SIX
JENNIFER WAS buoyant when she returned to the office from her visit to Hollywood. The secret of her marriage had leaked under the doors of the boardroom and then out into the corridors. Now everyone at Pegasus knew, and she gathered good wishes and high fives at every desk. She found a huge paper wedding bell suspended in the engineering conference room and a magnum of champagne waiting in her office. She immediately popped the cork and invited her entire staff for a drink.
Catherine heard she was in the building and rushed to find her. She and Jennifer hugged, danced in a circle, and sipped champagne. And then Peter came to wish her well, apologizing for the pain he must have caused her.
When Jennifer was alone with her sister, she bubbled with the happiness she had found in her new husband. “I’m doing stupid, frivolous things that I never would have done before,” she reported, and then asked, “Have you ever slept a whole night on a beach?” Catherine had, but she didn’t let on.
Jennifer bounced into Peter’s office to say that she really did understand his responsibilities for the business, that as usual he was right, and that she would be happy to put all his concerns to rest. “I told Padraig about the prenuptial agreement, and he said he’d be happy to sign anything you have drawn up, unless it’s a temperance pledge.” Peter laughed and promised that the document would avoid any mention of her husband’s habits. By the end of the day, she was hard at work with her usual energy and even more than her typical enthusiasm.
“Do you believe him?” Catherine asked Peter, referring to O’Connell’s willingness to sign away his financial claims on Jennifer and her stock.
“She believes him. And Jennifer is nobody’s fool.”
“But in matters of the heart, maybe just a bit out of her league?”
“I hope she’s right,” he answered. “I care a great deal about Jennifer, and I wouldn’t want to see her hurt.”
There was a note of uncertainty in Peter’s voice. “But?” Catherine asked, telling him to hold nothing back.
“But … I don’t think he’s told her everything. O’Connell is trying to put together a production company. He needs money—a great deal of it. So far there are no takers.”
“You think he’ll ask Jennifer?”
“Why not? She’s his wife.”
“Oh good God, is that what this whirlwind romance is all about?”
“I sure as hell hope not. And if it is, I could easily be persuaded to break his neck.”
They sat together quietly. Catherine gathered up the courage to say what it was that had been bothering both of them. “There must have been a thousand interesting, exciting, vivacious, stunning women at Cannes, most of whom would have hopped into Padraig O’Connell’s Ferrari in an instant.”
“Just the Ferrari?” Barnes asked facetiously.
“Well, bounced through the Ferrari on their way into his bed.”
“And you’re wondering why, out of that whole ocean of silicone and pulchritude, the world’s most rakish actor decided on Jennifer.”
“Is it awful for me to think that way? I mean, Jennifer is wonderful. She has qualities that—”
“That don’t pop out of the top of her dress. If Padraig O’Connell were a saint or a scholar, then Jennifer might well be his first choice. But it’s not awful for you to wonder why he made such a strong and successful play for your sister. It’s just common sense. I mean no disrespect to either you or Jennifer when I say that I believe you would have been a far more credible target.”
“I was available,” Catherine said. “I saw him decide on the gangplank with Jennifer at the top.”
“Don’t you think he’s smart enough to know that you wouldn’t be impressed with his leprechaun’s wit? You handle lines like his all the time. He’d never get out of the batter’s box. O’Connell is an artist, so he knows the first rule of seduction: Always take someone who wants to be taken.”
“Jennifer is not that foolish,” Catherine said.
“Not foolish. But she is that vulnerable.”
There was another long pause, again interrupted by Catherine. “If he signs an agreement, then it’s just Jennifer’s personal money that’s at risk. And I’d bet every penny of it in hope that he keeps making her happy.”
“If he signs,” Peter said, reminding her that despite what O’Connell had told Jennifer, there was no reason for him to sign anything.
Padraig showed up in New York a few days later, appeared on the network morning shows to plug the movie he had made a year ago that was just being released, and took Jennifer to one of the Manhattan openings. They dined for the photographers at two French restaurants that vied year after year for the most ridiculously expensive menu, and then privately in Jennifer’s loft, where he poured a two-hundred-dollar bottle of brandy into a flaming skillet. He visited Pegasus’s offices, dazzled the secretaries, and let Jennifer introduce him to Catherine and Peter.
“Did I really say that your nipples were giving me an erection?” he asked Catherine.
“I thought it was you,” she said, smiling, “but so many men claim to have the same problem.”
“Touché,” he surrendered, without his usual comeback.
He explained to Peter and the two sisters his plans for the new production company. “No need for the studios,” he boasted. “We’ll use your satellites for distribution. And once we do it, everyone will do it.” Then he mentioned casually that he was shooting a few European commercials in Italy. Almost as an afterthought, he invited his wife to come along with him.
“We’ve had no proper honeymoon,” he complained to Peter and Catherine. “You two keep Jennifer far too busy. Tell her right now that you don’t want to see her for at least two weeks.” Then he turned to Jennifer and suggested, “We could ship the car ahead of us. I’ll take a villa in Positano. There are roads on the Amalfi Coast that will keep you from breathing for a full ten minutes.”
There was nothing else for Peter to do. “Jennifer,” he said, “I don’t want to see you for at least two weeks.”
She laughed and threw herself into Padraig’s lap.
As the newlyweds were leaving, Peter managed to pull Padraig aside and bring up the marital agreement on Jennifer’s stock.
“Her stock, her silverware, even her goldfish, old boy. Whatever you need. Just have your scribes draw it up and send it to my attorneys. I’ll have it back to you instantly.”
And then they were gone, smiling and waving their way through the outer offices like royalty on their way to St. Paul’s. Peter never did get the name of the attorneys.
Padraig was waiting at the gate when Jennifer landed at Leonardo da Vinci, and had the Ferrari poised in the VIP parking area. He insisted that she drive while he folded and refolded the road map. “A left here, I think. See if you can find a road sign for Foggia.” And then, when she flashed by the turn, “That may have been it, but no problem. The next sign will be for Dubrovnik. You can turn there.”
She ached from laughing. Was it possible that anyone could be this happy? Could it be true, as Padraig told her, that he had been searching for her all his life? Did she dare to believe that she had finally been rescued out of Catherine’s shadow?
They drove south around Naples and were suddenly in the long tunnels that carved through the coastal cliffs toward the Gulf of Salerno. They passed the turnoff for Sorrento and were suddenly on a road cut into sheer rock, hundreds of feet above the water.
“Can I handle this?” she asked Padraig.
“I certainly hope so,” he answered. “God knows I can’t!”
So she turned serious, caressed the shift lever, and followed the torturous road into Positano. When she finally cut the engine, in the driveway of the San Pietro Hotel, her expression exploded in joy.
“That was fantastic,” she said.
“No, that was a road. You’re fantastic!”
Their room jutted out from the side of the cliff, with a balcony that was almost frightening to step on. He orde
red up a bottle of Brunello that came with olives the size of apples and almonds big enough to break in their fingers. They decided against dinner, tossed their clothes haphazardly, and were in bed together just in time to see the sunset over the gulf. They made love acrobatically, then passionately, and finally gently.
“You’re wonderful,” she told him.
“You should have seen me in my prime,” he answered.
“That would be frightening.”
“Well, maybe alarming.”
“Could I have accommodated you?”
“That would be a stretch.”
“You were that big?”
“No, but my body double was enormous.”
Jennifer jumped up and hit him with the pillow. Padraig responded by taking up a pillow of his own. They battled furiously, over the bed, around the coffee table, and out onto the balcony. When the couple next door noticed them, Padraig held the pillow strategically in position. “Call the front desk,” he begged the startled woman. “I have no idea who this woman is.”
Seconds later they were back in bed with Jennifer sitting astride him.
“Well, aren’t you the optimist?” he said.
“Isn’t this what you do in your movies?”
“It’s all special effects,” he pleaded.
“Well, I’m waiting for a special effect.”
In the morning they had breakfast on their balcony and took the elevator down to the small, rocky beach. Seeing all the women topless, Jennifer threw a towel over Padraig’s face. “Don’t dare move that until I get back,” she said. Then she went back up to the hotel shop, selected the skimpiest bikini they had in her size, and settled into the chaise next to his. She took off her top, lounged back, and then told him he could lift the towel.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” he said in mock anger. “I’ve seen those before.”
They spent a full week without leaving the hotel, taking their meals on the beach, in their apartment, and by the side of the pool. Jennifer occasionally used her laptop to connect to her office files and stayed on just long enough to make sure that her satellites were still functioning. Padraig took the twice-a-day deliveries of air-express packages and tossed them into a heap in the corner.
“You should open them,” Jennifer told him.
“Do you suppose there’s someone more beautiful than you inside one of them?” he asked.
“I certainly hope not.”
“Then why should I stop looking at you?”
But by the end of the week, economic instincts prevailed. He opened the packages, ranted and raved over their contents, and was immediately on the phone with his agents, his bankers, his brokers, and representatives of one of his ex-wives. “Just another minute, darlin’,” he kept saying to Jennifer, but each minute seemed to require another call. So, as the second week of her honeymoon began, she accustomed herself to kissing his cheek while he talked on the phone, and finding distractions of her own.
“I’m going shopping,” she announced. “Maybe a new dress will get you to pull your nose out of your paperwork.”
“If it were new underwear, I’d leave with you immediately,” he answered. “But some of these contracts have deadlines, so if it’s just a dress, you’re on your own.”
“I thought I’d take the car down into town, so if there’s nothing I like, I could run over to Sorrento.”
“Oooh!” He seemed pained. “I need it this afternoon.” He held up the pages he was looking at. “Lunch with one of these bastard lawyers. I already told the garage attendant to gas it up and have it washed.”
“Well, then I won’t go to Sorrento. I’ll stay in town and have it back up to you long before lunch.”
She kissed the top of his head and tried for a quick getaway, but Padraig pulled her down on the desk across the top of his papers. He kissed her passionately, then stood her up and patted her rump. “Be out of here, before I lose control and tear your clothes to shreds.”
“Promises, promises,” Jennifer sang as she walked to the door.
She was still smiling when she started the engine and spun out of the hotel’s underground garage. Almost immediately, she cut a sharp right turn and powered into the steep switchback road that dropped from the top of the cliff down to the town of Positano. She sensed the quickening speed and swung her toe to the brake. It went to the floor.
The next five seconds came at her too quickly for her to save herself. She came off the accelerator and felt the engine try to brake the car, but the road was so steep that she was still gaining speed. She wasted two seconds pumping the brake, hoping it would catch. There was no sense of resistance. Then she pushed the clutch and tried to drop the gearshift into low. But with the speed of the wheels, the gears ground and the shift lever tore out of her grasp.
In the fraction of a second she had left, she popped the catch of the seat belt and grabbed the door handle. With her other hand, she threw the wheel into the turn, even though she knew she had no chance of making it at the speed she was traveling. It was a good choice; had she hit the wall head-on, the car would have blasted right through it. A better move would have been to turn the car into the stone wall that was flashing by next to her. Sideswiping the wall might have killed some of the speed and prevented the car from going over. But Jennifer had no time to think of alternatives.
The car lost traction. The passenger side hit the retaining wall. The Ferrari rolled onto its side, slid along the top of the wall, then flipped over into space. It still carried enough forward speed so that it didn’t begin to fall immediately. Instead, it arched out away from the cliff, nose forward, rolling gracefully around its front-to-rear axis like an artillery shell. Its trajectory gradually began to fall into a sickening plunge. It bounced once off the sheer slope of the mountain. Its gas tank ignited. Then, as a fireball trailing a line of black smoke, it plunged into the continuation of the downhill road that it had just left. Instantly, a puddle of fire shot out in all directions.
By some mercy, it landed in a gap of what was normally bumper-to-bumper traffic. Cars collided with one another as they screeched to a stop at the edge of the flames. A motorbike managed to dodge the devastation. The firemen who put out the flames could be thankful that no one had been hurt or killed.
Except for the driver, who was not on the scene. Apparently, he or she had been thrown out of the car somewhere in its flight path. The rescuers went back up to the first hairpin turn, where the barricade was smashed and streaked with bright red paint. They stepped through the debris of broken glass and twisted trim that had peeled off the car before it went over the wall. Ten feet below, stretched out in a grassy tuft that was one of the few breaks in the cliff face, they saw Jennifer. From where they were, they could see that she was unmarked but most likely dead. But when they went over the top with ropes and a litter, they found her alive. She was unconscious, and her eyes didn’t respond to light, but there was a pulse in her neck and a breathy froth on her lips. The medics ministered to her on the spot, then hauled her motionless form up into a waiting ambulance and rushed her off to the hospital. Within minutes, she was strapped into the litter of a helicopter and on her way to a trauma unit in Naples.
Padraig, whom she had left less than two hours earlier, was on the phone arguing with one of his agents when the policeman knocked on his door.
“She could handle those turns,” he told the officers in the police car. “She’s a great driver.”
“Perhaps too much car,” an officer suggested.
“Horse shit,” Padraig snapped.
The officer shrugged.
They had no idea why she lost control, but it was clear that the car had entered the turn with far too much speed. The Positano switchbacks demanded nearly a full stop. The Ferrari must have been doing eighty kilometers an hour. What they did know was that she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, because otherwise she never could have left the car. They assumed that she was thrown out as the car flipped from the top of the wall, probably af
ter the drag of the collision had reduced the speed. A clump of bushes had broken her fall, and the bit of turf had cushioned her landing. She was lucky, if you could say that about someone in a coma.
While being flown up to Naples, Padraig learned the seriousness of her injuries. A concussion, but much too soon to tell how severe. “These things,” the Italian doctor tried to explain in an unfamiliar language, “are hard to guess. Sometimes … nothing. The next day like nothing happened at all. But sometimes … not so good, no! The X rays will show us something.”
She had broken a shoulder, a collarbone, and two ribs, all on her right side, probably from the impact of landing. Her left leg was fractured in several places, most likely breaking as it dragged out of the car. There was a bump and a contusion on the right side of her face. “All not important,” the doctor said. “Time, of course, but all will mend. The danger is the head,” he went on, pointing to his own. “And here,” as he ran his hand up and down Padraig’s spine.
“Her spine? Is she paralyzed?”
The doctor waved away the suggestion. “No … no. We know nothing yet. First she wakes up. Then we see about the rest.”
Padraig couldn’t believe the sight at the hospital. She was on a canvas rack instead of a bed. A ribbed plastic tube was stuffed into her mouth and flexed in rhythm with the rise and fall of her chest. A bottle of fluid dripped into her arm. The wall above this apparatus looked like the control room of a television station. There were half a dozen monitors beeping, blinking, and drawing bumpy traces.
“Sweet Jesus” was his only comment.
Doctors and nurses were rushing in and out, all happy to talk with the great film star and offer him reassurances. “She’s doing as well as can be expected” was the common English phrase that told him absolutely nothing.
In the early evening, Jennifer and all her life-support hardware were unplugged from the wall and rolled into a nearby room. Padraig could recognize the doughnut shapes of CAT scans and MRI equipment. But he saw no signs of life from Jennifer as she was passed from one technician to another.
Good Sister, The Page 7