I'll Take Manhattan

by Judith Krantz

“Not him?” India asked anxiously.

  “I’m afraid so, darling. It was your ‘biggest fan’ again. And my unlisted number was changed only last month.”

  “Oh, Toby, I’m sorry. That crazy guy. He writes me three times a week, and tries to call long distance. My secretary just tells him I’m not available. Forget him, it’s the price of fame.”

  Toby unplugged the phone and turned back to India.

  “Now listen, my love, you really have the most extraordinary and admirable facility to avoid facing facts,” he said, resuming the interrupted conversation. “Let’s cut to the chase. I’m blind, we can’t pretend that I’m not.”

  “You’re not really blind,” India said stubbornly. “You can see something, you told me that your field of vision was less than five degrees, but that’s still something.”

  “Less than five degrees out of a normal field of one hundred and forty in each eye, and that’s only when I put together a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there, where there are still a few cones functioning in my retina. It’s all fragmented, a nothing, not even black, just a kind of flickering, a now-and-then reality that has no color, no borders or stability. And it will probably get worse, certainly no better. And there’s no cure, no hope at all.”

  “But your blindness skills, everything you learned at Saint Paul’s! You can do so much, Toby, you learned so much while you could still see … all those years of seeing, more than twenty-five good years. You told me yourself that you have an enormous number of visual clues, thousands of memories that help to piece things together, to make a pattern recognizable, it isn’t as if you’d been born blind. Anyway, what difference does the exact percentage matter, when you can function? When you can work? What does it have to do with the two of us? So what if you’ve never seen me? When I get old and wrinkled and lose my looks you won’t care about it. You don’t love me just because I’m beautiful. Don’t you realize how much that means? Besides Maxi you’re the only person I know who doesn’t base some of his feelings about me on my particular face, you’re the only person I can trust to like me for no other reason than that I’m me. Doesn’t that make a difference to you? Don’t I make sense?”

  “Perfect sense, up to a certain point. I don’t think it’s fair to you to involve you in my problems.”

  “Fair? What’s fair is to take the happiness you know exists for you, now, this very minute, without doing any harm to anyone else, the happiness that exists if you just stretch out your hand,” India said, her voice trembling.

  “You have an incredible ability to oversimplify, India, sweet, imperfect India. I can’t allow you to choose a man with my particular handicap, for it is a handicap, say what you will, even if you’re convinced, at this particular time, that it’s what you want. You have no idea of what the future holds, you can’t know how long I’ll be able to make you happy.”

  “I know you’re the man I want,” India said, her voice golden with the intensity of her sureness, “and I know I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “What, may I ask, does Doctor Florence Florsheim have to say about us?” Toby asked.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “She must have said something, analyst or not.”

  “She said that it wasn’t recommended to make major life changes during the analytic process. Not that I couldn’t, just that it wasn’t recommended.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Word for word.”

  “Well, I think she’s right.”

  “Oh rats!” India howled, pounding her fists against his bare chest. “I knew you’d say that. You make fun of her all the time and suddenly when it suits you, you decide to agree with her.”

  “Just because she’s your shrink doesn’t mean she’s necessarily wrong. Hey, what’s this I’ve found? Oh, oh, India, poor baby, I think you’ve got a crow’s foot in its earliest stages. It probably won’t be noticeable on the screen for a few years, maybe even five if you never smile from now on. Let me kiss it and make it well.”

  “You’re a first-class sadist, Toby. You know something? For the first time I’m absolutely convinced that you and Maxi are brother and sister.”

  The morning of Cutter’s breakfast meeting with Leonard Wilder, Charlie Salomon had called and told Lily to meet him at the courthouse. He had used his considerable influence to arrange for Justin’s hearing to take place immediately following the judge’s arrival.

  “I’ll go with you, darling,” Cutter said, “just let me cancel my breakfast date.”

  “No, I don’t really think it’s a good idea,” Lily answered. “Not that I don’t want you there, but I believe it would be easier on Justin if we treated this as … routinely … as possible. Anyway, I promised Maxi to let her know as soon as he could get out of that awful place. I’ll call her and tell her to come with me.”

  “Maxi, for moral support?”

  “Well, you know how close she is to him.”

  “All right, Lily, if you’re sure, but—”

  “I’m positive. I’ll call you as soon as I’m back home.”

  Lily picked up Maxi on the way downtown to the courthouse. There they met Charlie Salomon and two young lawyers from his office whom he had brought along. When Justin was brought in, handcuffed, Lily grasped Maxi’s hand tightly, and lowered her eyes so that if Justin happened to glance at her he wouldn’t see her watching him until the handcuffs were removed. How stubbornly defiant he looked, Maxi thought. His stance was as dangerous as it had always been, his head tilted at his characteristically aggressive angle but he limped slightly and no amount of toughness could disguise the dark bruises around his eyes, forehead and chin where the detectives had hit him with their saps. His spiky blond hair was matted in several places. Maxi flicked a glance at her brother and caught his eye. On impulse she winked broadly and smiled as if she were remembering a private joke between them, but Justin looked away, without acknowledging her.

  “The defendant is a very rich man, Your Honor,” they all heard the assistant district attorney say. “Two detectives found almost three kilos of cocaine in his possession and he forcibly resisted arrest. If found guilty of conspiracy to distribute cocaine he will certainly face years in prison. Under these circumstances there is every reason to expect him to leave the country rather than stand trial. The state asks for one million dollars bail.”

  Bring your checkbook, Maxi thought. Oh, Justin, how naive we both were last night. The reporter who had accosted her the day before was scribbling away in the row behind them.

  “That’s an unreasonable amount, Your Honor,” Charlie Salomon said. “My client has no record of any previous offense.”

  After a few more minutes of argument the judge made his decision.

  “Bail is set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  Justin was handcuffed again and taken to a holding cell in the courthouse until the money could be produced. Lily telephoned her bank manager and made arrangements for a cashier’s check, to be delivered by a messenger on a motorcycle. After an hour and a quarter of waiting the check finally arrived and was handed over. The necessary paperwork for release took another half hour.

  “Charlie, thank you so much for your help,” Lily said. “I think you and your colleagues should go now. Maxime and I will go back uptown with Justin.”

  “I think I should stay here with you till he comes out. I have to talk to him anyway, Lily.”

  “Tomorrow, Charlie,” Lily commanded and the lawyers left.

  “That reporter from last night is here again today, Mother, and he’s got a photographer with him today,” Maxi warned.

  “Justin is not guilty, Maxime. If they want to take pictures, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Shall we both smile for the camera, Mother?”

  “Why not, Maxime? There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “All I need is a good hot shower and something to eat,” Justin insisted when Lily suggested that she call her doctor and ask
him to examine Justin in case there was serious damage to his skull from the saps the detectives had used. Nothing could sway him so the three Ambervilles went back to the great gray stone house and eventually found themselves sitting, at Lily’s insistence, over the lunch table making conversation as if nothing more serious than an unremarkable head cold were at issue. Even Maxi felt gripped by the compelling force of Lily’s superbly maintained composure, yet without looking at her mother or her brother she felt the hurt that suffused their souls. As a rack of lamb followed the cream of asparagus soup the tension in the room grew greater with every evasive word they each uttered, with the mounting total of essential words that hadn’t been spoken. The servants came and went.

  “Mother, could we skip the dessert and have coffee, just the three of us, in your sitting room?” Maxi asked.

  “Certainly, dear,” Lily answered as if this were the most normal request in the world.

  They went upstairs, Justin moving with the tightly controlled restraint of a man who is keeping all his capacities for action in reserve. He looked as psychically remote from his sister and his mother as if he were a bullfighter being dressed in his suit of lights just before the corrida. It was almost, Maxi thought, as if he weren’t there at all.

  “Sugar?” Lily asked.

  “Please,” he answered and took two lumps with the close attention a heart surgeon might give to opening a chest.

  “Tomorrow,” Lily said, with no change of tone, “I’ll have Charlie Salomon look into the question of defense lawyers, the best ones available. The fact that you’re innocent is hardly a sufficient defense.”

  “Thank you, Mother,” Justin said with a lopsided shadow of his go-to-the-devil smile.

  “Of course, you realize,” Lily said nervously, fiddling with the handle of the coffeepot, her words tumbling out in a way that wasn’t natural to her, “that whatever life-style you choose will never make any difference to us, that we love you anyway—very much—no matter what.”

  “Life-style? You mean even if I were a vegetarian or took up computer fraud? How about murder-for-hire?” Justin challenged her.

  “What the hell are the two of you talking about?” Maxi burst out. “This isn’t a time for twenty questions, Justin. We know that there’s only one reason that cocaine was found in your place.”

  “Maxime,” Lily said warningly.

  “Mother, we can’t keep waltzing around.” Maxi got up and took away Justin’s demitasse and put it down on a side table. She knelt on the floor by his side and wrapped her arms around him and gave him a deliberately loud smacking kiss on the cheek. “Look, kiddo, there’s got to be a guy who has a key to your place or who’s been staying with you, somebody who put that stuff there without telling you, some guy you’re involved with. Can’t we just get this out in the open, Justin, so Mother and I can stop trying to act as if we didn’t know that you’re gay?”

  Justin leapt up savagely and stalked to the window without a word, turning his back on them. Maxi ran after him and grabbed him around the waist. “Gay, Justin, or whatever word you prefer. We know, we’ve known for a long time, Mother and I, and we don’t give a fuck! Come back and sit down. It’s not the end of the world. Gay is one thing, stupid is another, and in either case going to jail is not recommended. So turn around so we can discuss this sensibly.”

  “You don’t know anything. You can’t possibly know anything,” Justin said, his voice corrosive, his back still turned, gripping the windowsill. He stood as if he felt contempt for them rather than any stronger, more personal emotion.

  “But I do, darling,” Lily said, more evenly now. “I’ve known for years. I saw no reason to talk about it with anyone, ever. It was your private life, until now.”

  “I had no idea that Mother realized anything until last night when I had to call her,” Maxi said, without slackening her grasp. “Nobody but people who love you very much and know you as well as we do, and God knows, you’ve made sure there are damn few of us, would even begin to wonder. But this is a tough conversation to have with your shoulder blades. Please?” She planted a row of delicate kisses on the back of his neck, holding on to him as hard as she could, all the while.

  “Justin, who do you think put the drugs in your closet? That’s really the point, isn’t it?” Lily spoke as if she were asking him if she should dismiss a light-fingered butler.

  He turned, finally. Only two patches of red on his sharp cheekbones and the long, thin muscle that worked in his throat displayed any emotion. “I haven’t the slightest idea.” His tone was almost ironic, formal.

  “But there is somebody, some man, who can get into your place when you’re not there?” Maxi persisted.

  His face twisted in a spasm of shame so mixed with pain that it brought tears to Lily’s eyes.

  “Yes.” The one word so quietly spoken hung in the air like a long sigh. Briskly, Maxi broke the silence that threatened to overtake them all.

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “No. No, he couldn’t have. Absolutely not. He’s simply not like that. He’s just a guy I met on a shoot. But we’ve done a lot of … entertaining … people always dropping in—it could have been anyone. That duffel bag’s been sitting there empty since the last time I came back to town.” His voice was so empty that they felt fear.

  “Do you know where he is now?” Maxi asked. “What’s his name?”

  “He’s out of town,” Justin said. “It must have been somebody else. And his name is none of anybody’s business. I refuse to start blaming someone I trust just to prove I’m innocent. Christ, I hate this city!”

  Maxi and Lily sat silently after Justin had rushed out of the room.

  “Thank you, Maxime. Without your kind of directness I don’t think I could have persuaded him to say anything. But it must have seemed unfair, the two of us cornering him like that,” Lily said. “I feel somehow ashamed, not for him, for us.”

  “Unfair? Yes, but only if we’d wanted to know for any other reason than to keep him out of jail. But in these circumstances, no, absolutely not. And, Mother, he must have some sense of relief now that it’s out and he knows we love him just as much as we ever did, that it doesn’t make any difference. He’s been guarding that secret all alone for much too long a time.”

  “Oh, but Maxime, you saw his face … he looked … oh, as if he wanted to vanish, as if he didn’t believe in anyone or anything in the world and never would again. He’s always been so alone, so apart, he’s always kept so much to himself. I’ve worried about him all of his life but I could never break through to him.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mother. Not mine. Not Justin’s. It just is and it has to be dealt with. It’s reality and nothing could have changed it.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” Lily said wistfully.

  “Mother, do you really imagine that on one particular day when Justin was just a little boy you could have said, ‘Now darling, when you grow up, the only people you’ll want to touch will be girls,’ the way you taught him good table manners?”

  Lily smiled slowly, reluctantly and ruefully. “That would have been too good to be true, but what a wonderful idea. You do have a way of getting straight to the point, Maxime.”

  “Thank you, Mother,” Maxi said almost shyly. “I have to rush to the office now, but what’s the next step? How can we help Justin?”

  “I’m going to call Charlie Salomon at once and tell him what Justin just told us. But, on one hand he didn’t tell us much that would help, as far as I can see, and on the other hand wouldn’t it be better not to use it? I so desperately hope that we can keep that part of his life out of the newspapers … the man with the key to his apartment, the parties. If only we could do that much, at least.”

  “Every paper in the country is going to have the drug story, Mother. Plus the Star and the Inquirer and the news magazines. I don’t see how we can keep it from being a media circus. It’s only a question of time before they sniff out the rest of what Ju
stin told us. There’s nothing we can do to protect him. All it will take will be one lead, one person talking to one reporter. I don’t think there’s much hope.”

  “I thought … if only he could keep that bit of dignity. He cares so terribly much,” Lily said soberly.

  “I don’t think you should be optimistic about protecting Justin’s private life. The most important thing is to prove him innocent of drug dealing. He’s an Amberville after all, and the media is going to be out in full force, dancing on his head.”

  Lily sighed as Maxi got up to leave. The two women embraced, a little awkwardly, with more warmth than either of them could remember showing each other in years. Lily, in her familiar gesture, pushed Maxi’s hair back from her forehead.

  “It’s still wrong, isn’t it, Mother?” Maxi asked wryly.

  “The trouble with you, Maxime, is that you always jump to conclusions. I was just thinking how charmingly you wear your hair. It wouldn’t really look like you any other way, would it?”

  23

  As Maxi and Lily were saying goodbye to each other, Cutter was meeting in his Wall Street office with Lewis Oxford, Vice-President for Financial Affairs of Amberville Publications. Cutter could more easily have established himself in a suite of offices in the Amberville Building uptown but he found it useful to force everyone who worked on the magazines to make a time-consuming trek to see him, and it kept him at a useful remove from anyone who wanted to talk about minor matters.

  “Oxford, I wish you would stop doing that,” Cutter rapped out.

  “Sorry, Mr. Amberville. It helps me to reflect,” Lewis Oxford answered, regretfully putting away the pencil with which he had been tapping his teeth.

  “There’s nothing to reflect about. My wife’s orders are clear enough.”

  “Clear, perfectly clear. The only thing I was wondering was if it wouldn’t be better to follow her instructions over a period of six months, or even a year. Three months isn’t much time and I’m going to have to make a lot of waves.”