Resurgence

by M. M. Mayle

  Because she forgot to turn on the fan or open a window prior to showering, the bathroom mirrors are fogged over, so she arranges her hair by feel and dabs on mascara and lipstick hit-or-miss.

  In the bedroom proper, she sees she needn’t have rushed. Although the small round table in front of the fireplace has been set for dinner during her absence, she’s alone in the candlelit room.

  When Colin appears, Anthony is with him, ostensibly to say goodnight, but it’s clear he wants to linger. And linger he does, going on and on about the apple pancake—shades of his father—until even Colin grows impatient with his neediness. The third time one of the kitchen staff looks in to see if dinner should be served, the boy takes the hint and leaves on his own.

  The food, when it arrives, is of Colin’s choosing and reminds her of the dinner she had with Nate for being elegant without going completely overboard. They start with paper-thin gravlax on crustless buttered triangles of pumpernickel, followed by apricot-glazed poussin, short-grained East Indian rice, new peas and baby carrots, and finish with a Pavlova filled with whipped cream and mixed berries.

  For no good reason, she felt nervous throughout. Perhaps because no conversational thread was established; no single topic survived more than a couple of back-and-forths. They could have been on a first date, casting about for interests in common, awkwardly testing the waters of sexual attraction. And, now that they’re finished eating, true to first date form, Colin is offering her more of the sublime white Bordeaux that accompanied the meal. He’s already begun pouring when she places her hand across the top of her glass, causing him to spill some on her.

  “You could have said no before I started pouring,” he says without appearing perturbed.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, licking wine off her fingers.

  “And you could let me do that.” He reaches across the table for her hand and she pulls it back.

  Now he appears perturbed.

  “Am I gonna find out anytime soon what’s going on?” he says. “You’ve been acting strange ever since I found you on the high meadow this afternoon, and Anthony tells me you lost your temper with him in the kitchen. I’m not sayin’ he didn’t deserve it, but that’s not like you at all.”

  “I’m sorry about being strange. I’m sorry about being short with Anthony and I’m sorry—”

  “What is it, for chrissake? C’mon, Laurel, don’t give me a hard time. This is turning out to be the exact opposite of the evening I had in mind.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You already said that. Say something else!”

  “Very well! Give me some more wine and I’ll tell you what else I’m sorry about.” She folds her hands in her lap while he pours, then takes a deep gulp from the replenished glass. “I’m sorry I had to learn from a third party how you think I’ll feel about you performing music associated with Aurora. Shouldn’t I be the one to decide that? Shouldn’t I have some input about how I feel?”

  He frowns. No, this is a full scowl. She tries not to focus on his eyebrows while he mulls something over.

  “You’ve talked to Chris, then,” he says. “Doesn’t it just fucking figure he’d have to stick his oar in.”

  “That’s another thing I’m sorry about. That I have to listen to people talk about you like you don’t fully exist. The other day, it was the damn doctor in Denver who spoke of you as though you were some sort of experiment, and today it was Chris who just had to add this little tattletale epilogue thing to his testimony about your recovery period and now there’s—”

  “Laurel . . . baby . . . slow down. One thing at time. First of all—shit, now I sound like Nate. To get on with it, I am concerned that you’ll be bothered by music written whilst I was with Aurora. And I would have told you so, given the chance.”

  “Are you sure you are not the one who will be bothered by that music? If that’s true, I’ll dare say you’ll be the only one.”

  She offers a breathless argument that’s long on logic and short on illustrations. She can think of just one at the moment: “Layla!” she proudly proclaims. “The average listener’s not thinking of the lyricist’s feelings when he hears that song, he’s thinking of his own feelings. When your fans hear your music are they concentrating on your feelings or their own? Sure, your feelings allow them to tap into their own, and isn’t that all that matters—that the connection’s made, that the message comes across?”

  She’s getting away with it, convincing him she’s just another fan, and not a very well versed one at that. She continues to make her case until he holds up a warning hand and quite pleasantly tells her to leave off.

  “I get it, baby girl. You’re right. I’m the only one giving extra weight to the tunes from the Aurora era. And you’d be right calling me vain for doing it.”

  “Oh my god, is that Carly Simon song about you?”

  He winces like it could be before she gets the laugh she was going for. But the laugh fades fast; he’s all business again as he takes from his shirt pocket a folded sheet of lined yellow paper and smoothes it open.

  “I wasn’t gonna bring this up tonight, but as long as we’re on the subject,” he says and hands over the paper. “I needed to jot something down when I was in the north wing earlier. I stepped into your office, saw this on your desk and couldn’t help wonder what it meant.”

  She’s looking at the sketchy notes taken during the phone interview with the neurologist. “Dr. Aaron Kice Testimony” is printed across the top of the page in block letters; centered on the page are the words “your wife was decapitated in the accident” surrounded by swirls, arrows, sunburst designs, and a few squiggles meant to represent caterpillars. A notation at the bottom reads “catalytic converter.”

  “Can you tell me what that’s about?”

  She haltingly explains, admits to more than just a twinge of jealousy. “The notation at the bottom—a catalytic converter is, by definition, a device to reduce toxicity—my lame jokey way of attempting to deal with what Kice said was catalyst to your . . . your hibernation.”

  Not unlike Chris’s actions when an answer didn’t arrive easily, Colin rakes his fingers through his hair as though grooming his thoughts.

  “I should’ve seen that coming,” he mutters. “I should’ve known Kice would flaunt that bit when he talked to you. When I was in Denver a month ago, he more than alluded to it, but I wasn’t havin’ any because I still see no bloody reason in hell why the moment—sorry, the catalyst to my retreat had any importance.

  “I want you to give it no importance, Laurel. I mean it. You already know I don’t recall much of anathing that happened after I discovered Aurora at the truck stop. To use one of your favorite words, it’s ridiculous to pick one hideous example from a whole fucking string of hideous examples and lean on that as the reason for my disappearing into myself.

  “I don’t fault Kice altogether, though. You’ve gotta keep in mind he did get a reaction out of me—enough to generate a bit of optimism, I’m told—so maybe he can be forgiven for makin’ it sound like I sat up and took notice because Aurora got separated from her head. I mean . . . Jesus, with everything else goin’ on . . . I did have a few problems of my own, actually. You see what I mean?”

  “I see,” Laurel murmurs and looks away lest she actually see what it must have cost him to speak to her in such specific detail. She extends the hand she withdrew earlier. He doesn’t take it right away. When he does, he kisses the center of her palm, closes her fingers over that place, one at a time, then folds her thumb across her fingers as though securing a precious object. The symbolism is unmistakable; she never should have questioned where his heart lay.

  “Ridiculous,” she whispers and regards her closed hand with something approaching wonderment. Utterly ridiculous to waste any more of the half ruined evening on a specter. They can discuss the real issue another time.

  With her empty hand, she crumples the offending sheet of paper into a ball, bends low to ignite it with one of the hear
th candles, and tosses it onto the grate, where it briefly flares before flaking into ash. She glances up at Colin to see if he’s also viewing the display as an immolation scene, but his eyes are trained on the draped bodice of her dress, which has fallen open to the waist.

  TWENTY

  Morning, May 16, 1987

  Nate comes off an early arrival at Heathrow and survives the cattle drive through customs and immigration in unusually high spirits. The concession made to low profile wasn’t that much of a sacrifice; business class on the upper deck of a Boeing 747 doesn’t differ that much from the forward rows of a Concorde unless you’re hooked on cachet and speed.

  The other concession was booking rooms at the Westerly instead of the Dorchester in order to avoid a chance run-in with Colin. According to Amanda, Colin and a family entourage are booked into the Dorchester for three nights preceding the Rayce Vaughn Memorial Concert and for one night following.

  Nate is traveling light enough to take the tube into Knightsbridge, but arriving on foot at a five star hotel is a tad lower profile than called for. As requested, a liveried driver bearing a placard with Nate’s name on it is among the line of greeters outside the arrivals hall.

  Saturday morning inbound traffic is not that bad, so they’re through Hammersmith and closing in on Kensington well inside of an hour. Not one to tingle with excitement, he does acknowledge a rush of anticipation that can be attributed to being back in London, a city he prefers to New York. Because only the driver and hotel personnel know of his arrival today, he can be as free as he wants to be—within reason. Amanda expects to hear from him no later than Tuesday, the day before the concert, and Laurel is slated to take her cue from Amanda.

  Freedom might be overrated, though. A red phone kiosk flies by in his peripheral vision, then another and another. He starts watching for them, counting them like some demented traditionalist spooked by their threatened demise.

  When they enter Knightsbridge proper and approach Willow Place, he’s ready to buy one of the new cellular phones at any price and take his chances on it working more than ten percent of the time. At the hotel, he’s unable to settle with the driver and accept the doorman’s effusive welcome without scanning the surroundings for the nearest phone booth. Inside the lobby, he’s impatient with the assistant manager who checks him in and escorts him to a corner suite that boasts three phones.

  He grabs the closest one the minute he’s alone, tries Amanda’s office number first. She picks up on the second ring and he feels as though a hard-to-reach itch has finally been scratched.

  “Where have you been?” she says. “Do you realize I’ve been trying to track you down since last night?” She’s approaching shrill when she continues. “I don’t know how many messages I’ve left, and I was about to give up altogether, but now you’ve called and—”

  “Can we skip the reprimands? I’ve just come off an overnight flight, I haven’t had much sleep, jetlag’s in my near future, and because I didn’t eat on the plane, I’m getting peckish, as they say over here.”

  “Here? What here? Where are you?”

  “Not far from you—just down Park Lane and around the corner a ways.”

  “In London?”

  “Yeah, in London.”

  “But you’re not supposed to be here yet”

  “And you’re not supposed to be this woolly-headed.”

  “Are you referring to my curly hair?”

  “Jesus, Amanda, can we start over? I was able to come to London a few days early and I didn’t think to get clearance from you. Okay?”

  There’s a long silence. Long enough for him to wonder if he’s scratched the wrong itch.

  “I’m sorry,” she says in a less abrasive tone, “I apologize. I’m nutscrazy with everything else that’s going on and now this new development and now I’m taking it out on you and I didn’t mean it personally because I was set to dump on the next person I talked to and it just happened to be you and now I’m sorry.”

  “New development?” He waits for her to catch her breath. “Is that why you were trying to reach me? What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to fill you in about Rayce before you read it in the papers or heard about it on TV.”

  “Is it the coroner’s report?”

  “Yes, a preliminary report will be issued on Monday.”

  That trumps the news he wanted to share, and moves meeting with her to the top of the list. “Do you know The Grapevine in Shepherd Market?” he says. “It’s close to where you are on Curzon Street. Can you meet me there in a half hour?”

  She agrees without hesitation.

  Meeting in a public place solves the problem of how to greet her. Effusive displays are never his style, especially not in front of the flock of tourists ogling the landmark establishment with its lavish horticultural display and hazy leaded glass windows. When Amanda appears, they shake hands and float haphazard air kisses; when they go inside, they’re nonchalance personified as they head for a table in the darkest corner of the pub.

  She sips coffee while he slugs down an ale followed by an artery-clogging fry-up. She’s still a little prickly and responding like she’s on a thirty-second delay when he asks for an account of what will become public in forty-eight hours.

  “They’ve ruled it a suicide because there is absolutely no other explanation. None that would satisfy a scientific mind, anyway,” she says.

  “Is that your opinion or theirs—scientific mind?”

  “That’s the universal opinion, according to David, and they’re calling the results preliminary to leave the door open for later developments.”

  “Ass-covering and altogether understandable.”

  “Maybe so, but I think we all know that won’t happen. Later developments, I mean. Nothing short of a miracle will produce a satisfactory answer now. Nothing found since I last filled you in has made any meaningful difference.”

  “What’s been found since?”

  “Traces of coke showed up in a pocket of the suit jacket Rayce was wearing on the flight from New York. Colin was asked to attest to that—identify the jacket, I mean—and that produced all kinds of conjecture about whether Rayce had the coke in his possession during the flight.”

  “No way. No fuckin’ way. At his flagrant worst, Rayce Vaughn would not have risked going through customs carrying so much as a doobie. He would’ve enlisted someone else to carry, and god knows there were always enough volunteers for that job.”

  “That was Colin’s opinion, as well.”

  “Jesus, I should hope so.”

  “The investigators then theorized that Rayce had a stash somewhere within the Holland Park house, dipped into it when he got home, and for whatever reason, took a shitload of it by mouth.”

  “Shitload?”

  “That can’t be news, you’ve known from the beginning it was a humungous amount.”

  “I’m questioning the term, not the amount. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so much as the word ‘crap’ before.”

  “Get used to it. My vocabulary’s gone straight to hell since I hit the big time.”

  She smiles a little, making him acknowledge how truly pretty she is. And notice how exhausted she looks as she describes the official reconstruction of Rayce Vaughn’s last few minutes on earth.

  “This scenario they’ve come up with—as I was about to say—they now theorize that the drugs were contained somewhere within the house and—”

  “Somewhere? They can’t come up with better than that?”

  “Apparently not, and as I was about to say, they theorize that Rayce retrieved the coke from wherever, stuck it in his pocket, leaving those trace amounts they jumped on, while he went for the glass of water used as the means of ingestion.” She glances up from her second cup of coffee, “Before I go on, don’t hold me to this word for word. Keep in mind I’ve seen only David’s notes on the report, and I’m probably letting my own opinion creep in.”

  “You don’t have to issue me a
disclaimer. Don’t you know that by now?” He tries for a term of endearment that would soften his remark and can’t think of one that wouldn’t comment on her prettiness or her exhaustion. Another apology is the most he can offer. That, and a weak promise to stop interrupting.

  “Okay,” she says and rubs her eyes for a moment. “This is what else they’re saying—he mixed the potion in the study, drank all but a few drops, and was able to make it to the bathroom, urinate, and flush before the dose hit him.”

  “Yeah. Right. That’s exactly what I’d do if I were intent on killing myself—take a leak, then be sure to flush before I crashed to the floor.”

  “I know what you’re saying. I have a huge problem with that and with this other thing. Because they didn’t find any packaging anywhere, they’re theorizing he must have flushed it when he did the deed. I mean, who needs to destroy evidence in a situation like that? Why not just toss the baggie in the trash, why go to all that trouble? Have you ever tried to flush a baggie? They tend to fill up like a . . . a condom.”

  He’s closer to coloring than she is when she reveals at least a passing acquaintance with inflatables. He only nods to her rhetorical questions before posing one of his own.

  “What if the coke was packaged in something else? Rolling papers, glassine envelopes, maybe?”

  The words just hang there until she shrugs and enunciates the same resignation he feels.

  “I doubt there’d be any difference if the stuff turned out to have been gift wrapped. They’ve made up their collective minds and I’m compelled to say the same thing I did when I first found out—that this is just plain wrong.”

  Reminding her of his original assessment would be just plain cruel, and there is no satisfaction to be gained from his having predicted from the get-go that Rayce’s death would be ruled a suicide.

  Still stumped for a verbal means of showing support, he considers other possibilities. He could reach over and take her hand, hold it for a while. Or he could reach across and pat her arm, maybe stroke her wrist in a soothing way, and run the risk of sending a mixed message. Clouding the issue. Blurring intentions. Confusing her. Confusing him.