But no. The driver was Harold himself. He got out, locked the vehicle, and went straight, eagerly even, to the door of number nine, and entered without knocking.
5
'Stop! No! For God's sake don't!' I was shouting at the top of my voice. My voice this time, no disguises. He knew who I was. He realised I was back. He knew what was going on. But he was beyond my control.
It was the thing I had most feared. I knew the danger point would come when he faced the truth about his wife, but I had felt confident I would be able to take over and steer him the way I wanted him to go. What I had not bargained for was Harold's appearance in the list of players.
Perhaps because I was myself as appalled by the discovery as Richard was, I let my grip slacken for a vital moment. The next thing I knew I felt like a novice rider whose horse has bolted under him. I was shocked by the force of the sheer blind fury that tore through him like a blood-red tidal wave, levelling everything in its path — including me. By the time I had gathered my wits and taken stock of the situation, he was out of the car and striding across the road with a heavy steel wrench in his fist.
'Don't do it! You'll only make it worse!'
'Shut the fuck up!' he bellowed. Pedestrians on the far side looked over anxiously at the ferocious-looking man coming towards them and apparently shouting at nobody. They moved a little faster to get out of his way.
'Richard, you know who I am! I'm your friend! Trust me!'
'Fuck you!'
A couple of passers-by broke into a run.
'Listen, this is the wrong way to handle it. You're going to lose! Do you want to be a loser?'
'I'll kill him! I'll kill them both!'
'Then what?'
'I don't give a fuck then what!'
'They'll lock you up in the mad house again! And this time it'll be for good!'
That got him. He stopped right there on the sidewalk, about twenty yards of which had by now entirely cleared.
'But you saw! You saw them!' he whined plaintively. To an onlooker he looked as though he was addressing some point on the ground a little way ahead of him. In reality he was looking at nothing. He was suddenly focusing all his attention on this inner voice, accepting its reality without question, fighting what it said but not the fact of its being there. I realised in that moment that I had accomplished what I needed to accomplish. We had a dialogue.
'Look,' I said, 'let's just get out of here before somebody calls the cops. You're behaving like a maniac. Look at that wrench you're waving around!'
He looked down at his hand as though it belonged to someone else, then he tossed the wrench on to the low wall that ran along the motel parking lot and sat down heavily next to it. I thought he was going to burst into tears, but he held them in. 'How could they?' he murmured. 'How could they?'
People were beginning to be curious now, their fear evaporating as they saw his rage subside. After all, he looked respectable enough, despite the dark glasses and the hat jammed oddly on his head. But they didn't get too close. The boldest gathered in a semi-circle at a safe distance, whispering among themselves about what they should do. The majority, as is usually the case, just gave him a wide berth and kept moving, anxious not to get involved.
My own main fear now was that the minor commotion he'd caused might have attracted the attention of Anne and Harold in their cabin just across the parking lot. I needn't have worried. Obviously they were too engrossed in whatever they were doing to pay attention to the world beyond their dusty cream venetian blinds. But I still had to get Richard away from there as fast as possible.
'Listen,' I said, 'this is your last chance to walk away from here. You stay, there are going to be cops, questions, probably you'll be arrested — which means your name on file! It's not smart. Now, haul ass!' That mention of his name on file triggered the response I needed. He passed his hands shakily over his face, got to his feet and, leaving the wrench where it lay, walked back across the street and disappeared into the parking lot of the 7-11. As we pulled out moments later in the rented car, a police patrol was arriving to check out the disturbance. The proprietor of a Chinese laundry had emerged from his shop and was pointing dramatically to the abandoned wrench on the wall and acting out a vigorous mime of Richard's eccentric comportment for the benefit of the officers. Nobody observed Richard, hat and glasses removed at my suggestion, driving off in the opposite direction.
'Ten more seconds,' I said, 'and you'd have been right in the middle of that. So just listen to me when I talk. That's all I ask. Just listen.'
'I think you'd better tell me,' he said with slow deliberation and a tremor of profound ontological fear in his voice, 'just what the fuck is going on.'
'First things first,' I said. 'There's no need to actually move your lips and use your voice when you want to talk to me. People will think you're talking to yourself, and we want to avoid attracting that kind of attention — right?'
'But what . . . what do I do?' His voice cracked as he asked the question.
'You just think. I'm in your head, I can read your thoughts. I'll know when you want to talk to me. I'll also know when you don't, and I won't bother you unless I have to.'
'You mean you know everything I'm thinking?' He was still talking aloud, staring straight ahead but driving on automatic pilot.
'Just about. Not everything exactly, because I can't be everywhere at once. The mind is a bigger place than its observer. And by "observer" I also mean the person to whom it belongs, not just an outsider like me. You don't know everything that's in your mind most of the time, do you? So how would you expect me to?' I thought it as well to emphasise this point so as to leave him at least some sense of privacy.
'This is so fucking weird.'
'Will you please try to say that without moving your lips? Just to please me?'
He tried. Very hard. The thought came over like a slowed-down tape recording with the volume turned way up. 'T-T-T-H-H-H-I-I-S-S-S I-I-S-S-S S-S-S-O-O-O-O F-F-F-U-U-C-K-I-I-N-N-G-G W-W-W-E-E-I-I-R-R-R-D-D !!!!'
'No need to try so hard. Just think like you normally think. I'll read you.'
He tried again. 'Is that better?'
'You're getting there.'
'Holy fucking Jesus, I don't believe this!'
'Listen,' I told him, 'you're not the only one who feels a little strange. Believe me, this isn't how I'd planned on spending my life either. To tell you the truth, I'm anxious to do something about it — and soon.'
'I need a drink,' he said.
'I don't think that's a good idea in your present frame of mind.'
'I don't give a fuck what you think!' he snapped back, pulling off the road and into the parking lot of a bar called 'The Bottom Line' that neither of us had been into before. 'Come on — I'll buy you one!' He thought the line but laughed out loud, a bitter, ugly laugh.
'Just be careful,' I said. 'You're angry, you're irrational, you're vulnerable. If you get drunk I can't help you. You're going to pick an argument or a fight just out of frustration, and you'll wind up getting the shit kicked out of you or worse.' I was really concerned about the way I could feel things going.
He pushed open the double door with a gunfighter's bravado and squinted to accustom his eyes to the gloom. The place was empty except for a sallow barman with greasy slicked-back hair and a body which seemed to fall in ever-looser folds from his forehead down.
'It's okay,' Richard said, 'there's nobody here anyway.'
'We tend to get a little busier between five and six,' said the barman, pushing aside the newspaper he'd been reading as though it were a heavy weight.
Richard realised that he'd spoken out loud again when he'd intended only to speak to me. It gave him a jolt. 'Give me a gin martini,' he said.
'Straight up, or on the rocks?'
'Straight up, with a twist.' He hauled himself on to a stool while the barman worked.
'It's okay,' he said to me, keeping the conversation properly internalised this time, 'I'm on top of i
t, I'm just going to have the one.' Then, as though to show both himself and me that he could handle the new-found complexity of his situation with perfect command, he said aloud to the barman: 'Have one yourself.'
'Thanks.' He dropped Richard's change into a jug on a shelf and pushed his martini across the bar top on a coaster. His professional sixth sense told him that this customer didn't want to talk, so he went back to his newspaper and left Richard to himself.
'If you can hold it down to one,' I said, trying not to nag, but feeling obliged none the less to press my case, 'that's fine. It'll help you relax and think straight. Two will screw you up. Believe me.'
Richard sipped his martini. It tasted good. He didn't answer me directly. His thoughts were moving too fast for me to follow them all. I wasn't even sure what direction he was taking through them. Eventually, however, he formed a clear sentence and aimed it in my direction. 'I thought you'd gone away, Rick. I thought I was cured.' There was a soulful, sad quality in the thought. I felt suddenly, unexpectedly, sorry for him.
'There was nothing to be cured of,' I told him as firmly as I could. 'You're as sane as the next man, and so am I.'
'I wouldn't like to have to persuade Roger Killanin of that.'
'You won't have to — not if you're sensible.'
'And what exactly does "sensible" mean in this context? Remembering not to mention to anybody that I'm nuts?'
'You're not nuts! Just get rid of that idea!'
'I'm talking to a voice in my head. That's nuts by anybody's definition!'
'Not necessarily. For one thing, I'm acting as a restraining influence on you right now. The voices that nuts hear tell them to kill people or blow up buildings. Have you ever heard of one saying he's got the Voice of Reason in his head, talking him out of doing something violent?'
He took the point grudgingly. 'I suppose you're right. I might have killed them both but for you.'
'And now you'd be sitting in jail watching the rest of your life go down the tubes.' I was pushing my advantage as hard as I could, trying to keep him under my control without provoking resentment.
'But you put me up to it,' he said suddenly, accusingly. 'You made me suspicious. It was you, wasn't it?'
'In a manner of speaking,' I admitted. I was anxious to play down this part of my role. 'I was the one who heard that phone call, not you. I guess I pointed you in a certain direction. Maybe I shouldn't have. If so, I'm sorry. But put yourself in my position. What would you have done?'
He thought this over. It was a reasonable point, and he was, despite all my reservations about him, a reasonable man. 'I guess I might have done the same. Anyway, that's history. The question is, what do we do now?'
'About them? In my view, nothing. Above all, nothing hasty. You know what I think? I think this affair is one of those things that happens between friends who get too close and . . . something gets out of hand. I think Anne loves you. I think Harold in his way loves you. I'm willing to bet they both feel guilty as hell about this whole thing.'
'And that makes it all right?'
'Of course not. But sometimes a thing like this just has to run its course. Give it a chance to blow over. Human beings can do irrational, crazy, sometimes cruel things. They hurt people they don't want to hurt. Sometimes it's the people who get hurt who have to show some understanding — and, above all, some discretion.'
'I don't know how you expect me to forget this whole thing. Or forgive.'
'I don't. I'm just saying give it time. Give yourself time. I guarantee, whatever you do in haste you will live to regret.'
He finished his drink and sat there for a while, his mind still in turmoil. The barman, fortunately, was too indifferent even to ask him if he wanted another. He would certainly have said yes, a double, and that would have been bad news.
'Please believe me,' I said, 'I'm trying to persuade you what's best for you.' Actually it was true. I had come to realise that in his way, which wasn't quite my way, but near enough so I could sympathise with him, he did love her. Her faithfulness mattered deeply. He thought of her as an ally and a soul mate, just as he thought of Harold as someone whose friendship defined the meaning of the word.
And now this. It was, I knew, as close to unbearable for him as it would have been in my world for me. 'Whatever has happened,' I went on, 'you can only make it worse by going berserk and tearing your life up by the roots.'
I didn't know what else to say. I could do no more for him. I tried to read his thoughts, but they were swamped in such a torrent of pain and confusion that it was impossible. So I let him be.
After a while he made an effort — in fact, I'm forced to say, an heroic effort — to pull himself together. He pushed away his empty glass and slid off his stool. 'I'll give it a try,' he said aloud, unthinking, and started for the exit.
'You do that, pal,' said the barman, not even glancing up from his paper.
***
That night they were going to a fund-raiser for the opera. When Anne got home Richard was in the shower. When she entered the bathroom, he was in the dressing room getting into his tuxedo. By the time she started dressing he was watching the evening news in the bedroom, but by the time she sat down before her mirror he had moved into the living room. Somewhere along the way they kissed briefly and lied about their day.
In the car he put Vivaldi on the CD. Outwardly he was calm and a little bored, as she might have expected, by the prospect of the evening ahead. Inwardly both he and I were marvelling at Anne's cool self-control. There she was, fresh (if that was the word) from the ithyphallic delights of Balthazar's Motel, her senses presumably still resonating from those hours of fierce, adulterous carnality, now sitting next to him in the car and chatting inconsequentially about Mabel Dodge-Bryan's seating plan and how it had had to be revised five times as several big cheques for the building fund came in late.
'It's just possible, isn't it,' I found myself thinking, 'that nothing untoward was actually going on between them? Aren't we jumping to conclusions on relatively little evidence?'
This had been a private reflection and not meant for Richard, but when a loud snort of incredulity burst involuntarily from his lips I realised that he was becoming almost as deft at reading my thoughts as I was his.
Anne looked at him, startled, and he tried to disguise the outburst as a coughing fit. 'Are you all right?' she asked, with genuine-seeming concern. He assured her he was, and blew his nose unnecessarily, while growling inwardly at me: 'You're crazier than I am if you think that!'
I hurriedly apologised for the thought, and congratulated him on his alertness. 'Incidentally,' I continued, 'there's one thing we should talk about before we arrive. Harold's going to be there tonight.' I only knew this because he knew it, and I was aware that he had pushed the fact to the back of his mind. I thought it better we should deal with it and be prepared for the encounter.
'I haven't forgotten,' he informed me brusquely.
'Hadn't you better decide how you're going to behave towards him?'
'I'll behave just as I always do.'
'Okay. I'm sure you'll handle it.' I would have liked to have felt more sure, but thought it better to boost his confidence rather than undermine it by harping on the point. In the event, I must say that he was as good as his word. He and Harold, fortunately, only had time to exchange the briefest of greetings before he was whisked off by Mabel Dodge-Bryan to meet the guest of honour, a short, pinch-faced Hungarian conductor whose features he had seen on the covers of record albums, compact discs and scandal sheets for as long as he could remember.
At dinner Richard was seated on the top table between a UN Ambassador's widow, reputedly worth three billion, and the conductor's charming twenty-one-year-old sixth wife. Anne was prestigiously seated a few places along on the conductor's left. Harold was on a more modest secondary table. Throughout the evening Richard kept a discreet watch on both of them, looking for knowing glances, little smiles, or any of the tell-tale signs of secret intimacy
. But there was nothing.
'You've got to hand it to them,' he said to me, 'they're very good.'
I agreed. It was impressive. Credit where credit's due.
The drive home was uneventful. Anne announced that she was tired — he resisted an impulse to say he wasn't surprised — and put her seat back and closed her eyes. Forty minutes later they were in bed, Anne already asleep, and Richard staring up at what little he could see of the ceiling. I remained absolutely quiet, in a state of something like suspended animation. I didn't want to start up a conversation and hoped he wouldn't. But after a while his thoughts began to cast around in search of me.
'Rick? Are you there?'
'Of course I'm here.'
'Can I talk to you?'
'Why don't you try to get some sleep?'
'I can't.'
I knew what was coming and I really didn't want to get into it. But I had no choice. I let him tell me in his own way.
'I've got such a hard-on. A real fucking boner.'
I was aware of that, and told him so.
'Well?'
'Well what? I don't know what you expect me to do about it.'
'What do you think I should do?'
'I don't know. You could jerk off very quietly without waking her.'
'I'm embarrassed with you there.'
'You don't have to be — but I understand. Try thinking about something else.'
'I can't. I want . . . I want . . . '
'I know what you want.'
The Man Who Turned Into Himself Page 9