Authors: Unknown
Impatient now to get to the airport, Dolly dialled her apartment. Louella answered and summoned Felipe. She told her driver to get over to Girod’s as soon as he could, with a bottle of Cristal on ice.
Now, she had to come up with some charming way to unbend Import Specialist Julio Mclntyre-couldn’t be a bribe, exactly, but some kind of incentive. He had to release that shipment.
Dolly plunged into the closet-sized storeroom cattycorner to the office. She’d bring Mclntyre some chocolates, she decided. What else could she offer that wouldn’t be out-and-out bribery? But first she’d need a box … something really special. Her gaze scanned over the stacks of flat cardboard yet to be folded into boxes, embossed with Girod’s gold imprint, which lay in cartons on the floor. Above, lining the shelves, were the special containers, ones she’d collected herself: antique cookie tins and Art Deco canisters, gaily painted Mexican boxes, baskets studded with seashells, a quilted-satin jewelry chest. Gloria called this room her magpie’s nest. And that’s kind of how it had started, something catching Dolly’s eye one day while browsing through the Twenty-sixth Street flea market-a bright cloth-covered Indian box stitched with tiny round mirrors. On a whim, she’d lined it with gold foil and filled it with chocolates, then stuck a stiff price tag on it and placed it atop the pine washstand in the front of the shop. Within an hour, it had sold.
Now, rummaging through her magpie treasures, Dolly wondered what in the world would impress a seenit-all Customs agent.
Then she spotted it. Perfect-a cookie jar in the shape of an apple. She would fill it with Rhum Caramels and champagne truffles … and play Eve to Mclntyre’s Adam. It had worked in the Good Book. Why not now?
With the cookie jar tucked under her arm, Dolly
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made her way down the world’s narrowest staircase-it had to have been built with a midget in mind, she thought, ducking to avoid hitting her head against the landing. Definitely not for a size fourteen on fiveinch spike heels.
Downstairs, she found Gloria bent over the counter, folding boxes. She straightened and looked up at Dolly, her enormous brass earrings swaying and tinkling like wind chimes.
“You manage to kick some ass up at Customs?”
“Better.” Dolly held up the apple jar and grinned wickedly. “I’m mounting a personal attack. Death by chocolate.”
“Amen to that,” Gloria laughed.
Dolly had never known anyone like Gloria. In Clemscott, blacks were called colored, and you never saw them except cleaning the mansions along Shady Hill Avenue, or working down at the car wash on Main. But Gloria didn’t look down when spoken to, and she saw no reason to straighten her hair, which rose in an untamed cloud about her head. Gloria’s wardrobe reflected her outspoken style as well-a dress made out of sewn-together scarves one day, a man’s crewneck sweater over miniskirt and tights the next. Today, it was a fuzzy pink boat-necked sweater, black toreador slacks, and ballet flats. She sort of added to Girod’s exotic flavor. But it would be a blessing, Dolly thought, if Gloria didn’t get quite so darn many personal calls here at the shop. She had as many boyfriends as Zsa Zsa Gabor had husbands.
Dolly was just finishing filling the cookie jar when she spotted Felipe illegally pulling into the bus stop across the avenue. She grabbed a shopping bag, and threw on her coat with the Cacharel scarf stuffed in a pocket—Henri had given it to her last time, a silk replica of a stainedglass windo from the Sainte Chapelle. Dashing out into the street with barely a glance in either direction, she reached Felipe-but not before a taxi, seeming to whip out of nowhere, missed hitting her by a hair.
“You don’ watch out, you gonna get youself killed one a these days!” scolded her feisty Guatemalan driver as she slid into the back seat. She could see his broad face
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with its queerly flattened nose scowling affectionately at her in the rear-view mirror.
Dolly shrugged. Henri, too, was always after her for her supposedly reckless jaywalking, but in this city how else were you supposed to get around?
The Lincoln was inching its way along the Long Island Expressway, the world’s longest parking lot, when it started to rain, a torrent of fat droplets that sounded as if the car was being pelted with eggs. Dolly sighed, and slipped off her shoes, tucking her feet under her. It was going to be a long ride.
Her thoughts returned to Annie and Laurel … out there somewhere. Did they have any money? A place to sleep? Enough to eat?
For ages she’d so yearned to be a part of their lives. But she’d had to settle for mere scraps-fuzzy snapshots Ned Oliver had taken, and his well-meaning but scattered remembrances.
Lord, what it must have been like for them-those last years, Eve’s drinking more and more out of control, then the drying-out spells, when she’d be gone for months at a time. No money coming in, having to cut back until there was almost nothing left.
Dolly had so wanted to do things to help her sister. And there wasn’t a day when she didn’t regret having sent that damn letter. But every time she had called, some Spanish maid at Eve’s house would pick up and say, “Missa Dearfield no home.” Eve never returned a single one of her calls. And at Briarwood too, Eve’s instructions had been strict-no visitors.
Once, Dolly had managed to slip past the reception desk and into Eve’s room. Eve had been sitting on the end of the bed, smoking a cigarette and staring out the window. Her back, exposed by the flimsy robe she wore, made Dolly want to cry-it was so thin, every bump and ridge of her backbone clearly visible-and Dolly had seen that her hair, once bright as a gold locket, was now a dull ropey yellow, the color of straw.
But what shocked Dolly most was how fast her sister had deteriorated. It had been only a few months since her
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stone-faced refusal to give McCarthy one single name. Hollywood was still buzzing about Preminger snagging Grace Kelly in place of Eve. Syd had been way off about Dolly’s prospects, as it turned out, but that now seemed like ancient history. What she cared about now was making Eve understand how sorry she was. Whatever Eve had done to her, however thoughtless or selfish she’d been, she hadn’t deserved this.
Then Eve turned, and saw her. Her blue eyes, in that first instant dull and flat as carbon paper, turned suddenly bright. She smiled, but it was a horrible smile that made Dolly shiver. Cigarette smoke swam up, and eddied about her head.
“So you found me,” she said, her voice flat. “Well, you’ve seen me. Now you can go. It’s closing time at the zoo.” Eve stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray by her bed.
“I’m sorry,” Dolly told her. The words seemed as inconsequential as pebbles tossed into a vast ocean. But what else could she say? What else mattered? “Oh, honey, do you think you could ever find it in your heart to forgive me? I never thought …”
Eve fixed her with a gimlet gaze, freezing her. “Is that what you want to hear?” she replied in that same toneless voice. “Will that make you go away? Okay, then, I forgive you.”
Inside Dolly, something snapped, and she started to cry. Then she realized that, stupidly, she hadn’t brought a handkerchief, or even a tissue. Eve didn’t offer her one, either. Dolly’s nose started to run, and she wiped at it with the sleeve of her jacket.
“How did you find out it was me?” Dolly managed to croak. |
“You jnean you don’t know! About Syd?” Eve coughed out a harsh laugh. “God, that’s rich … that’s really rich. I’ll bet he promised you the whole pie in the sky for sticking it to me. And all the while, it was you he was screwing over. Well, both of us, really. For a minute or two he actually convinced me that it was your idea, that he’d done the pitch of his life to talk you out of it. Big
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hero. Undying loyalty no matter how bad I’d treated him. Fade to sunset, our disgraced heroine melts gratefully into his arms, now promising to become his good little wife. Only he didn’t know I’d just married Val. He figured there was still a chance, and then when everybody else in town had kicked me in the face, when I was nice and humble, he’d pick me up and dust off my career somehow. What a laugh, huh?”
Dolly stood there, feeling as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
And then, as if the fragile string that had been holding her sister upright had been abruptly severed, Eve slumped, her hands falling limply to her sides.
“You want to hear the best part?” Her voice was a thin rasp. “I’m pregnant. That whole bit about Val itching to marry me, it was all a big lie. Vegas was my idea. At heart, I guess I’m just an old-fashioned girl.” With a small crooked smile, Eve turned toward her, enough so that Dolly could see the swell of her stomach under her loosely tied robe. Then the smile was gone, and in a reedy whisper Eve pleaded, “Now will you go away and leave me alone?”
Twelve years. It had taken Eve that long to die, but all the time that’s what she’d been doing. Dying.
Now, staring out the window of her car at the rainslashed grayness of the Long Island Expressway, remembering that scene, Dolly thought, / helped kill her. It was me, not the booze and the pills, that did her in.
And now, because of what Dolly had done, Eve’s girls were out there somewhere, maybe in this pouring rain, probably scared to death… .
Dolly covered her face with her hands, and wept. She didn’t deserve anything good. She didn’t deserve Henri … nor had she deserved that dear man she’d married-huge-hearted Dale, who had picked her up when she was waiting tables at Giro’s, lavished her with affection and every ridiculous luxury, and died leaving her so wonderfully well provided for.
Then came the trickle of cool reason. Her tears were, she realized, like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom-no earthly good at all. They weren’t going to
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help her or her nieces the least bit. No, she would have to come up with something-something that both Val and O’Brien had missed, some hint, some small clue that might lead her to the girls. …
She closed her eyes and combed her brain. Could there be a friend in New York Annie might have gone to? Dolly had already called everybody she could think of who’d known Eve … but most of them said they hadn’t seen Eve in years, and had seemed downright astonished to hear from Dolly. The teachers at Annie’s school weren’t helpful, either. One old sourpuss snapped that she’d already told the police everything she knew.
Dolly allowed herself to imagine being reunited with her nieces. They’d live with her, of course. But what if they were staying with someone else, a friend? Or what if Eve had told them about her betrayal, and the girls blamed her, hated her even? Well, she’d find ways to make it up to them. Short visits at first, while they got to know each other, then maybe they could all go on a nice long trip somewhere. Paris. They’d stay at the Lancaster. They’d love the little garden, the boiserie on the walls, the pillowy croissants at breakfast. She pictured the three of them, under the vast glass dome of the Galeries Lafayette, trying on shoes and chic dresses, picking out smart silk scarves.
Dolly felt her heart lift. Lord knew, she couldn’t replace Eve … but she could be sort of like a mother to those girls, couldn’t she? She’d longed for children of her own, but after a whole year of trying, the tests had shown that Dale’s sperm count was impossibly low (The dick of a bull, and the nuts of a gelding, he used to joke, though it pained him plenty). No babies ever …
But wouldn’t this be almost as good, in a way? If she could bit a mother to her nieces, wouldn’t it, in some small way, help make up for what she’d done to Eve?
The traffic was clearing now, and the green approach signs for JFK could be seen through the rain up ahead. Minutes later, they were pulling up in front of the gray concrete cube of Cargo Building 80, and Dolly was dashing across the rain-slick tarmac, shopping bag tucked up under her arm.
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Inside, the place looked even more dreary than it had outside: pea-soup walls, scuffed linoleum floor, furniture that looked as if it belonged in the Bates Motel. At the reception counter, she asked for Mr. Mclntyre, and a bored-looking blob of a woman pointed the way down a corridor without even asking if she had an appointment.
She found his office easily enough; Mcintyre’s plastic name tag was in a slot by the door. It was open, and he was at his desk, shuffling through an immense sheaf of papers. A middle-aged man with sallow, pitted skin, almond-shaped brown eyes, and red hair shot with gray, the color of rusty iron.
Dolly waited while he wrote something down. When he put down his pen, she knocked softly against the open door.
He lifted his eyes without raising his head. Then, seeing an attractive woman, someone he didn’t know, he sat up and looked at her. Appreciatively, she thought.
Though they’d spoken to one another a number of times over the phone, they’d never actually met.
“Dolly Drake,” she introduced herself, and at his sheepish wince she grinned. “Guess you know why I’m here. Looks like your fellows are sitting on something that belongs to me, and I was sort of hoping you could help me out.”
She asked, trying not to overdo the flirty lowering of her lashes, if he wouldn’t mind taking a minute from his busy schedule to look into it for her. Now he was standing up, looking as if he really wanted to help her, and she noted also the generous slab of gut hanging over his belt. A man with a healthy appetite. That’s good.
While Mcintyre went across the hall to hunt up the paperwork, she slipped the apple-shaped cookie jar from her shopping bag and placed it on his desk.
After a few minutes that felt like an hour, he came back holding some papers. He looked weary, not as if those papers spelled good news.
She put on her knock-the-producer-dead smile, and drawled, “I brought you something.” She pointed to the
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cookie jar. “Cute, isn’t it? And wait’ll you see what’s inside.”