“Look, Claudia, I just can’t—we broke it off over six months ago. I meant it then, I still mean it. I’m sorry.”
She ignored his words and started talking to him, describing what she would do to him, in great and imaginative detail. She knew he was aroused in a flash when she did it, and he was now, only this time his brain was more in control than his cock. He waited until she finished her expert performance—another litany, this one designed to arouse him beyond thought.
Finally she paused and he said, “Claudia, I would very much like for you to accept a small token of my appreciation.” He forgot that he’d already given her quite a fancy token, many months before, when he’d finally broken with her. “Let’s say a diamond bracelet? From Cartier? I’ll have it delivered to you this afternoon. No, no, I can’t bring it myself.” As he said the words, he knew he was weakening, knew in his soul that he wanted the thoughtless release she would bring him. Just a moment out of time, just an hour out of twenty-four, with nothing in his consciousness, nothing in his brain, just the sexual release of the appalling tension in his body. And afterward, she’d be so sweet, she’d listen to him, sympathize, be anything he wanted her to be….
He was weak and he hated himself, but he was a man, and his father had always said that men were strong in those things that counted. Men also needed sex, and they deserved pleasure for all their hard work. Men could stray. He’d used those arguments his entire married life with his first wife, Edith. But there’d been another reason with Margaret, a reason that made him furious and sick and frightened. But that wasn’t important now. Claudia was gone from his life, long gone, his decision made months before.
He remembered how several times he’d caught Margaret staring at him, worry and love in her eyes, and he’d wondered what she was thinking and wondered if she might have heard of Claudia, and then he’d taken her to bed and told her with his body how much he loved her, only her. Of course there was so much more now, always more to understand, more to be explained, to know and deal with.
Charles then called Clement, his chauffeur, and told him to drive to Manhattan, to Cartier, and pick up a package for him. Then he called Mr. Clifford, the manager of Cartier, and ordered up the small token of his appreciation.
When he hung up the phone, he found that he was thinking of his son’s wife, Susan. Susan with the soft white hands, the boomy deep voice, and the beautiful big breasts. Benjamin was such a bloody fool, such a nice boy, but with no guts, with no push or drive. If only Charles had sired Rafaella instead of Benjamin. Now, there was a child to be proud of. But no, he wasn’t her father and it wasn’t fair.
He should probably call her soon, find out how she was holding up. He shook his head at himself.
God, the irony of it, the blissful irony. Charles had never been one to appreciate irony for the simple reason that he’d always had control in his life, until now. Irony hadn’t ever slipped in unnoticed, until now. Now he felt he was in an ocean of irony, floundering about like a helpless fool. But he wouldn’t be the one to drown. No indeed he wouldn’t.
All during his drive to New York City, he thought of the irony of Sylvia Carlucci hitting his wife.
Sylvia Carlucci Giovanni hitting his wife. But even as he thought about it, examined it, he found he just couldn’t bring himself to accept such a coincidence. Coincidence was just fine in fiction, but in his experience, coincidence just didn’t happen in real life. Did it?
Giovanni’s Island
March 2001
DeLorio held up the wet panties. “Isn’t this interesting?”
“They belong to that little slut,” Paula said, and tried to grab the panties from her husband.
“They could belong to Coco,” he said, raising them out of her reach.
“No, they’re hers. Where did you get them?”
“They were on the bottom of the swimming pool. The deep end. No, I think I’ll return them personally to the lady. I must say that Marcus has excellent taste.” He grinned at his wife, then touched the crotch of the panties to his mouth. “Wonderful.”
“What is? The chlorine?”
“You have no imagination, Paula. It didn’t take Marcus long, did it? I did wonder when they both showed up wet before dinner. Is she the one who’s the exhibitionist? Do you think she went after him on purpose?”
“Yes, to show me.”
DeLorio paused. Very slowly he laid the panties on the dresser top, smoothing them into shape. “Show you what, Paula?”
“That she could take, no, to prove to me that she was better than—”
“I know,” he said, and turned away from her. “It’s hard to explain, isn’t it? But all your little confusions and conceits—they only make me love you more. I’m going to Miami this afternoon. I have business meetings and arrangements to make. Do you want to come with me?”
“Yes, oh, yes, Del. Let me pack. How long?”
He turned and smiled at her. “Don’t you find it interesting that my father evidently didn’t mind Marcus screwing Rafaella Holland in the swimming pool? My civilized, well-bred father? No, he didn’t say a word. I’d like to see what he’ll do— First, Paula, I want you to change into a dress. That pretty blue sundress I bought you just last month. You know the one, it has a very full skirt and narrow straps over the shoulders?”
She nodded happily and turned to do as he’d bidden her, but he stopped her, his fingers curling around her forearm. He smiled down at her. She would love this. His fingers caressed her arm and his breath was warm against her temple.
“When you have the dress on, I want you to bend over the balcony with your arms balanced on the railing. I’ll just lift your skirt a bit and stand behind you. And while I push inside you I want you to wave to the gardeners and speak to whoever wanders by. If it’s Link, I want you to ask him all sorts of questions about his gruesome murderers of the past, keep him looking at you, until I come inside you.”
“But they’ll know—you’ll be behind me, pushing, and they’ll know—Link will know, and I—”
“But you’ll have your dress on. No one will see a thing,” but he was thinking, Yes, I’ll just bet he’ll know. And the bastard would know what DeLorio was doing and that Paula belonged to him and that he’d better keep his sniffing distance of Paula or he, DeLorio, would castrate him.
Link didn’t come by, but Merkel did, dressed immaculately as always in his three-piece white linen suit and pale blue oxford shirt, and when he saw DeLorio standing behind his wife, his hands on her waist, he knew what he was doing, and it made him want to puke. But it was also powerfully erotic for all its crudity, and from the brief look he’d gotten at Paula’s face, it seemed to him that she was enjoying it as much as she was hating it. He shook his head. He would never understand the two of them.
And when Paula called out to him, her voice high and embarrassed and shaking with excitement, he refused to look up at her again, just nodded and kept walking.
He was vastly relieved when the two of them flew to Miami that afternoon. He himself had gone earlier to fetch Ms. Holland from the resort. She was in her room, changing, Coco with her.
And he remembered Marcus’s request just before he’d left him that morning at the airport in St. John’s. “Watch her, Merkel. She’s too unthinking, too impulsive, and that can be dangerous. And she has that talent to attract confidences, and that can be even more dangerous.”
Merkel wondered what he’d let himself in for. At least one worry was down—DeLorio. He’d said he’d be gone for a week. God willing, it would be longer. He wondered if Mr. Giovanni had sent DeLorio away. If he had, then did he want Rafaella Holland all to himself? Just to work? Or did he want all competition out of his way? Was that why he’d sent Marcus to France? No, no, he was being crazy. Marcus had to go to Marseilles to deal with Bertrand. And, after all, Coco was still here, still the head mistress, and Rafaella was her friend. No, he had to be wrong.
When Mr. Giovanni requested his presence after lunch, Merkel wa
s impatient to know what was in his boss’s mind. Hopefully, more than writing his biography with Rafaella Holland. Maybe he’d gotten information about the assassination attempt, about Bathsheba.
“Both DeLorio and Marcus are gone,” Dominick said. He was sitting in a high-backed wicker chair, sipping a glass of lemonade laced with gin. “Now we will get Rafaella Holland settled in and everything back into, ah, balance.”
Merkel was smart enough to keep still. He simply stood there waiting for his boss to get on with it, and silently cursed.
“She likes Marcus. She knows it but she just isn’t ready to admit it.”
Merkel looked at the beautiful Picasso over Mr. Giovanni’s desk. It was from the artist’s Pink Period, Mr. Giovanni had told him once. He didn’t particularly like it. Most of Mr. Giovanni’s other paintings were in a private vault, located just off the master suite. He’d gotten the Picasso some twenty years before, he said, at an auction.
“As for my son, well, I wanted him out of the way so he wouldn’t be tempted by her. Also I wanted him to concentrate on other things. He will take my place in the future; he must learn about the responsibility, the strategy, all the tactics. He must learn the personalities of all the men he’ll be dealing with. He must learn humility.” He paused, and Merkel tried not to choke. Humility?
“Sometimes the boy shows so little breeding, so little class. He’s just like his mother, that stupid drunken woman, and his grandfather, the rotting old bastard.”
Merkel wasn’t about to tell Mr. Giovanni what DeLorio had done to Paula that morning, and how she, all red-faced with embarrassment, had probably had the best orgasm of her short life. He shifted his attention to the Vermeer that was artfully hung exactly seventeen inches from the Picasso, with its own lighting, stolen from Sir Walter Wrentham’s collection three years before. He himself preferred the Egyptian stuff in the living room. You could touch the jewelry, pick it up and feel how warm it was, press it against your cheek, and know that real people had worn it, and still it was so old that you couldn’t even begin to understand how those people had felt, what those people had been.
“Not that I don’t think DeLorio will straighten out. He will. He’s my son. He’ll have to. As for his wife, well, she is just a girl, young and silly and unthinking. Ah, forgive me, Merkel, carrying on like this and embarrassing you. You’re taken with the Vermeer, hmmm? I like it. Soon though I’ll exchange it with the Turner that’s in the vault. Just look at those colors—so soft, almost blurry, yet so real and stark. It sounds impossible, yet it’s true, that wondrous effect Vermeer achieves. If only life could hold such beauty dear and unchanging, but it doesn’t, does it? No, it’s always changing, mostly for the worse. It isn’t really fair, but there you have it.
“Now, Merkel, I wanted to see you because I will start working with Rafaella this very afternoon. Marcus is seeing to business, the dear boy, and I have nothing else to worry me.
“Yes, Rafaella will do a fine job. I explained things to her last night, slowly and carefully. She understands her role. She won’t try to cross me, I’m certain she won’t. She won’t play the ruthless reporter out to find dirt. She’ll write exactly what I want her to write. She will present me as I should be presented to the world: a man of ingenuity and imagination, a man of great vision, an intuitive man, a philanthropist. She will be my amanuensis, if you will.
“You, Merkel, you will ensure that peace reigns here. You and Link and Lacy. Poor Link, he’s such a shy fellow, so diffident. He doesn’t seem to be able to grasp innuendo. Well, he’s still a fine marksman and he does please me with his tales of long-dead murderers.” Dominick paused and sipped more of the gin lemonade.
Finally Merkel said, “Mr. Giovanni, you sent Marcus to France because you wanted to be alone with Miss Holland?”
How odd of Merkel to speak his mind so frankly. How unexpected of staid old Merkel. “Oh, no, I needed him there, to handle Bertrand. Don’t you think I can trust Marcus?”
“Yes, of course. He saved your life. Didn’t give it a second thought, you know, and—”
“Ah, that’s exactly what worries me. A man who just rushes into something, a man who doesn’t weigh his options, a man who doesn’t stop and think. I don’t think that such a man is all that trustworthy.”
Merkel just stared at him. “He saved your life,” he repeated. “He took a bullet in the back to save your life.”
Dominick picked up a gold pen, fiddled with it a minute, then tossed it into the air, deftly catching it. “Perhaps you’re right. Marcus has been with me over two years now. He’s bright, seemingly loyal, has made a good deal of money for me and for himself.” His voice suddenly turned hard, his eyes cold. “Keep everyone away from me and Rafaella. I want her to myself. She is to write the story of my life. There are to be no distractions.”
Merkel was afraid he did understand. He nodded and left the library. But what about his promise to Marcus?
Dominick didn’t move for many more minutes. Certainly he trusted Marcus. Hadn’t Marcus told him just this morning before he’d left for France that he’d finally gotten the opportunity to search Rafaella’s villa? There hadn’t been a bloody thing there. That’s what Marcus had told him. Marcus hadn’t told him that Rafaella was illegitimate. Dominick wondered why. It wasn’t important; that was what Marcus had decided. Still—
And Marcus had told him about Rafaella’s mother, lying in that hospital in a coma. And Marcus had counseled him not to let her come to the compound. He’d said it was too dangerous. Marcus was timid and a coward. He didn’t realize that Dominick controlled everything and everyone. Controlling one more woman was child’s play.
Dominick tossed down the rest of his drink. His book would be a masterpiece. He would be seen by the world as he should be seen. It was about time.
Thirteen
Giovanni’s Island March 2001
Rafaella opened the journal. The date April 5, 1994, was neatly entered at the top-left-hand side of the page. She looked at her mother’s rather crabbed, very straight handwriting and felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. She closed her eyes a moment, dealing with the pain. It would be endless pain, because even if her mother fully recovered, the other pain would still be there for all of those who loved her. Rafaella’s throat felt wet, and she swallowed.
She had to succeed. She closed the journal just for a moment and thought about calling from her father’s compound every morning to the Pine Hill Hospital on Long Island. Surely Dominick monitored all calls that went out from here.
But he already had to know that Rafaella called Long Island every morning. Marcus would have told him, just as he’d told him about her mother being in the hospital, in a coma.
She would simply, very matter-of-factly, ask Dominick if she could call the hospital every morning. If he asked her what she was doing here in the Caribbean with her mother so very ill in New York, well, she’d just tell him what she’d told Marcus, more or less.
She’d be more convincing with Dominick for the simple reason that she had to be. There was too much to gain, too much to be lost.
And he had no more idea who Margaret Rutledge was than who his daughter was. Even if he remembered a Margaret, it was Margaret Pennington, not Margaret Holland.
Rafaella smoothed open the journal again, picturing her mother in her mind, sitting at her small Louis XVI writing table, pen in hand, her eyes staring off, remembering the pain of the past, wondering about the future, obsessed in the present.
It’s Tuesday today, my dear Rafaella, and you’re here on spring break from Columbia. It still makes me grin to think how very appalled Charles was when you told him you didn’t want to go to Yale—his alma mater—but rather to Columbia, locked in Spanish Harlem, dangerous to the unwary, but the best school of journalism in the United States, in your estimation. How Charles started at that. “Columbia,” he nearly yelled at me. “For God’s sake, Columbia!”
I cajoled him, flattered him, loved him until he was silly
, but I refrained from telling him that it was, in fact, none of his business where you went to school. He’s very fond of you, Rafaella. It troubles me because I think he’s more proud of you than he is of his own son, Benjamin. Sweet, unpretentious Benjie—proof that genes do come through, only not necessarily in the configuration one could wish. Benjie’s an arty type, as you know, as was his mother, Dora. He really does fine watercolors. But Charles disdains all modern sorts of endeavors. He does, however, approve of those masters who had the good fortune to paint at least three centuries ago, e.g., Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Brueghel. Practically all those masters are Dutch; his library is filled with them, some, er, acquired through less than pristine means, I doubt not.
But I digress. I will tell you, Rafaella, even if the great Michelangelo himself had been Charles’s son, Charles would have given him hell.
Am I mocking my husband? I suppose so, but it’s healthy, not malicious. He’s human, and that’s just fine with me. Oh, yes, he’s all too human—not at all like Dominick, who cared nothing for anyone except himself and his dynasty and—I never understood his obsession with founding a dynasty unless it was his own overweening need to see himself immortal—was there anything else?
He’s had only the one son. His name’s DeLorio and he’s only eight months younger than you are, Rafaella. I don’t know much about him except that he lives with his father, and has for years. So much for his blessed dynasty. As for his wife, Sylvia Carlucci Giovanni, she doesn’t live with him, hasn’t for more than a decade. She gave him a son, started drinking like a fish because he probably didn’t give a damn about her and showed it, and is now living near us, of all the ironic things. She lives in a small hamlet called Hicksville, a very exclusive place, private, and the word is that she has a succession ofhandsome young men coming and going. Ah, here’s your mother, gossiping like an old fool. Which I am. No doubt about that. What else can a young fool become anyway?
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