“I slipped and fell,” she spoke before the bewildered doorman could voice his alarm.
The elevator rose slowly. Emma’s coat would never be the same. Nor would Faith.
Emma opened the door in surprise. She was in her slip.
“Faith! What—”
“Someone just tried to kill me with a car. Tried to kill me, thinking I was you.”
Emma in the distinctive Red Riding Hood coat.
Emma the real target.
“Me? Kill me?” Emma looked as if she was about to faint. She sank onto the seat of a Thonet chair set against the wall.
“I had the hood of the coat up, so whoever was driving must have assumed it was you. We’re about the same size, and I was coming from your building.” The adrenaline that had flooded Faith’s body as she had fought for her life still coursed through her body. She was standing in her stocking feet, numb with cold, dripping dirty water onto one of the Stanstead’s Oriental rugs, but she felt as if she could take on a tiger or two. She was alive. She had saved herself. Now she had to save Emma, save her from herself, save her from the forces of evil. Faith tossed off the scarlet coat, letting it fall in a heap on the floor.
“Emma.” She tried hard not to shout. “Emma! This is very, very serious now. It’s not just Christmas cards 230
and Dumpster drops. They tried to kill me—that is, you! Maybe the idea was just to scare you, but I don’t think so. These are not people we should be dealing with alone anymore. All bets are off. Your father was murdered—and they’re trying to get his daughter! Yes, it’s going to cause some very unpleasant publicity in the short run. But the point is the long run. The point is being around! You have to tell Michael—and the police!”
“Michael. Michael will be waiting at the party and wondering where I am. I have to get ready,” Emma jumped up and looked about the hall wildly, as if expecting her husband to emerge from the closet.
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Emma, I know this isn’t something you want to think about, but you have to—there are no choices anymore!” Faith was overwhelmed by depression and fear. The adrenaline began to ebb. She wanted to go home. Get cleaned up and pull her quilt over her head for a long winter’s nap. Granted, Emma was crazy in love with her husband, but what use would she be to him dead?
She’d told Emma the truth. Faith was positive the driver hadn’t meant to inspire fear—though it had succeeded. He meant murder. They must think Emma knew something she didn’t—or didn’t know she knew.
She followed Emma into the bedroom, leaving little wet marks on the carpet as she padded after her. At the moment, she didn’t have the energy to both reason with Emma and think about getting dry.
“Look, if Michael had any idea that you were going through something like this and not telling him, how do you think he’d react? He’s your husband, for God’s sake! Somebody’s not just blackmailing you now!
He’d want to protect you, save you! Men are like 231
this—especially about their wives!” Faith knew she was ranting, but her words seemed to have little effect on Emma, who was zipping up her dress and slipping into her shoes, apparently oblivious of her friend—and the fact that she had put on a Versace white linen shift more suitable for Portofino in July than Manhattan in December. She seemed to be in a dream. Drugged, but Faith was sure it wasn’t pharmaceutical. It was Emma’s own particular drug. She’d simply shut down.
Faith grabbed her shoulders and sat her down on the end of the bed.
“Emma, you’ve got to listen to me!” Emma’s eyes—so startling blue, deep blue like a sea of scilla in spring—focused on Faith’s desperate expression. “I have heard you, but I don’t want to. I can’t think about all this. It can’t be happening.” Faith sat down next to her. “But it is,” she said softly.
“Tell Michael. Start there. Tell him tonight, when you come home. Tell him everything.”
There was a long silence and Faith wasn’t sure she’d gotten through; then Emma stood up and walked to her dressing table.
“I’ll tell him about the blackmail, about getting pregnant when I was a teenager.” Emma’s voice sounded surprisingly resolute. She stood looking in the mirror. Faith could see her face: Her lips were pursed and she was frowning with the intensity of her resolve.
She picked up a silver-backed hairbrush with her monogram. “But”—she smoothed her hair back with several swift strokes—“I won’t tell him about Nathan Fox. Not about my father. I can’t do that to him. If I get another threat, I’ll tell them I’ve told Michael all about it and let them assume it’s everything.”
“Are you sure—”
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She cut Faith off. “It’s a chance I’ll have to take.” She put the brush down and faced her friend. “The worst part is thinking that you could have been killed.
That’s what I can’t face. It was supposed to be me, and if anything had happened to you, I could never have lived with myself. Every step of the way since this has started, you’ve been with me, and maybe I’ve done a lot of things wrong, but you have to believe that I thought I was doing what was right. What was right to protect my husband. I never thought it would end up like this. End up with you almost—” She gave a short sob. “Oh, Faith, weren’t we little girls just yesterday?
Doesn’t it seem that way to you? If I had known what was going to happen, I’m not sure I would have wanted to grow up.”
“We were and you did—admirably,” Faith said firmly, although she’d been having the same feeling.
“But nothing happened. I’m fine. And we’ll be fine.
We’ve come this far . . .”
Emma wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“And we’ll see it through.” She looked at Faith’s feet.
“You don’t seem to have any shoes on, and I’m afraid to give you anything that might connect you to me, but shoes are shoes. The coat was different. No one knows you’ve been involved in all this, and I swear that no one ever will, as long as I live.” Emma did look like a little girl now and Faith had a sudden vision of a long-ago secret club, another oath. Yes, they were all grown up, but the rules were the same.
Emma was rummaging in her closet, pulling out shoe boxes. Faith was waiting for the right moment to tell her that she needed to grab another outfit for herself, as well.
“Tonight. This can’t go on. There’s no question. It’s 233
just drinks—the thing I’m meeting Michael at—and I’ll make dinner reservations for us afterward.
Michael’s been complaining that we haven’t had any time alone together for ages, so I’ll surprise him.” Surprise him, yes, Faith thought. Telling Michael part of what was going on was better than nothing—it was a start—and she was sure he wouldn’t stand by while his wife was being blackmailed. Maybe Emma was right. Maybe they would assume she’d told him everything, especially after tonight. She’d be frightened enough to do anything.
Emma handed Faith several boxes of shoes. “Try these. We’ll go to the Post House. Michael likes it.” Faith had retrieved Emma’s coat from the hall and was holding it up, examining the damage. It had kept her warm and dry, but it needed a dry-cleaning wizard now. Emma snatched it from her on her way to the bathroom. “Juanita knows some super dry cleaner. But I don’t think I want to wear it again.” Nor did Faith.
The Post House. A good choice. Faith believed it was always better to reveal potentially explosive or emotional information in a public setting, where presumably good breeding will prevent too crazed a reac-tion. She’d broken up a number of times this way. The Post House was one of New York’s newer temples to beef and already was very popular. Michael would be surrounded by any number of men he knew, all order-ing enormous and expensive slabs of meat. It was a place where guys like Michael Stanstead felt at home.
Maybe Emma was a better politician’s wife than she appeared.
“All set. I made reservations for nine o’clock.” Emma blushed slightly. She w
as in her slip again and reaching for a simple long-sleeved black jersey dress.
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Apparently, the mirrors in the bathroom had reflected dress white, the fairest in the land, but better off in black for now. She was snapping a simple gold cuff bracelet around her slender wrist. “There’s a phone in the bathroom. Michael—”
Faith finished for her, “likes it.” They both laughed, but it was nervous laughter. Emma glanced out the window. The rain had stopped. But neither woman really wanted to go outside.
The phone was ringing when Faith got out of the shower. She had taken a cab home. Walking into the apartment, she’d shed garments as she made a beeline for the shower, then stood under the hot spray, trying to think of nothing but the warmth seeping into her bones. After a while she began to come to. Had she been in for a half hour, an hour? She’d lost all sense of time. She’d turned the water off, reached for a towel—
and the phone rang. For a moment, she considered letting the machine get it, but she flashed on Emma.
In the street, outside Emma’s building, Faith had lived the seconds of her attack all over again—and again. She’d seen one of her shoes, but nothing on earth could have made her pick it up. She’d insisted on dropping Emma off at her cocktail party, over Emma’s protests that it was only on the next street. Faith had extracted a promise from her that she wouldn’t go out alone—anywhere.
She hastily pulled her terry-cloth robe on and lunged for the receiver, hitting her shin on the corner of the bed in the process.
“Hello?”
“Faith, great! I thought you’d be working or out. I just got back, and my agent has sold the book! Please, 235
please come celebrate tonight. If you have a date, break it!”
It was Richard.
Faith didn’t believe in playing games, yet she also didn’t believe in appearing too available.
“My plans for tonight aren’t definite. I think I might be able to make it.” All of which was true. She was elated. Something good happening to somebody. This alone was cause for celebration. She very much wanted to go out—and, she admitted to herself, she very much wanted to go out with him.
“Fantastic! The sky’s the limit. You pick.” Faith didn’t have any trouble choosing.
“Let’s go to the Post House.”
“You’re a quixotic woman, Faith Sibley. I would never have predicted this as your kind of place. Bouley, yes.
The Quilted Giraffe, of course. Le Bernardin, absolutely. But a steak house—albeit a very plush one—
no.”
Richard was sitting across from Faith, sipping a very dry martini. He was ebullient, and the small amount of alcohol he’d imbibed didn’t account for the one-hundred-kilowatt glow suffusing his face.
“Major milestones call for drama, and what could be more ostentatiously dramatic than this place? The steaks are the size of a turkey platter and we’re surrounded by power brokers, movers and shakers—fitting for an incipient best-selling author. Here’s to you—and the book.” Faith held her glass aloft. She was drinking a kir royale and planned to have at least one more. Then maybe she’d be able to concentrate on Richard and not keep seeing headlights bearing down upon her. “What’s the title—or can’t you tell yet?” 236
“My agent wants to keep it all very hush-hush.
Make a big splash by teasing the public with ads in the weeks before it comes out. Who is so-and-so? What southern town will never be the same again? That sort of thing.” He was clearly enjoying himself. “But what I can tell you is it’s a story of good and evil. Of being tempted—and yielding to temptation.”
“Sounds very Faustian—or biblical. Maybe you can work Eve into the title—or the apple.”
“Or the serpent.” Richard laughed. “Plenty of snakes down in that neck of the woods. Not too many apples.
Not like here. Not like the Big Apple. The biggest, red-dest temptation known to man or woman. If you can’t fall here, you can’t fall anywhere.” The martini was loosening his thoughts—and tongue.
“I couldn’t wait to get back and tell you, Faith.
When I’ve finished the manuscript, will you read it?”
“Of course. I’d be honored.” And she was. She had a sudden vision of herself married to a great author.
Shielding him from his adoring public so he could write undisturbed. Making his favorite foods, coaxing him from the black despair of writer’s block. She drained her glass and caught the waiter’s eye for another.
Wait just a minute! a voice inside her head cried out.
Handmaidens to great men! Think of poor Sophia Tol-stoy. Dorothy Wordsworth. Lorraine Fuchs.
“Want to order?” Richard asked. “I’m starved.” Faith wasn’t very hungry, but she wanted to stretch the meal out. The Stansteads were nowhere in sight, but it was only quarter after nine. Richard and Faith were not in Siberia, but not at an A-list table, either.
Still, it commanded a good view.
“Mixed grill—rare; baked potato—butter on the 237
side; and Caesar salad—do you want to share one?” Faith asked Richard.
“Sure, I love anchovies. Let’s see. Think I’ll go for the prime rib—make that medium rare—sorry, Faith, I know that’s overdone—and baked potato with butter and sour cream—not on the side. How about shrimp cocktails first? We’re celebrating, remember. Plus, we might as well go the whole nine yards if we’re going to have this kind of meal. I plan to have cheesecake for dessert, if I can manage it.”
Faith agreed. She hadn’t had a shrimp cocktail in years. It had been Hope’s favorite as a child and the only thing she would ever eat when the family went out.
“And the wine list, please,” Richard added.
When it arrived, he turned it over to Faith. “You pick. Until recently, springing for a bottle of Blue Nun meant I had a serious date. I tend to stick to beer—
sometimes even imported ones.”
“Have a beer, then, and I’ll have something by the glass.”
“No, pick something. Something French. Something red. I know that much.”
Faith ordered a Gigondas—it was big and oaky enough to stand up to the food—and sat back. The Stansteads had just walked in and were being shown to their table. It wasn’t close enough for Faith to overhear anything, but when they were seated, she could see Emma’s back and Michael’s face, so long as the people at the tables in between didn’t lean the wrong way.
The Stansteads didn’t see her and Richard was facing away from their table. Would Emma plunge right in, or wait for postprandial complacency?
The shrimp were enormous—and tasty. Richard was 238
regaling Faith with tales of different assignments. It should have been a great evening.
By the time their main courses arrived, Faith could see that Michael was holding Emma’s hand. His arm was stretched across the table, snaking around the bread basket, and he was looking at her with a complicated expression of love and sadness. Obviously, Emma was letting the cat out of the bag—or a few whiskers. Faith couldn’t see Emma’s plate, but Michael’s food was getting cold. A waiter appeared to pour more wine and Michael motioned him away. He was looking at his wife intently. Faith stopped chewing. Michael put his other hand over Emma’s. It was hard to tell at this distance, yet Faith was pretty sure there were tears in his eyes.
“So then I asked Prime Minister Kaifu—Faith, are you okay?”
“What? Yes, sorry. I got a little preoccupied there for a moment. Tell me about the Japanese prime minister,” she said, resuming normal functions, savoring the really excellent meat, done perfectly. It wasn’t going to be hard to prolong the meal. She was taking very small bites.
Faith liked to have her salad after her main course, European style, but in deference to the setting, she hadn’t said anything, and it arrived with much aplomb.
Like the rest of the city, the restaurant was bedecked for the season and the comfort of yet more pine boughs and lots of red
and green was turning Faith’s thoughts away from her near-death experience and toward her companion. The wine was helping to quell her feelings of dislocation. After all, ’tis the season to be jolly, she admonished herself. And Richard was fascinating. And damn good-looking. Nothing like the aura of success 239
to enhance a man—or woman. She looked around her.
The room was crammed with perfect examples.
“We go up to Westchester to my sister’s for Christmas Day. Watch her kids play with the wrapping paper.
I keep telling her not to bother with presents, just wrap empty boxes, but she seems to think that puts me in a league with Ebenezer Scrooge. She’s got twins, eighteen months old. And believe me, they could care less.” This whole kid thing was more complicated than Faith realized. She thought of the weary mother at the Met whose baby would sleep only when in motion, and now apparently there were little tykes who could be satisfied with crumbling and tearing paper—never mind what the treasure inside might be. She made a mental note to ask her mother about this. Somehow, she couldn’t quite picture it. Not care about the present? She knew reasoning developed slowly—echoes of college psych and Piaget reverberated in her head—but what about emotions? What about good taste?
“I don’t know anyone with children yet—I mean my friends, people my age. It’s probably all going to happen at once. I keep hearing people are ‘trying.’ ” The irony of it all struck her anew. Before marriage, “trying” meant avoiding; after, it meant the opposite.
“I’d like to have a couple of kids someday—but not for a long time. I’m not around enough to be a decent father.”
What were they doing talking about kids? Faith decided to change the subject. She still had her eye on the Stansteads. A waiter had taken Emma’s almost-untouched plate away. Michael had freed his hands and eaten most of his. Now, the sommelier was bringing a bottle of champagne. Michael’s hands were back, locked on Emma’s. Faith thought of the fervent pleas from the class secretary for alumnae news. Between the two of them, Emma and she could fill an entire issue simply by recording today’s events.
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