Cut and Run

by Carla Neggers

  A year ago, before J.J. Pepper, Juliana had bought an aquarium and put it up behind her concert grand piano, near the French doors that separated her dining room and huge living room overlooking Central Park. She’d filled the aquarium with water and added goldfish, six of them. Their names were Figaro, Cosima (after Wagner’s wife), Puccini, Carmen, Bartók, and the Duke (after Duke Ellington; to Shuji he was Ludwig). They didn’t talk, and they weren’t much to look at, weren’t, in fact, any company at all, but they were something alive to have around during her long hours of isolation. She could turn around in her chair at the piano—she practiced far too many hours for her back to tolerate a bench—and have a nice chat with them, as she was doing now. They fit her itinerant lifestyle more easily than would a dog or cat. It was easy to get people to feed fish while she was away, but she had a feeling if they ever forgot, they’d just flush the bodies down the toilet and buy new ones for her. Would she ever know?

  Shuji had won. She’d decided to postpone Vermont. Saturday night at the Club Aquarian had gone too well, been too much fun. She needed to work. She had to get J.J. Pepper out of her system. There was no time for decent practice on the road, and she needed to get back into it. If she did at least eight hours a day at the piano for the next two weeks, she’d be back in shape—like a runner. The real work of being a pianist, Shuji had said. He had a point, although she was still so irritated with him for ruining Vermont for her that she wasn’t about to tell him so. Once she’d established her schedule, she could spare a few days in Vermont without compromising her progress. Without guilt.

  But she couldn’t just leap back into her old routines. Yesterday, after a meager three hours of practice, she’d ended up trotting off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Christmas tree.

  Today she’d done a little better. She’d climbed out of bed at eight, just an hour later than she’d meant to, and had done ten minutes of stretching, although twenty would have been better. She should have gone jogging in the park if it was warm enough or jumped on her stationary bike. She’d jumped into the tub. Her “healthy breakfast” was two of her mother’s famous butter cookies and a pot of tea. A proper schedule would put her at her Steinway by nine, there to stay for eight to ten hours, with occasional breaks and time out for lunch and dinner. Today’s schedule had put her at her piano at eleven with lots of breaks.

  It was just three o’clock, and so far she’d had four fish-talk breaks. But she refused to be hard on herself. All she needed were a couple of days. She’d be back to her old self, as demanding and absorbed in her work as ever.

  “What do you say, Duke, back to the Chopin?”

  Duke wiggled and darted away. Chopin had little effect on him. She was working on the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, a bitch of a piece, which she happened to love. It wasn’t the music that had her talking to fish. It was something else—the isolation, she supposed.

  The doorman called up, startling her, and informed her that a Matthew Stark was downstairs in the lobby and wanted to see her, was that all right?

  “Damn,” she said, surprising both herself and the doorman. She remembered Matthew Stark vividly—the sardonic laugh, the dark, changeable eyes. She couldn’t imagine what he wanted with her. She didn’t even know why he’d been in her dressing room Saturday night. Just to say hello to Sam Ryder? To her? She doubted he’d been even momentarily tempted to ask her to dinner. He’d called her toots. What was he doing downstairs? She didn’t need the distraction right now, but what the hell. “Send him up.”

  For no reason that made any sense to her, she considered her appearance: black sweatpants, oversized sweatshirt with the bust of Beethoven silk-screened on the front, scrunchy black socks, sneakers. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her hair was up in a ponytail.

  At least it isn’t pink, she thought as the doorbell rang.

  She went into the large foyer and opened the door only as wide as her chain-lock would permit because she was a New Yorker and didn’t trust anyone. But the man she peeked out at was definitely the one who’d made her feel like such a ding-a-ling the other night. He had on a black leather jacket, a black sweater, jeans, and heavy leather boots. No hat, no gloves. Somehow she wouldn’t expect any. Snow had melted into his dark hair, but his scarred face didn’t even look cold. She hadn’t realized it was snowing. Maybe the Chopin was going better than she’d thought it was.

  Stark gave her a lazy, unselfconscious grin. “A ponytail? How un–world-famous of you.”

  No one had ever been that irreverent to her. Absolutely no one. “Don’t you think you should wait until I let you in before you turn on the sarcasm?”

  “It never occurred to me.”

  She believed him. “What do you want?”

  “Five minutes. I’d like to ask you a couple questions.”

  “About what?”

  “A few things. I’m a reporter.”

  “I only have your word on that.”

  “The way I’ve been going lately, that might be the best you’ll get. But here.” He fished out his wallet and handed a press card through the opening. “Check me out.”

  Juliana managed to take the card without touching his fingers. As she glanced at it, she could feel his dark eyes on her. “You’re with the Washington Gazette?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He sounded amused, and she recalled she was supposed to have heard of him. Well, bullshit. “No wonder I didn’t recognize your name.” She gave him a haughty look and one of her cool, distant smiles, both of which she figured he deserved. “I don’t read the Gazette.”

  “Nice try, sweetheart, but nobody knows me from the Gazette.”

  She felt her cheeks redden with anger and embarrassment—and, she thought desperately, awareness. He was still standing out in the damn hall, and already she was noticing little things. The lopsided grin, the muscular thighs, the thick, jagged scar on his right hand. It probably wasn’t from anything as simple as slicing cucumbers.

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’ve never heard of you, and I don’t care if I haven’t.”

  “You going to check me out or leave me standing out here all afternoon?”

  She shut the door and considered just going back to her work. He would hear the Chopin and get the message. But she went to the phone in the living room. Curiosity, she supposed. She tapped out the number for the Gazette printed on his card. The switchboard routed her call to Alice Feldon, who verified that Matthew Stark worked for her. “If you want to call it work,” she added, half under her breath.

  “Would you mind describing him?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s outside my door, and I’m not sure I want to let him in.”

  “I see. I guess I can understand that. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Juliana Fall. I—”

  “Stark’s pianist. I’ll be damned.”

  Stark’s pianist. My God. What was going on here?

  “He’s about five-eleven, dark, scarred face, wears a black leather jacket and Gokey boots, and—”

  “That’s him. Thank you.”

  “Wait—put him on, will you?”

  “I’ll have him call you,” she said, and hung up.

  She unlatched the chain-lock and let Stark open the door himself. “You’ve been confirmed.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  He walked into the living room. Juliana followed. It was a huge room that overlooked Central Park, now a Currier and Ives Christmas card under the light covering of snow. She saw him eyeing the place, as if he didn’t expect the dust on the windowsills, the marble fireplace, the piano, the hodgepodge of expensive furniture, the books, magazines, photographs, clippings, letters, awards and junk stacked everywhere. For the first time since her return from Paris, she noticed it herself. And the two big Persian carpets needed vacuuming.

  “Goldfish, huh?” he said, walking over to the tank and taking a look. Then he glanced back at her. “Nice place you have here. No cleaning lady?”


  “I’ve been away for a while and haven’t taken the time to cleanup and—well, I do have someone come in to clean, but she hasn’t been in yet. She doesn’t come on a regular basis. It’s hard to concentrate with the vacuum running and someone flitting around with a dustcloth. To be honest, a little dust doesn’t bother me.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She felt his eyes on her and was aware her ponytail was coming loose and she probably looked a little vague. She usually did this time of the day, after hours of practice. It took a while for her to pull herself out of her heightened state of concentration.

  “What do you do when you throw parties?” he went on. “Just shove all the stuff under the couch and turn the lights down low so nobody’ll notice the dust?”

  She ignored his dry tone. “I don’t throw parties.”

  “You just attend them.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “La-di-da.”

  Her elastic band was at the end of her ponytail. She pulled it out, letting her hair flop down, and noticed his eyes widen slightly. She wouldn’t have noticed at all if she hadn’t been looking. So, she thought, he’s paying attention. A reporter’s eye for detail, she supposed. Nothing more than that.

  “Mr. Stark,” she said coolly, “did you want to ask me something or did you just want to insult me?”

  He looked at her, a touch of the warm, dark brown coming into his black-seeming eyes. “I’m sorry.” There was an abruptness to his words, and she suspected they were ones he didn’t say very often. “It’s obvious from the looks of this place, and of you, that you work hard at what you do. I didn’t expect that.”

  “You thought I just woke up one morning and knew how to play the piano?”

  He grinned. “Something like that.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” She decided to leave it at that. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “I’m half working on a story,” he said, walking over to the dusty Steinway. A dozen or so nubby pencils were scattered on the floor under the piano and her chair. He picked one up. It was two inches long. “Some life still in it, I guess.”

  “I do all my markings in pencil. I don’t take time to re-sharpen my pencils when I’m working, so I start with about a dozen and throw them on the floor when they get dull. I hate dull pencils.”

  “Nothing worse.”

  Despite his wry tone, he was as fascinated as he was amused, Juliana could tell. “When I run out, I gather them up and sharpen all of them at once. It saves time. Look, I can’t dress up what I do or how I do it. If my methods, this place, shatter your image of what a concert pianist ought to be like, then so be it. How can you be half working on something?”

  “In the immortal words of Alice Feldon, by being a lazy shit.” He started to put the stubby pencil on the piano rack but stopped himself and dropped it back on the floor. “Wouldn’t want to get mixed up. Aren’t the Dutch supposed to be tidy?”

  Juliana frowned at him. “How do you know I’m Dutch?”

  “Research,” he said.

  “What kind of research? I thought you weren’t a music reporter. If this is a formal interview—”

  “It isn’t. Relax, okay?” He looked at her, his eyes dropping to Beethoven glowering on her front. She felt like an idiot. “Mind if we go sit down?”

  She sighed. “As you wish.”

  He sat on the couch, amidst several musty books on Chopin and Mozart, while she lifted a huge stack of newspapers and magazines and letters off a wingback chair. “Four months of mail—and I forgot to stop the paper before I left.” Only, she thought, because she’d just started having it delivered. She’d wondered if reading the morning paper would help her feel more in touch with the world. Or maybe it was just one more thing to do in the morning before practicing. “I haven’t gone through it yet.”

  “So I see. Need a hand?”

  “No.”

  She said it too quickly. She knew it, and she could see, so did he. She didn’t want him getting too close. He was so different from the men she knew. Sitting down, she gave him a quick, sweeping look, taking in the scarred face, the strong dark hands, the boots that looked as if they’d been worn a long time and would be worn even longer. Shuji, she thought, wouldn’t like him.

  “Go ahead and ask your questions,” she said.

  Stark crossed a foot over his knee and held it by the ankle. He looked totally at ease, and suddenly Juliana wondered what would get this man worked up. What would make him angry? What would make him laugh?

  “I was at Lincoln Center Saturday night to see a Dutchman, Hendrik de Geer,” Stark said. “Do you know him?”

  Juliana laughed incredulously. “Is there any particular reason I should?” she asked, hearing her own sarcasm.

  Stark didn’t react. “Sam Ryder didn’t mention him?”

  “No, should he have?”

  “I don’t know, I’m fishing. De Geer and Ryder were supposed to have gotten together at the concert.”

  “Is your half-story about Senator Ryder?”

  “Maybe.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully, her lips pulled in slightly in concentration. “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “I don’t like many people. You’ve never heard the name Hendrik de Geer?”

  “Not that I can recall.”

  “I guess that might not be saying much. You’d never heard of Sam Ryder, either.”

  Juliana sat up very straight, stiff and insulted. “Are you always this hostile to people you interview, Mr. Stark?”

  “Call me Matthew, all right?” He gave something that passed for a smile. “How come you didn’t go to Vermont?”

  “I’ve been on tour since September, and I have some pieces I want to add to my repertoire. Vermont’s not going anywhere.”

  “I guess not. You put in long hours?”

  “Right now I am, eight a day minimum. To get back in shape.”

  “Then you’re following Shuji’s advice.”

  “He’s often right about this sort of thing.”

  “That piss you off?”

  She couldn’t resist a grin and madly wondered what this intense, remote man would think of J.J. Pepper. “Sometimes. But tell me more about this Hendrik de Geer. Is it just because he’s Dutch that you thought I might have known him?”

  “Frankly, yes. I always check out a coincidence. And there’s nothing more I can tell you about him. What about your mother, think she might know him?”

  “My mother?”

  “Sure. She’s Dutch, too.”

  Juliana stared at him, unable to believe he was serious, but nothing in his gentle-tough face, in the unreadable dark eyes and earthy grin, suggested he was—or wasn’t. “My mother left The Netherlands more than thirty years ago,” she told him, “before I was born. She has a sister in Rotterdam, but they don’t get along, and a brother in Antwerp whom she rarely sees. No Hendrik de Geers, I’m afraid, not that I know of.” Which, she thought, remembering tea with Rachel Stein, wasn’t saying a hell of a lot.

  “Okay. Sam Ryder attended the concert with an older woman, very tiny, dark, well-dressed. You wouldn’t know her, would you?”

  Juliana tried not to react, tried to keep her face as unreadable as his. Rachel Stein—it had to be! But she shook her head automatically, her instincts telling her to deny she knew anyone of that description. She should talk to her mother before bandying about Rachel Stein’s name and their relationship to a reporter. They were both Dutch, like this Hendrik de Geer. But what did any of them have to do with Senator Ryder—or with each other, for that matter?

  “No,” she said, shaking her head for added emphasis, “I don’t think so.”

  “Know anything about diamonds?”

  Juliana felt herself go numb. “Diamonds? No, how would I? I’m a pianist.”

  “Then you don’t know anything about the world’s largest uncut diamond?”

  Oh, Jesus. Could he mean the Minstrel’s Rough? No, impossible. Juliana resisted
the impulse to jump up and pace. Matthew Stark didn’t even know about the Peperkamp diamond tradition. How could he know about the Minstrel?

  Her mother, Rachel Stein, the Dutchman Hendrik de Geer, Senator Ryder—was this the connection among them? The mysterious, legendary Minstrel’s Rough? When cut, it would be worth millions.

  No, don’t be silly, she told herself, annoyed. She’d never really believed her uncle’s tale. What he’d handed her seven years ago was simply a rock with an interesting story behind it. If a diamond, one of only moderate value.

  But what if?

  Her heart thudded and her hands had gone clammy, but she called on her training and years of experience as a performer to maintain an outward air of self-control. Matthew Stark hadn’t lifted his perceptive eyes from her. She could feel them probing as he waited for her to give herself away. Well, she thought, I won’t.

  “I told you,” she said calmly, “I don’t know anything about diamonds. I don’t even like them.”

  Stark climbed slowly to his feet, his black eyes never leaving her. He walked over and fingered the diamonds in her ears, first the left, then the right. They were simple posts that she wore nearly every day, just so she wouldn’t have to fool with picking out earrings. Stark’s touch was very light, but not quite delicate. “What about these?”

  “They’re different.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re blue diamonds. Colored diamonds are the rage now. Once they were considered practically worthless.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about diamonds.”

  She smiled haughtily. “Obviously I know about the ones I wear.”

  The particular two in her ears had been cut by her great-grandfather Peperkamp, who’d been around during the wild early days when the South African diamond mines were discovered and the De Beers empire founded. But she didn’t think she should tell Matthew Stark that.

  He pulled back, and she looked up at him, carefully controlling her breathing like she did when she had the preconcert jitters and didn’t want anyone to know. She was more aware of Matthew Stark, his earthiness and obvious maleness, than she felt she ought to be. “Any more questions?” she asked coolly.