The State We're In

by Ann Beattie

  “I love you and I’m happy to hear from you, but I’m naked and greasy with suntan lotion, so can I call back?”

  “Don’t bother. But you do know there’s a storm coming? Maybe they’ll be checking in to make a horror movie, or one of those vampire things that I’m not supposed to call ‘horror movies.’ Larry’s daughter has written a script for one of those at UCLA. He wanted me to read it, as though I could differentiate one from another. You’re not going to do anything stupid, like break up Hughes’s relationship with Elizabeth, are you? It kills me that I have to know you’re at a motel with a friend’s daughter’s boyfriend.”

  “Anorexic bitch,” Moira said.

  “I’m not going to respond to that,” her mother said. “You remember that if Hughes cheats on her with you, he’ll cheat on you with someone else. But I really only called to say I love you no matter what you do and because of the strange coincidence of the Polanski thing. Well, it’s a small world. Not that he can move around it freely. Anyway, Daddy sends love. He’s doing great today. He loves the new afternoon attendant. They go to a park and listen to birdcalls together. Your father has two pairs of binoculars that would allow anyone living here to see into Buckingham Palace. Love you. Bye.”

  “Bye,” she said.

  There was a knock on the door. Hughes had, as usual, forgotten his key? (Real keys! So cool.) She wrapped the towel around her and said, “Yes?” at the door.

  “I have free drink coupons for a new bar that opened a few nights ago. We would like you to have them,” Kunal said.

  “Thank you, Kunal. Can you just push them under the door? No. I guess you can’t. Can I get them from you when I get out of the shower? I was just—”

  “Extremely sorry,” Kunal said. “Hughes said to please give them to you. He said he loses everything.”

  She opened the door a crack and reached out. Two pieces of paper were put in her hand. “Thanks so much,” she said, to Kunal’s embarrassed, trailed off “Sorry to interrupt.”

  In the distance she could hear the wind rustling the trees. It was great they didn’t need air-conditioning. She heard faint music she knew was not Kunal’s, so maybe it was wind chimes. The towel was nice, thick enough, neither limp nor stiff. She’d brought her own favorite soap with her. Kunal had liked it so much, she’d given him the other bar (lemon verbena and sage). Every day, they left a note for Kunal saying simply, “Thank you,” and a ten-dollar bill. They’d found a vase of ivy near the book on the night table, with one white daisy plunked in the center of the real glass vase. Now, there were free drink coupons.

  She stepped into the shower. Her mother was right about Hughes cheating. But what if they had a few good years? Or what if the cheating was somehow, miraculously, kept secret? What if she cheated? That wouldn’t be impossible, would it? As she began to smell like an herb garden, she thought: Elizabeth, with your smell of roses, just find someone else. You’d never lighten up enough to have a drink at a bar, even if it was free, would you? You could just disappear, Elizabeth, like a strand of hair going down the drain. After every shower, she herself had to dab up any hair that might have fallen with a crumpled Kleenex. It was gross, but Hughes thought finding hair in the drain was grosser. When she turned the water off, she realized she’d forgotten to wind the towel around her hair and it was damp. How preoccupied with that woman am I? she wondered. Then she stepped out onto the bath rug that even Hughes agreed was totally clean and began to towel off, first blotting her stomach, then gathering the towel together to rub it over her pubic hair. She had the legs of a young girl, athletic and unmarred. She’d inherited them from her mother, though her mother had also been responsible for her not very pretty mouth. She resisted looking in the mirror.

  “Hughes!” she called, as she walked across the parking lot toward the pool. He was underwater, clutching his knees. Bubbles rose to the surface. Yes, there were wind chimes on the lower branch of the tree at the far side of the pool. She hadn’t noticed them before.

  “What a beauty!” he said when he surfaced, shaking his head; tilting it, really, to get water out of his ears. “How do I deserve such a beautiful woman and free drink tickets besides?”

  “I thought you didn’t approve of my drinking.”

  “Free?” he said.

  They laughed. They laughed when they watched Jon Stewart, often. When they watched old Fawlty Towers. He thought Louis C.K. was a riot. She laughed, a little meanly, when he reached into food she’d prepared in her apartment and brought out an infinitesimally thin strand not of hair but the stem of some herb, a bit of oregano, something like that. On a scale of one to one hundred, she thought she loved him more than eighty.

  “It’s not going to storm. It blew over,” he said, climbing one-handed up the ladder. “This situation with Bezos and the Washington Post is an interesting one. He wasn’t so high and mighty he didn’t get in touch with Bob Woodward right away for advice. He—Bezos, I mean—has got a skunk works team in New York now, called WPNYC, which is a great idea. I think he’s going to turn it around.”

  “Skunk works?” she said. The wind chimes were tinkling in the breeze. She was not so sure the storm had passed over.

  “How about a little fooling around, followed by a brief nap, then drinks?” he said.

  “How much do you love me, on a scale of one to one hundred?” she said.

  Oh god, whatever had made her ask that? What, what, what.

  He tucked in his chin. Water streamed down his body, which was a good body. He worked out. His business partner had turned out to be a genius, but an out-of-shape one, so Hughes had become the front man. One of Hughes’s first moves had been to hire his old school buddy from Maine, who was a dynamite deal finalizer, though lately he’d been complaining about all the commuting from Maine to California.

  Moira, looking at Hughes, thought: Would he have said exactly the same thing to Elizabeth, would he have called her beautiful, if he’d brought her to the Nevada Sunset?

  “One hundred,” he said, after too much delay. “But if we could please put relationship talk on hold? I’m not in the mood today, Moira, I’m really not.”

  To change the subject, she said, “My mother called. She sends you her best. She said that of all things, she found out some movie is going to be filmed at this motel. Not today, I wouldn’t guess. Except for the Norwegians, nobody seems to be checking in regardless of the price, which is odd.”

  “You don’t think this place is just a bit obscure?”

  “Not really. An app directed us here.” She shrugged. If he said one hundred, she thought he, too, might love her about as much as she loved him: eighty. Eighty, max.

  “How’s your brother?” he asked halfheartedly. He liked her brother more than he let on. They’d done some major hikes together in the White Mountains, and he’d treated her brother to a week in Hawaii, when he and the Genius had gone there to talk to clients. They’d flown in a helicopter over a waterfall.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t really say anything about him. But Daddy has a new attendant he likes. That’s good news. He mostly hates people.”

  “Getting out?”

  “Yes. He went to the park today. Or maybe it was yesterday. I don’t remember.”

  “We should take him somewhere in the van again.”

  “Well, we’re not a couple, so we can’t very easily do that, since Elizabeth’s parents live two doors down from my parents.”

  He squinted at her. Seventy, max. Whenever he was being truly selfless, she went in for the kill. That was what he’d said about her at the beginning of the last trip, and she hadn’t forgotten it. He’d made her sound like a dangerous fish.

  Thunder, but no lightning.

  “I’m not in the mood anymore. I think I’ll get with your program. Where are those coupons?” he said.

  “On the table by the door.”

  “Are you going to snap out of it, or should I look forward to an evening of sulking?” he said.

  “Do y
ou think you might be picking a fight?” she said. “A few minutes ago you loved me one hundred percent, and I was a beautiful woman.”

  “But what are you doing with your life? I mean, really. You toss off that editing in your sleep, almost. You were going to start a book, weren’t you? How many people really have the talent to write a good book, but you do.”

  “Oh, go drinking with Bob Woodward,” she said, standing up and walking away.

  “I’ve only met him once,” Hughes said. “I’m afraid I don’t have his contact information. I don’t think he’d be interested in flying out here and meeting me at the Nevada . . .”

  She went into the room and put the chain on the door. He’d be too embarrassed to let anyone see she’d shut him out. Well, that was what she got for telling Hughes her dream. She was glad she hadn’t shown him the first fifty pages of the manuscript, as she’d been tempted to, when Elizabeth had been given a raise at work. She’d gotten yet another raise—the second in less than a year—and she and her stupid sister were now on a trip to Provence, a girls’ road trip to Aix, Avignon, and Arles. The three As, and wasn’t that just perfect? Such A-plus girls, both of them, one a scarecrow with minor Madonna pecs and hair that fell out because of a nutritional deficiency, the other fat.

  The door jerked and trembled. “Oh, this is just so childish,” he said. “What would you do if I got in the car and drove away, huh?”

  She considered this and grudgingly opened the door. “Show some respect,” she said, keeping her voice even. “This is not easy for me, and may I remind you, I am not in control of the situation.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll take a quick shower and we can get out of here,” he said.

  “I’ve never seen you quite so excited about a free drink,” she said.

  “I always go to hotel lobbies if they have free wine, don’t I?”

  “That’s different.”

  “It’s not much different,” he said. “I loved that place in Philadelphia: the Hotel Monaco.”

  “You sent me a selfie of yourself there,” she said. “I remember the name. It reminded me of Grace Kelly. Were she and what’s his name, Cary Grant, lovers or just friends?”

  “Don’t know,” he said, going into the bathroom.

  She stretched out on the bed. She noticed that today there were three daisies amid the ivy. On the notepad by the bed was written, “You are welcome.” She smiled, then instantly worried that for some reason, Hughes might not like to know their note had been answered. He always tried to seem like a nice guy by telling everyone to call him by his first name, but had his limits with people. She really liked Kunal, wished he could be her father’s attendant—Kunal, her father would be sure to like—but Hughes drew lines in the sand about people: yes, the haircutter was nice, but she was just a haircutter. That sort of thing. She crumpled the note and stuffed it in her pocket. “I do love you, I do, Hughes,” she whispered. She’d made no further progress with the thick novel on the night table. She listened to the water in the shower. She wondered if the owner’s daughter would be painting in the little storage room in the afternoon. She so appreciated her own parents staying together. It hadn’t saved her brother, but then, whatever problems he had probably had little to do with them. They’d been good parents. Pretty good. Her father hadn’t, as the expression went, been very present. Neither, together or separately, could ever have been one of the demons he’d tried to chase away with cocaine and shots. Shots. She certainly no longer did shots. That was gone, like dancing all night until sunup.

  * * *

  When they returned after having two free drinks apiece (their choice! They’d tried G and Ts with that new gin, Tanqueray Ten), then ordering veggie burgers and leaving a sizable tip, there was some action at the motel. Rooms glowed at each end like luminous bookends. The Norwegians were in their room, but the curtains were closed, so the light was not very noticeable. Only one room remained empty, and Moira felt vaguely happy for the motel owner but also a little disappointed, since so far they’d had such a private vacation. Which was also one day closer to ending. Which increased the pressure to have the talk—to at least give it one more try; to see if they could arrive at any conclusion, even temporary, that might make her feel better, that might be an incentive to get back to work. He was correct that editing the scientific pieces only took a few hours a week now, since the Internet was so much help and she was working with such professional writers that they sent almost all the primary source material to her along with their pieces. The things she’d found out about moth communication. The amygdala. A rare orchid that bloomed underground whose stems might be useful in pain management. Fracking (so depressing).

  Two SUVs were wedged into one and a half parking spaces. A motorcycle sat at the opposite end. The motel owner was standing outside the office, chatting with someone inside. She and Hughes waved as they opened their door. Hughes immediately turned on the TV. She went to the bathroom. She peed and fingered her arm for the little matchstick-size Nexplanon the doctor had injected near her armpit. What the doctor had said was true: you could locate it with no trouble, but you couldn’t see it. No birth control pills for her; she’d read enough about what harm they did after a certain age (she was three years older than he). She brushed her hair and thought to put the loose strands into a Kleenex and drop it in the trash basket. Yet again, she avoided looking in the mirror as she took the clip out of her hair and let it fall to her shoulders. Past her shoulders, and her mother didn’t approve. “It makes you look older, not younger!” she always said. Her eyes flicked to the mirror, then down. She didn’t have much of a sense of how old she looked. Men still tried to pick her up sometimes. Hughes had called her beautiful. So next would come sex with Hughes, a Coke or a ginger ale from the machine, maybe a little package of Hydrox to split, if he was in a really good mood. There was a knock at the door and she waited while Hughes answered it.

  “The people who have just checked in are from Hollywood. Good evening, Hughes. I’m sorry I am so excited, I have hurried to state this information, but the two men in unit one have me a little upset, due to the urgency of their request. They need to light the parking lot and wonder if you will be inconvenienced by their doing that. We did not know about this until only one hour ago, perhaps less. I phoned your room, but you were not back yet. We understand totally if this would not be what you want.”

  “What do you mean, Kunal? They’re making the motel into a movie set?”

  “Yes, that is exactly it, but they are not now making a movie. They will send a video to the director, and he must decide how to proceed. To be honest, this is a sudden plan and yes, we will be given some money, though we honor the wishes of our other guests, and except for perhaps buying you dinner—if you have not had dinner—we are wondering whether the matter of a couple of hours would truly inconvenience you.”

  “It’s fine,” Moira said, coming out of the bathroom. Her molar hurt, as well as the place she’d rubbed repeatedly under her arm. “No big deal. Can we watch?”

  Hughes turned toward her. She could see that he was about to say something, then decided against it. She had a quick flash of them the night before—no, two nights before—entangled on the bed, the sweat on his face, the curtains not pulled together tightly enough, but no one was there, no one but the Norwegians, who seemed to sleep all day and night.

  “Of course,” Hughes said. “But yes, do ask if we keep out of their way, whether we could sit back by the pool and watch.”

  “I will ask,” Kunal said. “Thank you. Tomorrow night, Mr. Reed would like to buy you dinner, then. You have been a pleasure to have at the motel.”

  “You sound like you’re out of central casting,” Hughes said, smiling a bit.

  “Sir?”

  Again, Hughes altered his expression. “I mean, we all suddenly become extras, or something,” he said. “We’ll just sit out by the pool and see if this amuses us.”

  “Okay,” Kunal said, bowing slightly as he turned a
way. Then he stopped and turned toward the still-open doorway. “I turn like that man, Columbo!” he said. “Do you remember that show? He would take his leave and then turn and say, ‘One more thing,’ or something like that?”

  “Yes,” Hughes said, smiling. “Peter Falk. That was a great show.”

  “So for this minute I become Columbo,” Kunal said. “Were you saying before—this is my one more thing—did you mean I said something that sounded like an actor who would be hired from central casting?”

  “What?” Hughes said. “I was just joking.”

  “Of course. It’s what I thought,” Kunal said, turning without bowing. “Good, then, I will make arrangements for you to sit outside.”

  Hughes shook his head and closed the door. He’d lied. He’d suddenly realized Kunal was a stereotype. A stock character.

  “People do notice when you’re being a shit. You must realize that. I happen not to be able to do without you, but you’re far from a perfect person.”

  “That’s a backhanded compliment,” he said.

  “No, it’s a straightforward comment. I save my backhand for tennis.”

  “Well, aren’t you the clever person?”

  “Let’s leave that a rhetorical question and not miss the goings-on.”

  “Really?” he said suddenly. “You’d get off on watching some stupid movie made in this obscure little motel? That’s your best thought for tonight?”

  “You could have said no,” Moira said, sliding her hands in the pockets of her Bermuda shorts. “Were you deferring to me when you agreed it would be great to have everything lit up? Or maybe you were deferring to the servant, Kunal?”

  “The servant? He’s not my servant. What the fuck! You’re this way on two drinks?”

  “That’s a low blow. You know two drinks certainly are not affecting anything I say.”

  “Oh, okay, I’ll just throw open the door and they can film around us. They can get two for the price of one: some pointless couple arguing in their little room and then whatever else they’re filming.”