Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll by Paul Monette

said. "Some mineral water perhaps."
    "Rick?"
    "Scotch," I said. He knew what I drank and when, but he was a little displaced, a little strained at finding Madeleine so possessed of the place. It delighted me. But by the time I had my drink in hand, I decided the strain had more to do with his perception of me, and I wanted to comfort him. They sounded like they could small-talk all day. Meanwhile, David clearly wanted Madeleine as an ally. He had guessed how angry and locked in I was liable to be, and he was hoping she would intercede for him. Little did he know how predisposed she was to pick him apart for my sake. I felt with a pang how much I wanted to be his ally against my anger. I was all Jekyll and Hyde as usual. And it made me want to cry to be in the same room with the two people who understood best how helplessly I werewolved between my angel and my demon. Oh David, I thought, let me know fast how much time you've planned for you and me. Enough for me to rattle around in my rage, or more than enough, in which case nothing will be the same. Because here I am, the man for whom everything is exactly the same. I dare you.
    "I'll bet you've set us a formal lunch," Madeleine said to him as I clicked my glass against my teeth and studied the spines on a set of Dickens. "In the dining room, with the Spode and the Baccarat and the Belgian linen. We're going to have our lunch in a magazine, aren't we?"
    "Actually," he said, wet to the skin with Madeleine's irony, "I set us up on the front porch, above the dunes."
    "Why, that's my favorite place."
    "I know."
    She had to admire his persistence. She smiled to let him know he had gained the point, then turned to me.
    "Rick? Do you want something to read with your lunch?"
    "No, dear," I said. "I'm going to be witty and riveting. I'm going to thrall you both with the tale of my adventures in the Vale of Kashmir."
    "It's not a love story, is it?"
    "No."
    "I knew it." She came up close to me and took my arm again. "That's what I love about you, Rick. You're the only man left with any discretion."
    David stood waiting, as lovely as a statue. Madeleine led me over to him. And the right question finally came to me: how had he known Madeleine would be with me?
    "I guess we're all ready," she said to David. "Should we take off our clothes, or are you going to put some on?"
    He grinned at me, and I cracked a smile in return. Somehow we had all three caught up with one another. It is something to discover that you have had the good fortune to be marooned with people who are old enough to be ironic. Then, if things go one way, you have fun. If they don't, you get very, very sad. But no one is going to get hurt. "I'll get a shirt," David said. "Well, hurry," Madeleine said. "We're starved."
     

 

     
    PHIDIAS ARRIVED the instant the last fork was laid down. David and I had nominally split the bottle of wine, but I was deferred to every time he poured, and so I bloomed with the good fellowship of an afternoon drunk. Incredibly, David had succeeded in getting Madeleine to talk about her films. How the boy studies. He knew the budgets and the cameramen, the locations, the wardrobe changes, even the problems with the nuns in the Hays office. Madeleine rewarded him with anecdotes so ripe they fell off the trees and rolled in the summer grass, where the bees buzzed and sucked at them. We stripped bare her leading men, and we laughed as she squashed the ingénues one after another like grapes between her forefinger and thumb. It was a loose, delicious hour, and I was boozy with gratitude to Madeleine. I wasn't even afraid of having some time alone with David. But then I felt safe that it wasn't going to happen.
    "So!" Madeleine cried as he came up the steps to the porch. "How long am I supposed to wait, Phidias?"
    "One thing at a time, Madeleine," he said, smiling, folding his arms as he leaned back against the banister. "I wanted you to get your sea legs. And I see David is right—I should