Searching for Grace Kelly (11 page)

Dolly was about to offer more color commentary—such as the fact that Agnes Ford had grown up in Nebraska, though there were those who thought that had simply been invented to create a rags-to-riches mystique—when a delivery man walked into the lobby and headed toward the front desk. Dolly gasped.

A bouquet of white gardenias.

They'd come. He'd sent them.

Without a word she dashed over to the desk, sidling up next to Agnes Ford as Metzger absently signed for the flowers. “Well, a case of perfect timing,” Metzger said. “These are for you.”

She slid the bouquet over to Agnes Ford.

Agnes was still fumbling with her bracelet—definitely trying to get it off, Dolly could now see—and paid no attention to the bouquet. Her bouquet. Dolly knew she should walk away, back to Laura and Vivian. No one would be the wiser. But somehow she couldn't help herself. She couldn't stop herself from accepting the full, brutal force of the torture.

“Your flowers, they're . . . they're beautiful,” she said cheerily. “Aren't you going to open the card? See who they're from?”

Agnes Ford thrust out her arm. “Can you get this thing off?”

Dolly hesitated, felt Metzger's dead eyes flicker up from behind the desk, appraising. “Uh, sure,” Dolly said, taking hold of the bracelet on the girl's left wrist. As she worked to unhook it—the clasp had gotten lodged in one of the bracelet's loops—she inquired again about the flowers. Agnes Ford reached over and plucked out the card, deftly removing it from the tiny white envelope with one hand. She shook her head.

“Wrong boyfriend?” Dolly asked, still fiddling with the bracelet. She'd figured out how to release the clasp but didn't want Agnes Ford to see her eyes welling up.

The model sighed deeply. “No such luck. Just some drip I talked to for, oh, I don't know, two minutes one night at ‘21' who now seems to think we're the next Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding.”

Dolly continued to play with the clasp, her heart heaving. Her voice was barely a whisper. “So, not for you, is he?”

“That's an understatement. He works pushing papers at some publishing company. I've talked to more interesting statues.” She glanced over at the flowers. “Who sends
gardenias
?”

Enough
. “There you go,” Dolly said, sliding off the bracelet and handing it to her.

For the first time, Agnes Ford smiled, the smile that had beckoned from the magazine rack, the smile that sold countless tubes of toothpaste and pillbox hats and silk stockings. “You're an angel,” she said.

She slid Bertrand Shaw's white gardenias across the counter. “Here, take these. It's the least I can do.”

 

“Marciano is going to kill him.”

The subject was boxing, specifically the upcoming fight in September between Rocky Marciano and Archie Moore, and Nicola Accardi was telling anyone—in this case, two similarly swarthy men and their dates sitting at a corner table at Antolotti's on East Forty-Ninth—that Marciano wouldn't let the bout go more than three rounds. A detailed analysis of the respective fighters' hooks and jabs and crosses had been going on for a good fifteen minutes; Vivian had tuned out somewhere around the three-minute mark. She had never understood the fascination two men pummeling one another to a pulp had held for her father and uncles back in Surrey.

Of course, there's so much I've never understood about Dad
, she thought.
Or he, me, for that matter. Which explains how I ended up in New York in the first place
.

Why
couldn't
she have been more like Mary and Emma? It certainly would have made life easier. Yes, her life would have turned out predictable and boring, but there was comfort in such things, she'd come to realize. But her sisters' lives were an argument she could never talk herself into making: the sacrifices too big, the payoffs too small. Security was for the timid and the weak.

She took another drag on her cigarette, looked around the room. There was the occasional couple engaged, laughing, clinking wineglasses over dinner, but for the most part the restaurant seemed stuffed with men like Nicky and his cohorts.
What the hell am I doing here?
she asked herself, not for the first time tonight. But then she glanced at Nicky's profile, his strong jawline and languid eyes and thick mane of silken black hair.

Carnality was a dangerous pastime. Not for some faux morality reason, the scorn of the sentries who ran the Barbizon or the Women, who looked at girls such as she as wanton harlots. But because in the end, indulging in it was invariably empty and fleeting. Wasn't what she was doing simply the sensual version of what the girls back at the hotel, watching telly while eating ice cream and trying to guess some contestant's hobby on
I've Got a Secret
, were doing? Passing time, trying to stay entertained, forgetting the drudgery of everyday life. She longed to be a singer but instead spent her nights passing out cigarettes. Laura wanted to be a writer but instead spent her days taping boxes of shoes. Dolly wanted—oh, who knew what Dolly wanted? A husband, that was for certain. Vivian flashed back to the episode in the lobby yesterday.
How very odd
. Dolly had rushed over to see the model and then after several minutes had walked out of the hotel, head down and clutching a single gardenia.

Vivian would never understand women.

She lifted her champagne coupe, silently toasting herself. Tuning in once again, she found the topic had now switched to the Brooklyn Dodgers and their odds of winning their first World Series. Boxing, baseball. What was it with American men and their sports? Not that the Brits were much better, she supposed: Dad was absolutely mad for golf, a sport so dull she couldn't fathom watching a single hole, never mind eighteen.

He had been so angry at her coming to America. Then again, he'd left her little choice.

Of course, he'd been so angry at so much of what she'd done growing up. She hadn't been like Mary and Emma, the good girls who'd stayed on the straight road, dressed modestly, and waited for their husbands to show up. Vivian had found trouble early and often, and discovered that instead of it scaring her, it only made her feel more alive. She had no acuity for cooking, baking, or cleaning and had no intention of acquiring it, either. What she did have, from the time she was a seven-year-old girl standing in a pew in St. Mary's in Fetcham, was the ability to sing.

God held no fascination for her; the Bible was a book of fairy tales that might as well have been written by the Brothers Grimm. But the music of the church, that was something else. There was something aching in the dour verses, accompanied by organ and harp and violin, a sad beauty that touched her in a way little else ever had. Music was transcendent. She loved the way she sounded when she sang. And that when other people heard her sing, they saw not the redhead with the dangerous curves, but something far more real. Something pure.

Nicky's elbow nudged her back into the conversation. “Tell 'em, Ruby,” he was saying, “am I right, or what?”

“Ruby” had become his selected nickname for her, though in more intimate moments he had the good sense to swap in “Honey” or “My lovely,” which, it pained her to admit, she rather liked. He had tried “Red” at first, but she had protested, pushing back that it made her sound like a saloon owner. At least Ruby had some style, something Bogart might call Bacall.

“I'm afraid I'm a bit out of my depth,” she said, sipping again.

“I'm telling these mooks that Johnny Podres is going to mow down that Yankees lineup.”

“Dodgers ain't gonna
make
the Series, so that's gonna be kinda tough there, Nick,” one of the mooks retorted. His date opened her compact, pursing her very red lips, coated in lipstick so thick it looked like cake frosting.

“Never fear,” Vivian said, raising her glass with brio. “To the Dodgers.”

Nicky quickly grabbed his whiskey glass and clinked. He leaned over, planted a soft kiss on her neck. “What do you say we get out of here?” he whispered.

Finally
.

She had told herself she wasn't seeing him again. She often made that sort of pledge with the men she dated. But then a necklace or a bracelet would arrive in a satin-lined velvet box, Metzger arching an eyebrow in disapproval as she slid it across the desk, and Vivian would think,
Oh, what the hell
, and agree to one more outing with the bookkeeper from Astoria or the car salesman from Westchester.

Nicky, though, had proved a bit more territorial than most. She had one night a week off from the Stork, and she wasn't going to waste it on him. But then he'd showed up at the club twice this week, bearing corsages and sonnets (actually, more like limericks), and she'd weakened. There were worse ways to spend your free night than in the company of a handsome man, eating and drinking at a nice restaurant. It sure beat
I've Got a Secret
.

He'd won her over tonight by reserving a room at the Plaza, complete with room service—anything she wanted. As he stood to pull out her chair, his eyes looked at her with a combination of benign amusement and raw lust. And she thought,
Right now
,
I know exactly what I want
.

 

Vivian sat on the edge of the tub, wiggling her fingers under the spigot as she fiddled with the faucets, trying to ascertain the perfect temperature, not too hot, not too tepid. Through the open door, she could hear Nicky on the phone, yelling—actually, it was more like barking—at whatever poor soul was on the other end.

She put the stopper in, watched the tub slowly begin to fill. She grabbed the bottle of bubble bath and upended it over the water, inhaling the sweet smell of jasmine. Their lovemaking had been ferocious—damn, he knew what he was doing—and she relished the thought of a warm, relaxing, afterglow soak in the tub.

She cinched the belt around her silk robe and padded to the doorway, taking a casual look into the room. A naked Nicky was standing by the nightstand with his back to her, the phone still in his ear. She took in the fine lines of his musculature, felt herself stirring again.

“. . . and I am telling you, if that shipment ain't in Hoboken by tomorrow morning, you can tell Mikey Feet that they can start sending his mail in care of Mount St. Mary's Cemetery, 'cause that's where he's gonna be livin'. Or rather
not
livin'.” A pause. “I don't give a shit, Lon! That's not my problem! I paid for freight, I expect freight to be delivered. This is business! Stop with this fucking bullshit! I am—” Another pause, punctuated by the occasional grunt. Vivian could imagine the plaintive case being made on the other end of the line. It wouldn't do any good. Nicky was immune to begging. Except when it came to sex, when he was very good at begging himself.

The call went on for another five minutes, Nicky apparently trying to set some sort of record for how many expletives one could sandwich into a telephone conversation. He slammed the receiver down so violently that Vivian wondered if he'd broken it altogether. He ran his right hand through his hair. It's what he always did when he was upset, as if pulling back his hair could actually clear his head.

“Can I get you something?” she asked serenely from the bathroom doorway.

He turned around, as if he'd completely forgotten she'd come in with him. “These fucking Jersey morons. Impossible to do business with. I—”

She unfastened the belt around the robe, let it drop to the floor. “No use getting upset, darling. There must be something I can do for you.”

His eyes never left hers as he walked across the room. He grabbed her roughly, biting her neck, her ear, her hair. She flung her legs around his midsection. “Tub is almost full,” she whispered. He cupped her ass as he continued feverishly exploring her with his mouth, slowly backing her into the bath.

Laura put down her book. She couldn't concentrate. Too many distractions.

Her date with Box to the El Morocco was tonight, but any daydreams had taken a back seat to worry. She looked over again at the clock on her bedside table. Almost 11 a.m.
That's it. If she doesn't show up by noon
,
I'm going down to Metzger
.

She hadn't seen Dolly since Wednesday. She and Vivian had watched as Dolly had approached Agnes Ford across the Barbizon lobby as if in a zombie trance, then witnessed the peculiar exchange where it appeared that Dolly was helping Agnes with the clasp of her bracelet. And then, suddenly, Dolly had turned and bolted straight out the door of the hotel, vanishing up Sixty-Third Street. Laura had started to go after her and now regretted heeding Vivian's advice. “Let her go,” Vivian had said. “Sometimes a girl just needs to tell everyone to sod off and sort out her own melodrama.”

She and Vivian had gone to dinner in the coffee shop before Vivian's shift at the Stork, which must have been when Dolly had slipped back in, hastily packed a bag, and left again. No note, nothing. Laura would have reported her missing right away if she hadn't noticed her suitcase and toiletries gone. The fact that Dolly hadn't packed everything steadied her—it meant she'd have to return at some point.

Doesn't it?

As if on cue, the door to the room opened and Dolly walked in, dropping her suitcase on her bed. “Hi,” she said, as if she'd been gone for breakfast rather than three days. “Have you been out yet? The humidity is wicked. The F train was stifling.”

Laura bolted out of her chair, flinging her arms around her roommate. “Oh my God! I've been so worried about you. Where have you
been
?”

“I went to see my aunt in Park Slope.”

“What?”

“Sorry. I probably should have left a note.”

Laura separated, slid a hand into hers. “Dolly, what's going on?”