The Carousel (23 page)

“Come look at the bathroom. It’s bigger than the bedroom I had at home. It’s got a Jacuzzi and Clive had a skylight put in. What’s the matter, don’t you like it?”

“Of course I do. There’s nothing not to like.”

“Now listen to this. No, come in here. Listen. Even in the guest rooms.” She flipped a switch, and music came pouring out. “All over the house, anyplace you want it,” Roxanne announced as though nobody had ever heard of such a thing before.

Well, probably she had not. “Very nice,” he said.

“Clive likes to hear music in bed. It’s nice, except that we don’t enjoy the same kind. He likes Moz—moz?” she finished, uncertainly.

“Mozart.”

“But he likes to listen to what I like, too. Sometimes we dance. I’ve taught him. Watch.”

She raised the volume so that the hall and all the rooms were filled with the rock and boom of a
band. And moving into the rhythm, she made a glissade down the long hall and returned to Ian, whirling, shaking her breasts, tossing the short, full skirt to reveal what he had known, that she was naked underneath it.

“Well, how about that?” Her eyes sparkled. And suddenly, she flung herself on him. “One kiss. I order it. Come on. It won’t cost you anything.”

The perfume was roses, pine, new hay, warm fruit, warm woman. Her mouth tasted like raspberries. He tried to free himself of her tight hold and wasn’t able to because she was strong; then, though he surely was the stronger, he still wasn’t able to, and then didn’t want to. Even at gunpoint he could not have stopped what had begun. And still with her lips attached to his he picked her up and carried her to the guest room’s bed.

The one sane thought that fled through his mind was, Not in there. Not where she lies with him. Then all thought fled.

When he woke up, it was almost midnight by his wristwatch. Roxanne had been watching him sleep. He rose on his elbow and frowned.

“Don’t you know people don’t like being stared at while they’re asleep?”

“How can you not like it when you’re asleep and don’t know they’re doing it?”

“Ah, don’t be stupid.”

“Men always like to think women are stupid.”

He had to smile. Be darned if she didn’t sound like Amanda Grey.

“You’re so sweet when you smile, Ian.”

At once his smile receded. What had he done? What a dirty business this was! He had felt enough guilt these past years on account of Happy, but now he had committed a double offense. My God, if this business tonight had given Roxanne any ideas, he would have wrecked poor Clive’s life. And in what might turn out to be his last few years, too.

“Don’t look so miserable, Ian,” she said, reading his mind. “We’re not taking anything away from anybody.”

He got up hurriedly to put on his clothes. He was terribly anxious.

“You said, that day I came here, that you intended to keep faith with Clive and the bargain you made with yourself. If you don’t, if you dare—”

“I intend to keep it, Ian. I’ve grown fond of Clive. But this has nothing to do with him. He’ll never, never know,” she said calmly, putting the green dress back on.

How queer it all was! A few hours ago she had driven him to her will, making her will his own, while now he was only tired, fearful, and in a rush to get away from her. And foolishly he stammered, seeking words.

“You—you
actress
!”

“I wasn’t an actress just now,” she said. “That
was the real thing.” She looked into his eyes. “And you know it.”

He almost ran down the stairs. At the bottom she caught up with him.

“You know you’ll want to do this again. We owe it to ourselves, Ian. When can we?”

“When your husband’s in the hospital.”

“He’s coming out soon, so what then?”

“You’ve got your answer.”

“But we owe it to ourselves. It’s not hurting anybody,” she pleaded.

“You forgot to make the potato soup,” he called back when he was halfway out the door.

“Oh my God!”

From the driveway as he got into his car, he saw through the lighted kitchen window that she had put a little heap of potatoes on the table and was peeling them. She was crying.

Well, it was a mess, that’s all.

When he let himself into his empty house, the silence roared up at him. Even the dog was gone, for Happy had taken it along so it would not be home alone all day.

When he saw the blinking light on the answering machine, he knew that the voice would be Happy’s. “It’s eleven o’clock and I still haven’t heard from you, so I think that must mean it hasn’t gone well for Clive. I know you won’t wake this household after midnight, but please call me first thing in the morning, as early as six. I love you. Good night.”

He clapped both hands to his head. Oh, damn, damn, damn. Then he went up to bed and lay awake, going over the day and the night just past.

It seemed to him that he was like an alcoholic, the kind of fellow who gets along fine without a drink but cannot refrain if he’s left alone in a room with a bottle on the table in front of him. Or it seemed to him that maybe he had not reached his chronological age, that he had lingered behind in the collegiate years. To be a steady guy like Dan must be much less complicated.… Not that Dan was perfect; he was a stubborn bastard. Take this business of Grey’s Woods. Stubborn, stupid, sentimental fool.

His mind was hopping from one thing to the other, all these disturbances, Clive with cancer, all crowding in. How could a man sleep? He went downstairs and got the morning paper from the hall table, came back to bed and tried to read it.

The paper was full of trouble. Naturally. Troubles made news. Damn right they made news. He shuddered. He wondered whether Roxanne was any danger in that respect. Probably not. But on the other hand, maybe. She was emotional, quick-tempered, and sorry afterward. He really, really, really did not want to be alone with her ever again.

Yet he knew, and this is what scared him so, that very probably he would be, and then—white legs dancing, huge eyes dancing, mocking, laughing, taste of raspberries on her lips—where are we all going? he wondered. Nothing stays the same,
that one knows. Something has to happen. But what?

“Ahhh,” he cried, threw the paper on the floor, and turned off the light. Dawn was already rising at the window.

December 1990

A
storm was mounting. Its winds already threatened gale force. Or you might say that a fire, begun with a low crackle in the underbrush, would soon be roaring through the treetops. Unless we can call a halt, Ian thought. But how?

He turned on the desk light and went over the newspaper for the third time that morning.

“It is reported”—and here he gave a snort of contempt for reporters’ reports, nasty snoopers all—“that the two cousins, Ian and Daniel Grey, are no longer speaking to each other but send messages through their secretaries.”

Well, that was partially true. His eyes then skipped to the editorial and read:

“Cool heads” indeed. How many of you good citizens would turn down a twenty-eight-million-dollar offer so that you would never need to get up by the clock and go to work, never again for the rest of your life? How many, hey? And yet you expect me to do it.

Across from the editorials came a full-page paid advertisement signed by various “concerned citizens” who had established a Committee to Save Grey’s Woods. On the next page came letters to the editor from nature lovers and lovers of free enterprise alike, most of them indignant and even caustic.

He shoved the paper aside and picked up a sheaf
of letters, muttering as he read. There was one from Amanda again, an ultimatum until the first of the year, when she would be coming east herself. There was one from her New York lawyers, a top firm, five hundred dollars an hour; she meant business, to spend all that much. Ian’s temples pounded. There was one from the consortium’s New York lawyers with a photostatic enclosure from Sweden; they, too, wanted immediate action after the first of the year. Even so, they warned, the deal was not to be taken for granted because there were a good many items to be ironed out before conclusion. The last letter came from Grey’s Foods’ own counsel, three solid pages of cautious analysis.

And tossing them all aside, he jumped up and left the room, banging the door so loudly that his secretary in the outer office looked up in dismay. He strode down the hall and without knocking burst into Dan’s room, shouting.

“Well? Have you done your reading this morning?”

“I assume you mean Amanda’s letter.”

“Yes. Two-gun Amanda. And from her lawyers. She’ll ruin us.”

“Not necessarily. I’m not yet willing to concede. There must be a way out.”

Dan made him sick sometimes with his calm, blind, stupid optimism.

“The only way out is to go along with Sweden, as I’ve explained to you a hundred times by now. With this cash, we—”

Dan raised his hand. “Please. Not again.”

“Well, why the hell don’t you listen to me, then? It’s our last chance. They’re tired of the shilly-shallying. And you sit there like an imbecile! I can’t get anywhere with Clive, can’t press him, can’t even talk to him because he’s too sick. So it’s two against two, and that’s an impasse, and we’ll lose the deal but still have Amanda to contend with. We’re going to crash. You know something? Grey’s Foods is going to crash.”

Dan said with some bitterness, “I thought you wanted to get rid of it anyway, so you could have a free life while you’re young enough to enjoy it, you said.”

“No. I’m perfectly willing to pay for my share and let you run it with Clive.”

“You know Clive and I couldn’t run this thing alone even if he were well.”

“He’s getting back on his feet. He’s only got another month of chemotherapy, if that. And I do think that you two could run it.”

“Well, we can’t. And you just said before that he’s too sick for you to talk to him, chemotherapy or not.”

“Will you stop nitpicking? All right, so you and Clive can’t run it, and it closes up. Liquidates. There’s a big difference between that and collapsing because Amanda drives it to the wall.”

“Liquidates,” Dan repeated. He got up from his desk and walked to the window, from which one saw the new office wing, the warehouses, a railroad siding, a load of tomatoes coming by truck
from the farm, three trucks departing with cartons bound all over the country, and old Felix, the retired pensioner who still hung about because Grey’s was home. A panorama.

Without looking, Ian knew what Dan was seeing. And he knew, too, what Dan was thinking because he had heard it often enough.
All this, so long abuilding, to pass into strange hands. Or, worse yet, and more probably, to be absorbed by some megacorporation, sold off in pieces, and moved away.
There was truth in it as well as pain. Ian felt twinges of pain himself.

But twenty-eight million dollars!

“Let it at least go down with dignity, Dan, if it has to. Better that than letting Amanda wreck it.”

Even from where he stood on the other side of the room, he could hear the long sigh. After a minute or two, Dan turned around. He looked as sad as anyone Ian had ever seen, stricken and sad. But he spoke quietly.

“All right, Ian, I give up. Take charge. Do whatever you think best.”

The afternoon was extraordinarily mild, considering that this was the first week in December. The last few leaves fell straight down in the windless air. Sally and Dan, with Clive between them, walked slowly around the paddock at the riding academy.

“Let’s take Clive out Saturday afternoon,” Dan had suggested. “He’s been wanting to visit his
horse, and Roxanne apparently has to go someplace.”

He looks terrible, Sally thought. It was not just the baldness, for Clive had lost all his hair except for a sparse circle around a naked dome; it was the color, the fish-white pallor. But they said he was doing very well, as he himself proclaimed. He had been going to the office three times a week after the rest at home that followed each treatment.

“How are you doing?” asked Dan. “We can sit on a bench for a while if you want to.”

“I guess maybe I will. I’m still kind of weak. It seems years since I was last on a horse’s back.”

“You’ll be on horseback sooner than you think,” Dan said.

“Oh, I do think. I know it.”