“I suppose.”
“You will see. There is something else, Danica, I must tell you. I have delayed speaking with you about this matter for some time.”
Oh god. Something about Henry. Or another tabloid episode about me and Foster.
“It is necessary to tell you now—because we are to be partners, when you return the contract—and so that I will not surprise you.”
“Surprise me?” I close my eyes, wait with dread.
“Yes, at work.” She handles the little cup delicately, spins it around in her brick red fingernails. “I have done my best to involve you in this matter as little as possible. Not that it matters much, because you will not be there much longer. But I wanted to share this news with you.”
“Okay,” I say, “just tell me what’s going on.”
“This book, Dani, it is my vision, you know, to include material on Foster. The project will not have as much currency if it does not.”
“Yes, or gain as much publicity,” I say, leaning back from the table. “That’s why I’m writing my section.”
“Exactly. But you must understand, the diaries are my discovery.” I feel a slight prick of jealousy. She continues, “I must be informed about all aspects of this book.”
“Yes. I’ll inform you.”
“That is nice. But it is not what I meant, exactly. You are starting to see?”
“Not really. Explain it for me.”
“I understand that you were not able to help me gain visitation to Foster, especially after you had the troubles with the tabloid.”
The troubles she was mainly responsible for, I think, but I stay quiet.
“I have undertaken that task myself,” she says. “I have an appointment to see him in two weeks.”
“You’re
seeing
him? How?” My throat feels dry.
“You are surprised that I am so resourceful?”
“How are you doing this? How did you get approved?” No doubt she’s gone about this in a less than ethical manner, but immediately I’m resentful that she’s been able to arrange it without my help, or even my knowledge. And now I’ll almost certainly have to quit Stowmoor, very soon. If Sloane and Abbas hear about my association with Maria, with the book, that will be it. It will look like Maria and I have been working together, that I’ve been speaking to her about Foster from the start.
“Well, I knew a person, who introduced me to somebody; we had some common interests. His lawyer, he is a very reasonable man. He understands the value of Foster’s fame. I am going to meet with Foster as a specialist in media privacy.”
“First, how did you meet his lawyer? And Maria, you are not a specialist in media privacy.” What
is
media privacy anyway? It doesn’t sound like it would fit the agenda of Foster’s lawyer. He seems like he’d bring in the whole reporting staff of the
Daily Press
to visit Foster if he could.
“Dani, I have many skills. You do not know everything about me.” She hooks the polished nail of her index finger through her cup’s tiny handle. “I only tell you now so you would not be confused if you saw my name on the visitors’ roster.”
She’s serious. Perhaps I’ve overlooked the benefits of spending the next thirty-odd years in a routine clinical job. Better than being convicted of fraud. “Maria,” I sputter, trying to find enough words, the right ones. All I manage is, “You are not a ‘media privacy’ specialist, if such a thing even exists. That’s completely fraudulent. Totally illegal.”
“Laws should be taken with a grain of salt. Mr. Lewison, he knows laws must be interpreted creatively.”
“You’re insane.”
“Now, Dani, that is a rather politically incorrect thing to say to me, especially given your profession.” She leans back, half-smiles, arches a finely plucked eyebrow. I catch myself almost weakening at her teasing.
“Well, then, why would you even tell me, if you have it all set up? Have you thought about how this could affect me?”
“How exactly? You are going to resign.”
“I’m not sure about that, and I definitely wasn’t going to resign before next week.”
“You will resign. You were always going to resign. Next week, the week after, it does not matter. You will do it.”
Her certainty annoys me. “Why do you need to see him, anyway? I’m handling his part of the book. Why can’t you trust me with that?”
She looks exasperated. I feel it’s a small victory.
“I had thought you might be excited,” she says. “If I speak to him as well, we can compare notes, discuss things.”
As if he would confide in her. She thinks speaking to him will be easy, that anyone will talk to her, that she’s entitled to anything she wants.
“Maria, have you disclosed to Foster your reasons for seeing him? If not, you’re asking me to be complicit in allowing you to deceive and manipulate a patient. That’s against several institutional rules, not to mention the moral issues of—”
“I did not know you liked rules so much,” says Maria. “You must know, I always find ways around such things.”
“What could you get out of talking to him, anyway? You’re not trained to interview forensic patients.”
“I do not need to be trained. I am after what is genuine. After beauty.”
“You’re delusional.” I say it out of frustration, and it’s probably true. But somehow I’m still unwilling to believe it completely.
“Excuse me, are you finished with that?” A thirty-something guy points at the newspaper crumpled up on the far side of our table. Maria hands it to him. “Always lovely to have a paper when you’re sitting on your own, having a nice cup of coffee.”
He addresses this comment solely to Maria, and gestures in the direction of his table. She smiles, and he stands there, looking at her, until she says, “Yes, enjoy your afternoon.” He looks back at her twice as he returns to his chair.
“What were you saying, Dani?”
“But you haven’t considered at all how this will affect me. You don’t think about ethics, you think you can get around laws if you don’t like them.”
“But, Dani, I do think about you. Maybe you should think, too. The rules tell you, do not pursue your intuition. You cannot tell me you do not want to know more about Foster’s story, if there is a cult. Can you imagine if it were true? Sublime.”
I pause for a moment. She is right, I do want to know. It is horrible, but I want to know everything there is to know about Foster, about his crime, his fixation with Báthory. And if a cult did exist...it would make the story deliciously bigger, perfect. It would be, as Maria said, sublime.
I’m silent. I wish I knew how to flout the rules. To know what it feels like to do exactly what you please. How can she be so absolute in her confidence, her entitlement?
As if she were reading my mind, she says, “Dani, all of the world works on connections. And I have them.”
I want to give in to her. I want to let go of the edge and dive into her world view, where laws are mere suggestions and delusions of grandeur constitute a healthy self-confidence. She believes herself to be invincible, entirely in control. I recognize that these are extremely maladaptive, even dangerous, traits, but still I’m tempted. I wonder what it would be like to move through the world with that feeling, delusional or not, of power and beauty.
“Trust me, Dani. We can be great. You can be great.”
I’ve been trained well. I can’t completely ignore all the warning signs, all the coincidences. Even though I want to believe in her, I can’t discount that things aren’t right. I leave her there, walk through the café door onto the street, my coat unbuttoned and billowing.
The flat is dark. I turn on the kitchen light, then throw the carrier bag onto the bed. I hurl a pillow at the bag, then a shoe, and another, then my old copy of the DSM that I keep on a shelf by the sofa. Maria has never really cared about me, has only been interested in me for whatever self-aggrandizing agenda she wants to push. Right now, this realization is as much as I can manage. I know there’s more, that it goes deeper, but I don’t want to look. I’m afraid of the magnitude of disillusionment that awaits me.
The glossy bag is now creased and dull, weighed down by a pile of my dreary belongings. I imagine the dress inside: a pile of soft green leaves, now crushed. I stop myself from hurling a cheap glass vase at the end table, and instead flop down on the bed and crumple into a heap on top of the bag. I don’t cry, and I try not to think. I lie motionless and concentrate on the sensation of the corner of the DSM jabbing into my forearm, a heel grazing my tummy, the crumpled green meadow I’m resting upon.
The phone rings. I don’t move, let it ring and ring, the sound bouncing off the walls of the small room. The caller leaves a message on the machine, her voice soaking into me: “Henry, it’s Nicola. Thought I’d catch you at home before tonight. I’ll be a half-hour later than I said. See you soon.”
It’s like someone scooped out my stomach with a melon bailer. I crumple a little more, get a little smaller. Twenty minutes later, I hear Henry turn his key in the latch. I pick myself up, tread into the bathroom and close the door.
Later that night, I’m alone in the flat. Henry said the message was about a “program thing” that he had to go to this evening. I flip through terrible shows, watch California girls who go to beach parties, cry about boys, have standing invitations to VIP sections in Las Vegas bars. They all have varying shades of blonde hair. On weekdays, they go to fashion design class, meet with each other in perfect sidewalk cafés, fight over who started which rumour about whom.
I remember the envelope that Maria gave me. I hold it in my lap. I want to rip open the seal, lose myself in Báthory’s tortures.
Maybe Maria’s plan to see Foster isn’t any worse than my badgering him in the library, spying on him in his room. I almost bribed him with the diaries. I tried to manipulate him, repeatedly acted in my own interests instead of considering his. It’s not just that I don’t have a calling as a clinician, it’s that I’ve been abusing my position. And I’m supposed to be on his side, to help him, provide him with resources for his rehabilitation. Is Maria’s plan any worse? Is his lawyer any worse? I tell myself I’m not in a position to judge.
The envelope burns my palms. I pop the flap.
For you, something you want to see. The conclusion. Your afterword will be brilliant. Yours, x, M.
Čachtice, January 17, 1611
It has been too much. Too much to think of writing until now.
Darvulia is dead. They arrested her in the raid and put her in a cell with the rest of my servants. They let them starve, and it was too much for her old body. Most of them, they tell me nothing, but there is one guard who will talk. He says they will force Dorca and Fizcko to testify at a trial. Then Helena is to be next. And then they will kill them all.
I know it is because of the money they owe me, and because the Palatine actually listens to the clergy, thinks anything they say is as important as Scripture. They are all corrupt. They could not have cared about that girl; her father was only a noble of the counties. What would she have amounted to in life?
I am shut up here, in my tower, but the guards peep in when they think I am sleeping. I am still the most beautiful woman in Europe. And I will have that last beautiful memory to keep with me here, until I am released.
We shackled her in the cellar, arms above her head, her feet cuffed and chained to a spike in the ground. Darvulia had told Dorca to use the new knife she had brought to cut off the girl’s nipples. That pale, tall torso was streaked with blood, and she was crying for us to stop. Then I took the knife.
She passed out when I approached her. I understand; it must be overwhelming to be at once so afraid of someone yet so in awe. Helena heated a poker and jabbed her thighs to rouse her.
I was inches away from her face when she came to her senses. Her soft hair was matted with blood, and her pale, pale skin stained with splatter. Her blue eyes opened wide and shone through the mess of her. If only they could be made into jewels, if only they kept their colour after the heart stopped beating. But they would never be more beautiful than at that moment. And I decided no one should see them again. I plunged the knife first into her stomach, then into her neck, where Darvulia showed me I could hit that great vein. The warm salt-iron leapt up at me and coated my face. I waited until the eyes shifted, when that slight dull cloud claimed them—I cannot tire of that, the moment when their tiny life expires.
I never heard the pounding at the door. When I turned around, they already had Fizcko and Dorca. They clamoured around the girl, undid her bonds, but it was far too late. She was one of mine.
I collect the paper into a neat pile and put it back in the envelope. I drop the envelope in my bag and pace around the small room. I know I should not reread them. I know I should think more critically about Maria, her motives, the circumstances I presently find myself in.
On my third lap across the flat I stop. I grab my laptop, take the envelope from my bag and pore through the diaries again.
“The taxi said he’d be here in ten,” says Henry over his shoulder. He’s lounging on the couch, arm over the upholstered back, left ankle resting on right knee, bottle of Old Hooky in his hand.
It’s seven fifteen. The ball starts at eight. And no one arrives at a party right at the start. I don’t even have my false lashes glued on yet. “Why did you call one already? There’s still lots of time. Can you call them back and see if they can come a bit later?” I don’t want to get this evening off to a bad start, but he didn’t even check to see if I was close to ready.
“It’s Saturday night, Dani. It’s better to go early before they’re swamped. If we’d gotten a ride with Wilson and Nicola,” he says, getting up from the sofa, “we wouldn’t even have to take a cab.”
Wilson and Nicola. Henry told me yesterday that the two of them were also going. Wilson got tickets from some gallery owner who came down with the flu, and he was taking Nicola with him as “an educational field trip.” I tried not to be annoyed that, rather than make this a more romantic outing, Henry wanted us to pile into the microscopic back seat of Wilson’s car in our fancy clothes. But I was not going to scramble out of the back seat of a hatchback and flash my underwear to passersby in front of the Grosvenor Hotel, in the most expensive and beautiful dress I’d ever worn in my life, on the way to my first black-tie ball. So I’d insisted on the cab.