Gay Place (18 page)

Ellen got to her feet, dropped her hairbrush into the pocket of her robe and pulled the collar round her neck. “Well …” she said, looking at him for a moment and then bending down to kiss his forehead. “Lots of luck.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Ask me over again sometime,” she said.

“Door’s always open.”

“I’ll try to remember to bring salt and bicarbonate.”

He got to his feet and moved next to her. They kissed for several minutes. “Go home,” he finally said. “I’m having an affair with a married woman and I shouldn’t get involved with a virgin at the same time.”

“Ask me for a date,” she said. “For the weekend.”

“I’m already committed.”

“Then follow me around out there when you’re not playing tennis. Pursue me. Like I’m wanted.”

“You’re wanted,” he said.

“Badly …”

“You’re wanted badly.”

“Not enough,” she said.

“I’m bored,” he said, “with abstract gods and loves that are little more than social habit.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. These insights just seem to come to me.”

He walked her to the car and said goodnight. When she had driven away, he strolled for a short distance along the lakefront. He stood watching the water and then pulled off his shoes and socks and clothes, setting them in a neat pile a few feet from the water’s edge. They’ll find them here, he thought. Should he run back to the cabin for his billfold? To stuff into the trouser pockets as some means of identification? He decided against it, and stepped off into the water. It was cool and exhilarating, but the mud bottom felt awful against his feet. He moved farther out; the depth did not seem to reach beyond his hips, so he lay flat in the water and began to swim, with smooth effortless strokes, and when he looked back he could see the distance covered — considerable — yes, a
substantial
distance — a good fifty yards. The lights in the cabin gleamed feebly; there was a thin path of reflection leading directly to him. He let his legs sink and then his head went under and then he broke the surface again. Plenty deep, he thought. Enough to drown an elephant in. He floated on his back, gaining strength somehow, and when he realized he was not going to sink he began to swim again, round in circles at first and then following the trail of light, finally pulling himself onto the slippery rocks. He walked naked and shivering up the stone steps into the cabin.

He sat on the edge of the bed, bunched in bedcovers, staring round the room. He looked at the cat.

“Who’d have fed you, Sam?” he said aloud. The cat’s ears twitched forward and then fell back. “Who’d have fed you, hah? Seems to me a man’s got to have
some
sense of responsibility …”

T
HE STRIDENT SONG OF
two grackles waked him late the next morning. He lay listening to the birds, attempting to isolate the sylvan smells that filled his head. The grackles were camped outside on a ledge, annoying the cat with their shrill calls, feathers glistening in the sun like sheets of carbon. The cat crouched in the window, peering through the screen, growling to himself. Roy lay on his side watching all this, feeling better with the sweet smell coming off the hills. The phone’s ringing finally got him out of bed.

“What I called about,” Ellen Streeter said, “was to inquire how you’re getting to the ranch.”

“Driving,” Roy said. “The last trip on water skis was just too hard on all the family.”

“Your car?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“I think.”

“Would you take me?”

“All right,” he said. “In about an hour … I thought you had a date.”

“I did. But Harris called this morning and broke it. He was furious because I said I was going straight home last evening and went to your house instead.”

“In about an hour,” Roy repeated. “I’ve got to bathe. And iron my Indian madras underwear. Feed the cat. Kneel toward Mecca. All kinds of things.”

Ellen said that would be fine and rang off. Roy smoked a cigarette and ate a bowl of cereal. He pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and walked outside to retrieve the clothes he had dropped along the lakefront on the night before …

Sometime during that night Ouida had untangled herself from Rinemiller’s dead embrace and wandered half asleep, the smoke and whiskey smell of him still clinging to her skin, down the hall to her own bed. Thinking of this next morning, the gesture was dimly consoling. I have
some
standards, she said to herself. She had come awake in her own bedroom, and who could say, for that matter, what really had happened during the night? They’d both been drunk — helplessly, monumentally drunk — struggling up the stairs together, fumbling in the dark with buttons, buckles, underwear snaps. He had stretched out alongside, kissing her arms, and when she rolled over, languidly returning the kiss, Rinemiller was limp and gulping air, already fast asleep.

At some remote hour, she liked to think, she had clutched her clothes to her breast and fled down the hall. But she knew there had been something in between, sometime before and after, with the phonograph music still thumping on the ground floor. Alfred had regained consciousness and taken hold of her in the night, resuming the familiar progression of events, mounting in awareness, until such point when they were both seized by wild, bed-groaning flights of anarchy, at once spirited and aimless, in quest of something long since passed from sight and mind. She could not recall where it had taken them or how it was ended; there was more the memory of exertion than exaltation.

She had come awake early, in her own room, and immediately set about putting the house in order while Rinemiller shuddered with his bad dreams in the upstairs bed. Window draperies stirred with the rustle of dead leaves on the lawn. Servants moved about noiselessly; the gardener rolled the courts and pruned hedgerows bordering the massive rock fences. Ouida sat in the kitchen, talking with the cook and listening to popular songs on the cheap radio.

George Giffen arrived at noon, stalking into the big house, smiling and confident, breathing Dentyne in her face, taking her in his bear’s clasp like a sugar daddy come to call. Then he bolted up the stairs to shake Rinemiller awake. She could hear their movements from the kitchen, tracing their progress from bedroom to bath and back to bedroom. They would be coming down the stairs soon, and she wished suddenly for all the guests to arrive, the whole pack of them descending at once to bring some privacy to the manse. She was relieved to have Giffen around to help her face Rinemiller. She’d need an army, though, to deal with Roy. If he came at all. She wondered if he would. Had he been aware of the phone call? Had that slut told him? Perhaps he had been in the same room all the time, listening to Ellen Streeter rattling on. She would need the crowd, in any event, to cushion the shock of renewal …

I have a horror, she thought, of salvaging operations.

She remembered Earle going off to war, brandishing his lieutenant’s bars, just after they were married, and the horror of his coming back. The feeling advancing not so much from fear he might have changed, but rather just the reverse — that he hadn’t changed at all. Returned, instead, just as he had been in the beginning, packaged and shipped home in one of those germ-free, sterilized plastic bags. Good as old! Exactly as remembered in her high school hopes. It was the trouble with all of them. Didn’t anyone ever change? She ought to try to make that clear sometime … Don’t you see, lover? The magic’s all gone. We had something once, but you never changed … Impale them with your love and they were the same as dead, gone fixed and rigid and beady-eyed: my wax museum of propped-up paramours. So few of them grew large in her eyes with the passing of time. If Roy should come, she hoped he would have changed in some small way, put on weight, added a quarter inch in height, succeeding in an overnight alteration. With even the slightest change, they might become old lovers all over again.

She sat alone at the kitchen table, wishing the others would arrive, all of them new and exotic and miraculously strange-visaged. When she grew tired of waiting, she prepared a tray of gin drinks for herself, George, and Alfred. They would feel so much more secure with cold drinks in their hands. She had the refreshments ready by the time the two men came down the stairs.

Giffen had changed — my heavens, she could see that. All of a sudden changed. And so had Alfred, though it could not be called progress of any sort. He seemed to have gone off in the other direction, retreating, pale and timorous, into a fog of indecision. Here she’d been uneasy about meeting his glance, and there was scarcely anything to meet. His face was vague, eyes all glassy; his rogue’s smile little more than a joke. She asked him how he felt.

Rinemiller touched his gleaming forehead; there was gooseflesh risen on his arms. “I’ve got an awful hangover,” he said. He looked at Giffen, and added: “Ouida and I got tight last night. I think I must have drunk a quart of whiskey. It didn’t occur to me until this morning that I never had anything to eat …”

George Giffen grinned at everything and talked endlessly, appearing to gain strength as Rinemiller lost ground. She could not imagine what had got into George. A success of one kind or another. Perhaps he was in love. My God. She could not begin to conceive such a possibility, but if this was what had happened to him she knew there would be only the single, sudden change and little else. What siren painter had got him fixed and immobilized for his first and only sitting?

They sat talking, drinking gin. Only Giffen demonstrated enthusiasm for the moment. Ouida and Rinemiller exchanged some preliminary banter, avoiding meaningful glances at one another. At the first sound of cars on the drive they all three rose as with immense relief and moved out to the porch to greet the visitors.

By the middle of the afternoon nearly everybody had arrived. The front grounds resembled an abandoned movie set, as if players and technicians had retired to a distant commissary, leaving their papier mâché stage props flapping in the wind. There were guests about, but most of them had either gone inside to drink or headed off round the back to play tennis. Luggage was piled on the front lawn; the grass was strewn with clothes and books and sporting gear. Someone had got halfway through the job of setting up equipment for badminton and croquet, and then given it up suddenly when no one expressed interest in playing.

Roy staggered slightly with the light bags. He moved along the concrete walk, past the carnival litter. Harris glared angrily at Ellen from the front steps. He stood and watched them approach, popping his knuckles. Roy deposited the bags on the porch and sat down to rest. Ellen sat next to him and opened a small thermos.

“Like a cocktail?”

Roy shook his head, leaning back on his elbows, breathing hard. Ellen held the plastic cup toward Harris, who turned round immediately and walked inside. After a moment, Willie appeared and helped carry some of the parcels upstairs. Giffen cruised up and down the long circular front drive in the Alfa, ferrying people to and from the tennis courts. Ellen went riding with George, and Roy followed the others into the house.

He found Ouida in the kitchen, overseeing the preparations for a picnic dinner. She looked up and said hello; she picked nervously over a turkey carcass.

“Need any help?” he said.

“No.” She peeled off a strip of white meat and nibbled at it, not looking at him.

“Looks like my mother’s kitchen when her bridge club meets,” he said.

There was no answer. He went to the refrigerator and found a bottle of beer. Then he stood next to her and said: “Are you still annoyed because I didn’t come out yesterday?”

“No. I knew you were busy.”

There was another silence. She wrapped sandwiches in wax paper and said: “What did you do last night?”

“I went home to bed. Not much sleep the night before. Remember?”

“Were you advised about my phone call?”

“What call?”

“Last night,” she said. “I think you were occupied. Shaving, picking your nails, something like that …”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t advised.”

“Strange … And she did
promise
to give you the message.”

“What message was that?” he said.

“Slipped my mind,” she said lightly. She turned away and carried a plate of sandwiches into the dining room. When she did not return, he looked through the door. Ouida was talking with her husband and Rinemiller. Earle Fielding was wearing white overalls. A parachute harness was laid out on the dining table. Roy walked through the kitchen and out the back door, heading toward the tennis courts.

Cathryn Lemens sat in the deep grass next to the courts, watching the others. Harris and one of the girls had begun a doubles match with another couple. There was a great amount of inexpert smashing by the men; the girls lobbed the ball back and forth. Harris served with a twist and charged the net repeatedly. His male opponent took a savage swing; the ball whanged off the wood of the racquet and looped over Harris’s head. Harris and his partner stood with their backs to the net, watching the ball bounce. Harris turned to her and explained patiently:

“When I rush, you fall back to the baseline.”

“Where’s that?” his partner said, admiring his dark arms.

The game resumed. Roy came over and sat next to Cathryn. She looked at him and said hello. She was a very special sort of girl, he decided, although it was impossible to determine whether she was worth a damn. It was difficult with all their women. Except with Ellen Streeter. With Ellen you could be fairly certain — she always flashed those warning signals:
You’re going to bed with a thief, my friend, and there’s every likelihood of your pockets being picked over in the night.
There weren’t many women so candid and unpretentious, so frankly corrupt, so willing to acknowledge personal ruin, as Ellen Streeter. He found this quality somehow exhilarating. Once he had believed that disorder and unrestraint were the hope of the world; then he had come round to thinking exactly the reverse — that carelessness in their private lives symbolized a general dereliction, a decline of the public ethic. But all such assumptions foundered on the hard-rock facts of Ellen’s misconduct. She wasn’t licentious; she’d come to him with her chastity relatively intact. It was something else with Ellen — it was her heart and head that were sullied. He wished he could understand half as much of Ouida. Confused, depressed, in love with her, he was nonetheless bewildered by the patchwork terrain of her emotions. He knew nothing, really, about the girl; he could only reason that whatever tortured aberrations came to the surface were the nearly direct result of her failed marriage. It would require more than well-intended advice from her cocktail party priests to save her from ruin. He wished he had not slept with her just yet.