Parachutes and Kisses (42 page)

“What crash?” she called out.

“Well—I'll tell you if you promise to come back.”

“I'm coming!” Isadora called from the kitchen.

“I should hope so,” called Bean.

She came back into the living room with wine and cheese to find him on his knees expertly laying the fire.

“That's a well-laid fire,” she said.

“I won't even dignify that with a response,” he countered.

“You make me merry,” she said, “and I've had one hell of a day. Anyway—tell me about the crash.”

“Well—there were two,” he said. “The crash where my family lost most of their money to the IRS ...”

“What an astounding coincidence ...” said Isadora.

“And then the car crash ... Which would you like to hear about first?”

“I don't really know,” Isadora said. “Have some wine. It's a lovely Trefethen chardonnay which I may not be able to afford for long ...” She handed him wine in a crystal goblet, and then, as an afterthought, she asked:

“How old are you, Bean?”

“Twenty-five,” he said. “Does that disqualify me?”

“For what?” Isadora asked.

“To be your friend,” he said gravely. Suddenly, she looked in his eyes and she knew he meant it. His eyes could be merry, but they also had a very vulnerable look. Was he possibly scared under all his banter?

“I want to be your friend,” he said. “I feel, from reading your books, that I already am ... Do people say that to you a lot?”

“Not the way you said it,” she said. “What they
usually
say is that I've been their sexual fantasy for seven years—and then we get into bed—and
pffff ...”
She made a gesture with her right index finger which indicated a penis going into profoundest detumescence.

Bean laughed. “Actually, I thought your supposedly scandalous first novel not nearly so good as your second or third, or
Tintoretto's Daugher ...
There was so much self-hatred in that first book. Don't you ever stop beating up on yourself? You
should.
You've got more balls than most of the men around. You're a real hero—in the classical sense.”

“ ‘What is a hero?' ” Isadora quoted. “ ‘Primarily one who has conquered his fears.' ”

“That's it,” said Bean.

“That's Henry Miller's definition, not mine,” said Isadora, “and by that definition I'm
not
a hero because I feel fear all the time.”

“Ah—you may
feel
it—don't let the fear control you,” said Bean. “I'll bet Odysseus felt fear, too. In fact we
know
he did. It isn't the presence or absence of fear that makes a hero—it's the action completed in
spite
of the fear. And you never stop the action. You go on right into the teeth of the storm. That's why you're my hero.”

“Thanks,” said Isadora. “It's nice to hear in the midst of the worst year of my life. I nearly died this year. I never thought I was suicidal, but after my husband walked out, I was ready to throw myself in front of a car. In fact I did. I threw myself in front of
his
car.”

Bean looked at her intently, as if he knew exactly what she was saying.

“I'm an accident looking for a place to happen,” he said. “I have more scars up and down the length of my body than anyone you'll ever meet.”

“I'll match you scar for scar,” she said.

“Done,” said Bean. “Let's get naked.”

“Have I been your sexual fantasy for seven years?” Isadora joked.

“No. Only for the last seven minutes.”

“You're looking at a wreck of a woman,” Isadora said. “I've almost given up my profession—and not by choice either. I, who have never been blocked in my life, find myself suddenly unable to write at all.”

“You're merely shifting gears,” Bean said, “or lying fallow for some great, new flowering. I don't for a minute believe that you're really blocked. Art is not mechanical—it's organic. You can't produce it the way a factory produces nuts and bolts.”

“Thank you for reminding me of that,” Isadora said. “I've never felt so used up, so finished.”

“You must be doing something right,” said Bean, “to be so alive and so beautiful.”

She looked at him with gratitude, if not with total trust, and said:

“So tell me about the two crashes.”

“I will,” said Bean, “if you give me dinner.”

“Spoken like a true vagabond,” said Isadora. “Next you'll want a bed for the night.”

“The floor will do,” said Bean, and laughed.

 

At dinner (which Danae had made and which was consequently delicious), Bean spilled out the story of his family
mishegoss.
Oh boy—Jews love to delude themselves that they have cornered the market on
mishegoss,
but they don't hold a candle to the WASPs in the realm of the
meshugge.
Bean's family history was rife with shootings (accidental and purposeful), squandered inheritances, family manses and antiques fought over (as in some Cheever story), alcoholism, incest, greed, embezzlement, lawsuits, prison terms, heroics, and mock-heroics. His ancestors had fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War. His immediate family's fortunes had fallen from five houses (New York, Paris, Palm Beach, Martha's Vineyard, Darien) to one—a crumbling manse in Connecticut crammed with crumbling furniture and crumbling collections of books and paintings that were all, anyway, in immediate danger of seizure by the IRS for back taxes. As far as Bean's own hope of personal booty, he had long since quashed it by his insistence on pursuing a career as an actor.

“There are no actors in the Social Register, my mother is fond of saying,” he said.

“Not true—there must be
one.
How about Dina Merrill?”

“Well, I guess,” said Bean. “One actress. It's anyway the profession of whores and vagabonds. I've never known a woman who could tolerate an actor's life. Not even actresses can stand it. We work all night, sleep all day, cavort with beautiful young women who are usually half naked, have no fixed addresses, don't wear suits, seldom shave, have ambiguous sexual habits—or voracious ones—and usually have no money at all—but love to spend other people's. Also, we eat like slobs.”

He dangled a chicken leg from his teeth for emphasis while making a mustache out of a lemon rind (it was Danae's fabulous lemon chicken with sesame seeds).

Isadora laughed.

“So tell me about the crashes,” she said.

“Well, the first is the conventional tale of the fall of the family fortunes, told by the would-be seducer to the astonished young maid.”

“Young? I'm more like an old maid—”

“Not after three marriages, you're not.”

“How do you know?”

“I? I only know what the world knows. Your life is an open book.”

“Do you have any idea how old I am?”

“I figure you've got to be older than me or you wouldn't have written all those books—but I can't imagine how you did it without it aging you.”

“Hah,” said Isadora. “More flattery. I reached puberty the year you were born.”

“Yes—and now I'm going to make it all worth your while.”

“You're really potential trouble,” Isadora said, laughing. “Tell me about the second crash.”

“Oh yes—
that.
Well, quickly passing over the tale of fortunes lost and great houses fallen in ruins—”

“The one you tell the potential seducee.”

Bean nodded and continued. “—I go on to the tale of my attempted self-slaughter, as they said in Elizabethan times ... You see, I've been trying unofficially to kill myself ever since
I
reached puberty. Maybe it's because I have too much energy—and no place to put it—or maybe it's because I realized then that my father had been trying to off
me
since I was born and I had somehow—according to my shrink—internalized his wish to do it. But anyhow, I seem to have these very nearly fatal accidents all the time. The last one was two years ago when my head flew through the windshield of my car, my chest flew into the steering wheel, my spleen flew all over the inside of my body, and I hovered between life and death for two weeks, having out-of-body experiences, while my parents went bananas, and one young nurse tried to suck my cock while I was conversing with God and the angels ...”

“And what did you learn while you were conversing with God and the angels?”

Here Bean became very serious, almost solemn.

“That God and the angels do not care who sucks your cock—but that a life without love is not worth living—even if you have fame, fortune, and lemon chicken to eat. So when I saw you at that health club and you looked so beautiful, so succulent, but something in your eyes looked destroyed, betrayed, haunted—I knew I had to see you again ...”

“Sir Galahad to the rescue. Are you one of those men who only falls in love with damsels in distress?”

“No,” said Bean. “I usually do not fall in love with anyone. I usually fuck my brains out and go home emptyhearted—but with you, I have a feeling that even if I never get to fuck you, you will fill my heart each time I see you.”

This brought tears to Isadora's eyes. She blinked them back. She was not sure whether she was hearing honesty or blarney. It was her curse to be moved by a man who could turn a phrase, however flowery, and it was either curse or blessing (she was never sure which) that she was so vulnerable. She girded her loins. She would
not
sleep with Bean, she decided—however he might appeal—or however appealing he might be. His openness, his emotional vulnerability was either very close to her own—or else he was
really
a good actor, and a bit of a con man (as all performing artists must be—and perhaps even writers?).

“Lately, I have also been doing a lot of fucking my brains out and going home emptyhearted,” Isadora said. “It gets boring really fast. I never did
enough
of it before to know that—whatever my reputation. But I've decided to give up promiscuity.”

Bean snapped his fingers. “Damn—just my luck to meet you
now,
on the round heels, as it were, of that decision.”

Isadora laughed again. She was trying to figure out how much sincerity was here, and how much humbug. Without a doubt, Bean was one of the most charming people she had ever met. He could charm birds out of trees, candy from babes, money from misers. But she was determined not to let him charm his way into her bed.

They had left the fire to smolder in the living-room fireplace, and were now putting one log after another on the blazing fire in the dining room. Outside, it kept snowing lightly and the sky had that wonderful pink-as-a-baby‘s-bottom look it gets during a snowfall. Usually, snow in Connecticut panicked Isadora, but this snowfall was warm and friendly because Bean was here. Perched in the big wooden house on the cliff, at the end of the treacherous, snaky driveway, at the end of Serpentine Hill Road, Bean and Isadora talked on.

“Why do you think you're so self-destructive?” Isadora asked. “I mean,
really?
Is it only your relationship with your father? Don't get me wrong—I
believe
in that sort of thing. I think that a man who never slays his father, never grows up—as witness my last ex-husband, Josh—but why are you slaying
yourself
... ?

“Because I want to kill
him,
so I turn the aggression inward?”

“Too glib,” said Isadora. “Listen, I spent the first twenty-five years of my life accumulating scars, too. Scars, broken bones, broken marriages. I nearly crippled myself being thrown from a too-spirited horse in Texas. I broke my tibia in twelve places following my inscrutable Oriental second husband down an icy slope in the Austrian Alps—which I
knew
I shouldn't be caught dead on. But I think I was always punishing myself because I felt so guilty, guilty for being more talented than my sisters, guilty for using my talent the way my mother didn't use hers, guilty for being so blessed.”

“So you admit it—you
are
blessed.”

“I guess.”

“Like being born with a little extra spin on the ball—as the WASPs say.” (Here Bean imitated a tight-lipped WASP accent—the sort of accent Isadora thought of as “Locust Valley Lockjaw.”) It was so uncharacteristic of him, it made her laugh.

“Or an extra shot of adrenaline—as my mother said of me when I was a child,” Isadora said.

“Precisely,” said Bean, still mimicking a real WASP. “Hey—you like that? You like when I don't open my mouth to talk?”

“I love it,” said Isadora. “It's so unlike you. You're the most openmouthed man I've ever met. But still, you're going to have to go home.”

Bean looked utterly crestfallen. His shaggy eyebrows drooped. His blue eyes suddenly lost their sparkle. Even his perfectly pointed WASP nose (the sort that Romance novelists call
retroussé)
seemed to retreat toward his upper lip as if in pursuit of sudden Semitism.

“But there's so much more to
say,”
he said. “We have to discuss Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and sex.”

“We've
already
discussed sex. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer will have to wait.”

“But don't you
need
sex to power your creativity?” Bean asked.

“Not tonight,” said Isadora. “My business manager just dropped dead, leaving me with horrendous tax problems. I have my period and I'm utterly exhausted. I'm going to stand up now—if I still can after all this wine—and ask you to go home.”