Almost Perfect Read online

  (“It was almost as though he was trying to fix us up, advertising you to me,” says Richard later to Stella. “But I was just scared.”)

  At the time, everyone laughs a little, as Richard wonders about all those names just dropped; the only one he caught and knew was Frida Kahlo, whose work he does know a little, sufficiently to arouse violently ambivalent feelings in himself: he sees the terrific skill, even the beauty. But all that blood, all those intensely female wounds—he finds this unbearable. She reminds him of something within himself, something hateful, frightful. Frightening.

  However, Richard would like to make it clear to this group that he knows who Frida Kahlo is. Was. He feels uneasy—not so much because everyone else is gay as because they all seem to have gone to Harvard, or some Ivy place, and although Richard has often been told that he sounds very Ivy, he painfully knows that he is just a good mimic, good with accents. He barely got through junior high, back in Paterson. He just reads a lot, mostly magazines and newspapers. He’s good at remembering names and certain facts—usually irrelevant ones.

  But before Richard can say “Frida Kahlo,” this Simon Daniels is going on about Stella Blake, who certainly seems to have made an impression on the guy.

  “Another thing about this little Ms. Blake,” says Simon, with his twisted, owlish smile. “I got this from her name-dropping old father, never from herself, but she had a tremendous involvement with Liam O’Gara—you know, the director. All over the world together for a couple of years. The only time she managed to impress her father, I guess. Poor girl. She must have been a child at the time. But you’d never know it to look at her. And you’d think she might have mentioned this to me.”

  “No, I don’t think,” says thin-lipped Jacob, the minimalist. Simon’s host, and lover.

  Unperturbed, Simon smiles and goes on. “At first I was surprised. After all, O’Gara’s probably the second coming of John Huston, but then when I met her and looked at her very carefully, I felt there was something, something not quite there yet but somehow present in her—”

  “Maybe she’s very sexy,” Richard interrupts, in his deepest (most Ivy) voice. “I’ve met her; it could be that. A Mexican sexpot.”

  He did not mean to sound so crude (and his words now tremble in his own ears, extremely crude). But in this pansy-Ivy atmosphere almost anything he said would have come out sounding gross. And it is not even true; he did not think Stella Blake especially sexy. Or did he? And even to say he met her is an exaggeration; it is hard to remember her at all: someone small and dark at his door, with great huge eyes, looking frightened. He remembers a thin pale face, dark, very heavy but well-curved eyebrows, those big eyes, a small nose and a long mouth. A possibly tender face, vulnerable in the glare of his entrance light. As he concentrates he can see her entirely: the unstylish blazer, the wrong boots. The kind of woman he would never look at twice, except for something, some hint in her face—he is not sure of what. She looked intelligent but very uncertain, scared. Hard to imagine her as the heroine of some high-powered love affair, but maybe Liam O’Gara is really old and can’t get the greatest girls anymore.

  “An odd-looking woman, not exactly the great beauty her mother was,” this Simon Daniels goes on. “But she’ll change. Certain women hit their peak quite late.”

  “Such as they are,” says Jacob.

  “My dear, you are quite obsessed with this woman,” says Andrew Bacci, to Simon.

  “Well, hardly. I’m obsessed with this piece I have to write. And I hope her old man doesn’t cash in before I can see him again.”

  And that is all there is about Stella Blake. The conversation dissolves into the usual trivia, discussions of San Francisco versus New York, of weather and of restaurants in both cities.

  Homelessness in both cities.

  AIDS. Dead friends.

  Out of here. I have to get out of here, thinks Richard. It is less a thought than a cry from his blood. I have got to leave this place now.

  He presses Andrew’s arm, he whispers, “Later, Dog Shoes. Got to go. Say goodby for me, okay?”

  This is the best he can manage, just before bolting out of the room. Away. Almost free. Out of there.

  5

  Love Affairs, of Sorts

  Margot and her friend Andrew Bacci live quite near each other on Russian Hill, but in contrasting quarters. Margot’s small, narrow rooms are filled with antiques, delicate woods, gilt frames and satin flounces, especially in the largest room, her bedroom. Lots of flounces in the bedroom. Whereas Andrew’s more spacious and much more expensive digs are sleekly “contemporary”: pale postmodern colors of wool and textured cotton and heavy, bright lacquered surfaces. Pale leather and high-tech steel.

  Andrew really looks best in her apartment, Margot thinks—and would not tell Andrew, not for anything. On a Sunday morning, in his open-necked, broad-striped blue shirt, his black curls crisp above that pale smooth brow, and a few chest hairs just visible (the shirt is unbuttoned perhaps one button too low), as he stands and leans, so gracefully, against her small carved marble table, Andrew is truly ravishing. He should stand there always, he should always just be there for her to look at. Thinking this, Margot smiles as she offers him more coffee.

  But Andrew is not smiling; he is talking seriously. (God, why do men always talk so much? Margot has repeatedly wondered this, even of beautiful Andrew, but she has come up with no answer.)

  “… real recession,” he is saying. “No matter what the feds are calling it. Things are very bad, and my private crystal balls are telling me it’s getting worse. Lord, I may have to move.”

  Very little of this has got through to Margot. She never reads or watches any news, confining herself mostly to fashion magazines and memoirs, preferably of the very rich and sexually active. But she did quite clearly understand Andrew as he said, “… have to move.”

  “But, darling, wherever would you go?” she asks him, all sympathy.

  “Oh, someplace south of Market, probably. Maybe Bluxome Street. Somewhere like that.”

  “Ugh.” Margot shrugs theatrically. “I’ve never even been there.”

  “Or maybe Potrero. Richard and I took in a party there.”

  “Oh, you and Richard?” Margot giggles, believing it permissible to tease Andrew in this way.

  But Andrew seems not to take this as teasing. Or to be not in the mood for teasing. “Yes, Richard and I went to a party, is that so odd? Really, Margot, Richard is possibly my closest friend.”

  He is so deadly serious, so unlike his usual light jokey self, that Margot is silenced, nonplussed, even as her mind records and dissects this exchange, and what she comes up with is a considerable surprise: Andrew actually loves Richard Fallon, Andrew is serious, he is in love with Richard, who everyone knows is a flirt but basically straight. Is Andrew mad?

  “Well, darling, you mustn’t move anywhere dreary like Potrero,” she tells Andrew. “You can always move right in here with me.” As she says this, Margot silently adds: Why not? I’d adore it. I adore you, beautiful Andrew.

  Andrew, however (fatally), laughs. “Come on now, Margot. You’re really not old enough to be my mom.”

  A rage so pure and cold that she almost faints fills Margot, rage and what is for her its inevitable concomitant: a seething lust. Covering her face with her hands, she begins to cough, hiding everything (she hopes). She coughs and coughs, as from behind those long tapering strong jeweled fingers she thinks, You rotten bastard, prick, how dare you, Andrew Bacci? I’ll get you for this, you just wait. I’ll really get you.

  “Sweetie, what is wrong?” asks Andrew. “Are you having some sort of seizure? Can I get you some water?”

  “No, darling, I’m really okay, honestly.” Margot dabs at her eyes with a scrap of lace and linen, even as she is thinking, Really, how dare he? I’ll kill him!

  She asks, “How is dear Richard?”

  In a doting, foolish way, Andrew laughs, confirming Margot’s idea. “Oh, the same,” Andrew
says. “Absolutely brilliant and totally nuts. That guy has a certain streak in him.” He smiles, his smile helpless and beautiful, and he pauses, looking marvelous, with those playful onyx eyes and that serious, perfect mouth. He says, “I think Richard’s poised on the brink of some very big changes in his life.”

  “Do you possibly mean he too might move to Potrero Hill?” Margot giggles, knowing perfectly well that that, in a sense, is precisely what Andrew does mean—move along with him, Andrew means. He is the crazy one, perfectly nuts.

  Andrew flushes, confirming all suspicions. “Nothing so specific,” he mutters.

  “Well, my darling Andrew, I think you’re probably right on the button. What I see in the future for Richard is a most wonderful new love affair. Something very new for him, this time a truly major passion. One that will really knock him off his pins.”

  “You think so?” Eager Andrew, his eyes enlarged, mouth unguarded.

  “Oh, absolutely. Sans doute. The only question is who. What marvelous hitherto unknown woman will deserve him or, more to the point, will get him? Do you think another blonde?”

  Andrew smiles unpleasantly. “As you well know, dear Margot, nothing could possibly interest me less than Richard’s blondes.”

  Understanding him well—and understanding too her own inclusion in what does not interest Andrew—Margot again is chilled through with a trembling rage: Oh God, how dare he—how dare he? She is forced to fake another coughing fit.

  Too slowly, making it clear that he really does not care if she chokes, Andrew gets up and goes into her tiny kitchen (in which Margot almost never cooks) and brings her a glass of water. Some minutes after this she has stopped coughing.

  And then, still standing, he tells her, “Well, baby, it’s tennis time for me.”

  Did he mention tennis earlier? Had they not actually planned a walk, a small venture down to the wharves? Margot ponders this after Andrew is gone, as she takes the glass and the coffee cups back to the kitchen—which is worse than untidy, it’s dirty, no doubt making Andrew hate her all the more; she has got to get a maid. On this especially brilliant day, even the rest of her apartment looks dingy. She sees small stains and patches in the gilt, streaks of dust on mahogany and rosewood; she sees shabbiness and age everywhere. She is old, and everything she owns is old and shabby. She should throw everything out, get everything better and brighter and more expensive. And get her face done, all tucked and tightened and smoothed, and then maybe that rotten Andrew would love her. Adorable Andrew, whom Margot in her small secret ferocious heart adores.

  “He’s my kind of guy, absolutely,” says Collin Schmidt, the contractor, to his beloved Justine, as he pours thin raspberry syrup over his large stack of buttermilk pancakes in the sunny kitchen—dining room of his Mill Valley hillside house, designed and built by Collin and several times featured in various magazines.

  Collin is speaking of Richard Fallon, whom Justine has asked about. Again. “Why do you ask?” says Collin.

  “I just wondered. My friend Stella has an interview coming up with him.” And something in Stella’s voice as she has mentioned this forthcoming interview has alerted Justine. Stella seems so “interested.” Meaning, in Stella’s case, so defensive and vulnerable, and slightly off balance. And so, on behalf of her friend, Justine probes.

  And she thinks how very nice this Collin is. He is so nice and so unfamiliar in his niceness that Justine hardly knows what to do with him and thus will do nothing, probably.

  “All the guys loved him,” says Collin, whose teeth are large and strong and white, whose mustache is pepper-and-salt, just now reddened here and there with syrup, which he wipes at with a very large blue bandanna handkerchief. “The workmen loved him, I mean. He gets right down into it with them, if you know what I mean. Rolls up his sleeves and just goes. He can do as good a job as any of them can, and they know it.” Collin laughs, somewhat self-consciously. “Only thing is, he has this really dumb name for me. Calls me Bunny. Can you beat that? Bunny.”

  “Bunny,” Justine murmurs, ambiguously. But of course she is clearly and cruelly aware of what Richard must mean: Collin is bunny-like, smooth and clean and sweet and good, and (probably) easy to scare off. Whatever else may be said of him, this Richard is not stupid, Justine decides.

  “But I hope your friend doesn’t get what we might call a romantic interest in Richard,” cautions Collin, somewhat surprisingly. “He’s hell on the ladies. I knew his first wife, Marina; we go back that far. He really gave her a hard time, although she’s a pretty crazy dame. But she’s a real straight shooter, no fancy talk.”

  “Was she good-looking?” asks Justine.

  “Well, in the early days quite a knockout. A big tall blonde. His second wife too, tall blonde. I guess that’s what he likes.”

  “Do they look like him?” asks Justine.

  “Like Richard?” Collin laughs uncomfortably, slightly disturbed at the notion of male-female resemblance. “Oh no, not a bit; they were all woman, both of them. But he really gave Marina a bad time over that other one, the one he married after Marina threw him out. Finally.”

  “Marina threw him out?”

  “Oh yes, right smack on his you-know-what. He didn’t know what hit him. He thought—and he actually told me this—thought Marina’d forgive and forget. Been married to her all those years, and he didn’t know the first thing about that woman. I still wouldn’t be surprised if he went back to her someday, though. In a way they belong together.”

  From Collin’s hill Justine can see more hills, all scattered with pretty, widely spaced suburban houses. She feels as though she has fallen back into some time warp; at least the externals in this sunny peaceful place have changed so little since the Fifties.

  Could she live in such a place, maybe find enough peace to write the novel that is always somewhere in her head? That is the question, and so far Justine has found no answer, although she is sure that the answer lies within her, as clear and definite as a piece of stone. When she finds it she will think, Oh, of course, why didn’t I see that before?

  Collin even has nice children, of whom he is modestly proud. Two daughters, married now and living somewhere around, and a son, whom Collin describes as “a little too handsome for his own good.” The son is a doctor.

  Could she, at her age, possibly become a stepmother? Justine almost blushes with discomfort at the thought.

  But when she really thinks of Collin, what most frequently comes to mind is not his children or all that sunny Mill Valley peace: what Justine thinks of, often, is Collin in bed. The sexual Collin. And he is, in that regard, quite a piece of work, as Justine puts it to herself, with a small pleased private smile—as she could not say, possibly, to anyone else (not even to Stella, who would certainly be very interested; they just don’t talk like that). For Collin, sexually, is something else. Indefatigable, enthusiastic, sensitive, generous and kind—he is truly an amazing lover. Justine does not see how she could ever give him up, and she hopes (sometimes) that this does not mean that she has to marry him.

  “Bunny.” Collin, beside her in the sun, chuckles. “Can you beat that?”

  She leans over to kiss his mouth. “No,” says Justine. “I can’t.”

  6

  The Interview

  “You could sit here. Pretend you’re a client,” Richard suggests, indicating the small bentwood chair across from his desk, and he smiles at her, radiantly, his private radiance fuelling the magnificence of his room, by which Stella is already both bedazzled and confused. She feels herself diminished, and somehow darkened, dimmed, so large is the scale, so brilliant and beautiful the composition of gilt and oil and wood, of mirror glass, of prisms and polished brass globes. But mostly it is the radiance of Richard himself that dazzles Stella, her sense of his warmth, his energy: he is like a sun.

  They have hit on this somewhat odd hour for an interview, nine-thirty at night, as the only one possible for them both for days. Stella on this evening was suddenly sen
t to cover a convention of social workers at a hotel in Berkeley, a dinner meeting.

  And so, having taken BART back from Berkeley, here she is, in this room, almost unable to sit down as she is bidden.

  Curiously, as soon as she does sit down she is visited by a very strong longing for a drink, odd, since she barely drinks anything alcoholic. But just now she would give anything for a glass of wine, anything. Apparently, though, she cannot say this to Richard Fallon.

  Who almost immediately (telepathically?) says, “What can I offer you to drink? I’ve got—I’ve got some champagne on ice, or do you really sophisticated types all dislike champagne?”

  “I love champagne,” Stella lies. “I’m not all that sophisticated. I don’t think I am at all.…”

  “You sure have it all over me,” he tells her. “With your background. I’ve been really nervous.…” The sentence trails off, as he walks into some other area, all darkened.

  Minutes later, minutes during which Stella has tried and failed to get used to her surroundings, even in the most casual sense, Richard returns with a champagne bottle and two frosted tulip glasses on a small enamelled tray, which he places on his desk.

  More defiantly than she meant to, Stella asks him, “What do you mean, my background?” And then, checking herself, she reminds him, “I’m supposed to be interviewing you, remember?” And she laughs, suddenly fortified by the first small sip of wine—and remembering that somewhere along the line she forgot to eat dinner.

  Richard sits down behind his desk, as light from the candelabra feathers his hair. He laughs, very friendly. “I won’t be mysterious. This is such a small town. I went to a party with a friend, or not exactly a friend—a guy I know.”