After the Reunion

by Rona Jaffe

  There was his tennis racquet, of course. And there was also a plastic bag of fine white powder, and a great many Polaroid photographs.

  Emily sat down on the rug, this bizarre and terrifying evidence in her hands, and stared at it. She was so horrified she didn’t know which to look at first. The pictures were all of the kind of girls you saw on the covers of filthy magazines, more naked than dressed, in the same sort of obscene clothing, in the same sort of lewd poses; but they were not always alone. Sometimes they were with Ken.

  In some of the pictures the girl was standing with her arm around Ken, and he with his around her, and they were smiling at the camera. In one photo they were both wearing army officer’s hats, which for one terrible distorted instant Emily thought were actually Nazi hats, but they weren’t, and the hooker or whatever she was was wearing a black garter belt and black stockings and nothing else at all. Ken was wearing nothing at all either. His penis was right there for the world to see, half erect. Emily felt like throwing up. What had they used, a time setting, or was someone else there? And the worst photo … the worst … was the one of Ken having sexual intercourse with the girl, and they were both still looking at the camera and smiling their heads off.

  Then Emily opened the plastic bag and looked at the white powder. She had never seen cocaine before except in photographs, but she was sure that was what it was. She was afraid to taste it, and besides she didn’t know what it was supposed to taste like. She certainly wasn’t going to smell it; snorting was what made you high. It was a tremendous amount of cocaine for one person to have unless he was an addict or a dealer. Maybe Ken was giving it out to his friends, to show off how rich he was.

  She understood it all now—the erratic behavior, the anger, the irritability, the loss of weight, the endless nervous energy, the lack of appetite. It wasn’t Ken, it was the drug. Dr. Page had been right, and she had been blind and stupid. But why the sex with those trashy women? Did cocaine do that too, or simply free Ken to do what he had secretly wanted to all his life?

  Emily sat there like a statue, cold and nearly not breathing, the evidence in her hands, waiting for Ken to come home.

  At midnight she heard his car, and then she heard him walking around downstairs. Then she heard him on the stairs, and then he came into the room, a drink in his hand. She could see that he was already drunk, and also—she now knew—stoned out of his mind. They stared at each other; the kind, considerate man who had become a malevolent stranger, and the fluttering, self-abnegating woman who had become a cold statue; and then he spoke. He actually sounded relieved.

  “So you found out,” Ken said.

  Emily nodded.

  “I’m glad,” he said. “I wanted you to know.”

  “So I could help you?” she asked, finally finding her voice.

  “Help me?” He laughed, more of a snicker really. “I don’t want help. I like my life.”

  “Then what?” Emily said. “Did you want me to forgive you?”

  “Forgive?” he said. “Forgive me? Who are you to forgive me for anything?”

  “I’m … your wife.”

  “I am more than aware of that,” he said. He finished his drink. “Did you enjoy the pictures? Did you learn anything? You’re such a prude and a bore in bed you might learn something from them.”

  “I’m not!” Emily screamed, even though she thought he was probably right. “I would do whatever you asked, but you never asked. How could I know anything? I was a virgin when I married you and I learned everything from you!”

  He stormed into her closet and began to pull her clothes off their hangers and rip them. “Look at these things,” he said with disgust. “Who could get aroused looking at a woman who dresses like this? You’re a dowdy old housewife, a frumpy old bat with cottage cheese for thighs and a fat ass and saggy tits.”

  Automatically Emily glanced at her thighs and ran her hands over them. “I’m not!” she cried, “I’m not twenty, but I’m not disgusting either! Let go of my clothes.” She was so angry she wanted to choke him, and so terrified that she wanted to run away, so she just stood there like a rabbit frozen in front of headlights. Ken was ripping her things to shreds; her beautiful silk party dress that she’d worn only once, her favorite white linen suit, all her at-home robes; tearing them with his drug-crazed strength.

  And then he rushed to his night table, and took from the drawer his gun—the gun that was supposed to protect his beloved family from burglars and intruders—and pointed it at her.

  At her.

  Her heart was pounding so wildly she thought she was going to faint. She tried to run but Ken stepped between her and the bedroom door, still holding the gun aimed right at her. She glanced from it to his eyes, trying to read some sanity there, but all she saw was hate.

  “They’re not your clothes,” he said. “They’re mine; I paid for them. I give you money and you buy ugly, sexless, hausfrau clothes to humiliate me. Is this what I worked for so hard all my life—to come home to something like you?”

  She felt cold again now, calculating, wondering if she could distract him and make it to the door before he shot her. She had never been devious or clever. Nothing in her life had given her any training in anything but trying to please. But apparently everything she had learned had been for a different Ken, one who had vanished in a puff of white powder.

  “Please let me go …” Emily whispered.

  “Let you go?” Ken said.

  “Please …”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure,” he said. “Get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”

  She ran down the stairs, trying not to stumble and break her neck, praying he wouldn’t shoot her in the back. Her car keys were in the little silver dish in the kitchen where they all left their car keys, and she grabbed them as she ran. She fled out the door and into her car. The brightly moonlit night was chilly and she was shivering and sobbing with fear. Her hand was shaking so badly it took a few moments before she could fit the key into the lock. She locked the car doors. The windows were already up, but a bullet could go through a window. Oh, start … start … Then the engine turned over with a welcome growl, and Emily careened down the narrow winding road without even putting on her seat belt, something that ordinarily she would never omit. Glancing into the rearview mirror, she looked back at her house, and Ken wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  She had no handbag, no money, no credit cards, not even the key to her own house. No, not her house; Ken’s house. California community property laws or not, he thought it was his house, just as he thought those were his clothes he had torn up. As for her, she never wanted to go back there again. Tears were streaming down her face and she could hardly see. Then she realized she had forgotten to turn on the headlights. She could easily have been killed … Ken would be so glad.… The thought made her cry harder. She hadn’t the faintest idea of where to go in the middle of the night in such a state, with such an embarrassing story. Even now, shocked and terrified, almost hating him, she couldn’t hurt Ken’s practice. The scandal of an incident like this could do irreparable harm. Let him destroy his own life, but she wasn’t going to do it.

  Without having realized it, she discovered she was heading toward Westwood, to Peter’s apartment. Her calm, calculating, stable son. Even if he wasn’t home to let her in, he had all those roommates. She could sleep on the couch. She could hide at Peter’s. She didn’t want to go to Kate’s. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t feel she would really be welcome. No, she would go to Peter.

  So Emily, former victim and now fugitive, drove off to a destiny which an hour ago she could not have imagined, and which would turn out to be something she could never have dreamed.

  Chapter Seven

  Kit Barnett, who was Kate Buchman to her family, and Emma Buchanan, the product of Annabel Jones’s brief marriage to Rusty Buchanan, were sitting in Kit’s small living room in Laurel Canyon getting drunk together on jug wine. They had become friends on a picture,
and unlike most friendships formed during the encapsulated world of making a movie, they had remained friends. At the moment both were living alone, were between jobs, and were hoping to get on the new Zack Shepard film.

  Kit’s rented house was one of many strung together along the winding canyon road that led up and through the mountain that separated her two lives: Beverly Hills, where her parents lived, and The Valley, where most of the work was, and where she took acting classes, voice lessons, and yoga. Her house consisted of the small living room, a smaller bedroom, a kitchen with a dining area, and a bathroom; and there was a great deal of glass from which you could see the other houses, and beyond them the lights of the world which she intended to conquer. Like almost everyone else she had a security system, but because of the glass she slept with a can of mace under her pillow whenever she didn’t have a live-in boyfriend.

  “I would kill to get that part,” Kit said. “It’s perfect for me. I would do anything. I would sleep with Zack Shepard.”

  “Ha, ha,” Emma said. She poured herself another glass of wine. “First of all, that would be no sacrifice, since he’s gorgeous and sexy and brilliant; and second, you’ve got no chance, since he likes older women.”

  “How much older?” asked Kit, refilling her own glass.

  “The one he lives with now is supposed to be thirty-five.”

  “Big deal. He’s forty-five.”

  “I mean older than us, not older than him.”

  “You’ve got lousy grammar for somebody who went to Radcliffe.”

  “I didn’t go that long,” Emma said.

  Emma had brought the magazine article her mother had sent her, but it turned out Kit already had it because their mothers had gone to school together. I hope you don’t hold it against me, Kit had said when they found out, and Emma had laughed, but Kit had meant it. You couldn’t trust the past. “Was your mother like those women?” Kit asked.

  “No, I think she was ahead of her time,” Emma said. “She slept with guys, and the other girls hated her for it. They made her miserable. Then she got engaged in senior year, like everybody wanted to do, but he dumped her right before the wedding. So she married my father. Then she set the house on fire and took me and our cat and ran away to New York.”

  “Set the house on fire?” Kit said. This was turning out to be a very interesting evening.

  “Not on purpose. She was smoking, and she’d had too much champagne, and the curtains caught fire.”

  “Smoking what?”

  “Just cigarettes. Nobody she knew did drugs in those days.”

  “God, my father certainly does now,” Kit said. It didn’t bother her to tell Emma; Emma was trustworthy.

  “Your father?”

  “Yeah. I found coke in his dresser drawer about a year ago. My mother doesn’t know.”

  “What were you doing in his dresser drawer?” Emma said.

  “Snooping.”

  “Ah …” They sat there for a while in companionable silence, sipping their wine.

  “So why did she run away?” Kit asked. “Was she afraid of what your father would do to her?”

  Emma grinned. “No … she went to bed with the fireman who rescued her. She said he was beautiful and young and sexy. Anyway, she didn’t want to be a wife who cheated, and she knew the marriage was over, so she ran away and got divorced. My mother has a very strong sense of morality, in her own way. She’s a decent person. When I was growing up she was very protective of me. Once, when I was in high school, she had a boyfriend who was much younger than she was—my mother likes younger men—and she caught him letting me try some pot he had, and she threw him out of her life forever. I think she felt badly about it too, because she liked him.”

  “She told you about the fireman?” Kit said.

  “Sure. We’re really good friends.”

  “Interesting,” Kit said. “My mother and I are not friends.” She realized how drunk she was getting and thought about what she was going to say next. Then she thought the hell with it. Nothing shocked Emma. “When my brother and I were very little we were drowning in our swimming pool, and my mother was sitting right there in a chair beside the pool, and when we screamed for help she didn’t lift a finger.”

  Emma looked aghast. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she just sat there.”

  “She would let you drown?” Apparently something could shock Emma; not sex—Kit could tell her anything—but betrayal.

  “You got it.”

  “But why?”

  “Apparently she was having a nervous breakdown. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s stupid really, to be so upset about something that happened when you were a child. But I always felt that if your mother wouldn’t save you then nobody would. I mean, who can you trust? I trust my brother, and I guess that’s it.”

  “You can trust me,” Emma said. She had round, innocent green eyes, and they were soft now with protectiveness and sympathy.

  Kit thought about it. “I know,” she said finally. “Are you hungry? Do you want some cheese or celery or something?”

  “Sure. Anything you’ve got.”

  They went rather unsteadily into the kitchen and piled the limited contents of Kit’s refrigerator onto two plates. The rest of the refrigerator contained a few diet sodas, which they left. Then they went back into the living room and sat on the floor. Kit reached over and made the music louder. She had rock music playing all the time, even quietly when she was going to sleep. It made her feel safe.

  They ate the food and drank some more wine and Kit began to feel better. “I want that part,” she said, again. “Nobody can do that part like I could. I know in the beginning I got parts because I looked sixteen when I was eighteen, but now I’ve worked hard and really learned a lot and I know I’m good. My agent says there’s a chance.”

  “You’ll get it,” Emma said encouragingly.

  “Thank you. My friend.”

  “And if I could get to be his assistant … Imagine, Zack Shepard’s assistant! I’d be his gofer, I’d be anything. As long as they gave me enough money to pay the rent.”

  “They’d be lucky to have you,” Kit said, and meant it.

  “My friend.”

  They drank to friendship. The level of wine in the jug was considerably lower than it had been when they opened it. “I love sex,” Kit said. “If I was at college when your mother was I would probably have been like her and the other girls would have detested me too. I hate not having a boyfriend. I miss sex.”

  “But you were never really in love, were you?” Emma asked.

  “No, but sometimes we were friends for a while. I’ll put up with a lot of annoying traits in a man if he’s a good lover.”

  “What’s your concept of a good lover?” Emma asked.

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Considerate,” Kit said, thinking about what she liked. “Asks me what I want him to do. Inventive. Willing to try new things. And, although I don’t want to be gross … well-endowed. What do you like?”

  “The same.”

  “Did you ever do it in a Jacuzzi?”

  “No,” Emma said. “Is it good?”

  “Fantastic! You have to do it in a Jacuzzi. The water or something … it’s the greatest. Did you ever do it in a bathtub?”

  “Yeah. The water slopped all over the floor.”

  “But wasn’t it wonderful? All warm …”

  “Stop,” Emma giggled. “You’re making me horny, and I’ll call up Bob and I told him I was through with him.”

  “How about in a plane?” Kit asked.

  “You didn’t!”

  She smiled triumphantly. “I did!”

  “The Mile High Club?”

  “You got it.”

  “When?”

  “Coming back from New York after I had that reading. There was this actor I met when we read together, and we were very attracted to each other, and we came back on the pla
ne together, so …”

  “You did it in that tiny little smelly bathroom?”

  “It’s not so smelly,” Kit said.

  “But do you do it standing up, or what?”

  “You sit on the sink and he stands up.”

  “But the sink is so high,” Emma said.

  “It’s not how high it is, it’s how high he is.”

  “How do you get up there?”

  Kit started to giggle. “Well, if he’s any kind of a gentleman he’ll help you up.”

  They were both giggling now and couldn’t stop. “If he’s any kind of a gentleman …” Emma repeated, laughing until there were tears in her eyes, “Oh … oh …”

  The idea of him having to be a gentleman in a situation that was so gross and disgusting and outrageous made them both hysterical. Kit was gasping with laughter. As she remembered the incident it hadn’t been so great, but she liked talking about it, and she liked having done it. “It’s just fantastic in a plane,” she said. “Something about the air.”

  “You’re an exhibitionist,” Emma said. “What if somebody tried to come in?”

  “You go in right after the movie starts,” Kit said. She remembered how scared she had been that someone might catch them, and she wondered if she was an exhibitionist after all. Part of her was, showing her outside as an actress, wanting to be famous, liking to have sex in dangerous places; but another part of her—her feelings and thoughts—was intensely private. “Anyhow, I am a member of The Mile High Club, and it’s something I always wanted.”

  “I think you are totally weird,” Emma said, still weak with laughter. “What was the movie?”

  “What was the movie?” Kit said, totally incredulous. “Only you would ask a question like that.”

  “Well, I’m interested.”

  “Emma, I think you like movies better than sex.”