Hudson coughed lightly into his fist. With his pointer finger he dug out the tobacco from his lip and flicked it over the side.
“So, what sort of game are we playing?” Ezra asked. He imagined the depth of the water beneath him, how much would fill in over his head were his feet to touch bottom.
“No games. This is just a balancing of the scales.”
“Adultery weighs the same as murder?”
“Who said anything about murder?”
Ezra rowed. Grant was looking out to the left at something, palming the pistol on his knee. He didn’t look like a famous movie producer, here in this small boat, with his shorts and stocky legs and bare feet. He looked like a suburban retiree, a snowbird from Arizona, fresh from the golf course. But his shoulders were broad. If it came to a fight, he might be difficult to take down. Ezra’s thoughts were interrupted by a scratching beneath the boat. Shark? He glanced to the side and could make out the shape of orb clusters on the surface in the dim light. Kelp heads. He wondered how many of them it would take to keep someone afloat. He could still hear the fuzz of waves breaking on shore. The lights on the property blinked over Hudson’s shoulder.
“Beautiful night,” Hudson said.
“Remind me again what we’re doing.”
“So very impatient. Fine, let’s have some fun. I’ll let you take a guess, for being such a good chauffer and for doing such a fine job with the grounds. And I’ll make it easier on you if you’re right.”
“You’re going to make me swim for it.”
Grant laughed. “Good! But that was too easy. Only worth half a mile.”
Ezra was in good shape, but yard work wasn’t swimming. “How many miles are we talking about here?”
“Up to you.” Hudson stared at him. “Once again, I have to ask the question, because it’s out there. Why are you a gardener?”
“The same reason you’re a movie producer.”
“Enlighten me.”
Ezra paused, took a stroke back out, and shrugged. All of a sudden, this all felt funny. It occurred to Ezra that he had an advantage here, and the advantage was this: Hudson already thought he knew him. If this was a game, he might as well play it. “To spite my parents.”
In the dark, Ezra imagined Hudson’s eyes flinching. Had he hit a target? This was the first crack he’d seen. Then Grant smiled, chuckled, and was back to his usual self. “Paging Dr. Freud. Where’s your trim little tennis beard?”
“It’s back with my Birkenstocks.”
“I can see the tan lines on your feet. But yes, parents. Who gave them the right to bring you and me into the world? We certainly didn’t ask for it.”
Ezra shrugged. “Why does a shrub produce pollen and seeds?”
“Why, indeed. And now I understand more why you haven’t done anything with your life. Being nothing has preserved your dream of being special. If you’re not misunderstood, miscast, the victim of your own tragedy, then what are you? Conventional. Which is, to you, unacceptable—”
Ezra said nothing, just did his best to appear as though he was listening. But trying not to be conventional? Please. Conventional was what he’d wished he could be his entire life: the norm by which everyone else judged themselves as different. That way, no one would ever question whether he belonged, and he could finally feel free to be the same on the outside as he was on the inside. But now? With Hudson holding forth with a gun in his hand, in the process of executing some elaborate form of revenge? All of that business about belonging seemed precious, if not absurd. The tanned grasses on the property he kept were starved for water, not fertilizer.
He needed to survive. So, as Hudson held forth, he shifted his grip on the oars, so that they were now slicing through the water a bit sideways instead of pressing full against the current.
“—your parents, your teachers, and everyone else insisted you were special. You were made to understand this, but at some point you realized that, in fact, you were not. Decent looks, decent smarts, decent talent—nothing more. But—and here’s the kicker, Ezra, hold on to your seat—rather than accepting that everyone around you was wrong about you, rather than embracing your lot in life, you realized a different way you could be special. You might not have had what it took to become famous on your own merit, but you could enjoy the infamy of victimhood.”
Grant stopped and let that sit for effect. Ezra took a few full strokes so as not to tip Grant off to what he was doing with the oars, as they’d slowed down dramatically.
“No, not victims,” Grant said. “What do they call them now? Ah yes. Survivors. You might not have had what it takes to go on your own quest, but you could survive someone else’s. All you needed was a victimizer, and lo-and-behold, one appeared, then another, and another, and you took what they had to offer and waited. But then something even more terrible happened. Gasp! You realized that your victimhood relative to others was also conventional. You were a survivor of only garden-variety misdeeds—pardon the pun—by minor villains. So, you began taking risks. Trying to lure a big fish in to tear you apart and make you famous. Eventually, you arrived here, in the land of big fish, to play the most obvious of roles: the pool boy. Congratulations. Here I am. Your shark.”
“Funny,” Ezra said. “I was always under the impression that I’d come here to escape my past.”
“The greatest con artist is one’s own mind.”
Ezra pretended to let that all sink in. But at the same time, he found that it was, in fact, sinking in. Sure, with his life at hazard, this all seemed absurd, but what about the years—hell, the decade—that he’d spent waiting? And for what?
“This should do,” Hudson said. “I can tell you’re thinking—”
A swell rolled beneath them; above coughed a jetliner banking into an airport. Other than that, the only action was tiny waves lapping against the boat.
“—and now, Ezra, you at least begin to see my reasoning. If you were a bigger fish, maybe I’d just bury you.”
“You have experience with that?”
“This in particular? You ask because you want more proof from me that you are special. You’re like Sybil—”
Ezra wished he’d kept his mouth shut. A few more misplaced words and Grant might just make it ten miles.
“—she has this effect on people, you’ve realized,” Grant said. “Making them believe they are the only ones in the world that matter. That quality made her rich. That quality made you her boy.” Grant took the pistol, uncocked it, and stuffed it into the holster on his lower back. “But no, Ezra, I’m not going to shoot you. I’m going to let you prove my point.
“You see, as I was watching television in your living room I made a little bet with myself. I gave it 80/20 that once we got out here, if I had a pistol loaded and cocked, you would jump out of the boat without a fuss. You would once again confirm your role of victim, trajectory unchanged. But those odds were boring. It would be too easy. So instead, I decided to make it 60/40 by holstering the gun. One of us will have to swim to shore. The other will row. And now, as they say, it’s your move.” He patted his hands on his knees and watched.
“So, what, we’re supposed to fight?” Ezra wished that rage he’d felt in the car, when taking down Grant felt like just a matter of letting his feelings escape, was still inside of him.
“Up to you. Or you could just jump out and swim.”
They both stayed still for a moment, silent. Ezra kept waiting for something to happen. But it didn’t. His hands were starting to shake. “This is ridiculous.”
Grant started laughing. “You don’t know what to do, do you? Or you know exactly what you have to do, but it goes against everything you’ve told yourself you are. I’m an old man, fat from the cream and honey of a privileged life far beyond what most humans can even dare to imagine. I haven’t labored with anything but my mind for decades. Surely you’re the one with the advantage.”
The feeling wasn’t there. He needed to keep talking. “Fine, you win. Just row us b
ack to shore. You’re the bigger man here.”
“Of course I’m the bigger man here. But this isn’t about me. Ezra, I’m not kidding: only one of us is going back.”
“If I come back with you drowned, who do you think is going to get blamed?”
“How will they know?”
“Sybil.”
“She knows that if you come back I most likely will not. She’s to cover for you and say you spent the entire night with her.”
“Sure she is.”
“Why do you think we drove your car? You row to shore, replace the boat where you found it, and drive back to the estate. She tells the authorities that I drove here on my own. Remember, she picked me up from the airport—my car’s in the garage on shore. As of an hour ago you were convinced she loved you. Maybe she does. Maybe she’s hoping it’s you and your shitty sedan that shows up in the driveway.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Are you willing to fight for her? Or is she just some fantasy you’ve experienced and are now bored of?”
“Fuck you.”
“For all you know, she’s waiting right now to see which brave knight will emerge victorious.”
“She’s already chosen,” Ezra said. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if she hadn’t.”
“Thank you,” Grant said. “You’ve officially woken up. Now, here we are. How would you like to proceed?”
He still didn’t know what to do. If he attacked Grant and won, he would always envision him struggling against the current, breathing salt water into his lungs, stout body fighting for air until he succumbed. He wasn’t that guy. Even if the chance to love Sybil was still possible, it wasn’t something he’d kill for, or die for. There were more important things than romance.
“Do you know what she told me?” Hudson asked.
Ezra said nothing. Keep him talking, he thought.
“That you fucked like a boy.”
“Sounds like she really wanted to convince you that I didn’t matter.”
“Said you had difficulty, at first, you know, making it happen.”
“And you bought that line too.”
“Said you needed training wheels.”
Ezra didn’t care about the sex. But for some reason he remembered that moment in the kitchen, when he’d come downstairs and surprised her, and she seemed really annoyed, at least at first. There couldn’t have been more to that, could there? He hadn’t seen her like that before. And then when they walked around the yard holding hands while his panic subsided, she got frustrated and fled. What did she really think of him?
“She said you really liked to talk about your hopes and dreams.”
The theater returned, the movie. The humiliation of seeing this joke played out on-screen. All of a sudden it was clear: she’d used him for her own pleasure and then used it to gain Grant Hudson’s devotion again. He was simply a pawn in a power game between them. He’d only serve to enhance whatever sick devotion their relationship demanded.
“But funny you mentioned parents,” Grant said. “Sybil said it was clear that what you really wanted was your mother.”
God, he was such a fool. He began to feel the anger returning, the rage.
“Is that why you’re special, Ezra? Did your momma hurt you when you were a poor little boy?”
Ezra took in all the humiliation and felt hot rage swell to his stomach, his shoulders, his throat, his eyes. He tried to stop, but couldn’t. He was crying.
“You’d been doing so well,” said Hudson, a little disgust now in his tone. “I thought this might be different.”
Ezra wiped his nose and hocked spit over the side. He felt a limitless strength. He could knock Hudson out with one punch, row back to shore, and disappear. Or be caught and put in jail for life. Or electrocuted. He didn’t care. Tears of rage blurred his eyes.
“That’s enough,” Grant said. “You’re disgusting me.”
Ezra gulped for air.
“Don’t be a little bitch.”
Sybil in the window, naked, with Hudson. His mother dying.
“Hey!” Hudson yelled.
Ezra looked up.
Hudson had pulled out the pistol and was holding the gun aloft, pointed just past Ezra’s head. “We’re done here.” Hudson’s lips were pursed thin. “No more games. Get the fuck over the side.”
Ezra was muscle. He wanted to taste blood. He lunged and grabbed Grant’s wrists, just as the pistol fired off to his right. He bore his head into Grant’s chest and bit as hard as he could. He could feel, beneath the fabric of the T-shirt, flesh giving way to his teeth, and then the salty warmth of blood. Grant screamed and pushed Ezra up to standing. The boat wavered. For a moment Ezra stood, in shock, of what he’d done. He stared at Grant and saw a desperate old man on the verge of being put out of his misery.
Grant hopped up and punched him flush on the nose—pain, shock, awe—and then countered with the pistol butt to the side of the head.
Ezra toppled.
SEVENTEEN
She’d been flying again in her dreams. This time there was no sun; the cloud layer brought out the grays in every color and every shadow. She could feel the mist speckling against her face as she flew over the steep canyons pouring into the foaming surf.
And then she woke.
“Get out of bed.” Grant’s voice, angry. Sybil thought it was still a stress dream, her mind boiling off the anxiety of the past week. But when she opened her eyes, the room was bright. She blinked and checked the clock—it was three in the morning. He whisked the sheets off her naked body. She covered herself instinctively. “You scared me.”
“Out,” he said.
She didn’t move. This had to be a joke. He’d done this before, pretending he was furious about something, refusing to elaborate on what. After a while, she’d realized that this was simply a tactic to make her panic and get her to confess to whatever came to mind. Overspending on clothes, unpaid traffic fines—there was never anything much. He’d relax and she’d feel ashamed, and angry, and relieved. But this? They’d just talked over everything that very afternoon. “Quit messing around.”
“I’m dead serious.”
Bluff. He was still trying to see how she would respond, trying to find out if she felt she deserved it. “I’m tired. Can’t we play this game in the morning?” She reached over the side of the bed and pulled up the sheets he’d thrown.
He walked over to the display case and palmed one of his awards, a metal cup, and threw it against the wall. It thunked before falling softly to the carpet. She almost laughed at how anticlimactic it sounded, but didn’t, because a suspicion was creeping over her that he was serious. The crevasses forming his forehead were tense but his eyes were far from fury. He touched his chest, where beneath his white shirt she could just make out a broad, rectangular bandage.
“What happened?” Even through his shirt she could see a dark stain.
He reached down and grabbed at her ankle. “Out.”
She kicked his hands away. What the hell had happened to his chest? And what the fuck was he doing? On the way home from the airport they’d made resolutions to take turns supporting each other in their careers, even to make time to vacation together. They’d discussed how critical it was that they become closer than they’d ever been before, in anticipation that he might transition into politics. And they’d made love and fallen asleep together. Or at least she thought they’d fallen asleep together. “What the hell’s going on?”
Grant walked into the dressing room and came out with a pile of clothes. “Get dressed. I’ll send the bags wherever you end up.”
“You’re injured.”
He didn’t respond.
“Quit this. What happened? What do you think you found out?” Had he gotten in a fight with Ezra? She tried to imagine that but couldn’t. But he wouldn’t look at her. She pulled the pile of clothes closer and buttressed her chest and stomach with them. “I’m serious. What’s wrong?”
“You’re smart. You know me. Or at least you should,” he said. “We’ve been married for over a decade.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Clearly.” He pulled out a leather chair plugged with brass buttons, flipped it around, and sat with his arms laid across the top of the backrest. “I think there’s an inevitability to everything that happens in the world, and this has been coming for a long time now.”
She hated it when he talked like this. “There’s nothing with Ezra. He’s gone. He never was anything. You know this.”
Grant said nothing.
“What, you’ve been talking to him?” She’d told Grant the truth, but she’d just assumed that Ezra would do the same thing. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing I wouldn’t have guessed. But he made me realize something important.” He scratched something on his hand, inspected it, and continued. “Realize is the wrong word. He confirmed it in my mind, something I’d known for years. That the time had come. It arrived once you presented me with your film.”
She shoved the clothes back across the bed at him. “Don’t you dare go back on your promise.”
“If your insistence to act and direct wasn’t so desperate, it might have been passable. But even the critics would see through it. I’m comfortable making money from that film, but I’m not comfortable with my spouse representing its cause.”
She backed against the headboard of the bed. “You’re scared. Scared that it might come back to bite you, in some stupid, political way.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Sybil rose up on her knees. “You said yourself that nobody cares what kind of film I do, so long as it isn’t porn.”
“I lied. I’d rather you do porn than this film.”
She threw a pillow at him. It glanced off his shoulder. “You’re a coward.”
“Am I? The film only represents my point. The problem is this: you’ve pitied yourself your whole life, for the precise reason no one pities you. You are a beautiful, talented, and now a wealthy woman, and you refuse to accept that people resent you for it. But not only that, deep down you realize that your situation on its own is not enough to garner what you really desire: sympathy. So you chose to capitalize on the tragic story of another woman in order to get what you want.”
The Hummingbirds Page 15