VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  Cardozo shook a business card loose from his wallet. It turned out to be Melissa Hatfield’s.

  Countess Victoria took out a small lipstick brush and wrote her phone number across the back of the card. “Call me. I give divine head.”

  40

  EVERY DAY BEFORE WORK, Babe practiced two hours. She lined up chairs at three-foot distances and struggled from one to the next without support. When she could manage three feet, she respaced the chairs four feet from one another, and then five and then six, evaluating her every step in the mirror. Eventually she dared to risk a turn to the left, a turn to the right, and finally she pushed the chairs to the wall and at long, long last—after fall-downs and stumbles and uncounted hesitations and swayings—she walked with no help or hesitation whatsoever from one end of the room all the way to the other.

  Babethings was showing its new line of cruisewear the first week in September at the Park Avenue Armory; Babe had made it her goal to appear at the event without her cane.

  She chose her ensemble for the event carefully—a black crepe suit that she had designed herself and a single piece of jewelry, a large emerald brooch that her grandmother had left her. The brooch had brought her good luck years ago, all the times she had showed her line at the Pierre, and tonight she kissed it before pinning it on.

  Billi arrived for her at quarter to eight. She met him in the ground floor hallway. Luckily—because she might just need a little help with the steps at the armory—Billi did not intend to spend any of the show backstage. Instead he would sit in front, getting the pulse of the audience.

  “Don’t you look ravishing, Babe.” Billi, whose eye rarely missed a detail, didn’t notice the absence of the cane. That fact gave Babe confidence—it meant she was moving naturally, not showing her nervousness.

  Billi kissed her on the cheek and held the front door. The black Mercedes limousine stood idling at the curb, eight feet away.

  A pulse of uneasiness beat in Babe’s throat as she took her first unsupported step on concrete.

  The driver touched a gloved hand to the brim of his cap and swung the passenger door open. “Good evening, Mrs. Devens.”

  She turned to smile at him. In that instant of inattention one leg shot out from under her. She slammed painfully against the door. Momentum propelled her forward, and a split second later she had landed on the floor of the limousine.

  The driver quickly helped her up. She stood blinking, angry and humiliated and not quite believing what had happened.

  “My God, Babe, are you all right?” Billi possessed an aristocracy of face that usually hid whatever was going on in his mind, but at this moment, concerned and solicitous, he was watching her with undisguised pity.

  Babe shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  Billi bent to help her brush off her skirt. “No rips, no tears on you or the suit?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No wonder,” he exclaimed. “You forgot your cane!”

  “How foolish of me.” Babe’s vision was filming and she did her best to hold tears at bay.

  Billi snapped his fingers. “Carlos, be good enough to get Mrs. Devens’s cane? It’s in the house.”

  On the approach to the armory, the car had to maneuver around clots of stopped limousines. Gawking crowds pushed against police sawhorses. Police patrolled on foot and on horseback, struggling to keep order.

  Searchlights mounted on wheeled platforms strafed low-hanging clouds, and as Billi took Babe’s hand to help her to the curb, dozens of flashbulbs popped. “God save us from New York’s brigade of professional event watchers,” Billi shouted.

  With his help and the help of her cane, Babe climbed the red-carpeted steps.

  Inside, extraordinary-looking women milled about with their escorts. They had obviously dressed to make a statement, but the clothes Babe saw struck her as loud and careless, probably overpriced as well, and they made her feel like a limping refugee from a time capsule.

  People swarmed to Billi in flurries of adulation. “You remember Babe Devens,” he kept saying, “my partner.”

  Yes, they remembered Babe. Hi, Babe. But they loved Billi. Billi, phone me and let’s set up that lunch… Billi, when are we going to have dinner? … Billi, you owe me a Michael Feinstein after that hideous Lohengrin!

  Kiss kiss.

  Darling’s and chéri’s and caro’s peppered the cooing and shoving. Babe kept smiling and nodding, fighting to keep her balance and fighting to keep the fight from showing. To reach their seats Billi had to pull her through wall after wall of fashion hangers-on.

  By the time they found their places in the center bleachers, Babe’s breath was harsh and hurting in her chest.

  She had reserved the seats next to them for Ash, but Dunk arrived with Countess Vicki instead.

  “Ash is still in detox,” Dunk shouted. “She can’t even have visitors yet.”

  “So you’ll just have to put up with me.” Countess Vicki planted a kiss on Babe’s cheek. “You look glorious, Babe, as always, and so sweet and sentimental in that frock.” She leaned across to scream at Billi, “Also liebe Billi, der Tag ist jezt, nicht wahr?”

  Billi smiled. “Ja, ja.”

  When the building lights dipped, a wild wind of applause gusted through the armory. There was a moment of darkness and stiff silence and then, with a thirty-speaker blare of recorded music, banks of stagelights came up, flooding the runway.

  The first mannequin came strutting out, hands on hips.

  “Billi!” Countess Vicki screamed. “Su-blime!”

  Babe frowned. The mannequin was wearing an outfit of skintight blue satin pants with passimetrie swirling around the buttocks. She had pump heels, a low-cut lavender silk blouse with four oversized loops of oversized fake pearls and a big scoop-brim blue fedora squared over her eyes. She was wearing craters of black eye shadow and too much lipstick, and her hips moved with a hard, angular syncopation to the fender-beat music.

  A creamy-voiced British actor delivered the amplified voice-over.

  Applause mounted as the mannequin strutted to the end of the runway.

  Before she had even turned, the second mannequin bounded out onto the runway. On her pencil-thin red-stockinged legs, swathed in yards of fuschia boa from her neck down to her ripped-off gray sweatcloth exercise tights, she looked like a pair of burning stilts holding up a cloud of acid rain.

  Once the fifth mannequin strode onto the runway, Babe found that the dresses and ensembles overlapped in a discordant blur. Though tradition had it that you viewed only one mannequin at a time, Billi put as many as twelve on the runway at once. For Babe the effect was bewilderingly like a Broadway show—too much movement, too many lights, too much music.

  She squirmed as Billi’s eighty-five mannequins filed on and off the runway, their outfits progressively more hostile and aggressive, and it all began leaving her with a taste of mega-hyped insincerity.

  The big outfit of the line—the one that got the greatest applause and that seemed to be the clearest statement of the house’s esthetic—was a chartreuse blazer of crumpled silk linen. The jacket had been loaded with beading and more passimetrie than a Turkish dress uniform, and it was falling off the mannequin’s shoulders, too big even to be called oversized. The dress underneath, shocking pink, was much too tight and almost pornographically short, and the heels on the black pumps were four inches—far too high.

  By some miracle of luck or coordination, the mannequin was managing to keep her balance. Incredibly, she was chewing gum, and her face was set in a theatrical sneer.

  “Well. Babe,” Billi cried over the mounting applause, “what do you think of our little girl?”

  It took Babe a moment’s shock to recognize that the mannequin was her own daughter. “Well, Billi, you certainly have turned things inside out.”

  “What the hell else is tradition for?” he laughed.

  The one tradition he had stuck with was to close the show with a wedding gown.

  The lights
dimmed suspensefully and came up again on a runway that was, for the first time since the evening had begun, empty. The speakers blared an eerily electronic Bridal Chorus.

  Billi’s tallest, skinniest mannequin slithered into the light, glistening as though she were oiled.

  Babe sat rigid, not moving. What she saw went through her brain like a knife.

  A sheath of black leather—cut tight down to the pelvis, flaring into a skirt below the knees—covered the mannequin from neck to ankles. Around her throat she wore a diamond-encrusted ankh, fastened upside down to a platinum-link chain. Billi’s designers had studded the gown with steel zippers and outcroppings of black crow’s feathers. For the veil they had used miles of black illusion, for the boots, black-dyed baby lamb.

  Babe’s blood was beating a drum in her head. The image of a steel-mouthed mask flashed before her.

  “The bride wore boots!” Countess Vicki yelped. “Billi, I want that gown—the count and I are going to confirm our vows this spring, and that is going to be the look!”

  The next few moments passed like caterpillars crawling over Babe’s skin.

  Applause exploded and a spotlight swept the bleachers, searching for Billi and finally, when he rose, escorting him down to the runway through a congratulating roar of high-fashion color and gemstone.

  Bowing, Billi exuded pride and satisfaction. Letting his eyes drop half closed, he spread his arms wide, embracing the crowd.

  The dinner afterward was at Lutèce, and Babe did her best.

  The buzz at the tables was that Billi’s line was glitzy, sexy, funny, compelling, expertly paced, slick, ironic, full of Hollywood decadence and offbeat charm, sure to be a winner.

  Everyone said Babe must be so pleased for her company, and she made a pleased face.

  Champagne was served with the meal. The guests toasted Billi and Babe, and somewhere down the line of toasts someone made a speech about Cordelia’s wacky charm.

  Cordelia remained imperturbably there, a perfectly coiffed presence with a cigarette dangling from her lips.

  Babe had two espressos, hoping one of them would persuade her she still had the capacity to think. As dessert soufflés were being served, she excused herself.

  Billi’s dark eyes questioned her.

  She promised him she could get home safely. “It’s just a little headache from all the fun and excitement.”

  As Babe lifted the phone in her bedroom, her mind was finally made up. She felt energized, as though all her synapses were at last firing.

  It took twelve seconds for the call to click through.

  “Allo?”

  “Mathilde, it’s Babe. I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but—”

  “Bonjour, chérie! Ça va?”

  “Mathilde, I’m going to start my own atelier again, and I want you to come back and oversee the first season.”

  “But I explained, it’s not possible.”

  “How much did you say that farmhouse is going to cost you? I’ll pay you three times the amount. Your bank will have the money tomorrow.”

  There was a hesitation in Mathilde’s voice, a missed beat.

  Babe doubled the offer.

  Babe and Cardozo followed a nurse down an ornate marble hall, their footsteps echoing like drum taps. Since the showing it had taken Babe another week of practice to walk without her cane, and there was still a slight limp in her left leg.

  The nurse led them past a landing with a door opening onto what must once have been a ballroom. Patients in pajamas and robes formed hushed groups, shuffling in paper slippers beneath a blazing crystal chandelier.

  “How is she doing?” Babe asked.

  “She’s still hanging on to a lot of denial,” the nurse said. “At meetings patients are supposed to use their first name—you know, ‘Hi, I’m Joe, I’m an alcoholic:’ She says, ‘Good evening, I’m Lady Canfield, delighted to be here with you.’ Like she’s dropped in from the Rockefeller Foundation.”

  The nurse took them as far as Ash’s door.

  Ash was sitting in a chair wearing a simple black silk dress and long strands of pearls. Her right arm was in motion, braceleted and white, moving through lamplight that glinted off the plastic fork in her hand.

  She was working her way through a raw vegetable salad topped with nuts and seeds, with a glass of Perrier on the side. She ate with an elegant weariness, looking frail and very tired. The white of her skin contrasted starkly with the blue veins in her temples, and she was wearing her hair pulled straight back, with the earphones of a Walkman fitted over it.

  As Babe bent to kiss Ash she noticed with strangely pained surprise how old and tired her friend looked.

  Ash reacted slowly, recognizing Babe, smiling, pulling off the earphones. She got to her feet, and it saddened Babe to see how she had to make the effort in stages.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” Ash said. “I was listening to Bobby Short singing some beautiful old Vernon Duke songs.”

  Babe and Ash held each other.

  “My first nonfamily visitor in over a month,” Ash said. “Oh sweetie, I’ve missed you.”

  “Ash,” Babe said, “you remember Vince Cardozo.”

  Ash glanced sidelong at Cardozo, studied him, then cast him a disarming smile. “Do I?”

  “You and Vince met at the party on Holcombe’s yacht.”

  Ash looked at Babe. There was something speculative in her gaze. “Should I remember a party on a yacht?”

  “Well, you were there,” Babe said, “and it was memorable.”

  Ash’s eyes took on a wary expression. “I’m sorry. I suppose I misbehaved.” She coughed a deep, dry cough. “What do you think of my temporary headquarters? It’s très glam, n’est-ce pas?”

  There was a tiroir of pale ash with ebony handles. The four-poster bed had a cream-colored cover. A Raggedy Ann doll that was at least as old as Ash lolled against the enormous fluffy pillows in lace cases.

  “This is a place for drunks, you know,” Ash said. “But my problem’s not drink. I only drink because of other problems.”

  “How are you feeling?” Babe asked.

  “I’m fine—cured. Back to normal and bored. I’ll probably check myself out tomorrow.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I’d better be able to do it. It’s my money that got me in, my money can damned well get me out.”

  Beneath the bravado, Babe heard the voice of a frightened child.

  “Where’s Dunk?” Ash said.

  “I saw Dunk at the showing,” Babe said. “He was fine. Don’t worry yourself. Get your rest, and you’ll pick up the threads of your life in no time.”

  “What in the world are you saying? I never dropped the threads of my life.”

  There was a strained silence. Ash’s eyes traveling from Babe to Cardozo. Babe could feel they were entering a dangerous emotional zone.

  “Well?” Ash said.

  “Well what?” Babe said.

  “The purpose of this visit.”

  “Must it have a purpose? We came to see you.”

  “No, no, no, no.” Ash pointed at Cardozo. “He didn’t come to see me. He doesn’t even know me.”

  “Lady Canfield,” Cardozo said, “last month we showed you these pictures.”

  He handed them to her. Her gaze was flat, empty of reaction.

  “We asked you if you recognized any of them.” He handed her the last photo: the girl with the confident stride, with the strong nose and jaw, the blond hair and brown eyes, the girl with the package who had gone into Beaux Arts Tower at 11:07 A.M., Tuesday, May 27, and never came out again. “You said you recognized this one.”

  For a moment Ash appeared to be lost in a mist between worlds. She shook her head. “Never saw her blond before. I can see I’m going to need to refresh my memory.”

  She went to the tiroir where she had arranged her Countess Lura Esterhasz skin care bottles. She brought three tumblers and a bottle of moisturizer to the bedside table. She tipped Babe a
crafty glance.

  “Remember when we used to do this at Farmington?”

  She uncapped the moisturizer and tilted it over one of the tumblers. A clear amber liquid poured out.

  She poured two fingers in each tumbler. “They don’t give you ice here. But this is Jack Daniel’s, it tastes terrific neat.” She raised her glass. “Santé, everyone.”

  She stopped, conscious of Babe’s cool disbelieving stare.

  “Ash,” Babe cried, “for God’s sake don’t drink that!”

  “I most certainly shall.” Ash emptied the glass in a single swallow.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, staring vaguely in front of her. After a moment she reached to the table for a second tumbler.

  Babe made a move to stop her.

  Cardozo put out a hand. “Let her do it. It’s what she wants.”

  Ash nodded. “Babe, your friend’s a wise man.”

  Ash downed the second glass.

  “On the house.” Cardozo pushed the third tumbler toward her.

  She stared at him, then at it, then at Babe.

  The lids sank over her eyes. Her face began crumpling. She put a hand to her mouth and burped softly, and then she was vomiting through her fingers, vomiting over her pearls, down her dress.

  Ash studied her vomit-stained hand as though it were an object that had materialized from another universe. She blinked back tears. A spasm racked her and she made a gagging sound.

  This isn’t my friend, Babe thought. Ash Canfield is not puking on the detox floor.

  Ash was sliding off the bed to her knees, bending forward, dragging herself slowly through the fouled pile of the carpet.

  Babe stared at her childhood friend, crawling across the carpet like a squashed slug.

  “Get out,” Ash whimpered. “Please just get the fuck out.”

  41

  IN THE TAXI CARDOZO could feel the pain in Babe and he knew she was trying to hold back tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a damned shame.”

  Babe nodded, teeth pressed down on her lower lip. He put his arm around her and drew her against his shoulder.

  They rode on in silence.

  After a while he looked at the photo again, thinking of what Ash had said: Never saw her blond before.