Almost Perfect (3 page)

“I’ll take it inside.”

Knowing, somehow, that it will be Claudia, and knowing too how the conversation will end, Richard takes his time getting to the phone, noting as he does so that the party is winding down. He’ll give it another half hour, but the best part is over, and Richard sighs with great and genuine sadness. What everyone said was true: what he did was really fantastic, almost perfect; in his way he is a sort of genius.

The first time Richard ever saw Claudia—it must be ten years ago now—what he thought was: That’s it, that’s her. That’s the most beautiful woman I ever saw. That’s
her
. The perfect one. Stark naked, standing in front of him, in a puddle of red silk.

He had been working all day on his cabin up the coast. He even remembers the colors of that day: an April mauve-pink-blue day, the sky that color all day, and the sea reflective, calm. Richard was up there alone, just working. Marina had stayed home, for some damn reason or other of her own. One of her nutcake intuitions, probably. But he was all alone and working well, on the beautiful house of his own design, his own labor. And he had that day the most marvelous sense of his own good work; he had imagined this house, all out of his head, and made drawings. Got a contractor for the foundation and the frame, a plumber for all that stuff, and here it was, beautiful and almost done. It worked. That day he was shingling the roof, stopping now and then to breathe the clean salt air, to admire the sky and the sea, the swooping gulls.

He barely remembered, in fact, that he had been asked to a
party that night at Sea Ranch; some client had bought a huge spread there recently.

But then he did remember, and he thought it might be fun; he hadn’t been to a party alone for a while, what the hell. Marina was unreliable, partywise; sometimes she hated a party on sight and wanted to go home, other times she got fairly drunk and wanted to stay all night. Now he even remembers a lilting sense of expectancy as he drove along the coast in the fresh spring dark, the dark-blue sky star-sprinkled, to the huge low-lying “contemporary” house, with its show-off Frank Lloyd Wright winged roof, its pretentious fancy brass door.

A blast of party hit Richard, opening that door when no one came to his knock. Extreme noise: there must have been two bands, several speaker systems. And people trying to shout above all that sound, as though they had something to say. Richard, whose nose is exceptionally sensitive, smelled garlic and fish and booze, cigarette and cigar smoke and some dope, and about a hundred fabulous French perfumes. Too rich, this is all too rich for my old thin Irish blood, Richard thought, aware of an urgent and private need: I’d like to piss all over this place, he thought, asking someone for directions to the can.

He went down a hall and he opened, as directed, the second door to the right, to a brilliant black-tiled bathroom, in the middle of which was standing, naked as a jaybird, a ravishing golden girl.

Who shrieked and tried to cover her snatch and her tits, but she was laughing too; Richard could feel her looking him over, and he knew how he must look to her, in his white party coat, dark-blue silk scarf. With his hair, and his eyes.

She laughed and laughed, giving up on her body, using her hands to cover her face, and not even succeeding at that too well.

He threw her a towel from the rack on the door. It was all he could do; he couldn’t speak.

“So chivalrous!” she cried out. “God, couldn’t you knock?”

“I didn’t know it would open. Don’t you lock doors?”

“Oh, go away!”

Near her feet lay a red silk dress, some lacy red silk under-things,
and hose. God knows why she had to take all that stuff off to pee.

“See you later,” Richard was barely able to say.

About half an hour later, by which time Richard had found an empty bathroom and had also found his host and the bar, he was introduced to this ravishing girl in red, a girl with a big full mane of dark-blond hair, not far from the color of his own hair (and a dark-blond muff and pink tits), a girl who blushed terrifically as he said to her, “I do think we’ve met somewhere.”

Claudia Farnsworth.

“I never saw you before in my life,” she said.

“Would you dance with me anyway?”

“Well, I might.”

Claudia was a flirt, very vain and selfish, but she was also smart, in a certain way; even that first night, Richard recognized in her some of his own survival-in-the-jungle qualities. A girl from Salt Lake City, she had sold cosmetics at I. Magnin, modelled a little, until she met and as soon as possible married Bucky Farnsworth, married the quantities of “old money” that made her feel both inferior and secure.

Which was almost how Richard felt, at parties like that one: he knew he was better-looking and probably as smart as anyone there, but at the same time he was very aware of not having gone to their schools, of not having known them for very long. Of being from Paterson, New Jersey, which was not exactly what any of them meant when they said “the East.”

“You’ll have to come to my house sometime,” he said to Claudia, dancing close.

“You mean in the city?”

“No, up here, on the coast.”

“Oh, we have a house up here too, and one at Tahoe. But where do you live in the city?”

“Oh, up near Twin Peaks, at the moment. But my studio’s in North Beach.”

“I’ve never been to Twin Peaks, I don’t think.”

“You don’t have to. Come to my studio. Call me.”

“Oh, you.” Her laugh was as pretty as everything about her, high and soft, a little burst of silver.

Later that night Richard met her husband, red-faced Bucky Farnsworth, who mentioned both Exeter and Yale within minutes of their introduction.

Later still, in fact very late, some hours after midnight, Richard managed to get Claudia out onto one of the porches, where through clusters of pines and hemlocks and aspens they could see the blackly glittering sea and an almost clearing new day. Clinging together, they kissed, for Richard a kiss of such sweetness, such innocence (she tasted of apricots). A kiss of true love. He felt that his heart would break.

“I feel like a child,” he whispered to her, to lovely Claudia, as they pulled apart.

“Me too—that’s how I feel.” She shivered. “We’d better go in, though.”

After that, for the weeks of spring and into summer, almost everywhere that Richard went he saw her, beautiful Claudia. For at that time he and Marina seemed to be taken up by a certain group, rich people with houses at Tahoe and up on the coast, people who gave a lot of parties. And since Richard’s house had turned out so perfectly, a small showplace, really, photographed all over, everyone loved it, and they were invited everywhere, Richard and Marina Fallon, the new smart couple. Richard saw Claudia at all those parties, in all her marvelous clothes—and he thought of her naked, red silk at her pretty feet. He was truly in love with her, he knew that, but he never made a real move in her direction. There were only those rare, intensely sweet and almost innocent kisses.

Until the afternoon when Claudia called him, and she came to his studio and told him that she could not live without him, not another moment. Which was, as Richard now sees it, the beginning of the end. Everything after that was more or less predictable, and more or less downhill: the impassioned afternoons, and evening quarrels at home. Divorce, and marriage to Claudia.

More quarrels. Another divorce.

Not that Richard ever forgot about those early afternoons—they were lovely, and she was indeed a lovely-looking woman. They even had, occasionally, a good conversation; Claudia was
almost as mean as he was about the people they both knew, as mean and as ambivalent.

But she was basically a very stupid woman, and vain, and selfish. Richard was almost relieved when she told him, finally, that an old boyfriend from Salt Lake had shown up in her life (terrifically rich, that went without saying). She wanted out. And so Richard moved back into his studio—not, as poor Marina would have liked, to Twin Peaks with her.

And now occasionally Claudia still calls, and sometimes they get together, for a couple of hours in his studio, in bed. He actually misses her children, two nice little boys, much more than he misses Claudia.

Living alone, though, Richard has moments, even days, of the most appalling aloneness, a sense of cold vacancy in his very soul. He worries about Marina, who often acts crazy. He worries about Claudia’s boys, believing that she is too stupid to take proper care of them. For all these reasons, he often ends up drinking too much, one way or another, and he spends time with people he does not even much like—stupid people, no life to them. Including, sometimes, Claudia.

“Sometimes I absolutely can’t believe that we could fail. I mean, where did we go wrong? You’re the most beautiful guy in the world, and I really love us together. I absolutely don’t understand it.”

Claudia says this as, late that afternoon, on the day of his bubble party, they lie together naked across his bed and she happily fingers the light growth of hair on his chest. But she has said all that before, and Richard has no new answers for her.

“It’s just marriage,” he says, as he has said before. “Not us.”

“But I love you so much, and it’s so good with you!”

Richard pats her sleek thigh. “I have to say, today was a big success,” he tells her. “They really went for it.”

“Darling, of course they did. The room looked fabulous.”

“You just saw the remnants.” Richard told Claudia very firmly that she must not arrive before three—at which time he knew the last guests would be gone. Which indeed was the case, though he had a little trouble with Linda, who seemed to feel
that the afternoon was hers, hers with Richard. “It was really incredible about noon,” he tells Claudia, “when people began to show up. And the sun—”

“Oh God, it’s almost five. I have to go!” Scrambling from the bed, Claudia stumbles into the bathroom, where she leaves the door open, and goes on talking, while she thoroughly washes herself. This habit, the open door, is one that Richard does not like at all; he does not want to see her doing all that, and even if he closes his eyes he knows. He can see her still.

“And Donny is so impossible,” Claudia continues, from the toilet. “Sometimes I think God’s punishing me with him. Rich, do you think I should try to gain some weight?”

“Are you serious?”

“Well, sort of. I read somewhere that older women have to sacrifice their figures to their faces.”

“Christ. In the first place, you’re not an older woman.”

“No, but I will be. And so will you. Older, I mean. Can you imagine being middle-aged? Like our parents, when we were kids?”

Any mention of his parents, any stray thought of them, blackens Richard’s consciousness, as does the notion of age.
“No,”
he says vehemently—to everything, sitting up in bed and watching Claudia as she brushes on makeup.

He suddenly feels that she has contrived to ruin his day. The day that started with such promise. The day of his big success. The next time she calls he will simply say, No, I don’t want to see you, Richard decides. Some women can ruin your life.

After Claudia is gone he simply wanders about the studio, not yet ready to tackle cleaning it up, and noting that it looks like the devastation after Christmas. The catering girls took the food and all that mess, but there are still all those goddam glass bubbles everywhere, many broken, many still rolling around the floor like marbles. Richard imagines weeks and months of stray bits of broken glass.

He feels vague pains in his chest and wonders if he is having a heart attack.

When the doorbell rings, Richard’s first thought, curiously,
is of Andrew Bacci, although Andrew has never just stopped by like that. Linda? And then he remembers: Jesus, the interview girl.

Stella. Whatever the hell her name was.

He heads toward the door, walking heavily. Fast, with more pain in his chest.

“Actually I guess he forgot. I got there on time; you know me: even when I mean to be late. But he came to the door in a robe, not expecting me.”

“Richard can be very careless,” Margot tells Stella. “He’s rather spoiled, I think. So handsome, though fortunately not at all my type. He’s not pretty, you know? I like men to be pretty. But no one was ever so pretty as George, and look how he treated me. Richard should never have married Claudia Farnsworth; the most total mistake. They could have gone on with that super affair forever. Andrew told me the two of them exuded steam. You know my friend Andrew Bacci, don’t you, Stell? Talk about pretty. But I guess Marina, Richard’s nutcake wife, got some of that steam blown in her face, and she threw him out, just like that. So stupid. Europeans have much more sense about these things.”

This is a telephone conversation that some weeks hence Stella will strain to remember in detail, and fortunately journalistic training has given her a memory that records automatically. At the moment, though, she simply reflects on the general uninterestingness of gossip, however steamy, when it concerns people one does not know. And she reflects too on the extremely smalltown quality of San Francisco: only last week she did indeed meet Andrew Bacci, Margot’s pretty friend. She was covering a fund-raising dinner for AIDS, and Andrew was one of the sponsors. And he was, as Margot said, extremely pretty. And now it seems that both he and Margot are somehow connected to, or friends with, Richard Fallon, her non-interview. In fact Stella is later to think that a seeming web of friends could almost have been conspiring that she and Richard should meet.

But at the moment, how bored she is with Margot! They met more or less through friends when Margot’s then husband, George, had just walked out, leaving Margot, who is considerably older than she looks, with no money, no job. With nothing. Stella, touched by this unfair plight, and by some quality in Margot herself, some brave undaunted verve, helped Margot get a job at a gallery out on Jackson Street. Not much of a job, but it helped a lot, and Margot was gracefully grateful. And they became, with limitations, friends, mostly phone friends: Margot, with not much to do but sit at the gallery, calls and talks, and Stella listens—as she has just noted, with decreasing interest.