The Infinite Plan (34 page)

Much later they dressed, when their need for fresh air and something more to eat than the cold pizza and warm beer the motel had to offer brought them back to the real world. They had had time to make love more calmly and to catch up on the past, to finish conversations begun on the telephone over the years, to remember Juan José, to tell each other of their broken dreams, failed loves, unfinished projects, adventures, and accumulated pain. In those long hours Carmen perceived that Gregory had changed not just in body but in his soul, although she supposed that with time the bad memories would fade and he would be the old sentimental, fun-to-be-with Gregory with whom she had won rock 'n' roll contests—her confidant, her brother. No, not my brother ever again, she thought sadly. When their curiosity in exploring one another had been satisfied, they put on their clothes and went outside, leaving Carmen's cart and jewelry in the room. Sitting before steaming mugs of coffee and crisp toast, they looked at each other in the red afternoon light and felt uncomfortable. They did not know why a shadow had fallen between them, but neither could ignore its injurious effect. They had satisfied the compulsions of desire but had not truly come together; their spirits had not fused, nor, as expected, had they found a love capable of transforming their lives. Once they were dressed and appeased, they understood how widely divergent their paths had grown, how little they had in common, how different their interests were, how they no longer shared either plans or values. When Gregory revealed his ambition to become a successful and wealthy lawyer, Carmen thought he was joking; such greed did not suit the man she remembered. What had happened to his ideals, the effect of the inspirational books and Cyrus's lectures? He had bored her with his idealism when they were teenagers, and she had made fun of it to tease him, but in the long run had adopted those norms as her own. For years she had considered herself the more frivolous of the two and had thought of him as her guide; now she felt betrayed. As for Gregory, he lacked the patience to listen to Carmen's opinions about important subjects, from the war to the hippies, dismissing them as the nonsense of a spoiled bohemian who had never known true want. The fact that she was completely content to sell her work on the street and planned to spend the rest of her life like a vagrant, pushing her little cart and living on air, elbow-to-elbow with loonies and misfits, was sufficient proof of her immaturity.

“I think you've become a capitalist!” Carmen accused him with horror.

“Well, why not? And you don't have the faintest idea what a capitalist
is
!” Gregory replied. Carmen could not express what was in her heart but mumbled some disjointed thoughts that came out sounding like adolescent drivel.

They had paid for the motel room for another night, but after they had finished their third cup of coffee in silence, isolated in their separate thoughts, and strolled for a while observing the spectacle of the street as it grew dark, Carmen announced she must get her things from the motel and go back home; she had a lot of work to do. Her declaration saved Gregory the unpleasantness of having to invent a similar excuse. They parted with a quick kiss and a vague promise to see each other very soon. They did not communicate for almost two years, when Carmen Morales called Gregory to ask for his help in rescuing a child on the other side of the world.

Timothy Duane invited Gregory Reeves to a dinner at his parents' home, unknowingly giving him the push he needed to get ahead in the world. Duane had welcomed his friend with the customary handshake, as if he had just returned from a brief vacation; only the shine of his eyes betrayed the emotion he felt, but like everyone else he did not want to hear anything about the war. Gregory had the impression he had done something shameful; returning from Vietnam was like getting out of jail after a long sentence: people pretended that nothing had happened and treated him with exaggerated courtesy or ignored him completely—there was no place for soldiers outside of Vietnam. The dinner at the Duanes' was boring and formal. The door had been opened by an elderly and beautiful black woman in an impeccable uniform, who showed Gregory to the drawing room. Dumbfounded, he saw there was not an unadorned square inch of wall or floor; a profusion of paintings, tapestries, sculptures, furniture, rugs, and plants left no serene space on which to rest the eyes. There were tables with inlaid mother-of-pearl and gold filigree, ebony chairs with silk cushions, silver cages for stuffed birds, and a collection of porcelain and crystal worthy of a museum. Timothy came forward to meet him.

“How luxurious!” escaped from Reeves as greeting.

“Bel is the only luxurious thing in this house. Let me introduce you to Bel Benedict,” his friend replied, motioning to the servant, who resembled an African sculpture.

Gregory at last met his friend's father, about whom he had heard so little good, a pompous, wizened patriarch who could not utter two sentences without parading his authority. That night would have been detestable for Gregory had it not been for the orchids that both saved the evening and opened doors for his career. His friend Balcescu had initiated him into the vice with no return—flowers—which began with a passion for roses and with the years extended to other species. In that palace replete with precious objets d'art, what most attracted Gregory were Timothy's mother's orchids. They flourished in a thousand forms and colors, planted in jardinieres, clinging to tree bark suspended from the ceilings, and growing like a jungle in a garden room in which the grande dame had reproduced the climate of the Amazon. While others were having coffee, Gregory slipped away to admire them and there found an old man with diabolical eyebrows and impressive bearing who was similarly taken with the orchids. They chatted about the plants, each surprised at the other's knowledge. The gentleman turned out to be one of the nation's foremost lawyers, an octopus whose tentacles embraced the entire West, who when he learned Gregory was looking for a position handed him his card and invited him to come have a talk. A week later Reeves was working in his firm.

Gregory Reeves was one among some sixty attorneys—all equally ambitious but not all equally determined—under the direction of the three founding partners, who had become millionaires from the misfortunes of others. Their offices occupied three floors of a tower in the center of the city, from which the bay was framed in squares of steel and glass. The windows could not be opened; the air was circulated mechanically, and a system of lights hidden in the ceilings created the illusion of an eternal day at the Pole. The number of windows in each office determined the occupant's importance: at first Gregory had none, but when he left the firm seven years later he could boast of two corner windows offering a glimpse of the building across the street and an insignificant scrap of sky; that glimpse, however, represented his ascent in the firm and on the social ladder. He had, in addition, several potted plants and a handsome English leather sofa that suffered heavy use without losing its stoic dignity as various female fellow lawyers and an undetermined number of secretaries, clients, and friends lightened the burden of the boring cases involving inheritances, insurance, and taxes it was his duty to resolve. Gregory's boss soon visited him under the pretext of exchanging information about a rare variety of fern, and then once or twice invited him to lunch. Observing Gregory from a distance, he had detected his new employee's aggressiveness and energy, and he began to send him more interesting cases to sharpen his claws on. Excellent, Reeves; you keep it up and before you know it you could be my partner, he would congratulate him from time to time. Gregory suspected that he told his other junior members the same thing, but after twenty-five years very few had achieved senior rank in the firm. He had no vain hopes of significant advancement and was aware he was being exploited; he worked twelve to fifteen hours every day, but he considered it part of his training to fly solo one day and did not complain. The law was a web of bureaucratic intricacies, and the trick consisted in being the spider and not the fly; the judicial system had become an aggregate of regulations so entangled they no longer served the purpose for which they had been created, and far from expediting justice had made it extremely difficult to achieve. The aim had shifted from the pursuit of truth, from punishing the guilty and compensating the victim—as he had been taught in his law classes—to winning by any means; to be successful you had to know the most recherché legal loopholes and use them to advantage. Hiding documents, confusing witnesses, and falsifying information were common practices; the challenge was the degree of efficiency and discretion you could achieve. The force of the law should never fall upon clients able to pay the firm's clever lawyers. Gregory's life took a turn that would have alarmed his mother and Cyrus; he lost most of his illusions about his profession and began to see it only as a vehicle for getting ahead. He had similar disillusions in regard to other aspects of his life, especially love and family. Samantha's divorce had ended without undue hostility; they had arranged the settlement in an Italian restaurant, over two glasses of Chianti. Since he had nothing valuable to share, Gregory agreed to pay Samantha alimony and child support for Margaret. As they said goodbye, Gregory asked Samantha whether he might have the wine barrels with the roses; after long neglect they were nothing more than dried sticks, but he felt duty-bound to revive them. Samantha had no objection and even offered to throw in the wood tub of the unsuccessful aquatic birth, which one day might serve as a container for an indoor jungle. At first Gregory made weekly trips to see his daughter, but soon the visits grew farther apart; he always found the child waiting with a list of things to buy, and once her whims were satisfied she ignored him and seemed annoyed by his presence. He did not communicate with Judy or with his mother, and for a long time did not call Carmen, justifying his neglect with the excuse that he was too busy with his practice.

Social connections play a fundamental role in a successful career, and your friends can smooth the way, Greg's colleagues told him. You have to be at the right place at the opportune time and with the right people. Judges belonged to the same clubs as the lawyers they later heard in court; friends understand each other. Sports might not be your forte, but golf is obligatory because of the opportunity for making contacts. As Gregory had planned, he bought a boat, dreaming of yachting whites and sailing with envious colleagues and enviable women, but he never seemed to grasp the caprices of the wind or secrets of the sails; every outing on the bay was a disaster, and the boat died a sorry death, abandoned at the dock with nests of gulls in her masts and a coat of hairy algae on her hull. Gregory had known an impoverished childhood and indigent youth, but he had also been nurtured on movies that instilled a taste for the grand life. In the barrio movie theater he had seen men in dinner jackets, women dressed in lamé, and four-candelabra tables attended by liveried servants. Although all that belonged to a Hollywood that was hypothetical to begin with and had no practical application in reality, he was fascinated by it. That may have been one reason he fell in love with Samantha: it was easy to imagine her in the role of an aloof, famous blonde movie star. Gregory had his suits made by a Chinese tailor, the most expensive in the city, the same one who dressed the elderly man of the orchids and other VIPs, and he affected silk shirts and initialed gold cuff links. His tailor was an excellent arbiter of taste and forbade two-toned shoes, polka-dotted ties, checked trousers, and other temptations, and little by little Reeves refined his sartorial tastes. He also was fortunate to have a proficient teacher in interior decoration. At first he used his credit to buy every gewgaw that caught his eye—the larger and more elaborate, the better—attempting to reproduce on a small scale the house of Timothy Duane's parents, thinking that was how the wealthy lived, but even exploring every avenue for credit, he could barely finance his extravagances. He collected antique furniture, teardrop lamps, urns, even a pair of life-size bronze Abyssinians, complete with turbans and slippers. Gregory's home was on the way to becoming a Turkish bazaar when he met a young woman decorator who saved him from the consequences of bad taste. They met at a party and that same night began an impassioned, if transitory, relationship that was very crucial for Gregory because he never forgot the lessons learned from his designer. She taught him that ostentation is the enemy of elegance, an idea totally contrary to precepts learned in the Latino barrio and one that would never have occurred to him, and she peremptorily discarded almost everything in his house, including the Abyssinians, which she sold for an exorbitant price to the Saint Francis Hotel, where they may be found today at the entrance to the bar. She left only the imperial bed, the wine barrels of roses, and the wood tub, now converted into a planter. In their five-week romance she transformed Gregory's house, giving it a simple, functional look; she had the walls painted white and the floors covered in sand-colored carpeting, and she personally accompanied Gregory to buy a few modern pieces. She was emphatic in her instructions: few but good, neutrals only, minimal adornment, and in case of doubt, abstain. Thanks to her counsel the house took on the austerity of a convent, and it remained austere until its owner was married some years later.

One reason Reeves never talked about his experience in Vietnam was that no one wanted to listen, but he also believed that eventually silence would cure him of his memories. He had gone to defend the interests of his country with the image of heroes in his mind, and he had returned defeated, not understanding why his people should die by the thousands and kill without compunction on soil outside their native land. By then the war, which in the beginning had received euphoric support from the public, had become a national nightmare; the protests of pacifists had swelled to shrill defiance of the government. No one could explain how it was possible to send men into space and yet not find a way to stop this open-ended conflict. Upon their return, instead of the respect and admiration promised when they were recruited, soldiers met hostility more ferocious than enemy fire; no one cared what they had been through. Many who had endured, and survived, the rigors of the war cracked on their return to the States when they realized there was no place for them.