The High Cost of Living (19 page)

She and Honor made a messy fire but it burned. The fire was unnecessary because for a change the weather was good. Her last day in Grand Rapids rain had fallen, and rain had shrouded the bus on her return. But today, Friday, it was high spring. Spring came to Michigan suddenly, violent and languorous at once. The air was so soft she melted into it.

George had not joined Sue at her parents', making Sue resentful. The plumbers had come but they had not finished. Now George was off with Sue and children on a four-day Puerto Rican jaunt supposed to restore harmony, and Leslie was house sitting and plumber watching. That gave her George's car, after she took them to Metropolitan Airport. When the plumbers finished in late afternoon she drove to Honor's and brought the girl back to keep her company while she cleaned up after the plumbers and tested the hot water.

Now she poured Honor a little Tío Pepe in a wineglass as they sat contemplating their fire. Honor wore an apple green dress down to the floor with a high stand-up collar and a V-neck, and she looked particularly rosy. But then she was particularly happy. Even visiting this house was a treat. Bernie had traded the early part of the week with another waiter who was also a student and wanted to go home to Port Huron for spring vacation. Bernie worked lunches all week and suppers too in exchange for Friday and Saturday off.

First they would all eat at the Szechwan restaurant Bernie had found. Then Bernie and Honor were going to a ballet; the American Ballet Theater was in town, and they had tickets. They had not got a ticket for Leslie because she had not imagined returning early. Tomorrow Bernie wanted to visit his old home.

“Something odd happened while you were gone,” Honor said, looking less happy. “Monday night I went to rehearsals with Cam. They're doing Pinter's
The Caretaker
. I suppose I wanted to flirt with Paul a bit. I miss that. Cam doesn't have a part—she's very disappointed—so we just stood around. Bernie came over too. Then Paul did something ugly. I was walking past him and he reached out and pinched my buttock, very hard. It wasn't even sensual. It hurt and I cried out. Then he laughed and asked me if anything was wrong. I asked Cam to leave. We had her car. Bernie didn't know what had happened and I didn't want to explain with Paul standing there gloating because he'd humiliated me. So we left and Bernie hung around.”

“His pinching you isn't odd, just nasty. What do you want from him, Honorée?”

“Nothing. I hate him. He's a pig. But Bernie told me Wednesday that Paul had … propositioned him that night after rehearsal.”

“I don't suppose Bernie was interested.”

“Do you believe it? I mean, why would Paul do that? He's ridiculously heterosexual. Staring at my breasts, pinching my behind, always leering. Cam warned me he's a womanizer.… Why would he suddenly switch?”

“Sex is sex to lots of people. He wanted someone and thought Bernie was available. Doesn't even mean he's interested in Bernie. Because a person doesn't act out same-sex attractions doesn't mean they don't exist. Everyone of us had a mother, for instance—”

“But Bernar' is always seeing homosexuality every place, you know how he is! He could have … misinterpreted Paul.”

“People don't make those kinds of mistakes. I've been stupid and not seen when people were after me. They were too subtle or I was preoccupied. But I never thought somebody was coming on when they weren't, whatever they might say afterward.”

“I can't believe Paul would be interested in another man. He's just too much of a letch about women.” Honor fidgeted with her hair ends.

“Why does his wanting to fuck Bernie mean he wouldn't like to get his paws on you? What does it matter anyhow? Nothing happened, right?”

“Bernar' could be wrong about Paul.”

“Why does it matter so much? Does this turn you off? Or make Paul's interest in you less exciting?”

“Here comes Bernie, that's his car.” The high anguished shriek it made whenever asked to negotiate a corner, however slowly. “But you ask Cam if she's ever heard of Paul being interested in men before.… I can't ask her myself because I'd have to explain. But you can easily ask her.”

The purple Mustang rattled up the drive, something loose dragging beneath it, perhaps the muffler; and as it clanked along it laid down a gray wake of fumes that slowly rolled through the hedge bordering the drive onto the neighbor's lawn.

Bernie sat down between them on the long couch that had recently appeared in the livingroom—very low and long and excessively soft so that Leslie sank in it as if into a feather bath—covered with a Chinesey print of chrysanthemums in gold and green. He poured himself a generous glass of sherry and began imitating the unseen neighbors behind the hedge.

“Do you smell that, Ralph? What is that?”

Ralph, coughing. “What is it, Ida? Is something on fire?”

“Do you suppose they're having a barbecue?”

“On their front lawn? I hope they're not that type.”

“Ralph, do you suppose their house could be on fire?”

“If it is, I suppose we'll hear about it soon enough.” Coughing. “Perhaps we'd better go inside.”

“Honorée,” he added in his own voice immediately, “you look absolutely beautiful.”

“So do you, actually.” Honor laughed. “You're competing unfairly.”

“Do you like this? I stole it especially for the occasion.” The shirt was a dark silky-looking blue. He brought out his makings and started to roll a joint until Leslie stopped him.

“Don't waste your own. I know where it is here.” She got George's downstairs stash from the kitchen, where it was hidden in a large jar whose label claimed it held oregano, the pizza spice, from Kroger's.

“This is lovely.” Bernie kicked off his sneakers and settled far down on his spine. “The fire is silly but pretty, the sherry nice, the company extraordinary, the setting is bourgeois cozy. I'll take it all, wrapped up.”

“George's sherry, George's dope, George's sofa, George's fireplace, George's car, George's house. Hmmm.…” Honor rubbed her nose. “I'm curiouser and curiouser and curiouser about George. Cam is always alluding to him as if to some act of God. Does he really have an existence in the flesh, or is he a fictional person like a corporation?”

“A bit of both.” Leslie surprised herself with a cough of embarrassment, half giggle, half disclaimer. She felt guilty sitting on George's brand new couch discussing him. She also had a moment's uneasy fantasy that a tape recorder hidden in the down would record every word of her disloyalty. She shared the joint with Bernie.

“Puerto Rico, adiós. Then the plane describes a graceful parabola and falls gently into the sea. Blub blub. Adiós a George y mujer y niños. Under the waves all. And we just quietly move in. Think how exceedingly comfy we could be here together, we three,” Bernie crooned.

“Until the first mortgage payment is due.”

“Les, be good. Right now, this moment, we live here,” Bernie coaxed.

“Yes, Leslie, you're suffering pangs of reality. We have quite enough of that every day. This is vacation. They've left us this playpen. Bernar', pour us both some more delicious sherry.”

“Be careful, Honorée. Don't drink it too fast.”

“Leslie! I told you to relax. I'd think it was gross to get sloppy! But I think I could drink you under the table.”

Bernie obediently poured more sherry into both their glasses and his own, standing empty. Then he put out the roach's tail in the ashtray, commenting, “They don't go in for the quality imported stuff. This is good old Toledo Green, a little moldy from efforts to jack up the kick.” He put an arm around each of them and his feet up on the coffee table beside the Tío Pepe. “Ah, satisfaction. A jug of wine, a stash of dope, and the two of you beside me in civilization! I could think of a lot more to ask for, actually, but this does fine for a basic set-up. We'd have to redo the place, of course. The taste is a little wobbly. This couch, for instance. You couldn't do much but cuddle on it. If you tried to make love, you'd suffocate in the stuffing, you'd lose your partner and end up making it with a dead goose.”

“Yes, let's throw all this failed art out in the back yard and do something interesting with the space.” Honor stared up into the gloomy rafters. “A trapeze, perhaps. Myself, I actually like this couch. I'll lie on it and eat chocolates when I've grown weary of the trapeze—Is there anything to nibble on?”

“Don't spoil your appetite for supper. We want to try lots and lots of dishes,” Leslie said.

“I have one Mama, Leslie. When I run away from home to join the circus of the two of you, I don't want to be mothered at all. I'll wear spangles and décolleté as low as I want and eat chocolates by the pound and hang from my heels and have a pet monkey that pees on the furniture!”

“Leslie will be the strongwoman and also the knife thrower.”

“Well, she can't throw them at me!” Honor said.

“She can throw them at me. I know she wouldn't miss, and if she did, she'd feel so very bad it would be quite worth it losing a finger or an ear.… I of course am the sword swallower. The magician. The famous disappearing man. We must all take several parts in a small traveling circus. We'll ride bareback on the circus ponies round and round. We'll do trapeze tricks and catch each other death defyingly as with no nets at all we fling ourselves through giddy space. And Leslie will tame the lions—which will consist of me in a mangy fur suit growling and snarling. She may lay her head in the lion's mouth. Thus giving head I stand, the perfect circus lion. Then Honorée is shot from a cannon and I am the ringmaster and I saw Honorée in two—”

“Oh, no! I'm not to be had so cheaply, at half price! I'm going to dance on a horse's back in ballet slippers and orchid tutu.”

“I like those Chinese acrobats who make human pyramids,” Leslie said. “We coud paint me with spots and I'll be the leopard lady. I can growl too.” She produced a sample.

“But can you purr?” Bernie asked.

“
I
can. Listen.” Honor did, from deep in her chest.

She leaned away from Bernie's encircling arm to stare at them. They both looked radiant. Honor's hair the color of orange pekoe tea shone in the firelight. The inner curve of a breast came and went in the V-neck. Her arms looked plump and rosy, even the elbows gracefully rounded, dimpled. Her long throat arched back and her mouth opened a little as she rolled the wine on her tongue. Bernie smiled in profile into the heart of the fire. The curve of his mouth was long and delicious. His curly hair caught the firelight. He looked lean and wound as a balanced spring. She had a startling urge to make love to both of them.

She sipped her wine nervously. The impulse was not real. No, she never wanted to make love to more than one person, and certainly not to both of them. In reality it would be complicated and messy. It would be like one of those construction projects her brothers used to hate to get for Christmas. A flat box with a brightly colored space platform or rocket launcher depicted on the cover, with no resemblance to anything inside. A bunch of pieces and directions. Insert Flap B in Slot D. Glue inside edges. Do not glue Flap A–2 to Flap A–3. Then draw inner tabs through outer ratchets along side F. No, she could never desire Bernie, not for an instant. It was preposterous.

They looked beautiful beside her and she did itch to touch them gently. It was the wine and the dope together before supper. It was sexual overflow from what had and had not happened with Valerie. It was the result of not having done karate all week. She had been drinking too much. It was pure silliness.

“I suppose there are five or six bathrooms in this mansion. What I need is only one, but that one rather soon.” Honor rose and swept her gown over her arm. “Where would I find it?”

“There's a lavatory off the kitchen, just to the left.”

With his free hand Bernie sipped his wine. Then his arm tightened on her shoulder. He gave a little tug drawing her nearer. “What happened?” he asked, turning to look hard at her.

“It's over. I've lost her.”

His hand dug into her upper arm and he stared into her face. “Are you sure? You did see her?”

She nodded. “Yes on both counts.”

“If she's hostile, that doesn't mean she'll stay so.”

“She wasn't. Except when I tried to push her. She was ready to fit me into her schedule. Ready to make love. At times that wouldn't annoy her keeper. Who's keeping her in Toyotas and school and new clothes.”

“That's stinking.” He took her face in both hands. “I can't tell how bad it is. You say it … numbly.”

“I cried for two days. I am numb. I can't tell what I feel.”

The way he held her was odd. It was not gentle. It was not the way he always touched them, very airily. She realized he wanted to take hold of her, the energy was something held back. She was not frightened, blinking at him. She felt a little smile tugging at her lips. “I'll let you know tomorrow how I am after I find it out tonight It's good for me to be alone.”

“Are you sure?”

She was not frightened because she wanted to explain to him that it was silliness. It came from drinking sherry on an empty stomach and smoking dope and sitting in front of the fire on a too soft sofa on the first evening of balmy warm spring. The air was soft. The wine melted them to taffy. “I'll survive.”

Honor called from the kitchen. “I found some cookies. Either we go eat now, or I'm going to have some. I'm starving!”

They used Bernie's car. “But tomorrow we'll take George's,” Leslie promised.

“Tomorrow!” Bernie sang out. “I'm edgy about it. Really, you must promise not to be disappointed. There's nothing to see but scummy water and ugly houses and for thrills an occasional junkyard. You have to promise not to expect anything.”