Lace II

  * * *

  An hour later, Judy put her head around Lili’s bathroom door. “I thought I’d find you here. Do you mind if I come in?”

  Lili was up to her nose in pink bubbles. When Lili craved comfort and security, she always headed for a warm tub.

  “The whole world has already seen me in the tub, I don’t see why my mother shouldn’t,” said Lili. “How are things with you?”

  “The Senator is really putting on the pressure.” Judy wondered if she should tell Lili the full scale of the battle that threatened VERVE! magazine after her fatal interview.

  Lili looked over the rim of the bath at her mother. “I’ve been waiting for a good moment to say this, but I don’t suppose there’ll ever be one.”

  “Say what?”

  “I’m sorry that his lawsuit is all my fault.”

  “You told the truth, Lili. We took the risk. Your life story in VERVE! boosted the circulation. We miscalculated the Senator’s reaction and that’s all there is to it. We’re still hoping that the Senator will settle out of court.”

  “Oh, him…” Lili sniffed. “He won’t be any problem to you, Judy. I told you I’ll stand by what I’ve said and what you printed. He won’t want to face me in court,” Lili reached for the shampoo, “because he won’t want his voters to discover that the man they sent to Washington is a dirty old goat.” She submerged her head in the carnation-scented water and came up dripping, big-eyed and sleek-headed as a seal.

  Judy hesitated, then asked, “Was he really as unpleasant as you made him sound?”

  Slowly Lili said, “It depends on what you mean by unpleasant.” She remembered how, a few months after Jo’s death, she had been a guest of the Duchess of Santigosta at her palatial Spanish beach house on the Malaga coast. Lili had still felt her loss after Jo Stiarkoz’ death, but Zimmer had suggested that she try to get more fun out of life and accept a few of the stream of invitations that any celebrity receives.

  The first two days had been delightful. The twenty-two other guests were mainly European business acquaintances of the Duke, who was no longer rich and supplemented his income by acting as an entrepreneur, a go-between, for his business partners, when they wanted to establish contact with, and impress, someone with whom they hoped, later, to set up a deal.

  They swam, they water-skied, and everyone else in the party water-parachuted, including the Italian jeweler’s wife who was a grandmother and trying it for the first time. It was easy, she saw; so, obediently, Lili had been strapped into her parachute harness, taken a run off the end of the jetty, then found herself jerked into midair, fifty feet above the little speedboat that was towing her. Lili looked down, her stomach turned over, and she thought for one moment that she was going to be sick. She knew that she suffered from vertigo, so she never stood near the edge of balconies or bridges, but she had never felt vertiginous in an airplane, so it hadn’t occurred to her that she would do so now. The ten-minute ride was purgatorial, but eventually the speedboat stopped back near the jetty and Lili floated down toward the blue waters of the Mediterranean where her harness was quickly unstrapped by the boatman’s assistant, who then started to gather up the parachute that was drifting in the sea water. Gratefully, Lili floated on the water with her arms apart, feeling too ill to strike out for shore. It was at this moment that a nearby swimmer, a balding American Senator with whom Lili had hardly spoken, swam up to her. “Great sensation, isn’t it?” he asked, then he noticed Lili’s dazed expression. “Are you all right, my dear?”

  “Yes … no … I don’t know … please,” a wave broke over Lili’s head and she accidentally swallowed a lot of sea water. “Please, could you h-h-h-help me back to the beach?”

  “Put your arms around me, my dear.” Lili did so and felt her body drift against his, then the man was lying on top of her in the water as, dimly, Lili thought, surely this isn’t the way that lifesavers do it? After what seemed an eternity, the man panted, “I think we’ll make better progress if you let go, my dear, and I hold you from behind.”

  A lifesaver swims backward, kicking only with his feet, as both arms are needed—the left arm holds the drowning victim across the collarbone and the right hand cups the victim’s chin above water. But this was not Senator Ruskington’s lifesaving procedure. He had, indeed, swum backward toward shore, kicking only with his feet, but he held Lili’s body on top of his with both his hands firmly on her breasts.

  Once ashore, Lili had lain in the shade and, within an hour, she had recovered, had thanked Senator Ruskington for helping her, and had decided to go to bed early. And that, Lili thought, was the end of the incident.

  Lili was awakened by a strange sensation. She opened her eyes and from her four-poster bed she could see the silver moonlight striping the room. Still half asleep, Lili shivered, then realized that the covers had been drawn back from her bed. Sleepily, she felt a flood of warmth in her body that she hadn’t experienced since Jo’s death, then slowly she awakened, realizing one thing at a time. Her nightgown no longer covered the lower part of her body. Between her legs she felt a warm, heavy, rough sensation, like having your hand licked by a calf. Lili realized that a man was crouched by her bed, parting her lower lips with his hands and steadily licking her clitoris. As she realized what was happening, a hand slid up her body and felt underneath the nightgown for the nipple of her breast, upthrusting and hardening in automatic response to this dark stranger’s stimulation.

  Lili gasped in horror and tried to sit up, but the hand that was on her breast pushed her hard, back against the pillows, and suddenly the man was on top of her. He was naked, she realized with growing horror as she felt his hardness against her. She screamed, then his mouth was on hers.

  I can’t believe this … it’s a nightmare … no, it isn’t … he must be a burglar.… And then he’d taken his mouth away from hers and, in the moonlight, she had recognized his face as he arched his back and tried to thrust into her, as painfully he held her by her breasts against the pillows.

  “You liked me touching you in the water, didn’t you?” the man panted. “You didn’t stop me, you led me on, you little bitch.” It was that balding American Senator who had helped her swim to shore that afternoon.

  Lili screamed again and simultaneously reached down the bed and grasped for the balls behind his groping cock and twisted them as hard as she could. The man grunted, gasped, doubled up in pain and Lili felt thankful that she had remembered this old tart’s trick from her past.

  Lili managed to wriggle from beneath the gasping fat body, then she shot across the floor to the door, flung it open and ran along the wide, silent corridors until she reached the servants’ backstairs. She ran down three flights and threw open the door at the bottom. She found herself in the imposing entrance hall, silvered by moonlight. Lili raced for the guest bathroom and sat shivering on the cold seat for the rest of the night, until she heard the bustle of servants starting to clean. Then Lili crept back to her bedroom.

  It was hard to believe that horrible scene had really happened. The bed was in disarray but there was nothing to indicate … Lili ran forward as she saw a navy, red-dotted piece of silk protruding from beneath the bed. It was the tie of a man’s dressing gown. Lili bolted the door and reached for the ivory bedside telephone and demanded to speak to the Duchess … well, as soon as Her Grace was awake, in that case. It was an urgent matter.

  Two hours later, the plump Duchess floated into Lili’s bedroom wearing an embroidered pale-gray crêpe de Chine peignoir that must have taken months to stitch. Lili poured out her story, showed the dressing gown tie, and looked into the chubby face for sympathy. The Duchess took the dressing gown cord and held it in her hands. Then she said, “My dear, Senator Ruskington is a very influential man with whom my husband hopes to arrange … certain matters. This entire house party is being given to entertain him. I think perhaps you had a bad dream. And if you didn’t my dear, well, nothing has happened to you that hasn’t happened to you before. A gentlem
an was bouleversé by your beauty; he had perhaps had a little too much to drink. I doubt if this morning he will remember what you say has happened. So any unpleasantness would be reduced to his word against yours. Or he might even say that you had invited him to your bedroom, in which case, what does a dressing gown tie prove?” The Duchess stood up and, in a polite but distant voice, she said to an angry Lili, who could hardly believe what she heard, “I feel it might be best for all of us, my dear, if you left immediately.”

  * * *

  Judy said, “Rape is never pleasant.” She held out a terrycloth robe for Lili as she stepped out of the bath, “Especially if anyone suggests you were asking for it.”

  * * *

  Nearly five and a half miles, thought Debra Halifax, relentlessly pedaling on. Although she was in her late thirties, her silhouette was that of girl of twelve. Each rib was visible through the candy-pink leotard, as she gazed with determination at the illuminated screen built into the bicycle’s handlebar. The preprogrammed rides could be dialed on the control panel; they could increase the machine’s resistance from an easy, five-minute trip to the toughest half-hour program which, her husband complained, was like cycling over the Rocky Mountains.

  Although the clock in her private gymnasium showed 8:30 A.M., Debra was halfway through the program for the second time that day when her husband, Curtis, appeared at the door of the gym. He wore a handmade gray suit, a white silk shirt, and carried a well-polished black briefcase. There is something obscene about a woman who deliberately starves herself, Curtis thought, as he saw bands of sweat spreading across the pink leotard below the areas where his wife’s breasts used to be. Debra’s whole appearance had become a macabre caricature of the delicate little sprite he had married; there was now a monkeylike appearance to her head, her face was deeply lined, and the outline of the skull was prominent at the temples. Curtis looked down at the bicycle dial and realized that she was pedaling the Rocky Mountain program for the second time. “Debra, please.…”

  “Don’t say another word, I won’t listen.”

  “But you’ll kill yourself.”

  “I will do no such thing. I am promoting my health.”

  “Surely it isn’t necessary.…”

  “You know the way my metabolism is. I only have to look at a lettuce leaf to put on weight.”

  Curtis gave up.

  “I’ll see you at the Peabodys’ tonight, dear.” He said good-bye with a dry kiss on the top of her head. She did not stop pedaling.

  In his car, Curtis leaned back and wondered what he could do to add some meaning to his wife’s life. He reached for the window control, then remembered with irritation that he must always keep the windows closed. Each day Curtis left Chestnut Hill for the bank at a different hour. Hawkins, his driver, brought the car round to the front of the house only when the butler called him on the house telephone, and both Curtis and Hawkins wore coats with a layer of ballisticproof wadding in the lining—the least conspicuous substitute for a bulletproof vest. His staff was even more exasperated than Curtis by the new security procedures. He had been obliged to call them together and explain that the insurance people now insisted on a full executive-protection program against kidnap or assassination, and that it was his responsibility, as the bank’s chairman, to follow their request.

  When he arrived at the bank, Curtis, who was no longer allowed to take the mahogany-paneled private elevator to his suite, joined his employees in one of the regular cars. Alighting at the forty-eighth floor, he walked down the long corridor between two rows of early American primitive paintings to his office, where Curtis’s large antique desk stood below portraits of his father and grandfather, so that anyone standing opposite Curtis looked at three generations of Halifaxes.

  “Good morning, Miss Brady.” Curtis’s secretary handed him the card on which she had listed his day’s appointments. “The usual reservation at the Philadelphia Club at twelve, but make it for two people, please. And no calls for an hour.”

  In these impressive surroundings, Curtis had very little work to do. No matter what kind of idiot Curtis Halifax III turned out to be, the basis of the family’s wealth would always remain stable. The senior managers were all clever men, from old, Anglo-Saxon, East Coast families. Their loyalty was to everything the Halifax family stood for—the best, historic traditions of American life: self-reliance, thrift, hard work, and Republicanism.

  Curtis’s grandfather had been determined that the Halifax family would, one day, provide a President for America, a wise, dignified, cautious man who would lead the country back to the old-fashioned virtues and rigorous standards of their caste. He had married both his sons into similarly minded familes, and had been disappointed that his two healthy boys, between them, had managed to produce only one son—Curtis, the sole heir to his grandfather’s ambitions. Grandfather Halifax had insisted that Curtis’s bride should also be chosen from an ideal background, and when she was nine years old, he had selected Debra for his grandson to marry. She had been born into one of the wealthiest Philadelphia families; her pedigree, her bloodline, her studbook entry were impeccable—in fact, too much so. Curtis had grown to suspect that Debra’s inherent instability stemmed from over-breeding, and, ironically, this would frustrate the ambition of Grandfather Halifax.

  Curtis sighed as he settled into his leather wing chair, beneath the portraits; he knew he had disappointed them. He had failed to fulfill his family’s political hopes and, because of Debra, he was becoming more of a liability than an asset to his political party. He settled his feet on the green leathertopped desk and picked up his appointment card for the day. The only name on it was Ms. Judy Jordan.

  * * *

  Tony drove Judy to Philadelphia in her cream Mercedes 350SL convertible. He was a fast, neat driver and Judy always felt safe when he was at the wheel. During the entire two-hour journey, Judy scribbled memos. She was only going to be in France over the weekend, but she wanted to leave nothing unfinished before she left. Tony never interrupted her train of thought. He now recognized Judy’s moods, knew when she was feeling ebullient, knew when she wanted to work out an idea aloud, knew when she needed soothing, and he also recognized the rare occasions when she was thinking hard and didn’t want to be interrupted.

  When the Mercedes slid to a stop outside the Patriots Halifax Bank, Tony jumped out of his seat and opened the door for Judy. Although her face looked strained, Judy was very appealing in a violet suede Calvin Klein coat and dark-violet suede boots.

  But her pretty appearance made no difference to her reception. After arguing, in the most charming way, for over an hour, Curtis Halifax leaned toward her over his huge, antique mahogany desk and clasped his narrow, nervous hands. Judy looked at the tall, well-built, fair-haired man and thought he’d probably never worn a store-bought suit in his entire life. “I know we’re … old friends … and because of our … special … relationship, I’ve done as much as I could for you in the past, but this time I just can’t swing it. The Board won’t wear it.”

  “You might at least try once more.” With an effort, Judy kept calm reasonableness in her voice. “If we show our projection figures for next year, your Board will see that we only have a temporary problem.”

  “Judy, don’t be unreasonable. Last month, I went to the limit for yon, so that you could buy Griffin out, and now you’re asking for more.” Curtis looked uncomfortable as he fiddled with the new, automatic gold Cartier calendar. He continued. “No banker in his right mind would invest money in the outcome of a lawsuit. And, as I’ve already explained, my personal funds are committed, long term. This time the answer really has to be no, Judy.”

  “No is not my favorite word, Curtis,” said Judy, a shimmer of a smile touching her lips as her dark blue eyes looked into his pale blue ones.

  Curtis responded with a flash of exasperation. “That’s a low blow, Judy, and you know it. Stop trying to make me feel guilty.”

  “I’m sorry Curtis, but VERVE! is my w
hole life and I’m desperately worried. Don’t you know anyone in Washington who could lean on Senator Ruskington?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Curtis started to feel resentful. “I haven’t got that sort of clout.” The door suddenly opened and Curtis and Judy looked up in surprise, to see a fine-boned blond woman, with a beautiful but gaunt face, wearing a dark mink coat with a bunch of violets pinned to it. She said, “Surprise, Curtis darling!” Then she realized that he was not alone and added, “Oh, I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”

  Curtis stood up automatically. “No, Debra. Of course not. I don’t believe you know Judy Jordan. My wife, Debra Halifax.”

  “So glad to meet you.” Debra flashed a faint smile at Judy, then ignored her. “Curtis darling, I’m on my way to lunch with Aunt Emily, but I just dropped by to tell you that I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want the emeralds tonight, after all, red looks better with white crepe. So tell Perkins to get the rubies out of the vault, will you?” She blew a little-girl kiss toward her husband. “Must go.” She flashed another brilliant smile at Judy and she left the room. “Bye-bye then.”

  There was a short silence, then Judy said enviously, “You can always tell old money. It must be wonderful to have nothing to worry about.”

  “Debra doesn’t have such a carefree life as people think, and you know it, Judy.”

  “What a pity that your folks were so wrong about her. Given a clever wife, you might be President by now.”

  “Don’t say that, Judy. Can’t you ever forgive me? Can’t you ever forget the past? You wouldn’t really want to be in Debra’s place.”