Hazard

by Gerald A. Browne

  Lindy was sitting with one leg crossed under and the other arched. Her white chiffon dress was gathered up. She had on white silk, seamed stockings, and matching garter belt. To flash bare thigh accessorized by the fasteners and tendrils of a garter belt was apparently the newest old rage. “These grapes are orgasmic,” she said, biting one in half with her front teeth.

  Laura flung the wine from her goblet, then took off her hat and sailed it away. Lifting her skirt she maneuvered around on her knees and then lay back, resting her head face up on Lindy’s lap. It was all performed with nonchalance, as though her only purpose was to make herself comfortable. However, now her body was extended offeringly toward Hazard and her legs were relaxed, slightly apart. She tucked her chiffon dress down between her legs, defining herself. Then she held up her hand with only her index finger extended. “Know what this is?” she asked Hazard.

  “Same to you,” Hazard said.

  “Not that. I mean, right here is where they can stick an acupuncture needle to tonify your sex life.” She indicated a specific place on the back of the finger between the nail and first joint. “It’s called point cx nine.”

  “Tonify?”

  “Stimulate,” explained Lindy. “Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that it should be that finger?”

  “Same place both hands?” asked Hazard, going along with it.

  “Only the right,” said Lindy.

  “Then it’s not a coincidence for anyone left-handed,” said Hazard.

  That amused Lindy. When she smiled, Hazard noticed one of her upper front teeth was slightly crooked. The imperfection was an asset, adding an incongruous provincial touch.

  Hazard accepted their routine for what it was. Seductive choreography. He wondered if they practiced regularly. But he had to admit he was flattered. They were very pretty, doubly so together. Which thought brought Keven to mind; however, he also remembered Kersh had prescribed distraction. He looked over and saw Catherine had left her place and was down the slope, mingling.

  “You going to drink that?” he asked Laura, indicating her bottle of Burgundy. He’d finished his. She handed her bottle over to him, and he got up and walked away.

  He went around the side of the house and off into a grove of oaks, over a falling rock wall, and across a small swale of wild grass. Walking anywhere just for the walk, pausing frequently to swig from the bottle. The sun was on its way down, not yet setting but already its light was a weaker amber. It was the time of day he liked most, from then until dark. The wine was getting to him, not a lot but he felt it some in his legs and head. He knew he ought to be concentrating on the Badr problem, trying to figure out his next move. He also felt guilty that he was feeling so good.

  His eyes caught on a structure on the opposite side of another rock wall. He went to it, climbed over, and found it was the remains of a small stone cottage, overgrown with ivy and creepers, roofless and with only three sides.

  On the north side some moss had grown a bed.

  On it were Laura and Lindy.

  They provided a tableau. And for a man who fancied only birds, the rest seemed inevitable.

  Hazard had no trouble finding his way in the dark back to Catherine’s house. He merely headed in the direction of loud, thumping music.

  He was astonished at seeing the inside of the house for the first time. Its authentic Queen Anne exterior was only a façade. Inside every surface was linear, stark white contradicted by jolting splashes of primary color, accessorized by mirror and chrome and lucite. It was brightly, evenly lighted, shadowless, enhancing the clean, spatial effect. Neon geometrics, huge mazes of shining wires. Even incidental functional objects such as ash trays seemed cool and unfamiliar. It was like transcending the present, stepping from the past right into the future.

  He felt a hand take his, fingers lacing. “I was wondering about you.” Catherine smiled.

  “It’s a big place.”

  “You’ve been exploring?”

  “I need a ride back to London.”

  “We haven’t had a chance to talk.”

  He almost told her that wasn’t his fault.

  She led him away from the crowd, out of the room, and down a long, high passage only wide enough for two. It seemed to go nowhere but as they approached the end of the passage a partition automatically opened to reveal a small elevator. It was entirely mirrored inside, and going up in it Catherine waited for Hazard’s eyes to find the view reflected by the floor.

  “That’s the one disadvantage,” she said.

  “Depends on how you look at it.”

  They stopped at an upper floor where there was the same sort of décor but in pastels, a softer effect.

  “This is my part of the house,” she said. “There’s no way up except the elevator and no way for anyone to call it down. How’s that for guaranteed privacy? Here …” she went ahead “… is your room.”

  “I can’t stay.”

  “I’ll be hurt if you don’t.”

  He glanced around the room but didn’t see his piece of luggage. Catherine slid a panel back with her finger, revealing a built-in wardrobe. His things had been unpacked, folded and put away. In the top drawer was his Llama in its holster, with the straps wound neatly around it. And his knife. On the wardrobe’s mirror-top surface were his three passports and the carton of images. Maybe it was English hospitality, but he resented it.

  “See, you’re all moved in,” Catherine said. “All three of you.”

  He didn’t have to explain, he told himself. Anyway, he didn’t have to tell her the truth. “I’m in a hassle with the government,” he said, the first thing that came to mind. “They don’t believe I reported all my income over the past ten years. And they’re right. So, before they could put me in I got out. Under an assumed name.”

  “Stevens or Beech?”

  “Stevens. The other’s a spare.”

  She seemed to believe him. “Evidently you were prepared to shoot your way out.”

  The gun. “No,” he told her, “just an old friend who never goes anywhere without me.” He realized how phony-tough that sounded.

  She stepped back and looked him down and up. “You’re a wanted man.”

  “In some parts,” he said, straining to keep it light.

  “Edmund Stevens. Must I call you that?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “I much prefer Haz.” She added pointedly, “I always did.”

  He thought how right he’d been about her. He remembered telling Carl she needed a kick in the ass. She hadn’t cried a drop at the funeral. It was a wonder she’d even showed up. “Get me a ride back to London,” he told her.

  She shrugged. “I’ll have my driver take you.”

  He expected her to go to make that arrangement but she stayed there as though entertained by his angry movements as he packed.

  Hazard didn’t really know her, had never wanted to, had seen her briefly only three or four times over the past five years. Probably he’d never see her again. She was truly nothing to him now that Carl was gone. He’d often wondered about her, though, especially why she’d married Carl. They were such an obvious mismatch. Carl had been way out of her freaky league and she must have realized that from the beginning. So why had she married him? Hazard decided to ask her now.

  “Didn’t Carl ever tell you?”

  “We never talked much about you.”

  She thought back a moment, then said, “I owed it to him.” It sounded as though it had been a debt she’d grudgingly paid. “We first met in Cairo …”

  That Hazard had known, but not the rest of it.

  It had been June, 1967, the second day of the Six-Day War. Israeli planes were over the city and nearly everyone had taken shelter. Carl was at the U.S. embassy. Looking out the window during a raid, he saw a pretty girl just walking along the deserted street with incredible nonchalance, as though it were any pleasant, peaceful afternoon. Carl opened the window and shouted down, warning her, but she onl
y looked up, smiled, and waved. Carl hurried down and out to her, urged her to come inside. She first ignored him and then resisted when he forcefully carried her in.

  She was not grateful for the rescue, called Carl a meddler, and sat brooding by a window like a child prohibited from going out to play. She’d been well aware of the danger, had been inviting the sky to send down her death, hopefully a direct hit. To die that way was abstract, impersonal, not the same as suicide, which required too much of one’s self. It had been an opportunity and Carl had deprived her of it.

  When Carl learned that these were her thoughts, he looked on her as a victim of another sort of war. She immediately became his private cause. Dedication made him almost immune to the abusive ingratitudes she put on him. He never wavered, kept her there, tried to reason with her, watched over her. She was literally a prisoner of his concern. Until, on the seventh day, the war was over. She was free to go.

  She left on a final, thankless note. But two days later she was back. His optimism was contagious, and she’d caught some of it. He’d given that to her, and she wanted to repay him. No matter that he didn’t suit her customary tastes and values. That, at the time, only qualified him all the more. He was good to her, for her. Hadn’t she lately been laughing almost genuinely; wasn’t she almost content to be only with him; didn’t she nearly believe it herself when she said she loved him?

  Within a month they were married.

  Within another two she was miserable, as miserable as ever. Her sanguine outlook was that quickly corroded by self-doubt, habitual fears, the same old hang-ups. They hadn’t really gone away for good, just for a holiday, and with their return came the need for the same old defenses. Such as ennui. Life with Carl now bored the hell out of her. His patience and devotedness irritated her. The whole new hope thing had been no more than an illusion. She’d been temporarily deceived into believing she had the ability to love and feel loved. She’d never be fooled again. She wanted out.

  Now, with a resigned smile and her eyes set against showing regret, she told Hazard, “Except for the unsavory minor details, that’s how it went.”

  Hazard hadn’t expected such openness from her. Maybe he hadn’t been fair, had based his opinion of her on superficial things. He remembered what she’d said that afternoon at the Pierre about being the one who wanted to die. Maybe underneath she was less a barracuda, more someone in deep water who had to tread like hell to keep from going under. “Why didn’t you divorce Carl?” he asked.

  “He didn’t want a divorce.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Hazard was asking her to peel off another layer. Reluctantly she told him, “I suppose I always held a bit of hope for myself. It was something to go on, a sort of life line that might let me find my way back again to that first good feeling I had with him.”

  An understanding nod from Hazard. He’d finished his packing. Now he unzipped his bag, flipped it open, and said, “I’d like a beer. Can you get me a beer?”

  Catherine was very happy to oblige.

  They sat side by side in another room, more neutral than a bedroom. She called it her gallery. A completely enclosed area where several paintings took the place of windows. One, a Nolde, gave a view of some dark, furious sea, the madness of the waves ridged with luminous gold beneath a vermilion sky. Another was a Leonor Fini, a nude young girl, pearl-skinned chimerical, her head laden with vague flowers, in her hands a large, platterlike leaf serving her breasts to the onlooker. The only lights in the room were those exactly illuminating the paintings, heightening the impressions that those creations existed in an outside world. There was also a portrait of Catherine.

  “Shouldn’t you be downstairs with your party?” Hazard asked.

  “It won’t miss me.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be with your friends?”

  “No.”

  Even in that high sanctuary the music from below could be heard. Its pervasive thump was like a pulse throughout the house. It was so much a part of Catherine’s usual experience that she no longer really heard it. Conversely, Hazard’s hearing at that moment seemed hypersensitive, irritated by the thumps and twangs. “Don’t they ever take an intermission?”

  Catherine used a nearby phone, and a few moments later the music cut off abruptly. “Silence,” she said, “is something a lot of people can’t tolerate.” She obviously included herself.

  Hazard pulled his shoulders back to stretch the tension from them. His legs were straight out and crossed. He settled down and took a gulp of beer. Five more bottles were being kept cold in a silver bucket of shaved ice.

  Catherine changed her position so she was lying on her side, giving him all her attention. He sensed she was studying his profile. “This tax trouble you’re in, is it just a matter of money?”

  “Why?”

  “I have much more of that than I need.”

  “Money won’t settle it now. They want me to pay them some prison time. For evasion. Anyway, thanks.” He was sorry he had to lie to her.

  “But now that you’re out of the States they can’t touch you.”

  “I can be extradited.”

  “Then we just won’t let them know you’re here.” She smiled, an accomplice.

  A long silent moment, while she decided she was really very attracted to him. She wondered if his being Carl’s brother had anything to do with it. Possibly. But Haz was a lot different. Haz would know how to handle her. At least he seemed to promise that. She imagined herself with him and just picturing it aroused her. That wasn’t an extraordinary reaction for her and she had no reason to trust or depend on it. But usually much more was required to cause such a response in her. Perhaps, she hoped, as she’d hoped many times before, it was the stir of something substantial, something that wouldn’t be so easily discouraged. It might be, just might. She’d never know until she’d put it to the test, and that was impossible at the moment, with Carl and his death between them. She’d have to obscure that, gradually charm and diminish it. “Let’s hear more about you,” she said.

  Hazard didn’t want to talk about himself, and after a while maneuvered their conversation back to her.

  Her people, as she expressed it, came originally from Northumberland. Probably way back her ancestors had been Nordic but there was no way of tracing that. Sometimes, she told him, when she was feeling especially pagan, she believed it was that ancient bloodline at work.

  Her industrious great grandfather had made the family fortune from woolen mills at a time before there was any such thing as an inheritance penalty. So his wealth was passed on intact to her grandfather, who succeeded in expanding the family holdings to such an extent and to organize them in such a clever way that even when he died the Government’s bite was a comparative nibble. Her grandfather lived to be eighty. She knew him only as the surly, grunting, patriarchal figure whom she saw and was prompted to curtsy to on special occasions. The entire family, and it was large, was unctuous and spittle-licking (she loved that description) around the old man. Her parents were no exception. She had been too young to care and once in protest at being forced to deliver a dutiful kiss to grandfather’s old, dry mouth she had stepped on his old, gouty foot. She claimed it was an accident, but always thought Grandfather knew better. Anyway, she’d never been close to him, not nearly as close as most of the others. That was why she often believed his leaving everything to her was only a matter of chance, as though he’d drawn her name from a hat or made a list and threw a pen like a dart at it.

  What about her parents? Where were they?

  Gone, in 1958, when she was twelve. Both drowned while sailing under the influence of too much wind and brandy—off Holyhead, of all places.

  Grandfather outlived them by a year. At thirteen she inherited, along with his fortune, the family’s sycophantic attention. At first she rather enjoyed having aunts, uncles, cousins—even those twice and three times removed—fawn over and oblige her. She was never reprimanded. She always won at games and wh
atever she asked for would soon appear, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate, depending on the number of relatives present when she happened to speak her desire. Her eager benefactors never mentioned that they charged their gifts to her account at Harrod’s and elsewhere.

  It wasn’t until she was sixteen that she fully realized what counterfeiters her relatives were. She began to devise little tests for them, and they all failed. And when they were all eliminated from her faith, she found an awful loneliness had set in.

  Did she tell them off and send them packing?

  No, not then, anyway. She didn’t even let them know she was on to them. That, in fact, was how she got back at them; by letting them continue their insipid pretense. She toyed with them, doled out encouragements and then enjoyed dashing their hopes. It was, she thought, a fitting, excruciating punishment. They nearly had a mass stroke when, at twenty-one, she married Carl.

  After that she was more irritated by their hypocrisy. By then many of them had come to live here in this very house. It had been part of her grandfather’s estate and belonged to her. She paid for its upkeep but never liked the place and so had never made an issue of her relatives moving in to stay. The place was overrun with them. They were literally waiting in line for a vacancy. Then one day, apparently on a whim, she announced she intended to have the house redone. They’d all have to leave. They could, however, take with them whatever they wanted.

  They correctly understood from her tone that it was the end of the free ride. They took everything, stripped the house bare of the many valuable pieces it contained, not overlooking the doors and boiserie. She didn’t care. In one fell swoop she’d gotten rid of her sponging relatives and saved herself the trouble of having to sell off the ugly, traditional junk. Shortly thereafter she had the house gutted and commissioned the best Italian interior designer a lot of money could buy to do it the way she wanted, as it was now. No memories.

  Hazard was on his fourth beer. Normally he wasn’t a good listener, but he’d been interested in Catherine’s ironic account of her past. Now that he knew her better he felt differently about her. He even liked her for the first time.