“I tell you this, Lindy, despite the fact that Quest swore me to secrecy, because you’re one of the four people I like in the world. And because I know you’ll be careful whom you tell. If you have to, tell McGuire. But don’t blab it around.” He paused. “First: the Cazarès collection isn’t canceled. It goes ahead, the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, eleven A.M., precisely as planned. Tomorrow morning Lazare is giving a press conference—and all the passes to that are being sent out now. The line will be that Wednesday’s show is un hommage. What Maria Cazarès herself would have wanted. Moving, isn’t it?”
“Actually, it is. And?”
“And now—get this—guess where Quest has been all night? At the Cazarès workshops. Getting fitted for three very special ensembles, three new ensembles…”
“What? Tonight? It’s less than two days to the show. That can’t be right, Markov. All the clothes for the collection will have been finished a week ago. Lazare always insists on that. The most they’d be doing is small last-minute adaptations—trimmings, accessories…”
“Sure. But I told you—these outfits are special. They’re Maria Cazarès’s last work. Her final designs. As drawn by her own pen, this last weekend. Lazare’s idea. He was there, in the workshops, Lindy, tonight, putting the fear of God into everybody. Quest was sent for within one hour of Cazarès’s being pronounced dead.”
“What? I can’t believe that.”
“There’s more. Think, Lindy—what time did I first hear? Around eight. And when you checked back with Pixie, what time did she say it came through on the wires?”
“About seven forty-five.”
“Exactly. So work out just how long Lazare took to release the news. Quest was summoned at five this afternoon. If it’s true that Cazarès had died an hour before, she died at around four. So what was happening for the next three and three-quarter hours?”
“I don’t know.” Lindsay gave a shiver. “They were getting the security in place, oiling up the press machine, making sure everyone put out the right story, the right way…”
“Sure. That’s certainly what the courtiers and minions were busy doing. But not Lazare. I’m telling you, Lindy, Cazarès is dead one hour, she’s not cold yet, and he’s there, in the workshops, raising hell. They’re cutting the material for the dresses on the model, the way Chanel used to work, because there’s no time to make toiles. Every tiny little detail has to be just so. Quest is standing there, getting pins stuck in her, getting slices taken off, because the cutters are so damn terrified they can’t hold the scissors steady, and there’s Lazare, in the middle of mayhem, people scurrying in all directions, and he won’t compromise, he’s going through fifteen, sixteen, seventeen samples of materials, he’s got them running down to warehouses, and bringing back bales, he’s got embroideresses, he’s saying no, those buttons won’t work, they’re one eighth of an inch too big—and all the time, Lindy, all the time, he’s in emperor mode. Like—no tears, no grief, no condolences given or accepted, just this white, set face and that voice that makes your blood run cold.”
“An hour after she died? I cannot believe this, Markov. He loved her. I’m sure he loved her. You’re sure he loved her. She was the one thing he cared about—”
“Oh, true.” Markov braked at a tight corner, then accelerated again. “If you’d seen them at the airport, Lindy—I told you. Like my hair is standing on end, I’ve got goose pimples the length of my spine, because any second Lazare’s going to spot me, and then I’m history, because this guy, I mean—he makes me think about crucifixes, Lindy. About stringing garlic around my neck and praying hard. I mean, all the time I’m standing there, quaking behind this palm, I’m thinking, oh, no, it’s after nightfall and before dawn…”
“Come on, Markov, stop exaggerating. Lazare looks fit, active, tanned.”
“Not Friday night, he didn’t. White, Lindy—his face was white. He had a desperate kind of thirsty look. Definitely but definitely one of the children of the damned. And then, when she started in on children, babies…”
“You’re sure she said that, Markov? You couldn’t have misheard?”
“I speak French, Lindy. I know the French for baby. And child. And son. And she kept repeating it, over and over—I want my baby back, I want my son—and he was desperate to shut her up, calm her down…” Markov hesitated. His voice became quiet. “He kissed her, Lindy.”
“You didn’t mention that before.”
“I know. It felt a bit blasphemous—discussing it. I shouldn’t have been there. I shouldn’t have seen it. I felt excited—and then I felt cheap for getting excited.”
“It didn’t stop you phoning me, I notice.”
“I know. Sainthood eludes me. But if you’d seen the way he kissed her.” Markov hesitated again. “It was to stop her talking, partly. But not just that. You could see—he wanted her, and he loved her. He looked like he’d die for her, or he thought she was dying, maybe, I’m not sure.”
“Markov, you can’t know that…” Lindsay began as they rounded a corner and the lights of the St. Vincent came in sight. “You’re reading too much into it.”
“No. I’m not.” Markov stopped the car. He turned to her and removed his dark glasses. Lindsay was allowed to read the expression in his eyes.
Ashamed, knowing she had been misled by his tone, Lindsay took his hand. Markov gave a wry smile.
“I just knew, okay?” he said. “I recognized that country. I speak its language. I was there myself, just over two years ago. It’s not a language you forget.”
“No. You don’t,” replied Lindsay, who had circumnavigated similar territory herself. She leaned across and kissed Markov good night.
“Watch out for McGuire. Watch what you say to him,” he called as she stepped out of his car. “I’ll see you at Chanel tomorrow afternoon.”
In the still-crowded lobby, Lindsay hesitated. She wanted to tell Rowland this, and she wanted to see Rowland very much, but it was now nearly two in the morning. She stared at the telephone booths, and in the end dialed his extension; he picked up on the second ring.
“No, no, come up,” he said, interrupting her apology. “I’m working. Gini’s here with me, working. She just got in from Amsterdam. Room 810.”
Lindsay was surprised to hear this, but not that surprised. Presumably Gini had not been unavailable, as Max had thought: Rowland must have tracked her down; and Gini, of course, was more than capable of working through the night on a story once she had locked into it. For Gini, when at work, two A.M. was early, she thought, and smiled as she entered Room 810, to find Rowland at the fax machine and Gini talking fast on the telephone in French.
Both of them seemed energetic, hyped up, Lindsay thought. Rowland began explaining that there had been a provisional sighting of Mina Landis earlier that day. News of this had taken time to be relayed back, via the British police, and the Correspondent news desk: Gini was just trying to check the details now.
He led Lindsay to a sofa at the far end of the room; Lindsay sat down, but he did not. Lindsay began explaining what Markov had told her, and Rowland listened with close attention. Once or twice he looked back at Gini, then interjected a question. Lindsay continued her story, and it was only as she reached its end that she sensed something wrong.
The room had a careful feel. On the far side of it was a door that presumably led into a bedroom. It was shut. There was a tension beneath the surface here. She looked at Rowland in puzzlement: his demeanor seemed much as it always was. She glanced across at Gini, who was twisting the telephone cord as she spoke. She had been about to ask which floor Gini was on, whether Pixie had found her a room in this hotel, or somewhere else—and then she realized: this was a question better not asked, a topic it would be unwise to discuss.
Gini had come to the end of her conversation. She put the telephone down. She glanced at Rowland, then away, and began to explain. There had been a sighting of Mina Landis. It was still unconfirmed, but a girl answering her description,
and a man resembling Star, had been seen by a plainclothes policeman in the sixth arrondissement. She reached for a map of Paris and laid it out on the desk.
“Here,” she said. “They were seen in this street here, in the Faubourg St. Germain area…” She frowned. “I know that neighborhood. It’s only a few streets away from the place where Maria Cazarès died. How odd.”
Rowland was already moving toward the desk.
“Do they now know where she died?” Lindsay said.
“What?” Rowland glanced back at her in a distracted way. “Oh—yes, apparently so. It was on the late TV news bulletins. She’d been visiting some elderly maid of hers—now retired. They were having tea together and she suddenly collapsed. According to the first reports, she was dying by the time the ambulance got there.”
“Oh, then they’ve released that much…” Lindsay said.
“I imagine they had no choice. Some French journalist will have been handing out hundred-franc bills to the ambulance crew within half an hour of her death’s being rumored, let alone announced. There were paparazzi crawling all over that hospital—that was on the news too.”
Rowland bent over the desk. He angled the light. Gini, who had not looked up once during this exchange, still kept her eyes on the map. Rowland began to trace streets with his right hand; he rested his left on the back of Gini’s chair, then removed it.
“You’re right,” he said. “It is very close…”
Their hands were now, Lindsay saw, lying side by side on the map, about four inches apart. Gini remarked in a low voice that it was an expensive area of Paris, not an area where you would expect retired maids to live. Rowland agreed that this was so. He glanced at his watch and drew back. A series of utterly unremarkable movements: Lindsay rose, intent only on disguising her shock and distress.
Had her evening with Markov been less strange, she thought, had she not had that conversation with him about love and sex, she might even have been deceived by those unremarkable movements and accepted them as such. As it was, she could sense the electricity and tension they were designed to disguise; she could sense that it was Rowland and Gini’s united wish that she leave—and that she do so at once.
Meanwhile, she had to pretend that Rowland’s urgent desire to take Gini in his arms was not as nakedly visible to her as if the act had been performed. Luckily, neither was paying her much attention, and she could dissemble, when required, well enough. She rose, stretched, and said she must get some sleep, that there were two shows tomorrow—Chanel and Gaultier as well as the Cazarès press conference.
Gini nodded and gave her a dazed look.
Rowland, who also looked half blind, escorted her to the door. He said he would certainly try to be at that press conference; Gini said she would too, if she had time, though it was unlikely to be useful.
“Party-line stuff,” she said. “Still, if Lazare himself is going to speak… I’ll try and come with you, Rowland.”
“Good night, Lindsay,” Rowland said, opening the door, and closing it behind her at once. Lindsay stood for a second in the corridor; she was shaking; she pressed her hands against her face. This couldn’t be true, she thought. Rowland, perhaps—but not Gini, surely not Gini?
She heard Rowland engage the lock and chain before she was two feet away. She returned to her room, paced, found herself unable to sleep. She tried very hard not to imagine what might have been said behind that locked door after she left.
Very little, in fact, was said. As the door closed, Gini bent again to the map; she did not dare to look up. She heard the lock engage; she heard Rowland approach, then stop.
For Rowland, distance was a last resort. If he remained here, two feet away, he thought, and if she did not look up, or meet his eyes, then he might be able to disguise what he felt. Once, she had said at a point when he had already made love to her twice. Throughout this evening, in the cab, in the rue St. Séverin, here in this room, while she telephoned and he used the fax, she had moved through his thoughts. In his mind he had continued to touch her, kiss her, make love.
Perhaps she did not feel this, he thought. He stood at that safe distance, just those two feet from the desk. His body had begun to stir the instant he locked the door. He looked at Gini’s bent head, at the pale curve of her neck, at the ordinary white shirt she was wearing, the ordinary black skirt. She was extraordinarily slender; he could span her waist with his hands, yet she had full and very beautiful breasts, their areolae wide and dark. He closed his eyes, fighting the memory of his own hands, and his mouth, pressed against those breasts. He felt her hands on his skin, the soft openness of her mouth. He swore in a low voice, looked blindly around the room, half turned, then moved back to the desk.
He stood immediately behind her, then, when he could resist the impulse no longer, rested his hands against her shoulders and her throat. He felt her body become rigid with tension at once. Even then, he thought later, even then he might have been able to retain control, but she tilted her head back and met his eyes. He bent forward and kissed her mouth, and in that instant he was lost. She caught hold of his hands and drew them forward inside her blouse. She gave a moan that might have been desire or despair, then twisted up out of the chair and into his embrace.
He could read the need and the desperation he felt in her eyes, and in that moment was certain that she had been as desperate to continue something unfinished as he had been.
He began to undo her blouse as she fumbled first with the buttons of his shirt, then his belt. As he caught her to him, and her bared breasts touched his bared skin, she gave a low cry and shuddered against him.
She rested one of her hands against his thigh, then his groin. She gave a moan, clinging to him and seeking his mouth. Rowland could think of nothing but entering her again. He pulled her down beside him, murmuring her name; she lay back among scattered papers and scattered clothes, drawing his hand down between her thighs. She was very wet; his fingers could slip inside her easily; she arched back in a quick ecstasy of pleasure.
She parted her legs, frantic for him to enter her. Rowland thrust up into her deep, knowing she would come almost immediately. If he moved a very little, he thought, just once, just twice. Lifting himself on his arms, looking down at her face, he watched her astonishing eyes, watched the waves of abandonment move like light across her face. He waited, withdrew, thrust again, and began to move carefully, because they were still not familiar to each other, and he wanted her to adjust her rhythms to his. It took her a little while; at first, as he fucked, he thought she was resisting him, deliberately mistiming her response to his strokes. He thought he knew the reason for that, as he waited, moved, waited again, although this was hard for him, because he was very aroused, and his own climax was close. He used all his skills, every pleasure device, and at last he felt that odd female resistance begin to give. Her eyes opened and met his. He bent his head and kissed her breasts, moving deep inside her.
“Darling, I can’t—don’t fight me,” he said in a low voice, and at that all her resistance melted away. She began to move with him, perfectly in time, and it was inutterably sweet. He watched her face, for that tiny second of stillness which he was beginning to know, and which meant she was just on the edge. Then he could no longer watch because the pleasure was too sharp, the desire too intense. He caught her to him as they came, and said her name. There were other things he wanted to say, and in the next moments was very close to saying, but he forced himself to leave them unspoken. He clasped her hand, trusting that the language of the body would have spoken to her instead.
Later, when they lay beside each other in bed with faint predawn light edging the curtains, she turned to him, her mouth lax with pleasure and her eyes languorous with sexual fatigue. She rested her hand on his stomach, laced her fingers in his pubic hair, and watched him stir, become erect.
An instant tremor of response ran through her body. She leaned across so her breasts brushed against his penis; she bent, and took him in her m
outh, and Rowland shuddered at the touch of her tongue and lips.
“We taste of each other,” she said, lifting her head, then kissing his mouth. “Of each other, and of too much sex. We said once—I said once…”
“It was already too late when you said that.” He clasped her hand, and their fingers interlaced. “Once. Five times. Six. A hundred. Does it make a difference?”
“Maybe not. I still want you so much. I can see you, feel you wanting me. In the rue St. Séverin?”
“Yes.” Rowland smiled. “And outside the church too.”
“In the taxi?”
“It was particularly bad in the taxi. Here too. While I was trying to listen to Lindsay, and you were on the phone—I couldn’t really hear what she was saying….”
“I couldn’t hear that policeman. All I could hear was you. Your hands. This.”
She moved so that the lips of her sex brushed the tip of his penis. Then, slowly, her eyes holding his, she lowered herself onto him, as if she were impaling herself on his flesh. There were tears in her eyes.
Drawing her down to him, Rowland kissed her tears. He felt desire for her, and also a profound tenderness.
“Are you sad? Darling, are you?” he said against her mouth. “Don’t be. I understand. It can still be once—in a sense. Just this one night…”
“Yes, that. One night. A time out of time, and…”
She could not continue. She began to tremble. Rowland came with a sense of painful release and an immediate sadness. After that she curled into the curve of his arm and fell asleep, and Rowland lay there, holding her close, listening to her breathing, counting the hours left to them and waiting for the late winter dawn.
Several times during the night the telephone had rung, and the front desk had picked up. At six-thirty, as the first thin city light stole into the room, Rowland rose and went through into the sitting room beyond. As was the hotel’s practice, the messages had been placed in an envelope and slipped beneath the door. The calls had all been for Gini and there must have been several, more than he had realized, for the envelope was bulky. He placed it on Gini’s desk, picked up some of the scattered papers, and looked down at the map of this city he and Gini had scanned the night before.