Rich Friends

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  The force of gravity had become impossible. She leaned against the chest, the yartzeit flame flickered, and black smoke pointed upward. Jamie, she thought. What difference do all these ex post facto words make?

  “Look, if there were any way to apologize, to make it right, don’t you think I would?” Dan, his hands dangling between his knees, was watching her from the edge of their rumpled bed. In that bed he had whispered, This is my beloved and this is my friend.

  “You wouldn’t have blamed me,” he said, “if I hadn’t made that one half-ass remark about Raymond Earle being anti-Semitic.”

  She had no answer. After a minute he rose, walking unsteadily to the bathroom. She heard the strong splatter of water on water. The toilet sounded, a discreet, expensive flush. Dan returned, zipping his fly.

  “If you aren’t living with me, you get to keep her, is that the idea?”

  “Dan,” she whispered, “I love you.”

  He picked up the Scotch, squinting around it at her. “Love?”

  “I do.”

  Setting down the bottle, he moved closer. She could smell the staleness, feel his body warmth, see his expression, chiaroscuro. Dan searched her face. But my beloved had turned away and was gone. My soul failed me when he spoke, I sought him, but I could not find him: I called but he gave no answer. She looked away first.

  “How can I let him take Alix?” she murmured.

  “Schorer can take her about as far—how far can you throw diarrhea with a fork? Now. Get the hell out. Get the hell out of my house.”

  In a sort of reflex action she fumbled in her purse for her keys, two small ones to the Oldsmobile 88 he had bought her and the heavy Schlage for the front door. She set them on the dresser near the memorial candle.

  He followed her down the hall.

  “Need money?”

  “No.”

  “You do!”

  “Thank you, no.”

  He dragged bills from his money clip, forcing them into her hand. She let green paper flutter noiseless to the carpet. He looked down, then gripped her arm above the elbow, his fingers biting between flesh and muscle to the bone. “Pick it up,” he shouted. “Pick it up, you no-good cunt!” And with the flat of his other hand, he hit her full force on the left side of her face. Involuntarily, she reached for his arm, steadying herself. There was darkness, shadows whirling around. His arm, the only steady object in the void. She’d never before been struck, not by her parents, not by her husbands, yet now it was a relief to have a physical dimension to her pain. The world settled. A slow liquid trickled down her nostrils. She ran through empty rooms. Outside, she knelt by one of the ornamental pools, cupping water to her throbbing face. Slowly, redness disappeared in water.

  Dan stood over her.

  “Here,” he said, giving her his handkerchief. She held it to her nose, rising heavily to her feet.

  He stretched his lips, an attempt toward a smile. His strong teeth were even, the result, he’d told her, of long-term orthodontia. “You’ll have a time explaining that eye.”

  The pool shivered as a dragonfly touched down. Beverly watched widening ripples, her mind swimming in crosscurrents farther and farther from reason.

  “We’ll find the best lawyers. He won’t get her, Buzz.”

  Buzz.

  The silly nickname. He never said darling, love, sweetheart, always Buzz. He never called her Buzz unless they were alone. In bed he whispered Buzz. A gate slammed, starting a string of mournful puppy howls. Erratically she wondered if she should phone Bel Air Kennels to explain Boris-the-wanderer no longer had a master.

  “Come inside. I’ll put ice on it.”

  She didn’t move.

  “I’ve been crazy, Buzz,” he said. “Six days wondering when I’d see you. If. Know how crazy I’ve been?”

  He put his arms around her. He was warm and she was cold.

  She couldn’t bear warmth!

  She pushed her handbag at his chest, forcing him away. Her heart expanded, her stomach lurched as if she were dropping in an elevator shaft, and bile filled her throat.

  She fled.

  Down the path lined with voracious birds of paradise she ran, heels clattering on newly paved sidewalk. She didn’t pause at Lexington. Her breath came loud. She raced into Sunset, and a red light trapped her on the grassy central divider. Cars swished by. The real Beverly, the gentle, dreamy painter, stood with a hand to her pounding heart, thinking, How I must be hurting him. I can’t let it end like this. I’ll go back to explain and apologize. Yet the woman with a wild, distraught look, hair in need of shampoo, continued walking quickly south.

  4

  Five months passed.

  Raymond Earle had been adjudged incapable of his own defense, and in accordance with California State Penal Code 1370, was committed to the state facility for the criminally insane at Atascadero. The walls of Victory Enterprises’ Encino Mall rose. And Van Vliet’s no longer had alternating presidents, Caroline’s Uncle Hend having died in May. During that August hot spell, Caroline and Gene took his widow, Bette Van Vliet, to dinner at Scandia.

  As they waited for the captain to seat them, Gene happened to glance into the crowded bar. Dan Grossblatt sat on a stool, one arm around his blonde secretary, Georgia. His hand dangled over a large breast on which a brooch shone like a good-conduct medal. Gene hadn’t seen Dan since Jamie’s funeral—company reorganization had chewed every minute of his time. Caroline hadn’t seen Beverly since Arrowhead—wasn’t that two days’ sacrifice enough for a cheerful hedonist?

  Dan, sighting them, waved. The broad face looked puffy. Gene zigzagged through the crush of noisy drinkers.

  “Gene, hi. Grab a stool, have some fun.”

  “I’m with Caroline and her aunt.”

  “Mustn’t antagonize the bosses, huhh?” One of Dan’s fingers touched Georgia’s gold pin.

  “What happened?” Gene asked. On Dan’s forehead was a large, flesh-colored Band-Aid. A greenish bruise lay under one eye.

  “You should see the other guy.”

  “Honestly, Dan!” Georgia giggled. “Mr. Matheny, he got the littlest tight and hit a lamp post.”

  Dan laughed loudly.

  Gene asked, “How goes it otherwise?”

  “What otherwise? Great. Fabulous. The time of my life.” Dan gave him a bloodshot, despairing wink. “Can’t you see?”

  Gene could see. And in that awkward minute before he could get loose, he decided this was Save Dan Grossblatt Week, and that friend to all suffering mankind, Eugene Matheny, was elected president.

  Which was why he was easing his new, air-conditioned Pontiac (replaced annually by Van Vliet’s) through used-car country, peering at fading numerals on run-down units. Number 1043 was a decaying Mediterranean court blanketed with purple bougainvillea. D, the rear apartment.

  Beverly opened the screen door. Chalk smudged her shirt, her brownish hair waved in the soft pageboy of their youth around a face innocent of lipstick. She hugged him. “Oh Gene, Gene.”

  In the shabby living room she held up a finger. “One second,” she said. “I’ve got to get this shadow.”

  She picked up a pastel, stroking lavender onto one of those saccharine baby portraits. He sat in the armchair. A spring came up to meet him. The furniture was awkward, old, but he sensed Beverly hadn’t noticed. Almost covering one wall was a vast, unstretched canvas. At first it seemed abstract. Gene realized he was simply too close. Narrowing his gray eyes behind his correction, he saw raised hands, hundreds of pairs of hands, hands of every age, reaching, grasping, pleading into empty darkness. Even though he understood the content, the painting remained mysterious, disorganized, glimmering with something he couldn’t quite grasp.

  “Yours?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, still intent.

  “It’s powerful.”

  It was more than powerful. It was desolate. Yet with all the despair, it aroused an odd exultation in Gene. How could Beverly—of the baby pastels—evoke su
ch emotional response?

  “That does it,” she said, setting down her chalk, offering him a cold drink. He followed her into a kitchenette, sitting at the breakfast booth. He inquired about Alix. “Off with a friend to a swimsuit sale. You know how they are at that age. They always need clothes.” And it was her turn to ask after Caroline and Cricket. They talked of daughters and ate cinnamon streusel from a Safeway package (“Sorry, Gene, but there’s no nearby Van Vliet’s”) and drank iced Nescafé. Her face glowed with pleasure, and he put off hurting her. She went for fresh coffee.

  “It’s Dan,” he said.

  She set down glasses carefully.

  “Beverly, he’s cracking up.”

  She stared at him. Her eyes, deep and huge, were made to express suffering.

  “He smashed his car,” Gene said. “He’s been hitting the bottle. Hard.” Grossblatt cheated me, so I decided to get even, Raymond Earle had told newsmen before he was committed. I thought the boy was his. “I don’t know how anyone could handle that kind of guilt. And your leaving.”

  Beverly stared down at the table. “Philip won’t let Alix live with Dan. If I go back to Dan, I lose her.”

  There was something glib about the explanation. Gene had known Beverly too many years. She was never glib.

  “Philip’s hardly that kind of guy.”

  “It’s not a gamble I can take.”

  “Maybe he would have after, well, after. That’s understandable. He was hurt. But not now. He wouldn’t take Alix away from you.” He’s not that interested, Gene thought, the cold, handsome sonovabitch, he and Caroline having opposing views of Beverly’s husbands. “He wouldn’t do anything.”

  She stood. “Gene, that portrait, such as it is, was promised for this afternoon.”

  Gene knew a dismissal when he heard one. He started out of the kitchenette. And was confronted by the huge, despairing canvas. He thought of Dan’s bloodshot wink. Gene had much quiet persistence. His face assumed that downward-lined, dogged expression.

  “At least talk to him.”

  “I’ve tried to call. I never get through.”

  Gene digested this. “Then go see him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “Beverly, maybe you aren’t aware of this, but Dan went into that mall for you. I was in his office the day Raymond Earle got him the property. Dan was all keyed up. He said you couldn’t take the entertainment end of his business. He needed income, a lot of income. So the mall. He was changing his life to fit yours. If you blame him—”

  “Yes, I blame him,” she interrupted in a low, trapped voice. “Gene, does Caroline still call you Clean Gene? You are. So you won’t understand this. Not in a million years.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Dan’s aggressive, he’s full of drive, he moves his hands when he talks, he has that wry shrug. He’s so very Jewish. That’s why I blame him.”

  To Gene’s recollection, this was the first time Beverly, in his presence, had mentioned Jews or Judaism. She shied away from the subject. He knew it was sentimentality to think of this avoidance in terms of an unbearable psychic wound, yet he, too, had grown up in Glendale. Her confession was against every one of Gene’s beliefs, yet he knew she was incapable of willfully inflicting hurt. He absolved her.

  “You’re alone too much,” he said. “Thinking.”

  “No doubt about that.” She leaned against the old-fashioned archway. “My favorite pastime. If Dan weren’t so very Jewish, would Jamie be alive?”

  “Raymond Earle,” Gene said, “is a psychopath.”

  “There’s plenty of them around.”

  “Does Dan know how you feel?”

  “He’s very shrewd about people. And he knows me. Gene, I’m the original anti-Semitic Jew.” She sounded like a child about to weep. Her voice shook.

  And then he saw that her body, too, was shaking.

  “Honey, what is it?”

  “Nothing. I’ve got these magic pills,” she said, running from the room.

  He heard a sharp sound.

  “Beverly,” he called, following her. In a shabby bathroom, she stood over broken glass.

  “Can you realize,” she whispered, “how very much I hate me?”

  The shaking was worse.

  He ran the few steps to the kitchen. “It’s the way you were raised,” he called, snatching the glass she’d used for her coffee. “The time, the place. Everything’s more open now.” He was back in the bathroom, dropping shrunken ice cubes in the sink, running the faucet. “Here.”

  She took the glass between both hands, convulsively attempting to swallow. In order not to embarrass her, he looked away.

  Over the bathtub hung three narrow, unstretched canvases, a triptych of the same man wearing the same murky red clothing. In each, the frail body was knotted differently. Yet the three paintings had the shattering impact of a single pose: a man twisting and jerking as if he were being flayed alive. No pity. No sentiment. It was as if Beverly had recorded the sadism she saw.

  And then Gene understood what he should have understood from the large canvas, what he surely would have understood if Beverly hadn’t been a friend so many years. However, it requires huge mental acrobatics to revisualize old friends. And Beverly, in this particular, was no longer Beverly.

  The slender woman grasping a dime-store tumbler in shaky hands, this woman Gene had known almost half a lifetime, had become, by whatever tragic route, all that he ever hoped and dreamed of becoming.

  She was an artist.

  It was entirely probable, a great artist, he thought, absorbed in the triptych. She’s done it, he thought, turning to her with pathological awe.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Confused, he said the first words that came. “Your work, that’s all that matters.”

  “I do want to see him.”

  “You’re an artist.”

  The pills, evidently, worked fast. She was shivering, but less. “Is Beverly Hills out of your way, Gene?”

  “He’s hurt. He’ll hit out. Look, I was wrong. Honey, I don’t want him hurting you.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  “The portrait—”

  “I’ll get to it afterward,” she said, and stepped around him.

  5

  VICTORY ENTERPRISES

  LAND DEVELOPMENT

  Dan R. Grossblatt

  raised gold lettering spelled. Tucking her purse under her elbow, she used both hands to turn the oversize knob. Georgia looked up. A slow flush rose from tight pink sweater to pale bangs. She resembled an agitated angora.

  “Hi, Georgia.” Pretty bunny.

  “Mrs. Grossblatt.”

  “How is everything?”

  “Very fine.”

  “Is Mr. Grossblatt around?”

  “He’s in conference. He asked not to be disturbed.” Disturbed, three syllables. “For anything.”

  Beverly backed out of the office. Trembling, she stared for several minutes at

  VICTORY ENTERPRISES

  LAND DEVELOPMENT

  Dan R. Grossblatt

  before taking a deep breath and going back in.

  “I’ll wait,” she said, sitting on one of the couches.

  “He’s very tied up.”

  “How long?”

  “Very. What do you want?”

  “To talk, but—”

  But Georgia had clicked a button, saying crisply, “Mrs. Grossblatt’s here. She says she must see you now.”

  And Dan’s voice clanked through the intercom. “Be right there, DeeDee.”

  Georgia’s eyes glittered in twin wedges of triumph. The door opened. Dan blinked, startled. A greenish bruise under his left eye, horizontal plaster above the right. Accident, Gene had said. Beverly glimpsed a man seated in the inner office.

  “DeeDee’s coming to talk over the boys’ school. I’m tied up! You’ll have to wait!”

  He slammed the door. Hard. Water sprang to
Beverly’s eyes. Lately, any loud noise dis-turb-ed her. Not wanting Georgia to see, she picked up a magazine, opening it, worrying suddenly that one wasn’t enough. What if she got the shakes again? But already she felt as if her blood corpuscles were weighted. Two would have knocked her out. She thought of Gene’s face when it started. Nice face, kind, the hair going. Slight, stoop-shouldered now, yet not weak-looking. Always she had liked Gene. Tolerance. Clean Gene. He’d been nice, but oh, how he must despise her. Beverly’s fingers clenched the slick paper. What time is it? She wouldn’t ask Georgia, wouldn’t ask—

  “Georgia.” She heard her shrill anxiety. “What time is it?”

  “One thirty.”

  She had asked, unwillingly, twice before Dan emerged from his office with a fat, tanned little man. Bart Cogan, Dan introduced, of Carmel Cogan in Phoenix. Through an over-white smile, Mr. Cogan said he was pleased to meet her, truly pleased, and he hoped he hadn’t kept her husband too long. Dan said he was sorry as all hell about the interruption, Bart, but hahahaha, you know how these things are. Mr. Cogan kept smiling, obviously embarrassed by how these things are. The door closed on him. Both Dan and Georgia were staring at her.

  “He flew in to write up the lease,” Dan said, drumming impatiently on his door. “Come in.”

  “Dan, about your calls?” asked Georgia.

  “Don’t put them through.”

  “None, Dan?”

  “None.”

  Beverly moved past him, smelling cigar and Scotch. She sat in the deep chair opposite his ebony-topped desk. He searched through a turmoil of scattered papers, finding a legal-looking form to read. She stared at his wrist. She could see only the white of French cuff.

  “What’s the time?”

  He cocked his arm. “Quarter to two. Am I keeping you? I am sorry.” He crumpled the form, tossing it, missing the wastebasket.

  “So?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Aren’t you in a hot sweat to talk?”

  “Dan, please don’t shout.”

  “I’m not!” he shouted. “Two thirty I have another appointment!”

  “For the mall? It must be almost up. Is it filled?”