Potboiler (4 page)

13.

The de Vallées’ new home forced Pfefferkorn to revise his template for what a Beverly Hills mansion ought to be—a template established by their previous home. Set north of the boulevard, behind impenetrable hedges, through two sets of forbidding iron gates, at the end of a tortuous driveway snaking through jungly grounds, the house appeared as if from nowhere, following a final, sharp turn. Pfefferkorn marveled at the forethought and skill required to conceal a structure of such immensity until the very last moment. The house was in the Spanish Colonial style, a style whose humble materials and lack of pretense had, until that moment, led Pfefferkorn to think of it as intrinsically more
heimish
than, say, a supermodern cage of steel and glass, or the looming, pillared façades of neoclassicism. Now he reconsidered. The de Vallée house was born of earth and clay, but it soared, swelled, and bulged. Turrets and balconies abounded. It looked like the place to make a valiant last stand against an invading army. Reinforcing the feeling of besiegement were a host of security cameras, their lenses winking through the foliage. Pfefferkorn wondered if Bill had had a run-in with an obsessed fan. Or perhaps this was simply an example of thickening wealth demanding correspondingly thicker insulation.

Carlotta put the Bentley in the care of the butler and told Pfefferkorn to leave his keys.

“Jameson will handle it for you. Won’t you, Jameson?”

“Madame.”

“Careful you don’t scratch it,” she said. “It’s a rental.”

Pfefferkorn followed her through a mammoth carved wooden door, crossing the foyer and coming to an interior courtyard fragrant with citrus. A mosaicked fountain burbled. Cut flowers stood erect in vases. A chess set awaited players. Chairs awaited buttocks. Portraits smiled, landscapes sprawled, statuary thrust. Every object, living or inanimate, functional or decorative, appeared to Pfefferkorn peerless, including the compact white dog that sprung from its languor to greet them.

“Say hello, Botkin,” Carlotta said.

Pfefferkorn stooped to scratch the dog’s head. Its velvety coat and pleasant scent spoke of frequent grooming. Around its neck it wore a first-place ribbon. It rolled onto its back and Pfefferkorn rubbed its belly. It yipped happily.

Sensing that this was expected of him, Pfefferkorn asked for a tour. Room by room they went, the dog trotting along at Carlotta’s heels. In the basement they visited the indoor swimming pool where Bill did his daily hundred laps. In the theater Carlotta handed Pfefferkorn a remote control as heavy as a dictionary and showed him how to raise and lower the curtain. There was a ballroom where Carlotta danced four nights a week with a professional partner and a music room filled with all manner of instruments, though Pfefferkorn knew for a fact that neither de Vallée could carry a tune. Atop the harpsichord sat a photograph of Botkin, perched on a rostrum, accepting his ribbon.

The tour concluded on the third floor, in what Carlotta called the conservatory. A silver tea service had been laid out and crustless sandwiches prepared.

“You must be starving,” Carlotta said.

“I could eat,” Pfefferkorn said.

They sat.

“What is this?” he said. “Is this chicken salad?”

“Foie.”

“Well,” Pfefferkorn said, swallowing, “whatever it is, it’s delicious.” He picked up a second sandwich. “I couldn’t eat like this every day. I’d weigh four hundred pounds.”

“You learn moderation,” Carlotta said.

Pfefferkorn smiled. So far he had seen very little of Bill’s home life that could be described as moderate. “How the hell do you keep it clean? You must have a cast of thousands.”

“Honestly, it’s not that bad. Aside from Esperanza, there’s just the butler, and I’m thinking of letting him go, now that Bill’s gone.”

“Come on. One person for this whole place?”

“She’s very efficient. Bear in mind that I rarely step foot into most of the rooms. You haven’t even seen the guest wing.”

“Forget it. My knees hurt.” He reached for a third sandwich. “I feel like a swine.”

“Please.”

“They’re small,” he said. “And I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“You don’t have to make excuses,” she said, nibbling the corner of a scone. “These
are
good, aren’t they.” She fed the rest to the dog. “Don’t let me take any more.”

She stood, stretched, and walked to the window. Her backlit form was lithe, and with sudden, agonizing clarity, Pfefferkorn remembered how much he had loved her. The seams of youth, those lines where disparate traits meet and fuse, had been gently effaced by time, and now he looked at her and saw womanhood in its most complete form. He saw what he had sought in his early lovers, in his ex-wife. All had come up short. How could they not? He was comparing them to her. He watched her for a moment, then set down his food and went to join her.

The window overlooked a stone terrace, which in turn overlooked the grounds, which were in keeping with the rest of the house: at once intricate and overwhelming. Other wings jutted obliquely, massive clay walls and burnt-orange roofs.

“All this,” she said.

“It’s a beautiful home,” he said.

“It’s grotesque.”

“Maybe a tad.”

She smiled.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to speak,” he said.

“It’s all right.”

“I feel bad.”

“Don’t. I’m just glad you’re here. It’s been so long, Arthur. I feel as though I have to get to know you all over again. Tell me about your life.”

“It’s the same. I’m the same.”

“How’s your daughter?”

“Engaged.”

“Arthur. That’s wonderful. Who’s the lucky fellow?”

“His name is Paul,” Pfefferkorn said. “He’s an accountant.”

“And? What’s he like?”

“What do you think he’s like? He’s like an accountant.”

“Well, I think it’s wonderful.”

“It will be come April fifteenth.”

“You are happy for her, aren’t you?”

“Sure I am,” he said. “I hope it works out.”

Carlotta looked alarmed. “Do you have reason to suspect it won’t?”

“Not really.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“There isn’t any.” He paused. “I think I always pictured her with—I know how it’ll sound, but—someone more like me.”

“And he’s the opposite of you.”

“More or less.” He tapped his lips. “It feels like a rejection of everything I stand for.”

“And what do you stand for.”

“Poverty, I suppose. Failure.”

“Tch.”

“I’m jealous,” he said.

“Think of it this way. She thinks you’re so fantastic a man that she could never hope to find someone
as
fantastic unless she chose someone utterly unlike you.”

“That’s an interesting interpretation.”

“I try,” Carlotta said. “When’s the wedding?”

“They don’t know.”

“That’s the way it’s done these days, isn’t it. Get engaged and wait until having children becomes medically impossible. It was different in our day. People couldn’t wait to get married.”

“They couldn’t wait to screw.”

“Please. You make it sound like we grew up in the fifteenth century.”

“Didn’t we?”

“Oh, Arthur, you really are such a
grump
.” She pointed below to a narrow path, barely visible, that led into an area of unchecked greenery. “That’s the way to Bill’s office.”

He nodded.

“Would you like to see it?” she asked.

“If you’d like to show it to me.”

“I would,” she said. “And I think he would have wanted you to see it, too.”

14.

They moved through the underbrush, ducking ferns and low-hanging vines, the dog bounding ahead in pursuit of a dragonfly. The light turned murky. Pfefferkorn felt as though he was heading into the heart of darkness. Rounding a mossy outcropping, they came to a glade flecked with dandelions and Queen Anne’s lace. Botkin sat by the door to a boxy wooden building, his tail swishing.

“Voilà,” Carlotta said.

Pfefferkorn regarded the building. “Looks like a barn,” he said.

“It was.”

“There you go.”

“The previous owner was something of a gentleman farmer. He bred champion goats.”

Pfefferkorn snorted.

“Don’t laugh,” she said. “The good ones go for upwards of fifty thousand dollars.”

“For a
goat?
”

“You don’t live around here if you’re poor. You know the part on a ballpoint pen cap that sticks out? So you can clip it onto something? He invented that.”

“My future son-in-law will be impressed.”

“Bill loved it out here,” Carlotta said. “He called it his refuge. From what, I wanted to know. He never did say.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it literally,” Pfefferkorn said. “You know how he could be.”

“Oh I know. Believe me.” She smiled mischievously. “Sometimes when I’m out here I swear I can smell them. The goats.”

Pfefferkorn tried and failed to smell the goats.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s see where the magic happens.”

What struck Pfefferkorn most of all about Bill’s office was its modesty. Only a tenth of the barn had been sectioned off and finished, and that left comparatively spare. Indeed, it was strange to think that such phenomenal wealth as Pfefferkorn had just seen could be produced in a room so plain. Atop a rickety desk were an electric typewriter, a jar of pens, and a neatly stacked manuscript. The familiarity of the arrangement caused Pfefferkorn to shiver.

There had been few embellishments in thirty-some-odd years. There was an easy chair that looked as if it had been slept in a lot. There was a low bookcase filled with Bill’s own prodigious oeuvre. On the wall above the desk hung a framed photo of Carlotta, a formal portrait made perhaps fifteen years prior. Below it was a photo Pfefferkorn identified as the source for both the pop-up invitation and the enlargement displayed at the funeral. The uncropped original had been taken at the marina. Bill stood on a dock piled with rope, smiling jauntily from beneath his captain’s hat as sunset inflamed a sliver of ocean.

The dog, seeking his missing master’s feet, settled morosely beneath the desk.

“I almost went out with him,” Carlotta said.

Pfefferkorn looked at her.

“That day, I mean. I changed my mind at the last minute.”

“Thank God.”

“You think? Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I have any notion of us waltzing off together into some spongy afterlife . . . Still. There’s guilt.” She indicated the manuscript. “That’s the new one.”

It was hefty, five hundred pages or more. Pfefferkorn wiped the title page free of dust.

SHADOWGAME

a novel of suspense

William de Vallée

Whatever Pfefferkorn’s opinion of Bill as a writer, the idea of the novel going unfinished gave him a pang.

“What’s going to happen to it?” he asked.

“Honestly, I haven’t given it much thought. It hasn’t seemed important, given everything else.” She rubbed her cheek. “Sooner or later I suppose I’ll have to burn it.”

He looked at her with surprise.

“I know,” she said. “
Très
eighteen seventies. It sounds pointless in the computer age. Believe it or not, he still did all his first drafts on the Olivetti. That’s the only copy.”

He continued to stare at her.

“What,” she said.

“You’re going to destroy it?”

“Did you have a better idea?”

“I’m sure his publisher would love to have it.”

“Oh, I’m sure they would, too, but Bill never would have approved. He hated anyone reading his unfinished material. That includes me, by the way. Way back in the beginning I used to give him feedback but it wasn’t good for our marriage.”

There was a silence.

“You’re wondering if I’m tempted to read it now,” Carlotta said.

“Are you?”

“Not in the slightest. It would be like listening to him. I don’t think I could take it.”

He nodded.

“I wish we’d been able to convince you to visit sooner,” she said. “Your approval meant the world to him.”

Pfefferkorn stared guiltily at the floor.

“It’s true.” She walked to the bookcase. “Look.”

Among everything Bill had ever published there was but a single book by another author. It was Pfefferkorn’s novel.

Pfefferkorn was moved.

“In many ways,” she said, “you made him a writer.”

“Let’s not get carried away.”

“It’s true. You brought him out of the closet, so to speak.”

“I’m sure he would have found his way out sooner or later.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself. He worshipped you.”

“Carlotta, please. This is unnecessary.”

“You really have no idea, do you?”

Pfefferkorn said nothing.

“I have a very distinct memory,” she said. “This was about five or six years ago, I think. A book of his had recently come out and was sitting atop the best-seller list. Bill was out on tour. You know he still liked to tour, after all this time. He didn’t have to, but he liked to greet his public. . . . Anyway, one night, he called me from his hotel in New York. It must have been around midnight, three in the morning over there. I could tell right away he was drunk as a skunk. ‘Carlotta,’ he said, ‘do you love me?’ ‘Of course I do, Bill. I’ve always loved you.’ ‘That’s good to hear. I love you, too.’ ‘Thank you, dear. Why don’t you go to bed?’ ‘I can’t sleep.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I’m thinking about Arthur.’ ‘What about him.’ ‘I have a copy of his book with me.’ ‘His book? Does he have a new book out?’ ‘Not a new book, his first book. I have it with me. I was rereading it. It’s a marvelous book.’ ‘I know, it’s very good.’ ‘Not very good.
Marvelous.
’ ‘All right, marvelous.’ ‘Do you want to know something, Carlotta?’ ‘Yes, dear, tell me.’ ‘I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.’ ‘Tell me, dear.’ ‘It’s very hard for me to tell you this.’ ‘It’s all right, Bill. I love you no matter what.’ ‘Okay, then, here goes. Are you ready?’ ‘I’m ready.’ ‘Here goes. Here it is. Do you know how much money I have?’ ‘I have a fair idea.’ ‘More money than God. That’s how much money I have. And I swear to you, I swear on my life: I’d give it all, I’d give every single cent, to be able to write like him for one day.’”

There was a silence.

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said.

“Please don’t be angry. I only want you to know how important you were to him.”

“I’m not angry.”

Light moved across the wall. It was later than he’d realized.

“I should be going,” he said.

They walked back to the house. Carlotta ordered the rental car brought around. Pfefferkorn thanked her, kissed her on the cheek, and bent to get behind the wheel.

“Arthur.”

Pfefferkorn paused, folded in half. The dog was watching them from the threshold.

“You can’t, I don’t know, extend your ticket?” She smiled. “The red-eye is always so beastly. You’ll be much more productive if you stay the night and work on the plane tomorrow. And how often are you in California? We’ve barely gotten to talking.”

“I have to teach,” he said.

“Call in sick.”

“Carlotta—”

“What’ll they do, put you in detention?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I have my students to consider.”

She looked at him.

“Let me make a couple of calls,” he said.