Fortune Is a Woman

by Francine Saint Marie

  The atmosphere at the mansion was tense in anticipation of the guests who Paula expected would be coming all at once. Lydia stayed out of her way and made small talk with Dickie as Paula took out her frustrations on the help and skittered to and fro, barking her orders at the back of bowed heads and sighing emphatically. Dickie smiled with a mixture of amusement and awe and offered Lydia a drink which she declined.

  “She is magnificent,” he said, more as a question than a fact.

  Lydia acceded that much. Paula was magnificent. And overwhelming.

  “No booze in the punch, my dear.”

  She tried it but it was too sweet without booze. A hunk of a waiter appeared with a tray of hors d’oeuvres–canapés with caviar, celery and carrots, deviled eggs. Dickie relieved him of his burden and the two of them devoured the goodies for supper while Paula glared over her shoulder at them as she all but whipped the sound-man for failing to produce his tunes on time, kicking at his six-foot speaker as one would a dumb animal who refused to get out of the way.

  “But, but, but,” Lydia could hear him whining, which she knew from experience would get him nowhere.

  “It is wrong to say you only live once,” Dickie said, waxing philosophical. “You only die once.” He grabbed a bottle of champagne and her hand. “Let’s scrounge up some dessert, kiddo.”

  Lydia followed him into the kitchen and together they absconded with a cheese cake and a basket of fresh strawberries, settling into chaise lounges by the pool to eat as much as they could before Paula discovered the theft and would come looking for them.

  “Aren’t we lucky, Lydia? All these spoils?”

  They were lucky, she said. The cheese cake went splendidly with champagne, he said. She believed him but should abstain from the bubbly, she said. That was too bad, he said, because it was a very good year. It was indeed a good year, she said, but it wasn’t over yet.

  It didn’t take long to ferret out the thieves.

  “Your guests are finally arriving,” Paula said, giving her husband the hairy eyeball. “Have we anything left to serve them?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Treadwell,” he said, looping his arm through hers and beckoning Lydia to join them. “We have ice.”

  “Ice! Don’t even dream of leaving now that you’re full,” Paula warned Lydia.

  “Perish the thought,” Lydia replied. “What time is it?”

  They were greeted in the main hall to strains of Pachebel and the sound-man, who came rushing to Paula’s side like a dog to its master begging for a bone. She threw him one.

  “Excellent,” was the scrap she offered.

  Thereafter he was walking on glass, monitoring his bells and whistles with palpable distress and casting furtive glances toward the hostess at the tiniest pop or crackle, wringing his hands, Lydia couldn’t help but think, just like a man preparing himself for his execution.

  “Good evening, Ms. Beaumont. Pleasure to see you again.”

  She had relegated herself to warming a chair in a corner of the room which she had hoped wouldn’t get much traffic. “Merry Christmas,” she said, clearly not remembering this guest’s name and hoping he wouldn’t bother to refresh her memory.

  “Have you met my wife?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He glanced awkwardly to his wife. “This is my wife,” he said feebly.

  (No kidding–where the hell is Delilah?) “Pleased to meet you,” she replied, in her befuddled style. Paula was coming at them, a freight train on fire. The couple excused themselves to make way for her.

  “Something I said?”

  “Why don’t you socialize?” Paula demanded. “What is so fascinating about this corner?”

  “It’s quiet.”

  “You know, I often think the only thing interesting about you is your blond.”

  “Paula, that’s not nice. True, but not nice. Is Del here yet?”

  “Just walked in the door.”

  “Excellent. Then I’m socializing.”

  _____

  She did not think listless quite qualified as rested, but it was better than the agitated state she had been in before. She ran her hands through her hair and yawned with the disheveled blond at her vanity. Brushes, combs, powder, lipstick, anti-wrinkle cream. She wasn’t pushing fifty anymore, she informed the woman. She was crashing into it.

  Once again she had dreamt of her parents. Mother and father this time, but that was the only detail she remembered upon waking, the meaning, if there was any, made vague by her jolt into consciousness and then displaced entirely by the harsh hues of morning, the first sunshine to be had in Madrid for days. It lifted her soul and showed her age, one of life’s bitter little tradeoffs. She snatched a hand towel, covered the mirror with it and opened the window blinds on a gold and purple city.

  Through the wall she could hear Carlos stirring, his music blaring the morning revelry, a ritual she had grown accustomed to on the long and now supremely arduous tour. In the corridor, guarding her suite, though she hadn’t looked out there yet, was Antonio. She was positive it was Antonio this morning. She could sense him through the door.

  He had talked her into a game of cards yesterday, and she had welcomed the distraction, playing some version of rummy until the afternoon was gone and Chuck showed up to relieve him.

  “What did you do before you became a–a–?”

  “Hired gun, Dr. Kristenson?”

  His English was pretty good.

  “Bodyguard, I was going to say.”

  “I was what you call in the States a ‘cop.’ The police. You want to analyze me?”

  “No, just curious.”

  “Analyze me. I do not mind it–rummy.”

  Rummy. He won again.

  “What do you want me to find, Antonio?”

  “Me!”

  “Mmhmm.” One of the two most commonly misplaced items in the universe: myself and my keys. “Okay. I’ll say a word and you say the first thing that comes to mind. Do you understand what I’m asking?”

  “Yes.”

  “We start with sun.”

  “Moon.”

  “Boy?”

  “Son.”

  “Son?” Three of diamonds. “Ah, a son. How about a car?”

  “Collision.”

  “Earth?”

  “Quake.”

  “Wind?”

  “Storm.”

  Face card. Jack of spades. “Man?”

  “Woman.”

  “Marriage?”

  “Divorce.”

  “Love?”

  He hesitated and laid down a red queen. “Unrequited.”

  Hearts. She snapped it up. “House?”

  “Home.”

  “Door?”

  “Locked.”

  “Window?”

  “Broken.”

  She froze. Suicide king. “Father?”

  “Son.”

  “Antonio?”

  “Yes, Dr. Kristenson?”

  “I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No–rummy.”

  Today Carlos was converting her rooms into a beauty spa so she doubted she would have any time for card games. She had on her roster another massage, a facial, a manicure, and, in advance of the reflexologist’s visit, a pedicure. In between these appointments she planned to bring her neglected diary to date, perhaps take a few catnaps, and tomorrow morning, the big day, she would have her hair done, then lounge around, blond, pink and fragile, in something she hoped her wife might find appealing, something designed to be devastatingly diaphanous.

  “Did I wake you, sleepyhead?”

  “No…I was just dreaming about you.”

  “Oh? What was I wearing?”

  “You know something, Lana? You never wear anything in my dreams.”

  “Well, that just doesn’t surprise me, Lydia Beaumont. Not one bit.”

  _____

  She was nude, tidying up the apartment and shooing the cat away while Claudine was out running a quick errand
for groceries and cigarettes. It should not have surprised her to stumble upon an old newspaper with a photo of Lydia and Helaine on it, but it did.

  The trip to Zurich, Venus gleaned from it, hardly hearing the door opening, Claudine returning as quiet as a cat, bearing cigarettes and breakfast.

  “Ah-hah, I was going to show you that. It is her, non?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Solmanshit–you work together!” She set her bag on the table and lit up a cigarette. “It is her. I know this, Venus. I am flattered.”

  “Bravo, Claudine. And it’s Schmitt, Soloman-Schmitt. You’ve got breakfast for me?”

  “Oui, petit déjeuner for my hungering Américaine.”

  _____

  She boarded the plane to Madrid at half past five. Fair weather, clear skies. Oh, man, how she hated to fly, part of the reason that private jets and whirlybirds were not counted among Ms. Beaumont’s possessions.

  “Liftoffs and landings, Liddy. Those are the only times you have to worry,” Delilah said last night. “Statistically speaking.”

  She had a mind for statistics. She held her breath until the airplane left the runway.

  _____

  She answered the door for her mother because Sharon was still not dressed when her date arrived.

  “She’s not ready, yet.”

  “Can I come in anyway?” he asked.

  She gave him a once-over and, thoroughly unimpressed, stepped aside. “I guess so.”

  “I’m Tom,” he said, waiting for Helen to offer him a chair. “Tom,” he repeated, unnerved by the surly girl wielding a violin bow as if it were a machete.

  “I know,” she answered. They were all Toms. Or Dicks. Or Harriets. “Another Tom.”

  He squeezed his lips together to stop an insult. “Run off and tell your mother I’m here, please.”

  She did not run. “Mommeeeeee!”

  He covered his ears and swore.

  _____

  She made Robert traditional Christmas Eve dinners even if he was a flaming atheist.

  “What took you so long? I called for you a half hour ago.”

  “E-mail from Helaine. I don’t know about this tour, Kay.”

  “What? Please, don’t worry me.”

  Helaine was ready to throw in the towel, she had disclosed in her message.

  She had raised five times the expected revenue already, not just in ticket sales but in charitable contributions, so it was fiscally feasible to cancel the rest of her world engagements without a loss and she knew that no one who watched the news regularly would blame her at this point if she did. The crowd scenes were flat out unmanageable, not just for her private security team but often for the municipalities she visited. Some of her scheduled cities had wired ahead with their safety concerns, urging her to concoct entrance and exit strategies for them, others were stretching civil liberties too thin for comfort, with law enforcement approaches that would make even Josef Stalin blink. Not in her name, she told Robert. She didn’t want any part of it.

  “She hasn’t left the hotel in days, she says. Cabin fever’s setting in.”

  “Well…but, Lydia will be there soon. Don’t you think that’s part of it, Robert? They’re so obsessed with each other. I can’t believe they’ve made it this far.”

  “I don’t think it helps, that’s for sure.”

  _____

  She was wearing the cocoa-colored bustier beneath her V-neck tennis sweater, preparing lamb chops for dinner when she got Stanley Kandinsky’s express package. She would always, always remember this day. It was 3:33 in the afternoon and the bell rang and she hurried to the door thinking the moment must be charmed.

  It was.

  _____

  She would, accompanied by a few siblings, their significant others, and their offspring, have holiday dinner with her mom in the nursing home. It was not where Delilah wanted her to be, but it was where Mom wanted to be. Her husband was dead, most of her friends gone, she liked meeting new people, and this way she couldn’t be called on to baby-sit rug-rats anymore. Sure bingo was a bore and she could do without the visiting square dancers and their frightening attire, but otherwise the joint was hopping, she claimed. A laugh a minute.

  She had made a wooden sign in crafts class and hung it on her door. Nuthouse Sweet Nuthouse it screamed in garish purple and neon orange paint. Delilah made her take it down.

  “It’ll just alienate the other residents,” she explained.

  “Put it in your office then,” her mom said. She had spent weeks on the project and hated to see her hard work go to waste. “You don’t mind alienating people.”

  “Nah, I do that for a living. Whole nations at a time.”

  “You’ll keep it?”

  “Sure. I’ll hang it from my desk.”

  “Good girl. What did you say your name was again?”

  “Ma, that’s not even remotely funny.”

  Chapter 49

  War and Peace

  It would have made a great photo-op for a terrorist wanna-be, but Lydia didn’t need the attention, paparazzis snapping her picture as airport security frisked her and rummaged through her baggage for a high-heeled shoe bomb.

  Whale bone in her push-me-up, metal clips on her garters. It was hard for Lydia not to smile at the solemn faced guard conducting the inspection. She was ticklish after all.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Beaumont.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Outside on the tarmac she easily picked out the “dark man” Helaine had described to her, the brooding Antonio, who would be riding with her in the chopper to the hotel. Obviously not one for glad-handing, he merely nodded when Lydia waved hello to him. Follow, she heard him say, his tone brusque and covert, his expressionless face half hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses. She saw her twin selves in their ovals, windblown and apprehensive.

  “Here,” he said, shouldering her bag. She followed him.

  Even inside the darkened passenger compartment he didn’t remove the shades. He was gazing at her from behind them, Lydia knew, his posture that of a man always mindful of his gun. She turned the side of her face toward him and closed her eyes as the helicopter lifted away from the launch pad and lurched into its clumsy ascent, moving like a gigantic bumblebee overweighted with pollen. Fut, fut, fut the blades sang as they chopped through Madrid’s atmosphere. Fut, fut, fut, fut, fut…she hoped it wouldn’t take too long to get there. The noise was annoying and the company bad.

  “So you’re Dr. Kristenson’s woman?” Antonio asked, attempting to break the ice with a sledgehammer.

  She glanced at him, agog at his directness. “Take off your glasses, please.”

  He took off his glasses.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said into his knees, wiping the lenses with his handkerchief before secreting the glasses away into his suit and looking up at her again with keen, interrogating eyes. “You are her woman, belladonna?”

  “I am her wife. Woman means…well, that means something else…generally.”

  “Oh, it means something else.” He gave her an appraising stare, seeing well beneath her oxford grays. “You are not that something else, too? Generally?”

  She pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek and parsed her words ineffectually in her mind. Fut, fut, fut, fut, fut, buzzed the bumblebee. At length she decided not to answer him.

  On the hotel rooftop she watched with irritation as Carlos and Antonio exchanged unspoken challenges with each other, each determined to be the one who would carry her bag for her. She took it away from them and proceeded to the atrium unescorted, the wind whipping against her body so that she couldn’t manage the door by herself.

  “Belladonna!” Antonio called, outpacing the older Carlos by leaps and bounds.

  She paused without turning to answer.

  “Let me,” he said, reaching around her for the handle. He yanked on it a couple times and it flung wide open,
forcing her to step backwards into him.

  “There,” he whispered into her ear, his hand in her coat pocket.

  “What the–?”

  “My card,” he said. “In case you should ever need my services.”

  He had his sunglasses on again. Carlos was approaching quickly. She stepped out of the embrace and over the threshold. “Never,” she felt it necessary to inform him. “Believe me.”

  Antonio simply smiled.

  “To the left,” Carlos said, out of breath. “There’s the private elevator.”

  Outside Helaine’s room, the stolid Aussie Lydia had heard about was positioned like the queen’s guard. She halted at the door, Carlos and Antonio at her heels.

  “It’s open,” the young man said unblinkingly.

  She went in and locked them out.

  The hotel room was afire, the evening sun shining through the window slats leaving bright orange bars across the mahogany table in front of her. Christmas dinner had just been served, pheasant under glass and platters of steaming goodies, but all she could detect still were the lingering smells of diesel exhaust and men’s cologne, odors incongruous with the picture that greeted her and inappropriate for the occasion. She leaned back against the door and let the feast fill her senses. From the other side came the stern voice of Carlos reaming out Don Juan Antonio. She was sure he was addressing Antonio. Don’t let it happen again, she overheard him warn. She moved away from the door so she wouldn’t catch the reply.

  She was in for a real treat tonight, she could tell, and one of those famous smiles, the first in weeks, began to creep to the corners of her mouth. Forget everything else. Lana was here somewhere and there were two unopened bottles of Spanish wine: a table red for their dinner and a port for dessert. Both, Lydia noted with rising pleasure, were very good years, very good years she remembered very well. She popped a chocolate-dipped strawberry into her mouth. The champagne, naturally, was French. The poem in the champagne glass was that of love stricken Propertius, once more fixating on his Cynthia.

  If you are flint, say no; if not, come soon: