Thomas Mcguane - Something to Be Desired
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- Название:Something to Be Desired
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- Издательство:Vintage
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- Год:2012
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:5 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Antoinette was taking reservations at a good clip, and the front office was filled with the wonderful smell of hot asphalt from the pavers outside. There was a warm breeze coming through the open windows, and Lucien could hear the American flag pop over the parking lot. Antoinette touched her forefinger to the dimple in her right cheek and bethought herself while the phone flashed. In the lobby a local decorator hung pictures of windmills, buckaroos, roundups and amazingly smoky trains. A smooth operation, Lucien thought.
“Antoinette, has Miss Taylor arranged for any activities for my son today?”
“I believe he has a riding lesson in half an hour. At ten.”
“I see. I didn’t know that. Who’s giving the lesson?”
“I believe it’s Sheila.”
“Antoinette, get Sheila and make sure the lesson lasts a couple of hours. Sheila is to teach James riding for two hours.”
Now Lucien began to move rapidly. From the tennis courts, he could see down to the stables. Sheila was lecturing James about the parts of a saddle while James sat up on a tall bay horse that seemed to be sleeping through the lecture.
Then he walked through the grove of flowering crab apples to the White Cottage. When he got to the wall, he walked around to the side that faced open country and stopped to level his breathing. Then he climbed the timber crossbrace of the wall and looked inside the court. As he expected, Suzanne was sunbathing beside the pool. For some reason he was startled by the lankiness of her naked body. She had one arm crooked over her face, and her breathing was slow and rhythmic. Once the arm swung out suddenly as though at a fly, and the effect of that on Lucien was a kind of fright. One knee was angled slightly against the other, drawing up one long curve of thigh. Lucien couldn’t help studying to see if her breasts had fallen; they hadn’t. Then she sat up and thought for a moment; he was afraid to move. She walked to the table and made a long-distance phone call; he knew this because he counted the digits and there were eleven altogether. Long-distance. She leaned onto her elbows with her fingers run into her auburn hair and talked and laughed for a few minutes. Then she hung up. As she walked back to the pool she kept smiling from the phone conversation and lay down again.
When he climbed back down he felt tremulous. He had the key to the gate and he walked around to the door. He touched the end of the key to the opening in the lock, waited a moment, then pushed very slowly, feeling each notch fall softly along the shaft of the key. He turned it and the door went loose. He stepped in. Now he was looking straight at Suzanne from a very short distance, unnoticed.
When he held her wrists and kissed her, her scream went all the way down his throat. Then she knew it was him and stopped. She just looked at him, resting on her elbows, with not the beginning of an expression. Lucien undressed and moved her knees apart with his own. He stopped then and waited. A second later, she crammed him inside her and he felt tears on her cheeks. It should have ruined things, but Suzanne’s healthy animalism was something she could never entirely eliminate, and they made love for a long time.
“Why have you done this?”
“I couldn’t help it.”
“Right.”
“I was sort of crazy. I’m not kidding, darling. I was controlled by something else—” He was telling the truth.
“A sort of lever.”
“Please.”
“ Please . I can’t believe you’d say that to me. What could be more adorable, Lucien, than your put-upon air?”
“You lubricated.”
“I ask you, please stop. That’s how they defend rapists.”
“And your boss called, wants you back at work yesterday.”
“There’s another thing we haven’t touched on. My work. Anyway, let’s not quarrel. James’ll be here in a minute.”
“Not to worry. He’s having a two-hour lesson.”
“Isn’t that thoughtful. You moved him into a larger time slot.” She was getting angry.
“You didn’t have to make love with me,” Lucien said petulantly.
“That’s right, I didn’t. But I hadn’t fucked anybody in about a week. I must’ve needed it.”
“Please don’t talk that way.”
“I’ll talk any way I please. I’m just a working mother and I’ve got my shoulder to the wheel, you sonofabitch.”
“Whooo.”
“You know what,” she said with blazing eyes, “I think I hate you. Why don’t you go fuck something else. I don’t think I want to fuck you anymore. Yeah, that’s it. No more fucking you, and here’s why: it encourages all your sloppy sentimentality and your no-shows and your desertions and your treatment of people who love you as if they were so many pocket mirrors for you to see if you’re aging or what kind of day you’re having or how deep and creative you are or how effective and memorable your personal philosophy is or whether you might not start going back to church or how many months it was since your last complete physical or whether you ought to give up after-dinner drinks. No, you sonofabitch, I don’t think I’ll fuck you anymore. I think I’ll just get the hell out of here and fuck someone else. You know how it goes.”
Lucien left. He was astounded at Suzanne’s description and the depth of her feeling. He had a drink at the bar, drove two buckets of balls at the driving range, shucked half a dozen air-fresh Chesapeake oysters with his personal prying iron, ate them, made ten or twenty effective business calls and bought James a fishing rod. He just wished he had Suzanne and that they were back on the Gulf Stream in a light norther in their old sloop bound for glory. He wished he were still playing third base, guarding the hot corner all those summers ago. Principally, he was exhilarated by her rage.
But it seemed to be true: she hated him.
“Antoinette,” he said a while later, “get the number, the long-distance call, Suzanne made from the White Cottage around half past ten. Then put a call through for me to that number.”
He waited as it rang and then was answered. It was the man who had called. “Yeah,” said Lucien. “I got you an answer on Suzanne Taylor’s return to work. She’ll get there when she gets there. Okay? She’ll get there when she gets there.”
“I think this is very sad for you,” the man said. “I’d hate to be in your position.”
18
Things at the spring grew very busy without warning. The Elks booked two luncheons, which on top of the built-in traffic made things burdensome. Nor was Henchcliff taking it as well as he might have. “Lucien,” he said after the second day of this, “we had a very specific conversation about what was expected of me and what was expected of me the way I saw it was high-grade, high-priced cooking, which cannot be done at the same rate as franks and beans. I don’t see this as an eatery.”
“I know that. But bear with us, we’re in business here. We’ve got to take it as it comes.”
“ You have to take it as it comes. I’m a cook, I’m an artist.”
“No,” said Lucien. “Cooks are not artists. Somebody should have explained that to you.”
Henchcliff pushed his hands deep into his pockets and bucked his elbows in close to his ribs: heavy weather ahead. “You want to spend a couple days with me in front of that oven?”
“I pay you to do that. Plus I’m the wrong guy to be having this conversation. I don’t give a shit what people put in their goddamn mouths. In fact, long conversations about what people put in their mouths bore the hell out of me. I’ve got plenty of problems of my own right now, Hench. It’s not like I’m interested in trying yours on for size. Why don’t you quit crying and go to work?”
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