Best Friends

by Thomas Berger

  “I’m willing to be the villain,” said she, and it struck him that this exquisite woman was pleading with him. “Feel free to put all the blame on me.”

  “I told you the other day that the only way I would turn him down was by doing just that, blaming you. That wasn’t very courageous of me. Taking the hit should be my job. As you rightly say, the money’s mine and he’s my friend.” What Roy would not tell Kristin was that he had decided to furnish Sam with the fifty grand, thus protecting her career from the consequences of her husband’s bankruptcy, while hiding the transaction from her, and Sam’s silence on the deal would be a nonnegotiable condition of it.

  Kristin spoke in a straightforward manner. “You’re an awful lot more than I once thought you were.” Her smile was rueful. “I hope that doesn’t sound as patronizing to you as it does to me. What I want to say is you’re going above and beyond the call of duty.”

  Roy understood that You’re doing this for me? was asked only in classic romantic movies. She anyway was not supposed to learn all that he was doing for her. Nevertheless, it was with a certain disappointment that he accepted her simple thanks.

  She had said goodbye and was walking toward her Corolla when Roy asked, “Do you have any plans for dinner?”

  It was only when he was following Kristin to the Grandy house, where she would leave her car and join him in the Silver Wraith, that Roy remembered Michelle Llewellyn.

  Directory Assistance provided him with the numbers of three local Llewellyns, none of them named Michelle, but he heard her voice when he dialed the second of them. He had expected to be vigorously abused when he identified himself, but she expressed more grief than wrath.

  “I bought a nice dress. It was expensive.” She was sobbing. “I told my friends.” She took a quavering breath. “Is this the way you get off? Making fun of people?”

  “Michelle,” said Roy, “my best friend had a heart attack. I’ve been with him at the hospital until just now. Please forgive me for not getting in touch sooner.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “You couldn’t have. Can I get a raincheck on dinner? The dress won’t go to waste. I can’t wait to see it.”

  “Great. I hope your friend gets better soon.”

  “Thanks a lot. I’ll be calling you soon as I can.”

  That had been easier than he thought and employed only existing truths. She sounded like a very nice girl, though he regretted having established a personal connection with her in the first place. If now he never again got in touch, she might reach the wrong conclusion.

  He was relieved when the two cars arrived at Kristin’s house and she simply parked hers and joined him without going inside for any reason. Had she done so, he might have been expected to come along and wait. It would have made him uncomfortable to be alone under the same roof as she now that darkness was settling in, whereas when they had eaten lunch there, on a sunny day, he had been almost at ease.

  “It seems to me we have two choices,” said he. “Either eat someplace where we, or particularly you, might be recognized, or go to one where that would be unlikely.”

  “Huh?”

  The car was still sitting in the driveway; they were lighted by the dashboard illumination.

  “I’m thinking of how it might look if the new bank manager is seen dining out with someone else while her old man’s in the hospital.”

  “Oh, yes. I see. You’re right.”

  “You didn’t think of that?”

  She smiled. “I probably would have. I should have.”

  She seemed to suffer little from self-doubt. He admired that, being of the opposite sort, and therefore he was not sure now whether he should express his admiration and have it misinterpreted. He decided instead to register his own vote on the choice of restaurant. “I think a conspicuous place would be better. If somebody did see us at a hideaway, it would look suspicious.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  It appeared to Roy that she really was uninterested in the matter. “Okay then. Let’s go to A Quarter to Nine, where they know us well.”

  He was an habitué of this place, which was named for its number on Pine Street, 845, and had entertained the Grandys there repeatedly, though he suspected Sam would have liked larger portions than those served by owner/chef Jonathan Marchbanks, whose dishes were artistic compositions for the eye as much as the palate.

  Marchbanks did much of the cooking himself, and yet usually managed to come out and greet each diner at some point in the meal, wearing a chef’s high-buttoned jacket, but in blue denim and with a golfer’s white linen cap rather than a toque blanche.

  He was just inside the door tonight. His eyes made special acknowledgment of Roy’s companion.

  “Kris! I should begin to serve breakfast,” was his cryptic greeting to her. “Hi, Roy. I got my eye on that Lotus Elite in your window.”

  “I’ll quote you a price after I’ve eaten dinner,” said Roy.

  “Try the lamb shank and you’ll make me a gift of the car.”

  When they were seated at a generous-size, fresh-flowered table for two, designed for comfortable eating and not intimacy, Roy asked Kristin, “What did he mean about breakfast?”

  “I had lunch here today.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “This is my favorite place; I lunch here a lot.” Then, leaning forward—on the opposite side of the table he was at some remove—“It was your discovery. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Roy was flattered, but concealed it in his response. “Jonathan sold me a classic. I think he’s regretted it ever since, but he hasn’t yet bought anything to replace it. He gave me the first meal on the house. He had just opened the restaurant.”

  “We granted the loan,” said Kristin.

  “Your bank.” He sighed. “And you never mentioned that before.”

  “The occasion didn’t come up…. Are we being observed?”

  He laughed. “You won’t look, and because you won’t, I haven’t. But the place is full, as usual.” Even a regular customer like himself could not have walked in the door at prime time on a Friday night without a reservation. The fact was, he had phoned one in after Michelle Llewellyn had called him.

  A svelte waitress left menus. She wore a tight red vest and black silk jeans. Her shiny tight-pulled black hair was parted in the middle like that of an old-time movie gangster.

  Roy said to Kristin, “You didn’t mention it because, as usual, Sam and I did all the talking.”

  “I was probably interested in what you guys were talking about. I don’t remember being forcibly gagged. Banking is fascinating to me, but it’s not the sort of topic that lends itself to general conversation at dinner—well, except maybe for those few subjects the media made familiar to the rest of the world: Fed Reserve meetings, the prime rate, ATM fees, and certificates of deposit.”

  Roy took a risk and said, “I wonder if you enjoy the reversal: You, the professional, are quiet about your working day, while it’s the men who chatter about the ways they amuse themselves.”

  She frowned. “You have a profession.”

  “It’s not like actually working. I did that for a year or so. I tried being a salesman at a Cadillac agency.”

  She blinked. “Elkhart Cadillac?”

  “Sam told me once that your parents bought a pair of new Caddies when your dad had his first success.” He and she compared dates, but those purchases had taken place long before he joined the firm.

  “Yes,” said Kristin. “I was only fourteen or fifteen at the time.”

  If so, Roy would have taken little note of her, whatever his own age. He suspected that her appearance as a girl had not been promising, especially if she had grown to much of her adult height early on. She would have been gawky, with projecting angles that had not yet been resolved into their later elegance of line.

  Their fino sherries were delivered. He paid so little notice to the waitress that he cou
ld not have distinguished her from another, which was not like him.

  “What kind of car did you buy from Jonathan?”

  “A sixty-six Shelby Cobra.” As with so many celebrated marques, saying or hearing the very name could produce a thrill, but only to someone who recognized it. “A combination of a small, handsome British sports-car body with a huge Ford engine. The acceleration could give you whiplash: under four seconds, zero to sixty.” He smiled at her lack of reaction. “Childish, no? Why would anybody want to do that? I haven’t any idea, but it’s fun if you’re a certain type of guy…. But there are some female car-fanciers and even a few race drivers who are women.”

  “There are lady body-builders and prize fighters,” said Kristin.

  “What did you have for lunch?” Roy was slightly jealous of her for having already been here once today, but spotting Jonathan across the room, chatting with a party of newcomers, he realized that what really disturbed him was the chef’s greeting Kristin as a familiar.

  “Soupe de poissons,” she answered slowly, distractedly, as she perused the menu, which was physically sizable in flexible cardboard but not extensive in content, offering one dish each in beef, veal, and lamb; two of fowl; and three of main-course seafood. “A tiny bit too heavy on the saffron, for my taste anyway.”

  This was the only criticism she had ever made of Jonathan’s cuisine, but it occurred to Roy that whenever the subject had been discussed before now, he had always been her host. Sam of course, by right of friendship, said anything he felt, and usually spoke disparagingly about any restaurant but a steakhouse, and even there never quite approved of the aging, marbling, and doneness of the meat at one chosen by Roy. His wife had better manners as well as better taste.

  “You must tell me your honest opinion of what you eat tonight,” Roy told her. “You’re the authority.”

  In this light her eyes seemed green. “I’m an amateur cook. If you think about it, everybody living is a professional eater and speaks with the same authority.” Then, as if she feared he would take it as a rebuke, added, “You flatter me too much, sir. But you’ve said nothing about my most notable attribute: modesty!”

  Taken by surprise, he hoped his laugh came soon enough. He was usually, without undue effort, pretty glib with women, but he had difficulty in adjusting to Kristin’s idiom. Or perhaps it was rather a matter of rhythm, phrasing, and pace, but then he had never been conscious of technique, if that’s what dealing with the other sex could be termed. He always did what came naturally, but nothing was doing so at the moment, surely because he was not, in any sense of the word, on a date. He had to remind himself that he was with his best friend’s better half, that it was solely because Sam had married Kristin that Roy was breaking bread with her now. Though she was nothing like her husband, in this situation she was again necessarily a surrogate.

  She lowered and closed her menu. “The duck-breast paillard, I think. Is that the same as a magret?” This was rhetorical. “I’m suspicious of Jonathan’s designations…. Nothing to start. I ate too much at lunch.”

  “Despite the saffron?”

  “I didn’t say the soup was inedible.”

  The waitress returned, and Kristin gave her order.

  “The lamb shank for me,” said Roy. “Nothing to begin.”

  “I hope you’re not just being polite,” said Kristin. “I’m not going to eat dessert, either. I’m trying to lose a few pounds.”

  “You?” He had actually never observed her body with the care he would have given such an assessment had she been someone else, but that as slender a human being as she could be overweight was hard to take seriously. “I’ve never even seen you eat much of the marvelous meals you prepare.”

  “You taste a lot when you cook. that takes the edge off an appetite. Anyway, what’s most fun for me is somebody else eating what I make.” She displayed a schoolgirl sort of grin, which nullified any threat that might be detected in her next statement. “They’re in my power.”

  “I’ve never looked at it that way.”

  “That’s because you’re not noticeably competitive.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Depends on the situation, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Roy decided it was time to assert himself. “No, I wouldn’t.” He had gotten her attention; perhaps she liked dissent. “I think I simply lack ambition. Can that ever be good?”

  “It can certainly be a relief for those around you.”

  A busboy took away the bowl of flowers—so that their fragrance would not compromise a diner’s olfactory sense—and Jonathan himself arrived, bearing two small plates.

  “Do me a favor, please,” said the chef. “Kindly give me an opinion of this smoked-trout mousse. It won’t spoil your palates, I promise, and it’s a comp.” He briskly served them both and left.

  On the little square plates, which were glazed in onyx-black, a swirl of pale mousse had been placed slightly off center; issuing from it was a swooshing comet-tail made of tiny dots of sauce, green interspersed with those of pink and some white. Three crisply toasted discs of bread occupied the space afforded by the off-centering of the mousse.

  Kristin grimaced at her plate. “This is over the top.”

  Roy lifted an eyebrow at her. “It’s always been Jonathan’s theory that going right to the main course is gastronomic heresy. The palate must be awakened first. I guess he’s exerting his power.”

  “What irritates me is the decoration, which you are obliged to destroy by eating it. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” She applied a dollop of mousse to a crouton and anointed it delicately with a little sample of each color of sauce. She extended the finished product to Roy.

  “How nice of you.” He accepted it from her delicate fingers.

  “Nice of you to say so,” said Kristin, “when what I’m doing is using you to defy Jonathan. I have no intention of letting him bully me.”

  “So you stick me with it?” asked Roy in mock indignation. “That’s not so nice.” He realized that what she was doing, consciously or not, was providing for the kind of irreverent give-or-take in which he and Sam so often engaged in her presence but never with her participation or even probable understanding. “And I was counting on you to identify these sauces so I can pretend to be knowledgeable when he comes back.”

  Kristin squinted at the dots on her plate. “The green is dill and the pink, pink peppercorn. The white is sour cream and horseradish.”

  Roy had finished his own small serving by the time the chef returned. Kristin’s was missing only the sample she had given Roy.

  “So,” Jonathan asked Roy, “what do you think?” But before he got an answer he stared at Kristin’s plate and brought his thin eyebrows together in a frown. “What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t want a first course.”

  The chef snapped his head toward Roy, who quickly said, “Delicious.”

  “We smoke our own trout,” Jonathan told him, as he always did.

  “I like the combination of the dill and pink peppercorn sauces along with the horseradish.”

  Jonathan lifted his golf cap in salute, affording a brief glimpse of his shiny shaved head. “You got one out of three. Very good! The ‘dill’ is parsley; the pink, tomato.”

  “Well,” Roy said genially, “what do I know?”

  “Jonathan,” Kristin said, “those were my guesses, not Roy’s. He’s being gallant.”

  The chef showed a faint smirk as he removed the little black plates, and went away without another word.

  “I thought he might crow over my confession,” said Kristin. “But no.”

  “You would have gotten them all right if you had taken a taste.”

  She lowered her empty sherry glass. “You don’t have to protect me, Roy.” They exchanged remote glances for a moment, and then she reached across and lightly touched the back of his hand with three fingertips. “I shouldn’t have said that. I apologize.” She looked away and withdrew her fingers. �
��Let’s have a glass of red.”

  Jonathan Marchbanks owned a piece of a Napa Valley vineyard and therefore could offer a cabernet labeled with the name A Quarter to Nine, but it was also a reliably good bottle whatever the vintage. Roy was relieved when Kristin made no objection to the choice.

  “Really?”

  “I hope I haven’t given you the impression I’m a troublemaker,” said she, apparently in earnest.

  “I don’t have any negative impressions of you at all. I never have had any. When I’m in your company, I just try to measure up. If Sam’s choice of investments were comparable to his choice of wife, he’d be in the Fortune Five Hundred.”

  Her expression was an odd mixture of affection and distress. “Oh, please…”

  The waitress appeared at that point and took the order for wine. Jonathan, who often performed as his own sommelier, was back in the kitchen at the moment, to Roy’s approval. Whereas he usually enjoyed conversing with the chef, he had had enough of the man tonight. This was due to Kristin. He was not drunk, the fino having been his first alcohol of the day, but apparently he had gone too far and embarrassed her. They spoke no more while they waited for the cabernet.

  When it came, the waitress opened the bottle and without ceremony poured them a third of a glass each and departed. Jonathan’s practice dispensed with cork-smelling, glass-sniffing, color-gauging, swirling, preliminary sipping, the lot. If after a healthy swallow or two you didn’t like the wine, you could send it back for an unchallenged replacement.

  Roy lifted his glass. “To Sam’s good health!”

  “Yes,” said Kristin, raising hers. “By all means.” She lowered the glass to the tablecloth. “You’re not going to tell me how much you’re lending him, are you?”

  “I haven’t said whether I’m going to lend him anything. I’m trying not to think of that subject at the moment. I’m uncomfortable in the role of middleman. I’ve played it on occasion between my sister and her husband, and I always end up being resented by both sides. Robin and I have never gotten along since we became teenagers, but she’s my sister; in fact, she is my twin. It would be unnatural to oppose her as much as I’m naturally inclined to do. So, though I invariably think my brother-in-law is right, I don’t feel it’s proper for me to join his cause. What I try to do is compromise.”