Fortnight of Fear (23 page)

In the elevator, she felt as if she were being compressed. Breathless, squashed, tightly surrounded by people who were determined to press the life out of her. By the time the chime rang for the 36th floor, she was shivering, as if she had contracted the 'flu, and when she reached her office she stood with her back pressed to the door, taking deep breaths, wondering if she were terrified or aroused, or both. That night she was taken to see
Les Misérables
by Dominic Bross, the record producer, whom she had met while working on the Bross Records account. Dominic was 55, gray-haired, handsome, talkative, opinionated, and Margot wouldn't have dreamed of going to bed with him in a million years. However, she always enjoyed his company, and he always behaved like a perfect gentleman.

Halfway through the second act, Dominic leaned over to Margot and whispered, “Do you
smell
something?”

Margot sniffed. All she could smell was the musky Isabey perfume which James Blascoe had given her. Once it had warmed on her skin, it had started to give off the deepest, most sensuous fragrance that she had ever experienced. Maybe it had been wrong of her to accept it, but it was something erotic and very special, something that made her head spin.

“I don't know,” Dominic complained. “It smells like something died.”

James Blascoe was waiting by her apartment door when she returned from her dinner with Dominic. She was tired and quite angry. For some reason Dominic had been unusually hurried and offhand, and hadn't even accepted her invitation to come up for coffee. Finding
James Blascoe at her door didn't make her feel very much better.

“Well, well,” she said, taking out her key. “I'm surprised Leland let you in to the building.”

“Oh, you know me,” James Blascoe smiled. “Bribery and corruption are second nature to me.”

“I'm not going to invite you in,” Margot told him. “I've had a totally terrible evening, and all I'm going to do is take a bath and get some sleep.”

“I'm sorry,” James Blascoe told her. “I quite understand, and I won't intrude. But I wanted to give you this.”

He reached into his inside pocket, and took out a long black jewelry case. Before Margot could protest, he had opened it up, and shown her what lay inside. It was a shimmering diamond necklace, so bright that it was almost magical, seven diamond festoons attached to ten diamond-encrusted bows.

“This is absurd,” Margot protested; although it was hard for her to keep her eyes off the necklace. It was absolutely the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.

James Blascoe slowly smiled. It was like somebody slowly drawing a spoon through an open jar of molasses. “Traditionally, this necklace was supposed to have been part of the ransom offered by Catherine the Great to the Sultan of Turkey, to persuade him to release her husband Peter the Great after he was captured at the Battle of Rusen in 1711.”

“Well, who does it belong to now?” asked Margot. The diamonds shone in tiny pinpricks of light across her cheeks.

“Now,” James Blascoe said, with utter simplicity, “now, it belongs to you.”

Margot lifted her eyes away from the necklace. “Mr Blascoe, this is ridiculous. I'm not a whore.”

“Did I ever suggest that you were? Take it. It's a gift. I want nothing in return.”

“You really want nothing?” Margot challenged him.

“Take it,” he said. “I want you to have the finest of everything. That's all. I have no other ambition.”

There was an unblinking look of command in his eyes. Margot knew that the jinn-flower brooch and the Isabey perfume had been one thing. But if she accepted this necklace, no matter how much James Blascoe protested that he wanted nothing at all, she would be beholden to him. It was probably worth over a hundred thousand dollars. It was certainly exquisite: the kind of jewelry which most women can never even dream of owning.

“No,” said her mouth.
What am I doing
? said her mind. But her hand reached out and took it.

Two days later, at a cocktail thrash at the Plaza Hotel for Overmeyer & Cranston, one of their biggest clients, Margot decided to take a risk and wear the necklace for the first time. She matched it with a simple electric-blue cocktail dress, and wore the simplest of diamond-stud earrings.

The party was already noisy with laughter and conversation when Margot arrived. She smiled and waved to O & C's president George Demaris, and then to Dick Manzi of NBC. However, she was surprised when both of them frowned at her and gave her only a half-hearted wave in return; and she was even more surprised when the cocktail waiter stared at her in what could only be described as dumbstruck astonishment.

She took a glass of champagne, and challenged him, “Something wrong?”

“Oh, no, no. Nothing's wrong, ma'am.”

A few moments later, however, Walter Rutter angled his way across the room toward her and took her arm and tugged her almost immediately to the side of the buffet table.

“Margot? What's with the necklace? You can't wear something like that here!”

“What do you mean, Walter? This necklace is worth a fortune! It was part of the ransom that Catherine the Great gave to the Sultan of Turkey!”

Walter narrowed his crowsfooted eyes and stared at Margot for a long time. Margot defiantly stared back at him.

“Catherine the Great gave that necklace to the Sultan of Turkey?” Walter repeated.

Margot nodded. “A very dear friend gave it to me.”

“I'm sorry,” Walter told her. He was obviously choosing his words carefully. “But – if it's worth a fortune – maybe this is not quite the place to wear it. You know, for the sake of security. Maybe we should ask the management to lock it in the safe for a while.”

Margot fingered the necklace in disappointment. “You really think so?”

Walter laid a fatherly arm around her bare shoulders. “Yes, Margot. I really think so.” Then he sniffed, and looked around, and said, “Those fish canapes sure smell strong. I hope nobody goes down with food-poisoning.”

The next morning, James Blascoe was waiting for Margot in the foyer of Rutter Blane Rutter, with a large gift-wrapped box in his hands. Black shiny paper, a black shiny bow.

“Mr Blascoe,” she said, emphatically, before he could open his mouth, “this really has to stop. You can't go on giving me all of these ridiculously expensive gifts.”

He thought for a moment, lowered his eyes. “Supposing I were to tell you that I loved you, beyond all reason?”

“Mr Blascoe –”

“Please, call me James. And, please, take this gift. It's an original Fortuny evening dress, made for La Comtesse de la Ronce, one of the wealthiest women in France, in
1927. The only person in the world who could possibly wear it is you.”

“Mr Blascoe –” she protested. But his eyes told her that she must accept the gown, no matter what.

“James,” she whispered, and took the box.

That evening, he was waiting outside her apartment, with a black silk shoe-bag. Inside were the softest pair of pointed suede ankle-boots, handmade by Rayne. They were meticulously hand-stitched, and dyed to the color of crushed loganberries, to match exactly the color of the Fortuny gown.

“Take them, wear them,” he insisted. “Wear them always. Remember how much I love you.”

She was awoken the next morning by the phone ringing. Tugging her fingers through her tangled curls, she found the receiver and picked it up.

“Margot? Sorry to call you so early. This is Walter Rutter.”

“Walter! Hi, good morning! What can I do for you?”

“Margot, I wanted to catch you before you left for the office. You see, the point is I'm in some difficulty here. I have to make some savings in the agency's overall budget, and that regrettably means shedding some staff.”

“I see. Do you know how many?”

“Not exactly, Margot. But the problem is that it has to be last in, first out. This is nothing to do with the fact that you're a woman; and nothing to do with your abilities, which have been tremendous in the past, and have earned us a great deal of acclaim. But … as things stand, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disemploy you, as of now.”

Margot sat up straight. “You mean I'm fired?”

“Nothing like that, Margot. Not fired. But not continued with, staffwise.”

Margot couldn't think of anything to say. She let the phone drop on to the comforter. She felt as if someone had suddenly lashed at her with a birch, stinging her face, cutting her hands, slicing her self-assurance into ribbons.

She was still sitting upright in bed twenty minutes later, when the doorbell rang.

Mechanically, she wrapped herself in her short silk robe, and went to answer the door. It was James Blascoe, with a long gift-wrapped box, and the smile of a man whose will can never be denied.

“I've brought you something,” he announced.

Without waiting to be asked, he walked into the living-room and laid the box on the table. He tugged free the gift-ribbon himself, and eased off the lid. Inside, wrapped in dark brown tissue-paper, was a huge greenish scepter, almost four feet long, embossed with gold bands and complicated gold knobs and bumps. James lifted it up, and Margot saw that the scepter's head had been cast in the helmeted shape of a man's erect glans, except that it was nearly twice the size.

She stared at it, strangely excited by its decorative blatancy.

“Do you know what this is?” asked James. “The copper phallus used by Queen Nefertiti of Egypt to give herself erotic pleasure. It has been passed down from one century to another; from one royal court to the next. It has slid its way up between the thighs of more celebrated women than anybody could count.

He grasped the glans in his hand, as if it were his own. “It is said to give more pleasure than anything you could imagine, man or beast. Now it's yours; to keep; and to use.”

He brought it across the room and laid it in the palms of her hands. “Tonight, at midnight, dress in the jewelry and clothes that I have given you, perfume yourself with
my perfume; and then think of me, and give yourself the pleasure that only you deserve.”

Margot still couldn't speak. James kissed her forehead with a cool, dry, almost abstracted kiss, and then left the apartment, and closed the door behind him.

At eleven o'clock that night, like a woman in a dream, Margot ran herself a deep perfumed bath. She washed herself slowly and sensually, rubbing the soap over her full white breasts over and over again, until the nipples rose between her fingers.

At last she rose naked from the bath and dried herself in a deep warm Descamps towel. Her apartment was filled with mirrors: she could watch herself walk from room to room.

She brushed out her curls, and made up her face, starkly, very white. Then she dropped the velvety Fortuny dress over her shoulders, and it touched her bare body like a series of soft, hurried kisses. She fastened the diamond-festoon necklace around her neck, and slipped on the handmade ankle-boots. Last of all she sprayed herself with Isabey perfume.

It was almost midnight. She went to the table and lifted the huge copper-and-gold phallus out of its tissue-paper. It was very heavy, and gleamed dully in the lamplight.
It is said to give more pleasure than anything you could imagine, man or beast
.

She knelt in the middle of the floor, and lifted up her gown. Holding the phallus with both hands, she parted her thighs, and presented its massive bottle-green glans to the dark silky fur of her vulva.

At first she didn't believe that she would be able to insert it, and she clenched her teeth. But then, little by little, the huge cold head buried itself inside her, and she managed to force it further and further up, until she was able to kneel upright, with the base of the phallus flat against the floor.

The sensation of having such a huge rod of chilled, uncompromising metal up inside her made her wince and quake with erotic anticipation. Her hands smoothed and massaged the swollen lips of her vulva, and caressed the slippery meeting-place between metal and flesh.

Think of me
, James had asked her; and as she pressed her whole weight down on to the phallus, she tried to visualize his face. As flesh parted, as membranes tore, she tried to remember what he looked like. But she couldn't. She couldn't even think of his eyes.

He had been right, though. The pleasure was beyond all belief. She gasped and shook in the most devastating of climaxes, and then the blood suddenly welled in her throat and poured out over her lips.

Ray had been trying to call her all day, and when she didn't answer, he took a taxi around to her apartment, and persuaded the concierge Leland to let him in.

The living-room was dark, with the blinds still closed. In the center of the room, surrounded by mirrors, Margot lay with her eyes still open and her mouth caked with dried blood.

Around her neck she wore a piece of twisted wire, decorated with Pepsi caps and unrolled condoms. She was dressed in a frayed candlewick bathrobe and worn-down Keds. The bathrobe was stained dark with blood, and out from between her thighs protruded a long section of bloodily-fingerprinted scaffolding-pole.

Shaking with shock, Ray knelt down next to her and closed her eyelids with finger and thumb. He had realized that she had been going off the rails a little. Pressure of success, that's what Walter Rutter had called it. But he had never imagined for one moment that she would kill herself, not like this. How could any woman kill herself like this?

The room stank of sardine-oil; the same smell that
had been following Margot around for the past few days.

Ray stood up at last and looked around. The concierge was standing in the doorway, pale, paralyzed with uncertainty, and Ray said, “You'd better call an ambulance; and the cops.”

Outside in the spring sunny street, a man stood watching as the ambulance arrived. He was unshaven and wearing a soiled gray suit. His eyes were red from lack of sleep and alcohol. He waited to see the blanket-covered body taken away, and then, as the sirens whooped, he started walking southward, sniffing from time to time, and ceaselessly searching through his pockets as if he expected to find a cigarette-butt that he had previously overlooked, or even a couple of quarters.