When the sexual storm was over, she let her cheek rest on his chest, listening to the thunder of his heartbeat. They lay together in silence for a long time before Clara spoke.
“I remember you now.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
She laughed at him. “And that isn’t my payment, so don’t think it is.”
He bit her gently on the neck until she shrieked like a teenager.
“No?”
“No.”
“What do you want instead?”
Clara smiled, running her hands idly across the hard muscles of his chest, feeling expansive.
“I’ll let you know.”
Fred came out of the shower as Clara picked up the phone.
“Hi, Donna.”
“Hi, yourself. You sound better.”
“Better than yesterday.”
“About that VP, Clara—”
“I want you to forget him, Donna. I’ve decided to let him go.”
Fred quirked an eyebrow at her, rubbing a towel over his wet hair.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Clara. His position at the studio is stronger than I thought. I’ve been gathering data on him—”
“Keep doing that, Donna. Now I want you to approach Sony with the project and see if they’ll bite.”
Donna shifted gears smoothly. “All right. Do you want anyone in particular to direct?”
“No. Leave the choice of director up to them as a gesture of good faith. I’ll take whoever they give me, in exchange for picking up the project.”
“OK. Now, if they’re leery—”
“They won’t be. If Stan gives you any trouble, call me.”
Donna laughed. “You’re right. Who am I kidding? I’ll call you with the preliminaries as soon as I have them.”
“Thanks, Donna.” Clara laid the phone down.
“So, you’re taking the project away from us?”
“Of course, I am. If you don’t want the project, Sony will.”
Fred smiled against her skin as he pressed a kiss to her throat. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider? I only need to shelve you for a year to six months.”
Clara laughed, running her hand through his still-damp hair. “Are you trying to get around me, Fred? It can’t be done.”
“I think we both know that isn’t true.”
Clara drew away from him. “Don’t push it.”
He took her hair in his hands and brought her toward him. “I love you, Clara.”
His eyes were serious. She could see no hint of humor in them. His hands were gentle, his fingertips brushing her cheek. She knew he wasn’t a psychopath, so his words were just a clumsy, ill-thought-out attempt to manipulate her. For some reason, that fact didn’t make her angry. It disappointed her. At last, she knew where she stood. Even without reading his mind, she knew very well how to deal with other people’s feeble attempts at manipulation, and her own disappointment.
She was almost glad he had betrayed her as she’d known he would. It had simply taken him longer than most.
She tried to keep emotion out of her voice, but she failed. Despite her best efforts and her years of strict self-governance, she still heard anger when she answered him.
“You damn well don’t.”
“How do you know?”
She tried to pull away, but he pushed her down and held her against her silk sheets.
“I love you, Clara.”
“Sony’s getting it anyway.”
“I don’t give a damn about the project, Clara. They can have it. I have others.”
“I bet you do.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and she held still for a long moment, but his lips worked on hers until she opened her mouth under his.
His mouth was warm against her ear as he whispered, “You can’t shut me out, Clara.”
“The hell I can’t.”
Fred laughed again, all tenderness gone from his eyes as if it had never been. He kissed her one last time and stood, moving to get dressed.
“We’ll see.”
5
Palm Springs, 2010
Clara watched the lights of the Christmas tree flicker in the soft gloom of the den. Her mother’s antiques were hidden in the dark, indistinguishable shapes that seemed to loom around her, taunting her. The room was decorated in her mother’s favorite tones of green and gold, but Clara could see nothing but darkness and the muted dark green carpet under her feet.
It was almost midnight on Christmas Eve, and household staff had gone home for the holiday. They wouldn’t be back for two more days. Her mother and Darren were at a party at the country club, and Clara sat alone, listening to the silence.
For the first time in her life, silence wasn’t a blessed companion, but a burden she wanted to set down. Earlier in the evening, she had watched television, but the emptiness of other people’s holidays had soured her mood, and she had soon turned the television off. Next, she had listened to music, but rock and roll grated on her nerves, and Mozart made her think of her Aunt April, so she turned the music off.
Clara watched the colored bulbs cast their glow onto the twelve-foot ceiling above her head, and onto the Aubusson carpet at her feet. She wanted to go walking in the garden and out to the desert where she could wander for hours and never feel lonely. It was cold, though, and there was a full moon, so the lynx would be out, prowling.
She stood and paced across the thick softness of the Aubusson. The rug under her feet seemed to buoy and support her, though she knew the effect was an illusion and that there was hardwood underneath. Her mother had bought the carpet as a Christmas gift for herself two years before. A month later, she met Darren, and Clara’s world changed.
She pushed thoughts of her mother and her mother’s husband out of her head. She shoved them into a hidden room at the back of her mind and locked the door. It was Christmas, and she didn’t want to think about Darren if she didn’t have to.
Clara sat down on the soft rug, running her fingers across it. As a remnant of the time before Darren, it brought her comfort. Most of the house had been changed since his arrival, but like her, this carpet had survived. The softness under her hands reminded her of the last gift Aunt April had given her, the cashmere sweater Clara had never worn.
She brought the sweater out sometimes and looked at it. It was hidden in the bottom of a drawer, still wrapped in tissue paper. She would draw the box out slowly and unwrap the paper carefully so she wouldn’t tear it. She would hold the sweater, still folded in her lap, and run her hand over it when she was feeling especially weak. Once, she had even leaned close to breathe in its scent. Her aunt’s perfume still lingered, clinging to the folds of the cashmere.
When Clara caught herself doing that, she stopped taking the sweater out of its drawer, no matter how lonely she was. She hadn’t looked at the sweater in over a year.
She lay looking up into the branches of the spruce her mother had ordered from the florist. Red and green were in fashion this year, and the entire tree was covered in nothing but red and greens balls, with red and green lights winking. Clara preferred the white and silver tree of the year before. The other had been cold, but this year’s monstrosity hurt her eyes.
She remembered the Christmas before her mother’s marriage, the Christmas she had spent alone with her aunt in New York. Her uncle had been in Germany on business, and her mother had been with Darren in Cancun. Clara had arrived alone on a plane from Palm Springs, and her Aunt April had met her at the airport with a huge box tied with a green ribbon. Clara had opened the box while in the terminal and found a fur-lined coat and hat nestled in the tissue paper. April had known that Clara had nothing warm to wear, and that her mother, Jessica, hadn’t given the cold any thought.
Wrapped in her mink-lined coat, Clara sat in the back of her aunt’s limousine as they drove into the city from LaGuardia, breathing in the scent of leather and her uncle’s cigar smoke. She watched the buildings of Manhattan rise before her as they cross
ed the Queensboro Bridge into the city.
April took her to the penthouse on Park Avenue. Though the city was just outside the glass of the windows, Clara couldn’t hear the noise of the traffic as she stood looking down from her aunt’s living room. The room was decorated in white, with white pillows and a white expanse of carpet that looked as if no one had ever stepped on it. Clara had hesitated before going in, and Aunt April laughed, wrapping an arm around her so they stepped onto the pristine carpet together.
Though it was the dead of winter, April’s house was full of flowers, and Clara could smell the scent of roses and gladioli as she walked down the polished marble hallway to her bedroom. She had brought no dress pretty enough to wear for a formal evening in New York, but April had thought of that, too. A green silk dress was spread across the foot of Clara’s bed, as if Clara herself had left it there, ready to slip on when she came home. She reached out and touched the silk reverently, and it slipped between her fingers like an eel. That dress was the first silk she’d ever worn.
April sent her maid to Clara’s room before they went out, and the woman brushed Clara’s hair until it gleamed. She drew the soft strands into an elaborate twist at the nape of her neck. When Clara saw herself in the gilt mirror, she smiled. She looked sixteen.
Her aunt had met her at the door to the elevator, a smile on her face. “You’re lovely, darling.”
Now, as she lay under her mother’s Christmas tree, Clara could still feel the soft, cool brush of April’s lips on her cheek.
That entire week in New York, Clara felt as if she’d fallen under an enchantment, and her aunt was the fairy that had drawn her into another world. Clara and April had dined alone in plush restaurants and gone to the theater every night, because April knew she loved it. One night, they went to Lincoln Center to hear Mozart’s Requiem. Clara thought it was odd music to play at Christmas, but when she heard it, the haunting strains blocked out all thoughts of anything else.
Clara’s favorite place in New York was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She walked through the museum at her aunt’s side, realizing that stood in a shrine built to honor people long dead. They moved slowly through the museum’s collections, and Clara set the pace. April watched her niece as she drank in the sight of the relics of each civilization, one after another. Clara had never seen anything so old as the Egyptian temple that stood in a glass wing of its own.
They had tea in the café next to the sculpture garden, looking out onto Central Park. They could see the Egyptian obelisk, where it stood as a sentinel outside. Clara wanted to go outside to look at it more closely, but the rains were coming, so they stayed inside.
On Christmas Eve, they stayed home. All the staff had gone to be with their families, and Clara sat in front of the fire with her aunt, sipping hot cider lightly laced with cognac. The oak logs burned steadily, and they sat in silence, listening to the fire and watching the snow fall. It was early for snow. Aunt April had laughed and said she’d ordered it from Saks Fifth Avenue, just for Clara’s benefit.
Clara fell asleep in front of the fire that night on the soft plush rug, with the touch of her aunt’s hand on her hair.
She pulled herself out of her memories roughly, biting her lower lip. The pain of her lip distracted her from her thoughts, and she blinked. Tears escaped, sliding down her temples and into her hair, and she wiped them away.
Clara looked up at her mother’s green and red Christmas tree with revulsion. She closed the flue of the fireplace to seal the dying fire behind its glass doors. Before she turned to go upstairs, she laid her hand on the switch that lit the tree. She hesitated for a moment before pressing it and enveloping herself in darkness.
The moon was full and high in the night sky. Moonlight filtered into the hallway from the conservatory. When Clara passed her favorite room, she didn’t look to see the lawn and the desert beyond the glass as she usually did. She moved past the room on silent feet, climbing the curved staircase to her bedroom on the second floor.
Clara had come home from boarding school for the holidays against her better judgment. She wouldn’t make the same mistake next year.
The empty house was as hollow as the belly of a whale, and Clara felt as if she floated alone on an empty sea. She listened to the echo as the grandfather clock in the foyer struck midnight.
6
Palm Springs, 2010
The next morning, Clara slept late. When she woke, the sun was already high over the desert, and the sprinklers were covering the lawn with a thin layer of moisture that would be absorbed by the grass and the dry air almost as soon as it fell. Clara lay in bed for a long moment, listening to the futility of the sprinklers running, and knew that without their constant motion, her mother’s treasured lawns would burn to dust under the high sun.
Clara dressed in shorts, knowing the desert would be hot now that the sun had risen. She was careful to stay quiet as she moved down the front staircase, her mother and Darren still asleep. She went unnoticed as she slipped into the kitchen and filled her knapsack with bread, water and cheese. The kitchen was completely silent without Carol, the housekeeper, or Brenda, the cook, bustling through it. Clara felt a moment of superstitious fear that she had wandered into the wrong house, a house lacking their steady and reassuring presence. She left the kitchen as quickly as she could, moving silently in her tennis shoes so that she wouldn’t break the spell.
She struck out across the lawns, watching the sprinkler system as it started watering the far eastern edge of the grass. She’d have to time her return so she could catch the sprinklers running along the back rim of the lawn. She would be hot later, and the cold water would feel good on her skin.
The air was warm already, and Clara sighed in pleasure as she crossed the edge of her mother’s manicured lawn into the desert. The heat greeted her, and she felt as if she had walked through a wall into another world. Since it was December, it was only about eighty degrees. Clara was grateful for that. Being away at school for so many months of the year, she was no longer used to the desert heat. She stopped to take a sip of water before walking on.
She missed the desert most when she was at school in Colorado. She lived and studied on a mountain, and the aspens were green all year round, except when they were covered in snow. The town she lived in was designed to look like a Swiss village and had been built to support the girls’ prep school she went to. The only people who lived in the town worked at the school in some capacity, and their families worked in the village, running fancy shops that sold chocolates and the latest New York fashions. The town was ideal for the nouveau riche families who left their girls at the school all year. With Aspen only twenty miles away, wealthy parents could spend a weekend skiing and see their daughters at the same time, thus assuaging their consciences before they moved on to Paris or the Amalfi coast, where their daughters knew they’d rather be.
Clara didn’t mind the cold in Colorado as much as she’d thought she might. Even the snow had its own beauty when it was fresh and not yet trampled by the boots of teenage girls. She loved to take long hikes down the mountain trails, when the excess of feminine chatter and teenage minds was more than she could bear. Nothing could replace the desert in her soul, though, not even majestic mountains and deep blue skies. Even in summer, when the flowers were in bloom on the mountains and she felt as if Heidi might come bounding out of a hedge at any moment, Clara’s longing for the desert was a physical pain.
She stopped for a moment to take in the sight of the desert in front of her, where it stretched towards the mountains in the distance. She sat on a rock that was already hot to the touch, careful not to burn her thighs. She knew she would be tan when she returned to school in a week, and everyone who hadn’t gone to Biarritz for the holidays would be envious.
Clara uncapped her bottle of water and sipped it slowly, watching a hawk fly overhead on its way to the distant mountains. There was precious little to kill in the desert this time of day. All the animals, large and small, w
ere smart enough to hide from the midday sun and heat. Clara smiled. She wasn’t so smart. She was the only one left exposed.
She ate her bread and cheese, watching as the shadows began to creep ever so slightly to the east. She stood and stretched. As much as she wished she could disappear into the desert and never return, she knew she would not. She had hiked three miles, and she needed to start back. There was always the slight chance that her mother would be looking for her.
As she arched her back to release the last of her tension, she felt a chill on the back of her neck. The silence of the desert was broken by the sound of boots on rock. Her haven had been violated. Clara felt a surge of anger, which she quickly repressed.
She heard Darren’s thoughts before she saw him, and she had trouble raising a mental wall against him. Surrounded by so much emptiness, she had allowed her mind to drift. There had never before been anyone in the desert to protect herself from.
She closed her mind, but not before she saw the flash of lust behind Darren’s eyes which he was always careful to mask. He stopped six feet away from her and offered his boyish smile.
“Out for a hike, I see.”
His perfect teeth gleamed in the desert sun, and his tanned face was lightly damp. Clara saw that he didn’t have a water bottle with him, and without a word, she offered him hers.
“I didn’t think I’d walk this far.” He stepped toward her and took the bottle from her, his fingers brushing her hand.
Clara held herself still and forced herself not to back away. Darren drank deeply, and she watched the muscles of his throat move. He smiled, handing the water bottle back to her.
“You shouldn’t hike out here without water,” she said.
“So your mother’s always telling me. I don’t do it often. Guess I forgot.”
He didn’t move away from her but stood close for a long moment. She could feel his breath on her hair. Clara repressed another surge of anger, masking it as if he had the gift and could read her thoughts. She stepped around him deftly, sliding her water bottle into her knapsack. He brought himself out of his contemplation of her and offered the boyish grin that had won her mother’s heart.
The Slow Rise of Clara Daniels Page 4