When Clay returned full-time to the bosom of his family, he discovered that his father had mellowed toward him so considerably as to assume his son would join him at the legal helm of Lee, Barringham and Sparks. That he had no intention of doing so did nothing to thaw the chill of his mother’s now-permanent indifference. All his efforts could not restore his former place in her heart.
Clay began toying with the notion of leaving home and going North, perhaps to New York City, where the preponderance of blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Jews would discomfit both his parents equally. “Child, you are crazy,” Mona said as he lay listening to Erroll Garner and dangling his feet off her bed. “What makes you think the world is ready for ‘the blond Duke Ellington’?” Before he could seriously explore this possibility, however, or investigate any other potential options open to him, his sister focused all attention on herself with an orgy of ill-chosen pharmaceuticals. As his parents’ sanity and already shaky union foundered, Clay had to wonder if poor departed Cynthia had it better than any of them.
Walking unsteadily from the bar, Clay saw that a pre-pubescent youth was holding a girl of indeterminate years at knife point against an attractive building on Columbus Avenue. This conclusion to the evening’s festivities seemed somehow fitting.
Clay had never actually seen someone held at knife point. Instinctively he stopped to watch; a dull thudding filled his chest as he braced himself for bloodshed. He searched his mind for some dramatic plan of rescue, but what little control over his mental functions he had managed to retain after discovering the beautiful girl in the restaurant had evidently vanished with her.
The boy, who must have been no more than thirteen, seemed a full-fledged product of the city’s harshest influences, and though the girl appeared to be little more than an urban consumer with limited charms, Clay found himself saddened at the sudden tenuousness of her future. “Hey,” he heard himself call feebly. The boy glanced over his shoulder with a smirk that reinforced Clay’s suspicions about his inability to meet the city’s standards of heroism. Then, as both he and the boy caught sight of a police car drawing slowly across Columbus Avenue, the pre-teen took his knife from the girl’s throat and bolted around a corner, leaving Clay to face her. With a toss of overly processed hair, she looked Clay up and down and then walked past him without a word. “That’s okay,” Clay murmured. “Nothing to it.”
The remainder of his trip home was uneventful. Reaching his apartment, he unlocked the door with unsteady fingers and staggered onto his bed, yawning and stretching as he listened to the night’s telephone messages.
“How’s your progress, boy?” The first voice was his uncle’s. (Clayton’s brother Wynn had given Clay a month to come up with the outline of a project for a grant he’d scrambled up “to motivate the boy.” All that held things up was the slight matter of a theme: Clay was no closer to a topic than he’d been six months earlier when Wynn had first told him about the project. Not that the world would end if he forfeited the grant his uncle had arranged, Clay thought; the idea of someone giving him more money than he had already was too ludicrous to consider seriously.)
Wynn was still trying to convince him that the whole thing was symbolic. “… just the push you need,” the voice droned on, “to do something of value with your life.” Clay sighed, stopping the machine before his uncle finished. “Right,” he said. “That’s probable.” That he might be of value to his ever-devoted parents, Wynn, the firm so busy seeing to the rights of famous addicts and deposed dictators on the loose was a winning concept, if one had a penchant for surrealism. He poured himself a modest cocktail and waited for inspiration to strike.
The next thing he knew, his slumber was shattered by the shrill ring of the telephone. The voice of Charlene Watford, who hadn’t contacted him since he’d emigrated to New York, made the perfection of his evening complete.
Since Charlene had made no effort to see him when she’d first come to the city, two scant months after his own arrival, Clay had presumed her new life in Manhattan was too streamlined to accommodate a rude intrusion from her past; clearly she wanted all traces of life in the slow lane erased from her resume. Her decision to relocate to New York had been as unexpected as his father’s earlier move to the East Coast branch of the family firm, but he’d hoped Charlene’s choice of the most superficially glamorous city she could find was the final indignity he’d be made to suffer. The sound of her voice destroyed his theory.
“I’m calling to invite you to a premiere,” she announced. Culture? he thought. (He’d never known Charlene to show an interest in any activity that wasn’t best undertaken in the nude.) Of a dance company, she went on to explain, whose choreographer she’d blown before he underwent The Change.
Her voice brought back a rush of memories. Resisting the urge to ask why she felt the need for weird frivolity or what she thought they’d find to say to one another after all these years, Clay murmured, “Day after tomorrow, then.” After a brief, intense exchange, he hung up, covering his head with the pillow. This time there were no further interruptions.
Two evenings later Clay discovered Charlene had grown lovelier and, if possible, more humorless than ever. He took her hand at the door to the concert hall, gazing into her earnest eyes. How was he going to get through the performance without snoring conspicuously and ruining all the good will between them? he wondered, following her to their seats. As if in direct challenge, the dancers instantly got under way.
After an interval of numbing (if well-orchestrated) banality, Clay felt his gaze begin to wander from the stage. He shifted in his seat, scanning the rapt faces in the audience. Several minutes passed before he found himself dumbfounded by a seemingly impossible discovery.
Four rows down from them sat the beautiful girl, like a recurring character in some Fellini movie. Was Clay doomed to see the specter of her glowing face wherever he turned? New York was obviously a mere handful of people surrounded by a great many mirrors. For no good reason, his heart began to pound. (What on earth was wrong with him?) To calm himself, he studied Charlene’s face. (Would the woman’s beauty startle him each time he saw her float by, he wondered, or would the vision begin to pall with over-exposure? There had to be some way to render her charmless, some way of breaking the brazen hold she had attained over him.)
“We’ll go backstage, of course,” Charlene said once the dance fest had trembled to its heartfelt, brave conclusion. Clay glanced across the aisle for one last look. Yet minutes after Charlene reached the proud choreographer, the girl appeared as if on cue. Walking past them, she went over to greet the most striking of the dancers, a flamboyant black man whose every comment seemed to be driving his admirers into frenzies of appreciation. Every few seconds the girl would say something and the dancer’s face would register shock, but before Clay could take in the dancer’s reply, Charlene and her soul mate would have a new epiphany on art, drowning out all post-modernist conversation.
Then the dancer flung up his hands and shrieked, “Girl, you get the hell out of this room! We don’t allow your kind here!” Taking her by the arm, he tried to race her out the door. She drew herself up to her full height, slinging an arm around his shoulder. He seemed to melt. Almost reverentially, he walked her toward the exit, where she kissed him goodbye, full on the mouth. (It was never too late to take up dance, Clay mused.)
Unable to help himself, he stole away from Charlene’s ecstasy to join the other group, waiting nonchalantly until the dancer returned. Then, at a convenient lull in the conversation, he casually asked the name of the girl the dancer had walked out of the building.
Not fooled for an instant, the man let Clay sweat out a few long moments of inspection.
Then he spoke. “You must be referring to Mia D’Allesandro.” He put a hand over his eyes as if the thought of her exhausted his bones. “The most lethal woman this side of Gomorrah.”
Clay thanked him and went back to Charlene, beaming like a fool. She frowned in confusion, but for once
it didn’t even irritate him. Free, white and twenty-four, he was at last a man with a purpose.
“Help me,” called his sister. Clay dove into the water, but the farther out he swam, the farther away she seemed to be. “What’s keeping you?” she cried.
Where were his parents? Clay thought, though their absence seemed familiar, even apt. He struggled through the water; still he couldn’t reach her.
“I just want someone to save me,” came her plea; then, fading, she went under.
Clay woke. His sister’s voice rang in his ears, echoing as if she’d only just left his bedroom. He sat up, looking at the clock next to his bed. Every time he thought about his sister’s death, all he felt was his utter helplessness to have prevented it. He rose, rubbing his eyes. The night before came back to him, and then his plan.
Research bore out that Mia was a highly successful stock trader on Wall Street and that neither of her parents—an explosive Italian father and an exceedingly refined French mother—lived in the city. Clay was surprised to find how easy it was to get information on her, thanks to the questionable resources of the family firm. On the other hand, the cost had been first a conversation with his uncle and then, far worse, an invitation to the party Clayton Lee was giving for his latest bride pro-tem. Perhaps his father’s lair would be a fitting backdrop for his plan, Clay told himself.
At last the day of the party arrived. It was the first time Clay had seen his father since his mother had bid her husband a stone-faced adieu shortly after their daughter’s funeral. Clay would have happily forgone the privilege of seeing his father again, but there was no denying that the firm’s ease at puncturing the privacy of anyone in business had proved more than handy. By all reports Mia’s salary ran to six figures, and while company gossip noted with some bewilderment that she had no steady boyfriends, there was evidence of regular socializing with the other traders, Wynn had informed him. One such enterprising drinking buddy turned out to be someone Clayton had once fleetingly employed, a young man charming enough to talk any red-blooded capitalist into a date that might enrich her roster of useful contacts.
Clay didn’t know quite what he was planning to accomplish by assuring Mia’s presence at the party, but he could no more alter his behavior than explain it. In preparation for the evening, he and some whiskey watched the end of Holiday in the small room his father had set aside for him before learning of his plan to make his way in the big city unassisted. After Cary Grant somersaulted into Hepburn’s arms, Clay went downstairs to survey the terrain.
Mia looked breathtaking. It was not hard to locate her in the crowd—something like brushing a hand through a pile of soot to find a diamond. Clay noted with satisfaction that she was trapped in conversation with his Aunt Celia, possibly the only one in the room who wouldn’t be rendered speechless by the dress Mia was almost wearing. The skin of her bare shoulders shimmered, incandescent.
“… a new job, or they’ll think you’re a slut,” his aunt was saying as Clay approached. (From the sound of Celia’s voice, she’d been celebrating for some time.)
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Mia replied dryly. Wild hair cascaded down her back (Clay suppressed a moan). His aunt went on, oblivious, expounding on the varied outlets fear of sexual expression had taken in their family. Clay interceded, steering Celia toward John and Bettina Willington at large.
Mia tried to slip away, but Clay blocked her path, taking her hand. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Clayton Lee, the proud new stepson. And you’re—”
“Lucky to meet you, I’m sure.” She smiled joylessly, slipping her hand from his and staring down into her drink.
“You’ll have to be more sincere, or I’ll be forced to call the bouncer.”
“Why don’t you do that,” she suggested dully, throwing back her head to swallow a sizable percentage of her drink. This seemed to rouse her. “What’s the matter?” she went on. “Afraid the minute your back is turned I’ll start going down on the clams?”
“Pardon?” Clay glanced around.
“Silly me,” came her sly drawl, “I guess you don’t get many brash Italians in the genteel neighborhoods of Tennessee—not even Italians tasteful enough to be part French. But then you already know that, Mr. Lee, the same way you know my name and no doubt my shoe size.”
Momentarily speechless, Clay stared into two emerald specters of anger. Who had told her that he’d wanted her to come—Wynn? Her date? “Clay,” he managed. She eyed him coldly, slicing a drink off a passing tray and downing it without missing a beat. “How’d you know I had you invited here, Mia?”
“Why’d you want me here”—her voice was steely—“Clay?” Her face was only slightly flushed from liquor.
The alcohol he had drunk earlier was starting to affect him, Clay realized. She had succeeded in unnerving him completely; beauty and angry omnipotence were an unsettling combination. None of this, however, was altering the agonizing state of arousal he’d been in since he’d first laid eyes on her in that dress—when he could so clearly have used the blood elsewhere.
The face of the girl she’d abandoned at the restaurant loomed before him for an instant. How could he explain his actions, his desire for this woman now before him? He cast about in vain for some convincing explanation. The words were out of his mouth before he realized it. “I invited you here, Mia,” he said, “to learn how you could have done it.” The slightly arched eyebrow only sped his inevitable demise. “How you could take the sweetest girl I’ve ever seen and just break her heart.”
He would have given anything not to have said it. All that effort to get her here and now he’d blown it completely. He was an asshole. He was king of assholes. All emotion drained from Mia’s face; she stood, a perfect mannequin, staring past him out into the crowd. “Oh, I see,” she said distantly. “You’re a friend of Louey’s.” She put her glass down, her voice chillingly polite. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stay.” Before he could respond, she strode from the apartment, leaving Clay with an open mouth and the certainty that this time he would never meet her again. The banner of her black hair against a flash of glistening white shoulder was the last thing he saw before the door closed behind her.
Monday, 5:48, Louey spotted Mia making her way through the crowd on the Seventh Avenue uptown express. She called her name.
Mia kept walking, and Louey called out “Mia!” again, louder, blushing. This time Mia had to have heard her, but she didn’t answer, continuing to make her way through to the next car. The other passengers eyed Louey impassively as she hurried to catch up, her face contorted, an advertisement for stupidity and shame. All the same, she forged ahead, entering the next car just as Mia reached the halfway mark ahead of her. Despite the fact that it was both fully lit and air-conditioned, Mia continued through it, side-stepping assorted white-haired women and dark-eyed boys at the peak of their sexual potency.
A little hoarsely Louey said her name again. This time Mia was at the end of the car; she stepped into the next one, closing the door behind her. It seemed to Louey that Mia was moving even faster than before, but Louey followed without thinking. She had bellowed Mia’s name in a public place; obviously all rational rules had ceased to apply. She took deep breaths; she took shallow breaths. Why she had not shriveled into a wilted mass of shame by this point was unclear. She seemed to be on some sort of automatic pilot, as on Mia went, wafting through the crowded underground of New York.
The next few cars were dim, their broken doors not quite closed; windows half open, fans stalled and silent: the external equivalent of Louey’s stifling, heart-pounding, clammy self. Now she couldn’t bring herself to utter a word, and they traveled together in silence through the darkened train.
Without warning, Louey found herself narrowing the distance between them at an alarming rate. They were in the last car, she realized, at the back of the train. Mia was trapped. Pressing herself against the tiny window, Mia seemed to be imagining herself far, far down the tunnel, safe, away from Louey.
The back of her head made one last plea for mercy.
Louey stopped just inches from her, inhaling the scent which, long since faded from memory no matter how she’d strained to recall it, now filled her senses. Suddenly shy, she struggled for the perfect thing to say to bring Mia crashing back into her arms.
“This the Number 2?” Someone jostled her, touching her shoulder. Louey turned in panic, realizing that the doors had opened and the train had stopped inside a station. (From the corner of her eye she saw Mia’s wild, dark hair, calling to be ravished.)
“I have no idea,” Louey said desperately; this was a lie, she knew, if only she could shake herself down for the information. But all she could concentrate on was Mia. She closed her eyes. Mia was wearing a fuzzy short-sleeved sweater Louey had given her, which bared her vulnerable elbows; Louey wanted nothing more than to pull them around her. Mia’s skirt was white, snaked on tightly over her hips and slit up the side to bare inexcusably perfect legs. Louey was staring at her now, frozen, inhaling. If she had any sense, she’d bolt. What was she doing here? She reached out her hand to rest it on Mia’s shoulder.
Mia turned. A pair of unfamiliar glasses gave Louey’s heart a jolt as her eyes pored over a stranger’s face. Then the woman beamed at her. Mia. Louey smiled weakly.
“Hey,” Mia said. She removed the tiny headphones which a heretofore undiagnosed mental defect had caused Louey to overlook. “How the hell are you, girl?”
“Fine,” Louey said, not mentioning that if Mia kept up that grinning Louey was going to have to get off the train. “How have you been?” The roaring in her ears prevented her from absorbing Mia’s answer. After all this time, Mia? She felt feverish. Her teeth ached. Where were her knees?
“Well, see you in another twenty,” Mia was suddenly saying. Before Louey knew it, Mia was moving through the doors of the train, which (oblivious to Louey’s internal combustion) had reached another station and stopped once again. Louey stood frozen as the doors closed behind Mia and the train started with a lurch.
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