VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  “This is such a volte-face.” The deep voice flowed creamily across the line. “For months you avoid me, and now at the very moment I’m going out to dinner you have to see me.”

  “I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve just needed time to think.”

  “I’m glad you’ve completed your thinking.”

  “Look, I’m spooked. A friend of my mother’s showed me some pictures and told me some really sick lies.”

  “What were these really sick lies?”

  “About me—and you—and other people.”

  “Who is this friend of Babe’s?”

  “You’ve met him, that policeman she’s seeing.”

  There was an instant’s silence. “What was his purpose?”

  “He wants me to tell him about you and me. And you.”

  “I wish you could be a little clearer about these lies.”

  “Not over the phone.”

  “Wait for me,” he said. “Wait right there. I’ll come as soon as I can get away from Tina’s.”

  Cordelia was tired of waiting. The livingroom seemed oppressively soundless and empty and the figure in the mirror very small and alone.

  She had to go walking. Just for a minute’s breath.

  She put on pink-dyed jeans and a man’s Hawaiian shirt and a Racquet and Tennis Club necktie loosely knotted, and oversized beads and earrings that were all wrong. That was to be the look tonight—all wrong.

  She made herself a cup of instant coffee and looked in the refrigerator for the half-and-half. That was when her eye fell on the vials of crack.

  No, she thought. I’ve got six days in Cokenders. I’m not going to.

  She tipped half-and-half into her coffee and as she put it back she looked at the vials again and she knew it was going to happen.

  She sipped her coffee and loaded up the crack pipe and smoked.

  A sweet buzzing went up to her head and all her fears faded. After another vial of crack she felt centered, high-spirited, and reckless.

  She went down into the street and walked through bubbling activity. A roar hung over Hudson Street. Traffic crawled and horns blared and pedestrians jaywalked as though they were exercising a constitutional right.

  She walked south on Broadway. Bad images kept coming up in her head. Those people on the videotapes, screaming, begging, bleeding …

  The more she thought about it the shakier she felt. She saw a phonebooth on the corner and she went to it and dialed her shrink’s number.

  She waited through three rings, hoping she wasn’t going to get the machine.

  A man passed the booth. He was in his mid-twenties, tall, dark. He was wearing Banana Republic safari trousers and a Mostly Mozart sweatshirt and he carried himself with a swagger. He turned as if he were surprised to see someone inside the phonebooth.

  His mouth had a tough defiant twist, but looking at her his expression turned into a half smile. The half smile turned into a slowing stride, and the slowing stride turned into a full stop.

  She shot him a glance from under her eyelids. He was a great-looking guy, just great.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” she answered.

  Cordelia handed back the pipe.

  The young man sucked in a deep drag.

  They were sitting on an unmade bed. He took her fingers. He massaged her knuckles with his thumb, then squeezed her palm and raised her fingertips to his mouth.

  “Go down on me,” he whispered.

  She felt a skip in her heart. “Just a second.” She reached onto the floor for her purse and took out the mask. “Put it on.”

  “What?”

  “Please, just put it on.”

  “Sure—next Halloween.”

  He tossed the mask aside and in extremely slow motion he grasped the sides of her head with both hands. He pushed her down toward his cock.

  “Come on, baby.”

  He was holding a coke inhaler in her nostril. She had a sudden medicinal rush in her nose, as if she had inhaled mouthwash.

  She broke away and pulled up to sitting. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it—unless you wear the mask.”

  He sat watching her. “You’re bullshit, man.”

  She gathered up her clothes.

  “What’s with the fuckin’ mask? Something wrong with my face?”

  “Look, sometimes it doesn’t work—nothing personal.” She was aware that her voice was too clear, too loud for ordinary speech.

  He settled himself in a chair, legs apart, cock dangling, hands clasped across his stomach. “I know who you are,” he said. “I recognized you. You’re bullshit.”

  “I was honestly moved by you,” she said, “and then you made me feel embarrassed about the way I chose to respond to you. That wasn’t necessary.”

  “That mask is kindergarten games. You’re scared, man. I’ll bet your daddy fucked you when you were a kid and that turned you off sex, right?”

  She struck him. He struck her back instantly.

  “Get out.” He began pushing her.

  She struggled and kicked, fighting him with everything that had built up inside her. He pulled the door open and shoved her into the hall. The door slammed.

  “I personally know very few people who would spend two thousand dollars for the dubious privilege of dancing on the same floor as Jacqueline Onassis,” Lucia Vanderwalk said. She was sitting at Gwennie Tiark’s dinner table, and she was talking to Ambassador Post, whose wife was rumored to have just left him. “It shows a blatant disrespect for the value of money, don’t you think?”

  “But if it’s for charity—” the ambassador said.

  “Rubbish. Charity is visiting the wards, not devouring quail.”

  A maid came to the dinner table and whispered to Lucia.

  “What a bother.” Lucia glanced at her diamond pave and gold-faced dinner watch on its black satin band. “A phone call for me.”

  “Have them call later,” Gwennie Tiark said.

  “Apparently it’s an emergency. Excuse me.”

  Lucia pushed herself up to her feet and followed the maid past the circular marble staircase, down a mirrored, plush hallway. Gwennie Tiark’s Fifth Avenue duplex apartment had once belonged to the Rockefellers, and Billy Baldwin had completely redecorated it. The rooms had good detail—parquetry and carved lintels and mullioned windows—but Lucia thought the Titian was a little showy and large for the library wall and totally the wrong color.

  The maid handed her the telephone.

  “Yes?” Lucia said.

  “Mrs. Vanderwalk?”

  “To whom am I speaking?”

  “This is Dr. Flora Vogelsang.”

  Oh dear, Lucia thought. “Yes, Doctor?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I’ve had a sad and very distressing call from Cordelia. Although I don’t approve of capitulating to her manipulations, in this case I feel she needs help.”

  Cordelia stumbled through the doorway at the rear of the restaurant.

  A black-tie gala was in full swing.

  Cordelia kept one hand extended in front of her, as though searching for a wall. Her disheveled hair cascaded over her eyes and she was walking a very slow, very deliberate zigzag.

  When Babe turned and saw her daughter, her hand—holding a champagne glass—froze.

  Cordelia’s hip struck a table. The little candelabra with delicate rose-printed lampshades almost toppled, and Cordelia fell face-forward.

  “Excuse me,” Babe apologized to Henry Kissinger.

  Cordelia broke loose from the waiter who had helped her up. She dashed through the bar and stumbled down three marble steps.

  Babe had to elbow her way. “Excuse me—excuse me.”

  Cordelia came to a dead end, a wall of plum Lalique glass. She dropped onto a sofa and sat trembling, arms locked around her knees.

  Babe came into the little room. “Cordelia,” she said.

  Cordelia looked up. Her face twisted.

  “What is it?” Babe sa
t beside her. She saw tears in her daughter’s eyes. She hugged Cordelia to her. “Tell me.”

  Cordelia dropped her head into her hand. “Forgive me.”

  “Forgive you what, darling? There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “There is. There is.”

  Lucia came into the restaurant.

  A man in a butler’s cutaway asked for her invitation. She waved him aside, saying it was quite all right, she wouldn’t be needing one.

  She took three steps toward the crowd. Festivities appeared to have accelerated to a full tilt. Peering, she saw her daughter and granddaughter.

  She came into the room without a sound and settled into a seat. “So here we all are. The three sisters.” She asked Cordelia, “Are you all right, my dear? I was worried.”

  Cordelia rose shakily from the sofa. “Yes, Grandmère, I’m fine. I’m going to go home.”

  “Yes, do go home. Rest. Take a taxi.” Lucia opened her purse and handed her granddaughter two fifty-dollar bills.

  “Thanks, Grandmère. G’night.”

  Cordelia kissed Lucia and threw a glance back at her mother.

  Babe started after her.

  “Don’t go yet,” Lucia said. “We have to talk.”

  “Mama, I—”

  Lucia stared without comment at Babe’s strapless pink satin Lanvin. “Sit!”

  Babe froze in her tracks. Obedience consumed her. “Mama, please. I can’t let Cordelia run off like that.”

  “Cordelia is precisely the reason I am here.” Lucia regarded Babe steadily for a moment. “I’ve just spoken to her psychiatrist and she’s very near clinical depression.”

  Babe sank onto the sofa. “I didn’t know Cordelia had a psychiatrist.”

  “I’m sure there are many things about your daughter you’ve never bothered to know.”

  Babe struggled to control herself. “Never bothered to know? You never told me!”

  “And why should I have played go-between? It was your job to be close to your daughter, to share her trust and confidence. Under normal circumstances the relationship is built up over time. It’s called love.”

  “What are you saying?” Babe stared at the judgment blazing in her mother’s eyes. She felt a rush of injustice. “Because I was sick, because I wasn’t there, I didn’t love my daughter? I refuse to be made guilty for something that was in no way my fault!”

  “Who’s discussing fault? Who’s discussing guilt?”

  “You are! You’re heaping it on me! You’re sitting there in your first tier box, reveling in this drama!”

  “I’m hardly reveling. I’m deeply concerned when I see someone I love suffering the way that child is suffering.”

  Babe stared at this woman, her mother, and a wound so deeply buried in her, so silted over that it was almost mute, came gradually to the surface, taking on words. “Do you really love Cordelia? Or is loving her just another way of not loving me?”

  “Not loving you! I cared for you for seven interminable years! I kept you alive when half the specialists in the country were saying, ‘Pull the plug, let her die.’ How many mothers would have done that?”

  “A million! What no mother would have done is hold back information affecting my daughter’s health and happiness!”

  “How could we have told you? You’d let too much go wrong for too long. There were limits to the strain we could put you under.”

  “That excuse seems to cover your every deception. You kept me in the hospital when there was no need for it. You lied about how I got there. And it was always to save me from strain. Well, give me your strain and spare me your saving!”

  “Someone had to defend you.”

  “From what?”

  “The consequences of the life you led before your illness.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the life I’ve led.”

  “Your exalted opinion of yourself is obviously not shared by the person who tried to murder you.”

  Babe felt amazement wash the colors from her face. “You think I deserved an attempt on my life?”

  “You lived in such a way as to make misfortune inevitable. You ignored your husband, and he turned against you. You ignored your daughter, and she developed severe emotional problems.”

  “Her problems are my doing?”

  “Your lack of doing.”

  Tears stung Babe’s eyes, tears she hadn’t even known were pooling there, ready to betray her. “All right. Maybe I didn’t do enough. I’m sorry.”

  “As if that was any help.”

  “Mama, I’m not the person I was then.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve changed. There are experiences in life that change a person.”

  Lucia sighed. “Beatrice, you have a habit that truly tests my patience. It’s when you turn righteous and saccharine like that. You spout a blend of Sigmund Freud and Norman Vincent Peale that is quite your own. They were both fine men in their day, but this is almost the end of the century, even if you have managed to sleep through most of the decade. In my opinion your seven-year nap has in no way transformed you. You are the person you always were. As is Cordelia. She’s had to be in arduous psychotherapy for many, many years. They call her a borderline personality. It’s a technical term. She’s struggling against terrific emotional odds and you have never helped. You are not helping now, and quite frankly I don’t believe you ever will be able to help.”

  “How do you expect me to help something I’m not even told about?”

  “What do you need to be told! If a car breaks down you don’t wait to be taught the principles of internal combustion. You see the trouble and you take the car to a good garage and you get it repaired.”

  “Cordelia is not a car. She’s my daughter.”

  “And she is my granddaughter. And I want you to give your father and me custody.”

  A wave of rage swept over Babe, tightening her throat. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “Do speak in a normal voice,” Lucia said.

  Determination came to Babe like an electric bolt. She rose and walked to the door.

  Lucia reached out and with one braceleted arm blocked Babe’s way. “We haven’t finished.”

  “But we have finished, Mama. The answer is no, never.” Babe thrust her mother’s arm away.

  There was a phone in the coatcheck room. Babe lifted the receiver and punched out the digits of Cordelia’s number. She waited while the call clicked through.

  She could hear Cordelia’s phone buzzing. She counted seven rings. The machine answered.

  “Cordelia,” she said, “if you’re there please pick up.”

  No one picked up. She broke the connection and dialed Vince Cardozo’s direct line.

  His voice answered. “Cardozo.”

  “Vince—it’s not a police matter, but—”

  “You’re not talking to the police, you’re talking to me. Tell me about it.”

  She told him and he listened.

  “Babe,” he said in a calm voice, “this isn’t your fault. Cordelia’s a statistic waiting to happen. If we’re lucky she’s on her way to her place. What’s her address?”

  Babe gave it to him.

  “Go there. If she’s not home, wait for me. I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes. I’m leaving right now.”

  51

  CARDOZO DISCOVERED IT WAS a mistake to have driven west on Prince.

  Traffic was barely moving; double-parkers clogged the lanes, and partying yuppies sat on fenders with plastic wineglasses from somebody’s art opening. In three minutes he covered half a block, and then the congestion brought him to a standstill at the intersection. A sign was hanging from one of the corner buildings: FOOD. He’d read about the restaurant; it served nonsteroid chicken and all-organic tofu fruit pies.

  Through the plate glass window he saw Cordelia Koenig, in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, sitting alone at a table with a plate of pie.

  He pulled in behind a double-parked, empty Mercedes whose horn and fron
t lights were blasting and flashing in sync. He put his police card in the window.

  Cordelia brushed her hair off her forehead and looked up as he approached.

  “What’s your phone number?” he said.

  She told him and he went to the payphone and dialed and got a busy signal. He waited a minute and tried again. Still busy. He came back and sat at the table and looked at her.

  “You didn’t know he was taping you, did you,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Why do you think he made those films?”

  “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  “He made them to show to other people. He’s not protecting your secret, Cordelia, so why are you protecting him?”

  “I don’t have a secret.”

  “But you think you have. You really believe no one besides you and that lunatic knows what you did seven years ago.”

  Babe saw from the street that there was no light in Cordelia’s apartment. Either Cordelia was on her way home, or already asleep.

  Babe used her key to get into the apartment.

  She turned on the light.

  She looked in the bedroom. Empty.

  She went into the kitchen and searched cabinets and made herself coffee. She saw from the cup in the sink that Cordelia had already made coffee that evening.

  She sat in the livingroom, waiting for her coffee to cool.

  A mirror hung on the wall opposite her. Something in its glow, some movement, caught her eye.

  She saw the reflection of a man.

  He was walking slowly and deliberately out of the motionless darkness. He stopped beneath a flood of overhead light, letting the light and shadow play over his close-cropped hair and staring eyes, his strong bare arms hanging from the sleeveless Levi’s jacket.

  There was something proud and brutal and dangerous in the way he stood there, the cords of his neck drawn taut, his eyes taking hold of her.

  She recognized the face gradually: Claude Loring, the man she had wanted to draw, the man charged with murder who had shouted at her.

  His pupils were huge, blue dazzles of light whirling around on themselves.

  She stood slowly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice was pleasant. “It’s nothing personal, but I have to kill you.”