Hot Streak

CHAPTER 11

C arey spent the next five days with a cranky, agitated ex-brother-in-law who drank coffee nonstop and yawned a lot. He brought a sweater when Egon shivered, and took it off when he began sweating. They sat on the terrace outside the bedroom, watched the yachts and launches cruising on the Mediterranean, made an attempt to eat at mealtimes, and talked about anything but the reason Egon had bolted Rome and come running to Nice. Finally, though, on the evening before he had to leave, Carey felt Egon was stable enough to come to terms with the fear. The stars seemed alive in the sky, brilliant against a blue-black canopy of night. The air was like velvet on one's skin. It was warm even late in the evening, and the scent of bougainvillaea invaded the senses with sweet reminders of spring. Carey was nursing his second Campari and ice; Egon had three empty espresso cups on the table beside his chaise. “If Rifat still wants those prototypes from you, remember they need you alive. He won't get them if you're dead.” Carey's voice was temperate, his eyes watching for Egon's reaction.

“They could kidnap me,” Egon nervously retorted, his long fingers clasping and unclasping restlessly. “I can't stand pain, Carey, you know that. I don't want my ear or my finger cut off. And with the current mood of the board of directors, even with a message like that, I'm not sure they'd exchange any prototypes for me.”

“You own the company, you and Sylvie. You own their jobs, don't forget. And even though they may not approve of your lifestyle, they'd be sensible about their obligations. Also,” Carey said with a flash of a smile, reluctantly admitting to himself that one had to admire her nerve, “don't think Sylvie wouldn't raise holy hell.”

Egon sat up straighter, rubbed his sweaty palms on the knees of his linen trousers, and smiled back. “You're right.” When Sylvie put her mind to something, she usually got it. “That makes me feel slightly more courageous. Keep in mind though,” he said, dropping back against the cushioned lounge chair, dolor replacing the brief elation, “everyone doesn't have what it takes to get two silver stars and a purple heart in Vietnam. That sort of bravery is genetically lacking in my DNA.”

Emptying his glass, Carey chewed on the last bit of crushed ice before answering. How could he explain to Egon that no one consciously prepares to be brave? “Everyone who went over there was afraid,” he said, his voice soft, “wondering how they were going to respond, whether they could actually shoot another human, if they'd let down their buddies someday, or die in a Saigon cafй innocently drinking a beer when a damn bomb went off. You're not lacking some shining virtue, Egon. There was more luck involved than anything when it came to survival in 'Nam. No one was doing much thinking over there-including the brass. Damn terrifying thought, so you just kept moving fast to cut down the risks or dug in and kept your head down. When someone's shooting at you there's no time to think, anyway; and when there was time, why waste it? Everyone got high. So it wasn't courage that kept me alive, but luck, and…” Carey softly added, putting the heavy tumbler on the flagstone beneath his chair, “a helluva lot of anger. It was a pretty stupid thing to do, enlisting like that, but at that age you don't readily admit to major blunders. So I figured I'd better learn how to use those weapons they gave me better than the guy who was trying to kill me. In a way,” he mused, his eyes on the stars, “I was fascinated by the ways man has devised to kill his neighbors on this planet. Do you know you can kill a man by jamming his nose into his brain? Really simple,” Carey said so quietly Egon had to sit forward to hear. His mouth twitched into a chill facsimile of a smile Egon had never seen before. “Hell, I wasn't brave, Egon.” Carey shook away the damning memories. “Just madder than blazes I'd ended up in a dripping jungle in delta mud up to my ass in the middle of nowhere for no good reason. We weren't stopping the VC, we weren't making progress that I could see in winning the hearts and minds as the general liked to say. There must be a better way, I thought, seeing the hundredth village burned to the ground to make the world safe for democracy. So I was damned determined not to die on that sweltering piece of real estate.” Shaking his head in an abrupt gesture of dismissal, Carey glanced up at Egon. “Don't let Shakin Rifat scare you into living on heroin. Don't,” he emphasized with a rough severity, “let anyone scare you into giving up your life. You just have to say fuck you!”

“I'll try, but I don't know… For me to say fuck you to Rifat would probably take the world's current supply of crank,” Egon replied with a simple honesty.

“Look,” Carey said, reaching over to splash another few inches of the red liquor into his glass, “why don't you get away for a while! You're a first-class rider. Come back, stay with me, do part of the circuit this year.”

Egon grimaced. “It's too much work.”

“It'd be good for you,” Carey encouraged. “Breathe fresh air at dawn, eat well… tone up.”

“I can do all that on the party circuit,” Egon teased, “although the exercise is different.”

“You can't do the party scene and stay off drugs. It's killing you faster than Rifat ever could. I can't help after tomorrow with the race and filming and Sylvie can't do it alone. Would you consider a treatment center?” He knew he was on shaky ground after Egon's last experience where they'd put him in solitary confinement for a day and he'd freaked.

“Don't ask.” Egon's voice was soft but decisive. “I'm over the worst now anyway; Sylvie and I'll manage. Speaking of whom,” he continued, determined to change the subject, “you've been side-stepping my sister these past few days.”

“With extreme difficulty,” Carey admitted with a rueful smile. Since the first night he'd arrived, he'd been politely evading Sylvie's sexual advances with various excuses. He'd slept on the couch in Egon's room not only to discourage Sylvie's presence, but because he slept when Egon did and woke when he did and in general served as nursemaid. He'd worn a two-day stubble of beard out of laziness until Sylvie had brushed her fingers across his jaw one afternoon when she'd come to visit Egon and said in her throaty contralto, “Ummmm… sexy…” Immediately after she'd left he'd gone into the bathroom and shaved.

“You must be the exception to the rule: What Sylvie wants, Sylvie gets,” Egon observed.

“Now I'm the exception,” Carey reminded him. “Now. But I paid for the privilege of that hard-earned experience. I married her.”

“She can be a trial,” Egon agreed with the frankness of a younger brother.

“The understatement of the millennium.”

“Whatever came over you?” Egon asked. “I mean, to marry her.”

“Lord, I don't know… wish I did.” He shrugged, and the silk shirt he wore unbuttoned shimmered with the small movement. “I woke up one morning and said, ‘What the hell?' That was that rainy day in Belio, when we couldn't do any filming, remember? It rained buckets all during the ceremony. I should have recognized the ominous portents.”

“It was a swell party after, though.” Egon had his own fond memories of Carey that summer. Carey had been the first person since his parents died who listened to him and took him seriously, who didn't treat him like an obtrusive child.

“Yeah, it was.” They'd invited everyone in the small village to the reception, closed down the shops, and danced and drank till dawn. “At least one good thing came out of the marriage,” Carey said, his expression mildly amused as he recalled the festivities at Belio.

“Two things,” Egon softly rejoined. “I've you for a friend, and I don't have friends. Not real friends. I'll pay you back someday, Carey. For all you've done for me.”

Carey saw Egon's eyes fill and felt his heart go out to the young man who'd lost his parents too young and had been forced to rely on Sylvie for stability. And stable she wasn't. “Hey, what are ex-brothers-in-law for,” Carey responded quietly, putting out a hand to touch Egon's shoulder. He'd spent long enough growing up himself to recognize the problem. “Why don't you come back to the States with me?” he offered. “You can cheer me on at the Maryland Hunt Cup. There'll be parties there, too. It won't be completely tame.” He went on talking about the race because Egon was perilously close to tears and needed time to recover. The drugs did that, made every problem more intense, every emotion shaky, hair-trigger, turbulent.

“Maybe later,” Egon replied short moments later after he'd swallowed hard, “but Sylvie's dragooning me into going up to Paris with her for a shopping spree. She needs my company, she says. Actually, she wants an excuse so Bernhardt won't barge in. And I'm the excuse. I know how to be obnoxious. He's too old, she says, and dreary.”

“She's right there, poor devil; he's boring as hell. Well, come later if you can. You've an open invitation. But try to stay straight. Shakin Rifat isn't near as frightening when you're off the stuff.”

“I'm going to try. Really. I'm not as shaky today, am I?” He was pale under his tan and still very thin, but the tremor in his hands was almost gone.

“You look great,” Carey lied. “Absolutely.”