Almost Perfect

by Alice Adams

  They all drink more margaritas, and eventually they eat: platters of shrimp, some beans and enchiladas, which Tony proclaims the best, the most authentic, he ever had. To which Richard shouts agreement (everyone seems to have forgotten the supposed Mexican among them, Stella notes). In fact Tony and Valerie do not address Stella at all; they talk between themselves, and occasionally one or the other of them will toss a small speech across the table in Richard’s general direction—a speech having to do with their own love affair, their grand passion.

  Valerie: “Can you believe this guy? The first time we went out, I thought if he didn’t kiss me I’d die.”

  Tony: “This little girl’s got the greatest singing voice you ever heard, I’m telling you. She’s going places. She’s something else.”

  And so on, all night.

  “Because you’re a fucking snob, and they could feel it. What do you think they are, insensitive?”

  Richard, lurching and accusatory, holds to the frame of the door, Stella’s door, which they have just come through. Any minute he will leave, will rush back out into the night, rush dangerously across the city, in his open car. Gone. Maybe dead. She will never see him again.

  Stella experiences ferocious anxiety. Panic. A huge bird caged in her chest beats its wings against her ribs. Insufferable. She cannot let him go.

  “Well, actually I’m not really snobbish, or I don’t think I am. I liked them a lot, I really did. I think they’re very nice,” she chatters, in a whisper. “I really did like them.”

  “You did not like them, and they felt it. I’m not so sure you like me either.” Richard’s face is swollen, darkened, his eyes a glowering dark gray, the color of storm clouds, of storms.

  And then, more suddenly than seems possible, he is gone, gone faster than Stella could imagine. No way to run after him now. She hears the slam of his car door, the engine’s start into motion, as her heart beats more loudly than any other sound.

  Quite irrationally—he could be anywhere now but in his studio—almost at once she begins to dial his number. Perhaps because she can think of nothing else whatsoever to do. And so she must do this crazy thing. Call Richard, who is not there, who could not be there.

  And that is what she does all night, or almost. She dials Richard’s number, and listens to the hollow rhythmic rings, and she thinks, This is craziness, I am acting truly crazily.

  She does not get Richard on the phone until almost noon on the following day, when she calls him from work. For the tenth or possibly the fifteenth time.

  “Well, uh, that was not exactly one of our great nights,” he says.

  “But you ran out. I was so upset. You could have been killed—”

  He laughs. “Of course I could have, but I wasn’t.”

  She is dead serious. As well as dead tired. Dead. “Please,” she tells him. “Please never do that again. Please, whatever’s wrong, talk to me.”

  “I don’t much like talking, haven’t you noticed? I tend to run. But I’ll try hard not to with you. Okay?”

  She settles for that as the best she can do at the time.

  That night despite resolutions they do not talk very much. Disturbances of the night before are expressed in intensified passion. Greater love.

  And deep within Stella there is nascent panic, which is never to be far from her, in all her time with Richard.

  Going to Justine’s party is considerably more successful. In Justine’s pretty rooms, on Belmont Street, on the northern slope of Twin Peaks, Richard looks perfectly at home. Justine’s furniture, her “things,” are old and worn, but they possess a quality that Richard would recognize; they are “good,” collected with care and taste. As Richard later puts it to Stella, Justine has style, a quality he knows and values.

  And Justine’s friends, although not stylish in the Margot sense, have quality; they are good, smart and interesting. Left-leaning professionals, most of them, professors and social workers and do-good doctors and lefty lawyers. Richard is curiously impressed.

  And of course there is Justine’s new love, Collin Schmidt, the contractor. The admirer of Richard. His Bunny. Although, as the party works out, Stella spends more time with Bunny than Richard does. Richard has involved himself with a group of doctors who are working on AIDS in Africa. (“I don’t know anything! I’ve never done anything worthwhile, and what they’re doing is so magnificent, so great and hopeless!” Richard cries out to Stella later on, drunk and almost tearful.) While Stella talks to Bunny and Justine—Justine a somewhat dizzy hostess in green velvet pants and long loose hair that makes her look about sixteen.

  Bunny tells Stella, in effect, what he has already told Justine. That Justine has repeated. His opinion that Richard is a genius. He seems to believe that Stella plans to marry Richard (is this because he himself wishes to marry Justine?), and he extols Richard’s virtues, overdoing it more than a little. “And not only that, the guy’s the world’s greatest cook,” he finishes. “When we were up on the coast, the meals he used to put on. I’m telling you. Do you let him do the cooking much?”

  “Sure. Whenever I can.”

  A pause. “You been up to the cabin yet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “We’ll have to invite my Bunny and your Justine to the cabin very soon,” says Richard on the way home; in his enthusiasm he seems to have forgotten that Stella herself has never been there. “What a great woman! What breasts! I think we could really be friends. You know, even in business I’ve never really had women friends. There’s always”—he smiles, self-lovingly (Stella feels), suggestively (or is she too harsh? too jealous?)—“there’s always, you know, some suggestion that if things were different we’d really be going at each other.”

  “Oh really? I have quite a few men friends, straight as well as gay.”

  “Well, you would. That’s different. Your Justine must have been something else a few years back. Lucky for you I don’t go for older women.”

  “Oh, Richard, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Now now, don’t sound like that. Can’t you take a joke?”

  “Richard, you’re driving …” His driving is slow and erratic. Any cop would pick up on it instantly, Stella is sure.

  “Look, I’m an excellent driver.”

  “I know you are—”

  “Then stop bitching. You make things worse.”

  They spend that night together, and in the morning everything is okay, or at least as okay as usual, although Stella is more and more fearful and unhappy: can they indeed not spend any time with other people? not go to parties? Is Richard an alcoholic or just someone who sometimes drinks too much?

  For a very long twenty-four hours after that Richard does not call—nor does Stella call him. She stays alone with her unhappy thoughts but finds to her considerable surprise that she is able to work. Anyway.

  And then she does call, and as though nothing had happened they begin to talk about what to have for dinner.

  10

  Richard on the Phone

  Richard.

  Richard.

  Richard Richard Richard. Richard.

  He loves his name, the way people say it. Women; men too. He loves the Rich of Richard, and the hard, or heart, depending. Richard, Richard: his mother made that sound, and an early high school girlfriend, Celestina—a Puerto Rican and not so good at English, a dirty family but a beautiful girl, really lovely. “Rich-heart,” she would say, not knowing why he laughed. And she would take his cock in her mouth, so beautifully. Lovely Celestina.

  Rich. A lot of people just call him that, of course. Very different in different voices. So abrupt and scolding the way Marina said it when they were married, and afterwards, quarrelling. When she loved him she called him Rickie.

  Rich. So classy in Claudia’s voice, short and peremptory. Cats calls him Rich—“Reech,” nice and warm.

  Stella says Richard, as though the word were golden. Full of love, too full, and she says his name a little too often, Richard fee
ls—or sometimes feels; often he loves his name in Stella’s mouth. He often loves Stella. (And sometimes he hates her. Jesus, the blackness! he could hit her. Kill.)

  But really, seriously, Stella is an exceptionally nice woman, intelligent (maybe a little too intelligent?) and kind. And not pretty or beautiful, really, but special. His Stella. With her lovely forehead, lovely tastes of fish. (Claudia tastes of alcohol, something antiseptic, alcohol based. “How can you do that, there?” he has asked her, making her laugh.) Stella’s wide flat mouth is so vulnerable (too vulnerable?), taking him in.

  Richard. Andrew Bacci says it mockingly, two syllables full of implication. Richard, whodoyouthinkyouare, playing at being “Richard,” when I know you, I know who you are, and I’m waiting. But in the meantime, it’s all pretty funny, no? Richard?

  He is sitting at his desk, trying to draw (trying to think of something to draw) and waiting for the phone to ring. Nothing special, he just needs some distraction. Interruption. Although it is just as apt to be bad news.

  And it is.

  “Mr. Richard Fallon?”

  “So sorry, not in at moment,” says Richard, imitating Chinese diction (old-style movie Chinese). “Say who call?”

  A pause, and then, “Would you please tell him to call Mrs. Elvira Jenkins, at 555-3728?”

  “Will do: 555-3728.”

  Elvira Jenkins, a collection agency name if he ever heard one. Elvira Jenkins. And her voice had that prim reproving sound, tight. The cunt. How dare she? Interrupting him, demanding: how dare any of them, hounding, tracking him down?

  When the phone rings again he lets it go, as he thinks, Elvira again, and this time she’ll pretend to be someone else, maybe call him Dick—that’s always a tip-off; anyone calling him Dick is either some non-friend pretending, like Elvira, or else some total jerk that he knows but does not want to see.

  His answering machine clicks on, and he hears not Elvira Jenkins but Stella, Stella sobbing, her voice almost unrecognizable. “Richard, it’s me. I had this terrible news. It’s Prentice, my father. He—he’s dead.” More sobs. “Call me right away, okay?”

  Jesus. All he needs. Stella on his hands like this. Tears, sobbing. Jesus. No control. Women like to cry.

  But at the same time that he thinks of her so angrily, Richard’s stomach clenches in sympathy for Stella, his Stella. Oh, poor Stella, and her father always such a shit to her, and now dead. Poor Stella! Tears come to his own eyes as he reaches for the phone to call her back.

  And then does not. No reason to call her right away; for all she knows, he’s out. Out of town, he could be. And then the phone rings again.

  He answers. Hello.

  “Richard.” It’s Marina. “Richard, I’ve got this pile of bills that I can hardly see over, so many. You know you’re responsible! Often sick. Don’t you ever? I can’t think. I remember everything, I’m trying to write it all down. I know this terrific guy, he used to be a policeman. Sick! Bills!”

  Hanging up, having said almost nothing in response to Marina (that’s the best thing to do with her, say nothing; it drives her crazy: crazier), Richard finds that he is shaking. Cold. Crazy women, all over him. Jesus.

  He dials Andrew’s number, gets Andrew’s jaunty recorded message. Hi! In no mood for jauntiness, Richard hangs up.

  He sits there fuming, breathing heavily. His morning ruined, ruined with women. All wanting too much. Oh Christ! their demands!

  When the phone rings again he does not answer it, and over his machine he hears Stella’s voice (again!), still tearful but now more controlled. Somewhat more controlled. “Oh damn, Richard. You’re still not there. God, what a day. You know, I knew Prentice was sick, he wouldn’t last forever, but still. The finality. I have to admit, I feel awful. Almost worse than when Delia died, I think. And of course Alexandra is being horrible.” (Who is Alexandra? and then Richard remembers: stepmother of Stella. Wife, now widow, of Prentice Blake. Used to be some kind of an actress. Fancy women he went for, old Prentice.) “Alexandra is saying I mustn’t come back there, there isn’t even going to be a memorial service. He didn’t want one. Not that I’d want to go back, with her around, but still. Oh, Richard darling, I do need to see you. Call me.…”

  Well, he can’t call her right away. Obviously not, or she’d know that he was there in his studio, had been there all along, just listening, not answering her pleas. Not helping. Besides, later on he has a meeting with a client. A possible new client, and he could really use one (ask Marina). Some woman from a new German magazine, said to be very, very solvent. The woman is coming to the studio in about an hour. A Kraut, apt to be prompt. So he had better get ready. No time now, really none, to call Stella.

  But as he gets into some tidying up, some very light housekeeping, Richard does give some thought to poor old Prentice Blake, now dead. Poor Stella’s dad. Stella seems not to have any pictures of her parents, or if she has, she has not shown them to Richard, and so he has pictured Prentice in terms of old black-and-white movies, some old guy like William Powell, or Gary Cooper, maybe even Cary Grant. Someone lean and dapper and vaguely English. And always mixed up with some woman, or women; nothing monogamous about those guys. And for the first time it occurs to Richard that they might even have liked each other, he and old Prentice. A pity that won’t happen. He is certain that Prentice was a better man than that cheap-shot phony Liam, the so-called director, the big love of Stella’s life. Big love before Richard, that is.

  Richard can only think of Prentice Blake in that somewhat removed, movie way, though; he cannot imagine a man at home, having supper with his wife and his little girl, little Stella. And come to think of it, maybe that’s what’s wrong with Stella, maybe Prentice was never just an ordinary father, taking her on his lap and mildly feeling her up, the way fathers can do with little girls. Sometimes Richard wishes he had a lot of little girls, his daughters; at other times he longs for sons. He was crazy about Claudia’s two boys; he misses them, he longs for their warm little bodies on his lap.

  Marina never got pregnant; he used to blame her, but secretly he wonders if he could be sterile.

  He does not want to have kids with Stella; mostly he cannot imagine Stella as a mom. Sometimes he thinks she’s as crazy as Marina. Even, more darkly, he has this idea that it’s really him, that he has some mysterious black disease that affects all women who come near him with craziness. And he can’t stand it, he really can’t, their wild female insanity. Their dangerous eyes and their voices.

  But he must call Stella, so in love with him, and her father just dead.

  He looks at his watch. Five of eleven, and the Kraut is due in five minutes, but she wouldn’t be right on time, would she? He can call Stella, talk briefly, strongly, comfortingly. But what on earth will he say?

  He is sitting there, biting a pencil and scowling, when the doorbell rings.

  Going across the room to the door, he feels her aura. He feels something deep and disturbing. As though he might open the door to an earthquake, a cyclone. To black light.

  Instead there is a woman so tall and beautiful that Richard gasps, as though in pain (“like someone hit me in the gut,” he later tells Andrew Bacci, his confidant). But she doesn’t know it! This dumb Kraut does not know how incredibly, how perfectly beautiful she is; Richard takes this in at once, in her hesitant smile, her light blush. (“Or maybe she comes from some town where all the women look like that. Jesus, I’m emigrating!”)

  “I have maybe the wrong place?” she says. “I come for Mr. Richard Fallon.” She smiles, and Richard sees that he was wrong: she knows she is beautiful; she is just very classy about it, playing it down. But of course she knows.

  “No; you’re right; that’s me.” Richard’s smile answers hers, as he does not say, as he would like to: Just please please repeat my name over several times, in that incredibly low throaty shadowy voice?

  She has pale brown-blond hair, pale tan skin, and light sea-green eyes. Hollow cheeks (she must be really thin), a
small, somewhat austere nose, and a mouth of surprising sweetness, soft and full. He could stare forever, just at her mouth. Hard not to imagine slipping it into her mouth.

  “I’m Eva Wulfman.” She extends a hand, which Richard eagerly takes—and which is smaller and softer than he would have imagined.

  “Well!” he says, feeling totally helpless; all his usual ploys have disappeared. “Come in! Sit down! Can I make you some coffee?”

  “Some coffee would in fact be wonderful. Last night, I had some problems with sleep. I believe, a new city—”

  They seem unable to stop smiling at each other, both of them, smiling and smiling. She has lovely small white glistening teeth, and the tip of her tongue is pointed, pink.

  “Where you are here, your studio is most beautiful,” says Eva, staring at Richard.

  If we had children together they would be the most beautiful people in the world, is what Richard thinks, and he thinks it so strongly that she must hear his thought. And she does, doesn’t she? He whispers, “Did you feel what I just thought?”

  Very softly, “I think so,” she tells him, as a faint rose color deepens her tan, in the long hollows of her cheeks.

  “Well! I’ll make coffee. You just sit there.”

  In his tiny kitchen Richard manages to make the coffee, trying as he does so to achieve some control, some vestige of calm. (And he must call Stella! God, her father dead. She must feel terrible.)

  When Richard reenters the room with his neat lacquered tray of coffee, sugar and milk, he sees that Eva is spreading layouts, presumably from her magazine, across his table, from a large red portfolio that in his dazzlement, his haste to do everything, he did not even see. He puts down the tray and goes over to stand beside her, controlling his breath.

  But she turns, this ravishing tall blond German woman turns, and she looks at him, and with a little smile she says to him, “Please, Richard, do we kiss each other now?”

  * * *

  “Stella darling, I couldn’t. Really, all day. I really could not, and of course I’ve been thinking of you. I’m so sorry about your dad, Stella. But just thinking about it won’t—Stella, I’m really busy. These German types, they just left, and I have to have dinner with them later, worst luck. But it’s a big deal; I can’t afford not to. Stella, I’m sorry. But I’m leaving right now. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, okay? I’m leaving right now.”