by Ann Beattie
The next morning he walked out of the B and B off Bond Street, having eaten two poached eggs on toast, strawberry compote, and something called a “gala” muffin. At the innkeeper’s insistence, he pocketed a piece of fruit (a banana).
He had lied outlandishly at breakfast to an Australian couple sitting across from him, who insisted on dragging him into conversation. He had told them he was a retired IRS agent, married, with a son who’d dived the Great Barrier Reef. The last seemed a particularly nice detail. The man had informed him that recently, more and more blind fish were turning up at the reef; there was speculation that chemicals in the water had led to their mutation, so that now many were born without eyes. Diving and looking at the head of a “blindie” (as the man called them) was a very strange thing. You might think a fish was inherently beautiful, but when you found yourself looking at two thumb-size (he held up his thumbs) indentations and nothing but a big snout, you…and then the man’s wife had interrupted and insisted he be quiet.
A lone German at the end of the table had clearly not understood a word. The innkeeper told them he was a visiting scholar from Munich, though she had no idea what his area of specialization was. That would have to wait for the arrival of the bilingual Irish cleaning girl. Meanwhile, she pantomimed to the German that he, too, should not leave the table without fruit. She went so far as to tap an apple to her lips. The second time she tapped, the German blushed and shook his head.
Outside, there was a ray of sunshine that quickly faded. George zipped his jacket, wishing he’d brought a scarf, and walked to the corner, where he was surprised to see a Starbucks. Where McDonald’s goes, can Starbucks be far behind? He’d used the cash machine at Heathrow, so he took out pounds to buy a ticket for the underground. He went through a turnstile and walked past posters advertising plays and liquor, clothes and movies. Richard Burton’s daughter looked matronly, but then, she was appearing in a Chekhov play.
He had memorized the address he was going to, but he had no idea what he would say to Nicholas if he found him. He thought he might be out of cash—even relieved to know he was missed by Mama. At the same time, though, he knew that wasn’t realistic. London had a way of making ne’er-do-wells into real losers, and when drugs were involved, you could be sure that the concept of home resided in whatever pill or powder was ingested or shot. Love, hate, God, Christmas, beauty, power, where you were starting from, where you were going. Where you already were didn’t matter at all, because being drugless was the most temporary state imaginable.
Getting off two stops later, he passed a woman in an orange and silver sari and nearly tripped when the mother of a small child yanked the boy across his path. He zigzagged a second time to avoid colliding with a Doberman on a leash that had stopped to stare at him. Never could stand those dogs. Someone was selling scarves from a black nylon bag, and he stopped and looked—the man selling them didn’t speak, probably because he knew no English—and then pointed to a fake Burberry plaid, which amused him to buy. He looked at the man’s five raised fingers, put up four of his own, and the deal was complete, the scarf pulled around his neck. Max had drawn him a map from the underground exit to Upper Middlesex Street. At the corner he turned and walked toward the end of the block, where there was a building with windows open on the second floor. Nicholas, though, lived in the basement, according to Max’s drawing. A side entrance was marked with an X. Once he stood in front of the building he felt a little tingle in his fingers, a little frisson, which was a word he’d learned from Paula. The feeling he’d most certainly had long before he met her. He went down several broken concrete steps littered with cans, bottles, and rotting newspapers, past a Dumpster piled high with broken furniture. A window beside the door was covered with a dark curtain. He paused outside the door and listened for any sound. Though he had the key, he knocked and stepped to the side: an old habit. In his peripheral vision he saw a cat jump from a broken chair into the Dumpster. There were more chairs on their sides, broken and scorched. He knocked again.
“Come in,” a woman’s voice said.
He didn’t have a gun. He wouldn’t have gotten it past security, though he supposed he could have had Max give him one. But why would he need a gun? He turned the handle. In front of him, in the entranceway, hung a wrinkled dark curtain that smelled intensely of cigarette smoke. He decided that if the person did not speak again, he would move to the side, with the outer door open, and wait.
“Hi,” said the woman who pulled back the curtain.
“I’m looking for Nicholas Gregerson,” he said.
“It’s me,” the woman said. “Do I look that different with a ponytail?”
It was Cary, from the night before. Confused, he said nothing.
“Get it?” she said.
“No,” he said.
“I’m the girlfriend. Nick’s girlfriend. Max, or whoever he is, paid for my company last night. Some people really go in for practical jokes, but I guess I knew that already, growing up with three brothers.”
“And what exactly does this joke consist of?” he said, following her into the dim apartment.
She spread her arms. She said, “This, I guess.”
There was a mattress on the floor with an almost threadbare Oriental rug thrown across half of it. The apartment was so dim, it was hard to see. She saw him squinting and turned on a floor lamp. The only other window he could see was high up, at the back of the room. No Nicholas Gregerson. No Max—unless he was about to jump out of a closet. If so, he might explain the joke a little better.
She sat on a corner of the mattress and gestured to the other possible places to sit: one of two director’s chairs that faced a big television placed crookedly on top of cement blocks. There was a lava lamp on top, though it was not plugged in. Also, a photograph of somebody.
“Tea?” she said. She bent forward to scratch her ankle.
“Nick lives here?” he said. “And how do you happen to know Max?”
“Don’t, really. He came around the same way you did. Said somebody from the States was going to be looking for Nick. Then he asked if I’d consider helping him pull a prank. For the money he offered, I thought I would, though you don’t seem as amused as he thought you’d be.”
“I’m still trying to figure this out,” he said.
“I thought you’d understand it better than I do,” she said. She took off her sock and scratched her ankle harder. She put the sock back on. “I microwave the tea,” she said. “I’m not English. So what I mean is, no problem.”
“Max hired you,” he said slowly.
“Yeah. You know, to me it was more or less a business deal. I mean, what am I saying? It was completely business.”
“So what’s the deal?” he said. “I hire you, and we call him to meet us for drinks?”
“I’m not doing it,” she said, as though he’d made a serious proposition. “I think this is going to get way kinky. And if Nicky finds out about it, he’ll kill me. I’m lucky you came when Max said you would, because if this was tomorrow, he’d be here.”
“Where is he now?” he said.
“Sung Ho Lo,” she said.
“And what is that?”
“Jeez, I’d expect you to take out a little notebook or something. I mean, look, put my mind at ease and tell me whether you’re going to tell him you stopped by.”
“I don’t know why I’d have to mention anything,” he said.
“Good. What about tea?”
“I don’t want tea.”
She shrugged. She said, “I don’t, either. In answer to your question, it’s a Chinese restaurant. He’s a waiter there three nights a week, but Tuesdays he goes in as a dishwasher.” She got up. “You’re not going to do anything bad to him, are you?” she said.
“No.”
“It’s what Max told me? His mother wants him to go home?”
He nodded.
“Okay,” she said, “because we’ve been having some problems and everything, but if he got ki
dnapped…I mean, he’d go back if he wanted to. You know?”
“I’m not going to kidnap him.”
She went into the kitchen and got a little can of juice out of the refrigerator. She did not offer him juice. She opened the can and stood leaning against the wall, sipping. “Did you think I was a hooker or his girlfriend?” she said.
He assumed she was asking about Max. He said, “Girlfriend.”
“From Oklahoma,” she said. “I had to have one lie, myself. It wasn’t much of one, though. I just thought, I wonder if he’ll ask why I don’t have an accent? I’m really from Wisconsin.”
He nodded.
“I told Nick I was at my mother’s last night.”
“She’s here, not in Wisconsin,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, she married an English guy and she’s a legal resident.”
He nodded.
“I have to go to work,” she said. “I guess I can assume—”
“I might walk over to the restaurant,” he said. “What did you say the name was?”
“Hey, if you’d written it on your little spy tablet, you’d remember!” she said. “Kidding. It’s Sung Ho Lo. Just one street over. Everybody knows it.”
“Don’t be late for work,” he said, standing.
“No. So. Good-bye. Maybe I’ll never see you again, right?”
“Right,” he said.
“So. This is the end, except that you’re going to talk to Nick and not kidnap him.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay,” she said. “It didn’t turn out to be much of a joke, did it?”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Okay. Well. You’ve been awfully nice. I’m glad it wasn’t the other way around. That it wasn’t you I went to that place with. That didn’t come out right. What I meant was, if I’d gone out with you, it would be Max who was sitting here today, right? And he sort of gives me the creeps, to be honest.”
“He’s definitely getting creepy.”
When he left, she stepped out of her shoes and socks and didn’t see him to the door. He pushed aside the curtain and went out, just in time to see a huge rat drop into the Dumpster.
Paula was trying to do origami. The instructions were badly translated from the Japanese, in print so small the lines looked like dead gnats. Take two fold, she read. Other fold point one and four. She put down the square of paper because it was getting damp and puckered by her fingertips. She looked ahead in the directions. Some sentences made sense, others made very little. It was not likely she would have her yellow giraffe any time soon, but she prided herself on patience. Lately, she’d gotten little cuticle scissors and begun patiently doing her own nails, going to Spa of the Seven Senses only for an occasional pedicure. Since moving to her fiancé’s house she’d gained five pounds, making her the only person in history to gain weight, rather than lose, in health-obsessed California. At the same time she was trying to figure out how to fold the pretty pieces of paper, she was mixing cookie batter. Stirring was a good distraction from trying to understand how to fold. The wedding would be a week from Saturday. She had still not bought a dress, though she had Peter Fox satin heels with sparkly little flowers that were so exquisite, no dress could compete with the footwear.
After a year of therapy she had realized how much George was like her aloof, undependable father, and that her self-esteem was severely lacking, which was something that George counted on, she’d come to think. Her career had been derailed when she met him, then ruined. She was a big girl, and also to blame, but he had made it impossible for her to work, he moved so many times. Once she had thought she would learn how to do something she could do anywhere, like quilt, but she had no talent for quilting, and stained-glass-making required…well, it required a studio and tools. She had given the one small coaster she made to her sister and given up. Her sister thought she should write, but she had no talent for writing. The course at Columbia had proven that.
They had moved every time he got a call from “the Starship Enterprise.” Condescendingly, he did not even tell her who phoned him, who determined their lives. “Conjecture,” her therapist had said, raising one hand, as if to stop something—which might have been the doctor’s own urge to speculate, she supposed. “Conjecture, Paula: Think CIA.”
Well, duh, as the kids said. But the therapy had helped. She had reestablished something of a relationship with her mother, though it was too late to try to talk to her dead father. Her mother, [email protected], sometimes wrote two or three cheery messages a day, eager to prove—Paula supposed—that their earlier, rancorous exchanges about Paula’s not working (not “putting your brain to use”) and not marrying (not “making a commitment that will sustain you through good times and bad”) were at an end. Paula didn’t care for e-mail, though every letter she’d attempted to write to George—at the behest of the therapist, for “closure”—seemed so overwritten that she’d begun to think one sentence on the computer would suffice to say she was okay, she wished him the best, and if he had any doubt, their relationship was over. How many commas would that sentence need? She was about to marry a radiologist named Kendall Llewellyn, whom she’d met at a meeting in Washington, D.C., arranged by the American Enterprise Institute. She had gone to the meeting with a friend, stopping to see an old school chum on her way to Charlottesville, Virginia, to swallow her pride and rendezvous with George, when she met the doctor (her friend’s plan, it seemed) and stayed in town an extra day to have lunch with him. He had been at NIH, but was about to move back to California, where he had a research grant at UCLA. It wasn’t San Francisco, but it was close. It also seemed that he was so fond of her, he was willing to consider going into private practice there, once his research fellowship ended. She could not quite believe she’d met someone when she wasn’t looking—though the therapist maintained that in the back of her mind, she had been looking, and that this was evidence that she had good instincts about self-preservation. Paula thought that refusing to have the big wedding he’d envisioned was also a step in the right direction—she hated formal gatherings, and hated to be the center of attention—and was grateful that Kenny agreed to marry at City Hall. It was a shame so few people would get to see the Peter Foxes, but she would know she had them on. She would be wearing the old gold locket she had gotten from her grandmother, along with a borrowed Lady Elgin watch she had admired on a female doctor’s wrist, who’d insisted she have it for her wedding, and as for something blue she thought she might tuck a photograph of George in her brassiere, because on her wedding day, she did not doubt that—at long last—she would be able to say with certainty how he would feel.
She turned the piece of paper, smoothing a wrong fold, then rather quickly shaping the giraffe’s long, fragile neck, which completed its shape. It didn’t stand up, though. There was no way to balance it. The directions didn’t say anything about the figures standing upright, she supposed. She decided to do one more, and to let her menagerie lie prone on the tabletop, as if winds from Chernobyl had done them in.
Two more completed: a leopard (easy) and a horse (moderately difficult). She was trying not to finish the cookie dough, because she still thought fresh fruit might be just as nice. Though whoever heard of having someone for tea and fresh fruit? The tea had been Kenny’s daughter’s idea. She had asked her to lunch, when Kenny said his daughter wanted to meet her, but his daughter had suggested tea instead. The animals looked colorful and sad. She remembered, vaguely, some poem by Yeats about animals that she had loved in her college days, but she couldn’t remember how it went. A poem of regret, as she recalled. All she could remember, as she searched her mind, was the beginning of a poem by Robert Frost: “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice.”
She got up and cracked an egg into the cookie dough, then lowered the blade and set the mixer on “medium.” The noise reminded her of George’s and her blender period: protein powder, bananas, and white grape juice, with a squeeze of liquid vitamins and a few ice
cubes, pureed for breakfast. There had also been their cinnamon toast period (the cinnamon sugar kept in a shaker intended for Parmesan cheese), and the yogurt with lecithin granules. She’d never liked that gloppy stuff, and the lecithin reminded her of the hideous pinworms she’d contracted over and over as a child. These days, she drank fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice (as sweet as orange juice), and, more mornings than not, ate a sinfully buttery almond croissant from the bakery at the shopping center. The juice was very California, but the bit of La Belle France was beyond delicious. You could believe you were in Paris, rather than the Hollywood Hills.
Kenny’s house had six bedrooms and seven and a half baths. The back windows overlooked a small plot of land on which the neighbor’s Appaloosa stood. The neighbor was divorced, and the horse sometimes came and spent the weekend. It was as affectionate as a dog. She would look out the window and see the neighbor picking up droppings and wonder if he might not be happier if he got himself a dog. He could get a very big dog, like a Great Dane, and think of it as a horse.
The Christmas before he died, Paula’s father had sent her sister Christie a tape of The Godfather with a note saying that he remembered her fascination with horses, and also the many dinners he had sat through, entirely devoted to his girls’ enthusiasms. Jan’s interest had been ballet, but to Paula’s knowledge, she had not been given the tape of a dance performance. Her own interest had been…well, that wasn’t so easy to say. She had loved her Barbie dolls, but she had also been a tomboy who liked softball, though for a while she played checkers, then chess, every night. Her sister Jan had played checkers with her; her father had played chess—though he often wandered off and shut himself in the bathroom, or went to bed and left her sitting there. She could remember one time, after she’d made a particularly clever move, her father rising and exiting the room, when she’d felt sure in the knowledge she should not wait for him to come back. She’d grabbed up Hawaiian Barbie and used the doll as a broom, sweeping the ivory pieces to the floor and running from the room, herself. Both she and Jan had been sent to see someone about their anger. Christie had not, and Christie had taunted them with: “Crazy, crazy, crazy.” See who was crazy now, with four brats driving her nuts and a husband who could barely support them. Jan had married well, leaving aside the fact that her husband was too much of a homebody. And she, herself, would be marrying a man who expressed his political opinions, who had religious beliefs (he had been raised going to church), who knew where he would be living for the next two years, and who was so responsive to her that he seemed quite willing…but there was no point in thinking of San Francisco. She should look out the window and continue to try to like the Hollywood Hills, where Gore Vidal and his companion were said to be in residence (this was rare), and where there were roses tended by a Mexican gardener who came twice a week, though he loved the flowers so much he often stopped by on Sunday. It was a strange feeling, to be near so many famous people. Christie envied her that, she knew. It was Christie who had given her a subscription to Vanity Fair. Come to think of it, she had not changed the subscription. Note to self: change address.
