Life Among Giants (35 page)

Somewhere in there, Kate had got out of McLean, a ten-month stay, very serious. She and Jack hadn't let me know she'd been released, and this was hurtful, except that I hadn't been in touch with them, had dropped away completely, Mr. Restaurant Man. Etienne finally made me do it, dialed the phone for me and handed it over. I thought I'd be speaking to Jack, had a whole script written in my head, how busy I'd been, how buried. But it was Kate who answered. She sounded heavily drugged, unnaturally ingratiating, as if her mouth and mind were full of sand.

“Well, that's enough chatter,” she said flatly, and flatly hung up. We'd spoken for no more than a minute.

19

Another year passed, Restaurant Firfisle a runaway train, pure excitement, like new love. Emily saw an article about us in
Th
e Miami Herald
and deigned to write, just enough ink to say that she'd seen Sylphide on a recent European tour and had met the great ballerina's sweet new boyfriend, the Swiss financier Daniel Tancredi.

Great.

Sylphide, it seemed, had hooked Emily up with a prestigious performance on German television. After, they'd all gone out to the boyfriend's castle in the countryside for a champagne dinner, and she and Sylphide had stayed up till all hours like girls at a slumber party. Sylphide still thought Emily and I were such a great couple! So did Emily! She'd be home to see her folks one of these days, but I shouldn't hold my breath! She sent love to Etienne. No love for the Lizard, just a quick xo.

And a P.S.: Carter said hello.

S
YLPHIDE RETURNED THE
following fall to choreograph a new production of her
Madame Curie
for the American Ballet
Th
eater. I saw that in the
Times,
but not until the day after she and her new husband and Vlad Markusak and three society ladies appeared for dinner at the restaurant. I emerged from the kitchen mid-meal, shook everyone's hand, kissed the women's cheeks, my heart pounding, everything else sinking. I resigned myself, welcomed Mr. Tancredi with warm smiles, real smiles. He seemed like a good guy, seventy if he was a day. Daniel, they called him.

Th
e two of them were High Side for the next several months (you were never
at
the High Side, you were simply High Side).
Th
ey only invited me to the biggest parties, parties too big for me to do anything but shake Sylphide's hand and lean down to kiss her ear in a receiving line. At a soiree for her foundation I waited almost an hour, got to study her as she posed a couple of risers up on the grand stairway, finally had my moment, kiss-kiss. Anyone watching would have thought she didn't know me, that she only greeted a fading sports figure, the up-and-coming restaurateur, but they couldn't see how I slipped the speckled stone into the bodice of her tight, strapless dress, couldn't feel how she let my fingers linger a moment against her breast, couldn't hear when she whispered my name in my ear, and then a familiar Norwegian phrase, something from our time together, something we'd said over and over again, something a little shy of love, which was how she wanted it:
jeg ar ohso glad i deg
—“I am so very fond of you.”

A
NOTHER YEAR PASSED,
and another, Restaurant Firfisle more an avalanche than a runaway train, a cavalcade of employees and regular customers, contractors making improvements, a thoroughgoing patio under a downpour-proof awning, a dock off the seawall to receive guests arriving on boats, attractive to Jack and Kate, who began to visit monthly, a great relief: my sister was back, calm and rather neutral, effects of new meds, but really herself, Jack back on his game, as well, cruising toward retirement.

I saw in
Sports Illustrated
that Emily Bright and Carter Jeffries had been wed in Miami, photos of their Cadillac procession to Dolphins Stadium, bride and groom standing up out of limo sunroof, double thrust of the knife of regret.

And shortly thereafter, Desmond wrote to say he was ill, an extended battle with HIV. Just a few months later, I spotted his obituary in the local paper, a short column: born and raised in Dorcester, Massachusetts, the rough side of Boston, employed by Sylphide, survived by his mother and eleven siblings.

His sad death explains why the note (I've still got it) is the only one I ever got from Sylphide in her own handwriting, an aspect of her personality I'd never seen, a tiny semi-script full of spelling errors. She'd never done school English, barely done school at all. What's not explained is how the note in its gold-piped envelope got into my front pants pocket one day, to be discovered when I was at work. She certainly wasn't in Westport.
Time
magazine, in fact, reported that she was taking a long-delayed honeymoon month at the Swiss-alpine estates of Daniel Tancredi, after which they'd begin their very public move to London and her directorship of the Royal Ballet.

I waited till I was home at the kitchen table to open the stiff envelope, pulled out the stiffer card. Of course the lump tucked in the fold was the speckled stone. Which fell out and bounced off my lap and onto the floor, skittering. I recovered it, dropped it again, recovered it, clutched it too tightly, dropped it yet again, left it there for what would be several hours, let myself read, my hands trembling:

Belov'd Reptil:
Th
is litten Hart will not be makin You hapy but it is my Hart and Your Hart, too, and is belongin in your Pokket deep. Daniel is gude and also vurry deep, but he is not my Firfisle, no. Firfisle-mine, I Love You. But kinsidder the Worlt I live in. Forever this Hart. Whatsoever else I am, I am Yours.

20

Restaurant Firfisle had been open almost five years the night Mr. Perdhomme came in with his sidekick, the man Dad had called Kaiser, the killer. And just when life had come to seem so, so simple: a restaurateur, his staff, the food, former lovers safely distant, everything present tense, the first periods of weeks on end since the murders that he did not see the blooming petals of blood, that he didn't think of his folks, the black hole in the barrel of that gun. It all came rushing back: Dad's cupidity, Mom's frustration with him, his mounting lies, the pressure she put on him.

Mr. Perdhomme. His coldness as he dared sit in my restaurant and eat my best food. And Kaiser's face in younger then older iterations, his preternatural calm whether shooting people to death or ordering wild-mushroom sausages, the way the two of them, far from remorseful, had put themselves directly in my path, right in my realm, confident they held all the knives.

A kiss Mom had given me when I was nine, a kiss on the forehead after a forgotten disappointment, but the kiss very much alive, the only kiss I can recall her giving me. And Dad, always with the mauling hugs.

Th
e lights stayed on at the High Side those next few days, thousands of chandelier bulbs lighting dozens of windows. Simple facts: Mr. Perdhomme and Kaiser had been Sylphide's guests. And though I hadn't seen her for several years, she'd sent the two of them to Restaurant Firfisle, where, wisely or not, I'd treated them like kings. Irrefutable conclusions, stuff even Jack would have to credit, which I wrote on a guest check that night:

1) Kaiser and Perdhomme know each other.

2) Dad was about to testify about the crimes of Dolus.

3) Perdhomme ordered Dad's death to save his own skin.

4) Kaiser carried it out, and I was there.

5) Sylphide knows both men.

6) Her skin must have needed saving, too.

7) Sylphide has told them where I am.

8) Kate's intuition about her is much better than I want to believe.

9) Perhaps Kate's intuition should be trusted more.

10) Headline in Friday's
Times:
“Dolus Object of Massive New Probe.”

11) Perdhomme's old crimes will come to light in such a probe.

12) I was a witness to one of the most violent of these crimes.

13) I am in trouble.

Th
e next morning, a bright Sunday, I seethed and paced, circular rumination like I hadn't committed since I didn't know when, couldn't get it straight in my head what I'd say when I went over there to confront the great ballerina, couldn't get it straight in my head that a couple of decades had passed since the disaster, that I was not a pure and invincible seventeen years old, worked my station at Firfisle in a cloud so ugly that Etienne asked me if I was sick, put his hand to my forehead.

And I'm sorry to say I slapped the hand away, left the restaurant in a typhoon, stayed up all night brooding, planning: I would confront Sylphide in the morning. Monday early I was out on Dad's famous brick patio glowering across the pond.

But I'd blown it. If I'd read the
Times Magazine
when it arrived on Sunday, things might have been different. But, as always, I'd saved the whole thick paper for Monday, my one morning off. Long, adoring article about Sylphide's work in South America, a tour down the spine of the Andes, a series of benefits for Dabney's foundation, still called Children of War. She and her new husband were to leave Monday after a dawn press conference at Bradley Field in Hartford, where the foundation's private jets were based. Gone before I could get my answers.

Old anger returned, stale fear, long-expired fantasies of revenge. And worse yet, fresh trembling. Obviously, I was to be killed. I thought to call my sister, the only possible confidante and advisor, but Jack would murder me before Perdhomme and Kaiser got their chance—I couldn't bring Kate in till I'd come to some plan Jack couldn't dent with his condescension. I knew what he'd say: Call the police, call the D.A. in Danbury. He'd even offer to drive me up there.

But I knew that route. If I went to the authorities with this quarter-century-old complaint, nothing would happen. Or, even if some dedicated public servant took an interest, all I would succeed in doing would be tipping off Perdhomme, who'd just have to press Kaiser to kill me sooner.

I was on my own.

I dressed in my best old Miami suit, tied a good knot in a narrow tie, combed my hair back with a spot of petroleum jelly, brushed out the ponytail, a tough look on an imposing man, but not good enough as armor went. So, in a box of Dad's things down in the basement I found his sap, a little lead-filled leather truncheon ungentle men of his generation often carried into nightclubs, say, or kept in the glove boxes of their cars. It sagged in my pocket like a spare penis—surely part of the weapon's allure for old Nick. At the Westport station, no faltering, none of that Dad stuff, I left my car at a meter, plenty of coins, and got on the train. From Grand Central I marched up Park Avenue, entered the familiar lobby of the Dolus building, marched past the security desk to the executive elevator bank. I would slug Perdhomme across the temple as soon as he recognized me. He'd drop and I'd hit him again, put a knee on his back, jerk his head up sharp to the side, break his neck, something I was plenty strong enough to do. What did consequences mean to me? I'd break his neck and leave him lying there, see to the dancer later.

But of course no elevator came: a keycard was required. And that left me to approach the guard, a scrawny lifer: “Here to see Perdhomme,” I said.

“Sir?” the guard said.

And I repeated it: “Perdhomme.”

“What company sir?”

“Dolus, of course.
Th
is company. What company do you think?”

“Dolus Investments?
Th
ey left the building in 1971, sir.” He went into a drawer in his stand, pulled out an index card. “
Th
ey are now based in Dallas, Texas, sir. We have an eight-hundred number, sir.”

I fondled Dad's sap in my pocket, impotent, useless thing, fell into a period of darkness like I'd never known: his killers had nearly made a killer out of me.

I
BEGAN AGAIN
to wonder if I was following Kate down the road to decompensation. Perdhomme's visit, the connection to Sylphide, the appearance of Kaiser, it all seemed to have affected my
personality,
like some pure form of stress someone had packed in a pipe and made me smoke. I had violence in my hands, my heart. Etienne thought I had every right to go nuts, treated me gingerly while I obsessed. But these were not magnificent thoughts, quite the opposite. I'd battled for years with Kate over Sylphide's supposed involvement in the murder of our parents, over the connection of those killings to the killing of Dabney Stryker-Stewart. To have Crazy May proved even slightly right required some serious rewiring of all the processes of my heart and mind.

I had to tell Kate about the visitation. And Jack, too, I had to tell Jack. RuAngela and Etienne were keen on that: no more denial from Jack. We needed to make a plan with him and Kate, get all of us on the same page, the extended family finding a way to bring Perdhomme and Kaiser to justice. Sylphide, too, Etienne kept reminding me (speaking of denial!), my dancer, who'd apparently choreographed more things than I'd ever known.

October again, and that clear, slanting sunlight over the Sound. I got in the kitchen early the second Saturday, tuned the radio to NPR, which I'd be allowed to listen to until the prep crew came in at eleven—their smashy music after that.
Morning Edition
came on, and after a lot of worried talk about the economy, there was an item about the new Tenke
Th
orvald Dance Company. I listened like an owl in a tree—dead still, that is, turning my head, blinking my eyes—a long interview between Scott Simon and Conrad Pant, who was still Sylphide's manager: the great international treasure and her troupe would be at Lincoln Center for a week in mid-October, huge retrospective celebration of Sylphide's career.

By the time Etienne arrived, I was shattered, pacing the kitchen, trying not to be sick. “Kaiser and Perdhomme,” I began, but that's not what I meant to tell him. Try again: “Sylphide, bro. She's coming to town!
Th
ey're coming to get me.”

E.T. nodded soberly, stalwart chef, big cleaver in his fist. No words necessary: We would prevail. Simple superiority. It was time to talk to my sister, all right. No more messing around. He said, “You know how Jack and Kate are always trying to get me on that sailboat?”

“You would do that for me?”

“It's just a sail, Lizard. Proximity, close. Kate contained. And Jack has to listen to every word you say.”

“You sound like Olulenu.”

“I'll have your back, and I'll back you up. When I'm done leaning over the rail, that is,
bumbaclot.
”

“Fuckery,” I said.

L
ONG ISLAND
S
OUND
was sharp with whitecaps, the air over it so dry that I could see the treetops of Long Island itself, seventeen or more miles away, the horizon lifted by shimmering mirages. Etienne had insisted on two life jackets, wore one of my Dolphins jerseys on top, looked like a bird-legged linebacker. Kate hadn't seen his gams before and kept giggling appreciatively—they were shapely and smooth as a teen girl's, also like a comic book, a hundred small and colorful tattoos.

“Your butt is so
fucking
cute,” she kept saying, never so cheerful as around E.T., pinching at him as I pushed him onboard from the dinghy, never this cheerful in years, auspicious.

“What a morning,” Jack kept saying. And he was right. Gorgeous. Crisp, clear, breezy, promise of a hot afternoon, the last sail of the year, early October: murder weather.

Jack showed E.T. where to sit, where to put his hands, and E.T. held on white-knuckle tight though we weren't yet off the mooring. I sat across from him in the big cockpit, held his knees to keep him from vibrating right out of the vessel. Kate leapt nimbly to the bow and unfurled the jib. It filled with a snap, the whole boat jerking to life.

“We're going?” Etienne cried.

“We're sailing,” Jack said calmly. He maneuvered through the tight harbor over a swiftly incoming tide, real expertise. Kate kept busy, quickly unsnapping the mainsail cover, dropping it at our feet for me to fold and stow, stood ready at the sheets. Jack watched her every move fondly, critically.
Th
e two of them had been together twenty years, it occurred to me. He was in his late fifties by then, fit and irenic, same as ever except for the graying temples, the increasingly handsome face. E.T. watched Kate more warily: what if she did something
wrong
and everything exploded and we ended up in the drink? I set the jib and trimmed it and trimmed it again to Jack's instructions as we made the end of the large breakwater just opposite their house on Drixel Point.

Deep Song
was a 1950s-vintage Concordia yawl, a sweet old wooden vessel painted midnight blue, teak planking, mahogany deck trim, length on deck just under forty feet, fast, elegant. Kate pulled at the lines to unfurl the main, a great flapping of canvas and squealing of pulleys as the sail climbed the mast. Jack pointed out the brails and spars, the hand-sewn seams, a man in love, a long-term relationship.

“But we have a motor? Just in case?” Etienne asked fervently. “I mean, how do we get back in if the wind's blowing
out
?”

Jack didn't betray any amusement. He said, “We'll tack in. But just in case, Cookie, we have the original Gray motorworks four-cylinder engine.” We splashed out of the river and into a freshening wind, the sails and lines suddenly tightening, the boat heeling. “Goat Island,” Jack said, and pointed across a perfection of waves backed by blue sky, a pile of rocks out there.

Kate slipped into the cockpit with us, sat close by Jack on the teak bench, her legs stretching toward me. In her tankini she looked like a surf babe stuck in a boat with a radically progressive senator and his bodyguards, ready to leap onto her shortboard and fly. I'd dug out my own old pair of swim trunks and tugged them on at the docks—what Kate did I'd do, though I was already freezing. My own legs, still powerful (as I wouldn't have hesitated to point out), were pale as underground asparagus and covered with goose bumps.

Jack brought
Deep Song
about, threw us tight to the wind. We quartered the swells, booming and shuddering progress. Etienne shrieked in exhilaration, water sheeting over the bow: “
Th
at's right, mo-fo, that's right, that's
right!
”

Jack laughed hard—something you didn't see often—and Kate laughed hard—something you didn't always want to see—and Etienne laughed and shrieked and the laughter was funny and made us laugh all the harder and Jack held the tiller and we all shouted and cheered, the boat fleeing into the next trough blind, cresting with a lurch to a view of the world in spray and spindrift, hilarious hiccups and snorts of laughter.

“We'd better all of us get into vests,” Jack chortled.