Silent Partner (3 page)

"You were, and 1 still need you."

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She smiled. "No. Now you're fixed, my darling. Perfectly tuned. And there's nothing left for me to do."

"That's crazy. I've been miserable not seeing you."

"Temporary reaction," she said. "You'll cope."

"You must think I'm pretty shallow."

She walked some more, shook her head. "God, I'm listening to myself and realizing it all comes down to jealousy, doesn't it? Stupid, childish jealousy. The same way I used to feel about the popular girls. But I can't help it— you've got it all together. Everything organized into a neat little routine: run your three miles, take a shower, work a little, cash your checks, play your guitar, read your journals. Fuck me until we both come, then fall asleep, grinning. You buy tickets to Hawaii, we take a vacation. Show up with a picnic basket, we take lunch. It's an assembly line, Alex., with you pushing the buttons, and one thing Tokyo taught me was that I don't want an assembly line. The crazy thing is, it's a great life. If I let you, you'd take care of me forever, make my life one perfect, sugar-coated dream. I know lots of women would kill for something like that, but it's not what /need."

Our eyes met. I felt stung, turned away.

"Oh, God," she said, "I'm hurting you. I just hate this."

"I'm fine. Just go on."

"That's all of it, Alex. You're a wonderful man, but living with you has started to scare me. I'm in danger of disappearing. You've been hinting about marriage. If we married, I'd lose even more of my self. Our children would come to see me as someone dull and unstimulating and bitter.

Meanwhile, Daddy would be out in the wide world performing heroics. I need time, Alex—breathing space. To sort things out."

She moved toward the door. "I have to go now. Please."

"Take all the time you need," I said. "All the space. Just don't cut me off."

She stood trembling in the doorway. Ran to me, kissed my forehead, and was gone.

Two days later I came home and found a note on the ash-burl table: Dear Alex,

Gone up to San Luis. Cousin Terry had a baby. Going to help her, be back in about a week.

Don't hate me. Love, R

One OF the cases I'd just finished working on involved a five-year-old girl as the hostage in a vicious custody battle between a Hollywood producer and his fourth wife.

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For two years the parents, encouraged to wage war by lawyers on retainer, had been unable to reach a settlement. Finally the judge got disgusted and asked me to come up with recommendations. I evaluated the girl and asked that another psychologist be appointed to examine the parents.

The consultant I recommended was a former classmate named Larry Daschoff, a sharp diagnostician whose ethics I respected. Larry and I had remained amicable over the years, trading referrals, getting together occasionally for lunch or handball. But as a friend he fell in the casual category and I was surprised when he called me at 10.00 P.M. on Friday.

"Dr. D.? It's Dr. D.," he shouted, cheerful as usual. A hurricane of noise roared in the background—squealing tyres and gunshots from a blaring TV competing with what sounded like a schoolyard during recess.

"Hi, Larry. What's up?"

"What's up is Brenda is at the law library cramming for her torts course and I've got all five monsters to myself."

"The joys of parenthood."

"Oh, yeah." The noise level rose. A small voice whined, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!"

"One second, Alex." He put his hand over the phone and I heard him say, "Wait till I'm off the phone. No, not now. Wail. If he bothers you, just stay away from him. Not now, Jeremy, I don't want to hear it. I'm talking on the phone, Jeremy. If you don't cool it, it's no Cocoa Puffs and twenty minutes off your bedtime!"

He came back on the line. "I've become an instant fan of aversive therapy... Fuck Anna Freud and Bruno Bettelheim. Both of them probably locked themselves in their studies to write their books while someone else raised their kids. Did old Anna even have kids? I think she stayed married to Daddy. Anyway, first thing Monday I'm sending away for half a dozen cattle prods.

One for each of them and one to shove up my own ass for encouraging Brenda to go back to school. If Robin ever comes up with a creative idea like that, change the subject fast."

"I'll be sure to do that, Larry."

"You okay, D.?"

"Just a little tired."

He was too good a therapist not to know I was holding back. Too good, also, to pursue the issue.

"Anyway, D., I read your report on the Featherbaugh mess and concur in every respect. With parents like these, what would really benefit the kid would be orphanhood. Barring that, I agree that some half-assed joint custody arrangement's probably the least terrible way to go. Want to take bets on the chances of its working out?"

"Only if I can wager on the down side."

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"No way." He excused himself again, yelled for someone to turn down the TV. No compliance followed. "People are really fucked up, aren't they, D.? How's that for a major insight after thirteen years as a mind prober?

Nobody wants to work at anything anymore—God knows I'm no day at the beach and neither is Brenda. If we can stick it out all these years, anyone should be able to."

"1 always thought of you two as the perfect couple."

"One born every moment." He chuckled. "We're talking Italian marriage—mucho passione, mucho screamo. Bottom line, she puts up with me because of my erotic prowess."

"That so?"

"That so?" he mimicked. "D., that was pretty damn shrinky sounding, not up to your usual level of sparkling repartee. Sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine. Really."

"If you say so. Anyway, on to my main reason for calling. Get the invite to Kruse's big bash?"

"It's gracing the bottom of my wastebasket—that sparkling enough?"

"Not by a long shot. Not planning on going?"

"You've got to be kidding, Larry."

"I don't know. It could be fun in a mondo bizarro kind of way—see how the other half lives, stand on the sidelines making nasty analytic comments while suppressing our bourgeois envy."

I remembered something. "Larry, weren't you Kruse's research assistant for a while?"

"Not for a while, D. Just one semester—and yes, I'm being defensive. The guy was a sleaze. My excuse is that I was broke—just married, slaving over the dissertation, and my NIMH stipend ran out mid-semester."

"C'mon, fess up, Larry. It was a plum job. You guys sat around all day watching dirty movies."

"Not fair, Delaware. We were exploring the frontiers of human sexuality." He laughed.

"Actually, we sat around all day and watched undergraduates watch dirty movies. Oh, for those licentious seventies—could you see getting away with that today?"

"A tragic loss to science."

"Catastrophic. Truth be told, D., it was total bullshit. Kruse got away with it because he'd brought in money—a

private grant—to study the effects of pornography on sexual arousal."

"Did he come up with anything?"

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"Major data: fuck films make college sophomores horny."

"I knew that when I was a sophomore."

"You were a late bloomer, D."

"Did he publish?"

"Where? Penthouse? Nah, he used the results to go on talk shows and cheerlead for porn as a healthy sexual outlet, et cetera, et cetera. Then in the 'uptight eighties', he made a complete about-face—supposedly, he'd 'reanalyzed' his data. Started giving speeches about porn promoting violence against women."

"Lots of integrity, our new department head."

"Oh, yeah."

"How'd he climb this high, Larry? He used to be part-time help."

"Part-time help with full-time connections."

"The name on the endowment—Blalock?"

"You got it. Old moolah—steel, railroads—one of those families that gets a penny every time someone west of the Mississippi breathes."

"What's Kruse's connection?"

"Way I hear it, Mrs. Blalock had a kid with problems, Kruse was the kid's therapist. Must have made it all better because Mommy's been pouring money into the department for years—on condition that Kruse administer it. He's been promoted, given everything he wants. His latest want is to be department head, so, voila, party time."

"Tenure for sale," I said. "I didn't know things had gotten that bad."

"That bad and worse, Alex. I still give those lectures in family therapy, so I'm involved enough in the department to know that the financial situation sucks. Remember how they used to push pure research at us, look down their noses at anything even remotely applied? How Ratman Frazier used to keep telling us relevant was a dirty word? It finally caught up with them. Nobody wants to fund grants

to study the eyeblink reflex in decorticate lobsters. On top of that, undergraduate enrollment's way down—psych's not a hip major anymore. Nowadays everyone, including my oldest, wants to be a business major, inside-trade their way to health and happiness. Which means budget cuts, layoffs, empty classrooms. They've had a hiring freeze for nineteen months—even the full profs have got their noses to the floor. Kruse brings in Blalock money, he can eat tenure for breakfast.

In the words of my oldest: Money talks, Dad. Bullshit walks. Hell, even Frazier's jumped on the bandwagon. Last I heard he was into mail-order, marketing stop-smoking tapes."

"You're kidding."

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"I kid you not."

"What does Frazier know about how to quit smoking? About anything human?"

"Since when is that important? Anyway, that's the situation. Now, about Saturday. I managed to farm out all five cupcakes for three hours tomorrow. I could use the time to pump iron, watch the game, or do something else comparably thrilling, but the idea of getting all spiffed up and saturating myself with free drinks and haute-cuisine munchies at some Holmby Hills pleasure dome didn't sound half bad."

"The drinks are bound to be lousy, Larry."

"Better than what I'm drinking now. Diluted apple juice. Looks like piss. It's all that's left in the house—I forgot to go shopping. I've been shoveling sugared cereal into the kids for two days."

He sighed. "I'm a trapped man, D. We're talking terminal cabin fever. Come to the damned party and trade cynical barbs with me for a couple of hours. I'll R-S-Veep for both of us. Bring Robin, parade her around, and let the rich farts know money can't buy everything."

"Robin can't make it. Out of town."

"Business?"

"Yup."

Pause.

"Listen, D., if you're tied up, I understand."

I thought about it for a moment, considered another lonely day and said, "No, I'm free, Larry."

And set the gears in motion.

HOLMBY HILLS is the highest priced spread in L.A., a tiny pocket of mega-affluence sandwiched between Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Financially, light-years from my neighborhood, but only about a mile or so due south.

My map put La Mar Road in the heart of the district, a winding bit of dead-end filament terminating in the rolling hills that overlook the L.A. Country Club. Not far from the Playboy Mansion, but I didn't imagine Hef had been invited to this bash.

At four-fifteen I put on a lightweight suit and set out on foot. Traffic was heavy on Sunset—surfers and sun-worshippers returning from the beach, gawkers headed east clutching maps to the stars' homes. Fifty yards into Holmby Hills everything went hushed and pastoral.

The properties were immense, the houses concealed behind high walls and security gates and backed by small forests. Only the merest outline of slate gable or Spanish tile tower floating above the greenery suggested habitation. That, and the phlegmy rumble of unseen attack dogs.

La Mar appeared around a bend, an uphill strip of single-lane asphalt nicked into a wall of
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fifty-foot eucalyptus. In lieu of a city street sign, a varnished slab of pine had been nailed to one of the trees above the emblems of three security companies and the red-and-white badge of the Bel Air Patrol. Rustic lettering burned into the slab spelled out LA MAR. PRIVATE. NO

OUTLET. Easy to miss at forty miles per, though a blue Rolls-Royce Corniche sped past me and hooked onto it without hesitation.

1 followed the Rolls's exhaust trail. Twenty feet in, twin fieldstone gateposts tacked with another PRIVATE ROAD warning fed into eight-foot stone walls topped with three feet of gold-finialed wrought iron. The iron was laced with alternating twenty-foot sections of vines—English ivy, passion fruit, honeysuckle, wisteria. Controlled profusion masquerading as something natural.

Beyond the walls was a gray-green canvas—more five-story eucalyptus. A quarter-mile later the foliage got even thicker, the road darker and cooler. Mounds of moss and lichen patched the fieldstone. The air smelled wet and menthol-clean. A bird chirped timidly, then abandoned its song.

The road curved, straightened, and revealed its end-point: a towering stone arch sealed by wrought-iron gates. Scores of cars were lined up, a double file of chrome and lacquer.

As I got closer I could see that the division was purposeful: sparkling luxury cars in one queue; compacts, station wagons, and similar plebeian transport in the other. Heading the dream-mobiles was a spotless white Mercedes coupe, one of those custom jobs with a souped up engine, bumper guards and spoilers, gold-plating— and a vanity plate that said PPK PHD.

Red-jacketed valets hopped around newly arrived vehicles like fleas on a summer pelt, throwing open car doors and pocketing keys. I made my way to the gate and found it locked. Off to one side was a speaker box on a post. Next

to the speaker were a punch-pad, keyslot, and phone.

One of the red-jackets saw me, held out his palm, and said, "Keys."

"No keys. I walked."

His eyes narrowed. In his hand was an oversized iron key chained to a rectangle of varnished wood. On the wood was burnt lettering: FR. GATE.

" We park," he insisted. He was dark, thick, round-faced, fuzzy-bearded, and spoke in a Mediterranean accent. His palm wavered.