Cheating at Solitaire (6 page)

“Marcey got drunk in that place downtown and threw up on the bar,” she said. “That's the message he left with Clau-dine. I don't know why he left it with me. I don't know what he thinks I'm supposed to do about it.”

“You could take her in. Dry her off. Make sure she didn't freeze to death in the cold.”

“She won't freeze to death. She'll show up here right on time, just watch. And she'll be sobered up enough to get drunk all over again. So will Arrow. I just wish we didn't have to put up with the dopey boyfriend.”

“You could have not invited him.”

“Not inviting people doesn't necessarily mean they won't show up.” Kendra got up and walked over to the great curved wall of windows. This was a Victorian-era house. The ceilings were not just high, but majestic, and that meant that the stories were higher than they would have been on a modern place. She could see the rocky promontory far below her, the tip of it sinking and rising as waves of water washed over it. That was boring too. It was incredible how much of what went on in the world was just plain boring, and there was nothing she could do about it.

“I wish something exciting would happen,” she said. “I wish we could have a ritual murder.”

7

There was a moment at the end there, right before the two of them walked out the door, that Arrow Normand thought she was going to lose it. She couldn't figure out why she hadn't lost it. She'd heard a lot in her life about self-control and self-discipline, and there were times when people said she had both, but she'd never really understood either, and she didn't understand them now. What she did understand was that she was going to be in a lot of trouble, and waking up to tell them all about it wouldn't help her situation at all.

It wasn't as if they hadn't tried to get something out of her, or that she had been able to play completely dead. Stewart Gordon could play completely dead. She'd seen him do it. He could lie there, so lifeless you thought he was dead, and you could poke at him and yell in his ear and he wouldn't move. This was “acting,” he'd told her when she'd asked him about it, and she'd known right away that he was being sarcastic at her expense. There were times when Arrow felt as if she were nothing more than a big, bad ball of resentment. She resented nearly everyone she could think of, all those people, like Stewart Gordon, who didn't understand what was important. They didn't understand that she was important, that was the thing. She was famous, and she was rich, too. Money was very, very important. It was stupid to pretend that it was less important than things like if she knew where Switzerland was, or if she'd ever graduated from high school.

She waited awhile in the silence before allowing herself to open her eyes. She had to be careful. The world seemed to be full of people who didn't understand what was really important. Besides, she didn't want to talk to Stewart Gordon twice in one day. It was hard enough to talk to him once. He always looked at her as if she were some kind of bug.

She felt the cat come up next to her on the couch and then rub his side against the top of her head. She really liked cats, although not as much as she liked dogs. Too many people
were allergic to cats. She opened her eyes and watched as it walked down the back of the couch behind her. It was just a matter of thinking straight. That was all. She just had to think straight, and act like herself, and everything would be all right. It would help if her head wasn't so fuzzy and her stomach didn't hurt.

She made herself sit up, just a little, and look around the room. It was the kind of room she remembered from home in Ohio before she'd come out to Los Angeles to be famous, except for the bookshelves and the books. Nobody back home in Ohio read much in the way of books, and Arrow had the sneaking suspicion that nobody else really did either. People just pretended to read books, most of them, to make other people feel stupid, and to pretend that books were more important than money, too. The woman who lived in this house must be either very poor or very ugly. She wanted to make the whole world feel stupid.

Marcey was lying curled up into a fetal position on the chaise lounge, which was really a “chaise longue,” which Stewart Gordon had lectured her about just that morning on the set. Only stupid people said “chaise lounge.” The real word was “chaise longue,” which meant “long chair” in French. It was Stewart Gordon who was stupid. Some people looked cool in bald heads, but he didn't. And nobody made any money doing one-man shows off-Broadway.

She forced herself all the way up and swung her legs off the couch. Everything hurt. She was probably running a fever. First the truck had gone off the road and onto the beach, and then it was later, and cold, and the snow was pouring in the open window next to her. She didn't see why anybody bothered to live in New England. Snow was horrible, no matter how neat it looked in the movies. Winter was horrible too. This island was the most horrible thing of all. That was because everybody watched you here, but not like they watched you in L.A. They were like schoolteachers who thought you were stupid, stupid, stupid, and they were always making mental notes about what you'd done so they could tell you all about it afterward.

She stood up, very carefully. She did not think she was going to throw up. She was past that. She was not sure she could stand for very long. She really did have a fever. Her whole face was hot. She'd probably come down with the flu and shut down the filming and make everybody mad at her again. She leaned against a small table. The woman who lived here had left a book and a mug on it. Arrow couldn't read the title of the book, because her vision was blurred. It didn't make sense, anyway. She wondered what time it was. It had been dark when they'd been driving around in the truck, but storm-dark, not night-dark, and as far as she knew it could still be the middle of the afternoon. That would be bad. She needed it to be night. The closer it was tonight, the better off she would be.

She got to the chaise longue and sat down on the edge of it. She couldn't have stood up much longer. Marcey was covered with a blanket that was just like the blanket Arrow had had on her on the couch. The woman who lived here must buy matching blankets. Marcey seemed to be snoring. Arrow put out her hand and touched her on the shoulder.

“Marcey?” she said. “Marcey, you need to be awake.”

Marcey groaned a little, and turned, and looked up. Arrow bit her lip. They all got pretty drunk, partying. Arrow had been pretty drunk herself just a little while ago. Every once in a while, though, it was important to sober up, and then you—

And then what?

Arrow pressed down on Marcey's shoulder and shook. “Marcey,” she said again. “You've got to wake up. It's important.”

“Fuck that,” Marcey said.

She hadn't opened her eyes. The longer Arrow stayed upright, the more she was sure there was something terribly wrong with her. She was so hot she was burning up, and she was dizzy. It wasn't the kind of dizzy you got when you were drunk. It was the kind you got when you spun around and around and around without stopping, or went on one of those rides at the amusement park where it did that for you.
She shook Marcey again, hard this time. There were all kinds of things she felt she had to say.

Marcey turned over, flat on her back, and opened her eyes. She turned her head from one side to the other, which couldn't have helped much, because the chaise had arms on both sides. She sat up a little and looked around. Arrow held her breath.

“Where are we?” Marcey said.

“I'm not sure,” Arrow said. “It's a house some woman owns, in town, I think. Nobody we know. I just—Mark and I had an accident in the truck, and it was cold, and I was walking, and this place was here. I think. I was sort of wasted. This woman made me lie down on the couch and put a blanket on me and tried to get me to drink tea, but I wouldn't, and then Stewart Gordon brought you here.”

“Stewart Gordon brought me here?”

“Carried you in on his shoulders. With his coat wrapped around your middle. I saw it. I was pretending to be asleep. I didn't want to talk to her, you know, the woman who lives here, and then Stewart Gordon was here and I didn't want to talk to him. I don't think it's right that people like that can call you stupid. Do you know what I mean? I don't think it's right.”

Marcey was suddenly a lot more awake than Arrow was, and Arrow could see it. She was sitting bolt upright and her eyes were clear.

“I threw up,” Marcey said. “At that place, the bar place on Main Street. Not the inn, the other place. I threw up on the bartender because he had a bow tie. Crap, crap, crap. Where the hell is Stewart Gordon now?”

Arrow looked away. “They went out. Stewart Gordon and the woman who lives here.”

“Out? Isn't there some big storm or the other? Why did they go out?”

“I don't know.”

“And what about Mark? Where's Mark?”

“I don't know.”

“God, isn't it just like the jerkballs you go out with, there's
an accident in the truck and then he just dumps you there to go walking around in the snow. Are they coming back?”

“I guess so,” Arrow said. “They'd have to, wouldn't they? Or the woman would. It's her house.”

“It's a really dinky house,” Marcey said. “You ever noticed that about this place? Most of the houses are really dinky. Except Kendra's, you know. That one's good.”

Arrow took a deep breath and almost immediately started coughing. Her chest hurt. Her head was on fire. “Listen,” she said. “We have to find out what time it is. We have to get out of here.”

“We can get out of here no matter what time it is.”

“No, listen, Marcey, be serious. We have to get out of here and we have to go somewhere. Somewhere safe. We have to go to Kendra's house.”

Marcey was suddenly very still. “You know how that works,” she said. “Kendra's getting ready for the party. She's not going to let anyone in there while the setup is going on. You know what she's like.”

“She's supposed to be our friend. We should be able to go there if we're in trouble.”

“What trouble? I get drunk all the time, Arrow. It's not like I committed a felony.”

Felony. That was one of those words. Arrow wished that the air would stop moving. Her chest really did hurt. Really, really, really. All her muscles hurt too. She didn't know what “felony” meant. People used it all the time, but she had always been too embarrassed to ask. If she asked Stewart Gordon, he would call her stupid stupid stupid. That was always, too. Out there in the snow with the window open on her side of the truck, she had been able to see the sea. It was not the same sea as the one she saw in California, and it didn't feel the same. It was angry and dark. The beach was full of rocks.

“I have to get to Kendra's house,” she said stubbornly. She was sure that was the right thing. She was sure of it. “I have to get there now.”

“If you try bursting in on her when she doesn't want to
see you, she'll cut you off. You know she will. She cuts people off all the time.”

“I have to get there now,” Arrow said.

She stood all the way up. Her legs felt like water. The skirt of her dress was hiked. She could feel a cold breeze between her legs. There was something about that, about having that part of herself exposed. There was something deeply shameful about it, no matter what Kendra said, but it was one of the conditions, it really was. The snow was coming in the window of the truck and the wind was very strong and very cold and then there was blood in her hair. There was blood everywhere, but there was especially blood in her hair.

“I have to get to Kendra's,” she said.

And then she passed out cold.

8

Jack Bullard's life had been an exercise in delayed gratification. If being about to work and wait was what it took to be successful, he thought he was due to overtake Bill Gates before he was thirty-five. Underneath it all, he had never really believed it. It didn't seem to him that people who succeeded did it by working and waiting. A lot of them were, like Kendra Rhode, just born to it, and anybody who had grown up on Margaret's Harbor could name a dozen more like her. The trick, some of the people on the island joked, was to know how to pick your great-grandparents, and that was the only trick they wanted to know. The other trick, the one that ended up making multimillionaires out of people like Mar-cey Mandret and Arrow Normand, was not the kind of thing you were brought up to believe was worthwhile if you lived on the island.

Right now, Jack was having a hard time knowing just what was and what was not worthwhile, and he was covered with snow. Everything was cold. This was the largest nor'easter he'd seen in years. There were people on the island who said it was the largest in a century. whatever it was, he kept going out in it, and that was not a good idea. He was behaving like a tourist. The tide was coming in too, he was pretty sure
of it, and this house—his parents' house, the one he'd grown up in—was too close to the water. If this had been a summer storm, he'd have been pumping out the basement for weeks.

He put his gear on his kitchen table and went to the window to look out. The curve of the beach was visible in the darkness mostly because of the streetlamps that lined the road that ran along it. He could see, on the other side, what looked like a car and people moving among the rocks. He stared at them for a while and then dumped the contents of his backpack on the table. The house was not the way he had remembered it. Once his father died, it was as if the old place had given up. It had been in the family, after all, for over a century. It was odd to think that Kendra Rhode's grandparents and his own had come to the island at the same time, or at least built houses there at the same time. He wondered what Kendra Rhode's family had thought of it, in the beginning. It was one of the things he liked least about rich people. They liked to go where the primitive was. They liked to think they were roughing it.