The Houseguest (4 page)

Connie had not yet accepted the truth that she had been dumped: hence the anguished telephone messages on the tape in his answering machines at island and city addresses. Fortunately she had never learned the name of the firm; nowadays he routinely kept that a secret when he could. In the past he had too often been embarrassed before his relatives, who usually managed to make a spy of his secretary, for after all, they and not he held the effective power in the firm. “For God's sake, Douglass,” said his uncle Whitson K. T. Graves III, who in addition to being on the boards of universities and hospitals had once been a wartime commanding officer of an elite regiment of the National Guard as well as, for the final eighteen months of one administration, ambassador to a little authoritarian state in Latin America. “Douglass, we all wet our whackers now and again, but we don't wave them out the window!”

“I had gone back to look for you,” said Chuck. “When the phone rang I answered it. I hadn't been given any special instructions.” He stared at Doug. “She assumed I was you, and gave me quite a earful.”

Doug raised his chin. “You see, I—”

“Look,” said Chuck, “it's better it happened this way. I gather you've given this person the boot, but she's resisting.”

“I—”

The houseguest raised his slender hand, making it into a pistol, the muzzle of the index finger pointed at Doug's chin. “This is something that requires no effort at all on your part. I'll see it's taken care of.”

“Oh,” said Doug, “that won't be—”

“Please,” said Chuck, waving the hand that was still extended. “It's the least I can do.” A bell sounded at the toaster, followed by a clicking metallic noise. The houseguest went to the counter.

Doug's embarrassment continued to grow. That he had no clear sense of what Chuck was proposing made it worse. And while Chuck was not as young as Bobby, he had yet to be born when Doug first had carnal knowledge of a female. With all respect to the young man, it did not seem right that he would assume authority in this matter—even though he might well be competent enough.

Chuck returned along a route that included the refrigerator, from which he took a covered butter dish of thick glass.

“She's making too much of it,” said Doug.

Chuck had reclaimed his seat and, working neatly, knifed shavings of butter off the firm stick and put them to melt on each piece of toast. “You don't need that sort of thing, Doug: a man in your position.” He smiled. “Let's drop the subject. It's been taken care of.”

This was news. Just a moment earlier he had put the statement in the future tense. What had happened since?

“I'm not sure I understand,” said Doug. “You've said something to Connie?”

Chuck shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I just arrange things. I'm an idea man or maybe a diagnostician.” He crunched his teeth into the buttered toast. It was probably not his place to offer the other piece to Doug, for after all it was Doug's kitchen, Doug who owned all the bread on the premises.

Before another attempt could be made to get to the truth of the matter at hand, Audrey entered the kitchen.

“Here you are,” said she, and it could be taken to refer to either one of them or both. “Golly, the toast smells
goood.”
She marched to the refrigerator. “How about some scrambled eggs to go with it?”

Doug considered this to be one of the great suggestions of the era, but Chuck said, “A little late in the day for me, Audrey, but you go right ahead.”

That was enough to discourage her even from preparing toast for herself and Doug. She sat down at the table, making a trio that might seem to the onlooker to be positively familial. “Well, what have you fellows been up to?” she asked as if jovially.

Chuck had already devoured the first piece of toast. “Oh,” said he, and took time to lick several fingertips, though with a certain grace that seemed boyish, not coarse, “oh, Doug and I are involved in a conspiracy.” He grinned at his so-called partner. “And it wouldn't be a conspiracy if we told
you.”
Perhaps because the emphasis seemed rude in retrospect, he added, after a pause, “Boy-talk.”

But so far as Doug was concerned, that note made it worse. Said he to his wife, “Sports. Baseball. That's the secret. It's not as if we're plotting a murder.”

Chuck raised his eyebrows inscrutably.

“I predict,” Audrey said suddenly, “that this will be a twenty-win year for the Soldier Boy.”

“You might be right,” replied Chuck. “It's certainly within the range of possibility, if that bone-chip problem can be licked.”

It seemed to Doug as though they had begun to converse in a code for the reason of discomfiting him: he who was still shaken by Chuck's being privy to the matter of Connie Cunningham.

“Since when,” he indignantly asked Audrey, “have you been interested in baseball?”

“Oh, I don't know I can name a date. And I still haven't actually ever seen a game except on television.”

Doug wondered whether he should be offended: this was news to him. He was not the sort of man who liked women who were keen on sports, even if simply as spectators. Of course female athletes, drenched with sweat, were out of the question.

Audrey asked Chuck, “Think the Bulldog will be swinging a big bat again this season?”

“Probably time for an off-year,” he said immediately. “Always happens after the signing of a big new contract.”

What in the world could Chuck have meant when he said Connie had been taken care of? Despite his previous favorable opinion of the young man, Doug found a suggestion of arrogance in the suggestion.

He rose from the chair and rubbed his hands together. He now had sufficient justification to announce he was hungry, in which statement there was a definite implication that was critical of Chuck. “I haven't had anything to eat since dinner last night. Does
anybody
have
any
plans for lunch?”

Audrey seemed to quail, but after a moment Chuck threw up his arms and cried genially, “Couldn't sleep, so I came out early and made a big breakfast. This toast has taken care of me till dinnertime.”

Doug was now provoked to reveal his annoyance. “I really was looking forward to your pancakes.”

Chuck raised one eyebrow. “You don't remember? We all agreed last night we'd each be on his own this morning?”

Audrey remained serenely silent. She could not be looked to for assistance.

After a moment Doug shook his head and said expressionlessly, “My mistake.” He walked to the casement window over the sink and stared out to the parking area, a graveled place below tall pines. Seeing which car remained, he asked, without purpose, “Bobby went to the club?” He slowly came to the table. “I think I'll run in to the village and catch a sandwich at the diner.”

“It's closed,” said Audrey. “All day Sunday.”

Smirking, Chuck strolled to the refrigerator, swung open the door, and while peering into the interior said, “A man's got a square meal coming under his own roof. I'll rustle up something.”

All at once Doug had lost his sense of hurt. “Mighty nice of you, Chuck old boy. I wouldn't mind it at all. You've spoiled us with your culinary prowess.” He had intended, on the route to the village, to stop at a roadside phone booth and call Connie Cunningham in the city: it was too risky to try that on his private telephone in the house, what with people wandering through the hallways. But he now had an excuse not to perform this chore, at least not promptly, and that was just as well, for he was sure to be wrong in feeling any apprehension as to her welfare: the result would be only to postpone, for more painful days, the necessary end to their association, for Connie was currently in the mood to see a routine hello as evidence of his revived passion.

Audrey protested hypocritically to Chuck, “It's really me who should be doing that. You're our guest!”

“I'd rather be useful than sit around,” said Chuck. “You know that.”

But good as he had previously been at the stove, today he produced fried eggs with hard yolks and brown edges, and burned the bacon, yet he served this fare to his hosts with the same air of confidence he had justifiably displayed with fine meals.

But one should probably not judge him harshly on the basis of a unique off-day.

Audrey was about to sit down to the plate Chuck had prepared for her when she said, “Oh, I guess I'd better tell Lydia we're eating.”

“No,” said Chuck, “you sit down while it's hot. I'll find her.”

When the houseguest had left the kitchen, Doug asked Audrey, “Know anything about Chuck's family?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I think he hails from out West somewhere. Ask Lydia. I gather she's the one knew him first, introduced him to Bobby.”

“He's an awfully agreeable guy,” said Doug, munching some bacon, the char-bittered taste of which was actually stimulating to his palate. “I hope he's able to stay for some days to come.”

Audrey agreed. “He's nice to have around the house. You know when Mrs. Finch is here he never comes into the kitchen. He's that delicate.”

Unlike his wife, Doug had never seen their weekday housekeeper as charmingly quaint. He had been coming to the island all his life and had yet to find a local he either trusted or liked.

“I wonder if Chuck would like to audit her accounts,” he said to Audrey. “I doubt they'd pass muster.” Members of the Finch family owned the nearest grocery, the gas station, the liquor store, and supplied the cleaning women, and the island postmaster was an in-law. In Doug's experience they were all lazy, surly, and unscrupulous throughout the generations. In appearance most of them shared a potato-face, though now and again a Finch had a foxlike snout: long nose and undershot jaw.

“Oh, Doug,” Audrey chided. “You're hardly ever here when she is.”

“I will be tomorrow,” said he. “I'm not going back this evening.”

His wife lowered her knife and fork. “Not flying back?”

“Nor driving. Nor going. I'm staying on for a couple of days for a change. Is it that amazing?”

Audrey made a little gesture. “Well, it's unprecedented.”

“You weren't expecting guests?” he asked sardonically. “I can keep my room?”

“Then how long will you be staying?”

“I trust I'm welcome?”

“You'll have more than Mrs. Finch to contend with: the cleaning crew comes again on Monday.”

These women, three or sometimes four of them, were also essentially Finches, at least second cousins or perhaps a near neighbor who probably had some of the same blood, so interbred were the island folk.

“You've forgotten. I've been coming here since I was a baby. I know how to handle myself with that tribe.”

“Well, I'm just pointing it out. And remember not to leave anything lying around that you want to find afterwards. They put away everything loose, any article of clothing, jewelry, papers, ashtrays, everything movable, so they can dust a room all at once. Trouble is where they put the things: never places I would choose. They'll shove one shoe into a dresser drawer and throw its mate on a closet shelf.”

“Genetic deficiencies have been passed on from generation to generation,” Doug pointed out. “Necessarily: any breeding done on the island has to be incest. These are essentially the same people that came here three centuries ago. Nobody leaves and no new blood has been added.”

Audrey herself could freely criticize the Finches, but of course when Doug added his observations she came to their defense.

“You exaggerate,” she said now. “They're probably as good or maybe even better than the usual people found in such a place as this, with a part-time population so different from the human beings who live here all year—to whom the permanent residents are merely servants.”

Lydia had composed herself by now and had only just left her room when she encountered Chuck, of all people, in the hall.

For no apparent reason he was positively ebullient. “Hi!” he cried. “You're quite the slugabed today.”

If she knew the term at all, it was but distantly, perhaps from some childhood book written in the century past but still read to little girls in her day. It went with “counterpane.” Despite these innocent associations she was having a struggle with herself to keep from making a wisecrack with reference to the state in which she had last seen him.

“I've been up and about for hours. You're the one who overslept today.” And not being burdened with Audrey's obligations as hostess, she added, “We naturally assumed you'd be up to make breakfast, and waited and waited.”

Chuck did not admit a hint of failure. “Where
were
you?” he asked aggressively. “I did cook, and everybody else has eaten long since.” His front teeth, now on gleaming display, were perfect. He was not at all her type, but there could be no argument as to his good looks.

He went on. “That's why I came to fetch you. It's so late now there won't be another meal till evening. Better come along and eat some eggs.” He turned and strolled along the hall for a few paces, then stopped and spun around to face her again. At first it seemed odd that he would not have waited till she was at closer range to say such a thing, but in retrospect she understood that it was his game to unsettle prospective prey by the use of special effects. “Just as well you're up,” said he. “Can't tell what I might have done if I found you still in bed.”