“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she says, taking the microphone from the bandleader. “Welcome to the Club Belladonna.”
There is a large outburst of applause.
“I take it you are happy to be here tonight” More applause.
“Thank you for joining me,” she continues, waving away the clapping. “I should like to initiate what may very well become a tradition in my club. You see, I often hear comments from my guests that leave me, well"how shall I say $$$?"perplexed.”
“Not you, surely,” someone calls out.
If they could see her face under the mask, she would almost be smiling. After all, Belladonnas are made, not born.
She opens her fan again and begins to wave it languidly. Yes, even me,” she says. “For instance, this evening we have a gentleman who has pronounced to me that American women know nothing about tenderness.” Heads swivel to $$$ok over at Gianni, whose temper is barely kept in check. Ladies and gentlemen, I throw the floor to you. Do American women know nothing about tenderness?”
There is dead silence for a few seconds, everyone too as$$$nished to speak. And then one stalwart woman calls out, we know too much about tenderness,” she says.
“Brava,” says Belladonna. With that, the floodgates open.
“It’s men who know nothing"”
“But she’s only tender to me when she wants a mink stole.”
“Our children teach us about tenderness.”
“My dog teaches me what sweetness really is.”
“The dog outside is more tender than most men I know, $$$d certainly my husband.”
General hilarity all around.
“We would always be tender if we got tenderness in return,” one lady says.
“But men need tenderness, too,” Belladonna says.
How true. Look at me, what a sensitive bunny I am. Look at my shy, silent brother, how he suffers. Look at Jack, at the Ringer, at Geoffrey.
Think of Leandro.
“That’s right,” shouts one man inebriated enough to be foolish. “I don’t know what you’re all complaining about All the tenderness you’ll ever need is in this!” He holds up his lovely crimson Belladonna in its crystal martini glass.
“How intriguing,” Belladonna says, then starts to laugh. Oh ho, the luscious sound of it, so divinely intoxicating! Except to this drunk, of course, and dear Gianni. He has just gotten a very sharp stabbing pain in his stomach, and beads of sweat are forming on his brow.
Belladonna steps off the stage, the spotlight following her and reflecting dazzling shards of light in the eyes of the guests as she approaches the drunk. “Do share your tenderness with me, kind sir,” she says to him, pointing to his drink. He looks befuddled as she leans over him to pick up the glass. Then she takes a sip and sighs melodramatically. “Quite right, you are, kind sir, quite right indeed,” she tells him. “This drink is indeed bursting with tenderness. Yet I believe it can be improved upon.” She twists the opal of one of her rings, and it pops open. Then she sprinkles a bit of what seems to be a fine powder into the drink and swirls the crimson liquid around for a few seconds. It bubbles slightly. She takes a sip and laughs again.
“Much better,” she says. “Much more tender. Here, you try it, and tell me.”
The color drains out of the dumb man’s face. He has rather instantly sobered up, and he shakes his head no.
“I said, try it,” Belladonna says calmly, but her voice has changed. It is no longer full of merriment.
There is dead silence in the club. Gianni nearly cries out, to tell him not to do it, but he is wracked by a sudden cramp. Strictly psychosomatic, I assure you. The powder in Belladonna’s rings is nothing more potent than plain old baking soda. A little in-house joke.
Belladonna stands motionless as the man looks up at her. Ever so slowly, he reaches out for the drink, his hand trembling. He is more terrified to disobey her than to swallow whatever it is she’s concocted, so he takes the tiniest sip, his hand now shaking uncontrollably, then puts the glass down so quickly most of the liquid sloshes out.
He’ll be thinking he was poisoned till the day he croaks. And not a moment too soon.
Pretty woman watch you die!
Belladonna slowly puts her hands together, as if she is about to pray, but instead she starts clapping, the sound muffled by the leather of her gloves. “I salute you, kind sir,” she says to the man, who is now as pale as the white linen handkerchief he’s using to dab his lips, “for now you understand the true nature of tenderness.”
She returns to the stage, and her wide smile is visible under her mask. “We are all here to enjoy ourselves, are we not?”
No one says a word. They are afraid this may be some sort of trick question.
“Yes, of course we are,” Belladonna goes on, unperturbed. “Therefore, since this is my club, and, as you obviously have recognized, I am a fairly strong believer in rules in my club, I am pleased to inform you of a new rule.”
Nervous hand-wringing. Will she make all of them sip from a cocktail laced with a mysterious powder? Could all of them be banned forever for breaking some unwritten code they knew nothing about?
“As of this moment,” she announces, “there will be no more disparaging comments about tenderness in my club.”
There is a collective sigh of relief, and the spell is broken. Amid tumultuous applause and laughter, everyone seems to start talking all at once. Belladonna waits for the nervous chatter to subside, then holds up her hand.
“Is there anything else any of you, my cherished guests, would like to say to me?”
Of course there is. Did you really poison that man? What were you whispering to the other one? Please, can we see your face? Can you come sit with me, for just one blissful moment? Can your dog let me in whenever I want? Can you be my friend? Where have you come from? Who are you?
Who are you? Why are you here?
Don’t ever ask her those questions.
Yes, there are a million things her cherished guests would like to ask Belladonna. But they wouldn’t dare.
“Drinks are on the house. Enjoy your evening,” she announces, and all in the room think they’re the luckiest persons in the world, even though none is going to take a sip from any drink. Except Gianni, who still has an awful stabbing pain in his gut, and the other man, who is shakily getting up to leave.
How tragic. Well, I wish both of them nothing better than they deserve.
Although we don’t know it yet, Belladonna’s performance is only a warm-up for what Loose Lips Megalopolis will call the “Night of the Necklace.”
The night of the Ball of the Elements.
6
The Ball of
the Elements
Sometimes things don’t quite go according to plan. And then the plan is revealed to be something else entirely.
But after all the work we’d done setting up the Club Belladonna, where would be the fun in predictability?
Let me tell you about the elemental ball of October 23, 1952. The Ball of the Elements, I should say; people are expected to dress up as fire, air, water, earth. Actually, what makes this ball so extraordinary was set in motion a few nights before. It started out as a perfectly forgettable night, and we were about to finish our drinks when Matteo suddenly materialized at our table. He wouldn’t have left his post unless something was wrong, and Belladonna and I immediately followed him into the kitchen. Through the kitchen to a locked door, leading to a corridor, another locked door, and then Belladonna’s office. To one side, through another door, is her dressing room, which has racks of her vividly colored costumes sent to us from seamstresses in Hong Kong, boxes of her bejeweled shoes, dozens of wigs hanging on hooks along one wall; stacks of kidskin gloves and lacy masks; a lighted theatrical mirror and pots of lipsticks and eye shadows, though only a glimmer of them will be seen from behind her mask; and a large three-way mirror so she can inspect the laces in the back of her corsets and bodices before entering the club itself. Sh
e keeps her rings in blue velvet boxes on her desk.
This is her private retreat, and it’s more like the sultan’s throne room in a harem. The walls are upholstered in pale green silk; a long, comfortable chaise is covered in deep pink velvet, flanked by thick cream-colored church candles in tall wrought-iron stands; and a large rectangular divan, draped with luxurious velvets, rests along one wall, heaped with embroidered pillows that resemble some of the more ornate bodices of her dresses. A gilded wooden fan lazily rotates on the ceiling. There are several gilt chairs with thick cushions near her Louis XIV desk, where she attends to paperwork, and piles of books stacked neatly on the floor. Framed prints of photographs she took of the Tuscan countryside decorate the walls. It is a room meant as a safe haven, a soundproofed place to stretch out when she is tired from listening to the endless chattering inside the club.
Belladonna sat behind her desk, fiddled with her pen, and waited for Matteo to speak.
“A woman at the door,” he said. “You should talk to her.”
“Why?” I asked.
“A feeling.”
Botheration. This was so out of character for Matteo that something extraordinary must have touched him. I was usually the one with the hunches, but would naturally be inclined to take one of his very seriously.
“Is it safe to let her in here?” I asked. We have fire exits, of course, and many side passages, but no guest, or even a staff member, has ever been let in behind the scenes. This office is strictly off-limits.
“I don’t think so. And it’s not that I don’t believe you, Matteo,” Belladonna told him with a frown, “but I don’t want a strange woman in my office.”
“I understand,” he said, looking very disappointed.
“May I talk to her?” I asked my brother, and he perked up a little bit. Belladonna sighed, then let me go. Matteo went back to his post, and I took my mask off and changed in her dressing room. No one would pay any attention to me in my normal street clothes. To them I am no more than a slightly rotund man with surprisingly smooth skin for someone my age and a lot of jet black curly hair.
I slunk outside via the dim and dank side entrance, the old freight platform of the Kiss-Kiss Kandy factory around the corner on Washington Street One of the shadow bouncers was waiting for me, alerted by Matteo. He took me to one of the off-duty cop cars, where a woman was sitting in the backseat I tied one of the waiter’s masks back on"I didn’t yet want her to know that I was the man always sitting near Belladonna in the club"knocked on the car door, then slid in next to her.
She was wearing a beige raincoat slightly too large for her petite frame. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a careless ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her pale blue eyes would have been pretty if they hadn’t been swollen from crying. She would, in fact, have been very pretty if she hadn’t been so disheveled and upset. She reminded me of someone. Double botheration. Who could it be?
Laura, that’s who. Laura Garnett, moping around Merano with Mr. Nutley. Laura, friend of Leandro, who never came to see us after he died. I’d nearly forgotten about her in all the bustle of the Club Belladonna.
Now I knew why my brother had a feeling. Just that second, Matteo knocked and sat in the front seat. Because of the masks, the woman couldn’t tell that Matteo and I were twins. He looked at me. I knew what he was thinking; we were both thinking of Laura. And Leandro. How Leandro helped us when we needed him.
My psychic kneecap began thrumming pleasantly. There was a reason this woman had appeared, an important reason. Something bigger than whatever she was about to tell me. I’d figure it out soon enough.
“Tell me your name,” I said gently.
“Annabeth,” she said, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. “Annabeth Simon.”
“You wished to speak to Belladonna.”
She nodded. “Thank you, whoever you are,” she said. “Thank you for seeing me. I don’t know why I thought I’d be noticed at the door. It’s insane, really, I’ve never been here before. But I didn’t know where else to go or whom else to turn to, and he’s …” Tears welled up in her eyes again. “If your doorman hadn’t seen me, I don’t know what I would have done.”
She fiddled with her buttons and I saw that her hands were trembling. Instinctively, because I am such a naturally sympathetic kind of guy, I took them between mine and rubbed them. “They’re like ice,” I said, even though it wasn’t cold out. In fact, it was an unusually balmly October night. Then I pulled out my handkerchief and gave it to her. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
“You’re so kind. I was going crazy,” she said. “It’s my husband, you see. He’s going to be coming here in a few days. Or nights, I mean. At the Ball of the Elements. With his mistress.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Friends of his have also been invited, and he’s been boasting to them that he’s bringing her, and telling everyone what she’ll be wearing because he’s convinced her costume is so clever she’ll get to sit with Belladonna.” She took a deep breath, calming herself. “You must think I’m a madwoman, the wronged wife who’s so pathetic she has to follow her husband around when he’s invited to a party.”
“I think nothing of the kind,” I told her. “Go on.”
“I wouldn’t have come, truly, I wouldn’t, but my husband, Wesley, he"” The tears were falling again. We waited, calmly.
“It’s not my husband who’s the problem right this moment what he’s doing to me,” she added. “It’s the necklace. He took it”
“Took what exactly?” I asked.
“The necklace belonging to my mother. It was given to her by her mother, and it’s all I have left of her. And it’s meant for my daughter, Charlotte.”
“He stole your mother’s necklace?” Matteo asked.
She nodded again.
“He stole it so he could give it to the mistress he’s bringing to the ball?” I asked. “To impress her? And because he’s too cheap to buy her another one?”
Annabeth tried to smile. “Exactly. I’d never have discovered it missing, except the insurance was due and I needed to take it to be appraised. It’s a very valuable heirloom, you see, late Victorian. Everyone who’s seen it has always said that it’s as delicate as spun air. That phrase must have clicked in his head when he heard ‘Ball of the Elements.’ Look.” She opened her purse and frantically scrambled through it, fishing out a photograph. A family portrait. “See, here I’m wearing it. That’s Wesley, and my children, Marshall and Charlotte. I brought this so you wouldn’t think I was making it up when you see him here with her.”
“How, may I ask, was he invited?” I said. This was serious. If scumbags like Wesley were being invited to our parties, our guest list was in need of a very serious overhaul.
“Wesley? He’s a prominent lawyer,” Annabeth explained, “and very connected socially. But I believe someone at his firm was invited, or his wife was because she knows somebody, and they had to go out of town. Wes was owed a favor.”
“Why doesn’t he want to take his own wife?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip. “Perhaps I’m not glamorous enough for the ball.”
“That’s absolutely not true,” I said indignantly. “Do you still live together?”
“Yes. I mean, I guess so. He usually comes home most nights, although he often stays at the club near the office where he’s working on a big case. Or so he says.”
“He doesn’t know that you know about his mistress?”
“Her name is Linda. Linda Jerome. No. He doesn’t think I’m clever enough to figure things out. When I told him I thought he was having an affair, he got incredibly angry. He threatened me, saying he’d have me followed with a private detective so I can see what it feels like to fall under suspicion.”
“So you can assume that he’s been lying for quite some time.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t want to upset the children. He’s a powerful lawyer, r
emember, and I’ve got nothing. We’ve been married since college, and I worked as a secretary to support us when he was in law school, but after he passed the bar and I had the children, well, I really don’t know what to do. I can’t believe I’m sitting in a car here and telling this to perfect Strangers.” She smiled ruefully. “I think I snapped when I realized the necklace was missing. I got a baby-sitter and ran out the door. Your doorman”"she gestured to Matteo"”was kind enough to listen. I don’t know why he bothered to notice me.” Matteo leaned over the car seat and kissed her hand, and she looked so bewildered at the gentleness of this imposing masked stranger that I felt a sudden sharp pang in my heart.
Unlike other employees, Matteo almost never interacts with anyone at the club; he prefers to remain the silent sentinel, guarding the door. The power of his position hasn’t gone to his head, no no no. Mostly I think he is bored, or disdainful of the pathetic specimens he sees groveling before him on a nightly basis. He’s never shown a particular interest in any person, much less a woman, since we moved to New York. I still couldn’t for the life of me understand why Annabeth had him so personally interested, but I was glad for it. He’d been too much on his own. Hopefully he wouldn’t need too much of the encouragement we would start subtly shoveling his way.
This entire situation was most improbable. We were meant to stay detached from the rabble while waiting for one man, and one man only. One of them.
But my brother and I were both working on gut instinct right then. A hunch, whatever"we had to trust it. Matteo took the photo from Annabeth and we scratinized it.
“Why do you think we can help you?” I asked. I knew I’d have plenty of time to get to the root of Matteo’s unusual behavior later.
Annabeth looked at me in some astonishment. “Because she’s … because she’s Belladonna. She can do anything.”
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