“Smooth, huh?” said a voice at my back.
I turned around, looked down on two hundred pounds of broken-nosed, bushy-mustached square meal packed into five feet five inches of round can, wrapped in a brown plaid suit, pink shirt, black knit tie, and scuffed brown penny loafers.
“Hello, Larry.” I started to extend my hand, then saw that both of his were occupied: a glass of beer in the left, a plate of chicken wings, egg rolls, and partially gnawed rib bones in the right.
“I was over by the roses,” said Daschoff, “trying to figure out how they get them to flower like that. Probably fertilize them with old dollar bills.” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the mansion. “Nice little cottage.”
“Cozy.”
He eyed the conductor. “That’s Narahara, the wunderkind. God knows what he cost.”
He lifted the mug to his mouth and drank. A fringe of foam coated the bottom half of his mustache.
“Budweiser,” he said. “I expected something more exotic. But at least it’s full strength.”
We sat down at an empty table. Larry crossed his legs with effort and took another, deeper swallow of beer. The movement inflated his chest and strained the buttons of his jacket. He unbuttoned it and sat back. A beeper was clipped to his belt.
Larry is almost as wide as he is tall and he waddles; the reasonable assumption is obesity. But in swim trunks he’s as firm as a frozen side of beef—a curious mixture of hypertrophied muscle marbled with suet, the only guy under six feet to have played defensive tackle for the University of Arizona. One time, back in grad school, I watched him bench-press twice his weight at the university gym without breathing hard, then top it off with one-handed push-ups.
He ran blunt fingers through steel-wool hair, wiped his mustache, and watched as Kruse charmed his way through the crowd. The new department head’s route took him closer to our table—near enough to observe the mechanics of small talk but too far to hear what was being said. It was like watching a mime show. Something entitled Party Games.
“Your mentor’s in fine form,” I said.
Larry swallowed more beer and held out his hands. “I told you I was dead busted, D. Would have worked for the devil himself—a bargain-basement Faust.”
“No need to explain, doctor.”
“Why not? It still bugs me, being a party to bullshit.” More beer. “Entire semester a waste. Kruse and I had virtually nothing to do with each other—I doubt if we spoke ten sentences the entire time. I didn’t like him because I thought he was shallow and a phony. And he resented me ’cause I was male—all his other assistants were women.”
“Then why’d he hire you?”
“Because his research subjects were males and they were unlikely to relax watching dirty movies with a bunch of women around taking notes. Not likely to answer the kinds of questions he was asking, either—how often they jerked off, their most frequent masturbation fantasies. Did they do it in public toilets? How often and who they fucked, how long it took them to come. What was their deep-seated primal attitude toward liver in a can.”
“Frontiers of human sexuality,” I said.
He shook his head. “Sad thing is, it could have been valuable. Look at all the clinical data Masters and Johnson came up with. But Kruse wasn’t serious about collecting data. It was as if he was going through the motions.”
“Didn’t the granting agency care?”
“No agency. These were private suckers—rich porn freaks. He promised to make them respectable, put the academic imprimatur on their hobby.”
I turned and looked at Kruse. The blonde in the black dress was teetering on spiked heels.
“Who’s the woman with him?”
“Mrs. K. You don’t remember? Suzanne?”
I shook my head.
“Suzy Straddle? The talk of the department?”
“I must have slept through it.”
“You must have been comatose, D. She was a campus celebrity. Former porn actress, got her nickname for being … limber. Kruse met her at some Hollywood party while doing ‘research.’ She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He left his second wife for her … or maybe it was the third—who keeps track? Got her enrolled in the university as an English major. I think she lasted three weeks. Ring a bell yet?”
I shook my head. “When was this?”
“ ’74.”
“In ’74 I was up in San Francisco—at Langley Porter.”
“Oh, yeah, you double-shifted—internship and dissertation same year. Well, D., your precociousness may have dumped you in the job market one year sooner than the rest of us, but you missed out on Suzy. She was really supposed to be something. I actually worked with her—for a week. Kruse assigned her to the study, doing secretarial work. She couldn’t type, screwed up the files. Sweet kid, actually. But somewhat basic.”
The honoree and spouse had come closer. Suzanne Kruse tagged along after her husband as if bolted to a track. She looked fragile, with bony shoulders, a tight-corded neck bisected by a diamond choker, nearly flat chest, hollow cheeks, and sharply pointed chin. Her arms were shapely but sinewy, bony hands ending in long, spindly fingers. Her nails were long and red-lacquered. They clutched her husband’s sleeve, digging into the tweed.
“Must be true love,” I said. “He stuck with her all these years.”
“Don’t bet that it’s wholesome monogamy. Kruse’s got a rep as a major-league pussy hound and Suzy’s known to be tolerant.” He cleared his throat. “Submissive.”
“Literally?”
He nodded. “Remember those parties Kruse used to throw at his place in Mandeville Canyon the first year he joined the faculty? Oh, yeah, you were in Frisco.” He stopped, ate an egg roll and ruminated. “Wait, I think they were still going on in ’75. You were back by ’75, right?”
“Graduated,” I said. “Working at the hospital. I met him once. We didn’t like each other. He wouldn’t have invited me.”
“No one was invited, Alex. These were open houses. In every sense of the word.”
He chucked me under the chin. “You probably wouldn’t have gone, anyway, because you were a good boy, so serious. Actually, I never got further than the door, myself. Brenda took one look at them coating the floor with Wesson oil and hauled my ass out of there. But people who went said they were plus-four orgies, if you could stand fucking other shrinks. Oh! Calcutta! meets B. F. Skinner—what a scary idea, huh? And Suzy Straddle was one of the main attractions—tied up, harnessed, muzzled, and flogged.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Campus gossip. Everyone knew—it was no secret. Back then, no one thought it was all that weird. Pre-microbe days—sexual freedom, liberating the id, expanding the boundaries of consciousness, et cetera. Even the radical libbers in our class thought Kruse was on the cutting edge of something meaningful. Or maybe it just got their rocks off being dominant. Either way, it was philosophically acceptable to flog Suzy because she was fulfilling some need of her own.”
“Kruse do the flogging?”
“Everyone did. It was a real gang scene—she was an equal-opportunity floggee. There, look at her, how she’s holding on to him for dear life. Doesn’t she seem submissive? Probably a passive-dependent personality, perfect symbiotic fit for a power junkie like Kruse.”
To me she looked scared. Adhering to her husband, but staying in the background. I watched her step forward and smile when spoken to, then retreat. Tossing her long hair, checking her nails. Her smile was as flat as a decal, her dark eyes unnaturally bright.
She moved so that the sun hit the diamond choker and threw off sparks. I thought of a dog collar.
Kruse turned abruptly to take someone’s hand and his wife was caught off balance. Throwing her arm out for support, she took hold of his sleeve and held on tighter, wrapping herself around him. He continued to knead her bare shoulder, but for all the attention he paid to her, she might have been a sweater.
Love. Whate
ver the hell that means.
“Low self-esteem,” said Larry. “You’d have to be down on yourself to fuck on film.”
“Guess so.”
He drained his mug. “Going for a refill. Can I get you something?”
I held up my half-full soda glass. “Still working on this.”
He shrugged and went to the bar.
The Kruses had circled away from our table toward one filled with magpies. A fizz of small talk; then he laughed, a deep, self-satisfied sound. He said something to a male graduate student, pumped the student’s hand while running his eyes over the young man’s pretty wife. Suzanne Kruse kept smiling.
Larry returned. “So,” he said, settling, “how’s it going with you?”
“Great.”
“Yeah, me too. That’s why we’re here without our women, right?”
I sipped soda and gazed at him. He maintained eye contact but busied himself with a chicken wing.
The therapist’s look. Gravid with concern.
Genuine concern, but I wanted no part of it. Suddenly I felt like bolting. A quick jog back to the big stone arch, farewell to Gatsbyland.
Instead, I dipped into my own bag of shrink-moves. Parried a question with a question.
“How’s Brenda doing in law school?”
He knew full well what was going on, answered anyway. “Top ten percent of the class for the second year in a row.”
“You must be proud of her.”
“Sure. Except there’s another entire year to go. Check me same time next year and see if I’m still functioning.”
I nodded. “I’ve heard it’s a rotten process.”
His grin lost its warmth. “Anything that produces lawyers would have to be, wouldn’t it? Like turning sirloin into shit. My favorite part is when she comes home and cross-examines me about the house and the kids.”
He wiped his mouth and leaned in close. “One part of me understands it—she’s bright, brighter than I am, I always expected her to go for something other than housework. She was the one who said no, her own mother had worked full time, farmed her out to babysitters, she resented it. She got pregnant on our honeymoon, nine months later we had Steven, then the rest of them, like aftershocks. Now, all of a sudden, she needs to find herself. Clara Darrow.”
He shook his head. “The problem is the timing. Here I am, finally getting to a point where I don’t have to hustle referrals. The associates are reliable, the practice is basically running itself. The baby starts first grade next year, we could take some time off, travel. Instead, she’s gone twenty hours a day while I play Mr. Mom.”
He scowled. “Be careful, my friend—though with Robin it’ll probably be different, she’s already had her career, might be ready to settle down.”
I said, “Robin and I are separated.”
He stared at me, shook his head, again. Rubbed his chin and sighed. “Shit, I’m sorry. How long’s it been?”
“Five weeks. Temporary vacation that just seemed to stretch.”
He drained his beer. “I’m really sorry. I always thought you guys were the perfect couple.”
“I thought so, too, Larry.” My throat got tight and my chest burned. I was certain that everyone was looking at me, though when I looked around, no one was. Just Larry, eyes as soft as a spaniel’s.
“Hope it works out,” he said.
I stared into my glass. The ice had melted to slush. “Think I will have something stronger.”
I elbowed my way through the crush at the bar and ordered a double gin and tonic that fell just short of single strength. On the way back to the table I came face to face with Kruse. He looked at me. His eyes were light-brown flecked with green, the irises unusually large. They widened—with recognition I was certain—then flicked away and focused somewhere over my shoulder. Simultaneously, he shot out his hand, grasped mine firmly, covered it with his other, and moved our arms up and down while exclaiming, “So nice you could come!” Before I had a chance to reply, he’d used the handshake as leverage to propel himself past me, spinning me halfway around before relinquishing his grip and moving on.
Politician’s hustle. I’d been expertly manipulated.
Again.
I turned, saw his tailored back retreating, followed by the shimmering silver sheet of his wife’s hair swaying in counterpoint to her narrow, tight derrière.
The two of them walked several steps before being taken in hand by a tall, handsome middle-aged woman.
Slim and impeccably assembled in a custard-yellow silk cocktail dress, white rose corsage, and strategically placed diamonds, she could have been any President’s First Lady. Her hair was chestnut accented with pewter, combed back and tied in a chignon that crowned a long, full-jawed face. Her lips were thin, molded in a half-smile.
Finishing-school smile. Genetic poise.
I heard Kruse say, “Hello, Hope. Everything’s just beautiful.”
“Thank you, Paul. If you’ve a moment, there are some people I’d like you to meet.”
“Of course, dear.”
The exchange sounded rehearsed, lacking in warmth, and had excluded Suzanne Kruse. The three of them left the patio, Kruse and the First Lady side by side, the former Suzy Straddle following like a servant. They headed for a group of swans basking in the reflected light of one of the pools. Their arrival was heralded by the cessation of chatter and the lowering of glasses. A lot of flesh was pressed. Within seconds the swans were all listening raptly to Kruse. But the woman in yellow seemed bored. Even resentful.
I returned to the table, took a deep drink of gin. Larry raised his glass and touched it to mine.
“Here’s to old-fashioned girls, D. Long may they fucking live.”
I tossed back what was left of my gin and sucked on the ice. I hadn’t eaten all day, felt a light buzz coming on and shook my head to clear it. The movement brought a swatch of custard-yellow into view.
The First Lady had left Kruse’s side. She scanned the grounds, took a few steps, stopped and flicked her head toward a yellow spot on the lawn. Discarded napkin. A waiter rushed to pick it up. Like a captain on the bow of a frigate, the chestnut-haired woman shaded her eyes with her hand and continued to scan the grounds. She glided to one of the rosebeds, lifted a blossom and inspected it. Another waiter bearing shears was at her side immediately. A moment later the flower was in her hair and she was moving on.
“That’s our hostess?” I said. “In the pale-yellow dress?”
“No idea, D. Not exactly my social circle.”
“Kruse called her Hope.”
“Then that’s her. Hope Blalock. Springs eternal.”
A moment later, he said, “Some hostess. Notice how we’re all kept outside, no one gets into the house?”
“Like dogs that haven’t been housebroken.”
He laughed, lifted one leg off the chair and made a rude sound with his lips. Then he cocked his head at a nearby table. “Speaking of animal training, observe the maze-and-electrode crowd.”
Eight or nine grad students sat surrounding a man in his late fifties. The students favored corduroy, jeans, and plain cotton shifts, lank hair and wire-rims. Their mentor was stoop-shouldered, bald, and wore a clipped white beard. His suit was mud-colored hopsacking, a couple of sizes too large. It shrouded him like a monk’s habit. He talked nonstop and jabbed his finger a lot. The students looked glassy-eyed.
“The Ratman himself,” said Larry. “And his merry band of Ratkateers. Probably going on about something sexy like the correlation between electroshock-induced defecation and stimulation voltage following experimentally induced frustration of a partially reinforced escape response acquired under widely spaced trials. In fucking squirrels.”
I laughed. “Looks like he lost weight. Maybe he’s doing weight-loss tapes, too.”
“Nope. Heart attack last year—it’s why he gave up being department head and passed it along to Kruse. The tapes started right after that. Fucking hypocrite. Remember how he used to put down
the clinical students, say we shouldn’t consider our doctorates a union card for private practice? What an asshole. You should see the ads he’s been running for his little no-smoking racket.”
“Where’ve they run?”
“Trashy magazines. One square inch of black-and-white in the back along with pitches for military schools, stuff-envelopes-and-make-a-fortune schemes, and Oriental pen pals. Only reason I found out is, one of my patients sent away for it and brought the cassette in to show me. ‘Use the Behavioral Approach to Quit Smoking,’ the Ratman’s name right there on the plastic, along with this tacky mimeographed brochure listing his academic credentials. He actually narrates the damned thing, D., in that pompous monotone. Trying to sound compassionate, as if he’d been working with people instead of rodents all these years.” He gave a disgusted look. “Union cards.”
“Is he making any money?”
“If he is, he sure ain’t spending it on clothes.”
Larry’s beeper went off. He pulled it off his belt, held it to his ear for a moment. “The service. ’Scuse me, D.”
He stopped a waiter, asked for the nearest phone, and was directed to the big white house. I watched him duck-walk through the formal gardens, then got up, ordered another gin and tonic, and stood there at the bar drinking it, enjoying the anonymity. I was starting to feel comfortably fuzzy when I heard something that set off an internal alarm.
Familiar tones, inflections.
A voice from the past.
I told myself it was imagination. Then I heard the voice again and searched the crowd.
I saw her, over several sets of shoulders.
A time-machine jolt. I tried to look away, couldn’t.
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