“Because of your deliberate cultivation of destructiveness, of your death-wish, not to mention your outhouse sexuality,” said Rita, still smiling, and addressing Sutter through the engineer. “Every man to his own taste but you can bloody well leave Jamie out of it.”
“What do you think I would do?” Sutter asked.
“I know what you have done.”
“Jamie also spoke of going down to Val’s,” said the engineer for reasons of his own. He could not quite make this pair out and wished to get another fix on them. Val was his triangulation point.
“Val,” said Rita nodding. “Yes, between the two of you, Sutter and Val, you could dispose of him very nicely. You’d kill him off in three weeks and Val would send his soul to heaven. If you don’t mind I shall continue to minister to the living.”
“Kill him off?” Sutter frowned but still could not tear his vacant eye from the engineer. “I understood he was in a remission.”
“He was.”
“What’s his white count?”
“Eighteen thousand.”
“How many immature forms?”
“Twenty percent.”
“What’s he on?”
“Prednisone.”
“Wasn’t he on Aminopterin?”
“That was a year ago.”
“What’s his red count?”
“Just under three million.”
“Is his spleen palpable?”
“That’s what I like about you and your sister,” said Rita.
“What’s that?”
“Your great concern for Jamie, one for his body, the other for his soul. The only trouble is your interest is somewhat periodic.”
“That’s what interests me,” said Sutter. “Your interest, I mean.”
“Put up your knife, you bastard. You no longer bother me.”
They quarreled with the skillful absent-minded malice of married couples. Instead of taking offense, they nodded sleepily and even smiled.
“What is it you want this young man to do?” Sutter asked, shaking his head to rouse himself.
“My house in Tesuque is open,” said Rita. “Teresita is there to cook. The Michelins are next door. I have even determined that they could transfer to the college in Santa Fe without loss of credit — at the end of this semester.”
“Who are the Michelins?” asked the engineer.
“A duo piano team,” said Sutter. “Why don’t you take him out yourself, Rita?”
“You persuade him to go and I will,” said Rita listlessly.
“Rita,” said Sutter in the same mild temper which the engineer had not yet put down to ordinary friendliness or pluperfect malice, “what do you really care what happens to Jimmy?”
“I care.”
“Tell me honestly what difference it makes to you whether Jimmy lives or dies.”
The engineer was shocked but Rita replied routinely. “You know very well there is no use in my answering you. Except to say that there is such a thing as concern and there is such a thing as preference for life over death. I do not desire death, mine, yours, or Jamie’s. I do not desire your version of fun and games. I desire for Jamie that he achieve as much self-fulfillment as he can in the little time he has. I desire for him beauty and joy, not death.”
“That is death,” said Sutter.
“You see, Bill,” said Rita, smiling but still unfocused.
“I’m not sure,” said the engineer, frowning. “But mainly what I don’t understand is what you are asking me to do since you already know I will go anywhere Jamie wants to go and any time.”
“I know, Bill,” said Rita mournfully. “But apparently my former husband thinks you have reasons for staying.”
“What reasons?” he asked Sutter.
“He cannot conceive that everyone is not as self-centered as he is,” Rita put in before Sutter could reply.
“No, I can’t, that’s true,” said Sutter. “But as to reasons, Bill, I know you are having some difficulties and it was my impression you wanted me to help you.” Sutter was opening and closing cabinet doors, searching for the bottle which was in plain sight on the counter. The engineer handed it to him.
“What’s number two?”
“Number two: I would not suppose that you were anxious to leave Kitty.”
“Kitty?” The engineer’s heart gave a queer extra thump.
“I could not help but observe her kissing you in the garden as you lay under a Governor Mouton.”
He stopped his hand, which had started up to touch his lips. Then someone had kissed him, not Alice Bocock in his dream,but Kitty herself, warm and flushed from the sun, tiny points of sweat glistening in the down of her lip. He shrugged. “I don’t see what that has to do—”
“The question is not whether you would stay but whether Kitty would go with you.”
“I don’t think so,” said the engineer, blushing with pleasure at the prospect. It had not occurred to him.
“The further question is, ahem, whether in case all three of you go, Rita might not go along with you after all.”
“You can’t reach me any more, you bastard,” said Rita, but not, it seemed, angrier than before.
“You’re right, of course,” said Sutter cheerfully and earnestly, facing her for the first time over his drink. “You were right before and I was wrong. I couldn’t stand prosperity. We were good, you and I, as good as you wanted us to be, and in the end I couldn’t stand it. You were productive and so, for the first time in years, was I, and thanks to you. As you say, we were self-actualizing people and altogether successful, though somewhat self-conscious, in our cultivation of joy, zest, awe, freshness, and the right balance of adult autonomous control and childlike playfulness, as you used to call it. Though I don’t mind telling you that I never really approved your using technical terms like ‘penis envy’ in ordinary conversation—”
“Excuse me,” said the engineer, setting a foot toward the door. But Rita was squarely in the way and gave no sign of seeing him.
“I confess,” Sutter went on, “that in the end it was I who collapsed. Being geniuses of the orgasm is the hardest of tasks, far more demanding than Calvinism. So I couldn’t stand prosperity and had to mess around with Teresita. I longed for old-fashioned humbug in the same way other men long for the dear sights of home. You never really forgave me. And yet, now at this moment I forgive you for—”
“Don’t you dare,” said Rita in a strangled whisper, advancing upon Sutter and at the same time, fortuitously, upon the engineer, who saw his chance and made his escape. As he left he heard Sutter say:
“You always said I knew you backwards. Well, I’m telling you now that you are wrong about yourself and wrong about what you think you want. There is nothing wrong with you beyond a certain spitefulness and pride and a penchant for a certain species of bullshit. You’re a fine girl, a fine Georgia girl — did you know Rita was from Georgia, Bill? — who got too far from home. Georgia girls have no business at Lake Chapala. Come on here—”
“Oh foul, foul, foul—” said Rita as he shut the door.
It is proof that the engineer was not in any ordinary sense an eavesdropper or a Peeping Tom that not only did he not head for the closet when he reached his room but instead closed the closet door and jumped into bed and pulled the pillow over his head so he could not hear a door close and so could not tell whether Rita stayed or left.
On the way to school Friday morning, Jamie leaned over and began to fiddle with the ashtray of the Lincoln. “I — ah—” said he, smiling a bit — they hardly ever spoke during this hour, the engineer drove, brother and sister watched the road as they would have from a schoolbus—”I’ve decided to quit school and go out west. Or rather transfer.”