Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  “If Madame is considering sapphires, we have a lovely—”

  She cut the salesman short, pointing to a gold necklace of eight emerald-cut solitaire diamonds. She tried it on. “How much?”

  The salesman coughed softly into his fist. “One million, one hundred twenty-five thousand.”

  She walked to a mirror by the window and studied herself. No doubt about it, her chinline was getting a little soft. Damn, that meant another trip to Brazil.

  “I’ll take it. Can you put it in a box for me?”

  “Certainly. And how does Madame prefer to pay?”

  “Charge, as usual.”

  The salesman’s teeth came down against his lower lip for one instant of hesitation. “Just one moment, please.”

  She pretended to be studying brooches but in the mirror she was watching the salesman confer with the manager. She sensed a hush come over the two men. Finally the manager approached.

  “Madame wishes to charge the necklace?”

  “As I charge all my purchases.”

  The manager’s face took on a grave expression. “Then Madame is unaware that Mr. Stratiotis has issued instructions?”

  “What sort of instructions?”

  “His office has ordered Madame’s charge account closed. Of course, if Madame would care to pay by check—”

  A wave of rage and incredulity swept her. She felt the catch pop as she ripped the necklace off and flung it onto the display case.

  “Thank you very kindly, but Madame does not care to.”

  The party that night was one of Carlotta Busch’s typical mixes of old guard America and new New York. Saltonstalls and Randolfs and Pinkneys rubbed shoulders with the new TV anchorwoman from CBS, fashion designers, Broadway composers. Maggie sensed sudden silences when she joined groups, eyes following her that averted themselves when she returned a glance. She suspected that word had already gotten around, but she didn’t know for sure until after dinner.

  She was in one of the bathrooms on the second story. Through double doors, in the neighboring bathroom, she heard laughter.

  And then a woman’s voice. “Mimsy Hoyt and Happy Blumenthal were there when the manager told her. She made a disgusting scene.”

  And another woman. “Couldn’t happen to a sweeter princess.”

  Maggie returned quickly to the party, wanting to burst into tears and commit murder at the same time. She felt she had been walked over with cleats and after three minutes chatting with the man who Rolfed all the stars in Hollywood she had to excuse herself and go outdoors. She walked with conscious, straightbacked grace, wondering how early she dared go home.

  The lights of Queens were not commanding, but the view of them from Carlotta’s terrace was. A puff of wind blew the light material of Maggie’s dress against her, outlining for an instant firm breasts and a waist not quite as small as she would have wished. A tugboat hooted on the river.

  A voice behind her said, “Do you mind, ma’am?”

  She turned and found herself facing a tall man, six foot two or so, with a long face and close-set penetrating green eyes. She’d seen him somewhere, couldn’t remember where.

  He took a cigar from his inner breast pocket, extracted it from its cylindrical case, waited for her permission.

  “Go right ahead,” she said. “Smoke never bothers me.”

  “The name’s Johnny Day Hill.”

  Now Maggie remembered. The trial lawyer. He’d just gotten an heiress acquitted of a murder charge in Baton Rouge. Typical of Carlotta to have snagged him for dinner the day of the verdict.

  “I’m Maggie Stratiotis.”

  “Heard lots about you.” He placed the cigar in the corner of his mouth, took a moment coaxing it to light. “You’ve got a case. Closing your charge accounts. That’s nonsupport.”

  She stiffened. It was too much. Even perfect strangers knew.

  “Refusing to pay shipping on your purchases and then letting the press know. That’s defamation.” He spoke with a husky voice and an easy smile. “I advise you to bring suit, young lady.”

  She let the mask of noncomprehension fall. “How much could I get?”

  “A sizable allowance based on reasonable expenses.”

  “What’s reasonable?”

  “How much has he ever let you spend in a month? Double it.”

  “That might be $150,000.”

  “We’ll try for a quarter-million. I get a third.”

  At 2:30 P.M. on May 3, in judge’s chambers in fourth district civil court in Manhattan, attorney Johnny Day Hill asked the court to grant his client Maggie Stratiotis $250,000 a month in temporary living expenses.

  Attorney Holly Chambers, representing Nikos Stratiotis, asked his honor if the court might have a breakdown of those expenses.

  Johnny Day Hill crossed his Texas boots and consulted the jottings in his memorandum pad. “Mrs. Stratiotis requires $27,000 a month to maintain her Manhattan co-op; $1,400 a month for club memberships; $1,200 for American Express; $1,200 for Diners Club. And $3,600 for travel and lodging; $12,000 for entertaining; $8,000 for staff; $5,000 for contributions to charity; $25,000 for clothing.”

  “A month?” his honor asked, eyebrows flexing.

  “A month, Your Honor. And $37,000 for jewelry and furs.”

  Holly Chambers punched buttons on a pocket calculator. “That leaves $128,600 a month unaccounted for.”

  Johnny Day Hill smiled. “My client has a great many incidentals.”

  Holly Chambers returned the smile. “My client would like to have those incidentals spelled out.”

  Johnny Day Hill tucked his thumbs into his pearl-studded belt. “Your Honor, Mrs. Stratiotis is a public figure. Incidentals for public figures are astronomic. If the court wishes, my client can provide an audited accounting—”

  The judge waved Mr. Hill silent. “This matter is not in court. We’re conducting an informal hearing.”

  “Give her twice what she’s asking,” Nikos Stratiotis said.

  Both attorneys’ heads shot around. Even Maggie Stratiotis, glowing in her blue picture hat, glanced across the room at her husband, a wrinkle of perplexity marring her flawlessly smooth brow.

  “Your Honor,” Holly Chambers said, “may I confer with my client?” Holly took Nikos to the window with its seventeenth-story view of rain sluicing down on the traffic-jammed Brooklyn Bridge. “What the hell are you doing? I can get her down to $50,000.”

  “I don’t want to haggle, Holly. I’ve got to be free of her. I don’t care what it costs.”

  “I do care what it costs and that’s why you pay me.”

  “You’re not hearing me, Holly.”

  Nikos explained exactly what he had in mind and, shaking his head, Holly Chambers returned to the bench.

  “Your Honor, my client attaches one condition to his offer. Mrs. Stratiotis must agree to an immediate, uncontested, no-fault divorce. She must agree here and now, in these chambers. Otherwise tomorrow morning my client will sue for divorce on grounds of adultery. He is prepared to introduce into open court evidence collected by the investigative firm of Meyers and O’Reilly.”

  Maggie’s picture hat lifted itself a degree. She asked his honor if she might confer with her attorney.

  A moment later Johnny Day Hill cleared his throat. “Your Honor, my client is willing to accept divorce plus $750,000 a month.”

  “Your Honor!” Holly Chambers cried.

  “Holly,” Nikos said, “shut up. Tell Mr. Hill his client has a deal.”

  The refrigerator was jammed with Fran’s neatness: Tupperware containers of leftovers, bottles of whole milk and all-natural no-additive juice, wheels and wedges and rectangles of cheeses, Baggies of fruit and bowls of Cuisine-Arted veg.

  Ames decided on a trapezoid of chèvre and a bowl of julienned carrots, and, why not, a beer; and took the armload back to his workroom.

  He sat a long while, the curtains open to the darkening May afternoon, not eating, not writing, not really thinking, jus
t sipping beer and massaging his knuckles and wondering how the hell he’d gotten a callus on his right palm.

  A car honked in the drive. There were voices at the front door, and then Greg Hatoff was striding past Fran into the workroom, hand out, a big grin on his face.

  “Hiya, Amesie. I just happened to be in the neighborhood, and…”

  A lie. No New York magazine editor just happened to be in the Hamptons on a drizzly May weekday.

  Greg glanced toward the sheet of paper in the typewriter carriage. “Scarlet Letter or Gone With the Wind?”

  Ames forced a smile. “A little too early to say.”

  Greg settled himself into the armchair. “How’d you like to slay a few giants for the magazine?”

  “I’d love to. But I’m on a book.”

  Undaunted, Greg tapped his fingers together. “Here’s the situation. Nikos Stratiotis, your favorite capitalist and mine, is ditching his wife, Maggie. Rumor hath it it’s the highest out-of-court settlement since Napoleon sacked Josephine. The selling point of this story is that anything this cheap could happen to such expensive people. And you’re the man to put it in words. Twenty-five thousand.”

  “Words?”

  “Dollars, dummy.”

  “Talk to my agent.”

  “You’re not hearing me out. There’s a quality edge. The same rumor hath it that Nikos is going to marry your favorite coloratura and mine, Vanessa affectionately known as La Billings.”

  At that instant everything in the room, in the world, changed. It was as though Ames were suddenly alive, a warm body pressing against him, connections coming through his skin.

  “All you have to do,” Greg said, “is interview her. We’ll set it up.”

  It amazed Ames how many rationalizations were already there, waiting. The assignment would be a release from the commonplaces of his existence. It would help him through his block. It would be a glimpse of a world he’d never otherwise know.

  But there was a deeper reason, a shape in his mind so dim and inexplicable he could barely articulate it even to himself. Stratiotis isn’t going to marry her. I’m going to.

  He heard himself answer, in a voice not quite his own, “I’ll do it.”

  39

  WEDNESDAY EVENING AMES RUTHERFORD watched two acts of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut from a seat in the Metropolitan grand tier. This time he suffered no premonitions, no claustrophobia. In a simpleminded way he even enjoyed the opera—more for its sumptuously spun-out melody than for its moral, which seemed to be that passion never pays.

  At 9:55 he threaded his way backstage through a mob of cheering Manhattan nabobs, gave his name to a guard, and was ushered into Vanessa Billings’s dressing room to wait for his quarry.

  After three minutes the most famous American soprano in the world walked in and glanced at him. “Hello,” she said. “Haven’t we met?”

  The earth didn’t shake, there was no bolt of lightning. Yet that one glance told him his whole life had just changed direction.

  “We met at Jean Stern’s,” he said.

  She was wearing a powdered wig and a hooped, low-bosomed dress of satin the color of sun on snow. She had a beauty mark on her cheek.

  Why do I feel like an eight-year-old with a crush? he wondered.

  She lifted her wig. With a smile and a thank-you she handed it to a young man who went to work combing it and readjusting curls. “We can take our time,” she told Ames. “I wear the same costume to jail in Act Three. Would you like something to drink?”

  He felt excited and anxious out of all proportion to anything that was happening. He didn’t need to pour fuel on top of that. “Thanks, I’m not drinking.”

  “I didn’t mean a drink drink. But I’ve got some apple juice.”

  “Apple juice sounds great.”

  She poured two glasses from a pitcher on the dresser top and handed him one. “It’s room temperature. Pretty icky, but singers have to be careful what they drink between acts. A burp onstage could be disastrous.”

  “May I quote you?”

  She laughed, and instantly there was warmth in the room. Stranger still, there was warmth in a space inside him where he had never felt warmth before, where he had never even known there was a space.

  “What sort of people do you usually interview?” she asked brightly. “Do they walk right up to the guillotine and lie down?”

  “Some do. It’s up to them.”

  Her wide mouth curved wryly. “Thanks for the warning. You’re not going to ask embarrassing questions, are you?”

  “That depends what sort of things embarrass you.”

  “That depends what sort of things you want to know.”

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  “There’s not much to tell. I’m just an amateur from Hempstead, Long Island, who turned pro.” The remark sounded like outrageously phony modesty until she burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, that was too dumb, wasn’t it? I’m trying to be interview material and I haven’t the faintest idea what that is.”

  He tried to analyze the attraction he felt for her. It wasn’t just the beauty, the suggestion of intelligence, the slightly aloof informality. It was something far less tangible. He wasn’t looking at a simple middle-class girl from Hempstead or a French coquette or one of the world’s greatest artists. He was seeing someone else, someone she was creating especially for this moment. For him.

  “May I ask a corny question?” he said.

  “Why not? After all, we’re in an opera house.”

  “Are you one of the greats?”

  “Ask them, not me.” She pointed to the walls, where she had hung up pictures of divas of the past and present. “As far as I’m concerned, all I am is one tiny link in a long, long chain.”

  “But you broke into the chain. A lot of people don’t. What made the difference? Or was it a who that made it happen?”

  “You mean, was it my mother, or my teacher, or some secret backer…?”

  Their eyes met.

  “Please,” she said, “let’s not discuss those rumors.”

  “Was it Kavalaris?” he asked.

  “Ariana played a very great role in my life. She taught me.”

  “Some people say she formed you in her image.”

  “Some people are fools. I don’t even come within envying distance of her. But I’m trying my damnedest.”

  From then on it went smoothly. He sat there trying not to gaze too openly at her, asking questions, pulling answers out of her. In a quarter-hour he had enough for a decent five-page article: the hopes, the breaks, the disappointments, all the colorful superficial stuff. And then there was a knock on the door and a voice called, “Ten minutes, Miss Billings.”

  She rose from her chair and went to the wig stand. “Funny. I was dreading this, but you turned out to be nothing like what I expected. In fact I had a good time.”

  “Thanks…I enjoyed it too.”

  He was at the door, one hand reaching for the knob, when she said, “I’m on TV a week from Friday—Channel Thirteen. Doesn’t that impress the hell out of you?”

  He smiled. “I’ll watch.”

  “Look, I didn’t give you much. I’m not very good at talking. But if you’d like to—I don’t know—follow me around one day and see how a prima donna buys chuck in the supermarket…”

  “I’d like to,” he said. He knew he’d like to very much.

  “I don’t know my schedule right now. I’ll phone you as soon as I have a day free.”

  He gave her his number.

  The night Vanessa Billings was on television, it turned out, Fran had invited Ellen Stern and friend for dinner. Ames pushed lobster around his plate and tried to be fascinated by Ellen and her blond beau, a drawling stockbroker by the name of Chasen Montgrade.

  “Art is the creation of its outlaws,” Chasen said.

  Ames bit back a reply, excused himself and went into the library. Five minutes later Fran came after him and found him in front of the television s
et.

  “Ames Rutherford, what’s the matter with you? We’ve got guests. If you’re watching something important, tape it and look at it later.”

  The rest of the evening felt like a slow trudge through snow. Ellen and Chasen didn’t leave till 1:30. Fran followed Ames into the library, talking about Ellen and the old days at Vassar.

  He rewound the Betamax tape and pushed the play button. The black-and-white image of a woman’s face composed itself on the screen. It wasn’t Vanessa’s face. He realized they were filling in background on her teacher. He pushed the fast-forward button.

  Fran yawned. “I’m going to bed.”

  “I’ll come in a little while,” he said.

  But it wasn’t a little while. He sat playing and replaying Vanessa’s interview till four in the morning.

  He spent Saturday waiting for Vanessa’s call. She didn’t phone. He tried to work. The pieces of the article wouldn’t come together and he couldn’t concentrate for more than a half-hour at a time.

  She didn’t phone Sunday.

  He played and replayed her tape. He watched her tell the interviewer why she had chosen opera. “I believed in the feeling of wonder and the sense of romance I’d known as a kid. I wanted the world to be that way. And in opera, it is.”

  She didn’t phone Monday, and he began to be frightened at the importance she had in his life.

  “Is something wrong?” Fran had a mystified, concerned look.

  His mind came back from the other end of the solar system. “I can’t seem to get a handle on that damned article.”

  “Don’t think too hard.”

  He kissed her guiltily and hoped the guilt didn’t show. Then he shut himself in his workroom with the phone and a notepad. He got nothing written, and there was no call.

  That night he drank.

  The next morning Fran brought him a cup of coffee in bed. She was silent, watching him with the patient eyes of a woman waiting for someone who was never going to be there.

  “There’s a message on the phone for you,” she said.

  He tried to show no excitement, tried to take a very long time getting to the answering machine and pressing the playback button.