Destiny (61 page)

The long circuitous and exhausting train journey, and now they were here. It was so very hot, and Thad was still talking, talking. She had been sick twice on the train, and felt as if she might be sick again, any minute.

She shut her eyes, closed them against the heat and that maddening procession of mosaic virgins. Her mother felt very close now; she had been coming closer and closer, ever since she had left the Loire, and now her voice was all mixed up with Thad's in the craziest way. Thad was telling her about a camera angle, and her mother was telling her that men didn't mean to lie, they probably thought their lies were true when they said them, which was why it was so easy to believe them.

Had Edouard lied to her, then? Had he not loved her? Was that why he had not tried to find her?

Or was he looking for her now? Was he perhaps at the Cafe Strasbourg at this exact minute, making inquiries, asking the owner, asking the waiters if they knew a woman called Helen Hartland?

Well, if he was, he would discover she had lied. And when he discovered that, he would stop looking. She felt quite certain of that. He would feel angry and betrayed, and that would be the end of it.

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She opened her eyes again. It was better that way, in the end. She stared at the procession of virgins on the church facade. They advanced; they receded: five of them fooUsh, five of them wise.

What made them wise, exactly? She became aware of the fact that Thad had stopped speaking, and that he had been silent for some time.

Finally, he reached across and patted her hand awkwardly, Uke someone patting a dog. He always wore tinted glasses, which made it difficult to see his eyes, or read his expression. Now he appeared to be looking at her with a kind of doglike concern.

"You all right, Helen? You feel sick again?"

"No. I'm all right." She swallowed. "I was just—I don't know—thinking about the past, I suppose."

"Tell me about the past," Thad said. It was something he had said to her before. He seemed very anxious, Helene thought, to hear her life story.

She turned to look at him. Thad was very very ugly. She suspected, she was not sure, that he was also very clever. Thad made her a little afraid. She felt sometimes as if he could look into her mind and see all the pictures there.

She was determined not to let him do that. She had let Edouard come close to her, and she intended never to do that again. It was simpler when people were distant. When they were distant, she felt safe.

She drew in her breath and began to tell Thad a he. It was very like the time on the train, with the woman who was knitting. At first she expected him to interrupt every moment, and say, "Come on now, that's not true." But he never interrupted once.

Helene invented. She made up an Enghsh family. All sorts of details and twists came to her as she spoke. The family's name was Craig—Thad and Lewis had seen her passport, so it had to be. This family usually called her "Helen," though she was christened "Helene."

There was a stepfather who was a httle hke Ned Calvert, and a mother, now dead, who was very like Violet. From this family, in particular the stepfather, she had run away. He might look for her, she told Thad earnestly, but he wouldn't look very hard, and even if he found her, she would never go back.

Thad never uttered a word. He just Ustened; his small dark eyes never left her face.

When, finally, she finished, Helene looked at him anxiously. Somehow it was important Thad should beUeve her: the story was Uke an audition, or a test.

Thad made no comment at all. When she stopped speaking, he sat silent for a while, and then shook his head. He looked at her solemnly.

"Wow," he said. "Some story."

382 • SALLY BEAUMAN

Helene despised him a little at that moment. He had been so easy to take in.

It was a long time before she reaUzed her mistake.

There was only one painting in the Principessa's bedroom, and it hung directly above the bed. It was a Dali.

Kneeling on the black silk sheets, while the Principessa went through a repertoire that had made her celebrated on two continents, Lewis Sinclair found that, unless he closed his eyes, he could not avoid looking at it.

For what seemed to him an eternity, he stared at a putrefying desert landscape in which detumescent flesh, propped on crutches, merged with the sand. A deliquescent watch face, without hands, mocked the minutes: Lewis measured them in the soft interminable lappings of the Principessa's practiced tongue.

It was hardly a turn-on. Lewis, always a pragmatist, and aware it was important to please the Principessa, took the coward's way out. Feigning a pleasure he did not feel, he shut his eyes. When the Principessa stopped her ministrations, she did so abruptly, and not, Lewis thought, at the most logical or the most tactful moment. His eyes snapped open to see the wide Ups draw back from the little nibbling pearly teeth in a sweet smile. "Your turn, Lewis, mi amove. . . ."

Fuck you, Lewis thought, and did so, roughly.

When it was over the Principessa yawned, and stretched her tawny limbs. She stroked the marks on her arms where Lewis had left scratches, and favored him with a long slow satisfied smile.

"Lewis. Lewis. What a very wicked boy you are. Surely you didn't learn such things at Harvard?"

"Baltimore."

Lewis reached across for the cigarettes, lit two, and passed one to the Principessa. She levered herself up on the black silk pillows, and inhaled deeply.

"Baltimore. Baltimore?" She frowned. "Where is this Baltimore?"

"It's a port, Principessa." Lewis gave her his best boyish, slightly crooked grin.

"Near Boston?"

"Near Washington. But worth a detour. . . ."

The Principessa laughed. "Lewis, Lewis . . . and I thought you were a good American boy. I can see I underestimated you. . . ."

Her eyes clouded speculatively, and Lewis shifted in the bed. It looked as if a further demonstration of his own virtuosity might be needed to

DESTINfY • 383

clinch the deal he had in mind, and—just then—he didn't have the energy. Fortunately, the Principessa appeared at least temporarily sated. She coiled one magnificent leg around his hips and rubbed up against him in a serpentine fashion, but then she drew back thoughtfully. She lay there, smoking her cigarette—recharging, no doubt, Lewis thought. She reminded him at that moment of a great python enjoyably digesting a substantial supper, resting awhile, appetite only temporarily in abeyance. Lewis was unsure whether to broach his deal now, or wait.

"So—you are going to make a film, you and your friends, Lewis. Mmmm, my clever httle godchild . . ." She laughed, and flicked her tongue across the tips of Lewis's nipples. Lewis wriggled.

"You should have told me before." Her large dark eyes looked up at him reproachfully. "I could have introduced you to so many useful people. Federico now—you know Federico? He would adore you, Lewis. ..."

"He would?"

"But certainly. So blond. So golden. So . . . well, perhaps not. It is no matter." She paused thoughtfully, stroking his thigh with one long pink opalescent nail. "What kind of film, Lewis? You didn't tell me."

"The cheap kind," Lewis said firmly. "We haven't got a lot of money."

"And your friend, the ugly one, he will direct it? Oh, Lewis, is he any good?"

"He's good." Lewis shrugged. He knew what she was leading up to. "Better than good, maybe."

"And the girl, Lewis—is she going to be in it?"

"She might be. It's up to Thad really. If he wants to use her. Something small, you know. I couldn't care less. If it keeps him happy . . ."

"Is he screwing her?"

"Who knows?" Lewis looked away.

"Are you screwing her, Lewis?"

Lewis knew the answer had to be quick, and convincing. If the Principessa suspected his interest in Helen, her vanity would be wounded. Then she wouldn't help them.

"Me? That kid?" He smiled. "You've got to be joking."

The opalescent nail dug a httle more deeply into the muscles of his thigh.

"But you'd like to?"

"No way." Lewis lowered his mouth to her arched throat. "Not my type at all, Principessa."

He did not lie well, but, luckily, this lie seemed to convince her—the He, and what he did next, which was almost one hundred percent guaranteed to distract her. The Principessa sighed.

After a brief pause, in which the appetite of the python showed signs of

384 • SALLY BEAUMAN

reawakening with alarming rapidity, Lewis lifted his head, and, keeping her pinioned beneath him, said, "So—how about it? Can we stay here? Can we film some scenes here? Yes or no?"

"Evil boy."

She pouted, an expression that made the wrinkles in the lovely face more noticeable. Tough, Lewis thought, looking at her with that expression of lazy lust that had always come naturally, and which years of practice had perfected; tough—how even the best plastic surgeons couldn't keep the ravages of time at bay forever.

"I suppose you could. . . ." She paused teasingly. "I shall be away three months. You can stay here that long. Maybe ... If you promise to behave. No scandals, Lewis. Raphael wouldn't like it."

Lewis smiled. Prince Raphael, descendant of the Sforzas and Medicis, was as famous for his complaisance as was his wife for her erotic inventiveness. Since he preferred the company of adolescent boys, such complaisance was understandable. Lewis bent his head, and nuzzled the Principes-sa's nipples; they were rouged.

"No scandals, Principessa. Promise."

"No parties, Lewis. You swear to me?"

Lewis thought of the Principessa's own party, the previous evening, which he had attended alone—fortunately. In the course of it, two dwarves had proved that all the inflammatory rumors about the size of their sexual organs were well-founded, and a man dressed in cardinal's robes—and, it proved later, little else—had propositioned him flagrantly amid the resplendent, and recherche, volumes in Prince Raphael's ancestral library. Lewis sighed, and raised his clear hazel eyes.

"Principessa—would I?"

"You might, Lewis, you might. I've heard rumors. . . ."

"All lies. I'll be the perfect house guest. I'll keep an eye on the servants, and the guards. ..."

"You will?"

"I'll look after the dogs. You know I love dogs, Principessa. ..."

The beautiful face clouded. "Oh, my poor babies. I shall miss them so much. They'll pine, Lewis, they always do. . . ."

Lewis suppressed a groan. He hated dogs, and the Principessa had twenty-seven, not counting the Dobermans that guarded the estate grounds.

"Prime steak twice a day. Proper exercise. They'll hve hke kings."

"You swear, Lewis?"

"I swear, Principessa."

"All right. You've persuaded me. You evil boy."

Big deal, Lewis thought. The Principessa had three houses in Italy, one

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in Monte Carlo, one in Tangier—though that was primarily for her husband's benefit—one on the beach in Jamaica, and one just off Fifth Avenue in the East Sixties. Most of them, at one time or another, were occupied by a sequence of spongers whom the Principessa found diveri;ing—which was why he had come to her in the first place. That, and the fact that this palazzo, in the hills some ten kilometers outside Rome, was like a fortress. There were the Dobermans; there were hired hoods on the gates; there was twenty-four-hour security. No one could get in, and—more to the point— no one could get out. Helen would make no further unscheduled disappearances: of that, Lewis was determined.

"You're using me, you wicked boy. Don't think I don't know that. ..." The Principessa gave his arm a painful pinch.

"I love you too. Turn over."

Lewis gave her a slap, a playful slap, quite hard. The Principessa moaned; she turned over onto her stomach obligingly. Lewis, averting his eyes from the Dali once more, prepared to give her full recompense for her generosity.

The Principessa arched her back, still unsuspecting. Her hands on the black sheets flexed and unflexed in pleasurable anticipation. Lewis maneuvered himself into position; slapping her had made him hard.

"Oh, Lewis . . ." She gave a httle sigh. "'You've grown up so fast. To think—I held you in my arms when you were a httle little baby. ... I was very young myself then, naturally. . . ." Lewis held himself poised above her. The Principessa had no children of her own, and she was the same age, exactly the same age, as his mother. Did she think he didn't know that, the vain stupid bitch?

"Oh, yes?"

He moved suddenly, taking her completely by surprise. Her cry of pain encouraged him.

Face set, eyes shut, Lewis thrust. With a force he enjoyed, he showed her a few other things he'd learned in Baltimore.

An hour later, Lewis returned to the cafe in Trastevere where Thad and Helen were waiting for him. He saw them before they saw him. From a distance, it looked as if she was speaking; then Thad looked up, peered nearsightedly across the square, and turned back to her. As Lewis came closer, it was the drone of Thad's voice he picked up.

"So—he did it by process. He must have." Thad placed his plump elbows on the table. "It's the only way he could have gotten the effect.

386 • SALLY BEAUMAN

First he must have done the separate dolly shot down the stairs. Then he must have filmed the actor, in front of a transparency screen, and—"

As Lewis reached their table, he stopped in mid-sentence. Helen looked up, but made no other acknowledgment of Lewis's presence. Beauty and the beast, Lewis thought. He smiled as Thad raised his face inquiringly.

"Hi, Lewis. Fixed?"

"Absolutely."

"How long have we got?"

Thad didn't attempt congratulations or thanks, and Lewis felt a second's passing irritation.

"Three months. She's away three months. That long enough?"

"Yeah. More than."

"How long do you need then?"

"Six weeks." Thad looked bored. "Six weeks two days maybe."

"Jesus, Thad, you're such a bullshitter." Lewis slid easily into a chair beside them. "You can't know that exactly. . . ."