Lance accepted the wine, swung the ankle of his shiny, tan, zippered shoe up on a knee, and tipped back in the rocking chair. He took a sip from the wine, nodded contemplatively, then said to me, “So, you’re the one Bonnie has gone wild over, huh?”
“Well...” I blushed.
“Every time I talk to her that’s all she can talk about, Baby, Baby, Baby...”
How often do you talk to her? I wondered, a flame of panic roaring up my spine.
Bonnie stood by with her own glass of wine and stared at Lance contentedly. She had neglected to ask if I wanted one. I could see her naked outline through the gown as she began to rub the back of Lance’s neck.
I hastily lit a True, a funny name for a cigarette so technologically altered as to be difficult to identify as tobacco.
“Lance is an old acting friend of mine,” Bonnie explained, kneading Lance’s neck without taking her eyes from him.
“Really?” I said, getting two or three puffs off the plastic-tipped cigarette, then flicking some ashes on my pants.
“Yes, we were in Strasberg together.”
“Is that in Germany?”
“No, that’s an acting school.”
“Oh.” I grinned and took consecutive puffs off the True.
“We took lessons from Stella Adler.”
“Stella Adler.”
Lance nodded slowly. Bonnie had quit rubbing his neck. Now her hand lay on his shoulder. He seemed unaffected by the attention. His eyes had a soft staring-into-the-fireplace look—a tender reminiscence of those Stella Adler days in Strasberg, Germany.
“She’s Stanislavsky,” said Bonnie, to help me better understand the renowned Stella Adler.
“That’s in Russia, right?”
The actors both laughed warmly. I was redeemed. Everything was going to be OK now.
“Lance is a method actor ... like Al Pacino.”
“Ohhh.”
“He just did a margarine commercial.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. Blue Bonnet. Two hundred thirty-five people tried out for the part.”
“Think about that.”
“We acted together in San Francisco, when I lived there.”
“I didn’t know you lived in San Francisco.”
“I never told you?”
I felt suddenly shaky, like a guy in a tree house who hears a loud crack. I had a sip of wine and lit up another cigarette. There was one still burning in the ashtray.
Lance smiled and patted Bonnie on the behind, calm and comfy as could be, ankle on knee. “I need another glass of wine,” I announced. “Anybody else need one?”
“What?”
I limped into the kitchen. The charcoal chip cookies were smoldering on the counter. I turned off the oven and dragged out the bottle of Annie Green Springs. As I poured the wine, I watched the bubbles gambol and wiggle to the top of my glass. The bottle was gone now. Bonnie would have to buy more. A sensible plan presented itself: I would go back into the room and say, “Hey Bonnie, looks like we better run to the store for more wine. You want to come along with us, Lance? We can drop you off back where you came from, or the Mexican border, if you prefer...”
Bonnie was sitting in Lance’s lap when I returned to the living room, her arm around his neck. “Lance and I go way back,” she said to Lance.
I collapsed into the couch. Deranged voices came to me out of the fog. Kill them with a kitchen knife, they said. Bonnie kissed Lance on the neck and then looked over to check my reaction. When Lance slipped his hand inside her brightly colored gown, she looked at me again. Then she began to unbutton his shirt, continuing to monitor my responses as if she were tuning a car diagnostically. I felt myself petrifying. Her eyes were glittering zeroes, like a woman without a soul, like a woman in a Led Zeppelin song, and the bottom of her face had receded into mist, but the expression was: Aren’t I a Naughty Girl? And shouldn’t you just be outraged at me? Shouldn’t you just kill us both in our tracks and put us into immemorial television history, either a trial or a miniseries? Aren’t I the most wicked creature on earth, but aren’t I having fun?
Lance didn’t seem really to care one way or another how wicked or naughty she was or how high the flames around my face rose. He seemed to be enjoying her breasts.
The actors kissed in a sudden raging, foaming, violent, headswaying, eyes-closed, nostril-huffing lock for a few minutes, Bonnie curled up and unbuttoned on his lap. Finally she stumbled up starry-eyed and took his hand, giving me a sweet, almost apologetic, but at the same time grim and dutiful, smile. Her face was a weird and fantastic convergence of sympathy, cruelty, and lust. It was like looking at a jigsaw puzzle that maniacs had hammered and glued together randomly. Lance’s hair was a bit thrown out of place, his trousers were wrinkled and his shirt was unbuttoned, but other than that he seemed unruffled, the same cool, striding, almost robotic Lance that had walked through the door a half an hour before.
They left the bedroom door open for me. I was numb with disbelief. I had thought it impossible they would go this far. I knew that I should leave right then—but my car keys were in the bedroom. Also I wanted to give her a chance to explain herself. Maybe it was all some awful misunderstanding, or incredible arrangement of incompatible events. Temporary insanity. Hypnotism. An elaborate practical joke. A test of my fidelity. Maybe she was on medication.
And I did not know what the rules were. I had never even been out on a date. Everything I knew about women came from sailor porno, magazine articles, and late evening hearsay. Maybe if you were a skinny drip you had to share your women with thick-witted, Mediterranean-looking method actors.
I wandered into the kitchen and found a bottle of Ronrico rum below the sink next to the Clorox. I’d never had rum before. It tasted like rubbing alcohol. I took off my shoes and sat in the couch and gulped the Ronrico Rubbing Alcohol Rum as the greedy flames of humiliation crackled over the tops of my desiccated eyes. PBS had gone off the air. I listened to the bedsprings squeak and the headboard bang against the wall. Bonnie called out her pleasure in a series of hoarse and escalating moans.
I was still lying red-eyed and barefoot on the couch when the lovers emerged from the bedroom the next morning.
“You’re still here?” said Bonnie wondrously.
“Where did you think I’d be?” I croaked.
Lance nodded and ran his fingers through his curly hair and yawned like the big lion after eating a whole zebra on a hot afternoon in the shade of a bimbo tree in Zimbabwe. The two lovers kissed sloppily at the door. Her hand lingered on his chest. He seemed irritated by her. She stood on her toes and breathed something light and hopeful in his ear. He mumbled and stumbled blankly out into the fiery, bright yellow sunlight.
Bonnie closed the door and clasped her hands behind her back. She looked wild and fearful and joyous all at the same time. Her hands fluttered to her lips. “I thought you would—” she moved toward me. She wore a dippy tight-smiled, quick-eyed, and helpful expression, a Helpful-Mom-With-A-Long-Brain-Surgery-Scar expression. Her hands flipped on her wrists like trouts ashore.
“Oh, Baby, what do you think of me now?” she said. “You must think I’m terrible.”
I moved past her