Best Friends

by Thomas Berger

  Roy maintained his polite smile.

  “So I stopped outside, hour, hour-and-a-half ago, and it was all dark in here, but when my eyes got used to the dark, I thought I could just barely make out a person’s head moving in the back of one of the cars. Maybe I just imagined it, but I thought I ought to mention it to you. I couldn’t even swear it was a person, let alone recognize them, but I thought I should let you know. It might help. So far as anybody else is concerned, I didn’t see anything. Have a good night, Mr. Courtright.”

  “You caught me,” said Roy. “I sometimes sneak into the backseat of the Rolls-Royce and catch a nap. Oh, I just spoke to Mr. Grandy. His wife came home okay, some time ago. He’s embarrassed he got so worried, but he’s been sick lately, in the hospital. Bad heart. Tell the dispatcher he apologizes.”

  “I remember that,” said the officer. “You was out at his house, a week back. I hope he’ll be in good health.”

  12

  I oughtn’t talk to you at all,” Michelle said in her slightly flutier tone of indignation. “I know—I called you. But still…”

  Roy had telephoned the Llewellyn number at nine-thirty a.m., expecting to leave a message with her mother, to the effect that he would be out of town for a few days. It was a potentially foolish lie, easily exposed by accident, but as good as he could do with a mind as uneasy as his after a restless night.

  “I told you my friend’s in bad shape.”

  “That’s very well—I don’t mean that he’s sick, I mean you could just of called me sometime. If you don’t want to see me, just say so, that’s all I mean.”

  Roy was incapable of telling any female person that he had no interest in her, for it would not have been true. That he was now in love with Kristin had no bearing on his friendship with Michelle, which existed on another level of being.

  “I do want to see you,” said he, and as if that were not already too much involvement for a man in his position, he heard himself add, “I miss you.”

  “That should be easy to handle. We live in the same town. Well, your business is here. I don’t know where you live.”

  “Parts unknown,” he said, using the jokey generic address with which professional wrestlers were sometimes introduced, back when as teenagers he and Sam used to watch the simulated mayhem of Gorilla Monsoon, Captain Lou Albano, and Chief Jay Strongbow. “What,” he asked Michelle, “are you doing out of class at this hour?”

  Instead of answering his question, she said, “I’m home alone. My mom and dad are at work. I’m supposed to do the laundry, but I’m still in bed. What are you doing?”

  “I’m at work, too. I’ve got a business to run.”

  She asked, “Are there actually a lot of people around here who buy fabulous cars early in the morning?”

  “Hardly any.”

  “You’re your own boss, Roy. You’ve got that girl there to look after the place. You can do anything you want.”

  “Mrs. Forsythe is about fifty,” Roy said. “She’d be flattered.”

  “She has a very young voice. If she’s really that old, I guess you’re not involved with her. I thought that was why you were avoiding me. Look, we could do something today if you want. I can see out the window it’s perfect weather.”

  He listened to himself in disbelief. “It’s nice enough for a picnic, don’t you think? I guess Mount Seneca Park is still open. I’ll grab some food and a bottle of champagne and pick you up in—how much time do you need?”

  “Just enough to shower and brush my teeth. I can’t believe you’re actually doing this.”

  Neither can I, he said to himself. But maybe he could get some breathing room thereby. His spirit stayed in turmoil when he was alone. Spending a carefree hour or two with this amiable college girl might soothe his soul and distract him from the matter of the Grandys.

  He left a note for Mrs. Forsythe, using her given name for the first time since being asked to do so.

  Margaret—

  I’m picnicking with Michelle. Be back right after lunch.

  Lie to anyone who wants to get hold of me before then.

  R.B.

  The third sentence was for her amusement. Margaret was not without a sense of irony—as in fact Kristin seemed to be.

  Michelle screwed up her small nose. “That’s cheese, right?” She pointed at the chunk of Pont l’Evêque.

  Roy tried to anticipate her objection to it. “It’s not so smelly.”

  She picked it up and sniffed. “That’s what you say.” She put it back on the blue-and-white checked tablecloth and returned her fingers to her nose. “Now my hand stinks!”

  “You like the pâté, though?”

  “What I really like is the champagne.” She thrust the empty flute toward the silver bucket from which the neck of the bottle protruded.

  He poured her a refill. “Ham? More bread?”

  “That’s actually pro-zoot, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “That’s what this Italian guy I know says his dad always calls it.”

  “Oh, prosciutto. This is actually Westphalian ham. But it looks like prosciutto.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  They were sitting on cushions at the grounded tablecloth laden with an array of cold foodstuffs, a selection made by Roy from a local “gourmet” shop’s offerings and, as he was not familiar with Michelle’s tastes, as diverse as could be asked: salads, spreads, smoked fish, five different kinds of olives, three of roast meats, and more.

  But thus far, on her second refill of Clicquot, she had only nibbled on a fragment of baguette, spread with duck pâté an eighth-inch thick.

  “I hope you’re going to eat enough to stay sober,” Roy told her. “I don’t want to take a young woman home drunk.”

  She mock-scowled at him. “Whose home? Yours? Oh, say yes, please. I’m dying to see where a person like you lives.”

  Roy had been delighted to locate this little blufftop hideaway again. He had not visited it in fifteen years. The level, smooth patch of glacial rock, always dry, offered a forward view of the lake but was screened on the other sides by thick vegetation. You had to know about it to find it. Apparently few people had done so in all those years, for there was no litter, vintage or current, and no graffiti on the rock, scrawled or carved.

  “If you look real hard,” he said, pointing south-by-southeast, “past that cell-phone tower, you might be able to see the roof of your house.”

  She squinted but soon shook her head. “That’s miles.”

  “I should have brought binoculars. But you can see across the lake, right beyond where that canoe is, there’s—”

  “Kayak,” said Michelle. “But they’re more fun on the river, where you’ve got a current.”

  “You’re a kayaker?”

  “Sure am.”

  She was dressed as she had been on the only other occasion he had seen her, in jeans and a loose gray sweatshirt. Her face was bright with the internal illumination of youth. She wore no makeup whatever, except perhaps a little, perhaps not, at the eyes, which were a compromise between oval and almond. Her cheeks were rosy.

  “You have lovely Asian eyes.”

  “My one grandma was Japanese.” She was pleased to make the identification. “The big boobs come from the European side, mostly Italian, though ‘Llewellyn’ is Welsh.”

  The glossy black hair was no doubt also of Far Eastern origin. Michelle was attractive by any international standard. Hers was obviously an unfettered spirit.

  “I’ll bet the college guys like you.”

  She started a smile that never developed. “They’re all full of themselves, or maybe I’m just in the wrong zone.”

  It occurred to Roy that her depths might not be as carefree as her surface, but then he remembered from his own youth, as well as the years since, that nobody’s ever are. He wondered whether there was a corollary merriment at the heart of the conspicuously melancholy.

  “Well,” said he, “you’ve got a lot of time to
come to terms with things. What are you majoring in?”

  She showed him a broad-browed look of histrionic candor. “Can you handle this? I dropped out, end of last term. I mean, I just didn’t go back.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “Yeah, I’m a fuckup.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She writhed on the seat of her pants and crossed her legs the other way. “This stone is hard on the butt.”

  “I should have brought thicker pillows,” said Roy. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.” She patted the back of the hand he had splayed on the rock for support as he reached for the open container of olives.

  “You were saying?”

  “Oh, yeah. Tell you the truth, Roy, I didn’t know what I was doing in college, so why keep going there like a robot?” She swallowed what was left in her glass and was extending it to him for a refill when a yellow jacket buzzed her on its way to a landing amid the cold meats. Michelle shrieked and dropped the flute, which hit the rock on the edge of its flanged base and bounced high. “Well, look at that, willya? ‘How is that possible?’ You know that commercial for Qwest, ‘Ride the Light’? Whatever that means.”

  “It’s plastic,” said Roy. “Could I interest you in a kalamata?” He offered her one, expecting by now that she would refuse it, but she seized the olive, popped it into her mouth, and performed a hidden depitting technique with only her teeth and tongue. His new expectation was that she would spit the stone over the edge of the rock, into the valley below, something he might well have done himself even at his current age, but again he was wrong. She used one of the paper napkins from the supply he had provided, carefully compressing it into a ball and keeping it in her palm.

  “Want another?”

  “Not me.”

  He retrieved the plastic vessel and filled it with contents not quite as sparkling as earlier. He still had not finished his own first fluteful. He did not want to feel the effects of alcohol while Michelle was in his charge, especially if she was drinking so much.

  “Don’t you think you should eat something more?”

  She leered at him. “Are you afraid you might lose control and take advantage of me if I get wasted?”

  “What I’m afraid of is what you might do.”

  She took this as a joke, which it was not quite, and enjoyed it immensely, chortling with a display of small, perfect teeth. “As well you might, my man. ‘Warning: Do not use this medication when operating heavy machinery.’” She had waited till now to hurl the balled paper napkin, with its gnawed olive pit, over the precipice, ten feet away.

  “Here,” said Roy, cracking a piece off the baguette. “Eat some bread, anyway.”

  “I can’t tolerate solid food till noon on weekdays.”

  “It’s one-twenty.”

  Michelle groaned. “Oh, all right.” She accepted the chunk of bread with her left hand while raising the champagne in the right and emptying the contents down her throat in one foaming flood, which amazingly enough did not spill over. She swallowed heroically, then lowered the glass and brought the bread slowly toward her mouth. “Excuse me,” she said softly and slumped forward, head against her chest.

  Roy spoke to her and shook her shoulder, but she was out. He put a finger under her small nostrils and felt that warm breath continued to emerge. He was relieved not to have to feel for her heart and have her suddenly wake up. She had the potential to be trouble.

  After he had picked her up and carried her to the Jeep, he established even more reason to estimate her troublemaking potential as high. A wallet had worked most of its way out of the back pocket of her jeans. Before reseating it firmly against a firm buttock, Roy had opened it and found what he was looking for. Her driver’s license indicated that Michelle Llewellyn would not be twenty until eleven months had passed.

  She awakened when he had put the wallet back, twisted to face him and asked, grinning, “Are you stealing my money or just feeling my ass?”

  He was not amused. “I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Michelle. You’re not of legal drinking age.”

  “Look, I’m eating!” She had all this while continued to clutch the chunk of bread and now jammed it into her mouth and chewed vigorously.

  Roy went back to the picnic site, roughly gathered up the food, and dumped it into the big basket from which it had been taken. He shook out onto the rock the foaming remainder of the champagne, which looked like less than half a glass, and added the empty bottle to the basket. He collected the cushions.

  He drove her home with utter silence on his part, but a good deal of chatter on hers. She was not as drunk as she had first pretended but more so than she now wanted to admit, especially when he pulled up at the curb in front of her house, a comfortable-looking two-story dwelling-place on a street of many, erected rather too close together because the lots seemed undersized.

  “Can’t you come in?” she asked blearily. “Nobody’s home. I’m not going to call the cops.”

  “The neighbors will. Can’t you be serious, Michelle? You act like you’re twelve, not nineteen. You’re a pretty girl, and you have a lot of charm. If I were your age, you wouldn’t be able to get rid of me. But right now, I want you to leave the car and walk, without staggering, to your door. Think you can manage that? I mean it.”

  “Oh, shit, yes.” She took a deep breath and straightened her back. “I had a very nice time. Thank you. But you still haven’t made good on your promise to let me drive a Rolls-Royce. When will I see you again?”

  He pointed a stark finger at her house. “Goodbye, Michelle.”

  Her bouncy stride looked like that of an altogether sober young person.

  He really did regret not having kept his promise, but it would be impossible for him now to profane the Silver Wraith by sharing it with anyone but Kristin.

  “Well,” a beaming Margaret Forsythe said when Roy reached the office, “that was quite a lengthy picnic. Do I assume correctly that all is going well?”

  “You haven’t ever seen Michelle, have you?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” said Roy. “She’s also very young. I may have more in common with mature women.”

  “Oh?” Margaret frowned slightly as if in polite dismay, but she did not seem offended by the sentiment.

  Seated at his desk, Roy was struck with a guilty awareness that he had not acted responsibly in the case of Michelle. Instead of just getting rid of her, he should, as a grown man, have shown some concern for her lack of direction, which was not unlike what his own had been at that age. Nor had he been a social success then, either. He had thought of the girls of his day much as she did of the boys of hers. Sam’s friendship had been a lifesaver. Michelle needed at least one friend, preferably of her own sex, so that the friendship would not be compromised by other emotions, and more or less her own age, because nothing was more essential at such a time than a sense that one was not unique in the universe.

  Margaret was speaking to him. “Excuse me?”

  “Mr. Alt called.”

  “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something.”

  “Seymour Alt,” said Margaret, who Roy only now noticed had done something to her hair that gave her a lower and younger forehead.

  Sy practiced a profession that usually provided only bad news, if you were with the defendant majority of the human race and not a plaintiff: Rarely you might be let off the hook, but you never won. Roy always dreaded a call from the lawyer, and that was too bad, for Sy was also a friend.

  The signal rang and rang, but nobody at Alt’s office picked up. “How long ago did you hear from Sy?”

  Margaret consulted the monitor for her phone log. “Twelve oh-two. I just got here. It was his assistant, Celia. She just said to call him.”

  “I’m not even getting voice mail. I’ll redial.” He did so and after a moment said, “Same thing,” and hung up. “Let me try his cell number. But if he’s in court i
t won’t be on.”

  Alt’s cellular telephone was answered on the third ring. The male voice was not one that Roy recognized.

  “Please do not call this number until further notice. I’m switching it off.”

  “Wait!” Roy cried. “Isn’t this Mr. Alt’s phone?”

  “This is an attendant at Mercy Hospital. I don’t yet know the name of the patient. The phone was ringing in the pocket of his suit.”

  “Hospital?”

  “He was just brought in to the E.R. He was in a car accident. I can’t say more now, sir. We’re real busy.” The man hung up, despite Roy’s protests.

  Margaret asked, “Mr. Alt’s in the hospital? Another heart attack?”

  Roy stood up. “He was involved in an accident, but I can’t find out anything else at the moment. I better go see what happened, before his wife’s notified. He may not have been hurt all that seriously. I think they rush everybody there as a matter of course. But Dorothea’s an excitable person. She’ll find it hard to handle if she just hears where he is. Maybe I can intercede.”