Butterfly (61 page)

“Cut,” came a tired voice. “Cut cut cut cut. Dr. Markus? May I see you for a

moment?”

She gave the man in the surgeon’s clothes one last glare, turned on her heel, and

marched off the set.

“Dr. Markus, my dear,” the director said, coming up to her and taking her elbow.

“You realize that if you keep interrupting, we’ll never get this scene finished.”

“That man is an idiot! You don’t hold a surgical knife like that. It requires a praying-

mantis hand. How many times do I have to tell him that!”

“Dr. Markus, sweetheart,” said the director quietly, steering her away from the film

crew. “What’s the big deal? It’s only a TV show.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “Look. Barry Greene hired me to be the technical

adviser. If you’re not going to take my technical advice, then what am I doing here?”

“Now, now. Calm—”

She turned and walked away.

Linda lived in Malibu in a house built on the side of a cliff, at the edge of the ocean.

Whenever the tide came in, she felt the house shake as waves pounded the stilts. A fine

spray would spew up over the wooden deck outside and the house would be filled with

the salty smell of the sea. It was an old house, small, with just four rooms, and it cost half

a million dollars.

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The house was shuddering on this drizzly April night as Linda waited for Barry

Greene to arrive. The Pacific seemed to have launched a siege against the pilings, as if

determined to bring them down. The ocean was alive in its steady, thrusting rhythm; it

seemed to be speaking to Linda with its great spumes of water and aftermath whisperings

as the tide receded. As she paced the living room, where Beethoven competed with the

song of the sea, Linda thought of the watery world down below, where crabs and seaweed

swirled around the supports of her house. She thought of the many nights she had lain in

bed, listening to the ocean, reflecting upon her loneliness. Linda had not chosen to lead a

solitary life; it had just turned out that way. She had tried to make her two brief marriages

work, tried to find someone to whom she could pledge herself, but always that vital part

of herself, the giving, wanting, sexual part, froze under a man’s touch. And intimate rela-

tionships could not survive such a frost.

She looked at the clock over the fireplace. It had been an hour since Barry Greene had

called, asking her not to act rashly—she had turned in her resignation on
Five North—

and saying that he would like to talk about it. So she had invited him here, to her expen-

sive shack on the rain-slicked Pacific Coast Highway.

And then she heard the door chimes.

He had parked his Porsche next to her Ferrari and stood in the light April mist with

packages in his arms. He had stopped at Vicente Foods and picked up steaks, French

bread, and a bottle of champagne; and it was when Linda saw these, as he spread them

out on the counter of her tiny kitchen, that she knew the real reason why he had come

tonight, and why she had invited him.

The discussion about the TV show took five minutes: he persuaded her to stay. “I’ll lay

down the law,” Barry promised her as they sat by the fire in her living room, watching the

rain come down hard on the sun deck. “I’ll tell him he has to do exactly what you say. The

man can be such a putz.”

Then they retreated into small talk while Barry kept their glasses filled.

Linda tried to relax; she forced herself to smile and listen and laugh now and then.

And she let the champagne do some of the work. After all, she decided as she kicked off

her shoes and drew her legs up under her, Barry Greene was an attractive man. And he

was a man at ease with his power. He was never loud or bullyish or arrogant about it;

Barry used his power quietly. Which Linda found appealing.

He was also funny. “Did I ever tell you about my cousin Abe?” he said when the cham-

pagne was gone and he came back from the kitchen with a bottle of Linda’s wine. He

joined her on the sofa and refilled their glasses. “Abe was going across the country on

Amtrak, and he had one of those pullman sleepers. One night, he was trying to get to

sleep in the upper berth, and he kept hearing a woman in the berth below him say over

and over again, ‘Oy, am I toisty.
Oy
, am I toisty.’ Well, Abe couldn’t get to sleep because

of it. So he climbed down the ladder, went down to the end of the train car to the water

fountain, filled a paper cup, brought it back, and thrust it between the curtains of the

lower berth. Then he climbed back up, got all comfortable and was just about to doze off

when the voice came from below, ‘Oy, was I toisty.’”

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Linda laughed and picked up her wine. She noticed that she no longer felt like eating;

the steaks were going to stay in the fridge.

“So,” he said softly, looking around. “Nice place you have here. I’ll bet you paid an

arm and a leg for it.”

“About that. And I felt lucky to get it.”

“You could ask a million for it and it’ll be snatched up before you can put out your

‘For sale’ sign.”

“The cliff is slowly eroding away. No one seems to care, though. Someday all the

houses along here will be floating to Hawaii.”

“Have you ever been to Hawaii?”

“I did my internship there, at Great Victoria Hospital in Honolulu.”

“No kidding. What made you decide to become a surgeon?”

Visions flashed in Linda’s mind—of operating rooms and surgeons and painful skin

grafts and experts trying to reconstruct her after the accident when she was a child. “I

guess to prove that I could do it, I suppose. My best friend is a pediatrician. She didn’t

want to be one, she wanted to be a pathologist, but she succumbed to family pressure and

to the brainwashing by our medical school staff. Female medical students are strongly

guided in the direction of so-called women’s specialties—gynecology, dermatology, family

practice.”

“In this day and age?”

She laughed. “In this day and age. Women doctors still have a tough go of it, despite

the consciousness-raising of the past two decades.”

“I remember when my son had to go for a summer-camp physical. He was twelve, and

when he discovered that the doctor was a woman, he refused to go. My wife informed

him that she and his sisters had had to go to male doctors for years without being allowed

to complain, now it was the guys’ turn.” Barry chuckled. “He went, but he didn’t like it.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“I’m not. We divorced ten years go.”

“I’m also divorced.”

“What happened?”

“It didn’t work out.”

They fell silent. Linda stared into the flames in the fireplace, while Barry stared at

Linda.

“I can’t believe you’re alone,” he said softly. “A beautiful woman like you.”

She turned and looked at him. She liked the way the fire light played on the planes of

his face. “I’m not alone now, am I?”

He reached out and touched her. “No. You’re not.”

Linda smiled. She felt warm and dreamy. The rain was coming down so hard that it

sounded like a dull roar on her roof. The ocean was churning, making her house tremble.

The world outside was cold and hostile, but Linda’s living room was cozy and safe and

filled with a golden glow. She felt herself relax.

Barry moved closer. When he started kissing her, it was not in a hurried, sexual way,

but slowly, tenderly, as if that were all he wanted to do. But, of course, that was not all he

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267

wanted to do. He soon had his hand up under her blouse; her arms went around his neck.

It felt good and right to her; she actually
wanted
him.

“Let’s go into the bedroom,” he whispered.

Linda’s daily maid had turned back the bed, as was her habit when Dr. Markus came

home after dark. So it looked as if Linda had anticipated this. Barry became excited.

Urgency crept into his kisses. His hands moved anxiously and with purpose.

“Wait—” Linda said. She got up from the bed and turned out the overhead light.

He came up behind her, slid his hands up to her breasts and kissed her neck. She felt

herself start to tighten up. She pulled away and went to the sliding glass door to close the

drapes and block out the light that came from a bulb on the sun deck. The bedroom was

plunged into darkness. She went into Barry’s arms. She kissed him. She pressed herself

against him. She forced a moan.

And then they were hurriedly undressing.

But as her slacks came off and she stood in her panties Linda realized that the bath-

room night-light still shed some illumination into the bedroom. She drew away from

Barry and closed the door. Now they were in total darkness and Barry couldn’t find her.

“Hey,” he said softly. “We need a little light, you know.”

“I prefer it this way,” she said as she went to lie down on the bed. Now she was able to

remove her panties, now that he couldn’t see her, now that she was completely safe from

his eyes. It was the only way she had ever been able to make love, in total darkness. It was

something Linda was used to. She knew her bedroom by heart. She knew where every-

thing was—the bed, the armchair, the TV stand.

But Barry didn’t.

Linda heard a dull sound, and then Barry: “Ow! Damn! My toe!”

She sat up and reached for him. “Here—”

“Sorry, darling,” he said, “but I just have to have a
little
light.”

And before Linda could stop him, she heard the click of a lamp and the bedroom was

flooded with light.

She cried out and pulled the comforter up over herself.

“There you are,” he said, smiling and limping toward the bed. But when he tried to

take her into his arms, Linda tightened up. “What’s the matter?” he said.

And then she knew: it was no use. She couldn’t go on with it. The light, his stubbed

toe—it was all wrong. All sexual desire vanished, as it had so many times in the past, at

this point or some other point in the lovemaking, against Linda’s will, even when she des-

perately wanted to go through with it. But her body betrayed her. Her mind wanted to

make love; her body froze. Now the thought of Barry Greene lying on top of her, pushing

himself inside her, filled her with a familiar dread.

He stared at her. “What’s wrong, Linda?”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“Sorry! About what?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t, that’s all.”

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He put his hand on her bare shoulder. She flinched. “What’s wrong, Linda?” he asked

gently. “Is it me?”

“No, it’s me. I’d rather you left now, Barry.”

“Why don’t we talk about it? Maybe we can work it out.”

She shook her head, unable to speak, angry and hurt and humiliated, and mentally

punishing herself for having tried too soon.

38

The people at the next table were having a fight.

Jessica tried not to be obvious about it, but she wanted to see what they looked like.

A giant potted palm stood between the two tables; she turned slightly in her chair and

glanced through the fronds. A man and a woman, in their early forties, were engaged in a

heated argument, and neither seemed to care about being overheard. They were saying

terrible things to each other. The woman was on the verge of tears. The man had his

hands curled into trembling fists. They were married, Jessica was able to deduce from

what they said, with children in their teens and one child still in grammar school. “How

can you do this to us?” Jessica heard one of them say. “How can you just pick up and leave

after eighteen years of marriage? How will the children and I get along without you?”

They were splitting up. They were getting divorced because one of them had fallen in love

with someone much younger and wanted, it seemed to Jessica, to start life over. “I’m still

young” was the explanation. “But I won’t be forty-three forever. And I don’t love you any-

more.” The other said in a dark voice, “You’re making a fool of yourself, giving me up for

someone who’s nearly twenty years younger than you.”

“Please don’t leave me” was the final plea, and Jessica quickly turned around, upset for