The Stars Shine Down (16 page)

“Not yet.”

“All right. I’ll handle it.”

That afternoon Lara made a dozen phone calls. She hit the jackpot on the last call. Barbara Roswell.

“Horace Guttman? Sure, I know him, Lara. What’s your interest in him?”

“I’d like to meet him. I’m a big fan of his. I want you to do me a favor. Could you please invite him to dinner next Saturday night, Barbara?”

“You’ve got it.”

The dinner party was simple but elegant. There were fourteen people at the Roswell residence. Alice Guttman wasn’t feeling well that evening, so Horace Guttman had come to the party alone. Lara had been seated next to him. He was in his sixties, but he seemed much older. He had a stern, worn face and a stubborn chin. Lara looked enchanting, provocative. She was wearing a low-cut black Halston gown and simple but stunning jewelry. They had had their cocktails and were seated at the dining table.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you,” Lara confessed. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, young lady. You’ve made quite a splash in this town.”

“I hope I’m making a contribution,” Lara said modestly. “It’s such a wonderful town.”

“Where are you from?”

“Gary, Indiana.”

“Really?” He looked at her in surprise. “That’s where I was born. So, you’re a Hoosier, eh?”

Lara smiled. “That’s right. I have such fond memories of Gary. My father worked for the
Post-Tribune.
I went to Roosevelt High. On weekends we’d go to Gleason Park for picnics and outdoor concerts, or we’d go bowling at the Twelve and Twenty. I hated having to leave.”

“You’ve done well for yourself, Miss Cameron.”

“Lara.”

“Lara. What are you up to these days?”

“The project I’m most excited about,” Lara told him, “is a new building I’m putting up in Queens. It’s going to have thirty stories and two hundred thousand square feet of floor space.”

“That’s interesting,” Guttman said, thoughtfully.

“Oh,” Lara said innocently. “Why?”

“It happens that we’re looking for a building just about that size for our new headquarters.”

“Really? Have you chosen one yet?”

“Not exactly, but…”

“If you’d like, I can show you the plans for our new building. They’ve already been drawn up.”

He studied her a moment. “Yes, I’d like to see them.”

“I can bring them to your office Monday morning.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

The rest of the evening went well.

When Horace Guttman reached home that night, he walked into his wife’s bedroom.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Better, darling. How was the party?”

He sat down on the bed. “Well, they all missed you, but I had an interesting time. Have you ever heard of Lara Cameron?”

“Certainly. Everyone has heard of Lara Cameron.”

“She’s quite a woman. A little strange. Says she was born in Gary, Indiana, same as me. Knew all about Gary—Gleason Park and the Twelve and Twenty.”

“What’s strange about that?”

Guttman looked at his wife and grinned. “The little lady comes from Nova Scotia.”

Early Monday morning Lara appeared at Horace Guttman’s office, carrying the blueprints for the Queens project. She was ushered in immediately.

“Nice to see you, Lara. Sit down.”

She laid the blueprints on his desk and sat across from him.

“Before you look at these,” Lara said, “I have something to confess, Horace.”

Guttman leaned back in his chair. “Yes?”

“That story I told on Saturday about Gary, Indiana…”

“What about it?”

“I’ve never even been to Gary, Indiana. I was trying to impress you.”

He laughed. “Now you’ve succeeded in confusing me. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep up with you, young lady. Let’s look at these blueprints.”

Half an hour later he was through examining them.

“You know,” he said reflectively,” I was pretty well set on another location.”

“Were you?”

“Why should I change my mind and move into your building?”

“Because you’re going to be happier there. I’ll see that you have everything you need.” She smiled. “Besides, it’s going to cost your company ten percent less.”

“Really? You don’t know what my deal is for the other building.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take your word for it.”

“You
could
have come from Gary, Indiana,” Guttman said. “You’ve got a deal.”

When Lara returned to her office, there was a message that Philip Adler had telephoned.

T
he ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria was crowded with patrons of Carnegie Hall. Lara moved through the crowd, looking for Philip. She recalled the telephone conversation they had had a few days earlier.

“Miss Cameron, this is Philip Adler.”

Her throat went suddenly dry.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to thank you earlier for the donation you made to the foundation. I’ve just returned from Europe and learned about it.”

“It was my pleasure,” Lara said. She had to keep him talking. “As…as a matter of fact, I’m interested in knowing more about the foundation. Perhaps we could get together and discuss it.”

There was a pause. “There’s going to be a charity dinner at the Waldorf Saturday evening. We could meet there. Are you free?”

Lara quickly glanced at her schedule. She had a dinner meeting that evening with a banker from Texas.

She made a quick decision. “Yes. I’d be delighted to go.”

“Wonderful. There will be a ticket at the door for you.”

When Lara replaced the receiver, she was beaming.

Philip Adler was nowhere in sight. Lara moved through the huge ballroom, listening to the conversations around her.

“…so the leading tenor said, ‘Dr. Klemperer, I have only two high C’s left. Do you want to hear them now or tonight at the performance?’…’

“…oh, I admit that he has a good stick. His dynamics and tonal shadings are excellent…but the
tempi! Tempi!
Spare me!…”

“…you’re insane! Stravinsky is too structured. His music could have been written by a robot. He holds back his feelings. Bartok, on the other hand, lets loose the floodgates, and we’re bathed in emotions…”

“…I simply can’t stand her playing. Her Chopin is an exercise in tortured rubato, butchered textures, and purple passion…”

It was an arcane language that was beyond Lara’s comprehension. And then she saw Philip, surrounded by an admiring coterie. Lara pushed her way through the crowd. An attractive young woman was saying, “When you played the B flat Minor Sonata, I felt that Rachmaninoff was smiling. Your tone and voicing, and the soft-grained readings…Wonderful!”

Philip smiled. “Thank you.”

A middle-aged dowager was gushing, “I keep listening to your recording of the
Hammerklavier
over and over. My God! The vitality is irresistible! I think you must be the only pianist
left in this world who really understands that Beethoven sonata…”

Philip saw Lara. “Ah. Excuse me,” he said.

He made his way over to where she was standing and took her hand. His touch aroused her. “Hello. I’m glad you could come, Miss Cameron.”

“Thank you.” She looked around. “This is quite a crowd.”

He nodded. “Yes. I assume that you’re a lover of classical music?”

Lara thought of the music she had grown up with: “Annie Laurie,” “Comin’ through the Rye,” “The Hills of Home”…”

Oh, yes,” Lara said. “My father brought me up on classical music.”

“I want to thank you again for your contribution. That was really very generous.”

“Your foundation sounds so interesting. I would love to hear more about it. If…”

“Philip, darling! There are no words! Magnificent!” He was surrounded again.

Lara managed to make herself heard. “If you’re free one evening next week…”

Philip shook his head. “I’m sorry, I leave for Rome tomorrow.”

Lara felt a sudden sense of loss. “Oh.”

“But I’ll be back in three weeks. Perhaps then we could…”

“Wonderful!” Lara said.

“…spend an evening discussing music.”

Lara smiled. “Yes. I’ll look forward to that.”

At that moment they were interrupted by two middle-aged men. One wore his hair in a ponytail; the other had on a single earring.

“Philip! You must settle an argument for us. When you’re playing Liszt, which do you think is more important—a piano with heavy action that gives you a colorful sound or light action where you can do a colorful manipulation?”

Lara had no idea what they were talking about. They went off into a discussion about neutral sonority and long sounds and transparency. Lara watched the animation in Philip’s face as he talked, and she thought,
This is his world. I’ve got to find a way to get into it.

The following morning Lara appeared at the Manhattan School of Music. She said to the woman at the reception desk, “I’d like to see one of the music professors, please.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“No.”

“Just a moment, please.” She disappeared into another room.

A few minutes later a small gray-haired man appeared at Lara’s side.

“Good morning. I’m Leonard Meyers. How may I help you?”

“I’m interested in classical music.”

“Ah, you wish to enroll here. What instrument do you play?”

“I don’t play any instrument. I just want to learn about classical music.”

“I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. This school is not for beginners.”

“I’ll pay you five thousand dollars for two weeks of your time.”

Professor Meyers blinked. “I’m sorry, Miss…I didn’t get your name.”

“Cameron. Lara Cameron.”

“You wish to pay me five thousand dollars for a two-week
discussion
of classical music?” He had trouble getting the words out.

“That’s right. You can use the money for a scholarship fund if you wish.”

Professor Meyers lowered his voice. “That will not be necessary. This can just be between you and me.”

“That’s fine.”

“When…er…would you like to begin?”

“Now.”

“I have a class at the moment, but give me five minutes…”

Lara and Professor Meyers were seated in a classroom alone.

“Let us start at the beginning. Do you know anything about classical music?”

“Very little.”

“I see. Well, there are two ways to understand music,” the professor began. “Intellectually and emotionally. Someone once said that music reveals to man his hidden soul. Every great composer was able to accomplish that.”

Lara was listening intently.

“Are you familiar with
any
composers, Miss Cameron?”

She smiled. “Not too many.”

The professor frowned. “I don’t really understand your interest in…”

“I want to get enough of a background so that I can talk intelligently to a professional musician about the classics. I’m…particularly interested in piano music.”

“I see.” Meyers thought for a moment. “I’ll tell you how we’re going to begin. I’m going to give you some CDs to play.”

Lara watched him walk over to a shelf and pull down some compact discs.

“We’ll start with these. I want you to listen carefully to the allegro in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. Twenty-one in C, Kochel 467, and the adagio in Brahms Piano Concerto No. One, and the moderato in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. Two in C Minor, Opus Eighteen, and finally, the romanze in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. One. They’re all marked.”

“Right.”

“If you would like to play these and come back in a few days…”

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

The following day, when Lara came in, she was carrying half a dozen CDs of Philip Adler’s concerts and recitals.

“Ah, splendid!” Professor Meyers said. “Maestro Adler is the best. You are particularly interested in his playing?”

“Yes.”

“The maestro has recorded many beautiful sonatas.”

“Sonatas?”

He sighed. “You don’t know what a sonata is?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“A sonata is a piece, usually in several movements, that has a certain basic musical form. And when that form is used in a piece for a solo instrument, like a piano or violin, the piece is called a sonata. A symphony is a sonata for orchestra.”

“I understand.”
That shouldn’t be difficult to work into a conversation.

“The piano was originally known as the pianoforte. That is Italian for ‘soft-loud’…”

They spent the next few days discussing tapes that Philip had recorded—Beethoven, Liszt, Bartok, Mozart, Chopin.

Lara listened, and absorbed, and remembered.

“He likes Liszt. Tell me about him.”

“Franz Liszt was a boy genius. Everyone admired him. He was brilliant. He was treated like a pet by the aristocracy, and he finally complained that he had become on par with a juggler or a performing dog.…”

“Tell me about Beethoven.”

“A difficult man. He was such an unhappy person that in the middle of his great success he decided he didn’t like the work that he had done, and he changed to longer and more emotional compositions, like the
Eroica
and the
Pastoral.
…”

“Chopin?”

“Chopin was criticized for writing music for the piano, so the critics of his day called him limited…”

Later: “Liszt could play Chopin better than Chopin could…”

Another day: “There’s a difference between French pianists and American pianists. The French like clarity and elegance. Traditionally, their technical schooling is grounded in
jeu perlé
—perfectly pearly evenness of articulation with a steady wrist…”

Each day they played one of Philip’s recordings and discussed it. At the end of the two weeks Professor Meyers said, “I must confess that I’m impressed, Miss Cameron. You are a truly dedicated pupil. Perhaps you should take up an instrument.”

Lara laughed. “Let’s not get carried away.” She handed him a check. “Here you are.”

She could not wait for Philip to return to New York.

T
he day started with good news. Terry Hill called.

“Lara?”

“Yes?”

“We just heard from the Gaming Commission. You’ve got your license.”

“That’s wonderful, Terry!”

“I’ll go over the details when I see you, but it’s a green light. Apparently you impressed the hell out of them.”

“I’ll get everything started right away,” Lara said. “Thanks.”

Lara told Keller what had happened.

“That’s great. We can sure use the cash flow. That will take care of a lot of our problems..”

Lara looked at her calender. “We can fly there on Tuesday and get things moving.”

Kathy buzzed her. “There’s a Mr. Adler on line two. Shall I tell him…?”

Lara was suddenly nervous. “I’ll take it.” She picked up the telephone. “Philip?”

“Hello. I’m back.”

“I’m glad.” /
missed you.

“I know it’s short notice, but I wondered whether you might be free for dinner this evening.”

She had a dinner engagement with Paul Martin. “Yes. I’m free.”

“Wonderful. Where would you like to dine?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“La Cote Basque?”

“Fine.”

“Why don’t we meet there? Eight o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“See you tonight.”

When Lara hung up, she was smiling.

“Was that
Philip
Adler?” Keller asked.

“Uh-huh. I’m going to marry him.”

Keller was looking at her, stunned. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

It was a jolt.
I’m going to lose her,
Keller thought. And then?:
Who am I kidding? I could never have her.

“Lara…you hardly know him!”

I’ve known him all my life.

“I don’t want you to make a mistake.”

“I’m not. I…” Her private telephone rang. The one she had had installed for Paul Martin. Lara picked it up. “Hello, Paul.”

“Hi, Lara. What time would you like to make dinner tonight? Eight?”

She felt a sudden sense of guilt. “Paul…I’m afraid I can’t make it tonight. Something came up. I was just going to call you.”

“Oh? Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Some people just flew in from Rome”—that part at least was true-—”and I have to meet with them.”

“My bad luck. Another night, then.”

“Of course.”

“I hear the license came through for the Reno hotel.”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to have fun with that place.”

“I’m looking forward to it. I’m sorry about tonight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

The line went dead.

Lara replaced the receiver slowly.

Keller was watching her. She could see the disapproval on his face.

“Is something bothering you?”

“Yeah. It’s all this modern equipment.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think you have too many phones in your office. He’s bad news, Lara.”

Lara stiffened. “Mr. Bad News has saved our hides a few times, Howard. Anything else?”

Keller shook his head. “No.”

“Right. Let’s get back to work.”

Philip was waiting for her when she arrived at La Cote Basque. People turned to stare at Lara as she walked into the restaurant. Philip stood up to greet her, and Lara’s heart skipped a beat.

“I hope I’m not late,” she said.

“Not at all.” He was looking at her admiringly. His eyes were warm. “You look lovely.”

She had changed clothes half a dozen times.
Should I wear something simple or elegant or sexy?
Finally, she had decided on a simple Dior. “Thank you.”

When they were seated, Philip said, “I feel like an idiot.”

“Oh? Why?”

“I never connected the name. You’re
that
Cameron.”

She laughed. “Guilty.”

“My God! You’re a hotel chain, you’re apartment buildings, office buildings. When I travel, I see your name all over the country.”

“Good.” Lara smiled. “It will remind you of me.”

He was studying her. “I don’t think I need any reminding. Do you get tired of people telling you that you’re very beautiful?”

She started to say, “I’m glad you think I’m beautiful.” What came out was: “Are you married?” She wanted to bite her tongue.

He smiled. “No. It would be impossible for me to get married.”

“Why?” For an instant she held her breath.
Surely he’s not…

“Because I’m on tour most of the year. One night I’m in Budapest, the next night in London or Paris or Tokyo.”

There was a sweeping sense of relief. “Ah. Philip, tell me about yourself.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

Philip laughed. “That would take at least five minutes.”

“No, I’m serious. I really want to know about you.”

He took a deep breath. “Well, my parents were Viennese. My father was a musical conductor, and my mother was a piano teacher. They left Vienna to escape Hitler and settled in Boston. I was born there.”

“Did you always know you wanted to be a pianist?”

“Yes.”

He was six years old. He was practicing the piano, and his father came storming into the room. “No, no, no! Don’t you know a major chord from a minor?” His hairy finger
slashed at the sheet music. “That’s a minor chord. Minor. Do you understand?”

“Father, please, can I go? My friends are waiting for me outside.”

“No. You will sit here until you get it right.”

He was eight years old. He had practiced for four hours that morning and had had a terrible fight with his parents. “I hate the piano,” he cried. “I never want to touch it again.”

His mother said, “Fine. Now, let me hear the andante once more.”

He was ten years old. The apartment was filled with guests, most of them old friends of his parents from Vienna. All of them were musicians.

“Philip is going to play something for us now,” his mother announced.

“We’d love to hear little Philip play,” they said in patronizing voices.

“Play the Mozart, Philip.”

Philip looked into their bored faces and sat down at the piano, angry. They went on chatting among themselves.

He began to play, his fingers flashing across the keyboard. The talking suddenly stopped. He played a Mozart sonata, and the music was alive. And at that moment he was Mozart, filling the room with the magic of the master.

As Philip’s fingers struck the last chord, there was an awed silence. His parent’s friends rushed over to the piano, talking excitedly, effusive with their praise. He listened to their applause and adulation, and that was the moment of his epiphany, when he knew who he was and what he wanted to do with his life.

“Yes, I always knew I wanted to be a pianist,” Philip told Lara.

“Where did you study piano?”

“My mother taught me until I was fourteen, and then they sent me to study at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.”

“Did you enjoy that?”

“Very much.”

He was fourteen years old, alone in the city with no friends. The Curtis Institute of Music was located in four turn-of-the-century mansions near Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. It was the closest American equivalent to the Moscow Conservatory of Viardo, Egorov, and Tor adze. Its graduates included Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Gian Carlo Menotti, Peter Serkin, and dozens of other brilliant musicians.

“Weren’t you lonely there?”

“No.”

He was miserable. He had never been away from home before. He had auditioned for the Curtis Institute, and when they accepted him, the realization struck him that he was about to begin a new life, that he would never go home again. The teachers recognized the young boy’s talent immediately. His piano teachers were Isabelle Vengerova and Rudolf Serkin, and Philip studied piano, theory, harmony, orchestration, and flute. When he was not in class, he played chamber music with the other students. The piano, which he had been forced to practice from the time he was three years old, was now the focus of his life. To him, it had become a magical instrument out of which his fingers could draw romance and passion and thunder. It spoke a universal language.

“I gave my first concert when I was eighteen with the Detroit Symphony.”

“Were you frightened?”

He was terrified. He found that it was one thing to play before a group of friends. It was another to face a huge
auditorium filled with people who had paid money to hear him. He was nervously pacing backstage when the stage manager grabbed his arm and said, “Go. You’re on.” He had never forgotten the feeling he had when he walked out onto the stage and the audience began to applaud him. He sat down at the piano, and his nervousness vanished in an instant. After that his life became a marathon of concerts. He toured all over Europe and Asia, and after each tour his reputation grew. William Ellerbee, an important artists’ manager, agreed to represent him. Within two years Philip Adler was in demand everywhere.

Philip looked at Lara and smiled. “Yes. I still get frightened before a concert.”

“What’s it like to go on tour?”

“It’s never dull. Once I was on a tour with the Philadelphia Symphony. We were in Brussels, on our way to give a concert in London. The airport was closed because of fog, so they took us by bus to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. The man in charge explained that the plane they had chartered for us was small and that the musicians could take either their instruments or their luggage. Naturally they chose their instruments. We arrived in London just in time to begin the concert. We played it in jeans, sneakers, and unshaven.”

Lara laughed. “And I’ll bet the audience loved it.”

“They did. Another time I was giving a concert in Indiana, and the piano was locked away in a closet and no one had a key. We had to break the door down.”

Lara giggled.

“Last year I was scheduled to do a Beethoven concerto in Rome, and one of the music critics wrote: ‘Adler gave a ponderous performance, with his phrasing in the finale completely missing the point. The tempo was too broad, rupturing the pulse of the piece.’”

“That’s awful!” Lara said sympathetically.

“The awful part was that I never even gave that concert. I had missed the plane!”

Lara leaned forward, eagerly. “Tell me more.”

“Well, one time in Sao Paulo the pedals fell off the piano in the middle of a Chopin concert.”

“What did you do?”

“I finished the sonata without pedals. Another time the piano slid clear across the stage.”

When Philip talked about his work, his voice was filled with enthusiasm.

“I’m very lucky. It’s wonderful to be able to touch people and transport them into another world. The music gives each of them a dream. Sometimes I think music is the only sanity left in an insane world.” He laughed self-consciously. “I didn’t mean to sound pompous.”

“No. You make millions of people so happy. I love to hear you play.” She took a deep breath. “When I hear you play Debussy’s
Voiles,
I’m on a lonely beach, and I see the mast of a ship sailing in the distance…”

He smiled. “Yes, so do I.”

“And when I listen to your Scarlatti, I’m in Naples, and I can hear the horses and the carriages, and see the people walking through the streets…” She could see the pleasure in his face as he listened to her.

She was dredging up every memory of her sessions with Professor Meyers.

“With Bartok, you take me to the villages of Central Europe, to the peasants of Hungary. You’re painting pictures, and I lose myself in them.”

“You’re very flattering,” Philip said.

“No. I mean every word of it.”

Dinner arrived. It consisted of a Chateaubriand with pommes
frites, a Waldorf salad, fresh asparagus, and a fruit tart for dessert. There was a wine for each course. Over dinner Philip said, “Lara, we keep talking about me. Tell me about you. What is it like to put up enormous buildings all over the country?”

Lara was silent for a moment. “It’s difficult to describe.
You
create with your hands. / create with my mind. I don’t physically put up a building, but I make it possible. I dream a dream of bricks and concrete and steel, and make it come true. I create jobs for hundreds of people: architects and bricklayers and designers and carpenters and plumbers. Because of me, they’re able to support their families. I give people beautiful surroundings to live in and make them comfortable. I build attractive stores where people can shop and buy things they need. I build monuments to the future.” She smiled, sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to make a speech.”

“You’re quite remarkable, do you know that?”

“I want you to think so.”

It was an enchanted evening, and by the time it was over, Lara knew that for the first time in her life she was in love. She had been so afraid that she might be disappointed, that no man could live up to the image in her imagination. But here was Lochinvar in the flesh, and she was stirred.

When Lara got home, she was so excited she was unable to go to sleep. She went over the evening in her mind, replaying the conversation again and again and again. Philip Adler was the most fascinating man she had ever met. The telephone rang. Lara smiled and picked it up. She started to say, “Philip…,” when Paul Martin said, “Just checking to make sure you got home safely.”

“Yes,” Lara said.

“How did your meeting go?”

“Fine.”

“Good. Let’s have dinner tomorrow night.”

Lara hesitated. “All right.”
I wonder if there’s going to be a problem.