Beyond Eden (12 page)

“They don't do elections, Gayle.”

“I'm just saying don't get your hopes up, Lindsay. The man could be a real slime bucket, he could be a pervert, a wanted criminal. You'll check him out before you head over there, won't you?”

“I already did. He's very well-known. He's big-time. He's in the phone book and his address is fancy and quite real. I even called
Cosmo
and asked about him.” She sat back in her cane chair and stared at the depleted basket of tortilla chips. “I've got big boobs. Don't all models have to look anorexic and be flat-chested?”

Gayle shrugged. “I'm going with you tomorrow. I'm not taking any chances that you'll be too trusting and sign away the farm.”

“Me, trusting?” That was truly a surprise to Lindsay. “You're joking.”

“No. You're naive as hell, Lindsay. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. I saw that psychology creep of yours, Dr. Gruska, this morning when I was on campus checking on gymnastics courses. He nearly ran to catch up with me. Can't you just see him with his tweeds flapping? He wanted to know how you were. He wanted your phone number.”

Lindsay choked on a tortilla chip and grabbed for her glass of water. “You didn't—”

“Don't worry. I gave him a number, all right, made it up right then and there. He walked away a happy creep.”

“I wonder what he wants?”

“He probably wants what every man wants. He wants inside your jeans.”

“I don't think so. His father wouldn't allow it.”

Gayle waved a tortilla chip at her. “You're an odd duck, Lindsay. I go along thinking you're so unworldly, but then I see this other side of you. All cynical and funny, at least on the surface. Sometimes I just don't understand you at all.”

“Nothing to understand,” Lindsay said, and called to Ernesto for two more margaritas, frozen, with salt.

Lindsay / Eden

 

It was a hot day in mid-July, not even noon yet, and already in the low nineties. Lindsay was regret-ting her long walk to the Demos Agency, but she'd gained two pounds, and walking and sweating was the easiest way to get it off. She came around Fifty-third Street and looked up, half-expecting to see Glen waving from the eleventh floor of the pre-World War II building, a solid brick, dark and dirty, needing a good hosing down, like most of the other buildings on the block. She didn't see Glen. Still, she smiled, knowing that today would be as much fun as she could expect from the modeling grind. She was doing a makeup layout for Lancôme and the ad-agency people in charge of the shoot were funny and bright, and practical jokers. Well, today she'd be the one to get the laugh—she looked like dog meat and when they saw her they were going to scream.

Lindsay bent down to pull up her baggy army socks, a nice touch she'd thought, especially with the puke-green stretched-out cotton sweatshirt pulled over the tops of her ragged jeans. When she straightened, she saw a beautifully dressed woman emerge from a taxi, a vision really, in cool pink silk that
should have clashed with her shining auburn tapered bob, but didn't. Lindsay could only stare at her. Inside, she jolted, recognition warring with deep, deep pain. She shook her head, as if to deny what she saw, then said very quietly, “Sydney, is that you? Sydney?” Her half-sister turned and stared at her, taking in the moussed-backed ponytail held with a rubber band, the shiny face devoid of makeup, and the hideous green sweatshirt.

She said nothing, merely stood there looking beautiful and slender and perfect, as always, now looking at Lindsay's face, her hair, the dangling Coke-bottle earrings.

“Sydney? It is you, isn't it?”

“Hello, Lindsay. It's been a while, hasn't it?”

Lindsay didn't know what to say. There'd been no warning of any sort, no one had bothered to tell her Sydney would be here. Pain and anger and hurt rolled through her. She just stood there staring at her half-sister. This cool exquisite creature was very different from the hysterical woman of five years before in Paris. Then that woman of five years before had become vicious, siding with her father.

“Yes,” Lindsay said, still not moving, “it's been quite a long time. You look beautiful, Sydney.”

“And you, well, you're still Lindsay, aren't you?”

“I suppose one doesn't change all that much.” Lindsay was surprised at another feeling that crept through her at her half-sister's words. Inferiority, that was it, she felt sudden and utter inferiority. She felt ugly and worthless, no more than a clumsy lump. She straightened her shoulders, towering over Sydney, who was only five-foot-seven in her stylish heels.

“It appears you have changed quite a bit. At least in those glossy photos you certainly look
different. How do they do it—with smoke and mirrors and doubles?”

“Very nearly.” Lindsay laughed. “There's the photographer, who can be a pain in the butt and who can have an attitude, the person directing the shoot, who's usually yelling and making threats and throwing fits, the makeup person, the hair person, the clothes person, all the technicians—well, you understand. It sounds manic but it isn't. Normally it all goes pretty smoothly. It's just that everyone is always talking and yelling. Sometimes I feel like a block of wood with all these people working on me and around me.”

They were still standing on the sidewalk, people walking around them, the sun beating down overhead.

Neither woman had moved.

Sydney said suddenly, “I came to make peace with you, Lindsay.”

Lindsay searched her sister's face but found no clue there, only the endless perfection of her features, the startling beauty of her hazel eyes that only emphasized her cool intelligence. “It's hot out here. I don't have to be upstairs for a while yet. Would you like to go across the street and have something cool to drink?”

Sydney Foxe di Contini, known as La Principessa to all those who weren't intimate with her, still didn't move. Five years was a long time, a very long time, she thought. It had come as quite a shock to her to pick up April's
Elle
and see her half-sister on the cover, so hauntingly beautiful, thin, stylish; she'd realized after close study that it wasn't just a beautiful woman she was looking at, not classic beauty anyway. It was Lindsay's face, filled with that elusive, quite indescribable quality that
transcended a woman's looks or lack of them. Sydney could only stare then; she stared now at the ordinary creature in front of her. No, not ordinary, a mess. Those high-top sneakers were god-awful. She wondered if Lindsay found it amusing to present herself like this and then undergo the incredible transformations for the fashion photos.

Sydney thought again of that exotically gorgeous creature on the cover of
Elle
with the thick lustrous hair, the arrogant smile, and those sexy blue eyes. That couldn't be Lindsay. No, Lindsay was the awkward pathetic mess of a girl she'd last seen in Paris after Alessandro had raped her. She'd picked up the phone to call her father. Why hadn't he told her about Lindsay? Then she'd slowly replaced the receiver. Her father never spoke of Lindsay. It would only make him angry, and Sydney didn't like his anger, for it was cold and hard and unrelenting. Then she'd gotten an excellent idea, brilliant, really. She was La Principessa, after all, renowned for her beauty, her charm, her taste. It didn't take her very long to execute her idea to its fullest. Everything had gone just as she'd envisioned it, but then, she'd never doubted that it would. Three days ago she'd left Melissa with her grandmother and great-grandfather and three di Contini servants, and taken the first plane to New York.

How odd that no one had told her that Lindsay was a successful model, she'd thought many times on the flight over. She hadn't known where Lindsay lived, hadn't ever cared, and she'd been hesitant to ask Grandmother Foxe for her address because the old lady might think her unloving, not even knowing where her half-sister lived. How to explain to anyone that knowing Lindsay's address brought that horrible time in Paris back to her, in spades?
It forced her to confront those hours of weakness, the dismal pathetic hysteria, the woman who hadn't really been her. She made herself sick whenever she thought about what she'd been in Paris.

She smiled at the very ordinary-looking woman in front of her. Seeing Lindsay in the flesh brought back her confidence. Seeing her didn't bring back Paris. Lindsay was just the same. There was no magic in her look or in any of her features, no elusive qualities. None. She looked a wreck, tall and skinny and in those disgusting clothes that made her look like a reject from the seventies. Slung over her shoulder was an old bulging bag that could hold a kitchen. Who had dressed her? It was laughable. There was no guilt from Paris. Nothing. She was vastly relieved. She was soon to be on her way, the stars the limit.

“Sydney?”

“Sure, let's go over to that little bar. I'm here for a couple of days—on business—and I thought you and I should speak together. Are you in a rush? Do you have a little time, perhaps, now? A glass of wine would be welcome in this ghastly heat. I'd forgotten how much I detested New York in the summer. I don't know how you stand it.”

“No one does. One just puts up with it.”

When they walked into Jay Glick's Saloon, Lindsay immediately went to the phone and called the agency. She got Glen at his bitchiest.

“Yes, sweetie, I'm here but you're not. Where the hell are you? I looked down and saw you chatting with this utterly gorgeous woman. Is she a woman, sweetie? Or maybe I lucked out. A queen?”

“No, Glen. She's my half-sister. Please tell Demos I'll be there on time. I've still got close
to forty-five minutes before the ad people for the Lancôme shoot arrive.” She paused, listening to Glen's outpourings. When he slowed, she said, “No, Glen, my half-sister just showed up. Yeah, right, the famous
principessa.
Okay, later. An hour, no longer. No, tell Demos I'm eating éclairs by the dozen. Sure, Glen, give him a coronary at the very least. Harden some of his arteries. And yes, I've got a real treat for the ad folk. Yes, outrageous, and this time I'll get them. You'll declare me the winner of the practical jokers. See you soon.”

Lindsay slid into the booth opposite her sister. A glass of white wine was already there. She raised it, then sighed and put it back down. She called for a Perrier. Sydney said, “You know I have a daughter, don't you?”

“Yes, her name's Melissa. Grandmother sent me a picture of her. She's beautiful. She looks just like you.”

“I didn't know you were a model.”

Lindsay shrugged, clicking her glass of Perrier to Sydney's wineglass. A pool of pain settled in her stomach. Sydney probably thought she was still a nothing. She'd told her mother and her grandmother about her new career, but evidently neither had seen fit to tell Lindsay's father or Sydney. Or he'd been told and he simply couldn't care less, which was no surprise. But why hadn't Grandmother told Sydney?

“I saw you on the cover of
Elle.
”

“That was a lucky hit, so Demos told me. The woman at
Elle
freaked out over the shape of my ears or something silly like that.”

“You're with Vincent Rafael Demos.”

“You've heard of the loose cannon then. How do you know about him?”

“Most women in the upper strata of society know about Demos and his, ah, models, Lindsay.”

“Oh ho!
Upper strata!
No wonder I thought he was a New Jersey loan shark.” She laughed, delighted with the snobbery, and to her surprise, Sydney flushed.

“I was joking.”

“Sure you were, Sydney.” For the first time in her life, Lindsay felt an instant of having the upper hand. It felt quite good, remarkable really. “What is this about him and his, ah, models?”

Sydney shrugged. “It's his reputation. Well deserved, I understand.”

“Glen arranges all that for him.” It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Sydney that Glen was Demos' lover, but she didn't, saying instead, “Glen's his mother, confessor, secretary, assistant, in short, his right and left hand. He decided some twelve years ago that a dicey reputation would be good for Demos' professional image. Demos rarely sleeps with anything other than his toy poodle, named Yorkshire, and three Siamese cats.”
And Glen, of course.
“Now, why are you here in New York? To find out if I'm sleeping with Demos?” She paused only fractionally before adding, “You're here alone?”

Sydney nodded, hearing the crack in her sister's self-confidence. She'd seemed a different person, at first. But it wasn't true. But no, some things never changed. She leaned back in the booth, smiling. “You're thinking of my husband, no doubt. Alessandro is in Rome this week. He is rarely at the villa in Milan now. It's just his grandfather, his mother, Melissa, and me and all the servants. His sullen pig of a sister is married to a Greek shipping magnate and spends more of her time now on
Crete. I'm involved in the family business now. A munitions factory, just imagine. Father stays at the villa a good three months of the year. He enjoys Melissa and being with me, naturally. His wife is tolerable, just barely. You've met her, haven't you? Holly's a bitch, but as I said, sufferable if you know how to handle her, which I do very well. Last trip, she stayed at home. She's jealous of me, you know. Father took a mistress after he'd been married to Holly only two months. He won't ever be the faithful type, as your mother soon discovered after her marriage to him. You've changed—a bit.”

“I'm an adult now. I handle things. He was probably never faithful to your mother either, Sydney.”

“My mother died! You know that. He loved her and only her, and when she died, he changed, gave up.”

Lindsay opened her mouth, then closed it. She'd overheard Lansford, the Foxe butler, say to Dorrey, the cook, years before, how after the first Mrs. Foxe had run away from the judge, she moved to New Zealand. It appeared she hadn't died. But surely Sydney knew this. Surely she just liked to pretend it was otherwise. She had the upper hand again. She smiled. “Is there something special you wanted to see me about, Sydney?”

“For God's sake, why do I have to have something special in mind? You're my sister.”

“I've been your sister for twenty-three years. Why now? It's been five years.”

Sydney said nothing. She sipped her tart chardonnay. She found Lindsay's attempt at sarcasm mildly amusing. Five years should have wrought some improvements, so the attempts at sarcasm were a help. What to tell her? She'd dangle her on the line a bit longer.

“Perhaps I'm really here to find some young virgins for Alessandro. He likes a new crop every year. You could probably throw yourself at his feet now and he wouldn't spare you a second glance. You're just too old, your face and your body. Do you know that Alessandro told me that you would become beautiful? He used to say that and I'd laugh because all I ever saw in you were skinny legs, elbows that stuck out, and a mop of hair that looked like a lawn mower had plowed through it. Of course he preferred you all skinny arms and legs and innocence. Seeing you like this, perhaps he would still want you. Perhaps he would even admit he'd been wrong. I'll ask him.”

Lindsay was frozen.

“You still think about that night, do you? Really, Lindsay, what's plain old simple sex compared to shooting your husband two times? I do remember the look on his face. Absolute astonishment, and then he toppled off you.” Sydney shrugged. “But it has been five years now, Lindsay. Time for you to forget, certainly. But you know, I've regretted many times that I was such a bad shot.”

“I don't think something like that is all that easy to forget. Why didn't you divorce him?”