Another Eden (4 page)

Sara put an arm around her shoulders and sat quietly until she stopped trembling. Then she pulled her gently to her feet. "Come, we must tell Par en, and then we'll tell the police."

"The police! No!"

"But they'll
help
you, Tasha." She read fear in the dark gypsy eyes. "Don't be afraid, I promise you it'll be all right. Do you trust me?"

"Yes, yes, you I trust, but—"

"Then come. We'll talk to the police together. They'll find this man, and then you'll be safe." She held out her hand. After a tense moment, Tasha took it, and the two women climbed the stairs together.

"Do you want some tea, Lauren? I can ring for it. Or a drink?"

"No, that's all right, don't make them do it twice."

"Well, why don't you just
stay
for tea, then?"

Lauren made a face which would have been indecipherable to anyone else, but Sara read it perfectly. It said: Not if Ben's coming, thanks all the same. "No, but I will stay long enough to meet this Mr. McKie. He sounds interesting. So, you were saying. You called the police—?"

"We called the police, and they came and took all the information, and then they went home with Tasha to look around and make sure she was all right. I feel so awful, Lauren, so completely helpless. I gave her some money, I don't even know why—it was all I could think of She wouldn't take it at first, until I made her."

"Maybe she'll find another place to live."

"Maybe. But if this man is really following her, what good will it do?" Lauren shook her head in sympathy. "Have you talked to her since then?"

"No. It happened on Friday. I Called Paren yesterday and again this morning, and he said Jonathan had stopped by her place twice to check on her."

"Who's Jonathan?"

"One of the residents—he lives at the settlement house while he goes to school to study social work."

"Is this girl really a gypsy? What's her last name?"

"Eminescu. Her mother was a gypsy; she says her father was a count." When Lauren looked skeptical, Sara smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "Did she come here all alone?"

"Yes, about two years ago. She started out selling fish from a cart on Delaney Street."

"Good God."

"Now she works in a sewing factory. She does exquisite work—you should see her clothes. She makes them all herself, from scraps her employer lets her take home. She's a fashion plate!"

Restless, she got up from her chair and went to the parlor window. The May sky was cloudless, perfect. A house sparrow with a straw in its beak flew into the maple tree in a blur of gray and chestnut. Thirty-second Street was a quiet, clean, orderly bastion of respectability and wealth—and a world away from the teeming tenements of Fourth Avenue. What was Tasha doing fight now? Sitting alone in her miserable little room, listening for a sound outside her locked door?

"It doesn't do any good to fret about this, Sara."

"No, I know. It's just that she's so helpless. She distrusts the police—and what can they do for her anyway?"

"I'm sure she'll be all right. This man probably just wants to scare her."

"I wish you could meet her. You'd like her independence. And she's so striking—not really beautiful, but once you see her you don't forget her."

"Come over here," Lauren said, patting the sofa. "Let's talk about
me
for a change."

Sara smiled, recognizing her friend's attempt to cheer her up for what it was, and went to sit beside her. "Yes, I do want to hear all about
you
. How is your painting class going?"

"Boring, boring."

"Really? But I thought you were in love with Mr.—Watson?"

"Whitson, and he turns out to be rather a limp rag."

"Oh, too bad."

"So I've decided to go to Paris."

Sara laughed—and broke off when Lauren didn't join in. "What? Are you serious?"

"Deadly."

She sat back weakly. "When?"

"In a few weeks. Well, you needn't look like that! After all, you were ready to abandon me for the whole summer while you go off to Newport." It was absurd to feel this bereft—and this stupid urge to burst into tears. "You're absolutely right. But Paris is so far away!"

"But do you know, Sara, you can call there now on the telephone?"

"Yes, but Ben tried to place a call to London the other day, and he and this man just
shouted
at each other until they finally gave up and rang off" She waved her hand in the air; that was neither here nor there. "I'm glad for you, truly I am. What will you do?"

"Study. At the Louvre, with an artist named Jean Laucoeur. Oh, Sara, think of it—he's a genius, and he wants
me
." "You never even told me you were thinking of doing this." She tried not to sound accusing.

"Because I never thought he would take me. It was such a daydream, the chance seemed so small. But he wrote me,
finally
, and he said my work has 'resonance.' Resonance!" She grabbed Sara's hands and squeezed them tight.

She had to laugh. Before she could reply, the maid announced from the doorway, "Mr. McKie, ma'am."

Sara rose to meet Mr. McKie in the center of the room. She'd forgotten how tall he was. His clothes were conservative in the extreme—a gray frock coat with silk lapels, plain trousers, and a broad knotted tie of a darker gray—but he wore them with such unself-conscious assurance, they seemed almost dashing. "How good of you to come on a Sunday," she told him, shaking hands. "I know my husband's schedule can sometimes be an inconvenience."

"Not at all, I was delighted to come." He smiled, and she noticed what she hadn't been able to see in the artificial light at Sherry's—that his eyes were intensely blue and his dark, blond-tipped lashes were nearly as long as a woman's.

She led him over to the couch, where Lauren still sat curled in the corner like a cat. "Lauren, this is Mr. McKie, our new architect. Miss Hubbard is an old friend."

Lauren stretched a hand up, with a look on her face that Sara knew well: full of charm and coy delight, it was the one she wore whenever she met a new man who interested her. Sara folded her arms while the two of them spoke pleasantly and easily, discovering within a few sentences that they had mutual friends. Did Mr. McKie find Lauren attractive? Well, Sara thought, what man wouldn't? She was small and petite, hardly taller than a child, but still unmistakably feminine. Huge, beautiful green eyes dominated her wry, intelligent face. If men were sometimes put off, it was because of her determinedly eccentric dress. Today she could have passed for a gypsy herself in a beaded smock of orange and yellow printed muslin. She'd wrapped an Indian scarf around her head for a turban, hiding the pretty brown hair she wore short in defiance of fashion.

When she and Mr. McKie ran out of conversation for a moment, Lauren unwound gracefully and stood up. "I hate to go, but I must—I've promised to watch some friends rehearse for a new play at the DeWitt Theatre."

It was the first Sara had heard. She looked at her watch. Nearly four; Ben would be home soon. He was infallibly rude to Lauren, so she avoided him whenever possible. Sara often wondered what he disliked about Lauren more—her ideological opposition to everything he stood for or simply that she and Sara loved each other, and their friendship was something he couldn't control?

"I'll call you, Sara," Lauren said, pulling on a fringed shawl.

"Yes, you'd better. I want to hear all about Paris."

"Goodbye, Mr. McKie, it's been a great pleasure."

"The pleasure was mine." They shook hands again, and Lauren glided out. A hint of her lemon-and-clove cologne lingered in the room after her.

"Please, sit down," Sara invited, and Mr. McKie took a seat on the just-vacated couch. "I can't think what's keeping Ben. He went to his office at noon, but he said he'd be home in a few hours. He knew you were coming to tea, of course." Indeed, he'd commanded her to invite him so he could see the revised plans for the Newport house before he left for Chicago. "I see you've brought your blueprints—is that what you call them?" She indicated the long cardboard tube he set on the floor at his feet.

"No, these are the design development drawings; blueprints come a little later."

"Oh, I see."

"And then we usually call them construction documents. That's when we convert the design concept into feet and inches, door swings, window frames, things like that. We're not quite to that point yet with your house."

"How long will it take to build it?"

"A lot depends on the weather. If we can get started in early June, it should be up by early autumn."

"So soon?"

"That's just the exterior. You couldn't move in before Christmas."

She could tell from his expression and the careful way he spoke that he was privately amazed that she didn't already know the answers to these questions. She could understand his confusion; it was her house—ostensibly—and she was the one who had been elected to supervise its construction. How could he know that Ben wanted her advice and opinions on his new architectural toy about as much as he wanted Michael's?

"Would you care to see the drawings?"

She hesitated. In a way, she was curious—about the house, and even more about this man's skill as an architect. But the ultimate pointlessness of it dissuaded her. "Let's wait for Ben," she suggested. "Fine."

She thought he sounded faintly disappointed. The clock struck the quarter hour. "I'm sure he'll be here soon, but would you like to have some tea now?"

"No, that's all right, I'll wait."

"A drink, then."

"No, thanks."

She relaxed her hands on the arms of her chair and returned his disconcertingly direct gaze with studied casualness. His manners were perfect; he had never been anything but gentlemanly in their brief acquaintance. Nevertheless, the edginess she'd felt alone in his company last week returned now, and she wondered why.

"Have you lived in this house long?" he asked.

"Eight years."

"You didn't buy it together, then, you and Ben?"

"No, he bought it about a year before I met him." As he crossed his long legs and glanced around the drawing room, she found herself trying to guess what he was thinking. He kept his handsome face pleasantly bland and accepting, but she suspected it was a mask. She suspected he was a diplomat. What did he really think of her home—and of her?

Alex hardly knew what he thought. Mrs. Cochrane and her house presented a powerful paradox he wasn't yet able to reconcile. There she sat, cool and elegant, her bright gold hair upswept in that loose, effortless-looking, two-tiered affair so many women tried nowadays but few achieved. He liked her black silk suit and the humorously masculine waistcoat and tie she wore with it. Her skirt was the fashionable new "instep" length, so called because it revealed three-quarters of the shoes. Composed, genteel, unaffected, lovely—and she was sitting on an ugly chair in a pretentious room, surrounded by furnishings of surpassing stupidity. He'd thought of her often since their last meeting, and not only for the obvious reason—because she attracted him. The puzzle of her marriage intrigued him as well, keeping him pondering what life with a man like Bennet Cochrane might he like for such a woman. Now to that mystery he could add the baffling incongruity of this wretched house. He stroked his mustache and asked innocently, "Would you mind giving me a tour? While we wait for your husband." He thought she hesitated, but then she said, "Yes, of course," rose to her feet graciously, and led him out to the hall.

They walked across its pinched, dark, uninviting width, past a sunken palm garden and into another drawing room, this one uglier and more grandiose than the other—something he would not have thought possible. Mrs. Cochrane pointed out, without enthusiasm, the most noticeable features—the English bog oak dadoes and wainscoting, the crimson stamped-leather wall coverings, the Spanish altar cloths of gold and garnet plush used as portieres to separate this room from the music room. On his own he took note of a Chinese ceramic pug dog standing knee-high beside the fireplace and a hideous gasolier hung over a damask-upholstered ottoman, the two creating a sort of static carousel that blocked traffic and devoured space.