The Last Good Kiss (12 page)

edge of the world, off the face of the earth. I even had a

friend from law school-he's in Washington-check her

Social Security payment records, and there hasn't been

a payment since she worked a part-time job the

summer before she disappeared." He sucked on his

whiskey glass, his hand trembling so badly that the lip

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of the glass rattled against his teeth. "I can only assume

that either she doesn't want to be found or that's she's

dead. Though if she is, she didn't die in San Francisco

or any place in the Bay Area. At least not in the first

five years after she ran away."

"How do you know that?"

"I checked Jane Does in county morgues for that

long," he said softly, as if the memory made him very

tired.

"You went to a lot of trouble. "

" I was very much in love with her," he said, "and

Betty Sue was a very special lady."

"So I've heard," I said, then regretted it.

"From whom?" he asked in a voice that tried to be

casual.

"Everybody."

"Which everybody, specifically?"

"Her drama teacher, for one," I said.

"Gleeson," he snorted. "That faggot son of a bitch.

He didn't know anything about Betty Sue, didn't care

anything about her. He encouraged her acting so she

would think he was a big man, that's all. She was good

at it but she didn't even like it. She used to tell me,

'They just look at me, Albert, they don't see me.' "

"I thought Marilyn Monroe said that. "

"Huh? Oh, perhaps she did," he said. "I'm sure it's a

common psychological profile among actresses. Betty

Sue was very sensitive about her looks. Sometimes

when we would be having a . . . spat, she would cry

and tell me, 'If I were ugly or crippled, you wouldn't

love me.' "

"Was she right?" I asked without meaning to.

"Damn it, man," he answered sharply, "I haven't

seen her in ten years and I'm . . . I'm still half in love

with her."

"How does your wife feel about that?"

"We don't talk about it," he said with a sigh.

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"Could Betty Sue have been serious enough about

the acting to have run off to Hollywood or New York,

something like that?"

"Do girls still do that?" he asked, glancing up at me.

"People still do everything they used to do," I said.

"What about her?"

"Oh, I don't think so," he said, then asked if he

could freshen my drink. When I shook my head, he got

up and made himself a new one. "I don't think so at

all," he said from the bar. "She enjoyed the workrehearsals and all that-but for her, the play wasn't the thing." He sat back down. "She suffered from passing

enthusiasms, you know," he said, as if it were a disease

from which he had been spared. "One month it would

be the theatre, the acting just a preparation for writing

and directing, and the next month she would be

planning to go to medical school and become a

missionary doctor. Then she would want to be a painter

or some sort of artist. And the worst part of it was that

she could do damn near anything she set her mind to.

For instance, I wasn't a great tennis player-though I

nearly made the team at Cal--and when I could get her

on the courts, she gave me a hell of a time, let me tell

you." He paused to look at his drink, then decided to

drink about half of it in a gulp. "And, you know, in

spite of all the things she could do, she was the loneliest

person I ever knew. That was the heartbreaking part of

it, that loneliness. I couldn't help her at all. Sometimes

it seemed my attempts just made it worse. I couldn't

stop her from being lonely at all. "

"Not even i n bed?"

"You're a nosy bastard, aren't you?" he said quietly.

"Professional habit."

"Well, the truth is that I never laid a hand on her,"

he said with proper sadness. "Maybe if I had, I

wouldn't still be carrying her around on my back."

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"Did anybody else lay a hand on her?"

"I always suspected that she wasn't a virgin," he said

with a slight smile. "But she wouldn't talk about it. "

"Did you two fight about it?"

"I fought, but she wouldn't fight back," he said.

"She'd just sit there, drawn into some sort of shell, and

weep. Or else she'd make me take her home."

"Did you have a fight the day she walked away?"

"No," he murmured, shaking his head. "It was just a

normal day. We drove over to San Francisco for dinner

and a movie, and on the way she decided that she

wanted to drive through the Haight to see the hippies.

We got stuck in a line of traffic, and she just opened the

car door, stepped out, and walked away. Without

looking back. Without saying a word," he said slowly,

as if he had repeated the lines to himself too many

times.

"You didn't chase her?"

"How could I?" he cried. "I didn't know she was

running away, and I couldn't just leave my car sitting in

the street, man."

"I thought you had tickets for a play," I said.

"Hell, I don't know," he said. "It was ten years ago,

ten god damned years ago."

"Right.,

"Need another drink," he either said or asked. When

he stood up, I handed him my glass, but he paced

around the office with it in his hand.

"Can you tell me anything else about her?'' I asked.

He stopped and stared at me as if I were mad, then

started pacing again, taking the controlled steps of a

drunk man. But his hands and mouth moved with a will

of their own; he waved his arms and nearly shouted,

"Tell you about her? My god, man, I could tell you

about her all day and you still wouldn't see her. Tell you

what? That I had loved her since she was a child, that I

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couldn't just stop because she ran away? I tried to stop,

believe me I tried to stop loving her." Then he paused.

"It all sounds so silly now, doesn't it?"

"What?"

"That the disappearance of a damned high school

chick that I'd never touched was the most traumatic

experience of my life," he said. "And let me tell

you, I know something about trauma, growing up

with a drunken father. What do you want to know anyway?"

"Everything. Anything."

"That I married a safely dull woman and fathered

two safely dull children that I can't bear to face and

can't bear to leave and can't bear to love because they

might all run away too," he said.

"Hey, man," I said, "take that crap upstairs to the

shrinks. Don't tell me about it. I asked about her, not

you." He stopped to stare at his feet. "You've already

been upstairs, right?"

"I've been going for two years now," he said with

that mixture of pride and shame people in analysis so

often have. "And, in spite of the jokes, it's working. I

meant to go to medical school, you know, but all those

visits to the morgue, all those anonymous faces beneath

the rubber sheets, were too much for me." He went to

the bar to splash whiskey aimlessly into our glasses,

then kept mine in his hand. "As you so aptly said, as a

lawyer I'm not even a good joke. But I'm enrolled in

next fall's medical school class out at Davis. Thanks to

Betty Sue, it's taken me ten extra years to get started,

but now I'm finally going to make it."

"Good luck," I said.

"Thank you," he muttered, not noticing my irony.

"Anything else?"

"One more question," I said, "which I hate to ask,

but I really would appreciate an answer. "

"What's that?" he asked, then saw the two glasses in

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his hands. He still didn't give me mine. "And why do

you hate to ask it?"

"I heard a rumor that Betty Sue had made some fuck

films in San Francisco."

"That's so absurd I won't even bother to answer," he

said, and finally ga�e me my drink.

"You don't know anything about that, huh?" I asked

as I stood up and put some ice in the warm whiskey.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, facing me across an

expanse of Persian carpet.

"Okay," I said. "Do you remember a girl named

Peggy Bain?"

"Of course. She was Betty Sue's best friend. Only

friend, I guess."

"You wouldn't know where she's living?"

"Actually, I might," he said. "I handled a divorce for

her some years ago, and she sends me a Christmas card

once in a while." He stepped over to the desk and

thumbed through his Rolodex, then wrote an address

and telephone number on a card with his little gold pen.

The simple chore had restored some of his fac;ade, but

his knuckles were white around his glass when he

picked it up. "Two years ago she was livirig at this

address in Palo Alto. If you see her, please give her my

regards. "

"Thanks," I said, " I will."

"Say," he said too loudly, "let's sit down and have a

drink. Pleasure instead of business."

"No thanks," I said, setting my unfinished Scotch on

the coffee table. "I've got a date."

"Me too," he said sourly as he checked his watch.

"With my wife." We shook hands as he led me toward

the door, then he held my hand and asked, "Would you

do me a favor?"

"What's that?"

"If you should, through some insane circumstance,

find Betty Sue, would you let me know?"

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"Not for love or money," I said, and took back my

fingers.

"Why's that?" he asked, confused and nearly crying.

"Let me tell you a story," I said, which didn't help

his confusion. "When I was twelve, my daddy was

working on a ranch down in Wyoming, west of a hole in