Pressure Drop (34 page)

I've also had a little thought. Did you ever find out exactly what was wrong with the phone in your hospital room? I think it's worth looking into.

Must run. Three lines are blinking in my face at this very moment and there's talk of a coup in Nigeria, which we're nicely positioned for, actually. Speak to you soon.

Affectionately,

Laura

“And she committed suicide?” Suze asked. She had to repeat the question: Nina was staring at words on the middle of the page—
Dr. Crossman. A bit creepy
.

“Seconal, just like me,” Nina replied. She looked at the envelope. “Probably before the stamp was canceled.”

“Her mood must have changed awfully fast.”

“Yeah.”

They got into the taxi. “Where to now, ladies?” said the driver.

“My donor was left-handed too,” Nina said.

“He was?” Suze replied.

“That makes Laura right about one thing.”

“What's that?”

“We've got to find the father. Just as if this were a custody case.”

“You think it was the same donor for both of you?”

“Why not? It was the same doctor.”

“Tick tick goes the meter,” the driver said.

“The Human Fertility Institute,” Nina said, and told him where it was.

“Here?” said the driver, pulling in to the curb fifteen minutes later.

Nina glanced up from Laura's letter. They were on the Upper East Side, on the right street, in the right part of the block. “Here,” she said. It was only when she got out of the cab that she noticed the Human Fertility Institute was gone. A rubble-filled hole in the ground had replaced the marble palace. A bulldozer was parked in the middle of it. At the controls sat a man in a checked lumberjacket, eating a sandwich. Nina ran to the chicken-wire fence at the edge of the hole.

“What's going on?” she shouted.

The man looked up. “Coffee break.”

“With the Fertility Institute, I mean. What happened?”

“Dunno,” said the man. “Trump? Zeckendorf? One of that crowd.”

“But it was a national landmark.”

“I guess it got de-landmarked,” the bulldozer man replied. “That's what makes America great.” He tossed the remains of his sandwich aside and shifted into gear. The bulldozer bumped away across the rubble.

30

“You look good, Suze,” Nina said as they walked up the four flights of stairs to Suze's room.

“I do?”

“Yeah. Things going well with Le Boucher?”

“Mindy? She's a jerk.”

“Le Boucher's name is Mindy?”

“Mindy Sue Lubke. She beat up a bouncer in Laguna Beach the other night. She's so pumped full of steroids she doesn't know what she's doing. But she's going to be a star.”

“In barbarian movies?”

“That's just the beginning. She's up for the lead in the new Ma Barker bio.”

“And you're her manager?”

“God, no,” said Suze, unlocking the door. “She's a dangerous lunatic.”

“But you look good anyway.” This was a question, vague to anyone else, but clear to Suze. She smiled and said nothing. They entered her room.

Suze's room was the entire top floor of a converted warehouse a few blocks south of her gallery. Except for the cast-iron support pillars, it would have been a good place to play polo on rainy days, or hold joint sessions of the House and Senate. Their footsteps echoed on the bare pine floors.

“Home sweet home,” Suze said.

Suze's home had a kitchen area, a table, a couch, a chair, a desk, a phone, a rug and, some distance away, a king-sized bed, a glass-walled shower stall and a toilet, half-hidden by a low steel wall scavenged from a superannuated Parisian pissoir.

“What's that?” Nina said, pointing to the far end of the room, where coils of barbed wire surrounded little metallic human figures.

“Auschwitz Cadillac,” Suze replied. “In storage.”

“It didn't sell?”

“We got a few offers, but not what we wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“Seventy-five grand. But we'll get even more when they see the stuff he's working on now.”

“What's that?”

“Tortured plants. It's going to rock the art world. He's on the cutting edge of the eco-installation movement.”

Nina walked all the way to Auschwitz Cadillac. She didn't see how the barbed wire, despite being pink, could have come from a 1957 Eldorado. But the huts were made of pink bumpers and doors and the prisoners had hubcap bodies and direction signal eyes and striped uniforms made from two-tone leather upholstery.

“The eyes work, if you want me to plug it in,” Suze said.

“That's okay,” Nina said, lightly fingering the barbed wire. What was the artist saying? That we are all somehow implicated in Auschwitz? Or was Detroit the guilty party? Was living in a consumer culture a kind of Auschwitz? Or was it just a demonstration that scraps could be made into art, the way Picasso had turned bicycle parts into a bull?

“Nina.”

“What?”

“You look tired.”

“I'm not.”

“Why don't you lie down?”

“I've got calls to make.”

“What calls? I'll make them.”

“Dr. Crossman. And I want to find out about that phone.”

“Lie down. I'll take care of it.”

“That's all right,” Nina said. “I can—”

“Come on.” Suze took her hand, led her to the bed, not far from Auschwitz Cadillac, pushed her gently down. “Trust me.” Suze pulled the comforter over her.

Nina heard Suze moving toward the other end of the room, heard her dialing the phone, heard her quietly talking. Outside darkness was falling. It sucked the color out of Auschwitz Cadillac and cast it in shadow. Lacking light, Auschwitz Cadillac floated closer to the line between art and reality. Nina's eyes closed.

Later she felt Suze slipping into bed beside her. “Suze?”

“You're awake.”

“Yeah.”

“Feel all right?”

“Fine. Did you find out anything.”

Suze sighed. “Dr. Crossman's office phone is the same number as the Human Fertility Institute. It's been disconnected. There's no home phone listed in any of the directories. I tried all the boroughs, Long Island, Jersey, Connecticut. I called the AMA but they wouldn't help me over the phone.”

“They'll help Delgado. I'll call her in the morning.”

“But I found out about your phone on the maternity ward.”

“And?”

“The wall plug was crushed.”

“How?”

“The maintenance man didn't know. He said someone could have stepped on it by accident.”

“And the volunteer could have been a madwoman off the street. And Laura Bain's case could have nothing to do with mine. And I could have written that note, and signed it. And swallowed a bottle of Seconal. But I didn't.”

“I know you didn't, Nina.”

“Therefore?”

But Suze had no answer. Through the windows, Nina saw falling snow. She watched it for a while, then closed her eyes. Under Suze's warm comforter, with Suze beside her, she drifted toward sleep. Sleep was safe, as long as the Birdman stayed away.

When Nina awoke, Suze's hand was on her thigh and the phone was ringing. She pushed the hand away. “Suze.”

“What is it?”

“The phone.”

Suze jumped out of bed and ran to the desk. Nina felt the imprint of Suze's hand on her thigh for a few moments; then the feeling went away.

Morning light streamed in through the many windows of Suze's room. It transmuted Auschwitz Cadillac back into art, and made Suze's body gleam like mother-of-pearl. Nina couldn't make out what Suze was saying on the telephone, but she could see that Suze was watching her while she said it. In a few minutes, Suze came back across the room, pulling on a sweater.

“Nina,” she said.

“What?”

“There's something I should tell you.”

“Tell.”

“I've met someone.”

“Someone other than Le Boucher?”

Suze's face wrinkled in an expression very close to wincing. “Forget her. She was just using me.” Suze smiled. “And vice versa, I suppose. No. This is different. He's a man, for starters.” Suze sat on the edge of the bed and began pulling on a pair of jeans.

“Continue,” Nina said.

Suze's back tensed. “Maybe this isn't a good time to tell you.”

“Why not? Is it Richard Nixon?”

Suze laughed and turned to face Nina. “Similar eyebrows, in fact. But nothing else. He's a film producer, potentially anyway.”

“Potentially?”

“He was assistant to the producer on
Ten Tall Ducks
.”

“I don't recall seeing it.”

“It's not out yet. It won't be coming out either, except on video. There were problems. But Ernesto learned a lot on the shoot and now he's got a script he wants to do on his own.”

“Ernesto?”

“Ernesto Cohen. Ernesto Che Cohen, actually. But everyone calls him Ernie.”

“Except you.”

Suze smiled, the same secretive smile she'd shown Nina the day before. “He's twenty-five. Almost.”

“That's a relief. I was worried he might embarrass you by ordering Shirley Temples at Spago.”

“I want you to look at the script, Nina.”

“Sure. What's it about?”

“Dan Aykroyd and John Candy are seriously interested. And Ernesto has an uncle with a partner who knows Alec Guinness's agent. They're going to approach him for a cameo.”

“Great. So the script's about putting together a movie deal.”

Suze laughed again. “It's about giant rats from outer space. A spoof. But not like Mel Brooks. More like Jonathan Swift.”

“Has Ernesto considered where the money for a Swiftian rat spoof is going to come from?”

“We're working on it.”

“We?”

“I'm going to co-produce.”

Nina had been afraid of that. Suze's father had money, lots of it. He owned the building Suze lived in, and the building the gallery was in too. But Nina didn't say, “Be careful,” or “What do you know about producing movies?” or “You're out of control,” although all three thoughts passed through her mind. Instead she said: “Have you got the script?”

“Not here. Ernesto's a little weird about letting it out of his sight. But I'll get you a copy.” She bent forward and kissed Nina on the forehead. “Thanks,” she said, and zipped up her jeans.

Nina sat up. “I don't understand why you were reluctant to tell me about this.”

This time Suze couldn't quite face her. “There's a little more to it.”

“Like what?”

“I'm pregnant.”

Under the down comforter, Nina's hands closed into fists. “Ernesto's the father?”

Suze nodded.

“But you've only been gone for—” She tried to remember; time had grown disorderly since the kidnapping.

“I missed my period, Nina. And I'm Old Faithful when it comes to blood flow, you know that.”

Nina got out of bed and started putting on her clothes as fast as she could.

“Say something,” Suze said.

“About what?”

“About me having a baby.”

“Congratulations.”

“I knew this wasn't a good time.”

Nina threw on her coat, buttoned it with quick, snapping movements of her fingers. “You said you never ever think about having a baby, not late at night, not when you see one going by in a stroller. Never fucking ever.”

“So? Who am I betraying?”

“You're out of control, Suze.”

Suze didn't move, didn't say another word. Nina crossed the huge room, went out the door and down the four flights to the street. There she stopped to catch her breath. The strength stored in her legs from all those hours on the bike seemed to have disappeared all at once. She was weak, weak from childbirth, weak from the loss of her baby, weak from the Seconal, weak from whatever had been done to bring her back to life. She stood in the doorway, just breathing in the cold air and breathing it out, until a ragged man went by talking to Jesus. Nina stepped out on the slushy sidewalk. She had things to do.

From a pay phone she called Detective Delgado to tell her about Dr. Crossman. Delgado was in court. Nina started telling someone else the Crossman story. After thirty seconds he said, “This sounds complicated. You better talk to Delgado.”

“When will she be back?”

“Hard to say. It's the Ezekial trial. It might last forever, with the show his lawyers are putting on.”

Nina hung up. The Human Fertility Institute was gone. Dr. Crossman was gone. That left the lawyer. Mr. Percival. Of Ablewhite, Godfrey, Percival & Glyde. The country squire in the black suit who had witnessed the signing of the papers.

Now sign here. And here. And here. And here. And once more. Good
.

Half an hour later, Nina was riding an elevator to the top of a midtown steel and glass tower. A man carrying three briefcases whispered to a woman in red suspenders: “Point six, I can't remember point six.”

“No escape clause, for Christ's sake,” the woman hissed as the doors opened at the penultimate floor. “This is the most important meeting of your life, Bart,” she added more loudly as they got off. “If you screw up on me …” The doors closed before she got to the threat clause. Nina went up alone to the top floor.

Nina stepped out of the elevator and into a quiet reception room furnished with leather couches and chairs and decorated with oil paintings of English rural life that looked old enough to be early imitations of Constable. Except for the small brass plaque on the opposite wall—A
BLEWHITE
, G
ODFREY
, P
ERCIVAL
& G
LYDE
—and the woman typing at the desk beneath it, she might have wandered into a men's club. The woman resembled Alistair Cooke. She spoke like him too. “May I help you?” she said.