The Dream of the Broken Horses (45 page)

Monday
: W's column: This morning he as much as says a certain member of his Happy Few is shagging her shrink on the old analytic couch!

Furious, I phone him up.

'Oh, hi there, love,' he says, all prissy and smug. 'I wonder what's on your cute little mind this lovely sunny Monday morning.'

'How could you write something so vile?'

'Is it, love?'

'You bet it is! Listen, W—'

'No, you listen, bitch! That's just a taste—do you hear me?— the merest whiff of what I can do. So mind your manners and I'll mind mine, and get over this nonsensical notion that I sent you those nasty items in the post. That's not my style. My style of waging war is the same as yours—total! Hear what I'm saying, love?'

'Yeah, I hear you. Sounds like you're making threats.'

'Not threats, darling. Statements of fact. This isn't a big town, at least not our set. We don't have to adore one another, but it's better to live in peace than war. Now the good news—right after Labor Day I'm off to Europe, my usual haunts . . . Venice, Paris, Cap
d'Antibes
. As I recall, there's a certain Parisian
saddlery
shop you like. My intention is to stop in at Herm
è
s and pick you up a nice piece of tack, say a saddle and bridle set. Call it a peace offering, my way of saying that for all the harsh words between us, it's my profound hope we can remain friends. So, love, what do you say?'

I ignored his peace offering, changed the subject.

'What am I going to tell my shrink? I'm seeing him in an hour.'

'Tell him "all's fair." He'll understand.'

'Tell me something, W?'

'Anything, love.'

'How many people have you gone after like this? How many have you tried to destroy?'

'What a question!'

'Since you don't care to answer, I'll have to rely on what I know. Since Max and I became friends, he's told me a few things. And then there's the matter of your
rentboy
, facts your Happy Few may not be fully acquainted with.' I'm sure that chilled him! 'Oh, and one other thing—don't bother getting me any tack.'

'Not even a crop to flog me with?'

'You'd like that too much!'

'Well, next move's yours, love. Of course, I'm hoping there won't be one.'

'You'll just have to wait and see, won't you?'

'I guess I will.
Toodleloo
, love.'

God, what a fiend!

Later:
R in a terrible snit.

'Where does he get an item like that? How dare he publish such a thing!'

 
'W thinks he's God around here. He publishes whatever he likes.'

'I've got a call in to my lawyer.'

'He'll tell you to ignore it.'

'Tell that to my wife!'

'What he wrote was for my eyes, his way of saying "Don't mess with me." I haven't decided yet whether to heed his warning or take him on.'

'Please listen to me, ' R said, sincere and sweet and grave. 'You have serious problems—a kidnapped daughter, a pending custody battle, a terrifying recurring dream. I rarely give advice to patients, that's not an analyst's role, but this feud with Channing's a sideshow compared with what's really important in your life. My suggestion is concentrate on the important stuff and let the sideshow pass.'

God, he can be such a good fatherly analyst when he wants to be! It made me feel great that he cared so much.

'You're right,' I told him. 'W's not important. This morning's column is tomorrow's
fishwrap
. Trash!'

'Exactly!'

'So let's go back to work on the dream.'

He was so pleased. He came up with another brilliant spiel about Mom and Blackjack and breakage and how I must have seen something traumatic when I was little and froze the moment like a mental photograph and when it was frozen it became something that could shatter, and that's what the broken horses are all about.

He was brilliant and I was dazzled. When he was done, I told him I adored him when he spoke like that, and I wished I could adore him in body because that's my way of adoring a man.

'It always comes back to that, doesn't it?' he said.

'I guess with me it always does.'

'I told you—assume you've seduced me, assume we've made love, then move on from there.'

'How can I believe something like that when I know we haven't?'

'We can't.'

'Because it would break the rules? Are you so bound by rules you'd deny yourself what you so clearly want and need?'

'Listen, Barbara—'

'Do you know, Tom, that's the first time you've called me by my first name since I started coming here?'

I turned to look at him, caught him mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.

'Now that we're on a first-name basis—'

He laughed.

'See how much you enjoy my company? Thing is, Tom, I just don't see the difference between "assuming" we've made love and actually doing it. Because if for therapeutic purposes we're to "assume" we have, then seems to me we might just as well do it—for therapeutic reasons too, of course.'

'That's impossible.'

'I know you want to.'

'If I did, I'd consult a colleague. That's how we handle those matters.'

'Oh, goody! Bring in a third party! Spread the word around! Play right into W's hands!'

'Know something? I think you liked his column this morning. I think now you want to make it all come true.'

Guess what, Dr. R? You're probably right!

Later
: As promised, T brought pot to the F. We smoked it together then made love. I felt I was moving on another level in a mysterious hazy world where everything was right, every move slow and perfect and complete. It was as good sex as I've had in years. When we were done, I started to sob. T couldn't believe it, kept asking 'What's the matter? What did I do? Did I do something wrong?'

'No, darling, it's just the beauty of what we did that makes me cry, this incredible floating feeling I'm left with. Guess I'm crazy, huh? How do you like being involved with such a crazy lady?'

'I like it just fine,' he said.

When we were dressed, ready to leave, I told him I couldn't meet him day after tomorrow, but that Friday would be fine.

'How can I bear to wait so long?' he asked.

Driving home, I wondered whether it was just the pot that did it to me, made me feel so lifted and clear. Is this what I've come to, I wondered—a slut who requires drugs to feel moved?

At the thought, I started to cry again. I was so red-eyed when I got home, I put on dark glasses so Marie wouldn't know I'd wept.

'Dinner at seven, Mrs. F?' she asked me at the door.

'No, thank you, Marie. Tonight I'm dining at The Elms.'

'Very good, ma'am. Thank you,'

'Yes, thank you, too, Marie.'

After reading this entry, I feel for her again. So many emotional vectors in her life appear, in hindsight, to be heading toward a tragic intersection. But I think even if weren't aware of the August 27 denouement, I'd feel, reading this material, that some kind of major crisis was in the offing.

She's concluded rightly that her old confidante, Waldo Channing, has not only been a false friend but is pathologically malicious besides. Now she must choose between her natural instinct to try to vanquish him in a social war or deny herself the pleasures of a fight for fear of furthering her former husband's goal of taking away her sons. The reference to Max intrigues me. Could Max have told her about Waldo's and Maritz's blackmail schemes? And is that reference to the "
rentboy
" the then-scandalous fact that Waldo had originally found Deval on the porn shop-prostitute-hustler
DaVinci
strip?

Meantime, she's embarked upon her final siege of her shrink, attempting to lure Dad into bed. And then there are the conflicting feelings engendered by her two lovers, Jack Cody and Tom Jessup—a mellowing out, perhaps even a tenderizing of her relations with Cody, while she and Tom appear to have entered a baroque phase in which Tom has rebelled against continuing to play a role in the risky child-porn penetration project to which she and Cody have assigned him.

Finally, there's her existential crisis—her awareness and fear of personal emptiness, her pain as she struggles to decipher her strange recurring dream, and a looming sense that she has lost her bearings in the privileged, rarefied, and terribly lonely world she's created for herself.

I'm also impressed by Dad's various stabs at interpreting her dream. Compared with the sum of all his efforts in this regard, I find Izzy Mendoza's interpretation glib and tepid.

On Tuesday, August 19, she makes a series of remarkable decisions:

Tuesday
: Woke up with a sense of mission. No more feeling sorry for myself. Time to take vigorous measures.

Phoned W, told him in no uncertain terms there will be no detente.

'You committed vicious and unpardonable acts. Now you'll pay the piper. And be very careful how you retaliate, W. Go too far and some of Jack's friends might . . . well, you know how they handle things. Also I know what you've been doing on the side, your venomous little schemes. Say one nasty word about me that'll hurt my case with Andy, and, I promise you, all that will come out.'

I hung up before he could reply. The old left eyeball must have been twitching up a storm!

Phoned Jack, thanked him for last night, told him T wants out of the Steadman deal, so if he's going to make a move on them it should be soon. He said he understood and will make arrangements. 'When am I going to see you again?' he asked. I told him I'll be busy the next few days, but maybe Sunday night.

Phoned R. left a message on his machine, said I won't be coming in tomorrow or for that matter ever again unless we can resolve the tensions between us. Told him I'll be in room 201 at the F at three tomorrow afternoon, that I'm inviting him to join me there, that he can come or not as he pleases, but whatever his decision to please not call to discuss the matter as I won't be taking calls.

Phoned Hansen, told him I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to combat A's custody claims. 'Tell his attorney my most vital interests are at stake. Tell him I have knowledge of things that could be ruinous to A, certain sexual episodes and peccadilloes. Tell him that though it isn't my style to stoop so low, the stakes are so high for me that if he doesn't withdraw his claim he can expect a no-holds-barred battle to the death.'

Saying that felt good!

Having completed a good day's work in just half an hour, I treated myself to a two-hour canter through Maple Hills, showered, then drove over to the club, where I played a fierce singles match with Tess.

After I lost the first set, quite a crowd gathered, all the girls eager to see nasty Barb dethroned. Somehow I managed to pull it out 3-6, 6-4, 6-4. Afterwards, Tess and I hugged to great applause. She whispered, 'Will you be my doubles partner if I dump Elaine?' 'Great idea! Give me the weekend to get rid of Jane. Then it's you and me all the way to club finals!' She kissed my sweaty cheek. 'I'm thrilled. I've had a crush on you for years!'