by Judith Gould
She shook her head stubbornly. “Duncan, you know every important doctor in this town! Please! Couldn’t you just call a gynecological surgeon and have him come here and do it? You have the facilities.”
“Olympia, what’s wrong with a hospital?”
“I’d ... I’d really prefer Shir . . . Billie not to be in a regular hospital at this time. That’s why I brought her here in the first place.” She looked pleadingly into his eyes. “Please, Duncan? Trust me?”
“Olympia,” he asked tightly, “what the hell is going on?”
She was about to say something, but then seemed to change her mind. She compressed her lips, wondering how much she should tell him. When she didn’t speak for a while, irritation finally overcame his near-legendary patience. He got up and started for the door.
“Duncan, wait!” she called out.
Her voice stopped him.
“As you’ve probably guessed,” she said frankly, “Billie has been mixed up with some very bad people. But please, try to understand. I promised her I’d be discreet and not tell anyone. I gave her my word. All I want is for her to be able to put this nightmare behind her.”
“After what she’s been through, I wouldn’t be surprised if her mind just blanks it out. But if I’m to help her, Olympia, I’ve got to know more.”
She disagreed. “Duncan, believe me, the less you know about this, the better off you’ll be. The apes who did this to her aren’t the kind who’ll forgive and forget how I got her away from them.” She took a deep breath, glanced down at her hands, and then stared intently back over at him. “You see, I’m not scared only for her sake, Duncan,” she said quietly, “I’m scared for my own too.”
That got through to him; he came back and sat down opposite her again. “I hear what you’re saying, but I still maintain that what she needs is a good emergency room,” he reiterated. “Lenox Hill or Doctors Hospital. Even St. Vinnie’s or New York.”
She shook her head. “Duncan, listen to me!” Olympia gesticulated with an unlit cigarette. “Do you want Billie to die? Or have those apes make mincemeat of both of us? Can’t you understand that, for a while at least, she won’t be safe anywhere but here?”
“If it’s a matter for the authorities—” he began.
“The authorities!” She gave a snort of a laugh. “What can they do, except to protect her for a short while. And then what? They won’t be able to guard her for the rest of her life.” She shook her head adamantly. “Besides, I can’t bring the police into this because she told me she’ll refuse to press charges or testify.” She looked at him pleadingly. “Don’t you see? The kid’s terrified, Duncan! And if I take her to St. Vincent’s or wherever, I’d be killing her as surely as those apes would!”
He was silent.
“She has to be here. Has to be!” she echoed emphatically.
“It’ll be expensive . . .” he murmured at last.
She felt the weight on her shoulders lessening considerably. He was coming around; he had just about said as much. “So?” she countered negligibly. “What’s a little money?”
He looked at her evenly. “Do you have any idea just how expensive it’ll be?”
Olympia held up her hands. “Duncan, I don’t care what it costs! I’ll bear all the expenses; you have my word on that. Just give her your all, okay?”
“I guess I’ll never understand you, Olympia,” he said, marveling. “On the one hand, you’re tighter with a penny than Shylock himself. And on the other, you’re willing to fork out what amounts to a fortune.”
“Does that mean you’ll do as I ask?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Against my better judgment and for old times’ sake.”
She kept her relief from showing on her face. “Thanks, Duncan,” she said gratefully. “I really owe you.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’ve owed you ever since I got started in this racket. You and I both know that without you, this place would never have gotten off the ground.”
Eleven years earlier, when he’d first started his practice, Park Avenue and its side streets had had a higher ratio of cosmetic surgeons per capita than anywhere else in the world; it was even higher now. In the beginning, the going had been tough. And Olympia Arpel had steered Duncan’s first clients to him—models who needed corrective surgery for flaws only a ruthless camera lens could find; women approaching thirty who were desperately seeking to extend their too-short careers through lifts and tucks and collagen injections. That was how he had financed his struggling career until he had been able to make a name for himself.
Olympia’s part in his success was a debt he’d never forgotten. And Duncan Cooper was a man who paid his debts.
He said quietly: “And don’t worry about Billie Dawn’s bills, all right?”
Now it was Olympia’s turn to look amazed. “You’re putting me on.”
“I’m not,” he said flatly.
“You mean to tell me you’re actually going to give me a price break? You?”
He grinned easily. “I’ll even go one better. This one will be on the house.”
“Now,” she said, nearly overcome, “I think I’ve seen everything. Who would have imagined you, New York’s most expensive doctor, handing out freebies?” She started to laugh. “What’s next? Two-fers?” She shook her head disbelievingly. “Who would have believed it, Duncan? Under that frog’s exterior you really are a first-class prince.”
“And beneath that Mrs. Rambo toughness of yours, Olympia, there actually lurks quite a nice, likable lady.”
“Bullshit. What are you trying to do? Ruin my reputation?” She scowled, but her eyes crinkled with pleasure. Then a look of sobriety slid over her face. “After this, we’re even, Duncan. You don’t owe me any more favors.”
He raised his hands heavenward. “Praise the Lord!”
Chapter 21
At the de Riscals’, the party had finally moved into the dining room.
Edwina, normally cheerful and effervescent, was gripped by a particularly grouchy mood and, even more uncharacteristically, was feeling downright murderous. Her earlier injury—Anouk’s absconding with R.L.—was now compounded by insult. For Anouk had not only relegated her to what was definitely the least important table— the third one, in the breakfast alcove off the dining room— but also absconded with R.L. a second time by switching place cards at the last minute and moving him to her table.
The most important one, of course.
Edwina tried to bite the bullet, but it wasn’t easy.
Why is it, she asked herself plaintively, that I’m stuck at the worst table? Was I born under an unlucky star? Is this some kind of omen? Or am I cursed with a social defect I’m unaware of?
Half-turning in her seat, she slipped an aching glance over her right shoulder. R.L. was barely visible in profile—at Anouk’s side, looking like he was having the time of his life. The chatter from that table sounded like a cage of happy magpies at feeding time. And Anouk, Edwina noted, every so often touched R.L. warmly on the forearm with her right hand. Mummified bitch! Edwina thought with a flare-up of concentrated rage.
Glumly she looked around the table to which she had been banished. Besides herself, there were seven others, with Klas Claussen seated directly opposite her.
As far as Edwina was concerned, she would have been just as happy to dine alone.
“So there we were! Stuck a hundred miles from Manila, in the middle of nowhere, when the typhoon struck . . .” Sonja Myrra, aging sex kitten and star of soft porn of dubious quality, was holding forth with an anecdote about one of her very few, very minor films. At least she kept anyone else from babbling. No trills of exotic bird laughter ran up and down the musical scale as at the other two tables. At Edwina’s, the sounds of cutlery on china rang out all too clearly—like Sonja Myrra’s grating voice.
Edwina’s cutlery had been silent. She had barely touched the first course of oysters and mussels in featherweight puff pastry, and she’d stirred her spoon a
round in the fish soup without even tasting it. When the sterling trays of squab were ceremoniously presented, she grabbed one little bird with the silver tongs, deposited it swiftly on her plate, and spooned some sauce over it. She eyed the tiny thing malevolently. It looked suspiciously like a stunted parakeet.
The rich aroma of poultry and truffled meat sauce rising from the plate brought on a stifling bout of nausea. She looked away from her plate and breathed shallowly through her mouth. Any appetite she had had was completely gone. Most of it had fled when she found her place card and started to sit—and Klas Claussen had sat down opposite her. From that moment on, her evening had progressed from bad to hell.
Klas raised his wineglass in a mocking salute, and she quickly looked away. But where to look? On her right, the old husband-manager of a soprano was attacking his squab with relish; fragile bones crackled under his fork and knife. On her left, the even older publisher of one of New York’s dailies was in a world of his own, picking at his food and chewing tiny mouthfuls with slow, mechanical movements; beneath his liver spots, his ancient skin glowed translucently. Shifting her gaze, she saw the Spanish wife of an Arab arms dealer, nose poked practically inside her wineglass, rolling the Riesling around as if it had come from some dusty hundred-year-old bottle.
Sighing to herself, Edwina bleakly sipped her own wine. At least, she thought cheerlessly, matters can’t get any worse. Can they?
And then they did.
“Aren’t you going to toast me, Edwina?” Klas murmured tonelessly in that superior, sniffing way of his.
“Why should I?” Edwina didn’t bother looking at him.
Sonja Myrra’s harsh voice reverberated across the table like a shock wave. “If there is a reason to toast you, Klas, you must tell us!”
“Sonja is right,” Riva Price, the gossip columnist, chimed in. “We loathe secrets. Especially me! Is it something I can dish up in my column?” Riva stared intently at Klas. Then abruptly her gaze shifted to Edwina; the sharp, dirt-digging eyes were like two searing laser beams.
Sonja Myrra was, for the moment, blessedly quiet.
Klas waited, drawing out the suspense. His insolent pale, goading eyes never left Edwina, who was still slowly sipping her wine.
“Well?” Riva prodded.
Klas leaned back easily, smiling with his dissipated lips. “The announcement,” he said with slow and evident satisfaction, “will not be officially made until Monday. However, I’m pleased to announce that I have been promoted.” He raised his own glass higher, and the smile widened on his narrow face. “You are now looking at Antonio de Riscal’s new number two.”
Edwina’s heavy Baccarat wineglass slipped from between her fingers and crashed down on the priceless Meissen dinner plate. The two-hundred-year-old china cracked. Riesling leapt high, like a fountain. Crystal shattered. Her squab, thrown up by the impact, levitated momentarily before plummeting back down.
At all three tables, laughter and conversation abruptly stopped. Heads snapped in her direction, but she didn’t appear to notice. She was oblivious of everything but the bombshell Klas had dropped in her lap, staring in confusion at the mess of food, china, crystal, and liquid. Jagged shards of crystal lay there like so many rainbow-tinged fangs; she drew in a breath of dismay at the amoeba-shaped stain of Riesling spreading inexorably in all directions, darkening the snowy starched damask. She gaped, horror-stricken, at the irreplaceable antique plate that had once graced an emperor’s table. It sat in two accusatory zigzagging halves, split down the middle, parted like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
But her embarrassment gave way to her despair at Klas’s smug revelation. Her world had collapsed. Did an emperor’s plate really matter? She had been betrayed.
Sensing a sudden presence, she looked up. The imperturbable Banstead had materialized at her side, a starched white towel folded neatly across his forearm. “I’m most frightfully sorry, Miss Robinson,” the butler murmured with heartfelt sincerity, as though he were somehow personally at fault. “I didn’t realize you’d been given a cracked glass ...”
Edwina stared up at him. “Cracked? The glass wasn’t cracked.”
“Your dress did not suffer, I hope?” Banstead signaled smoothly to a footman, who jumped to and began to clear away the mess. “Another place setting will be brought at once,” he assured her.
Edwina shook her head. “I don’t want another place setting.” Her voice nearly cracked, and she pushed her chair back from the table.
“But, Miss Robinson—”
“Banstead, please!”
The butler vanished at once, as if she’d vaporized him.
Edwina turned to Klas, who met her gaze while blithely sipping his wine, and almost, but not quite, succeeded in looking bored. She could see the triumph glitter like moonlit frost deep within his eyes, the barest upturn of self-satisfaction hovering indulgently at the corners of his lips.
Moving in slow motion, she carefully removed the napkin from her lap, crumpled it, and placed it on the table. Unsteadily she got to her feet. Her knees wobbled and jerked. For one long, awful moment she was afraid her legs would actually give out. She had a remarkably clear peripheral view; all around, the glossy aubergine walls seemed to pulsate slowly. The grandiose ceiling cornice appeared to tilt and blister. At the windows, the opulently beribboned braids of pale pink silk seemed to writhe.
Like snakes.
What in God’s name was happening to her?
“Edwina?”
She gave a start, her attention drawn by the silvery voice. Anouk, all hollow cheeks and visible bones, was half-twisted toward her, a pale skeletal elbow draped decorously across the back of her chair. A long-tined sterling fork was poised like a miniature pitchfork in her hand.
Edwina could only stare. In the flickering candlelight, Anouk’s sharp features had a feral quality that seemed to pulsate, just like the walls. Was it some hallucination, she wondered, or was it a trick of the lighting . . . or did the heavy Bulgari sapphires really stretch Anouk’s earlobes halfway down to her bare, angular shoulders?
“Darling?” Concern oozed from Anouk’s voice. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Edwina took a deep breath and nodded. “I . . . I’m fine. Really.” She could feel everyone’s eyes staring at her. Rabidly, like hungry wolves savoring a lame lamb. Then, furrowing her brow, she frowned and shook her head as though to clear it. “No,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’m not.”
Anouk started to get up, but Edwina waved her back into her chair. Air, she thought desperately. I need air. I can’t breathe in here. It feels like all the oxygen’s been sucked out of the room.
Drawing deep, ragged gasps, she felt her chartreuse bodice tighten and loosen with every breath she took.
“Th-thank you for the lovely party,” she managed with all the effort she could muster. Her throat felt clogged, and the words sounded thick, as though they came from someone else.
“Eds.” This voice was soft and familiar, sounded genuinely caring.
R.L.
Mindless of the ravenous eyes all around, Edwina focused on him. His eyes were looking at her steadily, and the concerned, tightly knit expression on his face touched her deep inside. Like a jolt of pain. But just the sight of him was enough to give her a boost of strength. She couldn’t, mustn’t, wouldn’t let him see her like this—not falling into a thousand pieces. Not while he was watching.
Drawing on the last of her rapidly dwindling reserves, she forced her limp body to rearrange itself, and the sagging pieces reassembled themselves into a facsimile of her usual proud posture. “I . . . I’m sorry.” She raised her chin with an effort no one in that room except Klas Claussen could appreciate. “I’m not feeling well.
I . . . I think I have to—”
Then the hungry faces seemed to converge on her from all sides and the aubergine walls closed in completely.
The suffocating warmth was like a flash of hellish heat.
Clapping a hand across her mou
th, Edwina turned and fled from the beautiful, stifling apartment without even bothering to retrieve her coat.
R. L. Shacklebury didn’t wait for her quick footsteps to fade from the marble-paved hall. Nor did he excuse himself. Abruptly balling up his napkin, he tossed it on his plate and went after Edwina.
He’d let her get away once, years ago. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
Anouk was burning. Sitting immobile and impassive, she watched Edwina and then R.L. depart. Nothing indicated her fury but the merest hint of subtle muscles rearranging themselves under the smooth surface of her flawless face.
The nerve! The insult! How dare Edwina ruin her beautiful dinner party, for which every detail, from the most telling to the most inconspicuous, had been so carefully planned and artfully fulfilled!
I will kill the bitch! Anouk swore to herself. But she smiled brilliantly all around and slipped the napkin off her lap. “If you’ll excuse us, darlings,” she trilled to no one in particular, “Antonio and I will be back in a moment.” While speaking, she had risen fluidly to her feet. “Darling?” She raised her eyebrows at Antonio.
He rose to his wife’s summons. “We won’t be long,” he said to the room in general, and gestured. “Please. Don’t let the food get cold.”
“However,” Anouk, ever the consummate hostess, added archly over her shoulder, “if I miss so much as one conversational tidbit, I will want to hear it the instant I get back!”
Then she and Antonio moved unhurriedly out of the room. Only once they were out of sight of the diners did they half-run to catch up with Edwina and R.L.
Chapter 22
They intercepted Edwina in the elevator vestibule, where she was pacing furiously. She had obviously recovered her steel. R.L. watched in amazement as they smoothly went to work on her. He had to hand it to them. Like tag-team professionals, the de Riscals operated in incredible tandem.
