Rich Friends (37 page)

“Come with me,” she said. Darkness (and circadian rhythm?) made her voice too loud.

He said nothing.

“Or I'll go with you.”

“Being alone is the living pits, but.…”

“But you're drunk.”

“I'm straight-line sober. And Cricket, aware of this juicy, schoolgirl crush.”

“So?”

“I can't take advantage.”

He couldn't leave, either. Stretching his arm to paneling, he leaned over her. The silence was taut as a dam before it breaks. Unendurable. In that moment their silence communicated, far more than words could, the violence of his new-learned anguish, the full impact of her love—yet for all this love, had she not understood the extent of his pain, she would have let the matter drop. As it was, she knew he needed her. Or rather, he needed comfort.

Thighs weak, face burning, she said, “How's it taking advantage if I want to?”

“Ever hear the term ‘using'?”

“This isn't.”

“You're my cousin. Christ, who needs to be more of a turd than's necessary for survival?”

“You aren't, Vliet.”

“Like hell I aren't. And besides, you're twelve.”

“Sixteen.”

“Eleven.”

“Sixteen.”

“I think of you as ten, and I'm what matters.”

“It's not as if it's firsts.”

“No?”

“No.”

“That I can't argue, Cricket, but I'm pretty stunned.”

“One night,” she said. “Only tonight.”

He gave a peculiar choking sigh.

“It won't alter anything between us, Vliet. I promise.”

Snap, snap, snap
. Vliet never hid from Cricket. And now his nervous, snapping fingers made a sound defenseless as a child's forlorn weeping.

“It'll be like we slept in our own beds, Vliet. Tomorrow we'll be the same as ever,” she whispered. And could speak no more. She listened to his fingers. She heard her heart. Circadian heart, she thought.

The snapping halted.

“Cricket, don't let me. Don't.” His plea held bewilderment, pain, and fear. Then, suddenly, he laughed. His breath stirred the warmth of Louis Martini wine onto her face. “Check this, willya?” His tone now mocked. “Me with the good fight when we both know the last thing I want is to be alone.”

She groped for his hand. In that sad, dusty chill, their fingers twined, his long and damp, hers childsize and trembling. They felt their way along shellacked pine to her room. His had the double bed. That bed, however, was occupied. Alix was in the cabin, palpable as if she slept in the room on the far side of the stairwell.

Cricket reached for the light.

“No need,” he said.

Darkness suited Cricket. She never had been self-conscious, but now she kept thinking she was a slob-pathetic type. Too short. Plain. She yanked sweaters over her head, skinning off jeans. She heard a button fall, rolling on boards. She paid no attention.

He held back clammy sheets to receive her.

She traced the skin of his shoulder, he brushed away her. fingers. She kissed his chin, he jerked his head. He moved onto her. Surprised, she struggled. But he had her pinned down, his body paying no attention to hers. I'm being used, she thought, exactly as he'd said. Fury burst through Cricket, a sexual outrage that she'd never experienced. Don't, her brain shouted, and she almost yelled it aloud. DON'T! With Tom, always it had been mutual. Tom Goose-ta-av-sen. And I didn't love Tom. She found herself moving, but Vliet was a runner, sprinting alone, uncaring. She could smell his sharp, mustardy sweat, the soured wine.

Vliet was experiencing a frantic brutality alien to him. Alix's rejection, Roger's defection were a gangrenous wound. The body under his was merely a vessel into which festering pus could explode.

Maybe ninety seconds and he was rolling off her, getting out of bed. The other mattress creaked. Neither had spoken. Neither spoke now. She curled on her side, making herself smaller.

A groan awakened her.

“Vliet,” she said into the dark.

Muttering.

“Wake up!” she said.

A low, wordless cry.

She padded across frozen night, crowding next to him. He was shuddering. Cold sweat covered his naked skin. By osmosis, his night terror reached her.

“Huhh?” he mumbled.

She moved her hand gently down the damp trough of his spine. “Shh.”

“Cricket?”

“Me, yes.”

He sniffed violently. “I was killing Roger.”

“A nightmare.”

“Then he was murdering me with his fists. He can, Cricket, he can.” Vliet's thumb rubbed her cheek. “Hey little cos. You rescued me in the nick of time.”

He reached under the bed, finding a pack of Chesterfields that he must've stashed beforehand. He took a long time lighting up. In the yellow flicker the line cut by his crooked smile was deep. He looked drawn, ill. He looked as if he were getting over far worse than a cold. Shaking out the match, he inhaled deeply. “C'mere,” he said.

She moved over, aware of biceps, muscles hard below her neck, aware of contiguous bodies. She had forgotten the misery of impersonal sex. She watched the glow of his cigarette, thinking of the bonds of warmth, familial affection, shared memory that joined them. And separated them. She understood the sense of vocation that leads a woman to a convent. The religious feel they are joined to, yet divided from, God. They consider their lives a bridge to gap the distance to Him. Cricket, the drifter, knew she had similar purpose. She would live only for Vliet. Even to her the idea was ludicrous. Puppy love, crushes, adolescent yearnings are very funny. (Yet who laughs when a young postulant in white cuts off her hair and takes her vow?) Vliet stubbed out his cigarette, turning on the pillow, nuzzling her cheek. “It's one of our small-size Van Vliets,” he said.

“I am?”

“Really.” He touched her breasts in turn. “Full and nice here.”

Dazed with pleasure, she whispered, “You're beautiful.”

He kissed her lightly. “We shouldn't let it get personal, we shouldn't. Cricket, Cricket, it is you?”

“Me.”

His fingers traced down her back. “Remember? I picked cactus from this.”

She began to tremble.

“You were one,” he said.

“Three.”

“Two.”

“Three,” she whispered.

“Three, then,” he said, kissing her, the kiss turning inside out, and they started to make love, side by side, easily, gently, her hands floating on him, and he rambling about the cactus, yes, here the cactus. Caroline had driven Cricket and the twins for a day at Uncle Hend and Aunt Bette's ranch near Palm Springs, and Cricket, wobbly from one of the operations, had fallen, spiking herself on a cholla cactus, and Vliet was the only one she'd let use the tweezers to remove painful spikes. I love you, she thought over and over, maybe she said it, she kissed sharp collarbones and lightly fleshed chest, their breathing the only sound, their sweat-glazed bodies protected by their mutual grandmother's quilt stitchery, and they were moving luxuriously as if they had had a lifetime's carnal pleasure of one another, and when it finally came, that mingling of flesh, fluid, nerve ends, and self, it was through her muscles. There was odd tenderness in such culmination. Vliet never before had been able to permit it, it was too unguarded, but this was Cricket merging around him, Cricket held no danger, no shadows, he trusted little Cricket, ahhh … trusted.… Their breathing quieted slowly. Through frost-edged windows shone huge mountain stars, a glittering that had traveled atomless eternity to reach a tall, elegantly handsome man with a nose like a Viking ship, who held a tiny, freckled girl with the same nose and blonde golliwog hair.

“You're a small snail,” he said.

“I love you.”

“You said a few hundred times.” He kissed her.

“It's no crush. I love you.”

“I encourage you.” He strummed on her shoulder. “Cricket, recognize?”

“No.”

“Should.”

“What is it?”

“For you I chust composed. I vill call it der
Moonlight Sonata.
”

“You mean everything to me,” she said, rubbing her nose in his neck.

“There's one thing.”

“What?”

“Not to give you a swollen head, but that was topnotch stuff. And now it's very cozy. Really. I could stay in bed with you forever.” He curled, yawning, around her. “You're my small snail.” Another yawn. “Small snail.”

2

Cricket transferred food into cardboard cartons. There were soups and chili, packages of cookies and crackers, an unopened two-pound jar of unprocessed honey, cellophane-packed dried mushrooms, eggs. Most of the purchases made by Alix four days earlier.

Vliet slept downstairs. Cricket moved slowly, the soft upper lip a dreamy curve. She set a bottle of White House dressing on Hostess Twinkies, crushing them. She wasn't caught up by anything that Vliet had said (
I could stay in bed with you forever
) or by the way he'd acted (tender, gentle, and yes, loving). She had promised last night wouldn't exist. And if she couldn't exactly keep this promise, well, she could come pretty close. For Cricket, as for small children, once a yearned-after activity is in the past, it takes on a mythic quality. For her, last night already had transcended what is real.

Vliet, shaved and immaculate, came upstairs, giving her his standard smile. Except Vliet, a night person, wasn't good for smiles until his second cup of coffee.

“'Morning,” he said, smiling into her eyes. “Packed?”

“Finishing up.”

“We're set, then.”

“There's the beds. I'll do them while you get the toilet.”

“First my coffee.” He moved to the stove. His lopsided smile definitely was lasting too long. A white-toothed reminder: your promise.

She hurried downstairs.

She folded Alix's stuff into Alix's case. Except for a faint perfume, the clothes were as they had emerged from the tissue of an I. Magnin box, where, according to labels, most of them had been bought. She stripped beds. She ended up in her room.

“Ready?”

She jumped. Vliet lounged at the door, smiling at her. She let the quilt (they had shared it) slip, then hastily refolded it.

“Practically,” she said.

“No rush.” He lit a cigarette, letting it dangle. “Hey, little cos, you've got milk on your upper lip.”

Reddening, she licked a finger to her mouth.

“Just for the record, say something.”

“I don't know what.”

He gave her a long look and walked to the bed nearest the window, sitting, extending his legs. Sunlight polished hand-sewn boots.

She said, “If you mean—That didn't change anything for me, last night.”

“How could it, Cricket?” He smiled. “Nothing happened, last night.”

She shoved more dirty linen in the pillowcase. She was confused, hurt. Obediently she had sponged away his moist, affectionate coupling as she would jam from a blouse, and if a faint mark, no longer quite real to her, stained her memory, well, she wouldn't wear that side. She didn't understand what it was that he wanted from her.

“Must you,” she asked, and her voice trembled, “keep grinning like that?”

“Get off that damn high horse! What're you trying to hold me to?”

Camera slung around her neck, duffel over her shoulder, afghan under her elbow, Cricket headed for the door.

“I didn't mean.…” Vliet's voice came apart. “I'm sorry. Really. Listen, you're a good, generous, smart little nipper.” Dragging on his cigarette, he discovered it had gone out. He dropped the butt in his palm. “But you're ten—”

“Sixteen.”

“—and for the sake of argument, let's say I hadn't slept in my own bed.”

She turned away.

“I might have said things, done things, I couldn't mean. No way I could mean them. You're too young. You're my cousin. You're not—you're not my type.” His voice had that odd, toneless quality. Despair, she thought. “Tell me, how do you figure I'd feel every time I see you?”

“Vliet,” she said, “today's today.”

“For you. Not me. If I'd behaved in a way that led you on …” He paused, relighting the cigarette. “I'd feel lousy. And people cannot face those they feel lousy toward. I wouldn't be able to come into the same room with you. Understand? We couldn't be in the same room.”

She leaned against the battered highboy.

“You mean too goddamn much,” he said.

She avoided looking at him head-on. What was it he wanted? Cricket had the tendency of openly generous people to imagine the motives of others were cleverer, more cerebral than her own. She never could realize that in general the elaborate circumlocutions they used were to justify their own triviality. She stood silent, weighted down by the heavy duffel.

“Cricket,” he muttered, “it's gotta be the same, you and me.”

“But it is.”

“I am so screwed. Lost. I couldn't take it if things changed with us. Can't you see that?”

And finally she did see. Vliet wanted her to behave as he had. A bit much. He wanted her to let him know she was playing his game. At first she had ignored last night, so how could he assume she was ignoring it?

“Know what?” She forced cheer into her voice.

“What?”

“That's what,” she said, brightly nodding at the lumpy pillowcase.

And he, rewarding her with his fine, uneven grin, swung the makeshift laundry bag over his shoulder. “Off, off and away.” Relief sang in his voice.

She followed him upstairs. Her shoulders were hunched, her face drawn. She looked like a shy child who has been coerced by grown-ups into performing at one of their parties.

3

A low-pressure area had formed over the Pacific. The next day, around eleven, rain started. As Cricket came out of her bathroom, she heard Vliet's voice. He must've been telling Caroline a joke because as Cricket circled down her stairs, Caroline's golden laughter rang.