Revenant Rising

by M. M. Mayle

  “No one’s saying for sure. Only one of the neurologists at the catastrophic care center supported that theory, but it was the one with the best fit.”

  “Can you elaborate on that?”

  “Not yet.” Laurel rearranges the document folders on the desktop, pushes them into a neat pile that she sweeps into a drawer. “Not until I’ve talked with the neurologist, but as I presently understand it, a dissociative disorder is precipitated by profound stress, and that can include witnessing as well as experiencing an overwhelming event.”

  “Such as a near-fatal accident.”

  “Yes, and if I further understand, this form of acute mental decompensation does not automatically preclude all forms of cognition.”

  “Hence your argument that I should have spent more time with the patient on the off chance my support might have been registered in some primitive area of his brain.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of that. Are you mocking me?”

  “Far from it. This is fascinating stuff, Laurel. Inspiring stuff. David hunches forward in his chair, rapt listener personified. “I can’t wait to read the book. I mean that sincerely, and I couldn’t be more sincere about saying how pleased I am with the way you’ve embraced the project. There was a while there when I thought it might founder, and I have to admit, I’m a little worried now about how you’re going to proceed with him on the other side of the pond. Have you worked anything out yet? Will you be going there or will he return when things are more settled with the boy?”

  “I have no plans to go to England.”

  “Oh, of course not. I wasn’t thinking. Your father . . . You wouldn’t leave him for any length of time, would you? How’s he doing, by the way? Do you still look in on him as often?”

  “Interestingly enough, I haven’t looked in on him—as you put it—since last Sunday when I went to the nursing home with the express purpose of signing a DNR.”

  “You don’t say? Well . . . My goodness, I never saw that coming, but it does answer a few questions . . . quite a few.”

  “Fine. Then that should do it for now.”

  “Yes. For now. I assume I’ll be seeing you on Ryan Walker’s arm tonight.”

  “No, you won’t. I’ll be with Colin. As his official biographer, I hasten to add.”

  “Am I hearing something significant in that specificity—biographer rather than date?”

  “You’re asking me? You’re the scrupulous one. You’re the one who always drummed into me the importance of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety.”

  “Maybe so, but I don’t know that you have to go to extremes. I doubt anyone who matters believes you’re romantically involved with a client, regardless of what’s said in the papers.”

  “Nevertheless, I’ll feel better when I can go back to being a private citizen. Inasmuch as you’ve been keeping up with the popular press, you must be aware that since I warned them away from Aurora Elliot, I’ve become their girl. Some tradeoff that turned out to be. At least I’m alive to defend myself.”

  “I am very aware and that only underscores my obligation to alert you about tonight.”

  “I know, I know. Amanda already warned me that the extremely luminous guest list—her words—would bring the media out in full force, and last night Colin mentioned the same thing in the context of other celebrities lessening the glare on him.”

  “There may be some truth to that, but you still should be prepared for very intense scrutiny—especially if it appears that you’re Colin’s date.”

  “I’ll handle it. I’ll take care of it, thank you. Now, shouldn’t you be rehearsing the waitstaff or reviewing the hors d’oeuvre selection or unrolling red carpet or something?” Laurel stands, inviting David to follow suit.

  “As a matter of fact, I am going by the Tavern to give everything a final inspection.” He frowns at his watch and gets to his feet. “I see I’d better be on my way. It’s after five and I still have a few things to touch on with Colin.”

  “Very well. Then I’ll see you later. From a distance, of course.”

  David winces at the extra jibe and allows himself to be hustled out the door.

  The minute he’s gone, Laurel places a call to Bemus, who picks up on the first ring. She’s required to explain that she has not called his number by mistake—that she does not want to speak to Colin—and then explain twice the reason for her call. Bemus is foursquare against the request. He doesn’t even want to hear about it. When he does give in, it’s with dire predictions of hell to pay.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Early evening, April 9, 1987

  Mellowed by a long bath and a catnap, Laurel stirs toward getting ready for tonight’s party. Similarly barefoot and clad in a hotel robe, Amanda is curled on the other bed watching the music television channel with the sound lowered to a syncopated hum. Laurel gropes for the remote on the table separating the two beds and increases the volume to let Amanda know she’s not bothered by it.

  “I wasn’t trying to listen,” Amanda says. “I’m memorizing a few faces I might not recognize later on.”

  “You never wear out on that, do you?” Laurel focuses for a moment on the TV screen and a parade of meaningless faces. “What time is Nate coming for you?”

  “Eight-thirty. Why?”

  “Oh, no particular reason . . . just making sure I’ll be out of the bathroom and out of your way before then.”

  And making sure what the optimum arrival time for the party is because Nate Isaacs cannot be imagined arriving unfashionably early to any event. Laurel absorbs that information, gathers up her clothing and hurries into the bathroom before Amanda can ask what time Colin is calling for her. After completing hairdo and makeup in record time she pulls on wispy black bikini briefs and thigh-high ultra-sheer black stockings with lace tops, all that she’ll be wearing beneath her new cocktail dress—all that she can wear beneath a dress with no shoulders, deep décolletage and short petaled skirt.

  She zips into it without help and takes a hypercritical look at herself in the mirror while inserting her usual diamond stud earrings. She could still switch to the other dress, the more conservative grey chiffon with the Grecian bodice and flowing skirt, also purchased yesterday and intended for a moment like this. Time decides the issue; there isn’t time to chicken out and change—not if she intends to go through with the plan.

  “Ohmigod!” Amanda’s jaw drops when Laurel reenters the bedroom. “Wow! And I thought that dress was a knockout in the store.”

  “No more so than yours.” Laurel indicates the dress that Amanda has laid out on the bed while she was in the bathroom. “I can’t imagine a better color for you than seafoam green, and there can’t be a more fluid fabric than crepe de chine.”

  She’s not altogether dissembling as she takes her coat from the closet and transfers a few bills from carryall to one of the pockets. Amanda will indeed cut a swath—albeit a petite one—in her first-ever designer duds. And occupied as she now is with removing tissue stuffing from a new pair of outrageously high- heeled evening shoes and debating jewelry choices, Amanda will remain unaware how early it is when Laurel leaves.

  Initial sighting of the fairy-lit trees backdropping Tavern on the Green brings forth Laurel’s standard assessment of the landmark restaurant: trite, touristy, over-the-top, but endlessly enchanting. Unspecified anticipation quivers her calm as the cab edges toward the drop-off point. Bemus was no doubt right; a price will be paid for choosing to arrive alone in a cab instead of with a celebrity in a chauffeur-driven car. But must it be the high price of Bemus’s dire prediction? How pissed can Colin be when he understands her reasoning and sees that she cheated the press of one last opportunity to register her as unofficial inamorata of a rock superstar? Who knows, he may even find it amusing.

  Although the cab is now slowed to a crawl, they are next in the queue; her turn to alight is imminent. She’s paying the driver when the passenger door is yanked open, and instead of the expected greeter, Col
in Elliot materializes.

  “Scoot over,” he demands.

  She complies rather than be sat upon.

  “Where to?” the cabby says.

  “About twenty feet forward of here,” Colin says to the driver, then turns to her. “Yours is a novice error that rankles nonetheless. You could arrive here with Prince Charles and the press would still associate you with me. There’ll be no denying it no matter what subterfuge you attempt or what title you care to give yourself,” he says from beneath a black cloud of a frown.

  The cab inches forward the final distance required to align with the open end of a curb-to-portal marquee that’s bordered six-deep with photographers. Colin opens the cab door before a greeter can, steps out, and helps her out. “Here we are . . . Move along smartly, then . . . Take my arm and project how overjoyed you are to be here as my official biographer.”

  Stunned on too many levels to remember to avert her eyes, she’s immediately blinded by camera flash. Letting go of his arm is not a remote possibility until they’ve been indoors long enough for her eyes to adjust. Then she’s engaged in another form of struggle when Colin tries to take her coat. He unbuttons the buttons and unfastens the tie belt as though she’s incapable of doing it herself. She offers no resistance because observers are everywhere; the scene is set for a repeat of the embarrassment she caused him at the recording studio by rejecting his embrace. No telling how many witnesses there are when he peels the coat from her shoulders and jumps back in alarm.

  “Bloody hell, woman, are you tryin’ to kill me?”

  She struggles to free her arms from the damn coat. “What else have I done wrong?” she says, irrespective of onlookers.

  “The frock. The way you’re turned out. Just look at you!”

  Dumbstruck, she looks down expecting to see that a crucial strap has let go or that she’s somehow spilled something repellent. She touches her hair, counts the clips and pins holding it in a loose French twist, but it’s the frock—the dress—he has the problem with. She tugs the bodice upward, smoothes the petaled skirt downward, and he’s back in her face again.

  “Madame X,” he whispers breathily. “The dead-black of the dress, your hair piled high like that, the miniscule little jeweled straps, the fabulous expanse of perfect creamy-white skin . . . If you weren’t a hundred times better lookin’ than the Madame and weren’t showin’ some leg, I’d say you stepped right out of the Sargent portrait.”

  He’d never believe her if she told him the truth. Who out there would believe her if she claimed insider information had absolutely nothing to do with the way she’s dressed? Besides, at the moment he’s too busy bedazzling the coatroom attendant to hear anything she might say in her own defense.

  “Shall we?” He offers his arm again. “Before things get any more congested, let’s show you off a bit.”

  The withering glance she casts in his direction causes her to notice what she was too distracted to see earlier—how he’s dressed. His tuxedo looks like the one he was wearing the first time she ever saw him, but it’s well pressed and complemented with a tieless black dress shirt and patent leather slip-ons instead of the ordinary white T-shirt and scuffed running shoes of the other occasion.

  They haven’t gone three paces when Colin is set upon by another unconventionally dressed individual, who could be a long-lost brother, judging by the effusiveness of their reunion. At the finish of their shoulder clapping and bear hugging, she’s introduced to someone whose name she ought to recognize if only because he’s presented as a Jersey Boy as well as a multiple-Grammy winner.

  “You may have heard that she’s writing a book about me,” Colin adds.

  Jocko the Jersey Boy looks her over with a practiced eye and winks at Colin. “That’s not all I heard.”

  “Forget whatever else you heard,” Colin says. “Any bleedin’ idiot can see she’s nothing more than your average hard-workin’ official biographer, here with me tonight to collect a bit of industry color for her writings.”

  This produces guffaws from all within earshot, encouraging Colin to continue. With minor variations, the snide little routine is repeated twice more in rapid succession. She somehow grins and bears it because this has to be the hell to pay of Bemus’s prediction. But after absorbing the sting of the third repetition, she’s through paying.

  “I think we’re even now, don’t you?” she says during a lull between introductions. He must understand what she means and agree because he ceases even the introductions.

  They move from the vestibule into the main party venue, the always-breathtaking Crystal Room, made more so tonight by pedestaled eruptions of spring flowers and clusters of globed candle pillars on each ivory damask-covered table. The sparkle of multiple chandeliers blends with the flicker of dozens of multicolored lanterns in the garden beyond to produce a mesmerizing effect on the glass walls of the conservatory-like setting. An effect more suggestive of a wedding reception than a gathering for notables of the rock world—an effect enhanced by waiters dispensing flutes of champagne and little canoes of endive stuffed with lobster salad.

  “Yeh, I know.” Colin invades her pensiveness. “You’re let down because you were expecting strippers and Neanderthals swigging Dom and JD straight from the bottle, pissing in the corners, and tossing bones on the floor. Maybe things’ll pick up later.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I was only—”

  “Save it. I see our host across the way. Let’s pay our respects.”

  “You go ahead. I think I see Amanda and Nate coming in.” She doesn’t, but the ploy satisfies Colin and gets her off the hook. While he’s gone, she makes a trip to the bar, not unaware of the polite stares and knowing looks that accompany her passing. She accepts a brimming vodka on the rocks, promises herself it will be the only one of the evening, and approaches a waiter bearing a tray of tiny caviar-stuffed new potatoes. She’s trying to figure out how to take more than one and still hang onto her drink when Colin rejoins her and assesses the situation. He relieves the waiter of the tray with the explanation that she requires a major caviar fix every forty-eight hours or so.

  “You can’t do that,” Laurel scolds, even though the waiter doesn’t seem to care.

  “Yeh, I can. I’m a rock star and that’s what we do. We take whatever it is we fancy.” His frown approximates the one he was wearing when he jumped into the cab and confuses her for seeming unrelated to the present mischief.

  “Here.” He thrusts the tray at her. “Don’t let these go to waste, then.”

  She takes one of the glorified little potatoes, savors it awhile before taking another, then another one after that.

  This makes him smile, then laugh outright. “You could start me wondering what it’ll cost to keep you fed.”

  She laughs a little, too—at the absurdity of the premise. “Fortunately that’s not one of your concerns.”

  “We’ll have to see about that, won’t we? Now, before I forget . . . David’s wife says hello and conveys her—let me get this dead right—her sincere and heartfelt felicitations on your new enterprise, unquote. Should I know what that’s about?”

  “I don’t even know what that’s about.” She eats one last potato before Colin relinquishes the tray to another passing waiter. They circulate along the edge of a crowd that’s steadily increasing in size—and in wattage, if the effusive outcries greeting each new arrival are any indicator.

  After Colin breaks free of an exchange with a recording star whose name and face she does almost recognize, she takes a stab at apologizing for being such a Philistine in the realm of rock and roll.

  “Don’t be silly,” he says, “you were never in a position to be other than you are. Believe me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  His hand moves from her elbow to her shoulder; his fingers toy with the jeweled strap of her dress. She takes a cautious sip of her drink and lets the time pass when objection to his touch would be taken seriously. She’s holding her breath, hover
ing on the edge of hiccoughs when vocal fanfare announces the arrival of the guest of honor.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Evening, April 9, 1987

  Heralded by cheering, wolf-whistles, and whoops of laughter, Rayce Vaughn joins the party. At the rate he’s going—seizing every extended hand and kissing every proffered mouth and cheek—he won’t cross the room inside of an hour. Laurel is astonished by the demonstration—no, stunned. A tingle of goose bumps spreads along her forearms as the tribute continues unabated.

  “Gobsmacked, are we?” Colin says over the crowd noise, acknowledging his own thrill of amazement. “If this is any predictor, tomorrow night’ll rival the Second Coming.”

  Tomorrow night. All but forgotten in the preparations for tonight’s gala affair. Was it only nine days ago that she made the vague promise to David to attend her first-ever rock concert, never dreaming she would be acquainted with the star of the show by the time the concert took place? And have only eight days gone by since she let herself be coerced into a special project without having any idea just how special it might become? For sheer content, these days could be weeks—months, even, and her current relationship with time could only be more out of whack if she were traveling in space instead of in the rarified atmosphere of rock superstars.

  She puts those confusing thoughts aside to notice that Rayce is making better progress and moving in their direction.

  “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” Rayce shouts when he sees them and surges free of a last few admirers. He approaches in the hobbling manner of a broadly played Quasimodo—a Quasimodo dashingly dressed in black brocade and lavish with kisses and hugs. That comic turn sets the tone; from then on, there’s little that isn’t up for laughs as Rayce remarks on bar traffic like a color commentator at a sports event.

  “Tragic that some never learn the difference between Versace and Liberace,” he says of a sensationally spangled individual carrying a tall mixed drink. “And won’t you look at what passes for styling these days.” He indicates a badly made-up young thing licking salt from the rim of her cocktail glass. “Do you think she knows that lip color’s universally known as labia-lavender?”