11 Harrowhouse

by Gerald A. Browne

  Maren confided to Chesser that, actually, she had been the driver. Only Chesser knew. Maren didn’t confess, merely told him in order to share it, and, although he looked for signs of guilt, he saw none, at least not on the surface.

  A month after the accident, Maren went back to modeling. She was sharply criticized by Jean Marc’s friends, who thought at least a year of secluded mourning was respectfully due. She defied them all with insouciance, and soon again was appearing on the pages of Vogue Française.

  She needed the distraction, desperately, and besides, she claimed, during her personal communion with the spirit of Jean Marc he’d given his permission. The temporal Jean Marc, however, had not been so liberal. His will, properly notarized, clearly stated that all his wealth and holdings should go to his wife, Maren. She was the sole heir, entitled to all the millions that had been handed down to him. With one condiiton. If she should ever choose to marry again, the entire fortune would automatically go to the lawyer-executors.

  Chesser and Maren met a year after the accident. As soon as their relationship formed into serious involvement, Maren told Chesser about Jean Marc’s restricting condition. She believed it only fair that Chesser should know why it was impossible for her to just fly off somewhere and become Mrs. Chesser. It just wasn’t practical.

  Chesser agreed.

  Maren took the same opportunity to make a condition of her own. She wanted to be able to speak of the late Jean Marc without inhibition, without fear of provoking Chesser’s jealousy.

  Chesser also agreed to that. After all, he reasoned, it was easy enough to compete with a dead man for a live, sensually demanding twenty-five-year-old woman.

  So, it was not unusual for Chesser to be somewhere with Maren, at a restaurant or inn, for example, and have her remark, quite casually and often with tender reminiscence, “Jean Marc and I came here once.” She never did it intentionally to irritate Chesser. It would just come out. Jean Marc used to do this or that. Jean Marc once told me. Jean Marc liked. Jean Marc detested. Jean Marc never. Jean Marc always.

  It made Chesser uncomfortable at first. Then he got used to it. She was merely remembering aloud, he realized, and, after a while, Chesser began thinking of Jean Marc as an old friend. In fact, someone he knew well, though someone he’d never known.

  Maren’s verbalized memories of Jean Marc never created a problem. Chesser handled them with extraordinary confidence. What did become a problem, however, was Jean Marc’s money. There was so much of it. There were the evident things, such as huge, beautiful houses, precious paintings and objets d’art, stables of thoroughbreds, yachts, and planes. Then there were the intangibles. Controlling interests in various companies, great blocks of stock and accumulated dividends. It was the sort of complex fortune that continuously nourished itself. By its size it increased at a rate that defied depletion. Maren could spend and spend while she became richer and richer.

  She had only a vague idea of her worth as the widow of Jean Marc. Many, many millions was her nebulous estimate. Chesser, on the other hand, knew precisely what her financial status would be if she were to become Mrs. Chesser. His two hundred thousand dollars in the Swiss account, which he referred to as his fuck-you money, was a pittance by comparison. For his daily bread Chesser was dependent upon The System. Profit from packets brought him about a hundred thousand a year. Part of that went to ex-wife Sylvia; taxes took even more. The rest didn’t approach buying Chesser’s, not to mention Maren’s, way of life.

  Many of those to whom The System granted the privilege of receiving packets had built sizable fortunes. They spent most of their time dealing and exploiting their diamonds. Whiteman was a good example. He’d started small, squeezed off a few big deals, and now the value of his packet was way up. But such effort required a certain focused ambition that Chesser didn’t seem to have. As ex-wife Sylvia put it just before the divorce, “You look good but you’ve got no goddamn direction at all.”

  At times Chesser wanted to prove Sylvia wrong. Usually on mornings after too much of everything the night before, he’d make a resolution to concentrate on business, to start dealing. But he really didn’t want to, not enough. Each time Chesser picked up his packet from The System, he quickly disposed of it, usually without even opening it. He merely took a fair fast profit from a dealer in Antwerp or somewhere and forgot about diamonds for another month.

  Sometimes, when he allowed it to get to him, Chesser felt like a bird on the back of a rhinoceros.

  Money. Chesser and Maren discussed it only once. He told her exactly what he did and what he had. He didn’t ask her to give up her wealth for him nor did he pledge to make a supreme effort toward financial success. She didn’t volunteer to give up her wealth for him nor did she want him to try to become rich. She meant it when she said she thought his struggling to acquire a fortune would be an idiotic waste of time.

  They reached an agreement. They’d spend his money and her money. But there’d be no distinction between the two. His limited funds would merely be mixed in with hers, unlimited. It would just be money, for any purpose their love demanded.

  So far, it had worked. Because Maren never felt the need to belittle Chesser. And he was not burdened by an oppressive conscience. The only problem was one they both felt but never mentioned in the fear they might just be foolish enough to do it and spoil the whole thing. The more they loved the more they felt it.

  They wanted to be married.

  That was Chesser’s very thought now, as he sat in the bedroom of the Connaught suite and watched over Maren taking her after-love-making nap. He had the urge to hold her and suggest marriage. He prevented that by getting up quietly and going into the sitting room.

  The windows there were open, and the light that came through them gave everything in the room an almost neutral cast. It was neither day nor nighttime. More correctly, it was time between, the effect of a hesitation or suspension. Chesser didn’t turn on a light. He was nude and besides it was better to be able to see out while not being seen. He noticed it was just beginning to rain. He could hear the swift licking movement of cars on the wet street below.

  His business case was on the sofa. He placed it on the floor and lay on the sofa with his head upon the arm rest. From there he could see chimney pipes on the roof of the building opposite. London, he thought. He glanced toward the bedroom, but it was too dark to see Maren. Meecham came to mind. He reached and brought his business case up, placed it on his stomach. He went into the case and, without looking, found his packet. Then into the packet for the tissue-covered stones. He ripped the tissues away to have all the stones in the cup of his left hand. The figure seventeen thousand repeated in his mind. He knew he’d be lucky to make a five-thousand-dollar profit this time. Maybe only four thousand dollars. To get five thousand, he’d have to haggle.

  That pompous bastard Meecham.

  The fucking System.

  He let go. The diamonds spattered against the near wall. He lay there a while, trying to disregard them. He couldn’t. He had to get down on his hands and knees and feel around to find them on the soft rug. As he searched, he heard Maren’s voice coming from what seemed a different dimension.

  “I had a weird dream,” she said, standing in the bedroom doorway.

  He was just below her. He got up and kissed her, held her. The diamonds were in his hand. He wondered if he’d found all of them. He’d see when there was light. He broke from her to put the diamonds back into the brown envelope. His hand was perspiring and a few of the stones stuck. He brushed them off and in. He sat on the sofa, expecting her to sit there beside him, but she was already in a fat, stuffed chair, curled up. She lighted two cigarettes and flipped one to him. She usually did that. This time he didn’t catch it. The cigarette fell into the crevice of the sofa cushions and Chesser dug quickly to get it.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” said Maren. “I think it was an astral trip.”

  “Maybe it was just a regular dream.”

  “No. I
left myself. I saw you sitting in the chair and my physical body on the bed. My guide was with me.”

  “Which one?”

  “Billie Three Rocks.”

  “The Chinaman wasn’t around today?”

  “Just the Indian. He showed me one of my past lives. It was as real as this room. I was a soldier. I think it must have been in Greece. It was, because there were marble columns and statues all around.”

  “A woman captain?” asked Chesser.

  “I was a man, then. I told you how people change sexes from one life to the next. Remember? According to their karma.”

  Chesser nodded that he remembered.

  Maren told him, “You were there.”

  “I suppose I was a woman.”

  “You were my younger brother. There was a celebration for you because you were a hero. You’d just come back from a battle.”

  Maren’s great interest, second only to Chesser, was the supernatural. For her that included everything from spiritualism to Tantra. She’d read extensively on psychic phenomena, parapsychology, black magic, Tarot, the works. What evolved from all her research was a personal sort of orthodoxy which she felt somehow applied to all existence. No doubt her concepts were a throwback from her notoriously superstitious ancestors. In her native land the nights were always a half year long, so there was no lack of conducive atmosphere for dark and imaginative thoughts. Maren believed religiously in life after death, just as she believed emphatically that everyone had lived previous lives. She considered her and Chesser’s love an important aspect of their mutual destinies. They had, according to her, chosen one another while in spiritual limbo.

  Chesser never ridiculed her beliefs. He was wise enough to know that he didn’t know what was true. Besides, he had no better philosophy to offer. At times he envied her faith and wished he could believe as strongly in anything. Because he never challenged or denounced her convictions, she tended to assume they thought alike.

  “It’s raining,” said Chesser, for a different subject.

  “We were having a lovely time,” she went on. “It was a feast with everyone lying around gulping wine from golden goblets. Later on, you and I had a quarrel over a girl. A very pretty girl.”

  “And you won.”

  “No. It was settled most amicably. She wanted us both and had her way.”

  “Being the younger I was second of course.”

  “Simultaneously,” said Maren. “It was very erotic.” She thought a moment. “Perhaps it wasn’t Greece at all. It could have been Rome. I don’t remember what language we spoke.”

  “It’s really raining. Are you hungry?”

  “Starved.”

  “We can have dinner at Annabel’s, if you want. And do some gambling later.”

  “What were you doing just then, on the floor?”

  “I dropped something.”

  “What?”

  “A couple of diamonds.”

  No reaction from her. Obviously diamonds were inconsequential.

  By then it was night. They were sitting there in the dark with only the reflections of car lights moving intermittently across the ceiling.

  She said: “I don’t know if I feel like Annabel’s. I’d enjoy playing some roulette, though.”

  She got up, stretched, and came over to the sofa. She snuggled against him, submissively, in the cave of his arm. “Something’s bothering you,” she declared.

  “Not really.”

  “Diamonds?”

  She wasn’t clairvoyant, thought Chesser, just intuitive, adapted to his frequency. He tried to transmit another emotion.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Shall we get dressed and go to dinner?”

  “No.”

  Her hands were on him, not demanding, appreciating.

  “You said you were starved.”

  “Order something up,” she suggested.

  “Be almost as easy to go to Annabel’s. It’s only a couple of blocks. We could walk.”

  “We could.”

  “In the rain.”

  “Want to?”

  “We could.”

  “Did you make a reservation?”

  “No. And it’s Friday night.”

  “Probably be packed.”

  “Every place.”

  She laughed, a conspirator now.

  He said: “No roulette tonight, I guess.”

  “It’s a shame, really, because I feel influential tonight. I’ll bet I could will the ball into any number.”

  “We may be losing a fortune sitting here.”

  “My tummy’s grumbling. Hear it?”

  They had dinner in. The two waiters who brought it arranged the table in the sitting room and waited around to serve. Chesser dismissed them. Then he and Maren, after much difficulty unlocking the hinges of the extension flaps, wheeled the table into the bedroom. Chesser had put on a robe, but Maren remained nude. She suggested that he get undressed for dinner and he obliged. He’d ordered rare roast beef for himself and Dover sole for her. She’d definitely rejected the idea of also having roast beef, making a face as though she wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of it. But now she only nibbled at her sole and reached over to spear big chunks of the beef from his plate. Her smile apologized. He didn’t mind. It wasn’t unusual. If he’d ordered sole and she’d ordered beef, she would have gone for the sole. Maybe it was something from her childhood. She had a gigantic appetite. She could outeat Chesser any time. She ate her Bibb lettuce salad with her fingers, dipping the leaves into a server of mayonnaise. She asked Chesser if he wanted a taste of her sole. She already had a large portion aimed for his mouth, and although he wasn’t in the mood for fish he capitulated and said it was excellent. For dessert she had two lemon tarts and half of Chesser’s strawberry ice cream.

  Throughout dinner Chesser’s look went from her eyes to his food to her nipples. She had eyes of a color close to cobalt blue, bright, as though they were backlighted. And there were flecks of silver in them. Her nipples were erect. Chesser had never known any other woman whose nipples appeared always aroused. Maren’s announced their sensitivity with evident physical candor.

  She wet her forefinger with her tongue and used it to gather crumbs from her tart plate. Then she fell back on the bed, complaining ecstatically about how full she was. She crawled to the center of the big bed and lit two cigarettes.

  He caught his this time, and she complimented him with a glance.

  “I forgot to bring the backgammon,” she said.

  “We’ll buy one tomorrow.”

  Backgammon was their game. Her play was improving. Now she owed him only nine hundred thousand. Last month he’d been ahead by over a million. She always threatened that she was going to pay him. In cash.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  He got up and went into the sitting room. The light was on and the drapes were drawn and he searched the rug near the wall. He didn’t see any diamonds. He looked under the table. He must have recovered them all. He didn’t regret having thrown them.

  When he went back into the bedroom, Maren was sitting up with her legs crossed in the middle of the bed. She had a book with a frayed dust jacket.

  “Let’s do your I Ching,” she said.

  She was referring to the book, a translated edition of the ancient Chinese Book of Changes. I Ching is a method of guidance and prediction based on chance. Its premise is that everything is constantly in motion, changing. The sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching are formed by broken and unbroken lines that abstractly represent objects and situations according to the intricate symbolism of the Chinese mind. Maren consulted the I Ching frequently for herself and for Chesser. It was another facet of her transcendental doctrine.

  “Have you got three coins?” she asked.

  Chesser knew he didn’t. He always tipped his coins away. Maren told him to look in her purse. She didn’t have any coins either. They couldn’t do the
I Ching without coins.

  “Call down and have them bring up three coins,” she told him.

  Chesser had a better idea. He went in the bathroom and removed the blade from his razor. Then he went to the closet and used the blade to snip the three front buttons off his dark blue business suit. He tossed them onto the bed, and Maren said they would do fine. She designated the side of each button with a ridge around it as a head; the opposite, smooth side would be a tail.

  Chesser tossed the three buttons six times, according to the ritual. Maren used an eyebrow pencil to record the results of each toss. His first throw was two tails and a head. Each of his next five throws was two heads and a tail. Maren consulted the chart at the back of the book and determined that this time his hexagram was number forty-three. Kuai / Breakthrough (Resoluteness). It was symbolized thus:

  – – – –

  – – – – –

  – – – – –

  – – – – –

  – – – – –

  above TUI THE JOYOUS, LAKE

  below CH’ IEN THE CREATIVE, HEAVEN

  She handed Chesser the book so he could read the appropriate passage.

  This hexagram signifies on the one hand a breakthrough after a long accumulation of tension, as a swollen river breaks through its dikes, or in the manner of a cloudburst. On the other hand, applied to human conditions, it refers to the time when inferior people gradually begin to disappear. Their influence is on the wane; as a result of resolute action, a change in conditions occurs, a breakthrough.

  While he was reading, Maren kneeled behind him and massaged his neck and shoulders.

  “Poor love,” she said, “You’ve got so much tension.”

  CHAPTER 4