Fallen Idols

by J. F. Freedman

  She swam back and forth several times before stopping. Then, reaching the far end of the pool, she stood in the thigh-high water, pushing her hair back from her face.

  Tom took an involuntary step backward, deeper into the shadows. He could see her clearly, her breasts, the dark triangle between her legs. Drops of water glistened on her body like silver fish. She leaned back against the pool's edge, her elbows on the deck, resting.

  He stood stock-still, mesmerized, afraid to move, afraid any movement, even breathing, would reveal him.

  The way she stood there in the shallow end, leaning bin k, it was almost as if she knew she wasn't alone. But she I couldn't see him. He knew that. He was under the eaves of the overhang, where the moonlight couldn't reach.

  She dipped her knees and pushed off and started swimming again and he stood there, watching her. He didn't know for how long: five minutes, ten. Time had stopped.

  Then she was finished. She climbed out of the pool, grabbed a towel she had thrown on a nearby chaise, and started drying off vigorously, her hair, then her arms, body legs, ass, snatch. Picking up a dark terry cloth robe, she put it on and knotted the cinch around her waist. She slung the towel over her shoulder and started walking up the lawn toward the house, to where Tom was standing, watching her. Spying on her.

  It was as if he had been frozen in a block of ice that was suddenly broken apart. He turned quickly, silently, reentering the house, closing the door behind him. Before she reached the patio he had made his way back to his bedroom and closed the door.

  He sat on the edge of his bed, shaking. His breathing was fast and shallow, like a dog's pant. He drank the glass of water that was still in his hand, listening to see if she was approaching, if she would throw open his door and bust him.

  He remained where he was, his tailbone aching from tension, for several minutes, but she didn't come. She hadn't seen him.

  There wasn't any hand cream in the medicine cabinet. He fumbled in his pack and found the sunblock she had given him. Standing over the toilet, SP30 lotion smeared on his cock, he masturbated, coming so violently that when it was over he went light-headed, almost fainting from the blood-rush. His knees buckled and he slid down onto the cool tiles of the floor, hugging the white porcelain bowl for support.

  “How did you sleep?” Emma inquired, when he staggered into the kitchen in the morning. She was in a casual summer dress, looking fresh as a daisy.

  Tom waggled his hand comme ci comme ça. “It takes me a few days to get over the time change.”

  “Coffee?” she offered.

  “Yes, please.”

  “With or without?”

  “I'd better have it black this morning.”

  She drew him a cup, handed it to him. It was hot. He blew on the rim.

  “Do you have plans for today?” she asked. “Until Walt gets back?”

  “I thought I'd be spending all my time with him, so no.”

  “I understand,” she answered sympathetically. “I'd escort you around, but I'm busy.”

  “It's not your problem. I'll find something to do.”

  “Okay. Your dad called earlier, he will definitely be back at four. We'll have a nice dinner, and you two can Catch up with everything then. Stay around here as long as you like, take a swim in the pool. The pool's nice for swimming laps.”

  He nodded. He had already seen how nice it was.

  A swim was the ticket. It cleared the mush from his brain, lubricated his constricted joints. After he had finished, shaved, showered, and put on clean clothes, he felt better.

  Casting about for something to do, he remembered that one of his dad's former students, Perry Bascombe, was at UCLA, in the graduate archaeology program. Perry and he were the same age, in the same undergraduate class. He had become friendly when Perry was still in Madison.

  He had lost touch with Perry, but maybe he was still here. If so, he'd be a teaching assistant, in which case he might he on campus, preparing for the fall term. Tom had never been on the UCLA campus. He decided to drive over and check it out.

  Once he got off the city streets and inside the body of the campus, he felt at ease in the thick red-and-yellow-brick buildings, the wide walkways, curving bike paths, kiosks with events plastered on top of each other; all the familiar and sheltering details of the cocoon of university life. School wasn't officially in session yet, but there was plenty of activity. This would be a nice place to teach, if he ever got his head out of his ass and finished up, so he could apply for a job. The big if. Sometimes it loomed as an insurmountable wall in front of him, reaching so high he couldn't see the top.

  He had to finish. What other choices did he have?

  Locating the building that housed the Archaeology section of the Anthropology Department, he looked up Perry's name on the rosterboard. It wasn't there, but that didn't mean anything. Graduate assistants usually weren't listed, there were too many of them and they didn't have their own offices. Scanning the board again, he found the name and office number of the department chair, a man whose name he didn't know. If Perry was still here, the chairman's secretary would know how to locate him.

  “North Carolina,” she informed Tom briskly. “Chapel Hill. The minute he finished his degree here last year UNC gobbled him up. He was one of our prizes. North Carolina got themselves a winner in Perry.” She peered at Tom over her bifocals. “Are you a friend?”

  “From a long time ago,” he said, feeling deflated; not only that Perry wasn't here, but that he had finished up, and moved on. Another reminder of his own torpor. “We'd lost track of each other.”

  “I can give you his e-mail address,” she said briskly. “Hold on a minute.”

  He was about to say “don't bother,” but he held hid tongue. Somewhere down the line it would be nice to get back in touch with Perry. Too bad it wasn't going to be today.

  She handed him an index card with the information written on it, and turned back to her computer. He stuck the card in his back pocket and went out. As he was walking down the steps, he heard someone call his name.

  “Is that Tom Gaines?”

  He turned. A small, wiry, middle-aged man, balding red hair sticking up from his birdlike skull like he had stuck his finger in an electric socket, came bounding down toward him.

  “You are Tom Gaines, aren't you?” the man asked. He was dressed in standard university mufti, khaki pants, loose sports coat, tennis shoes.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I thought that was you.” The man's face broke out into a smile. “It's been a long time, but you haven't changed that much.” He stuck out his hand. “Steve Janowitz. Your dad and I spent a summer together at a dig, eight years ago. You were there helping out, with your brothers and your mother.” His face dropped. “I'm sorry. That was so awful. She was a great woman.”

  ‘Thank you,” Tom said. “Of course I remember you.” Steven Janowitz was one of the most prominent archaeologists in the country, among the few accorded a position in the same pantheon in the field as his father.

  How's your dad?” Janowitz asked anxiously. “He's doing okay, all things considered,” Tom said, thinking, haven't you and dad seen each other if he's been lecturing here, been having discussions about coming here to teach?

  “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked Janowitz. He'd like to find out what was going on with this, if he could.

  “Sure,” the older man replied with a smile. “I'll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  The faculty dining room was almost empty. They carried their coffees to a corner table. Janowitz emptied three packets of sugar into his mug. A true archaeologist, Tom thought with an inner smile. You live in the field long enough, you pick up the natives’ habits. Indians love their coffee sweet.

  “What're you up to these days?” Janowitz began.

  “I'm finishing up my Ph.D. in mathematics at Michigan.”

  “Theoretical?”

  Tom nodded.

  Janowitz whistled in appreciation. “Are you te
aching, doing research?”

  “Some, to pay the bills. Mostly I'm finishing my thesis. I'll be done by next spring. After that, I haven't decided. I could join the faculty, they'd like me to stay on, but I'm thinking maybe something in business, where I can apply what I know on a practical basis, like at one of the tech companies. The money's better,” he said candidly. “I'll be paying off my student loans for years. I have several irons in the fire,” he added.

  “Sounds great.” Janowitz blew on his coffee, took a tentative sip. “That was a disgrace, the way they treated; your dad, after all he'd done for them.”

  Tom assumed he was talking about the situation in Madison. “It definitely was,” he agreed.

  “Pure stupidity,” Janowitz said. “Walt raises millions of dollars to develop La Chimenea, the most important excavation they've ever had in that pissant country, it's going to be a huge boost to their economy, not to mention their historical perspective, and they thank him by tossing him out.”

  “La Chimenea,” Tom said, concealing his surprise.

  Janowitz's head bobbed vigorously. “Look, I'm not naïve. We're old hands, your dad and I. I know there were rumors of stolen artifacts down there. That happens at the beginning of every dig that contains valuable artifacts. You can post guards with machine guns around the clock and you aren't going to stop thievery, it happens everywhere, most of the time by the government themselves. But you don't pull the plug on a man of Walt Gaines's stature.” He was building up a good head of steam. “They think they can do it themselves, without outside help. They're going to have a big comeuppance.” He sighed. “It's terrible for your dad, though. They needed a scapegoat to explain away the problem, and he was the most visible target. He had nothing to do with any of the theft that went on down there, I know he didn't. I've known him too well and too long to ever believe he'd do what they accused him of. He has too much integrity.”

  What in the world is this about? Tom thought. This was more than a new paragraph in the ongoing saga of the metamorphosis of Walt Gaines. This was an entirely new chapter.

  He couldn't let on to this man that he didn't know anything about this. But he damn sure was going to try to find out.

  “I should give him a call,” Janowitz said. “We haven't talked since right after that terrible time.” Wistfully, he added. “I haven't been a very good friend in that regard.”

  “He travels a lot,” Tom vamped. “Hard to pin down.”

  That's good. A man his age needs to stay active.”

  “And he's thinking about teaching again,” Tom said, baiting a line.

  Janowitz didn't bite. “He'd be an asset to any department. I'd love to bring him in here.” He frowned. “But between the problems with Madison and the difficulties at La Chimenea, it would be a hard sell. Plus there's his age. Our department's already overstaffed. All the universities are. Now that mandatory retirement has been banned, the pipeline's clogged with brilliant young professors who are stuck because there's no room for them to advance. I'd be very surprised if your father's ever going to be offered a position of the status he had again, certainly not one commensurate with his worth.”

  “So there's no chance he could ever join the faculty here.”

  Janowitz shook his head. “It would take an act of God. And I doubt God's paying close attention to the details at UCLA these days.” He looked at Tom sadly. “I'll be, frank, Tom. I'm afraid your father's teaching days are over. He should have swallowed his pride and hung on at Wisconsin. They were giving him flak, I know, but he could have forced them to keep him.”

  “What about a lecture series?” Tom was fighting a panic attack, but he needed to nail this down.

  “If he wanted to come out here, we'd certainly be open to his giving a talk. He'd draw a nice audience, I'm sure He'd have to pay his own way, of course,” he added quickly, in case Tom was acting as Walt's courier. He gulped down the rest of his coffee. “I have to run. It was good seeing you.”

  “You, too.”

  As they stood and cleared their table, Janowitz asked, “By the way, I forgot to ask. What brings you out here, Tom?”

  “I came out to see an old friend.” He paused. “An old close friend.”

  “Well, you and your friend enjoy yourself. And give my best to your father.”

  Walt was bounding out the front door by the time Tom had pulled up to the curb and gotten out of his car. His face wreathed in a leathery smile, he grabbed his son in bear hug, almost lifting him off the ground.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he boomed. “I caught an earlier flight, so I could be with you more.”

  “Around,” Tom murmured, after they'd broken free from each other. You're twenty-four hours late, he thought to himself, so don't start guilt-tripping me. “You told me you weren't going to be here, so I went off on my own.”

  Where'd you go?” Walt asked, as he flung an arm around Tom's shoulder and guided him to the house.

  Westwood.” He didn't want to bring up UCLA. “Then I cruised up into the hills, Mulholland Drive.”

  That's a beautiful area,” Walt exclaimed. “One of the locations I looked at before I decided on this place. At my age, being in the flats made more sense. You'd love living up there, though. Next year, when you've completed school and you start job hunting, you might want to consider moving out here.”

  “It's a possibility,” Tom said vaguely. Maybe I can get it UCLA, like you.

  Emma was in the kitchen, up to her elbows in cooking, she smiled brightly when she saw the two men come in. “I was afraid you might have gotten lost and couldn't you're your way back,” she said to Tom, sounding genuinely relieved. “L.A.’s so huge, it's like a Chinese puzzle out there if you don't know where you're going.”

  “I lost track of time,” Tom explained.

  She ladled some liquid out of a large, steaming pot, sampled it, began adding seasonings. “I hope you're hungry.”

  “Smells delicious,” he said. “What is it?”

  “Cioppino. Like bouillabaisse, but Italian. It's a specialty of mine.”

  Walt started laughing, a big belly guffaw. “She serves it whenever a son of mine comes to visit,” he told Tom.

  “It's like prime rib for Christmas, reserved for special events or special guests.”

  “Clancy had it?” Would he always be condemned to playing second fiddle to his older brother?

  “The only two times she's made it since I've known her,” Walt said, giving Emma a frisky rib tickle.

  She jumped and swatted his hand away. “Stop that.” She was flush, as much from Walt's insouciant sexual ease in front of his son, who she barely knew, as from the steam coming out of the pot. “I don't cook fancy when it's only the two of us, it's too time-consuming,” she explained. “And I have to watch your dad's cholesterol, because he won't,” she added proprietarily.

  “She does take care of me, even though she's busy here, busy there, busy everywhere,” Walt sing-sung, like a demented canary. “Work, school, always on the go.”

  This is awfully manic behavior for the old man, Tom thought, as he watched his father cavort about the room. It's as if he's turned back the hands of time. A beautiful young woman can do that for an older man. And she was certainly beautiful. He almost ached, thinking of Emma in the pool last night.

  “You're in school?” he asked her. Had Clancy mentioned that? He didn't remember. “What in?”

  “I've dropped out temporarily.”

  “You'll go back,” Walt said. “You're too smart not to. Don't let her looks fool you,” he said to Tom. “This woman has it…” He tapped his forehead. “Up here.”

  “Walt, stop. You're embarrassing me.” She was trying not to smile.

  Tom, watching this playful, almost intimate bantering between lovers, was the embarrassed party. His father was showing off for him—see my new lady, isn't she grand, isn't everything so peachy-wonderful? His father and Emma seemed to be much more serious about each other than Clancy had prepared
him for. It was a sobering understanding. His father's woman was his mother. Emma seemed, from the brief time he had observed her, to be a good person and devoted to his dad; but it hurt, seeing them like this.

  “Why don't you two let me work in peace?” Emma prodded, in mock vexation. “I'll come get you when dinner's ready.”

  As he had with Clancy, Walt took Tom on a tour of the grounds. Showing off, Tom thought, a taste of sour anger rising in his mouth at the petty materialism his father had embraced so enthusiastically. The lord of the manor. Walt Gaines had replaced the glories and excitement of a new, important excavation in the Central American jungle for a rich man's house in the middle of make-believe land. This was a stellar house, no question, but he didn't feel his father had gotten his money's worth in the exchange.

  He had come here to see for himself, firsthand, what was going on with his dad. Now that he had, he halfway wished he hadn't. He nodded mechanically as Walt explained the solar system that heated the pool, how he had replaced the old, sagging wooden back deck with stone, the pleasures of a gas-ignition Genesis barbeque over a dirty, time-consuming charcoal-burning Weber, like the ones they'd used summers back in Wisconsin, whenever he was home from one of his exotic locales.

  “It's very nice, dad,” Tom rotely commented, as they stood at the edge of the pool, watching the automatic cleaner glide along the edges, its rubber tentacles, like those of a giant jellyfish, sweeping the bottom clean. “Hell of a house.”

  “Thanks.” Walt's eyes were gleaming with pride of ownership.

  “Pretty highfalutin,” Tom added, unable to hold his tongue.

  His father looked at him with a sideways squint. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes against the twilight sun that was shining in his face. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. It's just different from what … from how you and mom lived.”

  “That's what this is about, isn't it?”