Best Friends

by Thomas Berger

  Kristin was listening with apparent interest, which was certainly not what Sam usually did. No doubt because of his own experience with Robin, he was made impatient by any mention of her name.

  “But I don’t want to knock my sister. She’s a good mother.”

  “Are you a good uncle?”

  “Her kids are pretty young to do much with or for, except bring toys. Robin seldom approves of my choices, which aren’t really mine but suggestions of the toy-store people or Mrs. Forsythe. My niece is just past two; my nephew, one. Robin is pregnant again.”

  Roy was aware that there were other diners in the restaurant, but he had not looked toward anyone else for purposes of identification. Now he was startled to hear his name spoken by a figure that had been moving past the table but had paused near his right elbow, a shadow in his peripheral vision.

  He reluctantly looked up and saw his attorney. “Oh, Sy.” He feinted rising from his chair and gestured toward Kristin, whom Alt was ignoring for some reason though, being Sam’s lawyer too, he surely knew her.

  But it appeared he did not. “I realize it’s no thrill to see me. But you might at least introduce your lovely companion.” Alt was a thickset man tightly swathed in a three-piece gray suit. He was less bald than he once had been, owing to a lengthy hairweaving process he had undergone the year before.

  “Kristin Grandy, Seymour Alt.”

  The name obviously meant nothing to Kristin, who offered the lawyer a gracious smile and a slender hand, as she might have done with a new depositor at the bank.

  Roy immediately understood that Sam, for whatever reason, had concealed from her his association with Alt, using another attorney for their joint concerns. He moved quickly to divert Sy, underestimating Alt’s talent, as demonstrated in a practice of many years, to assess situations and act according to his clients’, and of course his own, interests.

  “Congratulations, Mrs. Grandy. I’m sorry your husband had to postpone his part in the celebration, but at least his best friend can pinch-hit.” Alt displayed a seldom seen broad smile, which revealed a crooked lower tooth that struck a boyish note. He nodded at Roy and walked away.

  Kristin asked, “Who was that?”

  “He’s been my lawyer for years,” said Roy. “So he knows Sam. But I haven’t spoken with him since your promotion. No doubt all the local lawyers know about it.”

  “It doesn’t take effect till November first.”

  “You and Sam can have your own celebration then. This wasn’t planned as one, but it’s not a bad idea.”

  As if on cue, the waitress appeared. Rapidly glancing from one of them to the other, she asked, “Mr. Alt has ordered a bottle of champagne for you, with his compliments. At what point would you like me to bring it? With dessert?”

  Before Kristin could object, Roy told the young woman that it would be fine. To Kristin he said, “Do you mind? Sy is a sensitive sort, like most people who can be ruthless on demand. I don’t want to offend him. You don’t have to drink it.”

  She made a face of mock outrage. “You want it all for yourself.”

  “Great,” said Roy, taking it to mean she would cooperate; he could never tell. “Then we will make it a celebration.”

  Jonathan was quite right about the lamb shank, the tender flesh of which became almost molten in its sauce, and had he appeared again, Roy might have urged him to come tomorrow and collect the Lotus. But the sensitive chef had apparently been so miffed by Kristin’s rejection of the mousse of smoked trout that he was not seen again throughout the meal.

  It was Kristin who made note of his absence. She said, smirking sweetly, “That’s a pity, because the duck breast is heavenly. Do I see artichoke hearts with your lamb?”

  “I would give you a taste, but I’ve always seen you turn down Sam when he makes such offers.”

  “One of the many things you can do with a husband, or anyway one like Sam, which might be misinterpreted by someone else.” She rolled her eyes. “I wonder if even a wife could do that with Jonathan.”

  “He’s married?”

  “You thought he was gay, didn’t you? Sam does.”

  Roy swirled the cabernet in the long-stemmed, big-bowled glass. “I suppose so.”

  Kristin was laughing silently. “I think he’s probably not married, not that it would mean—”

  “That he’s homosexual,” Roy said quickly to prevent her possible embarrassment, though she had not indicated the onset of any.

  “It isn’t so much that I don’t like to eat off anyone else’s plate,” said Kristin. “I just don’t want to have to pay them back from mine.”

  Roy was amused by this confession, maybe even more so when he decided it was a lie. It occurred to him that he had never seen her drink from a glass or cup of Sam’s. Not that he was on watch for that sort of thing or any other particular of Kristin’s existence. He had always been at pains to ignore her as a woman, in the physical sense. That had been easier to manage with her than with someone of more ample proportions, assertive hair, vivid coloring, darker eyes; someone fuller and smaller. For example, long as he had known Francine, often as he had had her, tiresome as she could be, he had ever been keenly aware of her flesh, the swell of her breasts, which changed with the kind of fabric that covered them; the curve of her hip, different with each sort of turn she made, in fury, in mirth or depression or triumph.

  The waitress mounted a filled ice bucket on a chromium stand next to the table and twistingly embedded the bottle within the ice, then from a pocket produced a little card and gave it to Kristin.

  Kristin read the card and silently transferred it to Roy. Printed in the middle of the white rectangle was seymour alt, attorney at law, below which was handwritten: Complimenti! S.A.

  “Sy isn’t all bad.” Roy returned the card to Kristin’s side of the table.

  She was scowling. “What does Jonathan charge for Cristal? Two hundred?”

  Roy’s smile became more generous. “Cristal for Kristin would seem appropriate.”

  “I trust Alt won’t think I’m beholden to him.”

  “He’ll write it off as a promotional expense,” Roy said seriously, “and won’t have any expectation whatever, unless at some point he has a client whose interests are opposed to yours; then he’ll expect to defeat you. If on the other hand he represents you, he will expect to destroy your adversary. In the practice of his profession Sy is not hampered by a conscience. Yet at home he’s a family man, devoted to and even bullied by his wife and children. If you know him only in the one role, seeing the other would amaze you. You’d assume either one or the other was a hoax, but neither is.”

  “Maybe both are.”

  “That might be too deep for me.” Roy reached to give the champagne a twist in its frigid bath.

  “No, it isn’t,” Kristin said. “It’s just a new way to look at something familiar to you but not to me; therefore I’m free to do it. How well does he know Sam?”

  “I couldn’t say.” This was a true statement. He had a feeling that her fundamental concern was always for Sam, and the rest of what she said was treading water. The fact was she really loved Sam. Roy could not understand why that recognition tended to offend him. Sam was his best friend. How awful it would have been if she did not love the man. But the old question remained: What did she see in him?

  Kristin said without warning, “Tell you what, Roy. Before the bottle is opened. I’ve had all the wine I can drink tonight, and I don’t want the burden of having to butter up an attorney I don’t know and do justice to an extravagant champagne I didn’t order. I’ve already hurt Jonathan, whom I do know. Why not go for still another self-important personage?”

  Could this be some kind of old-fashioned bitterness against men when she had done so well in a realm they once dominated? You never saw a male bank officer nowadays.

  Wincing, Roy asked, “You want to send it back?”

  Kristin showed her first weakness: She tried to explain. “I should have turne
d it down earlier. I wasn’t going to until he sent his business card.”

  For the life of him, Roy could not see the unique bad taste in that: Alt was congratulating her on her success in what was certainly a business.

  He pushed his chair back. “I have to go say a word to Sy.”

  She weakened her position further. “I’m sorry if I put you in an awkward situation.”

  Roy stood up. “After all, he works for me, not vice versa. This is just a courtesy.”

  He went looking for the lawyer’s table and found it semicircled by one of the corner banquettes. Alt was with his wife, a handsome brunette of indeterminate age, with a high bosom and, had she been afoot, a regal carriage. In her presence Sy seemed more her lawyer than her husband.

  “Hi, Dorothea.”

  She gave him a radiant grin and continued to be the only person in his entire life who called him by his given first name, with which some years earlier he had supplied her, in answer to an idle question, at one of the Alts’ New Year’s Eve parties.

  “Royalton!”

  It took an awkward and uncomfortable lean to reach her for the double-cheek kiss, but she would expect no less. Alt meanwhile kept crunching on a seafood salad as if he were alone at an otherwise unoccupied table.

  “Who’s tonight’s beauty?” Dorothea asked, nodding vigorously in the appropriate direction.

  “The new branch manager at First United.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The bank,” said Roy. “She’s Sam Grandy’s wife.”

  “Well,” Dorothea said, smiling naughtily, “you might be more discreet about it.”

  Sy Alt looked up from his mollusks. “For a change Roy’s not being illicit, Dodie. Sam’s his close friend. Sam’s in the hospital.”

  Alt’s wife winked at Roy with a heavy-lidded eye. “I hope the change is not permanent. I want a whirl with you first. Sy’s only your lawyer.” She was one of those respectable women who enjoy such badinage.

  “Dorothea, I don’t think I’m man enough for you.” He spoke earnestly to Alt. “We’re taking a raincheck on the champagne, Sy. Kristin doesn’t feel good. I’ll tell Jonathan to hold the bottle for her and Sam to drink when he gets home.”

  “You don’t need my permission.”

  Roy saw that he was nevertheless offended; on the other hand, in Alt’s professional scheme of things—surely closer to Kristin’s than the mystique of a dilettante dealer in vintage cars—this might redound to her advantage.

  Kristin said nothing voluntarily on the way home, and after a few lame attempts to make conversation, Roy fell silent. She seemed weary, surely for good reason after the kind of business day he had never experienced, in fact would never have imagined now had he not yearned to be in sympathy with her. His own state was dispiritment. He felt he had failed utterly to connect with this remarkable woman, while having no sense of what such a connection should be. He did not desire her sexually, unless such hunger was unconscious. He had no longer any reason to seek her simple approval, which she had already explicitly given him.

  It was possible that what he yearned for had nothing personally to do with Kristin, and therefore she would not be able, with all the good will in the world, to provide it. The fact remained that she was his only hope.

  The Rolls-Royce glided up the driveway, as if it were under its own control, and around to the back door that the Grandys preferred as entrance. Roy got out and stood sentry as Kristin let herself into the lighted but presumably empty house.

  “Want me to check for intruders?” he asked only semiseriously.

  “The security system’s working. Sam’s got it programmed so that every bulb in the house is burning.”

  “He’ll be home tomorrow,” Roy stated as a matter of fact.

  Kristin firmly shook hands with him across the threshold. He remained outside. “I had a very nice time tonight,” she said. “Thank you, Roy.”

  This could not have been true. Perhaps it was due to his fury at the polite lie that Roy lost all command of himself. He dropped her hand with force, as if throwing it from him.

  “I’m sorry, Kristin. I’m in love with you.” Having said which he turned quickly so as not to witness her reaction, and leaped into the Silver Wraith and drove home, for once staying within the speed limit.

  9

  The telephone rang just as Roy returned from the shower in his gold terry-cloth robe.

  It was Sam’s jovial tenor. “Sorry to wake you up, kid, but I thought you’d want to know I’m home.”

  Roy glanced across at the chest of drawers, atop which the big red numerals of the digital clock displayed 10:21. “I ran for an hour, then worked out for another. I’ll bet the doctors told you to exercise. You’re home now, right?”

  “It’s asking enough of me to follow a diet,” said his best friend. “Listen, I don’t want to put the pressure on, but that deal we talked about? I’m ready to get going with it now this thing’s behind us.”

  He thereby demonstrated how many fallacies could be crammed into one short speech. Everything after the complaint about having to eat wisely was a blatant untruth or an asinine misstatement: He did of course want to apply maximum pressure; borrowing money from a friend was not a “deal”; that this “thing” was over, meaning a heart problem when you were grossly overweight and altogether sedentary, was a foolish and possibly lethal assumption. There was more justification, for once, for Sam’s habitual “us,” but it reminded Roy not of the brotherly connotation Sam intended but rather his marriage…. Roy had an aversion, this morning, to thinking of her except as an abstraction. It was the only means by which he could avoid remembering his demented performance of the evening before and not concluding he would today be less humiliated had he thrown up on her doorstep.

  “Roy? You still there?”

  “Let me put you on speaker. I’ve got to get dressed.”

  On the speakerphone Sam cavernously asked the whole room, “I guess you’ve cleared it with Sy by now?”

  Roy felt it necessary to raise his voice even though the built-in mike was sensitive. “I told you I didn’t think Sy would be the right lawyer for this.”

  “He’s already said he would handle it.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  “Just now.”

  Roy was in a quandary. Had Alt mentioned seeing him and Kristin at the restaurant? And if not, why not? For that matter, what about Kristin herself? Had she not confessed where and with whom she had had dinner last night? But what could be taken as illicit, in the simple truth? Nothing untoward had occurred, unless his momentary foolishness at the end of the evening, really a slip of the lip, could be so classified.

  “Well, if he says it’s okay…” This was the best Roy could do. He had dropped the towel and was naked at the moment, looking in the underwear drawer.

  “He’s a closemouthed son of a bitch,” said Sam. “I guess that’s what you want in a lawyer. He didn’t say a word about running into you and Kris at A Quarter to Nine.”

  Roy felt his face become warm and, probably, red. The only mirror in the room was affixed to the inside of the closed closet door.

  “He sent her a bottle of Kristal to celebrate her promotion.”

  “She didn’t mention it,” said Sam. “I guess she thought, with the Rolls, it would be too much. I didn’t let on to Sy that I knew about you guys having dinner. I guess he might now have the wrong impression of that.”

  “What do you mean?” Wearing only blue boxers, Roy opened the closet to find a pair of jeans. At a better time he might have had the will to ignore his image in the mirror. He never found his body a satisfactory sight, a common case with body builders though never suspected by others, who often wrongly believe them narcissists. One of the reasons he stopped going to communal gyms some years earlier was having to witness the self-criticism, a form of self-pity, of those who felt their physiques were below par, though this might well be superficially masked by a competitive bravado.
/>   Sam did not answer the question. “Did she drink much? Kris can’t hold her liquor.”

  “She sent the bottle back unopened,” said Roy, looking skeptically at his body, distending the deltoids. “Jonathan’s holding it till you and she come back.”

  “Still, it’s funny she never mentioned it. I don’t know why anybody should feel guilty.”

  Roy ignored the tendentious statement except to ask, “I gather she’s not there at the moment.”

  “Went to the drugstore for me,” said Sam. “So when are you coming over? It’s Saturday.”

  “I guess you don’t remember: I’m open on Saturday. I’ve got a client coming in from Maryland.”

  “She swears she doesn’t want the Rolls,” said Sam in his solipsist way, “but don’t unload it just yet, please.”

  “Be talking to you.” Roy was now close enough to hit the button that broke the connection.

  The Maryland car collector, whom Mrs. Forsythe had called “Leander” when making the appointment, was probably one of the many persons to whom Roy had given a business card at some vintage-automobile show, but he had no memory of the face that he saw in the window of the remarkable vehicle at the curb outside his showroom. Not that he inspected the man that carefully; he was distracted by the car.

  Too thrilled to drive the Silver Wraith down to the parking area, he pulled that suddenly modest, even humble conveyance to a stop behind a grandeur for which the world “royal” was far too small.

  He walked to the window of the right-hand-drive car, but after a quick glance therein, stared only at the coachwork. “My God, a Bugatti Royale? You drove it here?”

  “I did indeed, Mr. Courtright.”

  Roy remembered his manners. “Please forgive me. You must be Mr. Leander.” He shook hands through the window but still hardly looked at the man, immediately stepping back, swiveling his head, to survey the vast length of one of the largest automobiles ever built, almost fifteen feet, seven of which were taken by the hood. Yet its height, from running board to roof, seemed not much more than five feet. For all its size, the Type 41 was low and lean, a dark-blue silver-wheeled driving machine, whose straight-eight cylinders, equivalent to two Cadillac engines, would move its tonnage at 125 miles per hour—in 1928!