I'll Take Manhattan (62 page)

“I haven’t seen her for months. My analysis is finished. I’m leaving you, Toby. For good.”

“Hey, wait a minute.”

“Now what?” India said from the doorway.

“Are you taking your sheets?” He looked meditative, with the beginning of concern.

“Of course.”

“Pillowcases? And all the little baby pillows with the scalloped edges?”

“What is the point of this?” India snapped. “Just because I finished my analysis doesn’t mean that I have to give up my bed linen. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

“I don’t think I’d be comfortable sleeping on no-iron, fifty-percent manmade fiber anymore,” Toby grinned, as if he’d solved a weighty problem that had bothered him for years.

“Oh?” India’s heart started to beat so loudly that she thought that even a man with sight must be able to hear it.

“So let’s make a deal. We’ll get married and I’ll get custody of your hope chest.” Under his casual words was the tensile strength of a stubborn man who had finally changed his mind.

“My hope chest? Do you mean my linen?” India asked, approaching him slowly, carefully, so as not to betray her sudden tumult, the wild fluttering of her hands.

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

“I don’t believe so. Certainly not. Hope chest indeed!” India said, sounding deeply affronted, in the best acting of her short but glorious career.

“Well, let’s get married and sleep on your sheets.” He spoke with his habitual tone of command but India could detect a tremble in his voice.

“Is that your idea of a proposal?” She almost achieved a sneer but failed, failed utterly.

“Yep.”

“You can’t do better than that?”

“I saved your life, didn’t I?” he said, too impatient to try for courtliness.

“You can’t use that line forever, Toby Amberville,” she whispered, the sweet wine of her voice denying her words.

Toby got out of his chair and walked over to her and held her tightly against him with his good arm. He gazed at her intently, his amber-brown eyes happier than she’d ever seen them, abandoned to utter tenderness. “If there were a moor nearby, I’d take you up on it and fill your arms with heather and tell you how much I love you, Cathy … but there’s only Central Park. I love you, Cathy, and I want to live with you forever and ever and have a dozen children and take my chances with life.”

“Heathcliff!”

“Does that mean yes?”

“I’ll have to call my agent first, but … I think we can work something out.”

In San Francisco, two weeks later, Jumbo Booker’s secretary buzzed him.

“It’s Mr. Amberville,” she said, “calling from New York. Shall I put him through?”

Jumbo was not surprised by the call. He’d been expecting it ever since the word had reached him that Cutter was out of Amberville Publications. During the two years that had passed since Cutter had left his job with Booker, Smity and Jameston, of which Jumbo was now president, he had all but lost touch with his high-flying former employee. However, the extraordinary news of Cutter’s unannounced, abrupt and unexplained departure from the publishing world had reached him through the corporate grapevine, a grapevine just as effective as the one that had passed on the knowledge of Cutter’s sexual exploits during his marriage.

Jumbo was perfectly aware that Cutter had not been able to find another job in all of investment banking. Cutter had had a dozen job interviews but nothing had materialized for him and Jumbo knew why even if Cutter did not. A third grapevine had slowly operated on the highest
levels of San Francisco society and many influential people had become gradually aware that Candice Amberville had killed herself. A number of them had guessed why, and from that number arrows of gossip had flown to Manhattan; gossip that would always be contained within a small group; gossip that would never leak beyond a certain circle; gossip so shocking, so vile, that it made anyone who heard it unwilling to ever have anything to do with Cutter Amberville again.

It no longer suited Jumbo Booker’s needs for superiority to do favors for his former roommate. He wished that he had never laid eyes on the man, that he had never had any association with him. It was embarrassing, no, worse than embarrassing. It was shameful to be known as his friend.

“Tell him I won’t take his call, Miss Johnson,” Jumbo said to his secretary.

“When shall I tell him he can reach you?”

“Tell him he can’t,” Jumbo answered.

“I don’t quite understand, Mr. Booker. Do you mean you’ll be out all day?”

“No, I mean that I will not speak to him on the phone now or at any time in the future. Not on the phone and not in person. Make it perfectly clear, Miss Johnson.”

“Oh,” she said blankly, astonished and not sure what to do.

“Don’t worry about being rude. Just repeat what I’ve just said and then hang up the phone. Don’t wait for an answer.”

“Mr. Booker?”

“And if he ever calls again, under any circumstances, tell him the same thing.”

“Yes, Mr. Booker, I’ll remember.”

“Thank you, Miss Johnson.”

Cutter put the phone down slowly. During all the humiliations of the past days he’d prevented himself from calling Jumbo Booker. He d counted on Jumbo all along. He had felt certain that he would welcome him back to a job, if not his former job, then another, equally good. He’d made money for Booker, Smity and Jameston in his years with them, he’d always had Jumbo in his back pocket, but he’d grown tired of being patronized by someone he’d known
too long. After giving the orders and running the show at Amberville Publications he had preferred to deal with strangers than to go to Jumbo with his hat in his hands; Jumbo, that talentless, boring, stuffy man who’d lived through him for so long; Jumbo, who had everything only because he’d been born an heir; Jumbo, who even now lacked the guts to insult him and had made his secretary do it for him.

Cutter lay back on the bed in his hotel room. It was all Zachary’s fault, of course, as it always had been. Zachary’s fault that he’d gone to San Francisco in the first place; Zachary’s fault for marrying Lily; Zachary’s fault that he’d had to marry Candice; Zachary’s fault for being so unbearably forgiving and smugly understanding, so sickeningly unmoved by the revelations about Lily and Justin. It had been necessary to smash him up, necessary to leave him to die. Yes, to die. Yes, to die finally, because there was no other way to get rid of him, no other way to get even at last. It had been only fair, only just, only what he
deserved
.

Justin. Yesterday, in some gossip column, he had read that Justin had come back to New York to do the pictures for Toby’s wedding to that actress. What had the columnist written about him? “An American Lord Snowden shooting the marriage of the year,” something like that. Justin. The child Lily adored, Justin who didn’t know that his real father wasn’t dead, Justin who owed him life.

An hour later Justin answered his doorbell and found Cutter standing there, looking as confident as if he were an eagerly awaited guest at a party. Justin recoiled and Cutter took advantage of his movement to walk into the living room and shut the door behind him.

“Hello, Justin,” he said, putting out his hand to be shaken. Justin moved backward another step. “All right, Justin, I understand if you’re hostile, believe me I do. I know what’s been going on since I had that flare-up with your mother … she hasn’t wanted to see me, she’s probably been saying things about me to all of you children that aren’t true, poisoning your minds against me, but it isn’t her fault, Justin. She had a bad shock, a serious trauma that
was caused by hearing a pack of lies when she went up to Canada.”

Justin stood still, not looking at Cutter. “I decided that I should leave her alone long enough for her to realize that nothing she had heard would stand up under the exercise of common sense, or even under any investigation. God knows she was free to make one if she’d chosen. Now listen, Justin, I’ve come to talk to you because I think you’re the most sensible and the most sensitive of all of Lily’s children, and I’m worried about her.”

Justin retreated farther into his room, speechless.

“O.K., if you don’t want to discuss it, I do. I think it’s too important to just let matters stay as they are. This separation from your mother is as bad for her as it is for me. She loves me deeply, Justin, and I love her far more than she knows. We have a long, happy future together if only she can be made to see it. I know she said that she doesn’t want to lay eyes on me again, but by now, and I know my Lily, she wishes that she hadn’t been so hasty. Still she’s a proud woman and won’t make the first step. That’s why I’ve come to you. You’re the one person I think she’d listen to with an open mind.”

Justin turned and looked out of the window, his shoulders tense with the effort not to say anything to Cutter, not to dignify his presence in any way.

“Justin, just consider the situation. Isn’t your mother going to be a very lonely woman without me? She’s never existed without a man to guide her, to be devoted to her happiness, to protect her. As soon as my brother died she turned to me in such need, in such utter loneliness, that it broke my heart. I never failed her, not for an instant.” Cutter took a step toward the window and then stopped as he saw the tight control in which Justin’s slender, powerful body was clenched, a study in utter rejection.

“Look, Justin, you’re never around town for more than a few weeks at a time. Toby is getting married and probably moving to California and Maxi, God knows, is going to be busy with running the company.… Who will have time for Lily if I’m not there for her? Justin, I came here to ask you to do something, not for me, but for your mother. I
want you to go to her and ask her to talk to me … just talk to me.”

Justin moved away from the window, picked up a camera, sat down, and began to examine it closely.

“I don’t blame you for giving me the silent treatment, Justin. For some reason we’ve never managed to have a decent, warm relationship, but we should have been friends a long time ago … more than friends.” Cutter stood over Justin, speaking quietly, as if to gentle down a wild animal.

“I have a
right
to come here and talk to you, Justin. I would never have intruded on your privacy if I didn’t have that right. I would never tell you what I’m going to tell you if I didn’t think that the time had come for you to know the truth, to know why I feel entitled to ask you to do something for me and for your mother that I wouldn’t ask anyone else in the family to do. No, don’t shake your head, Justin, don’t refuse to listen, don’t shut me out.”

Cutter’s voice took on a pleading tone. Justin sat tensely, only looking at the camera now, using all the fierce concentration of his martial arts training to remain absolutely immobile.

“Justin … this is not easy to say. I know how much you love your mother. She’s a woman who’s impossible not to love. Years ago, when she and I were very young, both of us no more than twenty-four, younger than you are now, we fell in love with each other.”

Justin dropped the camera he’d been holding, stood up and turned toward the blank wall, like a prisoner in a cell.

“We fell in love, we loved each other in all the ways a man and woman love each other, and we had a child … you, Justin. You’re my son.”

“I know.” Justin spoke quickly, throwing the words away.

“What! Did Lily tell you?”

“I read that letter you wrote to her when you left her to go to California. I figured it out from the date on the letter and my birthday. I was just a kid, sneaking around looking at things in her desk the way kids do and I found it,
hidden away. After I read it I put it back. It’s probably still there.”

“But … then, if you
know
 … if you’ve
known
! Why did you never … how could you have … just, just kept it all to yourself?”

Justin turned around and walked toward the door. At last he raised his eyes to Cutter. “
Zachary Amberville was my father
. He was the only father I ever wanted, the only father I’ve ever
had
. He is still my father and he always will be. Please leave.”

“Justin! You know the truth and you don’t even deny it! Blood is blood,
I’m
your father, Justin! And I’m
alive …
doesn’t that mean anything to you, for God’s sake?”

“Just get out of here. Go away.” Justin opened the door and gestured toward it with a shaking hand. Slowly, reluctantly, Cutter moved toward it and then, when he stood next to Justin, he hesitated. Suddenly, playing his last card, he clasped his arms around his son.

“NO!” With an instinctive movement, swift and powerful, Justin pulled away and, using all his dangerous strength, chopped the edges of his hands down on the arms that tried to hold him. Cutter staggered backward, his broken forearms dangling uselessly, unable to steady himself or regain his footing.

As he fell backward, screaming in pain, down the long, steep staircase, above him a door was closed and bolted.

A few days later, when the excitement over Toby and India’s wedding, which was planned for the following weekend, was at its peak, Maxi left Toby’s house without being noticed. India, Angelica and Lily were too deep in conversation about what they would wear to see her slip out after dinner and Toby had taken refuge in one of his restaurants to avoid the fuss.

Maxi had put on an old pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Her feet were bare, in flat sandals, and she wore no makeup. A sublime sprite, battle-ready. She made a stop on the way to her destination and finally arrived at Rocco’s apartment carefully carrying a large, flat package.

“What’s in that box?” Rocco said suspiciously, as he answered the doorbell and she foamed into the room. “And how come you dropped in? New Yorkers don’t just drop in. They telephone first.”

“I simply had to get away from Toby’s … they’re going loony over there talking about heirloom lace and white satin slippers and all that nonsense … weddings seem to drive even sensible women crazy. I thought that since you were home—Angelica told me you were in tonight—you wouldn’t mind if I came by and discussed some things. Her relationship to Dunk for instance. I mean, Rocco, he’s going to be an usher, for goodness’ sakes.”