Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  "There! Happy?" she asked.

  "Let me touch it."

  "Oh, okay!"

  This lasted about five minutes while she continued—or pretended to continue—to read Seventeen, before someone came along and she slapped my hand away and popped the breast neatly back into her bathing suit.

  It was the very next morning, over huge slices of Crenshaw melon and cups of thick Dominican coffee on the pool terrace, that Alistair said, "Stodge, Judas, you're going to have to play without me this morning."

  "Why?"

  "I've got to put on a jacket and tie and crap and go with them [meaning Cousin Diana and Alfred] to meet with some ghastly bank guy. Should be done by noon. Tell me your shit-ule [parodying Alfred's accent]. I'll catch up with you later."

  Alistair didn't catch up with us that afternoon. He was lying on a chaise longue near the pool talking on the telephone when I returned.

  "Do you mind?" he asked when I settled next to him. Then he half explained: "Lawyers!"

  This was the Alistair from before that I'd remembered. I left.

  A few hours later, however, he came into my room and sat there watching me go through my clothing—he and Judy had forced me to buy more at stores they'd selected—and he semi-apologized and explained a bit more:

  "It's the project. Either I underbudgeted or Mother and Alfred are overspending. Whichever it is, we have to refinance. The guy we met the other day was a complete shark! Still was picking his teeth from eating the last idiot he'd snookered. I turned him down flat. They bitched and moaned, but... So, we're going to have to keep looking for a better deal. What a pain in the ass! Bankers!"

  As he talked, I recalled the sense I'd had as a nine-year-old whenever Alistair had talked about custody and divorce. It all seemed so grownup, and I so very backward. Even with his complaints, or maybe because of them, I once again felt out of it, behind the times, a kid.

  "I mean, you're pretty settled here now, aren't you?" Alistair asked. Then before I could answer, he said, "Because with all this bullshit, it may be a few days before I can return to my adolescence."

  "Sure, whatever you say, Stairs," I replied, thinking maybe now Judy and I could plan to be together and away from the Jewel's Box gang or Siggie and Marie-Claude, and I could, well, who knew what, exactly.

  "Look, why don't you take the Chrysler? I know it's a ratty old wagon, but it'll get you there, right?" Alistair said.

  That night, when I went to bed, I found the registration and car keys on my bed table. I wanted to thank Alistair, but I woke up late that morning and Inez said that all of them had already left the house.

  "Poor Stairs!" Judy said, as I removed the entire top of her bathing suit later that day. "Forced to be normal!"

  We were in a sandy little spot in a hidden gully, north of Jewel's Box, where I'd driven us that day. I murmured some reply and continued to kiss and fondle her. In return she reached over and began to play with my erection.

  "Oooh, that's nice! But Stodge...?" she asked.

  "Ummmm?" I answered, in a state of extreme distraction.

  "...You try to put that thing inside me," she said breathily, "and you're a dead man!"

  The discovery that Judy was a virgin, and intended to remain so for some time longer, rattled me considerably. It wasn't merely that from her and Alistair's talk I'd naturally assumed she was already far more experienced than I was; I'd also hoped she'd be the one destined to help me obtain that crucial, that very necessary, experience.

  Ungallantly, I didn't quite believe her. Which was why the minute I got back to the house that afternoon, I went in search of Alistair. Surely, I thought, he'd tell me if she was telling the truth. And if not, why not.

  Oddly, he wasn't anywhere to be found. Oddly, because his Alfa Romeo was parked out front. Perhaps something was wrong with it and he'd driven somewhere with them (I was already half accepting that like all grown-ups they were the enemy) using the Bentley. I knew he wouldn't be caught dead in a pickup, even one right off the assembly line, never mind Alfred's ratty, rattling vehicle. Did Inez know?

  She was in the kitchen, singing along to the radio a tune that sounded familiar but whose words made no sense at all—"Do zilwets on dee shayda"—when I asked. "Pleezze, don't bother me. I've got a headache," she said, and went on to sing, "Hmmm, hmmm, de daaay-da."

  He's here somewhere, I told myself.

  Which of course led to another one of my continuing explorations of the house and property that had so far eluded my grasp. Built by either a student or imitator of Frank Lloyd Wright (it depended upon whether Cousin Diana or Alistair told the story) some ten years before for a toilet manufacturer and his family, the place had been added to considerably since originally planned, although always by the original architect and in the appropriate style—which explained the different levels inside and out, as well as the sudden turnings required to reach certain annexes. So, while not large, the property remained somewhat mysterious: what I'd thought before to be a purely design-element fieldstone wall, for example, was one day revealed as containing the furnace; the pool-pumping equipment was hidden under slabs of gray rock which formed the steps leading down to the flower garden. And this particular afternoon's ramblings were to lead to two discoveries. First, that the freestanding wooden structure half-hidden by boxwood that I'd always thought of as a garden shed was, in fact, the Italian gardener's—Dario's—room. Second, Alistair already knew that fact.

  He was inside the room when I knocked on the windowless door. Inside, in bed, wearing nothing, smoking a Tareyton, and reading a copy of the Wall Street Journal, when I knocked, heard "Pronto," and thinking he was Dario, opened the door and stepped in.

  "What are you doing here?" we asked each other.

  Alistair spoke first. Pulling me over to sit on the bed next to him, he said, "Isn't it cute? Look at the way he's made it homier!"

  At first I didn't see what he meant. Aside from the large, low bed, the only furnishings were a battered rattan chest of drawers and what I took to be its companion chair.

  Alistair pointed to one bare wall, the substantial floor molding transformed into a narrow shelf, upon which leaned an overdecorated mandolin, a cheap vase filled with dusty cloth roses, and a yellowing chromolith in a baroque frame of some unknown metal, the photo of an old woman in a dark dress, her face barely visible within the shadow of a black shawl drawn over her head. Above the bed a large sepia tint of a gruesomely contorted Crucifixion had been thumb-tacked to the wall, adorned with a wreath of fresh laurel leaves, now dry and crumbling.

  "I thought you were him," Alistair said. "I need your help, Stodge."

  That was a new one, I thought. If anyone needed my help less it was he. "How? What for?"

  "To seduce Dario! Well, actually, I have seduced him. Now all I have to do is get him in the sack long enough and often enough to tie him to me by bonds lighter than air and tighter than steel."

  What the hell was he talking about?

  "What I actually need you to do is be lookout for us," Alistair said.

  Before I could ask any of the dozen questions I had, he went on.

  "Like most Mediterranean men, he's very sensual. Also chicken. So, if you're on guard while we're in here, it'll free his mind to do what we want to do."

  He explained it so rationally, half my questions vanished.

  "And the beauty of it," Alistair said excitedly, "is that you don't have to do anything. Just hang around the pool or up in your room, and if you see one of them happen to be looking for Dario when we're in here, you simply come warn us."

  "How?"

  "Knock on the door. Three times fast. Or on the window. It's hidden in the cypresses. Not hard to find."

  As though I were to be tested immediately, we heard the door open. Dario looked in.

  "Go! Go!" Alistair said, pushing me out. "Vieni, amorino," he said to Dario, who stood as though dumbfounded on the lintel. I managed to sidle along the gardener to try to get past him. But if he saw
me, he didn't give any indication. His entire field of vision seemed completely taken up by Alistair, risen upon the bed to his knees, his arms out in invitation. Dario stood there a minute in his canvas shorts, exuding a not unpleasant odor composed of loam, dirt, lilies, and sweat. Alistair was saying something I couldn't understand in Italian—given his reassuring tone, probably that they'd be private now that I was on guard. Dario continued to ignore me as he moved toward the bed slowly, I thought like someone in a trance.

  I got out of the little house and closed the door behind me.

  "Where is he?" Cousin Diana moaned.

  Inez was slapping T-bones on the kitchen counter so hard she could have tenderized the bone. She didn't look up.

  "Why is it," Cousin Diana went on, "whenever I want him, he's not around?"

  Alfred was half snoozing; a can of beer placed atop his firm potbelly rose and fell, rose and fell. He didn't even bother to pretend to hear her.

  "I've looked everywhere and I'll be damned if I can find him. Does he just blend into the trees or what?" Cousin Diana continued.

  I was attempting to read The Possessed, which Judy had foisted on me a few days before and which I was slogging through for the sake of our relationship, fully understanding it—I'd read The Magic Mountain already; this was light stuff—and, worse, pretending to appreciate it.

  "Isn't someone going to answer me!" Cousin Diana slapped Alfred's arm.

  The beer can bobbled and threatened to fall over, but though he barely opened one eye, he managed to catch it and mutter "Sodding kid!" before burbling back into somnolence.

  "Roger?" She turned on me.

  "I assumed your question was rhetorical."

  Her eyes narrowed quickly. "You're even beginning to sound like him."

  Which meant that she realized that after five weeks in L.A. I now dressed like her son, spoke like him, and went to places Alistair went— with his friends. Which was only natural.

  "Well, it's not rhetorical, it's... What is it, Alfred?"

  "Interrogational," he mumbled.

  "I am not interrogating him! I'm simply asking a question. It's... informational," she decided, smoothly.

  "Steak on the grill. Dinner in ten minutes!" Inez announced.

  Alfred more or less came to life at this. I merely shrugged at Cousin Diana. "Wasn't he at Creosote Canyon?" I asked, my use of his nickname causing Alfred to wink at me behind his beer can.

  "Much earlier!" she admitted. "Haven't you seen him? Where have you been all day?"

  "At the Slumbergs'," I said, using the name we'd invented for the once-famous émigré writer. "With Judy."

  This was cause for new alarm. "Does your cousin know that you're with Judy every day?" Before I could answer, she went on. "You're not getting serious with her, are you? Because if you are... And what am I supposed to tell your mother when..."

  "Cool down," Alfred commanded gruffly. "Let 'em have some fun."

  "I'm setting the table," Inez said, in a threatening tone of voice.

  Of course I knew where Alistair was, and it was eating me alive. He was in Dario's room doing something godawful with the gardener, and he knew very well what time dinner was, and it increasingly seemed to me that he not only didn't care what he was doing, but was drawing me into it too.

  Two days before, there had been a close call. Some neighbors had appeared with Cousin Diana in the garden, and suddenly, instantly, she required Dario to show them something or other. I'd been in my bedroom gabbing on the phone with Judy when I saw and heard the four women below. I hung up, slipped out the door to the little balcony, slinked down to the terrace barely eluding discovery, and cut and slashed my arms and legs sneaking through the boxwood into the cypresses, where I frantically knocked on the window of the gardener's room. Then I stood there—in nothing but my underpants—praying as the women's voices got closer and closer, until I thought I'd scream out of frustration. Just as they reached the cottage, Dario came out, complaining about having a little flu. I waited till they were all out of range, then dashed in myself. Alistair was naked—natch—languidly smoking a cigarette. When I began to chastise him, he merely looked at me and said, "What can I do? He's such an animal, he can't be stopped!"

  I could have said no to Alistair, I should have said no. But look at it this way: in return for that one small thing I was to do for him, he'd given me his car, his house, his friends, his wonderful way of life, the beach, sports, and fan in the unstintingly glorious summer weather; he'd given me a new, much more adult way of behaving myself, of dressing myself, of regarding myself; above all, he'd given me his girlfriend, to do with whatever I could get away with. Not only had he given all that to me, but he'd shown me in the greatest detail how to appreciate and enjoy it.

  Yes, it was bribery. I blushed thinking it. But where would I have been this summer without it?

  "If you want," I said, "I'll go look. Maybe he's in the garage?"

  "Doubtless," Alfred sniped, "changing the fuel lines on the Bentley."

  I snickered at the ludicrous vision. But I went anyway.

  Outside the dining room, dusk was falling, the low sun striking off glints of orange here and there as though in final emphasis, making the rest of the garden look even more shadowy and overgrown. In fact, earlier that day, while sitting at the pool, I'd noticed that the mixed foliage did seem strangely luxuriant, despite Dario's continuous presence and activity snipping and clipping and pruning, despite growing piles of cuttings barely contained in large burlap sacks out by the entry gates, despite the general lack of rain or moisture-laden mists in the past few weeks. As I sidled past the stands of succulents, the baby cholla and Christmas cactus seemed to send out spiky shoots to grab at my socks and nip my bare calves.

  From the dining room, I could be seen knocking at the door of the garden room, so I used my hands to machete my way through the boxwood, then brushed away flocks of tendrils vaguely attached to the encroaching cypress trees, their trunks dressed in verdigris, to knock at the little curtained window. While I waited for a response, I had the sensation that although it was nearly night, everything in the least bit botanic was growing inches per second around me. I knocked again.

  After what seemed the longest time, I noticed the window open. I reached under the sill, lifted it, and spread the curtains.

  The planned exhortation died on my lips.

  Before me in the room, outlined by undulations of orange light in the gloaming, Alistair appeared to kneel on the bed, dancing some sort of Polynesian fertility rite, his head thrown back and forward, his arms lifting and falling, his body rocking, moans erupting from deep in his sternum.

  I saw that he was kneeling upon the prone body of Dario, who lay under him, his arms crossed behind his dark hair, his entire body slowly writhing upon the mattress in that same tranced rhythm.

  I don't know how long I stood there watching them, baffled/ashamed/ entranced by the sight, my nostrils filled with the nightrise of humus and dead leaves from about my feet and, wafting out from inside the room, another musk, sharper, undeniably biological. Suddenly I heard voices on the terrace.

  "Stairs!" I whispered fiercely, hoarsely.

  He turned to me, his eyes open yet unseeing, and he waved me away with a boneless gesture not unlike that of a Balinese dancer.

  "Stairs! They're coming!" I whispered. "Quick!"

  He merely leaned forward into the dark curls of Dario's head, the two of them curving like serpents, their orangely defined bodies flattening together, slowly twisting until now Dario was on top, the little sparks of late light remaining in the room tinting as with a kiss the rhythmical apex of his surging buttocks.

  "Stairs!" I called out. "You have to stop!"

  "What is it!" Cousin Diana's voice, only feet away.

  I closed the window and pushed my way out of the boxwood.

  "Roger? What are you doing? What's going on?"

  Behind her, Alfred loomed, growling that his steak would be burned.

 
; "Nothing," I lied.

  "What are you doing there? What's..." She seemed to realize something, then turned and rushed to the garden room door. Before I could stop her, she pulled it open, and teetered on the lintel, before almost falling back into Alfred, who'd come up behind her.

  He looked inside and muttered, "Sodding kid!" Then Alfred pulled her away and, with a burst of strength, grabbed her up in his arms and carried her off across the garden and terrace to the house, from whence I heard her begin to scream in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.

  I no longer hesitated, but went to the door and closed it upon Dario's unceasing buttocks.

  The dining room was set for four. I sat down numbly, and Inez immediately served me steak and cottage fries and spinach souffle, which I ate, surprised by my appetite, my attention bifurcated by the decreasing sounds up a half flight of stairs of Alfred's deep voice and Cousin Diana's whimpers, and by the even more disturbing silence of the distant garden room, now just another undefined shadow in the dimmed outdoors.

  Alfred came downstairs, tumbled into his chair, and Inez jumped up and served him. He ate with gusto. A few minutes later, the glass door opened and Alistair stepped in casually, as though he'd been taking a nightly promenade. He sat down and Inez served him, and he also ate with great appetite, despite the almost dreamlike look upon his face.

  No one spoke a word. Once, just after Inez served apple pie a la mode, Alfred snorted suddenly, loudly. I jumped in my chair, prepared for an outburst that never arrived. But Alistair didn't seem to notice anything. He wolfed down his pie, drank his glass of milk like a good little boy, excused himself, and went up to his room.

  As he reached the landing, Alfred said in a low voice, "Happy now?"

  Alistair turned, in that single fluid gesture we'd seen Loretta Young use to turn after entering a room on TV. He stared with a distracted smile.