by M. M. Mayle
The man plants himself on a stool behind the display case he’s using as a counter and takes a noisy sip of coffee from a foam cup that’s left rings on the newspapers he must have been reading before he answered the knock on the door.
“I’m buying.” Hoop makes a snap decision. “My name’s Hoople Jakeway and I have a special interest in Aurora Elliot.”
The man gives a nasty little laugh. “I didn’t have you pegged for interest in that cunt. No way. Fact is, I thought you might be makin’ a delivery. No offense, but you could pass for a mule, y’know. By the way, my name’s Gibby Lester. The pictures you want are in the back room—I won’t be a minute.”
“I can wait.” Hoop counts to a slow ten then catfoots after Gibby Lester wishing he’d brought his tool chest. With only seconds to come up with a weapon he can hardly believe his luck when he spots a box cutter on top of a stack of unopened cartons.
Afterward, he wipes off the box cutter on Lester’s already bloodied shirt and tosses it aside. Then, as a precaution, he removes everything from the open floor safe along with the dirty pictures. There’s not nearly as much to carry as when leaving Cliff Grant’s place, but he’s stymied for something to hold it all. Any plastic bag he finds here in the back room has the bright-pink Cravings name on it and won’t do for a lot of reasons.
In the front part of the store he has no luck till he rummages through the souvenir section. There he comes across roomy canvas shopping bags decorated with the silly “I heart NY” slogan. Two or three of those will only brand him a tourist and that’s a lot better than advertising himself with pink lettering as a queer or a pervert.
Once he’s crammed his pickings into a pair of the carrybags, he hides the contents of one with Gibby Lester’s newspapers and the contents of the other with a couple of souvenir T-shirts grabbed off a rack at random. As he leaves the store, he’s careful not to knock over a display pyramid of boxed penis-shaped macaronis standing next to a rack of chocolate lollipops molded in the shape of women’s privates.
On the ride back to the starting point at Avenue of the Americas and 42nd Street, the subway car is uncrowded. There’s even room to sit down where he can position the two canvas bags on the floor between his knees. Most of the other passengers are reading one thing or another, so Hoop thinks to blend in by following their example. He takes out one of Gibby Lester’s coffee-stained newspapers and doesn’t read far before he’s thunderstruck by the coincidence showing itself.
He’s struck hard; his hands tremble when he quick searches through the other three newspapers for similar guidance and finds it. Just like in Los Angeles, he’s unexpectedly received a lead to Colin Elliot’s whereabouts. And better than Los Angeles and its limits, now he’s got a line on three places where the rock star might be found, along with reason to believe the target won’t skip town on short notice.
When he gets off the subway train and climbs back up to street level, the heaviest thing he’s carrying is not the two hefty canvas bags; it’s the information that just fell on him.
According to Gibby Lester’s stained reading material, Elliot will be staying at The Plaza Hotel, here in Manhattan, till Easter—three weeks from now. The reports also say that Elliot has a new girlfriend, Laurel Chandler, a lawyer at Clark, Sebastian & Associates, a prominent law firm with offices in Rockefeller Center, right here in New York.
One of the newspapers says the lawyerwoman has recently come into money and lives in a place called Glen Abbey, New Jersey. Another of the newspapers has a picture of Elliot and Chandler window-shopping on Fifth Avenue and goes on to say that they later enjoyed an aphrodisiac—whatever that is—at the Oyster Bar of Elliot’s hotel—for whatever that’s worth.
Hoop wants to stagger under this load on the way back to the bus terminal. When he reaches the terminal, he finds a quiet corner where he can set down the bags and take out the pocket street map.
He doesn’t have to study it very long to learn that The Plaza Hotel is a New York City landmark and Rockefeller Center is a top tourist attraction. That makes either place too hard to crack for what he has in mind and makes Glen Abbey, New Jersey—wherever that is—the best place to begin.
TWENTY-FIVE
Early afternoon, April 3, 1987
The final segment of the Jockey Hollow trek takes half again longer than anticipated. Before returning to the car park and her Range Rover, they were slowed by flooded areas, muddied pathways, and budding wildflowers to be admired. They were required to stand aside for the passage of boisterous schoolchildren, presumably ignorant of his celebrity, and forced to hurry past a group of binocular and camera-equipped birdwatchers who tried to place him without finding quite the right words.
Two hours after the course correction dictating that he take over the talking or else, Laurel is as restive and probing as she was at the start, wanting to know still more about his relationship with the press—a relationship he’s described only in the broadest terms.
“Am I to conclude that the tabloid press went out of its way to portray you as responsible for your late wife’s . . . reckless behavior? Is that what you’ve been hinting at?”
“Yeh. They loved to play the corrupting rock star angle, that all her troubles were attributable to me. I’ll never deny that I once did lead the epitomized rock star life. Big time. To the hilt. We all did, but that can get old unless it’s the only reason for being in the business. And that wasn’t my only reason, actually. I was in it—am in it—for the long run. I didn’t want to become a parody of myself before I’d done my best work . . . Sorry, I’m wandering off subject, probably because my stomach’s growling. Is there a place nearby where we can grab some lunch?”
“Oh, you should have said something sooner. I have food right here.” She steps to the back of the Rover and opens the tailgate. “I brought lunch to avoid the hassle of a restaurant. Picnic tables here are fairly secluded, so I doubt we’ll be bothered.”
“There you are, brilliant again.” He takes up an ice chest and she carries a hamper to a spot removed from the car park where birds are the only company. They choose a table in a small clearing where she spreads a cloth and sets out crockery, glassware, and cutlery from the hamper and an assortment of plastic containers along with a bottle of wine from the ice chest.
“I almost forgot . . . back where we passed the restrooms there’s a public phone in case you want to call home. It’s not quite two o’clock by my watch, so you can probably catch your boys before they fall asleep.”
A squeeze of hand or shoulder would seem an acceptable way to acknowledge this extra measure of thoughtfulness. Not in this instance, though. If he touches her in any way, under any guise, he bloody well will not let go. “Do all your clients get this sort of treatment?” he says, jamming his hands into his jacket pockets and easing away from the table.
“No, of course not. None of my other clients are as famous as you and the subject of my only other biography was dead when I researched her past.”
He’s slow to catch that she’s speaking lightheartedly, almost as slow as he is about turning his back on her and walking the short distance to the phone shelter.
For the first time in recent history, he’s reluctant to speak to either of his children when the connection’s made. And when he does speak, he’s hurried with Anthony and without even a lame spur-of-the-moment rhyme for Simon. His mother is noncommittal when it’s her turn to talk, saying only that she’ll be sure to let him know if something there requires his attention.
If all three screamed at him to come home straightaway and let on that they knew what was really keeping him in New York, the effect would be no different from what he feels when he rings off.
He pays a visit to the unoccupied men’s room more as a delaying action than of real need. He finds himself actually rehearsing what all he wants to say when he returns to Laurel. And when he does, the prepared remarks abandon him because food is the obvious priority.
She politely asks how thin
gs are in England as she indicates that he should help himself from the array of opened containers.
For answer he takes up the wine bottle. “I would have opened this, you know.” He insists on pouring to make up for that omission. “And if I’d had any idea, I would have furnished the picnic. I marvel that you had time to visit the caterer . . . This looks like Dean and DeLuca or maybe Caprice Delicioso fare. I don’t know how you managed,” he blathers on in full fuckwit mode.
“I prepared the food myself. I put it together last night. In case anything’s unfamiliar—the salad is made of orzo pasta with kalamata olives, feta, cucumber, green onions, and grape tomatoes in a mustard-dill vinaigrette. The shrimp were grilled with a little olive oil and lemon pepper, the dried figs were revived in Madeira and filled with Manchego cheese and almonds, and that’s prosciutto wrapped around the melon slices. I’m sure you recognize pita chips and ciabatta bread rolls, and you’ve no doubt had Orvieto wine at the source,” she says.
“Good Christ, you didn’t do all this morning, did you?”
“No, I did it last night.”
“But why?”
“Must I have a reason? I find that I like to cook when it’s not required of me—when it’s not one of my set duties.”
“You used to have to cook whether you wanted to or not, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes. I used to help my mother in the kitchen and then it was fun. After she died the job naturally fell to me and I had to learn by doing and it wasn’t so much fun. Two and three meals a day can be a real pain in the ass, even when the neighbors send over the occasional casserole or pie.”
“And still your grandmother would not contribute—either her own help in the kitchen or the wherewithal to engage help?”
“That’s right.” She pauses between bites and sooner than he ever would have believed possible, resumes her story where she left off back on the trail. She speaks unemotionally about another year of dispiriting mental abuse and dire financial straits. “Selling the house was never a consideration,” she responds to the obvious question. “Although there were no encumbrances and he would have realized a profit, my father couldn’t bring himself to relinquish the site where he had once been so happy. I think he equated selling with forsaking memories of my mother.”
“Did you think that at the time?”
“I had an inkling. I might not have understood all the emotional issues at the time, but it would have been difficult not to recognize his need for a shrine.”
To another obvious question, she replies that neither of her parents had living siblings and the only cousin who came forward offered to take the newborn baby as if that would constitute a favor.
“With a great deal of sacrifice you managed to stay together in this shrine to your mother’s memory, then.”
“Yes, we did. Somehow. Eventually my father was able to do some tutoring so we could hire a neighbor lady to come in during school hours to supervise the baby who was not a baby anymore and becoming too much for him to handle without help. The neighbor, Mrs. Floss, wouldn’t take much, just enough to conceal her charity.”
Laurel goes on to explain that as property owners in an upper-middle-class community they were ineligible for public assistance and too proud to accept more than neighborly handouts in the way of private aid.
“Then my grandmother died and the fun really began,” she continues. “While making one of her surprise inspection tours to see how we spent the paltry sum she sent us each month, she fell down the back stairs. She died instantly. Her neck was broken. We all were home at the time, yet none of us saw it happen. The medical examiner ruled it an accident caused, in all probability, by children’s toys. A quantity of marbles was found at the scene, so I was told. They also told me that she was given the big New York City funeral her reputation and position dictated and that it was attended by the legal establishment of the tri-state area. And by us, of course. I remember very little. Shock, I suppose.”
“What did you mean by saying the fun began when she died? I can see where you and your family wouldn’t have mourned her death with any sincerity, but I can’t imagine you were open about celebrating it.”
“I’m sorry, that remark was misleading. I was being facetious. Sarcastic. The so-called fun I refer to is related to the provisions of her will. My father anticipated nothing for himself. He did, however, think his mother-in-law would leave a little something for the children of her only offspring.”
“Please do not tell me this woman left everything to a pet Pomeranian or a television evangelist or worse.”
“No, nothing like that. Her entire fortune was left to me in a trust with the proviso that I accomplish what my mother did not. I had to maintain a grade point average sufficient to gain admission to my grandmother’s alma maters, Fairfield-Douglas and Columbia Law. I was required to distinguish myself at Columbia, pass the New York State Bar on the first try, clock a minimum of five hundred hours as a public defender, serve three years as an assistant DA, remain unmarried—unencumbered was her word—throughout the ordeal—my word—and attain the age of thirty. Then I could inherit her damned money and feel free to distribute it where most needed. Oh, I almost forgot. I was expected to write her biography in my spare time.”
“You did it all, then. You had no argument with the tabloid calling you an heiress this morning, so you must have pulled it off.”
“Yes . . . I guess you could say that.”
“That’s a bloody lot of pulling, I’ll say. How on earth did you live while this was going on?”
“Oh, there were provisions for that in the will. The administrator of the trust was allowed to draw a certain amount against it for our living expenses and my tuition so we did get by. Just barely.”
“Your father was named administrator because you were a minor. Right?”
“No, David Sebastian was named administrator and I will never be able to repay him for all the extra things he did to keep us afloat. If we had any little luxuries or special outings, I feel sure they came out of David’s pocket. And if any of us needed tutoring in a subject my father couldn’t handle, David filled in. He was a surrogate Little League coach for my brothers and enjoyed favorite honorary uncle status with my little sister. He was my mentor all through school and my tireless advocate when some of the best legal minds in New York State tried unsuccessfully to break my grandmother’s will.”
Colin’s ears are no less pricked than Nate’s would be for any hint of what else David Sebastian may have been to her. And might still be to her. To ask is out of the question. Sheer insanity, that would be, and to take even a deep breath seems ill advised lest it have the potential to end her stunning narrative. The only reason he thinks it safe to take a sip of wine is because that’s what she’s doing.
“It’s not too surprising that David and I eventually became lovers . . . for all the wrong reasons, of course. And nothing could ever come of it because of the restrictions placed on me,” she says after she swallows.
He swallows his wine the wrong way and he needn’t have worried about taking a deep breath because she hardly notices his coughing.
“We’re lucky though, David and I, because there was always a lot more to us than just the pleasures of the flesh. When the physical bond was broken we were able to revert to our original relationship without any of the bitterness and rancor that characterizes so many breakups. We presently enjoy a surprisingly amicable association although we do have our moments—usually related to his never-ending harangue that it’s time for me to forsake New Jersey for the big city.”
“Might you ever do that?” he asks as though that’s the single-biggest concern he has—as though he’s not suddenly seeing David Sebastian as a heavier anchor than her father—as though he’s not struggling mightily to blot out a mental image of her flesh being pleasured by a man he’s acquainted with—as though his concern is not downright laughable, considering he frequents a world where that form of inbreeding is the norm.
“Leave New Jersey? Oh, I suppose I will someday when I’m ready to give up on my father. It won’t be for a move to the city, though.”
“Where would you go?”
“I’ve never really thought about it. My freedom to choose is quite new. The final stipulation of my grandmother’s will was met only a matter of weeks ago, on my thirtieth birthday, so I really haven’t had a chance to decide if I want to run off and join the circus.”
“No one would blame you if you did, actually. My god, Laurel, did you ever have any fun as a teenager?”
“Of course I did. Perhaps not in the conventional sense. I didn’t date or hang out at the mall or have many girlfriends, and I didn’t have time or money for movies or rock concerts, but I wasn’t unhappy. I never felt that deprived and there were compensations, you know. How many women my age have already helped raise three children and learned how to run a household on a shoestring?”
As much as he’d like to hear that last as pride in achievement, it sounds more like sarcasm, something to move past. “That must mean your brothers and sister are on their own.”
“In the sense they no longer live at home, yes. They’re all away at school—fortunately in the same region—and they tend to look out for one another, a skill they’ve had a lot of practice at.”
“What are their names?”
“Benjamin, after my father, Michael, and Emily.”
Laurel takes another sip of wine and turns her attention to a pair of squirrels spiraling a nearby tree. “Well, are you smirking?” she says after a bit. “You got all that out of me a lot sooner than expected, didn’t you?” She continues watching the squirrels.
“I’m not smirking, I’m just glad you didn’t make me wait any longer.”
“Do you regard me differently now that you know my entire background?” She defies him with a level gaze. “Have my revelations weakened my position and made me into an object of pity?”