Inheritance

by Judith Michael

  When Allison opened the door, their eyes met in silence. She was frowning because he looked familiar, but she couldn*t place him. And even while she tried to pin down that elusive familiarity, she knew his hard face wasn't like anyone*s she knew: the strong jaw, dark brows almost meeting above bard blue eyes, blond hair combed but still a little windblown, a tall, lean body standing at ease but the neck muscles taut for no reason that she could see. There was a contained fierceness in him that attracted her: she was curious about what was behind the sober respectability of his dark business suit and horn-rimmed glasses.

  She held out her hand. "Ben Gardner?** At his quick flash of surprise, she smiled. 'Tm Allison Salinger. I always get people*s names; it*s best to know who*s supposed to be help-mg me.** Their hands met with equal strengtfi.

  He knew of her. In the days when he read magazines and newspaper articles, looking for mention of the Salingers, he had read about Allison. Felix*s daughter.

  *Tlease come in,** she said.

  A young woman sat on the couch, and Albeit was on a hassock nearby, a clipboard on his lap. But Ben still looked at Allison. He*d thought he knew what she looked like, from seeing her picture occasionally in a magazme or newspaper, but no picture had the impact of the woman before him. She was more striking than he had imagined, and more aloof, and he found himself wondenng what she would be like when aroused. His eyes showed nothing, his face was impassive, but he was imagining the feel of that long, angular body and silken hair beneath his hands as he forced her to drop her cool facade and the small smile she wore as provocatively as her pale satin robe.

  "My cousin Patricia Salinger,** Allison said. "Patricia, this is Ben Gardner, the director of security.**

  Patricia looked up and nodded. A pale echo of Allison, Ben

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  thought, with none of her style. Which means it comes from Leni. It had been a long time since he had wanted to confront the members of the Salinger family and make them pay for what Felix had done to his father; even a thirst for revenge diminishes as a boy of thirteen becomes a man of thiity-one. Now he found himself once again wanting to meet them.

  **rve told him everything I know," Patricia said, tilting her head toward Albert. 'It's astonishing that your security is so lax; have you been doing this sort of work very longT*

  *Tatricia is upset," Allison said quickly. ''She . . . bought the vase for ... as a gifr for my mother. It was very special to her."

  'Thanks so much, dear Allison," Patricia drawled. "But why make up a story? Why should you care whether a hotel employee thinks I have cause to be upset or not? Fm annoyed because it was a rather nice vase and I bought it for myself, not for the first maid who came along."

  She could make trouble, Ben thought. But Allison, who had surprised him by trying to soften her cousin's harsh words, might keep her in check if she wanted to. "Do you have information about a maid taking it?" he asked evenly.

  "Of course not; we weren't here. But the maids were; we'd been shopping and our packages arrived— ** She gestured toward Albert. "He has all this; I don't know why I need to repeat it."

  "You needn't, of course, if you've told Albert everything; I'm sure you'd like to get to sleep. I'll read his report and taSk to you in the morning. If you'll call my extension when you get up we can discuss how we'll proceed."

  He had not sat down. He bent his head toward Patricia in what was neither a bow nor a nod, but something in between, and turned to go.

  "Why don't we talk at breakfast?" Allison asked.

  There was the briefest hesitation. "We could do that. Eight o'clock?"

  Patricia was crossing the room to her bedroom. "Allison, you know perfectly well I don't eat breakfast."

  "I forgot," Allison said blandly, looking at Ben. "But if Mr. Gardner has breakfast with me, he can talk with you afterward."

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  lt*s quite ridiculous," Patricia said from her doorway. *'We'll never see that vase again; some crawly little maid has already sold it. I don't know why you even bothered to call . . r

  Her door closed behind her. Ben and Allison looked at each other. Finally Albert rose. "I shall type up my notes; they are not easy for anyone but me to read. . , ."

  "ril come with you; I have work to do." Ben*s face was taut with the effort of keeping his eyes from betraying him when he looked at AlUson. ''Until tomorrow/* he said to her and followed Albert into the corridor.

  Looking at the closed door, Allison smiled. Breakfast, she thought. Not my best time of day, but a nice time to begin. And I get better as the day goes on; by the time we have dinner together, Til be totally irresistible.

  "For your cousin," Ben said at the breakfast table, and handed a box to Allison with Patricia's vase nestled in tissue paper inside.

  Puzzled, she looked at it, and then at Ben. "It wasn*t really stolen? Or you found it. Do you solve all your thefts so eas-Uyr

  "We don't have many, and our job is to solve them."

  She waited. "And who is the villain?"

  "One of the maids. We're still looking into it."

  Allison let it drop; he wasn't ready to talk about it. The waiter came to take their order, and Ben met his thinly veiled surprise with a flat look. There would be talk in the employees' lounge about Ben Gardner and Felix Salinger's daughter, but it wouldn't last long and it couldn't hurt him. The staff paid almost no attention to the Salingers of Boston, so long as their salaries were good and they were left akme in the dmiy workings of the hotel they considered almost their own.

  Allison ordered melon, apple bread, and coffee, and Ben said he would have the same, and then they sat back, the box on the carpet between their upholstered chairs. The restaurant was in muted shades of gray, mauve, and wine, and on every table was a fiesh iris in a tall crystal vase.

  "Do you know why this is here?" Allison asked, touching

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  tbe iris widi a gentle fingertip. Ben shook his head. "My grandmother was named Iris. When she died—years after she died—when my grandfather was able to think about living without her, he ordered all his hotel managers to do this: a fresh iris, every day, forever. Even my father wouldn't dare change that.**

  Ben drank his coffee, and looked out the window at the Amstel river and the pedestrians walking past the hotel. He didn't want to hear about Owen Salinger, not now; he wanted to ask about Laura and Clay and the five years since he had seen them. But of course he couldn't. How could he explain Ben Gardner, a hotel employee in Amsterdam, knowing that a Laura Faiichild and her brother. Clay, had been living with the Saling^^?

  He would wait. There was no rush. If he was careful and patient, he thought, he and Allison could go on for a long time.

  "Where are you from?" Allison asked. 'Tell me how you got here. I h^rd you speaking Dutch in the lobby; why would you both^ learning it, when everybody in the whole country speaks English?"

  "Because the language of the Netherlands is Dutch, and if I want to woriL here they have a right to ask mc to speak their language.**

  **You're American, not British." He nodded. "In fact— New Yo±r

  "Yes. You have a good ear."

  The waiter placed pale green melons before them, then an array of plates filled with thin slices of cheese, sausage, and various breads, a basket of rolls, a tray holding small jars of honey, jams, and jellies, and a silver pot of coffee. **With the compliments of the concierge," he said to Allison. "He regrets the discOTsfort and displeasure you have experienced and hopes you will allow him to do anything in his power to repair the damage and make your visit one of perfection."

  Allison lau^ied. "He said all that?"

  "It sounds exactly like Henrik," Ben said. "Shall we ask him to join us?"

  "No. Convey my thanks to Henrik," she told the waiter. "And tell him I'll see him after breakfast." She turned back to Ben. "You were telling me about your life in New York."

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  **i

  *I
was telling you you have a good ear."

  "Because of New York. Not a strong accent, though.*' She tilted her head. "You've worked at getting rid of it. Are you getting rid of memories, too?"

  "About as many as you are."

  "I'm not getting rid of them; I'm trying to understand them."

  "So you can repeat them? Or to make sure you don't."

  *To make sure I don't. How very easy it would be to repeat them."

  "Especially if they involve other people."

  *They don't."

  "No one else? You made mistakes all by yourself?"

  "I didn't say mistakes; I said memories. And of course other people were involved. But they have nothing to do with whether I repeat something or not. Will you tell me how we—"

  "Was it a man? A woman? A friend? Someone in your familyr'

  "A little bit of everything. A death and a divorce and ... a few other things. How have we— '*

  "Your grandfather's death?"

  "Oh, you know about that? Well, of course, everybody in the hotels would know. That was part of it."

  *And your divorce. Recently?"

  *Last November; Thanksgiving, in fact. My ex-husband won himself an eariy Christmas present of a huge sdimony—a very big payment for a very small performance—and went his merry way and I sold the apartment I'd bought us on the harbor and left town. Will you please tell me how we got to talking about me when I started out asking about you?"

  "I have no idea," he said solemnly, ^ukI for die first time they laughed together.

  Allison licked the tip of her finger and picked up crumbs of apple cake with it. 'This is wonderful. Did your chef bake it?"

  "No, your chef did."

  She colored. "I wasn't making fun of you. You're part of this hotel."

  "I work in it; you own it."

  She frowned. "Why are you trying to make me uncomfortable?"

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  Ifc paused. "I don*t know. Why are we having breakfast togetherr

  "'Because I want to get to know you. You're making it more difficult than—very difficult."

  **Morc difficult than most menT*

  She smiled. ""Much more. I think we should start again."

  "Fm sorry; I have to get to work." He pushed back his chair and stood. *1 really am sorry."

  "It's only nine o'clock."

  "I start work at nine."

  "^kJ when do you stop?"

  "At six."

  "Then you'll be fi:ee at seven for dinner."

  "Allison ..." He saw her face change and heard her catch her breath at the rough caress in his voice. Allison Salinger, he reflected: heiress to the Salinger hotels and the Salinger fortune. Felix's daughter. Not the kind of pliant woman Ben had always preferred, but impressionable and still unskilled in hiding h^ feelings. And she wanted him. He relaxed. "Seven o'clodk,*^ he said, and put his hand briefly on her shoulder, feeling the shudder that rippled beneath his palm. "Shall I choose flie restaurant?"

  "Please."

  "I'll call your suite at seven." He turned, then turned back and kissed her hand, neutrally, the way a European friend would do it. The lover comes later, he thought, and left the crowded restaurant to walk through the lobby to his office. And off and on, all day, he thought about Allis(» Salinger, and still was not sure what he would say to her when he phoned h^ just before seven and she met him in the lobby.

  They wa&^ to Dikker en Thijs in silence. Allison seemed withdrawn, smd Ben, sensitive to the smallest signals, wondered what he had done wrong, and so they looked away from each other as they walked, only beginning to relax as they came under the spell of Amsterdam's clear golden li^t, slanting across the city from the low sun of eariy evening. It was the light that Rembrandt had painted; it was the light that mod^n tourists tried to capture with their cameras as it bathed the city's narrow streets, ancient stones, and stately buildings —turreted, gabled, arched, and topped with symmetrical

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  clock towers and chimneys—in a glow filled with promise and hope. It was a light that had drawn Ben to stop his wanderings through Europe, and stay.

  There had been other reasons for him to choose Amsterdam. Because even on days when lowering clouds and driving rain engulfed it, the city had a nervous, driving energy that reminded him of New York: people rushed through the streets instead of strolling, the theaters and concert halls were full every night, the shops were cosmopolitan, and the city's red-light district, strip joints, sex shops, and cabarets pulsed with a raunchiness that put most of Europe in the shade. It was a city where Ben Gardner could find anything and be anything; it was a city he could almost call home.

  He had rented a room in the Jordaan, a district that attracted all the eccentrics of Amsterdam as well as working people and struggling young artists and writers; and he bought a bicycle to join almost everyone else in the city who had long since given up on finding a place to park and depended on two wheels instead of four. Within a week he had a woman and he had begun to learn Dutch; in less than a year he had moved to a nearby apartment and, at the Amsterdam Salinger, had worked his way up from porter to maintenance man and then to assistant director of security. And a year later, he got the director's job itself.

  Now, walking with Allison, blending in with the throngs of visitors going to dinner and woricing people on their way home, he occasionally broke the silence by pointing out a particular building, or commenting on the stalls selling herring or pancakes, or asking her to stop for a moment to listen to one of the enormous street organs so heavy they had to be pushed along by teams of men while pouring forth waltzes and jazz on a weird mixture of cymbals, pipes, drums, wooden blocks, and plucked wires.

  But even with the golden evening light and the distractions of street stalls and music, they still were awkward and stiff when they were seated at a window table in the restaurant. Neither the view of the tall homes along the Prinzen-gracht—^"Princes' Canal"—nor the classic French luxury of the restaurant, nor the excellent wine Ben had ordered in advance eased their discomfort, until Allison, as if forcing her-

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  self to be natural, broke the silence. Looking at the canal flowing below their window in small, scalloped ripples, she gestured toward the long row of houseboats tied up along the far side. "Are all the boats in the city painted IDce floating farms?"

  Ben followed her gaze. The boats were flat-bottomed, each with a rectangular house in the center brightly painted with cows and butterflies, windmills in fields of tall grass dotted with white and pink flowers, and birds in flight against a daric blue sky. Most of them had deck chairs in the stem, beside the steering wheel; on one of the boats, a small dog stood on a deck chair and eyed the passing scene. 'They're all painted one way or another," he said. "Most people live on them because they can't afford anything else. So they paint them to look like the countryside to remind themselves of what they hope to have someday."

  "I'd like to live on a boat," Allison said dreamily.

  "Close quarters."

  "Well, but cozy and comforting, too. And you could always go on land to get away."

  "From the boat? Or the person living with you?"

  "Oh, I'd only live on it alone. Unless I found someone I wanted to share it with. And then I wouldn't want to get away."

  Ben raised his wineglass. 'To 'someone.' I hope he finds you."

  It was a curious way to phrase it. Allison studied him. "Thank you. I hope he does, too."

  There was a small silence, more comfortable than when the evening began. "What will you do when you return to Boston?" he asked.

  "Oh, no, you don't." She sat straight, one hand holding the wineglass, the other property in her lap. "This time we're going to talk about you. Tell me about New York. Tell me about everything that led you from New York to Amsterdam."

  It had been years since Ben talked about himself, but now he did. And he told ahnost the truth, walking the finest line b
etween what he could say and what he couldn't. Because he had learned, during the past years, that while it was often better to tell all the truth than part of it, it was always better to tell pait of it than none at all.

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  "My father owned a furniture company—he was a designer and a manufacturer—and he had a partner who supplied the start-up money and some customer contacts."

  "What kind of furniture?"

  "For hotels. It was a small company but it grew, and my father was proud of it. This was before I was bom, but years later he told me there were three things he had loved in his whole life: me and my mother and that little company. When the war started—the Second World War—my father fought in Europe. I never knew how his partner avoided the draft, but he stayed home and ran the business. A few months before the war ended, my father was badly wounded. He came home in pain and anger, furious at a world that allowed the barbarity he'd seen, and he found his company gone. His partner had dissolved it and taken its designs into another company that he and his father owned."

  Allison searched his face for emotion but found none. His features didn't seem as hard as they had the night before, when she had first seen him, but he showed no tenderness or sadness or anger. "Is your father still alive?"

  "No."

  The captain appeared and refilled their glasses. "Another bottle, sir?"

  Ben nodded. "And the duck pat6." He contemplated the ruby wine in his glass. "He died when I was thirteen. My mother died eight years ago. She'd remarried, but I've been pretty much on my own since my father died, working around New York—"

  "Doing what?"

  "Cleric in a grocery store, waiter in various restaurants, selling antiques that I picked up wherever I could . . . Then, five years ago, I came to Europe and began woricing mostly in hotels. Porter, maintenance man, desk cleric, even bookkeeper one time in Geneva. I wasn't expert at anything; I didn't know what I wanted."

  "And do you now?" she asked when he stopped.

  A small smile played at the comers of his mouth. "I think so.