She rapped her emerald on the inner glass.
All at once her teeth began to chatter, and her hands could not hold still. She was trapped by a phenomenon that transcended memory. She could actually feel the silky Egyptian cotton of her pajamas, see the pitch-darkness, experience the heart-stopping horror of something unknown in the dark room with her, and as it moved closer, terror choked her so once again she could not breathe or cry out. She could smell the liquor, feel the hands pawing at her hairless body, again she experienced her thrashing struggles to escape.
A whimpering groan escaped her.
Charles came over, resting his hands on either arm of her chair, looking down at her, his reddened eyes filled with concern. “What is it, Mother?”
She leaned back, shaking, unable to speak.
“Shall I get you a drink?”
She nodded. When he returned with the highball her hands shook too much to take it. Placing the glass on the small table, Charles sat on the chair arm, bending down to cradle her shoulders with his arm. Her son’s gesture was balm for her ravaged state.
He’s a wonder, my Charles, she thought.
And into her mind popped a corollary: I’m not about to let him throw himself away on that plain, cheap little movie girl.
She ignored the fact that her lover was Sari’s brother and that this weekend Billy was coming to New York to console her. In her pain she recognized only that Charles was the one person alive not her natural enemy, and she must see that he had the best of the best.
The jet passed smoothly above a break in the clouds. After a minute or two, her hands were steady enough to hold the glass. She took a long drink. “Exactly what I needed,” she said. “Thank you, dear.”
* * *
The family, or those of them who were in the country, felt it an incumbent duty to show up at the funeral on that rainy, chill afternoon. Immediately following burial they rushed back to the “cottage.”
With the death of the third Mrs. Grover T. Coyne, the immense country place, with its high gilt-and-crimson ceilings, oppressive dark marble, and priceless quattrocento Italian furnishings, had been donated as a museum to the state of New York. The Coyne family, however, had retained the largest guest house, which they used only on these mournful gatherings. Around the sitting room’s immense Gothic fireplace, fifteen black-clad people drank cocktails and chatted with imperturbable smiles. Gertrude, unnerved by her family at the best of times, retired immediately to her bedroom—she had the one with the famed Cardinal Mazarin bed. Althea, in her black St. Laurent orphan’s weeds, played chief mourner.
Her inferiorities surfaced when she had to face the Coyne tribe en masse, and besides, since the episode on the DC-10 she had been plagued by that imbalance, as if every floor tilted at a minuscule degree.
She therefore buckled Charles to her arm as her shield. He had mercifully inherited the damnable Coyne certainty. (She had never connected this assured aspect of her son with Gerry’s strength.) Even with Charles, tall and bone hard at her side, she found herself fighting desperately to prove her worth, talking knowingly of Vietnam, David Hockney, and the Paris showings—it would have been unseemly in a Coyne to mention the deceased.
At five, excuses were made and custom-built European cars departed crunching over wet gravel.
The funeral rites had officially ended: the mortal parts of Harry Cunningham were considered laid to rest.
Charles asked, “Will you go to New York tomorrow?”
The thought of staying at this gloomy place longer than necessary sent a shudder through her. “Yes, of course.”
“I’m flying back to California with Grandmother.” Charles sank into a chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his expression drained. After Firelli’s death, his grandfather had been the adult male of his life. “Tomorrow.”
The room tilted more ominously. “Charles,” she said, “don’t leave yet.”
“But you’re doing so fabulously,” he said. “You outshone everybody.”
“All front.”
Rain drummed against ancient French ecclesiastical stained glass, the logs in the fireplace jumped and crackled.
After a long hesitation Charles said, “I promised Grandmother to stay with her the month before I start work.” He would enter the Coyne New York Bank, which was fully controlled by the Coyne Foundation, at the beginning of May. “She was pathetic when she heard I’d be at Belvedere.”
“I . . . well, I’m sure Grandmother needs you, but she can express her grief. With me . . . it’s all bottled up and comes out so oddly. . . .” Her eyes filmed with unsought tears.
After a long moment Charles’s sleek head bent. “I promised Sari, too.”
A dagger of hatred directed itself from Althea to Sari. Why can’t she call herself decently Sara. I must keep him away from her. “If you promised, then you must go to California. . . .”
Charles blew his nose. “Would it help if I stay until next Friday?”
“I’d really appreciate that, Charles.” Rising, she moved to touch his shoulder. “I should be through the worst by then.”
He rose stiffly. “See you at dinner.”
Alone, she leaned back into the opulent tapestry that had been woven for a fifteenth-century pope, and finally began to cry. Her smothered little sobs had nothing to do with the deceased—or rather, everything. It was her father’s death that had upturned and unbalanced her.
She rested her wet cheek on the silken, must-scented brocade of the chair arm, and suddenly recalled that Billy would be in New York this coming weekend.
Yes, she thought. That’s good. I’ve been so incredibly sexy these last horrible weeks. I need his hard cock all the time. What’s happened to me? I never panted for it, I never was crude.
Then she thought: Charles’ll be with me at the flat, so Billy can’t stay.
* * *
“You don’t mind putting up at the Plaza, do you, Billy?”
“I had in mind your bed.”
“I can’t have you at my place. Charles’s staying on—this has been hell on him.”
“Let me sack down in the servants’ quarters. I’ll emerge only when summoned to service you.”
“Billy, no snideness, I can’t bear it today.”
“Would it be headline news if Charles caught on you’re not a virgin?”
To ensure the privacy of this call, she had taken “a little drive” in the wet night, and now she perched in the phone booth of a Texaco station. “We’ll be together more in the Plaza—”
“Hasn’t it sunk in, Althea? Don’t you realize I’m flying to New York to be with you for exactly twenty-three hours? Don’t you understand? I’m so crazy about you my eyes are bugging and I’m so horny for you it’s become an embarrassment.”
“Mmm . . . I can’t wait until Saturday,” she said, and replaced the receiver.
* * *
On Saturday, after Billy opened the door of his room at the Plaza, he returned to slump in one of the green armchairs morosely scratching his skinny bare feet while he watched television without the sound. The picture showed a sea of banners, then a close-up of a young, furious-mouthed man shaking a placard.
“More demonstrations outside the White House?” she asked.
“Right on. Amazing how the youth of the country has turned against patriotism, isn’t it?”
“In War Two, men lined up outside the Pacific Electric Building to enlist—it was Los Angeles’s Army recruiting center.”
“Just Nixon’s luck, becoming president in these degenerate times. I should be in Washington marching with ’em,” Billy said, going to the television set. The picture dwindled, fading.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
“I’ve been considering playing it platonic, you know, like a school pal of Charles’s.” He pecked at her cheek. “That sort of thing, Mrs. Stoltz.”
“You’ve never been petulant.”
“My God, doctor!” He grasped his chest. “Tell me
quick. Is it fatal?”
She sat on the edge of the bed, carefully.
“What is it, Althea? You look strung out.”
“We agreed when we started that we’d be discreet around Charles.”
All at once he went to a window, gripping the ledge. His back was curved and the vertebrae showed vulnerably through his T-shirt. “I know this is a rough time for you, and I don’t mean to heckle, but I’ve been sitting here thinking about us for hours. The relationship’s got certain very depressing angles. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m really hung up on you.”
“I care a lot too,” she said, not thinking, but needing him to hold her. She moved to the window next to him.
It was raining again, and below them the new leaves on trees in Central Park glistened.
“Then why don’t we do something about it?”
“Oh, Billy.”
“That tone of voice. You sound as if I just inquired whether you’d go into the park with me and set up a mugging operation. Not marriage.”
“Marriage?”
“So why not? God knows there was a minor age gap between you and husband number one, maybe sixty or seventy years. What’s so wrong with a virile young man separated by a mere fifteen years?”
“Eighteen,” she said. “You’re twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four. Is that one of the cardinal sins?”
“Billy, can’t we stop this?” Her voice was amazingly cool and controlled. She reached her arms around him.
He gave a groan, hugging her so tightly that she thought he’d crack one of her ribs, kissing her, thrusting his tongue deep into her wide-open mouth while he groped at her breasts and buttocks. Without thought, she began yanking at the zipper of her black wool frock, letting it slide onto the carpet while she fumbled swiftly with her black lace bra to loose her large, erect-nippled breasts. As she tugged down her cobwebby black silk panty hose, her frantic fingernails started a run.
Under the hotel sheets, she clung to him conscious only of where their bodies were joined, that wet, dark tunnel where all her impulses toward love—even with Gerry Horak—had ultimately been doomed to defeat.
Alternately she used her muscles and he moved. I am myself again, she thought.
She stayed with Billy for hours. Until after eleven.
Despite the lateness of the hour, she used one of the lobby booths to telephone Archie Coyne, who as chairman of the Coyne Foundation controlled all the family-owned Coyne enterprises including the Coyne New York Bank. Again it was of utmost importance that Charles not have the least chance of overhearing. She explained the reasons behind her request to Archie, and he agreed to it.
63
Late Monday afternoon Charles let himself into the apartment. Althea was having a drink in the living room. She had recently remodeled the co-op with luxurious simplicity, and to the left of the windows, carefully planned shelves had been inset. Her grandmother’s collection of Greek vases cast their shadows on the walls, graceful shapes of amphora, hydria, krater, rhyton, and alabastron that made a refreshing departure from the routine blare of contemporary art.
“Charles?” she called.
He had been, she knew, at a meeting with the Coyne hirelings, those circumspect gray bankers who would be his immediate superiors. His fair, straight hair was ruffled by the wind and he moved wearily.
“Don’t tell me you walked home from Wall Street?” she said.
“I needed time to think.” He sank into a chair near hers.
Crystal rang as she tapped her glass. “Want one?”
“No, thanks,” he replied. “Ogden told me a situation’s come up in Stockholm—the second man’s been transferred. I have to fly over there right away.”
She feigned surprise. “I didn’t know Coyne New York had an office in Sweden.”
“Since 1959. It’s small. A good place for me to learn the foreign side.” He looked down at his fingernails. “The thing is, I’m not so positive I want to go into Coyne New York.”
A tremor ran through Althea. I’m doing the right thing, she thought. Given any more time, that hippie slut would take him in completely. “We talked about it often enough,” she said. “You always told me you felt an obligation. Are you disappointed they want to start you at a minor office?”
“It’s not that. For a time now I’ve been thinking I’d like to be in something, well, more human. I do seem to have an ability to lead people. What could be more depressingly crass than leading the rich into making bigger fortunes?”
“Oh, Lord! Charles, do you realize that sounds direct from the sandals-and-commune set? We both know that financial institutions have done more to eliminate poverty in this century than all the bearded gurus put together.”
“Yes, I know that without an accumulation of capital there wouldn’t have been any of the industrial advances. All I’m saying is, I’m not sure that I belong in the bank. Most people are forced to spend their lives earning a living. That’s not true for me. I can choose what I want to do.”
“Archie will retire in a few years. I don’t have to explain what it means, being the bank’s president. Whoever has the job is chairman of the foundation.”
“I’m not the only cousin,” he said.
“Three’s over fifty,” she said. Three was Grover T. Coyne III, the next in the line of succession. “And after Three, who else would you suggest?” She listed the other third- and fourth-generation cousins. “Dennis flitting with his pretty boys? Ridge and his gambling? Tinny with his divorces? That nincompoop Wallace?”
Charles sighed. “You make me sound preordained.”
“You’re the natural one to head the family, Charles.” She leaned toward her son. “Tell me what the problem is about Sweden.”
“I’d planned on spending the rest of this month in California.”
She raised a delicate eyebrow, as if to say, Ahhh, so it’s frivolous.
He drew in his cheeks so that the bones were more prominent. A cold, forbidding Coyne expression.
She clasped her drink in both hands. Her voice low, pleading, she spoke the truth. “Charles, maybe I am pushing you, but that’s because I’ve always been so filled with pride. You’re everything I always wanted to be.”
* * *
Tuesday evening’s SAS flight from John F. Kennedy to Arlanda Airport outside Stockholm was delayed.
Charles and Althea waited in the VIP lounge. Dark shadows showed beneath Charles’s eyes as he slumped in his armchair.
Although her son was leaving tonight because of her purposeful maneuvers, the last thing on earth Althea desired was for Charles to go. She needed him desperately. That peculiar sense of not quite being on level ground sometimes still hit her, or she would hear ghostly strands of music. She awakened at night sobbing, and found herself trapped in paranoid fits, when she feared everyone but her son.
A disembodied Scandinavian bass voice announced that the plane was now boarding. At the gate she flung her arms around Charles, hugging him tightly—she who had always maintained a cool balance between them in public.
“You’ll phone and write often?” she asked.
“You’re still in rotten shape—it’s out of the question for me to be leaving.”
“Can’t a mother get sticky once in a while?” She drew away, patting his cheek. “Have a good flight, Charles.”
With the small group of other first-class passengers, he moved reluctantly down the portable entryway, turning at the bend to look at her. She raised her hand, grateful he was far away—had he been closer, he would have made out the hollowness of her smile.
At home, she rushed into her room with its sleek new furnishings and corner planted with bromeliads. Leaving her clothes strewn on the dressing-room floor for Gerda to get the following morning, she gulped down two Nembutals.
She dreamed of her father coming toward her with his charming smile. The dream then changed him into a sinuous leopard with dangerous black markings. She dreamed of Charles in a furious rage b
eating her with his fists—or was Gerry the man mercilessly assaulting her? She dreamed of Roy screaming from behind a monstrous Greek mask. She awoke shivering.
The phosphorescent digits on her clock read 12:03.
She had slept less than an hour.
She stretched out on her back, ordering herself to let the soporifics take hold again. But the more she tried to relax, the tighter strung she felt. Her molars clenched, her blood pounded, her sexual organs itched with desire.
After a half-hour she turned on the light, putting the phone on her pillow to dial California. A voice answered after one ring.
“Billy?” she said.
“Me.”
She rested her cheek against the monogrammed pillowslip. “I didn’t think you’d be in.”
“That’s your sensual mind.”
“Sensual?”
“You were imagining me in the arms of your routine lusciously titted nympho starlet. That’s Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This being Tuesday, I’m eating take-out sushi in front of the telly.”
“What are you watching?”
“Switchies.”
“What?”
“Switching the dial gives a surreal intelligence to the boob tube. This is pretty late Eastern Standard Time. Just get in?”
“Charles’s flight was hours late and I stayed at the airport with him.”
“Yea, yeah, that’s right. Today’s the day. So our Charles has taken off into the dizzy world of international high finance. Poor Sari, she’s been dragging around. She’d figured on seeing him next weekend. Aunt Roy’s taking her down to Laguna—not much of a consolation prize, but so it goes.”
Althea’s eyes were stony. “Sari? But she’s just a baby.”
“Nearly twenty.”
“She can’t be!”
“She told you the night we had dinner at L’Auberge.”
“It must’ve slid by me. Here I’ve been imagining her as twelve or thirteen . . .” Althea let her voice fade. “Billy, you’re totally on the wrong track about her and Charles.”
“He clocked in plenty of hours at the house.”
“To see your father—he admires his films.” She paused. “If he led the poor child on, he certainly didn’t mean to.”
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