An American Love Story (49 page)

When Susan got to the Beverly Hills Hotel, Clay had sent flowers. They were a large expensive arrangement, sitting on top of her television set and overwhelming it, with a note attached that said: “Welcome to California, Love, Clay.” He had only brought her flowers once in all the years she had known him. She could not imagine why he had done it now. The note was not in his handwriting and she knew they had been ordered from the office. Perhaps he wanted to pretend that they were still the best of business friends, and to impress Bambi so she would think their two projects were still operative. Or perhaps he wanted to impress himself. She did not allow herself to think that Clay wanted to be nice to her.

“You should throw them out in the hall,” Dana said.

“I can’t.”

“Well, that’s what I would do. I wouldn’t be able to look at them.”

“I like looking at them,” Susan said. “Besides, I don’t even think I could lift them.”

The speech went well, as they always did. Since Clay might see
the small interviews in the newspapers she simply said she was single. “Didn’t you ever want to get married?” the woman interviewer asked.

“Several times,” she said, and laughed, as if to say poor jolly me.

She sat in a booth in the Polo Lounge, drinking a glass of champagne and waiting for Sean, wondering if he looked the way she had imagined: like a tall, lean, handsome, tan California surfer, but with intelligence. He did. She stood up and they hugged each other like old friends. She knew him a lot better than any of the men she’d been out with. He ordered a drink and they talked a little about her work and his. She was determined not to bore him by dwelling on Clay and Bambi.

“I can’t understand why you don’t have a girlfriend,” she said. “Anyone would be lucky to have you.”

“Women tell me I’m too nice,” he said.

“Too nice!”

“That’s what my last two girlfriends said.”

Was she too nice? Had she been too nice to Clay? Or not nice enough: had she left him alone too much? “What do they want?”

“I guess a man who makes them miserable.”

“I didn’t,” Susan said. “But eventually that’s what I got.”

“You can find somebody better than Clay.”

“I would have stayed with him forever, you know,” Susan said. “Without success, without money—I would have supported him if I had to. I would have taken care of him when he got old, if he got sick …”

“Now he has Bambi to do that,” Sean said cheerfully. “You had his best years. Be glad for that and move on.”

“I wish I could.”

“You will.”

When it got late they left and he walked her to her room. She didn’t know whether he was being polite or hoped she would invite him in. She remembered the old days, so many years ago, before Clay, when she had been young and people slept with people they hardly knew, just because they found them attractive. For one moment she wondered what it would be like to go to bed
with Sean. She opened her door. They looked at each other. She wondered if she should make some gesture so he would kiss her good night. Then the moment passed, and they kissed each other gently on the cheek.

“Let’s have dinner together this week,” Susan said. “How’s Wednesday?”

“You got a deal.”

He left and she went into her room. I’m not so ancient and repulsive, she thought. He’s young, and he’s willing to spend time with me. She was just beginning to understand the depth of the damage Clay had done to her.

Dana’s friend who had the house in the Hollywood Hills was named Carla. She was a screenwriter. All the way up the narrow winding mountain road in Dana’s car Susan gulped in the view, the houses, trying to imagine Clay coming home from his office, living here. Lookout Mountain. It wasn’t his style at all.

Carla opened the door in a tight T-shirt and a pair of very short shorts. Dana had said she was forty-five or forty-six, the same as they were, and she looked fabulous, as Dana did. Susan looked at the two of them and wondered if she would ever be happy and pretty again; if the strain and grief and anger that lay on her face and pulled it too taut would ever slip away.

“It’s about time you came to visit me,” Carla said. Her house did not have a view; it was cozy, as if they were living in the woods. She had a deck, and had set up lunch on a table outside. The empty containers from take-out were scattered on the kitchen drainboard. “You see how hard I’ve been cooking all day,” she said. “Come in, see my house, now you’ve seen it, that’s all there is. It’s a great place to work. I love this—lunch with the girls. I never do this, it’s fun.”

They sat at the table and drank seltzer. “Tell Carla what Clay did to you,” Dana said.

Susan told her. Carla was appalled. “And tell her about how he stole your properties,” Dana said.

“He was living with Bambi for a year when he came to me and asked me to give him another option. Three years for a dollar, which made it four years in all. I did it because I thought it was for
us. If I had known he was living with her I would have refused to sign.” She saw the look of horror on Carla’s face. Somehow the fact that Clay had betrayed her in business seemed to arouse much more indignation in other people than the fact that Clay had broken her heart. To Susan it was just another thing he had done.

“Hello,” Carla said, imitating someone answering a telephone. “Literary Love Slaves and Victims, what may we do for you? A free option? Four years? Of course. We have a very nice book that everyone is after, would you like that too? Anything you want; we’re here to please.”

Susan began to laugh hysterically. She suddenly felt the first flash of happiness she had felt since all this began. Being here outside under the trees, laughing with other women, she thought there might be some time, eventually, somehow, when she would be able to go through an hour without thinking of Clay, without feeling so miserable that the things she looked at faded away into an image of him and Bambi.

They ate lunch. Carla talked about the screenplay she was writing. She seemed so independent, living here herself in seclusion, working, content. She talked about the man she kept seeing and breaking up with, and his emotional problems, but she did not seem in the least upset. He was just a part of her life, not all of it.

“We’re going to go see their house,” Susan said to Dana. “Don’t forget.” She was starting to get nervous that Dana wouldn’t want to go.

“We’ll do it,” Dana said.

“Ah yes,” Carla said. “Who hasn’t done that at some point in our lives?”

They helped her clear up and left her to her word processor and her deadline. Her phone was ringing and she waved good-bye.

In the car Susan was counting the numbers on the houses. “Don’t drive too fast,” she said frantically. “We’ll miss it.”

“There it is,” Dana said finally.

“Park the car.” Her heart was pounding.

“Not in front.”

Dana stopped the car farther up the street and Susan got out and walked quietly toward Bambi Green’s house. Dana followed
her cautiously. So this was it. Susan pictured the house as a kind of shell, filled with the essence of Clay. It was on the same side as Carla’s house had been, without a mountain view, secluded in the trees. You could easily pass it. A young house, Susan thought; a house where Clay had moved right into Bambi’s life. She went closer.

“Be careful!” Dana whispered. “They’re in there!”

They were home already? Didn’t they have anything to do at the office? Two cars were parked outside. One was a new, elegant, forest green Jaguar. Susan recognized Clay’s license plate on it. She felt sad that he hadn’t told her he had bought a new car; he had liked the old one so much. The other was a bright red Fifties vintage Thunderbird convertible, just like the white one he used to have. The license plate said LTL DEER.

“How fey,” Dana murmured drily.

“Opportunistic copycat,” Susan whispered. She crouched down to look inside it to find more clues about what Bambi was like. There was a little tan driving glove on the seat, even though the car had an automatic transmission. And there was a cigarette bum on the dashboard, from many years ago. It was Clay’s beloved old car, his trademark: she would know it anywhere. He had always so prided himself on being different. She would never have thought he would give it up. He really must love her, she thought, and felt sick.

“It’s his,” she whispered. “He’s passed on the baton.”

“Oh, please,” Dana whispered back. “It’s an old heap and so is he.”

“He’s not old.” She crept toward the house.

“What are you doing?” Dana asked nervously.

“I’m going to look in the window.”

“But they’re
in
there!”

“They won’t see me.” She went around to the side, keeping low. Why didn’t she just ring the bell, say Hi, we were in the neighborhood and came to say hello. He would have to ask her in. She couldn’t see much. They must be out in the back. There was a dresser under the window, with some framed photographs on it. She could only see the reverse side of them and wondered if they
were of Clay and Bambi; happy family photos. When she came down to the street Dana was cowering in her own car.

“You’re making me too nervous,” Dana said. “They’re going to catch us.”

“Then I’ll say we were taking a walk and act surprised they live here.” For a moment it seemed almost plausable. Susan got into Dana’s car.

“Why are you doing all this?” Dana asked.

Susan didn’t even stop to think. “I had to make it real,” she said. “We can go now.”

She stayed in Los Angeles for ten days and saw Clay twice. The first time they had drinks at the Polo Lounge, at his favorite front booth. It was early and no one was there. “Haven’t seen you in a long time, Mr. Bowen,” the captain said. Susan had thought Clay had insisted on going so early because he didn’t want to be away from Bambi for long, but now she wondered if it was the only way he could be sure of getting the booth.

It was very quiet, in that moment of limbo before people start to meet at the end of the day. “Why did you do it?” Susan asked again. “Why did you go off with Bambi?”

Clay started to cry again, quietly. This time he had brought his own Kleenex. “I can’t talk about it,” he said, and shook his head.

She had already planned what she was going to say. “You broke my heart, you ruined my life,” she said. “At least give me my properties back.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll give you back your dollar. I’ll give you two.”

“No.” He looked at her in a pitiful way that made her melt. “Maybe I’ll make them,” he said. Even he did not sound convinced.

She didn’t pursue it. In a way she was almost relieved he had refused. The book and the article were their link together. If he relinquished them maybe they would never see each other or talk to each other again. She couldn’t take that risk yet; she was still tied to him.

He left to go to “a dinner meeting.” She supposed he would
take Bambi. She went off to meet Sean. She tried to be interesting, but all she did was talk about Clay and Bambi and apologize for it.

“I don’t know how you can stand me,” she said.

“You’ve been through a hard time. I understand.”

“If Clay told me it was raining I would look out the window to make sure,” Susan said. “But he would only say it was raining if the sun was out. I can never trust anything he says again.”

“Do you want to drive by the house with me and see it?”

He was so kind. “I’ve seen it,” she said. “Thank you anyway.”

She made her dinner date with Clay for the night before she left for New York because it would be too painful to be with him and know it was for the last time during her visit, that he was still here but out of reach, living his own life without her. She knew she would be yearning for him afterward, and it was better to do that when he wasn’t so close that she could call and beg him to see her. She had too much pride to do that.

He let her choose where she wanted to go and she picked a restaurant in Beverly Hills. She knew he would never agree to taking her to Hollywood; it was too close to home. The beach, where she was staying with Dana, was too far for him. Beverly Hills was their past. She picked the most romantic place she could think of because she wanted him to suffer. They sat outdoors at a table under bougainvillaea and the moon, little candles flickering on their table.
Look at the moon. How beautiful it is, and how much we low each other
 …

“My best creative work is still ahead,” she told him. “I’m going to do great things.”

“I know,” Clay said, and his eyes filled with tears. Why was he looking at her with such love?

“I’m going to have a wonderful life,” she lied.

“I know you are.”

For an instant she felt free, she felt herself sailing away, while he stayed here behind. She didn’t feel old, she felt young. “Do me one favor,” she said.

“What?”

“If you develop either of my projects, don’t let Bambi write the script. She’s too inexperienced.”

“I would never let her write the script,” Clay said. “I’d hire a screenwriter.”

She went home the next day, back to the things she had to do. What she had said to Clay about her great creative future had been part belief and part bravado. She had writer’s block: she still felt too raw and vulnerable to function. She was ashamed that she hadn’t been writing, that she had been unable to think of or accept assignments, and she wondered how long this would go on. And then one night she had a dream so vivid and disturbing that she woke up stunned.

It was in color. “Oh, Cosumel,” a little girl was crying, “Oh, Cosumel.” Lying on the ground in front of her there was what had been a large beautiful dog—now skinned, slit open and gutted, the flesh shiny and pinkish red but clean of blood—and it was still alive. The miraculously raised, boneless rib cavity somehow still heaved with breath. “Oh,” the little girl cried, “that this noble creature had to die.”

The little girl started to crawl inside the dying dog, and then suddenly Susan became the little girl. As she crawled inside the skinned and slit dog she was afraid it would smell like death, but it had no odor at all. She felt a deep pervasive sadness. “I always loved you,” she said to the dog.