“That’s nice.”
“So things aren’t as bleak as you may believe.”
“It serves my purposes to feel that I am singled out. I get mad. Which serves to get me out of bed in the morning.”
“Do you remember my cousin Danny?”
“Not really.”
“Well, he wants to know if you can use an irrigator.”
“I want to hold you and kiss you.”
“You stop this right now.”
“We don’t need an irrigator. We put in a wheel-line sprinkler and we don’t use it. We just write it off. Lying there, it underscores the nothing-is-real atmosphere that people on holiday demand. Your cousin Danny would ruin that.”
“You’re not kidding about the atmosphere. I’ve seen some lulus around that spring.”
“I know.”
“But I also noticed a lot of the old local yokels.”
“They get to have it both ways. Their thing is to come just out of curiosity, night after night. I humor them. We elbow each other in the ribs. We point. They keep coming back. I specialize in catering to the big-spending local dipso. If I didn’t have the out-of-towners, I’d have to hire topless dancers.”
A long and awkward silence followed, maybe not awkward but full of something that brought pain without impatience. So it was a question of where it would end. Finally Lucien broke the quiet. “Why can’t we just see each other in a normal kind of way?”
“Because we had that. And you left it. It has not returned just because we occupy the same real estate at the moment. I’m surprised you asked that question.”
“You’re surprised that I asked that question?”
“Yes, because it implies that I am either stupid or have no memory.”
“I’m very much alone, Suzanne,” Lucien said and was immediately sorry for even having tested this lame idea out loud. He received an actual Bronx cheer. “I’m coming over,” he said and hung up.
When he got to the White Cottage, Suzanne let him in and said, “Will someone tell me why I’m even opening this door?” Lucien swept her into his arms and held her tight. His hands slid down over the roundness of her buttocks and felt them grow solid. He sensed himself getting suddenly hard. At least it will have something other to do than soak my foot through the top of my shoe, he thought confidently.
“I’m not going to fuck you,” she said.
“Oh, yes you are.”
“Oh, no I’m not.” Her pelvis was firm and unmoving against him. He had never wanted to make love with anybody so much in his life. He couldn’t remember how it had been with her because he had never really cared.
She planted the tips of her ten fingernails against his chest lightly and pushed him away. He glanced down. His nicely fitted slacks had a grim off-center bulge in them, and there was a spot too. Love.
Suzanne’s eyes flickered away. Lucien remembered when she was a virgin. Virgins are bores, he thought, like people with overpriced houses. I suppose we could show you the living room; but we’re not even sure we want to sell and we’re very particular about the buyer. Lucien remembered Suzanne’s virginity as something that one approached like a root canal. Against the precociously carnal Emily it seemed a little sappy.
So instead they had tea. Suzanne seemed so beautiful that Lucien stared too much and made gestures that were either not appropriate or off in their timing. The wind blew the door open and a strange dog came in while they watched. He drank from the spring and turned a gaunt brindle muzzle toward them coolly. When Lucien tried to shoo him, he merely watched, then left at his own speed, jogging angularly out through the door again.
15
The four nannies came up from Aspen in a chartered plane. Lucien met them and helped throw their numerous pieces of luggage into the carryall. The pilot barely emerged from the cockpit to open the wing compartments. He looked like he had been through hell and seen all its famous inconveniences. He got back into the plane and stared saucer-eyed at the four ladies. The oldest of them, a girl of nearly thirty, wore an old prairie skirt and a T-shirt that said
ASPEN, COLORADO.
JEWS IN FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE.
The shirt made Lucien nervous. She took the lead conversationally and told Lucien that Montana was great, really great, she couldn’t tell him how great. Two of the others looked to be sisters, early twenties, Eastern Mediterranean-looking. The last was almost silent, and when she remarked on what a nice day it was, she did so in an Australian accent. She wore Zuni jewelry and loud lipstick, hot pink. All bore the same high-strung, peaked quality that Lucien associated with the end of civilization as we know it.
He took them to the spring, checked them in and followed from a discreet distance as McCourtney showed them their rooms. Each tore into the contents of her luggage, then closed the door. It must have been very exciting luggage. The eldest nanny leaned out past McCourtney and called down the corridor to Lucien, “I’m Freddy. Ring me up when nothing’s happening. I’m a light sleeper. And, you know, whatever.”
Late that night Wick Tompkins came out and asked Lucien to have a drink with him. They sat off at one of the glass tables where you could hear the voices from the spring and where you could imagine anything from being at sea to being at an old sanitarium in the Alps. Wick took out a cigarette and tapped it tight against the table, reversed it, tapped the other end and then set it between the edges of his teeth. He struck a match and gazed at Lucien.
“Remember that guy Emily ran off with?”
“W. T. Austinberry,” said Lucien. “I do indeed.”
Wick lit his cigarette. “Pretty-boy type.”
“Only compared to us.”
“What was your impression of him?”
“My impression? I don’t know. Kind of a harmless cat, y’know. But not so bad. Why?”
“Smart?”
“Uh, not too smart.”
“That’s right,” said Wick. “Not too smart.”
“What are we driving at, Wick?”
“Emily shot him.”
“Dead?”
“M-hm.”
Lucien got the old sick heart back. He just wouldn’t believe it. “Where is she?”
“Turks and Caicos.”
“What’s that?”
“A little island country.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“What else? Avoiding extradition.”
“How do you know this, Wick?”
“Why, she called. She needs five thousand dollars. I gather that she has plenty of money but is embarrassed temporarily because of sudden moving.”
Lucien wiggled his hand in the air for another round.
“Send it,” he said. Then he gave his small smile that meant the discussion was closed. Wick sighed in resignation and made himself a note.
“I love you, I hate you,” said Wick. “But I can’t save you from yourself.”
It was quite late by the time Lucien walked Wick to his car. Wick looked back through the side window with a sad, uncomprehending smile and drove away, red tail-lights flicking on and off tentatively as Wick tried to make out the exit. Lucien went inside, wondering what terrible thing Austinberry must have done to make Emily take his life; absolutely no one was giving her a chance. She was like a deer being run by a pack of wild dogs.
He picked up the in-house phone and rang Freddy. He had feared waking her, but she was unbelievably wide awake. “Give me five minutes,” she said. “Walk in and, whatever.”
Lucien went behind the bar first and made himself a Stolie and tonic. He walked out to the edge of the spring. An elderly couple circled in each other’s arms, dancing a musicless waltz in the night-blue depths like old and beautiful love on the rim of eternity. This is where we first made love, thought Lucien, my fugitive and I.