Another man stepped forward from the bar, his round face pink with all the delight missing from the expressions of the others. “Mrs. Laurence!” He thrust his hand forward. “Can’t tell you how glad I am to meet you, all proper and official-like. Andrew Paulson.”
“Sergeant Paulson!” My hand was being pumped up and down like a jackhammer. “Julian didn’t tell me you were coming! What a wonderful surprise!”
He was beaming so broadly, I’d never have connected him with the downcast figure on Park Avenue last May if he hadn’t introduced himself. “Wouldn’t miss it, Mrs. L. Wouldn’t miss it. Couldn’t be happier to see that boy settled.”
“Boy?” asked my mother, over my shoulder.
“Mr. Paulson is an old friend of mine, Mrs. Wilson, from England. Just moved over a few months ago,” Julian said. I glanced again at Paulson’s face; I guessed he wasn’t much older than Julian now, though they must originally have been born at least a dozen years apart.
“I see,” Mom said, in a tone I recognized from my teenage years, meaning not quite buying it, honey.
The maitre d’ led us all down the hall to a private room upstairs. A round table had been set up in the middle, with a snowy white tablecloth and glasses of champagne at every place setting, still fizzling. Each plate, I saw, had a name card in front of it; Julian was urging everyone forward to sit down, the consummate host. At the last moment, he turned to me with a sweet smile, almost wistful, and squeezed my hand. “All right, darling?”
I nodded. “Perfect.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Pretty normal, for the moment. As long as they don’t serve any hot dogs.”
He lifted my hand and kissed it. “Let me know if you need to dash out.”
He led me to my seat and pulled out my chair, then moved to the one next to it and picked up his champagne glass. The table fell silent and looked up at him expectantly. Samantha wore an enormous grin.
“Ladies,” he began, returning her smile, moving on to the others, “gentlemen. All our dear friends and family. As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, judging from the expressions I see around me, Kate and I have asked you here tonight for a special dinner indeed.”
“Hear, hear!” burst out my father. For God’s sake.
“Early this afternoon,” Julian said, “Kate did me the very great honor of becoming my wife, in a small civil ceremony at City Hall.”
The table erupted into cheers and applause. From most of them, at least; Arthur stared down at his plate, and Geoff wore an expression of sclerotic hostility.
Julian waited for the enthusiasm to die down, a smile teasing the side of his mouth. “Of course, we’re deeply sorry we couldn’t ask all of you to attend, but after some reflection we decided that, rather than endure a long engagement under public scrutiny, we wanted the legal ceremony to be performed as soon as possible, to be followed, at some point in the next few months, by a more traditional wedding, which I sincerely hope will put me back in good graces with Kate’s mother and friends.”
“Hear, hear!” called out my mother.
“In any case,” Julian went on, twinkling at her, “I’d like you to join me in toasting my new bride, my beloved Kate. To her health and happiness, which I shall devote my life to undertaking.”
My blush, by this point, had reached every last node of my body, and when Julian lifted up my hand and kissed it in front of everybody, I thought I might disintegrate. But the faces around me, with the exception of Geoff and poor Arthur, were so radiant with delight—even Carla, who had enough estrogen in her to appreciate a romantic moment, even someone else’s—that the confusion began to recede. Julian sat down, still holding my hand, and I scanned the eyes fastened so eagerly upon me.
With sudden confidence, I released my husband’s hand and reached for my own glass. “Excuse me,” I said, standing up, “I think it’s my turn.”
Silence, close and expectant. I felt Julian’s warmth next to my arm, the coolness of the glass under my fingers, and gathered courage. “I’d just like to thank everyone for coming this evening. Having all of you here to share my joy—our joy—makes it all the more precious to me. So, to all of you,” I said, raising my glass and turning to Julian, “and to you, Julian, to your own health and happiness, which I very much hope to share with you for all the rest of our life together.”
I sat down hard, to a chorus of cheers and hear, hears, and took a drink of my champagne, which turned out to be ginger ale. He’d thought of everything. I felt a weight on my knee: Julian’s hand, squeezing gently. I looked sideways with a wan smile, unable to say anything more.
Then the toasts began in earnest, mingling with an appetizer course whisked in by an army of waiters. Some sort of asparagus dish; I sniffed delicately to test my reaction, and found no swirl of nausea curling my belly. So far, so good.
Charlie, who’d already had a glass or two of Julian’s single-malt Scotch before leaving the townhouse, began a rambling toast in his usual style, which I hoped my parents weren’t following. My own mind was already beginning to drift: to the plane that supposedly sat waiting for us, to the honeymoon ahead. Where we might be going, how long we might stay. In the midst of this meditation, I happened to glance over at Arthur Hamilton.
He was staring at me, directly at me, and his expression was neither pleased nor sad nor wistful nor tormented. It was cold. Stone cold. Like he was staring down a tennis opponent at a championship match. Like he’d just been told I’d killed his favorite cat.
Like I’d just married his beloved sister’s fiancé.
The entrée had that instant been placed before me, an elegant rack of lamb in a pool of minted butter. I looked down at it and felt the contents of my stomach heave drunkenly back and forth. “Excuse me,” I whispered to Julian.
He looked at me in concern.
“Lamb,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He started to rise.
“No, no. I’m okay. Stay here. They’ll worry.”
I slipped from my chair and out of the room, just as Charlie was winding up with some hilarious and probably grossly embarrassing anecdote. “Bathroom?” I begged a waiter, as he came up the stairs in front of me.
“Basement,” he said, in heavily accented English, “to the right at the end of the hall.”
I flew down the stairs, to the main level and then down to the basement, where I could hear the clatter of the pots and pans in the kitchen. Down the hall to the right. I looked frantically in front of me and saw a signboard painted with a female silhouette.
I made it just in time, emptying asparagus and ginger ale into the toilet until it seemed like the lining of my stomach had been stripped out as well. “You,” I muttered, straightening at last and catching my breath, “had better be a really cute baby. Because this is getting old fast.”
I opened up the stall door and staggered to the sink, one of those stylish bowl-above-the-counter models. A neat stack of linen towels sat by the basin; I took one off the top and wet it with some cool water from the faucet and looked up into the mirror to wipe my forehead.
Arthur Hamilton’s face stared back at me, from just above my right shoulder.
I wanted to scream, but my vocal cords had locked. I whipped around instead.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Where?” I gasped out.
“Out of here.”
I made a lunge for the door, but he grabbed my arm and shoved something into my belly. A gun.
I don’t think I’d ever even seen a real gun up close. Just stared uneasily, once or twice, at the pieces hanging on the hips of the NYPD, wondering what it would be like to hold one, fire one. They’d always looked a bit scary to me. Hard, lethal. Not something I really wanted around me.
“You wouldn’t use that,” I whispered. “You wouldn’t do that. It would kill Julian. He’s your friend.”
Arthur said nothing, only nudged me with the gun. Hard. I swallowed, trying to think rationally. ??
?You can’t kill me,” I said. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Open the door slowly,” he said. “We’re going out the back way.”
“No. I won’t.”
His finger moved, and something clicked. He’d been a soldier, whether or not a good one. He knew how to use a gun. He’d probably even killed someone before. I reached for the door handle and opened it.
“Turn to the right,” he said, and I turned to the right, walking down the hallway, hoping I could go slowly enough that Julian would notice the two of us missing, would get suspicious. Would come after me and freaking save me. Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? Because I was way too scared out of my wits at the moment to save myself. I didn’t know anything about Arthur Hamilton. Had he just snapped? Was he going to take me out into the street and shoot me there?
Buy time, I thought. Buy time. “Where are you taking me?” I asked, trying to turn around, but the gun shoved into my kidneys.
“Open the door,” he said, and I opened the door.
It was a service entrance, rising up the stairs to the street level. “Up,” Arthur said, and I started climbing the stairs, feeling the curl of panic now, the evening air cool and damp on my skin, the smell of cooking food making my stomach roil.
I heard some kind of commotion behind me, inside the basement, and called out, “I’m here! On the stairs!”
The gun shoved hard against my back, knocking me to my knees. “Don’t do that again!” Arthur hissed. “Now up! Now!” Another shove, and I scrambled up the rest of the stairs and through a gap in the railing to the sidewalk.
A car hummed by the curve; not one of ours. I cast about, looking for the Escalade, and saw it, a few storefronts down. Eric and the driver were both reading magazines. I reached up to wave, but Arthur grabbed my arm and wrenched it backward, shoving me toward the back door of the car. He flung the door open and pushed me in and followed, and the car took off with a screech.
I pressed down on the window button, to no avail; it must have had the safety lock on. “Help!” I screamed at the driver, “he’s kidnapping me!”
The man didn’t flinch.
I whipped my head around, staring back at the restaurant, and at that instant two figures burst onto the sidewalk. One of them was Julian; I could see his hair gleam under the streetlamp. “Julian!” I screamed out, not that he could hear me. He stopped, looking up and down the street, and spotted our car. He started sprinting after us, legs pumping like pistons, chest bursting through his crisp white shirt. I reached for the door handle, desperate, but it was locked, and Arthur’s fist came down on my hand.
“Calm down,” he said, in a hard cold voice. “You won’t get hurt unless you do something foolish. You have my word.”
“Your word?” I turned back to the rear window, and saw that Julian had given up chasing us and was now running back to the Escalade; we wheeled around the corner, onto Park Avenue, and by some cosmic blast of bad luck the lights had just turned green as far as I could see, all the way up to 125th Street and beyond.
We raced steadily up Park Avenue, through the seventies and the eighties, ambitious limestone Candela façades rippling past my eyes, before the lights turned red again at Ninety-third Street. I forced myself to calm down, to think rationally. Arthur was obviously sick, despondent, not a murderer. Talk him off the ledge. Make him see reason.
“Arthur,” I said. “I understand, I really do. I can’t even imagine how hard it’s been for you, losing your sister. A much better woman than I am. When I see what she accomplished, what she was…” I twisted the bracelets on my right wrist. “Of course you’re upset. Of course you are.”
“He loved her,” Arthur said. “You don’t understand. He loved her. They were perfect for one another. You should have seen them together: the match of the age.”
Each word he spoke, with laser precision, penetrated my brain with its own specific sensation of pain. “Of course,” I said. “Of course.” Keep him talking. Distract him. The car rumbled uneasily below my legs, eager to be back in motion.
“I don’t mean to be cruel. You’re a nice girl. Pretty, in your way. But Flora! We all worshipped her, Julian and Geoffrey and I.”
“I know. Julian”—I swallowed—“speaks of her with such warmth, such regret.”
Keep him happy. Just keep him happy.
“He loved her so,” Arthur said wistfully. “And she loved him, of course. How could she not? As beautiful as he is. His character, his noble soul. His spotless purity. A star, glowing above us all. There’s no one like him in this world. No honor, no decency, no fidelity. How I wish we had never been brought here. How I wish…”
“You love him,” I said, almost inaudibly, turning my head to read, with dawning astonishment and pity, the expression on his face. “You love him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Who doesn’t?”
“I mean you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
He snapped his face to mine, and I lost him. “In love with him! In love with him! You sordid woman, with your commonplace vulgar mind! I loved him, I love him, with a pure love, a noble love, something as foreign to you as the age in which we were bred. And his love for her! To think he would dishonor that love, betray it, with the vile sensuous fleshly passion he feels for you, into which you’ve corrupted him!”
“You,” I said, “are seriously sick.” The headlamps of a passing taxi shadowed across his face, and something connected in my brain. “You. It was you following me around. You at the Starbucks that night. No wonder Julian let you…”
The crosstown light turned amber, and I felt the car poise upward, ready to take off at the green.
A screech of tires ripped through the air behind us. We both turned to see a sleek dark car whip around the center island from Ninety-second Street. Julian’s Maserati.
The lights turned green, and Arthur’s driver punched the accelerator, throwing us both back against the seat. I grabbed my seat belt and snapped it in. Don’t, I begged Julian. Don’t race us. Just call the police. Don’t risk yourself. Please. Please.
Our car was fast, but the Maserati was built for speed. Within a block it was alongside us, then pushing ahead, trying to force us over. I saw there were two figures inside: who was with him? The passenger glanced back at us; I couldn’t see his face in the shadows. I leaned forward, pressing against the window glass, trying desperately to peer through.
My window began rolling down, exposing my skin to the outside air, and then I felt something cold and hard press against my right temple, turning my guts to water. Instantly the Maserati slowed down, backing off. It dropped behind us, at a close but respectful distance, and I tried to turn and look around, to glimpse Julian’s face, but Arthur snarled, “Don’t move. Just sit.”
Don’t shake. Don’t panic. Relax. Think happy. Think Julian holding you, think of his arms, his face, his smell, his kiss. Everything will be okay. You won’t die. We haven’t even had our wedding night. Can’t die without that.
We turned right onto Ninety-sixth Street. I wondered if Julian was still following us. We must be going onto the FDR, I thought. Nothing else in that direction.
But we didn’t go onto the FDR. We stopped instead on the block between First and Second avenues, and Arthur pulled me out of the car and up the stoop of an ordinary tenement-style walkup building. He pressed a button on the row outside the door, and someone must have been waiting for him, because it buzzed at once and he burst through the door, dragging me with him, just as a shout outside told me Julian and his companion had jumped out of the Maserati and were running after us, into the building.
They just caught the door before it closed, and I heard them running across the bare shabby lobby behind us. Arthur was pulling me up the stairs; I dragged my feet, slowing him down, and tried to look around behind us. He yanked me up on the first landing and spun me around and pressed the gun against my temple, hard.
Geoff. Geoff was the one with Julian. They both froze, s
taring at us.
I tried to keep my face composed. I didn’t want Julian to panic, to do something rash. His eyes locked on mine, ablaze with emotion. I’m okay, I mouthed to him. Okay.
His head made a tiny motion, perhaps a nod, and his eyes shifted to Arthur. “Put the gun down, Arthur,” he said softly. “You’ve no quarrel with her. It isn’t her fault. It’s mine.”
“No,” I squawked.
“Hush, Kate,” he said. “Put the gun down, Arthur. Let her go. We’ll all sit down and chat. Of course you’re upset. Of course you are. Just let her go.” He placed his foot casually on the next step up.
“Stop,” Arthur said. “I’ll shoot her.”
Julian stilled.
“You’re right,” Arthur went on. “It isn’t her fault. She didn’t know my sister. She didn’t betray her. Betray every principle we once held dear.”
“No, she didn’t,” Julian said. “So let her go. Let her go, and I’ll come with you. We’ll sort it all out.”
“No!” I said. “Julian, no! Don’t go with him.”
Nobody noticed me. Julian and Arthur stared at each other, like dogs in a ring, sizing one another up. Geoff stood there quietly, impassively, a bystander. Do something, I thought. They’re your friends, for God’s sake.
“Let her go,” Julian said, in his coaxing voice, the one I could never resist. “I’ll come with you. Willingly. No trouble.”
“Julian, no,” I whispered. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Silence hollowed out the stairwell. I heard a pair of thumps from somewhere upstairs, then another; a baby’s cry echoed faintly, fretfully, through the walls. Won’t somebody come, I thought, agonized. Won’t somebody hear something, see something, call the police.
“Very well,” Arthur said. “Have I your word of honor?”
“My word of honor.” Julian’s shoulders eased. “Let her go, without any harm, and I’ll go with you. Wherever you want. We can sort it all out.”
Arthur made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Your gun, please. Slowly.”