Last Night (4 page)

The years of her marriage, looking back, had been good ones. Myron Hirsch had left her with more than enough to take care of herself, and the success she had had was on top of that. For a woman of few talents—was that true? perhaps she was shortchanging herself—she had done pretty well. She was remembering how it had started. She remembered the beer bottles rolling around in the back of the car when she was fifteen and he was making love to her every morning and she did not know if she was beginning life or throwing it away, but she loved him and would never forget.

My Lord You

THERE WERE CRUMPLED NAPKINS on the table,wine-glasses still with dark remnant in them, coffee stains, and plates with bits of hardened Brie. Beyond the bluish windows the garden lay motionless beneath the birdsong of summer morning. Daylight had come. It had been a success except for one thing: Brennan.

They had sat around first, drinking in the twilight, and then gone inside. The kitchen had a large round table, fire-place, and shelves with ingredients of every kind. Deems was well known as a cook. So was his somewhat unknowable girlfriend, Irene, who had a mysterious smile though they never cooked together. That night it was Deems’s turn. He served caviar, brought out in a white jar such as makeup comes in, to be eaten from small silver spoons.

— The only way, Deems muttered in profile. He seldom looked at anyone. Antique silver spoons, Ardis heard him mistakenly say in his low voice, as if it might not have been noticed.

She was noticing everything, however. Though they had known Deems for a while, she and her husband had never been to the house. In the dining room, when they all went in to dinner, she took in the pictures, books, and shelves of objects including one of perfect, gleaming shells. It was foreign in a way, like anyone else’s house, but half-familiar.

There’d been some mix-up about the seating that Irene tried vainly to adjust amid the conversation before the meal began. Outside, darkness had come, deep and green. The men were talking about camps they had gone to as boys in piny Maine and about Soros, the financier. Far more interesting was a comment Ardis heard Irene make, in what context she did not know,

— I think there’s such a thing as sleeping with one man too many.

— Did you say “such a thing” or “no such thing”? she heard herself ask.

Irene merely smiled. I must ask her later, Ardis thought. The food was excellent. There was cold soup, duck, and a salad of young vegetables. The coffee had been served and Ardis was distractedly playing with melted wax from the candles when a voice burst out loudly behind her,

— I’m late. Who’s this? Are these the beautiful people?

It was a drunken man in a jacket and dirty white trousers with blood on them, which had come from nicking his lip while shaving two hours before. His hair was damp, his face arrogant. It was the face of a Regency duke, intimidating, spoiled. The irrational flickered from him.

— Do you have anything to drink here? What is this, wine? Very sorry I’m late. I’ve just had seven cognacs and said good-bye to my wife. Deems, you know what that’s like. You’re my only friend, do you know that? The only one.

— There’s some dinner in there, if you like, Deems said, gesturing toward the kitchen.

— No dinner. I’ve had dinner. I’ll just have something to drink. Deems, you’re my friend, but I’ll tell you something, you’ll become my enemy. You know what Oscar Wilde said— my favorite writer, my favorite in all the world. Anyone can choose his friends, but only the wise man can choose his enemies.

He was staring intently at Deems. It was like the grip of a madman, a kind of fury. His mouth had an expression of determination. When he went into the kitchen they could hear him among the bottles. He returned with a dangerous glassful and looked around boldly.

— Where is Beatrice? Deems asked.

— Who?

— Beatrice, your wife.

— Gone, Brennan said.

He searched for a chair.

— To visit her father? Irene asked.

— What makes you think that? Brennan said menacingly. To Ardis’s alarm he sat down next to her.

— He’s been in the hospital, hasn’t he?

— Who knows where he’s been, Brennan said darkly. He’s a swine. Lucre, gain. He’s a slum owner, a criminal. I would hang him myself. In the fashion of Gomez, the dictator, whose daughters are probably wealthy women.

He discovered Ardis and said to her, as if imitating someone, perhaps someone he assumed her to be,

— ’N ’at funny? ’N ’at wonderful?

To her relief he turned away.

— I’m their only hope, he said to Irene. I’m living on their money and it’s ruinous, the end of me. He held out his glass and asked mildly, Can I have just a tiny bit of ice? I adore my wife. To Ardis he confided, Do you know how we met? Unimaginable. She was walking by on the beach. I was unprepared. I saw the ventral, then the dorsal, I imagined the rest. Bang! We came together like planets. Endless fornication. Sometimes I just lie silent and observe her.
The black panther
lies under his rose-tree,
he recited.
J’ai eu pitié des autres . . .

He stared at her.

— What is that? she asked tentatively.

—
. . . but that the child walk in peace in her basilica,
he intoned.

— Is it Wilde?

— You can’t guess? Pound. The sole genius of the century. No, not the sole. I am another: a drunk, a failure, and a great genius. Who are you? he said. Another little housewife?

She felt the blood leave her face and stood to busy herself clearing the table. His hand was on her arm.

— Don’t go. I know who you are, another priceless woman meant to languish. Beautiful figure, he said as she managed to free herself, pretty shoes.

As she carried some plates into the kitchen she could hear him saying,

— Don’t go to many of these parties. Not invited.

— Can’t imagine why, someone murmured.

— But Deems is my friend, my very closest friend.

— Who is he? Ardis asked Irene in the kitchen.

— Oh, he’s a poet. He’s married to a Venezuelan woman and she runs off. He’s not always this bad.

They had quieted him down in the other room. Ardis could see her husband nervously pushing his glasses up on his nose with one finger. Deems, in a polo shirt and with rumpled hair, was trying to guide Brennan toward the back door. Brennan kept stopping to talk. For a moment he would seem reformed.

—I want to tell you something, he said. I went past the school, the one on the street there. There was a poster. The First Annual Miss Fuck Contest. I’m serious. This is a fact.

— No, no, Deems said.

— It’s been held, I don’t know when. Question is, are they coming to their senses finally or losing them? A tiny bit more, he begged; his glass was empty. His mind doubled back, Seriously, what do you think of that?

In the light of the kitchen he seemed merely dishevelled, like a journalist who has been working hard all night. The unsettling thing was the absence of reason in him, his glare. One nostril was smaller than the other. He was used to being ungovernable. Ardis hoped he would not notice her again. His forehead had two gleaming places, like nascent horns. Were men drawn to you when they knew they were frightening you?

She could feel his eyes. There was silence. She could feel him standing there like a menacing beggar.

— What are you, another bourgeois? he said to her. I know I’ve been drinking. Come and have dinner, he said. I’ve ordered something wonderful for us. Vichyssoise. Lobster. S. G. Always on the menu like that, selon grosseur.

He was talking in an easy way, as if they were in the casino together, chips piled high before them, as if it were a shrewd discussion of what to bet on and her breasts in the dark T-shirt were a thing of indifference to him. He calmly reached out and touched one.

— I have money, he said. His hand remained where it was, cupping her. She was too stunned to move. Do you want me to do more of that?

— No, she managed to say.

His hand slipped down to her hip. Deems had taken an arm and was drawing him away.

— Ssh, Brennan whispered to her, don’t say anything. The two of us. Like an oar going into the water, gliding.

— We have to go, Deems insisted.

— What are you doing? Is this another of your ruses? Brennan cried. Deems, I shall end up destroying you yet!

As he was herded to the door, he continued. Deems was the only man he didn’t loathe, he said. He wanted them all to come to his house, he had everything. He had a phonograph, whisky! He had a gold watch!

At last he was outside. He walked unsteadily across the finely cut grass and got into his car, the side of which was dented in. He backed away in great lurches.

— He’s headed for Cato’s, Deems guessed. I ought to call and warn them.

— They won’t serve him. He owes them money, Irene said.

— Who told you that?

— The bartender. Are you all right? she asked Ardis.

— Yes. Is he actually married?

— He’s been married three or four times, Deems said.

Later they started dancing, some of the women together. Irene pulled Deems onto the floor. He came unresisting. He danced quite well. She was moving her arms sinuously and singing.

— Very nice, he said. Have you ever entertained?

She smiled at him.

— I do my best, she said.

At the end she put her hand on Ardis’s arm and said again,

— I’m so embarrassed at what happened.

— It was nothing. I’m all right.

— I should have taken him and thrown him out, her husband said on the way home. Ezra Pound. Do you know about Ezra Pound?

— No.

— He was a traitor. He broadcast for the enemy during the war. They should have shot him.

— What happened to him?

— They gave him a poetry prize.

They were going down a long empty stretch where on a corner, half hidden in trees, a small house stood, the gypsy house, Ardis thought of it as, a simple house with a water pump in the yard and occasionally in the daytime a girl in blue shorts, very brief, and high heels, hanging clothes on a line. Tonight there was a light on in the window. One light near the sea. She was driving with Warren and he was talking.

— The best thing is to just forget about tonight.

— Yes, she said. It was nothing.

Brennan went through a fence on Hull Lane and up on to somebody’s lawn at about two that morning. He had missed the curve where the road bent left, probably because his headlights weren’t on, the police thought.

SHE TOOK THE BOOK and went over to a window that looked out on the garden behind the library. She read a bit of one thing or another and came to a poem some lines of which had been underlined, with pencilled notes in the margin. It was “The River-Merchant’s Wife”; she had never heard of it. Outside, the summer burned, white as chalk.

At fourteen I married My Lord you,
she read.
I never laughed, being bashful . . .

There were three old men, one of them almost blind, it appeared, reading newspapers in the cold room. The thick glasses of the nearly blind man cast white moons onto his cheeks.

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.

She had read poems and perhaps marked them like this, but that was in school. Of the things she had been taught she remembered only a few. There had been one My Lord though she did not marry him. She’d been twenty-one, her first year in the city. She remembered the building of dark brown brick on Fifty-eighth Street, the afternoons with their slitted light, her clothes in a chair or fallen to the floor, and the damp, mindless repetition, to it, or him, or who knew what: oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. The traffic outside so faint, so far away . . .

She’d called him several times over the years, believing that love never died, dreaming foolishly of seeing him again, of his returning, in the way of old songs. To hurry, to almost run down the noontime street again, the sound of her heels on the sidewalk. To see the door of the apartment open . . .

If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you.
As far as Chô-fu-Sa

There she sat by the window with her young face that had a weariness in it, a slight distaste for things, even, one might imagine for oneself. After a while she went to the desk.

— Do you happen to have anything by Michael Brennan? she asked.

— Michael Brennan, the woman said. We’ve had them, but he takes them away because unworthy people read them, he says. I don’t think there’re any now. Perhaps when he comes back from the city.

— He lives in the city?

— He lives just down the road. We had all of his books at one time. Do you know him?