But it was a mistake. Sal flared at me. “I told you. Why do I have to keep telling you? He in love with someone else … utterly lovesick. The way he used to be, in the old days, that same dumb expression on his face—remember the way he acted when you gave him up for Jack? It’s the same look.” She was crying. “Who can it be now, Belinda? How can I do anything about it … do I want to do anything about it? Oh, God, I’d like to brain him …”
She mumbled an apology, still crying, and the line went dead.
Harry showed up at the loft in the afternoon.
He came in looking tired and a bit ashen, like someone who’d been put through the wringer once too often. The lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth were deeper and the gray over his ears seemed more visible. He kissed me, leaned back with his arms around my waist, and looked into my eyes. His were bloodshot, adding to the overall appearance of strain and weariness. He sighed and smiled resignedly. “God,” he said, “it takes me back. Do you ever think of the dear, dead days beyond recall?” He was carrying a bottle of champagne, which was cold and sweating. He walked toward the table and peeled the tinfoil off the top, began unwinding the wire holding the cork in place.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.
“Maybe I’m just in a mood,” he said. He dropped the wire on the table and began working the cork with his thumbs. I went to get glasses. “I just got a whiff of your perfume and it made me think of Williamstown, that little bedroom in the old mansion they’d turned into a hotel. Our first time, Belle.”
I came back with the glasses and watched the cork pop, fly across the room. The white bubbles ran down the side of the bottle. “I haven’t thought about that in a long time.” He poured our glasses and clicked the rims.
“To the old days, Belle.”
“To Williamstown.” I smiled at him, the memory flickering. He’d been very gentle with a frightened college girl who was taking it all very seriously. I’d never forgotten that. The friendship between us was so genuine in later years that Sally and Jack had never been bothered by the fact that Harry and I had been lovers.
He winked at me, went to the window, slipped out of his seersucker jacket, and dropped it onto the sill. Even Harry was sweating. “I was so happy then,” he said. “We spent the whole day and night in bed, we didn’t even eat.” He laughed. “It was never going to end. Well, hell … it ended.” He sipped champagne.
“It never really ended,” I said. “It was just the sex that ended. We’ve always loved each other. All four of us. Haven’t we?”
He turned back. “Sure, sure. And we’ll always have Williamstown. As Bogie would have said.” He shrugged, as if discarding the past. “I didn’t mean to get sidetracked. I brought this bottle to toast your success tonight and ease you into the festivities.”
Eventually he got around to telling me what was bothering him. I was glad he trusted me and turned to me. I almost thought I should tell him about Venables.
“Sally and I had a real row,” he said. “In Central Park the other day. Right before I ran into you and Hack—did I act like I was coming apart?”
“Anything but,” I said.
“Well, I was on the ropes, believe me. She hasn’t really spoken to me since. You can imagine it’s gotten a little tense with Peter there, too. Poor bastard. The thing is, she’s so sure I’m having an affair with someone. She doesn’t even have any candidates in mind, but there’s no talking her out of it. I don’t know what the hell to do.”
“Is it true?”
He gave me a startled look and poured us some more champagne. “I’m not having an affair with anyone. No. But have you ever thought how impossible that is to prove to someone who’s convinced you are? I mean, I can’t do it. She’s so sure.”
“Maybe it’ll pass.”
“I sure as hell hope so. That thing in the park—she was just crazy, Belle. I’ve never felt so frustrated …”
“How is Peter coping with all this going on around him?”
“He’s okay. Pretty cool customer. He’s spent more time with Sally than with me and I’m sure she’s unburdened herself to him.” He flung himself down on the couch. “I might as well tell you the truth. Sally’s made a fool of herself over Peter. Nothing serious, but it’s got to be an ordeal for him. But he’ll be gone soon. She’s very fond of him. I don’t blame her … but every so often it gets to me—”
“Maybe she’s trying to make you jealous. I mean, it is a tried-and-true stratagem.”
“You don’t really think so, do you? Jeez, that never crossed my mind … so I guess it’s not working. But she sure has a bur under her saddle. Christ.”
“How interested in Sally is Peter?”
“Come on, Belinda. You don’t think he and I would discuss that, do you? I don’t know … how the hell should I know?”
He glazed over on me, as if I’d somehow managed to intrude on Ruffian matters. A no-no, for sure. He didn’t say much more and left soon after, telling me to have a wonderful time at my opening and he’d be leading the cheering.
I lay in the tub for a long time trying to see what was really going on deep beneath the surface. There was a pattern to it all, I was sure, but it was so faint, so obscure, that I couldn’t make it out.
Chapter Twenty-one
I FELT AS IF I had wandered onto a movie set.
The night was tropical. A marquee had been erected on the streetfront. Palm trees in giant pots twitched in the faint breeze. Clouds had moved in and darkened the late sunlight prematurely, and there was a smell of rain in the heat. Humidity hung like cobwebs. Men in evening clothes and women in low-cut bright gowns, so much tan flesh, the throwaway gaiety of something like a Cairo Polo Club dance. The street was lined with dark limos and gunmetal-gray Bentleys. The chatter of conversation reminded me of a frantic moment at the neighborhood aviary. You could smell the rum and the gin and the fruitiness of the drinks. Busboys in whites fit for a navy composed entirely of admirals were everywhere. Guests sat at rattan tables and glistened moistly.
Carlyle Leverett had shot the works for the opening of Belinda’s Belindas. The paintings had struck him as erotic and he told me palm trees and tropical gear always did the same. Thus the theme. I had to admit, as theater it worked. I stood inside, looking out the huge windows at the art crowd, the beautiful people, the collectors, all the damned Ruffians gathered together to celebrate the opening. And it seemed a million miles away, nothing to do with me.
Paul Clavell kissed my check. “It’s natural,” he said, reading my mind, “I’ve seen it a million times. The artist as lost soul emerges from his studio and realizes the work has become the commodity. The artist has nothing to do with any of this. When Philip Roth publishes a new novel he always makes a point of being in Eastern Europe so he’s aware of none of … this.” He swept his hand at the crowd. “Be of good cheer, Belinda. They’ll all be at somebody else’s party tomorrow night.”
Someone was playing a jazz flute in the shade of a drooping palm. People I knew and many more that I didn’t swarmed around me, told me how wonderful I was, and gushed about the huge paintings. The gallery was full of smoke and endless talk. I noticed a few critics in beards and sport coats but it wasn’t their night. This was for the buyers, and every so often Leverett would whisper in my ear that another sticker was going up, another painting was sold. Because of their size and the striking quality of the graphics—if not the “art”—he had priced them, in my view, extravagantly. But in that atmosphere, I saw them not as my work but as objects that did have a certain appeal. Someone said: “These people can’t remember the last show they saw that the pictures were pictures of something they could actually identify. I mean, look at that. It’s a tit, right? Restores your faith.” I shook my head to myself.
Looking back on it now, I keep breaking the evening into pieces that I don’t seem able to glue back together.
Sally. It’s hard to recall what she said because what she said wasn’t important. It was
the way she looked, the sound of her voice, the dark hollows of her eye sockets—all such a contrast to her attempted gaiety and high spirits. She tried to bubble and was only shrill. She tried to give me confidence and love and succeeded only in making me worry about her.
Hacker. He loomed alone in the doorway, the crowd eddying about him, and I felt an adolescent frisson of relief that he didn’t have a girl with him. He caught my eye through the bustle, winked at me, and made a swirling motion with his forefinger, indicating he was going to make a tour of the paintings. Later I saw him leaning against a wall with his calm, moderately dazed expression, as Ruffians and pretty women stopped by to have a word with him. He had, since the opening of Scoundrels All!, become known in certain circles. The Times had done a feature on him, centering on his use of his own past friendships to create a specific piece of entertainment. The blond from the show had made a couple of columns, her name linked to his—but I was convinced that was the work of a press agent. Now he waited, alone.
Jack, looking tired and tense, moved from one old pal to another. Avoided me. His glass seemed ever full. His hand was shaking as he stood looking up at one of the paintings. There was a fleeting expression of disbelief on his face, as if it had somehow been transformed in the move from loft to gallery.
Harry and Mike were laughing, leaning toward a woman whose large bust was barely contained in her dress. A little paranoid explosion went off in a corner of my brain. Were they laughing at me, my work? But what the hell difference did it make, anyway?
Peter Venables, looking very elegant, was engaged in conversation with a short, round man whose back was to me. They were intent on one another, Peter shaking his head in apparent serious, thoughtful disagreement. When the man turned, I was surprised to realize that it was Tony Chalmers, once again down from Harvard. He was gesturing, his hand on Venables’ sleeve. Finally he shrugged, folded his arms, and turned toward me, caught my eye from beneath his gray Afro, and smiled.
Later I stepped outside. I thought I heard thunder. The flute was weaving in and out of my consciousness. I sat at one of the tables and Mike appeared, gave me a Bertie Wooster smile, and sat down next to me. “Must be a relief to get this show on the road,” he said. “As you know full well, I love your paintings. Leverett has outdone himself with the setting. I … well, I bought one!”
I felt a tear in the corner of my eye. I took his hand and held it to my cheek. And I saw Sally sitting at another table with Tony Chalmers. Her hands were folded in her lap, her eyes cast down, as she listened. She didn’t seem to be having much fun. Chalmers was lecturing her, but my mind wasn’t really on them. How could it have been?
As I chatted with everyone and watched the passing minuet my friends seemed to be dancing, I felt as if I were behind a protective glass that deflected anything approaching reality. I saw Jack again, sweating, pale, looking unhealthy, Harry at his side. I felt the tension everywhere, but I couldn’t make it stop pulsing long enough to identify it. And Jack worried me. He looked like a man building up to something.
It was late and the crowd was beginning to thin out a bit when I made my way back to Leverett’s office to use his rest room. I stood holding onto the sink, staring blearily into the mirror, wanting it all to be over. I felt as if I’d almost finished the course, the ribbon was in sight, and I had nothing left to give the race. People were calling to me but I didn’t speak their language and I wanted to … I never managed to finish my little excursion into mindless self-pity because I heard voices in Leverett’s office. A controlled fury that could have gone off the edge at any moment.
It was all so familiar. It was Jack, but I didn’t know who was with him. I was trapped in the bathroom, just as I’d been helpless in the rowboat while I peered into someone else’s life.
“Now, listen to me, you slimy bastard.” Jack slammed the office door behind him, blotting out the flute. “I know why you’re here, I know all about you. I know what you’ve always been. You can’t fool me the way you fool the rest of them. You haven’t changed a goddamn bit—and you know I know. You were a thief then and you’re a thief now. I caught you at it once and by God you’re not gonna steal anything from me this time. …” He was out of breath. I knew the drill. Fists clenched, face white. “Don’t say a fucking word,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I know what you came back for, don’t I? I mean, I would know—wouldn’t I, old pal, old chum, old sock? I know. But if you try it, if you make another move … I swear to God you’ll wish you’d never been born. You hear me?” His voice had risen to a shout. Someone moved, a chair scraped on the tile floor and tipped, clattered. “You hear me? You’ve been warned—”
There were unidentifiable sounds and I couldn’t wait any longer. I opened the door.
For an instant I saw them both, staring at one another, like children who have grown up physically but still operate on their primitive instincts.
Jack and Peter Venables.
Venables saw me first. He started to speak, trying to recover his composure, but he failed. He was afraid.
He turned and was through the doorway, gone.
Jack seemed to come back to the real world, saw me, and scowled. “What the hell are you doing? Spying on me? Trying to catch me misbehaving? Well, good for you—you win! Where does he keep something decent to drink?” He began rummaging in an antique cabinet. “That miserable son of a bitch. Maybe he can take the hint and get out … he’s after you, sweetheart, the bastard really is after you. Shit! Where’s the brandy?” He grabbed a bottle and a snifter, poured with trembling hand, and watched brandy run down the side of the glass, drip onto the immaculate tile. Suddenly he hurled the bottle against the wall. It exploded like a mortar shell, brandy spraying across the room. I felt myself snap.
“You’re insane. You’re insane! You make me sick! You ruin everything you touch …” I was screaming and it kept on. All the frustration and nerves and the wreckage of my psyche came pouring out. “Get out of my life, get out of all of our lives, I don’t ever want to see you again, Jack, never, never. …” I was sobbing and when he took a tentative step toward me I thought he was going to hold me, comfort me, and I threw up my arm to ward him away.
Then I was reeling backward against the desk.
I’d never been well and truly hit before and I felt the ringing in my ears, the pain radiating along the line of my jaw, the trumpet blast in my ear. My face was wet with tears. I sank to my knees. I looked up and he stood over me, his face a blank, as if he’d just hit a stranger who deserved it.
He walked to the door without looking at me again and went up the hall.
The next thing I knew Sally was bending over me.
Chapter Twenty-two
SHE WAS DABBING AT A thin trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth. The inside of my cheek had shredded against some teeth. And my head was aching in earnest. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the mirror while she quickly stopped the bleeding and mopped up. “Doesn’t show,” she muttered, wadding up the tissues and pitching them into the toilet. “Now, you’d better dry your wee tears and tell me what in the name of God is going on. Every time I turn around, you seem to be in the middle of somebody getting punched out.” She grinned sourly, shaking her head.
“First, why did you come back to the office just then?” I sounded funny to myself. My tongue was swollen and I kept chewing inadvertently on little strings of flesh from my cheek.
“Jack. He was coming up the hallway and I was trying to get away from Tony Chalmers—he was being unduly morbid and I was poised on the ledge of insanity—and Jack said something about your wanting me back here.” She shrugged. “I came in and you were down for the count. Please don’t tell me it was Jack—he’s been looking blue murder at everyone tonight.”
I nodded. “None other. I really flipped out at him. I don’t exactly remember what I said, but you know how it is, you just boil over sometimes … well, I boiled over tonight.”
“But why? Everything’s been so won
derful for you tonight, it’s such a triumph. Really, Belinda—so what set you off?”
“It was Peter again. I mean Peter and Jack. Jack had him here in the office, and I like a fool was trapped in the bathroom while they went at it—”
“Oh God!” she whispered, biting a knuckle. She went back into Leverett’s office and lowered herself slowly onto a chintz couch. “They fought?”
“No, no. Peter didn’t do much of anything. I just heard Jack yelling at him, something about being a thief, Jack knowing all about it—it made no sense to me. But when I heard a chair tip over I’d just had it. I came out of the bathroom and Peter saw me and he looked … well, he looked scared. Scared of Jack, scared of whatever Jack was saying to him, hinting at, I don’t know. But he saw me, then just shot through the doorway, and Jack turned on me.” I stopped for breath. The room reeked of brandy, and a piece of glass glittered like a deadly weapon on the desktop. The wall was streaked and the floor below wet and littered with broken bottle.
Sally lit a cigarette and coughed nervously on the smoke. She got up and looked at the mess, biting her lip. I was sitting in the big chair behind the desk. I had no idea what to do.
“Well,” she said at last, “you look perfectly presentable. Your party is still in progress and you’d better get back out there. God only knows when we’ll get this sorted out.”
“Sal, I’ve got to tell you something.” I might not have done it under normal circumstances, but normal circumstances seemed to be getting pretty scarce. “It’s about Venables … he made a very nasty pass at me when he first got to New York … we had drinks and he got to reminiscing and we had dinner and he took me back to the loft and … it got bad, Sal. I think I was lucky to get him to leave.” I hiccupped. Pure nerves. “I didn’t want to tell you. He was your houseguest. He was a Ruffian! We mustn’t speak ill of the bloody Ruffians …” I felt myself losing it and stopped, swallowed hard, and willed the hiccups to get lost. “Anyway, he sent me those yellow roses with a stupid veiled threat about making up for his behavior in person—you should have heard him, going on and on about how it was his turn and he was going to do this and that and I might as well just accept it—Christ, who remembers? But pretty rotten stuff … and at your party for the opening of the play he started in on me again. He was obsessed, like he was trying to prove something—and then Jack came and saw him and lit into him.” I watched her fingers tightening and untightening, fists appearing and disappearing. “They’re both totally crazy … but I didn’t think any of Venables’ bad form was going to come out, just because he was bound to go back to London soon. And then this, tonight. I’m sorry, Sal—none of this is your problem, I’m just babbling.”
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