Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  “Richard, I need the money now. Can’t you get me something fast? Maybe some television commercials?”

  “No way I’m going to let you do commercials. Absolutely not.”

  When Ariana stepped into her brother’s office he was tilted back in a swivel chair, wingtip shoes crossed on the desk top. “Hi, Sis. I only have a minute.” He made a proprietor’s gesture toward a chair.

  She sat. “Quite an office.” It was cheap, tacky stuff: mass-produced Danish modern.

  He smiled. “I picked the color scheme myself.” He stopped smiling. “What can I do for you?”

  “You’re handling publicity for these people?”

  “I’m president in charge of public relations.”

  “I want to do television commercials for you.”

  He shook his head. “We have an Italo-American product, an Italo-American market. You’re Franco-Greek.”

  “I look Italian and I sing Italian. What’s more, I sing legit, and one thing Italians love is opera. We could take the big arias, like ‘Un Bel Di,’ ‘Celeste Aïda,’ change the lyrics to cookies and breadsticks. I can really belt. I’ve got what they call a high extension, that’s an E-flat you wouldn’t believe.”

  Sitting there in the chair, moving nothing but her jaw, she let him have the E-flat, sixty-three seconds that swelled from a whisper to a lampshade-jangling fortissimo.

  He was staring at her with amazement. “How much do you want?”

  “I’ll do it for two thousand dollars.”

  Ariana didn’t come back for three days, didn’t phone, and Mark went out of his mind. On the fourth morning he called in to work sick and went to the precinct and asked what to do about a missing person. A chubby sergeant with red hair said, “You check the hospitals, and if she hasn’t showed up in five days you file a report in the precinct where she vanished.”

  “How do I know the precinct where she vanished?”

  “Wait five days, okay?”

  “She could be dead and you guys are telling me to sit on my ass?”

  “She could also be sorry about the argument and decide she’s scared you enough.”

  “What argument?”

  The sergeant gave him a look. And a shrug. “Go home.”

  Mark was in his bathrobe when he heard the gate squeak in the courtyard, that special squeak it always made for her and no one else. He made a dash for his regular chair, grabbed a section of the New York Times, opened it, and arranged his face.

  The apartment door swung open, the hinges singing out the two notes of “Amazing Grace.” Steps came halfway into the room.

  “Water’s running,” she said.

  Now he looked up at her. Slowly.

  She just stood there motionless, beautiful, and then she took off her coat and hung it neatly on the coat rack and peeked into the bedroom. “Tub’s overflowing,” she said.

  There was a long strangling pause while they looked at each other.

  “I went crazy,” he said.

  Her smile opened up like a fan. “Are you going to take that bath? I’ll soap your back.” She took his hand and led him into the bathroom.

  “Where were you?”

  “Home.”

  She soaped his back in long circular strokes.

  “This is your home,” he said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I met a millionaire in the Oak Room at the Plaza.”

  “Where were you?”

  “My mother’s.”

  “Doing what?”

  Her look was almost a smile. “How’s the brokerage house?”

  “I hate it.”

  “Good. I don’t want you working there.”

  “Sometimes we don’t get what we want.”

  She squeezed the sponge over his head and warm suds rained down over his face. “Mark, it’s going to be all right.”

  “You could have phoned.”

  “You could have stayed in school and not gone to work for those dumbheads.”

  “Are we going to argue?”

  “I have a better idea. It’s been four days. I’d like to make love. Okay?”

  He tried but he couldn’t be angry. The three lousiest days of pain and craziness he’d ever dragged himself through in his life didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she’d come back.

  “Okay.” He got out of the tub and came toward her. Still dripping bathwater, he lifted her and carried her into the bedroom and set her down gently on the small brass bed.

  She let him undress her and then he slid his moist hand between her thighs and parted them. He arched her back against the blue-and-white comforter. She closed her eyes. He began to devour the soft flesh between her legs. She could feel his teeth, light and teasing, and then not light, not teasing.

  She moaned.

  He crouched over her, squeezing her nipples, and he took her with an intensity that she had never known in him before.

  She reached orgasm quickly, so quickly it almost frightened her, and then she felt his lean hips working, building her up to an even higher level of excitement. She had to bite into his shoulder to keep from screaming.

  When the second wave broke, the room seemed to be whirling, the whole world spinning. He cried out and collapsed against her.

  Seconds later she felt a more muted, sustained orgasm. She lifted his head and kissed him. “If you’re going to make love to me like that, maybe I should run away more often.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  The day that the check from Stathis’s bakery cleared the bank, Ariana phoned the seminary. The dean’s secretary said she could have an appointment in nine days.

  The dean was waiting for her, the door of his office ajar. “Miss Kavalaris?” He rose from his studded leather chair, a burly man six feet tall with a thick head of white hair. He wore a dark vested suit and his hand was extended in a welcome so automatic as to be chilling. “Please.” A pause, and then, with a gesture leaving no doubt which of the three chairs was to be hers, “Sit.”

  They took up positions on opposite sides of the carved teakwood desk. She brought the money out of her purse calmly, clean $500 bundles.

  The dean’s nostrils seemed horrified. “What’s this?”

  “Mark Rutherford’s tuition. For next term”

  “Mark Rutherford has not applied for readmission.”

  “He has now,” Ariana said.

  Two days later, at three in the afternoon, Ariana was practicing her sight-singing when she heard a knock at the door.

  Mark’s father was standing on the landing. “May I come in?”

  She felt winter in her blood. “Of course.” She stood aside.

  He took spectacles from his pocket and slipped them onto his nose and then he strode around the apartment. “Charming,” he said.

  The bedroom door was half open. He glanced through it. “You’ve been imaginative with very little space.”

  “Thank you.” She offered tea.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Sherry?”

  “Perhaps a little sherry, yes.”

  She poured two tiny glasses. He glanced at the label on the bottle. He sipped with almost dainty displeasure, staring at her.

  “Don’t think I don’t understand you.” Sitting back in his chair, one knee crossed over the other, he nodded tolerantly. “I don’t question your aim. I certainly don’t reject it. Many young unknown girls have become great singers. But let’s examine your plan.”

  “Why? Why should you and I examine my plan?”

  “Because I’m concerned.”

  “That’s kind of you, but there’s really no need. I can’t expect you to care if I fail or succeed.”

  “I care if you succeed in one thing only—harming my son.”

  She tried to mask a flash of anger. “I’ll never harm Mark.”

  “You’ve already begun to. Until the dean of the seminary phoned me I’d no idea Mark had dropped out; no idea he’d rented this a
partment; no idea he was—with you. Oh, I knew he was sleeping with you, but living with you, no. You’re Catholic or Greek Orthodox?”

  “Catholic.”

  “You may be unfamiliar with Mark’s church. The clergy are permitted to marry.”

  “I know that.”

  “On the other hand, the Episcopal Church is not the lyric theater. Episcopal ministers may marry, yes, but live with a woman, publicly, unmarried—out of the question. Why do you think Mark dropped out of seminary?”

  “I don’t think it had anything to do with me.”

  “It had everything to do with you. He had to choose between ordination and you. He chose you.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you can’t know it.”

  Mr. Rutherford’s upper lip curled. “This is going to sound old-fashioned to you. But ministers must set examples. And though ours is a liberal age, a man and woman living together out of wedlock is not yet considered exemplary behavior. Particularly when the man has promised his bishop not to marry till after ordination.”

  Ariana rose. She went to the window and stared down into the garden. A robin had perched in the fountain on Pan’s shoulder.

  “Leave him,” Mr. Rutherford said.

  “Leave him?” She saw that to Mark Rutherford Senior life was a completely solved equation, with no room left for unknowns or variables.

  “It’ll be an expense. I’ll help with the costs, of course.”

  “That’s very kind. But I’ll have to talk it over with Mark.” She moved slowly about the apartment, touching things, drawing reassurance from the lampshade, the rocking chair, the polished tabletop. “I think Mark would prefer to marry. I know I would.”

  Mr. Rutherford carefully took his spectacles off, blew on them, resettled them on his nose. “Young lady, I’m not judging you. But I’m talking life, not opera. Even if the bishop were to agree, which I find highly unlikely, there’s a financial consideration. To support a wife and family, to feed and clothe them and send the children to decent schools, Mark will have to become bishop of a large diocese: New York or Chicago.”

  “Then he will.”

  “Not if he’s married to a singer. No diocese will tolerate a bishop’s wife performing on the stage. He’ll never advance above village minister and his family will starve.”

  The eyes of Ariana Kavalaris met those of Mark Rutherford Senior. “Isn’t there another option?”

  She saw that she had aroused more than his disdain. For that instant at least, she had caught his interest.

  “After ordination Mark could marry a rich woman,” she said. “Surely Episcopal ministers have done that.”

  “No doubt. But how does that fit into your plan?”

  “I have no plan, Mr. Rutherford, except to be the best singer I possibly can be.”

  “And let him be the best minister he can be?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then we agree?”

  “On that much, Mr. Rutherford. I’ll do whatever I can to help him.”

  “By leaving him.”

  “By staying with him.”

  Mr. Rutherford lowered his head. His shoulders hunched and for an instant he was a silent, glowering bulldog. “Then you’re determined to destroy my son.”

  “No. I’m determined only to be a successful singer.”

  “I can almost admire your candor. You admit you care for nothing but yourself.”

  She drew herself up full height and wished she were two feet taller, that she could look down on this immaculate gray-haired man with the narrow ice-blue eyes and chiseled nostrils. “What do you know of successful operatic singers, Mr. Rutherford?”

  “Enough.”

  “Then you know that if your son is my husband, he and his family will eat and be clothed. His children will go to the same fine schools you did. He’ll want for nothing, he’ll have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to regret. And neither will you. You have my word.”

  Mr. Rutherford picked up his hat from the chair by the door. “You sadden me.”

  “You ought to be glad to know I’ll never threaten Mark’s happiness.”

  “You’ve probably destroyed it.”

  “Visitor?” Mark said that evening when he saw the two sherry glasses.

  “Visitor.”

  “Should I be jealous?”

  “Concerned.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Could you marry a woman you hate?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then let’s marry.”

  “Fine. I’ll have to ask the bishop’s—”

  Mark, I want to marry secretly. Right now.”

  10

  BUT RIGHT NOW TURNED out to be not quite the same thing as right away. They wanted a church wedding—a ceremony performed by an ordained minister in a building with a steeple and a cross over the altar—and the only sect liberal enough to give them all that plus secrecy was the Unitarians. Ariana phoned the Church of All Saints and asked how soon the minister could perform a marriage. “A mixed marriage, we’re both Christians and neither of us has time to convert.” She’d meant it as a joke. She was told, unjokingly, that the minister was on another line and would have to call her back.

  But when the phone rang it was Richard Schiller, eager. “How’s your Barber of Seville?”

  “Pretty damned good.”

  “You’ve got three days to get to St. Louis.”

  By the time she got back to New York the Unitarians didn’t have an opening for three weeks. But in two weeks Richard pulled a Santuzza in Cavalleria out of the hat—“Buenos Aires, a very important opera town,” and that meant a six-week wait till the Unitarians had chapel time available.

  Two weeks before the wedding date Richard phoned and said Maria Callas had canceled four dates in Mexico City. “How’s your Aïda?”

  “Panagia mou—not ready.”

  “You’ve got nine weeks.”

  “Richard, a friend of mine is marrying in nine weeks and I’ve promised to be there.”

  “Tell them to postpone. Lucco Patemio this early in your career is a catch.”

  “I’ve had Patemio, thanks, and he hates me.”

  “He’s still Lucco Patemio and he hates everyone. And this could make you. I mean, make you. I’m going to move heaven and earth, okay?”

  For three days Richard burned up long-distance wires. Patemio’s agent said Lucco was not a launching pad for amateurs. If Lucco couldn’t have Callas he wanted Alima Harvey.

  DiScelta told Richard, “Give him Alima but book Ariana as the cover. Alima will pull out. She’s my student and she obeys me.”

  So it was set.

  Which is to say it was set until 6:20 Friday evening, August 23, when Richard Schiller was sitting in a bar on Fifty-fifth Street. Two hundred voices were shouting in a space where the sign on the wall said: MAXIMUM OCCUPANCY 108 PERSONS.

  And then on top of it all one voice was singing.

  Richard stopped jiggling the ice in his drink. He knew that voice. He looked up, and on the television screen above the bar Ariana Kavalaris’s eyes were dark with sparkling points. She was belting “O Mio Babbino Caro,” except the words were “Oh, try my delicious breadsticks” and the accompanying saxophone band sounded like a tub of schmaltz.

  “Christ,” Richard Schiller groaned. He took his drink and elbowed to the phone booth in the corner. He dropped a nickel in the slot, dialed. “Turn your television on. Your pupil’s on Channel Seven.”

  “Everything you do—every breath, every word, every act—either sows the seeds of a career or it is useless.”

  Ricarda DiScelta stood in the center of her living room and with an exactly poised forefinger accused her pupil.

  “Patti, Tettrazini, Melba, Ponselle, Callas, don’t you think they had their years of struggle, of sacrifice? But did they ever stoop to advertising cakes and breadsticks?”

  Ariana tried to think of something to answer, something to de
flect the justness of the charges, but there was nothing she could say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Money.”

  “But if you need money, why didn’t you ask me?”

  “I had no right to. The money wasn’t for me.”

  “Then who was it for?”

  Ariana explained.

  DiScelta listened, rose from her chair, moved with decisive steps to the window. “This young man you want to marry, this Mark Rutherford, does he love music?”

  “He loves me,” Ariana answered.

  “That isn’t what I asked.”

  “May I ask you a question, Mr. Stratiotis?”

  “A question? Why not?”

  DiScelta had summoned him to her living room. The curtains were drawn, as in a house where a death had just occurred.

  “Do you genuinely want to help Ariana Kavalaris?”

  “Certainly I want to.”

  What a voice, DiScelta thought. What a baritone he would have made. “Ariana has made a foolish mistake.”

  Nikos listened in silence as Ricarda DiScelta described the television commercials. He nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll get the films back.”

  He called on Stathis Kavalaris at the bakery. “Your sister wants those commercials off the air.”

  Stathis studied his visitor carefully. There was a long moment of eye-to-eye contact.

  “It’ll cost you to get them off the air,” Stathis said.

  “It’ll cost you more not to.”

  A bakery in Queens was firebombed that night.

  The commercials were withdrawn the next day.

  In the taxi going to Wall Street, DiScelta saw a photograph in the Times, a frozen instant of rubble and destruction. Her mind hovered uneasily over the possibility of a connection.

  Mark Rutherford was waiting for her in the reading room just off the main entrance of the Downtown Association.

  He was exactly what she had expected: a handsome, well-dressed young man, appropriately deferential. He suggested cocktails.

  “Why not wine with our meal?” she said.

  They took a small circular table in the dining room. She said she was not at all satisfied with her present broker; she had some stock options that needed looking into; and since Mark was Ariana’s friend…“I feel I can trust you,” she said.