Destiny (106 page)

He had brought a bottle of whiskey upstairs with him; in his pocket were a couple of glasses. Now, defiantly, he unscrewed the cap of the bottle. He held it up.

"You want some? It's Scotch."

"Oh, Lewis. I've had so much champagne. . . ." She giggled. "Okay— maybe a teeny drop."

Lewis poured two large measures. He swallowed his own in one gulp, and immediately felt better. Stephani was still moving around the room. She looked at the eighteenth-century engravings of landscapes. She bent and touched one of the rugs, which was of needlepoint, a piece of museum quality. She moved to the dressing table, touched the silver and lapis brushes, from Cartier, and then bent, and looked at her own reflection in the Queen Anne mirror. She straightened again, and looked around the room once more: the fireplace, the two chairs which stood near it, the bowl of white roses, the serpentine-fronted chest of drawers, which was walnut,

648 • SALLY BEAUMAN

with a fine patina, and one of the rare authenticated Chippendale pieces. A shght expression of disappointment came over her face.

"It's not quite—I thought . . ." She looked at Lewis uncertainly. "It's kind of plain, don't you think?"

"She doesn't go in for cerise velvet headboards, if that's what you mean."

Stephani flushed scarlet; her eyes rounded with reproach. Lewis at once felt ashamed of himself.

"I mean," he said more gently, "she doesn't like too much color. She likes things muted and—well, plain. You know. It's the same way she dresses. ..."

Stephani immediately looked happier. She came over to him and took a little drink of the Scotch. She looked down at the floor, and then up at him again.

"Could I look at her dresses, Lewis? Please. Just a quick look before we go back downstairs?"

"All right. Sure. Why not?" Lewis took her arm; he was beginning to feel reckless. "They're through here."

He led her across the room and through into the dressing room beyond that. It was a large room, flanked with built-in closets from floor to ceiling. Lewis passed along them, opening their doors. Some were shallow, others Uke small rooms themselves. "Nightgowns. Underwear. Day dresses. Suits. Skirts. Blouses. Sweaters ..."

"Oh. Lewis."

Stephani's face was transparent with wonder. She followed him slowly from closet to closet, occasionally reaching out a hand to touch something reverently. She lifted up a little lace camisole, and held it against her face; it was as fine and delicate as a cobweb.

"She has those made for her in France. There's some convent place, where they're famous for that lace. ..."

Stephani laid the camisole back very carefully. She moved on. She touched the material of the dresses, one by one: wild silk, pure linen, wool barathea, tweeds woven by hand in Scotland.

"Oh," she sighed. "They're beautiful. You can feel the money." The next closet: shelf upon shelf of cashmeres, arranged carefully by colors; gray, pale blue, slate blue, Prussian blue, navy blue, black, rose, shell pink . . .

"Take a look at these." Lewis threw back another door.

And there were the evening dresses, line upon line of them. Fortuny velvet; silk moire from Givenchy; black taffeta from Saint Laurent; one from Hartnell with a bodice of tiny hand-stitched seed pearls. Long dresses, short dresses. Stephani passed along the racks, touching them. She

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looked at the labels, and her hands trembled. For a moment, Lewis thought she was going to burst into tears.

He was enjoying himself now. He felt almost brutal, though whether toward Stephani, or Helene, he was not quite certain.

"You want to take a look at the furs? They're in here."

He opened another, heavier door, which led into the cool room, kept at a constant forty-five degrees, with controlled humidity. Stephani gave a little cry.

"Oh, I didn't know she hked furs. She never wears them. . . ."

"She doesn't. She thinks they're cruel. I bought her most of them. She wears them sometimes. When she wants to please me." Lewis shrugged.

Stephani ran forward and began touching. Red fox; Blackglama mink; lynx; a long coat of brown sables.

Stephani hesitated. She touched it. She looked back over her shoulder at Lewis, guiltily, as if she were being caught in the act of shopUfting. Then she slipped the coat off its hanger.

"Please, Lewis, please. Let me just try it on. Just for a second. I never had a fur coat. Well, I had a rabbit thing once, but that doesn't count, does it? Please, Lewis ..."

"Go ahead. Why not? Helene doesn't Uke it anyway."

They came out of the cool room, and Lewis swung the door shut.

"Put it on. Then come and show me. I'm going to get another drink."

He walked back into Helene's bedroom, poured a large whiskey, and swallowed it. He looked around him. He had never liked this room, and now he hated it. It reminded him of his parents' home. It reminded him of nights of humiliation. Had he ever made love to Helene successfully in this room? He was not certain. Perhaps, at the very beginning, when they first moved here, but he was not sure. He could feel the past leaping and bending in his mind, taking on a life of its own. He passed his hand dazedly across his eyes; the room would not keep quite still. It fluctuated, advanced, and then receded. An idea came to him.

On one wall there was a narrow bookcase. This bookcase, when manipulated in the correct way, swung back, and behind it was the safe. One of the safes. The safe where Helene kept her jewelry. He knew the combination. He had been through the safe, just as he had been through her desk and her filing cabinets, because once, crazily, he had believed that maybe she kept the love letters in there.

He opened it, frowning in concentration, lifted out the boxes and the soft chamois bags, and carried them over to the bed. There, he began to tip them out, one by one, and there was his past, there was his marriage, tumbling and glittering on the bed in front of him. The diamond engagement ring; the matched pearls bought in Bond Street for Helene's birth-

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day; diamond earrings, bought to celebrate their second film. A Victorian belt of silver fiUgree; a necklace of moonstones; a long rope of amethyst beads; a diamond collar; bracelets of diamonds. Most of these things she rarely wore, and Lewis looked at them, feeling hurt and incomprehension well up inside him. Why didn't she wear them? Was there something wrong with them? Or was it because he gave them to her—was that why?

For a moment he wanted to cry. Then Stephani came back into the room, shyly, wrapped from head to mid-calf in sable.

"What do you think? Oh, Lewis. It's so soft. Do you think it suits me?"

"It suits you," Lewis said. "Come here."

She approached him slowly, and stopped just a foot away from him. She looked at him, and Lewis saw that her eyes were both dreamy and intent. She passed her tongue across her lips. He knew that expression. He knew what she wanted.

"I've been bad, Lewis. Just a little bit bad. Don't get mad now. . . ."

She lifted her hands and slowly opened the fur coat. Underneath it she was naked. Her skin looked white, almost translucent, against the fur.

"Come closer. Stand still."

Stephani advanced another step. Her nipples were hard and erect. She was trembling. Slowly and deliberately, Lewis began to pick up the jewelry from the bed. Piece by piece. "Don't move. I want you to wear it. I want you to wear it all. ..."

His voice was shghtly hoarse; his hands were shaking; not because he was aroused, he was hardly aroused at all, but because he felt angry and afraid. He lifted the silver belt and fastened it around her waist. He took her wrists and clipped bracelet after bracelet around them. He held out her fingers and pushed the rings onto them. Her fingers were not as narrow as Helene's, and some of the rings would not fit. Lewis gave a cry of exasperation. He began to thread them on the long necklaces. He looped the necklaces around Stephani's throat; he fastened the dog collar of diamonds. Stephani never said a word. He removed her own earrings, and tossed them to one side. He lifted out two exquisite chandeher earrings of emeralds—he did not recognize those . . . who had given her those?—and screwed them carefully to Stephani's ears. There were still more bracelets; two he fastened around her ankles, others he looped from the belt, and from the necklaces.

"Oh, Jesus," Stephani said. "Oh Jesus."

"Wait. I haven't finished."

There was one more pair of earrings, a perfectly matched pair of soH-taire diamond clips, each fifteen carats at least, maybe more. He had not given her those, either, and they were lying in a box from de Chavigny. Bitch, bitch, bitch; he felt anger flare in his mind.

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"This is the important part. Keep still."

He knelt down. He pressed his face against the wiry pubic hair between Stephani's pale thighs. She peroxided it, which Lewis had never hked, but he did not care now. Very carefully, Lewis parted the lips of her sex. He licked the soft slit of flesh, and sucked the hardening point of her cUtoris between his lips.

Stephani moaned, and Lewis drew back. The folds of flesh were glistening, as pink as a rose or a wound compared to the pallor of her thighs. He picked up the two earrings, and with trembhng hands, fastened them to the lips of her sex, so they gripped the tight curls of hair, the two folds of flesh. He looked at them, and let out his breath in a long sigh. They looked like two stars, or two eyes above a second mouth.

That idea aroused him; he felt his body stir. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against the diamonds. He hcked their flat table with his tongue. They were startlingly cold; ice cold. He lapped at Stephani's flesh, and its warmth, its musky wetness, after the coldness and hardness of the diamonds, made his mind surge. Stephani cried out.

"Jesus. Lewis. Oh, my God ..." She arched slightly, moving against his mouth with a small erratic frantic movement. Then she stood still, and Lewis drew back. The diamonds danced before his eyes. Stephani gave a small shiver.

"Lewis—you think, maybe, we ought to—they hurt, Lewis . . ."

"No, they don't. They don't hurt at all. You hke them. You like diamonds. You like furs. You like all that stuflF. You hke it when I do this to you. It makes you hot."

He stood up and gave her a little push.

"Lie down."

Stephani stared at him. Her small pink tongue passed across her lips. She reached her hand down and touched the two diamonds, delicately, with the tip of one finger; then she touched herself, one finger, with its scarlet painted nail, between the diamonds, between the folds of flesh. She withdrew it, glistening, and pressed it against Lewis's hps.

"It makes me wet." She gave a small smile, and backed away from him slowly. Holding his gaze, she lay down on the bed. Carefully, she stroked and arranged the folds of sable; still smiling, she parted her thighs. From the ballroom, Lewis could hear strains of music; they were playing a tango.

He stood at the edge of the bed, looking down at Stephani. Against the darkness of the furs, her skin was alabaster white; her breasts jutted upward through the jewels. She rested her hands across her thighs, and Lewis saw sex in colors, black as fur, white as skin, red as her painted fingernails, bright as the diamonds that glittered in the pale pubic hair like twin stars.

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"Tell me you're mine. Tell me you belong to me. I own you. You sold yourself to me. Tell me the truth for once. Tell me . . ."

He had spoken without being conscious of doing so. The voice he hardly recognized as his own. Stephani bit her lip; through the sudden crazy anger and pain that swirled around in his mind, he could see that she was afraid, and excited, and that she did not understand. He realized that he did not want to look at her. The hair was wrong. The face was wrong. Everything was wrong.

He made a lurching movement toward the bed and lay down on top of her. He pressed his weight on her hard; he insinuated his hand between their bodies, and felt for the diamonds, felt for her. Nothing happened. His own arousal had gone. His body felt small and diminished, as still as a stone.

After a while, Stephani unzipped him. She coaxed, and stroked, and squeezed and touched. Lewis fumbled for her breasts, and sucked on them; he knelt back and stared at the diamonds, and the pale pubic hair; the fissure between the lips of her sex looked more and more like a red gash, a terrible wound. Still nothing happened, and Lewis began to cry. Stephani put her arms around him, and rocked him.

"Lewis, honey, don't do that, don't cry. It doesn't matter. You've had a lot to drink, Lewis, that's all. ..." She hesitated. Stephani had her own kind of tact. "Maybe, you know, maybe it's because this is where you do it. With Helene."

She gave a little shiver. Her voice became sad.

"And I don't look right tonight. It's always better when I look right. Oh, Lewis, don't cry."

Lewis lifted his head. The tears had stopped, as suddenly as they began; he started to laugh.

"That's what you think? Well, you're wrong. I hardly ever come in here. This is the first time I've been here in two years. Maybe more . . ."

Stephani's eyes grew round. She stopped stroking him, and lay very still.

"You mean," she said in a puzzled voice, after a little pause. "You mean, you don't sleep here, with Helene?"

"Of course I don't sleep here. I sleep in my own room."

"But you don't . . . you and Helene don't ..."

"I've just told you. No. Not in two years, maybe longer. I can't even remember. ..."

Lewis got up angrily from the bed. He did up his pants, straightened his shirt, adjusted his tie. Stephani lay absolutely motionless, watching him.

"Wasn't it . . . wasn't it very good? With Helene?" she said at last, in a small voice.

"It's none of your business, but since you ask—no. It was not. At the

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beginning maybe, but not anymore. It was goddamn torture, if you want to know."

He crossed the room, and poured out another half glass of whiskey. His hand shook.