Second Chances (23 page)

“Hoist on their own petard.” Sara laughs.

“Exactly.”

By now the two women like each other very much, feeling themselves almost perfectly in accord.

“And then,” Sara continues, “at the end of the party I had a really ugly scene with him. He’s a cokehead, I was pretty sure about that, and I could see he was running low. In fact out.” And Sara describes that scene to Dudley: Bill’s rage, her own anger, and her fear.

Dudley asks, “You mean you think he recognized you?”

“Well, not necessarily. Probably not. He was half-drunk, and getting into withdrawal. I got the feeling he just deeply hates all women. Which of course is not at all the same thing as being gay. Celeste gets some things very confused.”

“Oh, right,” says Dudley. “Edward likes women a lot. So does Freddy, actually.”

“None of this explains what he was up to with Celeste, though,” Sara muses.

Surprisingly, Dudley seems to have worked out this last. “I think that was mostly Celeste. That relationship, whatever you want to call it, was mostly her doing, and mostly in her own head, I think. She took the initiative. You know, she was the one so struck with his looking like Charles. She made so much of that, and then running into him in the antique store, that same day. I really think she was so deranged with missing Charles that she was looking for omens, and almost anything would serve. And I’m sure he was interested in her money—Celeste always looks richer than she is.”

By now so absorbed in their conversation, Sara and Dudley have halted in their walk, without quite knowing that they did so. In the brisk blue sunny air they stand there on a grassy hillock, high above the still-raging sea, the angry surf of which they are for the moment quite oblivious.

It is Dudley who poses the next crucial question. “What do you think this Bill Jones really does, though?” she asks, quite as though Sara would know.

And Sara seems to, or at least she has a very definite opinion. “I think he’s still CIA. Of course he is. He was probably just monkeying around with the files at the IRS, getting after some poor bastard. Up to no good. I’m sure all those agencies ‘cooperate’ with each other. And Celeste saw him there looking official, so what was easier than to tell her he worked there?” She pauses, then plunges ahead. “His
antique store is probably a front for dope dealing in Central America. That’s what the CIA is really into these days.”

“Jesus,” Dudley breathes. “You know, I’m absolutely sure you’re right.”

Sara for her part is exhilarated, both with new friendship and with having been proved right, or almost. Her sense of herself during much of her life has been of muddle, of misguidedness. She did the best she could, Sara has thought, but so often things did not work out, and she felt that she could and should have acted otherwise. She could have been saner, wiser, stronger, more generous.

“I must tell you a really far out theory of Sam’s,” now says Dudley, in the tone (recognized as such by Sara) of a new friend proffering a gift. “It sounds so crazy, but then he’s so often right. Well, he thinks that the contras are somehow getting money from Iran.”

“Iran? But however—”

Dudley laughs. “He won’t say, and he hates it when he gives out one of his theories and then you ask him about it. But you wait, it’ll turn out he’s exactly right.”

Sara can accept this. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t put it past anyone.”

“You’ll see,” repeats Dudley. “And then, this is a sillier idea, but it’s pretty strange. He thinks that Charles and Polly had some tremendous affair, a long time ago. When Charles was in Paris.”

“Polly? How amazing. But really not, when you think of it. She’s such an unusual woman, she could have done almost anything. I feel that about her. But how extraordinary of Sam. What made him think that, do you know?”

“He won’t ever say. I’m not sure if he
can
say, actually. He just gets certain vibrations—oh, messages, like a medium. And he hates to be asked about them.”

“What’s his sense of Bill, then? Has he said?” Sara has asked this a little anxiously, despite new confidence, new friendship. The fact that Bill is both a cokehead and very hostile to women does not necessarily make him a big CIA dope dealer, she knows that perfectly well. Nor can she be absolutely sure that he is or ever was Priest.

“Really not.” Dudley hesitates. “He’s not so well today, in fact he feels terrible. Remember, he had to leave early last night? But it’s just the flu, I’m sure.”

“My flu took forever to get over,” Sara tells her (Sara, whose own intuition has just informed her that Sam is sicker than sick with flu, but of course she must be wrong). “But now I feel great.”

“And, Sara, you do look marvelous. I hope everyone said that to you last night.”

“Celeste’s regime.” Sara laughs. “She’s got me entirely off meat. Lots of fruits and veggies. Fish and chicken. She swears we’ll both live forever. Which I doubt. But at least I’ve taken off a few pounds. But poor Celeste, do you know that she sometimes sneaks peanut butter, just hoping she’ll gain a little?”

Dudley has sometimes thought, and she now thinks again, of the similarity between the start of friendships and love affairs. There are discoveries of areas of rapport (so charming!—so seemingly unique!); the compliments; the laughing at each other’s jokes; the richly insightful discussions of other friends. And then the later days, as in love, when the friend is less amusing, and you forget to tell her how great she looks, if indeed she does look great. Dudley sighs. She feels that she is almost too old for the intensity of yet another new friend—and surely too old for new love. And then her mind reverts to Sam, and she thinks, He
has
to get well.

Smiling to herself with pleasure at Dudley’s compliment (and knowing it to be true: she does look well, Sara can see it for herself), she smiles too at a further memory of that crucial sixties night in North Beach. Or, rather, she recalls the ending of that night, back in Berkeley, with Alex. And it is not love so much as cleanliness, safety and warmth that Sara remembers.

At that time Alex had a room with a private bath, on Parker (the only hint from that era that he had more money than the rest of them, although the room was explained at the time as a favor from someone, some family connection). And that night, having escaped together from the Tac Squad, from that North Beach alley, after the long, jolting, uncomfortable and slightly frightening ride on the E bus, back to Berkeley, to Alex’s room, then Sara took a long bath. Such a luxury, at a time in her life when the most semi-functioning, almost powerless stand-up showers were treats. She lay in the long tub, in deep hot water. Her heavy breasts floated upward, and she thought, Such a relief, floating breasts. (On principle, Sara went bra-less, so uncomfortable for a D-cup woman.) Alex came in, himself all
clean and fair, and beautiful, and as she sat up he soaped her back, and then he wrapped a nice big towel around her. He seemed more aware than Sara herself of how frightened she had been, and how cold. Later in Alex’s bed they probably made love—at that time they always did, given privacy and anything resembling a bed. But what Sara now most remembers, what makes her smile, is the memory of Alex’s care—in Sara’s life an almost unique experience: generally she has been the person taking care, the one giving baths, rubbing backs. Comforting frightened people. Coming up with clean clothes, clean towels, hot soup.

She finds these last thoughts slightly embarrassing, though. Is she sorry for herself, after all? And is that what she really wants from men, such primitive care? Well, sometimes it is, she has to admit. But surely that is what they often seem also to want? It may be all right?

The weather has begun to change again as Dudley and Sara have slowly walked along—paying little attention to either weather or scenery while they were talking, so absorbingly—on the beaten-down grass, above the turbulent sea. Dark clouds have appeared, amazingly sudden, and a strong cold wind has come up.

“There could be another storm,” Dudley tells Sara, the newcomer to these parts.

Sara shivers a little, and she laughs as she says, “I never can understand California weather. It’s always so, so irrational. So abrupt.”

“Oh, right, that’s how I’ve always felt. Even after all these years. The weather in New England made some sort of sense to me. Or at least I used to think so.”

“Oh, that’s how I felt when I was back there, I recognized the weather in New England,” says Sara.

“But I think we’d better get back.” Worried Dudley.

“Yes. God, it’s so cold.”

Almost running as they head for the car, Dudley has the sudden and absolute sense that Sam is extremely, quite possibly mortally ill. No chance of error: she knows. And she stumbles across the soggy ground in her haste to get to him. At the same time, she has the irrelevant thought, I forgot to tell Sara about the goats! I meant to and now it’s too late, I can’t really think about anything but Sam.

“It’s as though a tidal wave had hit the town.” This is how, in early March, Sara describes the death of Sam Venable. She is speaking to Alex, whom she has instinctively called for comfort; also everyone else around is too upset for conversation. Sam’s death is still so painfully felt by them all.

Sam died on the day that Sara and Dudley took their walk, during which so much of moment was discussed—the sunny afternoon that succeeded the stormy, wind-whirled night of Celeste’s least successful party. Dudley came home from that walk to find Sam in what appeared to be a deep sleep, which was in fact a coma, from which he did not emerge. A most fortunate, peaceful death, Dudley was assured, as though that were more than the very smallest comfort.

“They’re all so stricken,” Sara now goes on to Alex. “It’s terrible for them. The reminder of their own mortality, of course. That’s partly it. Sam being the first of that charmed circle of theirs to go. After Charles, I mean.”

“Of course.”

“Celeste has been so upset that she can’t even mention it,” Sara continues. “I guess Sam’s dying has made her think even more about Charles.”

“Well, it would.”

Sara and Alex have fallen into a pattern of frequent conversations—every week or so one or the other of them calls, and Alex by now is almost familiar as Sara is with the habits and histories of the people she lives among in San Sebastian. Alex is an excellent listener—the best, Sara often thinks, of any man she has ever known.

“Besides,” Sara tells him, “she’s still so upset about Bill just cutting out like that. And still not another word. I’m awfully tempted to tell her what I really think of him, including the coke. And how he acted with me. But I know I shouldn’t, she really couldn’t handle it.”

“You’re probably right,” Alex tells her. “But it was a very Priestlike disappearance.”

“It sure was.”

“Well,” says Alex, “I’m still trying to find out what I can. But it’s got a lot harder. They’re much more closed down, you know. Signs that are hard to read.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I’ll keep at it, though.”

A small silence between them ensues, until Sara takes it up again, saying, “Anyway, poor Dudley. Celeste’s really been no help to her at all. Celeste can’t help Dudley, she’s not well enough herself.”

“It’s good you’ve turned up, then, so to speak,” Alex tells her.

“I guess. It does seem oddly provident. My being here for all these events. On the other hand I think Celeste always knows what she’s doing, really. I mean, she would
know
just when to ask me here.”

“What I really want to know is, when can I see you?” Alex now says—as he has before, fairly often, in the course of these new-old long conversations.

“Well—” Sara, as always, hesitates. “Oh, Alex, I’d love to see you, in a way. But.”

“ ‘But.’ ” He laughs. “It’s complicated where you are, I know. But, Sara, it’s so cheap now, fares are down to nothing, how can I afford
not
to come?” This is of course a joke, the fact that Alex has money has become something they laugh about—otherwise Sara cannot, as she puts it, “deal” with it.

“It’s very complicated,” is all that for the moment she says.

“I send love, then,” says Alex. “Whatever I mean by that.”

She laughs. “Me too. Whatever.”

“Sara, do you need any, uh, money?” He has not so clearly asked her this before.

“Dear Alex, no. Unfortunately, uh, money wouldn’t help.”

*  *  *

Sara’s description of the effect of Sam’s death on that small group of his intimates was accurate: it was quite as catastrophic and as unexpected as a tidal wave would in fact have been. What they had all, their separate ways, believed would happen to none of them had indeed happened to Sam. Handsome green-eyed, somewhat strange, Southern Sam, now gone. Overweight, occasionally surly, more often hypercourteous Sam, entirely gone. Talented, remarkable unique Sam Venable, reduced to cold flesh, now buried in his box and becoming dust. It was as terrible, as horrendous, as it was unthinkable. And they thought about it all the time. About Sam. About dying.

In a way they all felt, and they said to each other that they felt, they had hardly known Sam. He was not an easy man to know, and they were not given enough time with him.

The comforting and the general care of Dudley have fallen to Sara, or perhaps out of lifetime habit she takes them upon herself. It was Sara who, on the evening of the funeral (to general surprise, Sam had wanted a traditional Episcopal service; “You have no idea how Southern Sam really was,” Dudley told them all)—on that evening Sara called Dudley to say that she was coming over with a casserole. She’d be glad to stay overnight, if that would be helpful at all.

Well, it really would, said Dudley.

Together, at Dudley and Sam’s table, now Dudley’s table, Sara and Dudley ate their dinner. (The excellent food was a considerable surprise to Dudley: radical, far-out Sara, a most sophisticated cook?) And they talked, that night, almost not at all (another good surprise for Dudley, who had feared that conversation would be expected).

Only, once or twice Dudley said, “Dear Sara, it’s so good of you to be here, and this dinner is wonderful.” To which Sara answered, “But I’m afraid I’m not much help.”