Cheyney Fox (12 page)

A kiss on the neck, another more passionate under the chin, and a tease of the tongue in the hollow of her throat. A light, tantalizing kiss on her still-closed and resisting lips. Another, and another. He nibbled their soft flesh and traced the shape of them with the tip of his tongue. Then he licked them, until slowly, reluctantly, her lips parted. She was helpless to do anything but take over and return his kisses with fiery and passionate ones of her own. It no longer mattered to her that she was bursting with desire and need for more of him, and that he knew it.

It was Cheyney’s ability to let go, give herself up totally to him sexually that excited Chrstopher and spurred him on to unbridled lust. Until he went to bed with her, he never realized how sexually starved he had been. He both loved and hated Cheyney for his carnal appetite for her. She could feel his passion and his anger for her as he unfastened the halter at the back of her neck. She felt the silk jersey slide down over her breasts to her waist. It sent a shiver through her. Her naked breasts yearned for his hands, his mouth to suck ravenously on her nipples. He lowered his head. The moist, warm pull of his mouth, the teasing teeth on the tender erect nipple. She closed her eyes and sighed and felt the core of her very being dissolve into a light, sweet orgasm.

He teased the zipper open and she felt the dress glide smoothly off her hips and drop onto the floor. His caresses were like tongues of fire scorching her skin. She backed away from him against the wall and all resolve lost, she whimpered, “I love you. I always want you. Every minute of every day I always want what’s happening to me now. And tomorrow you will be gone and I will be so alone.”

He silenced her by kissing her eyes, nibbling fiercely at her lips. His passionate kisses trailed over her breasts. He bit hard into her nipples and she writhed alternately between pain and pleasure. Hands on her hips he pressed her hard against the wall and, dropping to his knees, he buried his face in the triangle of her soft black pubic hair. He had her now, with searching fingers and his tongue teasing her clitoris, licking the inside of her satiny smooth, lusciously female slit.

Slowly she slid down the wall and onto the floor, taking him down with her. So lost in the moment, and her own lasciviousness, even her mind stopped crying “Don’t leave me.” He dragged her, naked except for the burgundy satin bolero jacket flung open and dangling off her shoulders and high-heeled sandals, across the carpet to in front of the hearth. He placed a pillow under her head and beneath her. And she lay as he arranged her, legs bent at the knee and spread wide apart so that her raunchy, vulnerable sex shone by the light of the fire.

He stood between her legs looking down at her. She saw it in his face. He, too, was lost to all else except sex and the blissful escape it provided. He was dominated now only by
passion and an overwhelming desire for her and where their coupling could take them. In that and that alone was Cheyney victorious with Christopher. Aware of her victory over him, it brought out the sexual animal in Christopher. He tore his clothes off. Naked and rampant, wild with desire for her, without ceremony, he plunged himself deep inside her, calling out her name again and again, ecstatic with the pleasure he felt fucking her. Unable to contain her pleasure, with every exquisite thrust he delivered she answered him with the sound that sexual thrills can produce. He filled not only her yearning cunt but the void in her life and for a few hours she knew bliss.

When she woke up the next morning she was just in time to see the door to the flat close behind him. She felt excruciating heartbreak, an instantaneous aloneness. For several minutes she struggled to still her acute anxiety. Then, still dazed, Cheyney ran to the window and looked down into the street. Just in time to see a liveried chauffeur loading rolled-up canvases and luggage into the trunk, and Christopher slip into the backseat of a cream Rolls Royce. His good-bye to her? To flee without even a word of love and farewell. A stolen glimpse of her prince through the rear window. He had turned into a frog.

Cheyney found the crumpled letter next to the wastepaper basket. She recognized the distinctive color of the ink and the penmanship as that of the contessa. Without a qualm she carefully straightened out the pages and read, “My life, my love, my Christopher.” Cheyney was shocked by the tone of the letter. She was numbed by the contessa’s passionate outpourings — but because they confirmed what Cheyney had most feared: Christopher loved her no more than he loved the contessa.

The contessa had written, “When I read your words, Christopher,” and then quoted him: “You must forgive me, my one and only true love, this small distraction of the last few months. I promise you it does not affect my life with you. I will prove it to you on my return.”

What remained of Cheyney’s self-esteem disintegrated. She traced at once in her behavior the shape of passion’s own peculiar blindness. Christopher had left the prints of his faithlessness on all his recent actions. She had chosen to ignore
them. Wanting only what almost any woman wants: to believe that somehow, in her own life, she has stumbled upon that near-impossible man, for whom she and her love will be all-in-all sufficient. What else could the eruption of Christopher’s compelling beauty into her daily life mean?

The contessa’s letter foreclosed upon that illusion. Impossible to make excuses. She sat on the edge of her bed for a very long time, Zazou lying across her knees. As if sensing her mistress’s despair, she kept demanding to be stroked, coddled, cuddled. Every time Cheyney stopped, she was immediately pressed back into action by a lick, a nudge under her breast.

Hours later the door opened. A click, and the room filled with light. Dora and Lala framed in the door. Lala went at once to sit next to Cheyney. Dora was the first to speak:

“Mah suggestion, ladies, is Martinis. Lots of ’em, and no sad songs.”

“Might as well make it three glasses, Dora.” That was Cheyney.

“Doubles for our troubles, ladies.”

“Doubles,” both women chorused.

Dora left, humming “Bye-Bye Black Bird.”

Cheyney folded the crumpled pages of the contessa’s letter as neatly as she could and placed them in an envelope. Then she wrote on a scrap of paper, “The question is not whether I read this letter, but whether you left it here for me to read.” She slipped that in the envelope as well, licked the flap, sealed and posted it.

The pressures of business left her no time for introspection. Now there were lawyers involved. Every creditor seemed to have a lawyer fortified with threats. Accountants who analyzed the books and advised her to cut her losses and file for bankruptcy. The mere word set Cheyney in a spiral of desperation. She refused. Every minute of her working day was devoted to forestalling that disaster. She pleaded with her advisers to issue assurances: if her creditors would only wait, she herself would carry all the debts of the three companies, and in time pay them off. No one was listening.

The last scheduled exhibition had just over a week to run.
If she could only hold out. Day-by-day attendance at the gallery declined. There were some days when not one person entered to view the exhibition. It was a torture for her, now she and the gallery were as if bleeding slowly to death. She needed only to keep everything at bay for those six days, to close, having paid all her painters, returned their property, and placed the gallery’s artists with other dealers. And all without a scandal. Only six days to go, or so she thought. But even that was not allowed her.

She had been walking the dog in the park and was just rounding the comer off Fifth Avenue and onto her street. Dora was standing there waiting for her.

“Ah don’t think you should go back in the gallery just now. Ah come to head yah off. Be better yah-all wait till aftah six, when da gallery’s closed foh the day. Just in case.”

Cheyney knew before she even asked, but had to say something. “Just in case what, Dora?”

A sheriff and deputy had invaded the gallery. Cheyney had been forced into bankruptcy. Cheyney felt as she walked away from the gallery with Zazou on a leash in one hand and a suitcase of clothes in the other — all that she had been allowed to remove — that she might never recover from her disastrous foray into the New York art world. She had been closed down and literally thrown into the street with a dog, a few dresses, and two pairs of shoes. Notice of her personal failure was nailed to the door. It was a kind of death. Reincarnation seemed a flimsy faith to set beside that feeling. A life was over.

Chapter 12

I
n the two weeks that followed the abrupt closing of the gallery, Cheyney slipped in and out of deep depressions, fits of uncontrollable sobbing, usually when her friend was out and she was alone. When she looked in the mirror, her face was the same except for the eyes. They belonged to a stranger. She recognized them as dead, like those of a fish freshly killed. Beautiful, clear, with nothing behind them. Just glaze, no life. She spoke only to her lawyer. Seemingly endless conversations. All the things she must
not
do: pay any of her creditors either with money or promises of money. Seek to obtain any of her remaining possessions. Make commitments of any kind to any of her past business associates. Talk to the receiver handling her case, or any persons who had been involved in the gallery, or her design company, without the presence of her representative. Thou shalt not.

Nothing
. She was to do absolutely
nothing
, except to wait for a bankruptcy lawyer to be found who would take on her case. The receiver had already appointed his on behalf of the creditors, to counter any award of a discharge in bankruptcy. Which, as Cheyney’s lawyer explained, was absolutely essential for her to win. It would prove that she had been innocent of any misconduct, and that she had lost the money and her businesses only after doing her best to succeed.

“A discharge in bankruptcy will wipe out your debts and leave you free to start again. You’ve gotta win it” was the lawyer’s brief to Cheyney Fox. It was the
nothing
, the having to do nothing, being unable to have any say about what was
happening to her. Waiting for events to carry her forward, where once it was Cheyney Fox who carried herself forward. She wasn’t so sure. Her guilt at having lost the money was too great.

She thought of herself as the chicken whose head had been chopped off. The body hung by the feet on a rack still twitches with life. The blood slowly drips into a sluice of red gore.

Della Robins can only be described as good people. She worked extremely hard, as junior executives managing large offices are prone to do. More than competent, she operated with both feet on the ground at all times. Della lived an uncomplicated but organized life. Even her paper clips were lined up in the same direction. It was a torture for her to see Cheyney in the state she was in. She actually feared for her friend’s life.

Della lived in what was currently the most chic of the new glass residential towers erupting flashily over the city. This one was in Turtle Bay, overlooking the East River. She offered Cheyney — plus Zazou — her glass, her view, a ceiling over their heads. “You must be my guest, for as long as it takes, Cheyney.” The act of a friend, certainly. The twentieth-floor apartment, spacious and with a vast panorama of the city, boasted only one bedroom, one bathroom. There was a kitchen. But it was in the large hall, dining area, or living room that Cheyney spent most of her time.

Della offered Cheyney and Zazou safety, comfort, and a glimpse of an uncomplicated life. Day after day, one week following another, she was always there, with a smile, caring, sharing everything she had with Cheyney.

Cheyney never left the house except to walk Zazou. Once a pleasant, happy chore for her, rain or shine. No longer. Cheyney was fine in the elevator, going down the twenty floors. Even through the lobby and while greeting the doormen. But, the moment she was on the city pavements, depression settled upon her. She was like an involuntary exile, in a limbo between what she had been and what she might yet be. After the first few days she never left the plaza and the gardens surrounding Della’s apartment building. Her cramped walkabout with Zazou would leave her smothered in anxiety. Panicked, she would rush back into the building and up to the safety of her refuge.

Only thirty-five blocks and two weeks away from the world where she had been alive, in love, and a person of substance. A world hyped with promise and excitement, likely at any moment to challenge you with a vitalizing choice, to probe your capacity for passion or intellectual involvement. Exiled from all that, she couldn’t face the streets. Only Zazou, her beloved, devoted dog, her sole remaining responsibility, drew her into the street. And she could barely afford to feed her. The last humiliation; feed me, feed my destitute dog. Having to add dog food to the charitable Della’s shopping list. Self-sufficiency at least in that department became a desirable goal. If only she had enough money to buy her a supply of dog food.

In the apartment things were little better. Her present nothingness clouded everything. Concentration was an early casualty: make a bed, prepare a meal, wash the dishes — those were her limits. To answer the telephone was a major effort, to which Della compelled her by calling without fail every two hours. Often the conversation amounted to an extended hello. So numb was she that it took Cheyney awhile to realize that Della saw herself as engaged in suicide limitation.

That realization shocked Cheyney. Because although she often wished that she were dead, she would never dream of taking her own life. Why would she? Because she had lost all her money? Her lover? Her gallery? Because she had failed on what she deemed to be a massive scale? Certainly not.

She spent most of two weeks twenty floors above the city staring from a plate-glass window down toward the river or uptown to where she had once lived. Zazou lay asleep with her head in Cheyney’s lap or licked Cheyney’s hand, snuggling next to her, never leaving her side, doggily sensing her despair.

“You know you’re welcome here for as long as you like.” Such generosity could create its own share of pain.

“I know.”

Cheyney was embarrassed by the concern in Della’s face, so it was to please Della that she finally accepted a dinner invitation from Tom and Paul.

Cheyney had refused to talk with them the several times they had called, but eventually, it became unthinkable not to. The stress it caused her friends was more than Cheyney could take. She appreciated that they were all trying to help her. Still she
was angry at being dragged into the stream of life, where she really didn’t want to be.

She had always had, in the past, a soft spot for Tom and Paul. She kept telling herself that, if she had to see anyone, they would be the easiest. Wrong. The moment she set eyes on them, all the pain of the past became acute: they were too vivid a reminder of a distant dream she could no longer relate to.

They were charming, so pleased with themselves for getting her out for the evening. Cheyney felt the least she could do was double her efforts to come alive, at least while she was with them. They would need to be athletes of empathy to know fully what she was going through. She realized that her misery and the end of her life were a very personal affair, not easily off-loaded on even the most willing sympathizer.

She felt she had mislaid the art of being social and charming. She had lost herself, couldn’t be the Cheyney they looked for. There seemed to be no self to articulate. The simple necessity of speaking to them was going to be an agony. She forced the screams and anger she was feeling to some dark place in the back of her mind, since their faces revealed how uncomfortable they were for her. They deserved better than that, and she knew it. She slipped an arm through each of theirs, and together they stood under the canopy and watched the rain pour down all around them. Cheyney winced at the shrill sound of the doorman’s whistle trying to catch them a cab. The faint smiles they were able to summon allowed them all a sigh of relief. The evening might yet be all right.

It was a small restaurant: cozy, French, no more than twelve tables. Dim lighting, red-and-white checked tablecloths. The service was simple, and the aromas and homey atmosphere of the place premised good food. One of those special little neighborhood restaurants, with banquettes around the walls and an owner-chef.

They ordered Manhattans to banish the chill wind and the rain that had whipped around them while they hurried from the taxi. Over a deliciously hot celery soup, generously spattered with crunchy homemade croutons, Dover Sole Véronique, tiny parsleyed new potatoes,
mange tout
, an apple
tarte tartine
, served hot with lashings of
crème fraiche
, and two bottles of
a perfect Chablis, they had made polite conversation until the three were relaxed enough to stop skirting any mention of the art world, the closing of the gallery, or what Cheyney’s plans for the future were.

“Is it terrible, the gossip about me? The closing of the gallery a scandal?”

“Yes, malicious. Perhaps you should feel flattered.”

“No, actually I don’t.”

“Surprise. Anyway, it will blow over, be forgotten once you’re on your feet again. If only you could have held out. That’s what the kind ones say.”

“Does Christopher know what’s happened? Where you are?” That was Paul.

“I don’t know. Bad news goes the rounds. I think we can assume that he knows.”

“You’re not just another notch on his cock, are you? He hasn’t broken your heart, has he?”

“No. And you mustn’t think that the mess I am in happened because I was escaping from some epic masochistic romance. It was bliss while it was bliss — if you know what I mean — and now it’s over. Change of subject. How about you two? Bought anything recently to add to your collection?”

The men brightened visibly at the prospect of talking about art. “An Oldenburg: a chocolate bar. Really good, you’d love it. We bought it on Saturday, from his studio.”

“I suppose Andy went shopping with you?”

“Yes. And I’d better tell you: he wanted to come to dinner with us. We had to promise we would bring you over to his place for coffee afterward, or we would never have gotten rid of him.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes!” said Tom.

“God, I don’t think I’m up to this!”

“Which of us is?” said a smiling Paul.

“Please, Cheyney, just for a few minutes. If we don’t turn up, we’ll be considered enemies for life. The alternative is dinner with him. Then he’d pick your brains like a fish bone, till you tell him how to become a famous painter.”

“What’s the difference — dinner or coffee? My brains still get filleted. Oh, those endless questions: What does one do?”

“Fob him off or tell him what he wants to hear, and be done with it.”

“That’s how he gets everything. He pesters and cajoles. He never lets up. So you cave in. You give him what he wants. He’s a black belt at wheedling. He gets a submission every time. That’s how he’s gotten where he is today.”

They all began to laugh. “Where’s that?”

“In his own little world making pots of money and crying poverty. He’s got whole garrets full of skinny students doing the donkey artwork for his commercial illustration accounts. Feeding them the minimal diet of oats to keep them working, while he gallops around town trying to break into the big-league art game. He’s convinced that the only thing in life that matters is being a celebrity in the wonderful world of art. A star in art — buy that: Oh, and there’s the shopping. Never miss out on a bargain. Shopping and starring. A man of the times. A mensch for our season. No, nothing’s changed for Andy.”

Cheyney was still laughing. It felt good. She asked, “Has he bought a new wig?”

“No. No new wig. His theory, clean enough for last year, clean enough for this. Good old Rinso!”

“You’re sure we have to do this?”

“A woman has to do what a woman has to do.”

“Well, come on then. Let’s get it over with.”

The three stood huddled in the door of the restaurant. They looked across the street and up a few houses. The brownstone was dark. Just a hint of light to fool a lethargic burglar. “Oh, good, he’s gone out.”

“Never. He expects us. Just saving electricity. He’ll be in the back room, his mother down in the kitchen.”

“There are things I’d rather be doing than this,” offered Cheyney. “You watch, he will carry on as if I am the same old Cheyney. Just been off on a two-week, arty-farty cocktail party. He’ll drive me mad with questions that will upset me.”

“Forget it. One dash in, and one dash out, we promise.”

The rain had not let up one bit throughout dinner. Gutters gushed water and still the rain sheeted down. Traffic seemed washed away. The three linked arms and dashed across the street, past several houses to Andy Warhol’s front door.

An umbrella arched over them. Someone’s thumb found the
doorbell. It rang for an age. Paul pounded a dripping fist against the doorjamb. A grimy lace curtain dangled on a sagging string across the glass set in the top half of the door. They peered through it.

Cheyney kept thinking, What am I doing here? This is madness. My shoes, they’re ruined. She shivered. She had worn the wrong coat. Furious with herself for even being there, she announced. “I’m leaving.”

“No,” they insisted. “He’s got to be here. He knows we’ll bring you and not let him down. Please, one more minute.”

Cheyney closed her eyes on her anger and suddenly felt very disoriented, imagining she was somewhere on the Upper East Side of the city, Lexington Avenue in the Nineties. She became frightened, couldn’t believe she was ever going to find her way back to Zazou and Della. She suddenly felt as if she had been kidnapped.

The lace curtain twitched. Nothing more, hardly a sign of light or life. Just a slight spasm in a dirty lace curtain. The three looked at each other. Tom shouted through the rain-spotted glass:

“For chrissake, Andy, open the fucking door. We’re getting soaked out here.”

Three sallow, ink-stained fingers curved around the edge of the tatty lace. It drew back a few inches. Several wisps of dry hair, more dirty gray than blond; a cheap wig, more than a head of hair. Then a pair of dark eyes staring vacantly at them from behind the glass. A noisy bolt shot back, a key turned in the lock, a door chain dropped. The door was, at last, opened a crack.

“Oh, hi!” A look of utter surprise on the face.

“Oh, hi! Oh, thanks. Where’ve you been? We’ve been drowning out here for five minutes. You knew we were coming. Where were you?”