One Fifth Avenue

by Кэндес Бушнелл

  “It wasn’t exactly like that,” Philip said ominously.

  Lola suddenly understood that Philip was about to break up with her — probably over Schiffer Diamond. The thought made her insides twist in alarm, but she couldn’t let Philip know. She ducked under the water for a second to get her bearings. If she could somehow prevent Philip from breaking up with her now, at this moment, his desire to be rid of her might pass, and they could go on as before. When she popped out of the water, she had a plan.

  “I’m so glad you’re home,” she said, grabbing a pumice stone and briskly sanding her heels. “I’ve had some bad news. My mother just called, and she needs me to go to Atlanta for a few days. Or longer.

  Maybe a week. She’s not doing very well. You know the bank took the house?”

  “I know,” Philip said. The financial woes of Lola’s family terrified him, constantly pulling him back into this relationship and her dependency on him.

  “So anyway,” Lola continued, examining her feet as if trying to be brave about the situation, “I know you’re leaving for L.A. in three days. I don’t want to upset you, but I won’t be able to come after all. It’s too far away, and my mother might need me. But I’ll be here when you get back,” she promised, as if this were a consolation prize.

  “About that...” Philip began.

  She shook her head. “I know. It’s kind of a bummer. But let’s not talk about it, because it makes me sad. And I have to go to Atlanta first thing in the morning. And I need a really, really big favor. Do you mind if I borrow a thousand dollars for my plane ticket?”

  “No.” Philip sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he couldn’t have the discussion now, but also somewhat relieved. She was leaving tomorrow anyway. Maybe she wouldn’t come back, and there would be no need to break up with her after all.“It’s no problem,” he said. “I don’t want you to worry. You help your mother — that’s what’s most important.”

  She stood up, and with water and soap sliding off her in a slurry mess, she embraced him. “Oh, Philip,” she said. “I love you so much.”

  She moved her hands down his chest and started trying to unbutton his jeans. He put his hands on hers and pulled them away. “Not now, Kitty,” he said. “You’re upset. It wouldn’t be fun for either of us.”

  “Okay, baby,” she said, drying herself off. Playing to the moment, she went into the bedroom and began packing wearily, as if someone had died and she was going to a funeral. Then she went into Philip’s office and wrote a note. “Could you give this to Enid?” she asked, handing it to him.

  “It’s a thank-you for the ballet. I told Enid I would see her tomorrow, and I don’t want her to think I forgot about her.”

  Early the next morning, Beetelle Fabrikant was surprised to get a phone call from Lola, who was at La Guardia airport, about to board a plane for Atlanta. “Is everything all right?” Beetelle asked, her voice rising in panic.

  “It’s fine, Mother,” Lola replied impatiently. “I told Philip I was worried about you, and he gave me money to visit you for the weekend.”

  Lola hung up and paced the small waiting area. Now was the worst possible time to leave Philip alone, when he was all hopped up on Schiffer Diamond and separated from her by only four floors. But if Lola had stayed, he would have tried to break up with her. And then she would have had to cry and beg. Once you did that with a man, it was as good as over. The man might keep you around, but he would never respect you. It wasn’t fair, she thought, scuffing her foot on the dirty airport carpet. She was young and beautiful, and she and Philip had great sex. What more did he want?

  Her perambulations took her by a small newsstand, where Schiffer Diamond’s face stared out at her from the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She was wearing a blue halter-necked dress and was in one of those model-y type poses with her back arched and her hand on her hip, her long dark hair glossy and straight. I hate her, Lola thought, having a visceral reaction to the photograph, but she bought the magazine anyway, and pored over the cover, looking for flaws in Schiffer’s face. For a moment, Lola despaired.

  How could she compete with a movie star?

  Her flight was called on the loudspeaker, and Lola went to stand in line at the gate. She glanced up at the TV monitor, which was broadcasting one of the morning shows, and there was Schiffer Diamond again. This time she was wearing a plain white shirt with the collar turned up, a profusion of turquoise necklaces, and slim black pants. As she stared at the monitor, Lola felt a vein in her throat thumping in anger.

  “I came back to New York to start over,” Schiffer was saying to the host. “New Yorkers are wonderful, and I’m having a great time.”

  “With my boyfriend!” Lola wanted to scream.

  Someone bumped her. “Are you going to get on the plane?” the man behind her asked.

  Jerking her Louis Vuitton rollerboard, Lola shuffled through first class to the back of the plane. If she were Schiffer Diamond, she’d be riding in the front, she thought bitterly, heaving her suitcase into the overhead compartment. She arranged herself in the tiny seat, smoothing down her jeans and kicking off her shoes. She examined the cover of Harper’s Bazaar again and nearly wanted to cry. Why was Schiffer Diamond ruining her dream?

  Lola leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She wasn’t finished yet, she reminded herself. Philip hadn’t broken up with her, and on Sunday, he was going to Los Angeles for two weeks. He’d be busy with his movie — too busy, she hoped, to think about Schiffer Diamond. And while he was away, she would move the last of her things into his apartment. When he returned, there she’d be.

  Arriving at the house in Windsor Pines, Lola saw that the situation had indeed taken a turn for the worse. Most of the furniture was gone, and all the precious artifacts from her childhood — her plastic ponies and Barbie Fun House and even her extensive collection of Beanie Babies —

  had been sold in a tag sale. All that remained was her bed, with its lacy white bedskirt and frilly pink comforter. This time around, Beetelle insisted on being determinedly cheerful. She dragged Lola to a barbecue at the neighbors’, where she told everyone that she and Cem were so happy to be moving to a condo where they wouldn’t have to worry about upkeep on a house. The neighbors tried not to acknowledge the Fabrikants’ situation by showing off pictures of their new grandson. Not to be outdone, Beetelle exclaimed how Lola herself was almost engaged to the famous writer Philip Oakland. “Isn’t he a bit old?” said one of the women with disapproval.

  Lola gave her a dirty look, deciding the woman was jealous because her own daughter had only married a local boy who ran a landscaping business. “He’s forty-five,” Lola said. “And he knows movie stars.”

  “Everyone knows actresses are secretly whores,” the woman remarked.

  “That’s always what my mother said, anyway.”

  “Lola is very sophisticated,” Beetelle jumped in. “She was always more advanced than the other girls.” Then they all started talking about their little investments in the stock market and the falling prices of their homes.

  This was both depressing and boring. Glaring at the woman who’d made the remark about Philip, Lola realized that they were all just petty and narrow-minded. How had she ever lived here?

  Later, lying in her bed in her barren room, Lola realized she would never have to sleep in this bed, in this room, in this house, ever again. And looking around the nearly empty space, she decided she wouldn’t miss it one bit.

  15

  Connie Brewer promised Billy never to wear the Cross of Bloody Mary. She kept her promise, but as Billy hadn’t said anything about framing it and putting it on the wall, two weeks after Sandy purchased it for her, she took the cross to a renowned framer on Madison Avenue. He was an elderly man of at least eighty, still elegant with slicked-back gray hair and a yellow cravat at his neck. He examined the cross in its soft suede wrapping and looked at her curiously. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “It was a g
ift,” Connie said. “From my husband.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “I have no idea,” she said firmly. She wondered if she’d made a mis -

  take by taking the cross out of the apartment, but then the framer said nothing more, and Connie forgot about it. The framer, however, didn’t.

  He told a dealer, and the dealer told a client, and soon a rumor began to circulate in the art world that the Brewers now possessed the Cross of Bloody Mary.

  Being a generous girl, Connie naturally wanted to share her treasure with her friends. On an afternoon in late February after a lunch at La Goulue, she invited Annalisa back to her apartment. The Brewers lived on Park Avenue in an apartment in which two classic-six units were combined into one sprawling apartment with five bedrooms, two nannies’ rooms, and an enormous living room where the Brewers hosted a Christmas party every year, with Sandy dressed up as Santa and Connie as one of his elves, in a red velvet jumpsuit with white mink cuffs.

  “I have to show you something, but you can’t tell anyone,” Connie said, leading Annalisa through the apartment to her sitting room, located off the master bedroom. In consideration of Billy Litchfield’s insistence that the cross remain a secret, she had hung the framed artifact in this room, accessible only through the master bedroom, making it the most private room in the apartment. No one was allowed in except the maids. The room was Connie’s fantasy, done up in pink and light blue silks, with gilt mirrors and a Venetian chaise, a window seat filled with pillows, and wallpaper with hand-painted butterflies. Annalisa had been in this room twice, and she could never decide if it was beautiful or hideous.

  “Sandy bought it for me,” Connie whispered, indicating the cross. Annalisa took a step closer, politely examining the piece, which was displayed against dark blue velvet. She didn’t have Connie’s interest in or appreciation for jewelry, but she said kindly, “It’s gorgeous. What is it?”

  “It belonged to Queen Mary. A gift from the pope for keeping England Catholic. It’s invaluable.”

  “If it’s real, it probably belongs in a museum.”

  “Well, it does,” Connie admitted. “But so many antiquities are owned by private individuals these days. And I don’t think it’s wrong for the rich to guard the treasures of the past — I feel it’s our duty. It’s such an important piece. Historically, aesthetically ...”

  “More important than your crocodile Birkin bag?” Annalisa teased.

  She didn’t for a moment think the cross was real. Billy had told her that Sandy had been buying Connie so much jewelry lately, he was developing a reputation as an easy mark. Knowing Sandy, he’d probably bought the piece from a shady dealer and had made the guy’s day.

  “Handbags are not important anymore,” Connie admonished her. “It said so in Vogue. Right now it’s all about having something no one else possesses. It’s about the one of a kind. The unique.”

  Annalisa lay down on the Venetian chaise and yawned. She’d had two glasses of champagne at lunch and was feeling sleepy. “I thought Queen Mary was evil. Didn’t she have her sister killed? Or have I got the story wrong? You’d better be careful, Connie. The cross might bring you bad luck.”

  Meanwhile, a few blocks away in the basement offices of the Metropolitan Museum, David Porshie, Billy Litchfield’s old friend, hung up the phone. He had just been informed about the rumor of the existence of the Cross of Bloody Mary, which was said to be in the hands of a couple named Sandy and Connie Brewer. He sat back in his swivel chair, folding his hands under his chin. Could it be true? he wondered.

  David was well aware of the mysterious disappearance of the cross in the fifties. Every year it appeared on a list of items missing from the museum. The suspicion had always been that Mrs. Houghton purloined the cross herself, but as she was beyond reproach and, more importantly, donated two million dollars a year to the museum, the matter had never been thoroughly investigated.

  But now that Mrs. Houghton was dead, perhaps it was time — especially as the cross had surfaced shortly after her death. Looking up Sandy and Connie Brewer on the Internet, David discovered exactly who they were. Sandy was a hedge-fund manager, of all things — typical that an arriviste should end up with such a rare and precious antiquity — and while he and his wife, Connie, deemed themselves “important collectors,” David suspected they were of the new-money ilk who paid ridiculous prices for what David considered junk. People like the Brewers were not generally of interest to people like himself, a steward of the great Metropolitan Museum, except in how much money one might extract from them at the gala.

  He couldn’t, however, simply call up the Brewers and ask if they had the cross. Whoever sold it to them would have been smart enough to warn them of its provenance. Not that a shady past ever stopped a buyer. There was a certain psychology in the purchaser of such an item that wasn’t dis-similar to the buyer of illegal drugs. There was the thrill of breaking the law and the high of getting away with it. Unlike the drug buyer, however, the illegal-antiquities purchaser had the continued elation of owning the piece, along with a feeling of immortality. It was as if mere proximity to such a piece might also convey everlasting life to its owner. And so, David Porshie knew, he was looking for a specific personality type along with the cross. The question was only how to make such a discovery.

  David was prepared to be patient in his pursuit — after all, the cross had been missing for nearly sixty years — and what he needed was a mole. Immediately, he thought of Billy Litchfield. They’d been at Harvard together.

  Billy Litchfield knew quite a bit about art and even more about people.

  He found Billy’s cell number on a guest list from the events office and called him up the next morning. Billy was in a taxi, coincidentally on his way to Connie Brewer’s to discuss the Basel art fair. When Billy heard David’s voice on the phone, he felt his whole body redden in fear, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “How are you, David?” he asked.

  “I’m well,” David replied. “I was thinking about what you said at the ballet. About potential new patrons. We’re looking for some fresh blood to donate money to a new wing. The names Sandy and Connie Brewer came up. I thought you might know them.”

  “I do indeed,” Billy said evenly.

  “That’s wonderful,” David said. “Could you arrange a small dinner?

  Nothing too fancy, maybe at Twenty-One. And Billy?” he added. “If you don’t mind, could you keep the purpose of the dinner quiet? You know how people get if they suspect you’re going to ask them for money.”

  “Of course,” Billy said. “It’s just between us.” He hung up the phone in a panic. The taxi felt like a prison cell. He began hyperventilating.

  “Could you stop the cab, please?” he asked, tapping on the partition.

  He stumbled out onto the sidewalk, looking for the nearest coffee shop. Finding one on the corner, he sat down at the counter, trying to catch his breath while ordering a ginger ale. How much did David Porshie know, and how had he found out? Billy swallowed a Xanax, and while he waited for the pill to take effect, tried to think logically. Was it possible David only wanted to meet the Brewers for the reason he’d stated? Billy thought not. The Metropolitan Museum was the last bas-tion of old money, although recently, they’d had to redefine “old” as meaning twenty years instead of a hundred.

  “Connie, what have you done?” Billy asked when he got to the Brewers’ apartment. “Where’s the cross?”

  Following her to the inner chamber, he regarded the framed cross with horror. “How many people have seen this?” he asked.

  “Oh, Billy, don’t worry,” she said. “Only Sandy. And the maids. And Annalisa Rice.”

  “And the framer,” Billy pointed out. “Whom did you take it to?” Connie named the man. “My God,” Billy said, sitting on the edge of the chaise.

  “He’ll tell everyone.”

  “But how does he even know what it is?” Connie asked. “I didn’t tell him.”

  “D
id you tell him how you came to have it?” Billy asked.

  “Of course not,” Connie assured him. “I haven’t told anyone.”

  “Listen, Connie. You have to put it away. Take it off your wall and put it in a safe. I told you, if anyone finds out about this, we could all go to jail.”

  “People like us don’t go to jail,” Connie countered.

  “Yes, we do. It happens all the time these days.” Billy sighed.

  Connie took the cross off the wall. “Look,” she said, taking it to her closet, “I’m putting it away.”

  “Promise me you’ll put it in a vault. It’s too valuable to be left in a closet.”

  “It’s too valuable to be hidden,” Connie objected. “If I can’t look at it, what’s the point?”

  “We’ll discuss that later,” Billy said. “After you put it away.” It was possible, Billy thought with a glimmer of hope, that David Porshie didn’t know about the cross — if he did, Billy reasoned, he’d be sending detectives, not arranging dinner parties. Nevertheless, Billy would have to make sure the dinner took place. If he didn’t, it would further raise David’s suspicions.

  “We’re going to have dinner with David Porshie from the Met,” Billy said.

  “And you’re not to say a word about the cross — neither you nor Sandy.

  Even if he asks you point-blank.”

  “We’ve never heard of it,” Connie said.

  Billy passed his hand over the top of his bald head. Despite all his efforts to stay in New York, he saw his future. As soon as the three million dollars were available, he would have to leave the country. He’d be forced to settle in a place like Buenos Aires, where there were no extradition laws. Billy shuddered. Involuntarily, he said aloud, “I hate palm trees.”

  “What?” Connie said, thinking she’d missed a part of the conversation.

  “Nothing, my dear,” Billy said quickly. “I have a lot on my mind.”

  Coming out of Connie’s building on Seventy-eighth Street, he got into a taxi and instructed the driver to take Fifth Avenue downtown. The traffic was backed up at Sixty-sixth Street, but Billy didn’t mind. The taxi was one of the brand-new SUV types and smelled of fresh plastic; from the mouth of the driver came a musical patter as he conversed on his cell phone. If only, Billy thought, he could stay in this taxi forever, inching down Fifth Avenue past all the familiar landmarks: the castle in Central Park, the Sherry-Netherland, where he’d lunched at Cipriani nearly every day for fifteen years, the Plaza, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, the New York Public Library. His nostalgia engulfed him in a haze of pleasure and sweet, aching bitterness. How could he ever leave his beloved Manhattan?