by M. M. Mayle
Anticipating the wait between delivery and response could be lengthy, she leaves word that she’ll be in the Palm Court. The coffee she ordered has just been served when someone comes for her there.
The unremarkable young woman in conservative business clothes escorts her to a front elevator. They ride to a high floor dedicated to Mr. Vaughn’s exclusive use, according to the escort. There, Laurel is led along a corridor bustling with activity and shown into a lavishly appointed sitting room that’s nevertheless underwhelming to an imagination tailored to anticipate wretched excess. This is no imitation Versailles by any stretch.
The door to the corridor was left open, so she drops her bag, strips off her coat and scarf, and takes a seat where she can monitor the passing scene. The personnel moving through her vision are difficult to categorize. They’re dressed too casually to be hotel employees and not casually enough to be the vacuous sycophants and playmates she expected to see. Women outnumber men, and none are wearing bustiers, leather hot pants, fishnet stockings, big hair, or theatrical makeup. No cheap excitement there.
The men she glimpses also resist typecasting. She was looking for combat boots, chains, metal studding, torn T-shirts, dirty jeans, spiked black patent-leather hair, safety-pinned cheeks, and she’s not seeing any. She’s not seeing anything that resembles the dissolute roadies who cemented her reputation as a hard-assed ADA and formed her opinion of music industry types.
But these are only fleeting impressions; these are only functionaries she’s viewing and not the true core of the organization. She consoles her disappointment with that conclusion, and several minutes have to pass before she’s ready to admit she’s no less guilty of stereotyping than are the principal targets of her outrage.
Relieved now of scouring the scene for preconceived notions, she refocuses on the outrage that brought her here. When a related quote springs to mind, she can’t remember if it’s Biblical or Shakespearean in origin. “He who steals my purse steals trash,” she says half aloud, “but he who steals from me my good name makes me poor indeed,” she finishes, and at the same time realizes she’s no longer alone.
Across the room, in a doorway unnoticed until now, stands a tall lean individual with arms outstretched as though about to bestow a blessing or take a deep bow. She rises from her chair and for a split second becomes one of the gaga girls in the museum because this man’s face is astonishingly familiar. As a child, she was accustomed to seeing a near-life-sized reproduction of this face on the cover of one of her mother’s most frequently played record albums. A Rayce Vaughn album, an album now stored with other relics in the back of a seldom-used closet.
“Wowser!” the record album image says and advances on her.
She swallows hard to keep from saying that her mother was his greatest fan, perhaps not the best way to introduce herself and her purpose.
“It’s our Laurel.” He grasps her by the upper arms, kisses her on both cheeks. “Let’s have a look at her.” He retreats a pace and gives her a thorough eyeballing. “Spectacular as advertised and gleaming with intelligence, something not mentioned in the brochure.” He releases a cackle of laughter.
She allows him to get away with all of it—the grasping, the kissing, the eyeballing, the verbal assessment, and the laughter—for reasons she can’t fathom, unless on some unconscious level she’s respecting his sheer longevity or honoring her dead mother’s memory.
When she gets the chance, she gives him a surreptitious appraisal. More bias goes out the window because he doesn’t match her idea of what a recovering addict should look like. Instead, he appears fit and healthy, with a steady gaze bordering on intense. There is nothing faintly derelict about his grooming, his dress, or his manner; if anything, he appears a little too well put together, especially after having been out all night.
She wonders about this as he shows her to comfortable seating on one of a pair of facing sofas. Until this instant, she hasn’t given a thought to whether his sleep might have been interrupted by the arrival of her urgent message. Or if he’s had any sleep at all. He takes a seat on the opposite sofa and rubs his eyes for a second or two as though confirming her suspicions.
“Will Colin be joining us?” he says.
“No, he doesn’t know I’m here.”
“I expect you’ll say why.”
“That will become apparent when I explain what’s needed from you.”
“Then please do. I’m more’n a bit curious. I was told only that you had to see me straightaway concerning Colin’s arrest, and I was of the impression David and his mate already had that sorted.”
“From the legal standpoint, they do. My concern is with fallout, with what the media’s manufacturing out of the illusion created when Colin went after the photographer.”
“You’ve talked with Colin, then.”
“No, my information comes from David and from my assistant who’s tracking media activity even as we speak.”
“Oh, right. She’d be the one David said could be depended upon to mind the unsavory bits.”
Laurel pretends not to be bothered by yet another indication that David and Amanda could be in collusion or by Rayce Vaughn’s seeming downgrade of media smear tactics to mere “unsavory bits.” She bites her lip and then proceeds with an overview of the situation as she sees it. She’s as brief as possible without leaving anything out, especially not the questionable references attached to coverage of Anthony Elliot’s bid for attention. Her emphasis centers on the dredging up of past allegations of substance abuse and child neglect, with unflattering references to the late Aurora Elliot as the common thread.
“Ideally, I would respond to the worst of the allusions generated by the earlier events and attempt to forestall more of the same that I feel are inevitable in the aftermath of this morning’s incident. But I’m . . . I am somewhat in the dark about certain areas of Colin’s past. I cannot always discern what is accurate and what is actionable in statements made about him in the tabloid press.”
“In layman’s terms you wanna be able to nab these merry shitsters if they slip over the line into outright libel, but same as them, you’re not able to tell fact from fiction either. Is that what you’re sayin’?”
“That’s a fair assessment.” She takes a shaky breath. “Despite having been commissioned to write Colin Elliot’s official biography, he’s divulged very little to me about . . . about certain areas of his life and absolutely nothing about his late wife or the circumstances of her . . . her erratic behavior.”
“You are havin’ me on. She’s the whole bleedin’ story. His story can’t be told without telling hers, and you say he’s holdin’ out on you?”
“That’s another fair assessment.”
“So you’re askin’ me to tell it.”
“I am. Colin as much as authorized me to ask, although he has no idea I’m presently doing so.”
“Do we know why he won’t tell you any of this himself?”
“I’m unable to say.”
“Well, I’m not. Bleedin’ cheese whiz! I knew I was gonna get sucked into this. Didn’t I tell him only last night he’d be using me as Cyrano in one form or other.”
Rayce bellows a short burst of amusement. “Sorry. A bit more time may have to pass before you see what’s funny, but whilst we’re waitin’ for that time to come I guess I’d be serving both parties if I fill you in about Aurora.”
“That’s a good way to put it. You’ll be doing us both a favor . . . You’ll be helping me do my job and by extension, helping Colin avoid unwarranted publicity.”
“That’s not what I meant at all.”
“I know, but that’s what works for me.” Laurel tries not to scowl.
“All righty then, let’s get the preliminaries outta the way. Obviously I know who you are and that you’re privileged to hear the sort of information I can furnish. Despite leaving great gaping holes for others to fill, I can’t imagine Colin’s neglected to tell you what his policy is towards the press.
You have to be aware he doesn’t cooperate beyond the issuing of routine releases through the proper channels, and he never reacts to the press publicly—no matter what’s said about him. Knowing that, you can’t have your hopes cranked up very high about his allowing you to respond to any of the allusions already in circulation. And, with your legal background, you can’t feel very optimistic about defending the reputation of a dead woman when American law likes to pretend reputation dies with the individual. With all that goin’ against you, anyone would have to say your pluck and passion are admirable. Extraordinary, they are.”
Nice speech. Great little speech, in fact. This gradual deflating rather than exploding the balloon of idealism with a sudden jab, this cautious chiding-without-chafing brand of discouragement that is pure David Sebastian and one of his greatest strengths when he bothers to employ it. She can wonder if the technique is innate to Rayce Vaughn or one acquired when he took David on as manager. She can also wonder what Stan Mason would make of her now—all heart, no brains, and at a momentary loss for words.
A discreet knock on the open door to the corridor could not have come at a better time. Her gracious host announces the arrival of something he calls “elevenses,” dismisses the room service waiter, and himself serves what turns out to be coffee and pastries.
Grateful for the break, she acknowledges how nervous she was—and still is to some extent. Although her neck and shoulders are protesting the rigid posture she’s maintained throughout, she won’t fully relax until she’s sure the David-esque finesse didn’t mean that Rayce Vaughn has reconsidered, no longer sees any point in relating what he knows about Aurora Elliot, and is letting her down easy.
Toward determining if she has any future here, she sets aside her unfinished coffee and conspicuously removes notebook and pen from her carryall.
“No, no, no, put that away, you won’t be needing that.” He gets to his feet, flutters a hand in her direction, and her hopes fade. “Recording device, there’s one in the next room. Keep it next to the bed for surprise visits from the muse and anything else I might be keen to hear in playback.” His smirk is probably standard equipment for British rock stars. “Be back in a tick.”
He returns almost immediately with a small voice recorder. “There we are.” He places it on the low table between them. “Now I can be my chatty self, and you won’t have to work so hard to stay apace.” He checks that the tape is rewound, squirms around in the sofa cushions like there could be a pea under one of them, places his expensively shod feet on the table, and heaves an audible sigh before activating the recorder.
FORTY-FIVE
Late morning, April 6, 1987
“Au-ro-ra,” Rayce begins as though he’d never said the word before. “An assumed name. Her real name was Audrey, Audrey Shantz. She had her beginnings in one of your middle states—Michigan it was—in a backwater with the unlikely name of Heaven. No, that’s not it, I always get that wrong. Paradise, it was. Paradise, Michigan. Oddly enough, there’s a Hell, Michigan, and the way things turned out, that spot would’ve been a lot more believable as Aurora’s hometown.
“Can’t actually say how she made the leap from Paradise to the world beyond. She was always vague about that period, and no one’s ever come right out and said she worked her way up through the ranks as a groupie, least not in the conventional sense. All I know is she was with one of the bands when she caught my eye at a music festival near Detroit. I could tell I was her first major score because on the overawed scale, she was off the charts and entirely potty when I took her home with me to England. Our getting together never got any publicity because she was still a nonentity back then—still an industry secret, we can say—and I was in one of my less-visible periods, a bit on the wane, actually.
“She was unconventionally attractive. She could be pretty as the proverbial picture one day and maddeningly exotic the next. Chameleon-like, she was. I never figured out why she didn’t become a supermodel, she had all the right equipment and sure as shit had the temperament. The chameleon thing also touched on her disposition. She could be sweet as all fuckety-do-dah one minute and sour as morning-breath the next. Had somethin’ of a mean streak, too. Downright cruel, she could be, and she never took any special pains to hide it.
“On more than one occasion she appeared to gain pleasure in telling over past cruelties. One of her favorite stories had to do with one of your aborigines, a young Indian lad—sorry, Native American—who had a crush on her during her school years, and wouldn’t she laugh when she told of mocking that poor bloke! Everything from his name—Coop, I think it was—to his race was fair game, to hear her tell it. Strung him along for the sport of it, let him think she welcomed his attentions then, unbeknownst to him, ridiculed him to anyone willing to listen. She told this over whenever she thought her audience needed reminding she was a peg or two above others, especially coloreds, as she called ’em when she was bein’ polite. Whilst she was with me she lorded it over the Pakistanis I had on my London staff at the time. She verbally mistreated ’em every chance she got, referred to ’em as house niggers—reason enough right there to give her the toss, but it was her treatment of my kids that finally got her binned.”
Laurel clears her throat just audibly. This causes him to pause and ask if he’s going too fast or too unsparingly, if she has questions, if she minds if he smokes. She risks only a shake of her head, and once he has a cigarette going, he resumes the narrative with renewed enthusiasm.
“Right about now you’ve got to be wonderin’ if our Aurora had any redeeming characteristics beyond her pleasing appearance, and she did indeed. She could be nothing less than captivating when it suited her purpose. She could be geisha-like in attentiveness and enchanting in all her ways, especially when demonstrating the skills of a seasoned courtesan. Beneath that provocative little pout of hers, she had this most-appealing and accommodating overbite, and not to forget that she was quite the expert at rimming—what she couldn’t do with a bit of latex—the most accomplished in my considerable experience. She was fantastic with other girls, and she had this incredible flair for. . . .”
Laurel does not so much as blink. During her prosecutor days she frequently took depositions to make this one seem G-rated. She never outwardly reacted then, and she won’t now, even though she would love to put her hands over her ears and run out of the room like someone of her grandmother’s era and rectitude. She’s so intent on maintaining her unshakeable façade she’s not immediately aware that Rayce Vaughn has stopped talking. And who knows when she would have noticed if he were not presently leaning into her space in order to switch off the recorder.
“Sorry,” he says at close range, “that last was bloody well uncalled for. I’m gonna ask you to excuse the lapse of an old wanker gone too far in his reminiscences and bear with me whilst I erase the naughty bits.”
“No, that’s not necessary. Don’t worry about it.” She’d like to assure him she’s not exactly a puritan among fleshpots, but only asks that he return to the subject of Aurora’s treatment of his children.
“All righty, I’ll get to that in a tick. Before I do, though, I think I ought to say why I was willing to write off so many of her peccadilloes. And please don’t go thinkin’ it was solely because of those talents I should’ve left unmentioned just now. I had quite a bit of extra tolerance for her shit because she was young, not yet twenty, and full of the same sort of youthful disdain that filled me at her age. She was little different from the way I once was for thinkin’ she’d seem more knowing and sophisticated if she looked down on certain conventions and practices, sneered at authority, and affected an arrogant world-weary stance—a stance that typifies nearly all rock musicians one time or another. So, on the surface it might’ve appeared we had something in common, even if it was across generational lines.
“Another reason I cut her some slack—she wasn’t a junkie right out of the gate. If she used whilst she was with me, it wasn’t apparent, and I never caught her with
her hand in my stash. She didn’t drink far as I could tell, but she did show signs that hers was an addictive personality. It was all there to see if anyone was looking. The impulsive behavior, the need for instant gratification, the sometimes antisocial nature, the constant sensation-seeking. She put a high value on nonconformity and no value whatsoever on meaningful achievements. She had a high tolerance for deviant behavior, as already touched upon, and a terrible round-the-clock need for attention.
“One of my lingering demons comes at me out of failure to prevent that which was unpreventable,” he says through a curl of smoke. “Quite mad, that is . . . fuckwitted, as our Colin would say. But any of us wishing we could’ve steered him away from Aurora will always be stuck with a useless regret because there was no saving of Colin. Warning him off Aurora was not a possibility. Once he was onto her, he had eyes only for her. Completely unstoppable, he was. I wonder if you know romantic passion taps into the selfsame dopamine system that’s utilized by other obsessive drives, like drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Did you know that?”
Laurel nods, wondering if he knows he could be quoting chapter and verse from the text for Psychology 101 and if his need to spread the word is standard behavior for the recently rehabilitated. While he refills their coffee cups, she tries to remember if the romantic passion of her younger years ever qualified her as an obsessive; while he lights another cigarette, she ponders what she might have been like without the constraints of siblings and her grandmother’s dictates, and by no stretch of her warped imagination can she project herself into any of Rayce Vaughn’s scenarios.
“To get back to where we were . . . You were wanting to know how Aurora got on with my kids,” he says.
“Yes, I did and still do, but I’m going to ask you to hold off on that for the moment. Right now I’d like to hear about the transition. I think it could be important to know how and when Aurora went from you to Colin. Was it directly? Did he find her more attractive because. . . .”