Lydia Millet - Magnificence

On a spying impulse she crept closer, screened from them by trees.

“It’ll be OK,” said the girl, and stroked the man’s head, comforting. Who was he? Not enough light. She couldn’t tell.

“One night you pet one,” he slurred, “and the next night you come in and you have to kill it.”

“You could change jobs,” said the girl, in her soft, halting way. “If it’s too hard.”

“There’s no one else to take it,” said the man, and raised his head. He was sobering up now, or had stopped sniveling, anyway. There was a branch in front of him and she couldn’t see his features. “Someone has to do it.”

“I’m sure they do. .”

“There’s weeks when, though, I feel it’s all on me, like the whole thing is on me . You know?”

Susan hit her anklebone on something hard, winced and looked down. It was a round river rock at the edge of a pool — mounds of rocks, dry reeds white in the nighttime, the black water. The still, black pools: she felt such an affinity for them. Who knew what he was talking about, some kind of mass euthanasia of unwanted pets? And yet the information was being dispensed as though he was a hero: he was a noble caretaker, he was a suffering martyr in his euthanizing. Repulsive.

Beneath her the pool was peaceful, black and smooth. So tranquil was the pool: look at the pools, pretend the pool alone was real, its dark relief, simplicity. She would creep backward, if she could do it silently and without tripping — back away from the conversation. After all, if these two were still here, there could be other guests lingering. She might still be able to redeem herself, as a hostess. She should sweep the rooms and make sure. She started her retreat.

Quiet.

“You’re so pretty,” said the man more loudly, in a different tone. His words still ran together, but now he was projecting.

“Shh,” said the girl.

“Come on. Lemme—”

“No.”

“Your eyes are nice.”

“We’ll get you some water,” said the girl.

He was trying to force himself on her, pushing his face up to hers. Jesus, she thought, a guy who used dead dogs as foreplay.

It was a new one on her.

There was the sound of it, the flesh sound of arms or chests, of soft fronts blundering.

“Stand up,” said the girl firmly. “It’s alcohol. That’s all.”

A long moment and then the man stood up droopily.

“We’ll go inside,” said the girl. “We’ll get you some water.”

She reached for her handrims and Susan stepped back into a nook, back behind a bush — the rhododendron, thick and waxy. In a minute they went past her, the girl ahead in the chair, the man slowly following. She recognized him from behind: Addison.

Where was Nancy? Asleep, maybe. Sleeping girlfriend in a wheelchair, dying dogs. That was the strategy. He was golden.

When they had disappeared she stepped up to the pool again and stared down into it.

•

There were others, she discovered, but they were fast asleep. Casey was lying on one length of the L-shaped couch in the cat room, a blanket pulled over her up to the chin, and Nancy was asleep on the other length. Sal was there too, asleep nearby but still in his chair — snoring, his head back to expose the jut of his Adam’s apple. An annoying tinny beat issued forth from his Walkman earphones. She didn’t see Addison or the girl.

She walked across to Sal and stood there looming over him for a second, deliberating. After a moment she reached for the dull silver cassette player lying on his lap. She lifted it delicately, turned it sideways to study the row of buttons, and gently pushed the one marked STOP.

Sal’s head jerked up. He blinked at her blearily.

“Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were. .”

“I gotta have the music,” he said.

“When you’re—?”

“To sleep, man.”

“Oh?”

“Can’t sleep without music,” and he took the Walkman back and placed it on his thigh again.

“I apologize, then,” she said.

He grunted, pressed PLAYand crossed his arms, leaning back.

Down on the couch, Casey moved her head restlessly.

“Good night,” whispered Susan in Sal’s direction. She was turning to leave when she saw the two from the garden approaching — the girl ahead, Addison stumbling behind.

“He needs to crash,” whispered the girl, and then: “I would — go home, but all of them. .”

“You came together,” whispered Susan.

The girl nodded. “In a van.”

“It’s always hardest for the sober ones,” said Susan, as though she knew.

Behind the girl — possibly headed for the corner recliner — Addison tripped abruptly and fell sideways onto the platform that held the rearing lion. He turned and grabbed at it as he fell and the hind paws came up off the platform, ripping off their bolts, so that he and the lion fell together, in a clinch.

“Oh my God,” said the girl.

“Oh no,” said Susan.

Sal’s head jerked up again.

“What the fuck,” he said.

Addison lay on the shag rug loosely holding the beast, whose front paws stretched above his head.

“Passed out,” said the girl, after a second.

“I think you’re right,” said Susan.

“No shit,” said Sal, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry about the lion,” said the girl.

“Me too,” said Susan, and gazed down at the lion’s ripped feet. She bent to look closer: the four gray pads of the toes, a yellow-white fur around them, another soft pad further back. It was torn open now with a bolt sticking out to reveal part of the white-plastic mold inside. Their pose, she thought, was like two animals on a shield or flag in one of the old man’s heraldry books. Some flags pictured lions and unicorns facing each other, standing on their hind legs, or griffins and dragons. Two animals poised to pummel each other. Lying inert, Addison pummeled a lion.

“Why don’t you come with me,” she said to the girl. Sal was already nodding off. “There’s another room on this floor you can sleep in. More comfortable than here.”

They left Addison where he had fallen, tangled with the great cat, a high-pitched beat leaking out of Sal’s headphones.

“They’re going to claim he had delusions,” said Casey in the morning.

She was in the bathroom with Susan, who stood up from the sink, her face dripping, and reached for the hand towel, her eyes squeezed shut.

“What?”

“Yeah. They’ve got a lawyer. They’re going to say the will isn’t valid.”

“You’re kidding.”

“But Jim says that they’re full of it.”

“Jim knows?”

“Yeah, he was standing there when they told me.”

Susan dried her face and walked out, looking for him. He was in bed still. She pulled the curtains open and flooded them both with whiteness, bleaching the flamingo.

“You didn’t think I’d want to know?”

He groaned and rolled onto his back, feet splayed under the sheet, arms wide.

“Listen. I don’t think you really need to worry.”

“Don’t need to worry? They’re trying to take this all away from me!”

“The standard for legal capacity is low,” he said, and raised himself onto his elbows, rubbing his eyes wearily.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Jim. What are you telling me?”

“They’d have to prove that he was delusional under 6100, and there’s no evidence of that. Or under Section 811, they’d have to have evidence he couldn’t reason logically. Or recognize familiar objects or people. Or have any memory. They’re not objecting to the trust. The trust is irrelevant to them. And that’s a benefit to you, because with trusts the legal capacity standard is higher. There’s no presumption of undue influence here, either. So chances are slim they’ll prevail.”