“She was unconventionally attractive. She could be pretty as the proverbial picture one day and maddeningly exotic the next. Chameleon-like, she was. I never figured out why she didn’t become a supermodel, she had all the right equipment and sure as shit had the temperament. The chameleon thing also touched on her disposition. She could be sweet as all fuckety-do-dah one minute and sour as morning-breath the next. Had somethin’ of a mean streak, too. Downright cruel, she could be, and she never took any special pains to hide it.
“On more than one occasion she appeared to gain pleasure in telling over past cruelties. One of her favorite stories had to do with one of your aborigines, a young Indian lad—sorry, Native American—who had a crush on her during her school years, and wouldn’t she laugh when she told of mocking that poor bloke! Everything from his name—Coop, I think it was—to his race was fair game, to hear her tell it. Strung him along for the sport of it, let him think she welcomed his attentions then, unbeknownst to him, ridiculed him to anyone willing to listen. She told this over whenever she thought her audience needed reminding she was a peg or two above others, especially coloreds, as she called ’em when she was bein’ polite. Whilst she was with me she lorded it over the Pakistanis I had on my London staff at the time. She verbally mistreated ’em every chance she got, referred to ’em as house niggers—reason enough right there to give her the toss, but it was her treatment of my kids that finally got her binned.”
Laurel clears her throat just audibly. This causes him to pause and ask if he’s going too fast or too unsparingly, if she has questions, if she minds if he smokes. She risks only a shake of her head, and once he has a cigarette going, he resumes the narrative with renewed enthusiasm.
“Right about now you’ve got to be wonderin’ if our Aurora had any redeeming characteristics beyond her pleasing appearance, and she did indeed. She could be nothing less than captivating when it suited her purpose. She could be geisha-like in attentiveness and enchanting in all her ways, especially when demonstrating the skills of a seasoned courtesan. Beneath that provocative little pout of hers, she had this most-appealing and accommodating overbite, and not to forget that she was quite the expert at rimming—what she couldn’t do with a bit of latex—the most accomplished in my considerable experience. She was fantastic with other girls, and she had this incredible flair for. . . .”
Laurel does not so much as blink. During her prosecutor days she frequently took depositions to make this one seem G-rated. She never outwardly reacted then, and she won’t now, even though she would love to put her hands over her ears and run out of the room like someone of her grandmother’s era and rectitude. She’s so intent on maintaining her unshakeable façade she’s not immediately aware that Rayce Vaughn has stopped talking. And who knows when she would have noticed if he were not presently leaning into her space in order to switch off the recorder.
“
Sorry
,” he says at close range, “that last was bloody well uncalled for. I’m gonna ask you to excuse the lapse of an old wanker gone too far in his reminiscences and bear with me whilst I erase the naughty bits.”
“No, that’s not necessary. Don’t worry about it.” She’d like to assure him she’s not exactly a puritan among fleshpots, but only asks that he return to the subject of Aurora’s treatment of his children.
“All righty, I’ll get to that in a tick. Before I do, though, I think I ought to say why I was willing to write off so many of her peccadilloes. And please don’t go thinkin’ it was solely because of those talents I should’ve left unmentioned just now. I had quite a bit of extra tolerance for her shit because she was young, not yet twenty, and full of the same sort of youthful disdain that filled me at her age. She was little different from the way I once was for thinkin’ she’d seem more knowing and sophisticated if she looked down on certain conventions and practices, sneered at authority, and affected an arrogant world-weary stance—a stance that typifies nearly all rock musicians one time or another. So, on the surface it might’ve appeared we had something in common, even if it was across generational lines.
“Another reason I cut her some slack—she wasn’t a junkie right out of the gate. If she used whilst she was with me, it wasn’t apparent, and I never caught her with her hand in my stash. She didn’t drink far as I could tell, but she did show signs that hers was an addictive personality. It was all there to see if anyone was looking. The impulsive behavior, the need for instant gratification, the sometimes antisocial nature, the constant sensation-seeking. She put a high value on nonconformity and no value whatsoever on meaningful achievements. She had a high tolerance for deviant behavior, as already touched upon, and a terrible round-the-clock need for attention.
“One of my lingering demons comes at me out of failure to prevent that which was unpreventable,” he says through a curl of smoke. “Quite mad, that is . . . fuckwitted, as our Colin would say. But any of us wishing we could’ve steered him away from Aurora will always be stuck with a useless regret because there was no saving of Colin. Warning him off Aurora was not a possibility. Once he was onto her, he had eyes only for her. Completely unstoppable, he was. I wonder if you know romantic passion taps into the selfsame dopamine system that’s utilized by other obsessive drives, like drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Did you know that?”
Laurel nods, wondering if he knows he could be quoting chapter and verse from the text for Psychology 101 and if his need to spread the word is standard behavior for the recently rehabilitated. While he refills their coffee cups, she tries to remember if the romantic passion of her younger years ever qualified her as an obsessive; while he lights another cigarette, she ponders what she might have been like without the constraints of siblings and her grandmother’s dictates, and by no stretch of her warped imagination can she project herself into any of Rayce Vaughn’s scenarios.
“To get back to where we were . . . You were wanting to know how Aurora got on with my kids,” he says.
“Yes, I did and still do, but I’m going to ask you to hold off on that for the moment. Right now I’d like to hear about the transition. I think it could be important to know how and when Aurora went from you to Colin. Was it directly? Did he find her more attractive because. . . .”
“Because she’d been with me? Hell no, but I can see why you might think that. You’ve probably heard it said I was Colin’s idol. That wouldn’t be altogether wrong to believe, but it would be wrong to believe he ever idolized anything about me other than my musicianship. You’d be painting with a dirty brush to think he ever emulated my offstage performances to any extent or took up with one of my rejects simply because she once had my seal of approval.
“There was a lengthy period between my cutting Aurora loose and his taking up with her, and during that time Colin’s career was on a meteoric rise. He had no need to look up to anybody. He’d become the idol, he was the one all the young-comers wanted to be like, the one all the prettiest girls flocked to. At the same time, Aurora was moving up, quietly makin’ a name for herself with a different set of sybarites—footballers, they were—and it was in that setting Colin met her at a bash given by the great mid-fielder, Gabriel Ostrander, whilst he was playin’ for Barcelona. It’s never been said if Aurora was linked to Ostrander at the time, but even if she was, there would’ve been no contest. Colin gave off the greater starshine, and that’s the only drug she craved back then.”
“I see.” Laurel looks off into the middle distance trying not to imagine a twisted assortment of rock musicians and soccer players servicing in various ways a wildly salacious celebrity hound. A shrewd and conniving celebrity hound, if Rayce Vaughn is telling the unvarnished truth about Aurora Elliot. Laurel refocuses on the iconic rock star as he supplies a few more unnecessary details. She watches for nonverbal indications he has an agenda and sees nothing that would raise a flag. She reflects on the fact his testimony thus far is missing the long thoughtful silences, the struggles for just the right word, and the halting admissions that characterize the delivery of most witnesses. He’s glib to the point of seeming rehearsed, something that would raise a flag if Colin hadn’t endorsed him as a source, and if it were not realistic to assume he’s spent considerable time unloading to professionals.
“From all outward appearances,” he goes on, “Aurora knew enough to acquit herself in a wholesome way when she first started up with Colin. That went along with her depicting herself as newly arrived on the scene, all fresh-faced dewy-eyed innocence ripe for the plucking. That’s the sort of propaganda that made its way into the press back then and you can safely wager she herself was the source. As mentioned earlier, Colin was the bleedin’ center of the universe at the time. He couldn’t make a move without someone wantin’ to cover it and cover whoever might be hangin’ on his arm. This was Aurora’s every dream come true, to be famous by extension, to be famous just for bein’ famous. Though she professed to hate it, she was never more in her element than when surrounded by paparazzi screaming her or Colin’s name. Several sources agree she was in the habit of secretly tipping off the tabloid press about where she and Colin would next appear, then feigning great horror and dismay when the media showed up in force.
“They got married at a register office somewhere in Leicestershire and I can see by your face you were expectin’ me to say they tied the knot in Vegas and both were pissed as parrots at the time.” He flashes a humorless smile, “Sorry, no excitement there, and she wasn’t even preggers, the first boy didn’t arrive for more than a year, a year when Aurora perfected her deceit, had it down to a science, by all accounts.”
“I’m . . . I’m curious to know . . . When they married, was Colin aware Aurora had . . . spent time with you?”
“Yes, he knew. I made a point of tellin’ him, and I didn’t keep my opinion of her to myself, for the little good it did. Partners get passed around a lot in our little musical community, no one ever makes too much of it, so he was nonchalant about that part. He didn’t react at all to my comments about Aurora’s character. I could’ve been talkin’ to a wall. They say love’s blind. In his case it was deaf. He wouldn’t let himself hear anything bad about her, he refused to hear that a critical part of her was missing—that there was something fundamentally wrong with her.”
“Is this related to her treatment of your children?”
“It is. My children, seven at last count, and not all from the same mother, which made coordinating their visits seem like layin’ out plans for the Normandy invasion. Keepin’ the ex-wives and ex-girlfriends apart was a full-time job—sorry, rambling again. All righty then . . . Aurora’s treatment of my kids . . . To say she didn’t like ’em is too strong a statement. She didn’t fucking
acknowledge
’em. For her, they did not exist. Whatever lot was in residence, she just looked right through ’em, and this included the time when one was in great peril. Aurora was sitting alongside the pool at my place in Marbella when my then youngest somehow worked her way out of a playpen contraption and toddled straight on into the deep end of the pool. This happened literally in front of Aurora, who glanced up at the splash, then went right on varnishing her nails.”
“How do you know this? Were you there?”
“I was told after the fact. At the time it happened I was in the house and came at a run when I heard the screams of the nanny and shouts from a groundskeeper who couldn’t swim and nevertheless plunged into the pool fully clothed and wearin’ wellies. Fortunately there were others about who heard the uproar and responded because the nanny and I were havin’ a time of it with
two
potential drowning victims.”
“Are you saying Aurora
still
ignored the situation?”
“I am. She did. And I couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d caught her settin’ fire to the cat. This girl was a strong swimmer, she was. Only the day before she swam the quarter-mile in from the yacht anchorage instead of taking the tender, so there’s no excuse there. Certain assumptions are made about human beings—that they won’t stand idly by and see harm come to another—’specially a child—if they’re able to do something about it. Seein’ that theory shot full of holes took a lot outta me, it did.”
“There is such a thing as bystander effect, you know. There are people who are predisposed to distancing themselves from involvement,” Laurel says.
“I know. I’m old enough to remember about the girl gettin’ attacked in one of your New York neighborhoods and the residents there not wanting to get involved when they heard her screams. I can almost understand that sort of callousness—the sort urban violence gives rise to—but that’s not what I’m talkin’ about here. Aurora wasn’t hiding behind a curtain to avoid getting involved. I’m sayin’ it never crossed her mind that she
should
get involved, that it would be normal to get involved. She was wholly lacking the part that reaches out to the troubled and defenseless. She’d shown this in other ways that didn’t seem all that significant till the near-drowning incident, when I got convinced she was born deficient.”
Rayce Vaughn could be describing her grandmother; he’s even using some of the same language her long-suffering father did when writing off that heartless woman’s behavior as an inborn deficiency rather than an acquired trait.
“I should remind that it didn’t appear Aurora was self-medicating at the time,” he continues, “so drug psychosis wasn’t a factor. But it sure as shit was when it was her own kid she paid no attention to. It’s generally believed she started using after the first boy came along and the excitement surrounding his arrival died down. By all appearances, she had a better setup than Princess Di, a bigger personal retinue than mine, and didn’t she get bored with the existence. Touring was not to her liking, and with Colin on the road a lot, she went lookin’ for attention elsewhere. Word of her wanderings leaked out and it’s safe to say she wasn’t the source of that leak because tabloid reports ran universally against her—against her leavin’ baby Anthony with the hired help whilst she frequented the playgrounds of the rich and famous, as the bloke’s so fond of calling us.