House of Lords
Page 17
What had she been doing when he called? He would ask. He would apologize for coming by so late. I didn’t get you up? he would say, and she would have to have an answer. She turned on the television and found a movie. No, I was up, I was watching a movie. That would do nicely. She left the set on while she went to the bathroom to check her hair, then hurried back to turn it off because she wouldn’t be able to say a thing about the movie.
The doorbell went off like an alarm, ending her confusion. “It’s me,” he said over the intercom, which seemed presumptuous, and she buzzed him in. He was at her door a minute later, offering her a shy, slightly awkward smile instead of the apology she expected.
“I read the book,” he said.
Presumptuous again, expecting her to know what he meant. But she did.
She offered him a drink. “Whatever you’ve got,” he said.
He followed her into the kitchen, where she uncorked a bottle of wine. Red. “You don’t seem surprised,” he said as she filled two glasses.
“That you called?”
“That I read it.”
He had surprised himself reading it.
“Very little surprises me,” she said.
“I never knew whether that’s a quality to be proud of or ashamed of.”
“That nothing surprises me? Proud, I would think.”
“Good, then,” he said.
They touched glasses and drank.
It was easy to think of her as a beautiful woman, although she didn’t have the grace most beautiful women have. There was a quality about her that was in fact the exact opposite of grace. It would have been easy to imagine her at the craps table of a sumptuous casino, all eyes on her, all her chips riding on every roll of the dice. She had an intensity he had never seen in a woman before.
Standing in the dark kitchen, lit only by a shrouded bulb over the sink, they talked about the book through two glasses of wine. He had read it on the train, or in the car, or when he was tired of work and didn’t yet want to go home. At first he found it hard to get into. There was a fevered energy to the lives in the story. So much uncertainty, he thought, and so much passion to the uncertainty. The characters were drawn in with pencil strokes, like a sketch, with such austerity in the lines that even their passions were austere. And yet he never felt tempted to put it aside.
What he didn’t say was that he pictured her, the woman from the bookstore, the woman with him now, as Tereza. Not in Tereza’s desperate and overheated passivity. Elaine Lester didn’t strike him as passive in any part of her life. But there was an intensity to her movements and gestures that struck him as possibly no less desperate, though rather in a different way.
What she didn’t ask was whether his wife thought it somehow out of character for him to be reading a Central European novel.
And then they were in the living room, eating shrimp the size of a fingernail out of an open can, passing the fork between them. He started to talk about his father, and she listened without answering. There was distance more than pain in his voice, as though he had put the pain away a long time ago. “I’ve never been able to protect him,” he said.
She asked him why he thought that was his job.
“Because she uses me to batter him. She always has.”
“And that’s your fault?”
“Of course it is,” he said.
What he didn’t say, although she knew it without his saying it, was that his father haunted him like a ghost, just as he was haunted by the certainty that if he hadn’t yet proved to his demanding mother whatever it was that seemed to have needed proving since long before he was born, then he never would.
There was no self-pity in his voice, which was low and soft, but certain, leaving no room for contradiction. She did the only thing she could. She reached across the table and touched the back of his hand, and the moment hung in the air between them like a palpable object, an ice cube melting in a dish perhaps, and they seemed for that moment to be waiting for it to vanish.
“I could use a cigarette,” she joked tensely, “and I don’t even smoke.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to offer you a cigar?” he asked.
She laughed.
He lit a slender cigar he took from the case he carried in his breast pocket. When he was satisfied that it was burning evenly, he handed it across to her, and she took a slow, tentative drag, barely closing her mouth, letting a small, perfectly rounded whiff of cloud float away, holding its shape as it rose toward the ceiling. She watched it drift away and handed the cigar back.
Neither spoke. He set the cigar across the shrimp tin and stood. She stood as well. Was he leaving? She wanted to stop him and wanted to let him go, conscious already that if he stayed, they would make love. And then she would betray him. She knew she’d be able to do it when the time came, and she trembled at the evil of it. They would become lovers, and she would be spying on him. Well, that was the job, wasn’t it?
He stepped toward her, and his arms were around her, while a thin trail of smoke rose listlessly between them, filling the air with its perfume. She pulled him to her and they kissed deeply, the same smoky taste in both their mouths. His hands moved down her back and under her belt, probing for bare skin.
They made love on the couch without undressing, and they said almost nothing when she walked him to the door.
With generations of headmistresses scowling down from heavy gilt frames around the balcony, the graduating class filed into an auditorium that had benefited only a few years before from a multimillion-dollar facelift. The seats were as comfortable as a Broadway theater, the sight lines perfect. Phyllis squeezed Jeffrey’s hand the first time she caught a glimpse of her daughter in her cap and gown, then turned to smile at her mother. Jeffrey glanced at his parents to make sure they had seen her.
Renée Goldschmidt was valedictorian and Grace Tunney presented the class gift, substituting for Amy Laidlaw, who had been voted the honor by the members of the senior class. At the last minute Amy decided that she wasn’t up to making a speech, and Grace agreed to do it for her. It was too late to correct the programs, which still had Amy’s name.
The girls all knew what Amy was going through. None of them had failed to notice the change in her after the rape. She had never been one of the bubbly ones, but she had always been lively and fun and quick-witted. Now there were hollow silences in the spaces where Amy’s contribution to any conversation might have come.
Renée and Grace gave lovely speeches, as earnestly optimistic about the future as young women of their social standing had every right to be. They pictured a world of eternal sisterhood, in which they would never forget one another while leading lives of dedicated, even impassioned concern for those less fortunate than themselves. The graduates listened absently, sorting memories in their minds as though they were preparing to paste them in books, while in the seats behind them their misty-eyed parents earnestly convinced themselves that yes or no, some or all of this might be true, but that what had to be true, above all these shining ideals, was that their daughters would always be young and would always be beautiful.
The graduation ceremony was followed by a brief reception on the patio which looked carefully out over the East River through the spaces between buildings. Lasting barely an hour, the reception marked the last time the graduating class would be together as a whole, and so it was tinged with a sort of prefabricated sadness, a nostalgia for absences not yet felt and moments not yet gone. Immediately afterward, three generations of Blaines and Armstrongs attended a buffet luncheon at the Goldschmidts’ Park Avenue duplex for a dozen of Renée’s closest friends and their families. Amy, who had been cheered when she accepted her diploma, sat next to Jessica the whole time, off in a corner, where she could stay away from both her mother and her father, who were in the same room together for practically the first time since their divorce. Neither had had the grace to decline the invitation.
And then it was over. As soon as the salads an
d spiced chicken and stuffed shrimp were replaced with cakes and cookies and a few more exotic desserts, Jessica seized the moment to make a quick round of good-byes. The four girls went off together, Jessica, Amy, Grace, and Renée. Phyllis took her mother and her in-laws home in a taxi while Jeffrey had Martin drive him back to the office, congratulating himself along the way for having steered his little girl safely through.
12
On a Wednesday afternoon late in June, Jennie buzzed Jeffrey in his office. “There’s a man on the line.
He wants to talk to you but he won’t give his name,” she said.
“Get a number. If he won’t leave a number, forget about it,” Jeffrey said, impatient at the interruption. He went back to the report in front of him but read only a few sentences before he found himself reaching for the phone.
“Listen,” he said. “Are you still on with that guy?”
She was.
“Put him through,” Jeffrey said.
He heard Jennie say, “Mr. Blaine just came in. If you’ll just hold on a second,” and then he recognized the high-pitched voice of the man who had called to set up his Riverside Park meeting with Chet Fiore.
“Do you know who this is?” the voice asked.
“Mr. Luisi.”
“Good memory. Then you know who I’m calling for. He wants to meet you. There’s a restaurant on Pell Street. China d’Or. That’s D, O, R, with one of those little things in front of the O. Eight o’clock.”
He sounded like a man who was about to hang up the phone.
“Wait a minute,” Jeffrey objected. “Tonight’s not good.”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Luisi’s voice came back at him. “China d’Or. Pell Street. Eight o’clock.”
The phone went dead.
As a matter of fact, Jeffrey and Phyllis had no plans at all that evening. Jessica was away for two weeks on Cape Cod with Amy and Grace and Renée, the last time they would all be together before they went off to their separate colleges in the fall. An evening home together with nothing to do had been Phyllis’s idea, and she presented it with the elaborate premeditation she always brought to notions she picked up from one magazine or another. Even after all these years, she still believed there were tricks that could make a pallid and boring marriage better, the way spices perk up a soup.
Jeffrey asked Jennie to call home and leave a message for Phyllis, telling her he’d be late. The rest of the afternoon passed in a muddle of distraction. He stayed in the office until seven, and even called home at one point to give Phyllis an explanation about unexpected work. But she wasn’t in. The maid had expected her earlier but didn’t know where she was or when she’d be back.
So much for a quiet evening at home together. Even if he had been there, she wasn’t.
He gave Martin the evening off and took a cab down to Canal Street, getting off at West Broadway and walking across to Chinatown. He found the restaurant easily enough. It seemed to him that the place used to have another name but he couldn’t remember what it was.
He was early, so he walked around the block once before going in, promptly at eight o’clock. Fiore was already seated at a table near the kitchen wall. He nodded almost imperceptibly when he saw Blaine at the door.
“I’m joining that gentleman,” Jeffrey said to the maître d’, who followed him to the table with a menu, which he presented with a ceremonial bow as soon as Jeffrey was seated.
“Glad you could make it,” Fiore said, offering his hand. “The food’s okay here and they don’t bother you.”
“Do you own this place, too?” Jeffrey asked.
“Do I look Chinese?”
“No, but—”
Fiore cut him off. “Oh, that was a joke, right?”
“I guess so,” Jeffrey said, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if Fiore’s answer had been yes. “What’s this about?” he asked as he sat down.
“What do you think it’s about?”
“You called me, Mr. Fiore.”
Fiore studied him a moment before answering. There was an intensity to his black eyes that could be unnerving, and he had no scruples about letting his gaze bore in on a man with a directness that seemed almost an invasion. He held the look only a few seconds, while Jeffrey looked back at him steadily, refusing to back down or look away. Calculations were being made on both sides of the table. Then something like a smile played at the corners of Fiore’s mouth and he said simply, “You remember Noel Garver, don’t you?”
That’s old history, Jeffrey thought. It’s done with. He didn’t see why it should be coming back now, months after the party. “What about him?” he asked, his voice so perfectly under control that none of his annoyance was audible there.
Instead of answering the question, Fiore took two sheets of paper from his breast pocket, standard typing paper, neatly folded down the middle. He handed them across to Jeffrey, who took them with what appeared to be a steady hand.
Across the top of the first sheet was some kind of computer coding, and then Garver’s name.
A waiter brought a large platter of small chalky-white steamed dim sum buns. He said something to Fiore, or Fiore said something to him, Jeffrey wasn’t sure which, and then he divided the buns equally between the two dinner plates. He was already gone before Jeffrey managed to pick his way through the typewritten pages.
The words on the pages might as well have been a bowl of alphabet soup for all the sense Jeffrey could make of them. His eyes jumped from one part of the page to another, grabbing for anything they could take hold of, picking out phrases here and there. He saw the word rape, he saw his own name in half a dozen different places. And Jessica’s name. And Phyllis’s. And Amy Laidlaw’s and her father’s. There was something about Amy’s scream and something about the assailants being spirited away.
He put the pages down and looked across at Chet Fiore, no expression at all on his face, nothing showing in his eyes. “Congratulations,” he said. “It doesn’t mention you at all.”
“You didn’t think it would, did you?”
No. Of course not. That went without saying. Jeffrey acknowledged the fact with a kind of offhand shrug. “When is this going to come out?” he asked.
Fiore reached across the table and took the pages back. He looked at them to make sure they were in order, folded them along the creases, and put them back in his pocket before answering.
“It’s not,” he said.
“Why would that be?” Jeffrey asked, and then added immediately, in a voice that made no effort to conceal his bitterness, “Oh, that’s right. You told me. It wouldn’t be in his best interest.”
Fiore was eating. He didn’t even look up.
“Do you mind telling me the point of this little exercise?” Jeffrey asked.
“Don’t you know?”
“It’s a reminder. In case I’ve forgotten how grateful to you I ought to be.”
“It doesn’t help you evaluate the situation?”
“There is no situation, Mr. Fiore. You took care of the problem and it’s gone. I appreciate that.”
Fiore smiled like a man who appreciated being appreciated. But he said nothing.
“I suppose you’re telling me that you could make this article appear as easily as you made it disappear. Fine. I’m telling you I don’t give a damn.”
He felt at the moment a boundless loathing for the man sitting across from him. It had nothing to do with the immorality of whatever steps Fiore had taken to silence Garver, nothing, really, to do with the power Fiore so blithely exercised over the press, over, it seemed, any part of the world he cared to control. It was Fiore’s power over him, over Jeffrey, that rankled so deeply. It was the way he took action on Jeffrey’s behalf without consultation, without asking whether or not he wanted these actions taken. He made Jeffrey feel small, insignificant, childish, in the way his mother always made him feel childish with her unasked-for generosities when he still lived at home, when he was in college, when he was just
starting out for himself.
“That’s good,” Fiore said. “It shows strength of character.”
“Why don’t you get to the point?” Jeffrey challenged.
“Actually,” Fiore said with a distinctly charming and somewhat boyish grin, “you make me a little nervous, Jeffrey. I’m not used to dealing with people like you.”
“You may not be used to dealing with people like me,” Jeffrey said, “but I don’t make you nervous.”
“You’re being too modest,” Fiore said. “I know a number of people who are considered masterminds at whatever it is they do. But frankly most of them aren’t all that smart. So there’s something a little”—his hand waggled as he searched for the word—“daunting about dealing with you. I don’t really know you. I don’t have a clear sense of what makes you tick.”
“Can’t help you there,” Jeffrey said.
“No, of course not. So let’s just move forward. You eat, I’ll talk. The pork buns are terrific.”
He waited until Jeffrey picked up a set of chopsticks. Was it possible, Jeffrey wondered as he started to eat, that any of what Fiore had just said was true? Did he really make this man nervous? It was possible, but it wouldn’t be wise to count on it.
Fiore leaned back in his chair, slightly sideways, one elbow on the table, as he launched into a witty, almost lighthearted monologue spelling out exactly what he wanted. He needed a source of legitimate income through which he could funnel money he couldn’t otherwise account for. “I’ve got businesses that are nobody’s business and then I’ve got business businesses. I need a way to connect them,” he said at the end, dropping his hands to the table.
It was Jeffrey’s turn.
He could have said that he had worked out the solution already, in late-night sessions at the office, but he chose not to. The temptation was there, no question about it. He was here because he was drawn to the man as much as he was drawn to the idea, drawn not merely by the seductive force of Fiore’s charm but also by the seductive force of his power. He wasn’t afraid of Fiore. On the contrary, he understood without even having to think it through that if he joined forces with Fiore, a portion of that power would be his.