The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (21 page)

Then she recalled the night before, the three of them in the house, suddenly around her, swarming all over her. And then the cloth over her face and that smell. The front door, of course. She had never locked it. One had no reason to.

Someone was speaking up front, then someone else, the voices drifting sleepily backward into the van. She could smell cigarette smoke. Someone was laughing.

By tucking her chin above the border of the rug, she could roll her eyes forward and just barely make out the tops of three heads side by side in the front seat. She knew who they were—not them personally, but where they came from and who had sent them. Her recent talk with Pettigrilli came back to her and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind.

She knew where she was going and why. It was that business with the museum chap. How rash that was. Why had she ever started up with him?

How ludicrous. All she’d done was to try to help him locate three small sketches of great importance to him, and of absolutely none to her. And to risk something so stupid as to reopen the whole thing with Borghini in order to achieve that. And now these people. And all because she’d done a stranger a small favor. He’d been nice to her and she had wanted to reciprocate. That was all. There was nothing to it. Now it was going to cost her dearly. She had few illusions about Ludovico Borghini. His reach was long, his tastes bizarre. He had a long memory, and one didn’t want to be so rash as to meddle in his affairs.

“Never do that again,”

“Do what?”

“You know what I mean. Countermand my orders. I tell the boy to do one thing. You tell him he doesn’t have to.”

“If you’re talking about that bunch in the
vicinato
…”

“Never mind that bunch. They’re fine boys—his age, good families. A little rough, perhaps, but that’s the way of young boys.”

“They’re louts. Little hoodlums bent on mischief.”

“He needs a bit of mischief, if you ask me.”

“I won’t have him associating with that sort.”

“And I won’t have him turned into a pansy. What will he come to with you dragging him off by the hand to opera houses and art galleries every day after school? Talk about a bad sort Degenerates, the pack of them.”

“You mean my friends, I take it.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“That crowd you call degenerate—some of the finest painters on the continent—de Chirico, Salemma, Tanguy …”

“I know perfectly well what they are.”

“What are they, Otto? Tell me.”

“Never mind. I’m telling you, I won’t have my boy grow up to be some feckless dilettante. Sitting around galleries with effete people sipping tea, talking art. I won’t have that. For God sake, isn’t he prissy enough without your—”

“Stop shouting … He’ll hear.”

“Good. Maybe it will shake some sense into his empty head. Pay heed, Mathilde. Don’t cross me again. It undermines my authority in the boy’s eyes, and I won’t have it. I won’t have it. I won’t—”

First came the dull thud and then the scream. The scream was more one of fear than of pain. Then two more thuds and his father shouting. And more screams. His mother’s screams. Panicked footsteps. Scuffing, stumbling, as if someone was running from someone else, dodging blows.

Seated barefoot in his pajamas at the top of the stairs, the boy cringed, his heart banging so hard in his chest, he thought his ribs might crack. Sometimes he would wake in the middle of the night, having heard them quarreling in the upper reaches of the palazzo. It would so unnerve him that he would get up and wander through the sprawling labyrinth of intersecting corridors, knuckling the tears from his eyes, unable to get back to sleep.

Years after, when they were both long dead, he would still awaken, hearing the voices and those fearful noises, the harsh, dull thuds, four, five at a time, in quick succession, the sound of flesh impacting on flesh, the bang of something heavy falling to the floor.

After all those years, it still had the power to unnerve him. And just as he’d done as a child, he would get up and wander the corridors, through the salons and sitting rooms, whose costly furnishings had now been either sold or shrouded beneath dusty sheets. His way invariably took him to his mother’s room, where he still expected to find her.

It had been left precisely as it was the day she died—the tall four-poster with its embroidered tester, the old Savois vanity, its mirrored top littered with perfume bottles and cosmetics.

After all those vanished years, he could still sense her presence in the room. Throwing open the doors to her closets, he would inhale the musty smell of her clothing mingling with the faded scent of perfume and paper-dry, long-dead sachet.

“I won’t have it …”

The voice racketed down the stair again and along the empty corridors, slowly fading across the spate of years.

“I won’t have it …”

Borghini rose, shaking his head as if to slough off whatever bits of sleep still clung to him. It was dawn. He’d slept, seated at the dinner table, a plate of barely touched food before him; beside that was a near-empty flask of grappa. Still in his clothing from the night before; he was rumpled and smelled of perspiration.

He heard voices again, but this time they were real. One was a woman’s voice, a mixture of outrage and defiance, alternating with frightened sobs.

In the next moment, a figure propelled by someone just behind came stumbling into the room. The figure was blindfolded, hands bound behind. A mane of tawny hair fanned out over its head and lay flat across the cheek, partially concealing the face. But he knew who it was.

Beppe stood in the doorway, looking larger beneath the low lintel than his actual five-foot-five frame. He gazed across the room at the maestro, beaming like a proud puppy who’d just retrieved a stick and was awaiting his master’s next command.

“Well, Isobel,” Borghini said, grinning agreeably. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

I
T WAS 10:00 P.M.
Emily Taverner’s back hurt and her head ached. She’d been going flat out since eight that morning, and she was stretched to her limit.

They were reviewing a list of last details before zero hour, exactly one week hence. Tie open, feet up on the desk, Manship, tilted back in his chair, read aloud from the list. Taverner buried her head in her clipboard and checked off items.

“For the media opening, does the press list include a cover release?”

“Yes.”

“Containing full details of the exhibit?”

“Yes.”

“What about a few quickie releases dealing with features on persons associated with the exhibit?”

“We have the one on the Mayor and Mrs. Giuliani. Also the one of the special banquet for the membership at Gracie Terrace.”

“What about the Tisches and Salomon Brothers? Their funding of past exhibitions, et cetera, et cetera.”

“We’re putting the finishing touches on bios of the Tisches and also one of Warren Buffett.”

“Don’t forget to mention the Wallace Funds and also Mr. and Mrs. Laurance Rockefeller.”

“All covered.”

“And the PBS segment?”

“Scheduled to be aired the night before. I told you all of this yesterday.”

“I know you did, damn it. There’s no need to keep reminding me.” He stared down into his lap for a long moment, then looked up. “Sorry about that,” he said, and hurried on. “What about feature stories?”

“Three scheduled—
ARTnews, Newsweek, New York
magazine,
The New York Times
wants to do something on the Chigi sketches.”

“I can’t talk to them now.”

“To none of them?”

“Not now. I don’t have the time.”

“But, Mark, that’s insane. There’s been too much advance hype to simply ignore them all now. It will look funny.”

“Let it look funny. I can’t help that.”

“The
Times
also mentioned this Cattaneo woman you met in Florence.”

Manship groaned and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “How the hell did they hear about her?”

“Someone evidently leaked the story about your going to Fiesole. If she is who she says she is …”

“Of course she is. She’s got all the papers to prove it.”

“What a pity. That would have been
the
perfect guest spot.”

“Well, it ain’t gonna happen.” Manship sulked. “I spoke to her again this afternoon.”

“Why won’t she come? What reasons does she give?”

“She doesn’t give reasons. She just won’t. She’s made that abundantly clear. She simply has no wish to be paraded around here like some kind of trophy. So let’s just forget about it.”

“Is she as beautiful as—”

“Her great-great-great-great whatever she was.”

“Grandmother.”

“Whatever.” Manship brooded. “Well, if you ask me, she’s no Primavera. No Venus.” He thought a moment, then seemed to relent. “Oh, I suppose she’s pretty enough. Frankly, I didn’t even see the resemblance until—”

“Until what?”

“Until she took down her hair.”

“She took down her hair?”

“I asked her to. And sure, it would have been fun to have her here for the opening. But I can’t seem to make Van Nuys or anyone else around here understand that our Miss Simonetta has zero interest in playing any part whatsoever in this exhibition. Don’t worry. I’m not concerned. We’ll do just fine without her.”

It all came boiling up in one long, breathy screed. Now that it was out, he realized how much it had been bothering him.

Emily Taverner could see that at once. She could see other things, too, regarding the Cattaneo woman that had perhaps not yet occurred to Manship himself.

Before they finally broke for the evening, they went over the general mailing list and studied the seating plan for the trustees at the opening-night banquet.

In the morning, they’d be meeting with one of the whiz-kid creative directors from Chiat/Day, the museum’s advertising agency. They would look at banners and billboard layouts, stickers, lapel pins on which the timeless visage of the Venus would appear, as well as designs for bus and subway advertising.

When Manship finally crept home that evening, it was going on midnight. He’d put Taverner in a cab, feeling strangely tongue-tied, torn between his desire to thank her for all of the unpaid time she’d put in and his inability to apologize for being short with her. He knew he had. Rather than the acid tongue he’d occasionally meted out, the girl deserved a medal for all of her superhuman efforts on the show’s behalf.

Coming up on 5 East Eighty-fifth, he was startled to see the little mews house all lit up and aglow. The impression from out on the street on a damp, chill night was like a Christmas card—all cozy and welcoming, as if just beyond the leaded windows Scrooge might well find old Fezziwig there dancing a quadrille at a party, as drawn by Boz.

Opening the front door, his key still in the lock, he stood for a moment, stooping slightly over the threshold, surprised to hear voices drifting at him from the kitchen. One was Maeve’s; the other was a man’s. He didn’t recognize it until he’d pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen and saw Bill Osgood seated opposite Maeve at the kitchen table. They were lingering over a glass of wine, with the litter of supper plates strewn out between them.

“Well, this is a fine time to be showing up.” Maeve gazed up at him. “Weren’t we supposed to be having dinner tonight?”

“Oh, Christ.” Manship thumped his forehead. “I got tied up at the office. Completely forgot.”

“I sat here like an idiot twiddling my thumbs until nine o’clock, when Mr. Osgood came along and was kind enough to sit down in your place.”

Osgood smiled like the Cheshire cat, his face flamed from a healthy infusion of wine and cutlets. “I sure lucked out tonight, old buddy. I just stopped by to drop off some revised figures for the advertising budget and poor Mrs. Costain here said you’d stood her up for supper. I was perfectly prepared to settle for rancid tuna salad out of my refrigerator, but she was good enough to ask me to sit in for you, you rude thing—and since I had no plans for supper, I told her I’d gladly do such. Glass of Riesling, old buddy? This is an ’83 Auslese. It’s a honey.”

“I know. It’s from my cellar.”

“You have marvelous taste.” He waved the half-finished bottle at Manship.

“There’re still cutlets left over, and I bought some lovely fresh asparagus at the market today, though you don’t deserve it.” Studying him more closely, Maeve frowned. “Come sit down, Mark. You look like you’ve been horsewhipped.”

He came forward uncertainly, sagging into a chair between them.

Osgood poured him a glass of wine. “Maeve and I have just been arguing …”

“Not arguing, Bill. Discussing.”

“Right. Discussing,” Osgood conceded, clearly feeling his wine and full of himself.

“What’s your idea of a museum, Mark?”

“A museum is a lunatic asylum,” Manship said “Handsomely decorated.”

Maeve made a face, as if there was a bad taste in her mouth. “If it’s any good, it had better have a sense of the past and some ideas about the future.”

“You mean the sort of thing with four bare walls, track lighting, and some plasticine balls and radiator caps strewn over the floor in a cunning arrangement?” Manship plucked a bread stick out of a tall jar and chewed gloomily.

“What about a row of TV sets, all chattering at once, or maybe some old boards and planks strewn on a skate ramp,” Osgood threw in with spiteful relish. “A nest of tangled multicolored neon lights blinking. Blink, blink, blink.”

“At least it makes a statement,” Maeve shot back.

“So does a mound of dog doo,” Manship grumbled. “Now, if you don’t mind, let’s quit all this. I’m getting depressed.”

Osgood and Maeve exchanged troubled glances.

“I’m sorry,” Manship murmured, crestfallen. “Forgive me. That was uncalled for.”

“What’s wrong?” Osgood asked, moving a step toward him.

“What’s wrong? Well, if you must know, I feel shitty. I’m so sick of this goddamned show, by now, I seem to have forgotten the reasons for wanting to put it on in the first place.”

“You’re pushing yourself too hard, Mark.” Osgood looked concerned. “It’s not good for you or for the show.”