The Secret Keeping (23 page)

For that she was eternally grateful.

Lana. Lana had died with them. No one called her that anymore. She was Dr. K. or the Luv Doc.

So who was Lana now?

_____

Who’s Lana? Dr. Kristenson asked herself, coming from the office of property management for the waterfront flat. There had been a year and a half left on her lease. She paid it out, including a rather hefty maintenance fee, all nonrefundable. Sharon could stay there then until the lease expired, provided that no activities of the sort they were reading about lately took place on the premises. If they did, she would be evicted. She would also face eviction if she was convicted of the current criminal charges against her, as several tenants had already expressed concerns about the super-model’s questionable reputation. Fine, that was their business, Helaine cordially advised, as she was no longer an interested party as far as Sharon Chambers was concerned. Considering the recent revelations about Sharon’s real estate holdings, none of which she had known of before, she doubted that the model would ever find herself without a roof over her head.

_____

Shouldn’t there be a dark specter from her past, some long gone demon whose empty shoes a Sharon Chambers had so nicely stepped into? But there isn’t one, Helaine concluded at one o’clock in the office of the real estate broker who she planned would handle the sale of her townhouse.

“It would be quicker to rent it, Dr. Kristenson. Perhaps with an option to buy.”

“You can manage that for me?”

“Of course.”

“How long will it take you to find what I’m looking for?”

The agent glanced at the computer and across the desk at Helaine. “A week? Two?” She scrolled the screen. “Unless you want to rent. I’ve got a lovely place midtown. Isn’t that near your offices?”

“I hate modern. It isn’t one of those?”

“No. I know what you need. It’s only seven stories. Penthouse.” She tapped earnestly at the keyboard as she talked. “Six big rooms. Patio and garden. Private elevator. Parking. Central air. Skylights in bedroom, bath. Eat-in gourmet. No maintenance. Blah, blah, blah. Let’s see. Yup, available…now.” She flipped the screen around, displaying a few interior photos provided by the owner. “Ready now,” she repeated hopefully.

“You want to see it?”

“Any ghosts?”

“No,” the agent giggled. “None listed. Young executives relocating. San Francisco. Want to see it?”

Helaine didn’t have time for that. Sharon had left last Saturday, the day she had stood her up. She would be back soon. Helaine was sure of it. And there was a phone number bouncing around her brain like a rubber ball. She hoped to dial that number by Friday. Or else. “No, it sounds perfect. I’ll take it.”

Helaine left, content with her selection. She felt she was operating at a hundred percent for a change.

Tomorrow she’d call the movers and get her things out. Tonight perhaps she’d stay with friends, if that was all right with Robert and Kay. She went back to the office and called them without telling them too much. In fact, she lied altogether. The townhouse was being painted, was what she actually said. It was only a half truth. She’d correct it next week.

_____

Archetypes: Generally, we’re looking for real people here. Larger-than-life people. Sadly, these are usually scary types or extreme types–Mommy Dearest, Mary Poppins, Henry the Eighth, Atilla the Hun–memorable and influential people that loomed over us, most likely when we were no bigger than bread baskets. At their core–at our core–they are real people, completely indispensable to us. They die or disappear, we replace them…with a close facsimile thereof.

She was so preoccupied with her inquiry that she sat dazed through her afternoon sessions and even felt obliged to apologize to one bemused couple.

Lana. She had liked the nickname, enjoyed being her, yet no one but her parents ever called her that. After they died four years ago, she never heard the name again.

The Kristensons’ daughter, Lana, for as long as she existed, was infallible, never made any goofs in her life, never failed at anything. When she disappeared, she was survived by Helaine who did make some mistakes. Sharon Chambers was certainly the proof of that. The years of misery…there was so much distance between who she was now and who she had been seven years ago that her former self seemed to have taken on a mythical shape of its own. Lana had become to her a perfect stranger. She could see that from the red leather chair, see the trap that she had set for herself as a result. Lana doesn’t err, therefore, somehow, Helaine couldn’t either.

And Sharon Chambers? A mistake–but it couldn’t be a mistake. Oh, but it was, it was. She had spent years denying it, disguising it every day of her failed and sorry romance, converting Sharon’s lies into promises she would wait for.

There was something scary about that, about being in denial. She stared through the couple on her couch as if they weren’t there. For how long had she been in denial? Four years? That could be. The loss of her parents had thrown her. But hadn’t it been bad before that? Wasn’t it really more like seven years of misery?

In fact, to be perfectly honest, hadn’t she been dissatisfied with the relationship since the moment she first took the model to bed with her? She nodded to herself. The couple nodded back, encouraged to continue their conversation. Yes. She admitted it. But, if that was the case, and of course she could see that it was, then she was still Lana Kristenson when she had first met Sharon.

Lana, Lana, Lana. Dr. Kristenson weighed the implications, still nodding her head after her clients had left. Back at her desk she saw the light on her phone blinking as if concurring with her conclusion: Lana was an archetype.

“Yes, Jen?”

“There’s an awfully pretty box here with your name on it. Looks like a love letter attached to the ribbon.

Shall I tell the messenger to send it back?”

A box! “Jenny, don’t you dare!”

“You’ll have to come and sign for it then. Your signature is required.”

_____

Monday, eight in the morning.

“How long, if I can ask?”

The guard sized the woman up before answering. Her looks didn’t trouble him. “I’d say she’s had her offices in here about three years.”

Three years, Lydia repeated in her head. She stared at the white lettering of the professional directory, a strange exhilaration coursing through her veins. There was a story here, an erotic bedtime tale she wished to be told. Right this minute!

Dr. Helaine Kristenson, twelfth floor, the plaque read. So the telephone operator had been correct about the address! It was no mistake. Helaine’s offices were practically across from her own.

Lydia could think of nothing else. She stood back from her own window, all day trying to catch sight of the blond head on the twelfth floor without being seen, all day resisting the urge to phone her there. Across the street, you scoundrel! The discovery that Helaine was less than a stone’s throw away from her, and had been all this time, aroused in Lydia an excitement that surpassed all others known to date and as she tried to work she grew more and more preoccupied with the dozen roses still in a vase by her window. There were as well other obvious and sensually distracting features about the situation to be considered. She did, until it was necessary for her to go home early.

Tuesday was a repeat of the day before and so on until, with the end of the week nearing and feeling professionally impaired by her sensations, she decided to work with her back to the window, stoically refusing to take any breaks. She was on a fixed timetable now. Helaine was to call by Friday to inform her that the mission had been accomplished. But since their Saturday meeting, Lydia had fallen into a state of readiness, heightened by Monday’s revelation, and she had wished to hear from the blond much sooner than that.

As the days slipped by without word, she caught her attention entirely missing from her work, saw her imagination running amok with disturbing visions. Her emotional deluge had begun to drown her and she bobbed up and down in an endless stream of unhappy possibilities. Twice she battled her hand from the phone.

By three o’clock Thursday, no word, her spirits sinking, Lydia gloomily packed her briefcase and once more headed for the solitude and safety of her penthouse, this time overloaded with misgivings. They trailed behind her like tin cans after the wedding.

She could practically hear them clanking as she rode the elevator down, her state of mind in such commotion that by the time she noticed herself stuck alone in there with Rio Joe it was too late to do anything about it.

And before she could prevent it he had her cornered and was interrogating her about the roses. She dropped the briefcase and he kicked it aside.

“Who is he?” he whispered into her hair, his hand groping her.

She reached for the switchboard. He grabbed her arm.

“Joe. Let me go or I’ll scream.” His chest heaved against hers. She could taste and smell his thoughts.

“Let me go or I’ll scream.”

He pressed his cheek against hers and pushed her into the corner. “Scream then, Lydia. You know I love it when you scream.”

She felt her skirt hiking up. “Joseph…” The elevator stopped. Ding! The doors opened revealing them to a group of surprised executives.

“Oh! Sorry!” Lydia heard from the hallway. “We’ll get the next one.” The doors closed again. The bell tolled.

“Scream for me, your highness.”

She fell silent. Overhead the floor numbers glowed in a slow motion countdown as the elevator descended toward the lobby. By the tenth floor he had worked the skirt up past her thighs.

“Who sent you the flowers, Lydia?”

“Joe, for Christ’s sake! Are you out of your mind?” She was wet–always wet now–and didn’t want him to know it.

He knew it. The elevator stopped. Ding! She glimpsed people waiting and hid her face in his shirt.

“Use the other one,” he snarled over his shoulder.

“Excuse us,” someone quipped humorously. The doors closed. Ding! She heard laughter through the floor and saw the elevator ascending this time. He reached into her blouse.

“Joe, let me out of here.”

“Lydia,” he murmured in an unusually tender tone. He was breathing heavily, his hand caressing her between her legs. “You want it.”

“Shit…” she swore under her breath, “oh, shit.” She did. Her nipples were hard. “It’s over Jos–” She gasped, as he slid his fingers inside her. Too late. She let him stroke her, one and…two and…three…until she slumped back into the corner. Four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ding! The doors opened wide and she came to him, so fast he lifted his face to hers in surprise.

“Whoa, sorry!” someone shouted.

Joe regained himself and fumbled furiously with the front of his pants, pulling her close as he did.

She quickly pushed him back again. The elevator bucked before heading downward. “It’s over Joe,” she repeated, her eyes issuing a warning as she managed to free herself from him.

He took her by the wrists. “Then why are you wearing my bracelet?” he asked, lifting it to her face.

She looked from it to him, wide-eyed and dumbfounded. There was no explanation to offer the man. Just a foolhardy choice in accessories, she guessed. She had utterly forgotten he had given it to her. Over him she saw they were finally approaching the lobby. She could tell by his face that he was no longer mindful of the elevator. Ding! He turned, startled by the bell, and she fixed her rumpled skirt, grabbed her briefcase and breezed past him.

“Lydia?” he called, as she stepped out of the elevator.

Such a strange sound in his voice. It filled her suddenly with a sense of pathos. She glanced back at the elevator, past the crowd waiting to board it, and saw him as they might, a desperate man, his zipper down, his suit coat abandoned on the floor, his shirttails partially hanging out of his pants. She took the bracelet off her wrist and tossed it to him, a consolation prize perhaps. He made to catch it and missed, diving for it as it bounced off the wall behind him and fell unceremoniously at his feet.

The doors started to close again and someone moved forward tentatively and stopped them, the others filed in after him like sheep. A woman ran by Lydia who had not yet seen the spectacle at the elevator.

“Hey! Hold that elevator!” she yelled.

Lydia walked away, her face blank, the tension in it gone for the moment.

“Ms. Beaumont?”

She turned to find a young security guard wearing a concerned expression and somewhat out of breath.

She didn’t know he had witnessed the scene on a video monitor, that he had recognized the female VIP

being molested in the elevator, and that he had run from floor to floor in an effort to rescue her from her assailant.

“Yes?”

“Are you all right?” he asked breathlessly, “I’ve got her,” he reported into his wireless.

She listened to the static filled response and gave him a puzzled look.

He pointed at the cameras hanging from the ceiling. “Security,” he stated, “in the elevators, too. I saw–do you want to file a complaint?”

She hesitated. Joe was getting in deep with the firm. She couldn’t bring herself to sick security on him as well. “Thank you,” she said at length, “but I don’t think it will happen again.”

He looked bashfully at his shoes. “I’ll make a record of it just in case.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you. I mean it.” She left him standing there with his radio buzzing, a pencil poised for taking notes.

“Wait!” she overheard as she was exiting through the revolving doors. “Hold that–” Ding!

_____

Lawrence Taft woke with a splitting headache and no memory of how he had earned it. He had had a couple of drinks at Frank’s after Sharon Chambers made her surprise appearance there, but the events that followed that were shrouded in a haze.

But the bottom line was NOTHING. There was nothing going down at all, not at all. He popped some aspirin. This is it, he decided. Friday would be the last stakeout. He was becoming too attached to his pigeon.

He could feel it under his skin. The way she wore her hair, the way she sipped her tea. And his memory? Not remembering an entire day. Friday was it, and then he was out of there.