After Claude (18 page)

“It wasn’t like that,” Libby said and started to cry.

“Why wasn’t it like that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand him.” The words came out in shudders. “I don’t understand any of it. I just know Victor likes flips around him. He keeps talking about love and no one ever notices what a creep he is. He’s a creep. Everyone near him gets sick or dies. Why doesn’t he die?” she howled.

After that outburst, a thick silence crept over the room of a variety that used to provoke my ailing mother to claim she could hear her blood pressure drop.

“Your ingratitude wounds me, baby. Here you are, recovered enough to fight with me, which really makes me proud of you, though I wish you were fighting your enemies, not your friends. Your head is together, you’ve got a man at your side, all supplied by the Institute, though the purpose of the Institute is not to act as a mating service, and you’re saying you want Victor dead? Why, if not for Victor, you’d be dead, and you’re not the only Libby in this world.”

“I didn’t really mean it that way,” she said softly.

“She really didn’t mean it, Roger,” Bryant hastily added. “She’s just very upset. Get hold of yourself, Libby.”

I was beginning to get the picture. She was one of these professional helpless types. A smaller, younger version of the Rhoda-Reginas, who throw themselves on your mercy and then hate you for whatever help you give. Why? Because you can never give them enough.
More
is the only word in their dictionaries. And when there is no more, when they’ve completely drained you, then guess who gets to play villain? I wanted to rush to Roger and warn him not to waste his rational words on her or he’d end up believing he was the crazy one. I longed to tell him about Rhoda-Regina and the thanks I’d gotten from her. Happily, I detected a bit more steel in Roger’s hushed voice.

“I’m going to give you an opportunity to repay Victor for all the good he’s done you, and I hope you’ll grab it, Libby. Victor is worried. He’s worried because one of his Libbys has strayed from the flock. He made an exception when he let you and Bryant go, and Victor often talks about it, questions himself about it. Did he do the right thing? Convince him he did the right thing. Help him to find his lost little girl. Help him to find Heidi. Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Libby moaned.

Roger pretended he hadn’t heard her. “Victor thinks you know where she is because he found a letter from you that Heidi, despite all rules, managed to receive.”

“Oh,” said Libby faintly.

Bryant got plugged in. “Tell him. Cut this crap out. You know how they can fuck up our scene, and for what? If Victor wants Heidi, he’ll get her. Tell him and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“For once he’s right, Libby. The way Victor figures it, there are no accidents, no mistakes. Heidi left that letter because she wants to be found. She needs to be found. She knows Victor loves her, and she’s a part of him.”

“I can’t fink on her.” Libby wept. “He’ll kill her. What does he want her for? He’s not hot for her. He doesn’t fuck her. He’s not hot for anyone. It’s all a shitty ego trip.”

Roger put his hand on Libby’s arm, and she swallowed hard. “It’s not up to you, Libby, to stick your nose into Victor’s private affairs. How Victor loves is Victor’s trip. We won’t talk about it. It won’t come up again in our discussion, right? Victor figures that Heidi got confused. Maybe you convinced her she wasn’t loved? Anyway, she’s made her point. She wanted proof of Victor’s love. She wanted Victor to follow her, and he’s following. You know what I think?” he said with delayed male inspiration, because I myself had been thinking it since Heidi’s name had turned up, “I think that you’re standing between them. Let’s assume Heidi managed to smuggle out a few complaints to you. Don’t women always complain about their old man? Isn’t that their trip? So you pump Heidi full of this notion of splitting on Victor, and she does. Now you’re determined to turn a girlish prank, a stupid impulse, into a permanent break. It must have bugged you, baby, when Victor preferred Heidi and you had to settle for this loser. I’ll never understand how you chicks keep doing this number on each other.”

“Shit,” Libby said, and then, “Heidi has as much right to live as Victor. He turned her into a vegetable. You saw. I think he hates her. He always hated her because she had spirit, even if she was a complete flip. She was funny. Please, Roger, don’t ask me to fink on her. I couldn’t stand myself. Listen, I have an idea. Why don’t you tell Victor you couldn’t find me. Take her,” she said pointing at me. “Give him someone new to break in, to discipline. She’s older than Heidi, but I don’t think Victor cares about things like that. Please, Roger.”

“No, she’s too old and fat.” If that slander had come from any source other than Henny Penny, I would have stuck an Albanian knife into its heart.

With that outrageous suggestion, Libby lost Roger and blew the game. She had overlooked the limits of his John Alden number. I was that limit. Due to her obsessive inability to grant other women the smallest degree of importance, referring to us as vegetables, the highest form of flattery being that we were “funny,” she had refused to take notice of Roger’s well-concealed infatuation with me and, with that spectacular blunder, had alienated Roger.

Roger, tense and hurt, slipped a sheet of white paper across the table. “I’m going to make it easy for you, Libby. Some things are hard’ to say, easier to write, if that letter you sent to Heidi is any indication of how you operate. Write down her address, and make it fast.”

Libby, unable to concede defeat, sat motionless over the paper. It was Bryant who finally had his fill of her obstinacy. He grabbed the paper and wrote quickly.

“Come on,” he said to her, and they both stood up. Roger, still seated, read, “Montreal.” He whistled. “Of course, she’s crashing with Leon.”

“You’ll never get her back, never. Leon’s father is a big shot, a senator or a governor. He’ll protect Heidi.”

“That’s not your problem; you did your best and that Victor will appreciate.” He followed them to the door, continuing to demonstrate his exceptional let-bygones-be-bygones nature, which was so akin to my own.

Standing between them, he draped his arms loosely over their shoulders. “Remember, Victor loves you, both of you, and any time you want back into the Institute, there’ll always be a place for you at his table.”

Libby fumbled with the locks and managed to get the door open. “I hate all of you,” she shouted, with her back to us. But I wasn’t paying the slightest attention to her. I was calculating how little space an Albanian person such as myself would take at Victor’s table.

Roger bolted the door after them and came spinning into the center of the room. “Montreal.” He laughed out loud. “Today Montreal, tomorrow the world.”

“I don’t know how you managed to scare the information out of her,” Clarissa droned in her monotone. I now knew, with a terrible stab at my heart, why Roger tolerated her presence. He grabbed his hostess and spun her around.

“It’s because we’re powerful, my love.” He beat a Tarzan tom-tom on his bare chest. “We are powerful. Victor will break Leon’s ass,” he said with delight. “We’ve got his kid sister up there, freaked but good. She’s on a Mary Magdalene trip. Her idea of salvation is to wash Victor’s feet. Wow,” Roger said, rubbing his hands together, “I wonder if it’s too late to call Victor?”

“He never used to sleep,” Clarissa said.

“Yes, but he gets into other things. I’d better wait till tomorrow.”

“Are we going to Montreal?” Henny Penny asked.

“That’s a long drive, man,” the musician joined in.

“It won’t be too bad. I’ll break it. Drop off Henny Penny at the Institute and pick up additional troops, if Victor thinks we have to use force.”

“But I want to go to Montreal with you,” Henny Penny complained, and I thought for a dreadful second that my words had issued from her dummy mouth. I had this awful premonition of Roger walking out of my life without ever knowing what he meant to me. I suffered the cruel pressure of time colliding with my absurd timidity. When would I be free of my prim restraint? If only I could be a Rhoda-Regina or a Maxine for one minute, express my needs, insist on them, let the bodies fall where they may. But no. There were certain inescapable laws in my upbringing, and number one on the forbidden list was to express feelings of attachment or affection too soon. To the man must fall the illusion of the successful pursuit. I knew, from bitter experience, that women were masters of a subtle form of encouragement. They somehow managed to capture the bungling hunter, while creating precisely the opposite impression. That know-how my mother had cunningly withheld from me. In truth, I was burdened with a male mentality. I wanted to grab Roger, fling him on my horse, and be abducted. I was too tired. It was too late for me to start learning feminine wiles. I did not know how to reverse the roles that I am sure nature intended us to reverse. Me with my inscrutable passions. I needed a man to shoot himself before I acknowledged that he was alive. -I grabbed my head in my two hands to hold it steady.

Roger came waltzing over to me. “Did anyone ever tell you that you make a gorgeous Albanian?”

“No.”

“What’s the matter? Why are you holding your head like that? Are you feeling sick again?” He leaned over me and caressed the top of my head, triggering off a hail of shivers that rained down my neck and back. I almost cried out to him, “Roger, you win,” but no, I had to pull a Doris Day and push his hand away.

“Hey,” Roger said, lowering himself to the arm of the recliner, “are you mad at me?”

“You called me stupid,” I said stupidly.

He couldn’t balance himself on the precarious tilting arm and sat down on the floor in front of me, resting his head on my knees. I would have appreciated a few additional strands of hair to run my fingers through. For a change, life had given me an impossible scene to play.

“Oh, baby, I’m sorry. You mustn’t be so paranoid. I just wanted to get that bad business about Heidi out of the way. You know I love you?”

How easy it is for a man to speak his piece. If I said I love you back, he’d probably have a stroke. How could I respond to Roger without endangering his health? My mind had never been blanker. Nothing. Not a glimmer, not a trace of thought. Empty. I hate that sensation of all the fuses blowing; there was Roger, at my feet, yearning for rapport.

I almost welcomed Clarissa’s insensitive intrusion. I could hear her clicking the channel dial.

“Balls,” she said. “Nothing but June Allyson being brave,” and then, giggling, “Oh my, Henny Penny’s at it again.”

“Don’t bug her,” Roger advised. “It will get her to sleep.”

“It ain’t helping me to sleep,” the musician said.

I felt somehow that he was the only other kindred soul in the room.

“Leave it alone, Clarissa. Come here, you witch.” There were rustles and grunts from the TV corner and then the sounds of whispering. I wondered if Clarissa was hinting that I should leave. The word leave seemed to permeate the atmosphere. Roger was leaving. He was going to sacrifice our budding relationship and leave to chase after a spoiled brat who was sulking in Montreal. No one was driving across borders to rescue me, to deliver me into the arms of a worried lover.

“I envy Heidi,” I said. What worlds I tried to communicate with that simple confession.

“You do?” Roger covered his delight with a mask of surprise.

“She’s a lucky girl.”

“Why?”

“To have you see through Libby’s game, and persist, and go after her. I don’t think there’s anything more important than to be missed, wanted. Victor is lucky, too, to have a friend like you. Most people don’t even want to know about anyone else’s troubles, much less actually do something about it. But I’m like you. I swear. My friends’ problems become as important as my own, more important. I just wanted you to know,” I said, “that I admire what you’re doing.”

“That’s beautiful.” He embraced my knees. “There aren’t many women who have your understanding.”

“Oh, I know. I personally haven’t met any. Take my so-called friend Rhoda-Regina, a mess, a catastrophe. I came back from Paris especially as the result of an intuition I had to help her. I lived in Paris most of my life,” I added.

I felt obliged to exaggerate slightly, because we had so little time left, and if I revealed myself in five-year hunks it would take forever.

“I hope you’ll never have cause to regret it, Roger. I hope that Victor doesn’t turn on you the way my friend turned on me. But he sounds like an exceptional person, not a Rhoda-Regina, who is in no way exceptional, except for being exceptionally large and exceptionally stingy. I’ve frequently noticed that very large people, fat in fact, want it all for themselves.” I was horrified to find myself squandering our brief moments analyzing Rhoda-Regina. There was so much I needed to know about Roger and the Institute and Victor. I put my hand on Roger’s gleaming, bare shoulder.

Roger looked up at me with unconcealed admiration. “It must be tough for an exceptional woman like you to make it, out here, with the lame brains. God knows,” he said pensively, “what lunatic asylum or prison I’d be in if I hadn’t met Victor.”

“He sounds like a wonderful fellow.” I brushed Roger’s skin with my fingertips.

“I’d kill for him,” Roger said passionately. “Victor saved my life.”

“Is he rich? How does he feed all these people he invites to his table? I mean, when you get invited to Rhoda-Regina’s table, which is never, you’re expected to bring your own sack of potatoes.”

“He manages,” he said vaguely. “Victor is a genius, a medicine man. Victor has powers. Whatever he needs, he gets. Victor is in touch.”

“I see,” I said. I certainly would have appreciated a less analytical answer. “And Victor takes care of everyone with his powers?”

“Of course. Victor is the spirit of the Institute. Our teacher. We share all our possessions, including our knowledge. We support each other in order to develop our full human potential.”

Much as I respected Roger’s elevated concepts, I wanted to be absolutely sure that we were talking the same language. “You mean nobody at the Institute has to work?”