The Houseguest (5 page)

Had she had time to reflect, Lydia would have seen that the only effective response here would have been none whatever. As it was, inexperienced at this kind of contest, she answered with some asperity.

“Oh. I can take care of myself.”

His grin was triumphant. “I would be counting on that.”

She realized she was now in the uncomfortable and in fact preposterous situation of fearing that he might believe she was afraid of him.

The car conked out not long before Bobby would have emerged from the private lane to join the cross-island road: simply coughed twice and stopped. He obstinately tried for a while to start it, angrily failing to comprehend how an engine that was running well could quit without warning and did not at least “miss” for a mile or two. But finally he climbed out and began to walk the quarter mile back to the house. The lane was one car wide, unpaved, and deeply grooved by wheels that had traveled it in wet weather. This was no place for anything but utilitarian vehicles. Not to mention that the salt air pitted any finish within months. The Graveses kept two cars at hand, a station wagon of some capacity and the rusty compact that had just given out on Bobby. These machines were regularly maintained during the summer by the Finches who operated the local garage and then when autumn came “winterized” by them and stored in one of the barns at the disposal of that family. But it was more than possible that, as his father routinely suspected of anything managed by the Finches, this job was poorly done. If so, Bobby did not want to be the one who told them so, for his childhood bête noire, Dewey Finch, now ran the automotive branch of the Finch enterprises. Once when Bobby was twelve and Dewey fourteen or fifteen and much thicker-set than he, the brutal islander had cornered the rich kid in the gas-station toilet and forced the younger boy to masturbate him, after the performance of which degrading act he predicted that Bobby would be far too humiliated to report it, and of course he was right.

Dewey had obviously not forgotten that episode, for he still smirked today if Bobby was so careless as to gas up one of the cars when his enemy was on duty.

On the walk back he saw a red squirrel that looked no bigger than a good-sized mouse and heard the sounds made by a larger animal he could not see but had set to flight amidst the trees. Many beasts lived in these woods. Deer were not uncommon. A gardener when Bobby was a boy, of course another Finch, scared him with tales of wandering bears, but in later years he determined that there had been no bear-sightings locally since the turn of the century.

As he was approaching the house, Chuck came around the wing nearest the parking area.

“Out for a constitutional?” asked the houseguest. Chuck wore his habitual uniform: khaki trousers, navy knitted shirt, and leather loafers. Apparently he had brought little else. Since it was not likely he was poor, this was perhaps an expression of his austere tastes. But Bobby really couldn't understand how anyone would want to stay out of shorts in this season.

He groaned now. “Car broke down, just stopped in its tracks. Sunday the garage is closed, so I guess what I'll have to do is take the wagon out there and pull the car back. Mind steering the car, Chuck?”

“Why don't you let me walk out and see whether I can get it started?” Chuck asked. “I know a few tricks.” He held out his hand for the ignition keys that Bobby had been swinging on an index finger.

Bobby felt a great sense of relief. He hated to have trouble with cars, for even the simplest matter pertaining to the internal-combustion engine was mysterious to him: he really had no idea of what, say, a distributor did.

“God, I'd be grateful,” said he, surrendering the keys. “I'll go get the keys to the wagon, just in case.”

“No,” Chuck said evenly. “Let me see first.” He started off up the lane in his, usual brisk, regular, almost military stride. Bobby would have liked to go along with him on this very male mission, but he had the definite sense that Chuck did not require his company. Also, he was hungry and assumed that now Chuck was up, some provision had been made for a meal.

He found a door that was reasonably near the kitchen and entered the house. In the kitchen he found Lydia eating an open-faced grilled-cheese sandwich with knife and fork. She also had a tall glass of what looked like grapefruit juice.

He told her what had happened. She frowned and lowered her fork. “He certainly makes himself indispensable around here,” said she. “I gather Chuck is a longtime friend of the family.”

Bobby shrugged. “I guess so. My parents are probably friends of his.” The molten cheese looked delicious. “Say, Lyd, make me one of those, will you?”

“You mean you don't know him?”

“Only since he came, last week.”

“You never saw him before?”

“Not that I can remember,” said Bobby. “I don't think he's ever stayed here before. Hey, how about it: grill me a cheese?”

Lydia pointed with her fork. “See that gadget on the counter, Bobby? That's a toaster-oven. You just take the cheese from the fridge and bread from the breadbox. You put the cheese on the bread and the bread in the tray of the toaster, then you press down the lever on the side. You watch through the window, and when it's done you take it out.”

“I know how to do it,” said he. “I just thought it might be nice and generous and kind of you to fix it for me.”

“You mean,” she asked with an expression that favored one eye, “it's some kind of test of my regard for you?”

She could be derisive in the kitchen, but when they were in bed,
he
would be the one who would be expected to perform, whatever the state of his own ardor at the time, and it never quite matched hers.

“I'll have something else, then,” he said, expecting her to capitulate, but she did not, so he had to go to the refrigerator and root around. As it happened, he never did come across the cheese. Instead he found one of the many packages of frankfurters for the lunch Mrs. Finch prepared every third day: hotdogs, canned baked beans, and the cole slaw sold in plastic containers at her family's grocery. Unable to breach the tough plastic without a tool, Bobby whined to Lydia, and she gave him the knife she had been eating with.

“For God's sake, this is
dirty,”
said he. “Also, it's blunt.” He gave it back, sighing. “I don't have any fingernails.” This was true: he trimmed them so short he could not pick up a fallen coin.

Lydia groaned and pointed to the conspicuous hardwood block with slots for many knives, all of them filled. It took him a while to find the littlest one. By the time the hotdogs were available to him, he lacked the energy and patience to cook them, and ate a couple cold, from his fingers, then reached over Lydia's shoulders and stole her grapefruit juice.

She was finished by now, anyway. She took her plate to the dishwasher, and while there looked out the window that gave onto the parking area.

“Huh, Chuck's brought the car back. He seems to have had no trouble with it.”

Bobby came to join her. “How about that,” said he. “He was right.”

“Right?”

“He said he knew a few tricks about cars.”

“And not just about cars,” Lydia said sourly. “He's a pretty tricky guy in general.”

Bobby frowned with his forehead, letting his long jaw hang loose. “He knows how to do everything. Maybe I should take a few lessons from him.”

Lydia seized him around the waist. “No, you
shouldn't,”
she said fiercely.

“I really ought to learn something about cars,” said Bobby. He found the hug slightly painful: he had a sensitive rib. “I've been driving since I was twelve or thirteen.”

“Speaking of cars,” Lydia said, releasing him, “where's Chuck's? How'd he get here?”

But Bobby was distracted, watching Chuck lock the door of the car he had just returned to its place. There was no need for that up here: robbery of any kind was virtually unknown during the season. When the summer people were away, however, their houses were fair game—unless they hired the Finches, at quite a healthy fee, to keep an eye on the property. It was his father's theory that this constituted a “protection” racket of the kind operated in the cities by mobsters: namely, that the people who could be hired as guards were, unless given such employment, the selfsame who ransacked the houses—though naturally this would have been hard to prove. Even old General Lewis Mickelberg, former supreme commander of the armed services, had a healthy respect for them, as did other summer residents who were people of power in the real world, e.g., Nelson T. Boonforth, chairman of the board of the third largest bank in the country; and celebrated defense attorney Hartman Anthony Johncock, whose eldest son was Bobby's principal rival on the tennis courts.

Chuck was heading in a direction that would have taken him out of sight had not Bobby leaned across the counter and shouted through the screened casement.

“I'm in the kitchen!”

Chuck halted.

“You got it started?” Bobby asked. “Did it run okay?”

Chuck nodded.

“What the devil was the problem?” asked Bobby.

“Flooded,” Chuck answered laconically. He walked away.

Lydia lifted her upper lip. “Don't you think that's rude?”

“I guess it was dumb of me,” Bobby said. “But if you don't keep trying to get the motor started, how's it going to start? Yet if you do, you flood it.”

“I notice he's keeping the keys,” Lydia pointed out.

“Well, we know where to find them.” Bobby yawned, crucifying his arms. “Anyway, the moment has passed for going to the club. I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“Are there extra sets of car keys?”

“Sure,” said Bobby. “On the hook inside the door of the cabinet in the utility room, next to the washer-dryer. Why? Going someplace?”

Lydia shrugged. “Good to know such things.”

Bobby grinned lazily. “We don't get tidal waves here. Sometimes there's the tail end of a hurricane, but you're safer inside this house than out where you could get hit by falling trees.”

“You didn't happen to check the tailpipe after the car stopped?”

“Why should I have done that?”

“Oh,” said Lydia, “I was just thinking if something, some foreign object, had been stuck in there, the result would have been just about what happened. The engine would stop if the exhaust was blocked.”

He smiled smugly. “You're as knowledgeable as Chuck. No, I wouldn't have thought of that. But Chuck already said it was flooded: that's something else entirely, though, isn't it?”

“Looks like you're headed for a nap,” Lydia observed, changing the subject. “Mind if I join you?”

“No, but I really am drowsy.”

“You mean I should keep my hands to myself?”

He laughed helplessly. It
was
flattering to him to be always in such demand.

After the belated (and, in truth, rotten) breakfast Doug told Audrey that he must repair to his study forthwith for the purpose of catching up on some work, in the course of which he might well be telephoning business associates in the city.

“The private line certainly comes in handy,” said his wife. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Otherwise,” she hastily explained, “somebody might tie up one phone with mere chatter.” She rippled the surface of her forehead. “Though, it's true that I haven't heard from anybody for
ever
so long. You'd think nobody had gotten here yet. Since we decided to cancel the party I don't want to call anyone else first, or they'll assume I'm calling to invite them, you see, and then I'll have to explain, and I would have to do that again with every person I called. Better just to stay silent until someone gets in touch with me. I had expected someone would by now. After all, the party was an institution. But then, it's only been a few days. The inquiries will come next week.”

“I'm sure wrists will be slashed all over the island,” said Doug as he left. When he reached his study he locked the door behind him. It had been unfortunate that Chuck had found such easy access to the place at just the moment Connie phoned. In his years of venery he had never been caught out in such a fashion.

Connie was a real pain, but never would he have wanted any harm to come to her, or in any event, none for which he had somehow set the stage. He was troubled by what Chuck had said, ridiculous as it was to find sinister implications in the sympathetic response of a houseguest and friend of the family to an intimate matter concerning the head of that family. Chuck would hardly be under this roof were he capable of criminality.

And yet Doug found himself doing now that which would have been most unlikely in any other situation: namely, phoning a woman whom he had determined to discard.

She answered on the second ring, simultaneously relieving him and putting him under a new threat. Her voice sounded normal enough. If he identified himself, he would be right back in the soup. He silently hung up and consulted his pocket address book for a number at which he could reach Chrissy Milhaven, who was some sort of distant cousin of his on his mother's side. He had read an announcement of her forthcoming marriage in Friday's newspaper, in town. Whether he and Audrey would be invited to this ceremony was doubtful: he had had no association with that branch of the family for years and had not seen Chrissy since she was a very plain thirteen. But the photograph in the paper showed the comely face of a person of twenty-three. It seemed worth his while to renew old ties of blood.

He called the number he had for Chrissy's parents, for apparently she still lived at home, in the vast apartment they maintained in the city, with its roof garden that went around three sides of the building.

Luckily a maid answered, so he did not have to speak with Millicent, Chrissy's mother, an acerb woman with whom he had simply never hit it off.

“Hi, cousin,” said he when Chrissy came on the telephone. He identified himself. “Just saw your announcement.” He answered some commonplace, lackluster questions. “Yes, fine. Yes, everybody. That's right, he did get married, privately. Very privately; some country courthouse. Uh-huh. She's from—out of town. But say, Chrissy, I must say you've become quite a beauty since we last got together. We have some catching up to do before you tie the knot, I should say. It's been too long.” He suggested they have a drink when he was back in town, middle of the week.

“You'll like Stephen,” said Chrissy, with the slight lisp she had retained over the years.

Doug had always felt superior to a man with impedimented speech, but he found it erotic in a female. Also, he was unusually attracted to women who were soon to be married, and there was something special with a person he could remember as an almost ugly little girl. Finally, that he was at least remotely related to her added its own excitement. The result was a growing lust for Chrissy. He was never gross in a situation of this kind: the force of his passion would be exerted subliminally, concealed within or beneath banalities, but if she were the right subject, she would receive these messages with clarity and make an appropriate response. If not, then no harm was done: she might not even be certain that an overture had been made. In his career of lechery Doug had to date made perhaps a half dozen such attempts on the virtue of a newly created financée. He had been successful only once, but even he considered it astonishing that nobody amongst these young women had apparently been offended by his attentions. Two pretended not to understand him, but three professed to be flattered. As to his successful project, it continued throughout the first year of the bride's marriage, for the husband while an amiable companion proved intimately enervate.

“I thought just the two of us,” Doug said now, “you and me, for old times' sake, to catch up on things. After all, we're family. Then comes Steve.”

His intonation was that of near levity. But Chrissy's response proved humorless.

“As you might expect, I'm
awfully
rushed these days. When we get back from abroad we'll have you and Audrey over for a sip or a bite.”

As if the general rudeness was not sufficient to discourage him, he despised women who employed such little phrases. Also, it was really difficult to suppose that in only a few years she had been transformed from that repulsive child into an attractive woman. He regretted having called her, the probable result of which would be that he and Audrey would now get an invitation to the wedding.

He heard a splash outside, and went to the high little window in the alcove to look out at the pool, the northern half of which could be seen from this perspective. Audrey, not he, had wanted this house of unorthodox perspectives: she had had a crush on the architect, an imperious, leonine-headed man who was a celebrity in his field and charged an appropriate fee.

Suddenly a swimsuited girl with an exquisite behind walked into his field of view. For a moment Doug had no idea whatever of who she was, even found himself hoping she might be a trespasser, perhaps one of the young female Finches, of whom there was always a new supply, probably dim-witted owing to the poor genes circulated throughout generations of intermarriage. Doug had seen such youthful slatterns over the summers since his own pubescence, but owing to his fear of the males of their blood, and also a certain delicacy of taste that gave preference to flesh of better breeding, he had not had a struggle with himself to abstain from making a personal approach.

But this one, whoever she could be, was on his property.

Then she turned her face so that it could be identified, within its tight white bathing cap, in profile, and of all people this person was his daughter-in-law. How had he failed until this moment to notice that she had the cutest little ass on the island? Because she habitually wore loose skirts or oversized shorts, and he had never before seen her attired for swimming.

He decided to join her at poolside, but before he could leave the room the telephone produced an electronic tone within the polished wooden box in which it was kept. There were only two such tones before the answering machine took over. Chuck's story of happening to be present when Connie Cunningham called and surrendering to the typically human impulse to answer a ringing phone was difficult to accept: to reach the instrument before the machine was activated, he would have had to work quickly for one who was presumably a stranger to Doug's communications center.

Doug now manipulated the volume control on the answering device, so that he could listen to the voice of the caller, if indeed any came, for one of the useful functions of the machine in dealing with the likes of Connie Cunningham was to discourage them from leaving any message or even an identification.

But the voice proved to be that of a man, an unpleasant, cynical man if his current mode of expression was representative.

“Pick it up, you fucker you. I know you're there. Don't jerk me off.”

Though Doug included amongst his acquaintances nobody who could have spoken in this style except in jest, he felt an inexplicable obligation to reveal his presence at the other end of the line.

“I'm afraid,” he said into the instrument, “you have the wrong number. That is—”

He was interrupted brutally before reaching the first digit.

“No,” said the voice, “
you
got the wrong phone, sonny boy. Now put it down and get me Chaz.”

Offended by the man's tone, Doug hung up. Hell with it, why give civility when it wasn't returned. He put the phone back into the box. In another instant the machine was accepting another call. After listening to his own recorded voice announce the number and ask for a message, he again heard the voice of the previous caller. This time it was even uglier.

“You do that to me again, dicklicker, and I'll make you scream for mercy. Now you go find him. You tell him Jack Perlmutter says okay. You do that and maybe I won't hurt you.” Perlmutter, assuming it was he and not some spokesman for him, rang off abruptly.

Though Doug had every reason to be furious, he was mostly frightened. To speak so to a man whom he did not know, Perlmutter obviously possessed considerable power. Else how could he so easily assume that Doug would not prove dangerous if provoked? Unless of course the man was a nut case of the sort it was routine to encounter in the city. There are persons who if denied what they believe is their right of way will leap from their car, draw a pistol, and shoot down the other driver. One read in the papers that on public transport a passenger will knife another who trips on his foot, and Doug had had personal experience of cabdrivers who verbally abuse their passengers and threaten to do worse if any complaint is sounded. How is it that the target of the aggressor never happens to be one of the other violent people at large? Is it never dangerous for the threatener, on whose approach the intended victim might draw his own gun and get off the first shot? Not only would such reversal of roles seem to violate a basic law of human intercourse, but the Perlmutters of the world have an unerring sense of when to strike. Doug was no coward, but he had been taken utterly offguard.

He went into his bedroom and lay down. Had Chuck been spying on him? Only now did it occur to him to wonder whether Chuck might be Perlmutter's “Chaz.” Or rather, only now did he summon up the courage to entertain that possibility: underneath it all, he had never been in doubt.

Lydia's family had the biggest pool in town, and there were always relatives in the water who would teach a younger child to swim. Bobby's story of being purposely almost drowned by a malicious larger cousin could be matched by nothing in the history of Lydia's childhood.

The Graveses' pool was of normal size, and therefore if only one more person shared it with her, she felt crowded: this was true even if the other person happened to be Bobby, who however—and unexpectedly, given his proficiency at the other summer sports—seldom entered the pool, and when he did so, swam none too well. As to the nearby ocean, no one from the Graves family went into or on it, and when Lydia once asked about this abstention, Bobby failed to give a real answer, mumbled something about currents and shrugged lugubriously, and hoping as she did to overcome the influence of her mother, who on any pretext would querulously question her father to the point at which he lost his temper, Lydia did not pursue the matter, though it seemed unusual that people would spend their summers surrounded by an element into which they would not dip their toes.

By now the day had become warmer and more humid than it looked when one faced the inland greenery. There were individual air-conditioners in the rooms, but it went against Lydia's grain to resort to unnatural cooling at oceanside. However, when she plunged into the pool she found the water sickeningly warm as soup. This could not have been the effect of mere sunlight, which owing to the nearby trees fell directly on only about half of the surface.

God's sake, was the pool heater on? She climbed up and out on the chromium ladder at the deep end and walked drippingly to the little structure that contained the filtering mechanism and the heater, here of utilitarian design and screened by bushes, not the miniature Swiss chalet her father had had specially designed and conspicuously situated.

Indeed, the thermostat was set at 92 degrees, and why, when the older Graveses never swam there, and Bobby's style was to paddle briefly at the shallow end, then climb up to sit on the rim, long shins in the water, to watch her racing dive and three fast laps, each in another style: breast, butterfly, crawl. That she might have been Olympic material had been routinely pointed out by relatives and friends, and nowadays her husband as well, but the truth was that in this day and age only obsessive-compulsives could compete for any kind of prize: people not simply willing but fanatically eager to incinerate the self to fuel a career. Ha, Lydia would say, I've got too much sense for that. By now of course she was a decade too old for a sport in which you were prime at twelve.