by Janice Weber
Aurilla turned to the next in line.
By the time we reached Fausto’s Corvette, his second wind had blown away. Plopping like wet concrete onto the passenger seat, he said nothing until we were back on the freeway. “God, what a night.”
I took his hand. “You’re a great pianist.”
“Thanks for indulging me, sweet. I owe you.” He closed his eyes. “Next time I promise we’ll play real music.”
I zipped past a BMW that was going only twenty miles over the limit. “I saw Bendix afterward. He was a little agitated.”
“He’ll calm down. Bet you a thousand bucks he kills the monkey, though.”
“Can you tell me something? Why did you play his piece?”
“Someone occasionally needs to remind Bendix that he has feet of clay. That’s what friends are for, after all.”
“You reminded him all right. He intends to pay you back.”
“He can’t do that, sweet. He doesn’t know what I want.”
More inverse riddles: I had had enough of them tonight. “I don’t understand. Aren’t old friends the only ones you can trust in this town? Look at the Marvels. They’ve paved the White House with people they went to high school with.”
“Old friends are a double-edged sword. They know all your youthful follies.”
“So you know a few of Bendix’s deep, dark secrets. If you haven’t spilled them already, why would you now? And if they’re so bad, why hasn’t he shut you up by now?” Dumb questions: secrets were blue-chip stocks. Only a fool would cash them in before maximum appreciation. “Some friendship you’ve got.”
“Ah, Leslie, let us play our little games. It’s how we keep each other going.”
I ran a red light. “How’d Bendix hook up with Aurilla?”
“They met on some island about ten years ago. She was on vacation and he was on a business trip. After Aurilla’s hubby kicked the bucket, they got down to serious business. Took a gamble on Bobby and it paid off. They’re right where they want to be now. It was a matter of luck as much as perseverance.”
“What does Bendix want out of this?”
“The taste of victory, love. He’ll never get it writing music.” Fausto rubbed his puffy eyes. “It’s probably my mother’s fault. She filled him with glorious tales of Washington when she came to visit me at school. No surprise that the White House became Bendix’s alternative Everest.”
“Does he want to be president?”
“No, no. Much better to be an éminence grise like me.”
I left the Beltway. “Aurilla sure knows how to repay you for all those breakfasts. I never sat at such a table of losers. Myrna’s pathetic. Pixley’s a psycho. All that raving about cemeteries was bizarre.”
“He’s been in the Senate over forty years. What do you expect?”
“Who was that fellow Tougaw?”
“Aurilla’s designated eavesdropper. She had one at every table.”
“Nobody said anything important.”
“No? You weren’t listening very hard, then.”
Silence as Fausto dozed and I tried to figure out what important bits of gossip I had missed. Unenlightened, I crawled the car down his quiet street, past willows, high gates … phone taps. Killed the engine but he didn’t move. For a terrible moment, I thought he was dead. Touched his lips, felt his slow breath. Still with me, thank God. Without him I wouldn’t last a day in this jungle. “Fausto,” I whispered.
He slowly turned his head. “Home?”
“Can you make it inside?”
“I think so.” He took a few deep breaths. “Just walk me to the door, if you would.”
I walked him to his bedroom, a gigantic space above his concert hall. A beautiful Pisarro hung over the fireplace. Elsewhere, Turner and another Rembrandt: Fausto kept his best paintings private. Exhausted, he stood at the foot of his bed as I began undressing him for the second time that evening. I put his diamond tacks on a dresser laden with pictures and sterling hairbrushes. While he was in the bathroom, I took a closer look at the photographs. Fausto had been a very handsome boy: tall, slim, Lisztian. He resembled his mother, whom Senator Pixley had described perfectly. I could understand why Washington had stumbled without her. Fausto and Ethel posed in front of Swiss alps, London bridges, Carnegie Hall, the White House, looking proud and mischievous, either on the verge of a great joke or the tail of a great concert.
The bathroom door creaked open. Fausto stared a moment, as if he had forgotten bringing me here. “You remind me of her, all dressed up like that.”
I laid Ethel’s brooch next to her pictures. “I see why you miss her. Who’s that?”
“Lydia Varnas. My piano teacher. She used to travel with us.”
The gorgeous boy, now a bloated ruin, shuffled under the covers. What had gone wrong? Other sons had survived—nay, overcome—the deaths of their mothers. Fausto had had more than enough cause to pick up the pieces and continue. But what did I know? Everyone had a breaking point. The unlucky ones reached theirs too soon, before a thousand middling disappointments could fuse into a protective shield around the heart. I went to his bed. “Are you going to be all right?”
He knew I wasn’t referring to the hours between now and his next breakfast party. “Do me a favor,” he whispered. “Stay here tonight.”
I turned my back. “Unzip me.”
Fausto’s hand crept down my bared spine, slowing as it came to a three-inch scar, souvenir of a wayward Austrian bullet. “What’s this?”
“Penance. Maybe my sins weren’t as great as yours.” Ha. I was just a little more adept at postponing retribution. I let my pink gown slide to the floor. He saw the crude stitches on my thigh. “Biking accident,” I explained.
“Please don’t shower,” he said, lifting the sheets.
I shut out the light. “You like stinky women?”
“I like the smell of you. It’s even more intense after a concert.” Moving with the unrushed, luscious sensuality of large people, he sniffed my sternum, throat, chin, stopping an inch from my lips. “Does it feel strange to be here?”
“No.”
He kissed my lips. A warm tide of lust overtook me but I dared not lead this dance: perhaps Fausto didn’t know the steps. “Will it feel strange in the morning?” he continued.
“I hope not.”
He kissed me again. A finger played with my hair, a nipple. Then, to my dismay, he rolled back to his own pillow. “If you’re gone when I wake up, I’ll understand.” He caressed my shoulder in the dark. “Just do it quietly. It would kill me to hear you go.”
I brought my mouth inches from his. “What happened to you tonight?”
“A few wires got crossed. It’s happened before. Nothing to worry about.”
“You take medication for it?”
“Not now. I haven’t had a spell in years.”
“What brings it on?”
“Causes unknown.”
“But you can tell when it’s about to happen.”
“Everything becomes outlined in brilliant turquoise. Then I have about a minute.”
I remembered him staring in horror at his hands. “Last time this happened, you got those burns, didn’t you.”
He didn’t answer for a while. “I was smoking in bed when the blitz came.”
“You’ll call your doctor in the morning?”
“Promise.”
I returned to my pillow. For a while we both stared at the ceiling. “Why do you think Aurilla invited me to play tonight?” I asked.
“I was just asking myself the same question.”
“Do you think she knew I would bring you along?”
“No. She doesn’t have that much imagination.”
Pauses between question and answer were becoming ever longer. Fausto drifted off while I stared at the ceiling, again reconstructing dinner: who had said what that I should have caught? From the slobbering Myrna, nothing but lachrymose details of Jojo’s heroics at the environmental conference. Aspirin had
n’t helped and no one was even looking for brother Louis. From Tougaw, zip except that a couple of Belizean schoolgirls had also fallen sick with dengue. Pixley was a tapestry of senile bathos, obsessed with burial at the Congressional Cemetery and his own flimsy shadow over American history. He had mentioned Louis’s uh-oh at Oxford. That was all.
Hour by hour, lust dissipated into pale, unslaked fatigue. Fausto had chosen sleep over me: insult or blessing? Outside, a few birds began to twitter. The hour of love and here I lay, not daring to wake a man up. I silently gathered my things and left in disgrace, praying he would open his eyes and miss me.
Chapter Nine
As THE FINAL insult of a humiliating daybreak, the gray Chevy followed me away from Fausto’s. Driver made no attempt to be discreet but this morning I was too weary to respond. He cut away as I pulled up to the hotel: sorry, pal. We’d play tag when I felt like punching again. I crawled into bed then called Rhoby Hall, whose shift at the FBI was about over. “I checked my calendar. Tonight’s good for me. What time were you and Fausto thinking of rehearsing?”
“Six o’clock?” she asked back.
“Fine.”
“The B Major Trio, right? I don’t want to be practicing the wrong one!”
Whatever it was, I’d be sight-reading it. “Could you let him know?”
“Sure! God! I’m so excited!”
Take an aspirin and call me after ten thousand concerts. I didn’t really give a damn about Rhoby and her phone skills at the FBI. I wanted to see Fausto again: chamber music furnished the perfect excuse for doing so. He’d be eating breakfast now—if he had awakened at all. Had he remembered anything of last night? Fits? Kisses? Fingers in my hair? Would he be ashamed that I had undressed him twice and he hadn’t risen to the occasion once? Probably not: how infuriating.
Duncan pounded on the door. “I know you’re in there! Open up!”
“Good morning, dear.” No problem with the seersucker suit and white bucks. But the white hat made him look like a reject from a barbershop quartet. “Coming or going?”
“Going. I have important NEA business today.”
“How’d Justine like Cleveland?”
“We didn’t go. Something came up.” He strode to the phone and ordered breakfast. “Get my coffee here in five minutes or start looking for a new job.”
“That’s a nice line,” I said as he helped himself to a Coke from my minibar. “Where’d you learn it?”
He frowned at my smooth bed. “You didn’t sleep here last night.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.” Duncan burped loudly. “I hear the concert was a howling success. Except for the very end. What do you call a monkey? An act of God? Serves you right.”
“The only person who suffered was Bendix Kaar.”
“Serves him right, too. He bought the monkey.”
Jesus, Duncan was quicker than CNN at getting the poop these days. “For someone who refused to go, you sure know a lot about the concert.”
“A man’s got to be informed. Especially when some schmuck’s trying to elbow him out of a job.” Back at the minibar, Duncan twisted open a tiny bottle of rum.
I watched him pour it into his Coke. “Learn that from your girlfriend, too?”
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve learned. So! Do you still think Fausto’s got fingers like cigars?”
“He’s not bad,” I lied. “For someone who hasn’t practiced in thirty years.”
“Only ‘not bad’? Why’d you sleep with him, then?”
“Who says I slept with him?”
“You went to his house afterward. You only left an hour ago.”
I sat on the bed. “Okay, Duncan. Why is Justine spying on me?
“You’re absolutely paranoid!” he screeched, guzzling the last of his drink. “She couldn’t care less about you! Someone calls her! She doesn’t ask for the fucking information!”
“Who calls her?”
“How should I know? Some guy. He paged her at six o’clock this morning.”
“And she called back?” I picked up the phone. “Get me the number. Now.” He still balked. “If you ever want to walk on a stage with me again.”
That did it. “This is Mr. Zadinsky, room 507. Yes, I know I’m calling from 508, don’t be a wise-ass! I made a phone call an hour or so ago.… What? No, from 507! I need to know the number. Just get it!” He scratched furiously on a hotel pad. “Where’s my breakfast? What kind of room service do you run in this clip joint?” He slammed down the phone and threw the paper at me. “There. I hope you’re happy.”
I blinked: Justine had called Louis Bailey’s home in Virginia. Careless woman! “She talked with a man at this number?”
“She answered a page from that number! What are you going to do about it? Go there and beat him up?”
Not if he had booby-trapped the joint like he did last time. I rubbed my forehead: what was Justine doing in this demolition derby? “Do me a favor. Don’t tell her you gave me this.”
“Sorry, can’t do that! We have a pact! No secrets! Forever!”
“Your choice. You blab, you look for a new job.” Duncan would be looking for one anyway if he had started swilling rum and Coke for breakfast. “So when’s Justine finally going to meet your parents?”
“Next weekend. For sure.”
Room service knocked a minute later, but Duncan was gone. I sent the prunes and tomato juice to 507 and took that shower I had been persuaded to forgo last night. Whatever scent Fausto had admired had been displaced by a ranker odor: fear. Face it, Smith. I had been a sitting duck the moment I took Barnard’s place at Ford’s Theatre.
The phone rang. “I missed you this morning. Terribly.”
I forgave him. “Couldn’t wear my gown to breakfast, could I?”
“You could have eaten upstairs with me.”
Ah, what a fool I was. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Very fine. Rhoby called. So we’re taking a whack at Brahms, are we?”
“Do you think she can play?”
“Does it matter?”
Spoken like a true philosopher. “Did you call your doctor?”
“It’s a little before office hours.”
“Who’s at breakfast?”
“The usual brigands. No one we saw last night, though. Aurilla kept everyone up too late.”
“Is Justine there?”
“Just walked in. Looks like she slept on a bus. Why doesn’t she ever bring her boyfriend over? Don’t musicians live on free meals?”
I almost told him about Justine’s phone call. Leave Duncan out of it. “He’s impossible at breakfast. Besides, he thinks you’re trying to steal his job.”
Short silence. “Duncan’s got nothing to worry about.”
Ouch. Served me right. As usual, I was confusing business with … life. After a few sentences I terminated the conversation. Seconds later the phone rang again. It wasn’t Fausto.
“Hello, Miss Frost? This is Gretchen. I’m sorry about wrecking your concert.”
I was sorry I had picked up the phone. “We’ll survive.”
“You looked so pretty in that pink dress.”
“Thanks. How’d you sneak your monkey past the guard?”
“He thought Herman was a doll. Everything was okay until you started to play that scratchy piece. Then Herman wanted to leave.”
Sharp little guy. He should go into music criticism. “Did you apologize to Uncle Bendix yet?”
“No! He threw Herman out the window!” Gretchen began to cry. “He’s lost.”
“Put a few bananas on the deck. I’m sure he’ll come back.”
“No he won’t! I hate Uncle Bendix!”
“You can always get another monkey.”
“Herman was my special present!”
“Give it a day or two. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll go to the animal shelter and find something else. An alligator maybe.”
She stopped crying. “Someday I’m going to kill Uncle B
endix.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that.”
Like her mother, Gretchen didn’t believe in retraction. Instead she sniffled off to stash bananas around her backyard: God help Bendix if the animal didn’t return. I wondered if he’d be calling Fausto today, maybe dropping by for Scrabble and a duel. Some friendship! Whatever they had on each other, it was deep. No time like the present to check it out.
Walked across the Mall, looking for tails. Nothing out there today but tourists and lower staff fressing out of paper bags. A few trees had already begun to shed into the Reflecting Pool and during lulls in traffic, I could hear the feeble chirp of crickets. Insects were so anemic here. I suddenly missed autumn in Berlin … yet I wanted to linger in Washington. Too soon to tell whether Fausto was a sign of recovery or another tango with suicide. I ran up the Capitol steps. No one huffing in my wake, but that only eliminated the amateurs. Whoever knew about me was slicker than that. So I threaded around the Senate offices before cutting to the Library of Congress.
Back to the microfilm. I searched for hours but didn’t find a word in any London paper about a scandal involving Louis or Jojo Bailey. I did find a stomach-wrenching review of Bendix’s opera. Even taking into account a limey critic’s anti-American prejudice, this was a trashing for the ages. I could understand why Bendix had burned his pencils afterward, poor sod. I would have hired a hit man.
On to more cheerful topics: didn’t take long to find Ethel Kiss’s obituary, but she had gotten nearly as many column inches as had the Tet offensive. Ethel came from a distinguished line of robber barons, specialty railroads. Granddaddy, tired of dealing with middlemen, finally bought himself a Senate seat around the turn of the century. Ethel’s mother had died fairly young; Ethel’s father spent the rest of his life hunting game until a charging rhino put an end to his safaris. After finishing school in Europe, Ethel had a string of spectacular liaisons on either side of the Atlantic. She scandalized her sixth and final fiancé, an English marquess, by eloping with an American pilot she had met in a London bar. He went off to war but ran out of luck over Dresden. Six months later, Fausto appeared.
Almost at once, mother and son began a reign of terror among hoteliers on every continent. They were famous for traveling with a pet tiger and a piano teacher named Lydia Varnas, for their midnight concerts in presidential suites, and literally tons of luggage. Suddenly it all stopped. Fausto immured himself in a conservatory and Ethel retired to Washington. One spring afternoon, she slipped off a parapet of the National Cathedral. No witnesses but the organist, who thought she was reaching for a bird.
