Authors: Joe Keenan
It appeared she had not misled me. The cluttered office was unoccupied. There was, however, a door in the rear corner. Conjecturing
that this might be a bathroom and that Moira might even now be in there, I approached it and knocked gently. I was much surprised
when the door immediately flew open without apparent human assistance. But then, gazing down, I beheld a short curly haired
woman. Her physique called to mind a dorm room refrigerator, as did her correspondingly chilly demeanor.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Sorry! Friend of Moira’s.”
Her diminutive stature afforded me a clear view of the room, which appeared to house an impressively high-tech security system,
a mandatory feature, I supposed, in a spa with such an elite clientele. It was dark and narrow, with banks of video monitors
such as one glimpses behind guards’ desks in office towers. The irate and armed munchkin scowling up at me was, I presumed,
Moira’s security chief, and there was no mistaking her views on unescorted guests who dared invade her sanctum.
“Moira’s not here.”
“So sorry, Kim!” came a voice behind me. Turning, I saw that Raccoon Girl had entered and was eyeing me even less warmly than
the wee sheriff was.
“I told you she wasn’t in!”
“Sorry,” I said, smiling inanely. “Do you know where I might find her?”
“She’s showing a guest the grounds,” said Blondie. “It’s a VIP so please don’t interrupt them.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied and bolted straight for the grounds. For the next ten minutes I searched the lawn, pool,
garden, tennis court, hiking path, gazebo, and duck pond but saw no trace of Moira or her VIP guest. I’d wended my way round
to the side of the house when I heard Gilbert cheerfully call out to me.
“Philip! There you are. Come join us!”
He’d called from the bar, which, like the salon, opened onto a terrace with tables. Entering, I saw that he was having a drink
with Claire, Stephen, and Gina, who were seated by a crackling fire in a cozy grouping of two sofas and a wing chair. Stephen
looked dashing in faded jeans and a navy silk shirt. Gina, by contrast, looked downright sluttish in a pink leather mini and
a low-cut peasant blouse. She could not have flaunted her breasts more showily had she encased them in a well-lit vitrine.
“Hey, Phil!” she twanged. “We were just talking about your swell script.”
I gave her a big extravagant hug. I did so, of course, not from any real affection but so she wouldn’t find it odd when I
embraced Stephen with equal ardor. Alas, the delicious tingle I felt as his manly arms encircled me was swiftly replaced by
a shiver of dread at the sight I glimpsed over his shoulder. Moira, her eyes wide with counterfeit surprise, stood in the
entrance to the bar. Next to her, warily scanning the place for hoi polloi, was her VIP guest, Diana Malenfant.
This was unwelcome on several grounds. First, when you’re hoping to seduce an image-conscious megastar at a luxury resort
it is impediment enough that both his wife and sundry members of the glamorati will be lurking in inconvenient proximity.
Toss Mother in and the odds of furtive nooky decline further still. Even more dismaying was the thought that Claire would
now be confronting Moira before I’d had a chance to pull the latter aside and broker a nonaggression pact. Factor in Claire’s
eagerness to brandish her new success and unawareness that Moira knew about what Robert Ludlum might have dubbed
The Casablanca Deception,
and you had a situation that seethed with the promise of disaster.
“Gilbert!” cried Moira ecstatically. “And Philip too! God, it’s been ages! When the reservation said ‘Donato plus guests’
I had no idea it was you! Massimo!” she called to the barman. “Champagne!”
“Wow, Moy!” said Gilbert, planting a loud smacker on each cheek. “Is this a small world or what?”
“Shame on you, Stephen!” said Moira, wagging a finger at our host. “You never told me these guys were working with you!”
“I didn’t know you knew them,” said Stephen, flashing me a conspiratorial smile.
“Hello, Moira,” cooed Claire, rising from the sofa.
“Claaaairrre!”
sang Moira. “It is
so
good to see you!”
“The pleasure’s entirely mine,” replied Claire with dangerous warmth.
“And look at you! So svelte! You must have lost a
ton
. Not,” she added to Gina, “that Claire was ever really
fat
but—”
“Diana!” I yelped, heading this off. “Where are my manners? This is our partner, Claire Simmons. You remember she was ill
when we first met.”
“Of course,” said Diana. She was in her Lady Highborn mode and the hand she extended to Claire was so limp and regal as to
beg a curtsy. “How lovely to meet you at lahst.”
“Well, it’s an honor to meet you,” said Claire. “I’m a huge admirer of your work.”
“Thenk you,” said Diana, adding that Claire could consider the admiration mutual, as she’d read our script.
“Well, I’m not surprised the script’s so good,” said Moira, passing round the champagne. “These guys are
so
talented. Is it a musical then?”
“Not exactly,” laughed Stephen.
Moira said she’d only asked because Claire was best known to her as a composer. “So you’ve given up on the music then?” She
asked this with just the faintest hint of relief, adroitly suggesting that Claire, given the limitations of her gift, had
been wise to do so.
“No, just branching out,” replied Claire, who proceeded to lavish compliments on the spa. I wondered where she was going but
not for long.
“How on earth did you find it, dear?”
“It was my husband’s.”
“You’ve remarried?” exclaimed Claire, all innocence. “Congratulations! When do we meet him?”
“I’m afraid he’s passed away.”
“Oh,” said Claire, stricken. “I
am
sorry.”
“He was Albert Schimmel, wasn’t he?” queried Diana.
“Yes,” said Moira wistfully. “I miss him every day.”
“
The
Albert Schimmel?” asked Claire. “Didn’t he produce all those wonderful films back in the forties and fifties?”
“Classics,” said Moira proudly. She knew though that Claire’s intent had not been to praise Albert’s oeuvre but to emphasize
his advanced years. This was lost on no one, not even Gina, who, with characteristic tact, said, “Wow. He must have been like
way older than you.”
“But so young at heart.”
“Now that I think of it,” said Claire, “I recall reading his obituary. It said he’d been battling lung disease for years.
How long were you married?”
“Eight months.”
Moira said this with just the right note of stoic regret, but her eyes were now boring lethally into Claire’s.
“How
awful
for you,” gasped Claire, “to have lost him so soon. But at least you have this gorgeous house to remember him by.”
“Thank you, Claire. It is a comfort.”
Gilbert and I exchanged a glance. I could see from his eyes that we shared the same anxiety, an ominous sense that, though
things had not yet gone irrevocably downhill, we’d clearly boarded the toboggan.
Stephen asked Moira why she’d decided to turn the house into a spa. Moira, mercifully removing her gimlet gaze from Claire,
said it was partly because she’d felt it a shame not to share its beauty with others, but mainly because she’d craved some
stimulating project to ease the loneliness of widowhood.
“I know just how you felt,” said Diana. “When Stephen’s father died I completely plunged myself into work!”
Diana, to my relief, soon monopolized the conversation with tales of her fantastically productive widowhood. I prayed that
Claire, having exposed Moira as a gold-digging hearse-chaser, would consider the skirmish won and withdraw from the field.
Alas, she did not but instead found in Diana’s stories an ideal springboard to mount a fresh, far riskier attack.
“Now correct me if I’m wrong, love,” she said to Moira, “but weren’t you also dabbling in films for a while?”
“Who told you that, dearest?”
“Your chum Vulpina. Back in New York. She said it was why you came out here.”
“Well,” allowed Moira, “I did sort of test the waters.”
Stephen said, “When we met you mentioned some projects you were developing?”
“Just a few things,” she said airily. “Very back burner just now. You know how long things can take.”
“Tell me!” sighed Gina. “When I was starting out it took, like, forever to get anything off the ground.”
Claire nodded, her face aglow with infuriating sympathy.
“Yes,
terribly
hard,” she clucked. “Believe me there’s not a day I don’t thank God things came together so
quickly
for us. But I know the average person—not that you’re remotely average, dear —can hammer away for years and get absolutely
nowhere.”
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! PLEASE,
PLEASE
SHUT UP!!” cried the voice in my head. But Claire, oblivious to her peril, forged implacably on.
“And I’m sure things must have been doubly difficult for you, what with nursing your poor ailing husband, then turning your
home into a spa. But if movies really are your first love, then I say keep at it, dear. Things are bound to turn around eventually.”
Well, that pretty well tore it. Claire had crossed the line separating casual sniping from Extreme Provocation. It was one
thing to imply Moira was a mercenary vixen. Moira saw no shame in this and could usually be seen toward the front of the parade
on Mercenary Vixen Pride Day. It was another matter entirely to call attention to her thwarted ambitions, then compound the
taunt with condescending sympathy. This Moira would not countenance. Glancing apprehensively toward her, I saw that her eyes
were again fixed on Claire. Her smile had grown steelier and one could all but hear the low, metallic hum of silos opening.
“How kind of you, Claire,” she said, patting the condemned’s knee. “Yes, it was
horribly
difficult getting started. It’s so hard to find decent scripts — not just commercial fluff but the sort of things that really,
you know,
spoke
to me.”
“What sort do you mean?” asked Gina.
“Call me Miss Retro,” she said with a girlish laugh, “but I just love a good old-fashioned romance. The sort they used to
make years ago. Things like
Casablanca
. ” Her eyes swiveled back to Claire. “You know that one, dear?
Casablanca?
An old favorite of yours, I believe? I swear, I’d do anything—beg, borrow, or
steal
—to make a picture like that today. But there just aren’t scripts like that floating around anymore. Or maybe there are and
people just don’t
know
about them yet. More champagne anyone?”
I have spoken before of the remarkable sangfroid Claire displays at moments that would make lesser women fall to their knees
and ululate in despair. But not even Claire could entirely maintain her composure in the wake of so savage and unforeseen
an ambush. Her face turned pale and her eyes took on that wide slightly glazed look one sees in the recently guillotined.
I thanked God Moira had offered champagne, as the stars’ sudden focus on the waiter was all that kept them from noting Claire’s
devastation.
“More champagne, Claire?” asked Moira.
“No thank you, dear,” said Claire, snapping out of it and plucking her head from the basket. “Goodness—I can’t think when
I’ve seen a lovelier sunset.”
The Malenfants gazed out the window, allowing Claire to turn and face me and Gilbert. I braced myself for the eyebrow-singeing
glare we had coming, but the look she gave us wasn’t angry. It was wounded and baffled and it pierced me more deeply than
the blackest scowl could have.
It was hardly the first time that cowardice had led me to withhold some crucial bit of information from Claire only to have
said info spring without warning from the shrubbery and seize her in its slavering jaws. But by failing to warn her about
Moira I’d sunk to a whole new level of heinousness. Her stare reflected this. It was a look such as a lady gladiator might
give her trusted comrade-in-arms upon discovering, in the heat of battle, that the new bronze shield he’d given her was in
fact foil-wrapped milk chocolate.
“How lovely,” said Diana, admiring the sunset.
Claire rose and addressed me and Gilbert. “I’d love to see the grounds before it’s dark. Perhaps you boys will join me on
a little tour?”
“Sorry! Can’t!” said Gilbert. “Massage,” he explained, then exited the bar, apparently via catapult.
“Philip?” said Claire.
My first impulse was to follow Gilbert’s lead by briskly dismounting the couch and diving through the Gilbert-shaped hole
he’d left in the wall on departing. I knew though that the reckoning would have to come eventually and that forestalling it
would only anger her further. I rose and, bravely forgoing the blindfold and cigarette, said that a tour sounded delightful.
We bade farewell to our hosts and left via the terrace. We strolled for a bit in less than companionable silence, Claire gazing
stonily ahead until we came to the little duck pond. Claire, with an assassin’s natural craving for privacy, scanned the area
to make sure it was witness free. Then, satisfied that it was just us and the ducks, she pivoted sharply and slugged my shoulder
with enough force to send me sprawling over a stone bench.
“How COULD you!” she roared. “How on earth could you do this to me?!”
“Ow!” I whined, rubbing my shoulder in a ludicrous attempt to prompt remorse. “That hurt!”
“So will this!” she advised, smartly kicking my left shin.
“OW! Cut it out!”
“This is
unforgivable!
You SWINE! You treacherous BASTARD! You have wronged me before, Philip, but this is beyond the fucking pale! To let me just
traipse in here without warning me that Moira knew about the
Casablanca
business —!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t want to upset you! I didn’t know Moira was going to go rubbing it in your face. But then you started
goading her and —”
“Do not attempt to blame ANY of this on me!”
she roared in a voice so blistering that I cringed like a frequently whipped hunchback.