“I’ve been following your column on Slate.com,” Lindy declared to the whole table as much as to Christy Chauvin. (In fact, she had only read one piece on the Web that afternoon.) “I hear you write the damn thing yourself?”
“Well, of course I do,” Christy said.
“What are these black flecks in the sauce?” Hayward asked Maggie.
“Shiitake mushrooms, dear,” Maggie said, instantly regretting the dear. She’d meant it to be reassuring, but it struck her as being either patronizing or overly affectionate, she wasn’t sure which. Hayward seemed not to notice. He was momentarily lost in a transport of new flavors.
“I don’t think we’re moving in the direction of one sex,” Lindy said.
“Gee, that wasn’t my point at all in the column,” Christy said. “In fact, just the opposite.”
“There is a fish which inhabits the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra that is said to change its sex from male to female and back again as the population demands,” Swann said.
“The population of fish, you mean?” Cynthia Wise put in.
“It couldn’t be the people,” Maggie said.
“The headwaters are in Tibet,” Swann said. “The human population is insignificant.”
“What about the ones in the middle?” Reggie Chang asked.
“The people or the fish?” Maggie asked.
“The fish,” Reggie said. “The ones changing from sex to sex.”
“They must be very confused,” Lawrence Hayward said.
“’Tis a rapid transformation,” Swann said.
“Do fish have penises and vaginas?” asked Cynthia, always the amateur clinician.
“They have ovaries,” Maggie said brightly. “That’s how they make caviar.”
“It’s an awful lot of equipment to be growing and getting rid of and growing again,” Earl said. “Seems biologically profligate.”
“’Tis not gotten rid of,” Swann said. “The organism is born with both sets. One or the other shrinks to vestigial form, while the set of organs in demand swells to dominance.”
Maggie noted that Christy Chauvin wore a look of refined skepticism, as though Swann might possibly be making all this up.
“I thought your point in the article was that we’d all be gay in a hundred years,” Lindy said.
“God, no,” Christy said. “In a hundred years we’d more likely be cyborgs.”
“Is that anything like a troglodyte?” Cynthia asked.
“It’s a machine. A man-machine,” Hayward said as though his dreams were haunted by them.
“Anyway, I don’t think we’ll all be gay,” Lindy said. “It’s like a disease, this gay thing, infecting our culture, infecting families.”
Cynthia Wise coughed conspicuously behind her hand.
“Great champagne, Maggie,” Earl said. “Such tiny bubbles.”
“Well, nobody here’s gay, are we?” Lindy asked.
There was a conspicuous effort by some not to glance around the table.
“Count me out,” Hayward said with an arid chuckle. “I mean, since you asked.”
In attempting to look away from Hayward, the Wises found themselves both glancing inadvertently at Reggie Chang.
“Hey, I like girls!” he said, defensively. “Always have.”
“We didn’t mean—” Earl and Cynthia both said at once.
“Because, you see, my husband is among the infected,” Lindy interrupted, a strange reddish inner glow emanating from her face, as though the accumulated rage inside her was fissioning into heat and light, and then tears literally squirted from her eyes. “The sonofabitch turned faggot on me and wrecked my life, and I’m sick of reading about how great homos are and how normal it is, because it’s a fucking sickness.”
The rest of the company seemed as breathless as Lindy, except Christy Chauvin, who said, “Life is often tragic. Under the best circumstances life is difficult for everybody.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lindy said.
“That misfortune visits all of us at one time or another.”
“How would you know?” Lindy practically shrieked.
“I have an older brother who was born without arms or legs,” Christy said, as evenly as if she were a Sotheby’s executive describing an antique chair. “There was a certain sleeping pill in the 1960s that caused the most severe birth defects. Today Richard is a vice president of Angelus Electronics in the artificial intelligence division. He has a wife and a healthy normal child of his own. Anytime my own thoughts turn to the futility of existence, I think of him.”
The table was, of course, silenced. The dozens of burning votives deployed around the conservatory audibly hissed.
“I’m so ashamed of myself,” Lindy cried. “I’m such an asshole!” Racked by sobs, she kicked back her seat and seemed to stagger from the room.
“Almost bought Angelus a year ago,” Hayward remarked. “Greatly undervalued.”
As Lindy reeled out of the conservatory, the Yalie materialized with three bottles of 1989 Pomerol (L’Evangile) and cleared the first-course dishes. Swann got up and went about the table quickly filling wineglasses.
“There is a custom in the Gironde that when any member of a supper party receives a bad mussel, and eats it, everyone at the table must take a full glass of the vin d’hôte in sympathy. Cheers everybody!”
Swann threw back his leonine head and drained his glass. The others followed his instructions like common sailors quaffing their rations of grog, without a word, except Earl Wise, who said, “Ahhhhh,” when he was done.
The meal itself, of course, had a momentum of its own. The Yalie returned with plates of venison scallops slow-braised in port with sage accompanied by truffled orzo and pencil-size asparagus, the first of the year from down south.
“Mortification is a great clarifier,” Christy observed, and the warm humid room (like her native Savannah) rang with relieved laughter. The Yalie refilled their glasses. Swann toasted Maggie with extravagant praise that, in a most subtle and yet unmistakable way, conveyed his erotic admiration for her as well, and conversation resumed as though nothing more than a naughty child had disturbed its brilliance.
Maggie concluded, between the mesclun, pear, and walnut salad and the dessert of homemade petits fours and jam tarts (a nod to Swann), that Christy Chauvin had conducted herself more than admirably, downright impeccably, especially vis-à-vis Swann. The Englishman, for his part, and notwithstanding his skillful patter, seemed entirely consumed with Maggie (his hand having worked its way under her skirts to caress her sleekly waxed thighs and the furry mound between them) and regarded the stunning supermodel with no more attention than he showed the others. Lindy’s horrifying breakdown was all but forgotten until the company made for the door and their various waiting limousines at eleven o’clock and Christy whispered in Maggie’s ear, “Please tell your friend to call me sometime if she wants to talk. And thanks so much for a lovely home-cooked meal.”
“You ate like a champ.”
“Anorexia ain’t us,” Christy quipped. “I think we’ll be fast friends, Maggie.” And then she was gone into the night, with Earl, Cynthia, and Reggie fast behind. Hayward lingered awhile, and Maggie was not clear why. It was obvious that she was with Swann. The two of them were draped over each other like Siamese twins. Hayward asked to see the kitchen, so they went in there where the colossus of Wall Street goggled at the hanging pots and cooking implements like a boy in a hobby shop. Nina and the staff were long gone.
“You actually know how to use all this stuff?” he asked.
“I do.”
Hayward threw open the massive stainless-steel door of the Sub-Zero refrigerator. “Mind if I, uh … for the road?”
“Of course not.”
He seized a handful of petits fours and jammed them into the pocket of his silver-gray suit jacket.
“Oh, let me give you a napkin, at least—”
“Don’t bother. I throw these suits out,” he said,
beeping his chauffeur.
At the door moments later Hayward hesitated a moment, saying, “Let me buy you a meal sometime in the city, Maggie. I’m getting to know some good places.” He seemed oblivious to the fact of Swann. Swann looked amused.
“Thanks. You’re very kind,” Maggie said and watched Hayward duck into the back of an enormous limo the same color as his suit. When at last the two-hundred-year-old front door latch clicked shut, Swann was upon her hungrily, as if there had been no lobster tamales or venison. She had no opportunity to even look in on the forlorn Lindy. Swann gathered Maggie into his arms and carried her upstairs to the bedroom, where he went to work upon her with the determination of a Consolidated Edison jackhammer operator cleaving relentlessly through an obdurate layer of New York bedrock. His ability to recover from a completed act and recommence service astounded Maggie, though she understood her own experience to be extremely limited, having been a college bride.
8
Night Sounds
“I’m leaving for Venice a week from Tuesday,” Swann announced in the exhausted aftermath of their third coupling. For an instant, all the warmth of Maggie’s perfervid flesh ran cold and salmon seemed to leap up the fluids of her spine leaving icy sparks where they broke the surface. Swann added, “And I hope I can persuade you to come with me.”
“Dearest boy,” Maggie said, melting again. But then the cool light of her own intellect reimposed itself and the damp sensation returned to her exposed skin; she drew up the covers over the pale moons of her breasts. “I have so many obligations,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“Come for a week. I implore you. I beg you.”
“Isn’t it funny, I’ve never been to Venice.”
“How is that possible?”
“We could only travel to places where my husband could take his morning run. He said Venice was … too cluttered.”
“Oh, but Venice is divine. You must come. Come. Please come.”
“There’s so much to keep up with here. The gardens. My books. I’ll have to think, look at my calendar, check with Nina—why must you go?”
“I’m to star in a movie,” Swann said.
“A movie!”
“Oh, Maggie, I want so much to be an actor. I’m sure I can be a good one. A worthy one.”
“I’m sure you can, darling.”
“I am bombarded by scripts and hounded by directors. The scripts are all abysmal and the directors imbeciles—until now. I have scheduled a meeting with Franz Tesla, the director of This Rotten Earth. Do you know the film, Maggie?”
“Why, of course. Post-communist Budapest. The geese dead of industrial pollution. The boy with the broken balloon. So sad but … I don’t know … uplifting in a way. Say, didn’t it win some big prize?”
“Many. The Palm d’Or at Cannes; also a Best Foreign Film nomination at your Oscars—though not the blasted statue itself. There was a Swedish prize and something from Argentina as well.”
“How thrilling for you, darling. Can you tell me about the script? What’s the story?”
“Well, the title is Starvation. ’Tis about vampires.”
“Really?” Maggie said, her enthusiasm slipping a few microns.
“I play the main character, of course. Vampire-in-chief,” Swann said, laughing at himself. “All right, I see what you think, Maggie Darling, for I can read you like a menu through a hotel window. I know this sounds like idiotic rubbish on its face. But it’s a start in films, and I do so want to be an actor, and the script’s tolerably intelligent, and with this Tesla I feel that I am truly in able hands. Will you come for a week, even a few days, to see me off on this … this new career?”
“Yes. I’ll come,” Maggie said. Hearing the word from her own mouth sent her into such a hungry transport of carnal desire that she had Swann one more time, rising to a rapid summation after a few mere strokes of his raw but ready engine. Afterward, they slipped into a jungly realm of sleep.
When she woke up, it was still night. The digital clock registered 3:38. Swann didn’t snore so much as purr. Somewhere outside the bedroom she detected a muffled sound that might have been sobbing. Her heart sank as she recalled Lindy’s outburst at supper and imagined her old friend’s humiliation at her own behavior. There was a rhythmic, gasping aspect to the sound like someone struggling for breath that alarmed Maggie and caused her to sit halfway up in bed. There was a note of choking, too. But then the gasping, sobbing, and choking ceased and the house resounded once again with the silence of its great age overlaid by the cybernetic workings of its expensive mechanical systems. Maggie lay back, struck by the sexual perfumes that saturated the sheets. Swann purred on. She felt an urge to go to Lindy but wondered if it would only make Lindy feel worse to think she had awakened Maggie at such an ungodly hour. Staring into the darkness, worried and unable to find the leafy path back to slumber, Maggie heard a door creak open. She pictured Lindy in search of a stiff drink downstairs and thought, under the circumstances, they might have one together. Imagine Maggie’s surprise, then, after throwing on her plush red and black buffalo-checked robe and stealing quietly out of the bedroom, to discover Hooper in the hallway at the head of the stairs.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“Just came up to use the bathroom, Mom.”
“What’s wrong with the one out in the cottage?”
“I wanted to soak in the big tub.”
“Oh.”
“There’s just that dinky shower down there.”
“That shower is not dinky. It’s fully tiled, with the finest Swedish Skara showerhead, twenty-seven pinholes to the square inch.”
“I mean, compared to the tub up here.”
“Well, it’s apples and oranges,” Maggie said, growing irritated. The scent of sex hung between them like an unwhispered secret. It disconcerted Maggie to imagine what Hooper thought about her sleeping with Swann. She was equally troubled by her awareness that Hooper was perpetually drenched with the scent of Alison and that there were so many pheremones ricocheting about the hallway that merely standing there with the grown child of her womb seemed dangerously indecent.
“Well, then go use the tub,” Maggie said. It was at the other end of the hall, next to the North Woods guest room.
“I think I’ll just get going, since I woke you up and all,” Hooper mumbled.
“Hey, I’m up, you might as well.”
“I’ll come back in the morning or something.”
“Whatever you want to do is all right with me,” Maggie said with a sigh. “I’m going back to bed.” Something about the sound of the word bed agitated her further, and when she leaned forward to peck him good night on the cheek, she felt momentarily like a character out of the old Greek theater. It wasn’t until she shed her robe and crawled back next to the slumbering Swann that it even occurred to her that there might be any connection between the muffled sobs and gasps issuing from Lindy’s room and Hooper’s presence in the hall. The possibilities this connection raised seemed unspeakable.
Instead, she reached for the television remote and the wireless headphones that remained from the Kenneth years, when her chronic exasperation over his exploits had caused frequent spells of insomnia and she would sometimes divert herself with old movies. CNN was on. She caught the tail end of a report on the Russo-Chinese skirmishes around Blagoveshchensk. Commercials for home security systems and a tummy muscle tightener were followed by a story about a sniping on the Merritt Parkway that killed one driver with a gunshot to the head and left five others dead and seven badly injured when the shooting victim’s car jumped the median and smashed into three other cars. Trying to sound competent, the spokesman for the Connecticut state police nevertheless revealed that the authorities didn’t have a clue besides the caliber of the bullet.
“This is obviously a sick individual,” the police spokesman said, as though anointing the culprit with infamy might drive him out of his dark hiding place into the bright circle of celebrity glory aw
aiting him.
Part Five
Hugger-Mugger
1
Casting Call
Basilisk Pictures’s Boeing 747 was outfitted like a South Beach hotel in the high Art Deco mode, all melon and sea foam pastels and gleaming chrome. An aircraft that normally carried 238 frequent fliers had been redesigned in this case to accommodate a maximum of thirty passengers. The usual mummy-in-a-casket seats were replaced by overstuffed leather loungers and sofas in various configurations around coffee and dining tables, and at the center of the “main salon,” as it was called, stood an Art Deco billiard table. Most remarkable, according to Buddy Torkleson, Basilisk’s chief of production, the plane contained a hydraulic gyrostabilizer, which not only kept the cabin level as the plane banked and turned but also absorbed all the turbulence so there was barely any sensation of motion once the craft reached cruising altitude. Explaining the whole thing to Maggie, Torkleson said, “Think of a capsule suspended in a semiliquid gel inside a flying tube.”
Besides the main salon there was a formal dining room, a complete kitchen, a gym with ten Nautilus workout machines, a sauna, and six staterooms with full-size beds and private baths. The magnificent aircraft had originally been commissioned by the emir of Qatif, a gambling addict who wagered away the drilling rights to his little oil kingdom at the Circus of Nero blackjack table in Las Vegas. The plane, too, had been swallowed up in the black hole of his indebtedness but it later resurfaced, since the Circus of Nero hotel and casino happened to be subsidiaries of Behemoth Communications, which also owned Basilisk Pictures.
The cast of Starvation and its top crew members had boarded at Kennedy around 6 P.M. and were scheduled to arrive at Venice’s Marco Polo Airport at 7:40 A.M. Italy time. The passengers, besides Maggie Darling, Frederick Swann, director Franz Tesla, and producer Buddy Torkleson, included the featured players Sir Nigel McClewe, fifty-seven, lately winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the anthropophagous maniac in House of the Nine Lamps; Regina Hargrave, another British veteran of stage and screen, age unknown but rumored to be at least fifty-three; Steve Eddy, twenty-two, a TV teen heartthrob from the weekly series Westwood, who had successfully transitioned into feature films; Lisa Sorrell, twenty, who made a splash playing Dustin Hoffman’s daughter in Little Tree and a teenage prostitute in Strip Mall; Dawn Vickers, twenty-eight, considered to be “brilliant but a project”—meaning she was a temperamental bitch with box-office charisma—and Teddy Dane, forty-six, a dwarf who had knocked around television and movies since graduating from Yale, where the great Robert Brustein had once dared to cast him as Hamlet. Along with these players were Giovanni Scarpone, the production designer; Celia Danklow, costume designer; Stefan Wedekind, the first assistant director; and Ladislaus Pilis, the director of photography in every Franz Tesla picture from Sausage and Kisses to This Rotten Earth.
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