West of Paradise (16 page)

But after a good, or bad, half hour of flingings and stomach-churning downdrafts, the plane resettled on its normal course. And all Arthur had to worry about was the show, and where to start to look for a shyster who seemed like a good guy.

*   *   *

In spite of the fact that he had no reason to wait for his luggage, since he was carrying all he needed, Tyler stood by the baggage carousel watching Sarah Nash wait for hers. She bit her lips with a nervous continuity, so that at moments she seemed to have no lower lip at all. In the part of his heart that was not on the job for Norman Jessup, he felt genuinely sorry for her. Pity was judgmental, and made the one feeling it think he was above and apart from the other person. So Tyler tried very hard to integrate what he was experiencing into his own being, and feel compassion. But it was difficult to identify with someone who had gone out of her way to be unkind. And she had matching luggage, embroidered, tapestry, so she was really into the externals, the bullshit that had probably trapped her into becoming vicious.

*   *   *

Helen Manning was relieved to see that Tyler was not dashing off as she feared he might, with the jauntiness that came from having only one thing to carry, not to mention youth. Her limousine driver had relieved her of her hand luggage, and was waiting for her rest of her things. So she was free to saunter over to where Tyler was leaning, although sauntering was not easy with the height of her heels. She regretted not having worn the sneakers she'd bought for her foray into Norman's office.

“Oh, hi,” she said, like it was a surprise, finding him there. “Aren't you that friend of Norman Jessup's?”

“Which friend is that?” Tyler said, his eyes still someplace else.

It moved her that he had the self-possession to look past her, at the same time giving her clear access to all that was inside him. From her vantage point, she saw depth, intelligence, sensitivity, and, almost more important, eyes that were more dazzling than her own. What would Bunyan call these, if hers were phoenix eyes? Tyler's were an intense blue, but pale, paler than blue topaz. Nor was there more than the slightest hint of green, so they weren't aquamarine. Really what they were was crystal blue, not precious enough to describe them, not rare enough. She wished she had Bunyan's gift for imagery and a knowledge of stones that were not semiprecious, other than diamonds, which wouldn't have done it at all.

And his smell was quite wonderful. Slightly toasty. Fresh from the shower that morning, clean, warmed in its own juice during the flight. Very much his own scent, inoffensive but male, reassuring. It reached someplace deeper than her nostrils.

“The one who was with him and Carina at Morton's,” she said. “It must have been a Monday.”

“
Must?
Because you, like everyone else there, are a victim of the ‘shoulds'?” he asked, smiling.

“Victim?” she said, bristling, although she didn't know why, since she didn't really understand him. “Shoulds?”

“Monday nights,” he said, and looked straight at her, the merriment undisguised, a tiny dimple appearing to the left of his generous mouth. “We should go to Morton's. The categorical imperative of a society with no philosophy.”

“I was invited,” she said, trying not to sound petulant.

“It wasn't an attack,” he said gently.

“Well, I don't know if I'm glad or sorry. At least if someone attacks you, you know you're having an effect on them.”

He looked straight into her eyes. She felt absolutely giddy.

“You have an effect on everybody,” he said. “You don't need to have one on me.”

She looked away, actually feeling herself blush. Blushing, for God's sake. Even when she'd been an ingenue, she hadn't been an ingenue.

“I gotta go,” he said, and started to move past her.

She could feel his warmth, even without touching. “Can I give you a lift into town? I have a limousine.”

“So do I. Thanks anyway.”

“I could use a ride,” said Arthur Finster, who was standing an eavesdrop away.

“Take a cab,” Helen said, signaling to her driver.

*   *   *

Sarah Nash had called ahead to Tel Aviv taxi. It was a comedown, of course, from the days of the curbside limo, but a cut above a regular cab. And they always sent a good car for her now, with a woman driver, Carmen, a Cuban who also sold jewelry. All the way into town Sarah would try on rings and pretend that her hands were really lovely, instead of square and stubby-fingered. She would flash the jewels at herself, and try not to despise the men who had never given her any, reaffirm that she was completely independent, wanted no man in her life anymore, even one who would bejewel her.

“Where we going?” Felicia asked her.

“The Carlyle.” She sat back and watched the sparkle in the darkness, the sparkle on her hands, the sparkle across the bridge, the pileup of lights that blinked and beckoned more seductively than stars. People still shook their fist at that city, figured they could beat it. For all its toughness, New York seemed to Sarah more innocent than L.A., because if you connected big enough, it forgave you. Welcomed you to its concrete bosom, asked you to all the best parties, gave parties for you, where the guest list was what passed for a meritocracy. A culture where achievement was honored, especially when you scapegoated another city. She would have moved there if it hadn't been so wind chill–factored in the winter.

Fortunately, it was spring now. As young men's fancies turned to thoughts of love, hers returned to revenge. It was just after six. Too late to set up any investigatory appointments for this evening. Maybe she would just have a quiet dinner in her room, telephone Chuck and make him nervous, and start her uncovering tomorrow.

*   *   *

The Tel Aviv taxi crossed the 59th Street Bridge with a limousine behind it and a limousine after that. The unintentional caravan at last reached its destination. Tyler went in the Madison Avenue entrance to the Carlyle. Sarah Nash had her luggage unloaded at the side, where the doorman was, and the welcome that made it worth not getting a break on the price of the room.

*   *   *

Now that she knew where Tyler was staying, Helen had her driver circle the block a few times, so she could phone from the car and make a reservation. They were fully booked, but after a weep to the manager, explaining she'd come to the city for the funeral of her father, he managed to make a place for her, giving up the suite he was holding for his dearest friend.

Being himself one of the few great gentlemanly toffs left on the planet, as nattily clad as he was jolly, the manager of the Carlyle, after dealing with the crisis on the phone, stepped behind the reception desk and saw Tyler. He tried not to react to the deliberately worn-through-the-knees jeans. But he did have a bad moment.

Then he looked at the name on the register, at the same time noting the great beauty of the boy, and remembered that Norman Jessup was paying the bill. So he thought, Oh, well. As Tyler himself often thought or said Oh, well, releasing it to the universe. First class hotel managers were every bit in their way as attuned to the mysteries as metaphysicians.

*   *   *

“I hate all this spying and sneaking around,” Tyler said to Norman on the phone.

“
Hate
isn't in your vocabulary,” said Norman. “I thought it was all about love and light.”

“It can't be when you're being devious and manipulative. Let her go, Norman. The only way Sarah can really beat you is if you empower her, give her power over you. Let her go.”

“Find out first what she's doing, and where she's going, and when I know, I'll let her go.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Tyler said.

“Visualize it happening,” said Norman. “Affirm it. Claim it. Isn't that how it works?”

“Only if you're not making fun of it,” said Tyler.

*   *   *

The ballet company at City Center was in rehearsal all during the day, the stage empty, the scenery for the evening performance of another ballet carefully pushed out of the way. Alexander Winsett, the choreographer, had a lot on his mind, more than enough, what with dancers leaving and dancers dying, and the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center with its best program in years, and there not being the appetite or vast audience for dance there had been once. On top of all his other concerns, he was having to parry the intrusive thrusts of this Hollywood harridan.

He tried to take mental sanctuary in the sense of community and safety the group provided, as the dancers did, the balletic version of the spiritual
sanga.
But the dancers were on a break, and this woman was continuing to grill him as she had most of the afternoon, waiting for the moments when he stopped to think, in order to interrupt the flow of his thinking. Right now he didn't have the dancers' physical presence to fortify him, with the exception of one eager girl from Michigan, who continued practicing fouettés, a kind of virtuoso whipping pirouette, around the stage.

Winsett and Sarah were sitting in one of the empty rows. He was two seats away from her. But he still had the suffocated feeling she was on top of him.

“And you brought Paulo up from Brazil?” Sarah Nash was saying, holding her tape recorder out like a gun.

She had asked his permission to record their conversation. Assaulted by her persistence, the overwhelming number of phone calls he had received from her the night before, he had assented, thinking it might be for his own protection as well as hers.

“He brought himself up from Brazil,” Winsett said. “Or rather, his company brought him. Capoeiras de Bahia. An inspired group.” He had a towel around his muscular shoulders, soaking up the sweat he could work up even in his head as he directed the company's movements. They were rehearsing
Midsummer Night's Dream,
part Balanchine, part Winsett himself, a mélange that had set the purists screaming in advance. But he wasn't afraid of critics or the ballet community and its advocates, having lost so many friends in the past few years he knew not to be fearful of words or opinions. Still, this woman frightened him, with her scarlet Mohawk with its shaven sides, and her relentlessness.

“How old was he?”

“Fourteen.”

“You really start them young,” she said.

He tried to read her for facetiousness. “A dancer's life is limited,” he said. “The knees usually go by forty.”

“And you persuaded him to stay in New York?”

“That was his original hope in coming here. That an American ballet company would want him.”

“Or an American ballet master?”

“I have accepted the fact that you are tenacious, Miss Nash. I won't abide your being rude.” He started to get up.

“Please,” she said, and reached with a hand to his arm, a gesture she supposed would comfort him. “Forgive me. I didn't sleep very well. I didn't mean to be discourteous. I'd much rather talk
to
you than to people who talk about you.”

“Is that an apology, or a threat?” he asked.

“Both,” she said, and smiled.

He sat back down.

“You did become lovers?” When he didn't answer, she softened her voice. “Look … besides being politically correct now, so you have nothing to be uncomfortable about, I have this enterprising assistant who spoke to a bunch of dancers, and they all said—”

“Yes, we were lovers,” he said, suddenly old. His hair was thinning and grayish blond, the high forehead that in his youth had been taken quite correctly as indicating intelligence expanded now almost to brilliance. He had prominent cheekbones, slightly caved in underneath, and dark eyes that scanned her for danger, found it. He shifted in the chair. “Why don't you just talk to Paulo?”

“I'd be happy to, if I could find out where he was.”

“He isn't in California?”

“No. One of the dancers said he stayed in New York. Weren't you guys in touch?”

“We had a falling out.”

“Over Norman Jessup?”

“It doesn't matter what it was over,” said Winsett. “We stopped being associates
and
friends.”

“But the dance world is supposed to be pretty small and incestuous. You must have heard something about what happened to him.”

“Not a word.”

“And that doesn't strike you as odd?”

“Only if I was interested.”

“Well, I'm really interested, and it strikes me as
more
than odd. It strikes me as highly peculiar that a man could disappear and no one has a clue where he went. Does he have a family?”

“They're all dead.”

“Of natural causes?” Sarah grinned. “Only kidding. It just makes it so convenient, you know, nobody who might care about him being around to ask questions.”

“Like you, you mean. Do you care about him?”

“I don't know him.”

“Then why do you care?”

“I'm interested in Norman Jessup. Paulo left you for Norman, didn't he?”

“Will you ask her to please stop hogging the stage!” a young man in leotards called out to Winsett. “We know how earnest they are in Michigan, but she's not the only one who wants to practice.”

“You'll all have the stage in a moment,” Winsett said. “The break is almost over.” He turned to Sarah. “As is the interview.”

“He did leave you for Norman,” Sarah said.

“I'm in the middle of a real crisis here. I don't know if you've been following what's going on with this theater…”

“Theater and ballet aren't it for me,” Sarah said. “That's nothing against you. I have nothing against you. I'd just like to know … the reason he left you.”

“If you don't care to understand the feelings of theater people and dancers, you can't possibly understand Paulo. We all have dreams. Paulo's were bigger than mine. He'd been a dance sensation when he was a child in Brazil. There was major play about him when he first got to the States. But it never really happened as big as he thought it would. And then he met Norman. I guess … well, to be the love of a great man is the next best thing.”