Ten Days in the Hills (46 page)

“That would not be a good reply.”

“Can we talk about that?”

“No. Anyway, I didn’t ask you what you want to do. I asked you what you feel for Isabel. Is that a question you can answer?”

His impulse now was to tell the apparent truth, and so he did. He said, “No.”

“Why not?” Now Max sounded more than impatient, almost belligerent.

He said, “Well, because I have never said how I feel about Isabel, especially to a third party, and so it feels like I am breaking some strict taboo, like saying ‘fuck you’ to the rabbi, for example, or, let’s see, what would be an impossible thing? I guess putting my arm around Dorothy and comforting her, which maybe I should have done when Jerry died, but I simply could not do, because Dorothy doesn’t seem to exist in the same universe as that sort of gesture.”

And Max chuckled. He said, “No, she doesn’t, does she? But anyway, try to tell me how you feel about Isabel.” He sounded firm.

“And you’re sure that you don’t want to just ask her?”

“No. I want to hear it from you.”

Stoney cleared his throat. The fact was, he hadn’t very often said even to himself how he felt about Isabel, because for many years he had been more or less not allowed to feel anything about her, especially because, until this very day, acting on whatever feelings he had seemed to be foreclosed at every turn. So, once again, he said the most apparently truthful thing he could, which was: “Isabel and I get along perfectly, and we have never had an argument. I always enjoy being with her. Probably, as I think about it, the lack of conflict is because whatever she says goes. I mean, it’s not that I am passive, exactly, it’s more that she cares about lots of things and I care more about her than I care about anything that she has an opinion about.”

“Are you afraid of Isabel?”

“Well, of course. Aren’t you?”

Now Max laughed out loud, but then he said, “How old are you now, thirty-eight?”

“Yeah. Almost.”

“Do you realize how feckless you sound?”

“Is that the word?”

“What word would you use?”

“Scrupulously truthful.”

“Okay,” said Max.

The breeze shifted direction, and began to ruffle the smooth sheet of the waterfall and throw up a bit of spray. Instinctively, Stoney pushed his chair back from the pool, even though he was sure the spray would not hit them. Max moved from the bench, which for sure would be hard, Stoney thought, to a chair like his, which he scooted toward him. Stoney said, “You know, Max, I asked her this afternoon what her plan is, and she said, ‘Nothing. Acting on impulse. I look around at everyone and listen to the stories they tell, and then I listen to myself, and I seem like the oldest one of all of us.
I
am the stick in the mud. I’m twenty-three. I don’t want to be the stick in the mud, and anyway, this is a vacation, right?’ That’s what she said.”

Max said, “Well, Simon does seem to be having more fun than she does. Maybe too much fun, in some ways. I worry constantly about Isabel and not at all about Simon, and Elena worries constantly about Simon and not at all about Isabel.”

“Who does Zoe worry about?”

“Herself.”

“That was mean, Max.”

“Well, she does so in a very charming way. And she has a theory, too. Her theory is that worrying about healthy, normal kids just because they are yours is a form of self-indulgence and lack of faith, whereas worrying about yourself is more likely to be a realistic appraisal of your shortcomings.”

Stoney laughed. “That’s like something Jerry used to say, actually. Anyway, I worry about myself all the time. But I think it’s just a habit at this point. I don’t worry about Isabel.” Even using this word “worry,” though, reminded him that, should the history of his relationship with Isabel come to light, he would indeed have something to worry about. At that very moment, he began to worry. What it felt like was the difference between feeling something and seeing something. What might feel warm and yielding and comforting might look disfigured and ugly. That sort of thing happened all the time when you began to discuss “truth.”

Max shifted his weight, and his chair squeaked.

Stoney thought of something, and continued: “Just out of curiosity, Max, you don’t worry that Isabel is going to turn out to be a schmuck, do you? Because that’s what I always thought Jerry worried about with me.”

“No, I don’t have the slightest fear that Isabel will turn out to be a schmuck.” Stoney saw him smile.

Stoney did not quite dare to go on to ask whether Max worried about whether he, Stoney, would turn out to be a schmuck. He said, “Well, that’s something, anyway.” He said, “I think we should join the others. If we’re the only ones missing, then for sure Isabel will know that we are talking about her.”

“Then let’s talk about Mike.”

Stoney sat up, the way you do when something forgotten but redemptive is suddenly remembered. He said, “Let’s do.”

“Did you look around?”

“I did.”

“Did you see the Vermeer?”

“I saw what they said is a Vermeer. And it looked like a Vermeer to me, or a very good fake. I didn’t scrutinize it or peek at the back.”

“It’s a lovely painting,” said Max. “The girl’s face is very good-natured. And you could see how such a small Vermeer could get lost in the course of a few centuries, especially if, as they said, the Dutch family that originally commissioned it fell on hard times, and the last heir died intestate, and the house was in a state of disrepair, and a Russian army officer who was in Antwerp bought a bunch of pictures at the auction and boxed them up and sent them home to Moscow and then was killed in a war, and the box went astray, only to be discovered in a government postal lost-and-found by one of the army officer’s illegitimate daughters when she herself was fleeing Napoleon’s army, so she hid it with friends as a keepsake of her father, whom she had hardly known but remembered fondly, and then one of their sons opened the box twenty years later and saw that insects and mold had destroyed the other three pictures, leaving only this one, and so he hung it in his library, and one day Vladimir Nabokov’s grandfather was visiting, and he asked the owner if it was a Vermeer, and they deciphered the signature at the bottom, which has now been worn away, and so they treated it with much more care, so that when the Revolution came one of the daughters took it out of its frame and rolled it up and carried it under her dress to Finland, and then it went in their luggage, sewn into a patchwork coverlet, when they immigrated to the United States, and only a year ago the last son of that family decided to put all his artwork on the market because he wanted to switch all of his investments to gold after the election of the Bush administration, and so it came on the market, and Mike bought it, and feels justified in keeping it, because, even though it was painted by a Dutch painter, it was preserved through the efforts of Russians, and in it he sees all of the ups and downs of Russian history.”

“Sounds plausible to me,” said Stoney.

“It makes you wonder how any piece of art at all ever survives.”

“They put us in the Amber Room, you know. I wonder if it’s the real Amber Room.”

“They put us in the Flower Room. It has floral wallpaper, a floral pattern in the carpet, paintings of flowers, including what seem to be two Georgia O’Keeffes, and casement windows overlooking one of the gardens. It has its own flowered teacups and teapot, and a collection of flower teas from France. I guess the windows of Delphine’s room open out toward the upper part of the aviary, and the decor is a tropical-bird motif. Elena went in to take her something, and Delphine showed her her bedspread and pillows that were hand-embroidered with a scene of parrots and macaws in a forest. And the handles on the faucets in the bathroom were ceramic birds with long tails, blue for cold and red for hot.”

“Simon said Charlie’s room was all paneled in inlaid tropical woods in elaborate designs, and the flooring is made of bamboo, and Simon’s own room is ultra-modern. Lots of glass mosaic tiles and trompe-l’oeil mirrors. He said to me, ‘This room is one they could not have put you in, Stoneman. You would have been falling down the steps and walking into the walls, and they must have been afraid of a big liability suit, but to me it’s just another challenge. I keep thinking that maid Monique is going to materialize in the middle of the floor and all of her clothes are going to fall right off her.’”

Max laughed. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Don’t call her a maid. You’ll have better luck,’ and he said, ‘Okay, I’ll call her a maiden.’” Stoney paused, then said, “But, Max, doesn’t the house make you want to do a movie for Mike?”

“No. Frankly, Stoney, I much prefer making movies for a couple of cheap bastards who want to cut corners in every scene, because it’s more fun. My guess is that Mike’s instinct will be to weight the whole project down with authenticity, so that, for example, every costume will be perfect from the underwear out. So the actresses will all wear some kind of corsets. But twenty-first-century actresses aren’t used to corsets, so they’ll be distracted by the discomfort of wearing corsets, and they’ll look awkward in corsets. So, as a result of that, Mike and I will get into a lengthy discussion of whether the actresses should be made to wear corsets, and the solution will be to try it out, which won’t in the end demonstrate anything conclusive. There’s thousands of dollars in costume financing wasted and at least a week of filming before we get to the issue of, say, dirt. Is the encampment going to look dirty and authentic, like the sets in
The Return of Martin Guerre,
or is it going to look clean, like the sets in
A Man for All Seasons
? Mike has lots of money, so he’s going to think that if we just get all of the details right, then a movie will eventuate, but in fact what will eventuate will be a kind of slow-moving parade of everything we’ve bought. I like staying here, in other words, but I would never live here.”

“Will you meet with Mike?”

“Didn’t I say I would?”

“Yes, but I didn’t believe you. And it sounds like you can’t be persuaded.”

“I can’t be persuaded by money.”

“You need money.”

“Do I?”

“That’s my impression. You haven’t made a movie in four years. You sold the Hawaii house. Stocks are down. My guess is you do need money.”

“Well, let me put it this way. If something else were to persuade me, I could thereafter be cajoled into taking lots of money to do the project.” He smiled.

“What would persuade you?”

“Something about Mike.”

“What?”

“I don’t know at this point. Something I don’t expect to be there.”

“That’s so Hollywood,” said Stoney. “That’s so ‘I don’t know what I want but I want something and I’ll know it when I see it.’”

Max shrugged. Stoney couldn’t see Max shrug in the dark, but he knew that he was shrugging. Now they fell silent. The moon had risen and faded even more; the breeze had died. The bubbler that was in one of the pools made a low, intermittent sound, and occasionally there was a call of some sort from the aviary. Suddenly there was a cry from the direction of the glen, too, maybe the sound of a coyote or a bobcat. That was a thought Stoney liked, the thought of some scroungy L.A. County predator expanding his territory to include Mike’s property. Come, hawks, he thought. Come, owls and buzzards and crows and Canada geese. Come, feral cats and cougars and deer, gophers and ground squirrels. Partake.

Max said, “Let’s go in.”

Charlie had to admit
he was impressed. He kept saying the word “On,” and then the other word, “Off,” and the lights in the room came on, and then they went off. Clapping didn’t do it, coughing didn’t do it, bumping one piece of furniture against another didn’t do it. Only the word “on” and the word “off,” at a normal volume. Shouting the words didn’t do it, either. Of course there were switches—one on the lamp beside the bed, and one next to the headboard (a beautiful tall, curved, dark piece out of some tropical wood accented in pale blond). You would expect a backup option, and you could override the general controls by turning various lights on and off individually, and Charlie’s private opinion was that this fancy business would prove confusing in the end, and whoever eventually lived in this room would go back to walking around flipping switches, but, yes, he was impressed. He said “Off” in a medium and not-too-self-conscious tone of voice, and the room went dark except for the bathroom and the window lights, which dimmed gradually and then died. He squirmed down under the covers, lay flat on his back, and inventoried his condition.

His condition was better than it had been the night before.

Aches and pains: His left trapezius muscle was hurting from the base of his neck down behind the shoulder blade. His right little finger was throbbing, unknown origin. His right knee hurt at about a three on a scale of ten, not bad, but something to be aware of, possibly from running on the slope of the beach. One thing he’d noticed since taking up fitness and health was that if you hurt yourself running north, say, on an uneven surface, you could not then fix yourself by running south over the same surface, though it seemed like you should be able to.