Antoinette was taking reservations at a good clip, and the front office was filled with the wonderful smell of hot asphalt from the pavers outside. There was a warm breeze coming through the open windows, and Lucien could hear the American flag pop over the parking lot. Antoinette touched her forefinger to the dimple in her right cheek and bethought herself while the phone flashed. In the lobby a local decorator hung pictures of windmills, buckaroos, roundups and amazingly smoky trains. A smooth operation, Lucien thought.
“Antoinette, has Miss Taylor arranged for any activities for my son today?”
“I believe he has a riding lesson in half an hour. At ten.”
“I see. I didn’t know that. Who’s giving the lesson?”
“I believe it’s Sheila.”
“Antoinette, get Sheila and make sure the lesson lasts a couple of hours. Sheila is to teach James riding for two hours.”
Now Lucien began to move rapidly. From the tennis courts, he could see down to the stables. Sheila was lecturing James about the parts of a saddle while James sat up on a tall bay horse that seemed to be sleeping through the lecture.
Then he walked through the grove of flowering crab apples to the White Cottage. When he got to the wall, he walked around to the side that faced open country and stopped to level his breathing. Then he climbed the timber crossbrace of the wall and looked inside the court. As he expected, Suzanne was sunbathing beside the pool. For some reason he was startled by the lankiness of her naked body. She had one arm crooked over her face, and her breathing was slow and rhythmic. Once the arm swung out suddenly as though at a fly, and the effect of that on Lucien was a kind of fright. One knee was angled slightly against the other, drawing up one long curve of thigh. Lucien couldn’t help studying to see if her breasts had fallen; they hadn’t. Then she sat up and thought for a moment; he was afraid to move. She walked to the table and made a long-distance phone call; he knew this because he counted the digits and there were eleven altogether. Long-distance. She leaned onto her elbows with her fingers run into her auburn hair and talked and laughed for a few minutes. Then she hung up. As she walked back to the pool she kept smiling from the phone conversation and lay down again.
When he climbed back down he felt tremulous. He had the key to the gate and he walked around to the door. He touched the end of the key to the opening in the lock, waited a moment, then pushed very slowly, feeling each notch fall softly along the shaft of the key. He turned it and the door went loose. He stepped in. Now he was looking straight at Suzanne from a very short distance, unnoticed.
When he held her wrists and kissed her, her scream went all the way down his throat. Then she knew it was him and stopped. She just looked at him, resting on her elbows, with not the beginning of an expression. Lucien undressed and moved her knees apart with his own. He stopped then and waited. A second later, she crammed him inside her and he felt tears on her cheeks. It should have ruined things, but Suzanne’s healthy animalism was something she could never entirely eliminate, and they made love for a long time.
“Why have you done this?”
“I couldn’t help it.”
“Right.”
“I was sort of crazy. I’m not kidding, darling. I was controlled by something else—” He was telling the truth.
“A sort of lever.”
“Please.”
“Please. I can’t believe you’d say that to me. What could be more adorable, Lucien, than your put-upon air?”
“You lubricated.”
“I ask you, please stop. That’s how they defend rapists.”
“And your boss called, wants you back at work yesterday.”
“There’s another thing we haven’t touched on. My work. Anyway, let’s not quarrel. James’ll be here in a minute.”
“Not to worry. He’s having a two-hour lesson.”
“Isn’t that thoughtful. You moved him into a larger time slot.” She was getting angry.
“You didn’t have to make love with me,” Lucien said petulantly.
“That’s right, I didn’t. But I hadn’t fucked anybody in about a week. I must’ve needed it.”
“Please don’t talk that way.”
“I’ll talk any way I please. I’m just a working mother and I’ve got my shoulder to the wheel, you sonofabitch.”
“Whooo.”
“You know what,” she said with blazing eyes, “I think I hate you. Why don’t you go fuck something else. I don’t think I want to fuck you anymore. Yeah, that’s it. No more fucking you, and here’s why: it encourages all your sloppy sentimentality and your no-shows and your desertions and your treatment of people who love you as if they were so many pocket mirrors for you to see if you’re aging or what kind of day you’re having or how deep and creative you are or how effective and memorable your personal philosophy is or whether you might not start going back to church or how many months it was since your last complete physical or whether you ought to give up after-dinner drinks. No, you sonofabitch, I don’t think I’ll fuck you anymore. I think I’ll just get the hell out of here and fuck someone else. You know how it goes.”
Lucien left. He was astounded at Suzanne’s description and the depth of her feeling. He had a drink at the bar, drove two buckets of balls at the driving range, shucked half a dozen air-fresh Chesapeake oysters with his personal prying iron, ate them, made ten or twenty effective business calls and bought James a fishing rod. He just wished he had Suzanne and that they were back on the Gulf Stream in a light norther in their old sloop bound for glory. He wished he were still playing third base, guarding the hot corner all those summers ago. Principally, he was exhilarated by her rage.
But it seemed to be true: she hated him.
“Antoinette,” he said a while later, “get the number, the long-distance call, Suzanne made from the White Cottage around half past ten. Then put a call through for me to that number.”
He waited as it rang and then was answered. It was the man who had called. “Yeah,” said Lucien. “I got you an answer on Suzanne Taylor’s return to work. She’ll get there when she gets there. Okay? She’ll get there when she gets there.”
“I think this is very sad for you,” the man said. “I’d hate to be in your position.”
18
Things at the spring grew very busy without warning. The Elks booked two luncheons, which on top of the built-in traffic made things burdensome. Nor was Henchcliff taking it as well as he might have. “Lucien,” he said after the second day of this, “we had a very specific conversation about what was expected of me and what was expected of me the way I saw it was high-grade, high-priced cooking, which cannot be done at the same rate as franks and beans. I don’t see this as an eatery.”
“I know that. But bear with us, we’re in business here. We’ve got to take it as it comes.”
“You have to take it as it comes. I’m a cook, I’m an artist.”
“No,” said Lucien. “Cooks are not artists. Somebody should have explained that to you.”
Henchcliff pushed his hands deep into his pockets and bucked his elbows in close to his ribs: heavy weather ahead. “You want to spend a couple days with me in front of that oven?”
“I pay you to do that. Plus I’m the wrong guy to be having this conversation. I don’t give a shit what people put in their goddamn mouths. In fact, long conversations about what people put in their mouths bore the hell out of me. I’ve got plenty of problems of my own right now, Hench. It’s not like I’m interested in trying yours on for size. Why don’t you quit crying and go to work?”
Antoinette, on the other hand, was booking them hand over fist. She really thrived on pressure. If it slacked off, she went creative, and that’s where trouble began. Now, seeing her bent grimly at her ledger, Lucien felt a flood of warmth that watching loyalty produces. He of course knew it was illusory, but what wasn’t. He leaned over and gave her a serious hug.
He checked the linen carts and occupancy list; there was a Billings car in staff park
ing and he had it towed. He had Shane paint out the graffiti in the bar men’s room and he checked the liquor inventory against the bartender’s sheet. The olives were down. The tar had firmed up in the parking lot, so he took down the rope and flags that cordoned it off. There were three trucks with whitewater rafts slung up in their beds waiting to park, and he waved to the drivers as they moved onto the new tar with an adhesive sound. He filled the bird-feeders and did up the wire ties on the garbage bags behind the kitchen. He ran a stick up into the mouths of the six drainspouts and dislodged leaves and sculch. Four of the six ran copious water though it was a sunny day. Seamless gutters. He threw a tarp over the log-splitter and pulled the rolling doors shut in the front of the tractor shed. He had all the fiery cheer of a man with a family business.
He skipped his dinner and worked until dark. His muscles ached and he took a long shower to feel better. That night Suzanne let him stay. The clean, painted white walls of the room made their shadows vivid; and beyond the door he could see James sound asleep on the daybed with true stories of the American West piled by his side.
“James, what are you interested in?” Lucien had the willows bent down and he was trying to dislodge James’s trout fly. James put his fly in the brush more than he put it in the water.
“A lot of things.”
“What are you best at?”
“What?”
“What do you do the best?”
“Aren’t I going to find out from you?” asked James.
The stream wound through brush in open country. There were antelope off near the limits of visibility, and rising and settling clouds of blackbirds. The pools were sandy and the trout hovered in small schools like fish in the ocean.
The next day a small thing happened which Lucien took to be a sign, a good sign. He went to town ostensibly to do some banking but really because the luncheon special at the Part Time Bar was split-pea soup, Lucien’s favorite. All municipal matters were being settled in the booths and along the counter. The poker machines had until Friday to get out of town, and most people seemed glad to see them go. Two cowboys were disputing whether or not Tom Horn really shot the kid, and withal, there was an atmosphere of time arrested for an appropriate review period or just a decorous tableau. But the sign actually was Dee, Lucien’s old squeeze, with a booth of her own. Lucien sat down. She was wearing her jeans and a pink sleeveless sweater. She was attractive. No wonder I was always sticking my dick in her, thought Lucien.
“Guess what?”
“I can’t,” said Lucien.
“I’m leaving Shit-for-Brains.”
“Hasn’t he been a good husband to you?” Lucien asked, knowing right away that it would have been darned hard to say anything sillier. He ordered the soup.
“You’ll also be delighted to hear I’m leaving town.”
“I’m not delighted to hear that.”
“We found ways of passing the time,” she said. “Me and you.”
“We certainly did.”
“My sister’s a florist in Salt Lake,” she said. “They’ve got a video dish. I can stay with them until I learn the ropes. I don’t know squat about flowers. But then, what did you know about hot springs?”
“Nothing,” agreed Lucien quickly.
“You just fucked the right murderer.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“What’s funny? With me it was a gutter salesman. But I can’t take it anymore. Wednesday he got one of these electric garage doors, and we haven’t been able to get the car out for three days. I walked downtown. So that’s it for me. I don’t care how many Mormons Salt Lake’s got. I’ve had a picture of that seagull since sixth grade and I knew someday I’d go. Also, Shit-for-Brains is about to receive news of foreclosure and I don’t want to be standing there when that one hits. It’s real simple around our place: I want to be somebody and he wants to be nobody. It’s just exactly that black and white. I’m gonna go down to Salt Lake with all those Mormons and sleep my way to the top.”
“It’s hard to think of the right thing to say, Dee.”
“Why say anything? You’ve got it made. But remember this, old Dee was there when you were walking the hoot-owl trail.”
That night Lucien played checkers with James and lost. The little boy sat in a plaid bathrobe and carpet slippers—where did children get carpet slippers these days?—and played to win; Lucien couldn’t stop him. Lucien helped Suzanne put him to bed; she’d bought him a globe during the day and he twirled it slowly as he drifted off murmuring the names of the countries. They made love and Lucien fell asleep thinking about Dee out on that highway; she probably took a few pills to get the trip behind her.
Sometime late, in the middle of the night, Suzanne got up and said she could hear the brindle dog drinking out of the pool. Lucien asked what difference it made. “I guess none,” said Suzanne. “Doesn’t anyone own him?” Lucien threw his head back on the pillow because somehow Suzanne had made it seem such a despairing question. “I thought if I chased him away from our pool he’d go home. But that doesn’t necessarily follow if he has no home.”
“Suzanne, please stop this.”
“I will. I’m going on and on, aren’t I?”
“A little.”
“Am I okay to make love with?” Suzanne asked.
“What do you think?”
“Well, you were never like this with me before. I think you want me.”
“I do,” said Lucien.
“I mean, more than before.”
“Something was the matter with me before,” said Lucien.
“That’s not the matter with you now?”
“Here’s hoping,” said Lucien.
“Here’s hoping!”
“I didn’t mean that. I just didn’t want to jinx myself. I know we’re happy, a bit at least. I’m thinking, little steps for little feet. All I’d need is some jinx now and that would about do it.”
Lucien wondered about her work. He knew that there would be a certain lingering foulness about his enquiring as to her relationship with her employer. And besides, he was briefly bored by matters of sexual envy. It was like talking endlessly about the toothed holes in people’s faces through which they passed pieces of food. Finally, enough was enough, though the variegated impulses continued to leave a ranker scent trail than the most ancient jackal. In the end, one was put off by the body itself, a virtual Kelsey, suitable for donation to some godforsaken college. One wanted the brain, a pure sensorium, flying around without weight. The poor old dick was continually fighting gravity: making trouble in resistance, falling down the wrong pant-leg in remission. Younger owners each considered his a lordly shlong; but finally it is seen for what it is, a little maniac.
There was a bedside lamp, and Lucien wrote their initials in the light covering of dust, thinking, I do in fact love this girl. When she fell asleep once more, he got up quietly and went in to look at James. It seemed to Lucien that children took up great space when they were awake and then became so small when they fell asleep. James looked completely different because he did not wear his thick glasses. The odd way in which he hovered within his own clothes was replaced by a carelessness that relieved Lucien as he looked at the boy. It was as though James could someday emerge from his frightened self and go on and be happy and maybe through some as yet undiscovered process lay claim to the years his father misused. Lucien knew perfectly well that this last thought was completely foolish; but it gave him peace and he was able to sleep immediately, as people with self-respect are said to do.
Sweet is fleet. They could pick up and go. They were their own society. They could go back to Green Turtle and take the place at Black Sound. Lucien could even paint a little. James could collect hermit crabs out of the mangrove roots for bonefish bait and they could run down to Manjack and fish the flats. Or back in the USIA! In many ways that was an interesting job, all right, and he could get back to it before he lost his Spanish for good. Anything was possible once the center had been restored. Not
that Lucien was thinking there were anything less than countless scars from the past, near and far. He thought now he could get over Emily, as he had seen her for what she was and she was out of the question, and she was gone. Obviously that all made him sad, but her chain of bad luck seemed something he lacked the power to break. If that was fatalism, then it would have to be. Nor would he brood about Suzanne’s interim love life. Certain things had become tedious, and watching himself start over again like a cat on perpetual linoleum was something he would do no more.
They had to get an ambulance for one of the nannies. She just wouldn’t wake up. She had paid off housekeeping to stay out of her way, and there were all sorts of food scraps from the kitchen that had to be cleared out. She woke up at the hospital and was vacationing again in a few hours with the Australian nanny, who looked like she herself would conk out in a matter of a few more hours. All the nannies were on some kind of marathon; two of them could take it and keep on eating and, clearly, two couldn’t.
Lucien drove his truck into Deadrock for a cortisone shot. During the long winter alone, he had actually gotten tennis elbow from self-abuse. Now it wouldn’t go away and he was accepting treatment. His doctor, of course, tried to have a discussion about larger health issues. Lucien scotched that.
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