THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction

by LEE OLDS

  “Really,” said Hammond. “Was the thing made of gold?”

  “No, not gold,” I said, “though it might as well be the same thing, a BMW cruiser with all the modern luxuries including a heater.”

  “A heater? How?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Something about coming from the seat. It kept your butt warm if nothing else. Another superfluous modern day invention.” Hammond shrugged his shoulders.

  After another meeting with the mother the two drove back to the hospital to pick up the fully recovered and ebullient son.

  “Hi mom and Hartwig,” he said very politely, a way he seldom talked, “I’ve been waiting for you. Remember, you promised.”

  “I wish,” said Sandy you’d forgotten about it.”

  Of course he hadn’t. Quite the contrary, he’d slept little that night just fancying about how glorious it’d be to drive such a fine machine around the twisty mountain roads where they lived. I looked purposively at Hammond.

  “It’s probably the same exhilarating feeling one achieves when he powers his boat out over the ocean. Man conquering nature again. That is challenging the constraints put on him by her. He conquers the sea. He conquers the sky. As to outer space I doubt it’s anything he’ll conquer even if he could survive its cosmic rays. We’ll be part of the mass again long before that even begins to occur.”

  “Although I don’t like to think so,” Hammond said skittishly, “I believe you’re right. If only there were a heaven we could go…” He ended up pounding his fist on the side cushion.

  “Yes,” I commented, “if only.”

  Sandy did get him back to Sausalito, however, the very next day. She hadn’t even tried to inveigle him out to the beach house but had taken him home directly from the bike dealers.

  “Why?” Said Hammond. “Another change in plans? Now that she’s shown him the potential reward she’s playing hard to get. She intends to make him earn it.”

  “No,” I said, “I doubt it.” She was far more honest than that. She’d experienced a passion-filled night. She probably took him at his request. Or maybe after her mother’s she did intimately see how difficult it’d be to communicate with someone on his level. The boundaries of self-doubt are great and wide. God only knows all the kinds and depths of them we constantly live with.

  Gloria, who’d had no one to turn to on her birthday except her mother in her depression over Hartwig’s broken promise, also phoned his mother, who like always was alone in her large house.

  “I can’t believe that of him on your birthday,” said the mother of her son. “That’s not a nice thing to do. Wait’ll he hears from me.” Of course little difference that’d make for ever since he’d left home Hartwig’d broken away from his mother’s influence and, in going out on his own, had drifted more towards his grandmother’s ideas. She, after all, was supporting him.

  And although Johansson was no longer bothering her, Gloria was losing interest in her job, which she’d come to find unrewarding compared to the industry of a law office. And with her intellect I can see how she could become bored being a potter by trade. With Hartwig around as moral support she’d been able to maintain the position but now the very thought of entering the factory every day, mixing batches of clay, shaping them before firing the figures without any man to come home to had taken on a robotic aura, which she found stifling. In other words she was thinking strongly of leaving the area and returning to her backwoods hometown of Santa Cruz. Quite frankly a nauseous thought since that’s why she’d left it.

  Over that one long phone call, however, Sylvia Hartwig was to once again repeat her offer to have the girl come live with her and work in her office. Though Gloria thought that wouldn’t be appropriate unless Hartwig was there too, she also must’ve deemed it’d be the perfect act of defiance towards him. He couldn’t live and get along with his mother but she could. If she were there he could then either come for her or not. If not, who were those young attorneys Sylvia threatened to introduce her to if Hartwig didn’t take advantage of her feeling? Maybe one of them wouldn’t be so bad. At least he’d be educated, have a job and be able to support himself. A notion Hartwig didn’t appear to be interested in.

  It was with that supportive idea in mind she came down to the café the following day after work with Stanley on a leash, approached the counter, ordered her favorite latte and sat down with an interesting man she hadn’t seen for some time. We all knew him. The belief circulated that he was gay.

  “Gay? Are you kidding. For Gloria?”

  “Gay or somesuch,” I went on. Although quite a brilliant intellectual, Hartwig hated him because he claimed the man’d once followed him into the men’s to look at his pecker. He’d been going to punch the character out, which wouldn’t’ve been any chore since the man was older and out of shape, but Hartwig hadn’t. Instead he’d just completely avoided him whenever he saw him. His intellectuality be damned. Hartwig’d gladly sacrifice that.

  But despite Gloria’s having run into the fellow again … she definitely knew Hartwig’s sentiment towards him and … like she’d taken off with Johansson to thwart Hartwig … who’s to say she hadn’t sat down that afternoon with Barth for exactly the same reason, especially when she had Stanley in tow and knew Hartwig’d come looking for him. Only this time it’d be intellectual solace and rapport she sought; not physical.

  “And it’d serve him right,” said Hammond, “though she should just leave him period for someone she could find a liking to once and for all.”

  “We thought so,” I told him. “We kept suggesting that. But things aren’t that easy. Matter of fact several of us volunteered to step in but she’d have none of it. That woman as pretty and smart as she was, was crazy in her own way. A virtual monomaniac. And her fixation was Hartwig. She wouldn’t let go of him. Talk about eternal love, I believe that’s as close to it as I’ve ever seen a person come even if it was obviously only on her part.” Hammond shook his head.

  “People,” he said.

  “People!”

  And this Barth was a character too. John was his first name, incidentally the same as the well-known writer of our time. And oddly enough he too had been a writer of sorts. For years he’d been a reporter for the New York Times before retiring and moving to the West Coast where he ended up here. Despite his ostensible orientation he had fought in one of our wars before that had become a big issue, been decorated for valor and honorably discharged. He was also a free thinker and an extreme fatalist with a noir sense of humor though I don’t think he’d always been like that. War again changed him permanently like it does to so many people. Most, however, turn in the other direction, towards God; not away from him.

  “My maker,” he was fond of saying, “is the gin bottle. When I say goodbye it’ll be because she’s empty.” A rather meaningless resolve though it was softly pessimistic. He was an alcoholic, who drank as much as he ranted. Outside of his coughing spells due to which every now and then he’d retire to the men’s until they expired, he appeared healthy enough. He was a proper looking gent with thick dark hair and blue eyes. He dressed in Harris tweeds and wore a tweed watch cap. It was said he and Gloria made a handsome couple despite their age difference, but more like father and daughter than lovers. Quite frankly she liked to be seen with him and didn’t mind being referred to as his Lassie. She took up with him that day. That is for the short time that … But why get ahead of myself.

  When Hartwig came in looking for his dog and found those two leaning across the table, their faces nearly touching, whispering to one another and laughing, he naturally saw red. He walked to their table as Stanley crawled out from under it to greet him (how’d the dog know what was going on), and said as he looked directly at Gloria who’d turned sultry.

  “I can’t believe this.” He smirked back superciliously at her as if to say he knew that she knew this new association of hers meant nothing. It was merely a smokescreen and the projected acknowledgement infuriated her. Whereas
she couldn’t let go of Hartwig before because of her love now she was welded fast to him because of her hate. How close were the two concepts? Some people claim they’re identical.

  “They’re lots of things you can’t believe in this life,” said Barth, “but what you see is a good thing to accept.”

  “Who’s asking you?” Hartwig stared him down. But Barth wasn’t afraid of Hartwig despite the fact that he must’ve felt he had an exemption from physical abuse by the younger man because he was older. If, however, Hartwig’d challenged him he’d’ve stepped outside and done his best.

  Believe me, Gloria also felt this strength of just what it was to be a man. It helped her dismiss her ex in Barth’s presence. She knew Barth wouldn’t back down. He was an old warrior.

  “And I might add,” said Hammond, “a proved veteran whether he was gay or not. That’s something Hartwig wasn’t nor ever was as far as I knew.”

  “No,” I said, “you’re right. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t’ve gone to war if there was one and his time came up and the cause was just. Don’t underestimate men like that before…”

  “Can’t I?” Hammond, the old time warrior, smiled diabolically. But we’d had no real wars lately and the issue in question was something waiting to be proved or perhaps never could be proved for the very reason Hartwig might not live to see another war. We all hoped that, of course. That’d been man’s eclectic pipedream his entire history, however it always seemed to be disturbed by the ancient rumblings of the thing itself. That, of course, was man’s lust to conquer.

  Hartwig … no. He’d’ve fought for the right thing I’m sure. That afternoon with a very disgusted look on his face Hartwig hadn’t tried to make conversation. He’d just grabbed his dog, turned around and left. Evidently Gloria’d kept a running commentary of her relation to Hartwig with this older fellow, who everybody seemed to freely indulge their inner secrets to. For what reason you never could say. Some people were just like that. You trusted them automatically. And you could see why, especially with women. He really wasn’t competing for them as much as he enjoyed their company and liked being seen on the arm of a beautiful one. Matter of fact he’d told her what a loser Hartwig in truth was. Whether true or not for her sake we hoped she listened to him. The issue of the broken date hadn’t come up at all. The circumstances, I suppose, hadn’t called for it.

  That night Barth took her out to dinner in Tiburon. They both got emotionally drunk and she spent the night in his Tiburon condo. I’m sure Hartwig was waiting at his houseboat for her to show as usual and to prove to her that he meant what he said. They’d go out that night to Chez Panisse. Of course, this time she never showed. It served him right.

  All Hammond said was “Good girl.” He was obviously on her side. We all were. What principled individual wouldn’t be? It’s a state we almost seem to’ve forgotten. It’s called chivalry, the respect a man shows for a woman and her feelings. Barth obviously provided all of that if not the intimate contact most women seek to go along with it. I know this. Hartwig didn’t like this new development. If he’d despised the old fag as he used to call him before, he hated him now.

  It’s my guess he knew Barth had exposed his roll and he’d have to live with it. He’d coped with greater disappointments and overcome them. Why not this one? And where better than at the beach where one could think, sun, swim and cavort with beautiful ladies.

  Chapter Eleven

  Not only was Benji, Sandy’s ecstatic son riding the twisty mountain roads along the coast out there now but Marcus, Sarah the alcoholic’s son, wasn’t far behind in the little convertible Miata sports car he drove around whenever and wherever he could.

  “Where … where on earth’d a kid like that acquire such a ritzy set of wheels anyhow?”

  “It wasn’t difficult in this arena of high finance, believe me,” I told Hammond. Remember how Sandy’d first met Marcus at little Tod’s christening. And how impressed she’d been with him when at the same time she became even more infuriated with the alcoholic mother than before for not having developed such talent? Well, it seems right then and there she’d decided to step in and take responsibility for the kid herself. That is if she could and the kid’d let her. She’d already taken away and raised the alcoholic’s first child, why not the second one? Don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t see,” said Hammond, “unless some persons are just born to be cruel and sadistic for there are other ways to help in a situation like that if you really want to.”

  “All too true.” Then I cautioned him to remember June’s bent. It was power, nothing else but power fueled by extreme loneliness. She wasn’t a happy camper you know. Even with her wherewithal. She never would be although, as in the lives of most persons, some times would be better for her than others. You wonder if people like that even objectively realize what or who they are or how they affect others in the world. Do they sit there and gloat like a witch over her cauldron? My guess is they don’t. They don’t even know who they are. And June had a brilliant mind. Hartwig acknowledged that and so did I.

  Remember at the christening how June’s fetish with Ivy League colleges prevailed and how during the course of her domination of the conversation she had picked out Dartmouth. Undoubtedly that was because she had contacts there and it’d been where her ex’d gone. At any rate her mind’d become set on sending the boy there. He’d given her his grades. He remembered every one he’d received. She knew he could qualify, and the hundred thousand a year tuition was a drop in the bucket to her. People who have that kind of money can afford to throw it away on their whims and they do.

  With a lot of help from Hartwig (June’d urged him to coax the kid) and even more from her daughter, Marcus’s half-sister, to say nothing of the lumbering tennis player and contractor Stich who, quite frankly, was tired of the kid’s living with them, the arrangements were made. Marcus was to go off to college in November. Until then he was to move over the hill to June’s colonial mansion to live with her and her other adopted daughter Jennifer, the touched piano player until the quarter began. The Miata, of course, was the incentive in the bargain. It’d been one of her husband’s cars she’d acquired in the divorce and had sat around the garage unused and deteriorating. Jennifer didn’t drive (June wouldn’t let her) so the lot fell to Marcus, who saw it one day when he’d been over there visiting with Hartwig. The two’d wandered into the garage and Marcus turned on the light. There the thing sat like a dusty emerald.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” said Marcus, “if I’m going to do this I could certainly use that until I go. I do have my driver’s license.”

  “Fine,” said Hartwig, who also wanted to close the deal because of his own recognition of the boy’s talent and desire for him to succeed. “Let’s go inside and see.”

  They did. The kid got the car. Hartwig helped start it and rode along with the boy while he retrieved his things from the Stiches. And now you had two breakneck racers on the coast roads, one in a sports car, the other on a motorbike.

  “I see,” said Hammond. “How quaint things move on. Like clouds it would seem. They form, they scud by and they disappear. And why aren’t we like that? I don’t know. We’re born, we live, we die similarly but … We’re just not. We’re human. We’re the ones who see them. Although I don’t know exactly what, that means something.” He seemed very anxious.

  June, of course, didn’t merely want the boy, she also wanted Hartwig. From what she’d seen in him just that one time and on subsequent occasions, she figured he’d be the perfect consort for her and her poor girlfriend; the dyslexic Sandy’d be no worse off without him for she couldn’t appreciate him anyway. Then Hartwig’d never be content with a woman like that. And she probably had a good point based on the solid reasoning of which she’d always been so capable. A fact, remember, that Sandy’s diseased father had brought to his daughter’s attention when the two girls had been in grade school.

  “That girlfriend of yours, June, thinks like a man
more than any I’ve ever met. You, of course, are more of a girl. You’re better off.”

  Whatever he’d been trying to say, it’d affected Sandy. She’d never forgotten the words and quite frankly in that regard stood in awe of and deference to her friend. And that feeling of hers had never changed.

  It was a particularly warm day on the bay and the flat expanse of the water resembled a desert with invisible waves of heat or air rising from it that you could nonetheless see. Hartwig sat on his old bulging couch practicing his guitar. Both doors, front and back, were wide open to let the breeze circulate through the large room which contained his desk, bookshelves, the small toilet and the kitchenette that stood on either side of the entranceway.

  When he heard the gangway bouncing and the dog growling, Hartwig knew he had a visitor and something else about that visitor.

  “Really,” said Hammond. “What was that?”

  “It was a stranger or someone the dog didn’t like, for Stanley whined in the presence of those he loved.”

  “Who was it then?”

  “Who else?” I said, “but June. Her silhouette appeared in the jamb of the door. Her natural blond hair was neatly bobbed. She wore a very expensive designer tennis outfit of blouse and shorts, shoes with low cut sox that defined her ankles and legs. In one hand she had her racket case and balls, in the other a brown paper bag.”

  “June the bag lady.” The surprised Hartwig said in a teasing voice and stood up immediately. He’d more or less described where he lived but hadn’t told her how to get there. Of course anyone who came to the area and asked for him was likely to receive directions. The realtor had a nose for that sort of thing. She was locating properties all the time. That was her business.

  “Hi,” said the heiress, “I just thought you might like to hit some. It’s so nice out. I’m dying for a game.”

  “Now that you’ve found me,” Hartwig put it, “why not? I could use a game myself.” Then he remarked. “I’m surprised you were able to run the gauntlet in that outfit. People around here don’t dress that way.”