A strange smile drifted across her mouth.
“Have you ever wondered about that kind of thing?”she asked, raising her eyes to mine. “Someone wants a divorce— goes home that night to say so—but before they can say anything, the other one—the husband, the wife—tells them they have some very bad news. They have cancer, but it isn't terminal, at least not yet. They have a chance, a very good chance, the doctors say, if they get immediate treatment and if—and this if changes everything, doesn't it?—they keep up their spirits and stay in the right frame of mind. What do you think must go through that other person's mind? Guilt, remorse, regret? And if regret—for what? For what they were about to say, or because they had not said it earlier, before they knew about the illness, before there could be any question that they were being selfish about what they wanted? It isn't such an easy question, is it? Because, of course—in most situations at least—he must have felt something for her once; he married her, didn't he? And probably—in some situations, at least—he must still care for her, still care for what happens to her.
“My husband tried. He really did. But, to tell you the truth, I wish he hadn't. It would have been easier if he hadn't. It would have been easier if I'd known he was in love with someone else than to have him go through this charade that what was happening to me didn't change the way he felt. I wish I had known. I wouldn't have told him. I would have had at least that much dignity left.”
I reached across the table to take her arm. She shook her head.
“I'm all right. Really. I'm only telling you this because I have to explain something that happened. If I don't, I can't tell you how I know what I'm going to tell you about Lawrence Goldman's daughter.
“After the divorce, I met someone. It was right after I opened the first store. She worked for me. We became good friends. We're still good friends.”
Marissa searched my eyes, not only to find the understanding she needed, but also to let me know it was important that she could find it in me.
“I didn't feel very attractive in those days; and I was lonely, more lonely than I could ever have imagined. Paula—Paula Hawkins—was very sympathetic. One night … well, I had never done anything like that before. It happened just that one time.”
A flash of something like defiance passed briefly through her eyes.
“I don't regret what happened—I'm not ashamed of it— but I knew I didn't want it to happen again. Paula understood. There were no recriminations or anything of the sort. Paula wanted me to be happy; besides, she was in love with someone else, had been in love with someone else since college.”
I read it in her eyes. “Lawrence Goldman's daughter?”
It was as if some weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Marissa had told me something about herself I was certain she had never told anyone. She trusted me, now more than ever, and what I think was at least as important to her, she knew I trusted her. With a casual smile, she reached across the table, filled up my empty glass, and then filled her own. Holding it with both hands around the rim, she watched the way the color changed in the shadows cast by the candle's dim flickering light.
“Paula said Ariella was the most self-sufficient person she had ever known. The way Paula told it, she almost had to be. Her mother made sure of that. Lawrence Goldman was in his mid-forties when Ariella was born. He was of that generation for whom children, as they used to say, were 'made to be seen, not heard.' She once told Paula that her earliest memory was of her mother holding her hand as they walked down the long curving staircase from the upstairs bedroom to the living room below. Her hair had been curled and powder put on her cheeks; the smell of lavender was all around her. Wearing a little pink dress, all starched and stiff, she stood right next to her mother, staring at a roomful of bright smiling strangers, all the men in black tie. Then, the moment her mother squeezed her hand, she performed the brief curtsey she had been taught, and in a tiny, tremulous voice remarked with earnest delight, 'I'm very glad to meet you and I hope you all have a lovely evening.' She thought those must have been the first words she had ever learned to speak.”
Marissa drank from her glass, then put it down on the table and draped her long slender fingers across the top of it. As the candlelight danced in her eyes, she began to trace along the edge the circle of the glass.
“From the very beginning, you see, she was Lawrence Goldman's daughter. Even when she grew up and was no longer an amusing sidelight at dinner parties for adults, that still set her apart. Everyone wanted something from Lawrence Goldman—his approval, his permission, something. And of course everyone went out of their way to be as helpful as they could to his daughter.”
Her fingers stopped their movement around the glass. She tossed her head back and fixed me with a quizzical look.
“Have you ever known anyone who grew up like that?”
I shook my head and chuckled as I took another drink.
“When I was growing up, the only tuxedo I ever saw was the one worn by the guy who took tickets at the movie theater downtown.”
She studied me a moment longer before she asked, “You don't like people with money, do you?”
“I know a few people with money I like.”
“What is it you don't like about the rich?”she persisted.
“Other than the fact that money is all they think about and that they tend to have the attention span of a gnat, I haven't seen that it has any very direct connection with character.”
“Money can buy you freedom,”countered Marissa.
“To do what—spend it? Earn more of it? Go on a cruise? Play golf? Retire? Buy a new house, a new car? How much of anything do you need? But you can always use more money, right? If a man ate so much at every meal he became ill, everyone would call him a glutton; if he drank every day until he passed out, we'd call him a drunk. But if he acquires more wealth than he'll ever be able to use, we call him—what? Smart, successful, a born genius, and someone everyone else could take a lesson from, but we don't anymore call him greedy.”
She was ready for me. “And what do you call a lawyer who charges a small fortune to defend someone wrongfully accused of a crime?”
“Smart, successful, a born genius, someone everyone else could take a lesson from,”I drawled as I reached for the narrow-necked green bottle.
“Ah!”she exclaimed with the satisfied look of a small triumph.
“Where was I?”she asked. “Yes, growing up with all the money in the world. Whatever it did or did not do to her character, Ariella seems from a very early age to have understood exactly what the money meant. Not just what it could buy, but what it meant. She knew that because of the money—her father's money—everyone would always try to do everything they could for her, and she understood why.”
Leaning on her elbow, Marissa spread her fingers and raised her chin. “Think about that. Your father was a doctor; I came from very comfortable circumstances; but when we were growing up, neither of us would have been considered rich—not like that. No one tried to get on our good side because of the money our parents had. When we found out someone we had a crush on, or someone we just wanted to be friends with, didn't like us the way we wanted them to, it might have been devastating, but at least we knew it was all about us. Ariella always knew there was something else involved. The odd thing is, she seemed not to mind—apparently she even thrived on it. Before she was even old enough to think about it, she understood that it was up to her to decide how close anyone would get. In a way I suppose it was like being royalty: When you have an inherited power, I don't imagine you very often doubt that it's a power you ought to have.
“Paula was convinced that the reason Ariella chose her as a friend was because when they first met at school, she was the only one who did not know who she was. Paula had never heard of Lawrence Goldman,”said Marissa, her large eyes narrowing as she concentrated on what she was trying to describe.
Outside, the lights of the city danced across the darkness from the other side of the bay. The sky had turned midnight-blue, and Angel Island, cut off from the inhabited world by a half mile of water, loomed up like a ghost ship thrown on shore by some great underwater upheaval.
Slouched against the back of the black lacquered art-deco chair, I watched the way Marissa's mouth formed each word in a smooth flawless harmony with the small, nuanced movements of her hands and the slight, subtle change of expression in her eyes.
“Early last spring, Paula asked me to lunch. She wanted to tell me about something that had happened during a weekend she had spent with the Goldmans. Ariella had just gotten back from Europe—some small place in Italy not far from Monte Carlo—where she had been with Jeremy Fullerton. Paula had known about them from the very beginning. Ariella always told her everything—or almost everything. They were very good friends; closer than friends, really. Anyway, Paula picked her up at the airport late Friday afternoon and they drove to the Woodside house.”
Listening to Marissa, I could see it all: Ariella, the house— everything. The Tudor mansion on twelve secluded acres was apparently the closest thing Lawrence Goldman had to a permanent home. A few years after he built it, the area had become some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Houses that had stood for half a century—the unpretentious summer places of comfortably well-off San Franciscans—were torn down and replaced with structures designed less for the convenience of the people who owned them than to advertise the fact that they were the kind of people who could afford to have them. Goldman's house was too far away from the narrow, winding road that ran past it to tell anyone much of anything, except that whoever lived under that steep slate roof, barely visible through the tangle of live oak trees, wanted his privacy.
Paula had been a frequent guest. They walked in the front entrance without knocking or calling out to see if anyone was home. Closing the heavy wooden door behind them, she and Ariella put the bags down on the smooth white marble floor. The muffled voices of women working in the kitchen faded in and out as the two of them made their way down a broad paneled hallway that led to the wing opposite the dining room. A door stood partially open, and from somewhere behind it came the unmistakable voice of Lawrence Goldman.
Ariella pushed open the door just far enough to reveal the profile of her father. He was sitting in an upholstered chair, his long, angular head jutting forward as if poised to ask a question, a barely perceptible smile of almost feminine encouragement flickering across the thin lips of his rather broad mouth. Both elbows on the leather-topped antique desk, he was staring straight ahead, talking on the telephone, calmly, quietly, as if this were the only conversation he could possibly want to have.
“I've pledged a million and a half to the new museum project,”he was saying, “and I'd like it very much if I could count on you for two hundred thousand of it.”
Goldman saw them standing in the doorway. He put his hand over the receiver.
“Welcome home,”he said, gesturing for his daughter and her friend to come in.
He ended the conversation in the same slow, unhurried way in which he had doubtless begun it. “Yes, thank you, Charles. I was certain you'd want to be involved.”
As he hung up, he scribbled a note to himself on a cheap tablet of lined paper that lay next to the telephone. He kept careful track of every transaction.
“Hello, Paula,”he said with the pleasant smile he bestowed on close friends and perfect strangers alike. “Did everything go well?”he asked his daughter as she bent down to kiss the side of his reddish tan face.
“Yes, Father, it went very well,”replied Ariella confidently.
Goldman nodded silently. “It's a bit of a gamble,”he said presently, “but not that much. He has a better chance than Marshall.”
“Much better,”agreed Ariella.
“I hope the flight from Nice was all right and that you were able to get some sleep. Our guests will begin to arrive in about an hour. Christopher Borden is already here. He's in his room making some calls. You remember what we talked about,”said Goldman as his daughter turned to go. “We need his help on the downtown development project.”
Borden was a partner in a New York investment house with which Goldman had frequently done business. Considerably younger than Lawrence Goldman, he had the reputation of a man who liked women almost as much as he liked money.
A dozen couples had been invited to dinner, and within ten minutes of each other all twenty-four people arrived, some of them forced to cancel long-standing commitments to be there. The dining room, like the living room, faced out through tall lead-paned windows to the patio and the pool and, beyond that, to the tennis courts and the stables far below. An oblong table ran the length of the room. Lawrence Goldman, as always, was seated with his back to the wall, so that when he spoke nothing outside might disturb the attention of his guests. Directly opposite him, Ariella was seated next to Christopher Borden.
A round-faced woman in her mid-forties expressed her disappointment that Goldman's wife, Amanda, could not be there. His eyes swung around to where she sat.
“She wanted to be, but she's up at the vineyard getting everything ready, and she just couldn't get back.”
Without expressing an opinion or asking a question, Lawrence Goldman deftly brought together the threads of several different desultory conversations into a discussion that affected them all. Among those gathered around his table were some of the most successful venture capitalists in the Bay Area and the heads of some of the most famous technology companies in the world.
“As we all know,”remarked Goldman, lifting his blizzard-white eyebrows, “Moore's Law claims that the computing power of the microprocessor will continue to double until a physical limit is finally reached.”
He paused, and the silence was so complete that the only sound heard was the hushed warble of a dove huddled on the roof outside, watching the dark blue sky fade to black.
“I don't know if Moore's Law is right,”said Goldman, his large head moving in a slow, methodical arc as he looked around the table, “but I do know something about Goldman's Law, and I can assure you, that law is never wrong.”