The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (20 page)

Critics from a half dozen periodicals, including
Time, Newsweek, ARTnews
and
New York
magazine, had all requested permission to preview the show. Michael Kimmelman of
The New York Times
had requested an interview and asked that Manship call back.

Atop the stack and appearing somewhat more ominous than the others was a cryptic message from Van Nuys, asking him to stop by later in the afternoon. Van Nuys seldom, if ever, called. It was more his style to walk in unannounced, feigning a breezy manner, then drop some bombshell on his desk. Manship felt a spasm clench his bowel.

With barely a cursory glance at his mail, he instructed Taverner that he would take no calls and see no visitors until further notice. When she started to protest, he clicked the phone down on what he sensed to be a slowly simmering panic rapidly coming to a boil. He knew where things were heading. The problems were real, but he would have to deal with them in the only way he could, and that was one at a time.

With that, he turned off his phone, then slipped into the deeply padded swivel chair behind his desk.

It was going on 5:00 P.M. when he reemerged from his office. He’d worked straight through without a lunch break. Stepping out into the outer office, he found Taverner, already moving toward him, clipboard in hand, an expression on her face somewhere between hysteria and relief.

“Are you all right?” she asked, as if he were a diver who’d just come up from a long submersion.

“Barely,” he said grimly, then flashed a wry smile. “What did you think I did in there, slash my wrists?”

“The thought did cross my mind.”

“I take it we’re nearing Armageddon.”

“Nearing, and on a direct collision course.” She waved a slip of paper at him.

“If that’s from Mr. Van Nuys …”

“He’s called three times.”

That got Manship’s attention. Already his mind had played out a half a dozen unpleasant scenarios. Turning sharply on his heels, he strode back into his office and put the call through.

Mr. Van Nuys was in conference, his administrative assistant informed him. He’d call back the moment he was free.

Manship’s fingers drummed his desktop for several moments, then, for reasons not entirely clear, he began rummaging through his drawer for his address book. He scarcely knew what he was doing until he’d dialed the long distance operator and gave her Isobel Cattaneo’s number in Fiesole, where it would be going on 11:00 P.M. Late to call, but not outrageously for Italy.

Sitting there listening to a succession of bell tones and a burst of rapid-fire Italian captured momentarily in crossed wires, Manship felt a surge of free-floating anxiety.

The phone was ringing on the other end. He thought of hanging up before she could answer. Three rings, four, then a fifth. He was certain she wasn’t home. Almost relieved, he let it ring several times more, berating himself for calling. He was about to hang up.

“Pronto.” The voice came low, drowsy, a bit annoyed.

“Miss Cattaneo …” He could hear the quaver in his voice. “Mark Manship in New York. I know it’s late. I hope I haven’t …”

Her response lagged, so that he wondered if he had awakened her, or, more dismally, if she simply didn’t recall anyone by that name.

“You know, the Metropolitan Museum fellow.” He laughed uneasily.

“Yes. Yes, of course. That Botticelli thing.”

He was certain he’d detected a note of irritation.

They exchanged a few awkward pleasantries.

“Did you ever find your missing drawings?” she asked.

“The Chigi sketches? No, I’m afraid not. I did see your friend in Rome.”

“Yes, I know; He was here last week. He told me he’d seen you. He said he’d given you someone to look up.”

“That’s right. He did. Some sort of a gallery in Parioli.”

“The Quattrocento. I know it. And did you contact them?”

“Yes—well, not exactly. I went there. But the place was closed. They were off on vacation.”

“Yes,” she said almost apologetically. “Everyone in Italy is at that time. I’d completely forgotten.”

Their conversation sputtered on as if they’d ran out of things to say.

“I have no special reason for calling,” he said, certain she was waiting for him to renew his pleas that she appear in New York as some sort of featured event at his opening. He was determined to make no such plea. “I just wanted to say hello,” he went on, realizing at the same time that 11:00 P.M. was a strange time to call just to say hello.

“I see,” she said with a cool brevity, and let it hang there like that.

There was another longish silence. He could sense her irritation. She hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was driving at. For that matter, neither did he.

“I was just checking … I mean, rather, I had a funny intuition.” It was all coming out wrong, but he couldn’t stop himself now. “I just wanted to check and see that you were okay.”

“I can assure you I am.”

“You are?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? What exactly were you worried about?”

He realized he couldn’t tell her what he was worried about. “Nothing in particular,” he said. “As I say, I just wanted to say hello.”

“That was nice of you. And, as I say, I’m fine. Just fine. Thank you very much.”

He laughed nervously. “Yes, I can hear you are. Well, I’ll say good night then.”

He found himself hoping she might prolong the conversation, and providentially, she did.

“I still have your plane tickets to New York,” she said. “Do you want me to send them back?”

“No, Not at all. You keep them.” His generosity sounded a bit too eager. It smacked of the bribe. “You may change your mind someday. Oh … I don’t mean about coming for the show,” he hastened to add. “You might just want to visit.”

“Yes,” she said, and let it drop at that.

“If you do come … for whatever reason, I hope you’ll call.”

There was another of those lengthy pauses.

“Well, then. I guess I’ll say good night,” he said again and feared he’d come off sounding pathetic.

“Thank you for your concern,” she said, and rang off with an abrupt, almost rude click.

He sat there for several seconds longer, the phone receiver still pressed to his ear. Outside the big skylight window of his office, the dusk had begun to gather, and as it fell softly over the park, he felt dejection overtake him. Brooding on his disastrous attempt at a friendly call to Isobel Cattaneo, he felt what a jackass he’d made of himself, then wondered why he even cared.

He was jarred from these gloomy thoughts by the phone ringing on his desk. It was Helen Mirkin, Van Nuys’s assistant, calling to tell him that the great man was free.

Climbing the short flight of stairs to Van Nuys’s suite, Manship felt as though he were mounting the gallows.

A
FTER SHE’D HUNG UP
, Isobel stared at the phone, a puzzled expression flickering in the shadows around her eyes.

She’d been sitting out on the terrace when the phone rang. September had cooled the ovenlike nights and it was so much more pleasant outdoors than inside, where the airless rooms and the tile roof of the old villa held tight to the heat of a blistering hot summer.

She fully intended to go back out a bit longer before turning in; then decided to stop first in the kitchen for a piece of fruit. Munching a chilled pear on her way back out to the terrace, she collapsed with an almost voluptuous languor into one of the battered old lounges.

She had the place to herself for the night. That was a luxury in itself. Erminia had gone home for a few days to her family in the north, and Tino was gone now, hopefully forever. She was glad to be rid of him.

He’d glowered at first when she told him it was over. He made threatening sounds, followed by gestures, going so far as to put rough hands on her.

That’s when she told him about the lawyer and her intention to file charges against him for theft, not only of Erminia’s money but also of some of her own, which she could prove he had taken. The lawyer, she told him, had also suggested that she press charges of menacing and battery for the several times he’d struck her. Of course, she hadn’t been to a lawyer. She couldn’t begin to afford one.

Tino laughed, but there was more bravado to his laughter than substance. When she picked up the phone and proceeded to dial the police, the façade crumbled.

She ordered him out that night, even going so far as to help him pack his few messy belongings. The threat of police and litigation had been too much for him. Gone were those well-practiced sullen looks he placed such stock in.

Seeing him out the door, she slipped a small bunch of lire into his pocket, enough to keep him going for a few weeks, long enough to find himself some sort of gainful employment, or, what was far more probable, another young woman with means enough to take care of him for a while, and naive enough to believe that he was some sort of genius, wounded by a callous world, and whom only she could save.

They said good-bye and she watched him walk down the graveled front path, his meager shabby bag banging at his hip. He looked chastened and lost, like a small child who’d misbehaved and was being sent to his room. Several times, he glanced over his shoulder, hoping to be called back, but no call came.

Stretching luxuriously in the lounge, she let the chilly juices of the pear drip in tiny runnels at the corners of her mouth. Licking them with the tip of her tongue, she savored the sheer joy of being alone and at peace on such a perfect night. She laughed out loud at the whole awful episode, put it down to a lapse of good sense, and vowed she’d never permit such nonsense to repeat itself.

Her thoughts returned to Manship, his curious, unexpected call. She frowned into the flower-scented shadows of her garden, brooding over her need to be unkind to him, and wondered why. He’d certainly never been unkind to her, his only crime being that he offered her a job, which she took to be an insult.

It was then she heard the noise. She paid no attention to it. It was a dull, thudding sound, nondescript, something like a book dropping. She imagined it came from somewhere out on the street and so ignored it. The second noise, however, was far less ambiguous. It was the sound of a door opening, and it came from somewhere inside the villa.

It couldn’t have been Erminia. She’d spoken to her that afternoon on the phone. She was miles away at her grandmother’s farm up in the north, not due back for several days. Tino was what came first to mind.

“Tino,” she called into the shadows behind her. “Tino.”

There was no answer.

She rose and strode into the house, prepared to be stern with him. Most of the lights were out, which was the local custom on summer nights, since it kept the house cooler. A single light glowed dimly in the front-hall vestibule, and another in the long, narrow corridor leading to her bedroom.

Though she heard no sound, she was certain someone was in the house. She stood perfectly still, unmoving, like a stag spooked by a hound in the bush.

“Who’s there?” she called out into the stuffy darkness. Impatient, angry, beginning to feel fright, she took a step forward into the parlor. “Tino … is that you? Don’t play games with me, I warn you …”

There was another sound, this time a sharp crack, as if someone or something had struck wood. The noise made her flinch, then shrink backward. In that instant, framed in the ormolu mirror above the mantel, a figure stood.

It wasn’t Tino.

She was aware that her mouth was dry and that she had no voice.

“Who—” The rest of it stuck in her throat while she watched the figure in the mirror take a step forward into the room. Watching the figure even as it watched her, she saw what appeared to be the outline of a young man of average height with a somewhat boxy, athletic frame.

She was about to cry out when he smiled at her. That was the first time she saw his face. Youthful, it was, even sweet, like a young boy’s. Seeing her fright, he put a finger to his lips as if to say, Hush.

Slowly, with no hesitation, he stepped into the room, coming toward her, still smiling, his finger pressed to his lips. Far from threatening, the movement of his body was sinuous, mesmerizing. In that moment, a sound came from behind her, from out on the terrace.

She whirled around in time to see two more of them. The two entered the villa from the terrace outside, quietly closing the tall louvered doors behind them.

It was the smell that awakened her. She recognized it at once. For a fleeting instant, she was five years old again, in a doctor’s office. Her mother stood above her, holding her arms while a man in a white gown of some sort, features blurred by a surgeon’s mask, held a white cloth over her nose. It was that odor she smelled now—ether. Then the pinwheels—pretty, vivid colored circles like kaleidoscopic figures—spinning before her eyes.

She heard herself scream and then woke with a terrible headache. She was aware of lying flat on something hard and cold, unable to move. A large wad of gauze or something had been stuffed into her mouth. It forced her jaws open and held them that way at an unnaturally wide angle, so that they ached.

She knew her hands and ankles had been tied. Then it occurred to her that, in addition, she’d been wound cocoonlike into what felt and smelled like a dirty piece of carpet. It covered her papoose-fashion from her toes to the top of her head. Only her face was exposed.

She knew she was in a truck or a van, stretched out on the floor in the back as it bounced and jostled along. The springs of the vehicle had to be practically shot, since the impact of its tires with each pothole in the road wrenched every bone in her body.

She could see up and out through the panel windows above her. She knew they were on one of the big four-lane autostrada running north and south out of Florence. She could hear the woosh of automobile tires streaking past, headlight beams momentarily flooding the cabin of the van, then sliding past. In the pale gray light of first dawn, she could see the rooftops of government housing projects, and laundry drying over the balcony banisters of top-floor apartments. She judged it to be somewhere past 4:00 A.M.