Lily, with a kind of amused wonder, said, “Lynsey, I’ve always admired you, I think you know that. If Koo can arouse such tremendous loyalty from a person like you, there must be more to the man than I’ve given him credit for. I suppose my vision is still colored, even after all these years.”
This combination of sincerity, condescension and naked self-analysis was too complex for Lynsey to encompass. She could only fall back to a safe position: “Whatever he’s done, Koo doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him now.”
With only the slightest hesitation Lily nodded, saying, “I agree.”
“The poor guy,” Frank said, and for once his smile seemed actually clouded. “It must be rough on him. All we can do is hope the FBI can get him out of there.”
Looking at Frank, Lynsey thought with some surprise, Koo never was his father, his or Barry’s. The marriage broke up too early. Naturally the boys aren’t responding the way I’d expect. How complicated and melancholy this must be for them, having to hope for the return of a father who had never been there in the first place. Turning her head to glance at Lily, she wondered who had taken the father’s role with these boys. Was there a father? Had this straitjacketed woman ever taken lovers?
Lily heaved herself out of the chair, saying, “We should dine. I come from a background where even at funerals one eats.” With a meaningful look at Lynsey she added, “And this isn’t a funeral.”
25
The knocking at the door woke Larry from a light doze; when he opened his eyes in the mirrored room he thought he was still asleep, in a dream, and that he had nothing to do but passively observe. But the knock was repeated, more insistently, and he sat up, groaning. He’d fallen asleep in one of the armchairs, in an awkward position, and was now stiff and sore.
He looked over at the bed, where Koo slept on, under the fur throw with which Larry had covered him. Poor man, he was still weak from his illness and kept nodding off. Larry pushed himself out of the chair and crossed the room to unlock the door, wanting to get it open before the knocking disturbed Koo’s rest. But then, remembering Koo’s terror, he hesitated with his hand on the knob, and when he did open the door, just a few inches, he kept both hands on it and his left foot braced against it, so he could slam it again if the person outside were Mark.
But it was Joyce’s worried face that peered at him through the crack. “Larry,” she said. “I have to talk to you. Come out of there. Why are you staying in there all the time?”
“Ssshhh. Koo’s asleep.”
“Come out.”
So he stepped through, closing the door behind himself, standing close with Joyce in the small areaway at the head of the stairs. The house was designed with most of the living quarters downstairs, at the rear for the ocean view, leaving the double garage and the utility room at the featureless windowless front, facing the Pacific Coast Highway. The bedroom in which they’d put Koo was over the garage, with another suite of rooms behind it, facing the ocean, opening onto a large deck built on the roof over the living room.
Her voice low and hurried, Joyce said, “Did you watch it?”
“I don’t understand,” Larry said. “How could they all...give up like that?”
“You should talk with Peter. He’s closed himself in downstairs with that man Ginger, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Looking over her shoulder at the stairs extending downward, she said, “I don’t like Ginger. I don’t trust him.”
“He’s all right. He just didn’t expect to be dragged into this, that’s all.”
“Go talk to Peter, Larry. Find out what he wants to do.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I promised Koo I’d stay with him.”
“For heaven’s sake, why?”
“He’s afraid of Mark, and I think he’s right.”
“Mark’s outside somewhere,” she said. “He didn’t even come in to watch the program.”
“He’s going crazy; Koo’s right. Also, I think there’s something else between them, some problem Koo won’t tell me about. He was going to tell me, but then that program came on and all he’d say was, ‘I’m done for now.’ ”
Joyce reached out to hold his forearm in both hands, looking up at him with an intensity he found disquieting. She said, “Larry, what’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s all gone wrong. Mark’s gone crazy, Liz just stays inside her shell down there—”
“The Eric Mallock thing; that must have been hard for her to take.”
“I’m afraid of what Peter and Ginger might decide together. That’s why I want you to go down there.”
“I can’t leave Koo.”
“Oh, it’s getting so hopeless. Maybe we should just let him go.”
“Peter wouldn’t agree, that’s one thing certain.”
She sagged forward against his chest, putting her arms around him, sighing, “Nothing’s going the way we thought.”
He stroked her hair, remembering this feel and smell of Joyce, surprised to realize how long it had been since they’d physically touched. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
“We aren’t a family anymore.” She was holding him tighter and tighter, burying her face in his chest, her words muffled. He felt the trembling of her shoulders beneath his hand. “We aren’t together anymore.”
“After this is over—” But there was no way to end that sentence; it had become impossible to think about life after this was over.
She raised her head, and he saw tears on her cheeks. “Make love to me,” she whispered.
He wanted to, suddenly, overpoweringly; she had to be aware of the physical manifestation. But he turned his head toward the closed door to Koo’s bedroom: “Where—”
“In here,” she whispered, leading him by the hand to the bedroom on the opposite side of the landing. “We’ll leave the door open, you’ll be able to see that door.”
The bedroom was in darkness, with the view of the ocean a kind of unfinished empty diorama seen through the wall of glass doors on the opposite side. Low massive furniture, indistinguishable in the dark, hulked like sleeping beasts on the wall-to-wall carpet. The room was large, muffled, quiet.
Larry wanted her achingly, demandingly, in waves of concupiscence; his hands trembled with the need of her. He’d been away from active thoughts of sex for such a long long time, and now sexual desire was like a revelation. He touched her breasts through her clothing, the shape of her body exciting him further. “Take everything off.”
“Yes. Yes.”
They pulled off their clothing with great haste, but then stopped and looked at one another, smiling slowly together, like old acquaintances unexpectedly meeting, who learn they can still be friends. Joyce was surprisingly voluptuous naked, with a long-torsoed body and full breasts, mysterious in the dim indirect illumination from the small chandelier at the head of the stairs. Larry cupped the side of her right breast with his hand, touching the hard berry of nipple with the ball of his thumb. Her face was wide-eyed and solemn in the shadows. He pulled her close, kissing her, rubbing himself against her.