Almost Perfect (23 page)

Stella has so far not told Richard that she went to see Marina, and she now decides not to tell him at all, less from cowardice than from a sense of sheer futility. He is all locked against Marina; he would burst out angrily—and why? Poor Marina!

Instead Stella says, “That’s a beautiful shirt. Is it new?”

“Sort of new. Part of my trip trousseau.” And Richard begins to talk about his trip—again.

And they do not discuss Marina any further.

Reeling from bad news—the worst—Richard makes quick decisions:

He won’t tell Stella.

He won’t tell Eva.

He will go to Cologne anyway.

These are all sentences that clatter about like dull plates in Richard’s empty mind as he sits in his studio chair. Transfixed. Dumbfounded. Having just been told that the conference is cancelled. All off. No funding, no Cologne.

No Germany. No castles. No passport needed.

But Richard has his passport, his clothes and his bags. He has everything. He is almost packed.

And so he sees what he will do: he will finish packing and go ahead with all his plans—how can he not, after all? And it
will work, he knows that, for isn’t that how most people operate, most of the time, as though their fantasies were true? Most highly successful people, that is.

The only difference will be that no one will pay for him, and what does that matter? He can pay for himself, subsidize his own trip. God knows he owes himself a trip to Europe, a man of his age, who has worked hard all his life—and for what? For a bunch of ungrateful women, it sometimes seems.

But below all this clatter of words and plans, of bravado, another area of Richard, perhaps his heart, is deeply and terribly wounded, and sore. And frightened: is this how life will be from now on, things falling apart? Promises turned bitter in his mouth? It could kill him, a life like that; he could just dissolve, as though in an acid bath. His heart hurts! He longs for someone, someone warm and loving and unquestioning. Someone to kiss his cock—oh, infinitely.

He feels like taking a shower, beating off there. But he does not.

He is so, so battered. He can’t believe it. This is like a cancelled birthday party, or the Christmas your parents forgot. (Is that possible, could anyone actually ever, ever forget it was Christmas? He knows it is, that it happened to him.) Poor Richard, he thinks, and he thinks, I would like to cry. Or to die.

No Cologne. No Rhine, no castles. No wild, wild lovely Eva.

He can’t believe it.

He won’t.

He telephones Andrew.

“Well, how nice to hear from you, big Rich. How’s tricks? Well, I’m about the same. Margot’s busy as a flea, all over the place, making everything what she calls perfect. And worrying over my so-called bloody health. Well, it isn’t perfect, whoever said it was? I’ve got this flu, and it won’t go away. And no one loved my blood count, but shit, it could be just that. Flu and a low blood count. And I’m tired. Christ, I sound like a girl, don’t I, though. I’d like to come over, Rich, and fool around some, but I’ve got this flu and I’m tired. Next thing I’ll be saying I’ve got the curse. Well, I do—what I’ve got is the curse, all right.”

Richard forces himself to laugh, and decides not, after all, to
tell Andrew about Cologne. He wonders, Is Andrew dying? He really can’t bear it. He can’t bear
anything.

He sits there in his beautiful studio, and he wonders who else to call.

He suddenly feels as though he knows absolutely no one in the world.

“I wonder how you’d look if you went, say, pale blond?” In a speculative look, in what has been a small pause in an intensely animated conversation, Margot asks this of her teatime guest—who is Justine. “You do understand that that’s not a suggestion,” Margot adds.

Justine laughs. “Well, of course in a way it is, and I have to say it’s been made before. Especially by hairdressers. Actually I tried blond once. I didn’t like it.”

“Touché,” murmurs Margot.

“Anyway I really like gray hair. It seems more original than blond,” says Justine, in a serious way. “And more like me. Margot, I will have some more of your marvelous tea.” It occurs to her to speculate on how Margot herself might look with gray hair, instead of her constant very dark black-brown, but something, perhaps small-town Texas good manners, prevents her.

“It is good,” says Margot, pleased. “I get it from Cost Plus, of all places.”

There is another pause—during which Margot fusses with tea things, adding hot water, pouring—before Justine remarks, “Well, we’ve certainly covered a lot of ground.”

“Indeed.” With the pleased smile of a mischievous child, Margot passes the teacup. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came over.”

They have indeed discussed a great deal, in the hour or so of Justine’s visit so far—and there seems in the air between them an aroused suggestion of more to come.

This visit came about, as one might imagine, through the agency of Stella, their bond, the mutual friend. Stella told Justine that Margot knew everything about living in New York, how and where to find apartments, all that, and Justine really should call Margot, Stella said. And so Justine did; she made the call and to her mild surprise was invited to tea. She had always imagined herself in Margot’s mind as a somewhat suspicious, definitely not chic friend of Stella’s—and she had to admit that she, Justine, had always thought of Margot as a somewhat ridiculous, pretentious friend of Stella’s.

But today they have indeed got on, perhaps simply because of the tea, which was indeed good, and plentifully poured by Margot.

And they have covered a lot of ground; it would be hard, if not impossible, for either of them to recall just how each topic and person discussed was arrived at, but arrive they did, discovering some quite remarkable areas of agreement.

They began, oddly enough (but quite possibly because of that day’s headlines—more transparent lies, Iran-
contra
diaries), with a rather personal discussion of the President, whom neither had met but about whom they both had strong and surprisingly convergent views.

“What a jerk,” they almost in unison say.

And Margot adds, “You could certainly call my taste in men catholic, but one type I’ve never liked is that preppy Brooks New England wimp. So sexless, don’t you think? Basically? So cute-little-boy. So
mean.
”

“Absolutely,” agrees Justine. “And me neither, I’ve never gone for those guys. Although I didn’t exactly meet a lot of them in Texas. I wasn’t hanging out in Midland, around big oil. But last year in Cambridge there were still some around. Old preppies.”

“The worst,” Margot tells her. “They don’t age well. The ones you meet around Harvard are lots, lots better than Yalies, though. The only nice men I ever met who went to Yale were gay, and they had an awful time of it there, poor dears.”

“I’ll bet,” Justine muses. “Lord, when was the last time we had an attractive president, not to mention an honest one?”

Carter was fairly honest but not too attractive, they agree. Roosevelt was the last really sexy president, though neither woman can remember him. Jack Kennedy seems not to have appealed to either Justine or Margot.

“Didn’t Richard’s pal Al Bolling go to Yale?” asks Justine.

“A perfect example. There he is, terrifically rich and successful, and what does he do with it all? He drinks and gets married a lot, and goes on and on about his daughter, who’s probably a perfectly happy lesbian.”

“He sure looks depressed. Did you go out with him?” asks Justine.

“Twice, and believe me that was enough. I always think that if sometime during dinner I begin to long for the book at home that I’m reading, that means I’m out with the wrong person. Or I shouldn’t be out at all. I wanted to get away from Boiling before he decided to drive off the bridge, or ram his car into something solid, or something.”

“ ‘Marbles.’ Wherever does Richard get these names?”

“God knows, but they all sort of fit, don’t you think? Didn’t you go out with the one he calls Bunny for a while?”

“Well, I sort of still do. Collin Schmidt. He’s a contractor. Very nice. Not Yale or drunk or a possible suicide, nothing like that.” And the greatest lover, Justine does not say—although it is what she thinks of, thinking of Bunny. And what Margot, she knows, would like to hear. But Justine doesn’t talk in that way. She says instead, “He has this terrific handsome son.”

“Oh?” Margot’s eyebrows rise.

“Just a kid. A doctor.” Not wanting to talk more about Collin Schmidt, or his son, Justine surveys the room, and then says to Margot, “It’s really beautiful here. I don’t know, is it you or Andrew?”

Very pleased, Margot laughs. “Well, very much both of us. It’s so funny, isn’t it? It’s as though we were meant to live together.” A shadow passes over her face then, the visible shadow of Andrew’s illness. And then she says, “We seem to have covered everyone but Stella and Richard.”

“Yes, we do.”

Justine has spoken neutrally, but as she speaks she feels some dim foreboding, dim but dark, so dark that she almost begins to prepare to leave, to gather up her things and commence the polite words of parting (in her case all this is elaborate, the remnants of southern girlhood). And later she is almost to think that she should have left just then.

“This awful thing happened with Richard,” Margot begins. “To me, I mean.” She whispers, leaning toward Justine. “I’ve never told anyone this, not even Andrew. You know how he is about Richard.” And then she relates her dinner with Denny (“my hairdresser, but he’s really adorable. And if you ever change your mind about color …”), her seeing Richard with this huge but very beautiful blond German woman. “They were all over each other, I mean literally. I’ve never seen anyone so in love as Richard looked; I’ll never forget it. And so imagine how I’ve felt all this time, with Stella so in love, and so trusting. And especially now, with Richard all worked up about his trip to Germany. I just know he plans to see this woman. I mean, of course he does.”

Justine’s first reaction has been one of annoyance at Margot, not only for telling this tale but for quite possibly (it seems at first) having made it up—from God knows what combination of malice and boredom. And so she asks, as gently as she can, “But, Margot, are you sure? And how on earth did you know the woman was German?”

“Well, Denny said he could tell by her hair. I know that sounds nuts, but then we walked out near their table—Richard was still too absorbed to notice. But her accent, really, pure
Kraut. I remember girls like that around Paris in the Sixties. When they all started to get so rich.”

“Even so. They could have been just drunk. Getting a little sloppy.” Even as she says this, though, defensively, Justine is quite suddenly assailed by a small, sharp, urgent memory: she recalls several minutes of a phone conversation in which Stella said, quite worriedly, “I don’t know, Richard seems to have this strange new obsession with Germany. He keeps mentioning it so oddly. German this and that. Cameras. Castles. And he says someone told him they have the most beautiful women in the world. He goes on and on—it’s so peculiar.” And Stella made a short, despairing sound, something between a hopeless laugh and a little cry of pain.

At the time, this behavior of Richard’s seemed no worse than odd to Justine—one more oddity from very brilliant, admittedly difficult, eccentric Richard. But now, recalled, it fits much too perfectly with Margot’s story.

“Even Andrew thinks he’s up to something,” Margot continues. “This thing about a food conference in Cologne. There’s more to it than just going to Europe for a conference.”

“But I read that that was all off,” says Justine heedlessly. “Didn’t you? I mean, in the
Times
business section.”

“Oh, I never read any business news. Too deeply depressing. Remember Bush saying that now is a good time to buy cars and houses.
He
should have read the business news.”

“You’re right there,” says Justine. “But I’m sure I read an item about the Cologne food conference. Cancelled for poor attendance, and no corporate funding. But maybe I’ve got it all wrong.” But she does not have it all wrong. Justine knows she does not. Her memory for the printed word is exceptional; not quite photographic but nearly. Extremely useful for examinations, not to mention day-to-day newspaper work.

“Odd,” says Margot. “When I spoke to Stella she just mentioned Richard’s going to Cologne. He’s apparently made the most elaborate preparations.” Margot pauses. “She certainly does not sound happy about it, and she definitely did not say it was all off.”

“When did you talk to her?”

“Yesterday. Or maybe it was this morning. No, I think yesterday.”

Justine hesitates, before saying, “Well, maybe I am wrong and I read something about some other conference.”

“Or else Richard’s really nuts and he’s going to a conference that isn’t there.”

Justine tries to laugh at this (they both do), although she really finds it a little scary: she has suddenly seen the possibility that Richard is in fact more than a little crazy and that he might indeed have chosen to go to a nonexistent conference. Or, more plausibly, somewhat more sanely, have decided to go to Cologne, to Germany, conference or not. Especially if there is indeed a beautiful German woman out there for him.

She says, “I really do have to go now,” and gets up. But then she stops, and she laughs as she says to Margot, “What we haven’t talked about at all, you know, is what I supposedly came for. Your advice about New York.”

“Then you’ll have to come back. I hope you will. Andrew would love to see you.” The Andrew shadow passes across Margot’s face again. “Do come,” she says. “You’ll cheer us up. Andrew loves to talk about New York. Maybe I can persuade him to take a trip there.”

The very few lies that Stella has told to Richard, in the course of their knowing each other, have been quite minor in nature and mostly to do with shadings rather than hard facts. About Liam O’Gara, Stella has been discreet rather than dishonest; as she has been discreet about a couple of other men, not spelling out the nature of the relationships involved. As why indeed should she do so? No one else has anything to do with her and Richard, she reasons.