Caroline's Daughters (8 page)

Buck laughed too, as though they had just had a harmless, mildly sophisticated joke between them. Old friends.

A week or so later, though, he called her. “A friend of mine from D.C. comes through here a lot, and he says he's seen you around. Says he met you one night at Harry's but you wouldn't remember, probably. Anyway, he's dying for a date.”

The mechanics of it, then, were very much like the old game of blind dates, a friend recommending a friend. You'd go out with the friend, and if you liked him, if you wanted to, you could easily end up in bed—in the old days Jill very often would. (But now no one would be quite so easy about it, probably, unless you handed out rubbers, something Jill really can't see doing. You certainly can't believe anyone's stated history; the straightest guy in the world might have had some swell gay fling. You can't tell, and nothing's all that safe any more.)

In any case, no one has that kind of blind date these days—and in this case, with the Game, ending up in bed is the main part of the deal. You both know that all along, all during the early part of the date, the dinner, whatever.

And after the first couple of times, Game times, Jill knew that the next day, in her office high up in the Transamerica Pyramid, she would receive a very large spray of roses, at least three dozen (there went a lot of Buck's profits), into which was thrust a thick envelope in which were ten C-notes. Romantic old Buck, such a valentine of a payoff.

And that was the Game.

“I just happened to have this overload of cash,” Jill explained the first time she got all that money, at Wilkes, where God knows they were used to big notes—as she bought a great new dress, the shortest anyone had seen around that year, in dark-red silk.

• • •

The date. That first guy was very nice (clever Buck). A little old, early sixties, probably, and a little on the scrawny side for Jill's particular taste: she prefers men to be about ten or fifteen pounds overweight, no less or more, and she knows this prejudice to be a little odd, even very slightly kinky. But this guy had good thick gray hair, and he was a doctor, for heaven's sake, talk about reassuring.

It was all arranged by Bucks, of course. They met in the upper bar at the St. Francis, the Compass Rose. Jill wore a white gardenia. (“A touch of Billie,” Bucks told her. “Billie never turned tricks, you stupid prick.” “Oh, don't be too sure.”) Then they had dinner in the English grill: it was clear that they were not to leave that hotel, where the doctor of course was staying.

Dinner was strange, to say the least, strange and for Jill intensely exciting, in some crazy way. As they talked and talked about absolutely nothing, Jill studied that man. John, he said his name was, and it could have been. Giving no thought at all to what she was saying (if he thought she was a real airhead, no matter), Jill tried hard to imagine or predict his sexual tastes. How she could really turn him on, make him wild, just as though she were really a hooker. As though she didn't care at all about her own fun.

And at the same time she was playing with the idea of backing off, out, away. Of course she could, no way to stop her. Why not? She did not need a thousand, really, and for that matter she certainly did not need to get laid, not back then. She was doing it with someone or other on far more nights than not, in those days. What was known as sexually active. Very.

Possibly this John knew a little of what she was thinking. He was fairly smart, for a doctor.

After dinner they went up to that crazy penthouse nightclub, and they danced. One dance. And then, perfectly easy, they went down just one floor in the big elevator outside. To his very large room. And almost immediately to bed, just some fairly perfunctory kissing, then undressing (he undressed her, an old-fashioned touch that Jill quite liked).

The interesting thing was that she had figured him exactly right. Precisely the touches that she had thought he might like really got
to him, he went a little crazy. Very likely he hadn't done it for quite a while, a sick wife, or something. Maybe just no time, doctors over-schedule themselves so much these days.

Another interesting thing was that it was great for her. In fact so terrific—
major
—that she could remember it still.

Afterwards, as she was leaving, there was none of the usual, “I'll call you, I must see you again, very soon.” Nothing like that, which was almost funny, and also a big relief. They both knew what they were doing. The Game.

Later guys were also okay, most of them. Almost all from D.C. or New York, a couple from L.A. Mostly over fifty, mostly too overweight. Nothing quite as special, ever, as what happened with her the first time. Still, the situation, the sense of what she was actually doing, turned Jill on quite a lot. She did not choose to probe too deeply into why she found all this so exciting, she didn't need to. She was always primed with a little good white powder, but it wasn't just that, she knew, that turned her on.

How shocked her sisters would be! Even Fiona, but especially Sage and Portia, on what Sage would call feminist grounds. (Sage talked a lot about Feminist Grounds, as though all the feminists owned some enormous state park.) And some feminist Sage is, letting that lousy Noel get away with all that he does. And Portia is probably gay, Jill has for some time thought that. Portia has seemed not to like men at all, unless they were gay, except for the creepy kid she hung out with sometimes. Harold? Yes, his name is Harold.

Does she herself like men? Jill has wondered that, and she has been forced to conclude that she does not, or not very much. What she does like is sex, she likes screwing a lot, and she needs men for that. (She has done it with a vibrator, which works, so to speak, an instant O, but not much fun. Much more fun using a vibrator with some guy.) She wants men around to make love with and therefore she has to humor them, to put up with what she considers their basic simplicity. Even smart men are basically very stupid, is Jill's
conclusion. Which is not exactly a feminist point of view, or is it? On feminist grounds, she is probably way off.

When she told one man about the Game, a lover named Crimmons, of all nerdy names, he got incredibly turned on. Crimmons was married of course and a senior partner in her law firm. At first she wondered why she was telling him all that, it was not exactly politic, but then, when he got so excited about it, wanting more and more, wanting every detail, she knew why she had told him. Just for that. His turn-on.

Now she will have to take a Dalmane, thirty grams. If it just puts her to sleep right away, it is now 1:30, so if she sleeps until 7:30 she will be okay for a meeting at 8. She hopes. She can skip the call to Fiona, she knows it's her turn to call and if she doesn't Fiona will call her. But Fiona can talk to her machine.

Jill is so thin that the ingestion of almost any food makes her feel bloated, as though whatever she had eaten were protuberant in her stomach, and visible, as if in the transparent stomach of a baby bird. (A baby bird is what Caroline thinks and says that Jill looks like, these days, with her very fine hair and long thin neck, and her wide, wide eyes. Jim McAndrew's pale-gray eyes, all the girls have them.)

Just now, having consumed three-fourths of a cornmeal breadstick, and several strawberries, a slice of orange and some tea, at Campton Place, Jill feels unpleasantly stuffed. She also has a heavier-than-usual Dalmane hangover. She is finding it hard to listen.

Her breakfast person is very young, her own age, probably, a red-haired lawyer from Memphis; this seems odd, Jill has never heard of anyone coming from Memphis. But he has no Southern accent: is he really from Memphis, what is this? Jill dislikes his hands, the red-brown freckles and reddish hairs. Dislikes his small blue eyes, and his voice, especially his voice, which is high and
nasal. “Very vulnerable,” he is saying, seeming to sum up what he has been saying all along. They are talking very hostile takeover. Some small company in Portland, Oregon.

Quite inadvertently, then, and very likely because she was thinking of the Game the night before, as she lay awake after all that talk with Noel, the Game comes back into Jill's wandering mind, and she thinks, Oh God, suppose Bucks had fixed her up with this guy, this red-and-pink-skinned twerp who doesn't even seem to be from where he says he is. Well, obviously that would have been the night to say no, just get up and leave, bow out, as she has always half imagined herself doing. Another tiny voice within Jill, though, is imagining how it would be if she did not leave, did not leave this particular guy. She is seeing herself in bed with him, this very young (too young!) man, knowing precisely what would excite him.

He asks her, “Are you okay?” She must have turned pale.

“I'm fine. It's just that breakfast always makes me sort of tired.”

“Me too, as a matter of fact. I guess we're getting old.”

“I guess,” and they both laugh at the sheer unlikeliness of this.

“You don't sound like you're from Memphis,” Jill tells him. “It's in the South, isn't it?”

“I'm from Detroit, originally.”

As they are leaving, walking out through the pretty, perfectly appointed tables, linen and flowers, silver, crystal, porcelain, as they almost reach the doorway, Jill experiences a shock: there, sitting alone at a window table and absorbed in the
Wall Street Journal
(thank God), is Buck Fister. Bucks, looking much younger than whenever she saw him last, a couple of years ago—which was when she finally said, “I really don't want to do this Game any more, old Bucks. Frankly, with this plague around it's just too dangerous. Besides, I make plenty of money.” And now there is Buck, looking terrific (for him), leaner and tight-skinned. Tan. Prosperous. Jill hurries past, not wanting any more contact with Buck, not now.

It is strange, though, that she should see him today, when she was thinking of the Game and of him last night (usually she manages to think of that small area of her past not at all, or hardly at all). But that sort of thing happens more and more as you go on in life, Jill has concluded. As though some sort of reliable radar signalled
another person's proximity: she thought of Bucks because she was going to see him today.

In the lobby, standing beside the giant arrangement of dry desert flowers, Jill and the red-haired man shake hands. His name is already gone from her head, but not from her notes. Back in her office she will be perfectly prepared to deal with their meeting, to give it her appraisal.

He says, “You know, that's the greatest-looking dress I've seen in San Francisco.” He seems to be speaking through his nose.

“Thanks. Actually I got it a couple of years ago.” With cash, at Wilkes.

“I hope it wouldn't be out of line if I asked you to dinner?”

Not out of line, just out of the question, you nerd. “I'd really love to but I can't.” Jill smiles. “I'm really sorry.”

Jill's firm is considering a move from the Transamerica to one of the old brick buildings on Jackson Street, in what used to be Jackson Square, where the antique dealers and decorators were. Jill can't wait to move; she has never said so to anyone but the views from this building, this pyramid, make her sick, on some days sicker than others, a sort of shifting vertigo. Today, maybe because of the Dalmane, it seems unusually bad. It is horrible to look out at all that distance, out and down to the bay, all that terrible deep water, and closer up all those monstrous dark boxes, the other new buildings. Jill shudders, and sits down at her desk, which faces away from the windows, toward the door.

One of the messages before her is from her half-sister Sage, which is such a surprise that Jill picks up the phone to make the call right away. And then she hesitates: suppose Noel should answer? Well, that would serve him just right, the cheapo cheat.

Sage, though, picks up the phone on its first ring. “I need some advice,” she says, sounding happy as anything, really high. “I need a good hotel in New York, and you go there all the time—”

“When I go it's on the firm, though, Sage. So I stay at the Meridien, or the Westbury.”

“I'd like to be downtown. Sort of. Near SoHo.”

“Well, look, Sage, I'll ask around. Okay?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Only after hanging up does it occur to Jill that she could have asked Sage why she was going to New York, why she sounded so excited, so happy. And was Noel going to, and for how long? But she couldn't ask Sage that.

Looking at her watch, Jill sees that, miraculously, she now has exactly fifteen minutes to herself—or, that she can take fifteen minutes. Which should be exactly right.

Quickly pulling several folders from a drawer, and opening the
Wall Street Journal
on her desk to the day's quotations, she begins to jot numbers on a pad of yellow paper. She then makes a few calculations on her handy brown lizard computer, and after seven or eight minutes of this she comes up smiling.

And she thinks, almost aloud: I have just barely under two mil, dear Noel, if you really want to know. And I'm only thirty-one, just starting out.

And she adds, I'm five feet seven, and I weigh in at just under ninety pounds. And so, what else would you like to know? Would you like to hear about a game I used to play?

P
ortia Carter looks remarkably like her father, Ralph, as indeed all Caroline's daughters resemble their fathers rather than herself. “I must have very weak genes,” Caroline has remarked, which no one believes to be true. Portia is very tall and often stooped, she has a look of being bent, like a tree. She has her father's large white face, long nose and large teeth. She is shy and somewhat strange; her mother and her sisters are divided between thinking her brilliant (the opinion of Caroline and Sage) and somewhat simple (Liza, reluctantly, and Fiona and Jill). Ralph has never been heard to pronounce on his daughter, it is only clear that he adores her. “She hasn't found herself,” is a sentence on which they all might agree, concerning Portia; brilliant or innocent, or both, she gives a sense of floundering through life, with both more trials and more errors than most people seem to encounter.