“Soon, I think.”
“You’ll do well,” Audric said. “Why? Because you’re bright. I’ve always liked you, Alex, ever since you were a kid. Now you’re a man, you’re still married to Diana, and your whole future is ahead of you. When are you two going to have children? Don’t wait too long. The longer you wait, the longer you’ll postpone your retirements. You want those little bastards out of the house toute suite. Trust me on this. I ditched Henri and put him to work as soon as I could. And now look at him. He’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me.” Audric looked up at his son, and what I saw in his eyes wasn’t confusion, but unqualified love. “Don’t let that go to your head, Henri.”
“It won’t, père.”
“But you know it’s true. You know your old man is proud of you. I probably should say it more often than I do. I have no idea why I’m saying it now. But it’s true. You’re a gem, Henri. And you’re not a pussy—thank God you didn’t turn into one.”
When Henri put his hand on his father’s shoulder, I was deeply moved. His father obviously was ill, but the love between them was palpable. I’d never had that with either of my parents, so it was always good to see others who had that bond.
Audric turned to me, and it was clear by his expression that he thought this was the first time that he’d ever seen me. He looked up at me with a smile. “And here you are, Diana, as beautiful as ever.”
“Thank you, Audric.”
He lifted his head at me with clouded green eyes that reminded me of the sea at dusk. He reached out his hand for me to shake, and here is where I felt his frailty. His skin was soft and papery. His fingers, wrecked by arthritis, were so slender, they felt like they could snap with a brisk shake. On the back of his hands were brown spots and purple bruises. It reminded me of my grandfather’s hands not long before he died, and the sight of it depressed me.
“It’s good to be out tonight,” Audric said. “I don’t come out often enough—and I’ve had fun! I even nipped at some old bitty’s heels with this damned machine, which gives me all the excuse I needed for doing so. What was she going to say to me—‘get off my ass, cripple’?’” He looked around the room with a wistful glance. “You all realize that I could be gone at any moment, don’t you? So, you know, you should prepare yourself for that. I could just slump over in my chair, shit my pants, and that would be that. Lights out for Audric. That’s what it’s like at my age. You never know when death is going to hit. Being this old is the most surreal experience. I go to sleep at night and think, ‘Well, that’s it. Surely, I’ve snuffed the final candle by now.’ Then, I wake the next morning, stunned to realize I have a shot at another day.”
At that moment, the photographer who’d photographed Alex and me earlier came over and asked if he could take a group photo of all of us.
“I look like a poached egg, but to hell with it,” Audric said. “Capture my son and me together while you can, and you might as well include these two. Are you capable of making me look young?” he asked the photographer.
When the man didn’t speak, Audric laughed. “Didn’t think so, kid. Go on—take the photo.”
“If I could just have everyone pull in,” the man said.
We did, and he took several photographs just as a piercing, unmistakable voice cut through the crowd: “Papi!” a woman called. “Yennifer!”
“That will be all,” Henri said to the photographer, but when the man receded, I was aware of him moving only slightly into the crowd, where he hovered along the periphery. I knew why. Epifania Zapopa was closing the distance between us, a smile as massive as her personal fortune on her face—and this man didn’t want to miss a moment of it.
“It’s Epifania Zapopa,” I said.
“What’s an Epifania Zapopa?” Audric asked.
“A wild, unhinged woman,” Henri said.
Audric sat up in his seat. “Then I’m ready for her. Sounds like my kind of girl.”
“You might want to rethink that,” Henri said. “They call her the loose cannon of Park Avenue.”
“Even better. I have a loose cannon of my own in my pants. Maybe she can spark it to life again.”
“What the hell is she wearing?” Henri asked.
“Apparently, a dress I bought for her,” Alex said.
“I can explain,” I said.
“Good luck explaining that,” Henri said. “She looks like a marshmallow. But maybe I’m being too hard on her. She’s amiable enough. In an odd way, I kind of like her. She’s not the brightest candle in the menorah, but she’s a good person. She just doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing after inheriting all of Charles’ money. So let her come—not that any of us could ever stop her.”
When Epifania finally burst out of the crowd, she went straight to Alex, gave him a kiss on each cheek, and repeated the gesture with me and then with Henri before stopping and looking down at Audric.
“Who you?” she said.
“Who me?”
“Yeah—who you?”
“I’m Audric Dufort, Henri’s father,” Audric said with a smoothness that bordered on flirtation. “And now it’s your turn, young lady. Who you?”
“I Epifania Zapopa! I good friend with your son, and also with the Alex and the Yennifer.”
“Who is ‘Yennifer’?”
“That’s what Epifania calls me, Audric,” I said. “It’s just a nickname.” Before Epifania could try to figure that out and potentially dispute it, I asked her if I could see her dress.
“Oh, no. Not the dress. Epifania know you gonna be mad.”
“I’m not mad, Epifania. I’d just like to see it.”
She took a step back, put a hand on her hip, and struck a pose.
“Well, there’s that,” Henri said.
All I could do was shake my head at her. The dress was not fitted properly, and worse, it looked as if her breasts were about to rip through the fabric and bare themselves to the world. Despite how expensive that dress was, she looked like a stripper to me. If there was a brass pole in this place, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find her swinging around on it.
“Immaculata tol’ me to get thees one,” Epifania said. “She always got my back, so I do what she say. How I look?”
“Ravishing,” Audric said. “Like a pin-up girl.”
“You mean like a ‘paper doll’ or something?”
“Doll just about does it for me,” Audric said. He patted his lap. “How’d you like to sit down right here and go for a ride?”
“Père,” Henri said. “I don’t think that would be advisable or appropriate. The press are here, after all. And our guests.”
“Henri, what have I always told you? Fuck them. Fuck society and what people think of you. We’ve made this crowd money for dozens of years, and because of that, they’ll overlook just about anything. We’ve proved that together. Plus, at this point, they know what I know—I’m not quite there. I get it—I’m losing it. It’s not some secret to me or to them. So, if Epifania wouldn’t mind obliging an old man, I’d like to give her a lift, blow my horn, and have some fun.”
“You say it so sexy,” Epifania said. “I blow your horn for you.”
“I bet you would, cupcake.”
“But me rump is too big. It’s like a couple peegs. Epifania too heavy for you.”
“Heavy? Hell. Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
“I don’ wanna crush your legs. They look like the toothpeeks me Mama Guadalupe use to clean her teeth with.”
“You won’t crush them. And besides, even if you did, it’s not as if they work, anyway.” He patted his lap again. “Come on over and let’s go for a ride, baby.”
“It does look like fun,” Epifania said. “You know, tonight, Epifania see you whirling around this joint without a care in the world. And if I sit on your lap and make the love to you while we go for our ride, it probably peese off a few of these uppity turds who can’t stand me. So, you know, why not? Epifania game!”
“Oh, Jesus,” Henri said.
“Epifania,” I said. “Please don’t.”
“No, Yennifer. I doing this. Me new Papi is about to take Epifania to grande heights of the scandal. I been sneered at all night by these reech motherfuckers, so if they want to sneer at me for real, let’s give them a reason. Epifania down with this! Screw these uptight honkies. Epifania and the ol’ man gonna make them think twice about who really run this crowd.”
“Or who runs over them,” Audric said. “Now, get that big fat ass of yours over here.”
“Père,” Henri said.
“Oh, Henri, just let me live for God’s sake. Is that too much to ask? I didn’t think so. Epifania, come here.”
“You got it, Papi. Let’s steamroll over them. Just don’ let anyone pull Epifania’s hair. You never know what happen when they pull the hair.”
“Why would they pull your hair?”
“Because they hate me.”
“Do you care?”
“Epifania worth the five hundred million. She only care if the hair pulling hurt.”
“Five hundred million? Well screw them. They won’t dare to touch you. Have a seat.”
Epifania did, sitting sideways on Audric’s lap with her legs curling over the side of the chair’s armrest. If Audric felt her weight, he didn’t show it. If anything, he looked excited by her presence, so much so that when she put her arm around his narrow shoulders and kissed him on the cheek, he glowed with appreciation.
“Let’s go,” he said.
And off they went.
For a moment, the three of us just stood there as Audric put his wheelchair into motion, and the two of them motored away from us. And as they sped forward with Epifania’s legs kicking out in rhythms of delight, the photographer from the Post came out from the crowd and took their photograph.
“Drive me home, Papi!” I heard her say. “Drive Epifania to the Mars and to the Uranus and to the back again!”
People turned and looked affronted as they stepped out of the way as Audric roared past them.
“This is humiliating,” Henri said to us. “But what can I do? Deny him of this? He’s right—I shouldn’t give a damn. But I have to admit that I do. Sometimes, he’s there, as he was just a moment ago, but most times he isn’t. It’s unpredictable.”
“It shouldn’t last long,” I said. “She’s no lightweight. He’ll tire of it soon.”
But not soon enough.
When he and Epifania were about thirty feet away from us, the chair seemed to catch, stop, and jerk in an odd kind of hiccup. Epifania lurched forward with such force, I thought for certain that she was going to be thrown out of Audric’s lap. But she wasn’t. Instead, she giggled and said, “No, no—don’ end the ride yet, Papi!” And then, with unexpected force, Epifania rocked back against Audric’s chest as a smart clap of smoke popped from the back of the chair. Suddenly, the wheelchair roared to life and shot forward, toward one of the large French windows that overlooked Fifth Avenue forty-seven stories below.
“Aye yai yai!” I heard Epifania scream.
“Your ass has crushed the controls!” Audric said.
Immediately, Alex and I darted forward in an effort to help them. Henri followed, pleading for someone to stop the chair—or to at least overturn it. “For God’s sake, somebody do something!” he shouted.
But nobody did.
Henri’s entertaining space was a good sixty feet long, but Audric already was past the halfway mark. And with Epifania’s ass resting hard on the controls, he wasn’t strong enough to stop the chair from racing toward the grand window that loomed before them.
“Papi!” Epifania screamed.
“Stop them!” Alex shouted. “Somebody grab hold of the wheelchair. Turn it over, for God’s sake.”
But the crowd—which had seen Audric race past them all evening—merely looked on as if this were some kind of joke. Perhaps they thought that this was just another one of Audric’s stunts, because some frowned as he and Epifania soared past them, while others looked on with tolerant, thin-lipped smiles.
But this was nothing to smile about. This was dire.
Before Alex or I could reach them, the wheelchair slammed against the bottom of the window. Epifania was knocked hard to the floor, but Audric was catapulted like a rag doll through the glass and into the open air, into which he disappeared, but not before leaving behind a fleeting bellow of fear that faded so quickly, it was haunting.
People started to scream. Strong gusts of warm air rushed into the room. Beneath our feet, glass broke and shattered as Alex and I hurried toward the window. And then, for some reason, it seemed as if lightning was going off all around me.
In stunned silence, Alex and I looked out the window, which the wheelchair kept banging against as if its motor knew no better. We looked down into the night, but it was so dark and we were up so high that we couldn’t see anything. But we knew that the worst had happened. I turned and saw someone help Epifania to her feet. She was gasping, breathless, and even she had no words for what had just happened. She was in shock.
Audric Dufort had just plunged over five hundred feet to his death.
In sadness and in horror, I looked around for Henri, but instead came face-to-face with the photographer from the Post, who was just behind me—and whose camera was the source of what I’d initially thought was lightning. With a fervor that hinged on hunger, he was taking photographs of all of us. And he had recorded the last moments of Audric Dufort’s life for the world to see.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning, news of Audric Dufort’s death was everywhere. That was expected—the man was an icon in the city, and he deserved all of the public condolences and accolades he received.
What wasn’t unexpected was that the Post had made Alex and I part of the story.
After a fitful sleep, each of us rose at four in the morning. After all that had happened the night before—from my attack against Stephen Rowe to what had happened to Audric himself—the idea that sleep was even possible was a joke.
And so, after giving up on sleep and holding each other quietly for a few minutes, we slipped out of bed, deciding it was best to just start the day. While Alex collected the morning papers, I went into the kitchen to make coffee. My nerves alone were enough to make me feel sick to my stomach, which was nothing new these days given the pressure Alex and Wenn had been under. But my nausea only intensified when Alex returned to the kitchen, sat at the island, and tossed the Post onto the countertop.
“And so it gets worse,” he said.
I pulled two mugs out of a cabinet and turned to him. He was wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, his dark hair was tousled, and he looked furious to me.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
He motioned toward the paper. “Have a look.”
With a sinking feeling in my gut, I went over to the counter, picked up the Post, and saw that Alex and I were on the front page, with an empty wheelchair and a smashed window just behind us. In the photo, surprise was stamped on my face and Alex looked nothing if not horrified by what had just happened. The headline was as massive as it was cutting: “WENNFAIL.”
On the paper’s lower right corner was another photo, this one fit snuggly in a circle. It was a grainy photograph of Audric Dufort’s smashed body lying on the sidewalk outside his son’s penthouse on Fifth. The cutline that ran beneath it was even more hurtful, unfair, and abusive: “Alexander Wenn fails to save Audric Dufort—and his own company.”
And that’s all it took—my stomach hitched, and I ran into the half-bathroom just off the kitchen and threw up whatever I had left in my stomach, which wasn’t much. As I launched into a series of dry heaves, Alex hurried into the room and crouched down beside me. He reached for my hair and held it away from my face while he rubbed my back.
“Jennifer,” he said, when the heaving slowed. “Please don’t be sick. They’re idiots. It’s the Post. Nobody takes them seriously.”
>
When I was finished, he reached for a towel off the rack beside the sink and handed it to me. I pressed it against my lips and my chin, and then went to the sink, turned on the water, and dipped my mouth toward the running stream while tears stung my eyes. I swished, spat, and took in a long pull of cold water and swallowed. When I stood up to look at myself in the mirror, I looked as if I’d aged a decade overnight. All of the color had drained from my face. Alex was just behind me, his hand resting on my shoulder. I reached for and grasped his hand as I leaned against his body.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“There’s no need to be sorry.”
“I’m not talking about throwing up—though I’m also sorry about that. What I’m sorry about is what people are doing to you. It makes me sick, Alex—literally. I hate it. You deserve better than this, and I should be able to protect you from it. You tried to save that man. We both did. And now look how they’ve spun it. I don’t even want to know what they’ve written about you in that fucking rag.”
He met my eyes in the mirror, and I could feel his concern for me, as well as his love and his compassion. “Then we won’t look,” he said. “We’ll just get on with the day and forget about it. As I said, it’s the Post. They’re a tabloid. They don’t matter.”
When I’d composed myself, I turned to him. “But we have to look, don’t we? We have to know what they’ve written, so we can be prepared for whatever might come our way later today. And it will come, Alex. People will react to that story. My first instinct is to protect you, and I will do anything that it takes to do so.” I lifted my eyes to the ceiling and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s embarrassing. I’m stronger than this.”
“You are strong,” he said. “You proved that last night with Rowe. But this is different, Jennifer. You’re upset for two valid reasons—Audric’s death and what you just saw on the cover of that paper. Don’t worry about it—I will rise above this. So will you. Right now it’s just my turn to be kicked around by the tabloids. It happened to my father. It happened to me after Diana died, when they blamed her death on our failing marriage. And now it’s happening again. I’ll come through this. We’ll come through this. But I’m worried about you.”
Annihilate Me 2: Omnibus (Complete Vols. 1-3, Annihilate Me 2) Page 12