Something to Be Desired (13 page)

He knocked at the gate. Suzanne opened the door for him and returned immediately to the small compound. Where the sliding doors opened on the wading pool, James sat reading comic books. He probably does that a lot, Lucien thought. When he’d last seen James he really wasn’t interested in comics. He still had an extensive GI Joe collection. Now he wore camouflage and read comics.

“Can I make you a drink?”

“Are you having one?”

“I’m having quite a few,” she said.

“Okay,” Lucien said. “The usual.”

“I don’t know what the usual is,” said Suzanne, making one slow blink.

“It’s anything but scotch,” said Lucien. “Like how about some bourbon and water?”

“I’m not sure we have it.”

“What’s this tone?”

“No tone. I just didn’t know if it was there.”

Lucien sat next to James.

“Hi, Pop.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“Are you making a fortune?”

“I’m doing okay.”

“I wish we could make a fortune. Me and my mom. Maybe I’ll invent something.”

Suzanne returned with the drinks and sat in a wicker chair opposite Lucien and James. “Dinner failed,” she said with an inquisitive smile, as if to say, Now what?

“It can’t have. You made that pork roast a hundred times.”

“Goes to show you about memory,” she said.

“Do you want me to ring over to the kitchen?” Lucien asked evenly.

“I made something else. I was going with a terrific cook. He showed me a way to do calves’ liver. Yes and you’re going to love it.”

“He was a cook?”

“He was an investment analyst and a college vice-president, but he liked to cook, Lucien. He liked to cook.”

“I’ll bet that’s not all he liked to do.”

She pulled her pearls out from the collar of her blouse, regarded James with a smile and said, “Come to dinner.”

Instead of place mats, Suzanne had used parts of that night’s newspaper. Lucien had railroad cutbacks. James had sports. Lucien couldn’t see what Suzanne had. Their plates were stacked like the silverware, to be passed around. The dinner was in one deep skillet with a serving spoon. Suzanne used to make a great effort at presentation. When Lucien tasted his food, he found her cooking had improved considerably. There was some jug red wine and water glasses.

“How was your day?”

“Amazingly complicated,” said Lucien.

“We rather thought you’d come by,” said Suzanne.

“One of my guests died,” Lucien boomed over the liver. “I had to arrange shipment.”

There was quiet as James stared with youthful ghoulishness.
He cut his eyes to his mother in hopes of a deeper inquiry about the man who died. Then the three went on eating. Lucien couldn’t believe James would eat this meal. He’d probably learned to eat what he was given. In Honduras they used to take a table right onto the beach and sink the legs in the sand. They’d throw leftovers profligately to the seagulls and put the juice of wild limes on the mangoes they loved for dessert. They had the shade of the beach plum, and Suzanne would take the trouble of using real linens. Therefore this utilitarian presentation was something of a shock to Lucien. Maybe it was high-tech.

Suzanne got up and left the room. Lucien looked over at James while James ate. It seemed to Lucien that James took extraordinary care in cutting his food into uniform pieces. For a moment Lucien couldn’t understand why he did this; then he saw that it was fear that made James so careful.

“We’ve got to think of something,” said Lucien more ingenuously than he usually was with children. “Something we could do for fun.”

“What do you want to do?” James asked. He looked ready for flight.

“Do you still like to fish?”

“I haven’t done it in a long time.”

“What do you do for fun?”

“I fly radio-controlled airplanes.”

“Radio-controlled airplanes! What fun is that?”

James was frozen silent. He pushed his jet-black hair sideways as if trying to remember where it was parted. “Anyway, that’s what I do,” he said in a small voice.

“I just don’t know what that is,” said Lucien. Then, to makes things better, he asked, “Do you think it’s something I’d like?”

“No.”

“Jamesie, let’s go fishing. Let’s try it. If we don’t have fun, we’ll just quit right then. We’ll stop right there and that’ll be it. We’ll try this radio-control stuff.”

“I don’t have my plane,” said James in terror. “It’s not here.”

“What’s happened to your mother? Go check and see what your mother is up to.”

James got up with an air of diffidence and of duty and went into the adjoining rooms. When he returned, he said, “She’s not coming out.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“She said she was sorry.”

“Well, I’m sorry too,” said Lucien, concealing his shock. “But tomorrow, let’s fish or something, okay? And uh, that’ll be good, okay? So, around eight o’clock, Jamesie. And you be ready.”

Lucien got up and left the White Cottage. He was stunned.

Lucien smoked for a while on the hillside and watched the moon rise, then continued his walk toward the spring. He had learned to gauge the day-use traffic and the activities of the bar merely by the sounds the building itself gave off. It was busy tonight and that was sufficient, though he felt quite sunk. He went alongside the main building, absentmindedly testing the height of the shrubbery plantings with his hand as he went. He could smell curing paint from the new siding, and the deep breath of the
spring was everywhere. A high, hysterical laugh penetrated from the bar; then it was quiet again. Lucien wandered clear around the front of the building to the parking lot. It was nearly full, many local license plates; and among the cars was the station wagon.

Lucien walked to the rear window and looked in.
No
. Though all you could see was the shipping container, there was Kelsey. Lucien thought, Why have you sent me this? I’m serious.

He called Antoinette at home.
“Where’s Zane?”

Quiet, then: “Why?”

“Kelsey’s still in the driveway.”

“Has he missed his plane?”

“Yes, he missed it. It was the Frontier five-fifteen to Minneapolis.”

“I guess Zane got scared.”

“Isn’t Zane your nephew?”

“Yes …”

“I’m in the mood to plow the little shit
way
back.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Taylor.”

“The next time you ring in some kinsman, make sure he’s grown fingerprints. Now look, I’m going to haul Kelsey to the airport. When I get there I’ll call you with his schedule. Then the rest is yours and Zane’s.”

“I’ll take care of it. Do you want to give Zane a second chance?”

“Not at all.”

Huge birds of prey soared in the vague artificial light over the spring as in a very ancient time; the steam plumes reached to the birds and didn’t quite make it, though they showed wind shifts sooner than the birds did. I wonder if they know I’ve got Kelsey. Lucien started the engine and drove down to the stables. He yelled in to
Roy to go ahead and feed Lucifer; he had to go to the airport with a guest. What did I do to deserve this?

He stopped in at the Deadrock Bar and Grill for a quick one, and had more than one. The back bar seemed as reassuring as a four-poster on a winter’s night. There was a playoff game on the hanging TV and Lucien shouted, “Hook ’em, Horns,” until someone next to him reminded him that Texas wasn’t in the game. It was Purdue and Somebody State. Nevertheless, there was a lot of handshaking. Here and there an enemy squinting with regal glee. Lucien set his empty drink down hard on the bar to indicate the end. Out with the wallet. “I’ve got to get my rear end to the airport.” The bartender turned to the register.

“The airport is closed.”

“What?”

The bartender made change blankly and Lucien left it as a tip. He tottered to the door, then swung abruptly to the pay phone. He called Antoinette and explained everything.

“I think you better get some sleep,” said Lucien with boozy, inappropriate affection.

“Mrs. Kelsey must be simply shattered beyond words. She’s already met one plane,” said Antoinette.

“She’ll be fine. Call her right now and find out what she wants us to do. Tell her the weather prevented us from getting to the airport today.”

Lucien went down the street and watched the teenage girls for fifteen minutes by the clock. Then he returned to the phone. Lucien had decided to lie. Antoinette picked it up.

“Mrs. Kelsey said bury him here. She said she’s sick of all this. She says she’s had it up to here.”

“Religious preference?”

“Nondenominational.”

“Can we use Dominic’s priest?”

Sacajawea Memorial Cemetery had been unsuccessful. Vault rentals were meant to carry the note, but locally it was viewed as citified, a meaningless luxury. Doing this at night took the curse off a death at the spa; so Lucien’s crew—his horseshoer Garby, Henchcliff the chef, the ever-considerate Dominic Armada, two waiters Sunshine and Farther, the trail boss Steven Thomas Castine, and Father Alerion—all stood around the viewless dynamite hole at the rear of Sacajawea Memorial, gone Chapter Eleven for its venturesome owner. One little roll and Kelsey seemed to leap into the next world, or at the minimum, the ergonomics of the grave. The staff immediately finished the job with garden tools from the hot spring.

“Our Father—” began Father Alerion, pulling down his Navy watch cap.

“Nondenominational,” Lucien reminded him. Alerion sent up weary eyes at him.

“Dear God in heaven—”

“Nope.” Lucien shook his head intransigently.

“How ’bout ‘Good luck’!” shouted Father Alerion.

So “Good luck” it was, and then a long spell as the earth reclaimed Mr. Kelsey, as the soil of the American West fell upon him; and suddenly, for all of them, there was something sad about this because, for example, who was he? The eight men stood in pyramidical silence.

And now it was very dark, yes, very solemn. Lucien suggested they go back for a small dinner, something, a note in a bottle, from eight strangers, to show that the immemorial balm of mourning was not something absolutely lost to mankind.

“Jesus Fucking Christ,” said Henchcliff. “I’ve been cooking since six this morning.”

“I noted some perfect breasts of mallards I shot, enough endive for a big salad, or you are at liberty to braise it. Those lovely new potatoes didn’t go unnoticed. Stir-fry the cauliflower as of yore. And I’d like a nice cigar in a number four ring size with a maduro wrapper.”

They sat at the long table in the kitchen while an exhausted Henchcliff slammed serving bowls with one hand and reeled around with an expensive cabernet in the other like some anomalous sailor with a family vineyard in Bordeaux. Dominic got tired of this noise and gave Henchcliff his homicidal grin with the veins of his skull in bas-relief: “Y’makin too much noise. Y’folla me?” Henchcliff quieted right down but resorted to breathing through his teeth. One cut of Dominic’s rheumy killer eyes and Henchcliff brought that to a stop as well. From Lucien’s point of view, Henchcliff was greatly improved.

One of the waiters noted that death was a long tunnel aimed at a cheerful light. Lucien wondered if he had missed a television special. The food was wonderfully prepared, a genuine salute to the departed. Henchcliff sat down, slack with alcohol and the sense he was being used. Dominic gave a very strict recount of the afterlife: heaven, purgatory and hell. Hell was particularly vivid, having been modeled in all its details on New Jersey waste-disposal sites. Purgatory you could hack; and you entered heaven without having to use the stairs, or having to listen to the neighbors screech, and without having to climb over a wino on the front stoop. In heaven you never ran out of silk, patent leather and mohair.

“How about you, Father Alerion?” Lucien asked.

“It’s in the Book,” said Alerion. “I didn’t imagine a word or two on Our Lord’s behalf would do any harm.”

“I was under strict orders.”

“From an apostate?”

“Nope.” Lucien speared a slice of rare duck. “His wife.” He turned to one hippie waiter. “Clean your plate.”

“I have, thanks.”

“Attaboy. Now run get Lucifer and bring him to the hitching rack with the plantation saddle. His is the cavalry bridle. ‘US’ on the cheekbuttons.” The waiter got up, a little put out at being removed from the company. “No charge for the meal,” Lucien said as the hippie left the room. “Henchcliff, it amazes me how well you cook even when you’re in a bad mood. I salute your carry-on-regardless approach to your craft.”

“Thank you.”

Garby, the horseshoer, grinned through everything with a fixed grateful expression. Lucien thought that if one had nothing to say, it was a successful stance. Experience had shown him, though, that people like this are quick to blow up, and to pummel people around them.

Then it was quiet. It was the middle of the night. Lucien was still toying with the idea, quite genuinely, that Kelsey might as well have been him. When my time comes, I want some ceremony. This was just terrible.

Lucien said goodnight and went out from the front of the main lodge, where Lucifer stood almost imperceptible in the darkness. He threw the reins up over the horse’s neck, mounted and rode off.

He took the long way home. His cigar made a ruby light that arced as he held it away from his body and
tapped the ash. Suzanne and James would be curled up now. The reins hung in Lucien’s fingers like a small plumb weight. Every now and then a bright spark flew from a steel horseshoe and it seemed wonderful how bright and emotionless country air could be. Was Suzanne afraid of him?

Lucien put his horse away and got into bed, into clean sheets and a wool blanket taut across his body. He lay on his back and crossed his arms on his chest. As he drifted into sleep, he pretended he was slipping away from the dock into the next life.

Lucien got up at daybreak. When he went outside, the moisture was still in the ground and the ground itself seemed to be beginning a day-long respiration as the smell of grass and open dirt and evergreens hung on the unmoving air. He walked down to the corral and opened the gate to the upper pasture. The horses crowded each other in the passage, then ran and bucked onto the new ground. There were flatiron clouds over the far ranges, and they were the color of wet slate. Lucien put his cup of coffee on top of a post and threw some hay up into the metal feeder. He reached through with his jackknife and cut the binder twine, pulled the strings out, looped them and hung them on a plank. The salt was all cupped out from the working of tongues, but more than half the block was left. He could hear the whine of a cold-starting tractor down at the neighbor’s ranch. He’ll do that until the
battery is dead, thought Lucien, then go in and watch the soaps. An old-timer.