The Houseguest (24 page)

“Morning, sleepyhead!” he cried before he had turned far enough to identify her by sight. “Though I shouldn't pick on
you:
the others are still dead to the world.” He gestured with a shoulder at the stove. “Go get yourself a cuppa. Give me another five minutes for the muffins.”

“You came back?” Lydia asked incredulously, though she realized it made her sound naïve as ever.

Chuck had the same beautiful rosy complexion. No doubt he had had a night's sleep in good conscience. “I thought I had a certain investment,” said he, “and shouldn't just write it off. I'd never forgive myself.”

“There's nothing here for you.”

“That's a matter of interpretation.”

“Yes,” said Lydia. “Mine. I'm in charge here now.”

“Forgive me for saying this, but you look
awful.”
Here he had made a grievous error: he had turned trivial.

“I'm also just getting my period.”

When he looked revolted, she knew she had him on the run. “I just want to ask you,” he said mournfully. “That bullet last night nearly hit me in the groin. Were you aiming there?”

“If I had been,” said she, “you'd be a soprano today.” This was not true; she really didn't know how to shoot a pistol, let alone aim it. In desperation she had closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

“You're one tough chick.”

“You're an amusing little fellow.”

“You don't want a blueberry muffin?”

“No,” said Lydia. She was backing him to the door.

He showed his famous grin one more time. “I'll admit I underestimated you, but I can change.”

“That may be true,” Lydia said, “but you'll never really make a go of it. You're all resentment. You have no vision.”

“I suppose
you
do?”

“I'm trying to accomplish something here,” she said.
“You
are the cheap hustler, not me.”

“All right,” Chuck said bitterly. “You don't have to pull a gun on me again.” He turned and left the house. She watched him until he had trudged through the parking area. Apparently he had come on foot from wherever he had spent the night. He was, perhaps intentionally, something of a pathetic figure. She regretted not having been able to tell him that all in all he had helped her establish herself in this alien place, but she did not yet have the skill to deal finely with someone so lacking in moral discrimination.

She might have stayed longer at the window had not dark smoke begun to issue from the oven. She found an insulated mitt and removed the muffins from the heat. They were badly singed, the bottoms positively blackened. Her mother would have trimmed them to an edible state, then eaten them herself or crumbled them for the wild birds, would never have tried to pass off such on the family. But that was another kind of family.

When the Graveses appeared—first Audrey, then Doug, and finally a groggy son—they ate the muffins with enthusiasm.

“Delicious,” said Doug, on his second. “And I thought you said you couldn't cook!” He waggled a fake-chiding finger at her: its nail looked freshly manicured, though he had not been in the city for three days now.

Bobby, obsessed with his third muffin, buttered its latest surface after each bite.

Audrey wore lime-green slacks and a sparkling white blouse. She smiled at Lydia. “Have you slept at all, dear?”

“What I haven't done is wash or change my clothes,” Lydia said in as civil a tone as she could manage when she really felt like snarling. “If you'll excuse me now …” She drifted towards the door but eventually stopped and said, “Look, I can't take credit for the muffins. Actually,
Chuck
sneaked back and baked them while I was asleep. Maybe he thought something like that would be atonement! Naturally, I ran him off.”

Audrey's expression did not change. “Naturally,” said she.

Doug nodded amiably and took a sip of the instant coffee each had prepared individually.

“Did you hear me?” Lydia demanded. “
Chuck
had the nerve to come back!”

Doug swallowed with care. “I don't find that surprising. Do you, Bob?”

Bobby shook his tousled head and plucked up some fallen muffin crumbs. “I even expected it, to tell you the truth. He's hard to discourage.”

Audrey made a sort of tulip of her hand. “Such persistence,” said she. “It can even be seen as flattering. He went through an awful lot of abuse.”

Lydia looked from one to the other. “What is going on here?”

“You have to admit,” said Doug, deploying his butter knife, “that he went to a good deal of trouble. Those telephone voices, for example: I admit I still can't quite explain them. I did speak with someone claiming to be named Perlmutter, with Chuck standing right beside me. Therefore he could not have been faking
that
voice. On the other hand, it might well have been he in the case of the
first—”

“Goddammit,” cried Lydia.

Bobby had seized another muffin. Notwithstanding that its bottom was black and hardened, he chomped on it with relish.

“He did not always know his place,” said Audrey, “but that's true of many people who make something of themselves. They err on the side of zeal, but that's not necessarily something to be deplored.”

Lydia let them go on eating and drinking for a few moments, which they proceeded to do without looking towards her. What she resented most was their aplomb.

“All right,” she said eventually. “Where is he?”

Doug smirked. “You anticipated us. We thought it would take a lot more preparation.”

Chuck came in from the butler's pantry. “Sorry about those muffins,” he said to Lydia. “They wouldn't have burned if I hadn't been distracted at the time.”

Lydia's glance made a tour of the Graveses. “You want him back, don't you?”

Audrey shrugged, though with no suggestion of apology. “He could be mighty useful. Mrs. Finch is not as young as she once was.”

“Neither am I, for that matter,” said Lydia.

Bobby spoke eagerly. “He's going to get the cars running and put the phones back in shape.”

“Also,” said Chuck, “I have to replace the broken glass in the door to the pool. There's more than enough to keep me busy.” He walked briskly to the refrigerator. “Now, who wants what for the next course? I think you all deserve a big breakfast, to start the week off with a bang.”

“I'm willing to pay Lyman for the gun,” Lydia told him. “But I'm keeping possession of it.”

“I can't say I blame you,” Chuck said blandly. “With all you've gone through.”

She stared at her in-laws. “Listen to him.
He's
the one who's responsible for the damage he's now allegedly going to repair.
He's
the reason I intend to keep the gun.” None of them returned her gaze, but neither did they seem concerned by what she said. “He
despises
all of you.”

Audrey chuckled. “He made that clear enough!”

Doug's noble forehead showed a frown. “Which of course has nothing to do with the quality of his work. There's no reason why we have to love everybody with whom we deal in life, or even to regard them in a personal way. We simply want the job done.”

“Then he's an employee now?”

Doug smirked. “He could certainly never get back in here as a guest! That was the trouble before: the basic arrangement was wrong.”

“Putting him on wages takes care of everything?”

“That's right, Lyd,” said Bobby. “It's the perfect answer.”

“And,” said Doug, as if Chuck were absent, “you can be sure I'll keep after him until I get an explanation of those puzzling phone calls and also the matter of the gun in the ankle holster.”

“And,” Chuck said with verve, “you can be sure I'll come up with plausible answers!”

Lydia put her head down and deliberated for a moment. The knees of her jeans were muddy, and she still carried burrs and other foreign matter here and there on her clothing. She had never been so filthy or exhausted in her life, yet she was far from being contaminated.

She looked up. “It makes sense.”

“It does?” Bobby asked happily, and the others, including Chuck, showed their pleasure.

“I don't think I've ever before understood what manners are,” Lydia said. “And I'm not at all sure I do even now. But I'm going to give you
my
condition: the only way I'll put up with the new arrangement is if I become the houseguest.”

The Graveses looked at one another, and then Doug said, “I can't see any objection.”

“With all the privileges of that situation,” said Lydia.

“Of course,” Audrey said grandly. “That goes without saying.”

Chuck was holding a spatula. “Now, who would like flapjacks?”

Lydia pulled off her dirty sneakers. “Here,” she said to him, “go scrub these someplace.”

“I'll pop them into the washer,” said he, accepting the shoes. She could identify no irony in his speech or expression. “And then I'll take Bobby to the club and Doug to the airfield for the ten o'clock flight. Then back here to do the rest of the week's wash, and if time permits, to draw up a guest list for the annual party. Then I'll prepare lunch.”

“Something special,” said Lydia. “I'll never eat another frank or bean or a forkful of cole slaw in this house.”

“As you wish,” said Chuck, with an inclination of his smooth head. “We'll do anything we can to assure you a pleasant stay.”

She could not resist saying, “That's the slogan of a chain motel.”

Chuck's response to the gibe was in the same idiom and could be heard as either submissive or ominous. “We'll stop at nothing to please you.”

Whether or not that “we” included her relatives-in-law, all four people in the kitchen were smiling benignly upon her.