Inez pats his hand. “I think you can manage.”
Soon, everybody goes back to their meal. Jake eats with his head down. The kids, sensing a shift at the center of the family, can hardly contain themselves. With their mouths open wide, they spoon in hunks of ice cream from their root beer floats. Inez sucks hard on her straw, but there is nothing left of her strawberry malt.
“Don’t slurp, Mom,” Anna says, repeating the ancient family injunction.
“Yeah, Mom,” Joey chirps in.
Inez looks across the table at her kids. Can she actually leave them? Of course, she can. It’s clear that they love her and that she loves them. This is indisputable. It is also clear to Inez that, in the end, they will be better off without her.
little bird
JAKE often has difficulty getting much work done on days he’s due to visit Christine. Awaiting an afternoon of unbridled sex can turn him into a horny old goat who has to be careful to keep his unbidden erections in check when a female client visits or his secretary, Grania, waltzes into his office. But since he’s been unable to raise an erection, for all his ardor, during his last two visits to Christine, he’s filled with trepidation this morning. The misadventures of his last visits have haunted him. He’s tried to reason with himself, to regard the events, or nonevents, as nothing more than a couple of isolated incidents that happen to every man sooner or later. The first time, in Christine’s sewing room, he could explain away as an aberration. But when the problem returned, two weeks later, after she led him, as a special treat, into her own bedroom, his frustration swelled into a knot in his chest. What if this became the norm rather than the exception? Was this the beginning of his demise? Who’s to say that a man cannot become a eunuch at the age of forty-two?
As if this fear about his potency weren’t enough, a certain madness is sweeping through his house. He has lingering, if unfocused, questions about his wife’s behavior. Inez is up to something, he knows it, but he doesn’t know what. The woman has a fierce resolve about her. One thing that’s clear is that whatever she’s planning, or in the middle of, doesn’t include him. Inez seems perfectly content to go on without him.
After a morning of paper shuffling and innocuous phone calls, Jake strolls down to Market Street to buy lunch. A return to the aphrodisiac basics seems in order. Jake picks up a dozen oysters on the half shell, a pair of walkaway shrimp cocktails, and a large loaf of dark sourdough.
As soon as he steps out of the cab and approaches Christine’s back door, he begins whistling the theme of “Yardbird Suite,” a gracious and relaxed Charlie Parker song. That’s Jake, gracious and relaxed. Christine meets him at the door.
“You sound chipper.”
“I’m trying.”
“Don’t try too hard,” Christine says, leading him into the kitchen. “I think my neighbors must know about you—here comes Christine’s backdoor jazzman.”
“How can you call them neighbors when you live in a mansion and the closest houses are so far away that you can’t even see them?”
“What kind of question is that, Jake? Are you in one of your socialist moods?”
“I don’t know, I’m in some sort of mood.”
Irritated, Christine shakes her head.
Is he trying to make her angry? He stares at her for a moment as if he were. Maybe he is. It is a weird, fucking enterprise he’s involved in here: getting his sex from a Pacific Heights matron, who he realizes is dressed today like a whore. He’s been so distracted that it isn’t until now that he notices Christine’s getup: a short, clingy skirt matched with a close-fitting cashmere sweater, in which her nipples are visible. She’s actually made up like a hooker, with a thick layer of foundation, heavy black eye shadow, and a swath of cherry red lipstick. Christine places her left hand on her hip as she’s being appraised, and she dangles a small clutch purse, the color of her lipstick, from her right hand.
“What’s the occasion?” Jake asks.
“Thought you might be up for a change of pace.”
“Do I pay you now or later?”
“Your pleasure.”
Jake’s never gone in for prostitutes or found the look the least bit appealing. One evening when his daughter, Anna, was a young girl, six or seven, and riding in a car with him through downtown, she spotted a streetwalker and quite innocently pointed her out: “Look at that woman, Daddy. I like her dress. I want a dress like that someday.” Jake hadn’t bothered to explain who the woman was or why she was dressed like that. Jake sees plenty of prostitutes down at the court-house. Once in a while they appear haughty, strolling the halls with their lawyer, but more often they seem like plain, working women, attending to another unsavory part of their job—getting booked and briefly jailed. No more glory in that than in treating their venereal diseases or drug addictions. Nobody, not even a whore, likes to be humiliated in the light of day. Christine gives him a hard stare. One more part of the act?
“You look like you’re going to attack me with your little purse.”
“Is that what you’d like me to do?”
“Not especially.”
“You can never tell with a customer.”
“I’m not a customer, Christine.”
“Of course you are. What’s interesting is that you fancy me as the aggressor. Maybe that’s part of your problem.”
“My problem?”
“Forgive me, Jake.”
It would be smart, he thinks, to walk out of the kitchen right now. Leave his oysters and shrimp cocktails on the butcher block and say sayonara. But, instead, he tells himself to be a good sport, to go along with the game.
When the plates are set, Jake steps around behind Christine and slips an oyster into her mouth. She swallows.
“Thank you; does this mean you’ve forgiven me?”
“No.”
“Oh, a man who holds grudges. Could I have another oyster, this time with hot sauce?” Christine tilts her head back and opens her mouth.
“How many shots?”
“I don’t know. I suppose five will do.”
Jake shakes hot sauce over the largest oyster, much more than she’s asked for, and watches the hue of the gelatinous oyster meat gradually tint toward pink pepper.
Christine winces as she watches Jake’s assault of the oyster. “Isn’t that going to burn, Jake?”
“I think you’ll taste it.” Jake feeds Christine the oyster and watches her swallow it, blinking her eyes shut.
Christine inhales slowly through her nostrils, her eyes turning bleary. “Do you want to hurt me, Jake?”
“Do you want me to?” says Jake, his hands on his hips.
“We’re not talking about my desire, Jake. Anyway, you should know, I have a high threshold for pain.”
“I’ve never been a violent person.”
“You’ve lived a very safe life, Jake.”
Jake lifts Christine off her stool—she can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds—and lays her on the floor. “Have you ever been fucked on the kitchen floor?”
“Not this one.”
“But others?”
“Plenty of others.”
“You are a whore.”
“Good, Jake, very good.”
Jake pushes her skirt up to her waist and strips off her underwear. He pins her arms back with his right hand and starts to fondle her.
“So, tell me, have you ever hurt a woman, Jake?”
“Not in the way you mean.”
“No, you prefer the more subtle approach, like driving your wife batty from neglect.”
“Do you think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I couldn’t say for sure.”
Jake twists Christine’s left arm behind her back until she winces. He slaps wildly, and with little effect, at her face.
“Good, Jake; I mean your aim is lousy, but at least you’re playing. Haven’t you ever hit a woman?”
“No.”
“Well, better late than never.”
“
Why are you doing this, Christine?”
“I want to see what you’re made of. Hey, how about we get back to Inez?”
“Stop.”
“Don’t you think it’s most fun when we’re talking about her? You know, somebody might say she’s my rival, but I never think of it that way. We’re not in competition. We each get a piece of you and I happen to get the piece I want. At least most of the time I get it.”
“Bitch.” Jake applies more pressure to Christine’s arm. His face turns hot.
“Are you going to break my arm, Jake?”
“No,” Jake says, letting her arm loose, then standing. He picks up an oyster from the platter, dashes it with hot sauce, and slips it down his throat.
Christine sits up, lifts her arm, and shakes it loose a few times. “You realize that I have no illusions about Inez, Jake. I know how it looks from the outside. She has the great career, the beautiful children, the outstanding husband, but things may not be as they appear.”
Jake glares at Christine. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Things may not be as they appear,” Christine repeats. “Take me, exhibit A. People look at me from the outside, my nonexistent neighbors, for instance. What do they see? A happily married woman with wealth, a place in society, and, some might even say, a measure of beauty. Could they possibly guess that the chic little woman in the mansion thinks of suicide five days out of seven?”
“You do not,” Jake says.
“You’re right. But I could.”
“Bullshit,” Jake says, a knot of fury rising right up his throat.
“And how about Inez? Who knows what she’s thinking about? She’s liable to be thinking about anything.”
“Shut up.” Jake crouches carefully in front of Christine. “Will you shut up about Inez!” This time, he takes aim at the beauty mark, just above the cherry wedge of lipstick, and slaps Christine soundly across her mouth. Her head snaps back. The smack is loud. Jake’s hand smarts from the contact. They are both stunned. Jake’s breath is caught in his chest and burns for a moment. Finally, his breath heaves clear and he forces himself to look at Christine, a fallen whore on the floor. Her mouth is already swollen, her makeup smeared.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I taunted you.”
Jake stands. “You should put some ice on that.”
“I don’t need it.”
Jake goes to the giant refrigerator and empties cubes from an ice tray into a large dish towel. In a moment, he kneels in front of Christine, holding the ice to her lip.
“Lie down beside me, Jake.”
She takes the ice from him as he reclines beside her and lights a cigarette. They have nothing to say to each other. They may never have anything to say again. When he finishes his cigarette, he rises up on an elbow and starts to stand up.
“Stay,” she says.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Come here.”
Jake bends down beside her and she kisses his forehead.
“What you said about yourself . . . ?”
“Nonsense. All of it nonsense. Sometimes I think I’m nothing more than a frustrated actress. I don’t even make a good whore, do I?”
“You have some potential.”
“Don’t be cruel, Jake. We don’t need to hurt each other anymore.” She reaches toward him and unbuckles his belt.
“It’s not a good idea.”
“What did you come for, Jake?”
It happens in a flurry. His zipper down. His pants yanked off. His prick in her hands.
“It’s like a little bird, Jake.”
“What did you expect?”
“It doesn’t want any part of me.”
“No,” he says, “I’m afraid it doesn’t.”
play me a song
LOOK ... look who’s here,” Hy says, when Toby ushers Sylvia into the living room. The poor man has a double-pronged tube coming out of his nostrils. Sylvia follows the tube to an oxygen canister, a massive orange tank that wreaks havoc on the Danish modern aesthetic of the living room. The furnishings surprise her. She imagined Hyman’s house would be extroverted like him. She pictured massive overstuffed chairs and sofas, maybe a baroque daybed on which Hy’s ample bride could pose for him as a mature odalisque. But clearly Toby holds the reins to the house. A blond baby grand, as homely an instrument as Sylvia’s ever seen, broods like a giant Scandinavian across the room. It must be a form of revenge for Toby, given Hy’s likely infidelities, to have him propped up on a thin-cushioned church pew of a teak sofa that offers better prospects for obedience than slouching.
Although Hy may be half-dead, his eyes brighten at the sight of Sylvia.
“Hy, I’m sorry I’m late.” She kisses Hy’s cheek. His skin is drawn and sallow like an old grandfather’s, and, though the room is more than toasty, he is wrapped in a heavy wool blanket. Sylvia takes a quick look around and spots Miller Beem and a couple of younger people she doesn’t know. Everybody seems to be holding down a separate corner of the large room. Sylvia feels the heat being pumped into the room through the floor vent. Too much heat. “Has everybody already done theirs?” she asks.
“Just about . . . everybody,” says Hy.
SYLVIA coached herself on the bus ride over. She’d been weeping most of the afternoon and early evening. About Inez, about Hy. Wishing that the one who no longer wanted her life could pass it to the one desperate for his.
On the bus ride, she tried to get ahold of herself. She needed a strategy. She decided that she would respond to Hy—and his silly notion of a eulogy party—by being nurselike, warm but clinical. But he is dying before her eyes, and clinical warmth is a more difficult task than she imagined.
“I didn’t think . . . you’d come,” Hy says.
Sylvia, aware that the others are watching, squints her eyes at Hyman, clownlike. “You think I had a choice,” she says, in her best Jewish-gangster voice. She hears some nervous laughter behind her. Now she tugs the cords of the string tie that Hyman gave her. Her only hope is to go through with the performance. She spreads her feet apart like a gunfighter. “I had no choice! I’m standing on the running board of the California Street cable car, you understand, going east toward the ferry building. I’m trying my damnedest to get out of town. Suddenly, I feel myself being strangled. It’s not a pretty picture. There’s an invisible rope drawn around my throat. The damn thing’s practically yanking me off the running board into traffic. The other passengers—they think I’m crazy. I’m struggling to hold on, my hair’s flying back, I begin to say my prayers, when it hits me like a shot—it’s old Hy, he’s got his mind lasso working.”
Hy breaks into a choked laugh, and the others are convulsed with laughter.
“Look . . . look at her,” Hyman says for the benefit of the whole room. “She’s even wearing the string tie.”
“Nobody else would be caught dead in it, Hy,” she says and turns, wishing she could withdraw the last comment. She recalls one of her mother’s favorite phrases: Aren’t you just mortified? Fortunately, neither Hy nor his guests seem to notice what she’s said.
Miller Beem gives Sylvia a quick wave. A young man in a Hawaiian shirt, his hair shiny with gel, comes up to greet Sylvia.
“I’m Rudy,” he says.
“You’re Hy’s son?”
“The one and only. Hey, that was very good, your routine, very funny. The whole world, you know, has heard about the mind lasso. He tried to teach me, back when I was in school. The secret to better grades.”
“How’d it work?”
“It went the opposite way for me. My grades went down—couldn’t go much lower—and I ended up spending more time in the principal’s office. I don’t think I was cut out for the mind lasso. How about you?”
“I’m just starting to catch on.”
“You may be the first one.”
Sylvia feels something tugging on the back of her blouse and turns to see Miller Beem, the left sleeve o
f his sport coat pushed up to reveal a shiny gold Longines watch that looks new.
“Miller, have you met Rudy?”
Miller nods his head confidently. “I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Miller’s a practitioner of the mind lasso,” says Sylvia, noting the rose carnation in Miller’s lapel.
“Have you had any success?” Rudy asks.
“Well, I haven’t hurt anybody yet,” Miller says with a chuckle.
“Hey, that’s a start.”
“Actually,” Miller says, a full grin breaking over his face, “I think it’s beginning to work for me. I sold two pianos the other day.”
“You did?” Sylvia says.
“Just a spinet and an upright, but I’m working on a baby grand.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“It’s only a start,” Miller says. He points to the ugly blond baby grand across the room. “That’s what I aspire to.” Miller pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket and dabs at his brow. “A bit tropical in here, wouldn’t you say?”
Sylvia can’t get over the change in Miller Beem. A little success goes a long way.
Rudy Myerson, the perfect gentleman, nods to Sylvia and Miller. “My father’s lucky to have such loyal employees.”
Now Toby, dressed in a floor-length red kimono, the largest mass of silk Sylvia’s ever seen in one place, approaches with a small silver tray of hors d’oeuvres. “By the way,” Toby says, “I apologize for the heat— Hyman likes it warm.”
Sylvia plucks a stuffed mushroom from the silver tray and remembers the night she sat with Hy and Toby at Inez’s solo concert. How Inez came onstage in her sleeveless purple dress and Sylvia fixed her opera glasses on the bruise under the violinist’s chin, wondering if she’d ever be able to kiss that bruise. She didn’t imagine that she’d soon know that bruise well, that she’d discover even deeper scars. Despite the fact that Hy kept sneaking his hand onto her thigh, Sylvia remembers sitting in the Myerson box and feeling a certain comfort, like sitting beside a pair of adopted parents for the night. Sylvia recalls the moment she fell in love with Inez’s bow arm, with the violinist herself. Sylvia wants to keep any thought of the violinist out of this house. She smiles at Toby, who has completed a circle of the room with her tray. “Your house is lovely.”
Beautiful Inez Page 31