway, in Los Angeles, I couldn't escape. And when I got here, I felt better.” Cricket had a couple of old Brace Ridge friends who lived in Chelsea, and with them had figured that on her trust income she could manage.

“And in London you're doing fabulous?”

“At least it's not being pushed on me the whole time.”

“A question, then. Why did you hang around when the shit was flying? And now it's over, take off? Want to know what I think? When the trial was on, Cricket, you could run around and beat your chest remorsefully or play ministering angel to the bereaved. But now things've quieted down, there's nothing left for you to do except atone. And that's what you're doing. Paying your negotiable penance. That's the way I see it, Cricket. You've pulled on a hair shirt. And you refuse to take it off, even though it's gotten quite smelly.”

She said nothing.

He struck a match. “Ever thought,” he asked over the flame, “what your being here does to Caroline and Gene?”

“They said it was fine.”

“They say everything you do is fine, and you know it. You're hurting them, Cricket, and in a goddamn stupid way.”

Cricket blew her nose more violently than was called for. After a minute Vliet went into the kitchen, running himself a glass of water. The tap was slow.