Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  “You know what I’m trying to say,” Ariana said.

  “I’m not sure I do.” Maggie pressed her lips together and walked to the mahogany piano and began shuffling sheet music on the rack. It was as though she sensed what was coming and wanted to force Ariana to shout it so that the maid could hear it in the next room.

  “Please…” Ariana said. “Please don’t take him from me. Please don’t do it just to prove you can.”

  Maggie turned and gazed at her and the look of astonishment that came into her eyes did not seem forced this time. “You’re talking about Nikos?”

  Ariana nodded.

  “I don’t have to take things,” Maggie said. “I accept them.”

  There was another silence and then, in a voice that was suddenly, inexplicably faint, Ariana said, “I love him.”

  “Perhaps you should tell Nikos that, not me.”

  “I don’t see how you could love him the way I do. You don’t even know him.”

  “Did I ever claim to know or love anyone? I’m attracted to a man, he’s attracted to me. We flow with it till one of us gets tired of it and then we go our separate ways and it’s a nice memory. What’s the big fuss?”

  “That’s all Nikos means to you?”

  “Nikos is a friend.”

  Ariana rose and felt herself swaying on unsteady legs. She took a step and looked out the window as though she had never seen a river before. “Are you going to deny you’re sleeping with him?”

  “We’re friends and we have a marvelous relationship with trust and understanding.”

  “And you’re sleeping with him.”

  Maggie drew her teeth across her lower lip, then gave her attention to one of her fingernails. “You have got to be one of the most naïve women I’ve ever met.”

  “I don’t care what you think of me.” Ariana knew her eyes must be shining in front of this child like hot spills of candle wax.

  Maggie didn’t answer. In the next room the pitch of the maid’s vacuum cleaner had risen to a loud whine.

  “I have a right to know the truth,” Ariana said. “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Why don’t you ask Nikos?”

  “Would I be here if I had the courage to ask him?”

  Maggie drew her head back to look at Ariana with a cool expression. “Let me give you some advice. You know a great deal about Puccini and Verdi, but you don’t know much about men. I’ve had friendships with some of the outstanding men of our time, and the reason is, I never talk about them to other people.”

  “Nikos is all I have. You’re young, you’re beautiful, rich. You can have anyone. Please, let me keep him. Let me marry him.”

  Maggie shot her a look of almost withering pity. “But my poor little superstar, don’t you realize it’s not up to me?”

  “But don’t you realize it is?”

  In the silence Maggie lifted her cigarette again. “Ariana, I’m going to tell you something about that privileged childhood of mine. A royal palace is as rough as any street in East Manhattan. Every minute you’re dealing with people at their phoniest, their most manipulative. I had to be tough and show I wouldn’t take bullshit from anyone. And frankly, I won’t take it from you.”

  Suddenly Ariana felt strange and weak. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean go to hell.”

  24

  “THE WHOLE THING WAS pure opera,” Maggie said. “Tears were running down her cheeks, tears, as if she were bidding adieu to life itself. I have to give her one thing: she’s a real performer.”

  Nikos dropped into an armchair and closed his eyes. “Yes,” he agreed softly, “a real performer.”

  “She actually has the notion that you’re going to marry her.”

  He could see Maggie expected confirmation or denial.

  “If it’s none of my business,” she said, “just tell me to butt out.”

  He stared at Maggie. He shook his head. “I never asked her to marry me.”

  Nikos called to Ariana from the living room when the limousine brought her home that night. She saw that the butler had laid a little table of cheese and fruit and French bread.

  “Nikos, what a nice idea.” We’re making up, she thought. She spread some ripe Brie on a thick crust and held it out to him.

  He didn’t take it. “Are you pleased with your performance?” he asked.

  “Trovatore’s never been my favorite,” she said.

  “That’s not what I mean. You spoke with Maggie this morning.”

  The blood thudded so hard in her veins that his image trembled before her eyes. She was swept by a certainty that in two seconds the world was going to end, that her stupidity had caused it to happen.

  “Do I have to remind you we’re not married? I am free to have whomever I want in my life, and I intend to!”

  Ariana felt a scream gathering inside her. She seized the knife from the wheel of Brie and thrust the handle at him. “Then why don’t you just kill me and get it over with, for God’s sake!”

  Nikos looked at her. A strange trembling filled her. She half believed he might actually cry out, Because I love you.

  “You’ve always had a flair for the drab,” he said.

  “You never loved me,” she said. “Never. And the worst thing is, you don’t love her either. And if you think she loves you…” She crossed to the window and stared down at the dark garden, wishing he would come up behind her and put his hand on her, knowing he wouldn’t but wishing it anyway.

  “I can’t go on like this, Ariana—arguing day in, day out.”

  “You’re trying to make it all my fault. But it isn’t.”

  “I frankly don’t care whose fault it is. I can’t take another minute of this endless battle that you call living together.”

  She turned to face him. “You’ve never cared for me, have you? I was just a possession for you to show off.”

  “I thought I loved you. But maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re right about everything. Do you want to use my lawyer or do you want to get one of your own?”

  At the mention of the word lawyer she felt her world racing toward death. “What do I need a lawyer for? We’re not married.”

  “You can have what you want, Ariana. Anything. I don’t want to hurt you anymore than I have.”

  “What makes you think you’ve hurt me? I’m not a child.”

  He sighed. “I’m sorry that I’m not made for belonging to someone the way you want me to.”

  Her eyes drank in the truth in little sips. She finally grasped his utter refusal to compromise. That refusal was his strength. It was him. She had loved a refusal. “You were my life,” she said. “I would have done anything for you.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Do you know something? Even now I want to plead. I want to say this is all my fault, I’ll do anything to make it right.”

  “Don’t—please.”

  “Don’t worry. You can’t humiliate me anymore, Nikos. The most you can do is destroy me.”

  “I won’t sleep here tonight,” he said. “I won’t sleep here anymore.”

  She turned and walked to the elevator and pushed the button. She heard his silence behind her, dark like the onset of night. She realized she was alone now. Not just alone waiting for an elevator to take her to her room, but alone for the rest of her life.

  She didn’t know how long she lay on the bed biting her lip and sobbing. At some point during the night she heard the front door closing, and she knew Nikos had gone.

  She pulled herself to her feet and crossed to the oak chest of drawers. With a sidewise swipe of her hand she cleared it of perfume bottles, figurines, dolls, lamps. She smashed her fist into the mirror but she was still there, multiplied into a half-dozen silvered fragments, a Picasso with running mascara and a locket flying like a yo-yo at her bosom.

  She felt a surge of hate and rage. She yanked the locket loose and hurled it to the floor. She went into the bathroom, leaned over the sink and let herself collapse
like a wave.

  The mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet swung open and caught her reflection. She stared at herself. Her eyes were pools of fatigue. She saw there was a bottle of Seconal capsules in her hand.

  It was not so much making a decision as carrying out one already made. She shook what seemed two dozen pills into her palm, lifted them quickly to her mouth and took ten long gulps from a glass of water.

  She heard a crash.

  The woman in the mirror was in violent movement, pummeling the drinking glass against the edge of the sink, stabbing at her wrist with a handful of sawtoothed fragments.

  She watched blood whirlpooling down the drain. A sort of peace engulfed her. Nothing hurt. Nothing mattered. I should have done this long ago, she thought.

  She half closed her eyes. Sounds mingled and faded. And then a figure stepped silently into the bathroom. A man.

  For an instant the light enclosed him like the background in a sixteenth-century Flemish painting. He was gazing at her with a kind look, a look she remembered from long ago, a look of caring, of consoling, of being a part of someone.

  He was wearing a dark suit, and at his neck was the narrow white strip of an Anglican collar. He took her wrist. “Don’t do that.”

  It was Mark’s voice. He looked absurdly young and handsome in his clerical collar and dark jacket.

  “Mark?” she said wonderingly.

  He pulled in a sigh. “You don’t want to die.”

  “I’m going to die anyway, why not now? I’m alone, there’s no one to guide me, no one who even cares, why should I go on?”

  “You’re not alone. There is someone to guide you. Someone who cares.”

  She raised her eyes. “You, Mark? Do you care?”

  “Someday you’ll understand.”

  Something like a cold steel pin went through her heart. “I’ll never understand. You left me and the best part of me died.”

  “I never left you. I never will.”

  “Then where have you been? All this time, all these years that I’ve needed you?”

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek. His breath warmed the side of her face. She closed her eyes, remembering. She was a girl again. There was a boy who loved her. The world was full of sun and music and reasons not to die.

  He was winding a towel around her wrist. Her blood had made a large rose around the monogram. His hand touching hers felt wonderfully soft, like milk.

  Can a touch be imagined, she wondered? Can a touch be remembered as clearly as this?

  “Hold the towel now,” he was saying, “hold it as tight as you can.”

  “I’m so scared,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re safe.”

  “Oh, Mark, you left me too soon, years and years too soon.”

  “I never left you,” he said. “Are you strong enough to make it to the other room?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. I want you to pick up that phone and call the doctor.” She picked up the phone and called the doctor. When she turned Mark was gone. There was only light where his face had been. An hour later a sleepy butler showed Dr. Worth Kendall, Ariana’s latest private physician, into the bedroom. The doctor unwrapped her wrist from the towel and studied it a moment. He opened his bag and began cleaning the cut carefully.

  His eyes met hers. “You weren’t even trying.”

  “I feel like an idiot,” she said.

  “Anything you care to talk about?”

  “Nikos has left me.”

  “Then he’s the idiot. Kill him, not yourself.” The doctor bandaged her wrist and then prepared a hypodermic.

  “Dr. Kendall, I don’t need any more sedatives. I swallowed two dozen sleeping pills.”

  His eyes came up at her. “The Seconals I gave you?”

  She nodded.

  His only comment was silence. He lifted the sleeve of her dress. She felt the sudden chill of alcohol as though a tiny window had opened on her arm and then the quick sting of the needle.

  “Those pills were placebos,” he said. “Just in case you ever tried something like this.”

  She didn’t know whether to feel insulted or relieved. “How did you know I’d—?”

  A mixture of affection and skepticism played on Dr. Kendall’s wrinkled face. “I’ve been a doctor quite a few years. I know all about human willfullness.”

  “I am not willful,” she said.

  “On the contrary.” He smoothed a small circular bandage over the puncture. “You performers don’t just have feelings, you insist on having them—no matter what the cost. But now that you’ve decided to live after all, I won’t have to send you to the hospital, will I?”

  As he was snapping his bag shut the empty Seconal cylinder rolled to the floor and he bent down to retrieve it.

  “Say, what have we here?” He was holding DiScelta’s locket.

  Ariana stared. “I must have dropped that.”

  He handed it to her. As she took it the lid popped open on an unbroken hinge. The face of Alberta Gesualda smiled out from behind an unshattered crystal.

  Dr. Kendall watched Ariana’s hand shake. “Have you considered getting away for a while?”

  “I can’t. I have performances till June.”

  “Perhaps you should cancel a few of those. You can’t go forever skipping essentials, you know.”

  “What sort of essentials am I skipping?”

  “Quite a few—air, sun, tranquility.”

  She closed the locket and slipped the unbroken chain around her neck. A soothing coolness flowed across her bosom.

  “Doctor, is it possible to dream—and be wide awake?”

  “For an artistic imagination like yours a great many things are possible. That doesn’t mean they’re advisable. You’d better lie down, Ariana. That injection’s going to hit pretty fast.”

  25

  “HE WON’T MARRY MAGGIE.” Carlotta Busch folder her Côte Basque menu and flipped it down flat on the table. “Why do you think he pays that wife in Stockholm two million a year? To render him permanently unavailable.”

  Ariana toyed with the stem of her tulip glass of Perrier. “Marjamaa, not Stockholm. His wife lives on an island in the Baltic. Maybe she’s wise. Maybe I should live on an island too.”

  “Islands are for people who’ve given up. You’re no good at defeat. You’re a contender and you were born to win.”

  “Am I? I’m so tired.”

  “Stop whining, darling, and listen to me. It’s perfectly easy to get Nikos back.”

  “Don’t you dare humor me, Carlotta. There’s nowhere on earth I’m going to get blond hair and a body like that and a royal pedigree.”

  “You know perfectly well they can all three be bought—and so, I might add, does Maggie. And anyway that’s not what I’m talking about. You have something she’ll never be able to buy or fake.”

  “What?”

  Carlotta smiled knowingly and let a moment slip by. “You’re an achiever. You can eclipse that little bitch with two well-planned galas. Three. Why not arrange a television shot? I doubt Nikos watches the educational stations, so make it one of the networks.”

  “You really think Nikos is that much of a child?”

  “Darling, he’s a starstruck peasant from outer Anatolia. He can pyramid companies and corner commercial grade uranium, but beyond that forget it. My take on Nikos is, he has complete contempt for anything he can understand and total awe for anything he can’t. Why the hell else do you think he pays three million for a lousy Mondrian?” Carlotta gave a contemptuous snap to her breadstick and dolloped butter across the fracture. “And you’re the same in reverse. To you, a high D-flat is daily drudgery and a corporate takeover is a work of genius.”

  It was true. Ariana shook her head. “What an ass I am.”

  “Welcome to the club. The point is, you and I know we’re asses. Most people only think everyone else is.”

  Ariana made her resolution. “I�
�m going to fight, Carlotta. I’m going to hold on to that bastard.”

  “Ecco un artista!” Carlotta signaled the waiter and told him they would be having a bottle of Mumm’s with the mousse au saumon fumé and then she fixed an approving, measuring gaze on Ariana. “You know, darling, Maggie has the much harder job. She has to make youth last. All you have to do is make press coverage last.”

  It wasn’t so much an unannounced visit to the fifth floor of the Met as it was a surprise invasion.

  Ariana stepped out of the elevator armored in a Lope de Trina platinum brocade jacket, a Fidalgo sequin skirt that swirled like an ocean tide at the calves of her Gucci boots, and $40,000 in Cartier baubles that the insurance policy said should never be allowed out of the Chase vault before sundown. With a wave, she ignored the secretary’s attempt to stop her and pushed quickly through the mahogany door with its bronze nameplate.

  Adolf Erdlich was sitting behind his ebony desk waging war against Milan on one phone and making love to Vienna on another.

  “Adolf.” She drew in a deep lungful of courage. “I’ll do your Traviata gala.”

  In a single continuous movement Adolf hung up Milan and he hung up Vienna and then he crossed the room and hugged her. “If you’d told me two minutes later it would have been too late. Do you know who I had on the phone? Schwarzkopf. She was willing to cancel La Scala and step in.”

  “You don’t need to embroider. I said I’ll do it.”

  He buzzed the intercom and told his secretary to bring in Miss Kavalaris’s letter of intent.

  “Sign here.” Adolf held out a pen.

  “Thanks, but I prefer this one.” Ariana opened her purse and took out the tooth-marked pen that she’d used, so long ago, to sign her first contract with the Domani Opera.

  “Ah, the lucky pen.” Adolf smiled.

  “It has been so far.” Ariana leaned over the desk. She hesitated for an instant, then splashed a signature across the blank line where Adolf’s finger was pointing.

  “And what is all this?” DiScelta waved a copy of the Times.

  “They’re mounting a new production.” Ariana sat huddled in the wing chair. “It has to be publicized with a star.”