Something to Be Desired (11 page)

Much trouble came to Lucien through his living in an area his friends wished to visit without their wives. When Lucien got the hot spring, friendships that had fallen into rueful desuetude came back to life. They loved him and they loved his healing waters! They parked on the white gravel, soaked and appealed for discounts on their bills. On the radio, a song spoke of one of sixteen vestal virgins heading for the coast. This is life, thought Lucien, this is the long tunnel. Down in my hot spring the women are buoyant with reproductive glee. It draws customers like flies. Cash discounts for the criminally insane.

Among Lucien’s customers were many who bore his study: a luckless parvenu, girl cowboys, environmental guides, a geothermal engineer who told Lucien what was wrong with his hot spring, how it would dry up, etc., a Hindu, a jockey named “Mincemeat,” and so on. There was a gangster retired to his Madonna collection and prayer. On Saturday night in the bathrooms next to the bar, urine’s vitreous ring was a carillon of high spirits from the happy toilets.

Lucien called Suzanne and described his success. This was going to be a wonderful summer out west.

Then Suzanne called Lucien late one night, so late that Lucien wondered momentarily where he was. He had hung a sport coat on the tall bedpost for dry-cleaning the next day; for a moment he thought the coat had placed the call to him. His bird dog stood and arched her back
in a slow stretch, not anxious to start the day in the middle of the night.

“What’s up?”

“I’m sorry to be calling you so late, but I’m in such a state of confusion I can’t sleep.”

“Think nothing of it. I’ve done this to you, often and drunkenly.”

Suddenly a silence from Suzanne’s end of the line was filled with sobbing. Lucien pulled himself up against the bedstead and waited alertly for her to recover. “What is it?” he asked. “Suzanne, what is it?”

“Lucien, I don’t know. I’m going in circles. I’m worn out trying to work and stay ahead of James and I’m just absolutely going in circles. And I miss you. Suddenly you’re strong and I’m a mess.”

Lucien ached sharply. He missed Suzanne too; but maybe he just missed their old hopes, now long in the past.

“What can I do?” Lucien asked. “I’ll do absolutely anything.”

“Don’t hang up on me.”

“I won’t hang up on you.”

“There. I think I’m better.”

“Haven’t you met anyone nice yet?”

“Oh, sure. They’re everywhere. And you?”

“Well, you know all about the Emily thing,” Lucien gasped. “After that I pretty much concentrated on staying fluid, you know. The old moving target trick.”

“Target. You’re darn lucky you didn’t turn into one while she was still there.”

“That’ll be enough of that, Suzanne. This time I mean it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. Lucien turned the
light back off and sat in the dark once again with the silent telephone. They could have been in the same room.

“Why don’t you pick up and come out here for a while?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got relatives all over the place there.”

“Please.”

“You come up with a presentable plan and we’ll see.”

This was the Suzanne Lucien remembered best. Touching, emotional, sweet and predacious. When she hung up, he lay there used and overjoyed. He could barely get back to sleep. There was moonlight. But when he awakened in the morning he was nervous and didn’t want breakfast.

Lucien was doing something very acceptable to everyone: he was making money hand over fist. He wasn’t quite certain why this had such a miraculous effect on his self-esteem. After all, the same old battered soul still lived inside the groomed monster Lucien felt he had become. It didn’t even arouse his cynicism. I have to admit, he thought, they all like me better now that I am a rich SOB. And some of the hollow feeling had gone, too. It was strange not to be desperate. In fact, he rather missed desperation now that it was gone. It had been an old friend and had produced some top fireworks. Lucien knew, though, that he had been allowed to make mankind’s favorite experiment, that of going from some form of rags to some form of riches, overnight. Only he was plagued by the questions: Am I a new man? Why do they like me? Am I secretly the same old shitheel, the same old wino from hell who brought down hurricanes of scorn on himself? Is this an American dream?

·  ·  ·

He began once again to bring Suzanne and James within reach. He asked if they would come back and got a no. He asked if they would just come up and “give it a try.” That didn’t work either. Evidently she was serious about presenting a plan. It was only by offering what was in effect a prepaid vacation that he began to get somewhere. “Let’s keep it fairly short,” said Suzanne. “I don’t want to be there with James when Emily returns. She might have an itchy trigger finger.”

Lucien gave a warm and appreciative laugh, like the sidekick of a talk-show host. “No, no, no,” he said in a rich voice. “I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of her.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got a million more where that one came from,” said Suzanne.

To begin with, nothing is merrier than a Rocky Mountain airport in the summertime. Nothing. Lucien stood among the small crowd awaiting passengers and watched the big jet pivot against the shimmering sagebrush flats and come to the ramp. There were numerous people Lucien recognized in the group, and he nodded genially to them like a man of substance, or at least a man not to be lightly disturbed. Perhaps some of these people remembered the old Lucien and took his current stance as an absurdity.

And then the doors opened. People flowed into the airport from the jet. They kept coming, the strangers. And there they were! James in clownish checkerboard shoes, thick glasses and a frightened grin. Next to him walked Suzanne, the same tall brown-eyed girl he’d misunderstood for so long. In her face the contradictions of this arrival were transmuted into wry cheer. She carried a
straw bag and moved James along with a hand on the back of his head.

Lucien was head over heels in love. He had never been so in love in his life.

Lucien lit a cigarette. He’d almost quit; then the spring was a success and now he chain-smoked like a foundryman. He was back in Wick Tompkins’s office, secure in its club-like atmosphere with the reassuring clacking of the computer keyboard coming from the next room.

“I thank the Savior for taking my tired feet from the long road of loneliness,” said Lucien.

“You are full of yourself.”

“Well, they’re back.”

“Anything else you’d care to tell me?”

“Yeah, Wick, I was wondering how come I’m so smart and rich.”

Tompkins stared across a pile of uniform green books marked with numerous pieces of folded paper. “It must’ve been something you ate,” he said. “Where’s the little family now?”

“I’m letting them sleep.”

“And, for example, where are you letting them sleep?”

“I’ve got them at the White Cottage, the one with the cabana and wading pool.”

“Why not with you?”

“The truth is, I’m not sure the Savior actually got me off the long and lonely road at all. Suzanne is viewing
this strictly as a vacation. I mean strictly. And my boy looks at me very remotely.”

“How long will they be here?”

“Couple of weeks. Maybe more. Y’know, if I pave a glorious trail for their good times. But I can’t just phone this one in. I’ve really got to be on deck. Besides, I’m in love.”

“With whom?”

“With Suzanne.”

“You’re joking.”

“No.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No,” said Lucien. “It was love at first sight. Last night at the airport.”

“Let me just say this: I approve in a very nonspecific way. Will I be retained as counsel?”

“Yes,” said Lucien. “In due course.” Lucien was no longer hungry. Though he understood it could never last, he felt himself to be autocratic, satisfied and self-absorbed. For him, that made a nice picture. He got up. “I’m going to go,” he said. “It’s after ten. They should be up by now.”

“As you wish,” said Wick. “I have to get in eight billable hours in the next ninety minutes, then go to lunch.”

“You’re like a brother to me,” said Lucien.

“I’ve come to sense that,” said Wick joylessly. “Call me when the roof falls in.”

Now Lucien went to see Suzanne and James at the White Cottage. He came through the gate in the wooden wall that gave the place privacy. Suzanne was in a lounge chair reading, her hair tied back exposing the crooked hairline that Lucien had never appreciated but was one
of the many things people always found pretty about her. James was knee-deep in the wading pool. “Good morning!” said Suzanne. She lay the book with its spine up in her lap. Lucien went to the pool, where James tossed water back and forth between his hands, nervously watching Lucien. Lucien dropped to one knee and gave James a small embrace.

“Ow,” said James. “My sunburn.”

Suzanne got up, and for a moment Lucien could still see her shape in the plastic cross-straps of the chaise longue. The book was a traveler’s introduction to the Seychelles. Lucien wondered if she had a trip planned there with someone.

“Pop,” said James, “want to see me do a racing turn?”

“You bet I do.”

James thrashed to the far end of the wading pool, inverted and shot back toward Lucien underwater. When he burst out, there was a sort of brief pride in his face as water streamed down it; and then it was gone.

Suzanne returned to her chaise with a glass of ice water. Lucien sat down a little awkwardly next to her in a kitchen chair, resting his arms on its back. “Maybe we could get someone for James and have dinner together?”

“No,” she said.

“Oh, all right. Perhaps another time.”

Lucien got no response to this. Instead Suzanne said, “I wonder if tomorrow James and I could borrow a car. I want to get some groceries.”

“That’s a handy little kitchenette, isn’t it?”

“He and I will be eating in.”

“Well, sure. You just ring Antoinette, who is my secretary. She’ll have someone drive you down.”

“I’d really prefer it if we had our own car.”

“Easily arranged.”

“Thank you.”

“James,” said Lucien, “am I going to see you later on?”

“Ask Mom,” said James nervously. Lucien thought it was time to go. By the time he got out the door, Suzanne was reading her book on the Seychelles again. When he closed the door to the gate, Lucien heard her exclaim, “Goodbye, Lucien! Thanks for everything!” Then in a conversational voice, “I guess he’s gone.”

He had dinner with Dee instead. Afterward they went to the supper club for dancing and power drinking. An illegal poker game started up and everyone got kicked out by eleven. Lucien drove Dee to her car, parked back of the bank.

“Tonight, sex is out,” said Dee.

“I feel the same way,” he said, and they parted. He liked her. Dee.

“Stop right there,” came the voice, soft, yet clear enough in the tall wooden bedroom where Lucien had slept the long night, the rain impelled horizontally at the panes of glass opposite his pillow. The hot summer lightning cracked into the smoky hayfields that surrounded the old ranch on every side. Lucien looked straight into the rifle barrel first, because it was closest to his head, then followed it back to the sights, the stock, then the face, as expressionless as a blister.

“Are you with one of the churches?”

“No,” said the man. “I’m with one of the women. I’m with Dee.”

But I was in bed by eleven, thought Lucien. And this time I never laid a hand on her. What is meant by this gun barrel? I imagine we shall see in the next few minutes.
Times like these turn the happiest memories into affliction. Even the memory of Dee’s bright gaze withered before this weapon.

“Let’s get a bite to eat,” said Lucien, throwing his feet out onto the cold floor and silently promising himself never to touch a drop again. “My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”

Normally an adroit cook, Lucien felt a cold breeze in his bathrobe as he shakily prepared breakfast, slivering the green chilies into the bowl of eggs, the Black Diamond cheddar, the scallions, the garlic, the microscopic, brutal bird peppers, the sprigs of dill. He reached around the gun to give Gale—that was his name—a smell. Gale nodded, just passing the product through to the skillet: no approval particularly. Gale was bandy with sloped shoulders and flat mosaic knuckles displayed against the wood of the rifle stock. Lucien felt that he would have to say a string of stupid things to get Gale to actually open fire. Gale was starting to get hungry. We must see our way humanely through this: Gale has lost his momentum, is wondering if his manhood is in question.

Lucien put the two plates on the table with glasses of orange juice and a porcelain pot of good coffee. They sat down, Gale with the rifle across his lap. Without emphasis, the gun had become silly. Gale made an attempt at equitability by eating fast: the bird peppers kicked in. Tears burst from Gale’s eyes and his face turned blood-red. He set his mouth ajar and stared in terrible thought.

“A touch of the vapors?” Lucien asked.

“—in the fuck you put in these aigs?”

“I’ll get you some water.”

Lucien hurried. He carried ice water from the refrigerator to the breakfast table, where he threw it in Gale’s face and confiscated the gun.

“Gale, stay right where you are for a sec—” Lucien racked open the bolt, ejected the magazine. There were no cartridges in the gun. He handed it back to Gale.

“They say you can set one of these off with your toe,” said Gale, morosely gesturing to the rifle.

“Not if it isn’t loaded,” said Lucien, wondering if this was not slightly at Gale’s expense.

“I seen on TV the other day where death is kind of a tunnel,” said Gale. Death? “But what few these folks that’s come back claim that first mile is hell.”

“Let’s not talk about death.”

“Your house needs a rain gutter,” said Gale.

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, I’m in the seamless gutter business. And I’m about to go broke.”

“How much is this going to cost me?”