Almost Perfect (27 page)

But tonight she has not talked to Richard, and she knows what he will say if he calls: Nothing, he will say. Don’t bother. I’m not hungry. And so it is important that she get something good, and she cannot, cannot think what to buy.

Walking through the familiar market, believing that she will somehow be inspired there, Stella stops and pauses, stops and pauses, staring at food displays that are no more tempting or instructive than cardboard pictures of food would be. And as she looks at the faces of other women shoppers, the occasional man, it seems to Stella that they are all similarly paralyzed; all the faces that she sees show anxiety, indecision, sadness. No happy lust for food, healthy appetites.

“I think Richard must be
really
worried over Andrew.” That sentence of Margot’s, with her particular stress, replays itself quite unexpectedly in Stella’s head, and she suddenly understands what was meant: Margot believes, or conceivably she knows, that Richard and Andrew were lovers. At this thought, which is quick and graphic, Stella shudders, aware of a sudden heat in her own loins and a chill of fear in her heart.

Blindly, she buys halibut steaks and some things for salad. But surely they need something else? She cannot think.

Lemons. They are out of lemons, she remembers halfway between the store and where they live, she and Richard. She considers going back for the lemons, and then does not.

With increasing apprehension, her heart almost choked with dread, she drives on toward Lake Street, to her (their) apartment.
She parks and gets out with her package. Scanning the street, she does not see Richard’s car, but that really means nothing; he could have parked anywhere. With her key she opens the door, and she finds what all day she has deeply known that she would come home to: black space. No lights. No sound. Nothing. No Richard.

Unless he is dead.

He could be stretched out on their bed, having taken pills. Or cut his wrists. Or suffocated in a plastic bag.

Paralyzed by these pictures, Stella waits a long instant before turning on a light. An instant during which she thinks, No, if Richard were to kill himself he would jump off the bridge, or drive his car into a train, or leap down a cliff. Down into that crater near his house. Into the sea. It would have to be something dramatic—something that he could in fact be doing at this very moment, somewhere else.

Stella stands there in the dark, in panic, more and more believing that Richard is dead. Her chest has been hollowed out; she feels a large cold cavity where her heart was.

She reaches for the light switch, flicks to bright empty rooms, through which she begins to search for signs of Richard.

And finds nothing, except that he is gone.

His toilet things are all gone from the bathroom: is that a good sign or a bad one? does it mean that he plans to live, though not with her?

The fact of his absence from herself is most horrendously powerful to Stella, almost overriding the question of whether or not he is still alive.

At last, on the kitchen table, she sees a scrap of white paper. Where she might not even have seen it. A very small scrap, among the canisters and notepads, near the telephone. In Richard’s familiar flamboyant childish printing, it says:

STELLA, I’M GONE. PLEASE DON’T COME AFTER ME. I’M SORRY. R.

Driving north in the pale late-April sunshine, Richard figures it will be dark before he gets there, and he wonders if he will have trouble finding the place. Probably he won’t. His sense of direction is terrific still. He has always had this magic sense of where things are, like a bird. Even places where he has never been before, and this is a place that he must have been to several dozen times. He takes people there, to scare them.

The last time was with Stella, and she was really frightened. But then Stella is scared of so much. Scared of making money and being famous. Scared of him, Richard, of what he might do: fuck other people, leave her, and now this. Well, Stella’s been right all along, the intelligent bitch. He did everything she always feared he would do, and maybe a few things more.

The light at this hour is really strange, more green than gray,
as though the air held a reflection of all the grass and leaves, the thousands of shades of green from everywhere. From spring itself, which is no big deal in northern California; not like in the East. Even in Jersey there was spring. Electric. Bursting. Waterfalls and rainbows. New colors. New clothes. New girls.

The light makes it hard to see. And maybe that would be better, easier; he could just take advantage of this lack of vision. Ram right into another car, some huge cross-country truck with a load of gasoline, maybe. Less driving involved, and everything over with several hours sooner. And making news in all the papers.

But actually even now he does not have to do this; does not have to go through with this plan, this dire determination. At this very moment he could turn right around and drive back to Stella. She would be there, he knows she would. Having read his note, at this very moment she is lying there, across their bed, probably crying. She is terrifically upset, of course, not knowing what to do, what to think. What will happen. She does not know where he is. And in an hour or so he could change all that; he could turn around and head straight back to the city, to their house. He could open the door with his key and just walk in, just say, “Anybody home?” like a joke. And then take her in his arms and talk about love. Make love to her. Be comforting, reassuring. Make promises.

Stella would take him back today, or even tomorrow, he is sure of that; even without much explaining she would take him back. Take care of him, pay off his debts, and support him as long as he would let her. And always be faithful to him: that’s Stella. But if he waits another month or so, even several weeks, it might be another story. Even Stella has her limits, he thinks, and she is getting stronger all the time. God knows she is.

But what is he talking about? He won’t be around in another couple of months, or weeks. Nor even tomorrow. Christ, how could he slip like that and forget what he is doing?

Richard is wearing an old brown tweed jacket and a brown-and-white-checked shirt; it is what he was wearing the first time he came to see Stella. Dowdy small Stella, then, in that hideous apartment, both now so magically transformed. Even if he can’t take all the credit for Stella’s transformation, he can take some
credit, surely some. And the apartment is gorgeous now, if he does say so. And Stella; Stella is almost beautiful. Buying good clothes, and her face has changed. Another year or so and she’ll be there, a beautiful woman.

He can see himself, though, in these clothes, tonight, standing in that living room, and hear his own voice,
Anybody home?
And then see Stella rushing out to him with tears and kisses. Embraces, passionate words. This vision is so real and so appealing that he automatically slows the car and almost stops. And then does not.

He has reached the coast now and is driving along a high bluff, where rocks are strewn all over a grassy meadow, like flocks of sheep. Or maybe they actually are sheep; impossible to tell in this crazy light. This non-light, this green. On the other side, his left, darkness falls across the sea, a shroud of clouds, purple-black, with ragged edges. Richard shudders, thinking ahead. Thinking, It’s too late now to go back. Too late for everything and everyone, for Stella and for Eva, for Claudia and poor Marina. And for Andrew, his darling boy, his lovely Andrew, dying of the plague.

(Which he could have too. Although it doesn’t much matter now. No one will do an autopsy on him; why should they?)

An hour or so later he has parked his car where he planned to park, where he remembered that there was a lookout area, with no cars there at the moment. He gets out and locks the car. Eventually of course they will break in and find the envelope marked for Stella; he counts on that.

He begins to stride across the meadow, feeling a terrific excitement in his chest: he is actually going to do it! How brave he feels—he
is
brave. He thinks, This should all be on video: a man who is reasonably young, and handsome (well, everyone says he is, and women in the street still stare, and some men). This handsome brave man walking with such resolution, walking toward his own anonymous extinction. His death march.

He breathes in the salty, misty cool air, and he thinks, Ten minutes from now I won’t be doing this, won’t be walking, won’t breathe. There will be no more me. No more Richard Fallon in the world.

Words hurt.

Unbearable. Stella thinks this word repeatedly. But what do you do if you can’t bear something? You bear it anyway.

Loss. The anguish of loss. This word makes her very blood hurt.

Never. Never to be with Richard again. Ever. (Probably.)

The words themselves make her cry, crowding her brain, as they do, with their echoes. Alone, she weeps disgracefully, incontinently. She cannot stop. Tears flood her eyes, seeming to rise from the actual, literal pain in her chest. The unbearable pain of loss. Of alone. Of never.

It is not, though, as if Richard were dead. Or is it? His death is surely possible, an unthinkable that must be thought about.
He could be dead, and there is no way for Stella to find out, immediately. If she called the highway patrol, for example (the obvious, sensible thing to do), and if they should find Richard and his car, he would be even angrier, more desperate than he is now. Probably.

She has telephoned to his house up the coast, many dozens of times, but if Richard is there, he is not answering.

She is always seeing his face; it lives in her mind.

Curiously, she finds it most moving at its least beautiful. For example, when they went up to the snow, to ski, on most days Richard wore a purple-striped knit cap that made him look funny. The whole shape of his face, that angular perfection of planes, was somehow altered to comic effect. So amazing: a silly-looking, laughable Richard, whose red nose ran. He thought he looked funny too, and he laughed at his own face, mugging in the too-large, awful gilt motel mirror.

Which, now remembered, is worse than his beauty. Human Richard with a runny nose, laughing at himself. Laughing at her.

With other people, at work or out with friends, Stella manages to behave fairly well. Even to speak of Richard with some analytic distance.

To Justine she speaks perhaps most intimately (but she would not cry around Justine). “In a way it is sort of a relief,” she says. “I always had to be so
up
for Richard. Even at best he was never easy. I couldn’t relax.”

“You sound so sure you won’t see him again.”

“Do I? I guess I think that, a lot of the time. Or I expect him just to walk in. That’s a big problem for me, always expecting him. He has a key, of course.”

“You don’t feel like putting some agencies to work?”

“No, not yet. If ever. You know, if anyone found him he’d be so furious. I think I’ll hear from him sometime. One way or another. And he did say not to come after him.”

“Well …”

A long pause ensues, during which Justine looks about and seems to concentrate on Stella’s rooms, this flat in which, on this late-April afternoon, they are having tea. “Well,” says Justine at last, “he certainly was—I mean is—a genius, in his way. This place is fantastic. When I remember how it was before.” She sighs.

“Was. In his way,” echoes Stella. “I just don’t think he’ll come back to working again. If he does come back. He was so burned out. But yes, he is a genius.” And she too looks at the beautiful space around her—the rich stripped wooden floors, muted Oriental rugs, sofas and chairs and tables, vases and plants—and it comes to her (so strange that she had not thought of this before): she thinks, This is not stuff that Richard “had around,” as he said. In the first place it isn’t “stuff.” These are first-rate, expensive pieces. He bought them, of course he did. How stupid I was not to see that, she thinks, and she adds, to herself, Poor broke extravagant Richard, so generous. So crazy.

Keeping these thoughts to herself, she says to Justine, “You know, that business Richard was in was so crazy in itself. Advertising. The keeping up, the killing trendiness. Even staying out of it for a couple of months, you’re probably gone. It seems some Eighties holdover that’s got to change, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.” Justine pauses, and then some moments later she says, with a small smile, “You know, I think I’m developing a crush on Collin’s young son. John. So disquieting. A real sign of old age, I think. Young women don’t get crushes on younger men.”

“They don’t? Probably some of them do.” Stella finds it hard to focus on this topic—for that matter on any topic other than Richard.

“If there’s anything I don’t feel like, it’s going to Margot’s party,” she says, moments later, in this somewhat disjointed conversation. Of course she is thinking: Richard just might be there.

“She was so insistent: a sort of command performance,” says Justine, as she laughs. “My new best friend. But she’s really not a bad sort.”

*  *  *

This constant possibility of Richard, which she feels as his imminence, is both frightening and deeply unsettling to Stella. He might be anywhere at all, she feels. Wherever she goes she might find him. Any ring of her phone or knock at her door might be Richard. Going anywhere at all seems unsafe: suppose, in some restaurant, Richard just happened to be there? (With a tall thin Nordic blonde, her polar opposite and Richard’s true type, Stella believes.)

Or just Richard by himself, on the street.

Richard, anywhere.

She is haunted by the possibility of Richard.

She manages to get herself to Margot’s party, and she instantly feels, even from outside the door, that Richard will not be there. He simply won’t; he could never turn up at a party, to see old friends, and so for a couple of hours she is safe. Among friends.

Laughing her silent wild laugh, almost choking on her own laughter, and whispering to each person, Margot greets her guests. In a shimmering pale-blue silk dress, very tight; her sharp bones protrude here and there.