Bombshell (13 page)

Katerina moved on quickly. “My own fiancé died just weeks before our wedding. He was injured on the job.” She sighed. “It's hard after you lose your love to hope again.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sasha said. “My mother could have married my father, but instead she acted like she was too good for him. She wasn't too good to have sex with him.”

“Sasha!”

Sasha ignored her, instead turning to me and addressing me directly for the first time. “So what's your story?” she asked. “You married?”

I started to shake my head.

“Got a boyfriend?”

The question seemed so ridiculously juvenile, yet I was amazed at how annoyed I felt when Sasha snorted as I shook my head once more.

“I do,” she said. “Aunt Katerina doesn't like him because he's black,” she continued with a sneer.

“Sasha!” Katerina repeated, her expression horrified, as if Sasha had cursed at the table.

“But I don't think Aunt Katerina likes men, do you, Auntie?” Sasha continued. Then, looking at me once more, a malicious gleam in her eye, she continued, “What about you? You a dyke bitch, too?”

It seemed to me if anyone was a dyke at this table, it was Sasha. She was about as butch as they came.

But it wasn't so much Sasha's question that concerned me as the pure anger I felt coming off Sasha in waves. Anger at me. I wondered, again, why I had subjected myself to the scrutiny of these people. These strangers.

In truth, I was getting tired of Sasha's belligerent attitude.

As was Katerina. “That did it, young lady,” she said. “You will go to your room.”

Sasha shoved away from the table, laughing uproarishly as she slid her leather jacket off the back of the chair where she had hung it earlier, ever ready to make her escape. “Yeah, right. Where I'm going is none of your business,” she practically spat at the older woman. Then, stalking from the room, she said, “Don't wait up for me. I might not be coming home tonight.”

“You see how she is?” Katerina cried once Sasha was gone. “I can't handle her by myself,” she said. “But Kristina made me promise. What can I do for my sister now? Nothing!” she said, looking at me with a kind of pleading expression.

I realized then that Katerina was looking for help in what appeared to be a hopeless situation. Sasha would do what she would do. Just as I had done when I was a teenager.

But then, I had always known I had parents waiting at home who could offer me a better alternative, a new vantage point, when I was ready to see it. As I studied Katerina's tired, bewildered face, I wondered what this woman could offer a girl like Sasha, who clearly longed for so much more than Katerina could ever possibly understand.

Then I realized that
I
might offer a vantage point Sasha could latch on to. I could help her….

I felt an immediate rebellion brewing in me. No way. I didn't even like the kid. Why would I subject myself to that? I didn't owe these people anything, I thought, looking away from Katerina's pleading eyes and trying not to feel a tug of sympathy for her.

No, I thought, gazing up at the photo of Kristina that
smiled blithely back at me through the arch that led to the living room.

I didn't owe anyone anything.

“T
he deed is done,” I said to my father when he called me at work first thing Monday morning. I had to admit, I was starting to enjoy this bit of subterfuge, if only because of the pleasure I felt picking up the phone to find my father on the other end. I realized now that the sometimes aloof man who had raised me may have been so simply because he didn't have anything specific to discuss with his daughter. I was glad to have a reason for us to speak now. Glad I could give something back….

“Good, good,” my father replied, clearly pleased.

“There's just the matter of getting it shipped,” I said. “The gallery offered to handle it, but they recommended insurance, of course. And we need a certificate of authenticity for that, according to the gallery manager.”

“Right, right,” my father said. “Did they have the paperwork?”

“Well, no. The gallery manager said it was just a matter of talking to the trustees of the estate that owns the painting. But they had better than the paperwork,” I replied. “They had the artist himself.”

“Chevalier? You met Chevalier?”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, a smile in my voice. Then I told him about Chevalier's interpretation of the infamous painting that had waged war—and love—between my parents.

“He said that?” my father replied, his voice filled with disbelief.

“Yup. It appears you and Mom were both wrong. The woman in the painting—Mariella—she was simply…checking out the view.” And what a view it was, I thought, remembering that lush landscape. It certainly could have put that smile on her face, that slumberous yet sensual look in her eyes.

“But the figure in the distance,” my father said, clearly not ready to dismiss his interpretation. “Why paint him into the scene? Clearly a narrative was being set up.”

“Maybe he was just a guy passing by,” I said. “Or a woman.”

“Nah,” my father said. “Chevalier was obviously trying to put you off the track. He was always a tricky one. In fact, I would even wager that the figure in the distance is Chevalier himself!” he finished, clearly warming to his argument. “You do know that Mariella—the woman in the picture, hell, the woman in all his pictures during that period—was his lover? Though it's unclear when the relationship started. Probably because she was a tad young when they met. She started out as his muse. Or so the official record says, anyway.”

“I didn't know that,” I said, suddenly remembering the
sadness I had seen in Chevalier's gaze when he first approached the painting.

“Yes, yes. Why do you think I bother arguing with your mother over it?”

I almost laughed. It was clear why he argued with my mother over it. I think to this day my father takes pleasure in the battle that had begun their life together. Since my mother wasn't around to defend her point of view, I decided to take it up on her behalf. “So this Mariella, did she ever have children?”

“Three of them!” he announced, caught up in the game. Then he amended, “But her affair with Chevalier was well over and done by then.”

“What are you saying?”

“What I'm saying is that Mariella married and had children. But with someone else. I think he was a Spanish noble. Anyway, Chevalier never recovered.”

It all made sense now, I thought, remembering Chevalier's resignation as he stood before the painting. God, that painting was completed over forty years ago—could he still be mourning the loss of her? The idea was terribly romantic. And achingly sad.

So sad, I no longer wanted to dwell on it. “I ran into an old colleague of yours,” I said, changing the subject. I wondered how old Jonathan actually was. He had to be around forty, though he wore forty very well.

“Is that right? Who was it?”

“Jonathan Somerfield?”

“Not Dr. Johnny?” my father said, pleasure filling his voice.

“Dr. Johnny?” I asked. Yeah, the rather aloof man whom I had met at the gallery was adorable, but he was no…Johnny.

“Oh, that's what I always used to call him. He'd just fin
ished up his doctorate when he was invited to speak on an interdisciplinary panel I was working on about France after the Revolution. We got to be friends. But he was just a kid back then. Brilliant, but a bit wet behind the ears.” He chuckled. “Hence the nickname. He hated when I called him that! But I felt a bit…fatherly toward him, you know? He was like the son I never had.”

I ignored the stab of hurt my father's unthinking comment caused me. Long ago I had accepted that I was my mother's choice, and not necessarily my father's. Not that he hadn't wanted me, but I think he would have given my mother anything she asked for.

“So how is he doing?”

“He seemed…fine,” I replied, remembering just how fine he was. And how unavailable. “He asked about you. And Mom.”

“Is that right? He always was a fine young man,” my father said. Then he sang the praises of paragon Dr. Jonathan Somerfield: smart, ambitious, well-published—which in academic circles, was better than being well-endowed, though I suspected he was that, too.

“You know,” my father mused, “you might want to give him a call.”

“Why?” I replied, fearful that he had somehow latched on to the attraction I felt for Jonathan but would never admit to, least of all to my father.

“Well, for one thing, with his background, he'd certainly be able to determine the validity of that certificate of authenticity we need for insurance purposes.”

“I suppose…” I said, wondering if my father was only using this as an excuse for matchmaking.

“Besides,” he continued, “Dr. Johnny was always a fan of
Chevalier, too. I'm sure he wouldn't mind having a look at the collection once more before it leaves town.”

Clearly, if my father was matchmaking, he wasn't going to show his hand. I decided to play along. “Yes, the paintings were beautiful,” I replied, remembering those sunset landscapes, the interiors bathed in light, with beloved Mariella at the center of them all. “I wouldn't mind seeing them again myself.” Or Jonathan Somerfield, I thought but didn't say.

“Then it's settled,” he said. Once he had located his address book, he rattled off a phone number. “That's his office at Columbia. I believe he's still there. He was up for tenure when I last saw him. Dr. Johnny,” he said. “Imagine you running into him after all this time. And at a Chevalier show, no less!”

Apparently my father did have an interest here. I took comfort in the notion that, for a change, that interest was in my heart.

 

When I walked into Claudia's office that afternoon, I discovered
she
had developed a new interest, too.

I found her at her desk, leaning in close to the mirror she'd placed there, her fingers pressed to her tender skin beneath her eyes, and pulling gently…up.

“Don't hurt yourself,” I mocked, startling her out of her strange pose.

“Don't you know how to knock?” she demanded, clearly discomfited.

“Door was open,” I said, dropping some paperwork from the Sterling Agency on her desk. She hadn't had the heart to deal with it herself, especially since Laurence Bennett had now gotten his contract and Claudia hadn't even gotten a follow-up call. I was about to leave when I spotted the drawing on her desk.

Not exactly a drawing. More like a photocopied replica of a human face, which had been marked in dark pen around the eyes, the chin….

“What is
that?
” I demanded.

“Nothing!” Claudia insisted, sliding the paper beneath a magazine.

“Don't tell me you're considering plastic surgery?” I asked, realizing I had seen a similar drawing before in an article in a woman's magazine detailing the horrors—and the joys—of going under the knife.

“
Cosmetic
surgery,” she said, as if it were as simple as choosing a new foundation.

“Claudia! Whatever happened to aging gracefully?” I asked, harking back to all those conversations we'd had over cocktails about how glorious our profession was for supplying us with the moisturizers, the color palettes, the illuminating creams, to do just that.

“Please,” she said, “there is nothing graceful about growing old.” Her eye fell on the blowup of Irina that now covered the back wall of her office. Claudia sniffed, returning her gaze to me. “Why do you think this company is banking all its
future profits
on that little chippy over there?” She gestured with her chin at the photo, as if she could no longer bear to look at it. “Beauty beyond thirty is a farce,” she declared. Then she stood and walked up to the life-size Irina, her eyes scanning that insolent face as if to find some secret there. “Look at her!” she said. “That skin…”

“Claudia, that's been airbrushed.”

She shook her head, a bit furiously. “Maybe. But you saw it. At the reception. She's practically flawless.” Her voice lowered to a reverent whisper as she brushed a veiny, perfectly manicured hand over Irina's face, as if caressing a lover.

I stood behind her, also studying Irina's face. But all I saw was the blankness in her eyes, and a certain tilt to the chin that suggested Irina Barbalovich was selling the kind of confidence no girl of nineteen could have.

She's just a kid, I thought, suddenly seeing her cockiness, the kind of fearlessness that comes from not knowing what hurts, what disappointments, lie ahead. I recognized it as the same look I had seen on Sasha's face.

The phone rang then, though Claudia seemed not to notice, either because she was caught up in her adoration of Irina's virtual porelessness, or because she had forgotten Lori was now across the pond.

“Claudia? The phone? Do you want me to—”

She started then, picking up the phone and barking with her usual menace, “Claudia Stewart.”

Her features slackened immediately, and her voice was positively ingratiating as she said, “Well, hello, Bebe.”

Bebe was Irina's personal assistant. Though what a nineteen-year-old needed with a personal assistant was beyond me.

“Of course, I'm still coming,” Claudia continued, in the same buttery tone. I saw her frown. “A car? I had thought we'd simply get a cab—” She paused, glanced at the window at the cloud-filled sky that brightened an otherwise cold and dreary evening. “Oh, right. No, of course. We wouldn't want Irina to catch a cold. Not with the shoot coming up. I'll order one right away. Shall we say, eight o'clock?” Her mouth moved into the smile that I suspected was more a cover for her gritted teeth. “Perfect. See you then.” She hung up.

“What was that about?”

“Oh, some party down at Moomba I'm going to with Irina.”

“You're actually hanging out with her?”

“Um-hmm,” she said, digging through her Rolodex. “Her and that boy she hangs out with. The photographer? Phillip something or other. It seemed like a chance to meet new people—” She broke off, as if she realized that she had just revealed some new vulnerability—one I suspected had something to do with Larry Bennett's abrupt blow-off. “Though now that the party is here, I'm dreading it a bit. Can you believe that girl had the nerve to call us to order her a car?” Finding the number she sought, she pulled the card, then looked at the dial pad on her phone as if she'd never used it before. And maybe she hadn't. After all, she'd always had Jeannie—and now Lori—to complete such menial tasks as calling up cars or dialing up clients. She stabbed at the numbers, then stood, looking up at me, a kind of pleading look on her face I had never seen before.

“You want to come?” she asked, her tone implying she might get on her hands and knees and beg. In fact, the lost look on her face even lent her a kind of youthfulness. But maybe that was because I had never seen Claudia look so positively nervous.

“Um, no. Sorry. Can't unfortunately,” I said, frowning as if dismayed by the idea of not joining Irina and her troop of followers as they traipsed all over town in search of whatever glories were to be had in NYC's bar scene. “I have plans,” I lied.

I saw her visibly slump, resigned, before she focused her attention on her call. “Yes, I'd like a car,” she began, then rattled off the address I knew to be Irina's brand-new loft in Soho, purchased before the ink was even dry on her million dollar contract with Roxanne Dubrow.

I turned to face my youthful counterpart, realizing suddenly where that bravado I saw cloaking her came from. Be
cause I knew that whatever wisdom she couldn't possibly have didn't really matter in the face of what she did have. Like money. And most of all…

Power.

 

I felt a kind of power, too, when I dialed up Jonathan Somerfield the next afternoon. Maybe it was because my father had provided me with the opportunity to wield my charms on Jonathan Somerfield once more. The moment I announced myself to the assistant who answered the phone, I felt a kind of tingle of anticipation, as if I was certain the good doctor wouldn't outlast a second encounter.

“Hello, Dr. Somerfield,” I practically purred into the phone when his deep, rich voice finally boomed a greeting over the line. “This is Grace Noonan.”

I heard him hesitate and felt my heart begin to sink. Did he not remember me? Was it possible I had not made such a great impression on him as he had made on me? “Dr. Noonan's daughter?”

He cleared his throat. “Hello. What can I do for you?”

I bit back a disappointed sigh. Well, I could be all business, too, if that was how he wanted to play it. “Actually, my father recommended I contact you,” I said, clearing up any misconceptions my somewhat breathy hello might have created. “He sends his regards and asks if you would do me—well, him, really,” I added quickly, “a favor.”

“Of course,” he said, his tone clearly warming now that he recognized this to be a matter between him and his former colleague.