Butterfly (5 page)

a bottle of champagne chilling in a silver bucket; the subdued lights softly illuminated a

crystal ashtray, a single rose in a bud vase. Muted music came from unseen speakers.

Trudie couldn’t believe how nervous she was. Trudie Stein, who had been taught by

her father to be always in control of a situation, to be the one in command. Even on her

Saturday-night prowls, when she met and drove home with strangers, she was the one

calling the shots. With not a ripple of anxiety or self-doubt.

Now she found herself wondering, briefly,
What on earth am I doing here?

But hadn’t her father taught her always to reach for the stars, to spin the dreams of her

heart’s desire? Hadn’t he taught her everything about the construction business, taking

her on jobsites when she was a little girl, hammering into his only child a sense of self-

worth, of identity, of independence? Hadn’t her parents argued on this one issue, Sophie

wanting her daughter to follow tradition and find a husband and be a good wife and

mother, Sam insisting that the world was changing, that times were changing and that his

daughter was going to be anything she wanted to be? Sam Stein, the fairest, most honest

man to walk the face of the earth, in Trudie’s mind, had taught her, right up to the day of

his tragic and untimely death, to dream, and to make those dreams come true.

Well, wasn’t that what she was doing here at Butterfly? Searching for, as her cousin had

put it, a
rescue?
Perhaps, Trudie hoped now as she heard footsteps coming down the hall,

she would find answers within these walls, perhaps she would discover what it was she was

searching for, find out what it was that drove her out of her apartment on Saturday nights

and seemed to compel her to take up with strangers in decidedly unsatisfying and some-

times disastrous encounters. Trudie was here for more than just the sex—that she could

get anywhere. She was here hoping to find solutions.

There was another door on the other side of the room. It opened now and he entered.

Trudie couldn’t believe it—he was even better-looking in this softly lit, intimate setting.

He was impeccably dressed. Trudie recognized that the jacket he wore was a Pierre Cardin

of black wool, and it fitted him to a T. Gray slacks, pearl-gray silk shirt and burgundy tie.

And the man himself: tall and slender, with confidence in the set of his shoulders. He

could be the chief executive officer of a large corporation, she thought, or the chancellor

of a major university.

He came up to her and said in a quiet, refined voice, “I am so pleased you could come

tonight. Dinner won’t be for a while yet. Won’t you sit down?”

He touched her elbow and led her to the blue velvet love seat. “Would you like a

drink?” he asked, walking to the wet bar.

“White wine, please,” she said, amazed at how shy her voice sounded.

He came back with a long-stemmed glass for her and a tumbler of brown liquid for

himself. He took a seat in a wing chair, settling with the ease and familiarity of being in

his own house, and set his drink aside, untasted.

20

Kathryn Harvey

Trudie looked down at her wine. She suddenly felt self-conscious under his gray-eyed

gaze. She was surprised to find that she had no idea what to say, what to do next. After all,

this was different from a Saturday-night pickup. She was
paying
for this one!

“I am reading the most interesting book,” he said, reaching for the book that lay on

the small table by his chair. He held it out for her to see. “Perhaps you have read it?”

Trudie looked at the title. Yes, she had read it.

“What did you think of it?” he asked.

“It was all right. Not as good as his earlier works, though.”

“How so?”

“Uh, well…” Trudie took a sip of her wine, to stall for time. To collect herself.

What was wrong with her? In all her years with her father, one of their favorite pas-

times had been to get into heated discussions over books and theories. He had taught her

the art and trickery of debate, and she had gotten so good at it that in the year before his

death she had usually won.

Trudie suddenly realized what was wrong.
She was out of practice.
Eight years of pool

lingo and “What’s your sign?” in pickup bars had rusted her skills. Now her silver-haired

companion was inviting her to give it a try.

It was just what she had asked for. What she had written on the piece of notepaper

downstairs.

“I think he’s reaching this time,” she said, referring to the book’s author. “His earlier

works were based on concrete theories and careful study. But this one seems fabricated.

You have to bear in mind that his last book came out ten years ago. Since then, nothing.

When I read that one there, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the author woke up one

morning and realized he was fading into oblivion. It’s as if he gathered all his friends

together and said, ‘Hey! I need a new pop-science idea. Anybody got any suggestions?’”

He laughed softly. “You might be right, although I haven’t finished reading it. I’ll

reserve judgment until the jury is in.”

“What’s your name?” Trudie asked suddenly. “What should I call you?”

“What would you like to call me?”

“Thomas,” she said. “You look like a Thomas.”

He sipped his drink and said, “You know, even though I haven’t finished this book, I

believe I must challenge you on what you said about this author’s work. You claim that his

earlier works are based on solid theories. What about his first book? An obvious con-

trivance if ever I saw one.”

Trudie raised her eyebrows. “But it was his
first!
And it was written in the sixties. He

was young and naive, testing his wings, so to speak. Give him the benefit of the doubt, at

least.”

“It seems to me that you’re not giving him that same benefit of the doubt with this

book.”

“You haven’t read it all the way through. Wait until you get to Chapter Ten. His whole

argument collapses there.”

“I’ve read Chapter Ten and I disagree, because when you examine carefully the under-

lying structure of his thesis—”

BUTTERFLY

21

The debate got into full swing. Growing in confidence now, Trudie kicked off her

shoes and drew her legs up under her. Thomas refilled her wine and continued to chal-

lenge her ideas. And then there came a discreet knock at the door and a waiter entered

with a room-service cart. Trudie didn’t feel like eating. She was too keyed up, too involved

in the discussion. She and Thomas continued their argument while the waiter presented

the fresh spinach and mushroom salad and then tossed it. Trudie attacked Thomas’s con-

clusions as the sour cream and caviar were spooned onto jellied consommé; he drove her

back into a defensive corner while the basil chicken and small red rosemary potatoes were

served. They completely ignored the custard dessert; they let their coffee go cold. Trudie’s

pool-green eyes flashed as she scored a point; her voice rose when a win went to him. She

talked fast, often interrupting him. She leaned on her folded arms, toyed with her dan-

gling earrings in agitation, grew increasingly more animated with each barrier he threw in

her path.

She became acutely aware of
him.
The faint scent of English Leather, the glint of his

gold Rolex, his finely manicured fingernails. Class, every inch of him. A far cry from

jeans and hardhats and sexist paternalism. Thomas
listened
to what she said, and he gave

her credit where it was due. He had removed his jacket and loosened his tie. He was

inclined across the table toward her, just as intense and deeply committed to the debate

as she. Trudie felt her heart race faster; she grew giddy. She was suddenly high. And very

turned on.

“You have your facts wrong,” he said.

“I do not! If there’s one subject I know better than anyone else, it’s this. You have to

read Whittington to fully understand—”

“Whittington is on the fringe.”

Trudie jumped up out of her chair. “That happens to be an
opinion
, Thomas, not a

fact.”

She walked away from him, whipped around and strode back. She caught a glimpse of

herself in the mirror: her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright and feverish. God, but

she was turned on. She suddenly realized she wanted this man more than she had ever

wanted any man, and decided that if he just touched her she would catch on fire.

And then Thomas was on his feet and reaching for her. He cut off her sentence with a

hard kiss, and the debate was all over and Trudie was whispering, “Oh my God, hurry,

hurry!
”

They made love on the rich carpet. When Trudie cried out in orgasm she thought she

would die—she had never experienced a climax so intense, so utterly shattering. And

when it was over and she lay for a while in his arms, she marveled at the evening she had

just spent, and realized that this had been the best sex she had had in a long time, possi-

bly in her whole life. As Thomas held her and caressed and kissed her, Trudie could hardly

believe it had truly happened, that it was
real.

And then a question came into her mind. She wanted to ask Thomas, but didn’t want

to break the spell. So she asked only herself, and she didn’t have the answer.

Who was behind this magical operation in the rooms above Fanelli’s men’s shop? Who

thought of it? Who had started it? Who ran it?
Who
,
in fact
,
was Butterfly?

4

New Mexico: 1952

Rachel’s earliest childhood memory was of waking up in the middle of the night and

hearing her mother screaming. She remembered crawling out of the crib—she might even

have still been in diapers—and toddling down the hall to another room. The door was ajar.

She knew Mummy and Daddy were in there. She could recall walking in and seeing her

mother, naked, on her hands and knees on the bed, and Daddy, pushing her from behind,

with his tummy it looked like, while Rachel’s mother was crying and begging him to stop.

It wasn’t until Rachel was fourteen years old that she learned what it was they had been

doing.

Two mysteries surrounded Rachel Dwyer’s birth. She had been unaware of the exis-

tence of either until one scorching day when she was ten years old and, having been left

alone in the trailer because her parents had gone down to the local roadside tavern, Rachel

had gotten bored.

Boredom leads to restlessness, and restlessness can breed curiosity, which in turn can

lead to discovery. Sometimes, unwanted discoveries. As in the case of the battered old

King Edward cigar box, which Rachel found wedged under the kitchen sink behind

cleansers and rags.

At ten, Rachel was a precocious child—not well educated (her jobless, itinerant father

saw to that) but bright. She could read beyond her age level—a self-taught skill born of

loneliness and the desperation to escape from a squalid life into the fantasy life of books—

and she had a sharp eye. In a glance she saw that the cigar box had not been randomly

shoved back in the moldy recess, but had been placed there by a careful hand. Clearly, to

Rachel’s richly imaginative mind, a treasure box.

She opened it.

Among the baffling collection of ribbons, faded birthday cards, a ring, and movie-

ticket stubs were two items that perplexed the ten-year-old. One was a photograph; the

other was an official-looking document.

Being able to read so well, she learned in seconds that the document was a marriage

license. Her parents’ names were printed on it, and there was a town listed that Rachel

had never heard of—Bakersfield, California. But the date made her think hard.

The certificate said her mother and father were married on July 14, 1940.

And yet Rachel knew she had been born in 1938.

She was two years old when they got married. That could mean only one thing: that

he wasn’t her real Daddy!

22

BUTTERFLY

23

This pleased her so much that she didn’t give the photograph the scrutiny it deserved,

for if she had, she might, in her youthful wisdom, have seen something disturbingly