Perfect Recall

by Ann Beattie

  “Any update on the president?” I ask.

  “You’d better not be responsible for my favorite hair highlighter of all time leaving New York City to live in the boonies,” Kathryn says.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t ask her to marry me.”

  “You don’t have to. Sex with a straight guy is enough to drive them over the edge.”

  “Quiet,” Lowell says. “I don’t want to hear the two of you sniping at each other before I’ve even had a cup of coffee.”

  On the counter, the coffee is slowly dripping into the pot.

  “We went to a party,” I say. “Gianni Versace was there, but he was peeing the whole time. We left and got into the hot tub at the Casa Marina. We watched Grand Hotel on the tube and had room service deliver a steak.”

  “It’s love,” Kathryn sighs.

  “Well, don’t sound so despondent about it, Cruella,” Lowell says.

  The phone rings. Lowell ignores it, resting his head on his hands. Kathryn is fanning herself with the travel section.

  I answer the phone.

  “George here,” the voice says. “I just found out there was a screwup, and that no one from Mrs. Clinton’s staff got back to you. My apologies for that. I didn’t awaken you, did I?”

  “No, not at all. You’ll want to be speaking to Mr. Cartwright,” I say.

  “Well, actually, if you could just relay the message that things are pretty much on hold at this end, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “I hope we can do it another time,” George Stephanopoulos says.

  I don’t know what makes me do it, but I say, “You know, last night I was at a party—Gianni Versace and some other folks, down in Key West—and I met a woman who knows you. Apparently her sister cleans house for a friend of yours. Does this ring a bell?”

  “What?” George Stephanopoulos says.

  “Nice-looking woman. From Washington. With a sister, who—”

  “Oh, sure. You’re talking about Francine Worth’s sister Priscilla.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  There is a pause. “What about her?” George Stephanopoulos says.

  Lowell and Kathryn are staring at me. The dripping coffee is making deep, guttural, sexual sounds.

  “The party wasn’t that much fun. You weren’t missing anything,” I say.

  “Is that right? Well, a lot of the time I feel like I am missing something, so maybe I’ll feel better now that I know I’m not.”

  “It wasn’t so bad, I guess. I haven’t been to a party for years. Not on a date, either, to tell the truth. So last night was quite out of the ordinary for me.”

  “I guess so, then,” George Stephanopoulos says, after a slight pause.

  I can’t think what to say. I realize that I’m being watched from one end, and listened to carefully at the other.

  “Well, we’ll see if this can be worked out sometime when things are less hectic,” George Stephanopoulous says. “Just think of me stuck at the desk the next time you step out.”

  “Oh, there isn’t going to be a next time. She’s going back to New York tomorrow.” I add: “Priscilla had only good things to say about you. Your kindness in giving people rides, I mean. Very generous.”

  “Yeah, I caught a movie with them one time. Seems like that was in another lifetime.”

  “I often have that same feeling of disorientation. I’ve lived so many places. Thailand. All over France, at various times. Le Moulin de Mougins, when the cooking was still brilliant. In the U.S., there’s a place called Lava Hot Springs. Lowell and I went there when he took part in a steak barbecuing competition, I guess you’d call it. A very nice place. And the country is full of places like that.”

  “I know it,” George Stephanopoulos says. “Man, you’re making me chomp at the bit.”

  “You should come here and fish and have dinner, yourself, if you ever take a couple of days off. We’re right on the water. Plenty of room.”

  “That’s very nice of you. Very nice indeed. Certainly be easier than trying to get everybody together to caravan down there in early February, Mrs. Clinton converging from one place, the president with no idea what time his meeting is going to conclude. And you toss into that three or four teenage girls, some of them who’ll back out at the last minute because some boy might call, or something.”

  “Feel free to call us,” I say. “Some of Lowell’s uncollected recipes are his very best. The Thai-California fusion dishes he’s been working on have really come together.”

  “My mouth is watering,” George Stephanopoulos says. “Think of me, when you’re having some of that terrific food.”

  “Will do,” I say.

  “And thanks again,” George Stephanopoulos says. It doesn’t seem like he really wants to hang up.

  “See you, then, maybe,” I say.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “Good-bye.”

  Kathryn is the first to speak. She collects her cup, and her brother’s, and pours coffee, giving me a wide berth to indicate her skepticism. She’s jealous; that’s what it’s always been with Kathryn. She’s very possessive, very set in her ways. In spite of passing judgment on anything new, she’s still trying to come to terms with things that are old. How many years have I been around, now—years in which I’ve been pretty decent to her—and she still wishes that she had her brother all to herself? Kathryn says: “The new effusiveness.”

  I say nothing.

  “Well, for God’s sake, would you mind letting me know the outcome of your little chat? Am I correct in assuming that the president is not coming, but that George Stephanopoulos might?” Lowell says.

  I nod.

  “What is this? Twenty Questions? The president is not coming . . . why?”

  “Some meeting is probably going to run late, and Mrs. Clinton would be rendezvousing with him from wherever she was, and Chelsea and her friends apparently drive him mad, because they’re so unpredictable.”

  “He didn’t know this when he called?” Kathryn says.

  “How would I know?”

  “Don’t you two start in on each other. Think about me, for once. What about my feelings, when I was prepared to be cooking for the president and suddenly he decides to blow the whole thing off because some meeting might run a little late?”

  Kathryn and I take this in. I get a mug and pour coffee. We all sit at the table in silence.

  “I’m not sure it quite computed with me,” I say. “The president visiting, I mean.”

  “I wonder if the bastard’s still having lunch at Antonio’s,” Lowell says.

  “Read the Times,” I say. “Would you like me to make you some toast?”

  “No thank you,” Lowell says. “But it’s nice of you to offer.”

  “I’ll be on the deck,” Kathryn says. She picks up her mug and half the paper and walks outside.

  “Still,” Lowell says. “Not everyone gets a call from the president.” He looks at me. “Remember a few months after we met, when we had that barbecue over at your uncle’s?”

  “Of course I remember. He was a great guy. Never charged me a nickel for room and board. A totally generous man. ‘Never get too big for your britches that you turn your back on your family,’ my uncle used to say.”

  “You never did,” Lowell says. “You sent him food every time we went somewhere exotic.”

  “Pistachios from Saudi Arabia,” I say.

  “And I’ve taken his advice, too. Which means that Kathryn will tyrannize us forever,” Lowell says.

  Back in Key West that evening, on impulse, I’m almost giddy. I go to the Green Parrot and have a cold draft before going over to the Casa Marina to meet Nancy and her friends in the bar there. Some bikers are at the Parrot with their girlfriends. Somebody who looks like a tweedy professor, except that he’s got on pink short shorts as well as the tweed jacket with elbow patches, so he might be just another unemployed oddball. He’s playing a game of Nintendo while sipping some tropical
drink through double-barrel straws.

  I am thinking about what I might have said to the president if he came to dinner.

  But then I think: he no doubt already knows the marines are a bunch of dangerous psychos. He always had better sense than to truck with any of that stuff.

  What would Nancy say if I suggested moving to New York with her?

  Probably yes. She dropped enough hints about the lack of straight guys in Manhattan.

  What do you get when you fall in love?

  You get enough germs to catch pneumonia.

  What happened to all the great singers of yesteryear?

  Replaced by Smashing Pumpkins.

  “You hear the one about this guy’s girlfriend, who’s leaving him?” a skinny guy in cutoffs and a “Mommy and Daddy Visited Key West and All I Got Was This Crummy Shirt” tee-shirt says, sitting next to me on a barstool.

  “Don’t think so,” I say.

  “The girlfriend says, ‘I’m leaving you. I’m out of here.’ And the guy says, ‘Whoa there, can a guy even know why?’ and she goes, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard something very, very disturbing about you.’ He says, ‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’ She says, ‘I heard that you were a pedophile.’ He says, ‘Hey, that’s a pretty big word for an eleven-year-old.’”

  Today I have spoken to this unfunny jerk, and to the president’s assistant, George Stephanopoulos. Also to my employer, who is depressed, because the president was going to come to dinner and then suddenly he didn’t want to, and to Kathryn—the sarcastic Kathryn, who always brings both of us down—though soon I will be talking to the lovely, though fleeting-as-the-breeze Nancy. Somewhere in the middle of these thoughts, I manage a strained “ha-ha.” I ask for the check and pay the bill before the guy gets wound up again.

  I drive on Duval, to check out the action. A bunch of middle-aged tourists, who wonder what they’re doing in Key West, a lot of tee-shirt shops, quite a few kids beneath the age of consent, not yet at the age of reason, who have never even heard of the Age of Aquarius. Duval looks like Forty-second Street, although maybe by now Forty-second Street looks like Disneyland.

  I meet Nancy and her friends—both women—where she said they’d be: at the beach bar. The women give me the onceover, and the You-Might-Hurt-Her-Permanently squint. Nancy flashes bedroom eyes, but only gives me a discreet peck on the cheek. “There’s another party, in a condo over by the beach. But first Jerri has to go back to the photo place where she works, because she needs to double-check that the alarm is activated,” she says.

  “Nobody has a car. Would you mind driving?” Jerri says.

  “Not at all,” I say.

  “Some customer left a bottle of champagne for the owner, but he’s in AA, so he just gives me those things. If you want, we could take that out of the fridge and drink it.”

  “Mmmm,” Bea, the other woman, says. Bea looks like she might eventually forgive me for being a man.

  “This new alarm system has been screwing up in a major way,” Jerri says. “It will take me ten secs to make sure it hasn’t deprogrammed itself. And to round up the bubbly.”

  “So,” Bea says. “I hear you’re the assistant to a famous chef.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Do you cook, too?”

  “Just help out,” I say. “I’m not innovative, myself.”

  “So how does somebody get a job like that?” Bea says.

  “Lowell and I became friends when I picked him up for a car service I used to drive for. It was back in the days when you’d meet somebody and check them out, and basically, if you liked the person, you never minded running some strange proposition past him.”

  “What was the strange proposition?” Nancy says.

  “It wasn’t so strange in and of itself. But there I was driving for a car service, and basically, he wanted to know if I had any interest in coming to work for him. Letting the other job go.”

  “Did he talk about money? I had two job interviews last year and it turned out they didn’t want to give me any money at all. They wanted me to take a full-time job as a volunteer!”

  “He didn’t mention money, now that you mention it. But people went more on intuition then, I think. I figured he’d pay me a decent wage.”

  “So where did he get a name like Lowell?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Everybody who meets me wants to know absolutely everything about me,” Jerri says. “Full disclosure, even if I’m, like, trying on a pair of shoes. I wouldn’t get out of the store without saying how much I pay in rent. Though I suppose people in Key West are obsessed with that.”

  “They are? Why?” I ask, grateful that something has come up that I can ask about.

  “Because it costs so much to live here,” she says.

  “Oh. Right,” I say. I open the car door, and everyone gets in.

  “Guess what I pay in rent?” Jerri says.

  “I wouldn’t have any idea.”

  “It’s a one-bedroom, and the bedroom isn’t mine. It’s on the top floor of a house on Francis that has a separate entrance. I share it with the landlady’s granddaughter, who’s not all there, if you know what I mean. She’s forty years old, and all she does all day is read gardening books and drown all the houseplants so they die.”

  “When she moved in, they gave her a mattress that used to be the dog’s bed,” Bea says.

  “God,” Nancy says. “Things were never that bad back in New York, were they?”

  “Oh, I didn’t sleep on it,” Jerri says. “But it was really depressing, because all these little fleas were using it as a trampoline. You could see them jumping up and down.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me that the rent costs a fortune,” I say.

  “One fifty-five a month,” Jerri says. “Take a turn here. The next street’s one way.”

  “Isn’t that reasonable for Key West?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it’s reasonable, but I had to buy my own mattress and box spring, and the granddaughter insists on keeping lights on in every room, all night.”

  “You couldn’t find another place to live?” I ask.

  “For one fifty-five?”

  Jerri indicates that I should take an empty parking space. I park, and we lock the car and start down the street. From a clip hanging off her belt, Jerri removes a keyring. She opens two locks with two different keys and flips on a light inside the back of the shop. We walk in behind her. She looks at a panel, flashing a number, on the same wall as the light switch. “Whew,” she says. “Okay, this is cool.” She pushes a couple of buttons and walks to the small refrigerator in the corner, from which she removes the bottle of champagne. She reaches up on a shelf and takes down a tower of upside-down plastic glasses. She counts out four and puts the rest back on the shelf.

  But my attention is drifting. In the back of the shop there are life-size cardboard cutouts with cutout faces. One is Marilyn Monroe, with her skirt blowing up. Another is Tina Turner, all long legs and stiletto heels and micro-mini skirt with fringe. There is the American Gothic couple, and there are a couple of Pilgrims, complete with a turkey that retains its own face. There’s Donald Duck, and Donald Trump with Marla Maples, who also has her face; Sylvester Stallone as Rocky; James Dean on his motorcycle. There is also Bill Clinton, arm extended to clasp the shoulder of whoever stands beside him. Jerri has walked over to the figures; first she becomes Marilyn, then Tina Turner. Her young, narrow face makes her unconvincing as either. Nancy is the next to wander over. Champagne glass in hand, she tries her luck as Rocky. She motions for me to join her. I do, and together we peer out from behind the Pilgrim couple. Behind the cutouts she passes me her glass, and I duck back to take a sip of champagne.

  “I look at this stuff all day long. It doesn’t seem so funny anymore,” Jerri says. “And what’s really not funny is when some guy who thinks he’s a real stud comes in to be Stallone, or when some guy who smells like a brewery wants his girlfriend to be Marilyn. Really wants her to be Marilyn.” />
  “I notice they don’t have one of Ike with his gun,” Jerri says, sticking her face through Tina Turner’s highly teased hair.

  “Too bad there’s not one of your good friend, George Stephanopoulos, just his flunky,” Jerri says. “Nancy was telling us about that before you came over.”

  Nancy smiles, mugging from behind the female Pilgrim again.

  “Well, we all know Nancy. Nancy’s only interested in the rich and famous. Or in people who hang with the rich and famous,” Jerri says.

  “That cowboy she lived with was hardly rich or famous,” Bea says.

  “You were always so jealous you couldn’t see straight, because somebody followed me all the way from Montana to New York,” Nancy says. “It really made you crazy, didn’t it, Bea?”

  “Oh, look who’s talking! Like you didn’t call my old boyfriend the day he moved out!” Bea says.

  “I called him to get my canvas bag back.”

  “Listen to her! She called about eight hours after he moved into his new place because she needed a bag back!” Bea shrieks.

  “You are so sadly misled,” Jerri says. “I mean, fun is fun, but this is one time I’ve got to defend my friend Nancy. She always thought your boyfriend was a jerk!”

  It’s as if I’m not there, suddenly. While they continue to go at it, I wander over to the plastic glass of champagne that’s been poured for me and take a long, bubbly sip. So she lived with some guy who followed her all the way to New York from Montana. When? How long were they together?

  “And you look so much like him!” Bea suddenly says to me. “If you were, like, fifty pounds lighter, and if you wore cowboy boots some armadillo gave its life for instead of those goony shoes, you’d be a dead ringer for Les.”

  “Jesus! I can’t believe you’re so jealous I’ve got a date that you’re insulting him about his weight!” Nancy says.

  “Oh, sit on it,” Jerri says. “Both of you.”

  “Bea has really got it in for me!” Nancy says to Jerri.

  “I’ve got it in for you? Nancy, you need to ask yourself why, every time somebody says something that’s true, but maybe you don’t want to hear it . . . you should ask yourself why you find it necessary to say that that person is crazy. I mean, fuck you!” Bea says. She pushes past Marilyn and storms out the back door, crushing her empty plastic glass.