“Painting, Del. Come see.”
“Painting? Oh, that’s right. Does it look like a whorehouse yet?”
“You won’t believe!”
“You got anything to eat there?”
“Not really.”
“Chinese?”
“Sounds good.”
“It does?”
“Good enough, I meant.”
_____
“You did this? It’s beautiful, Liddy. Look at those floors!”
“Sponge on the walls. Out of a book, of course. I’m going to have wood trim installed. What do you think?”
“It looks like you know what you’re doing. Ooh, Liddy, that table and chairs. Claw and ball. I like it. Ooh, what are those?” Delilah asked, pointing out two charcoal drawings hanging in the area Lydia now referred to as the sun-room.
“Master studies. Manet. Student’s work from the forties. That’s from Luncheon in the Grass.”
“Yah! Some lunch. How come the men aren’t nude?”
“You don’t think it’s funny? I thought of Frank’s the minute I saw it.”
“I think it’s a riot! Who’s that babe?”
“That’s Olympia. A courtesan most likely, though. At least that’s what the dealer says.”
“Lydia Beaumont, she almost looks like you. Maybe you were a courtesan in your past life. That would explain why you’re so cautious now.” Delilah stepped back from the piece. “I swear she looks just like you.”
Lydia laughed self-consciously. “You think so?” Perhaps that’s why she had been attracted to it. Odd that the dealer hadn’t mentioned the likeness, or maybe he thought it rude to point it out. Nice gentleman. Very polite. She’d ask his opinion about it next time. Curious she hadn’t noticed it herself.
“And what does a courtesan sleep on these days?” Delilah inquired from the hallway.
“Getting there, getting there. Just an old mattress for now.”
“Liddy, how you gonna get any action on that thing? It’s shockingly Spartan of you, you know. Hey, but that dresser looks nice in here. Why didn’t you polish it?”
A pair of black silk fishnet gloves hung from one of the drawers. Delilah recognized them. The women eyed each other in the mirror, Lydia frozen in the doorway.
“When are you going to ask her, my friend?”
“Del…” She wanted to put an end to it before they began. “I don’t know.”
“That is why you fled, am I right?” She placed the gloves where she had found them and turned to face her friend. “Ask the woman, Liddy. The very worse she can say is no.”
“Ask her what, Del? Would she have an affair with me? I don’t want an affair. Would she get rid of her perfect ten for me? Her beautiful, young girlfriend? Huh? What are the odds of that, Del? I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.” She headed for the living room, Delilah following after her.
“A perfect ten? Get real. There’s no such thing.”
“Oh, yes there is, Delilah, and I’ve seen her.” Lydia spun around and they stood face to face. “So what do you say to that?”
“What do I say? I say go look in the mirror, for godsakes. If that’s not perfect then what is?”
Lydia was silenced by the compliment. She sat down on the couch, Delilah standing over her.
“It’s just a little competition, Dame Beaumont, you can deal with that.” She sat down beside her. “You deal with it every day. They’re all the same punks. Spoiled. Arrogant. Stupid.”
Stupid. Lydia doubted the shark was stupid. “I don’t know. Besides I’ve never really asked someone out before. How do you go about it with a woman?”
“Well, how did Joe ask you out?”
Ugh, Joe. How did he? She thought back to it. It didn’t seem that he actually had. No. He was just always circling her, his pretty manicured hands constantly reaching for her erogenous zones. She cringed at the thought of it. He had seduced her.
“All right,” Delilah interrupted. “Forget it. How about before Joe?”
That was easier. “Flowers. Dinner. Love poems.”
“And you can’t afford flowers?”
Lydia chuckled. “I could buy her the Hanging Gardens of Babylon if she wanted them, but how would I get them to her? I don’t even know her last name. And it doesn’t matter anyhow. I don’t like to share lovers, Del. You know that.”
“So, obviously you think she’d say yes if you asked?”
Did she think that? “I don’t want to share, that’s all I meant.”
“So you’ll break your own heart? Like you did with Joe.”
“He did me wrong, Del. Right from the start. I don’t want that again. Why begin and then cry for something that might have been–you know that song?”
Yeah, but she didn’t share the sentiment. It was fun to fall. “You are in love, Dame Beaumont?” It was a gimmee, a setup for an if-this-then-that. Hypothetical hyperbole. Delilah knew her friend would dodge it.
“I’ve made up my mind, Del.”
“Oh, c’mon. Love at first sight?” Delilah pressed. “LUV?”
Lydia smiled despite her unease. No, definitely not at first sight. It had been a slow awakening. Couldn’t she gradually go back to sleep now? That’s what she was hoping for. “I can’t remember how it started. It just crept over me. Like a pox. LUV. Christ, Del, with a woman. I can’t believe this has happened to me.” She hesitated there waiting to be rescued, her head humming like a bees’ nest.
Delilah offered nothing but an expectant expression.
“A womanizer like my father. Del, say something.”
“Lydia Beaumont, have you ever slept with a woman?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then you’re hardly a womanizer. Besides, at this rate?”
“Have you?”
“Slept with your father?”
“Del! You know what I’m asking.”
“Liddy, please stay focused here. You’re going off on a tangent.”
“Del?”
“I have never been in love with a woman. There, are you satisfied?”
“Is that a yes?”
(Oh, geesh.) “It was a long time ago. I was drunk. In all places, Shanghai. Erotic and impractical. Mmmm.
Quite impractical for a conservative investment banker like me.”
“Solar flare?”
“That’s right, a solar flare. Not quite the blond bomb as your Helaine is, but an entire month of electrical interference anyway.”
Helaine? Lydia gulped. Delilah knew the blond’s name? “How do you know–? Oh, Del, tell me that you didn’t talk to her. Tell me you didn’t make me look like a child!” She moved closer to her on the couch; Delilah’s lips moved like a fish gulping for air. “Delilah Lewiston, you didn’t!”
“Liddy, I only–”
“What did you tell her?”
“Liddy…”
“You didn’t tell her anything! Oh, Del, what did you fucking say to her?”
Delilah sighed and stood up. “Liddy, I was only trying to get you laid. You are a child sometimes.”
“What did she say? Tell me what she said to you.”
Delilah walked toward the kitchen without answering. Lydia chased after her. She saw her going through the refrigerator.
“Del…please?”
“Why isn’t there anything to drink in here?”
“Delilah Lewiston–”
“The feeling is mutual, Lydia Beaumont. Now get your act together.”
“The feeling is mutual?”
Delilah was annoyed. “Your feelings. Hers. MUTUAL. You’re making yourself look like a child. I’m at least trying to get you laid.”
She went back to the couch empty-handed and threw herself in it with a loud sound of disgust, so loud it almost seemed to come from the furniture itself. Lydia stood over her speechless.
“Get some paper and a pen, Dame Beaumont.”
“Paper and pen? What for?”
“A love poem.”
“A poe
m? I don’t know how to write a poem. What about–”
“Liddy, it is not a happy union, that’s what I can tell. You’ve seen them together, not me. Get over how beautiful her girlfriend is. Do they look happy together?”
No.
“Paper and pen.”
She vacillated over the request. “Is this what you would do, little Miss Shanghai?”
That prompted a throaty laugh from Delilah. “You wouldn’t do what I would do!”
There was paper in the briefcase. A pen. Lydia rummaged for the items, one eye studying Delilah as she sat with an arm over her eyes, her head nearly lost in the pillows. Her friend had slept with a woman. “Here.”
“Not me. I’m not courting the woman, you are.”
“Delilah, tell me. Describe what it’s like. I’ve got fears about it.”
There was no response from the pillows.
“You understand, Del?”
“Veni, vidi, vici,” said the sofa.
“Del, that’s you, not me.”
“You think too much, my friend. You’re being impossible. And you’re making it impossible.” She rolled over on her side and stared at Lydia. “Liddy, don’t make me pity you. Start writing, please.”
“I can’t do this. I’m not a poet.”
“Then get a book. You don’t think all the poems you got were written by the men who sent them, do you?”
“They weren’t?”
“I doubt it very much. What, you think they grew the flowers, too?”
“What a bunch of frauds,” Lydia exclaimed.
“Us too–what kind of poetry do you think she reads?”
Poetry? “Burns! She was reading Burns the last time I saw her.”
“Robert Burns?”
“I guess so. You’ve heard of him?”
A helpless laugh emptied from Delilah. “This is going to be so much easier than you think, Liddy. Grab some Burns on one of your excursions. You’ll see what I mean.”
_____
Sherlock Holmes had nothing substantial to report to Sharon Chambers about the Love Doc. He had begun to think that title a bit specious since the doctor apparently had no love life of her own, unless you factored in the insanely possessive super-model who was paying a mint to have her followed while she plea bargained in LA.
Casing out Frank’s was an act of futility, though she had resumed her original habit of Friday dinners and Saturday lunches. But she still ate there alone.
He had discovered that she looked very nice in navy blue, striped linens and flowing silks. Privately he would have liked to see her step out a bit, something more flashy now and then. She could pull it off, he thought. A bright red dress, mid-thigh, cut low in the front, way down in the back. Liven things up a bit.
Course she might not look so much like a doctor then. Or a bookworm.
_____
“Altho’ my bed were in yon muir,
Amang the heather, in my plaidie;
Yet happy, happy would I be,
had I dear Montgomerie’s Peggy.
When o’er the hill beat surly storms,
And winter nights were dark and rainy;
I’d seek some dell, and in my arms
I’d shelter dear Montgomerie’s Peggy.
Were I a baron proud and high,
And horse and servants waiting ready;
Then a’ ‘twad gie o’ joy to me–
The sharin’t with Montgomerie’s Peggy.”
Except for the two of them seated at their separate tables (and the ghost of Robert Burns), the dining room was finally empty, the bar vacated. Outside, only a few lunch stragglers still sat on the patio, apparently immune to the wilting heat.
The worst she could say is no.
Lydia watched Helaine take the slip of paper from the waiter’s tray, the long fingers anxiously unfolding it.
The blond had clearly not expected to see her again, let alone the love note. She cast curious sideways glances in Lydia’s direction and then a long and pensive look out the window after she had read it.
The feeling is mutual, get over how beautiful her girlfriend is. Lydia was trying. The blond bomb.
Electrical interference. Short circuits. Solar flares.
She was more rested than the last time Lydia had seen her, although at present the woman had lost some of her normal composure and appeared to be considering a hasty retreat in an effort to regain it again. Lydia watched her slip the note inside her blouse and gather her other things into a purse. Despite her obvious confusion, the blond looked quite well. Beautiful. It was too much to hope that the source of her recovery was due to that she had not been with her lover for awhile. She hoped for it anyway as Helaine filled out her bill, handed it to the waiter and without a word swished past her table in a whisper of fine fabrics, her soft silks billowing like the sails of a tall ship, the scent of sandalwood wafting on her breeze and descending like a cloud all around Lydia, in her hair, on her skin. Lydia lowered her eyes and drew the intoxicating air deep into her lungs.
Running away? Now, is that supposed to happen? Lydia rested her chin on her hand and watched out the window as the woman evaporated into traffic.
That was a waste of courage, she told herself, wishing she had never been born.
“Congratulations,” whispered the waiter. He deposited a napkin beside her plate and disappeared without further ado. “Lydia”, it said on the outside. Dear John, she bet, waiting till he was out of sight before reading it.
“Her flowing locks, the raven’s wing,
adown her neck and bosom hing;
How sweet unto that breast to cling,
and round that neck entwine her!
Her lips are roses wat wi’ dew,
O, what a feast her bonie mou’!
Her cheeks a mair celestial hue,
A crimson still diviner!”
Signed simply, “Helaine.” The waiter returned with Lydia’s bill.
“What is your name?” she asked him.
“Harry.”
Harry. A fine name. A wonderful, uncomplicated name. Easy to remember. She smiled like a child. A perfect name in a perfect world. Harry. Just as light as a kite in her cloudless sky. “I really don’t know what I’d do without you, Harry.”
He grinned impishly. “You’d better figure it out soon.”
_____
The first week back and everything she touched turned to gold. No conundrums, no hassles. Corporate governance at its best. Lydia could almost stand leading the tribe again. Rumors abounded concerning an inside trading scandal and all of Rio Joe’s activities were suddenly under scrutiny. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, she wanted to say. He was likely the mastermind.
He acted like a hunted animal these days, sending her beseeching looks as if she was his only salvation.
She ducked them, allowing them to drift past her without interception. He had sought to become a lone wolf in the firm, alone he really was.
At free moments she studied Helaine’s handwriting. She wished the blond had given her number, but then what? Forget her beautiful girlfriend. Think of the sensuous “L” in Lydia, that elegant scrawl. Maybe the blond was a writer. That would explain her interest in books. Lydia couldn’t recall seeing her with one last Saturday. Had she dashed off this poem from memory?
Friday morning a dozen red roses arrived at her office. She feared them at first, almost certain that Rio Joe was resorting to different tactics, but when she saw and recognized the handwriting on the envelope her heart jumped out of its normal place and hid all day in her throat, disguised there as a suppressed scream of joy. (Our Mr. Burns again.)
“By night, by day, a-field, at hame,
The thoughts o’ thee my breast inflame:
And aye I muse and sing thy name–
I only live to love thee.
Tho’ I were doom’d to wander on,
Beyond the sea, beyond the sun,
Till my last weary sand was run;
Till then–and
then–I’d love thee!”
She placed the flowers on a stand in the window, speculating over them all day. That Helaine knew her name had not surprised Lydia. At Frank’s her friends yelled it all night. It would be odd considering how loud they were not to have heard it at least once. But where she worked? Too titillating. It cast a bit of intrigue over the affair. She pondered it at the window standing beside her bouquet.
She had already made plans to meet her father at the club this afternoon or she would have sought the blond out at happy hour. Discreetly, of course, in case she wasn’t alone. The red, red roses…what in the hell am I thinking?
One more day, is what she was thinking, preparing herself for dinner with her father. She was just going to get her feet wet, test the waters as Delilah had suggested she should do. She would ask Helaine to join her for lunch tomorrow and take it from there. One more day.
She put her lipstick on and adjusted herself for her father’s inspection, in a low grade dread over the inevitable inquisition which had become so routine in their relationship. She hoped this time he would not have the gall to set up a double date with her as he had done the last time. She had very nearly walked out on dinner that night, hooked up without advanced warning to the son of his most recent squeeze, the three of them waiting for her to arrive like cats would for a mouse. Poor Mom. Why she wouldn’t divorce him, Lydia didn’t know. Maybe just not living with him anymore was enough. She often wished her father was as smooth and debonair as he actually looked.
Stepping out on the sidewalk fifteen flights below, the heat was high, burning away the last weeks of summer. Suffocating humidity. It sat heavy on her shoulders shocking her air conditioned body. She was not going to struggle with it today. She stood on the corner and hailed a cab.
Above her, across the street, Dr. Helaine Kristenson stood at the blinds again. She had been engaged in that activity all day, ever since the roses she had sent first appeared in Lydia’s window. She had a great deal of apprehension now and it mingled with elation to create quite a potent poison to her nerves. For the moment, she was not going to struggle with it. She wouldn’t have to. Lydia was not going to Frank’s tonight.
The Secret Keeping Page 16