“It’s a real party,” Maggie said.
“It’s a good party,” Philip said, “thanks to you. It’s all thanks to you.” They were alone in the kitchen, and he drew her gently close and kissed her, and then he kissed her with passion. She responded—all those awful months seemed to fall away—and she pressed herself against him. They held each other for a long time.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
They separated and turned toward the door, where Hal Kizer was standing, an odd smile on his face.
“That’s very nice,” Hal said.
He said, “Really nice.”
And he said, “Surprising, really.”
“Happy New Year,” Maggie said.
“Sorry to interrupt, as I say, but I’m gonna be leaving now and I wanted to thank you for the party and congratulate you on being Dean.”
“It’s not midnight,” Philip said. “Surely you’re gonna stay till midnight.”
“Got a hot date,” Hal said, “downtown.”
“It can wait,” Maggie said. “Think of Dixie for once.”
“Oh, I’ve invited Dixie, but she says no. I’m on my own.”
“Well, be on your own here, with us,” Maggie said. “It’s not a night for driving anyway. It’s getting colder and the streets are going to slick over.”
“Very dangerous driving,” Philip said.
“Come on,” Maggie said, “come with me,” and put her arm around Hal’s waist and led him into the dining room, where Beecher Stubbs was fussing about the dessert table. “Beecher,” she said, “talk to poor old Hal, he’s on his own.” And Maggie drifted away.
“On your own?” Beecher said. “But I just saw Dixie, looking very beautiful, I must say, in red. So how are you on your own? In what sense, I mean?” Before he could answer, she went on. “How is it that you’re nice to Dixie when you’re alone but so mean to her when you’re in public? I’m not the first to notice it. Everybody has noticed it, it’s most remarkable, and it makes you look like a very nasty man, but Dixie says you aren’t. She says you can be very nice. You call her mousie and you say sweet things.”
“How do you know I’m not a very nasty man, period? Despite what Dixie tells you.”
“Oh, you mean the kinky-sex thing. That’s just psychosis. I discounted that as soon as I was sure you didn’t hurt Dixie. I don’t count that at all. It has nothing to do with who you are, for real, in real life. Don’t you agree?”
Hal smiled. Beecher Stubbs was dangerous, yes, but it was a pleasant surprise to discover she was smart as well.
“Yes?”
“Yes, I agree,” he said.
“Well, why aren’t you sweet to her in public?”
He thought for a while. He wanted to be honest with this fat, peculiar woman. “I don’t know,” he said. “I could try to be. I think I will try to be.”
“A New Year’s resolution,” Beecher said. “How nice.”
“I’ll try right now,” he said. He gave Beecher a kiss on the cheek, wished her happy New Year, and moved off to find Dixie.
He found her in the big family room with Cole and Emma and a bunch of their noisy young friends.
“I’ve come to say nice things to you,” Hal said. “It’s my New Year’s resolution.”
“I thought you were leaving,” Dixie said.
“I was. I stayed at Beecher’s request. To be sweet to you … in public.”
She looked at him and laughed.
“You’re looking very nice.” He whispered, “Very sexy.”
“I thought you were going.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“I’ll tell you a secret.” She leaned close and whispered in his ear, “I want you dead.”
He pulled back and looked at her. She’d been drinking. This kind of thing happened when she drank. It didn’t matter. He would try again.
“How about a New Year’s kiss?” he said.
She touched her lips to his and he could smell the liquor on her breath. She moved closer to whisper in his ear again. But she did not whisper. She said, loudly, “Go fuck yourself.”
Hal turned from her and left the Tates’ party and set off for Boston to keep his date with Theda. It was turning cold and the roads were slick.
The Tates’ party continued on without him. Suddenly, from the little TV room, there came a cheer and the sound of horns blowing and cries of “Happy New Year!” that spread through the house as everybody began kissing and shaking hands and wishing all best to each other.
“Everybody, everybody,” Aspergarter called out. He banged on a glass and shouted “Everybody!” until he got their attention. In the other rooms, people began shushing one another. “Ah,” he said, “sweet silence.” Nobody laughed. He raised his voice, a proclamation: “Join me, everybody, in welcoming our new Dean to his new job. Hip hip!” And they actually responded, “Hooray!” So he did it twice more until general laughter broke out, and then conversation, and after a while the older ones began to drift off toward home. It was the New Year.
Emma, who had drunk several glasses of wine, kissed her mother and began to cry. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “You too, Daddy,” and she flung her arms around him. Katina stood beside her looking embarrassed. “Kat and I are going out now with the others, but I just want you to know, I think you’re the two most wonderful, most supportive, most understanding parents in the world.” She kissed them both again and ran from the room. Katina smiled shyly and followed Emma out.
Almost at once Cole appeared and shook his father’s hand. “Father,” he said, “congratulations. Mother, we’re very proud of you, Emma and I.”
“Cole,” Maggie said.
“Son,” Philip said.
Cole kissed each of them in turn, solemnly, and left.
“Well, they are great kids,” Philip said.
“Everyone knows that,” Maggie said. “We’re lucky. That’s all there is to it. We’re lucky.”
All the young people left in a group—to party on, they said—and Dixie Kizer left along with them, and pretty soon the Tates’ party was over. The Stubbses were the last to go, thanking Maggie and congratulating Philip and apologizing yet again for the unspeakable Thanksgiving dinner. And then it was just Maggie and Philip and the cleaning people. In an hour more the cleaning people had gone.
Maggie and Philip, happy, relieved, went upstairs to bed.
* * *
The roads were very slick and they hadn’t been sanded yet, so Hal had to drive slowly. Originally, when he’d made the date with Theda, he had thought what a great idea it would be to have her do her British trick—with the orange slice in the mouth and the toe-wire controlling the action—so that as the bells rang in the New Year, he’d ring his own bells and come like fucking Vesuvius. It was silly, he knew that, but he had daydreamed about it all during the holidays. He could have had it, too, if he hadn’t let himself be sidetracked by Beecher Stubbs and then tried to be nice to Dixie.
He was still smarting from Dixie’s betrayal, in public no less, dismissing him in front of all those young kids. She had actually told him to go fuck himself. They were polite kids so they pretended it was all a joke and everybody had laughed and somebody had even punched him on the arm, a good-guy gesture, but the fact was she had betrayed him. Humiliated him. He stepped on the gas and the car skidded and leaped forward. Thank God for the Mercedes. At least he had something reliable in his life.
Theda’s place was on Commonwealth Avenue, an old town house divided into apartments for computer programmers and teachers and retirees on a fixed pension. And Theda. As usual there was no place to park. He smacked the steering wheel with his open palm and then, resigned, drove around the block, once, and then a second time. Finally he said to hell with it and parked next to a hydrant with the front end of his car partially blocking a private driveway. It was getting very cold. He walked carefully down the street to her building. The sidewalk was iced over and treacherous, so he stepped aside and walked i
n the snow. The slush spilled over into his shoes.
In the outside lobby he pressed Theda’s buzzer, 4-B, but there was no answering buzz. He knew she was home and he knew nobody else was there because he paid her extremely well and she was not about to jeopardize such a good steady income. Besides, she hadn’t yet gotten her Christmas bonus. He pressed the buzzer again. He went out to the street and looked up to the fourth floor. There were lights on up there, but that didn’t prove anything since her apartment was in the rear. He went back to the lobby and buzzed her again.
He tried buzzing 4-A. No response. He began to buzz randomly, hitting each of the buttons in succession, but there was no response from any of them. He pressed 4-A again, and at once there was a voice on the intercom, a very sleepy voice.
“Who’s that?”
Surprised, he did not know what to say and he blurted out, “It’s Hal.”
“Hal?”
“Right.”
“Who the fuck is Hal?”
“I’m buzzing for Theda. In 4-B.”
“She’s not here.”
“I know that. She’s in 4-B. I want to go to 4-B.” He was shouting. He felt like a fool.
“She’s not there, I’m telling you.”
“She is there.”
“Go fuck yourself, Charlie,” he said, but he pressed the door-release button and Hal was inside at last.
Upstairs, on the door of 4-B, there was a note in Theda’s handwriting. “Mother ill. Home sometime in January.” And she signed it with a little heart.
Hal went slowly down the stairs and stood on the sidewalk next to his car. He looked up and down the street and then at his watch: 1 A.M. His shoes were soaking wet. Happy New Year. He had other numbers he could call, but they’d be booked tonight for sure and besides he had his heart set on the British thing. He tugged at his crotch. Very nice. Very ready. He could drive around and pick up a likely hooker. It would be better than nothing.
He got in his car and drove down Commonwealth to the Public Garden and then cruised lower Marlborough Street. The streets here had been sanded and there was a surprising amount of action—and cop cars too, he noticed—but mostly it was just gays on the prowl. And then he saw a hot little number in black stretch pants and three-inch heels and a metal-studded top. She was a caricature of what he was looking for but, let’s face it, he was desperate. She was black, with long blond hair and fantastic boobs, and against his better judgment, Hal pulled in ahead of her and stopped the car. She approached on the driver’s side and leaned in the window. “Hi, porky, how they hanging?” she said. The voice was deep and the face was unmistakably a man’s. Hal stepped on the gas and the car pulled away, but not before she planted a solid kick in the rear fender. “Racist!” she hollered.
Hal took Storrow Drive and headed for home.
The roads were a mess and he drove slowly. He was shaken, he realized, by his reaction to the fact that the hooker was a man. From a little distance he could have sworn it was a woman—great legs, a great ass—and he wondered now why he had been so put off. What difference, finally, would it have made? He thought about this. Was he homophobic? No. No, he was as tolerant as the next guy. He thought some more. Look, he just didn’t want any man fiddling around between his legs, period. In sex there were certain proprieties that had to be observed. That’s just how it was. And he didn’t want to think about it any longer. Anyway he was almost home.
As he left Route 93 and pulled onto West Border Road, there was a banging in the engine and the car began to shake. “Shit,” Hal said aloud, and hit the brakes. The car began to slow and then suddenly struck a patch of ice and fishtailed wildly to the right. Hal corrected with a sharp pull to the left and then had to recorrect with a pull to the right. The car seemed to elevate, completely out of control, as it spun around in a perfect circle. And then, miraculously, it hit a patch of gravel. Hal was able to ease down on the brake and come to a shaky stop. He pulled to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. His heart was racing. He was covered with sweat. He’d been frightened, he realized, not a good feeling and not a good way to begin the New Year. He sat there a moment, breathing deeply, and then he started the car. There was a terrific knocking in the engine and the car began to shake. He turned off the ignition.
Out of nowhere a Winchester patrol car pulled up behind him. Two cops. He could see one calling in his license plate while the other one approached his car. He lowered his window.
“I saw you having trouble there. You all right?”
“I guess. I don’t know. Let me start it up and see.”
“Hold on. Hold on. You been celebrating a little tonight, sir? You have anything to drink?” He leaned into the car.
“A glass of wine, hours ago.”
“That’s good, that’s good. The life you save may be your own, as they like to say. Can I see your driver’s license, sir?” And as Hal got out his license and registration, the cop looked up at the sky. “Lovely evening now the rain has stopped. Slippery, though. I’ll be just a moment, sir.” He took the license and registration and walked to the patrol car. After a moment he returned. “Everything seems in good order, sir.” But he continued to examine the license and registration. “Coming back from a trip?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“And where was that, sir?”
“Just Boston. Visiting friends. It’s the holidays, right?”
“Uh-huh, very nice.”
He continued to examine the license.
Psychologically, it was a very interesting routine: intimidation by politeness.
The cop handed over the registration, glanced at the license one more time, and handed that over too.
“Well, you’re almost home. Woodlawn Drive. Very nice area. Start the car, why don’t you, and see if it’s still giving you trouble.”
Hal started the car and it made a grinding sound, and then there was a knocking in the engine, but he edged it forward a few feet.
“I think I can make it home.”
“Sounds to me like the water pump. We’ll follow along, make sure you’re okay.” He walked back to the patrol car. “Happy New Year!” he called.
“Yeah, sure,” Hal said.
It was only a few minutes’ drive to Woodlawn, but he could see he wasn’t going to make it. He pulled into the first service station he came to. They were closed, except for gas, but he left the car with the old man there and said he’d come by and explain in the morning. He fingered the small round dent in the rear fender—the perfect shape of a stiletto heel. The police pulled in behind him and offered to drive him home, but he said no, he needed the air, he wanted to walk, he needed to clear his head.
“On these streets? I don’t think so.”
They drove him home.
“Happy New Year,” they said, and laughed, as he got out of the car.
He walked up the drive to the back door. His feet were soaking, his shoes were ruined, and he was going to come down with a cold. Some year to look forward to. And all because of his stupid dick. He tugged at it and it responded, old faithful. He let himself in and sat down to rest. Dixie wasn’t there, but he hadn’t really expected her. She was still out with those kids, drinking and telling jokes and smoking grass, he supposed, and maybe laughing at him. How could she have done that? How could she have betrayed him like that in public? Well, fuck her. He was exhausted. He was dead tired.
“I’m dead,” he said aloud to the empty kitchen. “I’m a dead man.”
But he was wrong. He would not be dead until nearly 3 A.M.
Cole and his crowd were having a terrific time despite the rain. They had gone from Dante’s Inferno to the Oasis to Buck’s Neon Palace, with a drink at each bar, and everybody wanted still more partying. It was a great night. The older ones, college and grad school kids, had been through the high stage of their drinking and the rowdy stage and they were getting on toward the romantic stage. Emma and Katina had long since reached the romantic stage. For some
time now they’d been going from place to place snuggling cozily and doing kissy-kissy, but nobody seemed to mind because, as Dixie Kizer kept saying, they looked just so cute. Cole figured the party would be breaking up soon.
Dixie Kizer had attached herself to Cole from the start. Embarrassed at first—Dixie was married, after all—Cole very soon began to feel good about the situation: a gorgeous older woman on his arm, sexy and experienced, and clearly mad for his body; what more could you ask? They made out, lightly, at the bars and more heavily afterward as they drove from place to place. Cole was feeling very good.
There came a moment, though, when Cole realized he was no longer in charge—Dixie was making the moves—and suddenly he wanted out.
“Listen,” he said, “there’s something I’ve gotta get clear.”
He was driving her MG, concentrating hard, because he wanted this break to be easy and clean. Her hand moved lightly on his thigh.
“I’ve got to tell you something, Dixie. This has been a lot of fun and I’ve been having a really great time, we both have, I think, but, you know, I’m Catholic. What I mean is … what we’ve been doing is a sin, first of all. And then there’s the real thing: I’m not ready to make a commitment—my medical career has to come before everything else, everything—and you’re somebody who deserves a commitment. But I’d really like us to be friends. Okay? I mean, we agreed at the beginning that there were no strings, that we were just in it for some good times, remember? I’m saying this because I don’t want you to think later that I’ve just been leading you on.”
She put her hand up between his legs.
“Dixie, have you been listening?”
“Yes,” she said, but she did not remove her hand.
Hal lay on the bedroom floor with all his sex paraphernalia. He had found picture wire in the cellar and he had rigged up a kind of noose around his genitals and he’d run the wire down to his big toe, and he had another wire that went from his neck to his toe, and he had the plastic bag almost but not quite over his head, and he had the wedge of orange soaked with amyl nitrate resting on his chest, and he was ready to begin. He wished he had Theda and her magic fingers here to start him off. But he reached down and touched himself and instantly he realized he didn’t need Theda. He was hard as hell. He was like a steel spike. He pressed his toe down and the noose tightened and, involuntarily, his back arched off the floor and he felt as if he were being lifted into the air by his dick. He rested a second, caught his breath, and said, “Happy New Year.” Then he inserted the orange wedge in his mouth, pulled the bag loosely over his head, and tucked the edges underneath the wire. His brain reeled. He had used a lot of amyl nitrate. He had to rest a minute.
Having Everything Page 18
