“Some friends are.”
“Strange place. What floor’s your friend on?”
“Fourth,” Nick said.
“Not him, then,” the man said. “I’m on the third, and some man cries all night.”
He sat down and opened the newspaper. There was not enough light in the lobby to read by. Nick played “The Sweetheart Tree,” forgot how it went halfway through, got up and went into the phone booth. It was narrow and high, and when he closed the wood door he felt like he was in a confessional.
“Father, I have sinned,” he whispered. “I have supplied already strung-out friends with Seconal, and I have been unfriendly to an Englishman who was probably only lonesome.”
He dialed his house. Ilena picked it up.
“Reconsider,” he said. “Come to dinner. We’re going to Mr. Chow’s. You love Chow’s.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to her,” Ilena said.
“Come on,” he said. “Go with us.”
“She’s always stoned.”
“Go with us,” he said.
llena sighed. “How was work?”
“Work was great. Exciting. Rewarding. All that I always hope work will be. The road manager for Barometric Pressure called to yell about there not being any chicken tacos in the band’s dressing room. Wanted to know whether I did or did not send a telegram to New York.”
“Well,” she said. “Now I’ve asked about work. Only fair that you ask me about the doctor.”
“I forgot,” he said. “How did it go?”
“The bastard cauterized my cervix without telling me he was going to do it.”
“God. That must have hurt.”
“I see why people go around stoned. I just don’t want to eat dinner with them.”
“Okay, Ilena. Did you walk Fathom?”
“Manuela just had him out. I threw the Frisbee for him half the afternoon.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“I can hardly stand up straight.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll see you later,” Ilena said.
He went out of the phone booth and walked up the stairs. Pretty women never liked other pretty women. He rang the buzzer outside Benton and Olivia’s room.
Benton opened the door in such a panic that Nick smiled, thinking he was clowning because Nick had told him earlier that he was too lethargic. It only took a few seconds to figure out it wasn’t a joke. Benton had on a white shirt hanging outside his jeans and a tie hanging over his shoulder. Olivia had on a dress and was sitting, still as a mummy, hands in her lap, in a chair with its back to the desk.
“You know that call? The phone call from Ena? You know what the message was? My brother’s dead. You know what the hotel told Ena days ago? That I’d checked out. She called back, and today they told her I was here. Wesley is dead.”
“Oh, Christ,” Nick said.
“He and a friend were on Lake Champlain. They drowned. In November, they were out in a boat on Lake Champlain. Today was the funeral. Why the hell did they tell her I’d checked out? It doesn’t matter anymore why they told her that.” Benton turned to Olivia. “Get up,” he said. “Pack.”
“There’s no point in my going,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I’ll fly to New York with you and go to the apartment.”
“Elizabeth would hate not to see you,” Benton said. “She likes to see you and clutch Jason from the hawk.”
“Elizabeth is at your mother’s?” Nick said.
“Elizabeth misses no opportunity to ingratiate herself with my family. They’re not at my mother’s. They’re at his house, in Weston, for some reason.”
“I thought he lived on Park Avenue.”
“He moved to Connecticut.” Benton slammed his suitcase shut. “For God’s sake, I’ve made plane reservations. Will you pack your suitcase?”
“I’ll drive you to the airport,” Nick said.
“God damn it,” Benton said, “I don’t mean to be ungracious, but I realize that, Nick.” Benton was packing Olivia’s suitcase. He looked at the bedside table and sighed and held the suitcase underneath it and swept everything in. He put a sign about the continental breakfast the hotel served back on the table.
“I really love you,” Olivia said, “and when something awful happens, you treat me like shit.”
Olivia got up and Nick put his arm around her shoulder and steered her toward the door. Benton came behind them, carrying both suitcases.
“You were lucky you could get a plane this close to Thanksgiving,” Nick said.
“I guess I was. Forgot it was Thanksgiving.”
“Maybe people don’t go home for Thanksgiving anymore,” Nick said.
Nick was remembering what Thanksgiving used to be like, and the good feeling he got as a child when the holidays came and it snowed. One Christmas his parents had given him an archery set, and he had talked his father into setting it up outside in the snow. His father had been drunk and had taken a fruit cake from the kitchen counter and put the round, flat cake on top of his head like a hat, and stood to the side of the target, tipping his fruitcake hat, yelling to Nick to shoot it off his head while his mother rapped on the window, gesturing them inside.
“I hope you enjoyed your stay,” the woman behind the desk said to Benton.
“Fine,” Benton said.
“How you doing?” Dennis Hopper said.
“Fine,” the woman behind the desk said. She reached around Benton and handed Dennis Hopper his mail.
The security guard was sitting on a chair drinking a Coke. He was staring at them. Nick hoped that by the time he got them to the airport Olivia would have stopped crying.
“Want to come East and liven up the wake?” Benton said to Nick.
“They don’t want to see me,” Olivia said. “Why can’t I go back to the apartment?”
“You’re who I live with. My brother just died. We’re going to be with my family.”
“I wish I could go,” Nick said. “I wish I could act like everybody else in my office — phone in and say I’m having an anxiety attack.”
“Come with us,” Olivia said, squeezing his hand. “Please.”
“I can’t just get on a plane,” he said.
“If there’s a seat,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “Are you serious?”
“I’m serious,” Benton said. “Olivia’s probably as serious as she gets on Valium.”
“That was nasty,” she said. “I’m not stoned.”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. Olivia looked at him. “About the plane, I mean,” he said.
“She misunderstands things when she’s stoned,” Benton said.
They got into Nick’s car and he pulled out onto the narrow, curving road behind the hotel. “I’ll call Ilena,” Nick said. “Are we going to miss the plane if I go back into the hotel?”
“We’ve got time,” Benton said. “Go on.”
He left the car running and went back into the hotel. The security guard was making funny whiny noises and shuffling across the floor, and the girl behind the desk was laughing. She saw him looking at them and called out: “It’s an imitation of one of the rabbits in Watership Down.”
The security guard, amused at his own routine, crossed his eyes and wiggled his nose.
The house in Weston was huge. It was a ten-room house on four acres, the back lawn bordered by massive fir trees, and in front of them thick vines growing large, oblong pumpkins. Around the yard were sunflowers, frost-struck, bent almost in half. Nick squatted to stare at one of their black faces.
He had seen the sunflowers curving in the moonlight when they arrived the night before and Benton’s mother, Ena, lit the yard with floodlights; the flowers were just outside the aura of light, and he had squinted before he was able to make out what they were. It was morning now, and he was examining one. He ran his fingers across its rough face.