by Frank Deford
6
“Think carefully now, Bucky. Did you ever see this painting before?” He shook his head vehemently. “Are you sure? A lot of times we find that somebody saw something way back—even early in childhood—and it made a deep impression in the subconscious, so that it came out years later in some unusual fashion—like this.”
“Look, did I see it in some old schoolbook? It’s possible. But, hey, it’s not the friggin’ Mona Lisa.”
“Ever hear about Venus and Adonis?”
“Well, like everybody, I know she’s the goddess of love, and he’s the ultimate hunk. But, no, I never knew Venus and Adonis were gettin’ it on.”
Nina had to smile; she’d never quite thought of the gang from Mount Olympus gettin’ it on. “Well, how ’bout Rubens?”
“Painted fat ladies, all I knew.” He snuck a peek back at the painting. “I guess Constance was a little chubbier in that life.”
“It was the style,” Nina said. “But hey, more for a guy to love.”
He laughed, momentarily his old self. “Now me, of course, Nina. Get a load of me. I was a real piece of work then.”
“Yeah, a real studmuffin.” Nina turned back then, to look again at the painting. “I don’t remember the story. Did you ever know it?”
“Hey, Nina, I’m telling you. I didn’t know Rubens, I didn’t know the painting, I didn’t know the story. I swear, all I know is what I made myself read in that little notice posted on the wall.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, you gotta start with the little kid up there, tuggin’ at Adonis’s leg. That’s Cupid.”
“I could guess that,” Nina said. Cupid was blond and rosy-cheeked and also tubby like Venus. He had wings and—the dead giveaway—his bow and arrows lay at his feet. He was looking up at Adonis, pleading with his eyes, his fat little arms wrapped around one of Adonis’s massive thighs.
“Yeah, everybody knows Cupid from Valentines. And anyway, the deal is that he’s been dickin’ around, like little kids do, and one of his love-potion arrows accidentally grazed Venus. Now, she’s a goddess, but Adonis is only mortal. The sonuvabitch might have been built like a god, but he was still just another guy.”
“Early Schwartzenegger.”
“Yeah. Only here’s where the plot thickens. Venus just happened to be staring at that great bod when she got nicked by Cupid’s arrow. So she absolutely loses it over the guy. But still, she’s a goddess, so she could tell the future, and she knows that lover-boy is gonna get killed if he goes out on a boar hunt.”
“So, that’s the moment that Rubens painted,” Nina said, pointing at the picture.
Bucky said, “Exactly,” but he still kept his eyes turned away. “See, Adonis has got this pretty, naked lady pleading with him to stay with her, but he won’t listen.”
“Just like a man.”
“And, sure enough, he was killed by a boar.”
“The original tragic love story,” Nina said. She stared hard at the painting, searching for clues, trying to comprehend it all.
Suddenly, though, Bucky grabbed her hand again. “Look, I’m sorry,” he gasped, “but I gotta get outta here. I’ve never even been able to stay this long.”
“I understand,” Nina said, and keeping hold of his hand, she guided him the other way out of the gallery, into the eighteenth-century paintings, then through a maze of other rooms. They moved so rapidly, with such focus just on getting away, that neither of them noticed the tall, gray-haired woman in a most fashionable flowered spring chapeau, who had been sneaking peeks at them from the next gallery . In fact, so quickly did Nina and Bucky move that it was all the woman could do to turn away and hide her face, pretending to study a Dürer.
Past the woman, they rushed through the elegant British portraits, out to the top of the great stairs. “Hey, where ya takin’ me?” Bucky cried out.
“Just hang on for the ride,” Nina replied, and they flew down the steps, made a U-turn at the bottom, back through the European Sculpture Court to an elevator. They piled on, and when the doors opened, Bucky was surprised to be outside on the Roof Garden that overlooked the museum’s Egyptian obelisk and then all of Central Park beyond, green and thick with trees.
“Hey, this is really gorgeous,” Bucky said.
Nina was pleased. Bucky seemed to be returning to his more normal effervescent state. She let go of his hand and let him just drift around, wandering through the statues, gazing over the park, looking out to the city. Still, he didn’t say anything. Eventually, they found their way to the south end of the garden, past a bulky black statue called Standing Woman, to where, on the Fifth Avenue side, a little peninsula extended out from the rest of the garden. They plunked themselves down on one of the benches. But it was a long time before Bucky finally looked at Nina and said, “You think I’m loony-tunes, don’t you?”
“No, but I can tell that something in that gallery affected you in a very…uh, unusual way.”
“But you don’t believe me, do you?”
“Bucky, please understand: what you’re telling me is not exactly easy to believe. It’s not just that it’s a fantastic story. To me, it’s even more complicated. I’m devoted to a religion that doesn’t espouse the concept of reincarnation. If I accept your, uh, your adventure in time, I have to question the most basic beliefs of my own faith.”
“Yeah, that’s one reason I wanted you.”
Nina looked up sharply, curiously. Once again, Bucky had said something about her which at least seemed to indicate a personal knowledge that he shouldn’t own. But it was innocent enough, and for the moment, she let the matter pass again. Instead: “Have you told Constance about this?”
“No, I swore to you. We haven’t talked since that one day—February eleventh. Besides, I wanted to talk to someone like you first.”
“All right, Mr. Buckingham, this is hardly the place to offer any diagnosis, but given your state of mind, it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t at least venture some thoughts. Just understand this is instinctive, shoot-from-the-hip. Okay?”
“I won’t hold you to it.”
“Good. All right,” Nina began, “you have had, in your life, a huge emotional upheaval with Constance. I’m not about to advise you on that subject. I’m not a preacher, I’m not Dear Abby, and I’m not a horoscope. But, whatever, this attraction is obviously tearing at you. Now, you and Constance—you’re what I call a retro-romance. It’s not that unusual. Typically, it involves a man and a woman—usually just about your age—who were high school or college sweethearts, and they meet again, and—”
“But Connie and I were never sweethearts.”
“All right, all right—it’s not a classic retro-romance. But you’re back with somebody you were in love with once, and it evokes what you remember as the good old days—when all of life was summer at the Jersey shore. But now it’s mortgages and an advertiser who doesn’t buy your pages and a marriage that isn’t all hearts and flowers. But, ah, the old girlfriend. She was perfect then. It’s easy to convince yourself that everything will be glorious again if you just take up with the angel from the past.”
“That’s what you think?”
“I told you this was a quick read. But this situation is not uncommon. Adonis and Venus is uncommon. Bucky and Constance isn’t. And to be sure, your situation is even more pure, more idealistic, because Constance was never more than a sweet dream to you.” Bucky nodded. Nina went on. “And I’ll acknowledge that if we forget for the moment the rather essential complication that you both happen to be married to other people, then you and Constance make a very compelling love story. I know you believe that, Bucky.”
“I really do.”
“I know. And when you add to that this deep—very real—sense you possess that you two are somehow, as we say, ‘meant for each other,’ then I can see how y
ou could, in your mind, make this leap into other lives. And what better lever for your dreams than Venus and Adonis, as painted by that romantic master, Mr. Rubens? You walk in, you see—”
“Nina, damn it, I told you: I didn’t even know the story. I had the feelings even before I got near the painting.”
“Okay, okay. A point taken. But, Bucky, you were upset by the business deal gone wrong, you are carrying this retro-romance around, it is a very romantic scene, you did recognize Cupid, and taken together it was somehow enough to convince you of this journey through the centuries.”
“You do think I’m loony-tunes.”
Nina shook her head vigorously. “No, you’re missing the point. I think you’re one of the sanest people I’ve ever met in my life—which is precisely what makes everything you tell me sound so damn persuasive.”
Quickly then, he snapped at her, “Okay, hypnotize me, Nina.”
“Why?”
“You know. Maybe you can take me back to the seventeenth century, to Amsterdam, to Rubens.”
Ah. So that was where the fascination with hypnosis came from. Nina nodded, and replied, “Really now, Bucky, you make it sound so simple. Take me back! As easy as take me back to the mall. Take me back to that good Italian restaurant. Come on. If it was that easy, and if we really do live again and again, then that’s all we’d do: go back. It’d replace television.”
“All right. I know. But how many sane people—You said I was sane.”
“In a moment of weakness.”
“How many sane people ever get these feelings I have? You know, besides Shirley MacLaine.” He chuckled at that. So did she. And of course, that sort of humor was what made Bucky so damn much more convincing. Those patients of Nina’s who were acting, or just laying it on thick, always gave themselves away by being too intense by half.
“Look, Bucky—okay, I have hypnotized some people. But I told you: mostly to try and help deal with some physical pain. Or I’ve tried to stop someone from eating compulsively. Or smoking.”
“And you’ve had some success,” he interjected—a statement, more than a question.
“Well, yes, I have. And yes, I have helped people go back into their past to try and find out why certain things upset them. But never—never—has anybody I’ve hypnotized starting talking about a past life.”
He leaned forward, with that mischievous old look in his eye. “All the more reason to believe it, if I do make it.” Nina shrugged at that. “Hey, come on, what’s to lose?” he fairly cried out.
“All right, Bucky, I will think about it.”
“Thank you, Nina,” he said, and he reached over and took one of her hands and held it in both of his. There was nothing improper in the gesture, for Nina could sense the genuine gratitude that flowed with his touch.
Still, she knew she shouldn’t have accepted even such a benign clasp so easily. Damn, Bucky, damn you. He had taken her over the line again, to where she no longer quite knew whether she was his doctor or his friend…or God knows what she wanted to be. The trouble—and Nina recognized it—was that it was not a matter of her hands briefly touching his. Rather, it was a matter of her whole self being so entangled with this man and his bizarre story.
And Nina was the one who was the psychiatrist.
Bucky dropped her hand then, but went on, so sincerely, “Just to reveal myself to anyone—that’s why I had to be certain that I could trust you. I guess, in a way, I was examining you more than you were me. If I was going to tell you all this crazy stuff about me, I had to be so sure about you. I had to—”
Suddenly, something seemed to register with Nina. Something was wrong, something out of whack. “Bucky? Did you check up on me?” But even before he could answer, she recoiled—she knew—and then she raised her voice—more shrill, more accusatory. “Did you have someone spy on me?”
“Well, sure, you know, just the usual kinda background check—computers, records. Hey, Nina, I hadda be sure. I couldn’t talk to just any Tom, Dick, or Harry about this stuff. I never before—”
“You common…you, you,” Nina hissed, rising from beside him—and caring not at all that everybody there turned to look at her. “That creep of yours broke into my office the other night.”
“No, no, Nina. He’s not that sorta snoop.”
Nina had her hands on her hips now, glaring down at Bucky. She had to glare. She had to keep her anger in a grimace, or otherwise she knew she’d start to cry. “No. No, it’s not done that way, Mr. Buckingham. No—you’re way out of line, buster. And you can find somebody else to give you the green light so you can tiptoe through the ages with a little pussy on the side.”
Jesus, Nina thought: pussy. Did I actually say pussy? Did I actually say it out loud on the Roof Garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art?
Oh well.
At least that made it easier for her to turn her back on Buckingham and bolt away, past the grotesque statue of Standing Woman, under the arbor, through the glass door, to the elevator. She could feel everyone staring at her. And snickering. It must have looked like the poor older woman had…oh, to hell with how it looked. Nina never even glanced back at Bucky. She never relaxed her formidable pose. She strode onto the elevator.
Even when she got off on the first floor her face was still frozen in fury. She tore down the corridor—so fast, in fact, that her appearance caught by surprise that tall, gray-haired woman in the most fashionable spring chapeau. As a consequence, when the stranger turned quickly away from Nina as she rushed by, that action called attention to itself. And to the woman. Nina looked over at her. But she didn’t know her, so she didn’t slow her gait.
Still, even as she hurried along, through the Italian piazza, towards the Great Hall, to escape out to Fifth Avenue, even as she gritted her teeth, even as her eyes misted up, even as she cursed Bucky under her breath, even then, there was a part of Nina that longed to detour, that yearned to go back up to gallery twenty-seven, back there to visit with Venus and Adonis again, to study them and to try—try!—to understand. Nina had to force herself to stay the course, to hurry down the steps, out into that world that was, for sure, the here and now.
7
The huge bouquet was waiting for Nina the next morning. Hardly breaking stride, she plucked the note from the flowers and pitched it into the trash basket. “I want these out of here immediately,” she told Roseann. “Itsky-outsky.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“And when Mr. Buckingham calls, and he will, you are to advise him that I will not speak with him, now or ever, nor will I respond to any letters, faxes, email…or carrier pigeons. And Roseann.…”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Don’t worry about being courteous to him, either.”
Stepping then into her own office and closing the door behind her, Nina lunged for the telephone. She knew that if she hesitated, even for a moment, she would lose her nerve. Bang-bang, she punched the seven digits.
Two rings. No, he’s probably not there. Three. He is not going to answer. If it’s four, it’s surely going to be a phone machine. What then? Hang up and call back later? Leave a message and hope that he’ll call back? The fourth ring. That awful, demanding fourth ring. A click. His voice. “Hello, you’ve reached Hugh Venable. I’m sorry—”
Nina fell to her seat, squirming. Amazing. It was the first time she’d heard that voice in five years. Surely, she’d always assumed she would bump into him. Excuse me: bunk into him—it’s New York. God knows she bunked into everybody she didn’t want to bunk into. But no. “…I’m away from my desk right now, but if…”
Just the way the words tumbled out. The timbre. Hugh Venable could recite the alphabet and send chills down Nina Winston’s back. Hugh Venable could say, “…you’ll leave a message, I’ll get right back to you,” and she would swoon. “At the beep.”
; It beeped. She panicked. Go on, go on, her little voice told Nina, you’re not a goddamn teenager. Okay. So, she heard her big grown-up voice say out loud, “Hugh. Surprise. It’s Nina (quickly, add) Winston. I hope this isn’t out of order of me, but I just…” (Go on, Nina, go on. You’ve identified yourself.) “…and I just, uh, have had something come up—professional, Hugh—nothing personal at all…” (No, you didn’t have to add that. That was too defensive. Go on, go on—and be casual.)
“And I’d just love to touch base, see if you’re alive and well. Okay? Thanks. And the drinks are on me.” (No, no, you weren’t supposed to add that. Too social. Not until he says, let’s meet somewhere. You giddy little girl. Quick—don’t end on that. So…) “Bye for now.” (God, that could only have been worse if you’d ended up saying “Ciao.”)
Of course, if only Nina had known:
Hugh Venable walked into his office just as his own message ended. He started to reach for the phone. But then he heard Nina’s voice. And he froze, until out loud, this is what he whispered to her voice: “Still, the sound of all the nightingales in heaven.” And when her message was ended, he only listened to her words again. “Damn you, Nina,” Hugh said at last, “you weren’t supposed to do that.” But even then, he knew he’d call her back—and, in fact, it only took him four more hours and a Bloody Mary at lunch for him to work up the nerve.
In the meantime, Roseann informed Nina that (of course) Bucky had telephoned her.
Nina replied, “I don’t even want to know, and if he calls again, you tell him it is pointless because you have been instructed, on pain of death, not even to tell me that he has called.”
Roseann nodded. By now, she was convinced that the young Mr. Buckingham and the Widow Winston had been conducting a torrid affair right under her nose.
When Nina came back from lunch, where she had treated herself, indulgently, to a hot dog with sauerkraut, potato chips, and a carbonated orange drink, which she had purchased from a vendor working the museum trade, another policeman was in her office. Roseann was beaming. Officer Gomez introduced himself and announced, “Good news, Doctor. We caught the perpetrator who broke in here.”