“She swims like a shark. She swims better than both of us.” Wavelets made by his sister’s splashing were turning Zero’s body clockwise, then back again. “Why are you flailing around? Don’t you know about body weight and water? Don’t you know why most people drown? It’s simple: the pull of gravity.”
“Oh, shit,” said Casey, who’d been swimming in a sort of circle, and stopped and paddled. “If this is going to be that boring gravity lecture, I’m leaving.” And she streaked off towards shore, towards the house, whose undulating length and spaced lights looked like train compartments.
Zero called to Casey, who was by now a third of the way back, her bladelike stroke barely creasing water. “Don’t go in the house without us, do you hear?”
A distant reply which might have been “Okay” or “Oh, hell” or “Bye-bye” floated back.
“We just going to flop here all night? That’s the big plan?” asked Chad, who was toeing off his fifty-buck Docksiders. Mom will just love that. “You said you lost them? How do you lose a pair of shoes? They fell off your feet while you were walking across the campus and you didn’t notice . . . ?” That’s what his mother would say, getting up steam as she went along.
“You want to go back to that fucking Bethanne? Casey’s right—she’s a nympho.”
His arms were growing tired with the stretching, his legs with the paddling. “Could we continue this conversation sitting in a couple chairs?”
But Zero looked extremely comfortable, floating and drifting about, the end of his cigarette sparking like a star as he drew in, smoke misting the water as he exhaled. He looked indeed just as comfy as he had lying on Chad’s bed earlier. Casey, or the water trail of Casey, was well over halfway to land. Chad wasn’t really afraid for his life, not in this floating life-raft; but he questioned the sanity of this little outing.
• • •
Buoyed up by the water and looking at the stars, he would almost have enjoyed it except that his thoughts kept shifting between that bedroom scene and the drowned Docksiders that must be lying now on the floor of the lake like a sunken treasure ship. He felt the heat of the blush spreading across his neck and face. He’d never given back to her the money he’d saved because the shoes were on sale for half-price.
That and some “loose change” his Dad had sent him had gone for grass, beer. A little coke. A little—he wasn’t, thank God, addicted. Sam could have hauled him in that night in the Red Barn.
“But I won’t. Just stop using if you’re half as smart as I think you are.”
“I hardly ever do. I mean, at school a couple times—recreational . . . you know.”
“ ‘Recreational’? Oh, come on. You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”
“I’m not addicted. It’s controlled use.”
Sam swore softly. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? Some yobo? Don’t insult me.”
Sam had gone on. Chad liked Sam, but he couldn’t stand being lectured.
“Where’re you getting the money?”
Deadly tone.
“Babysitting, maybe?”
He’d started to say something snotty, but he knew better than to fuck with Sam. Not that Chad was afraid Sam would tell his mom. He wouldn’t. He liked her too much.
• • •
What Chad remembered now was that they—he and Sam—had sat there in the squad car not talking for some time, enjoying, he supposed, a rather companionable silence in spite of the occasion.
He’d been ten the first time he saw Sam. It was near the courthouse; Sam was standing looking at a Rolls parked by a fire hydrant. He had a gun on his hip and shades over his eyes; a leather jacket that barely hid the holster. He was looking at this car, shaking his head. Then he caught sight of Chad, who’d just come out of the matinee, full of Gary Cooper. It was a rerun of High Noon. He was thinking how he could tell his mom he’d lost the two dollars so he could go back the next Saturday and see it again. He was thinking of all this and then he’d seen Sam. To come out from seeing a sheriff, especially Gary Cooper, and then to see a real live sheriff standing off there in front of you with his dark glasses and his holster . . . well, that made you think.
Sam had turned those dark shades in Chad’s direction and said, “Some people . . .” Then he’d shaken his head again. “Think a Rolls or a Jag isn’t bound by the laws that apply to a Ford pickup.”
That had surprised Chad—the way the sheriff just talked to him as if he, Chad, were some acquaintance, another adult he was used to sharing his views with, chatting here on the pavement.
Chad had all of a sudden straightened up, made himself a quarter of an inch taller, and made his own assessment of the situation. “Probably one of those lake people.”
“Probably you’re right. Well . . .”
It was as if they’d been having this sidewalk chat for some time, or ones like it, for years maybe.
“I guess you’re giving him a ticket.”
“Wish I could think of something that’d make it stick—that people don’t go around parking by hydrants. A ticket doesn’t mean much to this person. He’s got the money to pay it.” Sam shrugged.
“If he’s got a car like that he’s pretty rich.”
Sam took out his book, wrote the ticket, zipped it off, and stuck it under the wiper. “Haven’t I seen you with Mrs. Chadwick?”
“Yeah. Yes, sir.”
“You her son? She has a son, I think.”
Chad had been enormously pleased that there was some doubt in Sam DeGheyn’s mind, as if Chad might just have been a friend of Maud Chadwick’s. “That’s right. My name’s Chad. My name used to be Murray, but I changed it.” He wanted the sheriff to understand Chad had been in charge of his name. “I didn’t like ‘Murray.’ ”
“Uh-huh. That happens. I’m Sam DeGheyn. Glad to meet you.”
“Me too.”
“Well, that’s the end of my duty. I’m going to the Rainbow for a coffee. You want to join me, or have you got stuff you have to do?”
For the second time in this brief interchange, Chad had been amazed. No one had ever asked him if he wanted to have a cup of coffee with them. And he liked the way Sam DeGheyn seemed to think Chad might be busy, just the same as anyone else in the town—the lawyer his mother knew, or the doctor, or even someone on the police force. He hated coffee, of course, but that wasn’t the point.
So he’d fallen into step with Sam and gone to the Rainbow, where Shirl, then known to him only as a stocky woman with a square face who talked a lot in a loud voice, set up coffee for Sam and a soda for him. His mother hadn’t started working at the Rainbow yet.
It was the first time Chad had had any good feelings about La Porte since they had come to live there. Before this he had hated it. He still wanted to go back to Sweet Air, but the road out hadn’t pointed with such insistence since that Saturday afternoon.
• • •
“Look, I’m sinking.”
“No, you’re not,” said Zero. He was floating a distance from Chad, would have melted into the water had it not been for the white scarf and shirt front.
Chad made as many waves as he could, slapping about, bitching, anything to disturb Zero’s becalmed mind. Swear to god, he wouldn’t be surprised if Zero turned north and just started swimming out to sea.
“Float,” said Zero. “Rest up for the small hours. Things can get weird back there.”
Weird back there? thought Chad, trying to pull up his legs. Well, that was one way of looking at a bunch of people drinking and eating and listening to music while you were floating out here in a dinner jacket in the middle of a black lake. But then as he started to float he felt suddenly pleasurably encapsulated, insulated. Looking at the stars, just buoyed up by the water, he would almost have enjoyed it except that he kept thinking of his mother and the Docksiders. He lay there on his authentic water bed trying to think up a good lie. He didn’t think she’d much go for having lost them mid-lake. “You’ve finally learned how to walk
on water, Chad. I always knew you could.”
Way off in the dark, a tiny figure waved and called. Casey had got to the shore.
“Might as well go,” said Zero, chucking his cigarette and watching it arc in the sky. Then he rolled over and started to swim. “Race you?”
“Oh, shit, shut up. Anyway, my shoes are at the bottom of the lake. They were new.”
Zero angled over to him. “So? So you can have a pair of mine. Let’s go.”
“Not the same.” Water was curling from Chad’s mouth as he turned his face for air. “Mom paid a hell of a lot. Now what do I tell her?”
Zero was a stroke ahead of him and called back, “The truth. What’s wrong with that?”
“Oh, sure.” Chad coughed on a mouthful of water, gaining on Zero. “She’d believe this? She’s not stupid.”
“They’ll believe anything, kid. Even walking on water.”
TWO
They circled a narrow path between the boat house and the front steps. Zero was plucking at the tiny blooms from patches of wildflowers. He snapped off a little trail of leaves from a willow just before they entered the front door. Chad shook his watch. It didn’t seem to be working. He took it off and dropped it in a tub of ornamental shrubs and followed Zero.
• • •
They came dripping into the large foyer, and the few guests standing by the Sheraton tables or leaning against the staircase turned puzzled, frowning looks on the three and then, bored, picked up their conversations again.
“Come on, Ophelia,” said Zero, reaching for Casey, who was heading for the stairs to go up and remove her soaked black dress.
“What’s going on?” she asked, the question ending in a whine, for as she said it, Zero swept her up, dumped a handful of crushed flowers and willow leaves on her head, and carried her to one of the arched entryways of the living room, which was nearly the size of a ballroom.
“Close your eyes, damn it,” said Zero, “and let me do the talking.”
“I’m certainly not going to do it!”
“Close your eyes.”
The sunken living room was packed, the guests grouping, fanning out, and regrouping. Only a few appeared to notice Zero in the archway holding the waterlogged, flower-bedecked Casey.
Eva Bond, whose profile had been shimmering in the firelight, must have sensed them immediately, even though she hadn’t, until now, been facing the doorway.
The three curved and carpeted steps and the archway above framed Zero and Casey in a small proscenium. With an exquisite intonation Chad had never heard from him before, Zero said:
“And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring.”
Raised voices; a few screams, cut off; and then a collective indrawn breath, before the guests realized it was some sort of joke.
Eva Bond’s face was expressionless as she moved with her fluted glass across the room, seemingly unaware of the nervous laughter, the wide-eyed gaping, a fugitive sort of fear. She walked slowly up the three steps and stood looking at her son for a frozen moment. Zero looked past her. Casey shifted and opened one eye.
Then their mother moved past them across the marble foyer towards the billiard room and library.
Furiously, Casey hit Zero on the arm and broke free. “Oh, why don’t you just give up?” She ran for the stairs.
Zero slowly lit up a cigarette; the guests turned away. His smile was a faded imitation of a smile as he said, “No one here likes Hamlet?” He walked away, calling back a question: “Bethanne still around?”
Chad didn’t care that he would probably catch a fever: in the wet clothes he needed to apologize to Zero’s mother. She was moving toward the library, stopping for a moment to respond to whatever comments her husband and his poker-playing friends made as she walked past. Then she went into the library and shut the high doors behind her.
Mr. Bond stopped him: “Chad. Got any plastic on you?”
Chad turned to the gaming table, green baize and walnut. “What?”
“Anything except gold. Just the regulars—AmEx, Visa, Diners, NatWest. What happened? Did you fall in the swimming pool?”
Chad looked at the ring of laughing faces, five of them, all turned expectantly to him, someone who could solve the problem—except for the doctor, who frowned as he said, “No, no, no. It’d be Diners, AmEx, or Lloyds Visa. Who the hell deals with NatWest anyway?”
Chad had never seen square or oblong chips like these before: bronze, white, black stacks; oblong, square, and round.
Brandon, the porky-faced one, who seemed to be holding most of the chips—two tall stacks of bronze, one of white, a few blacks—reached into a big cut-glass bowl where ice cubes were melting into a water pond. Then he plucked up a tiny lemon peel from a matching dish, popped that into his mouth, and pulled over the pitcher, from which he took a swig, and more or less rolled it all in his mouth, mixing. He shoved the pitcher toward Brie Sardinia’s husband. Mr. Sardinia held the Waterford pitcher aloft and in Chad’s direction. “Martini?”
“What have you got on you? Diners, maybe?” Zero’s father asked again.
“Only an Access card.”
Mr. Bond shoved back his horn-rims. “A what?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “It’s one of those money cards.” His voice was low and sad, as if he were back in the hospital, telling Chad’s mother the bad news about Chad’s condition. Then he tossed down a card. “Yeah, oh, yeah” went the round of smiles towards Chad, the poor pisser who’d be the last to know the headstone and the plot had already been picked.
“Billy!” said Mr. Bond, hitting his fist on the table. Then to Chad he said, “He’s got waterfalls of the damned things.” Zero’s father popped an ice cube into his mouth, followed it with an olive, and then lifted the pitcher and drank. Wiping his chin with a napkin then, he said to Chad, “Ask him, will you? Billy, I mean. I know he’s got Diners, Lloyds, so he must have an Express.” He slapped down a credit card, its identity downward. The backs were pretty much the same; the signatures had been covered with adhesive. “Do you play?”
The others looked at Chad, if not soberly, at least in invitation. The pitcher was back with Brandon again.
Chad looked around the table. “Never did with plastic. Wouldn’t it be easier just to use . . . Never mind.”
He knocked at the library door and entered when she called, “Come in.”
Eva Bond was sitting behind a large mahogany desk, her arms resting on the top, hands folded. Behind her was a French window, moonlight throwing rhomboids of light across her hair, across the desk where the edges melted into shadows. That eerie placeless light whose source seemed hidden lit parts of the room dimly. This time it seemed to be coming from the bookcases or the wall behind, so that the edges of some of the volumes were bathed in gold.
“Chad,” she said, looking him up and down. “You’ll catch cold.”
“I’m almost dry by now.” He tried to smile.
From a dark brown leather armchair with a very high back came the voice of Maurice Brett: “You and Billy make a good pair.” His face and hand appeared around the edge of the chair, the smoke pluming across them. “It’s a relief you’ve caught us non-in flagrante delicto.” His smile was ruthlessly charming, but still a smile in smoke.
“Sorry I interrupted.”
Eva Bond said to Chad’s departing back, “Stay, please.” It sounded like a command, although he didn’t think she meant it that way. “And please shut up, Maurice.”
She still sat perfectly straight, hands interlocked, and would have appeared to be some sort of high-powered executive except for the gown. She motioned to the leather sofa. “Won’t you sit down?” She smiled. “It’s all right.”
Chad wasn’t sure whether she meant Chad’s wetness or Brett’s presence.
“Incidentally, sorry about my crass behavior,” said Brett, who was nothing of the sort.
“All right.” Chad refused to look at him.
“I expec
t you think I’m a bit of a rat.”
Chad said nothing. The leather arm of the sofa was glistening and supple. It reminded him of Bethanne’s skin.
“. . . and make a better offer. A thousand?” Brett was waving his hand slowly, bills wedged between the fingers. “Just what you need, I believe, old sport?”
Chad felt as cold as he had in the lake. “I don’t need anything.”
“But your mum might. Oh, sit down, for lord’s sake. How do I know about the money? I see the question in your eyes. I know it from Bethanne, of course. Funny, she thought it rather charming: someone who couldn’t be bought. That’s a bit of a giggle, considering. So you still think I’m trying to blackmail you?”
“No,” said Zero’s mother. “No. You’re trying to control him. Why don’t you get out, Maurice?”
“Actually, I’m trying to help the poor boy.” Brett rose and went swiftly to the table. He wheeled the telephone around. “Go ahead, call your mother.”
Chad wasn’t sure why he even answered the man. “She won’t be there.”
Brett checked his watch. “Good God, man, it’s after one. Are you afraid to wake her up?”
“I mean, she won’t be in the house.” Chad looked down to hide a flicker of a smile. “She’ll be on the pier.”
Brett’s eyebrows went up. “Where do you live—Atlantic City? Does she gamble?”
“She’ll be on the end of the pier.” Chad said it again.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Nothing to you.”
Brett moved back to his chair, repocketed the money, which had never left his hand, lit another cigarette. “What in bloody hell are you kids up to? Take Billy, now . . .”
Eva Bond had risen, her fingers splayed over the top of the desk, her head down. “Leave.” Her eyes were riveted on Maurice Brett.
“Of course, darling. It’s just this one little thing. Billy—Zero, as you call him—good name—put on more than his usual magnificent performance.” He turned to Chad. “What was that all about?”
“Zero’s a performer. He’s an act, a clown, a nice guy. You wouldn’t notice the last. You don’t have any children is my guess.”
The End of the Pier Page 16
