On a Night Like This (4 page)

“We don’t always turn out the way we’re supposed to,” she said.

“I’m walking proof,” he told her. He pawed at his beard. Luke Bellingham, mountain man.

“You’ll come?”

“I’ll come,” he said.

“Thanks.”

She hung up and he turned back to Sweetpea. “Lucky dog,” he said. “You get to stay here one more night.”

He poured himself a bourbon, went into the bedroom to find clean clothes, poured himself another bourbon, went into the bathroom to shave, decided against it, poured himself another bourbon. By the time he left, he knew not to drive. He found a cab and headed to the restaurant, though he couldn’t remember one good reason for going there.

He made his way awkwardly through the crowded tables, looking desperately for someone who looked familiar. The noise level was deafening, and over the cacophony of voices, he felt, rather than heard, the insistent pounding of something that must have been music. He kept maneuvering around chairs and people and waiters, and still there were more tables, more unfamiliar faces. The walls and ceiling were painted burgundy and seemed to close in on him.

Someone—a waiter?—directed him upstairs, where he saw a long table and guessed that must be his group, though he didn’t feel like he belonged to any group in the world, much less one sitting in this ridiculous restaurant. Aqua chairs? Black plates on a black tablecloth? He stopped for a moment, looking at them all, thinking about fleeing to his cabin.

“Luke!” someone called, and he saw a woman at the end of the table stand, and then everyone turned to look at him. He didn’t know the woman—heavy, middle-aged—still didn’t recognize the faces of these people. But he smiled, headed toward the standing woman, offered an elusive nod to everyone else.

“I saved you a seat,” she whispered, taking his arm and pulling him down next to her. She planted a kiss on his cheek. “I knew you wouldn’t recognize me. One of the reasons I didn’t want to come.”

He looked at her, saw Trish hidden somewhere inside the extra flesh. His heart ached for her, and he leaned over and kissed her, threw an arm around her.

“God, I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered back to her.

“Bellingham,” a voice boomed, and Luke sat up straight, as if caught passing notes in class.

“My God,” he mumbled, “I feel like I’m back at Reese again. Getting in trouble before I open my mouth.”

The few people around him snickered—a guy reached over and slapped his back. “Good to see you, Luke.”

Luke had no clue. “You too, man.”

“You’re late, Bellingham,” the big voice boomed again, “but at least you’re here. We’ll settle for an appearance. That’s what stars do, I heard. Appear at night.”

Luke peered at the man at the head of the table—some pompous ass he would never want to know but probably did at some point.

“That’s Harrison Driver,” Trish whispered.

Luke shrugged. “You went out with him?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Never. Did he say that?”

“If we could have your attention, Mr. Bellingham,” Driver called.

“Yes, sir,” Luke said, and saluted. A few people laughed.

Driver talked about the reunion and the need to raise money for the school, and Luke tuned out, scoping the crowd. Rich people, but he was used to that. San Francisco was full of them. But these were rich people who had always been rich—even back when Luke was at Reese during the hippie era, they had trust funds to support their drug habits, their trips to Peru or India, their lofts in Manhattan or San Francisco after college. He recognized a few of them, but they were all middle-aged. Funny, he never saw himself as middle-aged.

He turned back to Trish. “Do you remember these people?”

“Most of them. So should you. You slept with most of the women.”

“I did not.”

“At least half of them. That’s Erica Bodine at the end of the table. You dumped me for her.”

Erica Bodine was gaunt and elegant, bejeweled and scowling.

“I’d never pick her over you,” Luke told Trish.

“Don’t seduce me,” she told him.

“Why not?” he asked.
Seduce,
he thought for the first time in a long time.
Sex.
Yet all he could yearn for was the deep sleep that good sex promised.

“Mr. Bellingham,” Driver called out. “I’d like your attention for a moment.”

“Can I get a drink?” Luke asked.

Driver gestured to a waiter who then appeared at Luke’s side.

“Bourbon,” Luke ordered. “Double.”

“We thought we could use your power and influence,” Driver called, and Luke began to slip down into his seat, “to invite some stars to this gala—make this a kind of Hollywood happening.”

There was a murmur of excitement from the crowd.

“Sorry, Driver,” Luke said. “I’m not happening at the moment.”

“Leave him alone, Harrison,” Trish called out. “This isn’t about movie stars.”

“This is about giving back,” Erica Bodine said loudly, eyeing Luke.

“Do I owe her something?” Luke whispered to Trish.

“It was hard for all of us to get over you,” Trish said softly.

Awkwardly Luke stood. “Listen, Driver,” he said, then looked around the table, surprised that in his drunkenness he had put this particular fantasy into action. Everyone was listening. “I don’t write films anymore. I quit. I don’t know people anymore. I dropped out. Consider me a fallen star.
Pfft.
” He gestured with his closed hand—a long, slow descent from on high—until his hand dropped to the table and opened, with nothing inside.

There was an awkward silence. Finally Luke sat and Trish put her hand on his arm.

“Then I’ve got the perfect job for you,” Driver said, and he looked immediately pleased with himself. “Finder of Lost Souls.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Trish said, pushing back her chair.

“Wait,” Luke told her. “What’s that?” he asked Driver.

“We’ve got a list of alums who have dropped off the face of the earth. They don’t support the school. They don’t send in notices of the births of their children or their business promotions for the school magazine. We’d like to find them. Where are they? What are they doing?”

“Maybe they don’t want to be found,” someone said.

“Maybe they don’t want to give money,” someone else said.

“I’ll find them,” Luke said. He felt a surge of energy, a kind of rush that filled his chest and cleared his head. “Give me that list. I’ll find the Lost Souls.”

Driver riffled through some papers, found his list, and passed it on down the table to Luke.

“Now let’s go,” Trish whispered urgently. “I hate this.”

“I’m the goddamn King of Lost Souls,” Luke said loudly.

“Luke,” Trish said, even louder.

“We’re out of here,” he said, and stood, bowing gallantly to the crowd, downing his drink and following Trish out of the restaurant.

Trish pulled her car up in front of Luke’s house. They could see Sweetpea peering out the living-room window.

Luke looked at Trish, reached out his hand and stroked the side of her cheek. “Anyone in his right mind would take you to bed,” Luke said.

She held his hand to her cheek, smiling. “Go on,” she said. “Get out of here.”

“Remember how cocky we were? How invincible?” he asked. He remembered a moment during his high school years, one Sunday, when he was high from beer and marijuana and decided to walk across a railroad bridge that spanned high above a rocky bend in the river. There was no safe edge along the tracks on the bridge—if a train had come, he would have dropped to his death or been crushed by the train. But a train didn’t come—he crossed the bridge, lazily, unhurried, while his friends cheered him from the other side. He had never expected trains or runaway wives to derail him.

Trish nodded. She looked wistful, and in the shadow of the streetlight, Luke could imagine for a moment that she was forty pounds lighter and years younger. No, she was a woman now. Still beautiful. She let his hand go.

“I’ve got a son in high school,” she said. “He’s a terrific kid. But he’s a geek, a nerd. He doesn’t get invited to parties; he doesn’t get phone calls at night. I see the clusters of pretty boys and girls at school when I pick him up every afternoon—and I hate them for their charm and their beauty.”

“He’ll be OK when he gets to college.”

“But four years of misery is a long time,” she said. “Did we know a thing about those kids?” She peered at Luke in the darkness of the car. “We were the popular kids. We went to every party; we had every boyfriend or girlfriend we wanted. Were we cruel? Did we just breeze on by those miserable kids on the fringe?”

Luke put his head back on the seat, stared out at the streetlight, half lost in the fog. Did he breeze on by? He remembered the confusion at his parents’ divorce and the unbearable pain a year later of his father’s death; he remembered the fear of too many pressures, too many dreams in his heart.

“Was it so easy for us?” Luke asked.

“I wasn’t prepared for the rest of life,” Trish said. “I thought I’d always win the guy, win the prize, win the race.”

They were quiet for a moment. Luke could hear Sweetpea barking impatiently from inside the house.

“We weren’t so invincible, were we?” Trish asked.

Luke turned toward her and shook his head. He ran his fingers through his hair. He had spent so much time thinking about whether Emily had been happy. Had he been happy? Christ, did he even know the answer to that?

“I’m leaving first thing in the morning,” he said. “Otherwise I’d—”

“Please, Luke. Go to bed.”

He leaned toward her for a kiss, then opened the car door and headed out.

“Don’t forget your list,” she called, and he turned back.

“King of Lost Souls,” he said, and offered her a half smile, reaching back for the paper.

“Good luck,” she told him, and she took off down the block.

When the car turned the corner, Luke felt a pang of loss or regret. For not urging Trish to stay? For the passage of time that had changed her so much? Or his own glory days, long gone.

Luke sat with a bourbon and his list of Lost Souls in the overstuffed chair next to the bed. He didn’t want to get into bed. Sweetpea was sleeping next to Emily’s side, curled around her slipper. Luke was beyond tired, beyond drunk. He would sit and drink bourbon for the rest of his life, he decided.

He didn’t recognize all the names on the list. His class had been small—only seventy students, but still there were a couple of unfamiliar names. There was one surprise—George Hansen, class president, suck-up extraordinaire—why the hell would he lose touch? Wouldn’t he be sending in those promotion announcements for each school bulletin? No, Luke wasn’t going to find George Hansen. He couldn’t really be a Lost Soul.

Blair Clemens. When Luke saw her name on the page, he sat up; his heart somersaulted in his chest. It was her story that had inspired
Pescadero.
He only knew hints of the true story. The mystery had intrigued everyone—what had happened to her that night at the beach. Everyone talked about it for a year or two and then, like all scandals, it was replaced by one more current, more thrilling. But somehow her story had haunted him, and years later he wrote a movie, trying to imagine what had happened to Blair Clemens and her boyfriend that night.

He never knew Blair. She was a real Lost Soul. Blair had floated somewhere above the class for all four years she had been at Reese. Luke remembered her as pale and ethereal, soft and unfocused, cool and untouchable. She wore long hippie skirts, gauzy peasant blouses, feathery earrings. Her hair swooned around her head. A real hippie chick when most of them were just playing dress-up. Her voice was too soft in class to really hear, so the teachers stopped calling on her. She always had a kind of smile on her face, as if she knew things no one else knew.

Lost Soul? No, maybe she was the only one who wasn’t lost. The rest of us were desperately looking for something she had,
Luke thought.
But we didn’t even know what it was.

Of course Blair Clemens lost touch with the school. She was a scholarship student, one of the few. She wasn’t academic—or maybe she was so smart she didn’t need to be academic. She didn’t play sports or go to parties. She wasn’t going to do things that needed to be bragged about in the school bulletin.
What was she going to do?
Luke wondered.
Win an Academy Award, marry a beautiful spouse?

Lost Soul? I’ll find her,
he decided.
I have to find her.

He picked up the phone, called information.

“Blair Clemens. Anywhere in the world.” Easier to look for someone he didn’t know than try to find his own wife. He’d start a missing persons bureau soon, he thought.

“I have a listing in San Francisco,” the operator said.

“You’re kidding,” Luke said.

“Would you like that listing, sir?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

And he wrote the number down on the list of Lost Souls. Could it be that the school never even tried to contact her? Or more likely, that she never returned their calls.

He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty
P.M.
He decided Lost Souls usually stay up late.

He dialed the number.

“You’ve reached Blair and Amanda’s place,” the answering machine told him. A husky voice, deeper than he remembered. Had he ever talked to Blair? Probably not. He could remember looking at her—she would look back, never turn away like the other girls. It always unsettled him.
Who is she? What does she know?

“Leave a message.” He was about to hang up when he heard the phone pick up, and a far breathier voice say, “Hang on. I’m here. Sort of.” A long pause while the phone banged around. Then, “Hello.”

“Blair?”

“Who’s this?”

“You won’t remember me. I went to Reese.”

“Forget it.” She hung up.

Luke smiled, drank his bourbon. He should have hung up when Driver called him. But then again, he wouldn’t have had this—the search for Lost Souls.

He called back. Got the answering machine again. This time he left a message. “Hi. This is Luke Bellingham. I did go to Reese—but hey, I’m not asking for money. I don’t know what I’m asking for. I just want to talk to you.” He had run out of things to say to her machine. “I’ll try you again. Another time. I’m leaving the city tomorrow. I just thought we could talk for a few minutes. . . .”