The Reserve (26 page)

“About five feet, I guess.”

“Oh, my. Five feet deep. Well, there you are. There’s really no way this can be done quickly, unofficially, off the record. Discreetly.” Kendall reached for the standing phone with one hand and dismissed the guide with a backhanded wave of the other. “It’s too late to do anything today, it’ll be dark in a few hours. Be here tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. I’ll have two or three men who’ll go in with you. And probably the sheriff.”

Hubert nodded and pulled away from the sticky embrace of the chair. When he stood, he felt strangely tall, as if he were outside his body and looking down on it from above. The man he saw below was a small man, shrunken and frail, prematurely aged—a man who used to be an Adirondack guide.

T
HE SUN PASSED BEYOND THE RANGE, AND THE BROAD SHADOW
of the mountains spread across the lake from west to east, and the light in Cinderella’s Suite quickly faded. Jordan Groves and Vanessa Von Heidenstamm did not notice the approaching darkness. They were still immersed in their lovemaking. It had begun slowly, tenderly, face-to-face, with long, lingering looks at each other, like devoted siblings at the start of a long absence taking their last leave of each other, gathering in all the details they had neglected to notice up to now. They removed their clothes, their own and each other’s, delicately, precisely, as if preparing to model for an artist, and once naked, seated side by side on the bed, they turned to face each other, and with their hands on each other’s bare shoulders, they kissed—sweetly, as if in relief and gratitude for having come to the peaceful end of a painfully protracted argument. And then they embraced and with their hands caressed each other’s breasts and backs and arms—her skin smooth and creamy and soft as fine silk, his alabaster white and
tautly drawn over muscle and bone—and their separate bodies gradually lost their boundaries and merged into a third body, one that contained all their female and male differences and erased all their anatomical contrasts and inversions.

Their passion rose slowly. His because he had never made love like this before, delicately, teasingly, fully aware of each slow turning, and though it frightened him a little, it excited him in a fresh way. Hers rising slowly also, but with her it was because she had made love in this fashion many times before and knew very well its effect on a man who was used to having his way with a woman quickly and efficiently without being conscious of having lost awareness of his body. Men like Jordan Groves, egocentric sensualists, men whose lovemaking left them with a sense of accomplishment, were rarely truly satisfied by a woman, unless she managed to slow him in his headlong rush. He had to be brought, bit by bit, cell by cell, to complete awareness of his body, moving, as if he were a woman, from the outside in, rather than from the inside out, so that when he did lose his body, he lost everything. Men like Jordan Groves had to be braked and slowed. They were the only men capable of exciting Vanessa’s passion. Slowing them almost to a stopping point gave her a power over them that she otherwise lacked. It brought her out of herself and forward toward another human being and through that other into the shuddering void beyond, and when that happened she cried out in joy. Afterward, with no memory of having cried out, she had to be told of it by her lover, as if she had been elsewhere at the time. For she had been elsewhere—she had left the locked and guarded, dark room of her body for the blinding light of self-forgetfulness, where there was no one to be courted or seduced, where there was no one to affirm her reality by means of his or her gaze, and no one to fail at it over and over
again. Making love with men like Jordan Groves let Vanessa Cole believe for a few seconds in the sustained reality of her essential being, even though afterward she could not remember ever having experienced it as such. Even though afterward it was as if self-awareness had been surgically removed and all she had to go on, all she was capable of experiencing, was its phantom. But her belief in its existence, like a Christian’s belief in a god she’s never met, gave Vanessa strength and a small, transient portion of equanimity, and for many years that belief had kept her from annihilating herself.

I
T WAS NEARLY DARK WHEN THEY HEARD FOOTSTEPS ON THE DECK
at the front of the house and then the squeak of the screened door of the porch opening and closing, and someone crossed the porch and knocked lightly on the living room door. Jordan reached for his clothes and rapidly began pulling them on, while Vanessa calmly rose from the bed, strolled naked to the dressing room, and emerged wrapped in a white cotton sheet. She told him to stay where he was and walked from the bedroom, closing the door firmly behind her. Jordan peered cautiously from the window along the front of the house to the porch. In the heavy shadow of the overhanging pines, even with a full moon rising in the east, it was too dark for him to see who was there, except that it was a man.

At the living room door Vanessa called, “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Hubert. Hubert St. Germain, Miss Cole.”

“What do you want? I’m not dressed.”

“I got to talk to you, Miss Cole.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

She opened the door, but did not invite him inside. “What
do you want? You shouldn’t be here now, you know.” The cold air rushed into the room, and she shivered and pulled the sheet tightly around her. She was not fooled: the guide was bringing news that she did not want to hear.

“I know I shouldn’t have come out. But I got to warn you.”

“What, the British are coming?”

“No. I did something that I thought…that I thought was the right thing to do. The only thing I
could
do, under the circumstances. Only it didn’t work out right.”

“For heaven’s sake, Hubert, you sound like you’ve been a bad boy. Stop beating around the bush and tell me,” she said, although she already knew what he’d done and what would follow. She turned away and told him to come inside, then walked to her bedroom door and called to Jordan, “Come on out. It’s Paul Revere. The British are coming.” He’s told someone, she said to herself. The bloody fool. She never should have trusted him. He was weaker than she had thought.

Returning to the living room, she strode to the bar and poured herself a half glass of rum and the same for Jordan. “You want a drink?” she asked Hubert. “Sit down and have a drink,” she said. Then, “No, make a fire first, will you? It’s cold in here.”

“I could use a drink, I guess. H’lo, Jordan,” he said as the artist entered the room, dressed, but shirtless, with his leather jacket on and zipped.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jordan said.

“I’m afraid he’s the harbinger of bad tidings. What do you want, Hubert? To drink, I mean.”

“Same as you, I guess.”

“You guess. Is that all you do, guess?”

“No. I know a few things. I’ll have the same as you and Jordan,” he said and knelt by the fireplace and crumpled newspaper into
it and laid some sticks down and while the others watched in silence got the fire lit.

Jordan slumped in a large chair and looked at him. Finally he asked, “What’s the bad news, Hubert? No, don’t tell me, let me guess. You got back to your cabin and sat there looking at your dog and had a crisis of conscience. Right?”

Hubert stood and looked at Jordan, then at Vanessa, who handed him the drink. The burning pine sticks snapped loudly behind him. He saw that they had spent the afternoon making love, and was glad of it. So many things were fracturing and getting reconfigured that it felt somehow reassuring to see still more of it. What the hell, let it all come down, he thought. Everything that’s broke is beyond repair. He was even glad that Alicia and he would not be able to see each other again, and that he might never be able to hire out his services to the Reserve again. Better that nothing will ever be the same again, rather than only some things. “Yes, you’re right,” he said to Jordan. “As far as it goes.”

“Jesus Christ,” Vanessa said. “‘As far as it goes.’” She moved from table to table, lighting the kerosene lanterns, filling the large, high-ceilinged room with pale orange light. “My father’s dead only a few weeks, and my mother’s killed this morning by a shotgun blast, a regrettable, sad accident, as we know, and Daddy’s ashes are in the lake, and Mother’s body is buried in the woods, both deeds illegally done, and you’re having a little
crise de conscience
? Get some perspective, Hubert. I haven’t even started to properly mourn yet, because of all this goddamned mess, and meanwhile you’re feeling a little guilty? Why should we care about that?”

“If that’s all it was, that I talked to Alicia about…about what happened this morning and all, I wouldn’t have come out here tonight. I would’ve just left it like it was.”

“You did
what
?” Jordan said. “You told Alicia? Jesus!”

“Why on earth did you do that, Hubert? What were you
thinking
?”

Jordan said, “I’ll tell you what he was thinking. He carried his little bag of guilt straight to his lover, my wife, because he couldn’t handle it himself, and she’s the only one he knows who would keep his secret, since I’m a part of it and she’s married to me, the father of her children, and is therefore obliged to protect me. Besides, she’s good at keeping secrets, isn’t she, Hubie? So now Alicia knows about it, and you’re feeling guilty about that, too. You’re having a second crisis of conscience, and you’ve rowed all the way out here in the dark to get it off your chest. You can screw another man’s wife, but you can’t stand thinking badly of yourself. Better get used to it, Hubie.”

“Jordan, don’t call me Hubie.”

“I’ll call you any damn thing I want.”

Hubert looked at Jordan, then at Vanessa. His partners in crime. Fellow liars. Adulterers. Everyone in it together, but only for him-or herself. He didn’t know who any of them was any more, not even Alicia. Not even himself. All he knew was what they had done. He had no idea of why, however.

“Stop it, you two,” Vanessa said. “Just tell us the rest, Hubert.”

“Tomorrow morning Kendall’s sending me and a couple of the boys from the Club out here with Dan Peters to dig up your mother’s body and take it in for an autopsy and suchlike.” He paused for a moment to let them absorb the information. “Peters is the Essex County sheriff,” he added.

Vanessa and Jordan glanced at each other, then turned away and stared expressionless at the fire.

Hubert said, “Kendall knows what happened out here today.”

“So I gather. Who told him?” Jordan asked. “Alicia? You told her what happened, and she took it to Kendall?” It was not like
her to betray him that way. But it was not like her, he had once believed, to betray him by sleeping with another man and continuing to do it and lie about it for months. Falling in love with him, even. There wasn’t much left in his life now that was predictable, except lies and betrayal.

“You told him yourself, didn’t you, Hubert?” Vanessa said. “Because of Alicia. Because that’s what she wanted you to do.”

“Yes. I’m not sure that’s what she wanted me to do, though. I did it on my own account.”

“Oh, Hubert St. Germain, you’re like a moth to flame.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t resist what can destroy you. You think you’re being honest, but you’re acting on some dumb blind instinct.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I thought I was doing what was right. Finally.”

Jordan said, “Did you tell Kendall about me, that I’m involved?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s something, I suppose. But Alicia, she knows everything?”

“Yes.”

Jordan pulled his tobacco and papers from his jacket pocket and rolled a cigarette. Vanessa sat opposite him, turning her glass and staring at it. Hubert looked at the fire and drank off his rum and placed the heavy glass on the end table next to him. Three full minutes passed in silence, except for the snap of the fire in the fireplace. Then Hubert walked to the door. He waited there for a second, as if expecting one of them to stop him, to ask where he was going, why he was leaving, why he had done what he had done. But no one asked him anything, and he was glad. He wouldn’t have known how to answer. He didn’t know where he was going, or why
he was leaving, or why he had done what he had done. He opened the door and departed from them. Let it all come down.

Jordan left his chair and crossed to Vanessa and stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, naked beneath the sheet, and pushed the sheet away and felt her cool skin. Firelight flickered across her breasts, and the artist thought it would make a beautiful picture—a seated, nearly naked woman seen from above and behind like this, her light auburn hair loose and long and streaked with red and orange bands of firelight, her buttery shoulders and her full, firm breasts with the pink nipples barely visible, the white sheet collapsed across her lap; and emerging from the darkness that surrounded her, obscure shapes of furniture, ominous, impersonal forms slowly encroaching on the lit space filled by the naked woman, thoughtful and grave. The fire in the fireplace and the kerosene lanterns were outside the frame. All the light on the woman was reflected light. He removed his hands from her shoulders—he didn’t want his hands in the picture, just the woman alone in the nearly dark room, naked and sad and in danger and aware of everything in the picture and beautiful to behold.

“You’re looking at me, aren’t you?” she said in a low monotone. She felt the heat and light from the fireplace and lamps on her face and upper body and the heat and light from the gaze of the man standing behind her, and she was filled with inexpressible joy. The warm illumination from both fire and man solidified her, gave her body and her mind three full dimensions and let her shape-shifting self, aswirl in a fixed world, stop and hold and, when she had become its still center, made the world begin to swirl instead. This must be how other people feel all the time, she thought.

Jordan could not resist touching her and placed his hands on
her shoulders again. She shrugged them off. “Just look at me. Keep looking at me.”