Greetings from the Vodka Sea (26 page)

. . .

It's funny how the world works. The gods at play. Étienne had called on the alderwoman because of the Pole and his blackmail scheme. He thought that maybe, somehow (to be honest, the details were not worked out yet), Thérèse could help him. She had a lot of sway in this town and at the very least could be counted on to vouch for him. She'd suggested on the phone that he come over to her apartment to speak directly, although she prefaced that remark by explaining that her husband was out of town on business unrelated (she was emphatic on this point) to the series of articles for the cardiology clinic. Of course. The articles. He'd forgotten the Medusa Project. And now here she was, providing the perfect entrée for him. He did not let it slip.

“Well, I have some general thoughts about the articles that maybe I could discuss with you, in general terms. I'd like your feedback, and I'm sure your husband would appreciate it as well.”

He arrived, like any experienced seducer, under the cover of daylight. Thérèse met him at the door. She wore a billowy brown caftan which, although it did not conceal her size, did not accentuate it either. She led Étienne to the sitting area, chatting in a very animated away about the latest news on the radio: first the British trade consul, now the Deputy Premier of Quebec — both taken hostage by masked gunmen. A French Canadian terrorist group calling itself the FLQ had claimed responsibility.

“It's impossible to believe. Something like this happening here, in our country.”

Étienne, who had not heard the news before, agreed. Things like this did not happen in Canada. Then he began, in as indirect a way as possible, to talk about Madrn's article. But Thérèse would have none of it; she kept dragging the conversation back to the present.

“We were in Montreal only last month, Gerald and I. There was something . . . the atmosphere was . . . tense.”

“I haven't been to Montreal in years. Decades perhaps.”

Still, Thérèse played it cool. She never gave the slightest inkling that she had known Étienne before. Yet there was something intimate in her body language. The way she tilted her head when she spoke to him, the way she held his gaze for a moment before quickly diverting her eyes. She was at once inviting him and pushing him away. So Étienne decided to seize the initiative. He stood abruptly to take his leave, and when, as if on cue, Thérèse protested that they hadn't even begun to talk about the clinic articles, Étienne boldly invited her to dinner that night to finish their discussion. By now she was blushing, he was certain of that. On an impulse, he took her hand and murmured some ancient nothings that perhaps he'd offered to her before, years ago, in a Spartan bedroom at the top of a Quebec City rooming house.

“You speak French.” She seemed genuinely surprised.

“I
am
French.”

“How quaint.” Thérèse rolled her tongue through her mouth. Étienne could see the saliva sticking to her palate. “I was once French too.”

She smiled, and Étienne noticed for the first time how her teeth had yellowed and cracked. She squeezed his hand and whispered a place and time where they could meet for dinner. Then she stepped back from the door, raised her eyes in a manner that she must have imagined coquettish and wished him a good afternoon. At that moment he understood. She had absolutely no recollection of their shared past, that she wasn't just cleverly faking ignorance but joylessly revelling in it, and, as he glanced at her one last time before the door closed, he realized that the woman who was already old and large in his eyes had become older and larger. He noticed too that his hands were trembling again.

. . .

The box landed upside down on a layer of thin ice. Madrn immediately felt the cold, the sour air freezing the inside of his nose. Perhaps the force of the blow had knocked him out briefly (he'd fallen, God knows, twenty feet, twenty-five maybe), but in any case, he was certainly dazed. When he became aware again, he realized that the water had begun to seep in through the air holes, and the box was filling up. Being upside down meant that his head would be the first thing to go under. He kicked and kicked again, which only freed the box from the ice and plunged him deeper into the river. In his panic, Madrn made no attempt to hold his breath. The cold water flooded his nose and his lungs, and he was certainly dead before the boxed settled on the bottom of the St. Lawrence. It was still night. The driver looked down from the bridge, flicked the dying bud of a cigarette onto the ice below. She noticed her hand; it had already stopped trembling. Anna hesitated, then wondered what she was still doing there. Étienne would be waiting for her, wondering where she was. She went back to the van. She was happy. The world — her world — was no longer different. Madrn's manuscript lay on the passenger seat. She picked it up and held it for a moment. She'd thought of dumping it with the journalist, but that could have been risky. Instead, she would stop at her mother's on the way home, burn it in her fireplace. She started the ignition and pushed forward. New snow was already falling on the dirt road, covering her tracks. Although it was still dark, it would be morning soon, it would be morning and nothing would be different. Madrn was dead and she was free again.

Endnotes

1
Sample headline:
Curtain Call for Drunk Hunk?

2
Not his. The private rooms at the Mardi Gras Detox Centre were beautifully appointed. Plumber's room featured an antique pine four-poster with a silk canopy and a state-of-the-art entertainment system built into the headboard.

3
David Plumber Sr. was also an actor of note, best remembered for his work as the Kissing Bandit in those old Colgate commercials and the voice of Gris-Gris Gumbo, cartoon spokescrawdaddy for the Louisiana Hot Sauce Company.

4
He'd discovered early in life that you could only masturbate so many times a day before it actually began to hurt.

5
Let's be more specific. For booze read scotch, and for scotch read vintage single malt. If he weren't a real drinker's drinker, he was at least a real actor's drinker.

6
In fact, the sequence ran like this: Plumber finished the evening at the Welsh Rabbit, downing tequila shooters with two college students who later joined him in the men's room for a couple of lines. At closing time, Plumber made his way home, where he found his factory-condition TR-6 waiting for him. He climbed into the car and drove with the semiconscious hyper-clarity that only a Stage Two drunk with a secondary cocaine dependency can summon, making his way almost to Bel Aire before pulling over to rest. Two emergency fifths later, he wound up on Nancy's doorstep and was halfway though a raucous apology when the Jewish Cavalry showed up.

7
In fact, Mischa Petersen now runs a pet store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is “happily married” to a weight loss counselor; they have three children. “Hollywood was an experience,” he says. “But I wouldn't go back. I've got all the money and fame I can handle right here.”

8
Dad, for example.

9
Pascal.
Eds.

10
And, for that matter, the blessing and support of Levitz and Sherwood, who had enough footage of Plumber unconscious in hospital blues to last through a covey of comas and perhaps an autopsy or two.

11
For a while, after he'd sobered himself up, he'd been a walking intervention.

12
The bag is critical. No one, it seems, can argue with a packed suitcase.

13
Shrink-wrapped, factory fresh jammies and gonches, courtesy Grandma Plumber.

14
Even at the time Plumber suspected that Dad's need to alleviate his own guilt was at least as strong as his concern for his son.

15
True, but Plumber was the only one of Goldberg's collection of shoe models, voice-over artists and animal acts to have made the crossover to the small screen.

16
And men, for that matter.

17
Dr. W.T. Prock, author of the best-selling parenting manual
The Competent Child.

18
Except for his father, who chose the irrational but perhaps more productive assumption that everything would work out fine in the end.

19
A town whence, it was widely assumed, no one famous would ever come.

20
Everyone had simple chores to do at the Mardi Gras Detox Centre.

21
In fact, a former bank president, who over a couple of decades had slipped from the occasional liquid lunch to the upper reaches of alcoholism, a place from which few, if any, ever returned.

22
Seated on his stationary bike, he could look directly down onto the east wing.

23
Rendered mathematically, it might look like this: (
N
1)(P1) = -(NP1)c.

24
Then again, maybe he was. He was aware of his reaction to female authority figures. They were “the red cape to the bull of his anger,” as Prock had so obtusely put it. More useful was the psychiatrist's explanation that anger was a typical, healthy reaction to suicide. The way Plumber had applied this anger to women in general, and particularly to women in positions of authority, was also typical of the male (and especially the adolescent male) ego.

25
He'd promised autographs for their girlfriends but wasn't in the mood to sign them right now.

26
It would be wrong to assume that just because Plumber had no formal education he therefore had no formal training. He spent two years with the Actors' Development Project in NYC before signing on as an apprentice at LA's American Academy of Theatrical Arts.

27
To steal a quote from Mr. Addleton of the AATA.

28
That sounded like an act. Plumber and Roy, from the old vaudeville circuit.

29
Plumber was never certain if this was his first or last name.

30
Prock, in a widely read monograph, refers to this as UFS (Ugly Friend Syndrome).

31
Up his ass, frankly.

32
Yard here is a misnomer, designed to make the centre sound more therapeu-tically Spartan than in fact it was. It sat on four or five undulating acres of woods and meadows, and all sorts of indiscretions took place in those hidden nooks and crannies.

33
She was opposite to Nancy in that respect; Nancy had never once been not beautiful.

34
Everyone.

35
Character: the booby prize of the formerly beautiful.

36
You could argue that Plumber and Roy weren't laughing at her but because of her. This distinction, however, is too subtle for the human heart to make.

37
Nancy, in truth, had started this debate. When they'd met she was a com-munications major at UCLA. She maintained that life was hot in that it demanded a “dynamic engagement” from its audience. Plumber never followed the logic but went along with it in hopes that he eventually might sleep with her and perhaps, ultimately, cause her to fall in love with him.

38
Suggested alternative title:
Misunderstanding Media
.

39
Hot, obviously, Plumber assumed.

40
Surprisingly cool, it seemed.

41
Hot, according to Nancy. Beauty required involvement, ugliness demanded it.

42
Plumber agonized for an hour over the razor. The scruffy facial hair thing wasn't a bad look. It made him seem darker, slightly gaunt in a sexy, desert-island-survivor way. And vulnerable, but maybe she'd had her fill of that. An argument could be made for shaving. Less dramatic, for starters, and Nancy was never one for the drama. More presentable as well, more like a man who had got, or was certainly in the process of getting, his shit together once and for all.

43
Plumber had recently reached the conclusion that he was cursed. Every woman he'd ever loved did not love him, and vice versa.

44
David Plumber Sr. did in fact wear a felt hat during the summer of 1965.

45
Nancy has by now sold the condo. Under the advice of the police and her lawyer, she is on her way back to her parents' house in New Rochelle. She is driving the red Mustang she bought with the settlement money. In the back seat are six boxes full of books, clothes and shoes. The rest she'd either sold or given away: the furniture, the appliances, the art, everything. She did not need it, she did not want it anymore.

46
Nancy herself was just waking up on the other side of the country. She woke up gradually, restfully, and her thoughts turned almost immediately to him. Something in the room, the book perhaps, the Rimbaud poems he'd given her - faintly smelt of him and brought him to her mind. She imagined him beside her and immediately allowed her fingers to linger across her breast. She thought of fucking him again, there was no other word for it, the way they took to each other and took each other, great, interlocking attracted opposites. She thought of fucking him and immediately felt herself grow wet. She moved her hand between her legs and pressed her legs together and moved her hand and let sensation swallow her, gulp her. Maybe this was simple distraction. She'd fallen into it suddenly, quickly, only after promising herself that she wouldn't let it happen like this again. She'd promised herself that next time she'd take her time. But the next time was now and she was letting herself go. Call it an indulgence — surely it was stupid (
Don't call me Shirley,
that's what he'd say). But love was a cold medium, and all the more so when the sex was hot.
   Nancy came quickly and quietly, then got out of bed and dressed. She wanted to be on the road by nine o'clock. She had to be in the city by three o'clock if she wanted to be at JFK on time. He'd offered to meet her at Grand Central, to save her the drive (or on top of the Empire State Building — an incurable romantic). Nancy put on a yellow cotton sun-dress, it was warm enough already, and wrapped a yellow scarf around her head. Most American woman could not wear a scarf like that, but Nancy could; she'd studied in Italy.
   He'd bought her pantyhose. Normally she didn't like them, but they turned him on no end. He loved to run his hand up her legs and rub his fingers along her wet lips — you could see how hot it got him. And that's what this was about, Nancy wasn't kidding herself. Maybe it would become love, one day. But right now it was all about getting off. She gone too long without that. She didn't blame Plumber completely. He just couldn't cut it in bed. That was no one's fault.

47
He'd never understood why this was such a turn-on for Nancy. She liked the feeling of helplessness, which was perhaps some curious Catholic guilt thing, a rejection of the responsibility for sex. Nancy, despite her protests and apparent ambivalence, was still a closet Cathoholic. But those sex games were relatively subdued and had never done anything for him. He wanted more than anything to hold and to touch. She'd tied him up more than once. She'd spend hours tickling him and licking his nipples and softly squeezing his balls before climbing on top of him. She'd come several times before slipping off him. Then he was expected to reciprocate. Frankly, it was exhausting.

48
Nancy had made one promise to herself, and so far she'd kept it. No more pills, no more booze. Hell, she'd even sworn off coffee. She was going to take on each day on her own; she was going to look at each day through two clear eyes. She was surprised how easy it was. Making your mind up, that was the hard part.
   Don't look back. That was the other promise she'd made to herself. The past is past and there's no changing it. She'd already taken steps. She'd applied to a few colleges and was ready, finally, to get her degree. He'd been a real help there. He said you only live once. It was a cliché, but it's funny how all the clichés were turning out to be true.
   Nancy had her yellow sundress on, with the buttons undone. The wind scooped in through the open sunroof and washed her face and skin, the scarf holding her hair perfectly in place. The warm wind washed her clean and tugged and bit her neck and breasts. Her nipples had been hard through four states. She turned up the tunes. It was something Creole, incoherently fun, the music of the uninhibited: hot. She spread her legs and ran her fingers up her pantyhose. She'd be inhibited again. But today — now — she was free, and freedom was the best revenge. Already the bruises were healing.

49
Cut to Dad, settled in his new apartment. He thought of his son as he watered the Indian rubber plant in the bedroom. The plants were his responsibility. She ran her finger across his bare shoulders.
   “Do you always do housework in the nude?”
   Dad shrugged.
   “If you've got it, baby . . .”
   She gently pulled him to the bed, pulled him down and pushed him onto his back. She took him in her mouth, soft, just the way he liked it, building him up with her lips and tongue.
   He wanted to say
Fuck baby, you're amazing
, but all that came out of his mouth was “fuck.” He said it over and over again, to let her know how hot she made him and that, no matter what, he would never let himself love her.
   Nancy's face contorted as the intensity increased. Her eyes were closed now as her head bobbed frantically, like a novelty dog in a car window, and her fist pounded up and down his cock like a pneumatic bureaucrat — Death's own bureaucrat — rubber-stamping summary orders. He was almost ready to come, she could feel his balls and legs tighten, feel his belly contract. She looked up quickly to see his face contort, his eyes squint, his mouth stretch as if in pain (the emotional pain, say, of a heartbroken man at the grave of his only son), just as a stream of obscenities spurted from his mouth like hot semen, and it struck her that nothing in the world — nothing — was more beautiful than the act of love.