The War of the Roses (24 page)

The Greek ambassador continued to address her. She nodded. Her mind was drifting. If only she could make Oliver understand how important this house was to her. There was, she decided, ample room for compromise. Despite what was happening now, Oliver was a practical man, a reasonable man. Compassionate, too. Her decision had cut too deeply. Both of them had overreacted. Besides, hadn't they once loved each other?
...

Benny's bark intruded. Hearing it prompted an instantaneous reflex, a shiver of dread, the sound was

Oliver's clarion and, for a moment, she felt the odd panic.

Alert to her nerve ends, she listened for his impending step. The bark continued, then faded. Her eyes probed the room. All three in help were busy clearing the table in preparation for serving the dessert, working in tandem with swift, efficient, professional silence.

A sense of uneasiness gripped her and she excused herself and went into the kitchen. The eclairs were laid out on their tray, waiting to be served; the chocolate sauce was warming on a burner over low heat. To the eye, nothing seemed amiss.

'What is it, Mrs. Rose?' one of the waiters asked, starded by her presence.

'Why did you all leave the kitchen?' she murmured, knowing that the question was ambiguous. The waiter, a tall, distinguished-looking black man, looked confused.

'Never mind,' she said quickly, surveying the kitchen once again. Turning, she went back to the table. The sight of her guests reassured her and she sat down, watching the waiters pour the dessert champagne.

'Everything is perfect,' the wife of the Thai ambassador whispered, filling Barbara with pride, chasing her uncertainty.

A waiter served the eclairs, and another followed with the warm chocolate sauce. Mr. White of the
Post
made a round sign of approval with his fingers, which completely dispelled her anxiety and she dug into the dessert. The chocolate seemed thicker than she might have wished, but the custard filling was perfect.

A tinkling of silver on glass startled her. The Greek ambassador rose. Stripped of his title and government-provided home in Sheridan Circle, he would be a very unimposing man, but standing now, well nourished with what, she was convinced, were some of the finest and best-prepared victuals in the world, well watered with rare wines, dressed in black tie and wrapped in the patina of diplomatic finesse, he made the symbol of her elegant home tangible. What did it matter if he barely knew her? He was visibly impressed. His toast was a potpourri of accented platitudes and compliments and she loved them all. She had never heard them applied to herself.

'A hostess of rare beauty, a gourmet of the first rank, a woman of elegant taste, impeccable.' The words rumbled outward in soothing waves. It was delicious. Others rose and echoed the Greek ambassador.

When they were finished and she had responded with a few modest words she had memorized, she led them into t
he library for liqueurs and coff
ee.

'Would you mind if we made an appointment for an interview, Mrs. Rose?' White asked. 'There's something special apparentiy at work here.' She flushed and nodded, offering a touch of the obligatory humility.

'I cannot tell you how embarrassed I was over our former problem,' the Greek ambassador's wife said in labored English.

'I had no idea,' the wife of the undersecretary told her, kissing her on the cheek.

A waiter passed cigars, cutting each proffered end with a flourish. The men became engrossed in political conversation. The women talked of other matters. Barbara delighted in the buzz of conversation, the sure mark of a successful party.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw the sudden frown, a brief wrinkling of the brow of the French military attache. She saw him whisper something to the waiter, who responded quickly, pointing to the foyer, and the man hurried off.

At that moment the wife of the Greek ambassador rose and looked curiously at
Barbara, who understood instantl
y.

'On the first floor,' Barbara said quickly. She watched the woman's gowned figure recede, but the odd, unspoken note of pleading disturbed her.

When White left the room with what seemed like uncommon speed, she began to feel the familiar tug of anxiety. With acute clarity, she heard the quick knocking on the door of the occupied hall loo. Rising, she went to the foyer and was suddenly confronted by the pale, tense face of the food editor.

'Are you all right?'

'Please.' It seemed the only word he could muster.

'Upstairs. There's one in the master bedroom.'

She looked after him as he raced up the stairs. As she turned, the Thai ambassador was moving toward her, a pained expression on his dark face. Reality was crowding in her consciousness.

'No. There's someone there,' she cried. 'On the third floor.'

She was diverted suddenly by a woman's voice.

'Jacques,' the voice cried, knocking on the closed door of the hall loo. She heard a muffled avalanche of French invective. The word
merde
came to her loud and clear, triggering further revelation. Turning, she saw more of her guests come toward her. They seemed to meld into one another, their voices raised in a cacophony of discordant sounds.

'I'm sorry,' she cried. 'You must understand
...
it wasn't me.'

The house suddenly seemed to come alive. The sound of flushing toilets, doors opening and closing, hurried footsteps. She saw the front door open and people brush past her.

'Forgive me,' she cried, feeling suddenly a bubbling sensation in her innards.

'My God,' she screamed, running to the rear of the house, through the kitchen, past the startled waiters, stripped of their uniforms how, busy cleaning up.

'What is it, Mrs. Rose?' one of them called after her.

She had lost any conscious sense of direction, finding herself finally in the garden. As she squatted in a clump of azaleas near the wall of the garage, she heard an unmistakably familiar sound next to her. There he was, the Greek ambassador, his bare bottom shining in the glare of the full moon. Slowly, his face turned towards her, implacable, expressionless. It seemed disembodied, like a lighted jack-o'-lantern hanging in the air.

'Madame,' the face said, offering an inexplicable smile.

'Help me,' she cried, looking away, hoping she would turn to stone.

She hid behind the azaleas for a long time, inert, paralyzed with mortification, watching the house. Only when she was certain that everyone had left did she find the will to move. Standing, she felt the acid of anger fill her, inflating her with its corrosive power. If he was within reach, she was certain, she would have strangled him and enjoyed the process. As her eyes roved the deserted garden, a beam of moonlight lit up the shiny cover of his Ferrari, which she could see through the window of the garage.

As if guided by some powerful force outside herself, she entered the garage by the garden door. With slow deliberation, she removed the car's covering, then lifted off the fiberglass top, which she carefully set on its side. He had shown her how to do it. When he had first bought the Ferrari, he had let her drive it, but she took no pleasure in the process. It was a man's toy.

In a toolbox on the shelf she found a screwdriver and unscrewed the box that held the mechanism for opening and closing the garage door. It was a simply matter to adjust the fail-safe mechanism. Once, the door had nearly crushed Mercedes, who had scurried away just in time, and Oliver had explained to her what had gone wrong with the fail-safe device. It was an extra-heavy door. The irony pleased her now, clearing he
r mind, enabling her to focus sin
gle-mindedly on her task.

When she had completed it, she took the remote-control gadget from its hook and tested it by opening and closing the door. Releasing the Ferrari's emergency brake, she put the gears in neutral and pushed the light car halfway through the open garage door. It moved easily. Only thirty-two hundred pounds, he had explained. Just forty-seven inches high.

She felt her lips form a smile as she pressed the down button, watching as the heavy door descended on the defenseless car. The sound of the crunching metal was satisfying, oddly musical, as she repeatedly raised and lowered the garage door like a giant hammer. When destruction seemed complete in one spot, she moved the car and began working on another. The steering column bent, the wheel broke off, the dashboard crumbled. Each stroke of the door gave her a special shiver of joy. She had never experienced such wild exhilaration, and she abandoned herself to the sheer excitement, her fingers working the r
emote-control gadget with relentl
ess deliberation.

When the novelty of the pleasure subsided, she simply pushed the car back into the garage and, closing the door, replaced the remote-control gadget on its hook.

What she had done restored her courage and she felt able to go back into the house again. At least now, she thought, she could enjoy her rage in peace.

23

He
sat in his office, sipping his morning coffee, eating the doughnut provided by Miss Harlow, and looked glumly out of the window. He had been certain that what he had done to her kitchen would have finished, once and for all, the foolishness of her fancy dinner party. It had taken him one whole night to do the job. She'd had no right to go ahead with it, flouting him, using the proceeds from a blatant theft of his possessions. By insisting on having the party, she'd brought it all on herself.

For a while he had reveled in his cleverness, hiding in the sun-room until just the right moment; then he'd dropped the Ex-Lax into the chocolate sauce, adding an extra piece to the mix for good measure. If he hadn't gone to the movies, he might have saved the Ferrari from her wrath, although he doubted it. Seeing it this morning, all he wanted to do was to cry. But the tears refused to come. He supposed he should have expected something of the sort. Fifty thousand shot to hell. And it was he who had shown her how to wield the weapon. She was one resourceful bitch. He'd give her that.

It was impossible to believe that a human being could change so much. Well, he was changing, too. He could be as unpredictable as she. The worst part for him now was to accept the idea of her strength. She was rubbing his nose in it, humiliating him.

'Some people never understand until you rub their noses in it,' he had told her many times, referring to various antagonists in his practice. Goldstein would have
called it
chutzpah,
which was one word for which he did not need a translation. To throw a fancy dinner party with the proceeds of what was, in purely legal terms, stolen property was unmitigated
chutzpah.
Not to pay the overdue utility bills was compounding the
chutzpah.
And this deliberate destruction of one of the great mechanical marvels of the age. .
..

He felt his gorge rise and banged the coffee cup in its saucer. On his desk were dunning notices of all kinds, which he gathered up and ripped in half. The bill collectors were beginning to call him at the office and he was ducking the calls.

'They'll cut you off,' Miss Harlow had warned.

'Her, too,' he had responded.

'You'll be without light, without air conditioning,' Miss Harlow lectured. 'Her, too.'

The children had begun to write and he was disturbed that they addressed their letters to his office, as if they had already acknowledged that the house was not to be his.

'Please write to me at home. It is my home. Our home. I paid for everything in it and continue to do so.' Rereading his words to them, he thought they sounded harsh, but he did not tear the letter up. He wanted to be emphatic. He was still the master of the family ship, he told himself. He searched his mind for what else to write, but could not think of much, since he was too absorbed in his present dilemma. One obsession at a time. He sent them handsome checks and left it at that.

He carried the inventory list with him now and every night checked through the house to be sure she had not taken any more of their possessions. She had continued to write him
little
notes and Scotch-taped them to his door, and soon they became repetitive; one-liners about the imminent cut
-
off of their utilities.

'You pay them,' he had scribbled, Scotch-taping the notes back on her door.

Living the way he did, from day to day, gave him a different view of time. With mental discipline, he found, he could keep his mind working, but only in the present. When an anxiety intruded that required some perspective on the future, even if only a few moments ahead, he ripped it from his consciousness. In that way he was able to cope with the impending utilities cut
-
off as well. No hardship, he decided, would be too much.