The Decent Proposal (28 page)

“Where're the cacti?” he asked suddenly.

Elizabeth took a moment to swallow the last of her PB&J, which she had scarfed as quickly as if she were on one of her lunch breaks. “What do you mean? There are tons of them out here.”

“Yeah, but, you know, the big ones, with the arms?” He stuck both hands in the air, as if he were making two solemn oaths at once, dragging one shoulder down as far as it would go. “Like in the cartoons? With a sombrero hanging off one arm?”

“Oh, that's the saguaro cactus. They're in the Sonoran Desert, which is farther south and east, mainly in Arizona. We're in the Mojave Desert now.”

“God, how do you
know
all this stuff?”

“Well, we had these regional geography quizzes in fifth grade—”

“Yeah, that's what you always say—‘oh, I learned it when I was twelve, or eight, or four,' but I don't know anyone else who actually
remembers
everything like you do.”

“I guess I don't forget things easily.”

“It's impressive. And kind of scary.”

She smiled.

Richard began shaking his leg against the floorboard. “Are we there yet?”

She smiled again.

Two in a row
, he congratulated himself.

“I think we still have a little over an hour.”

He retrieved his iPod from the floor, where he'd dropped it when he first entered the car. This had been his sole preparatory measure for the trip.

“Do you have a USB port in here?”

She jerked her head toward the basket again. He lifted it, spotting the port with a white connector sticking out of it.

Richard started with a playlist labeled “Cool/Not Embarrassing Music,” which he had crafted for a party at his apartment a year ago. By the end of the party, a wasted Mike had hijacked his iPod from its stereo cradle while he was in the bathroom and switched over to his “Top 25 Most Played” list, which included such humiliating gems as Miley Cyrus's “Party in the USA” and “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls. He smiled at the memory, realizing there was no need to play “cool” music for Elizabeth. He already knew what she liked. Currently the topmost track on his “Top 25 Most Played” list was Mariah Carey's “Always Be My Baby”—his favorite song, though he didn't advertise it. He began playing it now.

Elizabeth made a noise. He turned to her.

“This is my favorite song,” she explained.

Come on.
“Mine too,” he said, a little reluctantly. But how could he not tell her?

She took her eyes off the road again.

“Really?”

“Really.”

They lapsed into silence, accompanied by Mariah's silky crooning. Richard was reminded of their dinner at Factor's, when he vowed never to be a part of those couples who sat in silence, the ones who had nothing to say to each other. But he saw now that he'd gotten it wrong, that sometimes there was nothing better than sitting next to another person and thinking your own thoughts alongside them—nothing more intimate than being alone together. Maybe this was, in fact, the very definition of intimacy: acting with another person the way you did when you were alone.

The song ended. Neither of them spoke. Richard couldn't imagine sitting in perfect silence like this with anyone else in the
world. He and Mike, certainly, were incapable of shutting up for more than a few seconds at a time, and he wouldn't have it any other way. But he wouldn't change this, either. Wasn't it funny, he thought, that the one person he was being paid to talk to was also the one person he could
not
talk to? Maybe this was why he'd been withdrawing incrementally from his old social scene (though it had been a mistake to lump Mike together with all his other friends; Mike was special, and after last night he would never forget it). When you had someone you could
calm down
with in this way, didn't it feel a little pointless to keep expending all that energy?

“D'you have any Selena in there?” Elizabeth asked him, breaking the silence at last.

“Selena Gomez? Nah, she's too Disney, even for me.”

“No,
Selena
Selena.”

“What other Selena?”

He was scanning his iPod for his next selection, and for this reason he failed to see her exaggerated double take.

“Do you seriously not know who Selena is?!”

Richard looked up. This was the most animated he'd ever heard her.

“Selena was like the Mexican Madonna,” she told him breathlessly. “She was Tejana, actually, meaning she was a Latina from Texas, and had hit songs in Spanish and then later in English too, pretty much every year from '85 to '95, which was when she was shot to death by this crazy woman who used to be the president of her fan club and was caught embezzling money from her. She wasn't even twenty-four yet.”

It hit him without warning, like a slap in the face: he wanted nothing more than to kiss her. But lunging for the face of a driver currently operating a motor vehicle hurtling over sixty miles an hour was not the most prudent course of action, and also:
what??
Richard scanned his iPod blindly. What was happening? He
didn't even want to have sex with her (he couldn't bring himself to say “fuck her,” even though this was the phrase he had always used up till now, for both its pithiness and bite). He just really, really,
really
wanted to kiss her.

“That's terrible,” he mumbled, refusing to look up.

“It really was. Whenever people talk about remembering where they were when JFK was shot, I think about the day Selena died. I remember I was in math class, and I was bored, and then there was all this commotion in the hallway and people started turning on radios and televisions and . . . I know it sounds melodramatic, but it was like the world ended.”

They were silent for a few moments.

“Look in my glove compartment,” she instructed him.

In among a pile of Balance Bars, he found a CD labeled
S
and handed it to her. She slid it in.

They listened to “Dreaming of You” first. Richard loved it. Even though it was a wistful song, he could hear Selena's smile in every note; it was as though she could barely contain her joy in singing. After that, Elizabeth played him “I Could Fall in Love,” which he liked too, and then “Como La Flor” and some of her other Spanish-language hits, which he liked less, but pretended to love just as much as the others.

A road sign came into view.

“Look!” he pointed. “That's Big Stan Way coming up, isn't it?”

Jonathan Hertzfeld's directions had been simple: they were to ignore the no-trespassing signs posted at the turnoff for “Big Stan Way” and take the road all the way to what he simply called “the estate.” They were due at noon, but they hadn't hit a bit of traffic, and they'd never had to take a bathroom break. Elizabeth drank only a single cup of coffee, and even with his bottle of water, Richard was still dehydrated from his hangover. It was a little past eleven.

They turned onto the one-lane road, which went from well paved to badly paved to not paved at all. They passed a range of low-lying hills. “The estate” came into view.

Elizabeth jammed on her brakes. Richard bolted upright, inadvertently ripping the iPod from its socket, cutting off Selena in the middle of “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.”

It was like a limited-edition “Hacienda” version of the Lego castle he'd been obsessed with when he was nine. Richard clicked the camera app on his iPod. He
had
to get a picture of this.

“Holy
shit
,” he said. “It's a fucking castle.”

Elizabeth nodded. “It's a fucking castle.”

The portcullis split in two with an electric hum, opening like a regular gate instead of rising upward as Richard had been hoping it would. Even so, he imagined two little Lego knights in Zorro masks and gaucho hats on either side of it, pulling on a rope, their pencil-thin mustaches quivering with the effort. He was about to share this flight of fancy with Elizabeth when he wondered if she would find it racist.

They passed through the gate into the bright light of the courtyard.

BEVERLY HAD CONSIDERED
wearing an elaborate getup for the “Summit of Love,” as she'd been calling it to herself for a week. She toyed with the idea of impersonating a character halfway between Katharine Hepburn and Norma Desmond—brash yet grandiose, the eccentric old bat with a fortune to spare on her kooky whims—and as recently as that morning the plan had been to greet them in the middle of the courtyard in a turban, brandishing a cigarette holder, arms raised to the heavens. In the end, she decided a simpler approach would do. Stan's Castle was impressive enough on its own.

It was Peaches, therefore, who greeted them in the mid
dle of the courtyard, staring glumly through her silver-flecked bangs. Above her was a miniature footbridge connecting the two wings of the castle. Below her Crocs-clad feet were red ceramic tiles, miniature cacti, and succulents arranged in garden beds against the two long walls of the rectangular space. There were at least six iron-studded doors leading inside, and three times as many thick-paned windows. A hill overlooking them provided the promise if not the guarantee of shade at some point in the day. The effect produced was contradictory: snugly grand; kitschily enchanting; as if the architect hadn't been able to decide whether the building was meant to be a joke or not and had settled for somewhere in between.

Richard got out first, turning in a circle to take in the view. Peaches got a full, 360-degree look at him, a rare smile lighting up her sullen visage. But the smile collapsed on itself when she saw Elizabeth staring at her.

“In here,” she said, gesturing to one of the doors.

They entered a cathedral-like space soaring two stories in the air, an upper gallery running the perimeter. A dual-tiered chandelier hung from the wooden-raftered ceiling, two great rings of iron with electric candles sticking out of them. If they had been real candles, it would have been easy to believe this massive fixture had been lifted straight from a medieval banquet hall. Tapestries hung on the white plaster walls and over the balcony of the upper gallery. A great stone fireplace at one end of the room descended from the ceiling all the way to the ornately tiled floor. Across from it stood
another
fireplace, this one merely a story high, hiding the staircase leading to the gallery above.

It took some time for Richard and Elizabeth to observe these details, since despite the numerous windows, the space was dark and gloomy. Thick, leathery drapes had been drawn against ev
ery pane of glass, blocking out the sun, and their eyes needed a minute to adjust. The air smelled smoky, and what with this, the gloom, and the churchlike proportions, Elizabeth looked instinctively for the font of holy water and tiers of votive candles beside the door. (They weren't there.)

Placed in the center of the room, directly beneath the chandelier, was a high-backed, circular couch made of dark, button-tufted leather. It seated up to fifteen people, and was the sort of thing that belonged in a posh train station or glittering hotel lobby rather than a private home. And yet it fit the grandiose space perfectly.

Upon it sat an old woman, like a lone traveler, an unlit cigarette hanging off her bottom lip.

Richard saw raw, red scalp and sagging, papery skin; he still retained a vestige of that knee-jerk abhorrence of old age that belongs to children—an aversion to infirmity by the young and healthy who cling instinctually to each other. He glanced away, choosing to survey the furniture instead. It was all dark leather and even darker wood; it struck him as a little creepy. The only object that looked out of place was a glass plaque propped up on a slim, marble pedestal. He squinted, reading:
To CharBev, in grateful recognition of years and years of love and devotion, from the California State Prison, Los Angeles County, Lancaster, CA
. He guessed the old woman was the “CharBev” in question, but what the hell kind of a name was that?

Beverly had wanted to light her cigarette in front of them as a means of drawing out the moment—to observe them, to put them off their guard—but she was having a hard time igniting the lighter. She flicked it helplessly. Inside her ear, Char's voice taunted her:
Serves you right
.

Elizabeth stepped forward:

“Can I help you with that?”

Elizabeth hated cigarettes; she thought smoking was idiotic, but she couldn't just stand there watching the old woman fumble. Besides, the damage was already done. That much was obvious.

“I'll manage,” Bev replied coolly, her eagle eyes blazing a warning. Elizabeth stumbled backward, as if singed. It was this infinitesimal victory that gave Bev the burst of confidence she needed to light the damn Parlie at last. She drew in a deep breath, which of course brought on a coughing fit. Peaches, who had been hovering in the back of the room, stepped forward, but Beverly waved her away.

When she could speak again, there was a flush on Bev's cheeks that made her appear livelier than before. “Thank you for coming. My name is Beverly Chambers, and it's such a pleasure to meet you both in person.”

Elizabeth just stared at her.

“You too,” muttered Richard.

The stupidity of the “Summit of Love” broke upon Bev like an icy wave socking her in the gut. What the hell was she doing? She'd been like a crazy person for the last six months. Suddenly she wanted to stamp out her cigarette, throw the two of them out, and take to her bed like a normal octogenarian. But she merely paused.

“Peaches, let's have some refreshment,” she said finally. “Some tea and sandwiches, maybe? Something lunchy.” She looked at Richard, a half smile curling one side of her mouth. “And, Mr. Baumbach—may I call you Richard?”

Richard nodded his head uneasily.

“Richard, then. Please help Peaches with the dishes and things.”