Whatever Lola Wants

by George Szanto

  The insistent man looked drained, and scared.

  “If there’s nothing else then, I’ll be getting along. You don’t mind?”

  “No, no. No.”

  “Well, take care.” He stepped out, turned, fingers to brow in salute. He knocked on the other door. He explained he’d had to give Mr. Cochan some complicated news and he hadn’t taken it well. The Sheriff was glad not to be asked, What news?

  Yak looked through the clear partition at a man he’d known for years. The Handyman sat motionless, his face pale as chalk.

  8.

  Possible ways of getting below ground at Terramac: Another request to Cochan? Wait till dark of night, break in? Even if he got past the guard gate and any night watchman patrolling the site, where to go? Where was the entrance down? Maybe that building without windows? And once inside? Carney didn’t know. He fought visible disasters, he wasn’t the break-and-enter type—

  A knock. He hadn’t heard a car drive up. At the farmhouse door stood Karl Magnussen. “Hi, I was passing, thought I’d drop by and say hello.”

  Passing? Hardly. Carney offered coffee.

  “Sure, why not.”

  Carney made good coffee only for those who cared. He poured a cupful of warmed-up lunchtime leftover. “You okay?”

  “Me? Yeah sure.”

  “Want a shot of brandy in that?”

  Karl grinned then. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

  “So you’re not okay.” Carney went for the bottle, poured in two glugs.

  “Thanks.” Karl sipped, nodded. “Good.” He seemed to be collecting thoughts, or words, or strength. “Look, can I convince you to go for a walk?”

  Sarah would be arriving later, after she was done at the lab. Did he want Karl to know this? Did he care? They went out.

  The air felt light on his arms. They walked toward the dip behind the house where the stream, now a trickle, cut a rocky bed between the land he kept cultivated and the wilder upslope beyond. Karl remained silent, wooden. Carney let him be. They followed a small trail uphill.

  “Great afternoon,” said Carney. “Cooler.”

  “Yep.”

  They walked in silence, higher up the dirt path, Karl sweating lightly. Swallows swooped, late-lunching on mosquitoes. Carney would have to break through. “Do you just let go or is it a conscious decision to seduce every woman you see?”

  Karl’s head snapped around. He stared at Carney. “Who said that?”

  “In your way, you did.”

  Karl snorted a laugh. “My face is my billboard?”

  “Well?”

  Karl shrugged. “I like sex. A lot.”

  “It isn’t an experiment, then? Trying a theory?”

  “Why d’you ask that?”

  “From how you talked the other evening.”

  A wistful smile. “No. No theory. Just—the touch of skin, the smells. The tastes. A woman’s body is a beautiful creation.”

  “Some, anyway.”

  “Many. The first time, it’s an exploration. Learning what’s there. Sometimes the discovery goes on. But too often I need only one time to learn everything that’s there.”

  Provoking was one thing, grubbing about in a man’s life something else. Trees thickened around them. The trail, still uphill, had grown wider so they could walk side by side.

  Then Karl said, “Do you mind if I tell you an unpleasant story?”

  Carney suppressed a flip comment. “If you want to.”

  “It’s in the category of a confessional.”

  “Maybe you should talk to a priest.”

  “I did. He recommended several forms of spiritual cleansing.”

  “Unsatisfactory?”

  “Not what I need.”

  A tale of loss of faith? “A therapist, then.”

  “No, no.” No humor in Karl’s response. “I’d like your advice.”

  “Why me?”

  “You don’t know me. For my cheerless tale I need a pristine ear. You’re circumspect.”

  Carney chuckled. “One of my few virtues. I’m a regular oubliette.” The path divided. Carney led them down the trail to the right.

  “You see, I’m in the middle, more correctly at the beginning, of a very strong—relationship. Love. With a woman who’s quite wonderful.”

  “The rake backsliding from apostasy?”

  “A lot to discover. A lot about love.”

  “Yeah?”

  So he told Carney. It began like many love stories, the meeting a coincidence, then a conscious decision to seduce her according to his patterns, in part because of who she was.

  “And who is she?”

  “It’s not important, it’s not what I want to tell you about. You see, I’d been, well, testing myself. Examining my emotional stability.”

  Save me from shrinks. Carney kept his face blank.

  “It was a successful seduction. But then there was a problem. It had all begun as a kind of—I guess I have to call it revenge.”

  “Against?”

  “Her husband, of course.”

  “And who’s he?”

  Karl shook his head. “An old enemy.”

  “Of?”

  He stopped walking and looked at Carney, a small ambivalent grin. “Mine.” He considered his next words. “The world’s.”

  How unstable was the man? Time to get back. “Go on.” He resumed walking, faster now.

  “It went beyond revenge. Somewhere inside me this incredible attraction was born, a swell of, well, rich honest desire. In her too. It’s led to a remarkable closeness, and to love.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “To that point, nothing. Not even a couple of weeks back when she told me she was pregnant, by me or by her husband she didn’t know which. And it didn’t matter to me. Or her.”

  “Who a child’s father is doesn’t matter?”

  “I loved the baby, then already. It and its mother.”

  Carney’s friend Mot buzzed, Watch yourself.

  “A few days ago the husband found us together. He beat her, hurt her badly. And there’s not going to be a child. The beating caused her to abort.”

  “And how is she, the mother?”

  Karl blinked but his eyes were too full, they overflowed. “The thing of it is, it’s murder.”

  Carney remained silent. The cut-off back down was maybe fifty yards ahead.

  “The mother’s—okay as she can be. The baby had no chance. He took that life away.”

  Lighten this burden? How? “A few weeks ago? Still in the first trimester?”

  “Weeks’ and weeks’ worth of experiences. There’s amazing evidence how much a few weeks’ old fetus feels and reacts to. You ever seen pictures of a fetus in the womb? He killed it. Sister Sarah won’t kill ants and mosquitoes. They’re a lot less human than this little thing was.”

  “Still, lots of abortions are performed on fetuses much more advanced.”

  Karl nodded. “I know. And that’s a crime.”

  “Not here. Not now.”

  “It would have been a boy.” Karl kicked at a stone.

  Cauterize the pain. Carney spoke, slow and gently. “Maybe it wasn’t yours.”

  Karl stopped, stared at him, unbelieving. “It doesn’t matter, Carney.”

  Carney’s head shook again. How can the father’s identity not matter?

  They walked in silence. Carney turned them down the cut-off. Karl didn’t notice, he seemed absent now. Carney preferred to live among men and women who civilized their emotions, or acted as if they did. A world he’d chosen for himself, rational, damage control a large part of it. Now here was a certain Mrs. X not sure who the father of her child might be, and Mr. X pummeling the life out of his wife’s womb. And Sarah, testing his preconceptions about the worth of many kinds of life. An insect, a fetus, an old woman hit by a stroke.

  Silly though Karl could get, a part inside him had splintered and he needed solace. Tears ran down the man’s face. He didn’t try to hide or stop the
m. Carney put his hand on Karl’s shoulder. It struck him that Milton’s empathy for Karl’s distress came closer to understanding his son than Milton realized.

  They arrived at the farmhouse. Carney said, “I can give you some armagnac.”

  “I’ll take it.” Karl sat, drank down two ounces in three large sips. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I’m not usually like this.”

  “We all have to let go sometimes.” Ah, the strength of cliché.

  “Yeah.” He released a breath so long he might’ve been holding it since before the armagnac. “Thank you for letting me talk.”

  Carney waved him away.

  “And for responding. My goddamn confessor sat behind the screen dead silent. I made it gory just to get him to react. He didn’t.”

  “I guess he hears a lot of miserable stuff.”

  “I guess. Any advice?”

  “Well, don’t report it as murder, least not till after a long talk with Mrs. X.”

  “Yeah. Hard to do. She only had a couple of minutes when she called to tell me. About the baby. She’s with her husband.”

  “John Cochan.”

  “How the hell—?”

  “A reasonable guess.” Carney shook his head. “You’re an ass, Karl.”

  “Probably. Except I do love her.”

  “And I suppose she loves you.”

  “Very much.”

  Ah, romantic love. “And Cochan? How’s she feel about him?”

  “She loved him, she said.”

  “And now?”

  Karl shook his head.

  “But she’s with him.”

  “She says he’s calm.”

  “And contrite?”

  “Withdrawn.”

  “What does she want?”

  He thought a moment. “I’d guess, time.”

  Of which Carney had little left, it was getting on toward four. Sarah had said she’d arrive around five and he couldn’t count on her not being early. “I have to go out, I’m already late.”

  Karl went to the door. “Look, Carney. Another favor?”

  “I shouldn’t tell your family about this.”

  Karl grinned, but without cheer. “Thanks.”

  •

  It’s at times like this I’m saddest that Lola isn’t here. Down there she’ll never get to see that side of Karl.

  •

  9.

  Johnnie dreamed the camping trip, pitching the tent by the stream, laying out the sleeping bags, close. Only the place was wrong, no waterfall here. No Benjie, these people were Barney and Tick, Benjie’s friends. They slept one on this side of Johnnie, one on that. They squeezed in tight, crushing him. These weren’t kids anymore, they were too big, too strong. They pulled him up, one by his right arm, the other his left. Come on, you dumb bug-fweep, they said, and led him by both hands to a field, no grass. A cobblestone path to a house, two stories. The big wood door opened. The man there said, You’re late, come in. The man was an engineer or a doctor, he wore a white coat, and Johnnie nearly recognized him. He went down a staircase, Tick in front, Barney in back. A cellar transformed to a laboratory, white tile walls, stainless steel sinks. Johnnie’s crucible was ready. But he didn’t need a crucible, the spiders were too big, white crab spiders. Everywhere. And wasps. Spiders fornicating with wasps! Webs in the air, in sinks, across the ceiling. The walls were white spiders and wasps, and each mouth’s teeth grasped a butterfly, Phoebis sennae eubule, boy, never forget that name. Crushed butterflies released their odor, violets, musk. Johnnie cried out: “Not the butterflies, no!” The spiders heard. They looked up. “Not our pretty Phoebis eubule?” The spiders stared across at him, down at him. “If not butterflies, then what?” “Why anything, anything you want.” “The wasps, then, all the wasps.” The wasps drew themselves out of the spiders, they turned to Johnnie, advanced on him, an army. He couldn’t call out, he couldn’t move. They raced toward him from eighty directions. He slipped, his arm grabbed out, his fingers found the sink. On his feet and legs, his arms his crotch, in eyes through ears on tongue down throat. Spilling wasps took him low, his temple landed soft in a white pillow, wasp corpses. In choked silence he screamed, screamed. And woke to break his mute cry.

  Twelve

  BEST-LAID PLANS

  1.

  Sarah sat on the bank, just the rare mosquito today, and watched two shiny brown butterflies flit about dry moss on rocks jutting up at the water’s edge. “And Carney and Company?”

  “For a long time”—barely two weeks since Carney had hooked a solid trout in the pool upstream and been hit by a slingshot stone—“it was central.”

  “Not what I asked.” She turned to face him.

  “Now? Sure. But I own the company, and others work for me.” He smiled.

  Her eyebrow arched. “So you’ll go back to it? Or not.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Old habits.” The butterflies on the rock took on its color. Water rippled. “Non-endings prevent new starts.”

  “I don’t change easy.”

  “I was thinking about me. And Driscoll.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re way more enigmatic.”

  Carney stared at sunlight reflecting from the stream. He said, “You know, I’m not. I’ve done just one thing all my working life.”

  “One thing can make a first-class disguise.”

  “You push hard, lady.”

  “See those butterflies?” They were flying again, circling each other.

  “Monarchs?”

  “Viceroys. They look like monarchs. But they’re fine to eat.”

  “You’ve tried them?” Carney smiled.

  “A little oil and garlic, some salt. Delicious.”

  “Next thing, you’ll be eating cow.”

  “Just don’t eat monarchs. They feed on latex. From milkweed. Know what’s in latex? Digitalis. Which can be bad stuff. But it doesn’t bother monarch caterpillars, they eat it up, they become chrysalides and soon there are monarchs again. New ones.”

  “The cycles of nature?”

  “Swallows and jays and the like eat most kinds of butterflies. But they’ve learned something. Munch on a monarch, you retch till you die.”

  “Charming.”

  “Be quiet. At last I’m understanding you.”

  “What?”

  “Carney the viceroy, Carney the orphan, Carney his aunt’s ward, Carney the cellist, macho Carney of the fires, Carney the loner, Carney the contradiction with a single name.”

  “Parts of the above. Except maybe the viceroy.”

  “You’ll tell me everything. When you’re ready. But for now talking isn’t on.”

  “And what is?”

  “For me, you.” She gazed into a middle distance. “And for you?”

  “I’d like to take you fishing.”

  She turned, took his head gently with eight fingertips, kissed his mouth. “I’d like to go.”

  For an hour they swam in the pool and played bare-assed in the sun.

  Lola would have loved it. But she didn’t see them, no way could she catch sight of them from the middle of the down below.

  2.

  Stupid Priscilla. She wouldn’t shut up. Stupid woman.

  From nowhere she asked in her drivelly way: “But isn’t it possible to feel so much love I can love more than just one? Love you, Johnnie, so much. Love Benjie and Dee and Lissa, love him too, my dear good friend?”

  This was the moment, the closest he ever came to smashing her across that whiny face—

  But her question caught him up, too. Because the answer helped him see everything in the sharpest white on black. No. No you cannot love more than one. For Johnnie, this one was Benjie. Always. And before Benjie was born? Well, Johnnie wasn’t a metaphysician but he’d have to say, Yes, before too. Which meant, by clear subtraction, Johnnie could never have loved her. What’s never been loved can never be lacking, right? So he didn’t slug her, he smiled.

  From he
r face, stupid pulpy tear-driven face, a staggered grin. As if she’d won or something. He said, “No.” What sweet pleasure to see the gloat slide from that face, so much slush. “The one I love,” he said, “you burned him up.”

  “I brought him back, Johnnie. To the farm.” She reached her hand to him. “For you.”

  “You burned him. Till there was nothing. The one I love.”

  She nodded. Nodded? So did she finally understand? She went upstairs, nodding all the time. A revelation. To Johnnie, and surely to her as well, her head bobbing like a couple of neck vertebrae had gone loose or maybe some bouncy pith in her mushy brain. She locked their bedroom door. Deirdre and Melissa in with her? No matter, in Benjie’s room all he needed, the small bed. He lay down and slept far away, deep, first time in a long while. A clear answer.

  The sun came up too early, right through the window. Johnnie thought he heard a car start. He closed his eyes, turned, slept again. Less deeply. He dreamed he flew on wasp wings high above Terramac to the craggy mountaintop. He stayed for a long time, looking down, seeing everything. He watched everyone drive away. Only he remained. And the rock he sat on. And the spider-free air. Here at the pinnacle of the world, of all history, he felt at peace. He awoke again. The house was silent. He came downstairs. Her note lay on the table:

  I’ve gone, Johnnie. You said it all last night. No. You can’t love. I wonder if you ever loved. Even Benjie.

  And more: arrangements, Melissa, Deirdre.

  He breathed deeply. Cleansed. All that female fear, all gone. Upstairs again he washed his face. He shaved his mustache off. As he would clear away the shadow of his future. His life, scrubbed pure. She was gone.

  Deirdre and Melissa? He would give chase! Rescue them— Not physical chase. Legal. He’d call that lawyer, that fellow in Burlington, local lawyer was important. Meanwhile the girls would be okay, sure. Even alone with the mother. As long as he, that one, didn’t ill-use them. That would be unbearable. For now it was out of Johnnie’s hands.

  A new start. A few details to take care of.

  She’d left so easily …

  Unimportant. He was rid of her. He made his breakfast. His veins and bones felt clean.

  Of course he’d loved. And had been loved. For her to doubt his love of Benjie, incredible.