Part Seven: The Elevator That Stopped In The Night
That about brings me to Friday night and the formal party that A.L-Bion threw, in the Vaulted Sky restaurant on the top of the Obelisk building. I was now officially divorced, so I could escort Primavera without causing comment. The evening started off well and ended very well, but the in-between part was cruel. It began when I picked her up. She dressed for the occasion.
I stood there at the door, and closed my mouth with an effort. "This makes me very glad I indulged in a new tuxedo. I didn't know I'd be escorting the successor to the glamour of Dietrich and Garbo."
She smiled, a long lazy smile only a notch or two above the Mona Lisa. "You're turned out…presentably. Aren't you going to offer me your arm?"
"Oh. Yes, of course." She was…
Let me describe this. She wore an evening gown made of off-white silk, long and cool as a parfait glass of vanilla bean ice cream, with a short train behind, a bit of ruffling on the shoulder straps, and a V in front, cut so far down (and wide!), that it was obvious only God was holding her up, and He was doing a good job of it. It was distracting. I had trouble looking anywhere else, but it was either look away or arrive at the dinner with a visible erection spoiling the line of my trousers. Her perfume was a direct stimulant to every erotic nerve center, too, something with lavender, anise, vanilla and lemon.
She had on a diamond necklace her father gave her when she got her XD magna cum laude. It had a sapphire pendant the size of an egg, which hung in the V-opening of the gown, right in between—Well. She also had on a bracelet with the same stones, and diamond solitaire earrings of no more than two or three carats each.
She had a blue wrap in case she got cold, but that was for out doors. Indoors it came off. Very much off. That dress was cut at least as far down in back as in the front. She got away with it by being a tall, athletic redhead with natural elegance and beautiful, flawless breasts of moderate size. On a more generously built girl with less dignity and self possession, it would have looked vulgar.
Someone, for example, like my ex-wife Daenne, who had come to the party with Bock and was wearing the exact same dress. I suppose that if anything would upset a newly divorced woman, going to a formal party to find that your ex-husband's date is wearing the same dress, only it looks better on her and she's wearing a two-million-global necklace, would do it.
Primavera handled it like this—when she was introduced to Daenne by Elyse, playing the A.L.-Bion hostess for what would probably be the last time, my hopefully-next wife smiled at my ex-wife and said, with humor and grace, "I admire your taste."
Daenne replied, "Um, thank you. I admire yours," and then blurted out a rude and stupid question. "Aren't you worried that something might happen to your jewelry at a party like this?"
Primavera gave me one of her wry glances and quoted Anita Loos, " 'Any girl who was a lady would not even think of having such a good time that she forgot to hang on to her jewelry.' If you will excuse us, I'd like a glass of champagne." She left Daenne and Elyse there, taking my arm again.
We wandered around during the cocktail hour; I introduced her to various people, while the sunset suffused the glass panels and translucent concrete, turning the room raspberry, peach and gold, gradually cooling to lavender and indigo.
Elyse was acting strangely. For some reason, she kept trying to steer Primavera, my mother, and me together. Mom didn't want to be in the same frame of reference as us, nor did we want to be around her, but Elyse was stage-managing it. Why, I did not know. Like I said, strange.
Daenne was working the room. I saw her go from group to group, hearing snippets of what she was saying. She was spreading and garnering gossip about me, about Primavera, and about Primavera and me. Her behavior got to be so bad I had to do something about it.
I caught Daenne's arm and swung us into an alcove.
"Oww," she whined. "Don't grab me like that—don't touch me again, ever, Richard!"
"I apologize. It is my intention never to touch you again. I might almost say it my ambition never to touch you again, but I wanted to say something to you."
"What?" She wailed the word up and down an entire octave.
"You are acting like an embittered woman who has lost something she valued."
"Can't you talk normal to me just once, Richard?"
"You are acting angry and jealous. You are acting as if I left you for Doctor Visconti."
"Didn't you?"
"No." Yes. "Doctor Visconti has been a friend of mine for years." Never mind that I'd been licking her with my eyes all evening.
"Bullshit. Did you give her that necklace?"
"No. I have to say, it's entirely like you to think first of what I might have spent on her. To answer your next two questions, it's real, and it was a present from her father."
"Oh."
"He was very proud of her. Are you going to keep on entertaining everybody with your jealousy and resentment tonight?"
"I'm not--."
"It shows. Daenne—," I sighed. "You didn't love me. That day I stopped in the Cookshop, I read your eyes, and they said, 'This guy's so hooked, I can get away with anything.'".
"I did--."
"It was amazing how shopping sprees and sex followed each other. On the exceptionally rare occasions that we had sex, it was because you'd been spending so much you were scared to admit it without sweetening me up first. Not that I ever made a fuss about it."
"That's not fair!"
"I didn't think so, either."
She was silent a moment. "You married me knowing I didn't love you?"
"And that I didn't love you. I admit that was wrong. It was a spiteful thing to do, and I'm sorry about it." Was I ever sorry about it, at that point.
"You didn't love me? But what you said—."
"About how you were all my happiness? Things like that? That was true. I wasn't making it up. It just wasn't you I meant."
She gasped as though I'd slapped her. How could she have treasured what I'd said and not valued me? Vanity, I suppose.
"None of it?"
"The lust was real enough, at first, anyway. The body just doesn't stay attracted to somebody the brain doesn't like. Look. When we were kids, you called me 'Igor' for three years and you used to stick digitals of monsters in my books with very nasty personalized captions on them. Should I have loved you for that?" I hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead and asked the question. "Why did you do that, anyway?"
"Why did I do what?"
"Make fun of me like that. Why did you get such a kick out of making my life even more miserable?"
"I don't know. I don't remember."
"Oh, come on, Daenne. You put more time and effort into tormenting me than you put into your studies. You must have had some reason."
"I don't…It made them laugh."
"Yes, it made them laugh. I know that. But why did you keep on doing it?"
"It made them laugh, and," she was racking her brain. "and they liked me, it meant they liked me. I wanted them to keep on liking me."
That sent a shock through me. It was as if I was looking at Daenne for the first time. Instead of the vile little bitch I had always thought her, I instead saw an uncertain, insecure young woman, who was not very bright and knew it, who might just as easily been the butt of all the jokes…
Once again, I had not looked at things from someone else's point of view. I felt a bit ill. I should have asked her that a year and a half ago, before I had married her. Damn, it, I didn't want to feel sorry for Daenne! I didn't want to understand her!
"Why did you marry me?" she asked.
"Antacid for all the bile I swallowed on your account. To get back at you." I said, sheepishly.
"You-you heartless, lying user! You're vicious, oversexed—you spider!"
"Heartless means I have no heart for you. 'Lying', I freely admit. 'User'—you used me as calculatingly as I did you, or even more so. 'Oversexed' just means I wanted it more often than you did. 'Vicious' and 'Spider' deserve no comment." Being attacked restored a bit of my amour propre.
"You just think you're so smart, don't you?"
"I don't 'think' I am, I simply am. Look on the bright side, Daenne. You've gotten rid of me, you're no longer obligated to sleep with me or speak to me, I made you a nice big settlement, plus you can, in perfect truth, talk about what a son-of-a-bitch your ex-husband is. Count your blessings and be glad."
She spat another nasty name at me, and flounced away.
I am cheered by the thought that I will never have to have another conversation with her. I had, although that was not my goal, achieved a sort of closure with Daenne, and it left me feeling small, shabby, and rather soiled. I had married her for all the wrong reasons, never looked at her as a real person, and shed her as soon as I could. Could Primavera—could anyone love somebody who did things like that?
I turned to the seating chart, and saw that Primavera had been seated quite far away from me. I knew why this was, of course. The Executive Directorship candidates and their supporters were spread throughout the room for a reason; this was a business dinner when all was said and done.
I just wasn't prepared for where they'd put her. Right next to Richmond.
Right then, Elyse rounded Richmond up and brought him over that he might escort Primavera in to dinner, saying, "Knowing Richard, you two won't have met. Doctor Visconti, this is Theodore Richmond-Stanley. He's an MBA, a CPA, and has the Stanley directorship. Ted, this is Primavera Visconti, XD. She's worth over eight billion globals and she's single."
Everyone in earshot of the magic words 'eight billion globals and she's single' got whiplash as they snapped their heads around to look at my tall, lean, glamorous, rich, available doctor. Elyse knew just what would interest people. Especially Theodore Richmond-Stanley.
Richmond went bright pink, and a big, wide, greasy grin spread itself over his face until it went from one of his reddened ears to the other. The calculation program in his head was working at a rate three times faster than normal, I could see it. The earrings— the bracelet on the wrist of the hand she extended to him—the dress—the necklace and pendant—and then the program crashed as he noticed the pendant's backdrop, her intimate arcs and barely concealed peaks. Just for a moment, he gaped.
Then he let out a nervous little giggle and brushed his hand over his face, before taking her hand and doing a little bow over it. "Doctor Visconti, I am honored to meet you."
He had probably fallen in love instantaneously.
"Likewise," she returned. "But call me Primavera." She gave him a smile that could have melted glass.
I was taken aback.
She was going to encourage him?
Maybe it was that I had never before seen her with anyone she seemed to be attracted to. She'd had a serious boyfriend, I knew, during the first two years I'd been under her care, but they'd broken up because they weren't spending enough time together to suit him, or so she had said. That had been back before I had realized, or had admitted to myself, the real reason why I had gone to her for my treatment, why I had kept her baby tooth for over twenty years.
The person I work hardest at deluding is myself.
Then I saw who they'd put me next to. Richmond's mother. I gritted my teeth and took her in to dinner.
He was sitting there, bathed in Primavera's sultry radiance, while I was sitting next to his mother. It was intolerable. I made small talk with the people around me, which is the sort of thing I can do in my sleep, while underneath I stretched my ears in their direction.
"It's hard to imagine you could still be single," he oozed. "What qualities are you looking for in a spouse?"
"Well, to begin with, my spouse would have to be male. I like women very much as friends, but I'm strongly heterosexual…"
I was glad to hear that, but then I lost the thread of their conversation for a while. When I tuned back in, he was holding forth, at great and boring length, about the agricultural industry, how the only reasonable prices were for soy-yeast culture products, and using the food we were enjoying at dinner as an example of price-gouging on the part of exploitative surface-soil growers as opposed to the much lower, but still too high, prices charged by the hydroponic growers.
She was listening to him with every appearance of interest—she wasn't even interrupting him! She was always interrupting me—but she heard him out, before answering, "If you spent a year working for a surface-soil farming concern, you wouldn't say that. I did, when I was thirteen, between college and medical school. I needed a year off, and it was only right that I should learn something about the land I've since inherited…"
"Inherited?" he asked, his features showing that his opinion was shifting from a stance against surface-soil farmers and their evilly high prices to one in which he envisioned collecting the respectable profits to be had from scratching in the dirt, as he had put it.
"Yes. I was my father's principal heir. He and his brother bought adjoining estates in Tuscany, my father providing most of the capital and my Uncle Marco the know-how…" I lost the conversation again for a moment. "My cousin Lia—that's short for Virgilia— got one doctorate in viticulture and another in oenology, and now our wines win medals. Of course, the olives have always been excellent; the first pressing of oil is like liquid summer. The real profit, though, is in heirloom fruits and vegetables, so we have twenty hectares planted with tomatoes…"
His eyes were so bugged out, they would be rolling on the table in a moment.
Please, Primavera, don't tell him about…
"The villa on the estate is fundamentally sound, but very badly in need of updating." No! No! She was telling him!
"How so?" he asked.
It still has wiring," she emphasized.
"Wiring? Well, that shouldn't be too hard to fix," he reflected. "Especially if you didn't rip it out. Are the roof and foundations in good condition?"
"They are. But the plumbing's inadequate, and there's hardly a stick of furniture in the place. My cousins tell me that if I cared to correct those problems, I could name my own rental rates. It's a truly lovely place, so well proportioned that it's hard to know how to furnish it without cluttering it up unnecessarily."
"But think of the money you'd save on furniture! And if it has potential earning power as a rental, you're throwing money away every day it's empty. You'd recoup your investment in a few seasons. Is it a large house?"
" There are twelve bedrooms on the second floor. Parts of the house go back to the thirteenth century."
He nearly messed himself with excitement. He would.
"That's not a house, that's a hotel!"
"Oh, I could never do that. I could never turn it into a hotel. I've put some thought into it, though. Once I marry, when we're ready to start our family, I want to live in the villa and bring my children up there, as my father brought me up. He brought me up. He had help—but he was…" She broke off, and looked away, embarrassed by the strength of her feelings, then changed the subject slightly. "Some of the out-buildings could be converted into a private hospital for my patients."
That sounded like an excellent idea to me.
Too bad it wasn't me she was telling about it.
I took another look at him. Richmond was tall, whereas I am not. He was as tall as, or taller than, she, and I supposed women found him attractive…..
I thought about what I would do if she returned his regard. There was another reason to keep love and business apart. If she cared for him, would she not support him and work for his betterment? What if she married him? Would she not drop me as even a friend, because he didn't like me? What would be left for me in this world? I would have to have him killed. I might even do it myself.
It was in this frame of mind that I entered the elevator with her at the end of the party. Richmond had said goodnight to her in a truly disgraceful display of naked greed.
Given that the Obelisk building was so tall that it reached into the stratosphere, an elevator ride from top to bottom could take twenty to thirty minutes. The elevators were big and had a bench around the walls. We had this one to ourselves. She sat down. I stood at the center of the elevator. I was in a ferocious dark mood. In my mind I saw my future dissolving like a cube of sugar in the entirety of the ocean. My one morsel of sweetness, gone, lost in all the bitter salt…
"There's something I have to say." I forced out. "If you're going to choose someone else, can't it be somebody who I could like and respect, and not Richmond?" Then I wanted to bite through my tongue. Else! Else? Why did that betraying word have to come out?
She said, "If I'm going to choose somebody else—fascinating choice of words—can it not be Richmond? Leaving aside that 'else', I'm not interested in Theodore Richmond-Stanley."
"You seemed to be. To me."
"At dinner? Playing with him passed the time. He was so blatantly interested in how wealthy I am that I thought I'd draw him out and see how brazen he would get. It was quite entertaining. His eyes got big and shiny. I was only cat-and-mousing him."
I was having trouble thinking, which was new for me. "You looked so animated. Do you—have you been cat-and-mousing me?"
"You? No." She gave me a long, unreadable look. "I've been waiting for you to get over your conviction that no one who really knew you could ever love you."
God. Hearing that hurt. It was as painful as the physical therapy when my left hand had to be trained into being a hand and not a useless claw.
I had spent all my life like a beacon sending out signals into a vast infinite night, waiting for something to send a message back to me. Now I heard it. I could not speak.
She could, though. "I don't know why I should keep hanging around, for apart from being brilliant, wickedly funny, imaginative, determined, resolute, a crusader where anything helpless is concerned, courageous, really good at what you do, as energetic as a generator for an entire city, and secretly a good person, while at the same time being the most fascinatingly evil and reprehensible creature on the face of the earth, there's nothing about you that interests me at all—. You look like you're going to throw up."
I had to stop something. Time, maybe, or what she was saying, or one or the other of us from living any longer. Before she said, "Just kidding." I settled for stopping the elevator, and hit the emergency button. The elevator shuddered slightly as it came to a halt, and somewhere an alarm sounded.
My mouth had gone so dry that I had to lick my teeth to get my lips to move. "Don't be joking." I said. "Not about this."
"You could tell if I were."
The elevator intercom broke the tension. "Car three, your alarm is going off. Is anything wrong?"
Primavera got up and unstuck the stop button. "We're fine," she told them. "My friend looked ill for a moment, that's all." Coming over to the panel meant coming over to me. She is fifteen centimeters taller than I am. She had to bend and I had to stretch that we might bring our mouths together.
Most of her extra height is leg, so sitting down on the bench made making out a lot easier, and it seemed only seconds before we got down to the lobby.
I went back to her hotel with her, and stayed there.
What is it like for the Dickensian waif outside in the cold, when the door he thought forever barred against him suddenly opens, and he learns they've been waiting dinner for him? Some things should not, cannot, be described. Besides, I don't want to brag.