The Houseguest

by Thomas Berger

  Again Chuck had accompanied him to the bedroom.

  “What amount would be needed?” Doug asked, withdrawing the slender gold pen from the elastic loop that held it inside the lizardskin checkbook holder.

  Chuck had not lost any of his smile. “That’s impossible to say at this point. There are always unforeseen eventualities in a game of this kind. Suddenly someone will pop out of a rat hole and must be shoved back in, and that can be expensive.”

  Doug had not the slightest idea of what the houseguest was talking about, but he thought it politic to pretend he was in the picture lest he reveal his utter helplessness.

  “Obviously you know the ropes. Uh … how about five hundred?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Doug grinned vulnerably. “I had to start somewhere.”

  “I thought I just said I couldn’t name a precise figure,” said Chuck. He lifted his hands slowly and let them fall, as if in exasperation. “Look, Doug, am I boring you? I’m honestly trying to help, you know.”

  “I do know,” Doug said in haste. “I want to cooperate, Chuck, believe me. It’s just that I don’t quite—”

  “Sign one of these checks for me,” Chuck said in a stern voice. “It’s only money, and you’ve got plenty.”

  But Doug had found courage now. This was a sensitive subject. “Now, don’t go saying that kind of thing! I don’t have much at all, really. People think that because of the name—but it’s not true, I assure you. My father squandered most of what he got. It’s the others in the family who have all of it.”

  Chuck pretended to yawn. “That’s what they all say. Just sign the check. Don’t fill in any of the rest at this time. We wouldn’t want it traced.”

  Doug was still worried that he should be thought rich. Thus he had sufficient nerve to note somewhat testily, “You can’t exactly keep a check secret if you expect to cash it.”

  Chuck said regretfully, “I thought we had come to an agreement, Doug. I hope you’re not making fun of me.”

  Doug hastened to say, “Oh no. Certainly not! I was just pointing out—”

  “Let me handle everything, please,” Chuck said in a voice that seemed to Doug to be only superficially genial. “After all, this is my operation.”

  Doug raised his hands. “Of course.” He did not want to be shot. He signed a blank check but was clever enough to alter his signature. Ordinarily he scrawled his name; now he took pains to write clearly, and produced a version that looked as inauthentic as if done by an untalented forger.

  However, no sooner had he handed it to Chuck than it occurred to him that the houseguest could and probably would compare it with one of his genuine signatures, an example of which was easy to find, and then the fat would meet the fire.

  But to his relieved surprise, Chuck failed to glance at the face of the check: simply, quickly folded it in half and thrust it into one of the back pockets of his chinos, and said, “That’s that, then.”

  Now that Doug felt he had evaded current danger, he was able again to wonder just what “that” consisted of, but he was afraid to ask. Nor did it matter, for Chuck was leaving the study now.

  Doug waited awhile, then peeped into the hallway to see whether Chuck had actually left. He found it hard to believe that the man would pull something like this and then walk away, leaving him with a working telephone, but the passage was empty.

  He took the telephone from the oak box. The emergency number that was the standard summons for the police elsewhere in the country had no efficacy on the island. He dialed 0 and was answered by a man’s voice.

  “Have I reached the telephone operator? Connect me with the police.”

  “Is this an emergency?” the voice asked with a heavily dubious intonation. “I’m supposed to take your word for it, is that it?”

  “Goddammit,” cried Doug. “Connect me with your supervisor.”

  “All right,” the operator groaned. “I’m just going to do that, fella. I’m going to call your bluff!” And after the briefest of moments a woman’s voice was heard.

  “Are you having difficulty in placing your call?”

  “I certainly am! I’m trying to reach the police.”

  “Are you aware,” asked the supervisor, “that you must specify which police you want? There’s Milledgeville and there’s Swanson; there’s Crockett, Duntown, and there’s Saint James, and there’s the state force, and if you’re in an unincorporated area of the county, you should call the sheriff.”

  “Please,” Doug begged. “No more of this. Just get me the island police.”

  “Island?” the woman asked incredulously.

  After another exchange Doug discovered that he and the telephone service represented by this supervisor were at least a thousand miles apart. He must have misdialed somehow. … . Unless this was a hoax in the service of which the wires of his phone had been tampered with by Chuck Burgoyne. The voice of the supposedly female supervisor could have been a man’s in falsetto. It was not out of the question that the parts of both operator and supervisor were played by the man who had called himself Perlmutter. Or they might be three different people, all fellow conspirators with Chuck. But what could be their motive? The blank check was of limited worth: the current balance in the account did not reach two thousand dollars. Not to mention the phony signature he had used, nor his intention on the following morning to call his bank in the city and stop payment. That is, if he could find a working telephone by then—but if he could get a phone to function, he would first of all get the police.

  He lifted the instrument at hand, intending to dial more carefully this time. But now no tone could be heard. This line too was dead.

  Lydia had told Bobby that she almost drowned, but he was always a bit confused when awakened suddenly from a nap. Usually she found this another of his endearing ways, but never before had she nearly lost her life. A thirtyish cousin had been killed in a car crash; and two of her grandparents had died, but at a substantial age each. She had had no reason to see existence as being especially fragile. Right now it seemed an inexplicable wonder to her that, with the hazards available, anything stayed alive for long. That she knew this state of mind could, with the physical chills, be identified as shock helped not at all: the application of reason was a mockery here; instinct was all.

  She spoke sharply to her husband. “Did you hear me?”

  Bobby sat up and rubbed his tousled, now dingy blond head. “Oh, hey,” said he. “I was going to the club but the car quit before I got to the end of—”

  Lydia shouted, “Are you awake? I just almost drowned. Look at me.” Occupied with the one emotion, she was innocent of vanity. She was wet, and dirty with vomit.

  “Oh,” Bobby said, rising from his seat on the bed’s edge. “That’s bad.”

  Lydia was weeping again. Bobby did not act on her implicit idea that she should be embraced, vomit and all.

  “Chuck!” she cried. “He saved my life. I was helpless! Oh, God, I thought I was a strong swimmer.”

  Bobby smiled. “Is that right? Good old Chuck.” He was keeping his distance from her. “You get a cramp?”

  This was not that absurd a question, but in the current circumstances it infuriated Lydia. She showed her teeth.

  “I was in the fucking ocean!”

  Bobby made his eyes round. “You shouldn’t ever go in out there. Didn’t I mention the undertow? That’s no swimming beach, Lyd.”

  She found it impossible to speak with him. She trudged to the bathroom and showered without closing the glass door and while still wearing her bathing suit. The linings of her nose and throat, stung first by saltwater and then lacerated by acidulous digestive juices, hurt when she breathed and swallowed. Her mother would have had a remedy; her mother-in-law was hardly the person to go to when wounded. She detested her in-laws, this house, and the island; and for the first time in her life she feared the water, into which she swore never to put herself again, not even a pool. As to Chuck Burgoyne, however, he was be
yond the reach of any doubt. She revered him. What greater triumph could a human being achieve than saving the life of another? She hated Bobby for not being there at her moment of need.

  She shuffled through the standing water on the bathroom floor and went out into the bedroom. Bobby was before the window, staring at the ocean. His tallness repelled her now, as did the apparent lack of hair on his limbs in a certain light, so lightly colored was it. She had once found this attractive. The men to whom she was related by blood were all black-furred, on shoulder blades as well as chest. She wished she could recuperate at home, amongst them.

  She hurled aside a sliding door and took out one of the thick woolen blankets stacked on the shelves of that part of the closet. She cocooned herself in it, without having toweled off the water from the shower.

  Bobby turned, wrinkling his nose. “You’ve still got your suit on.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  This was so uncharacteristic an utterance, in either idiom or emotion, that he ignored it, perhaps genuinely did not hear it.

  Lydia lowered herself onto the bed, but despite the warm embrace of the moist blanket she began to shiver again.

  Bobby at last reacted appropriately. “Brandy,” said he, snapping his fingers. “You could use a drink.” He left the room. Some time later he was back, producing a clinking sound and saying, “Lyd … ?”

  She reluctantly opened her eyes.

  “Take some of this,” said Bobby.

  Hand emerging from the cocoon, she took the tumbler, and thought better of him until she swallowed the fiery liquid and ravaged her sore throat. … . But the slow aftereffect was finally anesthetic. Everything was transitional; no feeling long had a home.

  Bobby stood alongside the bed, gazing down at her. “Maybe you ought to be looked at, at the hospital. The wagon should be in running condition. Want me to take you?” His voice had weakened by the time he reached the question.

  Lydia took a second drink from the glass she had retained. Her throat felt all right.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

  He was still holding the brandy bottle. “For what? Chuck deserves all the thanks. Just lucky he was there. I don’t think I’m that strong a swimmer.”

  Suddenly Lydia felt a personal need to build him up: it was not for his sake. “Oh, sure you could have done it,” said she. “It’s just a very strong current. It’s not some force that can only be overcome by superhuman means. I could have held my own if I had just been prepared for it, but I was taken by surprise. I’m not effective on the spur of the moment. I have to know what’s coming.”

  “You’re like that in school, but you are always prepared. That’s what’s so great about you, Lyd: you can handle yourself. This is just a fluke. Don’t get depressed by it.”

  Bobby was now being more morally responsive than she had ever known him to be. She had always been the one who gave him confidence, sexually, academically, and even socially. At first it was astonishing to find that Bobby Graves had difficulty in talking with people, but it was true.

  Thinking of him in this way, Lydia began to feel the familiar stirring of a desire for Bobby: obviously she was recovering. But when she asked him to lie down with her, and began to unfurl the blanket, Bobby retreated.

  “Better get all the rest you can,” said he. “The whole system can be affected by an experience like that.”

  Again she despised him, but this time was strong enough to remain silent as he left the room.

  Bobby was simply revolted by such things as vomit and snot, which to him were more repulsive than the wastes excreted by bladder and intestines, perhaps because the central organs were designed for that negative purpose, whereas the nose and mouth had nobler functions. But he was also repelled by the very idea of menstrual fluid. Until he had moved in with Lydia, in her little off-campus apartment the year before, he had never been aware of how much of a repulsive nature is characteristic of female life. He had never since birth been that close with his mother.

  So seeing Lydia covered with puke and mucus had surely killed, at least temporarily, all physical taste that he might have had for her, and the truth was that her appetite had always been keener than his own, though he could perform well enough if asked. That was the trick, and in his varied experience with women only Lydia had consistently divined it: he was proficient only on demand. When, with prior partners, he had taken the initiative, all desire was gone by the time he entered bed. Lydia had introduced him into a new state of being in which every responsibility was hers: to attain success all he had to do was be present.

  Going along the hall in the direction of the central part of the house, Bobby met his father, who was coming his way.

  For once his parent greeted him with what seemed genuine interest, even clutched at his elbow.

  “Let’s find a private place,” his father said, in an undertone though no one else was nearby. He led Bobby through a glass-walled conservatory full of mostly long-fronded, probably tropical greenery, but there were colorful blossoms too: this was a hobby of his mother’s, who had a lot of potted plants specially brought up from the city every spring and taken back in the fall. The atmosphere was moist, unpleasantly heavy as was, for altogether different reasons, that of his father’s quarters, in which one could never elude the peculiar scent of a soap or lotion used by his male progenitor for at least a decade. He was pleased now when they went out the door at the far end. The ocean was below and beyond. How foolish Lydia had been to ignore the warnings about swimming there.

  “Listen, Bobby,” said his father, peering about as if in apprehension, “ordinarily I wouldn’t consider it my place to criticize your friends or your wife’s.” He swiveled his head again. Bobby had never seen him when he was not perfectly barbered and shaven. “But how do you happen to know Chuck?”

  “Chuck?” Bobby asked. “Chuck? I met him here.”

  “On the island. But where? The club? Someone’s house?”

  “Yeah,” Bobby said, smiling. “Your house, this house. He’s your friend, isn’t he? Or Mother’s?”

  His father frowned. “I’m not joking, Bobby. I’m afraid he’s a dangerous man.”

  “Huh?”

  His father moved closer to him. “Are you aware he carries a gun?”

  Indeed, Bobby had not believed his father was jesting till now. He grinned. “A real hood, huh?”

  “Please take me seriously,” said his father, being dramatically grim.

  However, still suspecting that he might be the victim of a hoax, Bobby said, “Okay, Dad: no, I don’t know he carries a gun, but it sounds unlikely. I’d have to see it.”

  His father glared at him. “I’m telling you he does. I saw it. Furthermore, he used it to get money out of me.”

  Bobby waited a moment, and then he groaned and started to say, “Oh, come on,” but had got only to the first syllable when his father slapped him in the face.

  “Goddammit,” cried his father. “This is an emergency! This guy threatened me with a gun in my own home! Who is he, some gangster associated with Lydia’s family?”

  Bobby now understood that his parent was genuinely exercised. He could not remember previously having seen him in this state, but something was obviously wrong with him. He would have to be placated.

  “I’ll look into it. Would you like that?”

  “He threatened me,” said his father, “and he claimed that he had just saved her life. Or anyway that’s what he boasted of doing.”

  “He did that all right,” said Bobby. “She ignored what I told her about the undertow and jumped into the ocean. She would have drowned except luckily Chuck was there. He must be some swimmer.”

  “He’s a thug, is what he is!”

  Bobby hastened to say, “Why don’t I look into the matter and get back to you?” His face at last began to sting where he had been struck, else he would not have believed it had happened: to be slapped by one’s father when one was twenty-three years of age
, newly graduated from college, and recently married was incredible. Bobby did not resent this so much as he wondered at it: what could cause a man to behave with so little self-discipline? He was aware that paranoia is never a thing-in-itself but rather a symptom. Was his father at last impotent? But was not impotence itself symptomatic of something still beyond? In human affairs perhaps there was never an end to any phenomenon, unless of course one was religious: everything pointed to still another signpost pointing elsewhere. After taking a number of courses in psychology, Bobby was not at all certain he had learned anything that would give him moral support when dealing with other human beings.

  For example, what in the world could he now say to Chuck? “Look, I promised to ask you about this. I know it sounds crazy, but my father now goes around saying you carry a gun. And what’s more, he claims you actually robbed him at gunpoint in this house.”

  Obviously he would have to approach the subject more delicately than this. Chuck had saved Lydia’s life, and Bobby had yet to thank him for that. But having done so, could he then pursue his father’s matter without an implied repudiation of the gratitude he had only just expressed, and without poisoning his friendship with Chuck?

  His father continued to stare indignantly at him. “All right,” Bobby said, “I told you I would look into it. I’m sure there’s some explanation.” He thought of one on the instant. “Maybe he’s a law-enforcement officer.”