Rich Friends (46 page)

“That you, Cricket?” Orion's voice came anxious from the room that had belonged to Dormin Van Vliet, a tiny man with hairy nostrils and a pacemaker in his heart who had departed this life from St. Vincent's and therefore, according to Orion, could have left no haunting ghost.

“You really want me back, don't you?” she said.

He switched on the light. “Father Genesis would be pleased,” he said.

“There're things you never can repay. Genesis took me in, he helped me have the baby, he's always been good to me. But that doesn't stop me from seeing stuff.”

“What?”

“He's gotten bitter.”

“He has cause.”

“And look at the way he cut you out.”

“I disobeyed the Rule.”

Cricket ran a finger along the rosewood dado. Examining accumulated dust on her fingertip, she asked, “If I go back, will he let you in again?”

“I'm not sure.”

“But you think so?”

Orion's scraggly beard worked. “He wants us all to live the Rule.”

The Rule. Goosebumps formed under Cricket's swap-meet robe. Yesterday Genesis had come over. He had sat on the low wall of the terrace with Magnificat at his feet, leaning her red hair on his knees. The other Select, cross-legged on flagstone, had gazed devoutly up. Genesis had spoken of civilization doomed:
Those who have accepted REVELATION shall survive
, he had rumbled. According to Genesis, humanity was divided in two parts—the hundred or so who belonged to REVELATION and the billions of doomed. He had crossed his bricklayer arms, prophesying the end. Roger and Vliet, both, had called Genesis a nut. He probably was. (But doesn't a prophet have to hand over his sanity as collateral until the world is proved round, man related to the ape?) Genesis had said,
Who do you think will survive? The killers of animals, the men who knife other men? The workers in gun factories? The Nixons and Congress? The fornicators, adulterers, sodomites? Surely before God builds His new world, these, too, must pass
. Under a balding forehead that had sojourned in prisons, the eyes had glowed. It was the eyes that got Cricket. Eyes searching, peering, probing, gazing into the sun. Peyote, Cricket had wondered, does it affect the eyes?

“He's hooked on this doom thing, Orion.”

“If Ralph Nader says the human race has had it, people believe him.”

“I don't.”

“You should,” Orion said.

The next morning he told her he was taking off.

She knew he had no friends in the city and was untrusting of his parents—across town in their separate San Marino homes. He had no one else to stay with. “I'll take you over to meet the Tadovitches,” she said.

“So I can stick around here and listen to you tear apart Father Genesis?” His voice was cold, hateful.

“I wasn't.”

“What were you doing?”

“He's gotten so different.”

“See?” Yet more cold and hateful.

Over eggs, though, he relented. “Father Genesis doesn't want you to change. The others have to.”

“Orion, does he really think he can alter the world?”

“He has to start someplace.” Orion pushed away his half-eaten eggs. “I'd give anything to get back where I was. I'm so lost, so terribly lost without him.” The
him
sounded capitalized.

“But where'll you stay?”

“It doesn't matter.”

3

They arrived that night around eight, hot and grimed with grit from the Mojave Desert.

“Wow,” Alix said. “Built by the Addams family.”

“Van Vliets,” Roger replied, reaching for the bell.

As his finger hovered, the door was flung open. A huge shadowy cave engulfing one small, freckled girl. “It doesn't work,” Cricket said, hugging Roger. “Doctor, doctor, doctor.” And she turned to embrace Alix. “Come in,” she said. “I've got eggplant casserole. Or would you rather shower first?”

“Shower,” they cried in unison. And laughed.

Wet-haired, they sat at the kitchen table, devouring Cricket's casserole, mopping up tomatoey strings of cheese with whole-grain bread, the FM behind them giving Elton John while Cricket, without innuendo, transmitted family news.

“Vliet's flying down,” she said.

“He's not here?” Roger asked.

“No. Seattle.”

“Seattle? He didn't write me that.”

“Saturday night he should be in.”

“Tomorrow?” Alix asked.

Cricket nodded.

A June breeze played with ivy on the gable. The big kitchen was cool, the big old house comfortable. Secure. They smiled at one another. Three already were home. Tomorrow they would be complete.

Alix woke before Roger. Covering his bare shoulders, she went to the window. She stared into the green of the huge old elm, leaning forward, delighted to find a nest on the branch below her. From tangled hedges birds sang. A dog poked his yipping snout between boards of the service yard fence. The Tadnitzes, wasn't that what Cricket called the caretakers? Must be theirs.

“Alix?” Roger mumbled drowsily.

“They've got a Doberman.”

“Wha'?”

“The Tadnitzes have a killer dog.”

“Tadovitches,” he said. “Buster. He belonged to Aunt Raphaela, and he's, let's see, around fifteen. Very gentle.”

“Obvious cover-up.”

Roger folded his hands under his neck. “Today,” he said.

“What about it?”

“We tell 'em.”

“Tell who what?”

“Our families. That you've landed a self-supporting MD.”

“Not to put you down or anything, but self-supporting is hyperbole.” She sat on the bed.

“I won't be paying tuition,” he said. “I'll earn like you earn.”

“You've got some complex about that.”

He said, “Thursday.”

“Then what?”

“It takes three days to get a license, and—”

“Roger—”

“—we're due in Palo Alto next weekend.”

“I mean, let's keep it nice and slow and easy.”

“It'll be more like a wedding down here.”

“Wedding?”

“What do you think I've been talking about all year?”

“Hopkins,” she said.

“Look, in Phoenix we agreed.”

“Phoenix. I remember Phoenix distinctly. You promised screwing would take up the slack between night calls and astronomy lessons. Oh God! And this was such a beautiful morning.”

Sunlight moved patterns on the comforter. A minute passed. Another.

She said, “Not that I'm afraid.”

“What of, sweet?”

“Everything. Them. Us.”

“It doesn't matter what they say.”

“To me it does. Always.” She sighed.

“This cover-up, I hate it,” he said.

To Alix, marriage was a handleable concept—in the future. The remote future. Right now she feared it would gum things up: any change (especially one formalized in the presence of family) might well ruin them. Roger, though, all along'd had this archaic feeling he was doing her dirt, and ringing her finger with gold was his way of handling his problem. She made a small, sad grimace. “Thursday,” she assented.

He took her hand, the one with the antique garnet that she wore in trust for their future female infant. Awkwardly—it wasn't Roger's style—he kissed her palm, bending her fingers around his kiss.

Her lips parted and after a moment she stretched on the bed next to him, and they began exploring one another. They moved dreamily, as if time had forgotten them. Leaves filigreed shadows on their naked legs, a faint smell of must inhabited the bosomy old bed, the Doberman gave a series of yelping barks. Alix drew a long, trembling breath.

“Alix,” Roger said.

She opened her eyes.

“Forsaking all others, keep me only unto thee as long as we both shall live.”

Her pupils were huge, mysterious.

“To have and to hold,” he said, “from this day forward.”

“Roger,” she whispered.

“With my body I thee worship.”

“Darling?”

“What, sweet?”

“Without you, I don't exist.”

“Or me without you. Ahh?”

“Yes yes yes.”

Later, they stood together under the lion-mouthed shower head. He fingered soap on her neck.

“I seem to have bruised you.”

She felt. “Mmm, there?”

“Yes.”

“Kiss.”

He kissed. “With this kind of injury,” he said, “you better rest.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“One day,” he said. “Don't we deserve one day home without their hassling?”

So they didn't phone the Grossblatts or Philip Schorer. They didn't take the Glendale Freeway so the Reeds could congratulate their son the doctor. Later the Reeds would blame this omission on Alix. They would put the blame, as they always did, on Alix.

4

“Cricket,” Vliet said, “you always huddle in the smallest room.” And bore his Taittinger into the living room. He made ceremony of the opening. The cork, gratifyingly, popped to the ledge that ran along the north wall. He poured champagne into the ragtag of glasses that Cricket had dug up.

He raised his green tumbler. “To Dr. Reed.”

They drank.

“And to me.”

“For what?” Alix and Roger asked at the same moment.

Vliet, bowing with a click of heels as for a Heidelberg duel said, “I was in Seattle getting it together. Regional manager. Fifteen outlets is all, but mine to lead.”

There was hubbub. Roger pounded his brother's shoulders. “Hey, Vliet, hey.” Alix kissed his cheek. Cricket gave him her artless smile.

Only RB Henderson didn't react. RB had picked up Vliet from the airport—Vliet had phoned asking her to, although he hadn't seen her since borrowing the Carmel cottage: he had the ability to drop and pick up with girls as easily as he traded in his sports cars. RB's legs remained stretched to the ottoman, legs so slender that sharp ankle bones stood out. She continued to smoke with yellowed fingers. Alix wondered that anyone so devoid of emotional response could be an actress. But undeniably RB Henderson was an actress. The film she had been shooting in the Bay Area had sealed her reputation as an actress. This, the year of
One Step, Two Step
, an incision of changing American sexual mores. RB's ex, Loomis Henderson, had directed
One Step, Two Step
, casting RB in the role of vulnerable young wife to a middle-aged tycoon, eliciting from her every ounce of bruised sensuality.

“Got us some music,” Vliet said, going to his car, returning peeling cellophane from Handel's
Messiah
.

Roger groaned.

“Medical men are notorious for their lack of culture,” Vliet said. “Where's the stereo, Cricket?”

“My room,” she said. “The library.”

He called, “Your needle's shot,” and sacred music came into the old house.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God
. The music blended with their voices and they accepted it and were oblivious to it, all except Vliet, who from time to time cocked his head with choruses that the others didn't hear. RB, curling one foot, sipped from her glass. Cricket watched Vliet as he talked to Roger.

Vliet was all keyed up. “The youngest regional manager,” he said, circling to pour more champagne, “unless you go back to our late, revered Uncle Hend. Smell a whiff of nepotism?”

“To answer that, I need more information,” Roger replied.

“What's wrong with a few hereditary favors?” Vliet asked.

“Daddy said you got the promotion because you're a shrewd merchandiser,” Cricket put in. “And hardworking.”

“Hardworking?” Roger chuckled. “Vliet?” In school Vliet had been a notorious goof-off.

“He made Orange County profitable.”

“No kidding,” Roger said. “So quickly?”

Vliet smiled, triumphant. This rivalry-love thing had been with him all his life. He never had baffled over it as Roger had. Yet the brothers were so intertwined that each had problems telling a victory over the other from a defeat. Even now, Vliet yearned to throw himself—as he had as a kid—into a spontaneous wrestling match which he must lose. Christ, where's the rivalry in self-immolation? he thought. That Cricket had let his brother in on his success delighted Vliet.

“There you go, Cricket, ruining the playboy image.”

He stroked her arm. She pulled away. Her small, freckled face turned pink. She loved him, and Vliet knew it. (Oh, he called this love a hung-over crush and he'd been successful in blocking that Arrowhead night. In his own way, though, he cherished Cricket. He sensed that Vliet Reed would be diminished if at some future, unbelievable hour, this small, plain girl quit loving him.) Her love was part of him. Roger was part of him. And in a painful way, Alix Schorer was part of him.

Alix rested her head against Roger's shoulder. “To our self-made man, another toast.”

RB said languidly, “With this.” And from a Virginia Slims pack, she took a joint, lighting it, offering it around. Alix, Cricket, and Vliet dragged. Vliet handed it to Roger.

“Pass,” Roger said.

RB drew a square with her forefinger, giggling. Either grass worked on her instantaneously or she'd popped something with her champagne. Vliet turned the three records, turned them again, Alix rested her head in Roger's lap, in the hall the grandfather clock chimed elaborately, and it was after ten when the door knocker banged.

Vliet said, “Stuff that damn thing!”

“Anyone could smell,” Cricket said, rising.

“So if it's the law, don't ask 'em in.”

Cricket floated on Septembral odors. They couldn't see the front door, they could hear
Lift up your heads, O ye gates
. And Cricket's clear voice.

“They're all here,” she said.

Mumbling.

“Yes, Roger,” she said.