9
The short tanned girl with short dark hair wearing a short white tennis skirt watched Jack approach without apparently blinking in the full sunlight. She stood by a net on one of the tennis courts. Three racquets leaned against the net. At her feet was a bag of balls.
She had just stood by the net, waiting, not practicing her serve or using the backboard. She didn’t even have a racquet in hand.
“Shana told me about you,” she said. “At lunch.”
“I’m Jack.”
“I know.”
He picked up one of the three racquets. “Are we expecting someone? Playing Canadian doubles?”
“No. I just thought I’d give you a choice of racquets.”
“Thanks.”
Coming out of the General Store in the village of Vindemia, Jack had noticed a uniformed security guard using the public pay phone.
Before going to the tennis courts Jack had bicycled his groceries back to his quarters, stored them in the small refrigerator, small cupboards. He ate a ham sandwich with a glass of milk.
“Let’s just rally, shall we?” he asked.
“Okay.” Alixis’ voice was bored, indifferent.
Watching her across the net playing tennis, Jack saw that Alixis had been beautifully taught. Her legs were excellent, muscular, springy.
But either she was awfully tired or awfully lazy. Unless his shot bounced within a convenient few steps of her, she ignored it.
After a few minutes, he asked, “Shall we play a game?”
“No,” she answered. “Let’s just sit. I’m hot.”
“Okay.”
She sat on a bench in the sunlight at the side of the court.
She said, “This will permit me to tell my father I spent time on the tennis court this afternoon.”
“Is that required?”
“Required?” A light breeze blew against her short hair. “You mean, do we have to sign in, punch a clock? Not exactly. But it is well to mention casually our day’s activities in front of my father: time spent swimming, in the gym, on the tennis courts, in the library.”
“Why?”
“If we don’t, if he doesn’t think we are obeying his philosophy of daily living, balancing physical and so-called intellectual activity, he just turns colder. Then comes comments regarding our wasting our lives, sarcasm … He lets us know his disapproval.”
“I heard a cabin on the estate blew up the other day, before I got here.”
“Yes. My father’s ‘think house.’”
“How did it happen?”
“One of his ideas must have caught fire while he wasn’t watching.”
“Why would the heat be on in the cabin this time of year?”
“Was it?”
“And the front axle of his Jeep broke while he was driving it?”
“It shouldn’t have. That Jeep is almost new.”
“And Doctor Wilson was gassed to death in the laboratory this afternoon.”
“Do you suppose it was because he is an Afro-American?”
“What would that have to do with anything?”
“Got me.”
“Why would a physicist have lethal gas in his laboratory anyway?”
She said, “I doubt he did.”
Jack hesitated. “The lab. blew up. I was there. We all thought your dad was in the explosion. I mean, dead. Killed by it.”
Fixing her hair with her fingers, Alixis said: “Oh.”
“He looked rather heroic walking out of the smoke carrying Doctor Wilson’s body in his arms.”
“Oh, that’s just Dad,” Alixis said. “Put him in a briar patch, and he’ll just smell of roses.”
“Does it seem to you someone just might be trying to kill your dad?”
Alixis shrugged. “I should care?”
He watched her flat eyes as she yawned. “Don’t you?”
“Not really.”
“He’s your father.”
“It would be nice not to be so pushed.”
“‘Pushed’ …”
“He bothers me a lot about what I’m doing, not doing.”
“You starred in a movie?”
“That was finished late last summer.”
“That must have been fun.”
“It wasn’t. Hanging around a film set is about the most boring thing you can do. It’s all hurry up and wait.”
“So you’re an actress. You want to act.”
“No. All that was my father’s idea as something I should do. It’s very important to him to report to the world what a great success each of his children is.”
“Maybe it’s important to him that each of his children is fulfilling himself.”
“‘Himself being him, you mean?”
“Why would he set up a movie for you to star in if—”
“I flunked out of Ol’ Miss. What a disgrace. As if I were the only person in the whole world who flunked out of college. I don’t like school. It’s too much work. Always having assignments hanging over your head. I mean, when you don’t do the work, the teachers can get right nasty, as if it’s any of their business. Why should they care if you don’t do your work?”
“Why, indeed.”
“So my father decided I should star in a movie. I had played Peter Pan once, in a school play. I wasn’t very good, didn’t like it much, but he insisted I was wonderful. He had this idea for a movie, got someone to write the script, hired a director—three directors, actually, before we were done. The first two quit. Said I wasn’t cooperating. He spent these tons of money, bribed people to put the movie in their theaters, all to distract people from the fact that I hadn’t cared to complete my college assignments. I guess he thought making a movie would turn me on, you know, as if I had a switch somewhere.”
“Did you at least try to get into it, I mean, get enthusiastic, involved?”
“How can you get enthusiastic with everybody telling you what to do twelve hours a day? I had to work with a dance coach, singing coach, do things over and over until I was bored out of my mind. Rehearsing didn’t do any good. I was never any better after I practiced something than before. It was all corny anyway. It was almost as bad as a children’s story. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ or something. Well, it came out last April, and everyone trashed it. They knew my father had bought and paid for it. They trashed me, as if it had been something I wanted to do. It wasn’t my idea. I tried to tell them. They said I was the spoiled daughter of a rich man. The money should have been spent any other way, shelter the homeless, feed the hungry. Or to make a good movie with talent that would appreciate the opportunity. I was very embarrassed. I’ve hardly left Vindemia since. See what I mean by always being pushed? Who needs it?”
“What do you like to do?” Jack asked.
For the first time a light came into her eyes. She breathed through slightly parted lips. “Sex. I really like sex.” She looked into Jack’s face, at his neck. “You like sex?”
“Sure.”
“I mean, it’s the greatest thing. If you can play at sex, why would you do anything else?” Alixis wet her lips with her tongue. “Why isn’t that enough for anyone? Everything else just takes energy I’m happier spending on sex.”
The girl was getting warmer.
“Ah.” Jack stood up. “I guess I better go over and see what needs doing to clean up the gym.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her tanned knees. She swung her legs back and forth from the bench, watching her muscles work.
Jack swept the clay court and then went around picking up the balls, putting them in their net bag.
She remained on the bench, watching him, swinging her legs.
When he returned, Alixis said, “Guess I should go, too. So I can mention I spent some time in the gym this afternoon.”
•
“Hey, fatstuff,” Alixis said.
The young man did not speak. He glanced angrily at his sister.
He was way overweight, soft-looking. His skin was sallow.
The four of them came together entering the gym. The two men wore greasy overalls, work boots. They had gotten out of a tow truck.
“This is my brother Duncan,” Alixis said. “Jack Some one-or-Other.” Duncan looked at Jack’s uniform shorts and did not speak or offer to shake hands.
Jack had shifted the three tennis racquets to the hand carrying the net bag of tennis balls.
“The man who helps Duncan waste money on cars,” Alixis drawled. “Alfred?”
“Albert,” corrected Albert.
“And on other things. What are you goin’ to do, brother? Surely not exercise.”
“Take a steam.”
“No, Duncan.” Alixis sounded genuinely stern. Jack wondered if Duncan’s eyes were characteristically angry.
“Duncan,” Alixis said, “you’re full of shit. I can tell. You always are full of shit. Going into a steam room in your condition might kill you.”
“So?” Duncan opened the door for himself. “Who cares?”
“You could have a heart attack.” Alixis followed him through the door. “An aneurysm.”
“Shut up.”
“If you exercised instead of using that stuff—”
Duncan turned on his sister. “Shut your damned mouth.”
“—and then you’ll take more shit later.”
Followed by Albert, Duncan went through a swing door.
Alixis said, “I don’t care. Go kill yourself!”
Jack was looking for someplace to put the tennis equipment. There was a closet door. He opened it. Inside were more tennis equipment, basketballs, a volleyball set… All the equipment appeared new, unused.
Alixis said, “The boxing-wrestling room has a door on it that locks.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean. We were talking about it.” Jack’s heart raced. “What were we talking about?”
“You and me?”
“I don’t see anyone else around.”
“No,” Jack said. “Not now. Maybe later. I have work to do.”
“You agreed!”
“I did?”
“Oh, fuck you!” she said. “Go fuck yourself!”
“I work here,” Jack said.
“I don’t think I like you at all, Jack!”
“Sorry.”
“Fuck off!”
“I knew you know that word.”
Forearms crossed, she walked away from him, through the main glass doors into the sunlight.
She did have gorgeous legs.
•
“I need another six hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” Over the sound of the steam, people are apt to talk louder than they know in a steam room. They think they can’t be heard outside their tiled room through the thick wooden door. “I’ve told the old man that, time and again! Why doesn’t he just give it to me?”
Jack had checked the equipment in the weight room. No parts needed replacing. Put the free weights in their rack. Vacuumed the rug. The full length, full width mirrors on the walls did not need cleaning. He dry mopped the floor of the basketball court. Vacuumed the whirlpool.
As he went around the gym building he picked up dirty towels, few of them still wet.
The laundry cart was outside the steam room’s door.
“He told me to write a proposal,” Duncan scoffed. “Can you imagine that? Me? write a proposal? for a measly six hundred? So I did. You know what he did, the bastard? He corrected my spelling in red ink and sent it back to me.”
“Should have used a word processor,” Albert said. “They have Spellers.”
“I did. I didn’t use the Speller. I was in a hurry. The bastard! No other comment! Not yes, not no. Who does he think I am?”
Duncan and Albert had left all their greasy clothes on the floor of the corridor outside the steam room. There was no evidence they had showered.
“How much you already spent on the cars, Dunc?”
“Altogether? Not much. Million, million and a half.” Albert said nothing. “Well, I won in Utah!”
“The mirror car was the only car in its class.”
“Well, I won, didn’t I?”
“You won.”
“I mean, there’s no point in getting into racing unless you’re willing to spend the money. That’s understood.”
“Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars seems like a lot of money,” Albert said. “To me.”
“Not to my father. I don’t have his support at all. Every time I see him, he asks me what business schools I’ve applied to. Everything is what he wants me to do, not what I want to do.”
“What business schools have you applied to?”
“None.”
“I thought you had.”
“I lied.”
“He wants you to learn Business Administration so you can help him out.”
“Who cares about his business? He built it; he can suffer for it.”
“It pays the bills.”
“There’s enough money so no one needs to work at it. No one needs to work at anything. Discipline! I’m disciplined.”
“Sure,” Albert said. “Ingest and press the pedal to the metal.”
“I graduated from Vanderbilt, didn’t I? He wanted me to do that.”
“Yeah.” Sorting towels, Jack heard Albert chuckle. “You hired other people to take your exams.”
“Well, I graduated, didn’t I? That’s what he wanted. Now I want to improve the car I’ve got, two versions of it. I’m already signed up for a dozen races through this year, and I don’t have the perfect car for it.”
“You’ve got a great car. It almost gets away from you now.”
“I can handle it. What am I gonna do?”
“Use some of your own money? What, he gave you ten million in stock on your twenty first birthday?”
“Why should I spend my own money? The Radliegh Mirror Car, I call it. My father should pay. It’s good advertising. Anyhow, we’re not supposed to sell the company’s stock. I will, though, if I have to.”
“The mirror car is blinding. To the other drivers. It shouldn’t be allowed.”
“I have other things to do with my own money.”
“Stick it up your nose.”
“Stick it up your ass.”
“Go ahead. I’d know what to do with it. Get away from this crazy place. From you.”
Jack wheeled the towel basket into the laundry and put the towels into the industrial-sized washer.
He planned to ride back to the village later and use the pay phone.
The idea of calling his father pleased him. He had never been able to do so until recently.
He had always felt the general need for his father.
Now he felt a specific need.
What would his father think of all this?