Rich Friends

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  After she left Vliet the thought of the thing in South Kensington depressed her, too. She went into a red phone booth, dialing Herbert Kuznik’s bed-and-breakfast, asking a Liverpudlian accent of indeterminate sex to inform Mr. Kuznik that Miss Matheny couldn’t make the party tonight. She wouldn’t see Vliet and she couldn’t see Herbert. What sort of sense did it make? And what was the difference? This was like it was.

  The following morning she was examining some proofs. Rain spat at the high windows that showed only the lower half of people. Her bell gave its harsh grate.

  “Come on, Cricket,” Vliet said. “Buy you elevensies.”

  Rain slanted in icy lines. They bent their heads, hurrying past joined red-brick houses, ducking into an Old Brompton Road snack bar that smelled of wet clothes and coffee. At the counter a pair of girls talked soberly of David Cassidy.

  Vliet shook his hair and took off his coat, ordering, “Two teas, two toasts.”

  “Just tea, please,” Cricket said.

  “This is my breakfast,” Vliet said. “My friend’s catching up on her jet lag. And while we’re on the subject, what’s with your sex life?”

  Cricket played with her spoon. In London she was wandering through her usual existence with her usual type of men. Herbert Kuznik was a good example. She had met him two weeks ago at the Wimpy’s on Oxford Street. He was alone, eating a Wimpyburger, hunched over London from A to Z. Squarish of mind and body, a sophomore from the University of Arizona, Herbert was sweating out his year’s sentence of obligatory dropout.

  “Caroline’s panting to hear.”

  “Nothing permanent,” she said.

  Vliet burst into laughter. The David Cassidy fans turned, approving him with green-rimmed eyes.

  “Cricket, oh Cricket. That is a one-night stand. One-night stands aren’t the message to take the boss’s wife.”

  Tea and toast arrived. He took a bite, gazing thoughtfully at her.

  He said, “About Thanksgiving.”

  “They don’t have it here.”

  “They have Guy Fawkes Day. Now will you listen?” He held out a toast triangle. She shook her head. “Go on,” he said. “It’s safe. Those buns I wouldn’t trust, but in my Fodor I read English bread is absolutely safe.”

  “Vliet,” she whispered, “they can’t tell you’re kidding. Stop the Ugly American, please?”

  “We’re talking about Thanksgiving,” he said. “Cricket, think of the food. There’ll be sweet potatoes, and Ma will tell us she put in orange juice, butter, and sherry and can anyone tell they’re canned? And string beans with blanched almonds. Oh, and let’s not forget the creamed onions. And the acres of pickled watermelon rind. Ever notice nobody eats watermelon pickles? They take them to leave on their plate. And the noble bird itself, from Van Vliet’s, a hen, golden, bursting with oyster stuffing.”

  “You’re nostalgic.”

  “If there’s one thing I never am, it’s nostalgic. And to prove it, we’ll have a minute’s silence for the vodka going down Ma’s throat in the kitchen. For Chrissake, Cricket, you tell me how anyone can be nostalgic for the looks on reactionary Dad’s and liberal Gene’s faces as they talk Watergate? And Caroline talking to keep them from talking, and saying she won’t eat this and this and this.” With a graceful movement he gathered sugar and cruet in his arms as if hoarding a feast. “Think of Grandma calling me Roger and you Em.”

  Cricket sighed.

  “Better,” he said. “Much better. Far from home, one should mourn one’s native festivals.”

  Don’t do this to me, Cricket thought. She poured milk into her tea. It turned putty-gray, and when she drank, it was cold. She had caught on to what Vliet was doing. She knew him as well as she loved him. Don’t do this, she thought. Please. I can’t go home.

  Chewing on his last triangle of toast, he glanced at his flat gold watch. “At the Royal Festival Hall tonight they’re doing Haydn’s Nelson Mass with, they say, a two-hundred-and-fifty-voice chorus. You come along and count.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Again?”

  “It’s a two-night stand.”

  Laughing, he reconsulted his watch. “Even she must be up by now.”

  “Don’t you like her?”

  “Should I?”

  “For me it’s sort of imperative.”

  “That, you’ll outgrow.” Tossing silver on the counter, he paused behind the two girls, dropping a hand on a shoulder of each. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I happen to be a very close personal friend of David Cassidy, and you’re right. He does have integrity, charisma, and smashing honesty. He’s the musical genius of our time. There’s one problem, one tiny problem is all. Ackshly, he’s a thirty-five-year-old female impersonator.”

  The girls goggled, then giggled, and one cried, “You Americans!”

  Cricket watched him stride past Harrod’s, tall above Britishers. The rain had stopped. Shifting clouds bared a crescent of blue, but it would rain again. She should go right home. Instead, she walked among the hatted, gloved, heavy-coated crowds. Winter, she thought, balling her hands in her pockets. The memories were coming at her, fast, in double exposures.

  I can’t go back to California.

  I can’t. Her nose was red at its Van Vliet tip, and she walked faster, into a side street. At Rutland Gate she saw the American couple. Today, though, they were a threesome. An older man, bald, managed to open a Paris Herald against the wind. She heard him say something about the A’s. Passing, she said, “Hi.” The woman smiled. The bearded young man said, “Hey there, again,” reddening as he lurched on an uneven cobble. The A’s? Sure, she thought, it’s World Series time. The A’s. Oakland. But who was Oakland playing? Her eyes filled with tears, so much did she yearn to know. She turned to ask. The threesome were disappearing into No. 16.

  She felt utterly alone, cut adrift. An exile. Which, of course, was precisely how Vliet intended her to feel.

  2

  By three o’clock her nose felt tight, her throat raw. “I haven’t had a cold since I got here, so I’m due,” she said to Herbert Kuznik when she canceled a second time. Around four, rain started again. At five thirty, there was a knock at her door. Barefoot, tightening her robe, she answered. Vliet. Rain dripped into the hollowed stone at the threshold, and silently across the puddle he handed her a bag of Rosarita tortillas.

  “Where’d you get them?” she cried. “There’s none, even at Harrod’s.”

  He came in, taking off his raincoat. The kitchen, which was the entry, once had been used for coal storage and was paved, low. He had to bend.

  “It’s like this, Cricket. I made a pilgrimage to Westminster, praying long at the tomb of St. Esteban de Enchilada, and—”

  “Fortnum’s?”

  “Caroline put ’em on a plane. I took ’em off.”

  “You called her? Went to the airport?”

  “No need to sob.” He crossed her narrow room to sit on a lumpy couch which opened into a lumpier bed—a Put-YouUp, the landlady called it.

  “Who’s in the Series?” Cricket asked.

  “What does that have to do with the price of tortillas?”

  “Mind?”

  “Oakland and the Mets,” he said. “We forgot the pies, Cricket. French apple, pumpkin, and mince with lattice pastry on top. And this should please you. Ma’s given up on Dream Whip and we’re back to the real thing.” He rubbed his palms together. “Christ, this place is cold. We’ll find you something plusher.”

  “Like the Hilton?”

  “You’re not dense, Cricket. How come I’m not getting through?”

  “You are,” she said clearly. “Vliet, I can’t go back.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m happy here.”

  “Really.”

  She sat on the floor, extracting a Kleenex, blowing her nose.

  “Let’s hear it again for happiness,” he said.

  “I’m.…”

  “Come on. Say it again.”

  “Until
you came I was. No. Not really. I mean.…”

  “What do you mean, Cricket?”

  She massaged her ankle. “Home, I kept thinking, all the time thinking. It wasn’t guilt.” She sighed. (Guilt affected only matters concerning their son.) “I couldn’t escape. The trial dragged on and on.”

  “We have television and papers in Seattle, Cricket. I testified longer than you did, Cricket.”

  “But I knew those people. Magnificat, Bethesda, Celestial. It got very bad. I’d be driving someplace and forget where I was going, and there I’d be, on the Pasadena Freeway, heading for Mrs. Putnam’s. Or on Pacific Coast Highway. Mr. Henderson lives in Malibu. He was very broken up, more than Mrs. Putnam. Of course he’s old and sensitive, a director and all. Mostly, though, I’d be at Beverly’s. She put up with me. Sometimes she’d get to painting and forget I was there. Her face is like an El Greco madonna, all grief and beauty. Steel and sorrow. I mean, how could anyone live through two murders? Two!” Cricket pulled out a tissue, not using it. “Before I left, they let me visit Alix.”

  “They did? How come you never said anything? How was she?”

  Closing her eyes, Cricket saw frantic mole fingers.

  “That bad?”

  “She’s very fat. And quiet. Mother says it’s the drugs.” Cricket paused. “Poor Beverly. Think how terrible it must be for her. She’s so gentle. And a fantastic painter. Did you know she’s having a big exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art next spring?”

  “And so much for Beverly Picasso’s career.”

  “Anyway, in Los Angeles, I couldn’t escape. And when I got here, I felt better.” Cricket had a couple of old Brace Ridge friends who lived in Chelsea, and with them had figured that on her trust income she could manage.

  “And in London you’re doing fabulous?”

  “At least it’s not being pushed on me the whole time.”

  “A question, then. Why did you hang around when the shit was flying? And now it’s over, take off? Want to know what I think? When the trial was on, Cricket, you could run around and beat your chest remorsefully or play ministering angel to the bereaved. But now things’ve quieted down, there’s nothing left for you to do except atone. And that’s what you’re doing. Paying your negotiable penance. That’s the way I see it, Cricket. You’ve pulled on a hair shirt. And you refuse to take it off, even though it’s gotten quite smelly.”

  She said nothing.

  He struck a match. “Ever thought,” he asked over the flame, “what your being here does to Caroline and Gene?”

  “They said it was fine.”

  “They say everything you do is fine, and you know it. You’re hurting them, Cricket, and in a goddamn stupid way.”

  Cricket blew her nose more violently than was called for. After a minute Vliet went into the kitchen, running himself a glass of water. The tap was slow.

  “That was below the belt,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are they really hurt? Am I being cruel?”

  “You don’t have it in you.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Cricket, you flunk cruelty.” He turned off the water. “Listen, I can take the way SOBs stare like I’m a freak. I can take Grandma calling me Roger. I can take the way Ma hovers over me, so proud I’m a Van Vliet like the big kids. Christ, though, she’s on the sauce. Really. And Dad—he’s pathetic. Whoever figured losing Roger would hit him so hard? I honestly believe he’s quit screwing around. But you wanna know what it is that really gets to me?”

  “Vliet, don’t do this,” she said. “Not to me.”

  He went on. “I can stand everything, Cricket. Except holidays and birthdays and anniversaries. With her wedding-present silver, bowls and platters and little jars, her good cutwork cloth covered. That food. So damn much food. That much food is obscene. And they expect me to eat and eat and eat and make up for Roger. And since I already said it, there’s Gene and Caroline. They have sad eyes, too. So I eat your share. Nothing goes down right. I’m a full-fledged ulcer candidate before my time.” He came back into the room. “Forget any of that crap about you going into self-imposed exile. You always did live in your own peculiar, honest little world.” He leaned on the sink. “It’s me. Me. Me. Cricket, I cannot eat all that damn stuffing and gravy.”

  “Please, Vliet.”

  He held up his glass, squinting at her through water. “God is my witness, I cannot face that Van Vliet’s butterball turkey alone.”

  “Here I’m all right. Pretty much.” Her voice faded.

  “Cricket, Cricket. Six thousand miles to say this. I need you to be with me.”

  A long silence.

  “Look, I fly down for every possible holiday and occasion, and some impossible ones. I’ll keep doing it. I’ll be with you.”

  Down the narrow room he was staring at her, so intently that she could feel her heart, and she thought of their son and the events preceding him. Upstairs, a phone rang. Her lips trembled.

  Vliet didn’t move, but the expression in his blue eyes changed. A warm look. And something more. Pleasure. As if he’d found the key to an Alfa-Romeo on his chain.

  “Okay, I won’t push it,” he said.

  Why should he? He’d won, and he knew it.

  She sneezed three times.

  “My limey cousin better take her vitamin C.” He pronounced vitamin English-style, the first i short, the second long. “And I better move my tail.”

  He phoned for a minicab. And was gone.

  She found a George V shilling and pushed it in the meter. Electric coals glowed orange. She sat on the thin rug, warm on her front, her back cold, munching a stale tortilla. From time to time she sniffled. The upper lip protruded wistfully.

  She listened to the rain fall on a city that, until two days ago, had been her haven.

  3

  Vliet kept his promise. He flew home so often that by April Gene was saying, “Joe McAllister’s retiring next year. We better break you in while he’s still around.” Joe was one of the old-time market men, he ran the seven Southern California warehouses. This was a big promotion, a challenge, a hell of a lot of work.

  Alix had been sprung. It took Vliet three months to find time (get up the nerve? )to call her.

  Vliet kept to the middle of the shabby runner. The apartment corridor was thick with the noncommittal hush that underscores muted television laughtracks. The window at the end of the hall was dirty, uncurtained. All the lonely people, he thought, this is where they all come to, and as his finger pressed down on the yellowing buzzer of 117, he saw, very clearly, a fat Down’s syndrome face with crazy lipstick. Make her look okay, he thought, I don’t ask for the old spectacular, okay is all.

  The door opened.

  Slender body in magnificently cut white pants, hair shining and curled at the tips as if blown dry by some hip faggot operator, makeup invisible but present. It was as if tragedy had made Alix aware of her unique gift, as if she now understood her luminous perfection demanded trusteeship. She was, without hyperbole, the most beautiful woman Vliet ever had seen—and he’d searched plenty. Relief exploded in him, she held out both hands, and he took them, kissing her forehead.

  “You smell good, too,” he said.

  The living room was ferns, wicker, charm, and a ringing phone. Glancing him an apology, she answered.

  “Sure … No-no, not tonight … Mmm, sad. Sounds fun.… Six tomorrow? Fine, Vic … Yes, here.…”

  Vliet noted a desk with books. Alix, still on the phone, pressed the rolltop. The desk rumbled shut.

  After she hung up, he asked, “What’s that you’re hiding?”

  “A mess. I’m working on a paper. Didn’t Cricket mention UCLA?”

  Cricket, who saw Alix, had. “Full time?” he asked.

  “Pretty much.” And the phone rang. As far as Vliet could tell, she made three dates in five minutes. So much for all the lonely people.

  Leaving down the drab hall, he asked, “Not to get personal, but have you considered somepl
ace newer?”

  “First, it’s near Beverly Hills and UCLA. Mother feels more secure if I’m nearby. Second of all, it’s cheap. And third, the rooms are good-size, and if there’s one thing I cannot stand after being in hatches, it’s small rooms.”

  “Real finesse,” he acknowledged. “I haven’t heard a crackup handled so beautifully since my first Sutherland Lucia.”

  They ate in the Rathskeller in Westwood, surrounded by others in the uniform of casual chic. They drove along Pacific Coast Highway. By the time they neared Malibu, they had talked, briefly, about her stay in Mount Sinai. “I was stuffed with Thorazine and soggy coffee cake. I weighed in at one ninety-eight when I left.” And Pleasant Elms. “I went on a diet.” He told her of his job, riding assistant herd on Van Vliet’s warehouses, playing down his hard work. He pulled into the Malibu pier parking.

  “Buy you a drink,” he said.

  “Let’s walk.”

  So they moved along the dark pier, listening to the hollow crash of waves beneath them. She put her arms on the rail.

  “It’s been easy,” she said.

  “Why the surprise? Isn’t it always with us?”

  “I was terrified. Vliet, I did crack in front of you.”

  He didn’t care to open that can of worms. He lit a cigarette.

  “It bothers you, my saying that?”

  “You never were one for confessionals, Alix.”

  She stared down. Breakers roared, ghostly white.

  “Dr. Emanual says I must be more open with my feelings.”

  “You’ve still got a shrink?”

  “One that looks like a lizard.”

  “Ahhh. You haven’t reached the transference stage.”

  “Not yet.” She laughed.

  “Openly then, Alix. How do you feel about the date you made with the first joker?”

  “Sincere.”

  “Too sincere to cancel?”

  “It’s Vic. One of Dan’s sons. They’re in for a month—they live with his first wife in Rome. Vic’s eighteen. No-no. Nineteen.”

  “Do you confine yourself to foreign adolescent stepbrothers?”

  “Absolutely.”

  At her khaki-drab front door, he put his arms around her. She pushed at his chest with her palms, breaking free. “That’s the trouble with the world today. Everything’s rush-rush.”