Rich Friends (58 page)

She said to his back, “I was remembering the time we last.… Vliet, I couldn't help.… It's only been you and Roger, ever.”

He brought his drink back to the couch.

“You still here?” she asked.

“Does it look like it?”

“I see you, therefore you are.”

“That's the problem in the world today. Everybody's got a simple answer.”

She laughed.

Her laughter reassured him, and he put down the snifter, finally able to take her hands, caressing the fingers, which were rigid, kissing her, gentle, and she pulled his hands, cupping them over her breasts.

“Nice,” he whispered.

She put her arms around him, and he was able to block—neat and complete—all she'd told him. Alix, flawless of mind and body. “The bedroom,” he said in her ear.

A line from the bathroom flailed her back as she bent, gracefully skinnying out of pants. “Mind if we have the lamp?” he asked. She switched one on.

And they lay on eyelet-edged sheets. For a nameless time (or so she'd said) this body had been ugly, but he didn't believe it. This incredibly smooth field of light and dark, this passive field he'd been first to conquer never could have been a swollen horror. He wouldn't have it so. Her breasts were nippled with pearly apricot, and there was the gentle rise and fall of a stomach whose flatness was proof positive: if she'd been bloat, wouldn't this torso have stretch marks? The diffused light shone on them, and he entered into the rite of spring—
sacre du printemps
—forgetting he'd had other girls, none of them counted, only this one, and now he shut his eyes, racing into that dark and mysterious cave where he had sojourned before, yet this time was different, for now through her body he was again linked with his brother, his other, he was again part of his brother, Roger and Alix and Vliet, a trinity that denied death, defied death, contradicting past terrors, and he wanted to help her and console her and tell her he loved her, he loved her and Roger, both. Instead, breathing stridently, he pressed her into tangled custom sheets.

After, he smoked, one arm under her neck. He whistled contentedly, and when the cigarette was finished, rolled over to get up. She held his arm.

“You aren't leaving?” she asked.

“I must.”

“Why?”

“It's after twelve.”

“Vliet, stay tonight.”

He moved her hand. The nails were long, the polish perfect. “I can't, Alix,” he said.

“Please!” Little muscles under her cheeks worked. And it popped into his mind again, that fat, pasty, Down's syndrome face with the lunatic lipstick.

“Some other night,” he said, quickly heading for the bathroom.

He stood in her tub with the shower curtain closed, letting the hot water race on him, rubbing himself dry with a terry sheet that smelled of her. Dressed, he went into the bedroom. Alix, in sheer, loose white, bent over a pillow.

“Then you are leaving?”

“Alix, we just did this number.”

She stared at him, bewildered, as if she'd just woken.

“Tomorrow's a workday,” he muttered, not caring—even now—to discuss how important his job was to him.

She turned down an immaculate triangle in the space he'd recently occupied.

“My clothes are in the apartment,” he said. “Want me to show up like a regular warehouseman in my Levi's?”

“You could get up early,” she said. But this time she smiled. The lovely smile rescued him. Other girls in other bedrooms had smiled, inviting him to stay over. A courtesy. Please, thank you, stay.

She went to the door with him. Two palsied old folk were attempting to unlock the next apartment, and their frustrated mumbles filled the dim corridor. He traced the line of Alix's lips, feeling her warm, moist breath, running his finger along the ridge that delineated her mouth. He was amazed by the intensity of his urge to hold her. Tomorrow was Wednesday, a workday. He had to leave now. If he held and kissed her, he would stay. Vliet glanced at the ancients. Having triumphed over lock and key, they were watching.

He took a step back, reaching into his pocket, palming nothing into her hand. “Not that it wasn't fantastic, chick, but we agreed fifty. A hundred's sheer rip-off.”

Alix gave him that luminous smile. “For Mother it was easier,” she said.

Terrific, he thought. Now that's something for them to cackle over. He left on the double. Outside, he stood on the steps. The night was damp, cold, and he could see puffs of his breath. A narrow Westwood street with bumper-to-bumper cars, old apartments, and Vliet Reed, motionless. A car swerved into the garage, headlights momentarily drowning him.

He opened the door with the blue-tailed mermaid, moving on silent feet. He stopped at her door.

Hold it, he said to himself.

First, I gotta get things straight in my mind. She's been there and back, and can I cope with a crazy lady? She's in love with Roger. And then, oddly, because he'd never considered this before: do I want her partially because she is in love with him? She's been in the bin, he thought.

A faint rustle. He wasn't certain where it came from, and the sound could be natural to an old building filled with old people, or—just possibly—the sound could be mindless grieving.

Oh Christ. It's too complicated for me. She's always been too complicated for me. Roger could handle it, not me. I'll phone her first thing tomorrow.

He sprinted down the hall, throwing open the door, not bothering to close it, taking the four steps at once, pounding the half block to the Mercedes. He hunched over the wheel. It was several minutes before he was able to negotiate his key into the ignition, and when he turned it, the radio burst forth with Diana Ross and “Touch Me in the Morning.”

After he left her, she climbed the stairs, no reason except they were there. She felt bruised everyplace, and very heavy, heavier than she'd been in the hospital. Her legs took effort to move. On the fourth, the top floor, she stopped, exhausted, holding onto the window ledge.

This hall smells mousy, like old people, like madhouses, she thought. He left me. Everyone leaves me. For a moment she saw Vliet with unusual vividness, as he'd looked the moment they went into the bedroom, the sharp tip of his nose, the mouth moving forward, then melting into his lopsided smile, one long, graceful hand extending to help her up from the couch. He smiled at me with Roger's eyes. I don't love him, she thought. I need him. How grasping I am, needing but not loving him. Her thighs felt rubbery, and she sat, uncomfortable, on the narrow window ledge. It's dusty, she thought. Why can't they keep this place decent?

She tried to remember again how it had been when she and Roger had made love. Instead, she remembered how he had been cut. Oh God, she thought, and leaned her forehead on cold, smeared glass. Why don't they get curtains, she thought. Outside, a long-winged insect, trapped in a spider web, had desiccated. With effort, she raised the window, freeing the corpse.

Alix never had asked quarter either for her madness or her grief. She loathed sympathy. (Pity?) Tonight, among the haunting terrors, she had betrayed herself by pleading on both counts. I asked him to stay, she thought, and he cut out.

I'm not crazy, I am not, she thought, and the weight inside her body pulled her to sit again on the window ledge. I'm alone. So is Vliet. We're utterly bereft, yet how is it we're incapable of holding one another, comforting one another? In the path far below, a bare lightbulb exposed a clump of dented garbage cans. She looked up at city stars. Small and pale, she thought. Everything's cold and ugly. Suddenly she remembered that Anna Karenina had seen the world's true ugliness before she threw herself under her appointed freight train.
And the candle by which she had been reading a book full of terrible deceit, misfortune, and evil flamed up brighter than ever
. Alix, at the fourth-floor open window, shivering in her thin white robe, staring into the drab night, thinking of terrible deceit, misfortune, and evil, thinking of Anna's suicide.

Chapter Sixteen

1

Dark had fallen on that New Year's Day of 1975.

The country had a new president and vice-president, unelected Republicans, Ford and Rockefeller, the dollar was falling steadily, gold was almost two hundred dollars an ounce, sugar prices soared, and American tourists were no longer the Romans of the earth. Matters critical to Van Vliets. Yet they continued to go securely about their lives.

The clan had watched USC win the Rose Bowl game on four color TVs spread through the home of Evelyn (Van Vliet) and Sidney Sutherland, the-ones-with-a-Japanese-son-in-law. They had regathered, and candles made a festive glow for sixty loosely related people, some holding plates of cold cuts, others clinking ice in glasses. Children in bright sweaters cut peppermints from a candy pyramid.

At one end of the huge, curving couch sat Em and Sheridan. At these greater Family get-togethers they clung together, Sheridan almost, but not quite, keeping up with Em drink for drink, both of them intent on drawing Vliet close, their rod and their shield. He sat cross-legged at their feet. Four cousins chattered about a recent Family divorce. Cricket, laughing, chucked the fat infant in the lap of Leigh Sutherland Igawa. Ken Igawa, the Sutherlands' Japanese son-in-law, was American-born, an artist, and the Van Vliets were tolerant of his origins and occupation. Comfortable with themselves, they were able to absorb exotica. Ken was trying to get his older daughter, a pretty child with the Sutherland red hair and carefully set Oriental eyes, to write
Happy New Year
. “See, Nan, first you make a line.”

Nan drew an uneven circle, dropped the red Marksalot, shouting, “Grandpa!” trotting off, leaving a trail of peppermint.

“Yeah yeah yeah.” Ken grinned at Vliet. “All looks, no brains. Your side of the family.”

“Wasps're no less intelligent than any other ethnic group. It's those unfair IQ tests.”

Ken laughed. “Where's the girl?” he asked.

“Quick. Give me the comeback.”

“It's like this. Without the fantastic stuff, man, you're naked.”

Vliet pretended laughter. The morning after he'd made it with Alix, a foggy October dawn, she had been readmitted to Mount Sinai's locked floor, voluntarily and briefly, true, but readmitted. It goes without saying he couldn't face her. What surprised him was the extent of his avoidance. He was a case of shell shock. He had no urge for any female companionship. Zilch.
Nada
. Zero.

He saw his mother's pony ankles move together. Primly. Ken's wasn't her type of remark, and besides, she disapproved of exogamy. Ointment was needed here.

“I'm with my little cousin.”

Ken laughed. So did Bette Van Vliet.

“Hi, little cousin!” Bette waved, rattling half a dozen gold bangles. “Get over here with your date. You're not his type, but.…”

“You'd be surprised,” Vliet said. “She's my small snail.”

Everyone nearby laughed. Everyone, that is, except Cricket. She tilted her head, peering around legs and long skirts at him. In candlelight he couldn't make out her expression.

She blinked and rose, heading—Vliet assumed—for the recently done-over living room where a few people sang “Auld Lang Syne,” off-key, to a thumping Steinway. Instead, she echoed across the hall to the dining room. Vliet was following her, but Sidney Sutherland, at the piano, called, “Vliet! Exactly who we need.” So Vliet played the Trojan fight song, and alums, Em and Sheridan joining, sang, “Fi-yut on for oold Esss Seeee, fi-yut on to victoreeeeeee!” Vliet spread his long fingers in a final major chord, saying, “No applause, no applause until the final curtain.” He moved to the dining room. On the table remained two half-eaten turkeys, a ham, bowls of relish, salads, fruit. Cricket wasn't in here. He had kept an eye out. She hadn't come back into the hall. Either she was in the kitchen or the breakfast room. He tried the door to the latter.

“Am I disturbing you?” he inquired.

Cricket, not answering, continued to pile round cookies in front of her. Poker chips. On her right hand she wore a child's gold ring with three seed pearls, and on her left forefinger, pale metal soldered to a green stone. Newberry's, Vleit thought.

“Mmmm, let's see. Not talking is on my little cousin's New Year's list.”

“Don't call me that.”

“You're four-ten. Our mothers are sisters.”

“Next time shout family joke number twenty-eight. You'll get the same laugh.”

“Ouch.” He grinned, sitting in the chair opposite. He tapped his left canine. “Chocolate here.”

Running her tongue over her teeth, she continued stacking cookies.

Vliet played a tune on the table. “Know it?” he asked.

She shrugged absently.

“What's eating you?”

She looked at him with those serene gray eyes. “Small snail,” she said.

He'd used the stupid, impromptu nickname in the family room. “So?”

She kept gazing at him.

He'd said it to her before, a long time ago. But when? Where? Oh shit, he thought. Arrowhead.

“Not funny.” He couldn't look her in the face. He examined her crap green ring. Her hands were child-size, with round nails, unpolished and unevenly filed.

“Come on, Cricket. There've been others, lots of 'em. Whoever.”

“When you're around, we always break up, me and Whoever.”

“You're a big girl now, or so you tell me. Really. Isn't it about time we put this game to rest?”

“You play, too.”

“Each morning I set aside a full hour. Today I must find a new gambit to keep Cricket on a string.”

“Because of you, I'm in Los Angeles.”

“And it's shattering?” he asked. She was currently living at home. She appeared content as ever. “Is it?”

“Not so bad as it was.”