Trauma (11 page)

“You think I don't love you, don't you?” he announced.

“Duke—forget it. I'm not saying anything.”

“But you think—because I can't always get it up—you think that I don't love you.”

“Did I say that?”

“Shit—you didn't have to say it. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Well, okay, let's be frank. It would be nice if you could sometimes get it up.”

Duke didn't answer, but stared at the place mat as if it would miraculously reveal the answers to all of his problems. Bonnie took a plate out of the oven and scraped six slices of bacon onto it, as well as hash browns, grilled tomato, and two fried eggs. She set it down in front of Duke's nose and said, “There. Don't ever tell me that I don't love you. Ever.”

Duke poked at his bacon with his fork. “You're trying to murder me, aren't you? All this goddamned cholesterol. Well, fuck you.”

“Duke, if I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't wait for you to die of a heart attack, believe me. I don't have the patience.”

He began to stab his breakfast even more furiously, as if he were trying to kill it. “Fuck you! You're trying to murder me—that's what you're doing! You're trying to clog up my arteries and murder me!”

Bonnie lowered her head and sat and listened to Duke's ranting and didn't say a word. What else could she say? After a while she stood up and took his plate away and scraped his entire breakfast into the garbage can under the sink—eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, everything. Duke sat and watched her, gripping his fork so tightly that he bent it.

“I'm going out this evening,” Bonnie announced.

“Out? Who says?”

“I say. I'm going to Ruth's place, and we're going to polish our nails and eat cake and talk about what bastards men can be.”

“Oh, really. And who's going to look after Ray? Your son's practically a cripple, one day out of the hospital, and you're going
out?
”

“Yes, I'm going out. Because Ray has two parents, not just one, and you're the other one. So you can look after him. There's meat loaf in the icebox. All you have to do is warm it up in the microwave.”

“Now you listen, Bonnie—” Duke began. But at that moment Ray appeared in the doorway, hobbling on his aluminum walking sticks. “Hi, Mom! How's everything going? That bacon sure smells good!”

“It's in the fucking trash if you want it,” said Duke. He stood up, slammed his chair against the table and pushed his way out of the kitchen.

It took Bonnie over two hours to get ready because she couldn't decide what to wear. What had Kyle Lennox meant by “informal”? His idea of “informal” might be a fugi silk suit by Anne Klein, with strappy Blahnik sandals. She tried on the red dress with the big pink flowers that she had bought to go to Ruth's son's bar mitzvah, but apart from the fact that she had put on weight since last summer, she thought it made her look like the victim of a frenzied stabbing.

She tried her fawn slacks, but there was a bleach mark on the right knee. Then she tried her jeans, but she didn't want to walk around with a Lands End label if everyone else was going to be wearing Armani.

Duke came to the half-open bedroom door and stared at her for a while, as if he couldn't understand
why she was making such a fuss about dressing up if she was only going to Ruth's, but the look she gave him discouraged him from making any smart remarks. Eventually he said, “I'm going to take Ray to the market to buy some beer. So long as I have to baby-sit this evening, I think I'm entitled to a little refreshment, don't you?”

“There's fifteen dollars in the Popeye jar.”

“I know. I took it already.”

“Well, don't be too long, will you? I have to leave at five-thirty sharp.”

“Yes,
sir
!” Duke gave her a sarcastic salute and left. She went back to her wardrobe, jingling her way through the wire hangers in mounting desperation. All her clothes suddenly looked so cheap.
Make a decision. Make a decision. You're going to be meeting people who buy their clothes on Rodeo Drive. They won't have seen this dress in Wal-Mart
.

In the end she decided on her navy-blue slacks and her cream satin blouse with the ruffles. The slacks were comfortable and even if the blouse's ruffles looked a little country-and-western, they concealed the size of her breasts. She laid them out on the bed.

Then she thought:
If it's going to be a poolside party, will they expect me to go for a swim
? She'd better take a swimsuit in case. She rummaged through the bottom drawer of her dressing table and eventually found her spotted turquoise swimsuit, the one with the little skirt, but when she tried it on, she looked far too bulgy. Next she tried the purple Lycra swimsuit with the high-cut legs and that was better, even if the top was so tight that it gave her four breasts.

By 5:05 she was ready, but Duke still wasn't back
with the car. She watched TV for a while, nervously perched on the arm of the couch, holding her brown plastic pocketbook ready in her hand. Then she got up and looked out of the window. At 5:27 he still hadn't returned, so she went and stood outside in the street. Old Mr. Lenz came past with his balding Pomeranian and said, “Hi there, Bonnie. Not working today?”

“No, Mr. Lenz. Not working today.”
Like—do I
look
like I'm working, in my new navy slacks and my ruffled satin blouse?

Half past five came and went, and there was still no sign of Duke. She wished to God that she had told him to take her cell phone with him. She went back inside and primped her hair for the seventh time. She was beginning to feel hot and edgy now. Supposing Duke didn't come back at all? That meant that she would have to take her truck.

At 5:45 she wrote a note saying, “Gone To Ruth's Thanks For Nothing” and stuck it on the front of the icebox with a magnet in the shape of a heart.

She parked the truck around the corner on Alta Avenue and walked the rest of the way. The street in front of Kyle Lennox's house was a traffic jam of shiny, expensive automobiles—a yellow Ferrari Testarossa, a silver Lamborghini and more Mercedes than Bonnie had ever seen in one street together at the same time.

Even out on the street she could hear the samba band playing “
Samba em Preludio
” with lazy, torpid, self-satisfied rhythm. Two pimply teenage car jockeys were standing on the lawn outside, wearing white coats with gold epaulets. They stared at Bonnie as she came walking up the street and up the redbrick pathway.

“Help you?” one of them asked her, showing his shiny wire braces.

“I've been invited to the party,” said Bonnie.

The car jockey peered over her shoulder in bewilderment. “Where's your car, ma'am?”

“I didn't come by car.”

“You
walked
here?”

“No, I was dropped at the corner by an alien spacecraft. Is this the right way in?”

“Sure. I have to check your invitation.”

“I wasn't given an invitation.”

“You were invited but you weren't given an invitation?”

At that moment, however, Kyle Lennox appeared on the porch, wearing a green silk shirt and Happy white pants and carrying a highball. He lifted his drink in salute and said, “Bonnie! Come along in! Real glad you could make it!”

Bonnie gave the car jockeys a “so-there” grimace and followed Kyle Lennox in through the front door. The stairs and the hallway were crowded with people, all of them shouting and shrieking so that they sounded like the passengers on a rapidly sinking liner. She felt a panicky urge to make her apologies and leave, but Kyle Lennox put his suntanned arm around her and propelled her through the throng until they reached the living room. And what a living room it was. She had never seen anything like it. The far wall was mirrored, floor to ceiling, and lined with bronze statuettes of naked nymphs. A huge crystal chandelier hung over the center of the room, and the chairs and the couches were all upholstered in cream-and-yellow satin. The patio windows were open to the pool area, which was paved in swirly Italian marble and equally crowded with laughing, screaming
people. Beyond the pool, the garden was brilliant with scented flowers, and a white stone statue of Pan danced on a pedestal, his hair lifted into little horns.

“You probably know some of the people here already,” Kyle Lennox shouted in her ear. The salsa band had launched into a Latin interpretation of “Positively Fourth Street,” and a man in a red sombrero and tight red satin flares was weakly singing the words into a microphone. “There's Vanessa McFarlane from
Shining Light
, and Gus Hanson from
The Lives We Lead
.”

“Gus Hanson? Where? I can't believe it! It is. You're right. It's
Gus Hanson
!”

“You want to meet him? He's an old surfing buddy of mine.”

“I don't know, I don't know. Let me catch my breath. I'm a little overwhelmed, to tell you the truth.”

“Come and meet him. He's the nicest guy on the planet. But how about a drink first? We have champagne and wild white strawberries. You'll love it.”

He waved to one of the waiters, who brought over a tray that was jingling with tall, trumpet-shaped champagne flutes. In each glass danced six or seven tiny wild strawberries, and the rims were sparkling with sugar.

“Hey … doesn't this look gorgeous?” said Bonnie. “I never thought of putting strawberries in champagne. Not that me and Duke can stretch to champagne very often. Well, when I say very often, I mean ever. Duke dropped a pickle in his beer once, but that was more by way of an accident.”

Kyle Lennox steered Bonnie outside, to a white
cast-iron seat by the pool, where Gus Hanson was talking to six or seven giggly young girls with shining blond hair and long, suntanned legs. Gus Hanson had curly dark hair, a Roman nose, and a white silk shirt that was open to his navel. He wore thong sandals and no socks.

“Gus … this is the lady I was telling you about, the one who's going to be cleaning up the Marrin house.”

Gus Hanson took off his gold-lensed sunglasses and grinned up at her. “Hi … great you could come. Kyle just won't stop talking about you. He says he can't believe that you do what you do.”

“Well,” said Bonnie, uncomfortably, “somebody has to do it. It's a service.”

“You never think about it, though. You never think what happens after somebody goes crazy and kills their whole family. You never think that somebody has to mop it up.”

“Is that what you
do
?” asked one of the long-legged blond girls, wrinkling up her tiny retroussé nose.

“Sure, that's what I do. I clean up after any kind of trauma. Like I say, it's a service.”

“You've been in the Marrin house?” asked Gus Hanson.

“Of course. I have to give an estimate.”

“I mean, what's it like in there? The room where they died?”

“It's burned, that's all. There's not much to see.”

“The kid was stuck to the door,” put in Kyle Lennox. “Can you imagine that? He was burning like a
fucking torch, and he was trying to get out of the door, but he, like, melted to the paintwork.”

“Holy shit,” said Gus. “Can you actually
see
that in there? Like where he was stuck to the door?”

Bonnie was feeling hot and overdressed. She could feel perspiration sliding down her back into her waistband. She took a sip of champagne, but all the sugar stuck to her upper lip and gave her a white mustache. Kyle Lennox said, “Here,” and used a linen napkin to brush it off, a gesture that was both intimate and deeply embarrassing. It made her feel like a child.

At that moment, a short, portly man came around the pool, his bald head shining like a dented brass doorknob, his eyes hidden behind black, thick-framed sunglasses. He was wearing a multicolored striped shirt, all reds and greens and yellows, and a loose pair of green linen pants. “Bonnie,” said Kyle Lennox. “This is my producer, Gene Ballard. Gene, this is Bonnie.”

Gene Ballard held out a chubby little hand, more like a pig's trotter than a hand, thick with lumpy gold rings. He smelled overpoweringly of Fahrenheit aftershave. “It's an amazing pleasure to meet you, my dear. Kyle has a talent for collecting all the most interesting people. You know who came to his last little get-together? Tasha Malova, that transvestite who got himself involved with the police commissioner. You should have seen him. Her.
It
, whatever. Beautiful, and I mean drop-dead stunning. But six-foot-three with a voice like a fucking foghorn, and a blue miniskirt right up to its ass.” He gave a thick, phlegmy bellow of laughter and turned around to
everybody standing by the pool to make sure that they were laughing, too.

Gus Hanson said, “Hey, Bonnie, is there anything you've ever refused to do, because it was so totally disgusting?”

“How about you?” Bonnie retorted. “Is there anything that
you've
ever refused to do?”

“Well, sure. I refused to pose for
Playgirl
.”

“You refused to pose for
Playgirl
?”

“Absolutely.” Gus Hanson pouted. “I want my image to be more about my work than the sex appeal or whatever. I mean, if it's a sex scene, of course I'm not going to have my shirt and tie on. But it's the whole point of focusing on the talent rather than the
fromage
.”

“So,” said Gene Ballard, taking hold of Bonnie by the elbow, “how does a pretty lady like you get into work like cleaning up corpses?”

“Oh, I don't clean up the remains. We call them remains. The coroner's department cleans up the remains. I just clean the trauma scene after the remains are removed. Curtains, carpets, stuff like that. It's just like being a regular cleaner, only obviously it's more specialized.”