Jeff smiled. "The rigors of ownership." His fiveroom condominium was elegantly furnished, but decidedly uncluttered.
"Exactly," Sean said, leading the way back upstairs.
"I love it." Jeff pronounced his verdict as they went through the kitchen.
"Thanks," Georgianne said, smiling. "So do I."
Fresh cans of beer in hand, Sean and Jeff went outside to sit on the patio. The Adirondack chairs were comfortable and looked recently painted. Jeff was going to say something about them, but decided not to-he didn't want to hear that Sean had made them himself.
They chatted about the winters, summer vacations, the Mets and the Dodgers, cars and computers. Sean didn't like computers, and on his home ground he was less reserved about saying so than he had been the previous evening. Jeff didn't bother arguing. He found it amusing and rather pathetic. He had the luxury of being on the cutting edge of technology. In the cellar, Jeff had seen a huge display of tools, but they were the old tools, the tools of the past. Still useful, of course, but undeniably quaint, as far as he was concerned. Sean struck him as one of those people whose idea of common sense is to go back to some simpler, earlier way of life. The only technology needed to accomplish this was H. G. Wells's time machine. Jeff could smile at this without being aware of the irony.
"You must come jogging with me," Sean said, re turning from the kitchen with more beer. 'I go out early in the morning. It's beautiful."
'No way," Jeff replied, setting the full can of lager next to the one he hadn't yet finished.
They heard a car stop in front of the house. A door slammed shut, and the car drove away. A minute later Georgianne came out to the patio with a teenager in tow.
"Jeff," she said, "I'd like you to meet our daughter, Bonnie." Her voice was proud, her smile radiant. "Bonnie, this is Mr. Lisker, a friend of mine from grammar school and high school."
"Jeffll do fine," he said, standing. His heart hammered in his chest, and he was afraid his face had changed color. "Hi. How are you?"
"Hi. Pleased to meet you."
The girl smiled shyly. She was stunning. She was an inch or so taller than her mother and she had her father's darker hair, but otherwise Bonnie Corcoran fulfilled in almost every way the twenty-year-old image of Georgianne in Jeff's mind. Breasts perky and girlish beneath a thin T-shirt, obviously no bra. Legs long and slender in tight designer jeans, a compact but definitely female ass that Jeff could hardly bear to look at. Most of all, the face and eyes, so like her mother's. Jeff had to make an effort not to stare at Bonnie, but he ached inside.
Can I have some wine?" Bonnie asked her father.
"All right," Sean said. Then, to Georgianne, "Water it down a bit for her, would you, hon?"
The women went inside.
"Did Georgianne tell me that Bonnie's about to graduate from high school?"
"That's right," Sean said. "And she's only seventeen."
"She's a beautiful girl."
"The price is more or less constant terror," Sean said. "You think it'll get better as a child gets older, but it doesn't. Just the opposite."
"I can imagine."
"Bonnie looks like any other teenager, and she is, in most respects, but God gave her a great brain. She's highly motivated and she seems to know exactly what she wants to do. Her SATs were fantastic."
"That's great," Jeff said. "Where is she going to school in September?"
"Harvard."
"Wow!"
"And they're paying just about everything, which is just as well, since I couldn't."
"What does she want to study?"
"Molecular biology." Sean had a helpless expression on his face. "She can tell you about it; I can't. My knowledge of biology is limited to giving electricshock treatment to dead frogs."
Jeff laughed. "Me too."
The four of them ate at a large redwood picnic table on the patio. The food was simply prepared but excellent. Cold shrimp, which they dipped in a spicy sauce, was followed by a platter of soft-shell crabs and a spinach salad with mushrooms and hot pieces of crispy bacon. For dessert they had chunks of watermelon that had spent the afternoon soaking in iced vodka.
Throughout the meal, Jeff and Georgianne took turns telling old high school stories. It was a kind of mutual self-indulgence, but Sean and Bonnie seemed to find it entertaining. Afterward, they sat back and relaxed. Then Georgianne went inside to prepare the coffee, and Sean followed her to mix some vodka-and-tonics.
"So...you're going to be an Ivy Leaguer in the fall," Jeff said to Bonnie. The girl nodded, smiling shyly again. "You'll like Boston, Cambridge-well, Cambridge might as well be a part of Boston," Jeff continued. "I've been there a couple of times."
Bonnie nodded her head enthusiastically. We went up for my interview, and we walked all around Harvard afterward. I really liked the look of it, but we didn't see much of the city. Cambridge was nice."
"You'll like it," he repeated.
There was a brief silence between them. Jeff felt he should say something more; he wanted to talk to the girl, but the words wouldn't come. Bonnie had a way of looking directly at him, open, almost expectant, and it had an effect on him. Jeff realized, amazingly, disturbingly, that he was unsure of himself. Was this what he had been like with Georgianne, years ago? Suddenly, it was hard to tell. The past and the present had merged into a moment of confusion.
"Mom says you live in L.A."
"Outside the city," Jeff said. "But close by. Just a short drive on the freeway."
"What's it like?"
"Like any other city," Jeff replied promptly, grateful that Bonnie had taken the lead. "But the state of mind is different. I don't think anyone has figured out what that is, yet."
Bonnie laughed, another trivial gesture that sent waves of delicious sensation through Jeff.
"That's just my residual New England prejudice," he added. "I really like L.A., and I wouldn't live anywhere else."
"I'd like to do my graduate work in California," Bonnie said. "Unless I end up liking Harvard so much I can't bear to leave it."
"Well, you certainly-"
"Are we in graduate school already?" Sean asked, returning with two tall glasses. "Here you are, Jeff."
"Thanks."
It was a strong drink, and Jeff wondered if Sean was trying to get him drunk. Not that he cared. He was annoyed with Sean anyhow. The conversation with Bonnie had just been getting off the ground, and now Sean had killed it. Jeff wanted to talk with the girl, but it was impossible with her father sitting in on every word. It didn't matter at all that Jeff really had very little to say to Bonnie. He had enjoyed being alone in her company, and now the spell was broken. There would probably never be another opportunity.
Perhaps it was that feeling of annoyance, in combination with the alcohol, that got him in the trouble that followed. Whatever the reason, by the time the coffee arrived, Jeff had agreed to accompany Sean to the Gorge at seven o'clock the next morning. They would jog together. It was madness, and Jeff didn't know why he'd been so foolish. The Gorge was a park, a stretch of countryside that jutted into Foxrock. Sean jogged there every morning. Jeff smoked and had no desire even to try running, but Sean talked, wheedled, dared him into it, convincing him that the Gorge was beautiful to see and promising that they'd mostly just walk anyway.
Later, Jeff would tell himself that the real reason he had agreed to jog with Sean was because it would give him one more chance to see Georgianne and Bonnie. The plan was that they'd go out at seven, run or walk for a while, and then return to the house for breakfast. He thought he'd drive down to New York in the afternoon. He had reached the point where he wanted to leave Danbury.
It was getting dark and cool outside by the time they'd finished their coffee. Bonnie cleared the table and cleaned up in the kitchen while her parents sat in the living room with Jeff. Georgianne dug out some albums of old photographs, which they looked through with a mixture of disbelief and amused embarrassment. She had a lot of pictures Mike Rollins had taken-he had been a Polaroid enthusiast. The result, Jeff discovered for the first time, was a number of snapshots of himself with two girls, his date at the time and Georgianne. He was fascinated to look at them now. How odd he appeared to himself! Weedy, angular, stiff. But there was something nice about it. He wished he had some of these photos, because he saw it would be possible to crop out the other girl, leaving pictures of himself with Georgianne, alone.