19 Purchase Street (21 page)

“Perhaps you know it as cudweed.”

Cudweed didn't ring a bell.

“You
do
work here,” she said dubiously.

He admitted he knew practically nothing about herbs. “I only own the place,” he told her, downplaying that.

“Oh.” Her lips formed a perfect little circle. She released the collar of her sable, which almost floated from around her face.

For Gainer it was as though the curtain had gone up on an exquisite opening number. He didn't give a damn if he was staring. She'd be gone in a moment. He'd enjoy her while he could.

“I use it to make mouthwash,” she said.

“Mouse ear mouthwash?”

“It's true.”

“Everything you say is true.”

Gainer thought that caused a slight break of a smile. He started looking for mouse ear or cudweed among the labels on the rows of bottles.

“How about some pokeroot?” Gainer suggested, choosing an herb at random.

“For a mouthwash?”

“Whatever.”

“You're dangerous. Pokeroot is a poison.”

She searched the labels with him, stood closer. The fragrance she was wearing seemed to be going off in tiny explosions around her. “To hell with it,” she said. “I'll come back another time.”

Think fast. “May I put you on our mailing list?”

She said her name and address only once and so rapidly Gainer wasn't sure he got it. Then, without bothering with her gloves, she pulled the sable close around her face and was gone.

Later, when Miss Applegate returned, Gainer learned that mouse ear was also known as everlasting and they had plenty of it in a jar on the topmost shelf. He emptied all they had into one of the store's printed brown paper bags and went out. He couldn't get a taxi because of the rain and rush hour so he walked the nine blocks up Lexington and the two longer crosstown blocks over to Madison and the neat blue awning with her desirable address on it. It wasn't a huge apartment house, but it had two formidable doormen on duty in white gloves, little white bow ties and dark blue uniforms that fitted them as though tailored.

Gainer was soaked, rain dripping from his ear lobes. Affluent people were rarely caught in such a rain.

“For Mrs. Pickering …”

A doorman took the paper bag from him.

Gainer thought he could get past them, get in there if he really wanted to. He put a folded ten into the white gloved palm and went out into the rain again, thinking Mr. Pickering was one lucky son of a bitch.

Over the following few days Gainer spent more time than usual at the herb shop. He didn't entirely admit to himself it was on the chance that she'd come in again. His style wasn't to stand around waiting for a married woman to throw five or ten of her many leisure minutes his way. Nevertheless, there he was.

And on the bright, nippy afternoon of the next Tuesday, there was Leslie.

She looked different. All her nutmeg-colored hair was exposed, suggestively, a bit wild. She had on western boots tucked with straight-legged tan slacks that fit precisely, a plaid wool challis shirt and a loose-fitting antelope jacket lined with lynx.

She smiled right off, an honest to friendly smile, thanked Gainer for the mouse ear. Promised when next she made up a batch of mouthwash with it she'd give him some.

Gainer picked up on the future that that implied. He was suddenly aware of an urge to know her immediately all the way down to her most personal marrow. He imagined her answering his most intimate questions. His next thought was how unfair and unromantic that would be.

That day Leslie bought enough herbs to supply a small naturopathic army. Miss Applegate was overwhelmed to the point of tears. Gainer carried the packages out to Leslie's car, a black Rolls-Royce Corniche defiantly parked in a tow-away zone. Seeing her so casual at the wheel of it, using it as though it were a Toyota, subdued him.

Leslie visited the shop twice more that week. Once for a sprig of vetiver, which seemed a pretext, considering she stayed over an hour. Exchanged viewpoints with Gainer on a number of subjects such as the marvelous compensation for enduring New York City and some of the possible explanations for
déjà vu
.

Saturday she came in again, starved.

Gainer, careful to sound offhand, suggested lunch.

Her eyes got him by the eyes as she told him: “I'd like that.”

They lunched at Le Relais.

For four hours.

Held hands beneath the table and then, with her initiative, in plain sight.

That was the start of them.

There were never any trading lies or need for other such synthetic excitements. Not even the usual purposely bewildering omissions. Leslie believed right off in the quality of what she felt for Gainer, and instead of cynically chalking it up to a mere phase of latter-day naiveté, she opened to it and allowed it to lead her.

She especially wanted Gainer to understand her marriage.

She'd been twenty-eight when she married Rodger Pickering. He was in his fifties and wealthy beyond count. His business was heavy construction on the international level. Hung on the walls of his study were photographs of him at the sites of huge projects in various parts of the world—of him stripped to the waist, chunky, hairy, wearing a hardhat and looking as though he could break rock.

Rodger didn't marry Leslie to camouflage his homosexuality. He no longer gave a damn who knew about that. His cock and ass were his cock and ass and he'd do whatever he wanted with them, was his attitude. He married Leslie to satisfy, in the least oppressive way, an older man's innate gravitation toward domesticity. Also because he liked her, liked her spirit and coveted her style and knew they required expensive upkeep. She hadn't saved much from her thousands of hundred dollar hours in front of the cameras, and it was imminent that her booking charts at the modeling agency would become spotty and then go blank. She'd seen other slightly older models suffer through that and she knew it was something to avoid if at all possible.

Marriage to Rodger saved her. The convenience, as she said, was more hers than his. Naturally, Rodger protected himself, had his New York lawyer draw up a tight, antenuptial contract that said she'd get nothing from a divorce other than what personally belonged to her. But also legally provided was an escape clause for Leslie—divorce papers prepared in advance, signed by Rodger and kept current. Anytime Leslie wanted out, all it would take was her signature.

What most made the arrangement comfortable was that she liked Rodger. He was delightfully frank, had a well-honed sense of humor and was, so far as she knew, always honest. Leslie saw relatively little of him, but their time together was usually rich with funny wicked anecdotes, particles from the cracks and crevices of their separate societies.

Where they lived was in keeping with their relationship. The twenty-room penthouse on East Seventy-fifth Street, for example, was divided equally, a sturdy partition separating Rodger's space from hers, designed to slide open and out of sight only when mutually activated.

All in all Leslie had the wealth of advantages that came with being married to big money. And none of the restrictions. She could do whatever whenever she wanted, was not even required to be all that discreet. It was, in many ways, a perfect setup, one that most women would have traded their souls for.

Gainer was relieved to learn these were Leslie's circumstances. He would have preferred that she was unmarried, of course, but this was the next best thing. At least he wouldn't have to feel like a sexual trespasser and keep looking over his shoulder.

What did bother him, though, was all that money of Rodger's. And Leslie's apparent need for it. Early on, only once, Gainer discussed it with her. He told her exactly what he did and what he had. He didn't ask her to give up a dollar for him nor did he pledge to make an all-out run on the fast track for her. She didn't volunteer to give up or even check her extravagances, nor did she want him to try hard to be rich. She meant it when she said she thought it would be a terrible waste of both head and heart if he struggled to make millions.

They made a pact. Never to let money come between them. His or hers, or anyone's, no matter, they'd just use it.

That had worked out fine.

However, recently Gainer happened on a hint of a complication. In the margins of several of Leslie's books on psychic healing she had doodled, among other things, her first name together with his last, and put a “Mrs.” larger in front of them.

Now, in the bedroom of the beach cottage, that same sort of image came sliding across Leslie's mind. She let it go by. She was bare, scrunched down in a chair by the window, her feet up on the sill. Outside, dawn was nearly finished. Only a little of the lower rim of the sun remained below the sea. The water was so calm the horizon looked as though it had been cut with a scissors.

She had gotten up before any sun, rather than lay there half awake and disturbed by premonition. It was like being maliciously teased by some force that already knew what would happen. Why not let her clearly in on it instead of prodding her unconscious with vague unpleasant intimations?

Gainer was still asleep, lying face up diagonally across the bed, as though claiming all of it. Poor love, Leslie thought, probably she'd oversnuggled him most of the night. She held her breath to hear his and be grateful for it. Felt sorry for the ocher and blue bruises and scabbed-over abrasions on his shins. She scratched a new mosquito bite just above her pubic hair.

There were the dry clawing sounds of gulls moving about on the roof.

She went over to the bed, stood absolutely still beside it for a long moment to, as she would say, center herself. Closed her eyes and asked for protection, asked for the help of Lady Caroline and any other guardian angels who might be around. Extending her arms above Gainer, she made her wrists and fingers resolute, placed her left hand an inch or two over her right, palms down. She started at his feet. Made vigorous, clockwise circles in the air, like she was scrubbing, worked all the way up to his head. There she interrupted her scrubbing motion, seemed to push a lot of something undesirable off and away. She shook her hands as though snapping a nasty substance from her fingers.

Resumed at his feet again.

Gainer, in the shallows of an REM state, experienced several images, including a cyclone funnel, a helicopter and a dragonfly. When he opened his eyes Leslie was intently churning the air above his groin. Had he been more awake, he would have pulled back.

Thickly, he asked: “What are you doing?”

“Cleansing your aura.”

“Is it dirty?”

“Very.”

“Filthy.” He nodded.

“You've picked up an awful lot of negativity.”

“Better than a cold or a social disease.”

No comment from her.

“Can you see negativity?” he asked.

“No.”

“So, how do you know it's there?”

“I can feel it.”

“Really?”

“It's prickly.”

Maybe she can, he thought. His stomach grumbled. He'd only had her and an apple and some cheese since the caviar. Still, he was patient, remained on the bed for her to cleanse him the required three times front and back.

He jumped up then and ran to the bathroom.

She needed something to offset any negativity she might have absorbed, she said. Hugging a tree or walking barefoot in grass would do it, but neither was possible there at the beach. So, she chewed on some juniper berries and washed her hands thoroughly with cold water.

After a long breakfast on the porch, they walked the beach. Gainer brought along a soccer ball. The day was burning so bright it seemed to put a glaze on everything. There were a few clouds, like frayed silk. Leslie enjoyed the sun, but it betrayed her whenever she trusted it, so they made it a short walk, only around the point to the Bight and back.

Leslie retreated to shade on the porch, sat there behind blue-tinted sunglasses with gold wire frames. The brim of her blue cotton hat was a foot wide and very floppy.

Gainer stayed on the beach to kick the ball around where the tide had left the sand harder. He assumed Leslie was watching so he practiced some fancy dribbles using his ankles, heels and insteps. Also did some fairly good headers and a couple of reverse scissor kicks that he badly mistimed.

His showing off amused and touched her, brought a crowding up into her throat.

He took off down the beach, running full out, pushing the ball in front of him without breaking stride, as though headed for a goal, unstoppable.

Leslie went in to make a pitcher of iced rose hips tea.

From the kitchen window she saw a car pull up.

It was Charlie Colt in his white Cutlass Supreme. Charlie was perhaps a three-fifths Wampanog Indian who lived on the other side of Squibnocket Pond up toward Gay Head. The nearest neighbor with a phone. He was by no means the archetypical stoic Indian. Charlie told jokes, was an easy laugher and usually even at the most serious times, he had trouble keeping a straight face.

This day he was grim.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HE
Kanton Spolezei Zurich
.

Located at Number 29 Kasernenstrasse, six blocks from the main railway station (Zurich's most commonly used reference point) and directly on the River Sihl.

An older structure built to last and kept to last, it takes up all of a long block. There are five stories to its roof line. Dormer windows indicate two more stories above that. Dark stone exterior, red and white crossed flags flying, it appears efficient just standing there.

Gainer was with Inspector Zeller, in the elevator going down. Zeller had used a key to open the control panel so he could hold the elevator on express all the way to the lowest level and a wide, vacant corridor painted gray. Zeller led under fluorescent lights through disinfected air to a pair of thick doors with a sign on each:
Do Not Enter
. Through those into a long room, cool, concrete floor painted white and slightly slanted, punctuated with a drain.