Trixie descended the front stairs warily, but remained in the foyer while Linda came through the living room archway to say hello to X. She tried to return upstairs with Linda, but I said, “Trixie, here,” and she wouldn’t disobey me. She stepped hesitantly to the archway, her tail held low.
Leaning forward in an armchair, X said, “Here, cutie, come give me a kiss.”
After a quick glance toward our visitor, Trixie refused to look at X again, as if by doing so she would risk being turned to stone. As X continued to wheedle, Trixie’s ears seemed to droop as if all the cartilage had melted out of them, and she hung her head as she might have if she expected at any moment to be beaten.
When she finally ventured into the living room, she slunk to me, where I sat on a sofa, and pressed up against my leg, as though for reassurance. If a large coffee table hadn’t stood between me and X, I don’t believe Trixie would have ventured out of the foyer.
Having told X that the Trickster was people-loving, as friendly as any canine who ever lived, so friendly that she made Lassie seem like a savage attack dog, I found our girl’s behavior a little bit embarrassing. In retrospect, perhaps this development should have made me nervous. But I had known X for years by telephone, even if this was only our second face-to-face encounter. I had no reason to think that I was dealing with an individual whose appearance and whose reality were as different as a rose is different from a garlic bulb.
I suggested to X that Trixie must not be feeling well, and I took her upstairs to Gerda. Thereafter, I drove X to lunch.
At the restaurant, after ordering but before we had been served more than iced tea, X said, “After lunch, I want to take a tour of your beach house.”
This statement struck me as somewhat forward, especially because it was delivered as a desire, almost as a demand, rather than as a request. Furthermore, X knew that I was on a deadline, working long days, and that to make up for the couple of hours we were taking for lunch, I would have to stay at the keyboard later into the night than usual.
Referring again to that deadline, I suggested that perhaps we could tour the beach house the next time X was on the West Coast.
“Just give me the address, directions, and the key,” X said, “and I’ll have a look at it on my own this afternoon.”
Faintly but unmistakably, in my mind’s ear, I began to hear the shrieking violins that accompanied every slashing of the knife in Psycho.
“Well,” I lied, “today isn’t a good day anyway, because the exterminator tented the house for termites. You can’t get inside.”
We talked about termites for a while, and X revealed no peculiar thoughts about them or about insects of any kind, and then we moved on to the subject of mold and dry rot, which are also problems when you have a house on the water in a warm climate, and somehow we went from dry rot to chatting about recent movies. Minute by minute, the give-me-the-keys-to-your-house-I-want-to-snoop-through-your-closets request seemed less real, as if I must have misunderstood, and the X who had asked for the keys, Bizarro X, seemed to have been someone I imagined.
After our food was served and as we began to eat, X said, “I’m going to come stay at your beach house for a few weeks this summer.”
The shrieking violins returned, and suddenly my food tasted like something termites might have gnawed on. Smiling as if I saw nothing strange in X’s announcement, I said, “Oh, well, you know, we don’t rent the place out, it’s not an income-producing property.”
“Yes, I know,” said X, “that’s what’ll make it such a special vacation, like staying in a wonderful home, not like a hotel.”
Disquieted by the presence of a sharp knife beside X’s plate, I tried to convince myself that this person must be pulling my chain, having a laugh at my expense. I might have embraced that notion if X’s eyes had not become as feverish as those of a malaria victim tormented by hallucinations. X stared across the table at me as Rasputin must have stared when he mesmerized the czar. Although I was reluctant to meet that intense gaze, breaking eye contact might be read as a weakness.
“Don’t worry,” X said, “I won’t wreck the place.”
Of course I knew at once the place would be thoroughly wrecked.
“There must be lots of interesting people to meet in a town like Newport,” X continued, “all the surfers, beach bums, and everything, but I’ll keep the parties down to one a week.”
“Well,” I said, “beach properties are pretty close together, and our neighbors don’t like parties.”
“It’s your property,” said X, “they can’t make rules for you.”
“Ordinarily,” I heard myself saying, “I would agree with you, but our neighbors are crazy skinheads, total gun nuts, they sit on their back patio with assault rifles on their laps, bandoliers of ammunition, you don’t want to push them.”
X regarded me as I had regarded X: as if I were of questionable sanity.
Instead of continuing to meet craziness with craziness, I said, “Well, as soon as you decide when you’d like to come, let me know the dates, and we’ll work it out.”
I had no more intention of accommodating X for a three-week vacation than I had of stabling a herd of Aegean horses in the beach house.
Evidently, I sounded sincere, because X said, “Great. It’ll be a lot of fun. You and Gerda will be invited to the parties, of course.”
“Cool,” I said.
For the remainder of lunch, we talked about this and that, as if neither of us belonged in an asylum, and Bizarro X appeared now and then only as an occasional facial expression that didn’t comport with what X was saying. Although telling a funny story, X glowered as if recounting a harrowing encounter with a rabid cat, while a dissertation on the threat of global warming was delivered with a sunny smile.
After surviving lunch and the drive home, when I could easily have been overpowered and strangled with a wire garrote in traffic, I was relieved when X did not suggest staying for dinner and then for the rest of my life. I waved at X’s departing rental car as if forlornly bidding adieu to a friend whose absence would make my world a grim, gray place.
A few days later, having returned to the East Coast, X called to give Linda five names to add to our free-book list. Each time a new novel of mine is published, I send inscribed copies to approximately 250 family members and friends, as a way of saying that I’m thinking of them and that my life has been brightened by knowing them over all these years, and another fifty to people who, like X, have been helpful on the business side of my life. The five names provided by X were, of course, strangers to me.
A few days later, X called to give us another five names to add to the free-book list. The following week, X called to say that none of those ten people had yet received their inscribed books, so we might want to resend, this time by Federal Express. A couple of days later, X phoned to leave the name and number of an acquaintance-let’s say the name was Q-who had recently been through a bad divorce and needed a shoulder to cry on. X felt that no shoulder in the world would better console Q than that of her favorite author.
Although a time had existed when I personally took calls from X, that time was past. Usually, we had reason to talk four times a year, but X started calling twice a week. Linda fielded all of this with her customary courtesy and patience, but X soon demanded to talk to me-and started ringing before Linda arrived for work or when she might be at lunch, hoping I would be alone and answering my office phone. Being sent to voice mail offended X. We were, after all, going to be partying together next summer, hanging out with a bunch of beach bums and radical dudes, having the best time of our lives.
Without giving the reason, I severed my business relationship with the company that employed X, after which we had no reason to talk. Nonetheless, the calls continued for a couple of years-as did demands for free books to be sent to people who were delighted to have met my best friend, X, and were further delighted to hear that they would never again have to buy my novels.