Best Friends

by Thomas Berger

  Margaret gave him a warm smile. “Go to it, Roy. He’s fortunate to have a friend like you. Most people hate lawyers, even their own…. I hope he’s okay.”

  * * *

  Mercy, the other area hospital, was at the far side of the county. The traffic on the direct route there was bottlenecked because of highway repair, and Roy decided against detouring on unfamiliar roads. Therefore it took him fifty minutes to reach his destination. On his arrival more time was squandered in arguments with hospital personnel as to his status. A mere friend and business associate could not gain access to a patient except during regular visiting hours—and not at all to one admitted for emergency care.

  The conflict was abruptly resolved by someone’s coming through a stainless-steel doorway and calling his name.

  It was Dorothea Alt. She wore no special expression. She came to him and took his hand. “Sy’s gone, Roy. He was hit by a car right in front of the courthouse. There were cops all over the place, but nobody got the fucking license number. Nobody.” She acquired a crazed smile. “How could that ever be explained to Sy? Nobody to sue! Oh, Roy, Roy, Roy…” She collapsed against him, sobbing into his chest.

  He drove Dorothea home in the Mercedes CLK55 convertible in which she had come to the hospital. It had been Sy’s gift to her on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the previous May. “Seventy something,” Alt had told Roy. “But it’s got sensors that instantly put up a roll-bar if they detect the car is starting to roll over. Dodie’s a good enough driver, but she’s reckless. Remember when she totaled her Beamer?”

  The Alt driveway was filled with vehicles, and more were parked along the curb on both sides of the street. “Will you look at that,” said Dorothea. “I only called my son a little over an hour ago. The gathering of the clans. I must look awful. I can’t bear to see.”

  She was eight years younger than Sy’s fifty-six and had been well maintained, but she was now a haggard elderly widow, with bruised eyes in a face that had fallen to what it was before cosmetic surgery.

  “You’re as beautiful as always,” Roy said, double-parking so she would not have far to walk. He took her to the front door on his arm.

  Amid the throng inside the house Roy saw the Alts’ son and called to him. “Wilson!”

  Wilson Alt, a lanky, fair haired, long-jawed young man who resembled his late father in no way, had just begun his final year at law school.

  “Hi, Roy. I just happened to run down to get some clothes I forgot. A trooper lasered me at eighty-two. I told him I was late for my father’s funeral! Who knew? He didn’t buy it, incidentally.” Wilson looked around and called out his sister’s name.

  Sybil Alt emerged from the crowd. She was twenty and unfortunately looked very much like her male parent and nothing like her mother. So far as Roy knew, she was still an undergraduate at the local community college; perhaps she had been a classmate of Michelle Llewellyn’s.

  “Thanks, Roy.” Sybil took Dorothea off his arm and led her haltingly away. They were detained by sympathetic relatives and neighbors who wanted to express condolence.

  “I can’t take over yet,” Wilson told Roy. “We’ll have to hire another attorney for a while, and I worry about what he’ll want. My father always kept it a one-man firm until I could join him. But now?”

  “I’m really sorry about your dad,” said Roy. “I’ve known him most of my life. He was more my friend than my lawyer, or maybe the older brother I never had. He looked out for me.”

  Wilson, taller than he, took Roy by the elbow. “Roy, I won’t let you down. Just give me a little time to get my shit together.”

  Wilson had always been a kind of punk. His sister was a better person, but in addition to her deficiencies of feature, she did poorly in school.

  “How about a drink?”

  Roy declined and left the house, purposely avoiding the other people, a number of whom he would surely know. He parked Dorothea’s Mercedes in the next block and returned to put the ignition key in the mailbox. Cell phone in hand, he was about to call Bob’s Taxi when he remembered Sam.

  “It’s me, kid. Have you heard about Sy Alt?”

  “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “He was killed, for Christ’s sake. Hit-and-run.”

  For a moment Sam was so quiet that Roy feared the cellular transmission had failed. “Sam?”

  “I’m trying to deal with it…. My God. He’s the last guy I would have…It’s one thing after another.”

  “Listen. I’m coming over.”

  “Here?”

  “I’m at Sy’s house. I’m walking.” Sam lived only a couple of miles away, and the adjoining neighborhoods, while subtly different—Sam’s was probably more parvenu in its prevailing architecture than Alt’s, though Sy was a self-made man—were consistently residential without much traffic. In a high-performance car Roy could have made the trip in less than two minutes, but afoot, though a vigorous walker, he consumed the better part of half an hour and found himself slightly winded as he strode up the Grandy driveway, where there were more dead leaves than last time, or perhaps it was only that he noticed them now as he had not when driving. The fall was on its inexorable way, and he was growing older. Given his regimen of exercise, the short hike, really a stroll, should have gone unnoticed. Maybe it was the very modesty of the physical demand that made it more taxing than it should have been.

  Though on foot, he went around to the rear entrance as if arriving by car. His ring was answered by Maria, the Hispanic woman originally hired to clean twice a week but who, spoiled by Sam, had elevated her job to housekeeper-cum-maidservant. She still did light cleaning chores but if on the premises when a visitor arrived, might don a little apron and serve refreshments. For more ambitious procedures of maintenance, the windows, floor-cleaning and waxing, and even the vacuuming of the larger rooms and longer hallways, she brought female relatives and friends.

  Maria’s round tan face often displayed a sunburst smile that was probably intended to make up for her limited ability to communicate in English, but on seeing Roy now she looked solemn and did not respond to his greeting.

  “Mr. Saym is not feeling gude.” Having said which she exited by the door through which Roy had entered, probably to wait for her ride home. She carried a tote bag and was obviously finished for the day.

  En route to the entertainment center where Sam could usually be found, Roy passed the entrance to the many-windowed sunroom and saw his friend’s bulk in a chair that faced the outdoors. Sam appeared to be contemplating the sward of lawn, still bright green through the iridescence of sprinkler spray, and beyond, the sweep of driveway and the dark stand of trees that concealed most of the pool and all of the garage.

  “The hike was longer than I thought.” For a moment Roy believed Sam was not aware of his arrival, and he whistled at him and cried, “Hey.”

  “I’ve got too much property here,” Sam said. “There’s at least an acre I don’t use. I ought to do something with it to make a buck.”

  Roy took one of the empty chairs near Sam’s, like his, of varnished bamboo with flowered upholstery. He moved it to face his friend, back to the big window where it could have been too warm had the direct sunlight not been blocked by foliage.

  “I have to look up the zoning,” Sam went on. “Maybe I could get a variance. Who’s going to replace Sy?”

  “It was a hit-and-run,” said Roy. “Nobody even got the number. Right in front of the courthouse, for God’s sake. Cops all over.” He still knew no more than what Dorothea had provided.

  Sam looked at him now for the first time. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  Roy remembered Sam’s inordinate grief when Roy’s father died and wondered whether his friend had been personally close to Seymour Alt. He could not recall Sam’s being at Dorothea’s big parties, nor did he play much golf despite owning a set of the most expensive clubs Callaway made.

  “Sy seemed like too alert a guy not to see a car coming.”<
br />
  Sam continued to stare at him. “Sy did some work for the mob, didn’t he?”

  “I never heard that.”

  “Your dad told me once.” Sam looked away at last.

  “It’s news to me…. This is going to be tough on Dorothea.”

  Sam looked back with a sneer. “Are you putting the moves on her already? Or have you been doing it all the while?” The sneer became a bitter smirk. “Though she’s a little long in the tooth.”

  “You’re going too far,” said Roy. “Take it easy. Sy was just run down in the street a couple hours ago, and she’s a widow. Of course I’ve never touched her.”

  Sam lowered and shook his heavy head. He had needed a haircut for weeks. He was also unshaven, now that he had been home awhile. “Shit. Sy Alt is dead. That’s all I need.”

  Facing him, here in their house, Roy felt so guilty about Kristin that he could not protest directly against Sam’s self-absorption. “Sy was a good father.”

  Sam’s nostrils dilated as if at a bad odor. “Think Celia’ll be at the funeral?”

  The reference was to Sy’s assistant of twenty years; she was also his mistress. “It would seem funny if she wasn’t, working for him as long as she did.” Sy was the most discreet of men. In two decades he had never been seen with Celia in any social venue. Roy and Sam for years had joked about this subject but only with each other. They had no hard evidence; they just knew that Sy and Celia had an intimate connection. You could tell by the way they spoke together on business matters, or anyway Sam could. He was the one who made the point to Roy, who had no gift for smelling out illicit liaisons despite his own proclivities, or perhaps because of them, his basic assumption being that he was unrepresentative: Most men, more fortunate than he had been, had permanent and exclusive attachments.

  “If she does, Alt’s wife can take her cue from that old French joke,” said Sam, patting the bamboo chair arms with his large, flat, hairy hands. “You know.”

  Roy did not.

  “Well, it’s usually the lover and husband, but in this case it would be Mrs. Alt, seeing Celia’s tears, saying, ‘Don’t worry, my dear, I’ll get married again.’” His laugh was short, loud, and ugly.

  Roy nodded, not sharing the laughter. He was struggling against being overwhelmed by a conviction that Sam knew about himself and Kristin. “I guess I never felt it up to me to speculate on what kind of arrangement Sy and Dorothea had, if in fact they had one. I considered both of them friends.”

  “And friendship is sacred to you.”

  Now Roy did smile, more in courtesy than affection, in an effort to keep the proceedings polite rather than personal, though well aware that he could not succeed. “It certainly means a lot.”

  “That’s how you can fuck my wife without regrets,” said Sam, in the warm, soft voice of mockery.

  “For God’s sake,” Roy said, “you’re back to that. How many times do I have to tell you Kristin and I had a meal together when you were in the hospital. You know that. In fact, we ran into Sy and Dorothea in the restaurant. That’s as intimate as we’ve ever been. Maybe it’s your medication. It won’t do your heart any good to get so worked up about nothing.”

  “Swear to me you haven’t touched her.” Sam leaned forward, hands tensed on the chair arms, as if he might leap at his friend, except that even after losing a pound or two during his hospital stay, he was still far too heavy to rise from a sitting position so easily.

  Roy groaned. “Want me to get a Bible? Okay, if that’s what will satisfy you, I’ll swear.”

  Sam let his heavy eyelids fall. “You dirty bastard you.” He opened his reddened eyes. “You stupid prick. Kris admitted it.” He paused to let the information establish itself. “Get the hell out of my house.”

  Roy started to rise, then sat back down. He put his hand in the air. “Listen, kid—”

  “Not a word,” Sam said. “You’re shit. Get out of my life.”

  Now that he could be honest, Roy no longer felt morally crippled. “No!” he cried. “Not until I speak my piece. I’m not going to try to justify myself in any way. You’re right to be outraged. I deserve no consideration. But I want to say that this is not just an affair. I’m in love with her.”

  Sam’s grin was ghastly. “You…are…in love…with her,” he said, dragging it out. “It’s not an affair.”

  “It’s no excuse,” said Roy. “I admit that. But it’s true. I fell in love, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t have any designs on her. I wasn’t even attracted to her. This is different from everything else. I’ve never felt this way about anybody.”

  Sam’s large body was shaking in some awful caricature of mirth. “I can’t get over how stupid you are. That you’re a corrupt, lying, cheating, backstabbing cocksucker doesn’t surprise me as much as how goddam dumb you are. I at least thought you were bright.”

  The abuse relieved Roy of some of his debilitating sense of guilt. He had admitted the grave offense and had to take what he had coming. But though it might seem so to the injured party, he had not thereby become less than human.

  “All I can say is I regret behaving dishonorably toward you. I apologize for that. I’m not sorry to have fallen in love with Kristin.”

  “I’ve been saving the zinger,” Sam said. “But suddenly I’m not getting the satisfaction I expected from the suspense.” He looked at the floor and exhaled audibly. “I lied, and you fell for it. Kris didn’t admit anything.”

  “This started as a joke?” Roy could have smashed a fist into his fat flabby mouth, but that impulse lasted for only an instant. His feelings were in contradiction. Once again he sank into guilt, now for the damage he had done to Kristin. That he had been unwitting did not diminish his role in the destruction of her marriage. It was uniquely his accomplishment.

  Wordlessly he rose to his feet. Not looking at Sam, he left the house and his best friendship.

  13

  Roy crunched along the gravel driveway and had almost reached its junction with the road when the tan Toyota turned in. Its approach had been blocked by the shrubbery and, were the car not crawling, he might have been struck. He jumped aside, and Kristin braked to a stop.

  She put her head out the window. “Roy! Are you okay?”

  He came to her window. “Kristin, I—”

  “And I just heard about Seymour Alt being killed, my God…. Why are you walking?”

  He explained and then began an attempt to introduce the crucial matter. “I came to tell Sam about Sy. We all go back a long way, you know…. And then I—”

  “Get in,” said Kristin. “I’ll run you home.”

  It was probably the best thing to do. He hoped Sam was not watching, though that would have been unlikely.

  She backed out, swinging the car to point in the right direction. The world had changed since the last time he had been her passenger. That had been less than a week ago, at which time he could not have imagined they would ever be other than they were then, wife and husband’s best friend, always a sensitive and often an uneasy alliance, unless perhaps the latter was gay.

  “I never met him till the other night at the restaurant,” Kristin said, “but what a shock to hear this.”

  “Sy Alt,” said Roy, “was the last person likely to get hit by a car. He was seldom on foot except inside an office or courtroom, although he hated to drive. I guess it made sense that he had no interest in cars. When he came to my place, only once or twice in all the years he represented me, he would walk in and out without turning his head to look at the collection.”

  Roy continued to speak nervously about Sy, giving an impromptu eulogy of the man. By this means he cowardly delayed revealing what had become of his friendship with Sam, an unbearable subject to address, all the more so in view of Kristin’s current mood, which aside from an appropriate gravity in listening to what he said about Alt, was seemingly happier than he had ever seen her. This was subtle, and could have been imagined, but she looked at him with evident affection and spo
ke in a new, intimate tone. It was as if she felt even closer to him in this routine act of providing a lift than when making love. She was comfortable with him, and in fact this made him less so than he already was.

  “You didn’t know Sy, but I did and more often than not thought him a pain in the neck even though he was acting in my own interest. I played golf with him though I’m not good at the game, and I was bored out of my skull by the other members of the foursomes he put together.” He did not specify who these people were, for they often included bankers, at least once Kristin’s predecessor at First United. “Anyway, he’s gone now, and I’ll miss him.”

  After Roy concluded his remarks Kristin drove for a decent interval in silence. They were nearing the place he called home when, smiling warmly, she said, “Roy, I’ve made a decision. I’m no good at being false. I feel creepy when I try to lie, and even worse if I’m caught at it.” Turning into his driveway, she kept her eyes on where the car was going. “I don’t know how you feel, though. You’re as close to Sam as I am. What I want to do is tell him.”

  Roy nodded miserably but said nothing.

  Kristin braked and turned off the ignition. She took his hand in hers. “I don’t think I should do this without your permission.”

  “I honestly don’t know what I’d answer under other circumstances,” he lied. “But Sam already knows.”

  She let go of him and clasped her hands to her lowered head.

  “He tricked me!” Roy cried.

  Her incredulous face came up. “I don’t understand.”

  “It was really a filthy trick. He told me you had confessed.”

  “You believed him?”

  Roy had not anticipated how this would seem from her side, but still…. “What could I have done? Called him a liar? What kind of man would lie in that case?”

  Kristin’s lips were contorted. “Apparently you don’t know him as well as I do.”

  “Just because you know somebody for years doesn’t mean you know everything about him. But you ought to get some idea of his basic character. I’m saying ‘him’ here, because I mean a man. I doubt this applies to women, though I haven’t known any for long enough to say, except of course my sister.”