The Houseguest Read Free Page B

in a family-owned firm, which employed serious attorneys for the serious work. Doug had barely squeaked through law school in his day, and his passing of the bar exam had been a mystery the investigation of which would surely serve no one’s interest at this late date.
    She returned the pencil to its place with the rest of those which would through lack of use stay sharp eternally. The message was simple enough, the name easily remembered: call Tedesco. No doubt the derisive “Chucky-wucky” should be omitted. In her experience this was the first message of any kind that Chuck had received from the outside world since his arrival. But then, she neither monitored the incoming phone calls nor was always first to get the mail.
    There had been no calls or letters in recent days. It was one of those periods in which one’s usually attentive friends, suddenly and as if in concert, forget one’s existence. This was far from being unprecedented, yet it was unusual this early in the season. A certain general disaffection usually appeared along about the third week in August, as if in preparation for the complex emotions of the imminent Labor Day, at once another end and another beginning, but as of early June the summer was still new, with many people yet to arrive—but perhaps that was the explanation.
    The phone rang again: no doubt Mr. Tedesco, with a revision or addition to the earlier message. But even before the receiver reached her ear the female caller was speaking, in a peculiarly ugly whine.
    â€œâ€¦ this to me? I’ve been sitting here crying all weekend. You’re hateful, absolutely hateful. I didn’t realize you could be so cruel. You’re a shit, a complete shit! … I didn’t mean that. Please answer. … . You’re there, I know you’re there.”
    â€œYes I am, you whore,” said Audrey, hanging up. She was really more impatient than angry.

    Doug naturally had seen his son at the top of the steps to the beach; there was nothing wrong with his peripheral vision. In fact, he had no physical disabilities whatever, unless some were so subtle as to elude the thorough examination he underwent annually, not to forget that he reported promptly to his doctor at the first appearance of the symptoms of even a common cold. He drank no more, and often less, than two glasses of wine a day and had never smoked. On each day of the island weekends he walked two miles of shoreline; in town he worked out three mornings per week in the gym at his club. He had lived more than half a century, and he was still the man his son would never be. If Bobby had any character at all, he would have shouted down to him. Not only was Bobby’s the superior perspective, but all of nature ordained that the younger man was the one with the obligation to take the initiative in such a case.
    The moral question aside, Doug was grateful to Bobby for staying mute. He had never been able to speak easily to his son. Audrey provided security, but Bobby made him feel vulnerable. Perhaps it was unfair of him to blame Bobby for the scandal at the Wilmot School, his son having been one of the underaged victims of the male faculty members, pederasts to a man (with the ironic exception of Hargrave Bond, English master and poet with an international reputation, the only one of them to display effeminate ways), but neither was it his own fault that the boy was so passive as to suffer such use for months without complaint—if indeed Bobby had not enjoyed it! Doug himself, age fourteen, had first punched the golf pro who once made advances to him in an otherwise deserted country-club locker room. “All right for you,” chided the hairy man, with a simper, and then Doug kicked him in the testicles and went promptly to have him fired. The experience had given him a prejudice against golf, but as it happened when the time came Bobby chose it as his own favorite sport and placed high and often