The Houseguest (2 page)

It was amidst his professional documents that Doug invariably filed souvenirs of his current sexual activities. Not only was this a place of nearly perfect concealment—for the black-leather case was clasped by a combination lock that would be proof against even the innocent intrusion of office assistants—but the practice also could be considered an expression of her husband's wit with regard to erotic activity, indeed the only area of such manifestation, for it would probably not have been unfair to characterize Doug as virtually humorless elsewhere in life. Thus what a surprise when, on their own first date, in fact before they had finished their coffee, the until then staid young man had displayed, down on the seat of the banquette, below the line of vision of fellow diners, a little rubber monkey that when squeezed simulated masturbating a pneumatic pink phallus. Audrey would have been appalled by this and subsequent antics had she not been captivated by the sheer incongruity between the premature fogeyism displayed by Doug when his fly was closed and his capability for the outrageous act when it was open. Once when, as an affianced couple, they had dined with his old half-blind aunt, he reached below the tablecloth and brought Audrey's hand over to bear upon that which jutted from his crotch—this while, bending over his plate, on the other side, was the young maidservant, whom, as Audrey realized only many years later, Doug had surely already enjoyed, for in remembering the incident she could recall that the girl, a newly emigrated Pole, had still been blushing when she reached Audrey with the peas, and probably not, as Audrey had then assumed, because she had seen what was happening in Doug's lap but rather because he had simultaneously put his other hand up the girl's skirt. He was only too capable of such a trick, and was to pull far worse. In years to come Audrey was to read an almost dementedly indecent note written to him by Didi Montrose, once her best friend, in which reference was made to what Doug had been doing to her as the back end of the comic horse they formed together at the mock circus for the children's hospital fund—and not just as they waited in the wings: he had persisted in his dirty work, keeping Didi in a state of ecstasy, even as they cavorted under the spotlights.

Whereas Doug might sit in silence throughout the most comic of plays, and even scowl if the humor verged remotely on the sexually suggestive.

Audrey now entered her husband's quarters, which were beyond her own and at the very end of the hallway. Corresponding to her own little dressing room was a small study for him, with a leather-topped desk over which hung an antique map, with its quaint distortions, of the then known world. To the left of the pristine blue blotter in its black leather holder was a flat box of polished oak containing a working telephone as well as an answering machine. This instrument was used exclusively for communications from Doug's girls, who assumed, no doubt on his assurances, that all such would be confidential and were unaware of Audrey's regular monitoring.

She now opened the lid of the box to see that the machine's little red light was signaling that it had recorded at least one message. Having rewound the tape and played it back, she determined that not one but three women had telephoned Doug since he had last collected his messages, which must have been only an hour or so earlier, unless he was now so disaffected as not to be moved to action by a winking red light and had allowed the calls to collect: not out of the question, for Doug could be ruthless with the overimportunate, and one of the callers, all but shrieking in resentment and self-pity, claimed to have been seeking him unsuccessfully since late Friday. Whether or not hers was a serious emergency was impossible to tell at this point, this being a new voice to Audrey, but there could be little doubt that if her style remained hysterical, whatever the legitimacy of her pains, the woman would be dumped, perhaps already had been. Doug would not tolerate emotional excess. What he provided in return was an extraordinary sexual endurance, which according to the unsolicited testimony of so many partners he retained even at the age of fifty-four. Indeed, on the very tape at hand one of the women alluded to his powers in starkly obscene language—and she too might well be a candidate for dismissal: even in private Doug was bluenosed with regard to language.

The case of one Barbara Rentzel was remembered: a travel agent whose wont apparently was to scream filth in Doug's face as he took her through multiple climaxes. The story had been recorded in the desperate letters she wrote him after being discarded, each of which he carried for a time deep within the legal papers in the attaché case, because he either enjoyed rereading accounts of anguish or wished to give his wife sufficient time to find them.

For it had lately occurred to Audrey that Doug must by now not only be aware of the surveillance she had maintained on him for many years, but be at some pains to abet it. In any event, that suspicion served her amour propre.

The remaining voice on the tape would seem to be that of a winner, at least amongst the trio at hand. For one, she had the thin soprano tones and the tentative phrasing of the grown-woman-as-schoolgirl that Doug preferred; for another, she had the sense to ask nothing, not even a return call, and to express only her longing for him and in romantic not carnal language. She sounded about fourteen, but as Doug was no longer attracted to jailbait, she was certain to be mature and could be even as old as forty-odd.

Audrey carefully left the tape at the point at which the last message ended. Had she been at all malicious, nothing could have been easier than to erase it, and there had been a time when she would certainly have done so. Perhaps it was just as well that Doug in those days did not yet possess an answering machine: nothing could have resulted from such an exercise of spite but the loss of the impeccable moral status by means of which she survived. Such an action could not but be succeeded by others of the same character, each more bitter and thus even less effectual than the former, for pride can never be served by negative means. Not to mention that Audrey was by nature an ironist who was capable of seeing in the rain that fell on a picnic, the staining of one's special dress an hour before the start of whichever memorable event, and like calamities not altogether unwelcome confirmations of her basic pessimism. In contrast, Doug habitually entertained favorable expectations. He and she were fundamentally well matched.

She found the key to the large drawer at the bottom of the desk's left pedestal, a key that was conveniently kept amidst the paper clips in a little leather-covered open drum on the desktop, next to a larger one that held freshly sharpened pencils. She unlocked and opened the drawer and removed the attaché case from it. Though Doug could be erotically ingenious, his powers of invention were notably banal in other areas of life, and the first time Audrey encountered the little cylinders of the combination lock she had no hesitation in moving them to represent the month, day, and year of his birth, and the hasp popped open on the instant. That had been three attaché cases ago, as of this time, yet the same maneuver was still as valid.

But today, for the first time ever, there was nothing in the case, not even any legal papers. Audrey was hard hit by this discovery, as she had never been by the occasional item of flimsy lingerie tucked into the pocket in the lining of beige suede. Moving by sheer habit, she replaced the case in the locked drawer and returned the key to a paper-clip burial before sitting down to deliberate on the edge of Doug's bed. She might have remained there until her husband returned from his walk, in flagrant violation of their tacit agreement, had not the tone of the telephone, so thin in timbre yet so piercing, sounded at that moment, restoring her self-possession.

She snatched the instrument from the box and said, “You have reached Douglass Graves's number.”

As she expected, the caller was surprised by this greeting and for a long moment preserved the silence. But when the voice finally came on the line it was not a woman's but hoarse and coarse.

“Get Charlie for me.”

Audrey knew an odd emotion which could have been either relief or regret. She answered sweetly, “I'm afraid you have the wrong number.”

The caller rudely contested her assertion. “Don't gimme that. You just go and get Charlie.”

During such an exchange with a person who was evidently her social inferior Audrey usually felt if not wholly in the wrong to be anyway on an uncertain footing. Therefore she now applied some cogitation to the matter and, after an instant during which she was conscious of the heavy, menacing breaths at the other end of the wire, came up with a possibility.

“Could you mean Chuck, Chuck Burgoyne?”

The question was received with a grating utterance between a grunt and a chuckle. Then, in manifest derision: “You just tell Chucky-wucky to call Tedesco, see?”

“Yes, Mr. Tedesco. Do you want to leave a number?” But, with an uncompromising click, the line was dead.

Audrey took a sharpened pencil from the leather cup, then looked through the desk in vain for a piece of paper. Though she had been taken aback by the current emptiness of the attaché case, she was not astonished to find that the drawers were barren as well. Doug did no work at the island house; he did little enough at the office. The job was a sinecure in a family-owned firm, which employed serious attorneys for the serious work. Doug had barely squeaked through law school in his day, and his passing of the bar exam had been a mystery the investigation of which would surely serve no one's interest at this late date.

She returned the pencil to its place with the rest of those which would through lack of use stay sharp eternally. The message was simple enough, the name easily remembered:
call Tedesco.
No doubt the derisive “Chucky-wucky” should be omitted. In her experience this was the first message of any kind that Chuck had received from the outside world since his arrival. But then, she neither monitored the incoming phone calls nor was always first to get the mail.

There had been no calls or letters in recent days. It was one of those periods in which one's usually attentive friends, suddenly and as if in concert, forget one's existence. This was far from being unprecedented, yet it was unusual this early in the season. A certain general disaffection usually appeared along about the third week in August, as if in preparation for the complex emotions of the imminent Labor Day, at once another end and another beginning, but as of early June the summer was still new, with many people yet to arrive—but perhaps that was the explanation.

The phone rang again: no doubt Mr. Tedesco, with a revision or addition to the earlier message. But even before the receiver reached her ear the female caller was speaking, in a peculiarly ugly whine.

“… this to me? I've been sitting here crying all weekend. You're hateful, absolutely hateful. I didn't realize you could be so cruel. You're a shit, a complete shit! … I didn't mean that. Please answer. … . You're there, I know you're there.”

“Yes I am, you whore,” said Audrey, hanging up. She was really more impatient than angry.

Doug naturally had seen his son at the top of the steps to the beach; there was nothing wrong with his peripheral vision. In fact, he had no physical disabilities whatever, unless some were so subtle as to elude the thorough examination he underwent annually, not to forget that he reported promptly to his doctor at the first appearance of the symptoms of even a common cold. He drank no more, and often less, than two glasses of wine a day and had never smoked. On each day of the island weekends he walked two miles of shoreline; in town he worked out three mornings per week in the gym at his club. He had lived more than half a century, and he was still the man his son would never be. If Bobby had any character at all, he would have shouted down to him. Not only was Bobby's the superior perspective, but all of nature ordained that the younger man was the one with the obligation to take the initiative in such a case.

The moral question aside, Doug was grateful to Bobby for staying mute. He had never been able to speak easily to his son. Audrey provided security, but Bobby made him feel vulnerable. Perhaps it was unfair of him to blame Bobby for the scandal at the Wilmot School, his son having been one of the underaged victims of the male faculty members, pederasts to a man (with the ironic exception of Hargrave Bond, English master and poet with an international reputation, the only one of them to display effeminate ways), but neither was it his own fault that the boy was so passive as to suffer such use for months without complaint—if indeed Bobby had not enjoyed it! Doug himself, age fourteen, had first punched the golf pro who once made advances to him in an otherwise deserted country-club locker room. “All right for you,” chided the hairy man, with a simper, and then Doug kicked him in the testicles and went promptly to have him fired. The experience had given him a prejudice against golf, but as it happened when the time came Bobby chose it as his own favorite sport and placed high and often first in junior tournaments: another example of their profound difference, each from each, which went to the bone and could not be called the product of Bobby's conscious defiance. There was no means by which he could have known of his father's experience with the invert. Doug had never revealed this to anyone. His discretion as to sexual matters was absolute, and he went to many pains to keep it so. He had only contempt for those whose greatest satisfaction came from revealing what should have been their secrets.

Doug had been coming to the island all his life. The land on which his house stood had been in his family for three generations. Yet he had not been in or on the ocean for more than four decades. His younger brother had drowned in a boating accident when they both were children, and he had thought of the sea ever since as an enemy and had ignored it insofar as that could be done when it was so close at hand. Most of the island's seasonal residents were boating people, and there were friends of Audrey's who sought to lure him on board their craft, but he successfully resisted all such importunities. Fortunately, Chuck Burgoyne had proved landlocked, indeed had seldom left the house since his arrival: that alone was enough reason to think well of the young man. He embodied Doug's idea of a perfect houseguest in all ways: he was genial; he was self-sufficient, needed no tending. He was not a zealot. Nor did he fall into moods. Above all, he was not vulgar.