Plague (28 page)

‘Well, well,
well,’ said Esmeralda.
‘If it isn’t Charles Thirsty the
Third.’

Charles gave a
strictly regulated smile.
‘Thurston, actually.
If
we’re going to be friends, we ought to get it right.’

Esmeralda, in a
dark red smock, was tapping the last hook into the green hessian-covered
gallery wall. ‘Who said who was going to be friends?’ she said, through a
mouthful of nails.

‘I hoped that
we were. You and I.’ Esmeralda straightened the painting. It was a vivid
gouache of reds and yellows. Charles Thurston stepped forward and peered
closely at the label underneath.

‘This is a
painting of Coney Island?’ he said. ‘It looks more like Hell on a warm day.’

‘Same thing,’
said Esmeralda.

She picked up
her hammer and toolkit, and walked back towards her elegant white-painted
office at the back of the gallery. Charles Thurston followed her, and perched
himself on the edge of her desk.

‘You’re very
sure we’re going to get along,’ said Esmeralda.

‘Of course I’m
sure. Here’s me, the famous art writer, and
there’s
you, the beautiful gallery lady. It’s a match made in Heaven, or someplace
quite close.
Perhaps a suburb of Heaven.’

‘Heaven has
suburbs?’

‘Of course it
does. Where do you think the people from Queens go when they die?’

Esmeralda
laughed. She found Charles Thurston an inch too elegant for his own good, and
an obviously incurable smartass, but there was something about him she really
liked. He was, after all, very good-looking, and he gave the impression that
when he got a woman into bed, he would lavish a great deal of time and athletic
energy on exotic forms of stimulation. Esmeralda liked that.

‘Well?’ she
said, reaching for her chrome cigarette-box. ‘Have you come to buy a painting?
Bronowski is young and vital and, most important of all, he’s still quite
cheap.’

‘Is that
because nobody’s discovered him yet, or because he’s been discovered and nobody
wants him?’

‘Don’t be so
cynical. He’s the new wave in gouache. Go on – buy one.’

‘If I buy one,
will you come out to lunch with me?’

Esmeralda
lowered her eyelashes provocatively. ‘Is that a condition of sale?’ she asked
him.

Charles
Thurston laughed. ‘How much is this young and vital and cheap artist of yours?’

‘To you, five hundred.’

Esmeralda
didn’t look up. This was a favorite test of hers. It immediately weeded out the
unsuitable suitors from the genuinely enthusiastic, because if a man wasn’t
prepared to toss away five hundred bucks for the sake of getting to know her
better, then in Esmeralda’s opinion he couldn’t be really sincere.

Charles
Thurston III flipped
open
his checkbook and scribbled
a check with a handmade gold pen. He blew it dry, and passed it over with a
flourish. It was for one thousand dollars.

‘This is too
much,’ said Esmeralda, raising an eyebrow.

Charles
Thurston shrugged. ‘What’s the use of buying just one painting? I have a couple
of blank spaces either side of my living-room door, and Mr. Bronowski will
liven them up nicely.’

He stood up and
tucked his pen back in his pocket. ‘Perhaps you could show me some more
sometime,’ he said. ‘My bedroom could do with livening up, too.’

Esmeralda
smiled. ‘I’m afraid Jacob Bronowski is into landscapes – not erotica.’

‘We can’t all
be perfect,’ said Charles. ‘Now why don’t we find ourselves a bite to eat?’

She took off
her smock. Underneath she was wearing a simple but beautifully cut blue dress,
with a Victorian pendant and lots of bracelets. She brushed her hair, and then
pronounced herself ready.

‘Have you heard
any more about the plague?’ asked Charles Thurston, as they rode across town in
a taxi.
‘Nothing very much.
Father’s furious about
it.’

‘Oh?’

‘Haven’t you
read the case of the plagiarized bacteria? Father’s sueing some Finnish
character in the Federal District Court, but the Finnish character’s got
himself a sneaky adjournment, on the grounds that all public-spirited
bacteriologists should be off fighting the plague.’

Charles
Thurston nodded. ‘I see. I wondered what you were doing in that district.

This plague’s
pretty serious, though, isn’t it? They’ve got cops on the Lincoln Tunnel and
the 59th Street Bridge, and they’re turning back everyone with a southern
license plate.’

‘You’re
kidding.’

‘No, it’s true.
I saw it myself this morning. They had some guy in a pick-up with a Maryland
plate, and they were making him turn right around and go back to Maryland. They
said on the news that there’s a contingency plan for sealing off the whole of
Manhattan.’

Esmeralda
crossed her legs.’

‘Well, I don’t
know. It sounds to me like they’re exaggerating the whole thing.’

Charles Thurston
laughed. ‘I’m glad someone’s optimistic. Especially the daughter of the
nation’s leading bacteriologist.’

‘Step-daughter.’

‘Does it make
any difference?’

‘You bet it
makes a difference. Where are you taking me for lunch?’

‘There’s a
unique little bistro I know. The prices are astronomic, but the food’s
terrible.’

‘What’s it
called?’

‘Chez-moi.’

‘You mean the
same chez-moi that has a couple of blank spaces either side of the living-room
door, and has a bedroom that also needs livening up?’

‘You guessed,’
said Charles Thurston, with a winning smile.

Esmeralda
didn’t look amused. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘you’d better get this hack to
turn itself around and take me right back to the gallery. I’ve heard of fast
workers, but this is ridiculous.’

‘What you’re
really saying is that you haven’t even had time to clear my check.’

‘I’m saying,
Mr. Thurston, that I’m not a painting. I can’t be conveniently bought with a
paltry thousand dollars to fill a blank space on one side of your bed.’

‘Don’t you like
me?’

‘Like you? I
don’t even know you.’

Charles
Thurston sighed. ‘Well, if you want to skip lunch, you can. But at least come
and look at it. I’ve prepared it myself – cold soup, smoked fish, salad, and
chilled vintage champagne.’

Esmeralda
looked at him curiously. He was very self-assured, and very handsome, and
somehow she couldn’t imagine him going to the trouble of spending the morning
in the kitchen, just to make lunch for a girl he hardly knew. He was either
very innocent or very devious, and right now she wasn’t quite sure which. But
he was intriguing.

‘Okay,’ she
said slowly. ‘I’ll come and look at it. But that’s all.’

The cab dropped
them on the corner of a faded but still-elegant street. It was one of those tired
enclaves of wealthy old widows who were too set in their ways to move away from
encroaching slumdom, and there was a mingled smell of decay and expensive
perfume in every lobby.

‘This is a
strange place to live,’ she said, looking around the street.

‘I like it,’
said Charles Thurston. ‘It reminds me every day that style is never permanent,
and that today’s lounge lizards are tomorrow’s drawing-room dinosaurs.’

They ascended
five floors in a dingy wrought-iron elevator that shuddered and groaned at every
floor. ‘You speak in riddles,’ she told him. He smiled. Charles Thurston’s
apartment was expensively decorated in a clean and rigid Scandinavian style
that surprised her. There was plenty of natural stone, plain wood, and glass.

Everything was
in whites and browns and grays, and the fabrics were all woven wool or leather.

‘This doesn’t
look like you,’ she said, sitting down on a soft tan cowhide settee.

‘Drink?’ he
asked her.
‘Vodka martini on the rocks, please.’
He
mixed the cocktails and brought hers over. She sipped it, and it was as cold
and uncompromising as everything else in Charles Thurston’s apartment. ‘Why
don’t you think it’s me?’ he asked her. ‘You’re warm, and this place is chilly.
I imagined you living with good Indian carpets and a few well-chosen antiques.’

He walked
across to the window. ‘I like my backgrounds neutral. The most important things
that happen in a room are the people who live and love in it. I don’t like to
interfere with human beauty by cluttering my living-space with inanimate
objects that keep crying out for attention.

‘I think you
just made that up. I don’t believe a word of it.’

He turned back
from the window and smiled at her. ‘Would you like to see the lunch that you’re
not going to eat?’

‘I’d be
delighted.’

He took her
hand, and led her into the dining-room.

He had been
telling the truth. The table was set for two with stainless-steel cutlery and
hand-made Swedish glass and pottery.

‘Well,’ she
said. ‘I have to confess I’m convinced.’

Charles
Thurston ran his hand through his dark curly hair. ‘Won’t you just sit and
watch me eating mine?’ he asked, with a mock-plaintiveness that, for all its
obvious artificiality, still appealed to her.

She couldn’t
help giggling. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘And since I don’t like to be rude, you
might as well give me just a teentsy piece of fish, and maybe a tiny bowl of
soup.’

‘And just a thimbleful of champagne?’

She smiled.
‘That will do, yes.’

Charles
Thurston rang a small bell on the table. Esmeralda hadn’t expected that, but
then she supposed that a young man of his means would naturally have a servant.

Charles
Thurston pulled her chair out for her, and she sat down. He himself sat at the
opposite end of the table, shook out his napkin, and grinned at her.

The servant was
no ordinary servant. When she walked in with the soup, Esmeralda took one look
at her, and then shot a quick quizzical look at Charles to see if his face
showed any signs of mockery or amusement. But there was nothing.

She was black,
with close-cropped hair and a thin silver headband. She was exquisitely
beautiful. Her eyes were deep and vivid, and her mouth ran in sultry curves.
She was also extremely tall – at least six feet – despite the fact that her
feet were bare. She wore a flowing kaftan that clung, as she walked into the
dining-room, around huge firm breasts.

‘This is
Kalimba,’ smiled Charles Thurston, offhandedly. ‘Kalimba is what you would call
a treasure.’

Esmeralda
watched the black girl with widened eyes as she padded out of the room, her
bare rounded bottom plainly visible through the diaphanous kaftan. In a small
voice, she said, ‘I suppose you would, yes.’

They sipped
consomme in silence for a moment. Then Esmeralda laid down her spoon.

‘Are you trying
to tell me,’ she said, ‘that Kalimba is really your servant? And nothing else?’

Charles
Thurston paused with a spoonful of soup half-lifted from his plate. ‘I’m not
trying to tell you anything.’

‘Well, she
intrigues me. I mean, she’s very beautiful, and very sexy. Are you friends?’

‘One has to be friends
with one’s servants.’

‘Don’t mock me,
Charles.’

‘I’m not.
Kalimba is everything you say she is. She’s beautiful and she’s very sexy.

She’s also a
very good cook, she makes beds,
she
cleans and dusts.
Okay?’

Esmeralda
frowned. ‘I don’t know. You baffle me.’

‘Why do I do
that?’

‘Because you’re
after something and I don’t know what it is. Up until I saw Kalimba, I thought
it was my body.’

He finished his
soup and laid his spoon down. ‘You’re reacting just like every girl does when
she first sees Kalimba. She thinks: Why the hell have I been playing
hard-to-get when he’s got a woman like that around the place? It throws them
off their usual game.’

Esmeralda
raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that why she’s here?
As an aid to
seduction?’

Charles stood
up and poured her a glass of Moet & Chandon 1966. It was well-chilled, and
ferociously dry.

‘Kalimba is
here to serve lunch,’ he said simply, with a faint suggestion of a smile.

A few minutes
later, Kalimba came back for the plates. There was something about the black girl,
silently serving and collecting up
food, that
was
disturbingly erotic. She looked like a fantasy slave girl, with her sullenly
pouting mouth and her lowered eyes. Esmeralda couldn’t help noticing the way
her charcoal-black nipples stood stiff under the flimsy fabric of the kaftan,
and somehow it made her feel both aroused and inadequate. She often liked to
play the slave girl bit herself with her step-father, but in the presence of
the dark and musky and mysterious she felt pale and plain.

The lunch continued.
By three, two bottles of champagne were empty, and they were well into their
third. Kalimba softly came and went, with coffee and sweets.

Esmeralda felt
light-headed and unreal, and somehow everything about Charles Thurston and
Kalimba was no longer puzzling or threatening, but funny. She laughed at almost
every story he told, and when he suggested they go into the living-room, and he
put his arm around her, she didn’t object in the least.

They drank more
champagne, and Charles put on some soft drumming record that mesmerized her
with its endless complicated rhythms. They sat on big embroidered cushions on
the thick rug, and shared a cigarette, and laughed even more.

‘You still
confuse me,’ she said, taking another sip of her drink. ‘I mean – you’re a very
confusing person.’

‘I think I’m
very straightforward,’ said Charles.

‘That’s what’s
confusing about you. You’re straightforward, but you’re not deep.

You’re like a
rubber tunnel.’