Authors: Roberta Latow
His English was perfect, spiced with a trace of a French accent. “I much admired your interview with Picasso. I have a film of it and watch it often. I think you got the maestro to reveal himself more than anyone before you. I am obsessed with real genius, true greatness. I am fascinated by
his
genius, particularly. I met him several times in Paris. It would have
been gratifying to have him here with us tonight. I own many Picassos, but never enough.”
A
sufragi
, dressed in a black caftan and turban, his hands clad in white cotton gloves, offered tall crystal flutes of champagne. Albert Semanan chose one and handed it to Grant. “After dinner, we will talk about your time with this great man.”
Their conversation was interrupted by other arrivals. Grant took the opportunity to wander among the other guests. Dozens more of the black-clad
sufragis
served individual crystal bowls of the best Beluga caviar with jade spoons from heavy baroque silver trays. Slivers of crisp toast piled in pyramids on similar platters were passed among them.
Grant noted that no care had been taken to disguise the many armed guards wandering everywhere in their crisp white jackets. He could only assume it was a clumsy attempt to reassure the guests that they were safe at least from anyone else’s firepower.
This was a party of such elegance and style, it was difficult for Grant to equate it with murderers, plunderers, sadists. Yet, borrowing Irving’s hypersensitive nose, he could imagine he caught the stench of brimstone beneath the heady scent of the jasmine, lilies, and roses that adorned the room in lavish arrangements. Menace seemed more than usually available amid the rich fragrance of humanity on the desert breeze.
A dinner gong was struck, and the
sufragis
manned the French windows, drawing the curtains aside for the guests to enter the grand salon. That aroma of menace yielded for Grant, as he flowed through the hundred-foot-long reception room with the other guests.
The room was enviably filled with works of art. Truly art treasures of provocative quality and beauty. Picassos of every period, some of enormous size. Soutines, Rouaults, Gauguins in eyebrow-raising numbers. Greek and Roman classical sculptures. Large, magnificently painted Greek vases and urns in glass cases. It was scarcely less impressive than walking through the museum galleries of Paris, New York, or London, but here all rolled into one grand showroom. But, of course, it was not a gallery, merely the trophy case of a Nazi looter, if Irving Kirshner was right.
A pair of grand pianos was distributing measures of Chopin to either side of the room. The guests wandered around in relative silence, awed by the collection. A flood of
sufragis
trailed in, carrying more silver trays with cups of hot lobster bisque. Albert Semanan collected a pair of cups from the tray and accepted two napkins from a
sufragi
.
He handed one to Grant and said: “I often do this. Serve the first course of the meal here in this room so people can enjoy the paintings. Most of my guests are only in Egypt for a few hours to honor me. This way I can at least honor them with more time to look.”
He was called away by a couple and that gave Grant time to observe. There were odd things about the guests. Their manner, their bearing, a certain pomposity and coldness, seemed common to all. Replicas almost of one another. Most were German, there were several Americans, two ranking ministers from South American countries, several Arab princes. The remainder were Europeans of dubious provenance.
And, among the black-tied men in evening dress, there were present only half a dozen women. Gloriously young, beautiful, resplendently gowned and sporting priceless jewels. Kings’ ransoms of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds.
One woman stood out among the others. A woman of considerable age with honey-blond hair worn in a rather old-fashioned manner. A wide braid twisted around her head in a crown and was held in place by diamond sunbursts. She had a marble-like, stoic beauty. She was dressed in black crepe de chine, and bore a massive collection of gems, all diamonds, intended to swell her grandeur. She hardly spoke, but every person in the room paid respectful attention to her. She was introduced to Grant by Helmut Furtwangler. Viennese, the Baroness Walbrook. She acknowledged the introduction before dismissing Grant with hardly a glance.
She was a formidable, if not somewhat unnerving woman that carried in her persona a kind of moral decadence. He suddenly sensed glossed-over evil and imagined what the stench of brimstone must be like. Grant placed his cup of lobster bisque on the tray carried by a passing
sufragi
and headed for the terrace for a breath of fresh air. That was when he encountered her.
A ravishingly sophisticated beauty of blond hair and fair skin, dressed in a strapless white silk jersey dress that barely covered the stunningly sexy breasts and fell to the ground in nearly clinging soft folds. He watched her take the last few steps down the sweepingly grand staircase. Her large, intricately designed dangling diamond earrings, the only decoration she wore, sparkled as bright as the stars and gave a glow to the no longer young but amazingly beautiful, experienced face.
On the terrace, he led her into the shadows. She resisted the shadows. And, instead, led him to the balcony’s stone balustrade where a shaft of light from the windows of the grand salon only missed them by centimeters. There they were able to see the lust in each other’s faces, hear the sounds of people and music, feel the excitement of illicit sex. Time was not on their side: they felt the urgency, the danger of being discovered together, it spurred them on. He reached out to ease her breasts from the silk. She resisted with a nod of her head, smiled, and from a chair dropped a cushion onto the marble and dropped down onto it on her knees.
She was magnificent. She took him wholly in her mouth and made love to him. He watched her face, and how she loved sucking his cock. She had to have been one of the best. He was half in this world, half out. To see this calm, cool beauty devouring him. To see himself in the stream of soft light disappear in and out of her amazing mouth. To feel the warm, soft, moist interior of this woman, and the tantalizing rhythm of her sucking and squeezing on him. Oh yes, she was maybe even more than magnificent. And then, in one swift act, he had her up on her feet, had spun her around, and, having raised her dress up to her waist, leaned her over the balustrade. Naked except for white stockings held by long white lacy garters attached to a slim lace belt around her hips, the light and dark shadows playing on her, she was sublime, decadent lasciviousness, open and ready for him. He grabbed her by the hips, she raised her bottom and spread her legs as wide as she could to take him wholly into her cunt and use it as she had used her mouth while he fucked her.
“If someone comes?” she asked.
“They will see nothing more than two people looking at the stars.” The only words they ever said to each other.
When they returned to the salon, cups were being collected and the guests were moving through the Great Hall toward the dining room. They drifted apart and mingled in with the crowd. Each of them would often remember the interlude as the perfect romantic fuck, because they never exchanged names, never stole a glance at each other all through the evening, and would never meet again.
The way into the dining room was impressive and dramatic with pharaonic artifacts that might have been lifted from the Cairo museum, and Italian Renaissance paintings seemingly snatched off the walls of the Uffizi in Florence. A more jovial mood seemed to have taken over the party. Laughter was louder, the people smiled at each other more, it was less tense. Grant felt the lightness with relief.
Semanan had the baroness on his arm, and behind them a man was escorting a ravishing brunette. Grant recognized him from somewhere. Irving had said that Grant and another man had shown up in the intelligence reports. Grant remembered the name Kurt Walbrook but still had no memory of where he had seen him.
The dining room was resplendent in white damask, vermeil cutlery, crystal, and gold goblets, gold plates, white lilies of every variety, and low candles by the dozen, all alight. A
sufragi
stood behind every second chair. The walls were hung from the wainscot to the ceiling with priceless Impressionist paintings. Renoir flowers shimmered, Monet’s water glistened, his water lilies begging to be plucked. Van Gogh suns burned, and Cézanne fruit invited tasting.
“As you can see, I am an obsessive collector,” Semanan told Grant. His smugness was repulsive. Grant thought, Wily old Irving, he’s right. He’ll catch this man by his greed.
Grant answered with, “I have a friend who has recently become involved in the art world. He calls it his magnificent obsession.”
“Ah, that’s very good. Most apt in my case, certainly.”
Grant Madigan could never recall exactly when or how the news arrived. Chairs had been pulled out from the table by the
sufragis
so that the guests could be seated. It was as the table was settling down that he realized something had intruded upon the stilted gaiety of the occasion.
A woman, an American opposite the prince who was sitting next to Grant, lowered her head and covered her face with her hands. Kurt Walbrook at the foot of the table was rubbing his hand over his chin. He looked thoughtful, disturbed even. And was it tears Grant saw in the eyes of another guest? Both Semanan at the head of the table and the baroness, who was seated on his right, appeared less disturbed. Helmut, on his left, was pale and very quiet.
All conversation trickled away. The room was perfectly still, the
sufragis
at attention behind every other high-back chair. All eyes were on Albert Semanan. He suddenly looked furious and rose angrily from his chair. It scraped the rose-marble floor. He flung his napkin down and in a rasping voice announced:
“It is my misfortune that this should have happened tonight, the one night in 1963 when you were all able to come from the corners of the world to honor me on my birthday, this twenty-second of November that we have planned for so many years to celebrate. But it has, and I feel honor-bound to give formal recognition to the news. Have a moment of silence, and then let us put it out of our minds and get on with our celebration.” Then he read out the message that had informed him that John Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
Grant Madigan was the only one to walk away from the feast.
W
hen Mrs. Rosewarne hung up the telephone, she returned to her Mixmaster. She switched it back on high and hoped the cake mixture in the bowl had enough banana brandy in it. She had forgotten to measure. Two pots were bubbling over just enough to make a mess of the stove. The kitchen was warm and smelt delicious. But things were not coming out quite right. Not that it bothered Mary Rosewarne. Mary Rosewarne always kept going. An ambitious cook, she was not without her successes. Engrossed in her kitchen, she was hardly aware that her husband David had come home.
He went directly to the sink where she was scrubbing out a pan that she had somehow let burn on the stove earlier in the day. He put his hand on her shoulder and she half turned from her pot to him. He kissed her on the cheek, and she in turn kissed him on the lips. They loved each other in just that way.
She was wearing a navy-blue taffeta shirtwaist dress, with a diamond brooch and earrings of antique rose-cut stones. Her hair was dressed well and she was made up. She sped across the not-so-clean kitchen floor in a pair of high-heeled, open-toed, navy-blue calfskin shoes. Around her waist a dirty apron. They were going to the country club for dinner with the Waverlys. She smelled of white lilacs and a touch of Ajax cleanser. She was not unlike a slim version of Marie Dressler with a Vassar degree.
It was all homey, upper middle class until they spoke, and then you knew that it was upper, upper middle class, or bottom-rung first class. It was perfect. She was perfect. David Rosewarne
was content with his wife, his children, his work. His life was an adman’s American dream.
“You’re looking very pretty, Mrs. Rosewarne,” he said, giving a purposeful pat to her bottom. She gave him a distracted smile and spoke to him as she stepped up her action on the burnt pot.
“Did you have a good day?”
“Yes. You?”
“Fine.”
“Where are the boys?”
“In their rooms doing homework.”
“Good. Mary, why are you standing over that sink? Where’s Shirley? That’s what she’s hired to do here.”
“She’s in her room. I thought I would clean the kitchen, give her a little rest. She’s been washing and ironing all day.”
“Mary, you have a laundress for that. Now put that pot down and come into the study. We’ll have a glass of wine before I go up to bathe and change.”
She duly relinquished the pot, washed her hands, and removed her apron. She spread too much hand cream on her hands and had to wipe it off with a paper towel. In the study her husband was removing the cork of a bottle of cold May wine. Two Baccarat crystal glasses, a strawberry in each, were waiting to be filled.
Mary sank into the gray, linen-covered cushions of the large, overstuffed lounge chair and slipped into complacency. Gazing across the room she allowed herself a moment to revel in its handsomeness.
Her house
. It radiated cultivated New England taste and respectability. So did her husband. Like their life. She accepted the glass from him with a smile.
They updated each other about their family, their home, his golf game, her garden, his office. What she would do when he took the boys sailing in a few weeks’ time. They had a second glass of wine, then a third. The Chopin nocturnes he had chosen came to an end, and they sat in the silence and comfort of their lives. A faint sound from somewhere in the house, unidentifiable to David.
“That’s a strange noise. Can it be coming from the kitchen?”
Mary cocked her ear and listened. Whirring and unmistakably from the kitchen. She took another sip of her drink and
thought about it. Suddenly she jumped from the chair, splashing wine on her navy-blue taffeta.
“Oh, damn! The frozen banana pound cake, it must be ruined by now!” She ran from the study toward her kitchen to see if any of the mix was salvageable. David picked up the evening newspaper. She popped her head back through the study door.
“Oh, I forgot, Cheyney Fox called. Sounded mildly urgent, so I said you would call back as soon as you came in.” Then Mary was gone again.
A slight tightening, somewhere between the gut and the heart. Wherever would-be adulterers feel such things.
Cheyney often thought about David Rosewarne’s personal life. During the time that he acted on her behalf, she had seen at firsthand similar scenes when she had consented under pressure to visit his family in Massachusetts. A window onto his relationship with his wife, his unqualified love for his sons, had a profound effect on her. The pride he took in being a leading citizen of his community, combined with what she knew of him as a successful, much sought-after lawyer, had only added to her fondness and respect for the attractive, likable man. He had let himself be persuaded by Cheyney’s lawyer, an old Harvard classmate, to handle Cheyney Fox’s bankruptcy problems.
He had taken her case on for several reasons. Money was certainly not one of them. His being a collector of contemporary art himself — a passionate pastime both Mary and he had been indulging in from back when he was a law student at Harvard — had something to do with it. Blackmail by Tony Caletti was another reason. Her courageous attempt to make her gallery work, yet another. They were factors, but his truest prompting had been her desperation. The pain he saw in her eyes. The lingering romantic in David Rosewarne had chosen to recognize Cheyney Fox as something special, rare, and beautiful that was only hanging on to life by a thread. He both feared for her life and wanted to help her. A potent emotional mix. But despite all this, he had not foreseen a personal involvement with Cheyney Fox.
David had never imagined that her case would drag on for so long or turn into such a bitter battle. He had fought hard to
win her case. None of it had come easy. He could never understand the absolute determination of Marvin Weinstock, the lawyer representing the creditors, to hang a case of fraud on his client, as well as to sink her under the weight of her debts. A common, vulgar man who wore white cotton socks with short-trousered dark suits, he had displayed a vicious hatred for Cheyney right from the beginning. He believed she was a clever, manipulative criminal and pulled every string he could to prove it.
This constant interrogation of Cheyney had a crippling affect on her mental well-being. Many times during her ordeal, David Rosewarne thought that she would break down and spent hours persuading her not to give up. Such intensity — and her beauty — had its effect on him.
Ever since the night that Cheyney had earned fifty dollars by telling Andy what to paint — money and how to earn more money — haunted her day and night. Now Andy Warhol had become a famous painter, much as she had predicted, the international celebrity he had wanted to be. And she was still down-and-out in Manhattan, living in penurious near-isolation at a good address.
She couldn’t possibly take a responsible job: her mind was too tortured and fragmented for that. A stop-gap solution materialized. Waiting, zombie-like, in a boutique in the Village while Della was trying on a dress, she got into conversation with the owner of the shop, who asked about Cheyney’s glass beads and offered to buy them and anything else similar she might have. She sold them to him at once, happy to have some money in her pocket. The man explained to her that shops like his were always on the lookout for new things. That was how they survived, buying bits and pieces for cash because it was a limited investment. The small quantities meant no risk. Four of something, six of another, a dozen of something else, was no big deal. On the way home Cheyney bought a pair of jeweler’s pliers and that evening tore apart what little ethnic jewelry she had, making nine pieces out of one. She sold it all to the boutique man the next morning.
She remembered, from her Andy Warhol days of camp lunches and banana splits, the shop cum restaurant, Serendipity,
and the stream of forgettable figures with baskets over their arms who wandered in, peddling their wares. The owners always bought something and paid those faceless suppliers immediately. She called in on Serendipity the next time she had something to sell. If they recognized her, they gave no sign of it, for which she was grateful. They bought, and she had found a way to earn some money.
The Serendipity call was always the worst, but the most lucrative for Cheyney. It was the only time she ever went above Forty-ninth Street except when she had to see her lawyer. She took the First Avenue bus up and then, with eyes lowered, she walked as quickly as she could across town to Serendipity. The journey alone put her in a frenzy. Walking the streets, seeing sights that had once been part of her life, filled her with despair, left her riddled with anxiety. She dreaded bumping into someone she knew from her art-dealing days. But maybe even worse than that was the idea that the boys at Serendipity would surprise her with Andy Warhol. They never did.
Once she did have a strange encounter. It was a foul day, rain, wind, a bitter chill in the air, and she had several blocks to walk to get to Serendipity. She was reminded of another rainy day years before and of the handsome man who had rescued her from it with a taxi ride home. How good it felt when he warmed her with his body. How she felt “at home” with him for a stolen moment in time. The streetlight changed and Cheyney hurried across. At the next corner, again a red light. And then he was right there, standing beside her, not in memory but in real life. She felt an instant pull, strong as a magnet. He looked and dismissed her with one glance. Cheyney wasn’t surprised, she was barely a shadow of the woman she had once been. She almost spoke to him. But the light changed, and he dashed across the street into the arms of a beautiful young blond woman standing under a black silk umbrella. She had scurried away feeling more depressed than ever.
Life developed a routine for Cheyney. Once a week she made her rounds of the boutiques and gift shops from Thirty-fourth Street to Greenwich Village, selling her cash-and-delivery bits and pieces of ethnic jewelry from a straw basket over her arm. There was an “on call” few-hours-a-week stint of shop sitting at a tacky antique shop that was more like a
secondhand furniture store on Lexington Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street. Her first Monday of the month, 9:00
A.M
. meeting, when the boys from Serendipity chose from the wares she designed for their shop with uptown camp in mind. Assembling collections of original Chinese folk art from the old traders in Chinatown and selling them to the Brooklyn Museum gift shop was the best of the jobs she did. This was how she and Zazou had survived financially for three appalling years of her life, until a letter arrived from Lala and Roberto, who were living in Rome.
They had left behind, at the time of their hasty departure, two Etruscan pieces. Large, important. Would Cheyney sell them to the Metropolitan Museum for Roberto? They had insisted on paying her a thousand dollars and a ticket to Rome whenever she wanted it so she could come to them and be pampered.
That was an El Dorado for Cheyney. Her success and Lala and Roberto’s appreciation meant little to her, except that she could give a thousand dollars to David Rosewarne for costs, which kept piling up every day.
In those terrible years she filled her time mostly walking, when not defending herself in lawyers’ and receivers’ offices. She trudged where no one had ever heard of Cheyney Fox, where no one recognized her. The Fourteenth Street area, the Lower East Side, the Village, Chinatown, and back to Turtle Bay. It was either that or wander through one empty room after another on her monastic island of peace, the apartment three floors above Della, where she lived with Zazou and a few sticks of furniture.
Cheyney learned things in these three years. What real poverty means. How it can strangle the spirit. How demeaning shabby can be. How wretched poor is in a city where money can buy anything. That, when you’re living in hell, it’s hard to remember heaven.
She dressed very carefully. It was the first time, since she had been forced from the gallery more than two years before, that she wanted to look beautiful and chic. She resolved not to go for the final determination of her case looking shabby, down-and-out, and broken-spirited. It was not easy to be elegant
and chic without money. But she worked hard at it on this morning.
In her Trigere suit with frayed cuffs and shiny skirt — a leftover from her better days — cheap black shoes, at least styled to look like Ferragamos; coatless because she only had a yellow plastic raincoat Della had lent her; without a handbag, the good ones having been sold off years ago; she still managed to pull up from somewhere deep inside herself some pride and dignity. She shone and looked beautiful as she had not done since the bright days when the gallery was alive.
At David Rosewarne’s insistence, she allowed him to call for her in a taxi on the way to the courthouse. Nerves jangling, tense as a drum, Cheyney could barely speak. David had only to look at her to know what fear she was harboring under the serene facade. He was wonderful. In the taxi, his assistant next to him, he said only three things to Cheyney. “I understand how you must feel. We
will
win. You can begin your life again. Say nothing, do nothing in the courtroom, and I will get you through this.” And he did.
It was all over before noon. Once out of the courthouse he turned to her and said, “You can let go now, Cheyney Fox.”
He offered her, in celebration of their victory, lunch at the Oak Room at the Plaza, the Colony Club, Romeo Salta’s, the Harvard Club. Nothing he could do could convince her to go uptown with him. She accepted Number One Fifth Avenue, on the edge of Greenwich Village. A quiet, informal, yet sophisticated hotel with a large, quiet dining room. Old New York in modern times, chic on the edge of Bohemian New York in sight of Washington Square.
As he placed his arm around her shoulder and pressed her to him in a hug of delight that her ordeal was over, she was unaware of anything different in their client/lawyer relationship. Likewise in the taxi going to Number One, when she saw the new warmth and smile in his eyes for her. She could never quite figure out at what moment they fell in love. Over lunch?