Christabel

by Karin Kallmaker

  I laughed politely and put my arm through his, forcing Leo to step back out of politeness. I could feel his gaze boring into my bare back as George led me away from him. I had no idea if his separating me from Leo was deliberate, but I could almost love him for doing it so adroitly.

  “I am so glad you came this evening,” he went on. “Dina told me some time ago that you liked modern art. I want to show you something.”

  He stopped to chat in various groups, introducing me as we went. Away from Leo’s clutches I found everyone friendlier than I had hoped, and while it was obvious George was enjoying having me on his arm, he wasn’t showing me off like a fancy bauble, but as he would any woman who had earned his respect. I wondered how I had earned his.

  There were several people in the opulent library, and George scolded them for talking shop. He touched a switch, and an overhead spotlight illuminated a painting. It was so unexpected that I gasped. A Chagall, a real one. Not large, but full of his vibrant color. The Circus Dancers.

  “Get closer,” George urged. “Dina said he was your favorite.”

  I wanted to crawl into the yellow and green landscape of the brilliant circus world. The blues made me want to fly.

  I turned to George with a grin, and he stepped back abruptly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, realizing I’d discomfited him somehow. I wasn’t doing it or anything.

  “No—many pardons, Christa. I’ve seen your face in so many photographs and never realized that you weren’t really smiling.”

  “It’s just haughty model smiling in the pictures,” I said, honestly.

  “Have you thought of going into movies or television? When you smile like that, the entire world would smile with you, you know.”

  “I’m not sure I have the talent for it,” I sidestepped. “Thank you for letting me see this.”

  “Slip back in any time you like. I’ll leave the light on.”

  Over George’s shoulder, a man said, “I didn’t know you collected art, George.”

  George turned to make small talk with the newcomer, and I excused myself after a few minutes. To my surprise, as I made my way to the bar, several people drew me into their groups, asking my opinion about plays and movies. I was used to people giving way, of thinking me too beautiful to have a brain in my head. But that was when I was with Leo or other models. For just a few minutes I felt like an ordinary career woman who could be talked to instead of stared at. The sensation was both novel and nourishing.

  I’d only ever before felt this way with Dina and as the feeling grew I knew my mother had never felt this way, nor her mother, nor any woman for who knows how many generations. More than a body, I felt like a whole human being.

  I was astonished by how good it felt. In some ways, it was as good as the touch of Dina’s hands.

  I was so full of my high spirits that I didn’t even realize when Dina entered. Someone said, “Wow,” and everyone turned around.

  I’d never seen her with her hair down. It fell halfway down her back, ending in large curls. Her vibrant green cocktail sheath was the color of her eyes, and it clung to her in places where I had rested my head, where I had kissed her and enjoyed the softness of her skin.

  She had never seemed so tall, but then I’d never seen her in real heels before. George was greeting her, telling her enthusiastically that she was going to certainly liven up the partner’s photograph in the annual report.

  She hugged him, and over his shoulder her eyes met mine, as if she’d known I was there from the moment she entered. She gave me such a look of love and pride that I couldn’t help but respond. For that moment, Leo did not exist.

  She was walking directly toward me. Eyes were still on her, and they followed her path to me. Her eyes asked permission; mine gave it. To have this moment was something I’d never dreamed of. Part of me accepted that we did not have a future beyond tonight. No doubt it was the selfish part of me that added, “So why not have tonight? One night is more than you ever dreamed possible.”

  She inclined her head, and I raised my mouth to hers for a short, but definitely intimate kiss. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said after, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. “Now we can plan what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

  I felt the recognition ripple through the room. Everyone there understood that Dina and I were lovers. Then I remembered Leo, but even then I didn’t care. I was within the aura of her strength, and nothing could hurt me.

  Dina was not going to leave my side, that was clear. Our conversational group shifted and changed, with people from Dina’s company, as well as major clients, congratulating her on her partnership. I overheard two younger men muttering that they supposed Dina wasn’t sleeping with George after all. Leo never came near us.

  “Christa, this is Jeff, the wonderful assistant who did so much of the work on the IPO.” Dina put her hand on my back to turn me his way, and a delicious thrill ran through me. I shook his hand and then his wife’s, and answered her breathless questions about what a model’s life was like.

  The evening turned into a shimmering kaleidoscope of smiling faces and laughter. When the crowd began to thin, George put on big band music and Dina took me into her arms and we swayed together, my heart beating in time to hers.

  It was beyond any conception of happiness I’d ever had. I wanted the night to last forever. Tomorrow might be all the more terrible for the beauty of this night, but at least I would have the memory of her love.

  Christabel could not focus her eyes. The light from the fire danced. She heard the doctor’s voice, then Mr. Albright’s. She could not make her mouth form words.

  When she heard his voice she wanted to scream, but could only gurgle.

  “I found them thus. I’ve been concerned about the mother’s stability since the funeral. I suspected alcohol, but never thought she would harm her own daughter.”

  “I’d not have thought a woman could do it,” the doctor said. “I’ve never known one who did.”

  Mr. Albright grunted, and then there was the cold clink of metal falling to the ground. “It’s sharp enough.”

  “Then there’s no question,” the doctor said. “I’ll prepare the body for a quick burial. There can’t be a service.”

  “No, of course not,” the preacher said. “A suicide cannot be mourned. But I will say a few words now, I owe the family that much.”

  “Of course, Reverend. I’ll get the stretcher.” Mr. Albright left the room with him, offering to help.

  A shadow fell between her and the fire, and she opened her eyes again.

  He was kneeling over her mother’s prostrate form. He dipped a fingertip into the dark pool around her mother’s hips, and he smiled.

  She made a choking, gagging sound—it was all she could do. He turned to look at her.

  “There are better and worse ways to die. This was a better way.”

  There was no stopping his evil smile. Murderer, she wanted to scream.

  “When the poppy syrup I gave you wears off, I want only one sentence out of your mouth. If you say it, I will spare the witch’s life. If you don’t, I’ll see her dead, and it won’t be quick like this. It’s your choice.” He dipped his finger again in her mother’s blood. “You understand that I can do it?”

  After a moment he nodded, finding sufficient terror in her expression. “What you will say is, ‘I beg of you, save me by making me your wife.’ Will you remember that? I want you to say that and nothing else.”

  He stroked her hair in a parody of fatherly concern. “You have no way of understanding what I can do. It is easy to use a knife, not so hard to make a team of horses go mad.” He let that sink in. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to bring you begging to my bed. It would not take much effort to get people thinking of fire.”

  She couldn’t roll over to vomit, but when he realized she was being sick, he pushed her away from him, onto her side. The pain in her ribs made her nearly faint again, and she could only let the bile trick
le onto the floor.

  He whispered into her ear, “We shall have many children, you and I. The boys will be like me. And all the girls like you.” He stood up. “I think she’s realized what has happened,” he said to the returning doctor. “You’ll take good care of her, won’t you?”

  “Of course, but she has no family now, poor thing, just in England.”

  “God has shown me how His mercy can reclaim this lost child from the evil that took both her parents. In service to His word, as my wife.”

  The doctor was rolling her onto the stretcher when her revolted gaze took in Mr. Albright licking his lips.

  She swam toward the darkness, wanting to get lost in it. She asked Rahdonee’s Great Mother to let her die.

  She was like an angel to hold. Dina breathed in Christa’s unexpectedly light perfume. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have to confront him, and I think I know where. If I explained it you would think I’m crazy.” She let her hands explore Christa’s bare back. Her dress was a black halter that covered her from her neck to her waist in the front but left her back completely bare. If the neck came undone... That didn’t bear thinking about, not if she wanted to keep her composure. She wondered if Goranson had selected that dress because it did make it hard for Dina to concentrate on anything else.

  “He won’t let me go.”

  “That’s not his decision anymore.”

  She sighed in Dina’s ear. “What do we do?”

  “All I know is that it’s going to be his will against ours. Yours and mine. And if we’re united, he can’t win. Do you believe me?”

  “I want to.”

  “You have to believe me. He wants us confused and not thinking. We can’t let him turn us against each other. It’s the only way we win.”

  “And if we win, what happens then?”

  “Then, my love, you can go anywhere, do anything, be whatever you want.”

  “You make that sound so simple.”

  Dina shifted Christa so she could look into her face. “My mother came from a long line of, um, well—”

  “Green.”

  Dina blinked in surprise and led Christa away from the dancing. “Let’s go into the library. Did you see the Chagall?”

  “Yes, but I’d love to see it again.”

  They met George coming out as they went in.

  “Thank you,” Dina said. “For...you know. It was kind of you.”

  “Kind?” George rubbed his chin. “Let me put it this way. You happy means me richer. It’s that simple.”

  “Right.” Dina gestured at the library door. “Now get out for a while.”

  “It’s my home, you know.”

  “Yes, and we’re just going to talk.” She closed the library door in George’s disbelieving face.

  Christa was gazing at the Chagall. “When we went to the museum together and we looked at your favorite, I thought the green was like your eyes.”

  As unwilling as Dina was to believe in fanciful tales of destiny and debts and unfinished business, she had to admit that there were too many coincidences. She dreamed of a demon, and in her visions a demon wore Leonard Goranson’s face, and she made love to a Christabel who was as full of life and joy as the Christa in front of the painting was full of doubt and fear. Maybe it was all some story her mother had told her, but then how did Christa know about the significance of green?

  She was asking Christa to believe that if they faced Goranson together they would win. She needed to listen to her own advice, because if she didn’t believe in herself, Goranson would exploit her doubts.

  “My mother’s last words to me were a hope that I would be the one to find green. Her mother told her to look for green. And so on back for a ways.” Christa turned from the painting, tears trembling in her eyes. “I couldn’t let myself hope. Because hoping things will get better means I have to accept the present as it is. Which means going through with the deal I made if I want to be around for when things get better. God, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Tell me about it. About the deal you made with him.” Dina drew Christa to the leather sofa, sitting close enough to touch her hand, but far enough to see every flicker of emotion in her face.

  “It’ll sound stupid.”

  “Believe me.” Dina patted my hand. “Not many things seem stupid to me right now. How old were you when you met him?”

  “Twenty-one, a little over four years ago. I’d been on my own for four years before that. My mom died...my mom killed herself when I was seventeen.”

  Dina tightened her fingers around Christa’s. “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”

  “I don’t go a day without knowing why she did it, and what she felt. I remember, when I was little, that she was so beautiful. Would it be conceited to say she was more beautiful than I am now?”

  “No, but I find it hard to believe.”

  “She was. You have to understand, Dina. Women in my family don’t live long. They marry badly. They get pregnant early, and they die. My mother was an old one—the ancient age of thirty-five. Her mother died in a back-alley abortion. One aunt died of pneumonia, the other was killed by her husband. Her grandmother died in childbirth, and if I remember it all, her great grandmother died in an opium den. And without exception they were all beautiful in their youth, but all of them at one point in their lives got on their back to survive. And when they did that, it was all over.”

  Dina wiped away the tear that trickled down Christa’s cheek. Her mother had been nearly eighty when she died, after a long, useful life trying to make life better for others. They’d called her the Saint of the Bowery. Her grandmother had almost made it to ninety, a fascinating woman who had drawn landscapes in chalk and taught Dina to love art. Both had had adoring, loving husbands they had outlived by a number of years. Dina hardly remembered her father, in fact.

  “I’m the only child of a doomed line of women,” Christa was saying. “And when my mother died I told myself, this is it. This is the end of the line. There aren’t going to be any more victims. I’m the last one. And I’ll decide exactly what kind of victim I’ll be. More than anything I wanted to be immortal, remembered for something. I’m sure that none of the men who used my mother even remembers her.”

  “And so Goranson is making you immortal as a supermodel.”

  Christa was nodding. “Leo was the only opportunity that came my way that didn’t require me to lie down. How bad could it be, I thought. I agreed to his terms. He would put my face on at least six magazines—big magazines.”

  “Like Vogue, next week.”

  “That’s number one. Numbers two through five will be done by fall. I’m sure number six will happen soon after that.”

  “And your end of the bargain?”

  “I go to bed with him, willingly, and I give him a child.” Christa’s lips trembled before curving slightly. “But, you see, the funny part is, I’m not going to do it. He doesn’t know that. My plan was to jump off a bridge or walk in front of a bus as soon as I had my measure of immortality and my tragic, untimely death would only add to it. I’d get the last laugh, so to speak.”

  Dina whispered, “And now?”

  “Now there’s you. And I’ve also come to accept that he’s not an ordinary man. He thrives on the pain and inconvenience and stress he gives others. There have been models he fed on, like sucking them dry.” Her lower lip trembled slightly as she took a deep breath. “I’ll sound crazy, and I didn’t want to see it that they were real, the things he did. He’d belittle and berate the new girls and destroy their confidence, and he’d laugh about it and call them weak. One girl got so distraught about her weight that she started…cutting off parts of herself. First her hair. The one day she showed up missing a toe. Leo said he was going to take her home.”

  Dina wanted to put her arms around Christa to quell the shudder than ran through her, but their bodies were already so close that Dina was finding it distracting. D
istraction could be fatal. “What did he do?”

  “He only told me about it. When she bled to death that night I’m not sure it was an accident. I know he was there. He just sat there and let her die. He told the police he was with me and how shocked and saddened we all were. It sounds so crazy—

  “I believe you. There’s a simple word for him—evil.”

  “And that’s why he wanted us to be together. Wanted me to get under your skin, into your bed, so that he could use hurting me as a way to force you to do—I don’t know what. But something that would destroy you in the end. Something that would take away your Green and give him more power.”

  Firmly, she repeated, “He can’t hurt us if we face him together.”

  “I want to believe you. But what I know is that if I have a choice between letting him hurt you and giving him what he wants, he can have it. He can have me. I don’t care. You are all that matters to me.”

  “That’s how he wins. Christa, listen to me.” Dina cupped her face. “You were right. It ends here. You’ve been looking for the Green, and maybe I am it. Maybe my mother was right and I have some unfinished business. But it can’t end here if you agree to sacrifice yourself. I am not worth more than you.”

  “I am so afraid,” she whispered.

  Dina kissed the salty cheeks and lost herself in the passion of Christa’s mouth. She heard the rustle of tree branches in the wind and the clicking of crickets.

  Christa undid the collar of her dress, and bared herself in a single motion. “Please.”

  Dina’s head swam. She could not help herself. Her teeth grazed the lush perfection of Christa’s breasts, and she dreamed of losing herself between Christa’s thighs.

  A warning note sounded in her mind, finally, and she raised her head. “We can’t do this here,” she said, her voice like gravel.

  “Don’t stop on my account. After all, she’s only my wife.”

  Christa gasped and covered herself, while Dina tried to shake the lethargy of passion. She cleared her throat. “You and I have some unfinished business.”

  “That we do,” Leonard said. “And I think we’d better tend to it this evening. I was going to wait until tomorrow evening, but this is a golden opportunity. I think you’re in the right frame of mind.”