Something to Be Desired

17

Suzanne sent James over to have breakfast with his father. There was an alcove next to the spring, where they sat together and listened in on conversations at the nearby tables. An older lady talked in a high voice. “It was either this place or the QE II. But there had been talk in the press about the stabilizers failing and tummy upset at the captain’s table. So we came here. I like it. I think I like it. Do you like it?” Her companion, another woman her own age, flicked her eyes in Lucien’s direction to signal that he was listening, and things murmured to a stop.

Little James had his head tilted back as though he needed bifocals; he was holding a piece of toast that looked half the size of his head, and he was just smiling at his father without fear for the first time since his arrival. His shirt was one button out of line and Lucien leaned across and made it right. Lucien wondered how in God’s name he could ever leave the boy unguarded even for a moment, much less for the duration of his recent hegira. “Self-discovery,” he thought with loathing, for he was losing interest in himself. He wished now he could install his wasted years as unused time in his little boy’s life. It was a kind of regret.

“I hope we’ll fish a little.”

“That’d be great,” said James anxiously.

“You like sport, though …?”

“Not athletics!”

“This is different. You can go off and be to yourself. When I was your age, people used to hang out gone-fishing signs and they never had to explain anything. Just go look at the air or find out what’s out past the trees. You can still do that.”

“I can?”

“Sure you can.”

From another table came an implacable voice: “When that Ford tipped over, it took a Jaws of Life to set me free. I’m a lucky man to be here to tell about it.”

“If we fish,” said James, knitting his fingers in his lap, “I don’t care if we get one.”

“I don’t either.”

“But I hope we get one.”

“Me too.”

Lucien ate the same thing he’d eaten for thousands of mornings: bacon and eggs and hash browns, with hot sauce on the eggs. He looked at them and wondered if they were the only continuity he had. As he stared down, there was a moment of complete suspension in which the sound of silverware and morning voices poured through eternity like a river. I want an island, he thought; I want an island.

The year Lucien and Suzanne parted, they had gone up to the States for the usual minor supplies: paperbacks, a cordless electric razor, Suzanne’s contacts, ten or twenty movies, a pump for the saltwater aquarium. It was the year they had both come out of the mall with things that seemed to bode ill for the future: Suzanne with a pair of crotchless panties, Lucien with his first corncob pipe. It proved to be a very bad sign indeed, especially since Lucien was in an epoch when it seemed to him there actually were signs, an era in which he could join the rest of the populace in the wonderful ongoing melodrama of inanimate objects. He thrilled to clothes and cars; he sat at an old tropical wicker desk which seemed to guarantee character in his work. It was also the time he began to feel that his dick had rights of its own. He viewed it the way Vasco da Gama viewed the needle of his compass. Wherever he went, he believed it to be one of the leading dicks in the area. He never wanted to be accused of standing in its way. It was an up-market dick even when it spotted his clothes, made a crude lump or pissed through the top of his shoes. Still, the real story lay in his sense of getting nowhere, the functionary blues.

The voice at the other end said, “I’m told you can put me in touch with Suzanne Taylor.” It was a man.

“I think I can. What’s it about?”

“It’s about when she’s coming back to work.”

“Isn’t this kind of a vacation for her?” Lucien asked. He was racking his brain to recall what the job was: something about life-insurance money and land investment in the Sunbelt. His part of the office did Houston to Memphis, and she worked in his division.

“It’d just be real nice to hear when she is planning to pop up.”

“I think she’s trying for a couple of weeks holiday with her little boy.”

“It won’t do. You tell her to get hold of Lawton Hudson. That’s me. Tell her I said now is the hour.”

Lawton Hudson clicked off. Lucien had felt unable to put in his two cents’ worth fearing he’d jeopardize something he knew nothing about. But he was furious.

He spoke to no one as he made his rounds. In the kitchen, they looked at him from the steam of breakfast dishes. Henchcliff was receiving meats, checking them off as they were transferred to the trolley in cold storage. There were the usual newspaper readers at the pastry table who jumped up when Lucien came in. Along the poolside, three or four men made notes in their half-glasses, looking up with that peculiar air of dubiety which those glasses produce. One of the nannies was backed up tight to the water intake, absolutely oblivious to Lucien or anything else. The bar was still locked, and the morning light was just making it to the high windows and beaming down on the continually changing pool of thermal water. Once when they were first open, a local rancher had galloped his horse into the pool and gone to the bar for a drink. There had been something of a struggle to prevent the horse from drowning. Afterward Lucien took a chair to the rancher. The rancher had not come back since, though his lawyer made two or three sheepish calls.

Antoinette was taking reservations at a good clip, and the front office was filled with the wonderful smell of hot asphalt from the pavers outside. There was a warm breeze coming through the open windows, and Lucien could hear the American flag pop over the parking lot. Antoinette touched her forefinger to the dimple in her right cheek and bethought herself while the phone flashed. In the lobby a local decorator hung pictures of windmills, buckaroos, roundups and amazingly smoky trains. A smooth operation, Lucien thought.

“Antoinette, has Miss Taylor arranged for any activities for my son today?”

“I believe he has a riding lesson in half an hour. At ten.”

“I see. I didn’t know that. Who’s giving the lesson?”

“I believe it’s Sheila.”

“Antoinette, get Sheila and make sure the lesson lasts a couple of hours. Sheila is to teach James riding for two hours.”

Now Lucien began to move rapidly. From the tennis courts, he could see down to the stables. Sheila was lecturing James about the parts of a saddle while James sat up on a tall bay horse that seemed to be sleeping through the lecture.

Then he walked through the grove of flowering crab apples to the White Cottage. When he got to the wall, he walked around to the side that faced open country and stopped to level his breathing. Then he climbed the timber crossbrace of the wall and looked inside the court. As he expected, Suzanne was sunbathing beside the pool. For some reason he was startled by the lankiness of her naked body. She had one arm crooked over her face, and her breathing was slow and rhythmic. Once the arm swung out suddenly as though at a fly, and the effect of that on Lucien was a kind of fright. One knee was angled slightly against the other, drawing up one long curve of thigh. Lucien couldn’t help studying to see if her breasts had fallen; they hadn’t. Then she sat up and thought for a moment; he was afraid to move. She walked to the table and made a long-distance phone call; he knew this because he counted the digits and there were eleven altogether. Long-distance. She leaned onto her elbows with her fingers run into her auburn hair and talked and laughed for a few minutes. Then she hung up. As she walked back to the pool she kept smiling from the phone conversation and lay down again.

When he climbed back down he felt tremulous. He had the key to the gate and he walked around to the door. He touched the end of the key to the opening in the lock, waited a moment, then pushed very slowly, feeling each notch fall softly along the shaft of the key. He turned it and the door went loose. He stepped in. Now he was looking straight at Suzanne from a very short distance, unnoticed.

When he held her wrists and kissed her, her scream went all the way down his throat. Then she knew it was him and stopped. She just looked at him, resting on her elbows, with not the beginning of an expression. Lucien undressed and moved her knees apart with his own. He stopped then and waited. A second later, she crammed him inside her and he felt tears on her cheeks. It should have ruined things, but Suzanne’s healthy animalism was something she could never entirely eliminate, and they made love for a long time.

“Why have you done this?”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“Right.”

“I was sort of crazy. I’m not kidding, darling. I was controlled by something else—” He was telling the truth.

“A sort of lever.”

“Please.”

“Please. I can’t believe you’d say that to me. What could be more adorable, Lucien, than your put-upon air?”

“You lubricated.”

“I ask you, please stop. That’s how they defend rapists.”

“And your boss called, wants you back at work yesterday.”

“There’s another thing we haven’t touched on. My work. Anyway, let’s not quarrel. James’ll be here in a minute.”

“Not to worry. He’s having a two-hour lesson.”

“Isn’t that thoughtful. You moved him into a larger time slot.” She was getting angry.

“You didn’t have to make love with me,” Lucien said petulantly.

“That’s right, I didn’t. But I hadn’t fucked anybody in about a week. I must’ve needed it.”

“Please don’t talk that way.”

“I’ll talk any way I please. I’m just a working mother and I’ve got my shoulder to the wheel, you sonofabitch.”

“Whooo.”

“You know what,” she said with blazing eyes, “I think I hate you. Why don’t you go fuck something else. I don’t think I want to fuck you anymore. Yeah, that’s it. No more fucking you, and here’s why: it encourages all your sloppy sentimentality and your no-shows and your desertions and your treatment of people who love you as if they were so many pocket mirrors for you to see if you’re aging or what kind of day you’re having or how deep and creative you are or how effective and memorable your personal philosophy is or whether you might not start going back to church or how many months it was since your last complete physical or whether you ought to give up after-dinner drinks. No, you sonofabitch, I don’t think I’ll fuck you anymore. I think I’ll just get the hell out of here and fuck someone else. You know how it goes.”

Lucien left. He was astounded at Suzanne’s description and the depth of her feeling. He had a drink at the bar, drove two buckets of balls at the driving range, shucked half a dozen air-fresh Chesapeake oysters with his personal prying iron, ate them, made ten or twenty effective business calls and bought James a fishing rod. He just wished he had Suzanne and that they were back on the Gulf Stream in a light norther in their old sloop bound for glory. He wished he were still playing third base, guarding the hot corner all those summers ago. Principally, he was exhilarated by her rage.

But it seemed to be true: she hated him.

“Antoinette,” he said a while later, “get the number, the long-distance call, Suzanne made from the White Cottage around half past ten. Then put a call through for me to that number.”

He waited as it rang and then was answered. It was the man who had called. “Yeah,” said Lucien. “I got you an answer on Suzanne Taylor’s return to work. She’ll get there when she gets there. Okay? She’ll get there when she gets there.”

“I think this is very sad for you,” the man said. “I’d hate to be in your position.”