Twenty minutes later she stepped out of the bath, brushed her hair into a sleek knot, and slipped a plain white wool Dior dress over the new champagne lace underwear she had bought in Florence.
“Do you suppose I’m a schizophrenic?” she asked the mirror as she carefully fitted a hat into place and tilted it slowly over one eye. But she didn’t look like a schizophrenic. She looked like “the” Kezia Saint Martin, on her way to lunch at La Grenouille in New York, or Fouquet’s in Paris.
“Taxi!” Kezia held up an arm and dashed past the doorman as a cab stopped a few feet away at the curb. She smiled at the doorman and slid into the cab. Her New York season had just begun. And what did this one have in store? A book? A man? Mark Wooly? A dozen juicy articles for major magazines? A host of tiny cherished moments? Solitude and secrecy and splendor. She had it all. And another “season” in the palm of her hand.
In his office, Edward was strutting in front of the view. He looked at his watch for the eleventh time in an hour. In just a few minutes he would watch her walk in, she would see him and laugh, and then reach up and touch his face with her hand … “Oh Edward, it’s so good to see you!” She would hug him and giggle, and settle in at his side-while “Martin Hallam” took mental notes about who was at what table with whom, and K. S. Miller mulled over the possibility of a book.
Chapter 2
Kezia fought her way past the tight knot of men hovering between the cloak room and the bar of La Grenouille. The luncheon crowd was thick, the bar was jammed, the tables were full, the waiters were bustling, and the decor was unchanged. Red leather seats, pink tablecloths, bright oil paintings on the walls, and flowers on every table. The room was full of red anemones and smiling faces, with silver buckets of white wine chilling at almost every table while champagne corks popped demurely here and there.
The women were beautiful, or had worked hard at appearing so. Cartier’s wares were displayed in wild profusion. And the murmur of conversation throughout the room was distinctly French. The men wore dark suits and white shirts, and had gray at their temples, and shared their wealth of Romanoff cigars from Cuba via Switzerland in unmarked brown packages.
La Grenouille was the watering hole of the very rich and the very chic. Merely having an ample expense account to pay the tab was not adequate entree. You had to belong. It had to be part of you, a style you exuded from the pores of your Pucci.
“Kezia?” A hand touched her elbow, and she looked into the tanned face of Amory Strongwell.
“No, darling. It’s my ghost.” He won a teasing smile.
“You look marvelous.”
“And you look so pale. Poor Amory.” She gazed in mock sympathy at the deep bronze he had acquired in Greece, as he squeezed her shoulder carefully and kissed her cheek.
“Where’s Whit?”
Probably at Sutton Place, darling. “Working like mad, presumably. Will we see you at the Marsh party tomorrow night?” The question was rhetorical, and he nodded absently in answer. “I’m meeting Edward just now.”
“Lucky bastard.” She gave him a last smile and edged through the crowd to the front, where the headwaiter would be waiting to shepherd her to Edward. As it happened, she found Edward without assistance; he was at his favorite table, a bottle of champagne chilling nearby. Louis Roederer 1959, as always.
He saw her too and stood up to meet her as she walked easily past the other tables and across the room. She felt eyes on her, acknowledged discreet greetings as she passed tables of people she knew, and the waiters smiled. She had grown into it all years ago. Recognition. At sixteen it had agonized her, at eighteen it was a custom, at twenty-two she had fought against it, and now at twenty-nine she enjoyed it. It amused her. It was her private joke. The women would say “marvelous dress,” the men would muse about Whit; the women would decide that with the same fortune they could get away with the same sort of hat, and the waiters would nudge each other and murmur in French, “Saint Martin.” By the time she left, there might, or there might not, be a photographer from Women’s Wear waiting to snap her photograph paparazzi-style as she came through the door. It amused her. She played the game well.
“Edward, you look wonderful!” She gave him a searching look, an enormous squeeze, and sank onto the banquette at his side.
“Lord, child, you look well.” She kissed his cheek gently, and then smoothed her hand over it tenderly with a smile.
“So do you.”
“And how was this morning with Simpson?”
“Pleasant and productive. We’ve been discussing some ideas I have for a book. He gives me good advice, but let’s not … here. …” They both knew that there was too much noise to allow anyone to piece much together. But they rarely spoke of her career in public. “Discretion is the better part of valor,” as Edward often said.
“Right. Champagne?”
“Have I ever said no?” He signaled the waiter, and the ritual of the Louis Roederer was begun. “God, I love that stuff.” She smiled at him again and gazed slowly around the room as he began to laugh.
“I know what you’re doing, Kezia, and you’re impossible.” She was checking out the scene for her column. He raised his glass to her, and smiled. “To you, mademoiselle, welcome home.” They clinked glasses and sipped slowly at the champagne. It was precisely the way they liked it, a good year and icy cold.
“How’s Whit, by the way? Seeing him for dinner tonight?”
“Fine. And no, I’m going to bed to recover from the trip.”
“I don’t think I believe that, but I’ll accept it if you say so.”
“What a wise man you are, Edward. That’s probably why I love you.”
He looked at her for a moment then, and took her hand. “Kezia, be careful. Please.”
“Yes, Edward. I know. I am.”
The lunch was pleasant, as all their lunches were. She inquired about all his most important clients, remembered all their names, and wanted to know what he had done about the couch in his apartment that so desperately needed re-upholstering. They said hello to everyone they knew, and were joined for brief moments by two of his partners in the firm. She told him a little about her trip, and she kept an eye on the comings and goings and pairings of the natives.
She left him outside at three. The “surprise” photographer from Women’s Wear dutifully took their photograph, and Edward hailed her a cab before he walked back to his office. He always felt better when he knew she was back in town. He could be there if she needed him, and he felt closer to her life. He never really knew, but he had an idea that there was more to her life than Raffles and parties given by the Marshes. And much more to her life than Whit. But she didn’t tell Edward, and he didn’t ask. He didn’t really want to know as long as she was all right-“careful,” as he put it. But there was too much of her father in her to be satisfied with a man like Whit. Edward knew that only too well. It had taken more than two years to settle her father’s will discreetly, and execute the arrangements for the two women no one had known about.
The cab took Kezia home and deposited her at her door with a flourish of brakes and scattered curbside litter, and Kezia went upstairs and hung the white Dior dress neatly in the closet. Half an hour later she was in jeans, her hair hanging free, the answering service instructed to pick up her calls. She was “resting” and didn’t want to be disturbed until the following noon. A few moments later, she was gone.
She walked away from her house and slipped quietly into the subway at Seventy-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue. No makeup, no handbag, just a coin purse in her pocket and a smile in her eyes.
The subway was like a concentrated potion of New York, each sound and smell magnified, each character more extreme. Funny old ladies with faces made up like masks, gay boys in pants so tight one could almost see the hair on their legs, magnificent girls carrying portfolios on their way to modeling engagements, and men who smelled of sweat and cigars, whom one wanted not to be near, and the occasional passenger for Wall S
treet in striped suit, short hair, and hornrims. It was a symphony of sights and odors and sounds conducted to the shrieking background beat of the trains, brakes screaming, wheels rattling. Kezia stood holding her breath and closing her eyes against the hot breeze and flying litter swept up by the oncoming train, then moved inside quickly, sidestepping the doors as they closed.
She found a seat next to an old woman carrying a shopping bag. A young couple sat down next to her at the next stop, and furtively shared a joint, unobserved by the transit patrolman who moved through the car, eyes fixed ahead of him. Kezia found herself smiling, wondering if the old woman on her other side would get high from the smell. Then the train screeched to a halt at Canal Street and it was time to get off. Kezia danced quickly up the steps and looked around.
She was home again. Another home. Warehouses and tired tenements, fire escapes and delicatessens, and a few blocks away the art galleries and coffee houses and lofts crowded with artists and writers, sculptors and poets, beards and bandannas. A place where Camus and Sartre were still revered, and de Kooning and Pollock were gods. She walked along with a quick step and a little throb in her heart. It shouldn’t matter so much … not at her age … not the way things were between them … it shouldn’t feel so good to be back … it might all be different now…. But it did feel good to be back, and she wanted everything to be the same.
“Hey girl. Where’ve you been?” A tall, lithe black man wallpapered into white jeans greeted her with surprise delight.
“George!” He swept her off her feet in a vast embrace and whirled her around. He was in the ballet corps of the Metropolitan Opera. “Oh, it’s good to see you!” He deposited her, breathless and smiling, on the pavement beside him, and put an arm around her shoulders.
“You’ve been gone for a mighty long time, lady.” His eyes danced and his grin was a long row of ivory in the bearded midnight face.
“It feels like it. I almost wondered if the neighborhood would be gone.”
“Never! SoHo is sacred.” They laughed and fell into step beside her. “Where’re you going?”
“How about The Partridge for coffee?” She was suddenly afraid to see Mark. Afraid that everything was different. George would know, but she didn’t want to ask him.
“Make it wine, and I’m yours for an hour. We have rehearsal at six.”
They shared a carafe of wine at The Partridge. George drank most of it while Kezia played with her glass.
“Know something, baby?”
“What, George?”
“You make me laugh.”
“Terrific. How come?”
“Because I know what you’re so nervous about, and you’re so damn scared you won’t even ask me. You gonna ask or do I have to volunteer the answer?” He was laughing at her.
“Is there something that maybe I don’t want to know?”
“Shit, Kezia. Why don’t you just go on up to his studio and find out? It’s better that way.” He stood up, put a hand in his pocket, and pulled out three dollars. “My treat. You just go on home.” Home? To Mark? Yes, in a way … even she knew it.
He shooed her out the door with another ripple of laughter, and she found herself in the familiar doorway across the street. She hadn’t even looked up at the window, but instead nervously searched strangers’ faces.
Her heart hammered as she ran up the five flights. She reached the landing, breathless and dizzy, and raised a hand to knock at the door. It flew open almost before she touched it, and she was suddenly wrapped in the arms of an endlessly tall, hopelessly thin, fuzzy-haired man. He kissed her and lifted her into his arms, pulling her inside with a shout and a grin.
“Hey, you guys! It’s Kezia! How the hell are you, baby?”
“Happy.” He set her down and she looked around. The same faces, the same loft, the same Mark. Nothing had changed. It was a victorious return. “Christ, it feels like I’ve been gone for a year!” She laughed again, and someone handed her a glass of red wine.
“You’re telling me. And now, ladies and gentlemen …” The endlessly tall young man bowed low, and swept an arm from his friends to the door. “My lady has returned. In other words, you guys, beat it!” They laughed goodnaturedly and murmured hellos and goodbyes as they left. The door had barely closed when Mark pulled her into his arms again.
“Oh baby, I’m glad you’re home.”
“Me too.” She slid a hand under his ragged, paintsplattered shirt and smiled into his eyes.
“Let me look at you.” He slowly pulled her shirt over her head, and she stood straight and still, her hair falling across one shoulder, a warm light in her rich blue eyes, a living reflection of the sketch of a nude that hung on the wall behind her. He had done it the previous winter, soon after they had met. She reached out to him slowly then, and he came into her arms smiling at the same moment that there was a knock at the door.
“Go away!”
“No, I won’t.” It was George.
“Shit, motherfucker, what do you want?” He pulled open the door as Kezia darted bare-chested into the bedroom. George loomed large and smiling in the doorway with a small split of champagne in one hand.”
“For your wedding night, Marcus.”
“George, you’re beautiful.” George danced down the stairs with a wave, and Mark closed the door with a burst of laughter. “Hey, Kezia! Could you dig a glass of champagne?” She returned to the room smiling and naked, her hair swinging loose down her back, the vision of champagne at La Grenouille in the Dior dress bringing laughter to her eyes now. The comparison was absurd.
She lounged in the doorway, her head to one side, watching him open the champagne. And suddenly she felt as though she loved him, and that was absurd too. They both knew she didn’t. It wasn’t that kind of thing. They both understood … but it would have been nice not to understand, just for a moment. Not to be rational, or make sense. It would have been lovely to love him, to love someone-anyone-and why not Mark?
“I missed you, Kezia.”
“So did I, darling. So did I. And I also wondered if you had another lady by now.” She smiled and took a sip of the too-sweet, bubbly wine. “I was queasy as hell about coming up. I even stopped and had some wine at The Partridge with George.”
“Asshole. You could have come here first.”
“I was afraid to.” She walked toward him and traced a finger across his chest as he looked down at her.
“You know something weird, Kezia?”
“What?” Her eyes filled with dreams.
“I’ve got syphilis.”
“WHAT!” She stared at him, horrified, and he chuckled.
“I just wondered what you’d say. I don’t really have it.” But he looked amused at his joke.
“Jesus.” She settled back into his arms with a shake of the head and a grin. “I’m not so sure about your sense of humor, kiddo.” But it was the same Mark.
He followed her into the bedroom and his voice sounded husky as he spoke from behind her. “I saw a picture of some girl in the paper the other day. She looked sort of like you, only older, and very uptight.” There was a question in his voice. One she was not planning to answer.
“So?”
“Her last name was French. Not ‘Miller,’ but her first name was blurred. I couldn’t read it. You related to anyone like that? She looked pretty fancy.”
“No, I’m not related to anyone like that. Why?” And now the lies had even begun with Mark. Not just sins of omission; now they were sins of commission too. Damn.
“I don’t know. I was just curious. She was interesting looking, in a fierce, unhappy sort of way.”
“And you fell in love with her, and decided that you had to find her and rescue her, so you could both live happily ever after. Right?” Her voice was light, but not as light as she wanted it to be. His answer was lost as he kissed her and eased her gently onto the bed. There was at least an hour of truth amid the lifetime of lies. Bodies are generally honest.
Chapter
3
“Ready?”
“Ready.” Whit smiled at her across the last of their coffee and mousse au chocolat. They were two hours late for the Marshes’ party at the St. Regis, but no one would notice. The Marshes had invited more than five hundred guests.
Kezia was resplendent in a blue-gray satin dress that circled her neck in a halter and left her back bare to show her deep summer tan. Small diamond earrings glistened at her ears, and her hair was swept into a neat knot high on her head. Whit’s impeccable evening clothes set off his classic good looks. They made a very spectacular couple. By now, they took it for granted.
The crowd at the entrance to the Maisonette at the St. Regis was enormous. Elegantly dinner-jacketed men whose names appeared regularly in Fortune; women in diamonds and Balenciagas and Givenchys and Diors whose faces and living rooms appeared constantly in Vogue. European titles, American scions of society, friends from Palm Beach and Grosse Pointe and Scottsdale and Beverly Hills. The Marshes had outdone themselves. Waiters circulated through the ever-thickening crowd, offering Moët et Chandon champagne and little platters boasting caviar and pâté.
There was cold lobster on a buffet at the back of the room, and later on there would appear the pièce de résistance, an enormous wedding cake, a replica of the original served a quarter of a century before. Each guest would be given a tiny box of dream cake, the wrapping carefully inscribed with the couple’s name and the date. “More than a little tacky,” as Martin Hallam would note in his column the next day. Whit handed Kezia a glass of champagne from a passing tray and gently took her arm.
“Do you want to dance, or circulate for a while?”
Passion's Promise Page 3