Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  “Oh, Nikos.” She fell against him and it was as though she could breathe again. “You know I’m willing.”

  She went to Richard Schiller’s office and tried to explain.

  “I’m a professional,” he said. “I represent professionals. That means I work. That means they work.” Suddenly he was on his feet. “What the hell are you doing, playing?”

  She was on her feet shouting right back at him. “Don’t you dare preach to me!”

  “Telling you to keep your contracts, that’s preaching?”“I’m entitled to sick leave!”“Then talk to a doctor, not me!”

  She talked to a doctor. His smile was wry and helpless in the face of all the cheating in the world and his own part in it. He wrote her an excuse for the insurance company.DiScelta called her an irresponsible fool.“It’s only three Elisir d’Amores,” Ariana said.

  “It will be more. Much more.”

  They flew to Paris Thursday and boarded the Maria-Kristina Friday morning in Nice. The trip was everything she had dreamed: gentle breezes, the all-enveloping warmth of the sun, translucent blue sea drifting off forever. Gratified desire glowed in every one of her ligaments.

  It’s going to work out, she told herself. Yet an anxiety was growing in her, and on the fifth day Nikos caught her chin on his fingertip and gazed at her.

  “Ariana, what’s wrong?”

  “Don’t you understand? I’m happy. For the first time in my foolish life, I’m truly happy.”

  “The way you’ve been acting—is happy?”

  She nodded.

  “My poor darling. How little you know yourself. And how little you’re able to hide. There’s a child in you, worrying. I see her face here—and here—” He touched his lips lightly to her forehead and then to her lips. “What can I do to make you smile?”

  “You’ve already done it. You’ve given me the most beautiful week I’ve ever known. It makes the rest of my life seem such a waste.”

  “Don’t bother about the rest of your life today.”

  Far across the blue water, the green palm trees and turrets of Alexandria shimmered like a liquid mirage in the noon sun.

  He led her into their stateroom. He slid a tape onto the player and pushed a button.

  She recognized the soft strings and clarinets that opened the “Lie-bestod,” the final scene of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. And then, with amazement, she recognized her own voice.

  “Nikos,” she protested, “I don’t want to hear that.”

  “You won’t even notice it,” he promised.

  He arched her back against the enormous bed, bending over her, trailing kisses across her nipples, her stomach, her navel. Over the stereo speakers her voice sang of the undying love that could find fulfillment only in death.

  She felt a curious disorientation, as if she had split in two.

  Drawing the elastic of her bathing suit away from her thigh, Nikos’s fingers entered and stroked. She felt herself yielding to the moist touch of his lips and the moister touch of his tongue and moistest of all, his mouth plunging into her.

  She reached for his erection, held it as it swelled, till its wonderful hardness overflowed her hand. He pressed against her, parting her legs. She felt him rigid against her belly. She lifted her knees and opened herself to him.

  He rose above her now, his brown-black eyes boring into her, his hair flying like a demonic conductor’s. His body was slick with a thin skin of sweat and hers was slippery from him. His hips moved against her, drawing her into motion in time to the music as if he had done it this way with her through all their lovemaking.

  The music poured from the speakers, flowing over them like an ocean. As the interwoven melodies climbed higher, the waves of instrumental sound grew in resonance and power. The tempo pushed forward, always forward, her voice cresting above the mass of sonority like a tireless swimmer.

  She couldn’t tell whether she was surrendering to the music or to Nikos, but she gave herself without inhibition, without shame. It was as though she were erasing all other voices from the “Liebestod,” all other women from his memory.

  At first gradually and now swiftly, the music rose to climax after climax, first the voice and then all hundred instruments of the Wagnerian orchestra and then, finally together in this most sexual of all musical fulfillments, voice and orchestra soaring to their long-delayed completion.

  She came in a single drawn-out explosion, and instants later he followed.

  The orchestra subsided. The strings sighed out a high, aching melody. There were two stinging woodwind chords, resolving into a glowing major chord. For a moment a single oboe held a lonely D-sharp. The chord returned and then all was stillness, peace, fulfillment. She closed her eyes.

  Later, on the deck, she said, “Can I talk to you honestly, Nikos? Can I let you see what a child I am and will you promise not to change your mind about me?”

  “How could I ever change my mind about you?”

  “I can’t go back to the life I had. And when I look ahead, that’s all I see. The same work, the same people, the same lies…when all I want is here…”She turned and faced him, suddenly paralyzed, unable to say the words with you for fear it would be saying too much.

  “Don’t you love your work?” he asked.

  “I love music. I try to pretend it’s enough.”

  He took her hand. “Who are these people, what are these lies?”

  “My husband…my marriage…”

  He nodded. “I have a marriage like that too.”

  “They took our past. Do they have to have our future too? Why can’t we be free?”

  He gazed toward the shore. The sea stretched around them like a flaming mirror and his arm tightened gently around her. “Maybe we can be free. Maybe there is a way.”

  Though Ariana did not immediately recognize it, freedom arrived by seaplane the following night after dinner, in the form of a tall, white-mustached man whom Nikos introduced as his lawyer.

  “Ariana, meet Holly Chambers. Holly, Ariana.”

  “Delighted, just delighted.” The lawyer’s shrewd gray eyes peered at Ariana from a deeply crinkled face. “I’ve been an admirer of yours for a long time.” He was dressed for an air-conditioned New York office, not for a warm night on the Mediterranean, and he carried a briefcase.

  When they sat down for brandies on the deck, Ariana realized the briefcase was chained to the lawyer’s wrist. That interested her. The conversation did not. She couldn’t see what was so important about Bolivian manganese that it had to be discussed now, or why this stranger had to sit with them like a member of the family on what was to have been their private, make-believe honeymoon.

  “Will you entertain Holly for a moment?” Nikos rose and kissed Ariana behind the ear. She realized she was to be left alone with the lawyer. Grimly, she braced herself for small talk.

  What came was something else.

  “I gather you want to divorce your husband.”

  She looked up, lips parted. “Who told you that?”

  “Nikos phoned me last night, ship-to-shore.”

  She breathed in slowly. “Does Nikos—want me to divorce?”

  Holly Chambers was gazing at her across the hurricane lamps. “Do you know what the poet Rilke said about marriage?”

  She wondered if she ought to trust lawyers who tried to impress her with their knowledge of German poetry. “Unless it was set to music, I’m sure I don’t.”

  “Rilke said in the best marriage each partner stands guard over the solitude of the other. In that sense, I think you and Nikos are already married.”

  She decided to tell this man the truth. “I want to be married to him.”

  Holly Chambers leaned back, elbows on the arms of his chair, hands clasped across his stomach. “And he to you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Nikos said that?”

  Holly Chambers was playing with a gold pen. “Nikos tells me a great many things.”

  What was this lawyer saying to her? I
t sounded like perhaps with a maybe in it. She gazed out at the rippling black sea, at the whole unchanging universe of stars. “If only I knew what he wanted.”

  A snapping of silver locks answered her. Holly Chambers’s briefcase sprang open. “Nikos asked me to draw up these papers.” He handed them to her. “Do you read Spanish?”

  She frowned. “No.”

  “It’s a Dominican petition for divorce. All it needs is your signature.” He held out his pen and smiled, showing a mouthful of handsome teeth.

  Ariana hesitated. “Is Nikos divorcing his wife?”

  “Nikos and Maria-Kristina have been up to their necks in divorce for years.”

  That sounded like a maybe with a yes in it. “Why won’t she let him go?”

  “They can’t agree on the child. He’d like to share custody; or at least to have visitation rights.”

  “His wife refuses?”

  “So far she hasn’t been noticeably cooperative.”

  “That’s unfair.” Ariana took the pen. “Renata is his child too.” Quickly, before anything could change her mind, Ariana scratched a signature across the page.

  Holly Chambers tapped his fingers on the Dominican petition. “Are you sure you want her to divorce?”

  “Absolutely,” Nikos said. “I don’t want her belonging to anyone but me.”

  They were sitting alone in the ship’s library.

  “You realize she’ll want to marry you,” Holly Chambers warned.

  “I can handle Ariana and her wants.”

  That night, in their stateroom, Ariana turned to Nikos. “Tell me about your daughter.”

  “Why do you want to know about Renata?”

  “Because you love her.”

  Nikos smiled. “She’s a wonderful child. She looks like her mother and she thinks like me.”

  “Is her mother beautiful?”

  “Not as beautiful as you.”

  In the beige-and-mahogany office on the thirty-seventh floor of the Seagram Building, the lanky Texan with the shaggy white mustache extended an ebony box in a suntanned hand. “Cigar?”

  They were State Department Havanas, but Boyd Kinsolving shook his head. “A little early for me.”

  “Something to drink?”

  “Maybe a light Scotch.”

  Holly Chambers ambled to the bar, poured two stiff Chivas Regals, and handed Boyd one of them.

  “You know, Boyd, things always connect. I act as minister without portfolio for a great many interests. Please, sit.”

  They settled into Mies van der Rohe chairs. Holly Chambers gazed a moment at his visitor, taking his measure.

  “Your wife asked me to have a word with you. You’re surprised?”

  Little warnings began piling up in Boyd’s mind. “I didn’t realize my wife required your services.”

  “A lot of people require my services.” On all the eighteen gleaming square feet of Holly Chambers’s Ferrara marble-top desk, there was only a single piece of paper with two lines of type. He moved it two inches to the right. “Was it Santayana who said marriage is like death—nothing prepares you for it?”

  “People are always blaming remarks on Santayana.”

  “Mrs. Kinsolving feels she entered her marriage unprepared. She wants a divorce.”

  Boyd was quick to mask any facial reaction.

  Holly Chambers smiled pleasantly. “Of course, divorce is one of those scare words that say a great deal more about our fears than it does about any sort of reality.”

  “I had no idea my wife was unhappy with her situation.”

  “Perhaps I should explain the context of all this. Are you aware that Mrs. Kinsolving has been seeing a great deal of Nikos Stratiotis?”

  “I do read more in the papers than my own reviews—or Ariana’s.”

  “He’s a really delightful guy. His humor is infectious, he’s high-spirited and he takes Mrs. Kinsolving’s mind off her problems.”

  “I didn’t realize my wife had problems.”

  “Any artist faces the stress of getting in, getting on, getting ahead, as I’m sure you know.” Holly Chambers’s glance dug into Boyd. “I gather you’ve found your own solution.”

  “If you mean my wife’s and my decision to live separately, I can assure you, it’s perfectly ami—”

  “Yes, that and your present living arrangement with Mr. DiBuono.”

  At the mention of Egidio, instinct warned Boyd not to panic. He needed every drop of clarity he could muster. The man facing him was not a frightened little oboist he could cow with a shout, but a highly paid, highly successful destroyer of corporations, careers, and reputations. Boyd had no desire to become another of Holly Chambers’s triumphs.

  “A divorce could be had without your consent. After all, you and your wife have been separately domiciled for almost two years. You’re openly residing with a man. There’s no shortage of grounds.”

  “Am I being threatened?” Boyd asked.

  “On the contrary, Nikos wants it made clear that—”

  “I don’t see that Mr. Stratiotis has any say in this.”

  Holly Chambers’s lips shaped a conciliatory smile. “He happens to be a good friend of your wife’s and mine, and he asked me to assure you he’ll take a friendly, supportive attitude.”

  Boyd heard the unmistakable jingle of a code word. “How supportive?”

  “That would depend whether or not you consented to a Dominican divorce.”

  “You can’t expect me to decide something like this overnight.”

  “Overnight is just about all the time we’ve got. Your wife’s petition will be presented to the court Thursday. If it has to be presented without your signature, Mr. Stratiotis’s offer, naturally, will not hold.”

  “You haven’t told me what his offer is.”

  “Mr. Stratiotis is prepared to make an immediate cash deposit in your name into any Bahamian or Swiss bank account you care to establish.”

  “How large a deposit?”

  “Three.”

  “Three?” Egidio repeated.

  “Three million,” Boyd said.

  “Dollars?”

  Boyd was making real Swedish sandwiches for them—thick slices of pumpernickel topped with fresh sweet butter and pâtè and Brie and ripe tomato slices. He nodded, and suddenly he found his lover staring at him, eyes disbelieving.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “No shit. The man said dollars.” Boyd arranged two slices of furled cucumber on each plate. “Untaxed.”

  “Gran Dio,” Egidio murmured. “You have deep friend, you have fame, and now with money you have everything.”

  Boyd had to laugh. Egidio was nothing if not upfront. “Is money all you think about?”

  Egidio hung his head like a child. “I think about sex too.”

  Boyd stepped deftly aside, sensing that Egidio was on the verge of one of his love-in-the-afternoon lunges. He carried the plates to the breakfast alcove.

  “Mangia.”

  “How can I eat? I’m too happy for you.” Egidio swung one leg around the bar stool. “You know what this means? You’ll never have to conduct in Rochester again!”

  Boyd wanted to smile, but he felt his lip trembling.

  Amazement crossed Egidio’s face. “You’re crying about Rochester?”

  Boyd shook his head. “Ariana and I—we had good times together. And now it’s over. I hate it when things end.” He couldn’t expect Egidio to understand what was being taken from him. He ached. Not so much because he loved his wife, though in his way he did, as because his life was more than half over, and it was the stronger, better half that was gone.

  Egidio gazed at him. His expression had turned serious. “One thing must sometimes end to let another begin.” He leaned across the table and kissed Boyd lightly on the forehead. The kiss left something behind, something warm and deeper than itself. “If she divorces you, then you belong to me. No more pretending. No more lies.”

  Boyd went to Holly Chambers’s
office the next morning and signed his wife’s divorce petition.

  He returned to the apartment early that afternoon from a photography session with Vogue.

  “Egidio?” he called.

  The apartment was silent except for the peaceful gray buzz of air conditioning. Boyd looked in the bedroom and saw a suitcase lying half packed on the bed. He looked in the kitchen.

  Egidio was standing at the counter pouring espresso, the smooth fall of his navy blue blazer ending just where the neatly tailored gray flannel slacks hugged the narrow curve of his hips.

  “There’s a suitcase on the bed,” Boyd said. An $800 monogrammed pigskin suitcase from Mark Cross that I gave you for your birthday.

  Egidio sipped his espresso. “Yes, I’m packing.” He set down his cup. The coffee breathed up a filament of white smoke that floated across the view of Central Park West and then lost itself against the bright steam-colored sky.

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  “I’m leaving for Italy at five.”

  It was said calmly, without fanfare. It was hardly even a declaration. But Boyd sensed an evasion buried somewhere.

  “For long?”

  Egidio nodded.

  “Couldn’t you have told me a little sooner? The Van Rensselaers are expecting us.”

  “Please apologize to Dinah. I didn’t know till an hour ago.”

  Boyd followed Egidio and the coffee cup into the bedroom. Egidio leaned over the double canopy bed and lifted down an eight-inch carved ebony Christ.

  “Why are you taking your sister’s crucifix?”

  “Pia is not my sister,” Egidio said. “She is my wife.”

  For an instant Boyd forgot how to breathe.

  Egidio smiled guilelessly. “Forgive the lie. But you would not have wanted a man with a real wife.”

  Boyd fumbled a cigarette to his lips and lit it from a shaking match. He slowly absorbed a new reality. “And might I ask why a man with a real wife wanted me? Was it my money?”

  Egidio shook his head. “Be realistic. I have three children, a wife, a widowed mother. I want to own a house, start a business, send my sons to school. Your money is not enough for that.”

  “Whose money, then?”

  “Whose do you think?”

  “Stratiotis paid you?”