“I’m not going out on my own,” I said. “Look, Diana, this is a little hard to explain, but I can’t go on working for people as some sort of glorified decorator. I mean, I’m not so naive that I think I can abandon patrons with money altogether, and I don’t deny that a lot of collectors have real taste. It’s just that I want to get back to why I got interested in art in the first place. I want to work with students, too. I want to help poor Latino kids discover their own talent. I want to set up something like the Art Park here in the South Bay.”
She made a derisory snort. “You’re dreaming. I told you to forget that project.” She looked at me. “What are you going to do for money while you’re embracing all these noble causes? You’ll starve in a month.”
“Actually, I won’t,” I told her. “I’ve found another job.”
“Come off it, Ellen. When have you had time to go job-hunting? This is some kind of strategy to get more money from me, isn’t it?” Clearly, she thought I was playing hard to get.
I shook my head.
“What is it, then? What kind of job have you found?” she asked in a disbelieving tone.
“I’m going to be working with Karin Deacon. She wants to represent more Latin American art. She’s trying to mount a major exhibition.”
She did a double take, and then she narrowed her eyes. “I see what you’re after. You think if you worm your way into Karin’s good graces, she might turn over the gallery to you someday.”
I lowered my gaze, embarrassed for her. “Actually, Diana, that’s sort of the plan.”
“What?”
“Well, you’ve said it yourself. Karin’s been in the business a long time. She’d like to back down a bit, turn some of the projects over to someone else. She thinks the Vendôme needs some new blood,” I said apologetically. “Also, she’s going to sponsor my version of the Art Park.”
Her jaw dropped momentarily before she recovered. “Pie in the sky, my dear. Karin may be quirky, but she’ll never in a million years turn over her gallery to an employee.”
“Not to an employee, Diana,” I told her. “To her partner.”
“Feel like talking?” Scott asked me, appearing in my room with a copy of Brian Moore’s latest novel and a shiny gold box. He eyed the orchid tree in the corner with interest. “Jesus. It looks like Tropic World in here.”
“From my erstwhile boss,” I told him. “I love Brian Moore,” I said, as I raised the bed to an upright position. I was going to miss all this mechanization. It hurt my arm a lot when I tried to hoist myself up on my own. “How did you know?”
“I knew you’d like all those ethical dilemmas,” he said.
I patted the edge of the bed with my good hand. “Have a seat,” I said. “The man next door is having some kind of family conference in his room, and they borrowed all my chairs.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Vasectomy,” I said.
“Oh.” He winced. I’d never met a man who didn’t, at the mere mention of the word.
I smiled. “What’s in the box?”
He grinned. “Open it and find out.”
It was the perfect size for jewelry, but I could tell by his mischievous look that it was more likely to be a rubber spider or something equally surprising. No problem. I was getting to like surprises.
I unwrapped it gingerly. I lifted the lid and pulled aside the tissue. “A floatie!” I cried.
“Is that what you call them?”
“Yes. They come from Denmark.”
“Well, this one comes from your friend Alvino Louis.”
I put my hand over my mouth. “Oh, no! The BMW! I forgot all about it.”
“No problem. Your daughter and her boyfriend took it back.”
I blanched.
He laughed. “It’s okay. I was right behind them in my car.”
I extracted the floatie from the box. One end was a pencil, and the rest was a long clear plastic cylinder in which a red convertible floated from one end to the other when you tilted it back and forth. It was almost as dreadful as the one of Elvis’s pink Cadillac, which I’d seen at Graceland.
“It’s to remind you,” he said, grinning at me happily. “It’s tacky,” he added unnecessarily.
“Yes, it is,” I agreed, smiling back. “I love it.”
“Good,” he said, “because I couldn’t find a velvet painting.”
“How’s your father?” I asked him, when the floatie had gone back into its box.
“Improving. Somewhat against his will.”
“I’ll be joining him in Rehab,” I said. “Maybe I can encourage him.” I paused. “Mark was here earlier. He told me Julia is in the hospital, too. I gather she’s in pretty bad shape, physically and emotionally. He says they’re doing a quadruple bypass, but it’s touch and go.” I sighed. “I still can’t believe she was going to kill me,” I said.
He looked amused. “Why—because she didn’t look the part? Would it be more convincing if she had fangs and bloodshot eyes? I saw her, Ellen, and if she wasn’t planning to shoot, she’s a damned good actress.”
“I know. But I can’t help feeling a little sorry for her. She was so desperate. And Bruce was such a shit.”
He shook his head, laughing. “Is this the ‘men are such beasts’ defense? It’s all her husband’s fault?”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that.” I raised the bed a little higher. “What did you find out, by the way? Is he cooperating?”
He nodded. “In exchange for certain concessions. I think it’s pretty much what you already know. Bruce was embezzling money from clients of his investment firm down in Florida. He paid it back and got out of going to jail, but, of course, he was ruined. He lost everything. He changed his name and moved here to start over. He was legally barred from the financial business, but nobody checked. Somehow, after he arrived, he got hooked up with Melanie Klein and heard about her little scheme.”
“Melanie Klein?”
“You’re going to love this. Apparently Natasha was using the matrimonial service to cover suspicious monetary transactions for her unsavory comrades back in Russia. The artworks were a good way to launder money, and the service provided the entrée. She even arranged some legitimate sales. Unfortunately, she was something of a tyrant and demanded total submission from everybody who worked for her. She also refused to share. The matrimonial service got a little sloppy, and some of the clients ended up with prospects who were a little frayed around the edges.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, Melanie Klein, who was then Natasha’s colorless assistant, got the idea that Ivanova Associates might do a little under-the-table work for people like Bruce who wanted to marry money even if they didn’t have any themselves. For a substantial cut of the postnuptial profits, of course. After the wedding, the mark would be encouraged to buy art as an investment—through Ivanova Associates, naturally. The service took a big cut off the top, and a lot of money got siphoned off into various pockets.
“Natasha went along with it at first, but she hit the ceiling when she found out Bruce had a criminal record. It was one thing to be fixing up gigolos, but something else to be involved with somebody who could bring down the whole scheme if he was found out.”
“She couldn’t afford that kind of scrutiny,” I suggested.
He nodded. “She told Melanie to lose Bruce fast, but Melanie didn’t do it, because by then she was having an affair with him. So then Natasha decided to go to Julia herself.”
“But why would she do that? Then Julia would know the agency had swindled her.”
“Not necessarily. Natasha was going to say they’d been taken in by him too, and that the only honest course of action was letting Julia know about it. Besides, the contract with the service very carefully specified no guarantees. If Bruce said anything, who was going to believe him? He was a convicted criminal, and Natasha was some kind of civic aristocrat. It’s not as if he’d have anything in writing. It was her word against his. She coul
dn’t risk having Julia find out from some other source, because then the service’s credibility would have been undermined.”
“The irony is that Julia already knew about Bruce, anyway. What a vipers’ nest! I can’t believe it.”
“There’s another viper you don’t know about.”
“Who?”
“The decorator.”
“Valentin! That doesn’t surprise me.”
“He was on the take, too. He got paid for identifying potential clients for the service. Some of his less scrupulous work involved setting up the ‘rich pigeons,’ as I think you once called them, like Julia Livingston. Naturally, he didn’t like it that you were asking questions about the service, so he tried to discourage you by helping Bruce with his whispering campaign against you.”
“He doesn’t like me, anyway,” I said. “He thinks I’m stealing his business.”
“Well, now he’ll have even more cause. On the other hand, I’m sure the decor at Tehachapi could use his help.”
“So they must all have been ecstatic when they thought Natasha was killed by some random burglar,” I said. “There was nothing that would cause the service to be investigated. I guess it will all come out now.”
“You’ve made a lot of people very unhappy by exposing the truth,” he said. “And there’s more to come. When all this gets out, a lot of people fixed up by the service are going to be wondering who they’re really married to.”
I laughed. “Why should they be different from anyone else?” I looked at him. “You had it right all along, you know.”
“I did? I was as clueless as everybody else.”
“You said Natasha was a chameleon,” I reminded him. “There were so many versions of what she was like. A number of people mentioned that her usual attire could have been supplied by the wardrobe mistress for La Cage aux Folles. It always bothered me that the night of her murder, she was dressed very elegantly, in Donna Karan. That was a clue, and I didn’t even see it. She dressed that way because she was going to meet Julia. She must have known Julia would have been put off by glitz and baubles.”
“That’s the truth,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone so aggressively unadorned in my whole life.”
“I guess we’ll never know what she was really like,” I said.
“Which one?”
“Natasha, but I suppose it applies to Julia, too. There was so much about both of them that was hidden. I’ve had it with repressed women,” I told him.
He took my hand, grinning. “That sounds promising,” he said.
“I mean it. Look what keeping things in did to Julia.” Or my mother. “Getting shot made me greedy.”
“Greedy for what?”
“Life, I guess.” I laughed. “I want it all. Basque dinners. Painting. Work.” I looked at him. “You.”
He bent over and kissed me on the lips, very gently. “Very promising,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “No more quiet notes. Bring on the Beethoven chords.”
He looked at me questioningly. “Beethoven chords?”
For a moment, I’d forgotten that the expression had been Michael’s. Well, it was mine now. I started to shrug and then thought better of it because of my arm. I smiled. “Coup de foudre. Lightning bolts. I’m ready.”
“Ah,” he said.
There it was again, that “ah” that meant he knew what I was thinking. This time I didn’t mind. “I—”
Mark stepped in from the corridor, bearing a mound of what looked like multiple variations on lettuce leaves. “I found you something to eat that won’t put you into cardiac arrest,” he announced. “They were serving roast beef sandwiches. With gravy. Can you imagine?” He shuddered in horror. “Oh, hi, Scott.” He looked at us. “Sorry—was I interrupting something?”
“That’s okay,” Scott said.
“Yes, you were,” I told him.
Mark winked at me. “I’ll come back,” he said.
“Mark?” I said.
He turned. “Yes?”
“Come back with some nachos.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, okay. Just this once.”
“And, Mark,” I called after him. “please shut the door.”
He did.
34
It’s November 1, el Día de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead. All over Mexico, at midnight, people crowd the cemeteries, carrying flowers and food and drink to the graves of their ancestors and loved ones. It’s a fiesta, a party for the dead, a celebration of the living past. It’s a mockery, with the dancing skeletons and death’s-head marzipans, but it’s serious, too. Look, it is saying, neither birth nor death can interrupt the continuity of life. The past is not dead.
It’s my birthday, too, and I’m celebrating life.
I already have my present, quite by accident. It’s a big square package with the return address marked “California Correctional Institution, Tehachapi, California.” I cut the tape and take off the wrapping. It is a painting, in a frame. It shows a man and a woman walking out of the surf, with a huge blue-green wave curling up behind them. They are holding the hands of a third person who stands between them—a person not quite a man, but older than a child.
“I call it ‘The Rescue,’ Ramon has written. Thank you.
It’s beautiful.
Seriously beautiful, and not just because of the sentiment, which is beautiful, too. Ramon is talented, and he’s been taking classes. It shows in his technique. When he finishes his term for burglary, in about six more months, he will have something to work with.
It’s a place to start.
I am sitting in my brother’s backyard, under a pepper tree. It’s an absurd tree for a backyard, because it’s got a root system bigger than the L.A. subway’s, and it sheds all over the place. Still, it’s great-looking and probably well over a century old. The early Californios planted them throughout the southern part of the state.
There is a swing hanging from one branch and some kind of hook in another, about eight feet off the ground. My brother tells me to close my eyes, so I do. I hear rustling and laughing. A child is giggling.
“Okay, you can open your eyes now,” he says.
I do, expecting a cake.
It’s a donkey, pink and green, suspended about three feet above my head. It’s huge and made of paper. It has wild yellow eyes and a blue tongue.
“A piñata!” I cry joyfully. I can’t believe it. I’ve never had one.
Tommy’s eyes are dancing. He is holding a stick and a blindfold. “I wasn’t sure what kind of candy you liked, so I put in some of everything. Don’t hit it more than once. It’s sort of overstuffed.”
“She shouldn’t hit it at all,” says my sister-in-law. “She doesn’t want to hurt her arm again.”
I look at them. They are all watching me. My brother, his wife, my nieces and nephews, baby Alex, my daughter. My family. Next to them is a handsome man with gray-blue eyes and a wide, loving smile. My heart turns over. I am so happy, I can scarcely breathe.
“No, I can do it,” I tell them. “I’ll take it easy.”
“At least stay in the chair,” Dorie insists. “Tom, you can lower it for her a little.”
The piñata is suspended on a rope that is passed through the hook on the branch. Tommy lowers it so that it dangles right in front of me.
Someone ties the blindfold around my eyes and puts the stick in my good hand. I know that the trick is to jerk the piñata out of reach just as I swing, so I aim high.
I miss.
“Way to go, Mom,” Andy calls, laughing.
I swing again, listening for the whoosh and trying to see where the donkey is in my mind. This time I touch it, but just barely. I’ve made a hole in it; one or two pieces of candy hit me on the head.
“Whack it now, Elena,” my brother says. “Don’t hold back.”
I whack with all my strength, throwing everything I’ve got into the blow.
The stick connects with a satisfying crunch.
I hear baby Alex squeal with delight.
The candy tumbles like blessings into my lap.
More from Catherine Todd
Making Waves
Newly separated from her lawyer husband, Caroline James heads to the spa for a makeover and a massage, looking for a tonic to her battered pride. Instead she encounters Eleanor Hampton, the ex-wife of her spouse’s law partner, a woman so bitter she makes Medea look like Anne of Green Gables. Watch your back, Eleanor tells her. You won’t believe the stuff they’ve pulled.
When Eleanor turns up suspiciously dead in her hot tub, Caroline opens the Pandora’s Box of documents the vengeful socialite has sent as proof of the firm’s unscrupulous divorce tactics. Between fighting her divorce proceedings, raising two children, and mending her broken heart, Caroline sleuths her way through upscale La Jolla, California to unravel the truth. For the first time in a long time, she feels truly alive, if only she can stay that way…
Exit Strategies
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Once upon a time, Becky Weston had the life of her dreams—then the Volvo, the beach house, and the luxurious lunches disappeared when her husband went looking for a much younger trophy wife. To top that, her ex is now deceased, leaving the purse strings of the children’s trust fund in the greedy hands of Number Two, leaving Becky truly out in the cold.
Having put herself through six years of night law school, Becky is now the oldest new associate in a small, aspiring law firm, where she is expected to put her life on hold and her nose to the grindstone, a prospect that’s neither anatomically advantageous nor a great deal of fun. Rescue appears in the form of a new client—bestselling author, glamorous anti-aging guru, and Becky's college archnemesis, Bobbie Crystol. When some of the designer-clad doctor’s patients leave her life-extension spa a great deal sicker than when they entered, however, Becky grows skeptical about the pursuit of longevity at the expense of living well. Trying to save her career while maintaining her integrity, Becky comes up with the perfect exit strategy—a strategy that will reap unexpected dividends…
Staying Cool Page 38
