Scruples Two (40 page)

How could he not believe her, Billy asked herself as she sealed the letter, shaking with the speed and conviction with which she’d written. How could Sam fail to understand the reality of what had happened once he’d read her explanations? Wasn’t truth unanswerable?

Billy called downstairs to have a messenger sent to hand-deliver the letter by taxi to the gallery, where it would be sure to reach him. The minute it was gone and the activity of the past hour abruptly stopped, she was besieged by the doubts she hadn’t let herself think about while she was writing. She bent her head, closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her hands, picturing Sam opening the envelope and reading the pages. Had she left anything out, anything that would be conclusive, anything that should have been added to her plea? She couldn’t leave this room until he’d had a chance to call, until he’d had a chance to read and reread the letter, and think about it.
And call
. Such a letter could not be left in limbo—no one could be that cruel. There would be an answer soon.

In frantic agitation she looked at the clock again. Saturday, not quite two-thirty. She had no way of knowing where Sam was. He could be out for a hasty lunch with Daniel or Henri, or he could be deep in discussion with gallery-goers. Saturday was the prime day for art collectors to make their rounds, and except for the lunch hour, when most galleries closed, Sam would be expected to remain rooted to the exhibition space, ready to answer any questions that people might ask. The gallery might stay open late tonight, taking advantage of the troops of art lovers who crowded the busy neighborhood of the Beaubourg Museum. The invitations for the opening yesterday had been from seven till ten—Daniel could easily decide to stay open equally late again tonight if the drop-in traffic warranted it.

When would Sam be able to slip away and read her letter? Surely there would be time for that, surely he would find a free minute and take the letter into Daniel’s office—by four—or five. Oh, surely by five o’clock! But what if he put the letter away into a pocket and resolved not to read it until he got home? Was it even possible that he would tear it up unread? No, no, that couldn’t be. That was a crazy thought. People only did that in movies. Yet if Sam didn’t read the letter until the gallery closed …

She had to get out of here, Billy realized. She was filled with too much savage uncertainty to stay in any one place. The familiar visual continuity of her suite was nightmarish, reminding her of the past nine months of happiness. Every tall white rose, every pompous cluster of ball-fringe, every settled sign of luxury and placidly well arranged surface irritated her heart as if they were iron filings, scraped into her agony. She was filled with too much wild conjecture, too many unanswered questions, to remain in these quiet, undisturbed rooms. She lived in a world of dread. She had endowed that letter with such importance that she’d drive herself mad, she’d explode with her longing for Sam to understand and forgive her, she’d tear herself up with her irrational hope that happiness was just a phone call away. She couldn’t last another fifteen minutes, waiting here like this. When he called, of course he’d leave a message with the concierge and then she could go to him.

In seconds Billy changed into a dark green velvet jumpsuit and pulled on high, black suede, low-heeled boots. She thrust her arms into a double-breasted, dark mink coachman’s coat that buttoned with antique gold coins. It fit tightly to the waist and then whirled wide to mid-calf. She grabbed a bag and a watch and automatically put on the pair of huge cabochon emerald earrings she always wore with Sam because the irregular, unfaceted stones didn’t reflect light and could easily be taken for fakes.

Where? Where? In less than a minute Billy had reached the first-floor lobby, flown across it, and crossed the Rue de la Paix. There, on the other side of the Place Vendôme, lay Van Cleef and Arpels. She pushed into the store quickly. It was empty for the moment and a salesman immediately stepped forward.

“Good afternoon, Madame. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Yes, yes, I’d like to see.…” Billy halted. She had no idea what she wanted, only that she wanted, needed, had to have something, anything, but immediately, right away for God’s sake, couldn’t he understand that? She looked at the salesman in angry confusion. Idiot, she thought, he’s a complete idiot.

“Is it for a gift, Madame?”

“No, no—for me—something unusual, different, exceptional.…”

“Something in diamonds, Madame? No? Sapphires, emeralds, rubies—”

“Yes,” she almost stuttered as he was about to run on and on, “yes, rubies, Burmese rubies.”

“The most difficult stones to find,” the salesman said, glancing appreciatively at her earrings. “As it happens, we have several superb examples that have just arrived for Christmas. Madame has come at an excellent time for—”

“Go and get them,” Billy said, cutting him short. The fierce look in her eyes informed him of five of the most welcome words in the jewelry business. Rich. American. Woman. Impulse. Shopper.

As he hurried away to search out the few fine pieces set with rare Burmese rubies, he left Billy alone in the small, private, gray velvet and gilt room to which he had led her, as quiet as if it had been soundproofed, a room that had been designed for serious buyers, a room that shut out the bustle of the city. As she waited, tapping one boot in fretful eagerness, Billy met her own eyes in the round mirror that stood on the table next to the black velvet pad on which the jewelry was to be displayed. Stunned, she peered closer. Jesus Christ Almighty, was that the way she looked? She held her breath in shock at the mad avidity marked so clearly on her features. A furrow she didn’t know existed had appeared between her eyebrows and her lips were tightened in an impatient grimace, as if she were holding herself back from springing at a piece of raw meat. She was ugly with covetousness and greed. Inside she felt choked by the diffuse cloud of turbulent anticipation that threatened to strangle her with its deadly combination of fear and unreasoning hope, a cloud that she could try to disperse with the soothing ritual of handling, trying on and eventually buying jewels, as in the Middle Ages men opened their veins in an attempt to relieve their fevers.

No!
She jumped up and was out of the shop in an instant, taking a deep breath as she hit the frosty air. She was insane, she told herself as she almost ran along the sidewalk in the direction of the Seine. Insane to buy jewelry she didn’t want to hold herself together, insane to use this old method of plastering a temporary lid on her need to hear from Sam.

Did she believe that buying hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stones could put her back in control of her life? Was this what it took to give her strength? If so, she
was
the sum of what she bought. And, damn it, she had to be better than that! She couldn’t be only what she wore, she couldn’t be only the glittering things she could pile on herself in the finest shops in the world. She wasn’t just that expensive package wrapped in white satin and hung with diamonds that Sam had seen at the Opéra, she wasn’t merely that woman all-but-panting for a quick fix that the unfortunate, now-disappointed salesman had encountered in Van Cleef.

As she passed Cartier and Bulgari, Billy imagined all the stock of the jewelry stores within a two-minute walk of the Ritz, imagined tray after tray of blazing wares dumped in a heap at the foot of the Vendôme column, forged from the bronze of twelve hundred cannons captured at the Battle of Austerlitz. How high would the heap become before it equaled her net worth? Eventually, there would be enough of those colored bits of rare mineral, to which men had decided to assign intrinsic value, to equal the Ikehorn holdings. And then what? What words could the stones speak, what actions could they take, what emotions could they feel? All those rich chips of fire wouldn’t be worth a damn on a cold night when only a fire of wood or another human being could keep her warm.

Billy came to the vast Place de la Concorde, its eternal nobility of proportion dwarfing the worst traffic jam in Paris, and skirted the Grecian façades of the Jeu de Paume and the Orangerie, crossing to the Left Bank at the Pont de la Concorde, loping along as swiftly as she could among the loitering crowds enjoying the unexpected brightness of the day. She had no destination, no agenda, nothing to do with herself except keep moving until she could make that phone call to the Ritz that would give her a message from Sam. On the peaceful Left Bank she walked a little more slowly, along the bulk of the Palais Bourbon, until she found herself in the small square directly behind the Palais where her florist was located.

Outside Moulie-Savart, covering the street and overflowing into the square itself, was the brilliant, multicolored, pre-Christmas surprise of a garden of flowering plants backed by a tall assortment of green potted plants. Billy stopped dead, her eyes focused on the startlingly gay vision of temptation that had sprung up against the gray stones. Then, unwaveringly, she followed along the perimeter of the square on its opposite side. She didn’t intend to be tempted to buy so much as a single amaryllis in a pot.

There was nothing morally wrong with buying things, she told herself as she walked, shopping was rooted in the human psyche, people waited eagerly at every oasis for the sight of camel trains bearing goods, itinerant peddlers had been sure of a welcome wherever they went, cavemen must have held cave swap meets. When in human history had shopping not been a normal human occupation? But not for her, not today. She had to endure the wait until she heard from Sam without recourse to her old ways of keeping from feeling emotion. She didn’t know why, only that it was necessary. Not for anyone else, but for her. Perhaps it was superstition? A form of test? If she didn’t buy anything, was it a charm to make Sam call the Ritz in the next fifteen minutes?

No, magical thinking of that childish sort didn’t work. Did she honestly believe that if she thought about nothing but Sam reading her letter and rushing to a telephone, she’d send a strong enough psychic message to make it happen?

Billy passed a café and hesitated. How did she know that there was nothing to be said for transmission of thoughts? How many times had she phoned someone and been told that they were just about to phone her? She rushed into the café and bought a pay-phone token at the counter. For minutes she waited behind a skinny teenaged boy who was relating to his girlfriend the plot of the movie he’d seen last night, acting out the role of Gérard Depardieu. There should be a law, Billy thought blackly, a law that a woman waiting for a phone automatically gets priority over any male. How could they call this a civilized country? She jostled the vile little creep with the point of her elbow and begged his pardon loudly, several times, until she finally forced him to end his conversation. At the Ritz there were no messages for her, one of the three concierges reported. But it was not even four, that promising afternoon hour between lunch and tea when, all over Paris, gallery-goers would be sauntering into the new shows. It was far too early to expect anything, Billy told herself, and began to walk more quickly, as if speed could allow her to outdistance her inner turmoil, defang the dread that pierced her stomach, allow a ray of light to penetrate the dark hollows of her thoughts.

Soon she found herself in front of the Rodin Museum. Here was a place she dared enter. The government of France or the city of Paris or whoever owned the Hôtel Biron did not put price tags on the bronzes within.

She paid the entrance fee and then found herself unexpectedly unwilling to go into the museum. She couldn’t confine herself between any four walls, no matter what masterpieces they contained. She took her unrestful spirit into the oasis of the park that lay behind the museum and wandered among the groups of families who had come to let their children run about under the geometric ranks of trees. She tried to distract the unruly leaping of her mind by concentrating on watching French children at play. Each one of them possessed positive differences from the others, each one was a small and definite person, with an agenda of his own, rather than just another one of a bunch of kids. They formed a group of tiny individuals who had consented to join together for a while, not a pack. Many of them played happily by themselves, absorbed in some private project. And yet, thought Billy, she had read that the worst punishment that could be inflicted on a French child who was disruptive in school was to be verbally ostracized by his classmates, to have his words ignored, allowed to participate in school but not addressed or listened to.

As she sat on a bench she noticed that each time a child was frustrated or angry in play with the others, the child, instead of creating a fuss, made an immediate beeline for its parents, who were watching closely from a nearby bench. There the child poured out its grievances, was listened to closely and calmly, reassured and sent back to the group, happy again.

She had been one and a half when her mother died, Billy mused. Her father, that overworked doctor whose free time he dedicated entirely to research, had never had more than a few minutes to spend with her, and even then his mind was visibly far away. Hannah, the housekeeper, had been her only adult connection to the world. Only after she entered first grade had she become aware that she didn’t have a life like other children, just a bunch of snooty cousins who didn’t accept her, and a few bossy aunts. Without having performed any bad action, she had been put in the position of an ostracized child. As she watched a tearful, rosy little girl being dusted off, cuddled, kissed, praised and given words of motherly advice before being sent off to the sandbox again, Billy felt a sharp pain pierce her heart and startling tears come to her eyes.

She
had
been a neglected child, Billy realized. She had never thought of herself in that light before, but the sight of the little girl informed her clearly and absolutely that at an age she couldn’t remember, she had not been properly valued. She had not been loved in the only way that would have given her the inner sense of selfhood she was still struggling to find.