by Rex Baron
She touched the letters, as if they were displayed in memorial of some lost friend. She turned the knob and quietly opened the door.
There, before her on the daybed, were Helen and David. They were both naked. David was sleeping soundly with Helen's arm wrapped around his chest, the amulet resting in the center of the palm of her hand. Helen was not asleep. The door opening and Lucy's intrusion into the dim room, stifling with heat, had no perceptible effect on her. Her eyes surveyed the intruder with the indifference of a charmed snake listening to the distant music of the Swami's pipes.
She was whispering under her breath, holding the amulet in her fingers, like a blasphemous nun, repeating a rosary again and again. When she had finished, her dark eyes filled with fire and turned their full attention to Lucy.
Lucy was frozen, unable to move, stunned by what she saw.
Very slowly Helen began to smile. The sound of her quiet laughter brought Lucy back to herself. Without a word, she closed the door and hurried down the blackened hallway to the safety of the busy street.
•••
David and Celia’s apartment, New York
David opened the telegram informing him that Lucy was leaving. He crumpled the paper and tossed it in the direction of the wastepaper basket near the secretary, not particularly concerned whether it hit its mark.
The last line of the cable had read: AT THEATER LAST NIGHT. I'LL SAY NO MORE.
“Lucy's leaving the production,” he said to Celia, who sat on the sofa of their apartment. “I'm truly amazed that she would do this after all I've done for her.”
David waited for Celia to agree. It was just the sort of opportunity to feel put upon and undervalued that she so enjoyed, a chance to reproach humanity for its general lack of manners and good breeding. He waited, but her reaction took a moment in coming.
“You've thrown her to the wolves, that's what you've done.”
Celia pulled her needlepoint from her carrying bag with such force that it caused the handle to break. “I think it's rotten. David… how could you?”
“Speak up. What are you muttering? You know how it irritates me when you mumble your words.”
David knew he could always parry and counter-attack against her half-hearted jabs of dissatisfaction, winning the point and the match with this single move.
But Celia did not retreat as expected.
“Don't you dare try to throw me off balance with your superiority,” she said. “It's hardly the issue here. You're just trying to cover up for the ridiculous attention you're paying that chorus girl, and stabbing Lucy in the back to do it.”
David adopted a more plaintive tone.
“I simply contracted the girl based on the word of Jesse Lasky, who seems to think she has talent and the makings of a star. It will be good for the opera.”
Celia gave him a disapproving look he had never seen before. She jabbed her embroidery needle into the defenseless hoop of cloth in her hand.
“Dragging that woman here as a bit player is one thing, but to have her stand in for Lucy is an outrage. Honestly David, I think you've taken leave of your senses. You speak of loyalty and what's good for the opera, but what about your loyalty to Lucy? She's going back to Germany, and you've done nothing to try and stop her.”
“Damn it, Celia, why the sudden sympathy for Lucy? She's a grown woman… she can do as she chooses. Normally, you display nothing but a bored disinterest in her, or anything that has to do with the opera for that matter. Has Lucy said anything to you?”
“No, she hasn't,” Celia said, raising an eyebrow, “but I suspect, perhaps she could have. But it's not Lucy I'm concerned about. It's you and your precious theater. You're making a fool of yourself, allowing this little whore such a powerful position in your life.”
David did not answer. He had never heard the word spoken by Celia in all the time they were married, unless she were discussing a reference from the Old Testament. He felt a slight tremor under the surface of his world. He lit his pipe and waited, his eyes locked on a geometrical pattern on the carpet.
“I didn't say she was your whore, although I realize such liaisons have their appeal for men in your time of life,” Celia continued coolly.
David protested.
“Don't look so alarmed,” Celia said, poking skillfully at her needlepoint. “I'm simply telling you that I don't intend to let you ruin your career and our lives with it. I've invested a good deal of my life in our marriage, and I'm not about to let that slip away due to a weakness on your part.”
“Whatever are you talking about?” David asked with tenuous annoyance.
“Only that from now on, I intend to manage things,” Celia said with a cool resolve that sent a chill through David's being. “I know what your weakness is, but I also know that in time, it will pass. Until then, I intend to protect what's mine. You might even continue your caprices, although I suspect they will give you little pleasure, knowing that I am fully aware of every detail.” Celia smiled to herself, as she poked the needle into the cloth hoop again and again. “Make no mistake,” she said, “I may be old fashioned, but I believe in the wedding vows… till death us do part, I believe they say... and I intend to make certain that's exactly the way it is.”
She looked up from her work and held David with a fixed and controlled power in her gaze. She tied the thread into a neat little knot and bit the needle free with her teeth.
•••
Downtown, New York
Lucy rang for Mrs. Mullridge's car to drive her down Madison Avenue into the Fifties, to shop for something suitable in which to travel. Once the news that she was returning to Germany had reached her hostess, the good-natured woman set about helping her with all the necessary arrangements for immediate sailing on the TROUBADOUR, bound for Bremerhaven by way of Southampton.
Her enthusiasm was so spontaneous, so complete, that within a matter of a few days, the small pronoun WE had totally supplanted the word I in any description of the forthcoming trip, and it became a forgone conclusion, wholly without discussion, that Mrs. Mullridge would be joining Lucy as a traveling companion.
The idea was met with no opposition from Lucy. She found the older woman's company comforting and amusing. She had such an avid interest in anything she saw or undertook, and unlike most touring companions, who insist that one be present to witness their awe and amazement at any odd scrap of grandeur or antiquity that caught their notice, she, to the contrary, was perfectly happy to experience her own raptures and amazements totally unattended.
She had taken the liberty of booking passage on the ship, taking Lucy at her word, and insuring that they would be at sea before the week was out.
Lucy was glad that her old friend had taken charge of the traveling arrangements, allowing her time to occupy herself with last bits of unfinished business. She must drop in on Miss Auriel, who was recovering from a sudden attack of scarlet fever, and stop by the hairdressers to pick up one of her theatrical wigs that was being reconditioned.
•••
The area on lower Third Street, where Miss Auriel lived with her sister, was as foreign to Lucy as a market in Baghdad. It was equally overcrowded and squalid, depressingly overshadowed by the deafening roar of the elevated train overhead. The ominous superstructure was built above the street, like a great land bridge, obliterating the clouds and the fresh blueness of the sky from view.
Lucy's shining motorcar made its way incongruously through a jumble of pushcarts and children playing in the street. The address on the scrap of paper in Lucy's hand led her to a brownstone building from the previous century, a brace of metal fire escapes scarring its Romanesque facade.
She climbed a flight of narrow, uncarpeted stairs up toward a shaft of light coming in from a side window. Illuminating the air, heavy with particles of dust, it fell across the upper landing and the wooden moldings of the upstairs door, creating a tableau of god-sent silver light worthy of the brush and paint of any of the Dutch masters.
Next to number seven on the apartment directory, she found the name of her young dresser and rang the bell. A woman made from the same mold as Ellen opened the door and stepped aside to ask Lucy in.
“Good afternoon Miss von Dorfen,” she said formally, with a slight hint of a bow, “I'm Ellen's sister, Claire.”
Lucy greeted her with a friendly smile and stepped carefully through the narrow door.
The flat consisted of two rooms, a tidy, well-polished parlour and a back bedroom closed off by a set of French doors. They seemed ironically out of place, an affectation of grandeur amidst the homeliness of the simple furnishings and objects worn by generations of use. Lucy noticed a photograph of herself, clipped from a theater programme, enshrined in a Bakelite frame from the five and ten cent store.
The sister, offering an uncannily familiar smile, showed her into the bedroom where Ellen sat propped up in bed, looking drawn but characteristically cheerful.
Lucy proffered a box with an Altman's label in the corner and a bed jacket inside, meant to cheer up her faithful little assistant. She told the girl what was inside before she had a chance to open it, explaining that she could not bear the suspense of waiting for a reaction.
“At least, this way,” Lucy explained, “you can decide ahead of time to look surprised or hide your disappointment if it is not to your taste.” But Ellen found the jacket very much to her taste. She held it to her cheek and called for her sister to come and feel how fine the fabric was to the touch.
“Oh, and I have set aside a small credit for you at the art supply shop on Bleeker Street,” Lucy added with a benevolent smile. “I thought it might be nice for you to have some pastels or some drawing things to help pass the time of your convalescence.”
There was an unspoken understanding that neither Lucy nor her dresser would bemoan the fact that Miss Auriel would not be accompanying her abroad as had been promised. Her illness would not allow it, and the recovery time was estimated to run into weeks, if not months, before she was entirely well.
“What I think I'll miss seeing the most are the cathedrals,” Ellen sighed. “But one day, I'm sure, I'll travel around and do watercolors of each of them, in the proper sequence, as if I were a pilgrim on a holy quest.”
Lucy patted the young girl's hand.
“I have a lovely spot in my drawing room in Germany that is perfect for the painting of the archangel from the ceiling that you gave to me. It will look out over a shrine of Saint Sebastian, toward the mountains.”
Lucy left without mentioning the money she had put in an account to insure that her young friend might have her trip abroad at a later date.
She left the sunless area of Downtown and instructed the driver to take her to the hairdresser's on upper Fifth Avenue.
•••
Inside the shop, beautiful women waited for the treatments and the pampering that made them feel even more beautiful, the intangible sensation that, above all else, served as a testimonial to money well spent.
As Lucy entered, a noticeable hush fell over the Patrician patrons and her eyes fell at once upon Helen, sitting in a hairdresser’s chair, her raven hair straggling down her back in thick wet ringlets.
Helen caught Lucy's reflection in the mirror in front of her and made the first move.
“Lucy, dear,” she said with exaggerated mockery, “I hear you're giving up our little opera and the whole country with it. Such a pity, especially after David, and all of us, hoped you might have a career here.”
The ladies, waiting in a row under the permanent wave machines and dryers, carefully listened from behind their movie magazines, peeling back the rubber caps over their wet hair or loosening the cotton batting from around their ears so as not to miss a word of the fortunate encounter.
“Yes, I'm going back to Germany,” Lucy answered coldly. “I have no stomach for the ruthlessness and cheapness of this place.”
“Going back for a rest, I suppose, to strengthen those aristocratic frayed nerves of yours. You know, of course, I'll probably be taking your part.”
Helen still did not turn to face Lucy, but continued to speak to the reflection in the glass.
“That madness is David's doing, but it doesn't concern me now. I'm going back to a season of my own, especially created for me in Berlin. What you do to David is his own affair. He has been warned but won't listen to me. I tried to tell him about the amulet and what you did to Paulo, but he won't hear it.”
Helen laughed.
“That's right. It only goes to show you who has the most influence with these men.”
She cast a knowing glance toward the battery of women who sat shamelessly enthralled.
“But they don't know what you are,” Lucy answered, still glowering at the face in the mirror. “They have no real idea how you control them. It's not only with your body, but with the powers you call up from Satan himself, to manipulate and destroy, to get whatever you want. I recognized the markings on the amulet the moment I saw it and I knew who was behind it. They won't listen when I warn them, but I know what you are.”
Helen looked to her jury of onlookers under the dryers for sympathy.
“The woman's mad,” she said, “I gave a few trinkets to my friends as a gesture of gratitude for their help. I ask you is there anything wrong with that?”
“I can't stop you. God knows I would if I could, but I can't stay and watch you destroy everyone in your path.”
“That's right,” Helen said, swiveling the chair so the two were face to face. “You run back to Germany where you belong, check into a sanitarium or wherever they put tired out, over-stressed little divas these days. You're crazy, do you understand? Everything you're saying is crazy. You can accuse me all you like, of anything you like, and I'll deny it. Even David said you were running out of steam, all nervous and confused, whining around all the time about anything that didn't go your way. Well, I'm used to making things turn out my way without help from a Prussian Prince or my boss’s wife. You're too soft to stay on top for long. What used to be your career is now my career. So go home, run back and check into the looney bin where you belong and get out of my way.”
The words cut into Lucy, tearing open wounds of anger and the shame of failure. She thought of Paulo and the love that was only a lie.
She heard Helen cackling, and before she realized what she was doing, Lucy had grabbed her by her wet hair and pulled her up out of the chair. She raised her hand and silenced the shrieking woman with a blow across the face. A gasp went up from the onlookers, wide-eyed in disbelief. She clawed at Helen’s wet hair with her fingers and threw her down on the floor in a burst of rage.
Helen let out a scream of protest, like a wild animal that had been caught off guard, and blocked her face with her hand as Lucy rumpled her long wet hair into a tangled knot. Two of the women hairdressers were required to pull the angry German from her shrinking rival.
Helen narrowed her eyes and glared as Lucy stormed from the shop, leaving the attendant behind holding her reconditioned wig and the bill. As the door slammed behind her, rattling the glass, one of the ladies under the dryers remarked, “That girl certainly knows how to take care of herself. Well, I suppose that'll be the end of that.”
Helen's face contorted in anger as she pulled at her knotted hair with her fingers. “No,” she hissed with hatred, “I haven't finished with her yet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Troubadour, at sea
After two more days of furious packing, avoiding everyone, Lucy finally mounted the dazzling white gangway of the TROUBADOUR. A single telephone call to Celia, right before she boarded, had been her only concession to civility. She listened closely as they said goodbye, for some telltale sign that Celia had found out about David and Helen. She knew that she would have been a better friend if she had told her what she saw that night at the theatre, but there was something in the older woman's voice that made her believe things were moving along exactly as Celia had planned. Luc
y decided to hold her tongue.
She had had enough of Helen and her evil magic. She had locked in combat with the villainous creature and was grateful that she had survived. She was tired of seeing witches and evil ones everywhere she looked, in taxi drivers and shop clerks. She had had enough of strange power rings and imagining sinister and knowing smiles on the faces of fat matrons and hotel waiters. She had had enough of California, the land of illusion and unfulfilled dreams. She was tired of the ruthlessness of unchecked ambition and the unholy lengths to which people would go to be a success. In short, she was tired of America. It was time to go home.
•••
She stood at the rail of the great ocean liner and watched with awe as the gleaming vessel circled the statue of Liberty, sounding its horn proudly, and churned its way out into the deep gray water. She had purchased a Loden green traveling suit and matching coat for the journey, and wished that she had brought the black gloves and woolen scarf on deck with her when she came up to watch the ship depart. Mrs. Mullridge had been entertaining a myriad of exotic acquaintances in one of their adjoining staterooms and Lucy had made her escape to the forward deck so that she would not have to make needless small talk with a roomful of strangers. She rubbed her hands together against the February chill, and felt glad to turn her back on all the promises that America had failed to fulfill.
She was away at last, on her way home. Yet, she wondered if she were going as a failure. How unlike her namesake, Saint Lucy the immovable, the patron saint of vision and light she was. When denounced as a Christian and ordered to be cast in the flames by Emperor Diocletian, the sainted virgin grew such strength, by focusing her eyes on a vision of God, that ten men using ropes around her neck and legs could not move her.