by M. J. Rose
To me, it looked like a halo glow, a shimmer of phosphorescent shine. Certain shades denoted different states. Blue the color of robin’s egg shells was a deep calm. A gray sea blue was depression. Anger was a sunset orange. Love was dawn’s rose. Denial was the purple gray of a storm cloud. Pale, pale icy blue, the color of the air around Clara, was panic.
I didn’t understand. What had I done? I inspected my surrealistic illustration of Clara’s secret. The drawing was a step away from reality but rendered with utter clarity. Nothing impressionistic. I was a draftsman first, having taken years of drawing lessons before going to L’École in Paris in 1919 to study painting.
The man in this drawing was on his knees. Well, his body was that of a man. His head was a stag’s but with a very human expression nothing short of idolatry. This half-man, half-beast was worshipping—naked and quite erect—at a shrine. The shrine was the equally naked body of Mrs. Clara Schiff. She sat upon a velvet cushion on an elaborate throne that would not have been out of place in the court of Louis XV.
On her head was a crown of cavorting putti, sexy little naked angels, making lewd gestures. Under the headdress was a feline face with large almond-shaped eyes. Like her lover, she was half-woman, half-beast.
Suddenly, I understood.
If the man on his knees had been Clara’s husband, Ari Schiff, who was at that very moment making his way across the white and black marble floor, the evening would have ended with curious glances, oohs and aahs, and probably some praise for my ability to render these creatures so lifelike and familiar.
The evening might have gone equally well if the man in my drawing wasn’t recognizable.
But the man-stag was neither Ari nor unidentifiable. The man lusting after Ari’s wife was clearly his brother, Monty, whose reputation for seducing women, making outlandish deals, and taking grave risks always made for breathless gossip.
Despite their father, Reuben Schiff, owning a prestigious brokerage house, both brothers were in the importing business. Which we all knew was code for their real occupation. The brothers were bootleggers, defying Prohibition to supply New York and New Jersey with the best wine and liquor they could bring in through Canada. They’d started out working together, but after a personal rift involving Ari’s first wife, they split up the business.
Ari was in charge of the importing, Monty the distribution. They had separate offices and intermediaries and as little as possible to do with each other. Monty also owned one of the most popular nightclubs in Manhattan, which gilded his wealth and reputation. And he was, at that moment, also making his way over to where I sat. Monty and Ari crossed the floor from opposite directions, both alerted by Clara’s too-loud protestations.
Ari reached her first. Before he could even see the drawing, she burst out with “It’s only a parlor trick, Ari. It’s all Delphine’s fantasy.”
I wanted to tell her to shut up. That her nervous reaction was the very worst way to handle the situation. That with every single excuse she blurted out, she was hurting her case. But it was too late.
Ari pushed her aside to inspect my drawing of his naked wife, who, even as a cat, had Clara’s face. Her lovely bow lips were pursed, her wide eyes half-closed, her high level of animation subdued into an expression of lust about to be satiated. Leaning backward, her legs spread, she awaited the encounter.
Her paramour’s expression was every bit as telling. The bold look in his eyes, the way his lips parted, how his right hand reached for her breast, and, of course, his erection all made any other interpretation of the scenario impossible.
I had captured the lovers in the throes of an anticipated passionate and completely adulterous embrace.
“My brother?” Ari turned away from my drawing and to his wife. “What am I looking at, Clara?”
“It’s Delphine’s twisted mind. Not one iota of the truth. It’s her imagination. Her portraits are always weird and strange. Tell him, Delphine,” she pleaded.
Ari didn’t give me a chance. “Don’t lie to me, Clara. Everyone knows exactly what these drawings are. And even if she is a charlatan, she didn’t come up with this scenario on her own out of thin air.”
“Maybe she did. You did, didn’t you?” Clara turned back to me, desperation in her voice. All signs of inebriation gone, chased by the panic that surged through her.
“Yes, yes, I did. I made it up,” I said. I would have agreed to anything to defuse the situation, because I could see the danger in a colored haze of orange around Ari’s form.
Monty reached our sorry group. He stood on Clara’s other side. Taller and darker than Ari, with a wicked smile he wasn’t wearing just then, he was the more charming and popular of the brothers. Both were invited to all the best parties, but it was Monty the women flirted with and invited into their beds. It was Monty the men invited to play golf and to whom they offered cigars.
“What is all this fuss?” Monty asked. “Certainly, there can’t be anything that—”
He walked around so he could see the drawing. After he took it in, he looked to me, to Clara, and finally to his brother.
“You are not going to take some silly drawing seriously, are you?” Monty asked.
“So you are going to claim this is just the artist’s wild fantasy, too?” Ari responded.
“Calm down, Ari,” Monty said, in a soothing voice that belied his concern. As he spoke, I noticed he’d positioned himself between Ari and Clara, protecting her from her husband’s rage.
“Calm down? While I stand by and watch my brother try to destroy my life? Again?”
The Schiff scandal that had turned the brothers against each other was well known among New York’s social set. After returning home from the war, Ari had married a woman named Mabel Taub. Within six months of the wedding, Monty had seduced his brother’s wife. Ari divorced Mabel, and shortly thereafter Monty married her. A year later, she died in a tragic train accident.
And now the two brothers stood face-to-face. History, if my drawing was to be believed, repeating itself.
Chapter 3
“Delphine didn’t make this up. The two of you are having an affair!” Ari shouted.
“You’re imagining things,” Monty said, also raising his voice.
“Oh, really?” Ari asked in a nasty snarl.
“Both of you have to stop,” Clara cried.
Accusations continued to fly back and forth above the din of partygoers who had no idea what was transpiring in our corner.
From halfway across the room, Tommy looked over in our direction. A friend of Ari’s, he’d recognized his voice and was concerned. I motioned to him, and he broke away from his conversation and pushed through the crowd.
Monty was now trying to soothe his brother. “This isn’t the place to discuss it, Ari. You have to calm down.”
Ignoring his brother, Ari grabbed the drawing off my easel. Pushing past Monty, he shoved the offending illustration under his wife’s face. “Tell me what is going on!”
“It’s nothing, Ari.” Clara’s voice trembled. “It’s Delphine’s fantasy.”
“Tell me the truth!” Ari stepped even closer to her.
“Please, Ari,” she begged, tears filling her eyes.
“Tell me!” He rubbed my drawing across her face in an ugly, violent motion. Graphite smeared her pale peach skin.
Tommy had reached us, and together he and Monty pulled Ari away from his wife.
“That’s enough for now, Ari. You are terrifying Clara,” Monty said, as he fought off his brother’s efforts to keep from being restrained.
“Enough for now? Are you insane? You seduce her and turn her into a whore and then tell me it’s enough?”
With a great surge, Ari pulled free of Tommy’s and his brother’s grip.
The scene that ensued belonged in a horror film, not a Fifth Avenue penthouse filled with millionaires and flappers.
Ari fumbled into his suit pocket and pulled out a gun with a mother-of-pearl handle. Absurdly, it gleamed
in the party’s soft lights, for a moment just another jewel among the diamonds, emeralds, and rubies adorning the guests. Then, like a snake, it slithered into the spotlight, threatening an end to the gaiety. A poisonous reminder that evil is never far from laughter.
I sucked in my breath and watched as Tommy sidled up to Ari and tried to cajole him into letting go of the gun. “Now, now, Ari, there’s no need for that.”
“No,” Clara whispered, and then kept whispering that one word over and over. Even to this day, it is always in my mind when I picture the scene. “No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no …”
With the gun pointed at him, Monty, almost too calmly, glanced around. He seemed to be measuring the size of the gathering. Assessing the danger of a gun in such a crowded room. Looking back at Clara, he smiled at her. A moment of tenderness passed between them in the midst of the madness.
Our little group was in the corner beside the terrace that wrapped around the penthouse and hung high over the avenue. Even though it was a cold night, with so many guests packed into one place and with so many different perfumes mixing and so many people smoking, our hostess had left the door cracked open to let in fresh air.
Smoothly, despite having a gun pointed at him, Monty began backing up, stepping through the door and going outside onto the terrace. He was mitigating the damage his brother could do in the congested apartment. Quickly, Ari followed Monty outside. So did Tommy. Clara tried, but I stopped her, putting my arm around her trembling body and holding her back.
“Stay here,” I said. “There’s nothing you can do, and it’s too dangerous for you to be out there.”
She turned to face me, terror contorting her features. The lovely creature who had been sitting for me just minutes ago was gone. She was Eve now, a temptress, in pain—no, in agony—confronting her sin and panicked by what she had wrought.
“It just happened one day,” she whispered urgently, as if telling me would make it right. “I just couldn’t seem to help myself. Every time I turned around, Monty was always there, charming and exciting, while Ari was so taciturn and grumpy all the time, and then—”
Pop.
Clara and I froze, staring out at the scene on the terrace, both of us certain that Ari had fired the gun at his brother. But they were both still standing, flinging accusations at each other.
I turned around. Over at the bar, Fred Steward, the party’s host, not realizing the drama unfolding across the room, had opened a new bottle of champagne. The noise we’d heard was a cork popping.
Clara clutched my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “What is going to happen? What are they going to do to each other?”
I held on to her as she struggled to go out to the terrace.
“I don’t know.”
Locked in some primeval battle, the brothers created a horrifying tableau with the marvelous nighttime skyline of New York behind them. A surrealistic canvas of forefront juxtaposed against backdrop, two unmatched scenes.
As Ari, gun pointed, advanced on his brother, Monty backed up, talking to him without pause. We couldn’t make out the words, but clearly they weren’t effective, as the gun remained pointed at Monty.
“Is Ari going to pull the trigger? Or is he just trying to frighten Monty? What is Monty saying?” Beside me, Clara kept up a stream of questions, not one of which I could answer.
Suddenly, Monty’s face twisted into a pained smile. He must have said something that enraged Ari, who raised his arm and aimed the gun more squarely at the center of his brother’s chest.
Monty took a step backward to get farther away from the gun and his brother and the nightmare he’d put himself in the middle of. And then he took another step. And another. And then one step too many.
“Oh, God, no!” Clara cried.
She saw what was happening before I did. My eyes were frozen on the gun itself. At how the mother-of-pearl gleamed in the moonlight, opalescent and resplendent. But Clara had been watching Monty. The man she loved. The man who, in that very moment, she lost.
The iron railings on the terrace must have been old or rusted or just not strong enough to withstand the pressure of Monty backing up against them. It didn’t matter why. It happened. The railing gave way, and Monty fell into the darkness as, at exactly that moment, we heard another sound.
Pop.
Not more champagne being opened. Not that time. Ari had fired. The flare lit up the terrace.
What was he thinking? That he had to be the one to destroy Monty? Not to allow fate to take a hand? Had Ari forgotten for the moment that we were twenty-six stories above the pavement? Had he thought Monty was getting away?
Either the sound of the gunshot or the realization that Monty had fallen roused Ari out of his rage-induced state. Understanding what had happened, he rushed toward the gaping hole and leaned over so far it looked as if he might be about to follow his brother.
Just then, Tommy darted over, grabbed him around the waist, and pulled him back.
Clara and I stayed where we were huddled, holding on to each other, staring at the men, her husband and my fiancé, as they stood side by side at the edge of the abyss.
Chapter 4
The morning newspapers all carried the story. The Champagne Suicide, they called it. Despite Tommy’s efforts to shield me from being questioned, the police had asked me for a statement, and every article included my name and my involvement in the tragedy.
The incident began when French artist Delphine Duplessi, who is something of a regular at blue blood parties, drew a cartoon of the deceased with his sister-in-law in a compromising position. According to Mimi Palmer, a party guest, Duplessi’s drawing left nothing to the imagination, and as soon as he saw it, Ari Schiff went after his brother, accusing him of seducing his wife. Monty Schiff either fell or jumped off the twenty-sixth-floor terrace. Currently, his death is being reported as a either suicide or an accident, pending further investigation. One source in the police department said there is a possibility that Ari Schiff will be accused of second-degree murder, since he was threatening his brother with a loaded pistol when the accident occurred.
As is the custom in the Jewish religion, the funeral was held within twenty-four hours. Given the scandalous way Monty had died, his family was anxious to have him put to rest as quickly as possible, in the hopes of curtailing the attention focused on them. Not only did they have to endure the tragedy and the farewell, but as soon as Monty was buried, they would need to attend to the business of hiring lawyers and helping their other son avoid a prison sentence.
Despite the family’s wishes, and as I had expected, the scene at Temple Emanuel on Forty-third Street and Fifth Avenue was anything but private. The press crowded the sidewalk, shouting questions, cameras at the ready to snap pictures of the society mourners.
Tommy’s parents, friends of the Schiffs, preceded us out of the car. As Tommy escorted me from the curb, one of the reporters recognized me and pointed me out to his photographer.
Click. Click. Click.
I shielded my face and walked with my head down.
“I told you it wasn’t wise for you to come,” Tommy whispered harshly, as he hurried me toward the front door to the temple.
“Given my involvement, how could I stay away?”
“This will do nothing but stir up even more gossip about you.”
I turned to look at him. “Gossip would only improve my popularity. You’re upset about how it will affect you because of your association with me. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
His reaction didn’t surprise me. Since we’d become engaged the month before, Tommy’s attitude toward my work had changed, albeit subtly. What he’d thought was fascinating before suddenly worried him. How would the patrons of one of Manhattan’s largest banks, which his father owned and where he was a junior partner, take to a wife who was not only French but also something of a psychic? If only he knew the whole truth. That I was, in fact, a witch.
Sec
rets bind families together. While many in occult circles knew that the Duplessis were the descendants of La Lune, we didn’t discuss our abilities outside of a very tight and trustworthy circle. They were not something to boast of or to brag about. In New York, I had made light of my ability to paint people’s secrets and never alluded to myself as a witch. I never even used the word clairvoyant. Psychic or mind reader were benign, acceptable, and all the rage.
Now, seeing this new side to Tommy made me wary, but I put aside my concerns. He’d grow used to it, I thought.
Tommy’s marriage proposal had come as a surprise. And I’d surprised myself even more by accepting. It was time to put the past behind me, I’d determined. To acknowledge that I could never be with Mathieu and that the kind of love I’d had with him and longed for still was lost to me forever. With Tommy, I could have a life in New York City that would be creatively fulfilling and different from what I knew in France. Without familiar landmarks and triggers, there would be nothing to send me into a tailspin of memories of my time in Paris. I could avoid the past as I made a future with Tommy, who doted on me and appreciated me. I found him funny and smart and more than handsome enough to enjoy being in his arms. If the deep passion that I’d felt with Mathieu was absent, if the sense of souls connecting was missing, that was fine. A love like the one I’d left behind was as much pain as it was pleasure. Even if it had been possible, I never wanted to live on that plane again.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” he said. “I don’t want people to think I’m marrying a female Harry Houdini. Or worse, one of those Lower East Side charlatans and fake fortune-tellers reporters love to write about.”
As we stepped through the door, out of the afternoon sunlight and into the temple’s dark foyer, I glanced at my fiancé. Shadows hid the expression in his eyes.
Even though he’d voiced concern about my reputation before, he’d never been so vulgar about what I did. Perhaps it was just the stress of the situation, I thought, as we followed the crowd inside. Tommy’s parents had already taken seats in a pew by the rear of the temple, where we joined them.
