Salt Water (6 page)

NEXT MORNING HILLYER
was heating water in the kitchen and scratching his stomach with both hands.

“You two sure disappeared,” he said. “Rita was shocked.”

“I liked her.”

“How do you know? It was hello and good night. How did it go?”

“It was okay.”

“As good as that,” he said, then deepening his voice, “We, on the other hand, did outrageously well.”

“When Melissa and I left were you here?”

“I heard you go. In fact, I was in situ at the very moment. … There’s no food in this house.”

We agreed to have breakfast at my place. “But I have to call first. My father might be there.”

“Your father is the best.”

Hillyer felt so rotten about his parents breaking up I thought I’d let him know that things weren’t necessarily perfect everywhere else. “Actually,” I said, “I have to call because he might be in situ himself.”

“I didn’t know he situed around.”

“Yep.”

“Well, at least he still situes at home. You seem pretty blasé about it.”

“He told me that people feel love is magical because it’s making something out of nothing. If he wants to make something out of nothing, I can’t get too excited about it. Also, it’s his business.”

“Absolutely. As long as no one finds out. If they do—and I mean your old lady—he’ll make nothing out of something.”

“Is that what your father did?”

“Yep.”

I phoned home. Father was still there, about to leave for his office. He hadn’t known I was in town. “You
must
tell me when you’re coming to town,” he said. Then in a lighter tone, “We might have had dinner.”

“I couldn’t. I was in situ.”

“In what?” Then he got the joke. “Anyone I know?”

“A gentleman never tells.”

“Quite right.”

I asked about his plans for getting to the Point. He suggested he pick me up outside the apartment.

Father pulled up promptly, with Mrs. Mertz beside him. Zina was in the back. I got in beside her. She took my hand and squeezed it. Father gave me his big smile in the rear view mirror, and Mrs. Mertz continued talking. It was a while before I realized she was talking about a recent trip to Russia.

“The people of course suffer. Italians eat, the French talk, the Germans make, and Russians suffer. It’s their métier, and now they have no culture to protect them from the suffering. No cuisine. No etiquette. Everyone wants to leave. You should see the hard-currency whores in the tourist hotels. And very attractive whores they are. You look at them, and you say to yourself the Russians have put the flower of their womanhood into prostitution.”

“I came to see you at your place last night,” I whispered to Zina.

“Mother told me.”

I waited for Zina to say where she had been, but she didn’t.

“I asked one of the girls,” Mrs. Mertz went on, “what her favorite nationality was. ‘The Japs,’ she said, ‘they pay well and they’re quick.’ ”

Mrs. Mertz thought Father was enjoying this, but I could tell from his polite nods that he wasn’t. As for me, I had not expected to be driving back with Zina, and I was pleased. Every now and then she touched my hand.

We pulled into the station parking lot. Mr. Strangfeld was waiting with his beach buggy. Father got in front, and Mrs. Mertz squeezed in back with Zina and me. She kept talking. Everyone stopped listening but Mr. Strangfeld, who said
“Ja!”
a couple of times.

Finally Mrs. Mertz said something to him in German, which tickled him, and he said,
“Ja, ja, ja!”

We got off on the hard sand, and as we trudged up to the house through the soft sand Blackheart barked behind the screen door. Mother was there watching us. She let Blackheart out but didn’t come out herself. Mrs. Mertz gave Father a parting kiss on the cheek, a mistake. When we got inside, Mother was gone. Father and I changed and went for a swim. The ocean was in a late afternoon mood, smooth and cool. We avoided talking about town, I thought.

Mother brought it up at supper. “Did you get done everything you wanted to get done?” she said to Father.

“Just about.”

“Did Mrs. Mertz get done everything she wanted to get done?”

Father gave her his ironical quizzical look.

“I asked you a question.”

“I don’t know the answer.”

I said, “I went to the Mertzes’ last evening, and Mrs. Mertz was going out to dinner with a man named Jack Packard.”

“Would you say she got done what she wanted to get done?” Father said to me.

“I’d say she probably did. Zina wasn’t there.”

Mother stared down at her plate for a few seconds. We said nothing. She burst into tears. Father indicated that I should leave them alone. I went to my room.

Whatever Father was up to, I don’t remember blaming him very much. I suppose I didn’t take the problems between him and Mother seriously. And, sure enough, the next morning she was sunny, even though it was raining. Father had soothed her. Blackheart lay on his stomach by the stove, watching carefully, ready for fun. Mother asked me what I wanted for breakfast.

Zina appeared at the kitchen door. “Can Misha come out and play?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Zina asked me,” Mother said, “and you haven’t had your breakfast. Come in, dear. Have you had breakfast?”

“There’s a lovely warm rain out here that I don’t want to miss.”

I picked up a piece of coffee cake and gave Mother a mock-imploring look.

“Go!” she said. She really was in a good mood. Blackheart jumped to his feet.

My first recollection of warm rain was when I was five and Father carried me from the boat we had then up the bay beach and over the Point to the house. Out on the bay the rain had started gradually, and the sky turned yellow, the way it was now. We were tacking to shore in a slow wind, and I got grazed by the boom. It was nothing. Nonetheless Father beached the boat and carried me home like a baby. I remember looking up at the yellow sky and liking the warm rain.

Now Zina and I walked along the water’s edge. The ocean too had a yellow tinge. Zina wore a white cotton blouse, which soon was wet and clung to her breasts. I didn’t look at them directly, but I could see them. They were small in depth and large around. I suppose it would have been arousing if it had been any other girl, but I didn’t think of Zina that way. What I felt included sex, but the whole thing was so much more important than sex.

The water was pocked and subdued by falling rain. We shared the coffee cake. She sucked the crumbs off her fingers and then off mine. I told her about Father carrying me in the rain, and, the most remarkable thing, she told me that her first recollection of warm rain was walking hand in hand
with her father at low tide on the beach of the French resort Ile de Ré.

“Was the sky yellow?”

“I think so. What I remember most was feeling safe. We walked far out in the water. It seemed never to get deep. My father said the tide came in very fast and we had to be careful. He said it, I think, to give me a thrill, but he couldn’t scare me, I felt so safe. You’ve never been to Europe.”

“Not besides being born there.”

“How I’d like to show it to you! The first time Americans see Europe is like the first time they make love. They never forget it. Americans think they invented everything. But it all comes from Europe, the buildings, the furniture, the language. We’d spend a week in London and go to the theater every night. Then a week in Paris. Then we’d take the Paris-Rome overnight and stay up to see the Alps by moonlight.”

“Could we really go? If I went to Father and said we wanted to go to Europe and he said yes, would you really go?”

“Wouldn’t that be splendid! And it would help me.”

“How do you mean?”

“Misha, I want you to protect me.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m in danger.”

“What kind of danger?”

“I want you to protect me.”

“Of course I’ll protect you. I love you.”

“I know you do, that’s why I can ask you.”

“How are you in danger?”

“You know I’m a very self-controlled person.”

“Yes,” I said, although I didn’t particularly.

“I’m losing control.”

“Of what?”

“Of myself.”

“In what way?”

“Misha, I just want you to protect me.” She put her hand over my mouth, put her face close to mine, withdrew her hand like the leaf, and kissed me on the lips.

What was I supposed to do? The only sense I could make of it was that she was having some kind of mental trouble.

That evening—the rain had stopped—I invited Father to check out the ocean and told him about Zina. I thought maybe he should speak to Mrs. Mertz and suggest a doctor. He said it didn’t have to be mental trouble, it could be anything.

“Maybe you should talk to her yourself,” I said. “Maybe she’d tell
you
what it was, and we could help her.”

He said he might, and I felt better. But that night I had a dream. I was standing on a station platform in a foreign country. Zina was in a train that was pulling out and was
trying to tell me something through the window. But I couldn’t hear her. I tried to get on the train, but it was going too fast. When I woke I knew what it was. She had fallen in love.

After breakfast I got Father alone again and told him my dream and what I thought it meant. He nodded but didn’t really say anything.

In mid-morning Zina came by with Sonya and asked if Blackheart could go for a walk. I called him, and off he went, looking back to see if I was coming. As soon as they were out of sight I went to the guesthouse. Mrs. Mertz was sunning herself on the deck. “Hello, darling Misha. Zina went for a walk.”

“I came to see you, Mrs. Mertz.”

“People are beginning to talk, Misha.”

The only way to get into the subject was to tell her right off what Zina had said and ask her what she made of it. She sat up and listened carefully.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Misha, except that Zina is a high-strung girl. Not to go into details, she has had her share of problems, as who has not. Just what this one is, I don’t know. But let me put it another way. Both Zina and I tend toward the dramatic. I suspect whatever it is it’s not life threatening.”

“Do you think she’s fallen in love with someone?”

She gave me a shrewd look. “Those things are so … transitory. I don’t take them seriously until the people move in together.”

“Has Zina been in love before?”

“Every young girl has been in love before.”

“Then she has.”

“There was the boy with the Chinese eyes. There was … But, Misha, ask her yourself. She’ll tell you.”

“Would Henry know?”

“He’s a terrible gossip. He probably would. I must have the boys down. They
are
diverting. Henry took an especial shine to you. Well, ring him up, darling. He’ll take you to the best restaurant in town. His gallery is the St. Sébastien, not very original.”

FRIDAY I TOOK
Mrs. Mertz and Hillyer to town in the Angela.

“I know what Misha is up to, Hillyer,” Mrs. Mertz said, “but what about you?”

“I’m just relaxing. How about you, ma’am?”

“I’m up to no good.”

“Sounds good.”

“Let’s hope so.”

We moored in the marina. Mrs. Mertz and Hillyer went their way, and I went to the Galerie St. Sébastien. It was on the second floor of the town’s only art deco building. A pretty woman at a desk asked if she could help me. When I told her why I was there she gave me a wonderful smile,
said that Henry was busy with a client, wouldn’t be long, would I like to look at the show in the meantime? She handed me the catalogue.

Without it I would have thought the paintings were by a child. Stick figures in bright colors. A house with a door, two windows, chimney, smoke. A mailman and a dog, a red wagon, a cat with whiskers.

A bearded man was standing back and looking with amusement at the paintings. He asked me if I liked them. I said I did, but I thought I could have done them myself.

“Precisely why you like them,” he said.

He was about to begin a conversation when Henry came up behind me, locked my elbows in his hands, and whispered into my ear, “These little items start at fifteen big ones.”

“Hundreds?”

“Thousands. Like them?”

I said the same thing, I liked them, but I could have done them myself.

“Not so. You think you could have, but you missed your chance. At four or five, but not now. The thing about Odo, Odo Fürst, is there’s a part of him that’s still five years old. This is Odo’s first—oops, pun—his first show, and it’s a grand success. They came all the way from New York to review it, and you and I are going to celebrate at the best restaurant in town.”

The pretty woman reminded Henry that he had an appointment at three. He told her to put it off till the next day.

The restaurant, along the water, was Les Deux Amis, which I had heard about but not been to. It was run by a young couple, who told Henry they were coming to see his new show “soonest.”

Henry struck me as very handsome, with his deep tan and large, bright eyes. He told me he had been born in the Midwest, studied art history at Yale, “done advertising” in New York, and came here twelve years ago with a friend. The friend had sold him his half of the gallery, and here he still was. “Now how about you? Zina says you’re a real American.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Well, if I saw you on the street, hadn’t heard your voice, and your clothes didn’t give you away, I’d say you were … Milanese. I’d also say that your parents adore you, that your father is a judge, very proud of your academic record. He thinks you’ll be a scholar. Your mother knows your lighter side because she’s seen you among your contemporaries. She knows you’re destined to be loved, even though you will always present a somber face to the world.”

“My mother thinks I’m in for trouble.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“She thinks I’m heading for a fall.”

“Does she think you’re expecting too much from life?”

“Something like that.”

“You want to be a genius.”

“No, she thinks that about Zina. I don’t want to be a genius, I want to be happy.”

“Then definitely don’t be a genius. Zina is not a genius, by the way. She has talent and will do fine if she works hard. Photography doesn’t have many geniuses. It’s too easy to be good and too hard to be better than good. Tell your mother that Zina is not a genius. And tell her—no, better not—there’s something you could be right now. I know twenty photographers at least who are
searching
for you. There’s a lovely intensity about you, Misha. The agencies would just gobble you up. That is, if you never smiled. What you’d be selling is severity. After a year of it your face would be famous. Then one day a photographer catches you off guard. ‘Say
formaggio,
’ he says, and you smile. The spell is broken. Your career is over.”

He went on like this, describing my marriage to and divorce from “a very rich, older, I mean older, woman.” With money from the settlement I move to Switzerland and become “the toast of Zurich,” but my destiny lies in North Africa…

This was making me uncomfortable, and he stopped. He ordered sole Véronique for us. I had never had fish with fruit before. It was the best thing I had ever tasted.

The more he talked, the more I thought it was Henry that Zina was in love with. I also thought he was being so nice because he was happy about it. I asked him how long he had known Zina.

“Years and years. I lured them up here. So, tell me, what are you studying in school?”

“The regular things. Do you know Zina’s father?”

“Self-important. We can’t figure how Mrs. M stood him so long.”

“Does Zina show her pictures at your gallery?”

“All we do is painting and a little sculpture. Those photos you took of Zina are quite remarkable. Does photography interest you?”

“Not really, but I like Zina’s pictures. Did you see the beach grass?”

“And your
feet.
You’ll have poems written to those feet before you’re done.”

And that’s the way it went. Finally I said, “Henry, may I ask you something personal? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Are you and Zina going together?”

He was taken aback, at first I thought because I had discovered his secret. Then he looked to see if I was kidding. When he saw I wasn’t, he said solemnly, “No, Misha, Zina and I are not going together.”

“How about Wilder?”

“Wilder! No, no, no! You dear, dear boy, you’ve fallen in love. You’re blushing like a virgin.”

“I’m
not
a virgin.”

“I said
like.
Oh, dear lord!”

“You swear you’re not going with her.”

“I swear it, you poor creature. Nor is Wilder. Wouldn’t he be amused! When did this dreadful thing happen? You can tell Henry. Henry is a friend of love. You can tell Henry absolutely everything.”

I did, practically. He listened closely, clicking his tongue in disapproval at points, like Zina removing the leaf and encouraging me to sleep with Melissa. “How do you feel about sleeping with Melissa?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“You want to sleep with Zina.”

“No!”

“Yes! Listen to me, Misha. You still think there’s something sinful about love. And in fact there is, if you feel there is. Also, you think Zina has already slept with men, and you don’t want to be like the others. You’re different, your love is different…”

“Has she slept with men?”

“If she hasn’t she has a problem. So let’s say for her own good she has.”

“I just want to know if she’s in love with someone now.”

“Why do you think she might be?”

I told him what she said about being in peril and losing control and wanting me to protect her.

“That’s rather sophisticated of you to conclude she’s in love.”

“Will you find out for me?”

“You mean if and who?”

“You don’t know already, you swear it.”

“I swear it. But tell me something first. Why would knowing help?”

“If she isn’t in love it would be better, is all.”

“And if she is?”

“If she is, she is.”

“About the who. You wouldn’t shoot him, would you? Or her?”

“Shoot Zina?”

“I didn’t quite mean that. I meant if the him turned out to be a her. But I mustn’t joke. All right, I’ll try, and I’ll tell you if I honorably can.”

“How do you mean?”

“I can’t very well tell you something told to me in confidence. Misha, how old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“You’re certainly old enough for love, but you must know
somewhere deep down that this is not likely to work out.”

“I don’t care.”

“Of course you care. But you have no choice.”

“No, I have no choice.”

“All right, I’ll try to find out, not to satisfy your curiosity, but because it’s better to know. And I have another reason. It’s this. I don’t think your personality is fully formed. You’re an extremely intelligent and very attractive young man and grown up in many ways, but in other ways you’re not grown up. Your destiny has not been decided. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

I said yes, but I didn’t.

“In a word, your hash has not been settled, and this may settle it. We’ll go to my place, and we’ll find out, for better or worse. Okay?”

Like Father and me, Henry was a water person. Besides having the Chelsea Hotel, he lived in a houseboat moored not far from the restaurant. It was mostly one room, with a lot of portholes. You could feel the boat shifting and hear the slap of the water against the hull.

“The only problem with it,” Henry said, “is rats occasionally come aboard, including the two-legged kind.”

He pointed me into a sling chair, gave me a glass of vodka, and dialed Zina at the Point. “I have to get her talking without actually asking questions.”

He held up his hand. “Darling, you know I’m psychic… Yes, psycho too. You remember that dream I had, you were a siren singing at passing ships, and the next evening three Greek sailors came on to you. I was absolutely prescient… Yes, precious too. Listen, darling, last night I dreamt you came to me wrapped in a sheet… A bed sheet. Or maybe it was a winding sheet, and you said you were in trouble… You didn’t say… What you said was you were losing control…”

I waved my hands and shook my head. He was using the same words. She would know.

He patted the air reassuringly. “I
knew
it. Tell Henry everything.”

So she
was
in love. He listened, grunting every now and then. What was ominous, he only looked at me twice during the whole thing, and then quickly looked away. He said nothing, except for things like, “Say that part again” and “I don’t think so.” Finally his voice rose to close the conversation, “All right, sweetie… Yes, of course… We’ll talk,” and he hung up.

“Well, you heard it,” he said.

“Who is it?”

“She didn’t say who.”

“She talked and talked and didn’t say who?”

He held his palms up hopelessly.

“You
know
.”

“Misha, please.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

I think I was shouting, and I think he was a little frightened.

“Misha, I have lots to say to you, but you’re in no condition to listen. I want to help you, and I can, but you’ve got to quiet down. Why don’t you absorb the basic fact, and then we can talk.”

“You
know
.”

“Misha, go home!”