All that night, driven by fury, she’d attacked the floors of her apartment with mop and vacuum, and cleaned out every closet, every cupboard and drawer. By morning the place shone, and she was exhausted. But she had an idea, a way that might make Hughes reconsider her grade.
She’d gone to him the next day with her proposal: If she staged a mock trial here in class, and could win over the “jury,” would he reevaluate her paper?
Hughes had stared at her so long, and so hard, his eyes the blue of case-hardened steel, that Rose had felt her boldness shrivel.
Then he had smiled, a hairline fissure in the stony implacability [320] of his face. “You may be very foolish, Miss Santini,” he said. “But you have nerve. I admire nerve. All right then, you have a bargain.”
The day of the trial, she had been almost paralyzed with nervousness. But sheer force of will—the will to prove herself, to Brian, to the world, that she was somebody, damn it—had forced her in front of the auditorium, and all those people.
At first she had had trouble making herself heard by those in the back rows, then, like a storm gathering strength, she grew less timid, forgetting her nervousness as she was caught up by the gale force of her convictions. Western Securities, she argued, could not be held accountable for an escrow account fraud scheme its president, now dead, had masterminded—and benefited from—all on his own. There had been no “intentional misconduct”; therefore Rule 10-b of the Securities and Exchange Act was invalid.
One by one, she saw the bored, cynical expressions of the jurors drop away, replaced first by curiosity, and gradually, genuine interest.
When, at the end, the jury returned with a verdict in her favor, the entire auditorium had surged to their feet and cheered her.
Afterward, glowing, she had gone to Hughes. Now he would give her an A, no question. But on her paper, the C- had been changed only to a B-. “I still don’t agree with you, or the jury,” he had written, “but I applaud your mettle.” At first she’d felt crushed, cheated, then she realized—yes, she really had won. She had succeeded in bending the formidable Hughes, and the B had put her over the top. She would graduate summa cum laude, top ten percent of her class. And more importantly, she knew now that in life she could accomplish anything, however frightening or risky, anything at all she set her mind to.
But didn’t she owe a good part of her success to Max, as well? Without him to bolster and coach her, without his badgering, scolding, cheering, she probably could never have made it.
She turned to him now—oh my dear, loyal friend—and forced a bright smile, feeling the old anger at Brian drain away.
“You look, as the British would say, very dashing,” she said. He was wearing a black dinner jacket with a black satin collar and a maroon cummerbund in the peacock design he’d bought at Liberty’s. She had never seen him look so handsome, elegant even, his rumpled brown hair neatly combed, his eyes the blue of Wedgwood [321] china sparkling in a face ruddy with firelight. “You remind me of Nick Charles.”
Max laughed, rising from the sofa. Three long strides and he was beside her, fastening the top hook of her dress in back, fingers warm against her neck, causing her scalp to tingle, making her feel deliciously taken care of. Darling Max. The most wonderful friend in the world.
A little slip-up, that was all—him kissing her in the taxi yesterday. Both of them, in their excitement over the settlement, forgetting for an instant who they each were.
Yes, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered, but that’s not what you thought then, was it? When he was kissing you, you felt ... well, you enjoyed it, didn’t you? And you were sure he meant it. ...
And seeing him tonight, how distinguished he looked, and, yes—admit it, why don’t you?—downright sexy, she felt that same flicker, and wondered, How would he kiss me in bed?
Rose caught herself, feeling ashamed and disturbed. What an idiot she was! Max was probably just as embarrassed by that kiss in the taxi as she had been. And what if he had wanted to make love to her? He was married, so it would be just a fling. And afterwards they would feel uncomfortable around each another, unsure where they stood. No, she treasured Max far too much to let that happen.
“You’re too young to remember The Thin Man,” Rose heard Max’s voice against her ear, light and bemused, blowing her confused thoughts away like so much dandelion fluff. “Besides, where’s the mystery?”
“I have one for you. Maybe you can tell me why, if both of us put our shoes outside our doors last night, only yours came back polished?”
“Elementary, my dear. The Brits may tolerate a woman on the throne, but to polish her shoes would be going too far.”
“I have an answer to that.” Smiling, Rose bent down, wrenched off one of the high-heeled pumps she’d polished herself, and angled it as hard as she could across the room at the heavy brass-handled door.
It landed dead center with a satisfying thump, and she immediately felt better. Not only about the party, but about everything.
She turned to Max with a triumphant look. “Shall we go then?”
[322] He offered her his arm, still smiling, blue eyes dancing. “Delighted, Cinderella.”
Leaning on Max, Rose hobbled over to retrieve her shoe, wondering how on earth Cinderella had managed on the run going down stairs and wearing one glass slipper.
Because anything is possible in fairy tales ... even Happily Ever After. ...
At the door, Max helped her on with her new raincoat. As she flicked the lights out, she glanced out the bay window that curved between heavy tapestry drapes. Old-fashioned street lamps wreathed in fairy rings of mist. The faint yellow glimmers of barge lights drifting up the Thames. She imagined she heard the clopping of hooves, the creak of carriage wheels. A magic coach come to spirit her off into the night.
And suddenly Rose felt happy, happier than she’d felt in years. This was a fairy tale. London ... a beautiful-people party ... this dress. Something out of another time. A place where it was safe to dream.
The cabdriver had a time locating Rupert Everest’s house. The townhouses on Cheyne Walk stood well back from King’s Road, and in the dark, the leafy branches of huge old trees obscured their grimy facades, making the numbers nearly impossible to read.
Rose peered at her watch, barely making out the faintly glowing numerals. Late. Nearly an hour! Well, maybe it wouldn’t matter what she was wearing after all. By the time they got there the party might be over.
Max, as usual, remained unruffled. Rose felt his hand on her arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry. It’ll be such a crush, Rupert won’t notice. He’s promoting some new author—an American, I think—and he’s probably invited the whole BBC, every gossip columnist on Fleet Street, and some rock stars for local color. He always does. When Jonathon was doing his publicity stint, Rupert rented the Aldwych Theatre, and held the party right up there on stage.” He winked. “Even invited Devon Clarke.”
The squeal of brakes, a sudden lurch throwing both of them almost out of their seats, and then the cabbie was cranking to a stop at the curb by a pair of tall harp-shaped wrought-iron gates.
[323] “This ’ere oughta be it,” he announced grudgingly.
Rose, emerging from the cab, peered up into the mist-blurred darkness, and saw a pair of winged cherubs, one perched atop each gatepost, so delicately wrought they appeared on the verge of flight.
She stepped through a pair of high carved doors into a marble-floored vestibule the size of a studio apartment, flanked by twin arched alcoves filled with roses, dozens and dozens of them bursting from enormous urns, their effect dazzling, all crimson on one wall, pure white on the other. She felt moist, a bit suffocated by the heavy, perfumed air. Through the double glass doors that opened onto the hallway, she saw a wide staircase curving upward, and heard the hum of mingled voices drifting down from above.
Their coats dissolved into the arms of a maid straight out of a thirties movie, black uniform, ruffled organza apron and
cap. Then a small elegant man in a plum-colored smoking jacket materialized from the top of the staircase, descending to greet them.
Max tightened his hand on her elbow, and whispered, “He’s a little eccentric. Charming, though.”
“Wonderful to see you ... I’m thrilled you could make it,” their host gushed. Rose thought, amused, He doesn’t have the slightest idea who we are. But the effusiveness of his greeting made up for the lapse of memory. Now Rupert’s gaze swept over Rose’s dress, and he clasped his hands—tiny and wrinkled like an infant’s—in front of his chest, as if in prayer. “You look luscious, my dear. Wherever did you find that dress? No, don’t tell. I’m terrible at keeping secrets, and every woman at this party will want to know. Let’s go upstairs, shall we? I want you to meet our guest of honor.”
“A famous writer, didn’t you say?” Max managed to get in.
Rupert leaned close, so close Rose could see the faintest line of kohl around each of his jade-green eyes. “His first novel actually, but I daresay he will become famous rather quickly. Quite a coup for me, too. In fact, a little birdie whispered in my ear that someone at the Times will be writing him up as the literary find of the decade. Sort of Hemingwayesque, you see, the man actually was shooting at people in Vietnam. The title is some sort of military jargon, I believe, Double Eagle. Perhaps you’ve already read it?”
Rose felt her heart stop, as if a fist had closed around it, and a terrible coldness begin to spread slowly down from her collarbone.
Brian’s book, oh God, oh yes ...
[324] She remembered the shock of seeing it on display in the Doubleday bookstore on Fifth Avenue. She had picked it up and stared at the glossy dust-jacket photograph of the man she had loved so dearly, for so long, feeling as if she had been struck clean through her center.
Rose wanted to scream, to grab this little raspberry of a man by the shoulders, and shake that silly grin off his face. You don’t know him, you don’t know anything about me either, so how dare you mix in our lives like this?
Then abruptly her anger was gone, and this house, everything around her, suddenly turned gray, flat and gray and far away. She felt immensely tired, her head floating miles above a body thick and useless as a stump.
Please, God, Rose thought, I can’t go through it again ... don’t let this be happening. ...
“Rose?” A sharp voice broke through the buzzing static in her ears. “Rose ... are you all right?”
Max, she thought, clinging to that voice as if to a lifeline. Thank God for Max.
The gray shifted, and Rose found herself looking at Max, seeing a man built like an ex-prizefighter, going gray and a little soft around the edges, but oh, so wonderfully there, a man you could count on, always.
“I’m fine,” she heard herself say, cool as ice water. “Just tired. Jet lag. I guess it caught up with me all at once.”
“Why don’t you have a little lie-down, my dear?” Their host, too, was being kind and solicitous. “There are plenty of bedrooms upstairs where you won’t be disturbed ... quite frankly, you do look a bit Madame Tussaud.”
“I’m fine,” Rose repeated, more firmly. “Really.”
Then she caught sight of herself in the long ebony and chrome Art Deco mirror at the bottom of the stairs, and sucked in her breath. God, she did look pale.
Then, as if in a dream, Rose was climbing the stairs, no, more like floating, because oddly her feet didn’t seem attached to her body.
She found herself smiling and nodding graciously to the elegantly dressed people she passed. Here I am, and isn’t it fanny, because I’m not really here, I’m just pretending to be.
[325] Then an enormous room at the top, a sweep of dazzling white ceiling and white walls, startling shapes and colors springing out at her—crimson dragons writhing on a black lacquered Chinese cabinet, a huge Mondrian canvas of yellow and red squares, mirrors that were reflection upon reflection, whole galaxies of tuxedoed men and sequined ladies streaming off into infinity.
And suddenly there he was, standing by the vast window that stretched ceiling to floor, his back to her, lean and slightly stooped, his face—the face that had haunted her sleep night after night—shimmering ghostlike in the darkened glass, and nothing else, no one else existed.
Brian ...
Rose felt as if the champagne she’d just swallowed had suddenly turned to acid. It was burning its way down her throat, tearing away at her stomach.
She found herself remembering the first man she’d slept with after Brian. One of her N.Y.U. professors, a short, heavyset man with thick dark hair and a beard like fur, who didn’t look a thing like Brian except for his glasses—the same tortoise-rims Brian wore when he read. And she’d gone to bed with him for that. His eyeglasses. He took her out for some beer and pizza, discoursing on Proust nonstop, and then she’d gone back to his apartment, climbed between his sour-smelling sheets, and let him make love to her. And she hadn’t felt a thing except sorrow.
There had been other men since then, a few, men she had liked, flirted with, men whose bodies she’d enjoyed. But no one she’d loved, no one she’d have shed a tear over, no one who could have ruined her life as Brian had.
Oh God.
How could she go over there now? Talk to him, act as if all this were perfectly normal, just a bit surprising, two old friends bumping into each another in a strange place—
But somehow, she was walking over, breaking away from Max and walking toward Brian through air thick as water. The sounds around her were all distorted, as if she were under water. The conversation dulled to a low hum, but the clink of ice in someone’s tumbler sounded to her like the violent shattering of glass.
Then she was facing him, putting her hand out—a hand [326] belonging not to her, but the creature from the wax museum that she had just become. She saw the shock registering in his face. An instant of naked pain. Then he was the same man he had been a minute ago.
Lean and hungry. The words popped into her head. A cliché from a pulp novel. But it described Brian all the same. The face she had carried in her heart like a cameo all these years, only its angles sharper, hair longer, curling over the collar of his brown corduroy jacket, a shadowing of premature gray at the temples. Those silver eyes, which had seemed so startlingly lit from within, now like mirrors in which she saw only herself reflected.
“Hello, Brian,” she greeted him.
“My God, I don’t believe it ... Rose!” The glass in his hand slipped, and with a quick jerky motion he caught it, beads of amber liquid spattering onto the white carpet. That gave her a moment to swim to the surface, catch her breath before she heard him exclaim, “You’re the last person on earth I expected to see here!”
She gave a brittle, sparkling laugh that hurt in her own ears. “Well, me too. I mean, you’re the last person I expected to see. How are you?”
“Good. Better than ever. I wrote a book. Even managed to get it published and sell a few copies. Mr. Everest here is giving it quite a send-off in England.”
He was smiling, and it was such a false, strained smile, Rose wanted to kick it in just as she’d wanted to kick in those posters of him on cardboard propped up in the bookstores. Phrases floated through her head, snatches of reviews she’d read.
... the debut of a powerful new novelist ...
... more raw power than THE NAKED AND THE DEAD, more poignant than ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT ...
... DOUBLE EAGLE is the real-life code name for a military operation in Vietnam ... but it is also the symbol of its hero’s disillusionment with his own country. Don’t read this book unless you’re prepared to have your heart broken, and how you think of modern warfare forever changed. ...
She had read it, wanting to hate it, and had been so moved she had cried for hours after finishing it.
Rose wanted to cry now, too. Hot tears threatening to [327] betray her were gathering at the back of her throat. She imagined tiny hairline cracks fanning out from the corners of her brittl
e smile.
And then, she heard Brian saying, “Rose, I want you to meet my wife ...”
Incredible, but there she was. She was standing beside him all along, and I just didn’t see her.
Now, suddenly Brian’s wife was the only person in the room.
“... Rachel ...”
Rose thought with a stab, She’s beautiful. I didn’t expect her to be so beautiful.
Tiny and slender, a good head and a half shorter than Brian, but there was nothing doll-like about this woman. She radiated strength, a sense of purpose. It was in her eyes, bright and blue as pilot flames, and in the tiny muscles that leaped under her skin as she angled herself forward slightly, smiling, to shake Rose’s hand.
Slim fingers tightened about hers in a crisp, surprisingly hard clasp. Everything about Rachel was crisp, bright, hot, crackling with intensity. And different. Somehow, she was like no other woman in the room. Everywhere, beads and bangles and sequins sewed onto tie-dyed silk, and here was this woman in a crisp oyster linen suit as clean and simple as a thank-you note written on a single sheet of expensive stationery. Her hair was the pale amber of good brandy, and she wore it parted in the center, falling in loose waves to the small of her back, oddly free spirited.
Rose, smiling, shaking her hand, couldn’t take her eyes off the slim gold band on the third finger of Rachel’s left hand. She wanted to rip it off. It didn’t belong there.
It’s mine. I should be the one wearing it. Brian should be my husband, not yours.
The tears rose, hot and suffocating, and suddenly Rose knew she couldn’t stand here being polite a second longer. She broke away, and fled, pushing her way through the crowd—go to hell, all of you, I don’t care what you think—down the stairs.
A long hallway, a door in back, and suddenly Rose found herself in a garden. A garden as old as the house, dark and silent as a well. Brick walls blanketed in English ivy, a moss-grown fountain guarded over by a headless stone cupid.
Garden of Lies Page 37