The Four Johns (4 page)

“It would be nice,” Mervyn agreed.

“If it weren't for Mary, I could really go for little sister Susie. She's clean and bright and—well, virginal.” He glanced sidewise toward Mervyn. “Isn't she?”

“How should I know? I've never attempted to determine the point.”

“I thought—well, I wish I had your natural advantages.”

“Diet. Exercise. And less beer, especially mine.”

“I'll lay myself bare,” said Boce. “I'm fat to protect my self-respect. Now Mary laughs at me, pulls my nose, rumples my hair. I might be her uncle. Well, I tell myself, why not? I
am
fat and avuncular. But suppose I diet, exercise, run, jump, drink my own beer, finally lose a hundred pounds. I become proud of myself. I'm trim, athletic, have a lean profile. Then what? Mary still laughs at me, she still pulls my nose, rumples my hair. So what do I tell myself?”

“That Mary doesn't want a man, she wants an uncle. Which is what I decided three months ago.”

Boce nodded gloomily. “So the old Mervyn Gray magic failed to ring the bell.”

“I never even got my finger on it.”

The accountant was silent. He finished his beer. “Well? Are you accepting the invitation to this party? You and your car?”

“I may not stay very long. Where is it?”

“Up the hill, at Oleg Malinski's. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“He's an optical engineer, a genius. Tonight he's barbecuing a sheep. There'll be a crowd, so we'd better get there early.”

John Boce presently departed: Mervyn sprawled, thinking. Somehow he must bestir himself to sell the Chevrolet convertible, which in its present keyless condition was the property of anyone who knew where to find the hidden switch. He groaned, swung his legs to the floor, sat holding his head in his hands. He was sick of his own thoughts.

He went into the bathroom, showered, shaved, ran a comb through his hair, regarded himself in the mirror with disapproval. He was just too damn handsome in a Mexican-matinee-idol kind of way. His skin was a clear olive, eyes hazel and long-lashed, hair a dense black pelt. He wore unobtrusive clothes, having long since cultivated a sartorial reserve. But the dark grays and blues accentuated his coloring; the reserve was variously interpreted as arrogance, narcissism, or plain stupidity. So Mervyn had taken refuge in the twelfth century, where he could refresh himself with the chansons and gestes, the rondels and
virelais
of the Provençal jongleurs.

Mary Hazelwood was no less refreshing. Mary, uncritical and happy-go-lucky, took life as it came. She was an exuberant and enthusiastic flirt, an activity as natural and necessary to her as breathing. She flirted with John Boce, with the mailman, with Mrs. Kelly's asthmatic grandson, with Mervyn Gray … with everyone and anyone.

Mervyn was amused and charmed; in her company he could abandon the twelfth century as well as his façade of calculated coolness. Nevertheless, the tradition of
la belle dame sans merci
impelled him to caution; besides, there was Susie, who possessed her own peculiar attractions.

Susie was even more perplexing than Mary. Mervyn understood that the role of Mary's little sister posed special problems for Susie; still, she had all the necessary equipment to cope with them. Mervyn was unable to fathom her feelings toward him: did she regard him merely as an instrument to be used in her machinations—whatever they might be? Twice he had kissed her; she had seemed to melt, only to become more flippant and detached than ever. Meanwhile, Mary was Mary: pretty enough to make the heart stop, lavish with her charming provocations, and unpossessable as a sunbeam. Impossible not to love Mary! And perhaps, for one whose heart was broken, impossible not to hate her, too.…

At six o'clock John Boce tramped back into Mervyn's living room. He wore a suit of pinkish-brown silk and pointed yellow shoes. His long nose twitched; his eyes were bright. “
Allons, mes enfants
!” he called. “
En avant! Au mouton
! I smell it from here! The girls are waiting! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

“Girls plural?”

“Harriet's coming with us.” Boce watched from the corner of his eye. When no protest was forthcoming, he heaved a relieved sigh. “Well, boy? You ready? We'll take the convert, eh? More room and all that.”

“The Volkswagen's handier. The convertible's out back, in the garage.”

The accountant started to grumble, but Mervyn had already stepped outside. Susie and Harriet waited by the fountain in the middle of the court. Susie wore a eucalyptus-green suit, and she had slicked down her tawny hair into a semblance of order. She was fluttering the fingers of her left hand against her thigh—a signal of displeasure, or tension. Harriet wore black tights under a mulberry red skirt, with a green-and-black Peruvian sweater of confused design.

They walked up the street to where Mervyn had parked the Volkswagen. He tried to maneuver Boce into the back seat with Harriet, but the fat man protested so vehemently that Susie, smiling grimly, slipped in ahead of him; and, still complaining, Boce heaved himself into the front beside Mervyn.

Mervyn looked at him for directions. “Where do we go?”

“Up Panoramic. Almost to the top. I don't think we'll make it in this goddamn motorized wheelbarrow.”

“I wonder if I need gas.”

“You've got the reserve tank. Once we get there we can coast all the way back down. C'mon, boy, move this heap. Sheep have only four legs. That's one apiece if we get there now.”

“It's only six o'clock. You can't be hungry.”

“I'm always hungry.”

Mervyn started the car and set off toward the campus. John Boce sat hunched forward, pointing out traffic hazards with a nervous finger. “Next block turn.… Stop. Traffic light.… Now turn. All the way up Bancroft. Stop sign. Stop.
Stop
! You blind, Mervyn?”

Mervyn saw an opportunity to play his game. “It's a fact I never seem to see the things. I wonder why. Maybe because I detest them so. Tall things with those bright red heads. They remind me of something, I can't think what. My mother? That can't be.…”

Harriet Brill asked cautiously from behind, “Did your mother have red hair?”

“It's hard to remember. She died when I was sixteen.”

“Oh,” said Harriet.

“Ignore him,” Susie said shortly.

At Boce's direction Mervyn turned up Panoramic Way, a narrow and wickedly winding road that led up into the sky, with the reach of the bay spread out far below, and San Francisco a stipple of miniature towers in the hazy west.

Oleg and Olga Malinski lived in a house of glass and redwood perched incredibly over a cliff. A dozen cars were already parked along the street, and Boce sat on the edge of his seat while Mervyn backed into a parking place.

Harriet suddenly exclaimed, “John, I've been meaning to ask. Did Mary call you yesterday before she left?”

There was an instant of startled silence. Susie and Mervyn looked at John Boce, whose neck had turned red. “Why should she telephone me?”

“She spoke to a John and asked him to please be on time. I know it wasn't you, of course—”

“Then why'd you ask?” growled Boce.

“Mary knows lots of Johns,” said Susie indifferently. “Also Petes, Wilburs, Dicks.…”

“Any time you stable this goat I'll get out,” the bulky accountant snapped at Mervyn.

Mervyn set the hand brake. “Lead the way.”

Malinski's house was essentially one vast living room, with the incidental addition of two or three cubicles for bathing and sleeping. A deck across the entire width of the house hung out over what seemed miles of empty air. Below and beyond spread the gray cities, the leaden bay, the sky, where sunset colors were gathering.

The cars parked along Panoramic had given John Boce an unjustified fright; only eight or ten guests were in evidence. They had gathered at one end of the deck, where a whole lamb turned over glowing coals. Here stood Oleg Malinski, a small, agile man with a large, excessive head. A bushy mustache covered his wistful pink mouth; his gestures were extravagant. He drank red wine from a beaker of blue Mexican glass, he basted the lamb, he discoursed with emotion and conviction to the captive audience gathered around the spit. Boce hurried to join the group. “Oleg,” he said, “I've arrived. What a magnificent sheep!”

“Gad!” said someone. “You've ruined everything. I can't stand the idea of eating sheep.”

“So much more for the rest of us,” said Boce with a pudgy bow. “Anyone else I can bug?”

Mervyn and Susie and Harriet came out on the deck, and Boce introduced Mervyn. Oleg absently extended the hand that held the basting brush. “Harriet I know. And Susie, of course. Where is your effervescent sister?”

Susie gave the slightest of shrugs; Harriet spoke in a voice quivering with excitement. “Can you guess? Mary has eloped.”

Oleg Malinski swung the brush dramatically high. “No! I cannot believe my ears! Who could succeed where I failed?”

“His name is John,” Harriet said.

“John? John who?”

“Not me,” said John Boce. “I plan to drown my sorrows in that sheep.”

“
Please
don't call it sheep!” cried the same someone.

Mervyn went to the kitchen area to deposit the gallon of red wine he had brought; from a jug already open he filled three glasses, served Susie and Harriet. Oleg Malinski was still dwelling upon Mary's elopement. “It must be someone we know. Ha there, John Lloyd, are you the guilty one?”

John Lloyd, a man of forty, thin and brittle as a stick-insect, smiled knowingly. “Would I admit it in the presence of my wife?” His wife, buxom, flat-footed, square-faced, gave him a look of scornful malevolence.

“I think we can consider John Lloyd unlikely,” said Oleg Malinski hastily.

“You can consider him impossible,” snapped Mrs. John Lloyd. “In more ways than one.”

“I take my oath,” said John Lloyd. “I've never met the young lady.”

“Very well. John Lloyd: impossible. Have we a John without a wife?” Oleg searched his guests. “I see John Thompson, library stack superintendent. Persuasive, hedonistic, enterprising, with the whip and carrot of special privilege.”

Thompson, a compact, sunburned man of thirty-five, heard the accusation with a sleepy grin. He had an air of easy competence. “My budget barely runs to paper clips, let alone whips and carrots.”

“I employ a figure of speech,” said Malinski. “In this society the manager is king. You could easily make Mary's work a dream of Elysian pleasure: a cushion for her chair, purple ribbon in her typewriter, an extra five minutes for coffee breaks, and so forth.”

“It's a fact that I wield considerable power,” said Librarian Thompson, “but if I were that sort of cad, why am I here now, instead of reaping the fruits of Mary's gratitude?”

Oleg basted the lamb. “Some men are quickly sated.”

“Not that quickly.”

“Perhaps not. But meanwhile, and tentatively of course, shall we place you in the Quickly Sated category?”

“As you like.”

Susie turned away. “Disgusting men,” she muttered, not altogether under her breath. She stalked into the living room, perched on a chair, glared out the window. Mervyn went to sit beside her. She flicked a glance of reptilian chill at him, but said nothing. Mervyn sipped his red wine and held his tongue.

More guests arrived: members of the faculty, a writer or two, a contingent from the Radiation Lab. A tall man with a gaunt and quite ferocious profile and glittering black eyes came to bend over Susie. “My dear young lady!”

Susie looked up indifferently. “Hello.”

“So seldom do I see you without your sister.”

“I usually tag along.” Susie performed a perfunctory introduction: “Mervyn Gray, John Viviano,” which Viviano acknowledged impatiently.

Mervyn made no effort to join their conversation. John Viviano's voice was alternately harsh and melodious; he used it with the control of an operatic virtuoso. He spoke of color film and skin tones; apparently his work was fashion photography. Oleg Malinski, passing by, pointed at John Viviano. “Beyond doubt this is the ‘John' you seek. He is a well-known gallant.”

John Viviano bowed to Susie. “I am at your service.”

Susie smiled tiredly. “Don't call me, I'll call you.”

“We are not offering you new exploits,” Oleg told Viviano. “We are inquiring about an old one. What have you done with Mary?”

“Ah. You must mean, what would I like to do?”

“I leave the question as it stands.”

“I have done nothing. I have never done anything of which I am ashamed. Shame, unknown to children and to animals, is equally unknown to me.”

“Then you are not the correct ‘John.'”

“Correct for what, Oleg?”

“Mary has eloped with a ‘John' whose identity we are eager to learn.”

Viviano glanced briefly about. “If this is true, I congratulate the man. If it is not true, I congratulate Mary.”

Susie laughed; the fashion photographer looked at her with eyebrows raised. He had said nothing funny; why had she laughed? Puzzles displeased him.

Olga Malinski came from the kitchenette bearing a great trencher mounded with pilaf. Oleg's wife was no larger than her husband, and half of her seemed flamboyant coiffure, almost hiding her wild, wise gypsy face. She carried the pilaf out to the deck and set it on a table.

Oleg cried, “The lamb is ready! You must all be on hand when I carve, as in the old days in Budapest.” Everyone came running.

The lamb was a great success: succulent, with a crisp crust redolent of garlic, herbs and pepper.

Evening came, night. Mervyn, seeking Susie, found her by the rail staring out over the stencil of glowing cities. In silence he leaned on the rail beside her. She began to drum with her fingers. Presently she said, “I'm tired. Can we go home soon?”