Card Sharks

  And I knew he'd tried that marijuana stuff at a recent American Bar Association convention. He'd brought a marijuana cigarette home and I'd flushed it down the commode, terrified the police would break in and arrest us both at any minute, or that mere skin contact might be enough to tie my unborn children's chromosomes into pretzels. He'd laughed at me.

  Brandon. Brand could have picked it up someplace disreputable and given it to me.

  But Dr. Isaacs was shaking his head. "You could live alone on a desert island and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. The spores are all over the world by now and they aren't transmitted from human to human. They're airborne. Or genetic. Those are the only two ways you can contract it. And since we know you didn't have it while pregnant with Clara, you must have contracted it in the interim."

  "But I feel fine!"

  He was shaking his head again. "The virus is dormant in you right now. It could remain dormant forever, or it could express itself tomorrow."

  I remained silent, just looking at him.

  He went on, "There are things about this situation that you can't control, and things you can. You can't control the fact that you have the virus. But it's possible that the virus will never express itself in you. You could live out a very normal, fulfilling life.

  "But I must strongly advise you against a second pregnancy. The child would be at high risk of being a carrier. And the stress of the pregnancy and labor would almost certainly cause the virus to express itself in you.

  "The wild card is a life-threatening illness and I won't lie to you: the prognosis is not good if it is triggered. The vast majority of wild card victims die a very painful death, and most of the rest end up with severe deformities. I've lost a sister to the disease and I can assure you, it's not to be taken lightly."

  "Doctor, this is absurd."

  He leaned across the desk. "I know this is difficult for you to hear. But you must do everything you can to minimize all stress in your life. Stress is a key factor in whether the virus expresses itself. Here." He placed a business card down on the desk. "I'm sure you're familiar with Dr. Tachyon's work at the Blythe Van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic in Jokertown. There's no one in the world with greater expertise in the wild card virus. I advise you to make an appointment to see him as soon as you can. Today, if possible."

  I was familiar with Tachyon, all right. That odious alien had seduced Brand's mother, Blythe, away from her husband and children, had destroyed first her reputation and then her life - had brought Brandon such pain he still couldn't bear to speak it, after all these years. I didn't pick up the card.

  "Surely you jest."

  "I'm quite serious. He's the best."

  I said nothing for a moment, looking down at my handbag and the kerchief wadded up in my trembling fist. Then I looked up at the doctor again.

  "I can assure you there's been some mistake."

  But he was giving me that look again, that unbearable pitying look. I stood.

  "I'll want a second opinion, then, by a doctor I can trust."

  ***

  Douglas, Mannerly knew how to throw a party.

  Of course, the senior partners were up to something more than just presenting Brand to New York society as their boy wonder after the big court case he'd just won. '68 was a national election year. The papers and TV newscasts were cluttered with stories about the presidential and other candidates making their junkets around the country, and the city's power brokers were plotting for all they were worth.

  I didn't know what their other motives were, and didn't care. The party was a major event and Brandon was at the center of it, which meant I was only a little right of center, myself. The glow it gave me blotted out any lingering unhappiness from the doctor's appointment.

  Remember that dress you saw in the photo, with the big blue sequins? Those sequins shivered and glittered like shiny coins when I walked. The dress had spaghetti straps and was sinfully short, with cobalt blue silk stockings, square-toed, sequined platform heels, and a garter that one caught glimpses of when I danced, or lifted my arms or bent over just the slightest bit. And I loved the cobalt blue feather boa. My mother would have had to get out her smelling salts if she had seen me.

  I'd done up my eyes in beatnik fashion. I had that sort of sultry, honey-blonde, green-eyed beauty that captivates certain men. So I got a few admiring looks, I don't mind telling you.

  Douglas, Mannerly had rented the two uppermost floors of St.-Moritz-on-the-Park, which has a spectacular view of Central Park, and had hired a top-notch caterer and a jazz band. Enormous arrangements of rare tropical flowers rimmed the tables and walls. Lace-covered tables displayed caviars and pates, finger sandwiches, crisp vegetables on ice with dip, shrimp and smoked salmon. The bar served hard liquor and mixed drinks, as well as wine and champagne. The musicians were colored, but I didn't care as long as they didn't mingle.

  Brandon was supposed to have come straight from work, but I didn't locate him right away. Plenty of introductions kept me busy, though.

  Mayor and Mrs. Lindsay came. Several rumor-mongers had been whispering it around that Mrs. Lindsay had a joker deformity, which she may have been hiding under that full gown of hers, but I scrutinized her closely and saw nothing except a tendency to obesity. Needless to say, I avoided her anyhow.

  Gregg Hartmann gave me a dance. He was a city councilman then, not yet mayor, or senator. I can tell you, the man knew how to foxtrot. I also chatted with Asaf Messerer, the balletmaster and main choreographer for the Bolshoi Dancers, who were performing at the Met.

  I tipped the photographer covering the party to get several shots of me and Brand during the evening - which is where the photos you're looking at came from. He promised to mail them to me within the week.

  ***

  Eventually I found Brand seated at a table in a side room, an interior balcony lit only by votive candles, with a great view of the west side of the park. Brand introduced me to his companion, Dr. Pan Rudo, a noted psychiatrist. That's him right there, with Brand and me.

  They definitely made an odd pair. Brandon cut an exquisite figure in his formal tails and black tie, his gold cufflinks and silk shirt and kerchief. That night he looked his best: intense, excited, his dark auburn hair slicked back, his ruddy complexion aglow, hands moving in sudden, enthusiastic gestures. His black eyes were all fiery with glory and dreams.

  The doctor's appearance also commanded attention, but in a cooler, more exotic way. His hair was a blond so pale it looked white, his eyes a violet-blue that stared right past one's surfaces into the soul. I remember shivering deliciously when he looked me over.

  He stirred his drink with a paper umbrella swizzle stick and stroked his lower lip thoughtfully: pale ice to Brand's dark burning; serene age to Brand's youthful, barely suppressed impatience. He had the hypnotic patience of a cat.

  That suit of his was a Nehru suit; do you remember those? The intelligentsia and other trendy types favored them back then. It was made of an expensive, cream-colored Irish moygashel linen. About his neck was a thick silver chain with an ankh hanging from it. Very odd.

  Despite his bizarre appearance, he emanated power and money; from Brand's demeanor I could tell the man was Someone Important. We chatted a bit, and the doctor seemed quite congenial.

  Brandon's older brother Henry walked up shortly.

  Of all the people who made me wild with fury, Henry van Renssaeler, II, headed the list. He had accepted a scholarship to Juilliard, thwarting his fathers wishes for him to pursue a political career, and had become a brilliant classical pianist instead. This had been all to the good, as far as I was concerned. But once he had completed his degree he'd grown long hair and a beard and taken up the acoustic guitar, of all things. He now spent all his time in little cafes or bars in the Village, playing folk rock, when he wasn't marching in antiwar protests. I considered it a hideous waste of talent.

  Worse, he had spent this spring loudly supporting Bobby Kennedy for president, who was not only
a little carbon copy of his older brother John, which was the last thing we needed in the White House again, but a Catholic to boot. In fact, Henry had a "Kennedy for President" button on the lapel of his dinner jacket. A thoroughly tasteless gesture.

  Henry kissed me on the cheek and slid into the chair opposite Brand, folding his lanky legs under the table.

  "Where's Fleur?" Brand asked.

  "Here somewhere. Have you caught up on your sleep yet? The papers are still talking about the coup you pulled off."

  Brandon flushed and shrugged. I could tell he was pleased that Henry had noticed, despite their mutual animosity. A weirder love-hate relationship I'd never seen, unless it was their relationship with their father.

  Brand introduced him to Dr. Rudo, who raised his eyebrows at Henry's campaign button and smiled. "Can you really back a man with Bobby Kennedy's platform? His position on joker's rights and war only promise to divide the country further."

  "Oh, I don't know. He beats Clean Gene hands down, don't you think?"

  Brand flushed again, and not from pleasure. Brandon wanted Eugene McCarthy to win. For myself, I couldn't understand how anyone could vote Democrat after what they'd done to the country.

  "Kennedy is a power-grabbing poseur who's simply trying to cash in on his brother's name," Brand said in a flat tone.

  Henry gave him a sour look. "You're in fine form tonight, I see."

  Another of their endless arguments was in the works; I excused myself and went in search of Patricia.

  ***

  It was around then that one Miss Marilyn Monroe arrived.

  She stood framed in the doorway for a moment and surveyed the party. The shy, vulnerable look on her face infuriated me. Whom did she think she was fooling? I'd read about what sort of woman she was.

  A silence fell over the room when people first began to notice her. Apparently she had come unescorted. I wondered who had invited her.

  She wore a dress even shorter than mine, and she certainly had the legs for it. Her dress was made of layers of translucent silk the red of candied apples, snug at the waist with a flaring skirt. Brilliant, heart-shaped diamonds made up a cluster of buttons at her waist, and more of the same were stitched into her plunging decolletage. The diamond teardrops at her ears and a matching pendant on a gold chain must each have weighed at least four carats. She had the pale skin and dark mole on her lip she was so famous for, and her hair was shoulder-length, and wavy. She had let the color return to its natural dark chestnut.

  Several men rushed forward, including doddering old Thomas Mannerly, the firm's senior practicing partner. Patricia caught my eye and motioned me toward the ladies' powder room down the hall, where we spent a few minutes repairing our faces and remarking upon Marilyn's taste in clothes. Not to mention certain of her other characteristics.

  "I feel so embarrassed for her," Patricia said, "wearing a dress like that."

  I arched an eyebrow at her in the mirror; the dress I wore was similar to Marilyn's - at least in its length. Patricia sat down at one of the chairs and applied a little eyeliner, then caught a look at my expression.

  "I mean, for a woman her age. Did you know she's supposedly at least forty-five? Well, forty, anyway."

  "Did you see those diamonds?" I asked, dabbing a bit of powder onto a shiny spot on my nose.

  "They're a bit overdone, aren't they? Someone should take her aside."

  "What embarrassed me was that cleavage!" I said. "You could see practically everything. And her breasts, they are so enormous. I can't imagine they're real."

  "Those Hollywood doctors can work miracles."

  We both giggled.

  Patricia was smaller in stature than I, with a round face and a tendency to pudginess. She was always dieting. Tonight she wore an empire-style black gown With black bead embroidery and pearls. More pearls were wound up her swirling hairdo, which she now teased with a comb.

  She wore a more subdued style than usual because she was five months pregnant with her first child. Looking at the curve of her belly I felt a tightness in my chest. The doctor's appointment came back to me; my hands curled into fists on my own, flat belly. I had to breathe deeply for a couple of seconds before my heart stopped pounding.

  My face had lost color. I applied a bit of rose-colored rouge and brushed more powder over it. Patricia didn't seem to notice my reaction; she was applying a new Chanel color to her lips.

  "Did you hear how she got invited?" she asked, squinting as she pursed her lips at herself. Looking at her expression, my anxiety passed. I suppressed a smile.

  "For heaven's sake, dear," I said, "stop impersonating a fish and put your glasses on. We're alone here."

  She gave me a rueful glance and slipped her rhinestone-rimmed, catseye glasses out of her handbag. She put them on and surveyed her appearance, dabbed at the comers of her mouth.

  "I hate these things." She tucked the glasses back into the bag.

  "You look fabulous. Tell me who invited her."

  "Oh! Caroline's husband found out that she was going to be in town, and went straight into old Douglas's office." Patricia laid a hand on my arm, leaned close enough to me that I caught a whiff of her spicy perfume, and continued in with a conspiratorial tone. "They were holed up in there for two hours, his secretary told Caroline. And the invitation was hand-delivered by Douglas's private chauffeur."

  I paused with my powder puff in midair, studied her reflection in the mirror. "Two hours, eh? Maybe they want to set up a Hollywood office."

  "Who knows? They're always up to something." She gave me a meaningful look in the mirror. "It's going to be nothing but trouble while she's in town, you know, with the partners courting her influence. She'll sleep with anyone, they say. I'm keeping my George under lock and key and you'd be wise to do the same with Brandon."

  I put my compact back into my handbag and gave Patricia a thin-lipped smile. "Brandon's too busy pursuing glory to waste time puising women. Especially an older, burned-out woman like our dear Marilyn."

  Still, on our return to the party, I had to admit she didn't look old and burned out. She looked pretty damned good for a forty-year-old, pardon my language.

  Looking at her wide, innocent eyes, her winsome expression, my heart filled with rage. I wanted to bring her down. I wanted to see her humiliated.

  Dr. Rudo had taken her hand and was saying how lovely it was to see her again; it'd been so long, etc. etc., as Brandon and I came forward to be introduced. But something about how they acted - the way she straightened almost to stiffness, something in his face - made me believe they loathed each other.

  "How is your movie deal proceeding?" he asked. At her lifted eyebrows he added, "That is why you're here, is it not? That's what the papers say."

  "Oh, I'd love to discuss it with you, Dr. Rudo," she said in a light tone, "but you know, how these ventures are. The backers get jittery if we discuss too many details before the deal is closed."

  "But of course. Pardon my prying." He smiled. But his attitude was aggressive, and he didn't take his eyes off her. It seemed to make her a bit nervous. Which suited me just fine.

  Dr. Rudo's example emboldened me. When Brand and I were introduced I refused to take her extended hand, merely gave it a cool, quizzical glance. As if to say, what should I do with that?

  A look of hurt and bafflement came into her eyes, but she simply gave me that smile she is so famous for, equal parts innocence and sensual languor, and nodded to me. She kept her hand extended, transferring it to my husband, who bent over it and kissed it, lingeringly.

  I wanted to scream. As I pulled Brand away he gave her a charming little grin and a shrug, and I knew he'd seek her out later. Then and there I decided to glue myself to Brand for the evening.

  "What is your problem?" he asked sotto voce, summoning up his courtroom smile, a parody of the one he'd given Marilyn. I suppose you could say he was more concerned about appearances at the moment than I.

  "I don't know what you're talking
about."

  "Lower your voice. You know precisely what I'm talking about." Brand pried my hand loose from his arm and, folding my hand and arm under his in a deceptively tight grip, dragged me along toward the end of the room with the dance floor. He nodded a greeting at Councilman Hartmann, who stood nearby watching us.

  "Let me go."

  "I mean it. I have important plans for tonight. This may he my big chance to make some important contacts and I won't have you interfering."

  "Exactly what sort of contact did you intend to make, darling?" I asked, showing as many teeth as he, though his fingers were digging hard enough into my wrist to leave bruises. "And with whom?"

  "Don't bait me."

  "I saw how you looked at her."

  "Someone had to show some courtesy."

  "That woman is in no need of your courtesy."

  He virtually dragged me out onto the dance floor, with that hateful, suave smile on his face, making pleasantries all around. The song was Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World." He grasped me in a clutch with a hand around the back of my neck and an arm around my waist, and whispered in my ear, "This is my big night and I wont have you interfering."

  "Stay away from her."

  "Don't push me or I'll make you regret it."

  His hand closed alarmingly tightly on the back of my neck; I started to become frightened. Councilman Hartmann still watched us over the heads of the crowd. He must have known something was going on, and was wondering whether he should intercede. A sudden impulse rose in me to struggle in Brand's grip, to hit at his face, to cry out for the councilman's help - for anyone's. Which would have been disastrous at a time like this. I knew how to handle Brand; why was I getting so panicked?

  Besides, Councilman Hartmann had looked away by that time, so I was on my own. I took a deep breath and relaxed in Brand's grip. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I breathed a gentle breath in his ear.

  "I can't help being jealous. You're such a powerful, attractive man that other women won't be able to resist your charms. I couldn't bear it if you got involved with another woman."

  He loosened his grip a bit and drew back to give me a suspicious look, but I had my most sincere face on. After a moment he said, "All right, then, but no more public displays."