Once More With Feeling (21 page)

She had stared at the ceiling through the
long night, scheming like Gypsy and worrying like Elisabeth. But as
the city below her had begun to come awake again, she had realized
exactly what she had to do and how she had to do it.

She needed a connection to her old life. She
couldn't forget forty-eight years and all they had brought with
them. She might eventually be able to banish Owen from her heart,
but Grant was another matter.

And so was Marguerite.

She dressed quickly in clothes Casey had
brought for her. Her purse was locked up, and there was no hope of
getting it until she was officially checked out later that morning.
But she had already learned that Gypsy had a habit of keeping
change in her pockets, and a quick perusal of the clothing Casey
had provided had revealed about six dollars in quarters and
dimes.

Enough for the subway.

If she was lucky, Marguerite would be at
home on Central Park West and not at Birch Haven in
Connecticut.

She dialed the familiar number and waited
while it rang. Marguerite was an early riser, but this early was
unheard of for her or her household staff.

"This had better be good," said the voice
that answered, carefully enunciating in flamboyantly frigid
tones.

"Marguerite . . . This is Gypsy Dugan."

There was no answer, but Marguerite didn't
hang up.

"I know this is early," Gypsy said. "It was
the only way I could be sure that this would be private."

"I would not have taken you for a morning
person."

"I have something to tell you, something
that's going to come as a terrific shock."

"Just the fact that you have my phone number
comes as a shock, Miss Dugan."

"I'm afraid that's only the beginning."

"Exactly what do you mean by that?"

"I can't tell you this over the telephone. I
have to meet you. I know where you live. Could you meet me right
across the street in the park? For a quick walk?"

"No."

Gypsy had expected exactly that. "It's about
Elisabeth. Something only I know. Something she would want you to
know, too."

"You know exactly what buttons to push,
don't you? But I suppose that's why you do what you do."

"Please meet me."

"And will there be a film crew? Microphones
and crude reporters?"

"No. Just us. You can search me, if you
want."

Marguerite was silent. Gypsy hoped she was
considering. "When?" she asked at last.

"Thirty minutes?"

"If I have to wait, I will not."

"I'll be there."

"Very well." The line went dead.

Gypsy wondered if she could make it on time.
First she had to escape. She had discovered last evening that the
door between her room and the one beside it was locked from her
side. Des had checked it last night to guarantee her security. But
when she'd unlocked her side and tried it in the middle of the
night, she'd discovered it wasn't locked from the other. She hoped
the doors were unlocked for at least several more rooms. If she
could exit farther down the corridor, her chances of being caught
by whoever was guarding her room were substantially lessened.

Luck was with her. She stole quietly through
the first room where an elderly lady wheezed pitifully in her
sleep. The next room had no inhabitants, but the next had two, and
one of them, a middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache, was
awake.

"Housekeeping," Gypsy said with a smile.
"Just making an inspection. Have you been satisfied with the
condition of your room?"

"Room's better than the damned nursing care.
What do you mean waking me up before it's even light outside?"

"Just not enough hours in the day to do
everything." She smiled again. "Go back to sleep now. Pleasant
dreams."

She stepped into the hallway and closed the
door behind her. If she was really lucky no one would even know she
was gone until she returned. With summer camp flair she had piled
her pillow and the one from the other bed in the semblance of a
human shape and covered them with her spread. The resulting lump
would pass inspection if no one turned on the overhead light. And
if this was like most hospitals, what passed for breakfast didn't
start for another hour and a half.

The escape was melodramatic to the extreme,
much more Gypsy than Elisabeth. But she knew that once she was back
in her own little world, every move she made would be carefully
noted. At home there was Perry and the ever-present Billy Boys. At
the studio her colleagues would be watching her for suspect
behavior. It would probably be weeks before she had the opportunity
to steal away to see Marguerite. And she couldn't wait weeks.

Her exit from the hospital was trouble free.
New York stretched and yawned as she made her way to the nearest
subway station. The ride was blessedly peaceful, and the short walk
to the section of the park closest to Marguerite's Gothic Revival
apartment building was, too. With everything else that had happened
to her in the past months, she had expected terrorists, or at least
rapists and muggers, but the human scenery consisted of dog walkers
and professionals heading to jobs where an early start was the
first rung on the climb up the corporate ladder.

Two joggers crossed her path, brightly
decked out in iridescent spandex, and so did a young woman with a
baby in an expensive perambulator. The baby looked content, but the
woman looked as if they'd been up all night. An old man dressed in
several layers of ragged clothing dozed upright on a bench, as if
now that the sun was about to rise, sleeping was a safer
activity.

Marguerite was nowhere in sight.

Without the sun, the morning was cool, and
Gypsy rubbed her hands up and down her arms as she waited. She
wondered if Marguerite had changed her mind. Had she thought better
of this visit? Worse, had she called Owen and told him that Gypsy
Dugan claimed to have important information about his wife? She
hadn't cautioned Marguerite against calling Owen because she had
been afraid it would plant the idea in her head. But now she
wondered if she should have taken that chance.

A woman's figure emerged from a small clump
of trees that hid a bend in the sidewalk. She wasn't jogging. She
was walking slowly and regally, Queen Victoria out for her morning
stroll in Hyde Park.

Gypsy waited for Marguerite to join her.
Marguerite's blond hair was pulled back in a dime store barrette
and she wore an army surplus parka over a pale blue designer sweat
suit. "Shall we walk while we talk?" Gypsy asked.

"I do not intend to have more than a brief
conversation."

"Wait and see. You might change your
mind."

"If you knew me, Miss Dugan, you would find
I rarely change my mind."

Gypsy began to walk. "You did at least once.
You and Elisabeth were six. You had invited her to your birthday
party. A magician was scheduled, and Elisabeth, in a rare,
undiplomatic moment, said that she was tired of magicians. So you
told her you had changed your mind, and she was no longer invited.
Your mother wouldn't allow that, of course, but you refused to
speak to her the entire afternoon of the party. The next year you
had ponies, and even though Elisabeth was tired of ponies, too, by
then she knew better than to say anything. You were quite a
tyrant."

Marguerite betrayed no emotion. "It does not
warm my heart to hear that you've been doing research about people
who have absolutely no connection to your life. Except, of course,
that you were at exactly the same place and time as one of them and
she is now in a coma from which she will probably never
recover."

"I haven't been doing research, Marguerite.
I've been recuperating. I've hardly left my apartment."

"Then how do you know that ghastly piece of
childhood whimsy? Did it just happen to come up in a conversation
with someone who knows me? I find that doubtful unless you were
probing for information for that show of yours."

"I don't need to probe. I know more than I
could possibly tell you. I know that on the eve of your wedding to
Seamus you had one too many glasses of Dom Perignon, took Elisabeth
aside, and asked her if she would help you escape to Bora
Bora."

"Zimbabwe."

"No. Bora Bora. You said that you'd always
had a yen to wear flowers in your hair and dance naked in the
sunshine. Zimbabwe was Rhodesia back then, and far too colonial for
your purposes."

"I can not believe Elisabeth ever told
anyone that story. She was the soul of discretion."

"She didn't, and she was. And I know because
I am Elisabeth. At least the part of me that's not visible to the
naked eye."

Marguerite stopped walking. "I suppose about
now some sordid chain-smoking little man will come leaping out of
the shrubbery with a state-of-the-art video camera."

Gypsy faced her. "This isn't about
The
Whole Truth
. It's about you and me and the incredible reality
of my waking up in another woman's body."

"I am not the pushover I seem, Miss Dugan. I
have far-flung interests, it's true, not all of them terribly
mainstream. I had a great-aunt who was a Spiritualist medium, and
for a time I attended services with her. But never did I see the
tiniest shred of proof that anything she believed was true."

"I remember going to one of those services
with you. We were what, fifteen? Sixteen? Everyone brought a flower
and laid it in a basket. The woman leading the service held each
flower in the air and talked about the person who had brought it.
She said that you would experience an extraordinary event in your
life that would make you question everything traditional religion
had ever taught you."

"How do you know that?"

"I took a white rose to the service. She
held it up and said that I would lead two very different lives. I
always thought she meant my life before my marriage and my life
afterward. Now I know that's not what she meant at all."

"This is outrageous. Ridiculous!"

Gypsy touched Marguerite's arm to keep her
from turning away. "Marg, no one is more aware of how outrageous it
is then I am. Do I have to keep proving my point? I can tell you
the name of the first boy who touched your breasts and the first
man you slept with. I know that if the baby you lost had been a
girl, you were going to name her Anne after your favorite nanny. I
know you didn't really want to go to Bora Bora at all, but you were
afraid Seamus didn't love you enough to put up with all your little
quirks. I also know that he did and does and that you've made a
wonderful life for yourself with him."

Marguerite took a moment to examine her from
head to toe. Then she shrugged. "Do you remember the time we stole
butternuts from a neighbor's grove in Newport?"

"It was apples at your grandmother
Warrington's summer house in Bar Harbor."

"What was my grandmother's maiden name?"
Marguerite held up her hand. "No, that is too easy. What was the
name of the Birch Haven butler who was fired for peeking at us when
we were changing for bed the year we were twelve?"

"
That's
too easy. Wyman, and we were
thirteen. I'd just had my birthday. I don't know if Wyman was his
first or last name. Poor man, I never was sure he really peeked or
just happened into the wrong room and was trying to leave without
embarrassing us."

"He was a convicted child molester."

"You never told me that! When did you find
out?"

"What was the name of the first man you
slept with?"

Gypsy was silent. Marguerite raised an
eyebrow.

"There was the first man I really slept
with, and then there was the one I told you about," Gypsy said at
last. "They weren't one and the same."

For the first time that morning,
Marguerite's surprise was discernible. "What?"

"I'm sorry I lied. I never slept with Lyle
Bennett. I know I told you I did. I almost did, but I just couldn't
go through with it. I couldn't tell you the truth. You were so smug
back in those days. You were into free love and women's lib, and I
was just repressed. Owen was my first lover. My one and only."

"I knew that."

"How did you know?"

"You could never lie. Your face . . ."
Marguerite shook her head. Then she started walking.

"Marg, do you believe me?"

"No!"

"Yes, you do!"

"No! I don't know why you're doing this,
Miss Dugan, but it's unconscionable."

Gypsy caught up with her. "You're afraid of
spiders, but you love lizards. You wouldn't wear lavender if it was
the only color in the world, and you've always wanted to be a
jockey but you were already too big by the time you were ten. Your
mother sent you to bed without your supper when you were eight for
telling a houseguest that her feet smelled, and your father brought
you a tray that night when she pretended she wasn't looking. You
adored them both, but you weren't allowed to tell them so. They
adored you silently, too, and spoiled you rotten."

"They did not."

"They certainly did, but they were good
parents. They taught you to look for the truth in unlikely places.
And they would be disappointed in you now for ignoring what your
heart tells you to believe."

"Stop it!" Marguerite stopped walking again.
They had attracted attention this time. Fifteen yards away two men
in business suits were staring at them as if they might need to
leap to the rescue.

Gypsy took Marguerite's arm to allay their
fears. "Look," she said softly. "It's me. Elisabeth. I don't know
why or how. I remember seeing Gypsy Dugan's face staring back at me
from that limo. The next time I saw that face, I was staring in a
mirror."

"There's something only Elisabeth knows.
Something about me, my life, that nobody else suspects. . ."
Marguerite looked off into the distance.