Something to Be Desired

9

It began to soak in. It soaked in faster than the Chinese food. Lucien headed for the bank, where he was strangely unspecific with a vice-president, who agreed that the ranch was valuable and the loan Lucien wanted would be well secured. Yet when Lucien said, “I just feel lost. I’m hoping heavy borrowing will create a useful crisis,” he saw the banker was lost too but unwilling to consider embezzlement or any of the other things that would restore the oxygen to his atmosphere. Even with his blow-dry shag haircut, the banker retained a hangdog face; and nothing on its surface really changed when Lucien said the following. “I know this is all based on you throwing me into the briar patch of usurious interest rates. But I just don’t see the thrill from your point of view, however it turns out. Not that I don’t appreciate it!” He waved the big check in gratitude and went back outside, where yet another unique sedan suddenly seemed to hold the absolute promise of a rocket ship or a bomb.

Before he started, he wanted to take another good look at the spring. He drove out on a highway interrupted by the tongues of old wheel-packed snow; he went up through his outbuildings, past the house, where Sadie leapt behind the front window. He made his way over the unnerving shalerock jeep road until he reached the spring. He didn’t get out. He just sat in the car and listened to the livestock report on the radio and viewed the rolling steam climbing from the great blue eye that had watched him from days gone by. Around the spring, the steam had mineralized the landscape, the branches of trees. Minerals, Lucien knew, were a big item. The spring was a deep penetration of warm moving water as full of goodness as amniotic fluid is to a developing infant. All I’ve got to do, he thought, the big check burning a hole in his pocket, is deliver the goods. He felt better already, monstrous almost.

They brought the buildings from near and far: a cavalry stable from the Missouri River housed the main pool. Evocative bentwood dude-ranch furniture from the twenties was arranged around the slate perimeters of the spring, concealing the old mud banks where Lucien had floundered away many a sorrow. Adjoined by a fragrant, carpentered cedar passage was an ancient way station found at Silver Star, Montana; here Lucien’s friend and chef Henchcliff prepared the meals that made him a regional legend. Then line shacks from the slopes of Kid Royal Mountain and the high pastures of Froze-to-Death were dismantled, moved and restored as the evocative cottages that housed chiefs of state, high-spirited young professionals, screaming mimis and the assorted preposterously well-off who drifted around the good places on a seasonal basis.

Mary Celeste had set up her enema therapy center in an old-time blacksmith’s shop, also connected to the spring; on its walls were loops and loops of glass tubing where the gastrointestinal burden of her clients flew by; she could tell booze from water, beets from a bleeding ulcer and bacterial diarrhea from bad cocaine. She had the mind of a native healer, and no sense of humor.

The landscaping was the original sage and juniper, divided by gravel walks. The parking lot was hidden in a draw and the airfield was on the low flat mesa where, as a boy, Lucien had seen the lost saddle horse with his father.

Old man McCourtney was the doorman, the shell-shocked Irishman with a mottled face. He wore English suits and indicated the front desk with a shaking hand. Since he looked too old and weak to fight, he made a perfect bouncer in the late evenings, preying on the remorse of drunks. Lucien had renewed their friendship at his father’s funeral, where he had requested no keening; McCourtney stood well off among the casual acquaintances, twitching. Lucien had had little to say at the time, as he gripped his mother just above the elbow and hoped for the best. At the funeral, Lucien said, “If you ever need me, call.” She never called.

Much trouble came to Lucien through his living in an area his friends wished to visit without their wives. When Lucien got the hot spring, friendships that had fallen into rueful desuetude came back to life. They loved him and they loved his healing waters! They parked on the white gravel, soaked and appealed for discounts on their bills. On the radio, a song spoke of one of sixteen vestal virgins heading for the coast. This is life, thought Lucien, this is the long tunnel. Down in my hot spring the women are buoyant with reproductive glee. It draws customers like flies. Cash discounts for the criminally insane.

Among Lucien’s customers were many who bore his study: a luckless parvenu, girl cowboys, environmental guides, a geothermal engineer who told Lucien what was wrong with his hot spring, how it would dry up, etc., a Hindu, a jockey named “Mincemeat,” and so on. There was a gangster retired to his Madonna collection and prayer. On Saturday night in the bathrooms next to the bar, urine’s vitreous ring was a carillon of high spirits from the happy toilets.

Lucien called Suzanne and described his success. This was going to be a wonderful summer out west.

Then Suzanne called Lucien late one night, so late that Lucien wondered momentarily where he was. He had hung a sport coat on the tall bedpost for dry-cleaning the next day; for a moment he thought the coat had placed the call to him. His bird dog stood and arched her back in a slow stretch, not anxious to start the day in the middle of the night.

“What’s up?”

“I’m sorry to be calling you so late, but I’m in such a state of confusion I can’t sleep.”

“Think nothing of it. I’ve done this to you, often and drunkenly.”

Suddenly a silence from Suzanne’s end of the line was filled with sobbing. Lucien pulled himself up against the bedstead and waited alertly for her to recover. “What is it?” he asked. “Suzanne, what is it?”

“Lucien, I don’t know. I’m going in circles. I’m worn out trying to work and stay ahead of James and I’m just absolutely going in circles. And I miss you. Suddenly you’re strong and I’m a mess.”

Lucien ached sharply. He missed Suzanne too; but maybe he just missed their old hopes, now long in the past.

“What can I do?” Lucien asked. “I’ll do absolutely anything.”

“Don’t hang up on me.”

“I won’t hang up on you.”

“There. I think I’m better.”

“Haven’t you met anyone nice yet?”

“Oh, sure. They’re everywhere. And you?”

“Well, you know all about the Emily thing,” Lucien gasped. “After that I pretty much concentrated on staying fluid, you know. The old moving target trick.”

“Target. You’re darn lucky you didn’t turn into one while she was still there.”

“That’ll be enough of that, Suzanne. This time I mean it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. Lucien turned the light back off and sat in the dark once again with the silent telephone. They could have been in the same room.

“Why don’t you pick up and come out here for a while?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got relatives all over the place there.”

“Please.”

“You come up with a presentable plan and we’ll see.”

This was the Suzanne Lucien remembered best. Touching, emotional, sweet and predacious. When she hung up, he lay there used and overjoyed. He could barely get back to sleep. There was moonlight. But when he awakened in the morning he was nervous and didn’t want breakfast.

Lucien was doing something very acceptable to everyone: he was making money hand over fist. He wasn’t quite certain why this had such a miraculous effect on his self-esteem. After all, the same old battered soul still lived inside the groomed monster Lucien felt he had become. It didn’t even arouse his cynicism. I have to admit, he thought, they all like me better now that I am a rich SOB. And some of the hollow feeling had gone, too. It was strange not to be desperate. In fact, he rather missed desperation now that it was gone. It had been an old friend and had produced some top fireworks. Lucien knew, though, that he had been allowed to make mankind’s favorite experiment, that of going from some form of rags to some form of riches, overnight. Only he was plagued by the questions: Am I a new man? Why do they like me? Am I secretly the same old shitheel, the same old wino from hell who brought down hurricanes of scorn on himself? Is this an American dream?

· · ·

He began once again to bring Suzanne and James within reach. He asked if they would come back and got a no. He asked if they would just come up and “give it a try.” That didn’t work either. Evidently she was serious about presenting a plan. It was only by offering what was in effect a prepaid vacation that he began to get somewhere. “Let’s keep it fairly short,” said Suzanne. “I don’t want to be there with James when Emily returns. She might have an itchy trigger finger.”

Lucien gave a warm and appreciative laugh, like the sidekick of a talk-show host. “No, no, no,” he said in a rich voice. “I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of her.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got a million more where that one came from,” said Suzanne.

To begin with, nothing is merrier than a Rocky Mountain airport in the summertime. Nothing. Lucien stood among the small crowd awaiting passengers and watched the big jet pivot against the shimmering sagebrush flats and come to the ramp. There were numerous people Lucien recognized in the group, and he nodded genially to them like a man of substance, or at least a man not to be lightly disturbed. Perhaps some of these people remembered the old Lucien and took his current stance as an absurdity.

And then the doors opened. People flowed into the airport from the jet. They kept coming, the strangers. And there they were! James in clownish checkerboard shoes, thick glasses and a frightened grin. Next to him walked Suzanne, the same tall brown-eyed girl he’d misunderstood for so long. In her face the contradictions of this arrival were transmuted into wry cheer. She carried a straw bag and moved James along with a hand on the back of his head.

Lucien was head over heels in love. He had never been so in love in his life.