Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (24 page)

           
The motel had cable, and cable had a
semi-dirty movie about a kid comes home from college to his house in
Beverly Hills
and there’s nobody there but the new
Swedish maid. Sure.
^c
T’ll give you fifty-seven thousand dollars,”
Frank told the set, “for every time that happened in real life.”

           
Somewhere in through there he fell
asleep, and when the knock came at the motel door, waking him, there was a
black-and-white war movie on instead. He switched it off, readjusted the towel
around his middle, and let in a black kid carrying the pizza in a box and
wearing a cap with the pizza store’s name on it. He gave the kid a whole lot of
money for one lousy pizza, and then when he opened it the smell was too strong.
He shut the box and went back to bed and lay there awake, thinking.

           
The pattern had changed. That was
what had happened today, he’d gone through the looking glass like
Alice
, he was on the other side now, and the
pattern was completely different.

           
The lawyer lady had talked about the
pattern, had talked about the rubber band attached to his back with the other
end still in his cell, and all along he’d known she was right. He’d known it
would happen again. He’d be out for a while and then he’d fuck up and then he’d
be back in, the same old pattern, over and over, world without end, amen.

           
No more. World
with
end. The law would surely fmd some way to tie him to the
robbery of the old man and the shooting of fat slob Joey. He didn’t know
exactly what it would be, fingerprints or saliva or threads from his coat or
some damn thing, but
something
would
lash him tight to that robbery-and- murder.

           
Frank had an almost religious
respect for the forensic scientists who worked with the authorities. He
believed they were omniscient and omnipotent and damn near omnipresent. And
that meant, if the law ever got its hands on Frank Hillfen again, they would
drape that robbery-and-murder around his neck, and he’d be
gone.

           
I can’t go back, he thought. Not
this time. That’s the change, that’s what’s different now. Now I
can’t
go back.

           
I need Mary Ann Kelleny’s five-mil
job. The big one.

           
Hardly thinking about it, Frank got
up and ate half the pizza, washing it down with cold water from the sink. The
five-mil job. What would it look like?

           
Fantastic! He did all that on his
own! I didn’t influence the proceedings in any way, I haven’t even had contact
with Frank Hillfen since Mary Ann Kelleny gave him the ride to
Omaha
. (Isn’t it touching how he saves that
business card? There’s something really very sweet and vulnerable about Frank.
Hopelessly self-destructive, of course—of course!—but endearing, like a
flea-ridden dog.)

           
And he surely remembered what Mary
Ann Kelleny had to say to him, didn’t he? And he made a mess of things
absolutely on his own and without my help. He made himself ready so fast I
don’t even have the others in position yet.

           
Susan is still seeing Grigor
Basmyonov sometimes, though less often than before. But she still phones him
during the week when Andy Harbinger has monopolized her weekend. I’m afraid a
vegetable love isn’t enough to distract Susan completely from Grigor. I’m
afraid we’re going to have to become more deeply involved with one another.

           
But why should this affect me so
strongly? When adrift, of course, when in my usual self, I still
am
my usual self, calm and obedient, but
when in Andy’s body I find myself increasingly nervous, expectant,
apprehensive. As though there were things to be learned. Things to be learned?
From Susan Carrigan?

           
There was a special on PBS that
night about efforts being made to preserve the artistic heritage of
civilization, the struggle against everything from acid rain to mindless
looting, and a litde puff piece in the paper mentioned that the International
Society for Cultural Preservation would be prominendy featured on the program.
From the bank, that morning, Susan called Andy up at Columbia—he taught
sociology up there— and left a message with the faculty secretary, as she had
done before. He called back half an hour later, and she invited him to come
watch the program with her. “The organization ids about is the one where I met
Grigor, in
Moscow
. Remember the cocktail party I told you
about?”

           
“Sure. What time’s it on?”

           
“
Nine o’clock
. I’ll make dinner, we can eat before.”

           
“White or red?”

           
Meaning the color of the wine he
should bring. “You decide,” she said. “I’ll make chicken.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
Buying the chicken and the new
potatoes and the baby green beans and the three kinds of lettuce on her way
home from the bank, Susan found herself betting Andy would bring white wine,
given that choice. Because it was bloodless.

           
Immediately she rejected that
thought, angry at herself. She knew she shouldn’t feel that way, so
denigrating, knew she should be grateful she’d found a man happy to give her
companionship without making demands, but then sometimes she couldn’t help
wondering why it was supposed to be such a big deal to be around a person who
never made demands. Maybe she wanted demands. Maybe she should
demand
demands.

           
She grinned at herself over the
lettuce bins, and a guy smirked at her and said, “You’re beautiful when you
smile,” and she turned her back on him, heading for the cashier.

*
 
*
 
*

           
When Andy arrived, just after
seven-thirty, he was carrying a brown paper bag up against his left side, and
used his right arm to bring her close and kiss her cheek. How pretty he is, she
thought yet again. He always surprised her with how goodlooking he was, as
though his appearance faded slighdy every time they were apart.

           
“A treat tonight,” he said, and
reached into the bag, and brought out a bottle of French red wine; good stuff,
from the look of it. “For dinner,” he told her, as she took it.

           
So she’d been wrong. “Great,” she
said, looking at the label.

           
“And,” he said, full of repressed
excitement, “this is for
now!”
And
out of the bag came a bottle of champagne.

           
“Why, Andy!” she said. “You surprise
me!”

           
His smile bubbled over with delight.
“I hope to,” he said.

*
 
*
 
*

           
There’s something about knowing
you’re going to, but you haven’t yet, nobody’s even made a move or a suggestion
or a hint yet, and yet you both know it’s going to happen,
this
time it’s going to happen; there’s something delicious in
those last moments before you fall into one another’s arms.

           
Susan couldn’t remember when it was
exacdy that she’d
known
, whether it
was when he’d brought out the red wine, or not until he’d shown her the
champagne, but somewhere in there she’d understood that he’d made a decision.
And that she agreed with it.

           
How will he do it? she wondered. He
always seems so confident, but we’ve really known one another a while now with
no moves at all, so what does that mean?

           
And how will
I
do? Will I be a klutz? One or two incidents in her life when
she’d been a klutz came into her mind, keeping her edgy, but over the edginess
was the knowledge that it was
going to
happen
.

           
And tonight he didn’t at all do that
sort of fading-out thing that happened with him sometimes when they were
watching a movie or TV. He would be there with her, and then a kind of glaze
would come over him, his eyes became dull, his face less expressive. It was as
though he were taking a nap, asleep with his eyes open, but somehow it was more
than that. Once, in a movie theater, she’d touched the back of his hand when he
was like that, and it was so cold it frightened her. But then he’d responded
immediately to her touch—he always responded immediately from the fading-out
thing, if his attention was called on—and when he’d used the same hand a minute
later to pat the back of
her
hand it
was no longer cold. Had she imagined the coldness? She didn’t believe it, but
she’d been reluctant to find out for sure. Since then, if she saw him fading
out, she’d speak to him but not touch.

           
But tonight he didn’t fade once. He
was with her the whole time, admiring the dinner she’d thrown together (she was
sorry now she hadn’t paid it more attention) and even showing interest in her
retelling of the story about the Moscow cocktail party, this time emphasizing
the International Society for Cultural Preservation rather than the meeting
with Grigor.

           
They sat on the sofa together to
watch the program, and it seemed perfectly natural for him to put his arm
around her and for her to nesde in against him, feeling the steady beat of his
heart. They watched the program in silence for about twenty minutes, and then,
during a boring bit—helicopters over imperiled green rain forest, portentous
offscreen narration—he lifted her chin and kissed her lips. A great languor
flowed into her from his mouth, a spreading softness and a heightened sense of
her own physical self. His hand very gently stroked her body, and he whispered
against her lips, “You are so amazing to me.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
He filled her as though his body
were all molten, soft and flowing, as though she were a small mountain lake,
hidden and unknown, and his presence turned her to nectar. She moved in slow
motion, her arms boneless ribbons around him as he nuzzled within her, her body
holding and releasing in long easy swells of a great warm tide, physical
sensations and yearning emotions all braided together, coiling around her, a close
compelling spiral of flesh and she an electric dot in the very center. It all
made her so sad she thought she must be dying, she thought this must be the
great sad fulfillment of death, but she didn’t care. She embraced the sadness,
the salt of tears and birth and death, time contracting into that electric dot
that was herself, everything contracting to that one infinitesimal point in the
whole world, and she it, and then that point imploded and left nothing at all.

           
They smiled solemnly at one another,
stretched out together on her bed, the warmth rising from their bodies. And he
said two astonishing things. No, not astonishing things, but said in an
astonishing way:

           
“I don’t want to lose you.”

           
And, “I didn’t know about this.”

           
I didn’t know about this.

           
I like being Andy Harbinger. I have
made him healthy and attractive and reasonably strong. (I’ve tried a number of
human types by now, and prefer comfort.) And he
is
human. I constructed him, from molecules of myself, so he is
both me and human, and I am learning from him all the time, but I didn’t know
about
this.

           
The experience of being with Susan
was unlike anything I could have imagined. Not like that business with Pami at
all, that brutal calisthenics. This was... this was like the best of the
empyrean, distilled. How can humans spend their time doing anything
else
?

           
Of course, it was even more powerful
for me, since I was in some general contact with Susan’s feelings and reactions
as well. Andy’s and Susan’s emotions, sensations, all mixing together in my
semi-human brain; what an explosive cocktail!

           
I’m so happy I’ve had this chance to
get to know and learn about humans, before the end.