Donald Westlake - Sacred Monster

“Never had I known anyone so interested in me .” I smile in contented reverie at my interlocutor. “Do you know what I mean, Michael?” I am remembering his name, even that. I am under control, by God, I am the captain of my fucking fate, I am the master of whatchamacallit. I say, “I don’t mean interested, you know? I mean... interested! You know?”

“I think I do,” he says, gazing at me over his knees and his notebook and his pencil and his nothing nose.

“I mean,” I explain further, “ you’re interested in me, right?”

“Yes, I am,” he says.

“Your readers are interested in me,” I say. “People going to the movies are interested in me. Everybody’s interested in me. But not like Lorraine. She really dug down in there. She really wanted to know me. But thank God she didn’t care about the details, you see what I mean?”

He frowns. “No,” he says simply.

“Lorraine wasn’t interested in my biography, ” I tell Michael O’Connor. “She was interested in my meaning . My biography is trash, don’t you think I know that? Pop paperback history, a million pretentious movies, the same elements over and over again. The religious interlude, the failed rapprochement with the parents, the ghastly secret in the past, the casting couch, the betrayals, the glitzy locations, the glamorous diseased marriages, the problems with mood enhancers, the whole shmear. Lorraine didn’t care about any of that. Her interest in me went deeper, into why these images are so powerful, why the population sifts itself over and over again for the same histories, the same qualities, the same doomed glamour.”

O’Connor nods but doesn’t write anything. “What conclusion did she come to?” he asks me.

I shake my head, disappointed in him. “Intellectuals do not come to conclusions, Michael,” I tell him. “Intellectuals consider the situation . That’s enough for them.”

“And it was enough for you, too?”

“It was paradise,” I say. “And yet, almost from the beginning, there were these small signs of trouble ahead.”

The Malibu kitchen was clean again, once more carefully tended and polished. The television set was gone from the small white table, the fingerprints were gone from the refrigerator, the hanging copper pots gleamed as before, and everything was in its place with a bright shining face.

At the butcher-block island, Jack stood, neatly and absorbedly preparing a peanut butter sandwich on pumpernickel bread. From some other room in the house came a sound rather like a clap or a slap; Jack looked up, attentive, listening, but the sound was not repeated. He returned to his peanut butter and his pumpernickel.

Buddy entered the kitchen, rubbing the side of his face, but when he saw Jack his hand dropped immediately to his side and he forced a kind of careless but lopsided grin, saying, “Hey, how’s it goin’, Dad?”

Jack smiled at him. “I say Nietzsche was right: Happiness is a woman.”

Lorraine came into the kitchen, looking grim and flexing the fingers of her right hand. When she saw Jack and Buddy, she dropped her hand to her side, ignored Buddy, and spoke lightly to Jack, saying, “Oh, hello, darling.”

“Hello, darling,” Jack said.

Buddy was awkward in the presence of these two together. Trying to hide the fact, he scuffed his feet and behaved in an elaborately casual manner. “Well, I’m off,” he said, too brightly. “I’ve been invited to watch the Rams scrimmage. Wanna come along, Dad?”

“Another time, Buddy,” Jack said. His eyes and attention were on Lorraine.

“Sure,” Buddy said, and did too large a farewell wave, saying, “See you guys.”

“So long, Buddy,” Jack said, smiling at Lorraine.

Buddy left, his lips twitching, and Lorraine crossed to the butcher-block island, saying with some amusement, “A peanut butter sandwich, darling?”

With an easy laugh, Jack said, “We can’t be intellectual all the time, darling.”

With an easy laugh, Lorraine said, “I only meant, darling, you didn’t offer one to me .”

“Would you like one?” Jack asked her. “Be delighted to make it for you.”

“Thank you, darling,” Lorraine said, and leaned on the butcher block to watch.

Jack started another sandwich, absorbed and happy in his work. Lorraine watched for a moment, and then said, “Darling?”

Still concentrating on the job at hand, Jack said, “Yes, darling?”

“There’s something I don’t understand, darling.”

“What’s that, darling?”

Lorraine hesitated, then went ahead: “Buddy, darling.”

With a quizzical laugh, Jack glanced at her, then back at his sandwich-making. “Buddy, darling.” he echoed. “What’s not to understand about Buddy?”

“His place in your life, darling.” Lorraine said, her manner firm.

“Darling,” Jack said, “he’s my oldest friend in all the world.”

“Yes, I know,” Lorraine said dryly, “you ate sand together.”

Cheered by the memory, Jack said, “Oh, did I tell you about that, darling?”

“Yes, you did, darling.” Lorraine took a deep breath, then plunged ahead, saying, “But your relationship with Buddy must have changed since then. You aren’t in that sandbox anymore.”

“Well, of course not,” Jack said, chuckling as though she were making jokes.

“And to a recent arrival on the scene, darling,” Lorraine persisted, “it does look awfully as though Buddy is a mere sponge.”

“Oh, darling!” Jack said, reproachful.

“A sponge,” Lorraine repeated, inexorable. “A wastrel. A parasite. He lives on you, darling, borrows money he never repays, treats your possessions... as though he owns them.”

“Is it wrong, darling,” Jack asked, pleading prettily for understanding, “to be generous to an old friend?”

“It goes beyond generosity,” Lorraine insisted. “It’s almost as though Buddy had some hold over you, some—”

Quick, urgent, Jack said, “Why do you say that?” And added, as an afterthought, “Darling?”

Casual, not noticing the force of his reaction, she said, “Oh, I don’t mean anything as melodramatic as blackmail, darling, as though you’d committed a murder or something—” She broke off and looked with some surprise at the sandwich Jack had been making. “Why, darling,” she said. “You’ve stuck the knife right through the bread.”

Jack held up the knife, the pumpernickel slice impaled on it. His voice hoarse, he said, “I’ll start another sandwich... darling.”

“But all unknown to all of us, a cloud was hanging over our heads, completely unsuspected. A cloud named Rubelle Kallikak.”

The courtroom, a large traditional place of gleaming dark wood benches and railings, high pale ceiling, large side windows, judge seated on a tall impressive banc flanked by the flags of the United States of America and the state of California, was crowded with onlookers but was almost perfectly still. The six jurors sat in somber intensity, deeply aware of the solemnity and import of their work here. The judge, white-haired, stocky, fatherly, fondled his gavel and gave his full attention to the questioning of the witness.

That witness. The plaintiff, in fact: Rubelle Kallikak. A filthy slattern of seventeen, already spreading in hip and thigh, dressed in cast-off garments a year from their last cleaning, her hair a mare’s nest, her nose snot-smeared, her dull eyes a monument to a lifetime of improper diet, she sprawled in the witness chair with a filthy baby shlurping at her sagging breast. Before her was spread the courtroom: in the seats on one side of the aisle her family, dozens of Kallikaks (of whom Rubelle was the beauty), and on the other side the media, eyes and ears wide open. To her left stood her attorney, a slick-haired sleazeball in a maroon leisure suit and bright blue wide tie. Seated at the defense table were Jack and Lorraine, hand in hand, with their battery of brilliant and expensive lawyers all in pinstripes.