Woke Up Lonely (13 page)

“For the party?” the butler said.

“Yes.”

“Very well. I will tell Mrs. Anderson that you do not wish to see her.”

“Wait, don’t do that. I mean, who? Never mind. I’ll just have this custard thing here. And a brandy, if you got any. I can wait for a bit.”

He sat down in a chair that was probably a hundred years old. Victorian, maybe. Blue velveteen, cream frame, crimped seat and back. He bit into the pie. It was an individual serving, the size of his palm. He’d wanted to shove the thing in his mouth whole, but that was always when the lady of the house walked in. Wow, this custard was good. Smooth and light. He decided to sample the strawberry cheesecake puff. And a few truffles, because they were exotic; it said so on the labels, scrawled in cursive. Like someone in the kitchen had taken the time to write in this elaborate hand the names of each truffle. Mint julep. Pepper vodka. Ceylon.

The butler returned with a brandy snifter and bottle. He was everything a butler should be. He was even bent at the waist. Ten years from now, he’d be an L.

“Care to join me?” Bruce said. “There’s clearly enough for two.”

A documentarian needs people.

The butler demurred.

“Some other time, then,” Bruce said.

He crossed his legs. His fingers were sticky. He had slept but three hours the night before—the couch was a muddle of lump and trough—and the sugar was romping about his blood like it owned the place. He went: Okay, Bruce, let’s think this out. Mrs. Anderson, lady of the house and Crystal’s godmother, was partaking of afternoon tea and dessert when she heard you in the hall. She is a pale, recondite woman who consorts only with her godchild, the butler, and, perhaps, the executor of her estate. Most of all, she does not appreciate a certain genre of man, call him stranger, a stranger documentarian who needs people.

The butler came in. Bruce asked for another brandy.

“Shall I just leave you the bottle?”

“That would be lovely.”

“Mrs. Anderson,” the butler announced.

Bruce stood. Crumbs tumbled down his thighs. She put out her hand. She was what—four foot nine? He tried not to stoop, but it was impossible.

“Sit,” she said. “Please.”

“Mrs. Anderson, it’s an honor. You have a magnificent home.”

“Call me Lynne. And thank you.”

She settled under a lamp whose glow helped define the cut of her face. Very narrow. Unnaturally so. A face between cymbals after the clap.

“I see you’ve sampled some of our pastries. The head chef is a specialist.”

“They were great, yeah. Look, I’m sorry if I chased you out before. I didn’t mean to intrude. I think I got lost!”

“Don’t be silly, Mr. Bollinger. More brandy?”

She was so small, the rest of the room began to stand up in contrast. Walls were cream, moldings were buff. No windows, much art. Giant amphora depicting the plight of Agamemnon.

“I’d love some, yes.” He was drinking heavily now, except for the face-saving caveat that, unless you were Samuel Johnson, brandy was not drink. Brandy, Armagnac really, was just fancy after-dinner wine.

She poured with grace. Three-quarter sniff for him, half a smidge for her. She wore a red turtleneck and brown flats. The effect was to condense her frame in obvious defiance of what God had given her to work with. Think I’m small now? Think my calves are compressed and bloated in a way that’s hardly possible in nature? Well, I can do worse. And frankly, what did she care. She lived in a mansion. She had minions. And if her goddaughter’s appearance was any kind of bellwether, she had very attractive friends.

He held up his snifter and regarded the liquid inside. Such an odd vessel for drink.

She fussed with the string around her neck that attached to a stainless steel dog whistle. “Look over there,” she said. As he did, a wall packed with framed impasto art broke in half like a curtain at show-time. The reveal was a console of monitors similar to that in the security guard’s booth. Here, though, no expense had been spared for the quality of the picture. It was closed-circuit viewing in HD.

“Surprised?” she said.

He was not.

“Good. It gets lonely out here sometimes. Crystal has so many friends; I like to participate in some measure.”

The whistle was in fact a laser pointer, which she trained on the first monitor: a man in a button-down with chest hair sprouting from the collar, sitting next to Rita on what had become for Bruce, in the past minute, a symbol of all things coveted but unattainable—the cerise banquette with claw-feet. Monitor two, of considerably less cause for distress: Crystal and the militia kids distributing literature. Three: a king-sized bed with canopy, rippled valance, and stuffed green platypus atop the duvet.

“Looks like a nice party,” Bruce said, and he drained the last of his brandy. “I should probably get a move on. A move seems like a good idea.”

His tongue felt swollen. Unwieldy too. Enunciation would fail him in about three minutes.

“I get sound, too,” she said. “Want to hear?”

Bruce thinking: This Howard Hughes thing is weird, and I want to find Rita. Bruce saying: “Okay, and just another pinch before I go.”

He returned his glass to a side table.

“Volume two,” she said in a voice reserved for the commanding of equipment.
“Volume two,”
she said in a voice reserved for when your equipment does not work. “Martin!” she yelled.

The butler appeared with tray in hand. It occurred to Bruce that he had never seen a butler in person. “Fix the sound, would you?”

He nodded. Disappeared behind the console. Smacked the thing, which released Crystal’s voice in stereo. Crystal haranguing a woman with a gold bone through her nose and spikes implanted in her skull. A metal headband.

Crystal was saying, “The helix goes on the small of your back, not your hip. The sacrum is a place of power. Whatever you put there is a guiding principle. If you tattoo it on your hip, it just means you want to get laid. Makes us look frivolous.”

“Mute two,” Lynne said, and the TV went quiet.

Bruce stood. “Mrs. Anderson, I really should be joining my wife. Thank you for your hospitality. If you’ll just show me the way.” He was listing, one arm braced on a chair back.

Lynne said, “She doesn’t look too concerned,” and she gestured at monitor one, in which Rita and her new Cro-Magnon hero were sharing a laugh. “Please, stay a bit longer. Some pastry, perhaps?”

He retook his seat. Accepted another brandy. He was drunk and glad for it. Now he could say what he wanted, which was this: “You know, Lynne, I figure since I had to leave my driver’s license with security, that’s how you know my name. But how do you know who my wife is? And what’s with all the cameras? I’m a filmmaker myself, so I get wanting to look at people and their lives. But in this case, in this place, I don’t approve of it so much. Not at all. Forgive me if this seems rude, but are you looking to take a lover? Is this
Sunset Boulevard?
”

Lynne laughed with her whole body, pitching back and forth and finally just forth, doubled at the waist, trying to breathe. When she regained herself, her eyes were bright and cold and the tears seemed to freeze on her cheeks.

“My, my,” she said. “Aren’t you to the point. But really now, what do you mean? Your wife is Crystal’s employer. She told me.”

He frowned. Waved his hand, waving it off, and said, “Right, of course. I am, you know, a jackass.”

“What’s more,” Lynne said, “I know you like film because of Crystal, too. That’s why I thought you’d like my setup here.”

“A jackass! That’s me. Bruce J. Bollinger. Lynne, you are a fascinating creature. You are the stuff of documentaries. You’ve seen a thing or two, literally and otherwise, so how is it you think they’re having a party down there? No, I don’t buy it. I got your number, Mrs. A. I do.”

“Well,” she said, and she smoothed down her skirt. “It’s not my place to think too rigorously about what I hear. Now, tell me about yourself. Are you enjoying your new job?”

“No.”

“No? That’s too bad.”

He pushed at the floor with his feet. His feet lost purchase—this rug was no place for purchase—so he nudged them under the crust and pushed again. Backing away from Lynne had become supremely important. He was not feeling well. The pastries and sissy drink had found kin in the malfunctioning of his intestines and were colluding to make him sick. He thought Agamemnon was dancing on the vase for the way he and the other figures moved about. He considered a lamp on the desk and decided four lightbulbs for one socket was a bit much. He thought, also, that Lynne’s face was coming loose.

She moved her chair forward to reestablish proximity. “Maybe you just need to nurture your creative side.”

He looked at her and smiled. So her face was melting before his eyes—so what? It was a spiritual condition. She was lonely. He was lost. Maybe they could help each other. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “that’s my whole problem right there. I don’t even know what my job at the Department is, but I’m terrified it marks the end of a period in my life when I tried to do something that mattered. I don’t know who I am anymore. I am estranged from myself. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

She poured him more brandy. He’d gone through half the bottle and wanted something else. She offered him some Scotch. “Martin!” And then, to the console: “Volume one.”

RITA: Oh, that’s hilarious. The saddest part of any day is when you hear the vice president is still alive.

CRO
-
MAGNON: Want to take a tour of the house? It’s pretty amazing, as you can see.

RITA: I’m sort of couchbound. And I’m waiting for my husband.

CM: Where is he?

RITA: Beats me. Probably trying to bleed money from the walls.

BRUCE: Oh no. No no nooooo, you did not just say that.

RITA: He makes (miming quote marks with fingers delicate and lovely) documentaries.

CM: An arty type, right. Those types are always looking for money. He’s come to the right place. I hear Mrs. Anderson is a patron of the arts.

BRUCE (swiveling in his chair to gawk at Mrs. Anderson, to gawk and leer): Well!

RITA (puffing up, happy): No, we’re done with all that. Bruce works for the Department of the Interior now.

BRUCE: I work for the Department of the Interior, and my wife is proud of me. How pathetic. You know, Lynne, this is some very nice Scotch you have here, but I am drunk. And no one is fun when they’re drunk. My son is due in four months, and I work for the Department of the Interior. I am a man he will come to admire, not for what I did, but for what I
wanted
to do. I have to use the john.

LYNNE (standing): There’s one down the hall.

BRUCE (sniveling): A documentarian cries. Okay? He cries. This is me crying.

“Mute one.” And the room was silent but for the snuffles of the documentarian, who rallied and said, “How did you get so rich? How does it happen? Did you inherit? What do you do? What does your husband do? Is there something for me to learn here?”

She appeared to depress a button under the coffee table. The parted wall reunited. Not one of the paintings was askew for it.

She called for Martin and said, “Make Mr. Bollinger some tea and bring it to the green room, where he will be resting.”

“I don’t want to rest.”

“Don’t worry. And don’t despair. Life sometimes offers up solutions when you least expect them.”

Bruce could not control the slack of his lips, but some part of him smiled, and later, ensconced in a guest room that was all green, he crawled into a bed, thinking: A grant! This incredibly odd, rich woman is going to give me a grant. The hours passed; he slept through them all.

ESME
SAID, “Martin, just look at this.”

He looked. And what he saw sacked his self-esteem for the year. It had taken him months to perfect the anchoring system of her face. So much trial and error, but in the end, it held. She’d worn it nine times. It had even survived exposure to wafts of sweat and BO in a gym carnival. So why today? Her left cheekbone had mutinied. It was actually falling away from her face. And her nose—my God. It was released from the bridge and tilting floorward.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say: Esme, I am sorry. This will never happen again.” She began to laugh. “Can you imagine what Bruce must have thought? Good thing he was drunk. Good thing, for me—” She looked at Martin with reproach. “Get him home, okay?”

“I’ll do that now.”

“You’ll need the sleds. For them both, I think.”

Martin nodded and left, but at the door, Esme said, “Be careful.” It was cold out—the wind panned across the fields in great sheets—and Esme felt for Bruce and Rita. A couple expecting a child. She’d been part of such a couple once, and she remembered its pleasures. But also the ruination that came before and after and, in this arrangement of feeling: a reminder that nothing is ever as it seems.

On TV: the Great Hall. The meeting was long over, though the room was half-full. If she rewound tape of its highlights, she would have heard about weaponry and nation-states and living as one in a socialist community severed from the body elected. How was it Thurlow couldn’t prune from his ranks people who believed in stuff like this?