Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
Continuing to stroke the back of his son’s yellow sleepers, he frowned, his mouth pulling into heavy, downward lines. “You know I don’t like pushing my way into people’s homes.”
“Oh, Gideon! What’s so wrong with being a bit friendly?”
“Talbott’s has never needed to smear or do favors.” His tone was harsh.
“We’re going to a party for the Taiwan committee, not buying them each a half dozen singsong girls.” She drew a breath. “Gideon, I don’t have to remind you that Bechtel and
Fluor are offering a free preliminary study. And so is McNee-Ivory. How will you feel if Taiwan awards a contract this size to
them?
”
Curt’s successful highway project in Lalarhein had brought McNee several extremely large Mideast jobs: after he was with the company a little over half a year, the elderly George McNee had made him a partner. Gideon was particularly embittered because before their relationship had altered so disastrously he had been considering raising Curt to the same position.
After a moment, Gideon gently laid his son back in his custom-upholstered crib, a gesture of acquiescence. Clear mucus bubbled at Gid’s nostrils, and he flailed fat arms and legs, emitting snorting, unhappy wails.
Gideon hastily picked up the baby. “It’s all right, Gid, Daddy’s here,” he soothed.
Crystal squared her shoulders. Her breasts pulled up from her low-cut gown and the dim nursery nightlights danced on the diamonds at her throat. “Gideon, dear,” she cooed, “we can’t be late. These are Chinamen, they
do
take offense easily, they
never
forgive a loss of face.”
Gid sneezed.
Gideon tenderly wiped the baby’s nose, then looked up. His jaw was set. “Go ahead without me,” he said. When Gideon spoke in this preemptory tone it meant that his mind was closed. He would listen to no argument or pleas.
Settling her white fox stole over her shoulders, Crystal marched from the nursery and down the stairs to the porte cochere, where the new
black Cadillac waited.
* * *
As she proceeded through the large, crowded hall with its baroque, curving staircase and into the two-story drawing room, gratifying zephyrs of admiration followed in her wake. Though many of the Chinese-American women were exquisite in their opulent jewelry and their latest Paris creations, Crystal outshone them all with the natural rose of her cheeks, the bright glint of her upswept hair, her firm, magnificent young bosom rising from the swathe of black chiffon. Her host escorted her to the guests of honor. The committee’s leader, a tall Manchurian with prominent gold front teeth, must have made some sort of signal. With repetitive bows, his two underlings excused themselves, backing away. Crystal gestured animatedly while she conversed about the real China, as she called Taiwan.
“You are a most knowing lady,” said the official in his high-pitched English. “And delightfully beautiful, as befits this house.”
Privately, Crystal thought this gabled and towered heap tacky in the extreme. On every wall hung folding screens, the kind of overly gilded horrors you saw in Chinatown store windows: the low, carved Oriental tables were dwarfed by mammoth, antiquated red brocade upholstery. But she smiled her gratitude for the compliment. “Our place can’t hold a candle to this, but we do have a rather nice view of the Bay.” She tilted her head. “Do you suppose that I could coax you and your friends to see
it? My husband was so disappointed he was ill tonight.” She had transferred the ailment from Gid to his father. “This dreadful twenty-four-hour-flu—San Francisco’s having an epidemic.”
“We will be delighted to accept,” the Chinese said somberly. “But I cannot express my sorriness at Mr. Talbott’s unfortunate indisposition. I was so looking forward to have discuss our project congruently with him
and
Mr. Ivory.”
“Mr. Ivory?” Crystal’s voice rose in shocked surprise.
“Mr. Curt Ivory.”
“
Curt
here?”
“Ahh, yes. You did not know that he flies up from Los Angeles for the evening? You have not yet see your brother-in-law?”
“How clever of you to know the relationship,” she said in a strangled tone. “Hardly anyone does.”
“But you must not be so amazed, Mrs. Talbott,” he replied. “This is my obligation, to know about your fine American engineers.”
Crystal heard a snap and simultaneously a sharp jolt shot through her arm. Glancing down, she saw that she had broken the stem of her empty champagne goblet. With a little cry, she dropped the two pieces, jumping back as cut glass shattered on the hardwood floor. Nearby guests crowded around to ascertain that Mrs. Talbott’s delicate palm was undamaged while servants neatly swept up. In the midst of the hubbub, Crystal lowered her lashes, surreptitiously
glancing around. At the far end of the vista of rooms, amid a group of patent-leather glossy heads, she glimpsed a thick mane of dark blond hair.
Her voice high, she assured everyone that no blood had been drawn and she was absolutely all right.
A full glass was placed in her benumbed fingers. She downed it in two gulps.
“Now, where were we?” she asked the committee chief.
“Ahh, yes. I did so want a discussion of these two experts on how to handle the method of sinking the pylons.”
“You’re talking to a complete idiot about engineering.”
Smile
, she told herself. “But hydraulics is my husband’s forte.”
“So I understand. Already we have decided against the Bechtel and Fluor concepts. But we are most impressed with McNee-Ivory’s, and with Talbott’s. Thus there is no problem.”
“Problem?”
“One family.” The gold teeth shone. “Whoever builds our seawall, McNee-Ivory or Talbott’s, the other will be glad—or maybe there will be a joint venture.”
Crystal again managed a pretty dimple. Setting her empty glass on a passing tray, she reached for a fresh one.
Even at the most raucous cocktail parties, she nursed a single drink. Thus it seemed surprising that the swift consumption of Taittinger did not affect her. She wasn’t even slightly tiddled. If she were, would she be able
to regale her enchanted audience of one with her recently boned-up-on knowledge of Sino-American politics? From the corner of her eye she again glimpsed Curt, this time with the lesser two of the delegation. She took another glass—she had difficulty remembering whether it was her fourth or fifth—launching into accolades for General Chiang Kai-Shek, whom she knowledgeably called the Gismo. The committee chief responded with his golden smile.
If she were drunk, wouldn’t she be verbose, loud, angry, as her father was when in his cups? Wouldn’t her vision blur? Yes, drunk, she would never see details with this preternatural clarity. Surrounding conversations drifted in and out, like a radio being turned on and off, the men talking of real estate values, the women of servants and children, just like at a regular Caucasian gathering.
And then all at once Mr. and Mrs. Wei, the roly-poly host and hostess, were bowing and nodding, inviting their most honored guest to lead the gathering to the buffet.
Her conquest was borne away. Crystal, feeling drained by the exertion of her vivacity, decided not to try the thousand-year eggs or shark’s fins or whatever other strange food was being served. As the two-story room cleared, she glanced toward the rear bay window. Standing alone, Curt lounged against the arch with that air of relaxed energy most women seemed to find devastating. Maybe he
had
married poor Honora, as everyone said, but Crystal bet he
made her life a misery with his chasing.
She inhaled deeply and ran her tongue over her lips. Pushing her way around two large groups which were meandering toward the dining room, she went toward him.
“If it isn’t the belle of the ball,” he drawled, raising his highball in a mocking way.
His sardonic grin, or so Imogene said, was sexier than straight, unadulterated musk, but Crystal considered it nastily arrogant. His topaz eyes were bloodshot.
He’s sozzled
, she thought in surprise, and was delighted afresh with her own sobriety. “Why don’t you stay where you belong?” she demanded.
“The Weis mailed me an invitation.” He finished his drink. “And where’s your esteemed husband?”
“You have no right to be in San Francisco,” she said belligerently.
“Oh? Is there a warrant out for my arrest?”
“After what you did to Honora—”
“You don’t say her name,” he interrupted in a low growl.
“She’s my sister.” Crystal sounded defiant.
“That,” he said, setting down his glass, “is impossible to believe.”
“The way you treated her, you deserve to be shot!”
Two women with glossy black chignons turned to look at them.
“Quit shrilling like a two-bit hooker who’s lost a trick,” Curt hissed.
She was too angry to be intimidated. “Hooker?” Her voice rose yet higher. “Is that
what you think of my sister?”
Jerking open a French door, Curt gripped her arm and yanked her outside. The entire first story was surrounded by a pillared porch, and as she stepped onto the painted sequoia planks, she was aware of the chill air, aware that her bare flesh was rising in goosebumps, a discomfort that refreshed her. The summer night was clear, with a full, brilliantly white moon. She felt immortal, clean and strong. She did not need to evade his rough grasp. She was in control, and therefore it was all right to allow him to propel her down the steps to where thick, rattling shrubbery cast impenetrable shadows.
He released her arm and she stared at the man who had reduced her sister to a pathetic, pleading, unwed mother. “You’re an animal,” she panted. “I can’t bear to think of you with poor Honora—”
“You conniving cunt, I told you not to say my wife’s name!”
“You’ve stolen both my sisters.” With a stab of sadness she thought of dark-eyed, tender Honora, beloved companion of her girlhood, and of skinny, mean-mouthed little Joscelyn, who suddenly seemed so dear. “My sisters are all that ever meant anything to me,” she said. Choking back a sob, she accepted that this unplanned remark was her life’s deepest truth: Langley, a charming, boozy loser, had always stood at the periphery of her existence; her elderly, stubborn husband was as inconsequential to her as that dull, sweet infant, her son.
Males, all of them. Another species to be wheedled and coaxed and tamed.
My sisters
, she thought,
they’re the meaningful part, the mainstay of my life.
Tears of unendurable, irreconcilable loss prickled behind her lashes.
Then, swiftly, her grief converted itself to rage. Rage at Curt, rage at his gender.
Men
, she thought with an all-encompassing blaze of hatred.
Men, with their strong, grasping hands and powerful wrists, men with their ridiculous pride in that bludgeoning dagger of flesh.
With a sudden motion she raised her right hand, hitting below Curt’s cheekbone with her full strength. At the loud report of her hand exhilaration charged through her, and a slap wasn’t enough. The blood drumming deafeningly against her ears, she used her large, emerald-cut engagement stone as a weapon, catching him close to his left eye, scratching viciously.
“Bitch!” He grabbed for both her wrists.
There was a long moment when neither moved. By the reeling, shadowy moonlight she could see that her diamond had caught his flesh and a droplet of dark blood was oozing down his high-boned cheek. An incandescent heat flooded through her and she struggled to mark him again. His manacling grip tightened. She bared her teeth, hurling herself forward to bite his jaw. He stepped back, and she lunged again, her stiletto heels catching in the wet grass as she jerked and swiveled in an attempt to consummate her animus.
Abruptly he released her wrists. She fell
toward him, flinging her arms around him, a savage wrestler’s hold to crush and annihilate.
In the same enveloping hatred, she reached down for the fly of his satin-striped trousers.
A convulsive shudder passed through him. Then, bizarrely, unfathomably, they were meshed together, their locked bodies slowly lowering to the wet, stubby grass in a gladiatorial embrace. She drew his zipper down sharply, he shoved up her tulle skirts, exposing white thighs striated by taut black strips of garter. She was oblivious to the silk cutting into her flesh as he tore at her black panties. Inhaling the liquor on his breath, the odors of his sweat, she flung her legs around him.
As he thrust into her she whinnied in triumph.
And then her cherished control left her, and she shook with violent gasps that rose from the wellspring of her being.
When awareness returned it was with a buzzing sensation of her extremities—fingers, toes, ears. He was sprawled with his full weight pressing her into the wet lawn.
Abruptly he pulled away from her and rose to his feet. Shifting from the painful metal that she recognized as a sprinkler head that was digging into the small of her back, she stared up at him, a titan swaying over her. The light wavering across his scratched face showed a peculiarly boyish expression of shame.
On the top step he halted to adjust his dinner clothes. Without a glance back at her, he followed the porch around curtained windows, the sound of his footsteps fading.
Dizzily rising to her feet, Crystal suddenly recognized how drunk she was.
Just like Daddy
, she thought.
Uggh.
Bending awkwardly, she shook her full breasts into the wired cups of her Merry Widow, adjusting her strapless bodice, flailing moisture and grass from the diaphanous black folds of her skirt. She was wet through, shivering with the cold. Yet her nerves and muscles felt relaxed, a bone-deep calm. From a distant vantage point above her vertigo and nausea, she wondered whether the shuddering engulfment that she had just experienced was an orgasm.
Holding on to the wood balustrade, she negotiated the steps, halting at the French door. A few groups still clustered in the vast, ugly living room, and it came to her hazily that despite her efforts she probably was exceedingly disheveled. She stumbled along the porch in the same direction as Curt.
Rapping at a side door, she gripped the jamb, waiting. An elderly Chinese maid in a black silk uniform opened up; her wrinkled face showed surprise. Crystal pitched her voice commandingly. “I’m Mrs. Talbott. Bring me my white fox stole, and inform my chauffeur I’m ready to leave.”