About Schmidt - Louis Begley [99]
She has been washing with extreme care. Schmidt laughs at the attention she has given to her belly button. She has told him, pointing to a tiny pinprick, That’s where I wore a ring. It was crazy! Schmidt would like to know which one of her boyfriends had this wish to mark her. He hasn’t asked; he is afraid it was Mr. Wilson, although that seems so preposterous. When she finishes, Schmidt stands up and holds a towel for her, wraps her in it, and pats her down until she is dry. She has already brushed her teeth. He takes her in his arms and, turning out the lights on his way, carries her to bed. Too bad for the little guy, she whispers this in his ear, and, a moment later, I love you, darling, I can’t tonight. He dicked me for an hour. It was brutal. That asshole was so freaked out he couldn’t come. Her fingers continue. Do you still love me? You like it like this, Schmidtie?
Later, when her head is already in its nest on his chest, Schmidt tells her that he has seen the man and asks whether she knows that he has come back. She does; he has waited at the restaurant.
Carrie, does the man dick you?
You sound funny! Can’t you say Mr. Wilson? That’s his name.
Does he?
When he first came here, he tried. He got cleaned up at my place and tried and tried. No way! He couldn’t. He got so pissed he hit me. No, it wasn’t bad, just knocked me around.
What will you do if he tries it again?
He won’t. He just won’t. Not while I’m with you.
Why? How do you know?
He told me. Like you’ve got the things he used to have. He doesn’t want me to compare.
Then he will want to kill me.
XV
QUOGUE HAD FOUGHT VALIANTLY and with considerable success to stop Jews from invading the bay properties that made it such a desirable beach community in the eyes of many of Schmidt’s partners and clients. Nevertheless, Schmidt had a deep-seated, generalized prejudice against Quogue and its entire population—locals and summer and weekend residents.
To start with, Schmidt’s canon held that all townies living in the western part of Long Island’s Suffolk County were avid, mercenary riffraff: the more enterprising among them built on speculation the houses that were defacing Schmidt’s landscape, while the rest busied themselves selling cars and insurance. So far as he was concerned, regardless of geographical considerations, Quogue belonged in that part of the county. The East End locals were more likely to be found cutting lawns, servicing septic tanks, and growing vegetables (activities of which Schmidt approved and that, in his opinion, lifted them to a higher sphere of existence), unless they were fishermen, an ornery but noble and endangered order. But Schmidt’s loathing for Bryan was not at all related to Quogue’s being his birthplace. He detested Bryan for being devious and exacting access to Carrie’s body. Whether and to what degree these demands were unwelcome, Schmidt had not yet chosen to investigate.
And Schmidt’s view of Quogue was not enhanced by the presence of those very partners and clients who had houses there. They were the sort of people whose links with Schmidt Jon Riker had used to illustrate for Charlotte her father’s anti-Semitism, but Schmidt did not feel at ease