Authors: Roberta Latow
From the small morning-room overlooking Central Park, now bathed in a pink light, the sky was a shimmering bright blue. The day was going to be a scorcher. ‘I’m never doing this again, Sebastiano, coming to New York in the summer.’
‘When can we leave?’
‘I should be able to finish off the meetings in two, three days.’
The two men took their seats at the round table draped in snowy damask and laden with platters of food. ‘Will she be all right?’ Carlos asked his friend.
‘Yes. She looks strong-willed. There is no doubt she has had a shock but an hour or two and she will be wanting to return to her hotel. But she’ll have to work on what’s upset her, that will take time.’
‘She wears no underclothes. Very sexy.’
‘And I know how you like that, Carlos. One of your own demands
for the women you get involved with. Well, that might just give us a hint of the sort of men she favours.’
‘And she has a great body, sensuous, I liked what I saw.’
‘Not now, Carlos. Don’t even think it. The woman has too many problems to handle already.’
‘Just remarking, Sebastiano. I’m not a lout. I have my Good Samaritan hat on this morning. Let’s eat.’ They began with paper thin slices of ham which they rolled and ate with their fingers. Afterwards the pancakes were attacked with gusto.
The handsome stranger had been right. Cressida felt a great deal better having freshened herself up in his bathroom. She used the man’s comb, looked in the mirror, studied her face. She wore no make up, and thought she looked not only plain, which she didn’t mind, but pained. It was in her eyes: the hurt, the confusion, but worse, the pain. She hated seeing that in herself and wanted it gone. She could not even make up her face to detract from the pain she was showing. Cressida had not taken a handbag with her from the hotel. She had merely stuffed some money in her dress pocket for a taxi.
Nothing to be done except fight off the depression that was settling over her. Get rid of the pain. She walked from the bathroom to the drawing-room and sat down again. She drank the coffee. It was impossible to erase the vision of Tommy and Vicki from her mind. She had loved them too much for too long not to understand the pain they too must be suffering for their incestuous relationship. To have used her and deceived her in the past, but worse to have planned so brutally to deceive her in the future, use her to cover their crime – it was unforgivable. Frightening. Their actions now exposed forced her to ask who were these people she had thought she knew so well?
Cressida placed her hands over her face. Feeling her tears on them, she removed her hands and took several deep breaths. There was no point in agonising over what had happened. Her own dishonesty was what had brought her here to two strange men’s flat. Byron had, of course, been right. The best reason to enter into a marriage was because of a mutual great passion. She had known full well neither she nor Tommy had that for each other. She was as guilty as Tommy for not being true to herself. But that was where
her
guilt stopped. Where did Tommy’s and Vicki’s?
Once more she placed her hands over her face and lowered her head. A vision of them in the throes of lust occupied her imagination. She blocked it out. What could not be excluded and which hurt more was the huge slice of her life she had devoted to two people who had loved her, yes, but for their own incestuous reasons. It had somehow been easier to come to terms with the selfishness of Rosemary, Byron, even
Kane, but it was taking a concerted effort on her part to do as the stranger, the doctor, had suggested. To confront what had happened and be done with it.
Cressida was thirsty. She finished her cup of coffee. The kindness of strangers. She rose from the sofa and walked, with cup and saucer in hand, somewhat hesitantly, careful not to trip over the robe she was wearing, into the room where the men were dining. They rose from their chairs, Eduardo quickly pulled one out for her. She sat down.
‘Well, I’m pleased to see you are looking better,’ said Carlos.
‘I wonder if I might have another cup of coffee, please?’
‘Of course. Do you think you could eat something?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I want to thank you. Especially you, doctor. It
is
best to confront the shock of what has happened to me and dispose of it.’
‘It will take time. But try every day. Painful treatment, but it works. In time you will have worked yourself through it and it will be gone. Like a miracle. The situation will not have changed but the shock will be gone. You will understand what has happened and why and will no longer be traumatised by it. It will be just another thing, albeit a bad thing, that is part of your past.’
‘That’s Harvard Medical School talking,’ quipped Carlos.
‘I don’t know how, but I’m not going to let this wound me. I let a disappointment do that to me once and for far too long. Never again.’
Carlos buttered a piece of warm bread and dribbled some clear golden honey over it. He leaned over and held it to her lips. He caught sight of just a flicker of a smile at the corners of her mouth. She bit off a piece of bread and took it from his hand. ‘Well, that’s better,’ he remarked, looking pleased.
Cressida found it difficult to swallow. She made an effort and was relieved when she could. She drank the hot black coffee, and after placing the cup back in the saucer, sat there quietly watching the men eat their breakfast.
In a calm and very steady voice she began to tell them, ‘He fell in love with me when I was fourteen years old. His sister was my age, my best friend. His family became my second family, in time my only family, except for my real father. They gave me the home I no longer had with my father. He watched me grow up, loved me, took care of me always. He waited years for me, until I was ready for him. They were my world, he and his sister, the biggest most important part of my life. In many ways the foundation of my adolescence and adult life. We travelled everywhere together, were inseparable, a happy trio who knew nothing but fun times. He sent me out into the world to test myself with other men and just waited for the time when I could
love him as he loved me. A great romantic love story with a rotten ending.
‘We became engaged yesterday, in the early-evening. At five in the morning it was over. I found him in bed with his sister, my best friend, naked, wrapped in each other’s arms. A big part of my life over. My past, my future, gone.’
Carlos was about to say something but Sebastiano stopped him with a hand on his arm and a nod for him to remain silent. Carlos understood at once and Cressida continued. The story seemed to flow from her and clearly Sebastiano thought that was the best medicine for her.
‘When you two came along, I was so disorientated. Nothing seemed real to me. I’m staying with my father at the Plaza. I simply could not go up to him in the state I was in. How could I? Three-quarters of me was gone.’
She stopped now and drank more of her coffee. The two men remained silent. They had ceased eating while she had been telling her story. Sebastiano rose from his chair and went round the table and poured more coffee into her cup. He stroked her hair and then returned to his seat.
She looked up and smiled at him. A smile of gratitude. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s it. I’ve confronted my shock. Begin again? One has to ask oneself, how many times in a lifetime can one begin again?’
‘Every day.’ That was Carlos. He smiled at her.
‘Their lust for each other, it must be a torture for them,’ she said apropos of nothing.
‘Not necessarily so. You would do yourself a service if you took that thought on board. It might help you to get over this faster,’ said Carlos.
‘If it is or it isn’t, that’s their problem. They were vile to make it mine. I can never love them again, ever. I might one day manage compassion for the predicament they are in, and even then only from afar. I will not be left crippled by their deceit, their disloyalty, their lack of real love for me. People who really love, do they use people as I have been used? I think not. How pathetic they must have found me. I’m grateful to you both. Strangers who came to my aid just when I needed them. And good strangers at that. If not for you, I might have been damaged by this even worse than I already am. Thanks for your helping hand. I don’t think I will ever forget you for this.’
The more she spoke, the stronger Cressida seemed to be. The two men were amazed not so much by her story, but by her resilience. That she had sprung back to life as well as she had. She seemed to raise her chin a little bit higher, sit up more squarely in her chair.
She gave a deep sigh. Quite composed and in charge of herself, she
said, ‘I doubt that we shall ever meet again. If I thought so I might not have had the courage to confess all this to you. It is not an important event in anyone else’s life, so I will be grateful if we can keep this meeting to ourselves.’
Tears were trickling out of the corners of Cressida’s eyes now. Sebastiano rose from his chair and went round to stand next to her. He raised her wrist and took her pulse. He placed a hand over her brow for a few seconds, then tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes. He patted her on the shoulder.
‘A good lesson to remember. Life is not what you Americans tend to believe. For generations you have been sold on the idea that life is beautiful, nothing but happiness and good times. That’s why you are never prepared for disasters and suffer anguish over the least little one that comes along. Life is not beautiful. It is not easy. Life is very hard, and ugly, and nasty. It is unfair, cruel. Now face that truth and you will appreciate all the good things that happen to you. Every flower, tree and leaf. Every experience good or bad will be easier to handle. It’s not a pessimistic attitude we are talking of here, it’s the reality of life. You are going to be fine.
‘I can’t keep my eyes open another minute, so I will say goodbye and good luck. You are a strong and clever personality, do something with that.’ Sebastiano gave her a smile of encouragement and left the room. He called over his shoulder, ‘Carlos, don’t let her go back to the hotel alone. Send Eduardo with her.’
Carlos and Cressida remained silent for several minutes. Eduardo arrived with a Spanish omelette. ‘That smells a treat,’ remarked Cressida, delighted to be distracted by something other than herself.
‘Good. You have some,’ invited Carlos.
Cressida could only manage a forkful, and that was out of politeness. They sat in silence and she observed the stranger across the table from her. He was very handsome, almost too handsome; sensual, incredibly attractive. How Vicki would have chased after him. Cressida closed her eyes for a second, put a check on her thinking. She could no longer use her best friend as a point of reference. She had no best friend any more. It was true, two-thirds of her life had vanished. She would have to begin again.
Eduardo arrived with Cressida’s dress over his arm. She rose from her chair. ‘I feel well enough to return to the hotel. You have been more than kind to me.’
‘I will send Eduardo with you.’
‘It’s not necessary.’
‘Oh, but I think it is.’
Carlos had risen from his chair and placed an arm round her to walk
with her from the dining-room. He had her dress over his arm. ‘What will you do today?’ he asked.
‘Go to work. I’m a working girl.’
‘May I suggest something? Take the day off. Make your father take you shopping. He can buy you a new wardrobe.’
‘I hate shopping. I’m not a good shopper.’
‘Begin to be a good shopper. Ladies have a knack of healing themselves in department stores, expensive boutiques, designer shops. I have sisters, many, I know what I’m talking about. You have to change your life now, so why not your image? You’re very pretty. Get glamorous. Men love glamour, even those who pretend they don’t. And you need a new man. Lots of men. Lots of good sex. Forget love for a while. Put that two-thirds of your life you think you’ve lost aside. Chalk them off as a long adolescence, a growing up. Face it, you didn’t want to marry him anyway.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Instinct. You were probably marrying him to get a husband and he was the easy way out. The easy way out is not always the easy way out.’
At the door to his suite of rooms, as she was leaving with Eduardo, he asked, ‘An artist?’ after giving her portfolio to Eduardo to carry.
‘An architect.’
‘Ah, that’s interesting.’
‘Thank you very much. I will never forget your kindness nor your friend’s.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you will.’
Carlos kissed her hand. The perfect continental kiss.
Carlos Marias Arriva was a better businessman than he was a structural engineer, a better structural engineer than he was an architect. That was how he assessed his own talents. With first class Harvard degrees, and his family resources, it was not difficult for him to cut out a working niche for himself that held his interest and was personally satisfying to him. One that was constructive and yet allowed him freedom to pursue his pleasures.
It took only a few years after he had graduated from University to establish himself as indispensable asset in both his family’s business and their philanthropic trusts which were incredibly well-financed. Knowledgeable, professional, and with an ability to delegate, he was a formidably hard man to deal with. He did not suffer fools gladly but managed to accomplish a great deal, adding tremendous quality to the buildings and civic projects he took on.
There was not an architect, builder, land, housing or business developer that was not looking for his trusts’ custom. Carlos Marias Arriva had power, and the sort of power that affects people, changes their life. What’s more he had global power. The family trusts and wealth and business holdings were administered from Madrid, Buenos Aires and London, but their interests spanned several continents.
Carlos Marias Arriva, without setting out to be, had become an international man of arts and culture, a reputation he abhorred. He did not hide from, but cleverly diffused, his reputation by using his executives and associates to front for him. He gave them credit for his accomplishments and the trusts’ successes, all the while holding all the power, making the final decisions. For the most part, his projects were on a grand scale, interesting, monument-making, because the projects his trust usually undertook specialised in adding something positive to mankind, something important to the world. He was a man who cared about his fellow man, beauty and substance.
To work for a man such as Carlos was not easy. But to work for a man with such vision, and the power to bring his visions to fruition, that was the ultimate job, no matter what the difficulties. Every man in the arts wanted commissions from the Arriva trusts and foundations, their
corporate holdings. To deal with them was to deal with a phalanx of people until you got to the top. And even then you might not deal directly with Carlos.
Owen Merrick was one of the men who did. That was what Carlos Marias Arriva was doing in New York in the midst of a killer summer heat wave – having meetings with him. Carlos’s great forte was that he knew the bare bones of many things. He had the eye, the intelligence, certain sensibilities, was shrewd if not cunning, enabling him to cut to the heart of a matter. He was a man who got what he wanted, when he wanted it. Owen Merrick was not delivering the goods. He was nearly there but not quite and Carlos had lost patience waiting for Merrick’s firm to get it right. They needed his in-put, needed to be told where they were getting it wrong. That was what made Carlos both a difficult and a respected client.
This was the third commission Carlos had handed over to Owen. The first that the architectural firm seemed unable to get just right. And here Carlos was, five days after his first meeting in the boardroom of Owen Merrick, Wendell and Corey, unable himself to work out what precisely was wrong with the designs. It had been a difficult brief and the firm had it largely right, but not as right as it should be.
Owen Merrick and Carlos had been at Harvard together. They knew each other well. They had respect for what each was doing in their work, and both knew that Carlos was right to be disappointed. He was not being difficult for any other reason than that he wanted the best. Carlos was a perfectionist. Owen Merrick could not fault him for that. But it did make the two men and the other architects in the boardroom anxious. They simply could not crack the problem with the designs.
‘I don’t want to be difficult, Owen, but I don’t want to stay here in New York, not another day, and we’re up against time. None of us is leaving here today until we discover what’s wrong with these designs, so you guys had better think about that, and fast. I’m going to stretch my legs.’ And Carlos walked from the room, knowing full well how testy he sounded. The implication being that he was on the verge of withdrawing the commission from the firm.
Owen Merrick, Wendell and Corey’s offices occupied three floors of one of the glass towers on Park Avenue, close to Grand Central Station. They were open plan and what privacy there was was a matter of glass walls for the high ups. Executive offices, dining-room and conference rooms were on the top floor. The entire space was open plan with galleries overlooking a moving staircase right through the centre of the triplex offices. Once you shot through the building in the
express lift and were deposited in reception, you entered a world of top class architecture that was as exciting and thrilling as you would find anywhere in this vast city of skyscrapers.
Carlos stepped on to the escalator. It was a splendid sensation, like floating through space. He watched the workforce: architects, draughtsmen, designers, secretaries, in action as he rode down through the three floors. There was a buzz of creativity on the move, people carrying drawings and papers and files; walking, running, riding up and down between floors.
Carlos, more frustrated than angry that the firm simply could not get his project right, distracted himself by girl watching. He was spotting the beauties. Trying to find one he fancied, one who gave him that sexual buzz, switched on the libido. Not one did the job for him. He could not climb out of his involvement with the firm and its failing him. He liked the firm. They had good concepts, their aesthetic values were right, they were hot, original, usually reliable. What was going wrong?
Now on the ground floor, where the donkey work was done, mostly draughtsmen labouring over working drawings for various projects, the new architectural recruits, the place where the big climb up the success ladder started, he wove his way in and around the large drafting tables.
She stood out as the only girl in a pool of men. She was sitting on a high chair in front of her drafting table, legs crossed. That was what attracted him. The bare legs, very long and sexy and shod in tarty high – heeled white leather sandals. The short skirt allowed a tantalising view, a hint of sensuous thigh. Hardly the blue stocking, dull but chic, look usually found in architectural offices.
She was deep in thought, the knuckle of her left hand clenched between her teeth, and she was staring into space. He recognised her at once and smiled to himself. She certainly had taken his advice about glamour. He came across the floor at an angle and was practically in front of her before she saw him. She recognised him at once. He smiled at her. ‘You don’t look surprised?’
‘I’m not.’
‘I am,’ he told her.
‘Yes, well, you would be. I had the advantage. I saw you earlier in the day when you came in with Owen Merrick.’
‘And you asked who I was?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you have me at a disadvantage, I don’t know who you are.’
‘You mean, besides being the girl you rescued a few days ago?’
‘Oh, how strange, I don’t remember that.’
‘That’s incredibly kind.’
He chose to ignore that and told her, ‘You look pretty and have great legs. They are what brought me all the way over here.’
She smiled again at him. He liked her smile. She sensed that and seemed to rise to it. With great charm, something she had not displayed to him before, she told him, ‘In all of New York City to meet again? It’s an incredible coincidence, isn’t it?’
He chose not to answer her, to leave her pondering as to whether it was or it wasn’t. He kept thinking how sexy it was that she was sitting there with no knickers on. How divine it would be to raise her skirts and turn her over her drafting table and fuck her right then and there. The fantasy made up his mind for him. He would have her.
He turned to look at the work in progress on her drafting table. She was quick in reaching across to drape the white linen cover over it, as she did every night before she left the office. But not quick enough. He stopped her, a hand on her wrist. ‘What have we here?’ he asked.
He recognised at once the plot plan and several elevations of the Buenos Aires housing project his company was developing. The very buildings that they were having so much trouble with up in the boardroom. She looked terribly embarrassed. The colour rose to her cheeks. He ignored her embarrassment, was too interested in her drawings. Impressed, he demanded, ‘Talk me through this.’
‘I’m not working on this project. I did this merely as an exercise for myself.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why aren’t you working on this project?’
‘I’m in a very junior position here.’
‘Never mind that. Talk me through these drawings.’
Once again she made an attempt to cover them up. He stopped her yet again. ‘I’m not going to ask you again. I can easily go upstairs and tell Owen what I have discovered and make him make you talk me through them, or you can be gracious and do as I ask. Why did you take this on as an exercise? Come on, speak up for yourself.’
‘I didn’t feel we were getting the best out of the site or the brief. I didn’t like the drawings I saw. They were interesting, exciting even, but they didn’t answer a great many problems. I envisage in twenty years just a newer slum property. Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.’
‘That is exactly what they are. But my family and our company don’t like being slum landlords.’
‘Then why are you?’
‘Well, that’s what we are trying to address now. What I am doing here. We are spending three hundred and fifty-six million dollars to redevelop this whole district of Buenos Aires, not to be slum landlords,
and most certainly not to create new slums. I like this, these parks, the many courtyards, all the trees, the way the green snakes through the development. And the river, yes, I like what you have done by the river. Now talk me through it.’
Cressida saw no point in keeping silent, she had said too much not to carry on and do as he asked. For nearly an hour she expounded on her theory about the development: what was right, what was wrong, the issues that had not been addressed. Out came the yellow onion skin tracing paper and the soft sketching pencils, and she illustrated as she spoke. Carlos tore off the used sheets from the roll and sketched some ideas himself. Finally he stopped her in mid-sentence.
‘You’ve cracked it. It’s terrific. You’ve been clever enough to solve the problems that have had us all stumped. The inner and outer courtyards, the laundry yards and nurseries and boathouses along the river, and the river cafés. Turning the ground floors and basements into shops, offices, and arcades to make up the revenue of lost housing that is now converted into living green areas. Adding another floor to the buildings, which are low-rise anyway, and dividing the four floors with a fifth floor, a loggia, where people can sit in the open and view the river and the city beyond. I’m incredibly pleased and impressed. And do the figures tally up? How does it come in in financial terms?’
‘For the developers, it is financially more advantageous. For the residents there are innumerable advantages. Most of all you will not be creating another slum, but a healthier community to live in.’
‘The upkeep of the complex?’
‘Not much in it either way. Here the costs are made up by the revenue from the shops and cafés, the boating on the river.’
‘How long have you been working on this?’
‘For the last month or so. Ever since I saw what they upstairs termed the best solution. I just did it to see if I could do it, if you know what I mean. And then it got rather complicated because I realised that I could do it. And damn’ well at that.’
‘Why didn’t you put it forward to Owen?’
‘Well, it just doesn’t happen like that here. I did mention it to some of my colleagues, we talked about it.’
‘You should have done better than just talk about it, you should have
acted upon
it. How did you arrive at this? It’s so simple and clever, the concept so much better conceived.’
‘I kept thinking about the future. Not how it will look when completed, but in fifty, a hundred years from now. Thousands of families having moved in and out of the place. People living and dying there. I tried to visualise it with mature trees, and generations returning to their roots. I tried to think of the poor people of Buenos Aires who
will spend their lives there in a rich and colourful life, only just making ends meet. The key to it was always communal living. Neighbours. A life all of its own, a little city within a city. The courtyards as breathing spaces. Places to run away to just outside your front door. The courtyards and the river.’
‘I’ve seen enough. You are a clever girl. An architectural trouble shooter. And keeping the original designs of the building because you knew they worked well was especially commendable. You merely took them that step further where you knew they had to be taken. Oh, I like it. And I want it.’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘Come on, roll up your drawings and take along these scraps of tracing paper we’ve been working on.’
‘I don’t think this is the way to do this …’
‘Well, I do. I wouldn’t think of not allowing you to make me a better slum landlord.’
‘Now you are embarrassing me.’
He eased her off her chair. She held herself back. ‘Maybe what we should do is have you go up to the meeting and tell them you …’
He interrupted her, ‘Just come with me.’
‘But we work as teams here. This isn’t even my project.’
‘Jesus, woman, you protest too much. Look, this is your big moment.’
‘I don’t know that I’m ready for this big moment. In fact, I don’t know if I even want any big moments in my life.’
Carlos saw that they were drawing attention to themselves. He was beginning to find her attitude irritating, and took action. ‘I am going back to that meeting and I expect you, with your drawings, knocking at that door in ten minutes’ time.’
‘You still don’t understand that I cannot possibly just push my way into that meeting. I am way out of line.’