Barbara Wilder hooked me by my arm.
“Let me give you the tour,” she said. “I have a new meditation alcove, I’d love for you to see.”
When she was younger, Barbara had been a painter of abstract portraits—but her subject matter had changed. Religious figures mostly, swathed in a mystical light. Lakshmi, the five-headed goddess. Philotanus, the god at the borders of heaven and hell. Our Lady of the Glorious Ascension, rising forever into the blue-tinged clouds.
“Life is difficult, sometimes, isn’t it,” she said.
“Yes,” I agreed, and I thought about her husband. He always lingered near the pool during the parties, working the Tiki bar. They had a perfect marriage, people said, though they hung out at opposite ends of the house at such occasions—and I could not recall seeing them together elsewhere.
“We have so much, but in other ways we have nothing at all.” She put her hand to her chest. “I find myself in crisis, teetering.”
She moved closer as she spoke. She had a certain manner with visitors. We were her possessions in some ways, however temporary, and we needed to be cared for, arranged and sorted, placed in this room or that. Nonetheless she was a sincere woman and I understood what she was trying to tell me. It was an artful balance, this life of ours. Trapped between the physical and the metaphysical. Trying to come to terms with all you possessed (or wanted to possess). Hoping to transcend.
I glanced about for Elizabeth but she wasn’t here, not yet, and it occurred to me that she might not come at all.
Barbara Wilder led me to the mediation alcove: a room in the center of the house, on a riser above the living room. The alcove had been an open pantry once, designed to service the dining room, but now it was empty except for a mirror and a gold-fringed pillow—and also a man with a wine glass.
“Oh, Madison,” she said. “I see you’re lingering here. It’s a lovely space, isn’t it.”
“Very serene.”
The man with the wine glass, it turned out, was Madison Paulie, the San Francisco psychologist who’d been scheduled to testify in the Dillard case: a thin question mark of a man, stoop-shouldered, with a wild mop of red hair. I had met him once before at a party in this same house.
“Pleased to see you again,” I said.
“Likewise.”
“I regret missing the opportunity to work with you.”
“Me, too. I admire you hanging in there the way you did. That was a tough business.”
“Thanks,” I said, though I suspected he thought otherwise. It was a weak case, and I’d been made a fool.
Barbara Wilder had wandered off. I spotted her in the hallway talking to another guest. Another psychologist, I believed. Or maybe he was an interior designer. They were discussing the flow of her house according to the Oriental principles of Feng Shui.
“Very nice. The energy flows through the space and is yet contained. The Feng Shui, it is very good.”
“Thank you. We’ve worked so hard to attain it. But I feel there is still something not quite right.”
“Oft?”
“Sometimes looking at the garden, I feel askew. I’m ill at ease.”
“Perhaps if you move the couch?”
Madison and I talked shop meanwhile, a little this, a little that. Dropping names, the way you do. He was very thin, as I have said, very long and tall, with unruly hair and a black mole on his cheek. He had an infectious smile but lugubrious eyes, a little sad, a little weary, like a man who’d been looking a long time for the solution to a certain puzzle but was beginning to suspect he would never find it.
Looking me up and down now all the while. Judging me, I thought. Though perhaps I was oversensitive.
“I saw you on television,” I told Madison Paulie. “During the Rodriguez trial.”
I meant it as a compliment, but his eyes narrowed.
“Disturbing case.”
“Yes.”
Rodriguez was the so-called Vampire Killer. During a long weekend at the height of his madness he’d mutilated a half-dozen women, hollowing them out from the inside. He’d eaten their livers, it was reported, drunk their bodily fluids, and in the end was captured at his mother’s house on the front porch, blood on his face, and semen. His own semen, as it turned out.
“Clearly psychotic. Paranoid schizophrenic suffering from auditory hallucinations. A candidate for the asylum if I’ve ever seen one. But the jury gave him death.”
He shrugged, and so did I. It was one of the ironies of the system. The insanity statutes had been designed to provide treatment for those who suffered from verifiable mental illness. But such people were the ones jurors feared the most—and were least likely to send for treatment.
“On the other hand jurors love a sociopath,” he said. “A guilty man who charms them with his talk, his smile. Who knows how to work the system.”
“Those are the tough ones.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’ve been fooled myself.”
Below us, more people had arrived. The meditation alcove was an unusual room. One side was open and gave you a sweeping view of the house. Two steps away, behind the partition, and you had the illusion of solitude. I took another drink. Paulie and I stood watching the crowd—he was a wide-eyed, curious man—then I saw Sara Johnson. I was taken aback, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been; the Wilder affairs, they were those lands of parties.
Sara lingered at the edge of the others, gangly, girlish in her white blouse and skirt.
Our eyes caught.
I was tempted to go to her—but then Barbara Wilder reappeared, Mike Milofski on her arm now, the homicide detective, a gruff man, perpetually unshaven. He was buddies with Minor Robinson and, like his friend, he was not very fond of me. The last time I’d seen him had been at the Blue Chez, the day Minor came to our table. He’d been seated over by the window, with Minor and the rest of the Courthouse Gang.
Barbara Wilder had a camera in her hand.
“I’m getting pictures of all my guests,” she said, “and I told myself, why not get you all together. Two criminal psychologists, and a homicide detective. A charming group, yes?”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Milofski,” said Paulie, and it was clear immediately that they had met before, no introductions were needed. “My colleague and I here, Mr. Danser, we were just discussing our strange business. The strange bedfellows we make.”
Milofski grinned at us. He grinned easily—a bearish grin that made you back up a step or two. “You shrinks and me,” he said, “we’re not quite in the same business, are we? But I guess I’ll consent to a picture.”
Barbara snapped the picture, then she was gone again—with her feathered hair, her luminous blouse, her earrings by Eisner. The place was filling up rapidly. People I recognized but whose names I could not quite remember. A anchorman from the local news. A congresswoman. A real estate broker whose face was on signs all over town—and who’d been to my office a few years back, plagued by dismemberment fantasies.
“From what you say, Lieutenant Milofski,” said Madison Paulie. “I take it you have little regard for the psychiatric science.”
“We cops, we clean up the bodies. We talk to the victim’s relatives. We bring the criminal in. We have to touch him, feel up his ass, looking for weapons. It’s not something the ordinary person has to suffer, putting your fingers up a psychopath’s ass.”
“Literally speaking, no,” said Paulie, “but figuratively . . .” Milofski wasn’t listening. He wouldn’t have it. “No,” he said. “To me, it doesn’t make any difference if the guy’s bipolar or paranoid or just a garden variety shithole. The crimes the same. The grief’s the same. The punishment should be, too.”
Paulie stood regarding the other man, his own eyebrows arched, neck bent in the manner of an inquisitive giraffe. “Then in your mind,” he said, “there’s no such thing as the person who suffers from irresistible impulse?”
“The impulse is in all of us,” said Milofski. “The reasonable person, he tunes it o
ut. He shuts it off. It’s a matter of will.”
“Free will,” said Paulie. His voice was rueful, and I saw the underlying exhaustion that comes to people in our profession. “Sometimes, no. Its chemical. There’s quite simply something wrong with the brain.”
“All the more reason to throw away the key,” said Milofski.
I eased away. I’d been through this kind of conversation before and didn’t want to go through it again right now. I worked my way to the other end of the house, through a marble verandah and onto the deck. Part of me was looking for Elizabeth, I admit, but she still hadn’t come. There was a pool in the back, and a Tiki hut close by—a shed built for the occasion, covered with palm husks and well-stocked with liquor. Mr. Wilder stood behind the counter, in a pink polo shirt, pouring drinks.
“Gin,” I told him.
“Certainly.”
He may have had a perfect marriage, but I could hear the alcohol in his voice like an old friend and see something dreamy in his eyes. Prozac, maybe. Or Zoloft. The stuff of good relationships.
Through a window in the hut, I glimpsed Sara in her white dress. I lingered, watching her from behind. Mr. Wilder and a friend of his at the end of the bar started talking investment strategy. They were a bit drunk.
“Computers.”
“No. Biotech. That’s where you want your money.”
“Same thing. It’s all converging. Computerized muscle fiber. Bio-optics. There’s some good companies. ”
“Opportunities, yes”
“This new drug, just around the corner. An investment opportunity if I’ve ever seen one. It’ll let Baby Boomers live forever. ”
“Not all of them I hope.”
“No, no. Just you and me.”
There was laughter inside the Tiki hut. Meanwhile, outside, the torches were being lit and a jazz quartet was tuning up by the side of the pool. The water shimmered. Sara stood in the torchlight, handsome as I had ever seen her—but pretending she had not noticed me. I pretended the same and went back inside. I stared at my drink with the light-headed feeling you get at parties, hearing the vague chatter that veered from crime to real estate to the metaphysics of Waldorf education, and at the same time I sensed the blur of the world around me, of print skirts and sheer blouses, of silk suits and cotton polos, of hair just going gray, of black hosiery and flat bottom heels, the smell of cosmetics, of anxiety mixed with alcohol, of desire and giddiness, and the smell, too, of polyester damp with sweat. I finished my drink and sucked on the cubes and crushed the ice between my teeth.
A painting of Mt. Tam hung on the wall beside me. Another one of Barbara’s I supposed, from an earlier period. An idealized view, a panorama of gentle slopes and lush gardens, of people at repose in hidden valleys. It was a shallow view of the world some might say—no menace, no danger—and suddenly I felt a rush of sympathy for them, all these people milling around me, and I felt pity, too, for Barbara and the rest, feelings undermined by that smile of mine, the smirk, tugging at my Ups.
Milofksi elbowed up beside me out of nowhere. He and Paulie must have run their conversation dry, I figured, for Milofski to be sidling up to me. His demeanor was less than benign.
“Look what we have here.”
The cop’s voice was dark and ugly. I scanned the crowd. It took me an instant, but then I saw Minor Robinson in the foray below us, his gaze sweeping the room with that same steadiness it swept the courtroom. Behind him, a step away, stood Elizabeth. Her dress was flame blue. She lit up the place, and I felt a confusion in my chest.
Milofski grunted, a guttural noise like an elbow in the side, full of insinuating pleasure.
He knew the gossip, too. They all did.
Minor bent toward my wife, fondling her obsequiously, touching her elbow. He ran his fingers down her sleeve, bending to listen to a little something she had to say, a request; then he folded into the crowd, leaving Elizabeth alone in her blue dress. I took advantage of the opportunity and headed across the floor.
“Elizabeth,” I said. My voice startled us both. It had a brute edge I had not intended, but the edge was there nonetheless. “What’s going on?”
“I was invited to this party. So I came.”
“You got yourself a date, I see.”
“I didn’t come with Minor.” She held her features in profile, aloof. Her face had an otherworldly paleness and her Ups were pink and her dress had buttons up the front, from the hem to the neckline. The buttons at the collar were undone, almost immodestly, so you could see her long neck, her breast line, and a hint of lace, too, on the camisole beneath.
“You walked in together.”
“We ran into each other, in the parking lot.”
She was lying, I thought. I could see the care with which she had prepared herself. Even so I felt the underlying pull between us. Her glance met mine, faltered. She reddened, breaking into an ungainly blush.
“Let’s go outside.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We can talk. Seize the moment.”
“This isn’t the place, or the time.”
Across the room, I glimpsed Minor threading through the crowd, a drink in each hand. I took Elizabeth by the forearm.
“No.”
I didn’t listen. The room shimmered once again, and for a moment I was a man in a tunnel inside another tunnel, just emerging, squinting into the light. Elizabeth splayed her fingers against my chest.
“No!”
A hush rippled through the people nearby and I felt their eyes on me. I smiled, a wide smile, directed at no one in particular. My face burned. If I had left then, everything that followed that evening might have been avoided, but the entrance was knotted with people and Minor was almost upon us. So I went back the direction I had come, through the large French doors onto the terrace. Outside the jazz quartet had begun to play. The torchlight glistened on the pool. The Tiki hut had lost its artificial look and the band was playing a Chet Baker number, an instrumental that gave you the feeling as if you were floating on a glass ship over a blackening sea.
Sara.
She stood facing the bandstand, alone, all in white, a drink in her hand. A young man watched her from across the pool. In another moment, she would not be alone. The young man would saunter up to her, ask her to dance. I would lose everything.
“Dance?”
“What about your wife?”
“We’re not together.”
“I saw her.”
“She’s with someone else.”
“So you’ll settle for me?”
Sara gave me a smile, a wan turn of the lips that said she, too, wanted to tell me to go away—that she didn’t like the way I’d treated her, ignoring her calls—but she wasn’t quite able to say so, didn’t quite mean it. Instead she placed one hand on my back, the other on my waist while I pressed her close, and we slid together across the dance floor. We did a couple numbers like this, Sara’s cheek soft against mine.
“I have something to tell you.” Her eyes were sad now, guilty looking, and this new sadness confused me.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
We stopped dancing and went across the lawn toward an arbor near the garage. A white roadster stood slouched underneath the trellis, an old car, a convertible. I glanced back through the arbor to the lighted house and saw people moving inside, dancing, gliding about like figures in a dream. Then we leaned side by side against the convertible. It was a warm evening, and I took my tie off, draping it across the front fender.
“Things have changed for me, since the last time I talked to you.”
“Things have changed for me, too.”
“Bill, my boyfriend—he’s in Santa Barbara. His father died.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It was unexpected. Or he would have been here, too.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“We’re getting married,” Sara said.
“Congratulations.”
She starte
d to cry a little bit. I put my arms around her and she buried her head in the hollow of my shoulder. I patted her back, and at the same time felt her chest against mine, and then I started to kiss her in a manner that was not at all platonic—but rough and wanton, full of desire.
Sara responded at first. Then she pulled away.
“I can’t hurt him,” she said. “Not again. Not after what I put him through already. I told him we were finished once, and I can’t do it again. There’s this thing inside me, my heart, my soul, I don’t know what you call it, but it’s divided. Split in two. Part of me wants to be good, wholesome. The other part . . .”
I kissed her again. I pushed her against the convertible.
“I shouldn’t do this.”
I slid my leg between hers, into the warm space between her thighs. One of my hands was under her blouse, the other up her dress. She wore white tights and I ran my hand up and down her legs, and her hips began to move despite herself.
“Oh, Jake. I don’t know.”
I had her down on the trunk now. She was splayed out like a star. I started to slide her tights down, and she held me fiercely. She was shaking. I ran a hand through her hair, trying to steady her. One of her earrings came off in my hand.
I put my lips over hers. I thought of Minor. I wanted to swallow her, to eat her whole. I thought of Elizabeth and the light in her eye. Sara pushed against me, thrashing now, panicky.
“Oh, Jake. No. I can’t do this again.”
I let her up. She ran across the lawn.
“Sara!”
I called after her but she kept going, a white figure disappearing into the blackness under the eucalyptus trees.
I followed, tucking my shirt as I went, putting myself together. As I crossed the lawn, I noticed two figures watching from the side patio. I wondered what kind of picture we might cut, Sara and I, and what these onlookers might think. I slowed down, walking now, and I realized who the two men were. Minor Robinson and Milofski the cop.
By the time I reached the front terrace, Sara stood talking to the attendant, asking for her car. I hung back. I did not want to make a scene. Once she had driven away, I came onto the terrace myself and asked the attendant to retrieve my car as well. Meanwhile Mrs. Wilder and some of the others loitered nearby half-crocked. They made a noise like birds tittering, flying in circles around an abandoned nest.
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