The Houseguest (3 page)

But what Doug found inexplicable was that Chuck would be a friend of Bobby's: what in the world did he see in him? Lydia obviously was out to rise in the world, but what could a fellow like Chuck gain from an association with Bobby? As to Lydia, Doug did not find her sexually attractive. He had had his moments with some of the other female houseguests brought by Bobby throughout the decade past (though sometimes, in the earliest years, when the girls might not yet have reached the age of consent, nothing more occurred than fondling), but Bobby had chosen another type to marry than those he had previously dated. Lydia's scholastic accomplishments had earned her four free years at the university to which Doug had to pay a fortune to send Bobby, and the irony of this state of affairs was that her father was if anything more prosperous than Doug, who in his own opinion was a poor man, for the real money was in a trust from which he was provided with only a modest annual stipend, his own father having had no higher regard for him than he for Bobby. With the inconsequential salary paid him by the firm controlled by his uncle and cousins, his yearly income from all sources was not nearly sufficient to support his own tastes, not to mention what was spent by Audrey over and above her own modest independent income and that needed to maintain Bobby.

He now checked the mileage on the pedometer at his belt, even though he had walked this route every Saturday and Sunday morning for many summers, but consulting the instrument was what distinguished exercise from mere stroll: precision was always a value well worth honoring. By now he had worked up quite an appetite. If Chuck was not up and about when he returned, Doug really would be disappointed in him, unless of course the poor fellow was ill, but how tiresome that would be with a guest, especially on a Sunday.

Lydia encountered her mother-in-law in one of the hallways.

“Believe it or not,” said she, “I'm still looking for Chuck's room.”

“Bobby hasn't given you the tour yet?” Audrey assumed a smirk.

“I haven't ever thought to ask,” said Lydia. “Until now I've known how to get anyplace I wanted to go.”

“Well, this is our part of the world, Doug's and mine.” Audrey threw a hand towards her own shoulder, but she made no offer to show the rooms behind her. “The guest rooms are on out the hall you're in. Go on past your room and through the door at the end.”

“Gosh, is there more of the house out there? I thought that door went outside.”

“It does,” said Audrey. “Or rather, onto a little open-sided but roofed passage called by some, I believe, by that awful word breezeway. The guest rooms are back there.”

“Aha,” said Lydia. “Separated.”

“We thought that was nice and private.” Audrey frowned. “It can be inconvenient when rain is blowing in off the ocean. I should in all honesty say that like everything else it was Peter's idea … Peter De Vilbiss, the architect.”

“Oh yes,” Lydia said hastily. “It's a remarkable piece of work. It certainly makes the most of all the features of the property.” She despised herself for speaking in this fashion, but there were times when doing otherwise seemed impossible. She continued now through several more banalities, concluding with a reference to “both sea and forest.”

“Doug dislikes sleeping in a room that looks out on water,” said Audrey. “Hence his faces the hillside. But that's what he wanted.”

Fortunately Lydia had never till now found herself alone with her mother-in-law. Audrey was quite as uneasy as she. “Very good, then, I'll be on my way to find Chuck.” She walked backwards a way so as not to seem rude.

Audrey made a frowning mouth. “I do hope he's all right. But if he is, we certainly won't want to chide him for oversleeping, will we?”

Lydia was offended by this warning. Why should Chuck be sacrosanct? That it would be rude to kid someone about a little excess sacktime was preposterous. The things that mattered to people who did nothing useful in life!

But now she at last felt free to turn her back on Audrey and stride away, back to the central vestibule or whatever it should be termed in such a structure, from which place she chose the corridor, as directed, off which was Bobby's former bedroom and bath, now shared by her. After a week of nights there, she still felt as though she were an adolescent sleeping over, screwing surreptitiously, as in fact she had done when she was seventeen, as houseguest of a boy in more modest circumstances, so modest indeed that he had to sleep on the living-room couch while she occupied his bedroom. He was supposed to stay out there, but as it happened, when the house was quiet he stole in and slipped between the sheets alongside her and, before she was altogether awake, had aroused her to the degree that when fully conscious she was as eager to proceed as he. This boy was the first of the only three lovers she had had before meeting Bobby; she had had no other since.

For some reason once she had passed their room now and gone through the door at the corridor's end and into a kind of outdoors—for not only was the breezeway roofed, but a fence of shrubs grew close by on the inland side—Lydia was suddenly conscious of her bare thighs. Perhaps it was the sea breeze. She wore shorts, but they were conservative enough, a fit that could be called neat, certainly not undecorous, and made of blue-and-white seersucker. She wore a simple white blouse above and sockless sandals below. With Bobby she had checked this costume for appropriateness and received his unqualified okay. True, he might have done as much had she appeared in a cerise playsuit, but she insisted that he remember that this was not her native milieu and asked him to be serious. Lydia by no means felt inferior when amongst the Graveses, but she abhorred nothing more than being conspicuously out of order, which was discourteous. Crude as they were, her own family had a tradition of courtesy. “If you're served fish, Johnny, then you
eat
fish,” were her mother's instructions to her older brother when he was first invited out on his own to dinner as a teenager, and her father continued to slap him for lapses in table manners till he had graduated from high school. Lydia herself had been admonished for wearing jeans so tight they showed the outline of her underpants and thus violated accepted manners. “It's ugly, Lyd, not nice to others,” her mother had said. “We all have to live in the world together. Who wants to see what covers your bare behind, for heaven's sake?”

In any event, it occurred now to Lydia that she was on her way to the isolated domain of a man she hardly knew, dressed in attire that could be called skimpy, for there was nothing beneath the shirt and shorts but a ribbonlike garment for which briefs was perhaps too substantial a term. The underwear had even evoked an amazed question from Bobby, “How come you wear something like that?”
“So my pants won't show,”
said she. Of course another taboo of her mother's concerned visible evidence of nipples, but Lydia was not weighty on top and the white shirt was not only opaque but outsized.

Even so she felt vaguely indecent as she reached the door at the end of the breezeway, opened it, and entered a hallway of a series of pale-blue doors, all of them closed but one halfway along on the side that faced the sea. As she had no means of knowing which belonged to the guest room occupied by Chuck Burgoyne, it was most convenient for her first to look into the doorway that was open.

When she did so, there he was, apparently sleeping soundly, in the supine position in or rather on the bed, even the sheet drawn away though the morning was not, back here in this shaded wing, cooled by the ocean breeze, really hot enough to justify that, but perhaps it was a matter of personal metabolism, for not only was he not under bedclothes, he wore no pajamas. He was in the state her father for some reason called “buck naked.” And he had a blatant erection.

Lydia remained just long enough to determine that he was genuinely asleep. He seemed to be.

Somehow Audrey had foreseen that when Chuck finally appeared in the main house, he would not refer to breakfast.

Instead he looked sternly at her and asked whether there had been a telephone call for him.

She answered guiltily. “In fact, there was.” It was fortunate that Doug remained away on his walk. “On Doug's private phone. It was just by chance that I—”

“It wasn't Perlmutter?” Chuck's bright blue eyes seemed to show an unparticularized resentment.

“Actually, someone named Tedesco. He didn't leave a number. He said—”

“I can imagine what he said.” Chuck was a man of slightly under medium height, of average-to-slight figure. He had a ruddy face that anyone would have called handsome, below neatly cut, straight, very dark hair. “If he calls again, tell him I've left.”

“It's not likely I'll be the one to answer if he uses that number. It's really Doug's private one. He doesn't like others to use it. I wonder how Mr. Tedes—” But Audrey stopped here; she would not be rude.

Chuck sat down in the chair that Bobby had earlier vacated in favor of the deck. Parts of the newspaper lay where they had been dropped. Chuck retrieved them, stacked them on his lap, but did not so much as glance at the headlines.

“Tedesco's not a man to trifle with,” said he. “If anybody is looking for trouble, Tedesco will supply it.”

Why then would he have given the man Doug's private number? was the question that persisted with Audrey. But she could neither ask it nor mention the subject tabooed by the law of hospitality: namely, were the plans for breakfast now definitely shelved?

“He called you Charley,” she said at last, and when Chuck looked at her as if puzzled, she added, “Mr. Tedesco.”

Chuck, who had seemed to be brooding, now brightened. “It's a matter of choice. The name you're called by others is not exactly your own property, is it? Charley, Chuck, Chaz. It's the name you can do that with. But Audrey is not, I think?” Chuck took the matter seriously. It was this sort of thing that made him so ingratiating.

“Actually, Audrey's not my first name, as it happens,” said his hostess. “I don't like it much but it's preferable to Wilhelmina, which is one of those names one is given to please some relative who might leave money to a younger person of the same name.”

Chuck leaned towards her. He still held the newspapers, which he had stacked, she assumed, merely to serve his sense of order. He wore leather loafers, with socks, and apparently had not brought along a pair of sports shoes of any kind, nor jeans or shorts. He provided quite a contrast with Bobby's style, and not only in clothing. “You're a desirable woman, Willie,” he said in a voice of intensity but low volume. Having made that startling speech, he rose and left the room at a smart pace, carrying with him the stack of newspapers.

Audrey had assumed she had forgotten how to blush, so long had it been, perhaps even since the days of the squint. While Doug's courtship antics had shocked her, she had never been embarrassed by them, but the difference there was that she had been a participant, a collaborator even if involuntarily. At the moment she had been given no role, and sat alone with her blazing face. Whether it was cruel or considerate of Chuck to leave so decisively would have been difficult to say. She was fifty-one and he might be somewhat older than her son but was still under thirty. With another intonation, his words now might well have been interpreted indecently. As it was, they sounded almost businesslike. His departure suggested ruthlessness. With no supporting evidence Audrey might have applied to Chuck what he had said of his friend or perhaps enemy named Tedesco, who should not be trifled with nor frequented unless one was looking for trouble. That certainly had never been true of Audrey. Her style was to avoid conflict, and thus, unlike almost everyone else she knew, she was still on her first marriage.

Lydia too had colored by reason of Chuck Burgoyne, but her flush represented anger. Only a scoundrel would sleep naked with an open bedroom door, even if quartered in the remotest part of the house. The weekday housekeeper, Mrs. Finch, surely went back there routinely as did the team of cleaning women who made regular Monday and Friday visits, not to mention those persons on missions such as that of Lydia only just concluded, or mere wanderers-through-hallways. But what infuriated her most was her inability to decide whether in so establishing the opportunity for self-exhibition Chuck was showing insolent indifference or narcissistic intent. Each would have been offensive, but perhaps the first was the more obnoxious.

Lydia could not abide inconsiderate persons, those who performed as if they were alone in the universe. But until now it could never have been said of Chuck Burgoyne that he operated with indifference to those around him: he was all too aware of others. He was always manipulating the Graveses, inducing them to alter practices that had apparently been lifelong, e.g., it had been their custom to breakfast severally and not collect around the table as a family so early in the day. He was singlehandedly responsible for the canceling of the traditional cocktail party with which the family had celebrated the opening of the season each year for the last seventy-odd, if the count began with Doug's grandfather, whose enormous house had not been at the shore, which in those days was considered too remote a site for a residence, but rather in the town overlooking the harbor. But it had been Audrey, not Doug, who cared about tradition, and the latter made no vocal objection when she announced that, as Chuck had rightly pointed out, the party when seen unsentimentally was no more than, when the time for planning and preparing was included, many dollars of expense and days of hard work for a few hours of tedium.

On the other hand, if it were Chuck's intention to exhibit himself, it could have been supposed that he would have done so under conditions more propitious for success. How could he have assumed that anyone would go back that way on a Sunday? And then what if the visitor had been Bobby or Doug? Presumably the sight would not have been so shocking to another man, certainly not to Bobby, who had told her of some of the contests that had gone on in his day as an adolescent in the locker rooms of the club. Males then actually did concern themselves with size, as she noted derisively. Ah, said he, then women are indifferent to measurements of breast and butt and thigh? He professed not to understand the fundamental difference involved.

To Lydia the sight of Chuck's tumid organ was anything but erotic. It simply represented the ultimate in effrontery.

She had stopped off at her own quarters to collect herself. A bright sitting room faced the sea; the bedroom, behind it on the land side, was always cool and dark and tranquil. The house had been built just as Bobby entered prep school, and his tennis and golf trophies from those years to the present stood on a teak shelving system that had probably been designed for books. Bobby owned few of the latter, being no reader, but with Lydia's assistance he had when necessary summoned up sufficient intellectual effort to get passing grades in his college courses, though they would probably not have been high enough to get him accepted by a law school not heavily endowed by his great-grandfather. All three of the Graveses known to Lydia considered themselves virtually impoverished because they did not have the grand estate of his forebear, with its scores of servants, a property that today had long been a monastery, with grounds ever dwindling as the monkish order, in need of funds in an impious era, sold more of the acreage for tract houses and a shopping mall.

Lydia stood before the big window and sought to be calmed by the sight of the expanse of water: the ocean was a great flat gray sheet at the moment. It was perhaps incongruous to seek emotional balance by gazing at such a potentially violent medium, but this measure never failed even in a storm. Presumably a hurricane might provide a different story, but anything less, if one were safe behind plate glass, did not fail to bring—well, reassurance might be the name for it: what did not seem petty in view of that liquid magnitude?

Lydia was a superb swimmer, but riding on the surface of the sea was another thing. She was the poorest of sailors on her father's big cabin cruiser, large enough for ocean-roaming but used by him exclusively on the meagerly proportioned and rather brackish Lake Winkeemaug, if not altogether a manmade body of water, then at least enhanced by dredge. Aboard that vessel the pubescent Lydia was capable of getting the vapors before the anchor was hoisted, and spent much of any voyage in the toilet, whose door, needless to say, was labeled “The Head.”

The two men Lydia loved the most were the same for whom she felt the most contempt: her father and her husband. But perhaps this was normal enough.

Had his daughter-in-law moved closer to the glass she could have seen Doug returning from his walk, ascending the steps from the beach. She would have been in an ideal situation from which to admire the fecundity of his scalp, on which the hair grew as thick as when he had been a boy.

He now had decided that there could be no more waiting for Chuck's appearance: he was too hungry. And if the houseguest did subsequently, belatedly, arise and prepare breakfast, it would be within one's capacity to eat twice: the salt air would see to that. Therefore, having entered by one of the doors which in a conventional dwellingplace would have been more obviously assigned to tradesmen, he was in the kitchen.

Here he stood bewildered for a moment before the large brushed-steel refrigerator that the designer had obtained, if memory served, from a firm whose routine clients were commercial restaurants. It was easy to assume that one could just go ahead and feed oneself, but aside from pouring cornflakes from a box, splitting a muffin and buttering it, and applying mustard to layered ham and cheese, Doug had never his life long been personally responsible for the preparing of that which he chewed and swallowed, and thus he found himself on alien terrain at the moment, without a legible map. He had never even tried frying a slice of bacon, and had an idea, based on scenes in comic movies, that it could seldom be performed by a beginner. To prepare his favorite form of egg, poached, divine intervention was probably to be implored, for even those of his women who were adepts at cookery made cloudy, oysterish messes unless they cheated and brought into play those little steaming-cups from which the eggs came looking as if effigies molded in rubber.

But Chuck's poached eggs were as though formed in God's hand, translucent, veiled, quivering, scarcely over the threshold of solidity. Dammit, where was the fellow now?

Right there: he came out of the butler's pantry.

“Chuck!” Doug cried in happy surprise and frank affection.

The houseguest failed to reply in kind. He frowned and scraped his lower lip with chisel-teeth. He carried two slices of white bread, inserted them into the twin slots of the toaster. Apparently this was to constitute his breakfast-making today.

Chuck asked, “Bobby went to the club?”

“I saw him outside a little while ago.”

Chuck made it a statement this time. “He went to the club.”

Doug rubbed his hands together. “Toast looks like a good idea. IVe been up for hours but haven't yet eaten a bite.” He gave his speech a rising inflection so as to imply that this denial had been his own idea.

With excessive force Chuck pulled one of the chairs away from the kitchen table and dropped into it. “Have a seat,” he said to Doug. “The womenfolk are elsewhere.”

It occurred to Doug that Chuck sometimes used quaint terms, especially with respect to females, had heard him actually say “gentler sex” once.

He took a chair as asked. He could not remember having previously sat in this kitchen; on his brief visits he was wont to lean against a counter.

Chuck put a fist on the tabletop between them. “I don't know whether you're aware, Connie's got to the point at which she's threatening to make real trouble.”

Doug felt a reaction at the base of his skull, as if he had been seized, with pliers, at the nape. “Connie?”

“Cunningham,” Chuck said impatiently. “I've talked with her. Obviously it's my intention to be discreet—else I wouldn't be sitting here.”

Connie Cunningham was a divorcee with whom Doug had lately had some six weeks of ardent sexual encounters. She was skinny, almost emaciated, with breasts consisting of little more than nipples, and her behind was flat, but her vulva could only be called inexhaustible. Indeed, the trouble had apparently been that none of her three husbands had been able to maintain the pace she demanded. Only Doug, eight to ten years older than the eldest of these men, had ever been her match. Anyway so she had assured him, and at first this news proved aphrodisiac. Lately it had been anything but, and as the weeks passed, Connie became ever rougher, seizing him painfully at the crotch on his entry into her apartment, in bed nipping at his glans with her horsey front teeth, riding him as if he were a recalcitrant bronco, bruising his ribs.