The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [104]
PART THREE
“Make voyages. Attempt them. That’s all there is.”
—TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (Camino Real)
ONE
SOME DAYS AFTERWARD—or maybe it was only two or three— I can’t remember exactly any more—I got out of bed one morning and found myself all alone in the empty house. I put on my bathing suit and went down to the untidy kitchen and made myself some coffee. Then I went out on the terrace and looked at the sky. It was a morning full of clouds; the sun shining brightly one moment and hiding under pearly grayness the next. It felt doom-ridden from the very beginning, out there among the ruins—very fin de siècle, fin du monde, fin de line. Bugs were climbing all over the roses, the chaotic breezes seemed wild and unfriendly, and the grass had burned brown. It was hard to believe that it was the beginning of July, not the end of summer. I thought: is summer only a state of mind? Is it always only two months long from whenever you start it? My arms would get no browner; my skin had reached saturation point, and the sun only succeeded now in bleaching them lighter—grayer. I shivered. I might have been something washed up against the River Styx. Or maybe I was waiting to be ferried across. I put on a sweater and went down to the sea.
I was thinking hard about Larry. I hadn’t seen him since the night at the Spanish boîte, but I’d been thinking about him incessantly. After my final talk with Bax, my thoughts had grown more and more troubled and disturbed. It was very confusing to have to reinterpret all his past actions in the new light. I felt as if I’d been wandering through life like one of those comic-strip characters, while right, left and center buckets of paint were falling off ladders, and cars were crashing into each other.
I very nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Larry lying there almost at my feet on the sands. His eyes were closed. They had deep shadows under them, and the pallor of his skin, on which his freckles stood out as if painted and the faint scar running up his forehead had turned into a livid gash, contrasted weirdly with his carroty shock of hair. He looked like a frightened clown. When he breathed I could see how near the skin his rib-cage was. In spite of everything I could have wept with pity.
He opened his eyes, now gray with fatigue, and smiled haggardly when he saw it was me.
“Lie down beside me,” he said. I obeyed.
He took my hand. The electric current that always ran through it when he touched me started flowing again. I clamped down on it hard, producing a sensation as unpleasant as a short circuit, as deadly as the electric chair. Nevertheless I didn’t pull away.
He sighed and stretched wearily. “They’ve all gone, haven’t they? Every goddam one of them,” he said.
“Yes, it’s like Uncle Vanya or something. How do you know?”
“I tiptoed around this morning and poked my head into all the rooms. No one but you. Where are they?”
“Missy and Mac took the morning train to Paris yesterday, and Bax the evening plane to London on his way to California. Where’ve you been?”
“I’ve been around. Around and around. I don’t know, Gorce— all this rushing around, where does it get us? The rat race.” He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at me. “You’re still here though. You didn’t run out on me like the rest. Why?”
Because I’ve got to know the truth at last, I thought. Only of course I didn’t say it. I drew a few circles in the sand with my free hand and said, “Well, you can’t really blame Missy for leaving, can you, when you didn’t show up all this time?”
He shook his head. “Missy ran out. I suppose I expected it. She’s a silly, selfish girl. But the point is you didn’t. I knew I could count on you.” He squeezed my hand tenderly (in a way it was quite easy to react favorably to Larry; it was a force of habit). “How come you’re such a screwball, Gorce?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t think what to say. “I was alone a lot as a child.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I wonder how I got so screwed up? I don’t seem to be able to reconcile art with life, that’s my trouble.” He