Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  Nikos gave a sigh of dwindling patience.

  “I bend myself out of shape believing the things you tell me.” She heard the thin, berating sound of her own voice and hated it. But it was too late to stem the eruption of words. “You say your flight to Riyadh was delayed eight hours. You didn’t want to upset my plans, so you didn’t phone. But when you tell me Lucius Griswold happened to be in the VIP lounge, and—”

  “And he suggested we go to Mimsy’s and kill a couple of hours. What’s so incredible about that?” Nikos seized the telephone from the end table and thrust it at her. “Go ahead. Ask Lucius. Let him see how deeply you trust me.”

  She clung to a narrowing margin of belief. “That’s not it, that’s not what I mean at all. I trust you, I do.”

  “You certainly have an original way of showing it.”

  “I’ll believe anything you tell me so long as you—”

  He was winding his watch, the Patek Philippe she had given him for his birthday. “So long as I what?”

  “Can’t you—at least respect me?”

  “Respect?” He glanced toward her. “You harangue me like this and accuse me of disrespect?”

  She fought to maintain some sense of direction. It was as though she were onstage, lost and flailing in a welter of screaming brass. Where am I? What’s my next line, my next note? “Why did you have to go to Mimsy’s? Why of all places there?”

  “It’s my habit to go wherever I’m welcome.”

  “You arrive without me at a party where we’re both known. You spend three hours tucked in a corner with that—that child. Don’t you see how it looks?”

  “Maggie and I spoke ten minutes. We were not tucked anywhere, we were standing in Mimsy’s garden with forty other people. And I very much resent your accusing me of being interested in her, let alone of pursuing her in full view of your friends and mine.”

  “I didn’t mean that, I never said that!”

  “Then just what are you saying?”

  She sank to the sofa. “I’m saying I love you,” she whispered. “And I’m so frightened…of losing you.”

  He came and put his arms around her.

  She let the silence of the moment fill her. “It feels so good when you hold me like this. When I close my eyes I can’t be sure where you end and I begin.”

  “That’s the way it’s meant to be. That’s the way it could be, if only you’d let it.” He took her hands in his. “Why do you hate that little girl? It’s unworthy of you.”

  “I don’t hate her.” Ariana’s eyes lifted uncertainly to meet his. “I don’t even know her.”

  “That’s the problem.” He didn’t speak, and then light flickered in his glance. “I have a solution. Invite her to dinner.”

  She pulled back. “Nikos, it’s not important—truly it’s not.”

  “But it is important. When a horse throws you, you have to get right back on. Otherwise the fear stays with you. This little girl has thrown you. We’ll have her to dinner next Tuesday.”

  “I’m in Rio singing next Tuesday.”

  He squeezed her fingers. “A week from Tuesday then.”

  Protest lumped in her throat. “But we’ve invited the Chapins.”

  “Then we’ll make it a party.” He placed a quick kiss to the left of her mouth. “I want to show off my brave Ariana.”

  She made three mistakes. She gave the party. She invited sixty-two guests. And on her right she seated Simmy Simpson, a gossipy, bald, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

  It was during the crayfish bisque that Simmy leaned close and whispered, “I must say, dear heart, you’re a sport to have la principessa in your house.”

  Ariana held her face in a mask. She felt her life about to be wiped out with a single swipe of a gossiping tongue.

  “After the way she and Nikos have been flaunting themselves all over town…I mean, you do know, don’t you?”

  Simmy sipped at his Perrier, watching her over the rim of the glass, his pink eyes glinting under tweezed eyebrows. Her heart was thumping so hard at the base of her throat that no reply could force itself out.

  Simmy read her silence. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I do hate to bring bad tidings to a sit-down dinner. I’m always afraid the hostess will signal one of the servants to poison me.”

  Ariana managed a smile. “I wouldn’t poison you tonight, Simmy. We’re having white chocolate mousse especially for you. Besides, you’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know,”

  “Then you knew they were looking at diamonds at Harry Winston’s?”

  For one helpless moment, Ariana’s eyes scanned the sea of dinner jackets and naked shoulders. She saw Nikos far, far away, smiling and tanned and gracious, deep in conversation with the wife of the Dutch ambassador to the U.N.

  Tonight she had wanted to make him proud of her. From head to foot, from silk underwear to Chinese mandarin jacket and embroidered satin pajamas, she had dressed in brand-new clothes. She looked like no one else at the party. She had done it for him, but he hadn’t spoken to her all evening, hadn’t even noticed.

  Somehow she found words. “Of course I knew. I asked Maggie to help Nikos pick out earrings for our anniversary. So he could think he was surprising me.”

  “Anniversary?” Simmy lifted an eyebrow. He had a connoisseur’s ear for falsehood.

  “It’s twenty-three years since we met.”

  He smiled. “How romantic. But why ask Maggie to help commemorate the event?”

  Ariana glanced across the garden. At the table under the farthest corner of the striped canopy, Principessa Maggie shimmered in black silk, laughing and clinging to the arm of the president of the Chase Bank and waving a champagne glass. Two gold bracelets, broad and bold as leather straps from a Greenwich Village sex shop, flashed on her arm. “Maggie has exquisite taste,” Ariana murmured.

  Simmy’s mouth puckered grimly. “Entre nous, dear heart, nail down everything you cherish, and I mean everything. La principessa is going to be needing a husband very soon.”

  Ariana felt a sudden inward pressure just below the sternum. “What about the one she has?”

  “You don’t see him here, do you?”

  “He couldn’t come. He’s playing piano at East Hampton.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” A faint smile lopsided Simmy’s lips. “My informant tells me Mr. Principessa got home from one of those gigs and did not like what greeted him when he flicked the bedroom light switch. She’s a tramp, m’dear, and I can cite chapter and verse.” He lowered his voice. “Not a whisper to anyone, but a very au courant friend whose initials are Brewster Cardinal McHenry tells me there’s a papal annulment in the works.”

  Ariana somehow got through dessert and coffee and Simmy’s chitchat, and then she slipped upstairs and locked herself in the guest bathroom. A racking cough took her. She bent over the toilet and vomited. When there was nothing left to throw up she washed her hands and face, gargled with cold water, emptied her mouth into the sink.

  There was blood running down the drain.

  For a moment her fingers wouldn’t work. She couldn’t turn faucets or wring face cloths dry. She thought, This is death. I’m dying. She ran the water loud and sat on the closed toilet and prayed.

  Dear God, don’t let me die alone.

  Finally the burning pressure eased a little in her chest.

  The bathroom connected two guest rooms and she opened the door on the river side to let in some air. Music and chatter drifted up from the garden. She straightened the hand towel with its single A monogram, not paying attention as the mirrored panel swung outward and reflected the dark bedroom. But then her eye was caught by two figures on the balcony, a man and a woman. They were whispering. The woman stepped into the light.

  Ariana recognized Principessa Maggie. She turned quickly, not wanting to recognize the man. But she knew. It was as though she had been stabbed across the face.

  She got out of the bathroom and down to the hallway one floor below. She stiffened
when she saw Nikos coming down the stairs. He was chatting animatedly with Ron Harkins, the man in charge of raising $20 million for the Metropolitan Museum.

  Nikos passed and touched her arm and smiled.

  Principessa Maggie strode down the stairs thirty seconds later. She was holding the hand of the editor with the flat turn. Her high-skirted dinner suit showed long flashes of thigh and teasingly narrow peaks of breast. Heads turned up toward her in one continuous ripple. “Can you forgive us, Ariana?” she said. “We’ve got to run.”

  Ariana mustered disappointment. “Let me find Nikos—he’ll want to say goodnight.”

  “I honestly haven’t time. I’ll phone.”

  Ariana was aware of a valley of silence around them as she saw Principessa Maggie and her escort to the door.

  There was a row of limousines double-parked in front of the town-house. Their taillights glowed. The principessa tossed a Fendi fox skin around her neck. It perfectly matched her hair.

  “Nikos said you did this whole party for me.”

  “Just for you and a few friends.”

  “You’re an angel to go to all that trouble for someone you hardly know.” The principessa kissed Ariana on the cheek. “Next time it’s my treat, all right?”

  Finally they were alone.

  “You’ve been seeing her.” The words left an emptiness in Ariana’s throat.

  Nikos glanced up at her from the sofa. “Who?”

  “Your principessa. Everyone knows you’ve been seeing her.”

  He smiled tolerantly, almost with amusement. “And when do you think I’ve had a chance to see her?”

  She looked at him, hating his calm. “When you’re not home. When you’re not at work.”

  “And when’s that?”

  “All the time. You’ve been taking her all over town.”

  “Where?”

  “You were at Harry Winston’s looking at diamonds.”

  “When?”

  “Don’t lie to me, Nikos. The whole world knows and the whole world’s laughing.”

  Nikos rose and came across the living room to put an arm around her. “Then the whole world’s as foolish as you.”

  She pushed him away angrily. “And just what kind of fool do you take me for?”

  His eyes darkened. “A fool who’s tossing off accusations a little too easily.”

  “I’ve every right to accuse. And I’ve every right to an answer.”

  “You’re like a phone off the hook. I’m not going to listen until you stop making those terrible noises.”

  She picked up a crystal cigarette box and swung with it. Nikos caught her arm. They grappled. The box shattered on the floor and cigarettes rolled across the parquetry.

  Nikos was shouting now. “I am my own master! Get it through your childish head that I obey no one! If I want to wear a plaid hat, I wear a plaid hat! If I want to drink milk, or go to Tahiti, or buy control of IBM, I ask no one’s permission!”

  “And if you want to make love to your principessa?”

  His gaze passed slowly, silently across her. “I warn you only once more, Ariana, I will not stand for jealousy.”

  “And I won’t stand for humiliation!”

  “Then we’re in full agreement.” He turned his back on her and strode from the room.

  “Nikos!” She ran to the empty stairway. She heard the front door slam.

  She went to bed. Fears started. At first little fears of not being able to fall asleep, then greater fears of being alone at three o’clock in the morning.

  She took a sleeping pill. Two hours later she took another.

  He didn’t come home all that night.

  He didn’t come home the next morning.

  Panic gnawed at her throughout the day.

  She taught Vanessa that afternoon at her studio. All through the lesson she was waiting for the phone, for Nikos.

  From the corner of her ear she heard something she didn’t like in the coloratura section of “Caro Nome.” She cut Vanessa short. “Pay attention to that run in broken sixths. You’re cheating on the low notes. A lot of singers think they can get away with that but it doesn’t fool anyone who knows how to listen.”

  Austin Waters struck a chord, and Vanessa began the passage again.

  Ariana sat bolt upright in her chair, her eyes narrowed, hearing nothing except the phone not ringing.

  She realized Vanessa had finished the aria. She rose, turning her head a little away from her pupil, looking at the darkening window.

  I can’t concentrate, she realized. I can’t concentrate on all this singing. I have a life to worry about. “We’re going to have to change our schedule,” she said. “I’ll see you every other week from now on.”

  Her tired, dark eyes tried to meet the girl’s brilliant gray-green ones with polite apology. They couldn’t, and she looked down at herself in embarrassment.

  Her glance fell on the locket. Something drew her finger to the gold and amethysts. They felt cool to her fingertip, almost cold, as though the stones were reproaching her.

  Vanessa’s deep questioning gaze came up at her anxiously. “Are you unhappy with something I’ve done?”

  “Of course not. I just have some problems that require my attention. We’ll get back to our regular schedule in a month or so.”

  21

  THAT EVENING BEFORE THE performance Ariana found two dozen red roses waiting in her dressing room. Relief surged in her like a sudden fever. “How sweet of Nikos!”

  The dresser was stitching the frilled blouse that Ariana would be wearing in Act Two of Adriana Lecouvreur. Her needle paused. “They’re not from Mr. Stratiotis, madame.”

  Ariana reached between the rose stems, found a note and cut her finger ripping the envelope open.

  For an unforgettable evening, untellable thanks—Maggie.

  “Madeleine—” She fought to keep her voice from rising. “Take these flowers up to the plaza and burn them.”

  “But wouldn’t you rather send them to the hospital?”

  “I want them burnt before I step on that stage.” Ariana thrust out the card with its ludicrous royal crest. “And burn this too.”

  Nikos did not show up in the first intermission. He did not show up in the second. By the final curtain, Ariana had suffered three nervous memory lapses and missed an attack on a high B.

  At home she found no note, no apology, no flowers. She questioned the servants. They had had no messages from him.

  She went to bed. Sleep did not come. In the morning, when daylight touched the silk brocade of the armchair, the pillow beside her was still empty.

  Two nights was all she could take of it. She phoned his office. They claimed not to know where he was. She tried to force herself to think rationally. A lover might vanish, even a husband might vanish, but the ruler of Wall Street could not simply disappear. Someone would know.

  The newspapers, she realized.

  Not her newspapers, but the servants’. The newspapers servants read always knew things no one else would mention.

  She sat down in the chair with the cook’s Post and the maid’s Daily News. The print was shaking so hard she could barely read it. She spread the papers on the table. She hated her eyeglasses, but she wore them now. Forefinger guiding her line by line, she bent forward to search the gossip column.

  She phoned Austin Waters. “I’ve got to see you.” She could hear a student in the background, vocalizing badly.

  “Okay, I can fit you in at four-thirty. And, Ariana, be on time?”

  When she came in the door, Austin looked at her for one smoky instant, marched to the piano, and clunked a loud A-major chord—her signal to sing the arpeggio.

  She closed the keyboard lid over his fingers and slapped the Daily News clipping onto the music stand. “Lunch at Delmonico’s, tea at the Plaza—dinner at Côte Basque!”

  Austin squinted. “The girl must have a tapeworm.”

  “Look at his arm in that picture—not just touching her—ho
lding her!”

  “For ten years Mr. Stratiotis has made it a point to be photographed with singers, actresses, models, lady newscasters, and millionairesses. Now will you tell me what is so special about Princess Maggie that she has turned you into a raving bitch?”

  “He hasn’t been home for two days.”

  “Who wants to come home to Medusa? He doesn’t have to put up with it and he’s serving you notice.”

  “Notice of what? That he’s infatuated with that child?”

  “Ariana—you’re talking about a billionaire. You’re talking about one of the biggest shlongs outside of porno films. He doesn’t have to take crap from anyone, least of all an angry humiliated pazza like you. Let’s warm up.”

  Austin hit the A-major chord again. Ariana didn’t move or make a sound. He turned around on the bench.

  “You have Faust in Paris in five days, so will you please sing?”

  She placed an airline ticket over the open Schirmer score of vocalises. “Come to Paris with me.”

  “Christ, I have students! Ever hear of students?”

  “I need you. I can’t face it alone.”

  “You know, to some people Carnegie Recital and the Ninety-second Street Y can be just as scary as the Paris Opéra.”

  “Who of your students has a recital next week? Name one, just one, and I’ll go to Paris alone.”

  Austin was silent. He picked up the ticket and flipped it open. “Where am I sleeping?”

  “The Ritz—you have the room next to mine.”

  For four frantic days Ariana and Austin worked on Faust. She had mixed feelings about Charles Gounod, the composer. He struck her as a professor who had absorbed the pedantry rather than the inventiveness of Bach. His work was well crafted, noble of its sort, filled with good intentions—and unbelievable dullness. Yet the final trio, where Faust and the Devil fought for Marguerite’s soul, was operatic drama of the first order.

  Many an opera, Ariana reflected, held the stage simply because it had a knockout finale. Faust was one.

  The first rehearsal at the Paris Opéra, soloists with piano, went poorly. Ariana could feel it and afterward she could feel Austin not saying it. “Can we walk?” she said.