“Ducky!” Prince began to follow Billy upstairs, stopped, shrugged helplessly, and decided to leave. Even a room-service dinner alone at the hotel would be more cheerful than having to look at Billy’s tormented face any longer. He hated to admit that the whole thing sounded intriguingly spicy, although he certainly wished it had happened to somebody else. The hotel bar would be full of people he knew, every one of them dying to dish about Billy, incognito, fucking her brains out in Paris. Of course he wouldn’t linger too long talking in the bar. After all, he was genuinely fond of Billy.
22
Do you know where I can find Billy?” Josh Hillman asked Spider very late on Thursday afternoon.
“Haven’t seen her,” Spider answered, quickly closing the copy of Fashion and Interiors in which he’d just finished reading the “P.D.Q.” article. “Why?”
“There’s something I want to give her, a good-luck souvenir, for tomorrow.” Josh placed the marble nameplate from Scruples that had been saved from the fire on Spider’s desk.
“Christ!” Spider recoiled. “You think she wants to see that? Jesus, Josh, where’d you get it?”
“The fire department gave it to me after Billy left. I’ve been hanging on to it for years, didn’t know what to do with it. But now, well, I was cleaning out my desk and I came across it and I thought maybe Billy should have it.”
“I can’t think of anything she’d rather not have. It’d just remind her of the fire.”
“I don’t agree at all, Spider. It will remind her of the success of Scruples. I know she’s worried about Scruples Two—I’ve noticed her looking very down lately. You’ve seen a million photos of people who lose their entire homes in fires going back to poke in the ashes. They’re trying to find something, absolutely anything, to keep as a remembrance of what they used to have. It always seems to comfort them, they’ll carry away the damnedest things, it gives them the courage to go on. It’s strange, but it happens all the time, I truly know it helps.”
“Yeah.” Spider looked at Josh in a rush of pity. The lawyer had no reason to suspect that his love for Valentine had not been a secret to Spider. While he’d been sailing from island to island, letting the sea and the sky and the wind slowly deal with his grief, Josh had been forced to stick to business as usual, unable to admit to anyone that he too had lost Valentine.
“Why don’t you give it to Billy yourself, Josh?”
“I have to meet Sasha in ten minutes, and I’m late already.”
“Okay, Josh, leave it with me and I’ll manage to get it to Billy somehow. One thing I’m sure of, she’s not in the office. Josie told me that a minute ago, and Josie would know.”
As Josh left, Spider realized why he had instinctively hid the “P.D.Q.” article, although Josh would unquestionably know all about it long before the day was over. He couldn’t endure watching anyone, anyone at all, read it, even someone as totally devoted to Billy as Josh Hillman. He touched the apricot marble with one tentative finger, and traced the beautifully swirling letters of the word Scruples that had been chiseled into the stone. Was it possible that this reminder of a past triumph would give Billy something to hang on to through the shipwreck of that unspeakably sickening article? The vomit that Harriet Toppingham had published? Unquestionably the nameplate had somehow helped Josh, that much was sure, or he would never have kept it all this time. Thank God the guy no longer needed it.
“Let me speak to Burgo O’Sullivan,” Spider said to the gateman who had refused him admittance to the Ikehorn house.
“Yes sir.” He handed Spider the phone.
“Burgo, it’s Spider Elliott. Yeah, I know she’s closed the house to visitors, the gateman told me. But, Burgo, you know as well as I do it’s not a good idea to be alone when you need a friend to talk to. I’ve tried to find Gigi—I called her apartment but no one answered. Look, Burgo, there really isn’t anyone else but me right now, is there? Someone has got to be better than no one. Sure. Will you tell him that? Thanks, Burgo.”
Spider handed the receiver to the gateman, who listened and promptly opened the electric gates for him. Spider pulled up in front of the house, where Burgo was waiting to greet him.
“Where is she?” Spider asked as he got out of his car, the piece of marble under his arm.
“After Mr. Prince left, she went upstairs for about an hour. Her maid said she was locked in her dressing room. Then she came down in her old cape and went out to walk around,” Burgo replied with a deeply worried look. “She hasn’t come in since. My hunch is that she’s in her private garden. I’ll show you where it is. If she’s not there, your guess is as good as mine. All the garden lights are on, you can look around as much as you like. I’ll let the guards know you’re here so they won’t bother you.”
Silently, without any small talk, Burgo led the way along the most direct path that cut through an olive grove and eventually came to a stop before the barrier of sentinel cypresses that concealed the stone walls of the garden. It was a chilly, windy night, the trees bending and rustling under the force of a dry Santa Ana wind that drove a full moon across the starry sky. Burgo parted the branches of two old cypress trees and revealed the door to the hidden garden. He gestured briefly and walked away before Spider could knock.
Faced with the uncompromisingly blank, well-made wooden door, Spider hesitated. He could leave Billy alone, in the privacy she had asked for and expected to be accorded her. He could stand here quietly, then wander around the grounds for a decent interval, and drive away, telling Burgo that he hadn’t been able to find her. He knew he must be absolutely the last person Billy would want to see, tonight or any other night; she hadn’t spoken a single word to him since their fight, she had even contrived never to be in the same room with him. In the course of the last month they had not laid eyes on each other once. But if there was any comfort on earth he could bring to Billy, if this fragment of marble had one-hundredth of the power Josh said it had, he had to give it to her. He knocked.
“What is it, Burgo?” Billy’s voice called.
“It’s me, Spider.”
A minute passed. Then another. “It’s not locked,” she said finally, in an absolutely neutral tone.
Spider pushed open the door and stood still, suddenly robbed of the power to move, bewildered by the magical whiteness of the enclosed garden, lit so softly that no source of light was visible. The passage through the somber screen of cypress into this square of concentrated enchantment made him feel as if he had stumbled into the heart of an awe-inspiring mystery. A living carpet of small white flowers eddied around his feet like surf foam, white tulips grew thickly around his knees, taller lilies tickled the backs of his hands, white roses climbed above his head and thrust their blooms so high that night was all but banished. The mingled sweetness of the climbing jasmine and roses startled him with its power; the moon’s reflection, a shivering shimmer, was the only adornment of the small center pool set so tightly into banks of fairy primroses that it seemed to have been dropped from the sky. He looked around for Billy, but he couldn’t find her.
“You’ve never been here,” she commented without any inflection, from her concealed seat across the garden under the arbor laden with twisted ropes of white wisteria.
At the sound of her voice, Spider located her barely visible form. “I never knew it existed,” he said, not daring to move.
“Since you’re here, come in.”
“Thank you.” He followed the curve of the path and stopped three feet away from the arbor seat, awkwardly putting the marble nameplate down behind him. Now that he was closer he could see that Billy was sitting far back, closely wrapped in some sort of dark, ample covering. Her head was shadowed by a hood, and he could barely make out the slight gleam of her dark eyes. He couldn’t give her the nameplate now, Spider thought, not here. He had expected to find Billy indoors, expected to repeat Josh’s words, deliver Josh’s gift and retreat, but in this sweet, blowing company of blazing, fragile whiteness, his solid hunk o
f marble seemed out of place.
Billy herself, in the shadows she had chosen, was suddenly inscrutable. He felt a great confusion fall over him. What did he truly know of the woman who sat here so quietly, whose retreat he had dared to invade? What could she have been thinking as she looked out at her garden, as if from a box at the theater, on a performance of private splendor? Suddenly he remembered Billy as she had sat with him at lunch one day in New York, in Le Train Bleu. She had worn high-spirited red, he thought, seeing her vividly, and she had been in total command of her electrifying self, her eyes carrying an empire within them, her strong throat a stalk more beautiful than anything in this garden. That day he had taken fresh measure of the depth of the intensely feminine tenderness that lived in her side by side with an autocratic impulsiveness. He understood her better now, after their intense partnership on Scruples Two, yet as well as he comprehended women, she still managed to elude him. More than in any woman he’d ever met, something about Billy remained fundamentally unknowable on the most basic level. He appreciated the depth of her shyness, yet she could be dauntless and daring far beyond other women. She’d managed to screw up her life, yet she’d maintained a powerful authority as she did so. She was sweet—oh, so sweet—but somehow unaware of the power of her own sweetness. He had come only to bring her comfort. He needed, more than anything, to heal her hurt somehow, to take away her pain, but he didn’t know how to begin, because of all the trouble between them.
“I came—” He faltered, and sought a new phrase.
“No, don’t,” Billy said, holding up a hand in prohibition. “I … I have to apologize to you. The things I said, they were totally unforgivable, I can’t explain them … I don’t expect you to forgive me, but—”
“No!” Spider was appalled at her words. “No! Don’t apologize! I was out of line, a hundred percent wrong, and you were right. But tell me you don’t think of me as a louse. I can’t endure your thinking I’m contemptible. Even if you do, say you don’t! Christ, Billy, I’ve missed you so! You’ll never have any idea how much I’ve missed you. We can never fight like that again, no matter what happens, it hurts too much. Jesus, I’ve cried myself to sleep, that’s how bad it’s been.” He stopped suddenly, amazed that he’d told her so much. He’d sworn to himself that no one would ever know how childish he’d been.
“But,” Billy said in a tiny voice, “but …”
“What does that mean?” Spider asked, confused.
“I … missed you too,” she answered, in an even smaller voice.
“You mean you don’t hate me?”
“Unfortunately … not. That would make it easy.” She shrank back farther into the protection of the folds of her old, sable-lined cape.
“I don’t get it—can’t we be friends again the way we used to be?” he asked, refusing to accept a note of unqualified farewell in her voice that terrified him. He moved toward her, bent down and took her cold hands in his, and tried to warm them.
“Friends? Oh no, Spider, not friends … not the way we used to be … I’m going away … back to Paris.… or maybe somewhere else … I’m not sure yet.”
“Billy, for God’s sake, you can’t leave! I won’t let you! It’s that lying garbage in the magazine, isn’t it?” he asked, trying to peer down at her face, almost hidden by the hood of the cape. Unable to see her and afraid to ask permission, he sat down gingerly on the edge of the narrow garden seat.
“No, not that,” Billy said. “It wasn’t a lie, you know. It happened, not exactly the way they said, but close enough. That’s why I didn’t tell you about Sam when you asked. I wasn’t proud of it, although, on balance, I believe I made an honest mistake. At first, after I read what they wrote, I was so assaulted by the tone of it—the sneer—that I felt like a poor, shriveled thing, someone without an identity except the one they pinned on me. And then, as I read it over and over, unable to leave it alone, it became thinner and thinner until the words became unreal. That thing wasn’t about me at all. I discovered that I don’t perceive myself as a pathetic person. Not anymore. Somewhere, somehow, I seem to have picked up some unmistakable self-esteem—high time, too, as my Aunt Cornelia would say, but never too late. I did have a bad time as a girl … growing up … but since then I’ve had a real life with real love and real friends and real achievements. Real ups, real downs, like everyone else. There is a real me—even if I don’t suit everyone’s taste. Don’t worry, Spider, I’ll survive that miserable magazine, I would never run away and give them the satisfaction of thinking they’d driven me out of town—”
“Then why are you even talking of leaving?” Spider interrupted fiercely. “How can you? It’s simply not possible, I won’t let you go.”
“It’s … it’s … because we can’t be friends again.”
“Why not?” Spider demanded in anguish.
Billy was silent, struggling to gather together all her powers, willing herself to speak, to be honest at last, to say the inadmissible words, get them out and over with and put them behind her for once and for all, to give herself a chance to get on with her life. She couldn’t live like this, tasting her lonely love on her tongue, drawing it in on her breath, breathing it out in each sigh.
“Because … because you can’t keep a friend if you’re … jealous of him.”
“Jealous?” Spider asked blankly.
“Oh, my God, Spider, do I really have to spell it out for you? What do you think made me say those cruel things? Didn’t you even guess? I was jealous … yes, of Gigi … yes, of all the other.… women in your life. Of all the women.… you’ve.… loved.”
Billy abruptly pulled her hands away from his and pushed her hood farther forward so that he couldn’t see her face at all, burrowing into her cape for protection.
“ ‘Jealous,’ ” Spider repeated slowly, in wonderment and the confused but unmistakable dawning of an impatient, rising hope that he knew far, far less about Billy than he had dreamed, unbelievably less, beautifully less. “Jealous. You wouldn’t be jealous if—”
“Don’t! Don’t say it! Have some decency, don’t rub it in. It’s bad enough as it is! I have to get over it and I intend to,” Billy said with pitiless determination.
“Oh no, you won’t!” he cried, taking her in his arms and pulling back her hood so that he could see her desolate, pain-filled eyes and her trembling, determined, ardent mouth. He cradled her astonished face in his big hands, keeping himself from kissing her with a heroic effort. First he had to explain things so that she would understand. “If you make a move,” Spider told her solemnly, no hesitancy in his voice, “if you take one step, I’ll follow you, wherever you go, I’ll camp out on your doorstep, if you want privacy you can have it, but I’ll always be there for you, waiting patiently. You must never go away from me again, you can’t leave me, we’ve been apart for too long, we’ve wasted too much time. Now listen to me carefully, Billy, this is the important part. About a year and a half ago you rang my doorbell, and the second I opened my door and saw it was you, I fell in love. But the insane, awful thing is that I didn’t understand it until just now. Billy, I’ve been hopelessly in love with you right from that moment, but it never occurred to me that you could love me—you’d never seemed … well, to care about me that much, we’d never had a flicker of an underground romance, so I didn’t allow myself to know it, I never let myself even imagine … never started to even wonder.… oh, but you do love me, I know it—I can’t be that wrong now, can I?” he implored. “Not when I love you so much. Oh, say you’re not going anywhere without me, Billy, please say you’ll never desert me, say you couldn’t be that unkind.” Spider pleaded with her with all his heart, as a man might beg for his life, still not entirely sure he was right, for Billy’s few, almost enigmatic words had taken him utterly by surprise. “Say you’ll never be jealous again because there’ll never be a reason, say you know I’ll be true to you forever, because I will be—for God’s sake, Billy, say something!”
“I don’t know
where to start,” she whispered, her face awakening to the birth of a transforming happiness. “Ask me more questions.”
“Oh!” He kissed her over and over in a fury of relief and sudden certitude and discovery. “I’ll ask you more questions, don’t you worry about that, we can go back and start this right, back to basics, like in the olden days, I’ll ask you out on a date and I’ll come by and pick you up and take you out for dinner and—and then I’ll bring you home and ask if I can see you again sometime, maybe next Saturday night, or even better, tomorrow, and then I’ll ask if I can kiss you good night, like this and like this and like—”
“Do we have to start so far back?” Billy managed to whisper between his needful, poignant kisses, kisses that had obsessed her for so long that she could scarcely comprehend their warmth, their breathtaking reality, their indisputable substance, scarcely believe that this was not just another daydream. “I’m much too … sophisticated.… to start dating again.”
“Anywhere you want … oh, darling, I’m so much in love with you I don’t know what to do. Can’t we get married? Come on, Billy,” Spider urged her, his voice becoming almost unrecognizable with impatience. “I can’t stand waiting around for all that in-between stuff when I’m absolutely sure what’s going to happen in the end—there’s no other possible way for us to exist except married to each other. Darling, what can I say to make you understand?”
“There’s always been this one particular thing about you, Spider,” Billy said, laughing in profligate bliss as she looked up into his eyes. She caressed his lips possessively, borne strongly aloft on a surge of happiness so pure that it was crystalline, so powerful that it felt like riding the swell of a mighty ocean, so indivisible that she trusted it fearlessly. “You have the most amazing ability to talk me into anything, anything at all. Are you going to miss it when you discover that everything you want, I want too? Because if you prefer, I can always put up a fight, but wouldn’t it be simpler if I said yes, in advance, to everything?”
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