“You son of a bitch,” he says, and takes a swing at Jack, who quickly steps out of the way. In a flash, Wesley is flat on his back. Geoffrey has karate-flipped him and is now standing with his shoe poised over Wesley’s neck. One of the cops on street duty hurries over.
“Everything under control?” the cop asks. “Shall I book him?”
Jack shrugs and steps back. The cop nods and goes back to his post as Linda scoots out of the cab, helps Wesley up, and brushes off his coat. Then they both get in and speed away.
Geoffrey has a broad, goofy smile on his face. “I’ve wanted to do that ever since I started,” he tells Jack with smug satisfaction.
And at the end of the night, when we take the box from the counter of the coat check and empty its contents in Belladonna’s office, we are astonished to find a dozen necklaces, glistening in a colorful heap of sparkles on her desk.
7
The Oracle
in the Office
That’s how it starts, the rumors spreading like crabgrass on a golf course. The gossip in Loose Lips’s column doesn’t hurt, and for once he doesn’t have to provide a lavish exaggeration. We receive a tearstained letter at the club, then another, and another. From women begging for help, women too scared to sign their last names or put a return address on the envelopes. Just phone numbers. I’d do anything if only you’d call me, Miss Belladonna, please, during the daytime only. I don’t know what else to do, they write in large, nervously slanting letters. Please, can you help me.
You’re the Belladonna, they write. You can do anything.
Belladonna make them cry.
When taking nightly breaks in her office in the club, Belladonna starts reading the letters. As the pile grows larger, she gives them to us"her inner circle, I guess you could call it"to read, as well. Then she calls a conference one afternoon, asking Matteo, Jack, and Orlando to join her for tea, making sure Bryony is playing at a friend’s house so we won’t have to worry about her overhearing anything. Bianca bakes a huge tray of scones, and we nibble them slathered in fresh butter and ginger marmalade. Andromeda, Froggy, and Tinkletime, the shaggy sentinels, doze in patches of sunlight on the glossy wooden floors. Petunia nibbles on sunflower seeds and lets put an occasional squawk. Noises from the street are muffled by the thick velvet drapes, and the outside world seems very far away.
In this saga, the outside world will always be very far away. The Korean War is winding down but there’s squabbling in Indochina; McCarthy rants about Communists and many of our clubgoers find themselves blacklisted. Dior is about to raise hemlines and cause a ruckus; atomic hysteria is in full sway; children practice bomb drills at school. We care not a whit. We are on a quest.
Nothing else has mattered. Not really. Not since we opened the Club Belladonna.
“What are we to do with these letters?” she asks when we’re through stuffing ourselves. “We seem to be in no danger of them stopping.”
“Why don’t we start calling the ladies who wrote them?” I ask. I’ve been thinking hard about this. Belladonna needs something to occupy her time while we wait. I fear that she’s like a well-oiled machine that breaks down only because there’s nothing for it to do. Our business is thriving. Belladonna already gives so much of her money away; I won’t bore you with the names of our pet causes and donations and foundations, set up and administered with the help of some of Jack’s contacts. All the funding is anonymous, of course, and often unlooked for and dazzling in its generosity. Yet no matter how much Belladonna gives, it barely makes a dent in her fortune. Maybe if she becomes more engaged in the particulars it will somehow help us get closer to what we’re looking for.
Or maybe I should stop thinking so hard about Belladonna. I don’t want to get wrinkles in my baby-soft and hairless skin from worrying. Instead, I’ll concentrate on the positive. About how much I love the delicious possibilities of la vendetta!
“What I mean is, this will give us something else to focus on while we’re waiting for certain people to show up. We have the energy, don’t we,” I go on, “as well as the money and the knowledge. After all, the club is running smoothly, and this will fill the downtime. It could be fun.”
“We’d need to implement some sort of screening system,” Jack offers, “to make sure the requests are legitimate. Once they’ve seen you the first time"if indeed you do want to see any of them"they’d no longer have to come here. We could set up another office somewhere, with phone numbers that’ll be billed to one of the dummy corporations. Actually,” he adds, “for now we could have anyone you wanted to talk to come in through the Kiss-Kiss freight entrance on Washington. No one goes there.”
That’s because we’ve planted some moonlighting cops dressed as decoy hookers there, and on most corners near the club. They’re the biggest joke in the precinct, and have been ever since our monthly contributions for the upkeep of the station house and for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association started rolling in. In fact, there’s a waiting list of dozens of cops who want to earn some extra cash lolling about in feather boas and stiletto heels, moaning about how much their girdles pinch. These guys are so ugly you’d have to be blind and beyond desperate to want to go near any of them.
“Might do you good,” Matteo says. He’s the only one who could say something like that to Belladonna and get away with it
“Might do all of us good,” I add, seeing her frown.
“I know that some of the staff would be happy for more work,” Jack says. “There’s no shortage of competent detectives who can investigate the claims. They could start their investigations as soon as we contact any of these women. Do the legwork and the paperwork, tail whomever, make whatever phone calls and follow-ups are necessary. This way, your actual involvement will be minimal. Piece of cake.”
Belladonna’s face is troubled. She doesn’t like the thought of having to deal with strangers, even if she’d be helping them. Annabeth Simon’s case was a fluke, and she did it more for Matteo’s sake than anything else.
Matteo took her necklace to Annabeth the next day, as we knew he would. Wesley also moved out the next day and into a small private hotel with Linda, which was probably best for all concerned. His lawyers have already been in touch, and we’ve assured Annabeth that ours are better. Besides, she has nothing to fear. Jack has a team on twenty-four-hour surveillance of their hotel and Wesley’s office, and the photographs in his file are not something I’d like to show my colleagues. Wesley’s bank account is about to show a huge deficit, if we have anything to do with his divorce proceedings.
All this we know because Matteo has suddenly become a rather regular figure in the Simon household. If it weren’t such a surprising turn of events, I might almost say he is falling in love. I didn’t think it possible. You know, the hormone problem, the too-ashamed-to-talk-about-it problem we both share. But Annabeth hasn’t asked him anything remotely probing so far, and she’s especially grateful for the attention he pays her son, Marshall. The little guy is entranced with the nearly silent man who comes to visit in the late afternoon and teaches him card tricks. Only after Marshall’s done his homework, naturally.
I must admit I haven’t talked very much about my darling big brother, have I? Bryony adores him, especially when he plays with her or takes her on window-shopping expeditions after school. We couldn’t run the club without him. It’s as if he’s a living embodiment of our shadow bouncers: present, yet seeming to belong more to the hidden darkness than to the light He and Orlando, who is by nature not a voluble talker, are great friends, and often disappear for long walks all over the city or to their favorite jazz clubs. They are both reliable to a fault and ask for nothing. I’ve always worried about Matteo more than I’ve let on, because he does say so little. We never discuss our difficulties.
I, on the other hand, have learned to occupy myself with gregariousness, and, as you know, absolutely adore sticking my busybody self in lots of places it shouldn’t go. I mingle with the crowd in the club and posit
ively revel in their sucking up. Belladonna laughs at me sometimes, how at home I am there, but she knows that my fussing and bustling are shields to stave off the loneliness that can creep unbidden into our lovely house at night. How must it be for Matteo? His life is even lonelier. He has chosen to stand guard outside, no matter what the weather, with only Geoffrey and a dog for company. He doesn’t complain. Yet he and Belladonna have always seemed to share an almost psychic connection, one that has made me plenty jealous.
It is the shared language of pain.
Matteo simply is. He doesn’t speak of his needs, or his dreams, or his fears.
Nor do any of us. If we did, I should think we’d all go quite mad. But who’s to say we’re not all mad already?
And who are we to be surprised, after all, if Matteo finds the courage in his heart to look for love? Of course, Annabeth is in for a bit of a surprise should their relationship progress, but I don’t think Matteo is quite ready for that conversation. This conversation is turning out to be difficult enough.
“I need to think,” Belladonna says eventually. She looks at all of us, reading the answer she doesn’t want to see in our faces. She sighs.
“Let’s see what happens, and take it one step at a time,” Jack says to her. “It could turn out to be a huge mistake, and a waste of our time and energy. If so, we’ll stop immediately. We must be as meticulous in our preparations for this as we were with setting up the club.”
He’s juiced, I can tell. Once a snoop, always a snoop.
And I have a funny little hunch that Jack is happy to be doing anything that might bring him closer to Belladonna.
We start with ladies who have relatively simple problems, ones that have somehow piqued Belladonna’s interest. I call them our “warm-ups”"useful to perfect our skills and potential scenarios. These ladies are contacted by Jack or one of his assistants, and if they pass the Theodora test"I’ll get to that soon enough"they are met on the corner of Washington and Gansevoort in the late afternoon and led through bewildering dark passages to Belladonna’s office. They all look as if they’re expecting her to pounce on them suddenly and whisk them away, never to be seen again. They nervously smooth their clothes and sit up straight, hats on heads and gloves in laps and handbags at their sides, darting glances around the sumptuous luxury of the room. They are desperate to pull out their compacts for one last inspection, patting the sweat away so they can look as perfect as possible for Belladonna.
When she enters the room quietly from a door hidden behind a large painted screen behind them, they invariably start. The air seems to shift imperceptibly. Poor ladies"they are almost fainting from nerves when they see her in full regalia, her face masked. She projects no air of friendliness or concern; she says little. Women who are rattled will talk more and reveal things they meant to keep secret, making our task easier. The air is so heavy, aromatic with scent, the spectacle of the real live Belladonna in front of them, listening to them, unbelievable and more than a little frightening. It’s as if she isn’t real, but some vaguely sinister fairy godmother conjured up straight out of their subconscious.
Belladonna goes over to a side table and lights a cone of jasmine incense on a silver-glazed plate, puts a small ceramic pagoda over it so that the fragrant smoke will waft out its windows, then sits down behind her desk, placing her fan near her inkwell. I sit on a gilt chair near the door, trying to look inconspicuous, which isn’t easy considering how imposing my persona, and am not surprised when the ladies don’t seem to see me. Belladonna is much more interesting.
She picks up the letter del giorno and scans it once more. She puts it down and looks at her blushing lady, who is near tears from worry or disbelief that she is actually there, I can’t tell which. Probably a combination of both.
“How can I help you?” Belladonna asks. Her voice is low and melodious, yet remote. The woman cannot read her expression from behind her mask.
“Well,” she says, clearing her throat. “Thank you for seeing me.”
She nods.
“I’ve heard…” The woman is really nervous now. “I’ve heard that you"”
“That I what?”
“That you help women,” she whispers.
“And who told you that?” Belladonna asks. It is a ridiculous question, really, because the woman has already written to her and been contacted and screened and brought to the bowels of the club itself, and, well, here she is.
There are a few seconds of silence, unbearable for this woman and welcome for us. People so often go on and on and on and have nothing whatsoever to say.
“It depends on the kind of help you’re talking about,” Belladonna says eventually, just so the woman can breathe again. “And something else.”
“Yes?” she asks.
“It depends on the woman.” She is looking right at this lady, her eyes huge and green and glinting. “You must be willing to do everything possible if you want my help,” she says. “Failure is not in my vocabulary. Shrewdness, frustration, and dexterity, yes. Vengeance. But failure? Never.”
Oh ho, the cunning Belladonna! She is a ferocious goddess, presiding over the fire, a modern oracle, speaking in riddles to this woman. Oracles can seem so obscure: They are meant to deceive with their ambiguous words. Sometimes I wonder if Belladonna herself knows what game she’s playing.
Belladonna gets up from behind her desk. I watch the woman flinch and steel herself. What can she possibly expect, poor thing, a spell cast over her on Gansevoort Street?
“Give me your hand,” Belladonna demands.
She takes it, then turns the palm over. “Strong in love, I see,” she says, tracing a line with her gloved finger. “Stronger than you think.”
The lady looks at her hand in wonderment, a lingering whiff of Belladonna’s perfume seeming to rise from it as Belladonna herself walks back to sit behind her desk once more.
“So,” she says.
“My husband. Like the man at the Ball of the Elements. The one with the necklace.”
This is what we expect to hear from our warm-up ladies. There are so many duplicitous men running around New York, it seems, that I’m amazed anyone manages to want to get married at all, much less remain faithful.
“An affair?”
“Yes.” She nods as tears begin rolling in earnest. “With my best friend.”
“Ex-best friend, you mean.”
I hand the lady a lovely large handkerchief of the softest linen, trimmed in lace. There is a crimson B embróidered in one corner. She blows her nose and wipes her eyes.
“No man has the right to treat a woman like his own personal whore,” Belladonna says, her voice harsh. She sighs, and I watch the lady begin to regain her composure. Belladonna isn’t going to turn her into a toad. Perhaps she is on the lady’s side after all.
“All women are vulnerable to deception,” Belladonna goes on. “Deception makes you want to give up, because you think it’s easier to lie down and die. Or so you wish.”
The heat of her gaze could burn a hole through her fan. None of the ladies we see realizes that Belladonna is talking about herself. They can’t imagine this indomitable creature in a vulnerable state, wanting to lie down and die.
“But that’s only if you let a man kill your spirit. If he’s so terribly cruel to you, then you must show him no mercy. He’s got to be taught to crawl. Do you understand?”
The woman nods yes, fervently.
“Personally,” Belladonna adds, “I never stick to a mistake.” She slowly removes the rings from her gloved fingers, placing them in a midnight blue velvet box on her desk, and then opens another velvet box and carefully considers a different set from her large collection.
“What do you think?” she asks, pulling out a large sapphire, or perhaps a square-cut emerald, a topaz or a peridot laced with her infamous loops of dangling pearls, and trying them on. The lady looks at me, stupefied that Belladonna would be bothering to ask her advice.
“Once, there was a gener
al from Thebes, who went to the oracle priestess at Delphi for advice,” she says, still toying with her jewels. “’Listen carefully,’ the oracle said to him. ‘Beware of the Sea.’ Arrogant soldier, he thought he knew what she meant He became wary. Not a sailing ship in his fleet escaped his concern. But he didn’t die at sea. No, of course he didn’t He died because he didn’t really listen. He died lost in a bewitched oak forest called the Sea.”
After a few befuddled minutes, the woman says she thinks she understands what Belladonna means.
“Oracles never lie,” Belladonna says, and I close my eyes to conjure a picture of Leandro sitting on his terrace as the heat shimmers golden around him. “It is all in the interpretation. To see the literal in the hidden, to be led to the edge of understanding. To hope that you can find the courage.” She picks up her fan and waves it “Are you ready?”
Again, the woman nods yes.
“Very well,” she says. She shuts her blue velvet ring box with a loud click, stands up, and comes around to where the lady is sitting. Then she points her fan at me. The lady turns, sees my charming smile, and by the time she’s turned back, Belladonna has disappeared.
“Before you leave, you’ll give me the telephone numbers and addresses where we can contact you, and all relevant information about the people and particulars involved,” I tell the woman brightly. “We’ll be in touch about what methods might be most suitable for your case, and what you’ll need to do. You, and only you. Don’t worry.” I wink disarmingly. “You’ll do fine.”
It is not Belladonna’s fault if the woman falls into the abyss.
“Acting like an oracle is the exoneration of the ambiguous,” Belladonna says to me one day, sitting lost in frustration, “and it’s the only way I can remove myself from blame if something goes wrong.” She sighs. “I’m trying to help them as best I can, so they can find some courage within themselves. Truly, Tomasino. I suppose I’m also trying to find some corner of my heart that automatically pities them because they, too, feel trapped.” She picks up several pairs of gloves, trying to decide which pair to wear.
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