Ann Beattie - Love Always

Lucy felt sadder than she thought she would when she put down the receiver. She could see it from her mother’s perspective — that almost everything they did was strange and upsetting.

She thought about that as she left the house and drove to meet Hildon at the Hadley-Cooper’s. It wasn’t at all what her mother claimed — that she had conveniently found a sort of all-purpose person, a lover-husband-father in one: it wasn’t that, because Hildon wasn’t dependable. She could depend on him to be there, but she couldn’t guess about his mood, couldn’t change it, whatever it was — Hildon was still an enigma, after all these years. His recent good fortune seemed to have made him crazier instead of more stable.

She had asked Nicole if she wanted to go, knowing that it was safe to ask because, as usual, Nicole was sure to say no. She was going back to the house where she had gone to the party not long ago with Hildon. She was glad to have somewhere to go, because she did not want to think about Jane. Hildon wanted her to see the pond, with the carp swimming in it, and a statue of Richard Nixon in the center, pissing.

At the last intersection before the house, she looked carefully at the map Hildon had drawn, that she had kept crumpled in her glove compartment. She found the unmarked driveway without any trouble, and got out of the car and went to one of the stone pillars. The pinkish stone below the lantern on the left was wired so it could be pushed, triggering a device that would make the iron gate rise so she could drive through. She felt like she was in a James Bond movie as she touched the stone and it moved. The gate rose slowly.

Hildon’s car was in front of the house, in the big circular driveway. The driveway looked enormous, almost empty of cars. He was throwing a yellow tennis ball for a Dalmatian in the field beside the house. The dog ran barking to the car.

“He won’t hurt you. Here, Kissinger!” Hildon called.

The dog raced back to where Hildon stood, and looked up at the tennis ball, eagerly. Lucy got out of the car. It was quite a mansion. The other night, she had not noticed the large holly bushes across the front, or the urns on the front steps with Norfolk Island pines in them. It was an enormous pale gray house — almost silver — with a catwalk across the top.

“They went to North Carolina for the week,” he said. “I have the key. Here’s the key.”

It was an ordinary key; she had expected some more dramatic way to enter the house.

“They went away and left the dog?”

“There’s a caretaker.”

“Who are these people?” she said.

“Just rich people. I changed a flat for Antoinette, and she asked me to come for a drink. She was very attractive, so I thought I would. They’re real Cindi Coeur fans. You’re going to have to come back sometime when they’re here.”

She noticed the inside of the house more this time. The house was traditional enough: a long Oriental runner in the hallway, a winding staircase, cherry furniture, primitive paintings of lumpy children and animals with bows around their necks. She looked at the staircase, and thought of Myra DeVane. Les.

“I’ve got a great afternoon planned,” Hildon said. “There’s some Cakebread Cellars in a cooler in the other room. You’re really going to like the entertainment.”

Hildon gestured to a room at the end of the hallway. Inside, black velvet modular furniture made an L-shape in front of a screen. Hildon gestured for her to sit down. He touched a button and the screen widened. He touched another button and an image came on the screen and seemed to shake itself into focus. Hildon sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. She could see his wide smile in her peripheral vision.

And there they were: Lucy and Hildon, standing and talking to Matt Smith. She had expected pornography, and instead she was watching Maureen, in her sarong, pouring a glass of wine. At this point, Hildon removed his arm from around Lucy, sat forward, and poured from their bottle of wine. Maureen was turning to talk to Cameron Petrus. Suddenly there was a quick cut to Lucy, dancing with whoever that silly girl had been. Hildon picked up the remote control switch from the floor. He pushed a button and the videotape stopped. Maureen filled the screen, frowning, her hand almost in front of her face. Hildon released the button. In slow motion, Maureen’s frown deepened and her hand stopped in front of her eyes. That image was there as Hildon opened one button and slid his hand under Lucy’s blouse, cupping his hand around her smooth breast, then moving his fingertips. Between his thumb and first finger, he felt her nipple stiffen.

IT was one of the few times in his life Piggy Proctor had a typical response to anything. He stood with his hands at his sides, glanced down quickly as the sheet was pulled back, looked away, and fainted.

He must have talked himself back to consciousness, because the first voice he heard was his own, saying “Oh no” over and over. He was sitting on the floor. The floor felt like a slab of ice. The doctor was keeping him from falling over by supporting his shoulders. He was standing behind him. Piggy was leaning on the man’s legs, his own legs spread in front of him like somebody lounging in a chair at the seashore.

Tomorrow, if Jane hadn’t been dead, she would have been on the beach in Martinique, honeymooning with her new husband, who had just killed her.

“Mr. Proctor,” the doctor said, stepping back a few inches. “Do you feel able to stand?”

Even the suggestion made Piggy breathless. His heart was racing. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road, right?” He clapped his hands together. They were freezing.

The doctor was standing in front of him, helping him up. It felt like one side of his head had been crushed.

“I thought you were going to be wrong,” Piggy said. “I didn’t come in expecting this.”

“I’m very sorry,” the doctor said. “Will you come into the office and sign some forms? Is there anything I can do?”

He was holding Piggy’s hand like a schoolchild. He was maneuvering him out of the room.

“Who should I call?” Piggy said. “What am I going to do?”

They were in a corridor. Piggy didn’t remember the day outside being anywhere near this bright. He had been at his office, in the middle of getting his weekly Shiatsu massage, when his secretary came in and said that there was an extreme emergency. She was always interrupting him, and although it was for a good reason, Piggy continued to think that the best way to keep her in line was to communicate to her that if she couldn’t think of adjectives, the situation wasn’t desperate. He liked to see her worked up. If he had to be worked up all the time, he liked to have company. He suspected that his secretary had gone back to her Valium addiction; she had a longer and longer string of adjectives every time, but she spoke about the emergencies very dispassionately: “A most urgent, terrible, extremely upsetting problem has arisen,” she had said, then turned and wandered from the room.

Two days ago his wife had hit another car on Rodeo Drive. One of the roofers had lost his footing and had broken his hand as he fell off a ladder. Bobby Blue wanted to hang from a rope over the beach at Malibu with Tatum O’Neal instead of Nicole. His other secretary, Zeva, had misprogrammed the computer; not only had the man who was going to write the novelization of Passionate Intensity not written a book on Venus de Milo, but he was apparently some unheard of chump, whose name wouldn’t dignify the project.