Falling in Place (45 page)

She was hungry. She wanted Bobby to come.

What a surprise it would be for Spangle if he did call, or did come back, and she was with Bobby. He would never expect it of her.

Of course he would call, or come back. One or the other.

She brushed her hair and tucked it in back of her ears. She went into the living room, to wait.

He got there not long after she had started flipping through the copy of
American Photographer
he had left behind. He knocked on the door, holding a bouquet of daisies, snapdragons and marigolds.

“How are you this evening?” he said.

“Come off it,” she said, sighing. “I’m hungry. Let’s just go out and eat, all right? How did it go in New York, with the agents?”

“Beautiful
agent. Simply beautiful. Everything is all set. Wonderful lunch. Wonderful wine. I love it. I just love it. New York has advantages. Waterfalls don’t gush free wine.”

“Did you propose to her?”

She was putting the flowers in a jar. She put her nose in the bouquet to check and realized that the marigolds did smell like cat pee.

“I bit my tongue. She had on a wedding band that must have been an inch wide, studded with diamonds. Spike-heel shoes. Oh, I love them. The most beautiful women in the world are in New York. Imagine what hell it would be to live in New York in the summer. I love her. She’s going to be a wonderful agent. We had Vouvray.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Jesus. They wear shorts on Park Avenue. All those shapely behinds, those perfectly tanned legs, those painted fingernails and toenails, sandals with ankle straps. I just can’t stand it. I found at least ten women today that I would have been perfectly happy to live with for the rest of my life.”

“Where did you get the flowers?” she said.

“They were thrown outside the door.”

“What?” she said.

“My guess is that a cat got into them. There was some pink yarn that had been tied around them, lying a little ways away. They were still piled in a bunch.”

“Do you think Spangle’s back? That he’s doing this?”

“Spangle? I don’t think it’s his style.”

She put the flowers on top of
American Photographer
. The squatting model, with red eyes, looked up at them.

“Any place you want,” Bobby said. “You’re paying.”

“You make me nervous. I can’t tell when you’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding about any of it. Did I insult you by saying that I saw ten women I wanted? I didn’t go up to any of them. I kept thinking about you. The minute that I heard Spangle was back, and that you didn’t know it, I knew it was bad news for you, but it was such good news for me—I just had to call you and tell you. But I’m going to play it cool now. I’m not going to say anything more about your coming to live with me. You wouldn’t have to go to any of the horrible faculty parties. You could cross-country ski—that’s wonderful—you could, we could move into a house. I’m not going to talk about it. Do you want a bagel?” He produced a white paper bag. “Victor doesn’t even have to visit,” he said. “I can go to New York, sometimes, to see Victor. I just feel so
sorry
for Victor. If you knew what a good person he was, you’d feel the same way. I’m not going to talk about Victor,” Bobby said. He sprawled on the sofa. “What if we had never met?” Bobby said. “I can’t imagine it—what if you were always in New Haven, and I was in New Hampshire and we never ran into each other?”

“Let’s go to dinner,” she said.

“I’m obsessed, I know it,” Bobby said. “I know it, but it’s not just me. It’s our whole culture, isn’t it? What do you think? I was reading an article about the Shah, and do you know what the Shah’s son does all day? He sits in his room listening to Rod Stewart singing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” Bobby bit into a bagel. “I’m so hungry. Don’t worry–this won’t spoil my appetite. I’m blowing it, I know I’m blowing it. I guess it would be unfair to you to pretend I’m not an excitable person. I was hyperactive when I was a kid. I think that’s why I lost my hair.” He swallowed, smiled at her. “Let me start over,” he said. “I’ll stand outside the door and knock, and you open it. Okay?”

“No. Look—I like you, Bobby, but I’m not really as amused by all this as I might seem. While you were hyperactive, I was in finishing school. I like you, and I think you’re interesting, but if you’re serious about my coming to live with you, it’s out of the question.”

“It’s my mother’s fault that I lost my hair,” he said, running his hand through the ropes of curls that hung at the sides of his head. “I can remember demanding candy and more candy, all day long, and she’d give it to me. Worst thing you can do for a hyperactive kid. Well—God rest her soul. I don’t want to start complaining
about my mother. She was bicycling in Maine and a car wiped her out from behind. Victor came to the funeral. He hitched all the way from New York to Maine, and he made it with half an hour to spare. He and my mother always liked each other. He was crying so hard out on the highway that he couldn’t get rides. He wanted to be there hours before the funeral so he could take a shower.”

“Bobby,” she said, “would you like it if I went out and brought something back for dinner?”

He took out a blue index card and jotted down a few words, holding her off with the first finger of his left hand raised. “Okay,” he said, shoving the card in his pocket. “Ready to go. All ready. This is very nice of you. I can’t remember the last time I had two meals out in one day, let alone meals I didn’t have to pay for. This is very nice of you. I love you.”

“Stop,” she said.

“Anything,” he said, hands up in surrender. “Anything. I don’t mean to be disagreeable. I’m just wound up. I’m fine.”

She picked up her keys, got her purse, stopped and considered what to do about the ringing phone.

“You answer it,” she said to Bobby. “Say I’m not here, if it’s for me. Unless it’s Spangle.”

“If it’s him, I’d hang up on him.”

“No you wouldn’t. Answer the phone.”

“I would. I have to be honest with you.”

She sighed and headed for the phone.

“All right, okay, I’ll get it,” he said. He picked it up the second before her hand reached it.

“Garden of the Fallen Lotus,” he said, in a surprisingly good imitation of a Chinese.

“Oh Christ,” Tess Spangle said. “I dialed wrong. The last thing I need is some fried won-ton.” She hung up.

“A woman,” he said. “She said, ‘Oh Christ. I dialed wrong. The last thing I need is some fried won-ton.’ ”

“His mother,” she said.

“Let’s go,” Bobby said. The phone was ringing again.

Love was one thing, survival another. The magician was going to have to leave the East Coast, very soon, to do another private party in Ojai. Amazing how even living rent-free, your money just dribbled away. Movies were expensive, food cost a lot, sixty cents to wash your clothes. His money was almost gone, and he hadn’t made any good contacts around New Haven. He’d pulled a couple of rabbits out of hats at children’s birthday parties, but God—the cost of rabbit food. And living with his mother was impossible. He had to buy things for her. She wouldn’t pay for anything when he was around: All she wanted was to criticize and to get a free ride. She talked about how high her rent was, as though she paid any less when he wasn’t there. She was allergic to the rabbits, and he had to put them in cages out on the fire escape, and he couldn’t put them out there until that part of the building was in shade, so all morning and half the afternoon he was stuck sitting in the park with the rabbits
.

It was unrequited love. Again. There was romance, and then there was the real world. He did not mean the real real world, but the world that he had to work in in order to survive. He knew that
the real real world was the Pentagon, not a mansion in Ojai, and he was at least thankful that he was not involved in the real real world. Trying to talk himself out of her, trying to make going away seem bearable, he had been saying to himself that she was in the real world. She worked. Was married. Separated. He had a collection of pick-up sticks; she probably had stock. And there was something about her face, however beautiful, that was not spiritual
.

At the very least, he had to say goodbye. Perhaps some energy would be exchanged, perhaps some cloud of romance would hover over her until she knew that she would have to go to him. Perhaps there would be some sudden epiphany, and her heart would flutter as fast as the wings of a hummingbird, and in time that movement would carry her to him. He would let her know his friend’s number in Ojai, because he didn’t have a phone himself, and the friend’s live-in maid was always around and would know how to get in touch with him. He would like to give her something miraculous: a hummingbird wing, beating; an opal, hot with real fire. He could think of nothing but flowers. Flowers scattered in a path to her car, the essence of beauty tempering her movement into the real world. He wished that the flowers in his mother’s yard were more aromatic. Marigolds smelled sour, like some liquor. They did not feel good against your face. He would like to stroke her face with a white iris. To stroke her with flowers, different flowers for different parts of the body, the way his friend in Ojai stroked women lying naked beside his pool. A rose petal on the forehead. Tickling the bottom of her feet, gently, with a camellia. Watching through his binoculars, he had seen some goddamn fat alley cat sniff the flowers and scratch the yarn away, tugging until he had it, dragging it off only to pounce at it once and then forget it
.

Time was short, and he wanted, at least, to say his goodbye. He had gotten there late, because he had had a fight with his mother, and he had not seen if she had gone into the building. But perhaps she was inside, because he had seen her husband pick up the flowers and skip up the steps with them. At least she would have his flowers
.

Watching from a distance was stupid. He would go and sit on the step, and when she came home, or if she came out, he would
tell her that this was goodbye, and that he adored her and wished only good things for her. He would do a trick, if she wanted him to
.

He sat and waited, and finally it happened. He was sitting on the bottom step when the door opened, and she was there. She was there with her husband; and seeing him, she suddenly reached out to grab her husband’s elbow, sucking in her breath
.

“Freeze,” he said, trying to be casual, to joke, to save what was meaningful for a later moment
.

The gun he pointed was a red water pistol. What he shot out of it was a plastic rose
.

Twenty-Three

IT WAS NOT
the vacation he thought they would be having. They were in a borrowed house on the bay in Nantucket. Mary was not with them. She was at Angela’s. John Joel was still at his grandmother’s, and three times a week she and Brandt and the cook went with him into New York and waited while he talked to a psychiatrist. Louise, sitting in a chair beside the pool in the backyard, wrote them letters every day. Not post cards—letters. Post cards to Brandt. When she wrote the letters and post cards, she cupped her left hand over what she was writing, so he wouldn’t see.

She liked the pool better than the ocean. There was a chair that floated in the pool, and early in the morning when he got up, he would go to the bedroom window and peer out through the shelves of gloxinias, the purple and pink bells of flowers, and Louise would be below, with orange juice, floating in the pool. He would go downstairs and sit on the rim of the pool, his legs in the water halfway to his knees. When the sun got stronger, after an hour or so, he would push himself forward and sink down, go all the way under, exhaling, and then pop up again. Then swim. Then try to get her to go to the beach. When she wouldn’t, he would open the
gate at the back of the pool and go down the fifteen steps to the sandy path, and follow it until it widened onto the beach.

Everyone had forgotten about John Joel’s braces.

Tiffy called every morning, and every evening Louise called Tiffy. Tiffy had left her husband and found an apartment on Central Park West. A famous painter whose name he had forgotten lived in the building, and Tiffy was going to take painting lessons. Tiffy this, Tiffy that. Tiffy said that Parker’s mother was in bed, trying not to have a miscarriage. Parker’s grandmother was there, taking care of things. When John had dropped Mary off at Angela’s, Angela’s father had had a lot to say about Parker’s mother. Very stupid, he said. Knew nothing about law. Parker’s father was out of town on business. The police had gone to the house several times to question Parker. Angela’s father reported that Parker’s mother had told him, with pride, what Parker said to the police: “If I told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”