“Hong Kong.”
Hong Kong. What an excellent place for a man to live whose only interests were women and wampum was what she didn’t say. Dinner was wafting into the living room. She lifted her head and sniffed the air hungrily and swallowed bitter words before she could utter them. Eddie was a sacred cow to her mother and there would be no joy in slaughtering him. He could do that for himself.
It was these subtle movements–a raised head, flared nostrils, dilated pupils–followed by a measured restraint, her dignified silence, that finally won Roy Mann over. Before this he had thought Marilyn’s daughter arrogant and perhaps even frigid. She was, he could see now, a very dutiful daughter, and very much like her mother, undeniably warm-blooded.
“He’s coming home, he says.”
“For the holidays?” Lydia asked. Roy was smiling benignly at her. She willed him to put another log on the fire and he got up with a grunt and did it.
“Sometime in the new year,” Marilyn said, unconscious of the fact that she was admiring his backside.
The idea of Eddie coming home, stirring things up with the family again when they were already too topsy-turvy, seemed to have a chilling effect on Lydia. She pushed her chair closer to the fireplace. “It will be wonderful to see him again,” she lied. “It’s been…I don’t know how long…too long.”
Marilyn gazed at Prometheus playing with his embers and flames. She didn’t know how she would explain him to her son. Eddie was tough on women and unsympathetic. In that respect, he was more like his father than he could ever stand to admit. “Yes, it has been, sweetheart. Too long. Too long.”
_____
It now had a purplish hue to it, which no amount of lipstick could mask from those who knew her well.
“Who did that?” her mother demanded.
“Mama, I hit my mouth at the gym. Merry Christmas.”
“Gym?” Jasmine asked skeptically.
“Yeah, gym. No presents for you, right?”
“Right,” Jasmine replied, smacking her sister’s outstretched palm. “You look like hell,” she jeered.
“Thanks.” Venus said, handing her a check. “That’s so the bums can be in furs this winter.”
“Venus, who hit you?” her mother asked again. “What piece of sh–”
Venus held up her hand for silence. She did not want to hear Lydia Beaumont vilified, not even anonymously. Besides, she didn’t hit her.
Mama dropped the subject and they all took their seats quietly.
She didn’t hit her. She elbowed her by accident, but flailing arms and hundreds of elbows was not the impassioned response Venus was shooting for from Lydia and after the ill fated match in the parlor she felt further away than ever from winning her. In all probability it was time to give up the hunt. She licked her wounds constantly as she chowed down dinner with her family and evaded their prying questions. In less than twenty-four hours she would be in Paris. Once there, the plan was to hide under the covers for a couple of weeks until everything healed. Her bruises, her pride.
“It ain’t football,” her father muttered. “Pass the gravy.”
She shot him a curious look and handed him the butter dish.
“Ain’t a game at all,” he said. “Pass me the gravy, Venus. The gravy.”
_____
For sure love is not a game, but it started out that way for Edward Beaumont the third and he played it hard and fast, an approach he had unfortunately learned from his father, deviating only slightly from his miseducation in that he never married and had no intentions to do so. Ever.
He had been happy playing his games in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was like Shanghai had been for him before he found it necessary to flee: one terrific playground. In Hong Kong he hoped to get back in the swing of things again, stop looking over his shoulder all the time, but as with Shanghai, and before that, Bangkok, and before that, London, his hopes were ultimately dashed.
Everywhere he went was the same for Eddie. He continued to do what it was he always did; he continued to get what it was he always had. In short, nothing but trouble, with a capital W.
The woman with child in the present case was, as always, an attractive one, from an attractive and well-connected Chinese family, the sort of family who did not take kindly to being dishonored by anyone, let alone the distinguished looking westerner who had presented himself to them as a good catch for their educated daughter, who had deceived them with his charm and sophistry into believing he was courting her for the purposes of marriage, painting a rosy picture of their daughter’s future married to a successful American businessman while he pilfered from them and then squandered away in high-risk investments, funds worth more than her dowry.
They were after their rambling, gambling, middle-aged American playboy on the run, the breathtakingly reckless day trader who had defrauded them of all that they deemed invaluable. They had their goons hot on his trail and that wasn’t funny to Edward Beaumont III. They were big goons and there were a lot of them and they had followed him all the way to Hong Kong and they didn’t seem to mind a game of hide and seek, nor were they about to give up the chase for him anytime soon.
So he was going home at last, returning to the scene of his earliest romantic crimes. Those girls must all be married, divorced, and remarried by now, he reasoned. The dust finally settled. Whatever it took, he would, he promised himself, tread very lightly once there, so as not to stir it all up again. Yes, he would. A day or a decade, no matter. He was going to tread lightly now, until this storm blew over, until everything settled back down again.
_____
“Daddy knows he’s coming?”
“Your father doesn’t return my calls. I don’t know what he knows.”
The “your father” clanged like a broken bell. Lydia gazed into the fire and waited for Roy to check on the turkey again before saying another word. When he abruptly left she sent her mother a pained expression but still said nothing. In the embers she could see shadowy figures. They were dancers and fighters. They were frantically fusing together and licking at the walls, only to disintegrate.
“I’m sorry, honey.”
Sorry, honey, sorrow, honey, sad, honey. Lydia was sorry, too, ineffably sorry. Sorry rose up scorching and licked at her insides. She was sorry that the lake house had needed a master carpenter, that its former mistress had needed a master carpenter. I have a fire going. She was sorry about Venus. She regretted the elbow and the earrings. She thought of calling to say so. Sorry I nearly put your teeth out in a panic, she wanted to tell her. Forgive me.
“Lydia…?”
“I know, Mom. So am I.”
Roy reentered the room cautiously wearing his new pants. “Ready when you are.”
“Ready as ever,” Marilyn said, glancing to her daughter.
Lydia glanced to both of them. Del was right, she mused. Roy was a man who could get away with wearing leather pants without the risk of looking queer. Delilah was wrong, however, in her romantic hope that Marilyn would ever be done with him.
Standing an arm’s length apart from each other, Lydia could practically see the force that was pulling them together. Illuminated in lamplight and winter’s fire, they didn’t look old so much as weary. Two weary people who had closed a vast distance between them, walking for so long it had forever stooped them, traveling by day till the sun and the wind and the rain had bleached their hair white and permanently stained their skin, traveling by night till the darkness had left them farsighted. Nothing and no one could have prevented this man and this woman from coming together. They were so clearly each other’s destination.
“You go on ahead,” Lydia told them. “I need to make a quick call.”
Chapter 47
Fortitudinous
It helped immensely to find Paris dry and warm, even if the skies were inclement. It didn’t hurt either that Claudine was there at the airport when the plane landed. Venus took her hand and allowed herself to be whisked into a waiting taxi.
“Ooh–what happened?”
“I hit it, Claudine.”
“She bit it?”
“Hah.”
At the apartment in Marais things were exactly the same as when Venus had last seen it, the cat sleeping like an overindulged trollop on the only decent chair Claudine owned, pantyhose and brassieres hanging from the kitchen hooks, half-read books and newspapers covering the floor like a carpet, and emptied boxes of Parisian confections collecting at the foot of the four-post bed. How the woman loved her chocolat.
She smiled and marveled anew at Claudine’s exclusive address with its exposed plumbing network and turn-of-the-century appliances, the walls thick with paint and paper and so warped it made her feel seasick to stand up for too long or to ponder the pictures that hung on them, whether they were crooked or not. The wide plank floors were wavy, too, worn into an etched path that forked from the small entranceway. One road led to the left through the living room into the kitchen, the other went right for the bedroom, sneaking past the half-drawn makeshift curtains Claudine had tacked across the doorway for privacy. Privacy from whom, Venus could only speculate. Maybe there were some who came uninvited, who were not welcome in her bedroom. To them, perhaps she was just a coquette and not a mistress. If that was the case then she liked the curtains there, Venus decided, stepping over the fork deliberately and halting in the middle of the living room to drop her bag.
“Même chose, non?”
Yes, exactly the same. Venus threw her coat on the back of the tattered couch and the cat sat up and stretched before landing to the floor with a thud and strolling over to it. Ugh, she thought, as it began plucking, drooling, and kneading. Honestly, she’d seen better behaved strays in the projects.
“She likes you,” Claudine said, scratching behind its ears and wiping its double chin. “You see?”
“She just has expensive taste, I think.”
“You think that’s so?” Claudine asked. Venus Angelo was looking all grown up these days. With her new coif, much more French than Américain. “Moi aussi.”
“English, Claudine. English, s’il vous plait.”
Claudine was flushed, her eyes twinkling like a pair of jewels. She might be too fond of this arrogant Américain with the bruised lip who spoke no French. “Oh-kay, Venus,” she said, turning for the kitchen. “Some chocolat for bed?”
_____
The rain in Spain falls mainly in Madrid, or so it seemed. Helaine sat on the window seat staring at the soggy city through rain-spattered panes, waiting for Lydia to call, waiting for Carlos to bring the hot chocolate.
She dreamt of her mother last night. One of those peculiar and elusive dreams that one remembers having but doesn’t. God, her parents had been dead so long, she couldn’t recall the last time she had dreamt about them. She didn’t know if she’d seen her father in this one. She had the feeling he wasn’t there, but then she felt sure she had heard him. What had he said to her?
“Come in, Carlos. It’s open.”
“Here you go. Hot chocolate, toast, melon…and the papers, if you can bear them.”
She could not. “I’ll pass today. Thank you, though.”
The press was sexing up the tour, quoting her out of context in order to create more controversy, controversy being such a good stimulus for sales and all. She didn’t know which was worse, the conservative media or the liberal. Both were at each other’s throats, bickering about her and berating their opposition. It was a bloody din, morning, noon, and night. A full blown Kristenson slugfest, the stress of which had made her miss her period.
“What am I today?”
“I didn’t read them yet,” he fibbed.
“Carlos.”
“A Gandhi.”
“Yah–and what else?”
“A passive-aggressive-antisocial-radical-female-supremacist. Eat your breakfast, you man-eater.”
“Ouch.”
“You asked.”
“So I did. No more interviews, Carlos. I never cared for interviews. I’m not doing anymore interviews. They can kiss my–”
“No interviews. Gotcha. Now what I’ve planned for these next two days is a little rest and rehabilitation starting with a massage this morning at eight. Do you want your bath before or after?”
A bath or a massage was the furthest from her mind right now. “Carlos, can you get rid of Chuck and Antonio? I don’t want Lydia to know I need bodyguards. Get rid of them for me, would you? As a Christmas present?”
The bodyguards were a bone of contention between them. She claimed to be conscious of their presence awake or sleeping. “Impossible, Dr. Kristenson. You said so yourself, you need them. Besides,” he said, noticing her playing with her food, “they don’t eat much. Just like you.”
Jesus how she needed to menstruate. “Fine,” she replied, poking with a piece of toast at the scum floating in her cup and ignoring what seemed to be a condescending smile. “I’ll have my bath after the massage.”
It would prove one day to be a very good thing for Helaine that Carlos Montague was infatuated with her, but for the moment, as it pertained to armed guards, it was an inconvenience.
“After it is. And there’s your phone call, so I’ll see you for lunch then.”
“Thanks, Carlos…hello…yes…Lydia?”
“Lana. Are you alone?”
She listened for the door. “Alone now, good morning.”
“Good evening. We have to stop meeting like this.”
“Do you want to stop?”
“Never. I wouldn’t know how.”
“I could design a twelve-step program for you if you like. I’m qualified.”
“I’d relapse after the eleventh.”
“Oh, good. I’m not sorry to hear that. How’s the weather?”
“Cold. How’s Spain?”
“Damp.”
“Ah…me, too.”
“Darling, did anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible tease?”
_____
Brain-teasers and margaritas. Paula was taking it easy by the pool tonight, resting up for the annual Treadwell holiday bash tomorrow evening and keeping one eye on her husband as he swam his laps in a crawl so laboriously slow she didn’t know how he managed to stay afloat.
Fifteen down: seven letters. Un-sunken treasure?
She was trying in vain to call Lydia since the woman had failed to RSVP as requested, but all she could get at the Kristenson-Beaumont fortress was a busy signal. It was nothing but an exercise in futility, she suspected, but she sent her another text message on the cell phone anyway.
“Honestly, Mr. Treadwell, a rubber duckie could swim faster than that!”
He didn’t appear to hear her.
Seven letters down, with an o and an m–who the hell could she be talking to for so long? She circled Lydia’s name and put a question mark beside it. Over fifty guests tomorrow, most of them shitheads. Ho! ho! ho! Talking to Delilah Lewiston probably. Paula checked her list to make sure she had invited Delilah. Guest number twenty-nine: martinis. Ms. Lewiston had RSVP’d. She wrote herself a reminder to call the maintenance man to clean the pool in the morning in case anybody fell in.
Dickie must have heard her after all.
“Well, what’d you think of that?” he asked, fishing for a compliment and dripping like a wet dog all over her legs.
“Mark Spitz on Quaaludes, if you really want to know.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Ms. I’m-just-a-visitor-on-this-planet Beaumont.”
“Oh, her. She’s not coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“Flotsam,” he said, toweling off.
“Flotsam?”
“Fifteen down.”
Fifteen down was…flotsam.
Rrriiinnng!
“Hello?”
“Paula, I forgot.”
“You’re coming?”
“Yes, sorry.”
Lydia Beaumont, guest number one: no alcohol. Paula wrote “flotsa” beside her
name and penciled in “Lydiaam” on the crossword, in her perturbation never noticing the errors.
_____
He was mistaken if he believed that Stanley Kandinsky Esq. could hush up his divorce if his wife sued him for one, or that he would offer him his shoulder to cry on. His lawyer was too familiar with the facts for any of that nonsense. The best save-face measure he could take, Stanley advised, was to strike first and immediately file for a no-fault. That would leave Edward Beaumont wide open to speculation but spare him the public ridicule, ridicule being something that the notorious womanizer was simply not up to at this juncture, if ever.
He’d have his pride; she’d have half their assets. No contest. And it would only take the amount of time required to fill out a form and write a check to change his life forever. And Marilyn’s.
“Who’s the guy?” Stanley inquired, when the paperwork was done.
“Some Mountain William.”
“And that is…?”
“A fancy term for hillbilly.”
“Oh, I see. Where did Marilyn meet her mountain man, if I may ask?”
“My daughter’s redoing our summer home. He’s the carpenter.”
“A carpenter. Hmmm. And how is Lydia these days? I never see her anymore save in the news now and then and of course in the financials. Though that’s probably a good thing, huh?”
“Stan,” Edward muttered, “we’ve been your bread and butter here and you know it.”
Stanley’s eyes were black and unsympathetic. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” he said, humorlessly.
And in a weird way Edward did.
Chapter 48
She
She arrived at the Treadwell’s early and instructed her driver to be out front by ten so she could be home early. No slight to Paula, but she needed to touch base with Helaine before the flight tomorrow morning and she didn’t want to be too tired or too drunk when she called.
Fortune Is a Woman Page 28