Something to Be Desired

11

Lucien walked in, self-infused vigor taking shape out of old habit. The sulfuric steam plumes had lost the Dantean fugal quality with the coming of summer and stood out over the buildings and against the high dry blue sky with rare gaiety. It was still early in the morning.

There was a meeting of the Deadrock Ladies’ Bridge Club. All bluebeards and George Washington look-alikes. Things were quiet.

But Antoinette, the receptionist, had a weary irritated appearance whose meaning Lucien suspected.

“There was a death in Antelope Suite early this morning,” she said. “We couldn’t reach you at home. There’s some snafu about the arrangements. I’m afraid you’ll have to sort this one out.”

“Who is it?” Lucien’s hair stood on end.

“I got your ex a car,” said Antoinette as she flipped through the register.

“Who died?”

“Mr. Kelsey.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes, that’s clear to some tank town on Lake Erie.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I would,” said Lucien. “He was going to have his last drink at the bar with me before signing up for the enema training table. Drank a quart of Finlandia. I know the town well.”

Lucien went through the glass doors and into the fetid steam. Certainly Antoinette thinks that I am callused, but if I fall apart, what is to become of this place, and all who depend upon me? Heads looked up from the steam, and arms waved or offered favor-currying salutations, down the wavering poolside that took the press out of his shirts before he’d even started his day. He knew many here were afflicted, if only in their thoughts. Lucien himself was no different. He too was afflicted; lately nothing could have been more trying, more purgatorial, than the activities of his poor old dick. Apart from the obvious, it had begun making two streams during urination, one for the bowl, the other filling his shoe or starting him upon an unwelcome dance; often, too, it saved a final spurt for when it had been returned to his pants: things no hot spring cured. Well, we weren’t promised an easy road.

One of the employees, a local youngster whose cowboy boots peeped out from the trousers of his hot-spring uniform, stood outside Antelope Suite in shock. “Never seen one of these before, huh?”

“No, sir.”

“They say the first mile’s hell.”

Lucien walked in, gingerly followed by the youth. Mr. Kelsey was still in bed. An unfinished plate of saltimbocca with some julienned vegetables next to it, a nouvelle cuisine flourish.

“How in the hell he get this?” Pointing to the food.

“I’m not sure,” the boy stammered. Henchcliff, the chef, had pocketed some change here. Kelsey had fed himself very well and expired before his first enema. Mary Celeste would have canceled him when she saw that saltimbocca going by. Then Lucien would have had her to quiet, another day without the river, without running the dog, without excursions in the saddle, nor tonight’s dinner with James and Suzanne.

Lucien leaned over; nothing to confirm here beyond the open pores, the sharkfin lips, the unhearing ears, the full mortality beneath monogrammed hot-spring sheets. Kelsey had planned a hair-dyeing experiment. At all events, we must get these leftovers to the shores of Lake Erie, to the shadow of abandoned steel towns, to the windrowed fish and bird bodies of that storied Midwest.

“We’re going to need a shipping bag and the air-conditioned station wagon. Make sure Antoinette has contacted next of kin. Have housekeeping stand by. I’ll be in my office.”

Lucien walked the long corridor. He rang Antoinette. “Antoinette, re Kelsey: A. Get him embalmed. B. Get him a container. C. Ship him home. And when you confirm shipment with next of kin, verify the new billing address.” Lucien hung up and sighed. He buzzed again. “Make sure Mary Celeste is not still awaiting Mr. Kelsey. Then come in here for a letter.”

Antoinette appeared in about five minutes with a spiral notebook and pen. The last ten percent of her looks were still there to extrapolate the loss from. “This one is to the Chamber, attention of Donald Deems. ‘Dear Donald, Do you think it is right that I should be asked to offer a rate reduction for the sister-city delegation when, one, no one knows the size of that delegation, and two, no one else in town is making a similar contribution to the success of the show? See you Thursday. Write it down. All best, Lucien.’ ” He looked up at Antoinette. “Chop chop. Today’s mail.”

Lucien hated having to be this way with Antoinette. But in the first six months of work she’d gone on and on about her no-good husband, her car loan and her period. Then she left her husband, and every time she had a new boyfriend there was a renewed outbreak of cystitis and she’d whine on about the cost of antibiotics, conspiracies between the AMA and pharmaceutical manufacturers to keep the prices up, and so on. Endless bladder-infection chats had finally turned Lucien into a man who watched his topics.

When she was gone, Lucien sighed, “A cowboy’s work is never done,” and started through his papers. Lang and Hughes in New York had sent the new ads, and they reflected the greater specificity he had requested: “Sun ’n’ Sulfur” for the travel magazines, “Minerals Plain” for The New Yorker with a wide-angle of the sage barrens making them look like a grass court. He vetoed for the last time, he hoped, an overweight children’s wing because of the inchoate evil he felt in the presence of fat youngsters. The very young failed to see the point of a rich mineral spring; they ran around yelling Who Cut the Cheese and other zircons of new wit. Besides that, a day that began with the purchase of seamless gutters to keep from provoking a scandal left a lot to be desired.

He went through the back of the kitchen, where a refrigerator truck of fresh fruit and vegetables from Oregon was being unloaded. “Hello, Henchcliff,” he called out. “How is it by now?” Henchcliff, whose habit it was to dress on or off the job like a prison trusty, twisted his head quickly in the don’t-ask-me of the perpetually angry. But Henchcliff had the touch. He was under the brutal constraint of cooking only longevity food, like so many of the nutritionists who made the rounds of spa kitchens. Henchcliff could loosen up, pour on the cholesterol, salt and grease with the best of them. On his best behavior, however, he sent forth hundreds of dewy, steamy, identical, fructoid marvels through the double doors to the fruit bats around the spring. How they could eat in the steam was beyond Lucien; but he was entrepreneur enough to recognize that dining on row crops half invisible to one another in an ambience that anywhere else would have gagged them was part of the mystique, part of what they took home to their dense-pack satellite homes, in gratitude. Pink faces hung mysteriously over the greenery in the steam. Satisfied faces, thought Lucien.

The candy kitchen occupied the west side of the main cooking area: it always surprised Lucien they could sell as much of the sulfur taffy as they did. But month after month it was a list leader, solid as a good franchise. Most people kind of choked them down like medicine, despite that no one claimed they were anything but candy. They did smell just like the spring, though, and nostalgia crops up in the least expected places.

He went out the far door and knocked at Dominic’s room. This used to be a bed-sitting room for the chef. It was no longer needed, now that Henchcliff lived in town. It was isolated from the rest of the compound and made Lucien a little more comfortable. Dominic had many grave enemies, and it was good to have him in a less populated spot in the event of a rubout. Dominic was their only permanent guest.

Dominic called for him to enter in his pure, strange soprano. Lucien thrust half his body in. “Just saying hi.”

Dominic held up a Madonna made of blue smoked glass. “A new one,” he said. “From Sainte Anne de Beaupré in Quebec.” He set it on the shelf with the others. “Go on. I see y’busy.”

Back at reception and a quick fan through the receipts. He looked up to see the station wagon cruise past on the pea rock toward the back of the building. Should have been gone by now.

“Got ahold of the next of kin?”

“No problem,” said Antoinette.

“Billing?”

“American Express. They had duplicate cards.”

“What about the autopsy?”

“They’re going to pass. They wanted him hermetically sealed rather than embalmed. The state requires one or the other. He’s in the container now.”

Lucien gazed irritatedly out to the empty parking area. “Tell Zane to get a move on,” he said. “It looks hot out there. I’m going to work in the office. No calls.” Lucien headed back off down the corridor.

Antoinette yelled out: “Someone phoned about seamless gutters. Said the price had gone up.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes.”

Lucien sealed himself in the office. Quick look at his watch: two hours’ light to ride home and run the dog, then dinner with Suzanne and James.

He called for current balances in the springs account, the ranch account, his personal account and wrote them into the respective books. Deadrock Plumbing. This bill can’t be real. No real bill can be this size. These drifters need a moving target.

“Tim Lake. This is Lucien Taylor.” After a little bit: “Tim, you send me this bill?”

“Yes, Lucien, I did.”

“Tim, you’ve got the balls of a brass monkey.”

“Lucien, you’re lookin’ at a lot of hours on that sheet. I had three men up there, two trucks.”

“I’ve seen that before. One truck is to make beer runs when your rummies get the DTs working on my furnace. Tim, I’m gonna give you a break. I’m gonna rip this goddamned sonofabitch up and not let you hurt my feelings. You go sit down and write me a bill you take some pride in. But this time be honest. With yourself.”

Then, while the glow was upon him, though the age of bowmen and harpers was lost for all time, he could dash off some price-control letters. He rang Antoinette. Gone home. The phone was done for the day. He felt the earth move. Lucien pulled off his tie, examining its red and silver silk stripes for the first time, rolled it and put it in his pocket. He wandered down the corridor, seeing with satisfaction the cowboy and cowgirl waiters moving in the steam. Mary Celeste table-hopped with nutritional tips in a drooping dinner gown; her Empire coif listed very slightly to the north. In a couple of hours all but the minimum lights would have been turned off; most guests would be in their quarters. A few with wooing twinkles would be back in the main pool, paddling through stench to desire. There’s a little of that in all of us.

There was time to take a shower and shave once again, inspecting his face for missed spots. Then he put on some invigorating lotion and watched himself button a blue-and-white-striped shirt. He had slicked his hair straight back like a rich heir, and he withdrew his lips so he could pass judgment on his teeth: bright gums, no plaque; the crown doesn’t appear unless one smiles too hard, as in drunkenness or, once a year, delight. He walked to the White Cottage, a bright and romantic rental unit in the wind-trained junipers above the spring. It did well.

He knocked at the gate. Suzanne opened the door for him and returned immediately to the small compound. Where the sliding doors opened on the wading pool, James sat reading comic books. He probably does that a lot, Lucien thought. When he’d last seen James he really wasn’t interested in comics. He still had an extensive GI Joe collection. Now he wore camouflage and read comics.

“Can I make you a drink?”

“Are you having one?”

“I’m having quite a few,” she said.

“Okay,” Lucien said. “The usual.”

“I don’t know what the usual is,” said Suzanne, making one slow blink.

“It’s anything but scotch,” said Lucien. “Like how about some bourbon and water?”

“I’m not sure we have it.”

“What’s this tone?”

“No tone. I just didn’t know if it was there.”

Lucien sat next to James.

“Hi, Pop.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“Are you making a fortune?”

“I’m doing okay.”

“I wish we could make a fortune. Me and my mom. Maybe I’ll invent something.”

Suzanne returned with the drinks and sat in a wicker chair opposite Lucien and James. “Dinner failed,” she said with an inquisitive smile, as if to say, Now what?

“It can’t have. You made that pork roast a hundred times.”

“Goes to show you about memory,” she said.

“Do you want me to ring over to the kitchen?” Lucien asked evenly.

“I made something else. I was going with a terrific cook. He showed me a way to do calves’ liver. Yes and you’re going to love it.”

“He was a cook?”

“He was an investment analyst and a college vice-president, but he liked to cook, Lucien. He liked to cook.”

“I’ll bet that’s not all he liked to do.”

She pulled her pearls out from the collar of her blouse, regarded James with a smile and said, “Come to dinner.”

Instead of place mats, Suzanne had used parts of that night’s newspaper. Lucien had railroad cutbacks. James had sports. Lucien couldn’t see what Suzanne had. Their plates were stacked like the silverware, to be passed around. The dinner was in one deep skillet with a serving spoon. Suzanne used to make a great effort at presentation. When Lucien tasted his food, he found her cooking had improved considerably. There was some jug red wine and water glasses.

“How was your day?”

“Amazingly complicated,” said Lucien.

“We rather thought you’d come by,” said Suzanne.

“One of my guests died,” Lucien boomed over the liver. “I had to arrange shipment.”

There was quiet as James stared with youthful ghoulishness. He cut his eyes to his mother in hopes of a deeper inquiry about the man who died. Then the three went on eating. Lucien couldn’t believe James would eat this meal. He’d probably learned to eat what he was given. In Honduras they used to take a table right onto the beach and sink the legs in the sand. They’d throw leftovers profligately to the seagulls and put the juice of wild limes on the mangoes they loved for dessert. They had the shade of the beach plum, and Suzanne would take the trouble of using real linens. Therefore this utilitarian presentation was something of a shock to Lucien. Maybe it was high-tech.

Suzanne got up and left the room. Lucien looked over at James while James ate. It seemed to Lucien that James took extraordinary care in cutting his food into uniform pieces. For a moment Lucien couldn’t understand why he did this; then he saw that it was fear that made James so careful.

“We’ve got to think of something,” said Lucien more ingenuously than he usually was with children. “Something we could do for fun.”

“What do you want to do?” James asked. He looked ready for flight.

“Do you still like to fish?”

“I haven’t done it in a long time.”

“What do you do for fun?”

“I fly radio-controlled airplanes.”

“Radio-controlled airplanes! What fun is that?”

James was frozen silent. He pushed his jet-black hair sideways as if trying to remember where it was parted. “Anyway, that’s what I do,” he said in a small voice.

“I just don’t know what that is,” said Lucien. Then, to makes things better, he asked, “Do you think it’s something I’d like?”

“No.”

“Jamesie, let’s go fishing. Let’s try it. If we don’t have fun, we’ll just quit right then. We’ll stop right there and that’ll be it. We’ll try this radio-control stuff.”

“I don’t have my plane,” said James in terror. “It’s not here.”

“What’s happened to your mother? Go check and see what your mother is up to.”

James got up with an air of diffidence and of duty and went into the adjoining rooms. When he returned, he said, “She’s not coming out.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“She said she was sorry.”

“Well, I’m sorry too,” said Lucien, concealing his shock. “But tomorrow, let’s fish or something, okay? And uh, that’ll be good, okay? So, around eight o’clock, Jamesie. And you be ready.”

Lucien got up and left the White Cottage. He was stunned.