“What’s happened, dear friend?”
“Nothing serious. I may have something wrong in my ears that’s making me lose my balance. And sometimes it feels like an elephant is stamping on my chest.”
“What does your doctor say?”
“I don’t want any doctors, examinations, or hospitals. Once you get into their hands, you never get out. And forget the Belascos! They love drama and would only make a fuss.”
“Don’t you dare die before me! Remember what we agreed, Alma. I came here to die in your arms, not the other way around,” joked Lenny.
“I haven’t forgotten. But if I fail you, you can rely on Cathy.”
That friendship, discovered late in the day and savored like a fine wine, added color to a reality that was inexorably losing its brilliance for both of them. Alma was so solitary a person that she had never realized how lonely she was. Protected by her aunt and uncle, she had lived as part of the Belasco family in the vast mansion at Sea Cliff that was looked after by other people—her mother-in-law, the butler, her daughter-in-law—but had always felt she was a visitor. She felt disconnected and different everywhere else too, but far from being a problem this gave her a sense of pride, as it added to her view of herself as a distant, mysterious artist vaguely superior to the rest of mortals. This meant she had no need to mix with humanity in general, whom she considered in the main stupid, cruel when it had the opportunity, and sentimental at best. She was careful never to express these opinions in public, but old age had only reinforced them.
Looking back from this vantage point in her eighties, she had loved very few people, but she had loved them intensely, idealizing them with a fierce romanticism that resisted any assault from reality. She had not suffered the devastating infatuations typical of childhood and adolescence; she had been on her own at college, and had traveled and worked alone, without associates or colleagues, only subordinates. She had replaced all that with her obsessive love for Ichimei Fukuda and her exclusive friendship with Nathaniel Belasco, whom she thought of not as a husband but as her closest friend. During this final stage of her life she could count on Ichimei, her legendary lover; her grandson, Seth; and Irina, Lenny, and Cathy, who were the closest thing to friends that she had known in many years. Thanks to them, she was saved from boredom, one of the scourges of old age. The rest of the Lark House community was like the view of the bay: something to be enjoyed from a distance, without getting her feet wet.
For half a century she had been part of the closed little world of San Francisco’s upper class; she appeared at the opera, charity events, and social occasions she could not avoid, saved by the insuperable distance she established from the first introduction. She told Lenny how much she hated the noise, empty chatter, and eccentricities of the human race, and that it was only a vague empathy for others that prevented her from being a psychopath. It was easy to feel compassion for unfortunate people she didn’t know. She didn’t like humans; she preferred cats. She could only take the human race in small doses: more than three gave her indigestion. She had always shied away from groups, clubs, and political parties; she was never a militant for any cause, even if she supported it in principle, like feminism, civil rights, or peace.