by Frank Deford
Well, maybe it would have made Nina feel better to know that after Hugh left her so abruptly, he went directly to his girlfriend’s apartment. Her name was Marilyn, and she looked not at all like Nina, nor acted at all like Nina. But still, he thought he might be in love with Marilyn.
The reason Nina might have felt better about this is that Hugh had not originally planned to see Marilyn this evening. He had some term papers he absolutely had to grade. But after he had been with Nina, if only for that little while, just one martini’s worth, he felt that he had to be with Marilyn. He had to reaffirm his feelings for her. He had to make love to her.
He did, too. Only, all he thought about was Nina.
This is what maybe, had she known, Nina would have felt better about. Or, maybe not.
9
There were balloons and flowers from Bucky the next day, and the day following, a singing telegram. It was performed by a guy dressed in sackcloth, carrying a large bag that had written on it: Ashes. He sang a medley of apology songs, including “I’m Sorry” by Brenda Lee in falsetto, “I Apologize” by Billy Eckstein in a deep baritone, and “Sorry, I Ran All The Way Home” by The Impalas in great animation. Then he left a note from Bucky, which pleaded for Nina to call him.
She resisted as best she could. Who’s sorry now? Still, Nina could not put Floyd Buckingham out of her mind. Whatever had occasioned that intense reaction from him in gallery twenty-seven was as weird as it had also seemed real. So finally, after a couple of weeks, Nina simply could resist temptation no longer.
She needed to buy a small birthday present for a friend, and so she rationalized that the best place to purchase something would be at the Metropolitan gift shop. So, with her membership card, she obtained the day’s admission pin—a too-pale lavender it was this particular afternoon—and steered herself directly to the shop on the main floor.
There, browsing in the jewelry section, her eyes suddenly lit on some earrings. They seemed so familiar. She drew closer. In silver, gold or pearl: a single teardrop hanging down. And closer still, the name: Venus Earring. Nina couldn’t believe it. But yes, it was indeed the very earring visible on Venus in Venus and Adonis. Is the whole damn world suddenly Venus and Adonis? The clerk came over. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” he said. “They’re from a Rubens painting we have up—”
“Yes, yes, I know it.”
“These were poor Princess Diana’s favorite earrings. You see them in so many of her pictures. The silver. But they’re all always popular.”
“The pearl,” Nina said. “I’ll take a pair of the pearls.”
“Of course. The real Venus.”
With the earrings, then, Nina pretended to herself that she was just moseying about, ending up strictly by random in the Rs of the book section. (Ah, feigning unconscious behavior; you need a good psychiatrist, lady.) And sure enough, there as if she could have expected it, was not only a book about Rubens’s work, but one that featured Venus and Adonis on the jacket. Venus: her Venus earrings shining, her pale pink cheeks, and the most adoring gaze, staring beseechingly into Adonis’s absolutely perfectly handsome face. Never was there better evidence of what Sir Joshua Reynolds had observed once, that all of Rubens’s subjects appear to have “fed on roses.”
Rushing to the cash register and totally forgetting to buy that birthday present, Nina hurried through the Great Hall. Outside, slinking about halfway down the twenty-eight steps, way over to the side, she started to read the book by covering the page with her arm as if it was dirty pictures. First she read Rubens’s biography, which was much more interesting than Nina ever imagined. He was the quintessential Renaissance Man who was not only an artist but a diplomat, a friend at most every court that mattered in Europe. Devout Catholic. Civic leader. Rich. Sensitive. Adoring father. Beloved husband. Twice, beloved husband: Isabella, then Helena after Isabella died. Damn, they don’t make men like this anymore.
Then she turned to read about the painting Venus and Adonis itself. Painted, 1635. Rubens would have been fifty-eight then, just starting to be hampered by the gout that would kill him only five years hence so that he might, one eulogist proclaimed, “go see the originals of all the great pictures he had left us.” Venus and Adonis, Nina read on, was itself something of a copy of a similar work by Titian, which Rubens had seen in Madrid in 1628. Hmmm, even the masters cribbed a little. Shakespeare, Nina remembered, never once wrote an original plot. (Of course, the Bard had never met Floyd Buckingham, either.)
By the time she had finished reading, there was no sense in Nina even trying to kid herself anymore. She had to return to gallery twenty-seven; she had to visit Venus and Adonis again. Had to. This time Nina sort of snuck up on her prey, entering the gallery from the door on the other side. She paused there for a moment to study the large family portrait directly across the room from her quarry—and, of course, now she knew exactly who those people were. Rubens, himself. Helena. One of their children.
But as soon as she turned around to face Venus and Adonis, she was in that painting’s thrall. And she knew it. Bucky had won. Nina could not look at the work without somehow seeing Mister Floyd Buckingham of Darien, Connecticut, metamorphosizing into Adonis. Why, Adonis might just as well have had on a double-breasted Joseph Abboud and a Turnbull and Asser shirt, as he did the reddish cloak that Rubens had draped around that powerful young body.
Closer, closer. So transfixed was Nina that she attracted the wary eye of the vigilant blue-grey garbed sentinel of gallery twenty-seven. He edged closer, ready to pounce if this odd woman might try to perform some random act of desecration. But then, to take it all in, Nina backed up, sitting on the bench in the middle of the room, and the guard relaxed. By now, Rubens’s glorious figures all but moved before her eyes. There—there was precious little Cupid, tugging at Adonis—stay with my mistress, stay! And there was the lead dog, looking off to the thrill of the hunt. Come, our master, lead us! And Venus—Venus, above all! Venus, reaching for her hero with both arms, pleading with him, her sweet lips imploring him in what could only be the prelude to a kiss!
But still. Adonis pulls away. How, Nina thought? How could this foolish man go off on some idiotic hunt, leaving this lovely woman behind? For Chrissake, Adonis is actually going to leave the goddess of love and go off with his stupid dogs, and—
Suddenly, to her complete surprise, Nina felt a strange hand on her shoulder—and then the smug announcement, “I knew you’d come back, Nina.”
She only sighed. In a curious way, Nina was relieved she’d found Bucky—even if she knew she’d have to admit that he had won, he had lured her back into his lair. Whatever. “Sit down, Mr. Buckingham,” she said, trying her best to sound irritated.
“Thank you,” he said, but placing himself at right angles, so that he was facing away from Venus and Adonis.
Nina sighed. Who was she kidding? Angry? She was absolutely enthralled by this adventure, even as it frightened her. So: to hell with it. To hell with arm’s-length, decorous, professional behavior. Everybody gets one freebie in life, what the gamblers call a bisque. So: “Come on,” she heard herself saying, “I’ll buy you a martini.”
“Really?”
“Where have you been, Buckingham? Martinis are back.”
So, they left gallery twenty-seven, Bucky raising his cupped hand, as if offering up a martini toast to the Madonna there in the company of St. Francis, and then, gaily, he escorted Nina across Fifth Avenue to Nica’s, the sidewalk bar at the Stanhope. “Martoonis,—goodness, gracious,” he exclaimed, holding out Nina’s chair—a green and cream rattan. Then he sat down beside her, their table for two right by the wildflower boxes that lined the sidewalk.
“Aw, come on, big old Adonis can’t handle a modern martini?”
“Two Boodles martinis, straight up, very dry, don’t bruise the gin,” Bucky proclaimed to the waiter, shooting his cuffs. But then, straight
away, he turned back to Nina, his face serious, his tone somber. “I am very sorry, Doctor, for uh, investigating you. It was wrong of me, and I have no excuse.” Nina nodded. “But this I swear to you, too: my guy did not break into your office. On my honor.”
“I know that’s true now, Bucky. I jumped to conclusions.”
The martinis came. “They are not bruised,” said the waiter. “No hemorrhaging at all.”
“Wiseass,” said Bucky, as soon as he turned away.
“Takes one to know one,” Nina cracked. “So, what did your private dick find out about me—assuming, that is, they still call ’em private dicks.”
He sighed. It wasn’t easy to embarrass Floyd Buckingham, but he didn’t feel comfortable about what he’d brought on himself. He even looked away, following the cabs that sped down Fifth Avenue. When he turned back, he tried to speak as blithely as possible. “Well, all right, Doctor, no flies on you.”
“Come on. That’s what the dossier said? Just: ‘No flies on Dr. Winston. Pay on receipt.’”
“No, that’s just my succinct summation. You want more detail?”
Nina held up her glass. “Bruise me.”
“Pretty boring. You have an impeccable credit rating. You even pay your taxes ahead of time.” Nina grinned sheepishly. “And professionally, you are not only admired, but held in some heavy awe. I picked the right doctor—that’s for sure.” He raised a glass to her. “So, that completes my report, Madame Chairman.”
“Oh, come on, Bucky, fill me in on the juicy personal gossip.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry: you’re whiter than white. Live alone, East Side. Like the theater. Some concerts. Would sell your body—although, apparently, you haven’t done so yet—to see Placido Domingo sing anything at Lincoln Center.” Nina nodded and sipped. “You vacation every summer in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where you spend a week with your only child—sorry, I forget her name.”
“Lindsay.”
“Yeah. With Lindsay and her husband. You also usually travel abroad once a year. Turkey and Greece last October.” Nina nodded. “Go with friends. You were, uh, widowed. I’m sorry, Nina.”
“Thank you, Bucky.”
“You’re five years older—at least—than I thought you were. Of course, there was the little”—Bucky smugly tapped his eye—“laser work you got a couple years ago.” She grimaced. “Hey, you asked for it, lady. And anyway, for reasons which elude both me and the private dick, you presently have no steady beau. God, what’s the matter with the older guys?”
Nina rolled her eyes. “The matter with the older guys, Mr. Buckingham, is that they are simply younger guys grown up.”
“Oh, I get it. The problem is with guys, generically?”
“You catch on.” She looked into her drink. So, Nina thought proudly, she and Hugh had managed to keep their affair utterly secret from the world. “And that’s it?” she asked, just to be sure. “That’s all the dirt your man could dig up on me?”
“Yeah. Pretty thin soup, I’m afraid,” Bucky said, but then he turned in his rattan chair, even twisting it a little, so that he could look directly at Nina there beside him. “Like I said, I picked the right doctor—and the right person. And now I want you to help me, Nina. Please.”
“In which particular area—the current passion, or the past life?”
“Both. Because I know they’re connected. Listen, what I have to do right now—well, me and Constance—that’s our problem. I don’t need a shrink to tell me who I’ve fallen in love with or how that complicates my life. But I do need a shr—”
“Wait. Here’s the deal, Bucky. You don’t call me a shrink. I don’t call you a two-timer.”
He smiled sheepishly, little-boy-like. “I stand corrected. But what I do need from you, Dr. Winston, is for you to try and help me understand how it is that I know—I know—from that painting, that I have lived a life before. In the seventeenth century, in Holland. And that the woman I love now lived with me then, too.”
He was altogether animated, throwing his arms around, pausing long enough only to toss down the rest of his martini as if it was Mountain Dew. He waved to the waiter, instinctively holding up two fingers—even if Nina’s drink wasn’t half gone. She didn’t notice, though, for she was reaching down to pull her Rubens book out of her Metropolitan shopping bag. She held it before her chest then, covering it with her crossed arms. And then she drew a breath and began.
“Bucky, Peter Paul Rubens wasn’t some unknown hack. In fact, he’d be a solid A-list celebrity today. His life is very well documented.” With that, she uncrossed her arms and laid the book on the table so that Venus and Adonis, in close-up, were suddenly staring at Bucky. He gasped. Nina jabbed her forefinger at Venus’s chubby face. “That, Bucky,” she said, “that was Rubens’s wife.”
Bucky was rattled. “Whatdya mean?”
“I mean, the model for Venus was Rubens’s second wife, Helena.” Nina turned to another page, showing Helena in a portrait with two of her children. The hair color was more auburn than Venus’s blonde, but the facial resemblance was undeniable. “Or look,” Nina went on, showing Bucky The Judgment of Paris, where the pudgy Venus appeared again. “Did you ever notice the painting across the room from Venus and Adonis?” He shook his head, obviously baffled by all this.
“Well, check it out next time. There’s a family portrait that Rubens painted of himself and Helena and one of their sons.” She leaned closer, mimicking swiveling her head. “You can stand sideways in the middle of gallery twenty-seven, and see for certain that Venus is Helena—look one way, and then the other.”
Gingerly then, Bucky began to flip through the book, as Nina kept talking. “Rubens’s first wife was Isabella. She was sloe-eyed, with a long, pointed nose, fairly thin. He seems to have loved her dearly, but she really wasn’t his type. So, after Isabella died, Rubens married Helena, even though she was only sixteen, and he was fifty-three. But she absolutely fit his mold. It was almost as if he’d been fated to marry her.”
Bucky’s head jerked up from the book. “A man after my own heart,” he said.
“In any event, Rubens and Helena were as happy as man and wife as they were artist and model. They had four children, and—”
Bucky looked up. “So, what are you telling me?”
“I’m not telling you anything. But what I’m saying is that the Rubenses were, from all accounts, the perfect couple. Yet you tell me that you have the feeling that you were Adonis and your true-life ladylove was Venus. But we know that Venus was Mrs. Rubens. Now, you couldn’t have been having an affair with the painter’s beloved own wife right under his nose…could you?”
Bucky ran his fingers through his hair, pondering this introduction of conflicting new evidence. Luckily, the waiter brought the next round, so he could dive into another martini. “Don’t be snide, Nina. And tell me this,” he growled, leveling an impolite finger at her, “if old man Rubens loved his child bride so much, how come he went around painting her naked all the time? For the whole world to see. I mean, the mother of his children.”
“Why, land sakes, Mr. Buckingham, I didn’t realize you were so puritanical. Certainly, that didn’t seem to bother Helena—especially since the guy doing the painting was not only her husband, but indisputably the most passionate painter of the flesh we’ve ever had.” She sipped her drink. “Of course, it’s also true that Rubens ran a full-scale studio. Rarely did he paint a whole picture all by himself. He’d design the painting and sketch the main figures, but usually he’d get his assistants to do most of the painstaking work. It’s certainly possible that he only used Helena’s face for Venus, sketched her body up in his private studio, then got an assistant who specialized in painting the human figure to fill in the rest. Or sometimes Rubens would use what we’d call a body-double today. Rubens employed a lot of the ladies of the night for his mod
els.”
Bucky approved of that idea. “Yeah. That makes sense, Nina, because every time I look at the painting, I always feel more, uh, association with Adonis than Venus. And now I understand. It’s probably only Constance’s body I’m seeing up there.”
Nina shook her head, smiling. “I guess I’m just never gonna dissuade you, am I? I suggest Constance was a whore, and you buy it.” Bucky smirked a buckysmirk. “All right, lemme try something else,” Nina said.
“Shoot.”
“Facts. Your facts are all off. You keep talking about being back in Holland—you and your Venus living in bliss in Amsterdam.”
“Yeah.” He said that confidently, but he eyed her warily.
“The trouble is, Rubens wasn’t Dutch. He was Flemish. Big difference. Huge difference. The Dutch and the Flemish hated each other. Holy war. Protestants and Catholics. Rubens never lived in Amsterdam. His whole life—when he wasn’t traveling—he lived and painted in the city of Antwerp. That’s in Belgium now. You’re just making up stuff, Bucky.” His shoulders slumped; Nina rushed to go on. “Look, I don’t mean you’re trying to deceive me. But whatever has happened to you—with Constance—has obviously been very traumatic. You’ve had a good marriage, wonderful family, and bang, out of the blue—or anyway from out of twenty years ago—comes this woman who turns you upside down.”
Bucky started to interrupt. Nina reached over, holding her two fingers before his lips. “Hush. You’re getting a full-service therapist for the low introductory price of a couple of unbruised martinis, so let me finish. Now, I don’t know what it is about that painting that moves you so. I have no idea why you actually identify with the man and the woman in it. Maybe Constance simply reminds you of Venus, maybe—”
“No, no—no way. Constance doesn’t look anything like Venus. And anyway, you tell me it can’t be her face, but she’s not at all fat, and I’ve never even seen her boobs, and—”
“Okay, okay. Let’s not be quite so, uh, literal. There are all sorts of things that we can connect in the mind in subconscious ways. You were upset. You’ve fallen in love with another woman. You’ve just lost a big magazine deal. You stumble into the museum, you see this painting—bingo. Who knows what clicked? And now you’ve convinced yourself.”
