The Decent Proposal (21 page)

Peaches burst in with a silver tray that held a bottle of Tanqueray No. Ten, Rose's lime juice, an empty crystal decanter, two cocktail glasses, a metal stirrer, a bowl of freshly cut lime wedges, and a bucket of ice. She banged the tray onto the coffee table and knelt on the floor to mix the drinks. Her servile posture made Mike uncomfortable, and she suspected the woman was taking as long as possible to maximize her discomfort.

“For God's sake, Peaches,” Bev huffed after a few minutes of this, “you're not making a bomb. Stir the damn thing and pour!”

Peaches grunted. She gave the first glass to Beverly, but left Mike's drink on the table, refusing to hand it to her. With a disapproving shake of her flat-haired bob that conjured the fringes on a flapper dress shimmying from side to side, Peaches took away the tray and everything on it except for the ice bucket and the decanter, nearly full, and stalked away, slamming the door behind her.

They eyed each other, frozen, before bursting into laughter. Mike felt suddenly as if she were at a slumber party and the adults had just gone to bed.

“Peaches is a treasure,” said Bev. “Don't let her stormy exterior fool you. I don't know what I'd do without her.”

Mike took a sip of her drink. She shuddered; it was strong—
really
strong. She was surprised Peaches hadn't watered it down, but then she imagined Beverly Chambers (who was sucking on hers contentedly) wouldn't stand for a weak cocktail. Mike had
eaten only half a salad at lunch, and the alcohol rushed straight to her head.

“Well, if everyone called me Peaches I'd probably be pretty pissy too,” she said. “Why doesn't she use her real Vietnamese name? Is she afraid you won't be able to pronounce it?”

“I like you, Michaela,” said Bev, refusing to take the bait.

“Call me Mike.
No one
calls me Michaela.”

“Then why did you introduce yourself that way?”

Mike shrugged her shoulders again, more aggressively this time.

“Well,
Mike
, now that I know you a little better, it's only fair I tell you something about myself in return.”

Deep inside her stomach, Mike felt the pit rustle ominously.
Here we go.
Somehow she was already at the end of her first drink. She leaned over the coffee table to pour herself another, and Bev held hers out for a top-off.

“I happen to know a thing or two about best friends,” said Bev, drawing back her glass. “Mine was named Charlotte.” She took a healthy gulp to keep from spilling. “Our mothers were best friends too. There used to be a photo. We lost it years ago, but it was the two of them arm-in-arm, both about to burst. This was in the days before women paraded their pregnant bellies in public every chance they got. It was an unusual picture, practically scandalous, and we used to say it proved our friendship started before birth. And if we had enough of these—”

She tapped her glass with one crooked finger.

“—we'd say it was going to extend beyond the grave as well.”

She paused to take another sip.

“We forced everyone to call us ‘CharBev,' if you can believe it.
That's
how much we were together.”

“Like ‘Brangelina'?” asked Mike, more saucily than she would have if she hadn't just downed a buttload of gin.

Bev laughed. “Yes, exactly, a portmanteau. We did it first. In
any case the day came, as I always knew it would, when Charlotte announced she was getting married.”

“Uh-oh. CharBev was splitsville,” Mike volunteered, and she had to make an effort to keep from giggling.

“Do I need to cut you off?” Bev asked, but there was only humor in the question. “Stop interrupting. I didn't like her fiancé much.” She stamped out her latest cigarette. “He was a bore, not the sort of man
I'd
have chosen to spend my life with. But I pretended to like him for her sake, and I helped her get ready for the wedding. And when they went away on their honeymoon,
God
, how I missed her.” She put down her drink, picked up her lighter, and stuck a fresh Parlie in her mouth. When she spoke, the cigarette dangled from her bottom lip, waggling with each syllable: “Those were the longest three months of my life.”

Mike crinkled her brow. Bev paused to light her cigarette. “Yes, three whole months.” She exhaled. “Back then honeymoons lasted
months
, not weeks, at least for rich people like us. Nowadays no one goes away for very long, not even the ones who can. It's a shame.” She began coughing, but managed to stave off a full-blown fit with judiciously timed gulps from her glass. “The whole time Char was away,” she continued eventually, “I fretted. I knew things would never be the same. How could they be? She had a new best friend now.” Bev flicked away a crown of ash with her talon of a thumb. “She'd always been the straight man of the act—the Abbott to my Costello, if that means anything to you.”

“I know who Abbott and Costello are,” Mike said, staring at her nearly empty glass.

“I'm glad. So you can appreciate how the straight man is just as crucial to the act as the show-off is. I felt lost without her. Suddenly there was no more fun to be had. I became convinced I was destined to live the rest of my days alone, starved for companionship. And worst of all, I would always have more than
enough of the false kind:
people, people, everywhere, and not a one to talk to
.” She took another drag. “To really talk to, I mean.”

“I get it,” said Mike.

“I'm sure you do. So imagine me, at the tender age of twenty—I know it's hard, but try—in this very house, on Valentine's Day, all the way back in 1952. Well over fifty years ago.
God,
that makes me feel old. I went to bed early that night. Alone, of course. Valentine's Day was our special day, you see. As girls we made valentines for each other, and insisted that for us it would always be a celebration of the love between best friends, nothing drippy or romantic about it. And this was my first Valentine's without her. She and her husband were due back any day, but in those days it was difficult to pin down a return. And I hadn't heard a peep. I couldn't blame her, of course. It was her honeymoon! I told myself our tradition was childish, it was only natural for her to move on. But secretly, I was heartbroken.”

Mike wondered if the story was about to take a lesbian turn.

“My thoughts were so disturbed that night, I couldn't fall asleep. I tossed and turned for almost an hour. And then suddenly I saw her face. She was floating above me.”

Bev paused, unwilling to even attempt to describe what seeing Charlotte's face had been like. It was her most dearly cherished memory.

“I thought it was a dream,” she said finally. “And I was glad, because it meant I'd fallen asleep. I've always been a sound sleeper, and I have no tolerance for insomnia. So I closed my eyes. But then something splashed my face so I opened them again, irritated as hell. She was still there, but this time she'd come down to earth and was sitting on the side of the bed, dipping her fingers in a glass and flicking them at me. I licked my lips and tasted gin, and then I realized it couldn't be a dream. I've always loved gin”—she took a long draught, as if to prove
her point—“but not
that
much. So I bolted up, and she dropped the whole drink right there on the sheets!”

Bev snickered at the memory.

“Guess you had to be there,” observed Mike.

“I guess so.” Bev downed the rest of her gimlet, poured herself another, and refilled Mike's glass. She continued:

“It was eleven fifty-three. We only had seven minutes of Valentine's Day that year, but we talked past midnight, there in my bed with a towel sopping up the alcohol. And we never missed a Valentine's Day after that. Those three months were the longest time we spent apart.”

Bev's eyes went soft. She sipped her drink, staring off into the middle distance.

And??
Mike wanted to say. But apparently story time was over. What the hell was she supposed to get from
that
? Even if Richard married the DP he'd still be her best friend forever? That she should content herself with being the fifth wheel the rest of her life?
Screw that.

“How did her husband feel about you two spending all that time together, after they were married?” Mike asked, tossing back a good portion of gimlet number three, which she was beginning to realize from the telltale swaying of the room was more like gimlet numbers seven, eight, and nine.

“Oh, he died a year later.” Bev waved her hand through a shaft of cigarette smoke, scattering it to the heavens. “In Korea. Didn't even get a chance to knock her up. Idiotic.”

It was unclear whether she was referring to the man or the war. Mike suspected it was both.
So I just have to make sure the DP dies
, she thought, suppressing a burp.
Check.

“At first people pitied us,” Bev continued, “the widow and the spinster, confined to a dull life together.” She smiled wickedly. “It was far from the truth, but we were happy to keep up the façade. Then the sixties happened, and let me tell you, Mike,
that was a good time to be young but an even
better
time to be middle-aged. Especially for two rich single women like us. We went crazy, it was
superb
. We stopped wearing makeup, screwed lots of men—”

Mike choked theatrically on her gimlet, but Bev pretended not to notice.

“—and we didn't hide a thing. I was the black sheep for years.” She released another long stream of smoke through her nostrils, and Mike watched the cloud trail lazily toward the ceiling, where the fans laid waste to it. “But that sort of hedonism can only last so long, you know, before it becomes boring too. I've always been an all-or-nothing person, Our Lady of Extremes, as Charlotte used to call me, the cow. So when we decided it was time to leave the jet set I insisted we go in the opposite direction.”

“I read all about that,” said Mike. “Your work in prisons.”

“Did you?”

Bev tried to downplay it, but Mike could hear the delight in the old woman's voice.

“You've been very generous,” said Mike.
Too generous
, she wanted to add.

“We did more than throw our money around. We spent years inside those hellholes, interviewing people, recording their stories. The conditions were
unthinkable
. One of our cases went all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Mike nodded politely.
I don't fucking care.

“And do you know the funniest thing?” Bev paused to sip her drink. “The whole time we were in those prisons, we were the widow and the spinster no more. Everyone—the lawyers, the wardens, the guards, the prisoners themselves—assumed we were queer. Can you imagine it?”

Mike shook her head, maintaining her best poker face.

“It was far from the truth, but we were happy to keep up the façade.”

Bev went back to contemplating the middle distance. Mike was left with the same refrain:
And??
She wanted—no, she
needed
—more: a twist ending, a life lesson, some measure of profundity to apply to herself. What about the Decent Proposal? Wasn't she going to tell her why she'd chosen Richard and the DP? What she had planned for them? If there even
was
a plan? Mike was beginning to feel like an idiot for thinking Beverly Chambers had any answers at all.

“Can I have one?” Mike motioned to the pack of Parliaments resting beside the old woman.

Bev hesitated, but they were just cigarettes, after all, and she reminded herself that Mike Kim was a grown woman, not a girl.

Mike took one and lit it expertly. She rarely smoked, but whenever she did it was a sure sign she was drunk. She touched her cheek: yup, red-hot; the “Asian flush” had officially set in.
No more gimlets for me
, she thought.
Wouldn't want to pull a Richard.
The pit in her stomach flexed a little at the thought of him, and she decided she didn't care anymore, that the time had come to throw caution to the proverbial wind she was three sheets to at this point anyway:

“So that's it?” she said. “That's all I get? No explanation for this stupid experiment or whatever the hell it is you're doing?” She took a quick, impatient drag, and everything in the room tilted on its axis, though she was reasonably sure she hadn't moved. “How about an apology for ruining my fucking life?”

Bev put down her glass and stubbed out her cigarette with a purposeful air.

“I will
not
apologize, Mike. Because your life isn't ruined, even if you think it is.”

Mike snorted; suddenly she needed to blow her nose, and she dropped her cigarette among the ice cubes in her otherwise empty glass to free up her hand.

Bev watched sadly as this gorgeous girl lunged unsteadily for the tissue box on the coffee table. “Do you know what my biggest regret in life is, Mike?” she asked her softly.

Mike shook her head, setting off a minor earthquake in the room.

“Underwear.”

Mike managed to subdue the shuddering long enough to meet the old woman's eye. “What?”

“It's true,” Bev nodded. “I spent half my life wearing a girdle, which is essentially a corset except with garter belts to keep up your stockings. Good God,
stockings
! I won't even get started on
those
. It was the one thing I did because everyone else was doing it. I should've invented my own garments. Or worn nothing at all.”

Bev paused, searching for the words.

“For all your courage, Mike, you act as if you—”

Mike honked into her tissue. Bev waited impatiently for her to finish.

“As I was saying, for all your courage, you act as if you aren't in control of your own life.”

“I know, I know. It's not his story.” Mike let the dirty tissue fall to the floor. “It's mine.”