Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“Oh,” she said. “You must be that guy.”

After a moment Krumholtz realized that this woman, this Lorraine, was wearing flowered pajamas. The roses on the pajamas had a slightly sinister efflorescence. “Yes,” he said, “I’m that guy.” He examined her. Unlike the wife, she was not particularly beautiful. On her left cheek was a birthmark in the shape of a candle flame. “I’m the guy you asked about angels. You were at the intercom.”

“The guy from the magazine? You didn’t answer my question.”

“No, I suppose not.” He pointed at her. “You’re wearing pajamas. It’s midafternoon. Been napping?”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Krumholtz. Jerry Krumholtz.”

“Jerry, did you think Jimmy looked okay?” Lorraine asked. “I’m worried about him. He hasn’t been himself lately, and no one knows why.”

“He looked all right. What do you think could be bothering him?” Krumholtz asked, getting out his notebook.

“Me? What do I think? It could be anything. He’s restless. I think he’s run out of worlds to conquer. And that makes him sick.” She tossed the glossy magazine onto the floor. “He’s got everything. What would you do if you had everything?”

What a preposterous question. Krumholtz took out his pen. “Doesn’t Ellie — doesn’t the wife — mind that you’re here?”

“What did you say your name was?” She was unapologetic about her forgetfulness, apparently.

“Jerry Krumholtz.”

“Oh, right. Where did you ever get a name like that?”

A moment passed while he absorbed her question. “My parents gave it to me. I think I was asking about whether the wife minds that you’re here.”

“Here? In this room, or here in the house? No. Oh, you mean my existence , here on earth, taking up the sexual slack? Why should she mind? Maybe you don’t understand about men like Jimmy. He’s just bigger than other men. Everything about him is bigger and stronger than they are. Those herd men. All the little Shmoos. So unimportant . He’s just richer and smarter and more … beautiful than they are. He’s at the top of the pyramid. The rules for the little doofuses don’t apply to him. Do you understand that? If you don’t understand that, Krumholtz, you don’t understand anything.”

“So this is the harem?”

“Because otherwise,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard him, “there’s no point in your being here. Or doing this story. He loves both Ellie and me. He has more than enough love for both of us, and the children. And the previous wife and the previous children. He flies to see them. He has a private jet. He’s not like ordinary men, is what I’m saying. I satisfy some of his needs, and Ellie satisfies other needs, and that’s how it is, and if it isn’t bourgeois enough for you, that’s too bad.”

“What needs do you satisfy?” Krumholtz asked.

“What sort of question is that? Is this going into the article?”

“It might. We’ll see.”

She stood up and walked over toward him. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Maybe I do. So explain it to me.”

“I don’t have to explain it,” she said. “I can do a demo.” She leaned in to him, reaching around his back, and, in what Krumholtz could tell instantly was a cruel practical joke, brought her face close to his and planted a long kiss on his lips, with the slightest suggestion of tongue. The kiss constituted sheer mockery of his unimportance. She might as well have been kissing a lampshade. “That’s what I give him,” Lorraine said, leaning back. “And that’s just for starters. Get it now?”

“Yes, I suppose I get it,” Krumholtz said. She was wearing a French perfume, which he recognized as one of the varieties of Plage de Soleil.

“I’m good at what I do,” Lorraine said with a fixed smile. “I’m a spell-caster. An energizer. I’ve got Jimmy in my grip and he has me in his.”

“And the wife?” Krumholtz asked. “Ellie?” This woman, Krumholtz thought, is trying to break my soul into little pieces just for fun. Out of sheer boredom.

“If you only believed in angels, Mr. Krumholtz, you might be lifted up now and then out of your pathetic little life.” Lorraine had touched him gently on the cheek. “But, sadly, no.”

From outside came the sound of a rifle shot.

“No one knows how we live,” she said. “And no one’s going to.” She lifted her head and listened. “Now I wonder what Jimmy’s shooting at?” She stepped backward and dropped onto the fainting couch. Krumholtz saw that she was wearing a small ankle bracelet of brilliant gold. “You can go,” she said.

Krumholtz returned to the corridor, again walking past the video of the midtown Miss Havisham, but he could not find the door out to the back terrace. He touched the thick glass in an effort to find the doorway. Night appeared to be descending on trembling batlike wings, and inside Mallardhof the music continued to float down from the invisible built-in speakers. At the moment, they were playing the first book of Debussy Préludes . Krumholtz had once been a pianist, playing keyboards in a rock band in high school, and had played in another band, Sweat Stain, in college, but had found no way of making a living from it and after majoring in music had gone into journalism, thinking that he might preserve some elements of artistic work in what he did. He had been a good enough pianist to work in a cocktail lounge to pay for his tuition, but greatness was far beyond him, and he knew it. You had to be a great musician to make a real living at it. He stopped to listen to the music. The sound was slightly smeary: an old recording: Walter Gieseking playing.

Cathy would be sitting the girls down about now, for dinner. They would be gathered under the kitchen light, maybe eating spaghetti together. Cathy made a great sauce. Her spaghetti sauce was one of her little glories. Krumholtz went through a brief shudder of longing for his wife and daughters and home. He had never felt anything but love for Cathy from the moment he had met her. He thought of asking someone in this infernal Olympian household for a telephone, so he could call to check up on her, see how she was doing. Lately he had been a bit worried about her. She had appeared to be distracted and preoccupied and hardly listened to him when he was talking to her. The job at the agency, she had told him, had been getting her down.

All at once he found the door out to the back terrace where Mallard had been chopping firewood. When he saw Mallard now, Krumholtz could make out that the man was covered with blood. He was bent over something with a knife in his hand and was cutting it lengthwise.

“A deer, damn it,” Mallard said. “Somehow it got on the property. You know, they eat everything. There must be a hole in the fencing. They can be very aggressive. And destructive.” Mallard had in his hand a four-inch field knife and another tool Krumholtz didn’t recognize. “Have you ever done this?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Some hunters bleed the deer. They cut its throat. But that’s ridiculous, because after all the heart isn’t pumping, so you have to hang the damn thing with its head down so the blood drains out. Anyway, we don’t do that. So what you do is, you get the deer on its back. Maybe you know. You look like you may be a hunter.”

“Yes, I can see what you’re doing,” Krumholtz said. Would this scene provide him with the opening of his article? “A winner not afraid of blood!”

“And then what you do is, you put your gloves on and then cut with a gut hook — damn, the light should be better — from down here, the genitals, up to the sternum. But you don’t cut too deep because if you do, you’ll cut into the intestines, and then you’ve got a god-awful mess on your hands, and you’ll smell bad for a week. You cut out the bladder. You can skin the deer at this point, pulling the skin back from the meat. Some do, some don’t. I usually don’t.”