I'll Take Manhattan (3 page)

Maxi hung back to scrutinize him as he walked easily and confidently ahead, sitting down in the chair that had been left empty for him by decree of his father since his twenty-first birthday, a chair that waited for him at each editorial board meeting, a chair he occupied more and
more rarely, as the advance of his disease of retinitis pigmentosa made his eyesight increasingly limited. Was his tunnel vision still relatively stable? Maxi wondered. It was never easy to know what Toby saw or didn’t see since one of the characteristics of his disease was that his vision varied from hour to hour, depending on the set of conditions in which he found himself, the distance and angle from which he looked at something, the brightness or dullness of the light, and a dozen other variables that had a maddening inconsistency so that at times he had moments of accurate seeing which only made the return of his condition of near-blindness more difficult to endure. But he
had
endured, he had made his peace with his condition as much as any man could, Maxi thought as she listened to him greet the various people in the room, immediately recognizing and turning to them at the sound of their voices. For a moment Maxi forgot why she was here in this large room, and lost herself in loving contemplation of her brother.

“Maxime.” Her name was spoken in a voice that had a faint British accent, a silver voice whose beauty caused Maxi to shiver. Her mother’s voice was the only one in the world that could make her jump and yet it sounded as if it had never been raised to give an order or ask a favor, much less express anger. It was a voice of such an assured and graceful pitch, of such cool, supple charm that it had obtained everything—or almost everything—that its possessor had ever wanted. Maxi turned to greet her mother, bracing herself.

“When did you get in, Maxime?” Lily Amberville asked betraying some surprise. “I thought you were still skiing in Peru. Or was it Chile?” She pushed her daughter’s bangs to one side, a familiar caressing gesture that indicated permanent disapproval of the way Maxi wore her hair. Maxi felt a futile anger that she had stopped expressing years earlier. Why, she thought, can no one make me, feel ugly except my mother?

Lily Amberville, who had lived the last three decades of her life in the aura of homage that surrounds a very few of the rich and powerful great beauties of the world, embraced her daughter with vice-regal dignity, an embrace to
which Maxi submitted as she always had, with a mixture of resentment and longing.

“Hello, Mother, you’re looking glorious,” she said truthfully.

“I wish you’d let us know that you were coming,” Lily replied, not returning or acknowledging the compliment. She almost seemed nervous, Maxi realized, although that wasn’t a word she had ever thought of in relation to Lily. Nervous and a little tense.

“I think there’s been some sort of mix-up, Mother. Nobody told me about today’s meeting. I wouldn’t have had any idea if Toby hadn’t phoned.…”

“Obviously there’s been some sort of communications problem—but hadn’t we better sit down?” Lily Amberville said vaguely and drifted away, leaving Maxi standing in the doorway. Pavka Mayer came up to her.

“Sit next to me, you devil. How often do I get this opportunity?”

“ ‘Devil’? You haven’t seen me for two months,” Maxi protested, laughing again. “For all you know, I may have reformed.”

“Devil,” Pavka insisted as she followed him into the room. How else, he thought, to describe the quintessence she distilled, a nimble, feisty, inquisitive, wide-awake ability to cause trouble, fascinating trouble that he couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything to change?

“Reformed?
My
Maxi?” he quizzed her. “May I assume that the seven dwarfs gave you that amazing black pearl because you were so innocent, so untouchable, so pure, so much like Snow White?”

“There was only one of him, actually, and he was of a perfectly normal height,” Maxi said, unblushingly, tucking the again-forgotten pearl quickly inside her blouse. It most certainly wasn’t daytime jewelry.

Before she had settled into the chair next to Pavka a hand grasped her too firmly by the arm. She swung around, stiffening with displeasure. Her uncle, Cutter Dale Amberville, her father’s younger brother, bent down and kissed her on her forehead. “Cutter,” Maxi said coldly, “what are you doing here?”

“Lily asked me to come. I’m surprised to see you, as a
matter of fact. I was convinced that you’d abandoned us for more interesting places. I’m so glad you’re home, Maxime.” His voice was warm and welcoming.

“Just where did you think I was, Cutter?” Only an effort at control kept the dislike she felt out of her voice.

“Everyone thought that you were skiing in Peru or Chile, somewhere quite unreachable. Something to do with helicopters and glaciers.”

“Is that the reason that I wasn’t notified of the meeting today?”

“Naturally, my dear. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying. We didn’t have a phone number. But I’m delighted to see I was wrong.”

“You should never listen to rumors, Cutter. Toby knew where I was if you’d thought of making that most obvious inquiry. But apparently even he wasn’t told. I find that very odd indeed. What’s more, even if I’d been up the Amazon I don’t like to be out of touch,” she stated crisply.

“It must just be a simple mistake.” Cutter Amberville smiled, a smile that reached the depths of his youthful blue eyes, a smile that redeemed his features from being impossibly distinguished, a smile so wide that it disarmingly revealed one crooked tooth and transformed his elegant head from that of an ambassador to that of a roustabout. He owed his fortune to the undeniable power of his smile and he had long forgotten the prep-school days when he used to practice it in front of a mirror, forcing warmth, and thus sincerity, to mount from his lips to his eyes by subtle alterations of his facial muscles.

Cutter Amberville had spent the last three years in Manhattan, returning in 1981 after an absence of more than twenty-five years punctuated only by a few brief visits. He had changed surprisingly little during all that time, never losing the spare fitness of the superb athlete he was. His still-blond hair was closely cut, his gaze a slash of blue, his manner never less than disarming. He was a compellingly alluring man who had bewitched many women, yet there was a darkness of some inner purpose in his manner, a hint of something hidden. He seemed to have little need for humor or for people whom he didn’t find useful. During his
entire lifetime Zachary Amberville had loved his brother deeply.

Cutter continued to beam down at Maxi with the unanswerable weapon of his smile. His hand still held her arm in a firm, even a protective way. Abruptly she jerked away, not caring if it looked rude, and popped herself down near Pavka. Cutter, unrebuffed, touched her hair with a small yet clearly intimate movement that made Maxi’s nose twitch briefly in disgust. Just what the devil, she wondered, had brought Cutter to the meeting? He had never attended one before.

She watched as her mother, with the distinctive floating walk, the unshakable proud distinction of the ballerina she had once been, went to the head of the table. Lily sat down next to the chair that had remained empty since Zachary Amberville’s death, a chair different from the others in the room, a worn, battered chair that achingly reminded everyone there of the laughing, daring, eager, gutsy, earthy man who had gone so suddenly.

She must not allow her tears to fall, Maxi told herself angrily. Every time she saw her father’s chair she was so vividly aware of him that, try as she would, tears rushed to her eyes. God knows, she’d wept and wept during this last year for the father she had adored but she always tried to keep her outbursts private. People were always embarrassed by the outward expression of another’s grief and such emotion had no place in a boardroom.

Holding her breath and concentrating fiercely, Maxi made herself retain her composure. Her eyes were bright but the tears did not fall. Safe now, from a public display of her deep loss, she watched as Cutter followed Lily. Just where was he planning to sit? Maxi asked herself. There didn’t seem to be an extra chair for him. She watched, incredulously, as her mother made a gesture as precise as it was astonishing and with one slender hand indicated to Cutter that he should take the chair that had never been occupied by anyone but her husband.

How could she! How
dared
she let Cutter sit there? Maxi cried to herself, her heart thudding. Next to her she heard a muffled sound of disbelief escape Pavka’s lips and all around the table there were hastily stifled sounds of
shock. The atmosphere in the room quivered with the impact of this unexpected act of Lily’s and people exchanged surreptitious, bewildered glances. However, Cutter seemed oblivious to them and sat down without any change in his expression.

Zachary Amberville had dominated his privately owned company, assisted by the group of people who were all in the room today. After his death his widow had started to appear at the board meetings that she had never attended during her husband’s lifetime. She was now the majority shareholder of the company. Lily had been left seventy percent of the voting shares in the corporation; the other thirty percent had been divided among Maxi, Toby, and their younger brother, Justin.

Maxi and occasionally Toby had both tried to attend board meetings when they were in town. However, Maxi had never heard her mother express any opinion or take part in any decision, nor had she done so herself. The editors of each magazine, the publishers and the business managers, headed by Pavka Mayer, had continued to run the huge enterprise as they had done under Zachary, with devotion, competence, great expertise and no diminution of zeal.

There was a moment of silence. Since no one knew the agenda of this meeting, they waited for Lily Amberville to announce it to them. But Lily still said nothing, her eyes cast down toward the table. Maxi watched, dumbfounded, too amazed to take a breath, as Cutter pushed her father’s chair a few inches out from the table, leaned back comfortably, perfectly at ease and took over the meeting.

“Mrs. Amberville has asked me to speak to you today,” he began quietly. “First of all, she regrets that she had to bring some of you into the city on such short notice, but she has an announcement to make that she felt you should all know about as quickly as possible.”

“What the devil … ?” Pavka said, in a low voice, turning to Maxi. She shook her head, tightened her lips and glared at Cutter. What had induced her mother to ask him to address the board? Why wasn’t Lily speaking for herself, instead of this investment banker, this stranger to the
group who had no right to be taking any part in the workings of Amberville Publications?

Cutter continued to sit calmly and speak in measured, authoritative tones.

“Mrs. Amberville has not, as you all know, made any changes in the structure of Amberville Publications in the last year since my brother’s unexpected and tragic death. But she has made a serious study of the future of this company, of its ten magazines and its real estate. Now, I think the time has come to face the fact that although six of the magazines are undisputed leaders in their field, four of them are in trouble.” He stopped to take a sip of water and Maxi’s heart beat even more rapidly. Her devious uncle was giving himself the aura of a general. “I think,” he had said, and all down the long table people were sitting without a sound, waiting for the announcement he had promised and had not yet made.

“We all know,” Cutter continued, his manner leisurely, “that my brother took more pleasure in creating a magazine than in enjoying its success; more interest in curing the problems of a sick magazine than in exploiting to the maximum the potential of a well one. That was his great strength, but now that he is gone it has become a weakness. Only another Zachary Amberville could have the necessary stubbornness, the willingness to sustain years of losses, and, particularly, the faith in his own creativity, that is necessary to continue to pour the profits of our six successful magazines into the hungry mouths of our weak ones.”

“
Our
,” Maxi thought in outrage.
Since when
, Cutter, have you had a part of Amberville Publications? Since when do you have the right to say “our”? But she sat in antagonistic, apprehensive silence, waiting, her stomach sinking at his ominously dominating manner.

“Three of our newest magazines,
Wavelength, Garden
, and
Vacation
, have been losing money at a rate that is simply unacceptable.
Buttons and Bows
has a value that, for years, has been purely sentimental.…”

“Just a minute, Mr. Amberville,” Pavka Mayer finally spoke, his voice slicing through Cutter’s composed urbane tones, “I hear a businessman talking, not a magazine man. I know every detail of Zachary’s future plans for
Wavelength
and
Garden
and
Vacation
and I can assure you that he didn’t expect them to be showing profits yet. However, it’s only a question of time before they do. As for
Buttons and Bows
, I feel …”

“Yes, what about
Buttons and Bows
, Cutter?” Maxi interrupted violently, suddenly finding herself on her feet. “You probably don’t know, innocent as you are of the business, but Father always called it his baby. Why, he founded this whole damn company on it!”

“A luxury, my dear,” Cutter answered, ignoring Pavka Mayer as if he hadn’t spoken. “It was a luxury to keep a magazine going because it had been lucky for him a long time ago, a luxury your father could well afford.”

“Then what the hell has changed?” Maxi cried. “If he could afford it, why can’t
we
afford it? Who are you to tell us all what we can and can’t afford?” She was shaking with pure, released anger.

“My dear Maxi, I’m speaking for your mother, not for myself. She
controls
Amberville—you seem to have forgotten that. Naturally it’s a shock to you to have the brutal facts of business expressed by someone who is on the outside.”

He looked at her expressionlessly yet he turned slightly toward her, focusing his words. “While your father was alive this corporation was a one-man show, as even you, my dear impetuous Maxi, would have to admit. But today Zachary Amberville isn’t here to make the difficult decisions. Only your mother has that right, only your mother has that power. She feels that it is her duty to engage in sound business practice since we don’t have the genius of your father to guide us. It’s her duty to look at the profit-and-loss statement, to look at the bottom line.”