Rich Friends (57 page)

He went about his routine. Behind the turreted Assyrian corporate offices built by his great-grandfather were two huge warehouses. Distribution Centers Nos. 1 and 2. They were filled with nine thousand different items to be distributed to seventy-three stores. Currently they were changing over to computer, with the inevitable screw-ups. Joe McAllister was out with back trouble. Vliet was swamped. He didn't call Alix. Whenever he thought of her, he told himself, Don't call.

Sunday nights he reserved for his parents. The last Sunday in August they went to an Omega Delta alumnae barbecue. Vliet said to himself, what the hell, and got out his little black book. He couldn't make out the crossed-over number. He surprised himself by remembering it.

Alix sounded pleased. She invited him for dinner, that is, if he didn't mind Sam.

“Sam? I think I do mind. Isn't he the one in wholesale blouses?”

“Idiot!” she laughed. “Sam. My brother.”

Sam opened the door. Skinny, with Chinese eyes, ears that stuck out, and a lot of curly brown hair. Harpo, Vliet thought. What is he? Nine?

Vliet sniffed. “Pizza?”

“Alix is no peasant. Veal parmigiana.”

And Alix called from the kitchen, “Fix yourself a drink.”

Bottles sat on the coffee table. “What's yours?” he called back.

“Scotch for me,” Sam said. “Alix doesn't drink. She's waiting for NoCal vodka.”

“If you're so funny,” Vliet demanded, “why don't you have your own talk show?”

The phone rang four times. Sam answered, “She's in La Jolla.”

The veal was white (unattainable at your local Van Vliet's) and excellently seasoned, accompanied by romaine salad and gnocchi she'd made herself. She sipped the Vouvray he'd brought, absently picking at her food.

Vliet poured her another glass. “To the pride of Weight Watchers,” he said.

“Food lost its charm after my former debauches.”

“Alix was formerly Godzilla,” Sam said, puffing out his cheeks.

“Why don't you shut up and clear off the dishes?” Vliet asked.

“Alix is the one with waitress experience.”

Vliet laughed, pouring a few drops of wine in the boy's Pepsi. “I even hate your kid brother.”

Across dirty dishes, Alix smiled. He could compose a million songs about that smile, mysterious, yet the mystery lay in how any smile that perfect of tooth and lip could be mysterious.

Not that they were together every night.

Sundays belonged to his parents. At least three nights a week he remained in his bare office, dining on hamburgers. Family affection among Van Vliets did not reach above a certain managerial level, but what was wrong with that? Here was his Grail. (As Roger had loved medicine, so Vliet pursued a buck.) In the daytime the 275,000 square feet were busy. Conveyor belts carried red plastic baskets and girls packed health-and-beauty items, lift trucks retrieved cartons—canned goods, paper goods, and so on—from thirty feet up. Pallets were stacked according to order sheets from individual stores. Freight trains pulled up to the rear docks. Bananas were hauled from ripening room to ripening room. But at night Vliet would sit alone in his office. He would figure whether it was cheaper to buy Brand X in quantity to inventory (as Joe McAllister preferred doing) or not to get such a good deal but also not to tie up capital. Interest rates were high this fall. Vliet was aware, very, if this went well, he was one step nearer being chief among the Dutchmen.

Once—he had forgotten an inventory he was going over—he drove back with Alix to the warehouse. She was intrigued by the Spartan offices. No receptionist. A red phone on the wall, and underneath, on plain white paper:

PLEASE DIAL THE EXTENSION

LISTED BELOW FOR THE PERSON

YOU WISH TO SEE
.

“Vliet Reed, oh-four-nine,” she said. “Shall I dial?”

“We're the only ones in the office.”

“Hey.”

“Yeah,” he said, leering.

But he never attempted more than a forehead kiss goodnight. Turandot, Puccini's glacial princess, had asked riddles of her suitors, insoluble conundrums, afterward impaling their idiot heads on the city walls. Rejection hurts.

Why do you keep on
?

We have fun. I like him
.

You haven't seen anyone else for two months
.

It's called easing back into normal life
.

I'll be frank with you, Alix. You should stop
.

Why
?

He can hurt you
.

I don't see how
.

You don't choose to see. In your opinion, have you resolved Roger's death
?

That, I'll never resolve. No shrink on earth can help me resolve that. You know I still love him
.

Let me ask this, then. Have you considered why, of all the men you know, you've selected Roger's twin
?

I like him, mind
?

He's not Roger. He's much weaker than Roger
.

Are you saying I'm acting out
?

I'm saying he was never able to accept you for more than your unique surface qualities
.

So now he's
—
God knows
—
not ready for a freaked-out case
?

Does he discuss that aspect
?

I told you. Not yet. Is that so bad
?

Yes
.

Maybe it's my fault. I haven't brought it up. Besides, Lizard, you forget one detail. Vliet came first
.

I'm not forgetting at all
.

(A long silence.)

Oh God. How can I be so chicken
?

You're brave. Under the circumstances, a little too brave
.

I have to reach out. Please, you're meant to help me
.

I'm trying to
.

Then don't you see how much I need him
?

I see two very troubled people who were involved in a trauma they're unable to handle. Justifiably. That doesn't alter the problem. He's not my patient. You are. He and Roger are connected in your mind
.

That's obvious
.

And you and Roger are connected in his
.

I suppose so, yes
.

And you don't see the danger
?

He resents me and Roger? I doubt if he still could. And if he does, well, I have to risk it. I like him a lot
.

That's why I'm asking you to stop. At this point another rejection, or what you inevitably would consider a rejection, could destroy all we've worked for
.

5

A white car chased a black car, and Vliet, nursing a brandy snifter, watched. He took his socked feet from the coffee table when Alix returned from stacking her dishwasher. She sat on the couch next to him.

“Which're the good guys?” she wanted to know.

“In the white car.”

“I should've known.”

“What was TV before the auto chase?”

She laughed, the white car swerved around a corner, and there was a woman smirking at her brand of margarine.

Alix shifted closer. Vliet could smell her light perfume. French, he decided. She fingered his hand. Christ, he thought, is this a pass? Her touch drifted toward his arm. She looked at him, her lashes gradually closing. He heard a lyrical
My mother never told me about Ultrabrite
, and thought, definitely a pass. Leaning forward, not putting his arms around her, he kissed her. He was aware of phrenetic music of the chase, then paid no attention because her lips were opening and in his ears was a roar as if he were being tumbled in surf, and now he did put his arms about her, easing her back into cushions, nothing planned, mind you, yet how long, oh, how long had he anticipated this moment? The skin, as remembered, a finer texture than silk, more like chiffon, and—he sought under the well-fitted shirt—breasts amazingly delicate yet full. She didn't tense. A distinct improvement. Before, she always had. And he was unbuttoning, unzipping, pulling back clothes. He gave himself over to admiration, half naked, a few strands of shining black hair clinging to her neck, Alix seemed to have arrived from the sea, the foam-born. Venus, for him.

He saw wetness making a path from her eyes to the sides of her hair.

He pulled her clothes together, fastening one button of her shirt. He sat up. Flames rose from the black car. He touched the remote.

“One thing, Alix,” he said. Hurt stuck in his throat like irretrievable celery string, and he gave a small cough. “I can't be charged with attempted rape.”

She heaved a tremendous sigh and undid the button.

“Believe this or not. Weeping isn't my turn-on.”

She rose, averting her head, hurrying from the room. He heard water. He smoked. She returned, hair combed, clothes in order, sitting on the far end of the couch.

“I'm sorry,” she said. Her hands rested on sharkskin pants. “I wanted to make contact.”

“Haven't we? The last couple of months?”

“We don't know one another.”

“Biblically speaking, no.”

“We've never talked about Roger.”

“That's bullshit.”

She closed her eyes. She had applied fresh shadow, brown, in a perfect curve. “We've skidded by his name.”

She loves him, Vliet thought, she did from that first day, she still does. Probably she always will. He could feel it in his gut, that weakness, that grappling of love and hate, that sense of being the inferior, lighter half of a twinship.

“What shall we talk about?” he asked lightly. “How strong he was? How decent? His interest in medicine?”

“I just want us to be honest, Vliet.”

“Yeah, Roger was high on honesty.” He kept his tone light, and if his words inflicted wounds, well, who had started this? “Let me guess. Your shrink wants you to define our relationship?”

She nodded.

She's got me in the old psychoanalytic filing system, he thought. Pigeonholing me. With difficulty he went through the mechanics of lighting up.

“Your behavior passes for honesty,” he said. “It passes with me, Alix. Maybe not your fabulous medical-research honesty, but adequate for your routine supermarket clot.”

“Do your parents know you're seeing me?”

“As one nears the twenty-eight mark, Alix, one doesn't check in.”

“They don't know.”

“Why should they?”

“And we've never talked about my being crazy.”

“Right off, you dragged in your nervous breakdown.”

“A few sentences. Does that cover eighteen months of insanity?”

Her eyes seemed more intense. The eyes caught him short. Mascara smudged the left. He remembered that nightmare afternoon when he'd failed her under whining jets. The eyes touched him where he hurt. Licking his finger, he leaned toward her, wiping the smudge.

“If talking's what the shrink ordered,” he said, “fire away, Alix.”

She leaned into the leather couch, staring up. The ceiling was high. Lamps cast fuzzy circles.

“I'm with you,” she said. “I prefer the surface. Smile and keep safe—does that make sense?” She looked at him. “No-no. Of course not. Let's see if I can explain.”

She frowned, then nodded. “In the hospital I ate all the time. The more I ate, the less I was me. That gross body couldn't be me, understand? The fat insulated me from myself. And that's how my personality works. The more smiles and easy talk, the less me.”

“Alix, we all cover up. Let a sleeping neurosis lie.”

“Neurosis?” she said. “I believed they stored blood, whole blood, in the room over mine. I truly believed. The weight made my ceiling droop. I'd hear a noise and think, Now they're getting some to take downstairs to Surgery, or, Now they're doing a dialysis. I mean, I heard them dragging around the aluminum cans. Imagine? After living with Roger, me visualizing blood stored in old-fashioned milk cans! At times the hospital was oversupplied, and then the ceiling would really sag. One night, Mother was there, it started leaking, and nobody would understand. I tried to explain blood was coming down on me. I went berserk. After that they really laid on the stuff. God! Those drugs! They slime your brain, crushing and strangling you, and you're trapped for eternity. I'd hate Roger for getting killed and leaving me. Of course I tried to kill myself, all nuts do, but I miss him so terribly I would've tried, anyway.”

Her tone stayed in pitch. Vliet had an excellent ear. Her tone remained absolutely normal, and it was this contradiction that got him.

“Lizard—that's what I call Dr. Emanual—he understood about blood leaking through the soundproofing holes. You know what he did? The sweet, ugly man, he borrowed a ladder and taped up sheets of paper, the heavy brown kind they use for packing.”

Her fingers dug into her thighs. Vliet wanted to hold her poor, anxious hands, wanted to soothe them. Instead, he lit up. Some smoker. One puff and he ground out his cigarette.

“He got the connection, you know, the blood. He was where I was at.” And on and on she intertwined
The Terror on Kings Road
(as the latest book on the Henderson case was entitled) with her lunatic phase. Vliet thought of a Bach fugue played on a theramin, background for a horror movie. He shut her out.

“Vliet?”

He blinked to, realizing she was tilting her head inquiringly at him.

“Alix.”

“Have I blown it?”

“What?”

“Us?” she asked.

A blue spiral of smoke drifted from his volcano of bent, discarded cigarettes. “If that's your mental-health spiel, Alix, you should know I gave at the office.” Very funny. But how long can you keep up this sort of thing without comedy relief?

Her fingers rubbed into her knees. After a pause, she said, “I, well, I haven't.”

He understood. Sex. He went to pour more Hennessey's.