Cheyney Fox (4 page)

Chapter 4

A
tap at the door, a voice way off in the distance. Cheyney struggled out of a deep sleep. It was like swimming against a fluffy, pink tide of candy floss. Exhausted, she felt herself slipping, slipping, back into a hazy mist somewhere between sleep and daydreaming.

Grasp of a cool hand on her naked shoulder. More awake now than asleep, she heard, “Yuh’ve been doin’ an awful lotta sleepin’ these mornens. What ah call lazy, somethin’s wrong sleepen. Are you sick’nen for somethin’ beside that han’sum devil of a man of yours, Miss Cheyney?”

Dora’s voice brought a faint smile to Cheyney’s lips. It usually did. Dora Washington was Cheyney’s black housekeeper, a rich presence in the background of her life. Her smile faded as Dora’s words took effect. Maybe her housekeeper was right. For weeks now she had had enormous difficulty not only rising in the morning but keeping awake during the day. She opened a wakeful eye on Dora. The housekeeper had more to say:

“Well, if you is, you ain’t goin’ to be no longer. Look what I have.” Dora placed the antique-footed breakfast tray of coral-colored Japanese lacquer with its pale yellow silk organza cloth and napkin, its Lalique glass dishes (cup and saucer, plate and glass), and included a slim vase in the shape of a lily that proffered a perfect white rose, on the bed. From the pocket under the crisp white apron of her black uniform, she waved a cablegram. Cheyney’s lethargy vanished. Wide awake now,
she pulled herself up against the pillows and tore the cablegram open.

Cheyney crushed the cable against her heart, closed her eyes, and felt tears of joy brimming beneath her lids. Not like her, this lack of control over her emotions. Opening her eyes, she announced to Dora rather more calmly than she felt, “Tonight. He’ll be here tonight, Dora.” Happiness took over.

Dora gave her employer a severe glance. She shook her head in disapproval before turning her back on Cheyney to open the draperies and then the windows. “Yuh’re a
mess
,” said Dora. “One word from that man and yuh’re always a mess. He’s
too
han’sum, Miss Cheyney,” she said, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth in admonishment and continuing to shake her head from side to side. “He’s
too
han’sum a man,
too charmin
’. A charmin’ man, like Mistah Christopha. Oh my, you better be careful. That man spells trouble, ah can feel it in mah bones. Ah should know. He’s just lahk mah Bill. He’s baaad people.”

Dora returned to the bed, bent down, and poured a cup of fragrant Blue Mountain coffee for Cheyney. She snapped the crisp white napkin in the air and handed it to her unfurled.

“If he’s such ‘bad people,’ Dora, then why do you make so much fuss over him the minute he walks through the door?”

“Ah tell yuh why. ’Cause that man, he shore can weave a spell around a woman, even a black maid like me. There ain’t a man, woman, or chile is safe from Mistah Christopha when he lays on that charm o’his. An God help yah, he’s ’n
love
with yuh. He’s bad people, an bad people ’n love that’s mighty big danger. That ain’t their natural state. Yuh gotta watch out.”

Cheyney had to smile. Dora was no fool. Cheyney hoped that she wasn’t being one either.

“Well, Mr. Charm himself is arriving from Paris tonight, Dora, only one day late of his promise. It’s to be dinner, in the Ninety-fourth Street flat.”

The hint of a glaze came over Dora’s eyes. She looked at her wristwatch. Cheyney knew why the handsome, slender
black woman was checking the time. Dora was a drinker. And no sneak drinker either. There was nothing sneaky about Dora. She and Cheyney had an understanding about the drinking. Cheyney never checked the whiskey bottle, and Dora drank no more than she could hold without it showing. There were occasional lapses on Dora’s part, but both employer and housekeeper tended to ignore them. They had never been offensive enough for a scene.

“What time is it, Dora?”

“Eight-fifteen, but it feels lahk eleven. Lordy, lord, does it evah feel lahk eleven. Shoot, Miss Cheyney, don’ya look at me lahk that. You know ah got mah drinkin’ rules.” Eleven was what she always claimed, but they both knew that it was an elastic eleven; more often than not, it stretched back to ten o’clock.

Cheyney watched Dora walk to the mirror and fuss with the perfectly neat chignon she wore at the nape of her neck. Dora was a terrific housekeeper, a brilliant cook, but an even better performer.

She spoke a servant’s affected classy English, but liked slipping into her other tongue, which Cheyney suspected was an equally affected negroid folksy from the deep South. She did both very well, considering she was Harlem born and bred. Dora was quick to impress on any guest who offered a compliment that she had learned her manners and her work and all about
humanity
from her onetime employer, Fanny Brice, whom she had clearly adored. Her style and class pretensions (which she chid her employer for not cultivating) and dress-sense came from Miss Fanny and her girlfriend, Mae West. Dora Washington was a one-off, New York character, wise without being wily, interesting because she knew how to please and at the same time command respect and affection from those she served. Dora knew how to play the game.

Cheyney watched Dora looking at her in the mirror. The housekeeper, hands on hips, spoke to the mirror.

“Yuh do spoil that man too much.”

“He spoils me.”

“Big girl, you don’t know what real spoilin’ is. What you mean is, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, he gives you mighty good lovin’. It ain’t the same as real spoilin’. It’s good, mindja,
but it would be better if that man warn’t so devilment charmin’. Don’t fret, I said my piece now, and I’ll make dinner for you, with all them favorite things your man likes t’eat. Not for him, mindja, for you, cause you’re so happy he’s com’n home.” She paused for a minute and then she said, “Lordy, but yuh do look a peaky thing this mornin’. You sure you’re feelin allright?”

“Me, I feel wonderful.”

Dora watched the woman she referred to as “mah madam” spoon out her grilled grapefruit. She sat down at the end of the bed. “A word?” she asked.

“Sure. What’s on your mind, Dora?”

“I hope we’re doin’ right, Miss Cheyney. This business of you givin’ up your home to make and live in this here gallery of yours. Yuh do realize in two days’ time you’re goin’ be livin’ here permanent-like. Don’t look like much of a home to me, not after what yuh’ve been used to.”

“Well, too late to worry about it now, Dora. The gallery has demanded a great many sacrifices. Let’s not go back over them now. Just pray it all works out according to plan.”

Dora abruptly changed the subject. “Yuh better get up. Ah’ve got them ’lectricians here workin’ downstairs. Mr. Sebastian’s waiting on yuh, and he says, would ah come in an tell yuh we’ve all got a big day today. Ah’ll leave yuh now. Ah got a mountain o’ work ta do now Mistah Christopha’s comin’ home.”

“Mr. Christopha’s comin’ home.” Those words kept ringing in Cheyney’s ears. So many firsts suddenly loomed: The first time he will have seen the gallery. Pursuing their separate careers while living together under one roof. Facing the world as a couple. For Cheyney they were monumental steps, not easily taken.

It meant ignoring the disapproval of friends, family, associates. She wasn’t even sure she didn’t herself disapprove of what she was doing. So she had made one fast rule where Christopher was concerned. They would ask nothing of each other. Their being together had to be natural, easy, without artifice. Whatever they were to give to each other would have to be voluntary. She wanted nothing but love to govern what they had together. And to that end she demanded of herself
that she see Christopher in real terms and without illusions, and accept him or reject him for the man he was. To stay with him for as long as their love lasted was just about all Cheyney dared to hope for in their relationship. She needed no Dora to tell her her lover was “baad people.” She knew it deep in the very core of loving him.

It wasn’t going to be easy. How would they react to each other under the pressures of the real world? They had only known the glamour of a Greek island love affair, an Athens cultural hop in the sunshine of their infatuation with each other. They had been a couple besotted by romance, shared erotic yearnings, who fed each other oysters and drank chilled Chablis in a Paris bistro on the rue de Seine, as if they were the only lovers the city had ever seen. Love letters filled with passion and affection, and reminders of sexual delights to ease their long separations, were about to be replaced by day-to-day living and loving in the hard reality of New York City.

Easy for them? How could it be? Their love affair was an enormous intrusion into their routine lives. Even so, to give each other up? Unthinkable!

Cheyney was no wealthy heiress with an ancient European title. Nor was she high society or old money or a celebrity of any kind; the types Christopher usually cultivated, using his struggling expatriate-painter image, his grand manners and charm, in search of position and security. She wasn’t even a Paris, London, or New York collector, top art dealer or museum director of either sex, to be teased and taunted to further himself. Cheyney Fox did not fit into Christopher Corbyn’s scheme of things. She just happened.

As for Christopher — an only moderately interesting American painter, in the process of divorcing a Spanish duchess, frittering his talent away on decorative collages, spoiled by women, torn between high society, the grand European life, and the bohemian and artistic world — he was hardly the kind of man she had expected to capture her heart. But he had.

A penniless artist living in a grand period house on a remote Greek island, with an equally grand
palazzo
in Florence, and a pied-à-terre in Paris, all stuffed full of shabby possessions. He shared ownership with a cunning Greek painter who was as flamboyant a homosexual and amoral snob, pimping for the
need of both, as Christopher was conservative and a periodic recluse. Christopher appeared, when in the capital cities of the world, in his slightly shiny but well-presented Brooks Brothers clothes, as the beautiful, even bashful gentleman painter whose only interest was his work. Hard to equate that image he projected with the gossip that made him an accomplished lover and user of lonely, wealthy women.

Kostas and Christopher: partners in houses and studios, people they cultivated. Close as brothers, movers, and pushers for their own selfish ends — more like partners in crime, some even hinted. No, not exactly the sort of man Cheyney Fox needed. Love had set a time bomb in both their lives that was ticking away. Or so people said, until they saw the couple together. Then they were not so sure.

Christopher too handsome? A tall, broad-shouldered man with thick, dark blond hair with streaks of white from the sun, he was yet fair-skinned. Blue, seductive eyes, yes, but it was his face that captivated: big with a wide forehead, a determined square chin, the masculine shape broken by a finely chiseled nose, a mouth that would have been mean but for the lips; their shape and softness made him look sensitive, vulnerable even. There was a combination of virile masculinity shaded by an innocent boyishness in his face, that, along with elements of his character, voice, and manner, charmed on a grand scale.

Cheyney never believed — but then she never disbelieved either — the gossip or other people’s reactions to Christopher or Kostas. She was living her love for him on a day-to-day basis. All she hoped for was that she could get on with her life, he with his, and they with a life together. No fantasies, no rose tints in the glasses.

Cheyney was reminded of what Dora had said. She was giving up her home, the love place they had hidden in the last time they were together in New York. Tonight a reunion there, tomorrow night a farewell to their secret hideaway. Christopher. Suddenly she felt only half alive without him. As if she was treading the waters of a life and not living it at all. She laughed out loud as she hopped out of bed to bathe and dress. In her private office on the ground floor of the gallery, she found Sebastian. He was, as usual, on the telephone. Cheyney riffled through the mail. She tried not to become annoyed with
him. But, as often lately, Sebastian had become an irritant that she found increasingly hard to take. They would have to sort a few things out, and soon. But not today, she thought. As she heard the tail end of his conversation, she turned to face him.

“Good morning, Sebastian.”

He rose from her chair and, putting his hands on her shoulders, gave her a kiss, first on one cheek and then on the other. “Good morning, Cheyney. You look radiant this morning.”

“Every time you bestow your De Gaulle kiss on me, Sebastian, I half expect to be given the Croix de Guerre. What act of bravery have I unknowingly committed this morning?” she asked with a teasing smile.

“You were a great success at my drinks party last night. Truman Capote thought you were charming. He will come to our
vernissage
. That’s very important.”

“Why, Sebastian? Is he a potential customer?” Cheyney was sorry the moment she said it. The last thing she wanted this morning was a confrontation with Sebastian. But, for weeks now, ever since Sebastian had bought into the gallery for a small share of the profits, she had been concerned that he was using the gallery, and her, more as a social event than a business. Sebastian’s contribution was supposed to have been public relations, since he claimed to be on intimate terms with everyone who was anyone in New York artistic circles.

That was turning out to be not quite true. And, as for those he did know — well, Sebastian had no influence on them whatsoever. Quite the reverse, in fact. They looked on Sebastian Cohen as a well trust-funded, ineffectual, social butterfly, a well-read, much traveled young gentleman. An inverted snob, living as close to the poverty line as society would allow him lest it label him “rich Jew.” The label he was looking for was “intellectual-poet-Jew,” with not too much emphasis on the Jew. For him, society was made up of gods. He basked in their glory, making it a part of his life.