The LeBaron Secret (36 page)

“I'll try. But I don't think—”

“Dammit, why do you keep contradicting me? I know I'm right.” Sari had never seen him so angry. “Find out everything about this bastard,” he repeated. “I want to find out who's screwing my sister.”

“I said I'd try,” she said quietly.

“Good.” He glared fiercely at the white tablecloth. Then he said, “Let's get the hell out of here.”

“Please don't be cross with me, Peter. For whatever it is.”

“Dammit, I'm not cross. I just said let's get out of here.” He began signaling for his check.

“Where shall we go?”

“Somewhere. Anywhere. I don't care.”

Then, for a time, they drove aimlessly and a little wildly about the dark city in his open car, up and down the steepest hills—Fillmore Street Hill, Powell Street Hill, Lombard Street Hill—driving too fast, and skidding around corners, bouncing against the curbs of sidewalks. He was not drunk, Sari decided. He was only—what? Upset about something.

“What's upset you so, Peter?” she asked him. “I mean, after all, suppose she
is
seeing someone? So what?”

“Because she's doing it behind my back. Because she's lying to us, and keeping her dirty little secret from us, and that means she's doing something she's ashamed of.” Then he said, “Let's go back to my house. We'll catch her when she comes in, catch her red-handed when she comes in, and tell her what we know.”

They drove back to California Street and let themselves into the quiet house whose master and mistress were thousands of miles away across the Pacific Ocean. MacDonald, in his tailcoat, had appeared. “Can I get you anything, Mr. Peter?” he asked.

“A bottle of champagne,” Peter said gruffly.

MacDonald nodded and disappeared on padded, slippered feet.

“She hates our mother,” Peter said.

“Really, Peter? Why do you say that?”

“Because it's true. Hates her with a vengeance. Hates even being in the same room with her. That's one reason for you, you know.”

“A reason for me?”

“Of course. Mother doesn't think you're quite—suitable to be Jo's friend. Jo chose you as her friend as another way to get back at Mother.”

She considered this unwelcome notion. Clearly, he was still in an unpleasant mood. “Well,” she said at last, “I thought Joanna genuinely liked me.”

“Oh, she likes you all right. But she likes you even more because Mother disapproves.”

MacDonald reappeared now with a bottle of champagne in a silver cooler, and two glasses on a silver tray. He set these on a low table between them, shifting a bowl full of cymbidiums to make room for them.

“My mother is an alcoholic,” Peter said. Sari said nothing, and MacDonald began filling their glasses. In the bottom of each champagne glass was a fresh strawberry. “It's true, isn't it, MacDonald?” Peter said. “My mother is an alcoholic. Tell Miss Latham that it's true.”

MacDonald pursed his lips. “Well, Mr. Peter. Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No, thanks.”

MacDonald withdrew on the same quiet, slippered feet, and now they were alone again in the red damask room, in this still, perfectly ordered house where fresh flowers were never allowed to die or even to fade in their crystal bowls, where Negro maids polished the mahogany tabletops with the palms of their hands, where no one seemed to have to lift a finger even to wind the eternally ticking clocks, where everything seemed so patterned, and yet where there now seemed to be also so much confusion. Peter scowled darkly at his champagne glass, and took a sip. “I nurse my drinks,” he said. “That's what makes the difference. That's why I'll never be an alcoholic.”

“Why is she—that way, do you think?”

“Because she hates my father. Everyone in this house hates everybody else. This house is full of hate. Except for Jo and me.”

“But I don't understand. If Joanna hates your mother so, why is she going through the debutante thing, which she also says she hates?”

“Don't worry. Jo has Mother wrapped right around her little finger.”

“Really? It seems to me the other way around.”

“Jo always knows what she's doing.”

“She's spent more time with your mother these past few weeks than she has with me. Why—if she hates your mother so?”

“Jo always has a plan. With her, there's always a plan.”

“I still don't understand.”

“There's a lot about this family that's hard to understand,” he said.

From a distance now, in the house, there was the sound of a ringing telephone, and Peter sat sharply forward in his chair. “That'll be her,” he said. “That'll be Jo calling. Wait and see.”

Presently MacDonald reappeared. “That was Miss Joanna, sir,” he said. “She says to tell you that she won't be coming home tonight. She's spending the night with friends in Burlingame.”

“I see. Thank you, MacDonald.”

“Will there be anything else for you tonight, sir?”

“No thanks. Good night, MacDonald.”

When he had gone, Peter said almost triumphantly, “Well? You see? That sort of proves it, doesn't it? She's sleeping with someone else!”

“Someone
else?
”

“Some guy. She's got to be!” And the look in his eyes was so fierce and wild that it almost frightened her. Then she was angry.

She set down her champagne glass. “Look,” she said, “I don't know, and frankly I don't care. What Joanna does is her business. It's late, and I'm tired. Will you take me home?”

He held out his hand. “Wait,” he said. “Don't go.”

“I know I'm supposed to be a good listener,” she said, “but I'm bored with this conversation. I don't care who your sister's sleeping with. Or if she's sleeping with anyone at all. Take me home.”

“Wait,” he said. “I've got an idea. Let's you and I sleep together! Let's you and I have sex! That would show her, wouldn't it? That other people can play her little game?”

She stood up. “That's a stupid, disgusting suggestion,” she said. “If you won't drive me home, I'll take the streetcar.”

“But wait—think about it!”

“I don't even like you, Peter LeBaron! I think you're a stupid and disgusting man! You think you can get away with anything with all your money. Well, you can't. I hate you, Peter LeBaron!” Then she picked up her wineglass and flung the contents, strawberry and all, into his face. “That's what I think of you!”

She had taken the streetcar home, struggling to hold back tears, certain that she would never see either of them again.

But the next morning he telephoned her. “I'm calling to apologize,” he said. “I'm really sorry. I'd had too much to drink. I behaved like a cad. Please forgive me, Sari. I'm really terribly, terribly sorry, Sari, about last night.”

“You behaved,” she said evenly, “as your sister might put it, like a rat's rear end.”

“I know. And I'm asking you to forgive me. Will you? Will you just give me another chance—one more chance, Sari? Please?”

“Well. Perhaps.”

“Tonight? The same place? The Mural Room? Let me show you that I'm really not a rat's rear end.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Please. I know there's no excuse for what I said and did, but I have been going through kind of a rough time lately.”

“I understand all that.”

“So—will you?”

“Well—all right.”

“I'll stand on my head to get you to forgive me.”

That night they met at the Mural Room, and he seemed so cheerful and eager to please her that the previous evening seemed to have occurred years ago, and to have involved an entirely different person. After a few minutes, the headwaiter approached them, and said, “Your dinner is served, Mr. LeBaron.”

“Thank you, George.” Then he rose from the table, and gestured to her to follow him.

Mystified, she also rose, and followed him out of the restaurant, into the lobby of the hotel, to the elevators.

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see. Sixth floor, please,” he said to the elevator operator.

On the sixth floor, he produced a key and ushered her into a suite of rooms overlooking Union Square.

“Oh, Peter!” she gasped.

The room seemed to be filled with flowers—roses, calla lilies, birds of paradise. In the center of the sitting room, a round table draped with a long white cloth was set for two, with serving dishes under silver lids, and a three-branched silver candelabrum with its candles lighted.

“Oh, Peter!”

“Just an ordinary little hotel suite,” he said. “I said I'd stand on my head to get you to forgive me. Now, watch me.” And he kicked off his shoes, sprang forward on his hands, and stood on his head in the center of the room. “I'll do more than that,” he said. “I'll walk on my hands.” And he began walking about the room on his hands, his stockinged feet high in the air, his trouser legs flopping about his ankles. He looked so ridiculous that she began to laugh. “I'll do this all night if you say so.”

“There's a monster here who tickles the feet of people who walk on their hands,” she said, and reached out and tickled the soles of his passing feet.

“Oh!” he yelped. “How did you know I'm ticklish?” and he back-somersaulted onto his feet again. “I can't stand to be tickled!”

“Are you ticklish here?” she said, laughing, tickling his chest. “And here?” tickling him under his arms.

“Stop, stop,” he moaned, and suddenly, gasping, he was holding her in his arms. “Oh, Sari,” he said, “I want—I want—so much!”

“What do you want?”

“So much that I can't have. What do you want, Sari?”

“I want someone to love me. Someone to love. I love you, Peter …”

“Oh … oh,” and now he was kissing her, and she felt her own body, of its own accord, of a mind of its own, grow limp and breathless, pressing against him, arched and expectant.

“Your beautiful nipples … I couldn't take my eyes off them that day on the boat … little pink points.” Now he unbuttoned her dress and was kissing them, first one, then the other, curling his tongue around them. “Let me show you the only way to drink wine,” he whispered. “Let me show you the wine expert's way,” and she watched with amazement as he reached for the bottle of chilled wine on the table, filled a glass, and then dipped first her left breast, then her right, in the glass, then licked the nipples clean while a fire of excitement shot through her like a volcano erupting. With her breast in his mouth, his eyes traveled up to hers.

“Oh, Peter,” she sobbed. “I love you so. I love you more—more than the world. Do you love me, Peter?” Then, in one motion, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, where the coverlet was turned down and the sheet folded back in a clean white triangle.

“Love me, Peter!”

At first, there was a little pain, but then, wonder of wonders, she began feeling herself liking it a little, just as Joanna had told her she would, and when it was over she lay damp and spent in his arms, damp, and spent, and loved. “All my life,” she murmured, and she thought: Now we will get married. Marriage is what happens next. We are in love, we will get married, and we will have his beautiful children, all my life. Then she discovered that there were tears in his eyes. “What is it, Peter? What's wrong, my love?” She ran her fingers through the fine hairs of his chest, and kissed his eyes, finding that even the taste of his tears thrilled her.

“I've done a terrible thing … a terrible thing,” he said.

“No, you haven't. It was lovely and wonderful, and I wanted it too, Peter.”

“No … you don't understand.”

“I want us to be happy,” she said. “Like the song.” Under the covers, she began to tickle him again, and soon he was laughing despite himself, and then they were making love all over again, and it was even better than the first time. After that, he appeared to sleep.

As she lay beside him in the big bed in the darkened bedroom, nested against him, spoon fashion, while their uneaten dinner in the sitting room outside grew colder under the hotel's silver warming lids, she let only one thought drift through her mind. She let the thought pass, waft past like a slightly chilly breeze, then disappear, banished, but not unobserved. The thought was: If Joanna always has a plan, is this a part of it? Is this why she has been arranging for us to spend so much time together? Is she testing us, testing me, testing Peter, experimenting with us to see what will happen when the two reagents are placed together and heated in the retort—what fumes will rise, whether an explosion will occur? Is this all a part of some mysterious Joanna plan?

“We must never tell Joanna about this,” she whispered. “Promise me. Never.”

But there was no answer, and she let the thought drift away into the clouds of foreverness and forgetfulness, where it belonged.

Instead, she thought: It is simple. He loves me. Next, he will ask me to marry him, and I will say yes.

Their clothes lay in a heap on the floor by the bed. Reaching down, she found Peter's tweed Norfolk jacket, picked it up, stepped out of bed, and slipped it on. It reached halfway to her knees. On tiptoes, she walked out into the sitting room of the suite, where two low table lamps were lit, and where the table was still set for their dinner. The candles on the table had guttered out. She lifted one of the warming lids: cold asparagus. She picked up a spear, and nibbled it. She lifted another lid: rissolé potatoes. She replaced that lid, but a third lid revealed baby lamb chops, which would be excellent cold. She sat down at the table and selected a chop with her fingers.

Sitting there in Peter's baggy jacket, overlooking the Square and the lighted city, the chunky palm trees that dotted the Square with the tall Dewey Monument at its center—the monument with the loosely draped lady at the top of her pedestal—and having her own quiet, solitary dinner and eating a baby lamb chop with her fingers; everything about it all was somehow—well, somehow like having a picnic on the deck of a sailboat in a sheltered cove, but tonight it was infinitely more rewarding, more fulfilling and romantic, she thought.