Alexandra Waring

by Laura Van Wormer

  “Yeah!” said the crowd.

  “Where is everybody?” Jackson then said, peering around. “I detect about fifty people are missing.”

  “Who?” said the crowd.

  “Langley, for one,” Jackson said.

  “Here!” cried a voice. It belonged to Langley—somewhere. And then there he was, standing in front of the crowd, looking none too steady on his feet.

  “Where’s Cassy?” Jackson said.

  “Behind you!” everyone said.

  “Oh,” he said, turning around. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Where’s Jessica?”

  “Up there!” everyone said.

  “Up where?” Jackson said, looking up, shielding his eyes against the lights.

  “Where stars are supposed to be,” Jessica said. A spotlight was moving around up there and found her, sitting on the floor of the second level with Rob, peering down at him through the railing. “I’m up here in the sky.”

  “Well, come on down, Jessica honey,” he said. “I want everyone onstage here with me.”

  While everybody gathered around and waiters passed trays of champagne and Perrier with lime in champagne glasses, Jackson did a little spiel on their success to date and introduced, one by one, Langley—who stumbled onto the stand—Cassy, Denny, and then Jessica—to great roars of applause—and then Kyle and then Alexandra—to great roars of applause—and then Gordon. There they were, all pressed together on the tiny stage, and everybody was clapping and cheering.

  And then Jackson offered a toast, holding his glass of Perrier high: “To you, you who are the DBS television network. I salute your talent, your energy and your commitment, and I wish you good health and happiness and a terrific career.”

  “Hear, hear,” Cassy said, raising her glass.

  They all drank to the toast, except Langley, who tried to rest his arm on a cymbal and nearly fell into the drums, causing a mild chain reaction that resulted in Kyle’s being shoved off the other side of the stage, spilling his champagne down Alexandra’s back as he went.

  “Yikes,” Alexandra said, jumping to wide-eyed attention.

  “Right,” Jackson said, turning back to the microphone. “And here’s to Alexandra’s success on the DBS Across America tour—forty cities in sixty days!”

  Not even one cheer from the crowd.

  “Hey!” Jackson said. “How about a little support?”

  “Not unless we get to go with her,” somebody called from the back.

  “Yeah,” somebody else called.

  “So much for the tour,” Jackson said, shrugging and looking at Cassy. “Well, how about this announcement, gang?” He elbowed Gordon to stop mopping Alexandra’s back with his handkerchief and look alive. “Listen up, everybody,” Jackson continued, raising his glass again. “I have a very special announcement.”

  “Notice how I’m suddenly chopped liver,” Jessica grumbled to Denny.

  “Alexandra is engaged to be married—”

  A series of “Ohhh” s rippled through the crowd.

  “—and she’s marrying none other than…” Jackson waited for the drumroll, but the crowd came surging forward with their congratulations, pulling him off the stage, forcing him to explain individually that, no, no, he wasn’t the one engaged to Alexandra, Gordon was.

  “We could have a great deal to talk about,” Lord Hargrave said, dancing with Alexandra, “so I hope you will come over.”

  She smiled. “Talk to Cassy.”

  “Oh, I will,” Lord Hargrave assured her. “Jackson tells me she may soon be representing the whole network.”

  Alexandra nodded, looking over Lord Hargrave’s shoulder and smiling at Gordon, who was dancing with Adele. “We’re certainly very interested in your global concept,” she said, turning back to him.

  “You should be,” he said. “Particularly when your husband—to-be is doing so much work on our side of the Atlantic.”

  “I meant DBS News,” Alexandra said.

  “I meant you,” Lord Hargrave said. “You can never tell when even America’s horizons might not be large enough for you.”

  Alexandra looked at him.

  He smiled, nodding slightly. “Why not?” he asked her. “Why not dream of greater glories?”

  Alexandra looked at him, still, expression impossible to read.

  He threw his head back, laughing, turning her on the floor with a little livelier pace. “So you do dream of greater glories. My dear, dear Alexandra—you are a most charming young woman.”

  This time Alexandra laughed.

  “May I cut in?” Gordon asked, appearing at their side.

  Lord Hargrave looked at him. “Of course,” he said after a moment, turning Alexandra over to him.

  “So what was that all about?” Gordon whispered, taking her in his arms, kissing her lightly on the temple and moving her around. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “I think Lord Hargrave may make you and me some kind of offer,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Gordon said, looking over at him. “Boy, that would be something, wouldn’t it?” he asked, looking back at her. “The two of us leaving the States?”

  She shook her head—no—and pressed the side of her face to his.

  “So now you know it all,” Jackson said, eyes still on Cassy.

  She lowered her eyes to the table, fingering the stem of her water glass. She glanced up, forehead furrowed. “So what happened to your money?”

  “Beau defaulted on the payments and”—he snapped his fingers” the bank took two-thirds and the IRS took the rest. So”—he shrugged —”except for my salary, I pretty much lost everything. But I make a great salary, and the plane and hotels and everything are part of it.”

  “And your children?”

  “Oh, they’re all set,” Jackson said, bending a straw, playing with it. “I set them up years ago. Though,” he sighed, “sometimes I think my kids and the whole family would be a lot better off without this kind of money. They’re a pretty confused bunch—and sometimes you have to wonder if it isn’t the money that’s keeping them that way.”

  Cassy was nodding. Then she sat back in her seat, resting one hand on the edge of the table.

  Jackson threw the straw down and looked at her. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “Expect what?” she said softly.

  “That you’d want to know about me. I thought you’d be firing questions at me about the miniseries and DBS News.”

  She shook her head. And then she shrugged. “What’s there to say? I figured it had to be something like this. Not that you lost your money trying to help your brother, though.” She smiled. “I knew that you had to have done something to get DBS News started a year early. When I first came, you know, Langley hated Alexandra and I always got the feeling he thought she was responsible for some terrible corporate problem.”

  Jackson sighed, smiling, leaning farther across the table. “Well, she was a pretty inspiring investment, I must say.”

  Cassy laughed. “To sell your miniseries, I should say so.” She shook her head, smiling, looking at him. “Does Hargrave own all of it?”

  “Two thirds now.”

  “So you do have some ground to stand on when you tell your family.”

  “A smidgen,” Jackson said, smiling at her.

  “And Gordon has no idea?”

  Jackson shook his head, still smiling.

  “Well,” Cassy said, “seems like have my work cut out for me.”

  “You still want the job?” he asked her.

  “Sure,” she said, smiling back. And then, a moment later, she said, “Or do you think there might be some reason why I shouldn’t take it?”

  His eyes were searching hers. “I don’t know,” he said. “You tell me.”

  “Uh, excuse me,” Alicia, Jessica’s secretary, said, appearing out of nowhere.

  “Alicia,” Cassy said, straightening up.

  Alicia leaned over to whisper something
in her ear.

  “Come on,” Cassy said to Jackson, quickly getting up.

  Leaning back against the rail in the shadows of the bow, Jessica exhaled cigarette smoke in Langley’s face. Her dress, underneath the steward’s jacket, was pulled down to her waist, and her breasts were in Langley’s hands. She held the cigarette to his mouth—stabbing his cheek with it twice before finding his lips—and he shook his head and buried his face in her neck, falling forward against her.

  She laughed, letting her head fall back, and she brought the cigarette to her mouth up over his shoulder, smoking to the stars, while Langley, in a state of half collapse, continued to feel her breasts.

  There were whispers across the deck. Figures moved away, leaving three there in the shadows. Then, in a moment, they started across the deck.

  Jessica flicked her cigarette away, blowing smoke, and let her head fall forward, chin thumping down on Langley’s shoulder. She squinted over Langley’s shoulder and then smiled. “Hello,” she said.

  Jackson reached out to tap Langley on the back. “Lang—Lang,” he whispered. Langley made some incoherent sound, more determined to feel Jessica’s breasts than ever.

  “I need to talk to you, Lang,” Jackson whispered, taking hold of his right elbow and gently tugging. “Over here, Langley, I have to talk to you over here.”

  “What?” Langley said, lifting his head from Jessica’s neck.

  “Oh, just go,” Jessica said, giving him a shove.

  Langley tripped and nearly fell; Jackson caught him and righted him, pulling him to the other side of the deck. Jessica stood there, jacket open, her breasts exposed, squinting, closing one eye to see.

  ‘Jessica?” Cassy said gently, moving closer.

  “Hello,” Jessica said, trying to lean back on the railing, but her elbow kept missing, slipping off.

  “You must be cold,” Cassy said. “Let’s do up your coat and take you inside to get warm.” Cassy closed the steward’s coat over Jessica’s breasts and started to do up the buttons.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” Jessica asked her.

  “No,” Cassy said, finished with her coat and now pushing Jessica’s hair back off her face.

  “Excuse me,” Jessica said, eyes wandering, unfocused.

  “Yes?” Cassy said.

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  “Let’s go see if we can find one,” Cassy said quietly, taking Jessica’s arm and looking back over her shoulder. “Denny?”

  “I want a cigarette,” Jessica said, slipping down against the railing.

  In a second Denny was on the other side of Jessica, holding her up. “Come on, Jessica, stand up. That’s it.”

  Jessica looked at him, closing one eye again to see. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “You don’t smoke, Jess,” he said.

  “Oh,” Jessica said, allowing them to lead her away.

  Across the deck, Jackson was holding Langley while he threw up over the railing.

  “She’s fine,” Denny whispered to Alexandra outside the stateroom. “She’s washing up. She’s not in a blackout anymore.”

  Alexandra sighed, shaking her head. “And I’m told my assistant is drunk in another room around here somewhere.”

  “Kate, right?” Denny said.

  “Yes.”

  “She’s in that one,” Denny said, pointing to a door down the hall. “But she’s just crying—maudlin, you know. Her boyfriend’s in there with her, so I’d knock first if I were you.”

  “Thanks,” Alexandra said, continuing on. She knocked on the door, listened, knocked and listened again. Someone said, “Come in,” and she opened the door. Kate was lying face down on the bed, crying, while her boyfriend was sitting there, looking as though he felt pretty useless. “Hi,” Alexandra whispered. “Why don’t you let us talk for a minute, okay?”

  He got up off the bed, seemingly eager to get out of there.

  Alexandra closed the door behind him and then leaned back against it.

  Silence.

  Kate sniffed and then, cautious, raised her head to look.

  “Hi,” Alexandra said.

  Kate sniffed again, wiping the side of her tear- and mascara-stained face with the back of her hand, sitting up. Alexandra pushed off the door, went into the bathroom and came out with some tissues. Handing them to Kate, she sat down on the edge of the bed. Kate blew her nose and then, dropping her hand, sighed. Then she sniffed again and looked at Alexandra. “I’m sorry,” she said, eyes starting to fill again.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t want you to leave,” Kate wailed, falling forward to cry on Alexandra’s shoulder.

  Alexandra smiled slightly, patting her back. “I’ll be back before you know it. It’s okay, Kate, it’s okay,” she murmured. “Really, it is. You’re over-tired and—”

  “And why didn’t you tell me you were getting married?” Kate suddenly said, jerking away from her. “Before, I mean. Before this week.” She wiped at her eyes with the tissues. “Chi Chi said she’s known for months,” she added. “Do you know how that makes me feel?”

  “No,” Alexandra said quietly. “How does it make you feel?”

  The question seemed to throw Kate. She gave Alexandra a look out of the corner of her eye—like, Oh, fuck you—and blew her nose. Then she slammed her fist down into her lap. “It makes me feel horrible, that’s how it makes me feel. Like I’m some sort of lackey for you, like you don’t even like me.”

  “But you know that I do like you, very much,” Alexandra said softly. “And that I care about you a great deal. And the reason why I didn’t tell you was because I wasn’t sure I was going to get married myself.”

  “Chi Chi says Cassy knew you were getting married months ago.”

  “Well, maybe Cassy did,” Alexandra said, “but I didn’t, and you can tell Chi Chi that from me. And I didn’t think there was any point in telling you that I was engaged if I didn’t think I was going to get married, all right? And in the meantime, I’ll have you know—you’ve known more about my life with Gordon than any other human being on earth. For heaven’s sake, Kate, you even know what kind of birth control I use—don’t you?”

  Kate nodded.

  “So I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” Alexandra said, her voice softening again. “I didn’t mean to. I would never want to.”

  Kate had lost her despairing look and was quickly regaining her adoring one.

  “And I’m going to miss you too,” Alexandra said. “But you’re going to have a very important job while I’m on the road. Otherwise, I’d take you with me.”

  “But—” Kate said, getting a pained looked again.

  “But what?” Alexandra said.

  “But I love you,” Kate blurted out, starting to cry.

  Alexandra looked pained then too, debating, it seemed, what to do next. Then she smiled and said, “I love you too, Kate—that’s what close friends are all about.”

  Kate looked at her, sniffing.

  “You are my friend, aren’t you?” Alexandra asked her.

  Kate nodded.

  “Good,” Alexandra said, getting up from the bed. “Then why don’t you let Gordon and me drive you and Mark home tonight? Friends do that, you know—double-date.”

  Kate’s face lit up. “You mean in your limo?”

  “There it is,” Betty said, standing next to Gordon on the bridge.

  “Looks strange from here, doesn’t it?”

  They were talking about West End. There was the bright ribbon of the West Side Highway running past but, because of the high fir trees behind it, this close to shore all they could see of West End was the second floor, when they had hoped to see the square.

  “I’m going to miss it,” Betty said, moving away.

  “Me too,” Gordon said.

  “Oh, look,” Betty said, pointing over the railing to the aft deck below. “Jessica’s back in action.”

  She was sitting in a deck chair, Alexandra standing next to her
, resting a hand on Jessica’s shoulder, both of them talking to Mr. Graham and Lord Hargrave.

  “Never would have paired those two as friends,” Betty said, shaking her head.

  “Alexandra has a thing for the walking wounded,” Gordon said.

  “So I noticed,” Betty said.

  The launches glided back and forth from the ship to the dock, the wakes spreading white over the black night water. The orchestra stopped playing and voices became hushed, reverent, for under the lamps of Riverside Park, under the glow of light from buildings on the ridge above, under the light of the moon filtering down across the water, it was so eerily beautiful. Eerie because it was New York City and yet it smelled only of ocean and of cool damp earth and of lush green trees, and there was the gentle ebb of the tide, the strange echo of their voices over calm water, and a very keen sense of being alone and alive in a place where no one else seemed to be.

  “This, right now,” Alexandra said quietly, sitting in the launch across from Kate and Mark and Cassy and Kyle, “makes everything worth it.” She looked up at Gordon beside her, and he kissed her on the mouth.

  Cassy turned away, looking back over the water to the ship. She wanted to see if she could see Jackson.

  But she couldn’t.

  And she felt awful.

  33

  After the Party

  Part I: Rendezvous

  “Psst,” said a voice from behind the rock wall bordering Riverside Park.

  Uh-oh, Cassy thought, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders and veering toward the Drive, after all these years, I’m finally going to be a statistic. She stood under a street light, happy to have the cars passing by, waiting to cross the four lanes to the residential side of the street where the doormen were.

  When she climbed into Alexandra’s limo with Kyle and Kate and Mark and Gordon and Alexandra, Cassy had been so depressed she could have screamed. She was not up for men who had wives and children they loved in their summer houses in Maine; she was not up to watching twenty-three-year-olds with their whole lives ahead of them; and she was certainly not up to watching a handsome young man nuzzling the neck of his fiancee. And so, before she did start screaming, she had asked to be let out at 79th and Riverside Drive, and they had waited there—Kyle and Kate and Mark and Gordon and Alexandra—until Cassy got a cab and was safely on her way. And then, at 81st Street, Cassy had climbed out of the cab to walk along the brick promenade edging the park, to think, to breathe (she couldn’t breathe in that damn limo, she had felt so upset), figuring that the dog walkers would be out. And the dog walkers were out, but there wasn’t one at hand at the moment, now that someone was hissing over the wall at her.