On a Night Like This (8 page)

“Maybe I’m getting tired of my own problems. I’d like someone else’s for a while.” He shrugged sheepishly, as if embarrassed.

“I don’t want your help,” Blair said quietly.

“Then I won’t help you,” Luke said. “I’ll just hang out and entertain you.”

Blair shot him a skeptical look. He was smiling, or almost smiling, and she had to look away again.

“I’m not really in the market for new friends or lovers. You know?” Blair said to the ceiling.

“I know,” Luke said.

“So, thanks for the ride. I mean, thanks for helping out tonight. But that’s all I wanted. A ride.”

“I’ll just wait here till Amanda calls,” Luke said, his voice soft. She wouldn’t look at him—didn’t want to see the expression on his face.

“Fine,” Blair said. “I might sleep a bit.”

They were both quiet for a while and then Blair asked, “What happened to me? I mean, do you know? Did you talk to anyone?”

She felt Luke’s hand on her arm but kept her eyes closed.

“You had a seizure. The doctor said that the cancer might have spread to your brain.” He paused. The world seemed so quiet and all she could hear was the deep draw of breath from his lungs. “He’ll be back later tonight. He’ll explain it all to you.”

Blair didn’t say anything. She kept her eyes closed, waiting for her daughter to call, to come to her, to crawl in bed as if it were any long-ago night and Amanda had a nightmare and needed the comfort of her mother’s body next to her.
But this time I’m the one who’s scared,
Blair thought.

Chapter Four

L
uke couldn’t sleep. In the old days when he woke at two or three in the morning and knew that sleep would elude him for a couple of hours, he would head to his study to write. He’d pick at his foggy brain in a different way than he did during normal working hours—he’d push scenes in new directions, challenge his characters, re-envision his plot. He liked that slightly groggy state—it made him think differently, and then the next day, in the light of day, he would take his odd ideas and shape them into something usable.

Now he couldn’t imagine writing. He couldn’t imagine inventing characters and scenes and dramas. He wanted to escape from his mind, not to explore it. When writing, even if he was working on a script that was far from his own life, his own circumstances, the deeper he plunged into his characters’ consciousness, the closer he came to himself. He became the serial murderer, the lonely housewife, the grandmother shoplifter, the young boy riding the trains. Now he wanted far away from inner life.

But he did think of his computer, still hooked up in his study, and he thought of a middle-of-the-night activity that jolted him out of bed. He would track down the phone number he had found on the ski ticket.

He walked into his study, a small sunroom in the back of the house with a view of the bay, now dark. He logged on, found a Web site he had heard about: a reverse Yellow Pages that would give you the address and name if you supplied the phone number. Unbelievable. Within seconds the screen displayed:
mr. and mrs. gray healy.
An address on Laguna.

He didn’t know the name. Had never heard Emily mention Gray Healy or his lovely wife. But she had asked Dana to call him from Tahoe.
I’ll be home tomorrow.

Luke remembered back to the trip, their last night at the hotel, her impatience with him when he tried to make love in the middle of the night. “I’m sleeping,” she had said.

“But I thought you were stirring; I thought you were awake,” he said, apologizing, still nestling close to her, pressing his penis against her thigh.

“If I’m awake, that doesn’t mean I want to make love. If I can’t sleep, it’s because of the job I’m working on, the pressure, the deadline. I’m not waking up because I want you to climb on top of me.”

She drew herself away from him. He stared at the curve of her back, cursing his stubborn erection. But he wasn’t angry. He felt protective of her, sad that this new job was going so badly, concerned that she felt the stress of it so terribly. Fool.

The next morning they drove back to San Francisco and he remembered that she fled the house the moment they arrived, her portfolio tucked under her arm, promising to be home before dinner. Unless the meeting ran through dinner. Had it run through dinner? Was she wrapped in Mr. Gray Healy’s arms ten minutes later, now urging his eager penis inside of her?

Luke wrote down the address of Mr. and Mrs. Healy on the ski tag, beside the note:
I’ll be home tomorrow.

He turned off the computer and headed back to his bedroom. If he wrote tonight, he would only produce pages of his own weak imagination: a story about a man who has been mourning the loss of his beloved wife and discovers her infidelity. Does this man now have to rewrite his own story? Does he have to take every one of his memories and twist them into something ugly?

A scene at the premiere of
Pescadero:
The wife is dressed in white silk, with her hair upswept, her neck long and lovely. The husband is tuxedoed and uncomfortable. They’re ushered through the crowd and into the party, and the throngs of adoring fans cheer. The husband wants to flee. The wife begs him: “Please, I want this so much.”

Cut to hotel room, later the same night. Tuxedo trimmings thrown over back of chair. The man wears only the black pants. He stands behind his wife, still dressed, who stares out the window.

“Why do you want this so much?”

“Because you give me so little.”

She doesn’t turn around.

The man puts his hand on her bare shoulder and her body stiffens.

“Don’t touch me.”

He turns and walks to the king-size bed in the luxurious hotel room. He lies down, exhausted. She turns and looks at him.

“Look at me,” she says.

He looks at her.

“You’re beautiful,” he says.

She’s crying.

“You don’t see me,” she tells him.

Luke finally slept, sometime toward dawn, and when Sweetpea nosed him out of bed a couple of hours later, he was ready to find Emily.

“Mrs. Healy?” Luke asked into the phone when a woman answered his call. He was standing in the kitchen, drinking coffee, staring at the ski ticket on the counter in front of him.

“Yes?” Her voice was small, unsure.

“I’m calling from Flowers on Fillmore. I’ve got a bouquet here for you and wanted to make sure someone would be home for delivery.”

“Flowers? Oh. I’ll be home till noon,” she said.

“See you before noon,” Luke said, and hung up.

He headed to the nearest flower shop, bought an impressive bundle of roses, wrapped it in a white ribbon, drove his truck to Pacific Heights.

Mrs. Healy lived in a modern stone-and-glass box of a house, the kind Luke hated, with a wall of windows on the top floor offering views out toward the bay. Luke rang the bell at the gate, and she buzzed him in.

He headed up the path to the door and rang yet another bell. She kept him waiting.

She opened the door and reached for the flowers without looking at him. The help. She turned the bouquet in her hands, looking for a card.

“Hey, where’s the card?” she asked.

He looked at her. She was his age, early forties, dressed in running clothes with a bandanna wrapped around her forehead. The cuckolded wife? Perhaps. Emily was taller, blonder, finer-boned. Lovelier.

“No card,” Luke said.

“Well, who are they from?” the woman asked impatiently.

“I don’t know,” Luke said. “Up to them to let you know. I just deliver ’em.”

“You mean, they sent these with no card? I don’t get it. You must have a record or something. Someone paid for the damn things.”

“Cash,” Luke said. “No record.”

“A woman, right?” she said. Finally. Annoyed.

“Yeah,” Luke said cautiously. “A woman.”

“Did you see her?” she asked.

“I might have.”

“Tall? Blond hair? Drop-dead gorgeous?”

“You might say.”

“Fuck her,” Mrs. Healy said. She dropped the roses to the ground and slammed the door in Luke’s face.

Luke left the flowers on the doorstep and headed to his truck, feeling oddly elated, as if knowing lessened the pain of what he knew.

“Sweetpea,” Luke said, climbing into the truck, “you’ve got a job to do, pal. Let’s go visit Blair.”

He had called the hospital and had been given the news that Blair was released that morning. He hadn’t tried her at home, knew that she wouldn’t talk to him, that his sweet dog would have to do the talking.

He drove to the Haight, pulled up in front of the driveway leading to the cottage. A man sat in a lounge chair on the unkempt lawn of the purple Victorian in front of the cottage. He was smoking a joint, reading the newspaper.

Luke ignored the guy, started up the path past him, toward Blair’s cottage. On the other hand, Sweetpea, unfaithful Sweetpea, went sniffing.

“Nice dog,” the guy called out, petting her.

“Thanks,” Luke said. “Come on, girl.”

“You a friend of Blair’s?”

“You the guardian at the gate?”

“You might say that.”

Luke stood on the path, eyeing the guy, who stroked Sweetpea and toked on his joint.

“Sweetpea! Let’s go!” Luke called, more insistent.

“Blair’s resting,” the guy said.

“I’ll let her tell me that,” Luke said.

“But you’ll have to wake her up so she can say fuck off. That wouldn’t be very nice, would it?”

“Maybe she only says fuck off to you,” Luke offered.

“Who the hell are you?” the guy said, though he didn’t seem to care.

“A friend. Come on, Sweetpea. Let’s go.”

“My name’s Casey. I’m the landlord.”

“Right.”

Luke hesitated a moment, then started toward the cottage again, deciding to leave Sweetpea with her new best friend. But Casey called out, “The lady is resting.”

“So you said,” Luke told him. He kept walking.

Casey stood up and started toward Luke. “Listen, buddy. I
am
the guardian at the gate. And I’m telling you not to bother her.”

“And I’m ignoring you,” Luke said, and kept walking.

Until he felt Casey’s hand on his shoulder and he swung around, knocking off the hand, knocking the guy off balance and onto the ground.

“What’s your problem?” Casey said, working himself upright.

“Right now, you’re my problem.”

Luke bounded up the stairs and knocked lightly on Blair’s door.

She opened it in a quick moment and stood in the doorway, arms on her hips, glaring at Luke. She looked pale, thin, a little shaky—but her stance was defiant.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sweetpea missed you,” Luke said gently.

“I tried to stop him,” Casey called from below. “He hit me.”

“I didn’t hit him,” Luke said. “The guy’s asking for trouble, Blair.”

“Maybe you’re asking for trouble,” she said.

“Can I come in? Just for a few minutes?”

“I told him you were resting,” Casey called up.

“I’m resting,” Blair echoed.

“Shut the fuck up!” Luke called back to Casey.

“You can leave now,” Blair said.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Luke asked, and suddenly he was shouting. “Your landlord? Or your lover? What right does he have to interrogate me? Look at him. He’s wasted. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. Is this your goddamn boyfriend? What kind of life do you have?”

Blair slammed the door in Luke’s face.

Luke stood there, feeling the reverberations through the soles of his feet. He didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t need some asshole pothead to tell him what an asshole he was.

So he’d make it worse. He knocked on the door again. And again. She didn’t answer. Finally Sweetpea made her way up the stairs and stood at his side.

“Sweetpea wants to see you!” he called out.

And in a flash the door opened; the dog scooted into the cottage; the door slammed shut.
Make that three slams in an hour,
Luke thought.
Three slams and you’re out.

“Call me when you want me to pick her up!” he shouted, but he was sure no one was listening.

When he headed down the stairs, he saw that Casey was back in his lawn chair, joint in hand.

Luckily, the guy was decent enough to ignore him as he climbed back into his truck and drove away.

By six that evening, Luke had had too much to drink and not enough to do. Blair never called—so he was dogless as well as wifeless. In his muddled state he decided to go after the wife instead of the dog.

He drove to Healy’s house and parked across the street. He wanted to see if the roses were still strewn on the front steps, but he couldn’t get a glimpse of the house behind the imposing gate. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he stayed there, stubbornly sitting in his truck for an hour.

He thought of his mother waiting for his father to come home, telling Luke they wouldn’t start dinner without him, he’d be home soon. Luke would do his homework at the dining-room table—the light was terrible in his room and he liked the movement of his mother in the kitchen while he worked. But as the dinner hour approached and his father didn’t show, his mother would begin calling people—his dad’s secretary, his fishing pal, the clubhouse, the bar at the Lighthouse Grill. He was never at any of those places. Luke would look up from his math homework or his social-studies book and tell her, between calls, “He’s fine, Mom. He’ll be home soon.”

“I know he’s fine,” she’d say curtly.

When Luke was twelve, his dad invited him on a Saturday sail—out to Angel Island for a picnic.

“Mom coming?” Luke had asked.

“Nah, she’s got her things to do,” he said vaguely. “I’m bringing a friend from the office. A real sailor.”

The sailor was a beautiful redhead, Marian, who wore a sea green bikini and a matching green kerchief wrapped around her thick hair. Luke watched the two of them all day, moving carefully around each other on the small boat, Dad’s hand softly placed on Marian’s back while he passed by her on the way to the head, Marian’s arm gently brushing across Dad’s leg as she reached for the wicker basket of sandwiches. On the island Luke went for a walk by himself, and when he came back, Marian’s kerchief was gone. He never saw it again.

The next week he told his dad, no, he didn’t want to sail with them again. He had started a woodworking project in the garage with the new tools they had bought him for Christmas. He started spending weekends in the garage, away from the sea and his dad’s boat. He labored for hours at his worktable, learning how to build with different woods, learning about objects of permanence, their shapes, their transformations. He never mentioned Marian to his mother and hated his dad for pulling him into the secret of it all.

A couple of years later, his father left his mother.
Did she know?
Luke wondered. He never asked her. Marian was around for a while, but then was replaced by other women, all beautiful it seemed.

When Luke and Emily threw parties, everyone seemed to flirt. They sat next to someone else’s husband, someone else’s wife, at the dinner table. They whispered into someone else’s ear. They placed their hand on someone else’s thigh. It was just fun, wasn’t it? Dangerous fun. And there was a kind of thrill to taking each other to bed, husband and wife, at the end of the night.

Luke was startled when a car pulled up in front of him, and he sat up straight in his truck, peering at a long black BMW. The driveway gates opened to let Mr. Healy through. Luke glimpsed blond hair, a handsome profile, a loosened tie. And then the gates closed behind the car.

Still, he waited. He had nothing else to do.

He remembered one party, in L.A., just after he sold
Pescadero.
Hal Levy, a producer on the project, invited him to Malibu for the day, for lobster and champagne. Somehow, late in the summer evening, he found himself heading to the ocean for a swim. And then someone was next to him, her warm arm brushing against his own. Belle. Was she an actress or a screenwriter or someone’s girlfriend? It didn’t matter. He didn’t recall talking to her—but at the edge of the surf, she stripped off her bathing suit and he watched her smiling. “Your turn,” she said. He obliged. She was lovely and naked and he followed her out to sea.