Ira Levin (4 page)

    71 fter two more breaks, the host leaned forward, jLX-SHOULDERS hunched, and said, "Rosemary, during the last break we received a call from Diane Kalem, GC'S press coordinator, who's also been a guest on this program. Andy is in his retreat in Arizona, but he's been told about the claim you've made here tonight, that you're in fact his mother. He's been watching for the past quarter hour." He glanced at the red-lighted camera-"Yo, Andy"-and looked back at Rosemary. "Diane tells me," he said, "and it comes as no surprise, that Andy wishes you well with all his heart, and he joins everybody in congratulating you on your miraculous recovery."

    Rosemary said, "Thank you, I thank him." She glanced at the red-lighted camera.

    "Diane also tells me that Andy has a question for you. Will you try to answer it?"

    "Of course," Rosemary said.

    "Andy would like to know," the host said, as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of him, "if you remember exactly what you were doing when you fell into your twenty-seven-and-a-half-year coma."

    Cut to Rosemary. "Yes, I do," she said. "In my memory it was just two weeks ago. I was sitting at a desk by my bedroom window, an antique school desk with a top that lifts. I was typing a letter on an Olivetti portable." She turned to the red-lighted camera. "Andy was lying on the floor on his stomach," she said. "Watching television. Kukla, Fian, and Ollie." The host, across the console from her, chuckled as she faced him. "Kukla, Fian, and Ollie

    …" He turned to the camera, shaking his head smiling. "It has the ring of truth to me," he said. "We'll wait to hear Andy's reaction. You never know what's coming next here. Malmo, Sweden, you're on!" cJssgJfSo caret rfttei*

    Andy asked for privacy, so another break was taken and Rosemary was shown into someone's empty office, where the phone on the desk blinked red.

    She sat down, took a deep breath, and lifted the handset. Put it to her ear. Said, "Andy?"

    "Tears are running down my face."

    Her tears welled.

    "They told me you diedl I'm so angry-and so joyful, all in one moment-to "

    Neither spoke.

    She tried a desk drawer-locked-and another, looking for tissues.

    "You there?"

    Wiping with the side of her hand beneath her eyes, she said, "Yes, dear!"

    "Listen. My press coordinator is on another line with them. You don't have to do the last segment if you don't want to. Do you?"

    She weighed it, wiping. "I'll do it," she said. "He brought us together; I don't want to leave him stuck out there alone."

    He laughed in her ear. What a laugh. "I forgot how sweet you are. No, no, I didn't forget. I'll talk too. We'll have to do a full press conference tomorrow, unless you don't want to. Where did they put you?"

    "The Waldorf," she said. "This is weird! I'm talking with a grown man and it's you! You were six two weeks* ago, Andy!"

    "When will you be there, Mother!" "As soon as the program's over!" she said. "As soon as I can get there!"

    "Figure on ten-thirty with traffic. I'll be there at ten- forty-five."

    She gaped. "From Arizona?"

    "I'm at Columbus Circle. I have an apartment here, over the GCNY offices. We'll say I'm flying in. What's your room number?"

    "I can't remember! It's a tower suite!"

    "I'll be there. You're gorgeous on television!"

    Laughing-crying, she said, "Oh my angel, so are you!"

    The crowd outside the studio, expanding exponentially, was excuse enough for a quick getaway. Rosemary repeated Andy's and her on-air promise to return to the program together, and went with the security men out a side door, through the kitchen of a Greek restaurant and a garage, to the limo waiting on Ninth Avenue-the escape route originally planned for just plain Rip Van Rosie.

    The driver, a champ, had her back at the Waldorf by ten after. The security men steered her through the buzzing lobby into the right elevator and up to the right floor, the thirty-first. A concierge ran a card through the door lock for her as she signed scraps of paper from the security men's wallets.

    The message gizmo by the foyer phone read 37. She pushed hold and don't ring.

    By twenty of eleven she had showered, touched up the well-disguised old face-it still really sickened her-and was standing before the bedroom mirror pinning her i caret andy button to the least bizarre at-home garment among the mountains of stuff the stores had sent, a cobalt-blue velour caftan. Sort of.

    A knock at the outer door stopped her heart. "Room service!" restarted it-she had ordered platters of shrimp and cheese. A white-haired waiter wheeled a table alongside the doorway, his face almost as red as his gilt- buttoned, i V ANDY'-BUTTONED jacket. "In the living room, ma'am?" he asked.

    "Yes, please," she said, and followed after him and his dozen-domed table. "I only ordered shrimp and cheese."

    "Compliments of the management, ma'am. Shall I open the bar?"

    "Please," she said.

    She turned the mammoth TV on while the waiter sprang table wings and rearranged domed dishes, silverware, napkins. The news was into sports already,- she turned the thing off. "Isn't there a bill I can sign for the tip?" she asked.

    "No, ma'am, most certainly not." He unfolded teak screens from a small mirrored bar. "I'd be honored, however…"

    She signed a cocktail napkin for him.

    She stood looking down through parted draperies at white and red lanes of car lights far below, lanes reaching up Park Avenue's separate sides and coming together blocks and blocks away. What would she say after the hugs and kisses? How would she frame the questions she had to ask? And more importantly, how could she be sure of the truth of Andy's answers?

    It was fine calling him her angel, it was how she felt and it was good for his self-esteem. She had done it often, and often he had been angelic. But he was her half- devil too; she shouldn't let herself forget it, especially not tonight.

    He had lied to her before, believably, and more than once. Just a few months ago-make that almost twenty- eight years ago-he had broken a small piece off Minnie and Roman's marble mantel, and totally convinced the three of them not only that he-a knock at the door.

    She turned, starting toward the foyer, but "Room service!" came in, another red-jacketed waiter, shouldering a wine cooler and glasses on a tray. "Champagne, compliments of the management."

    Stopping, sighing, she said, "Thanks, that's great. Would you put it on the bar please?" She returned to the window.

    Five-and-a-half-year-old Andy had totally convinced all three of them not only-"Do I at least get a hug before I open it?"

    She spun.

    He stood by the bar beaming at her-Andy!Jesus-handsome, combing his hair back with both hands, his bearded face flushed, his eyes shining. "I didn't want to attract attention," he said, coming toward her in his gilt-buttoned, i V ANDY'-BUTTONED red jacket, springing one side of his black bow tie, undoing his shirt collar, opening his arms.

    After the hugs and kisses, the sighs and caresses and tears and tissues, he wrapped the champagne in a napkin, uncaged the cork and popped it-all with the panache of a union member.

    Giggling, she said, "Where did you get all this stuff?"

    "Downstairs in the bar," he said, laughing with her. "I swore a waiter to secrecy. You "have no idea how glad everyone is to help me!" He tipped the wrapped bottle, pouring foam into her crystal tulip. Filled it to the brim…

    Filled his own…

    They gazed at each other over the glasses, he taller than she, as the foam fizzed down into pale gold wine. He shook his head. "Words can't say it," he said to her. Eyes locked, they clinked glasses, sipped.

    "Contacts?" she asked him.

    "Old-fashioned black magic," he said.

    "They're beautiful," she said. "It's a real improvement."

    Chuckling, he leaned and kissed her cheek. "And here I thought you were honest," he said. "Let's sit down, Mom. There's a lot I have to explain to you." t@lzandr8$3T less-than ch"*and-9

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    S tilde caret backslash od's Children," Andy said, "was meant to be a

    VJ tilde trap, a death trap, a way to wipe out all human life. He was finally going to win. Instant Armageddon."

    His eyes blazed-so intensely she could almost see his tiger eyes again. "Now," he said, "when I learn about this, that he let them do it to you and never gave me a CLUE about it-I" He drew in a long, deep breath. "Now, more than ever, I'm glad I fucked him! Excuse the language but that's what I did, Mom. I screwed up his Master Plan, thirty-three years in the making."

    They sat close together, facing each other, clasping hands, on a dark cloud of sofa, each with a leg tucked under.

    "It was why he came up when he did," he told her. "Covens are always 'summoning" him-real witches, fakes, fakes who think they're real, the whole range. He laughs. But he needed a child here who would be the right age by the year 2000. So when the Bramford coven called in '65, with you on the altar, he answered." She looked away. "I'm sorry," he said, bending, kissing her hands. "That was really brilliant of me. I'm sorry. It must have been an awful experience."

    She drew breath. Looked at him. Said, "Go on. How was the plan supposed to work?" She watched him as he took a sip of champagne.

    "Well," he said, licking his lips, setting the glass back on the coffee table, "first of all, there would be a charismatic leader, a great communicator." He smiled at her. "With normal-looking human eyes. He would be the age Jesus was during his ministry; he might even brush up the resemblance a little." Lifting his bearded chin, he brushed fingers beneath it. "Enough to lure the Christians," he said, smiling, "not enough to scare the Muslims and Buddhists and Jews. Being who he was, he'd

    JS have the connections and funds to launch the best and biggest media campaign in world history." He stopped smiling. Looked away. Drew a troubled breath.

    She watched him.

    He looked back at her. "When it peaked," he said, "when everyone on Earth trusted him except a handful of PA'S'-PARANOID atheists-he would betray them. The best and biggest betrayal in world history. Biochemicals. You don't want to know."

    She winced; biochemicals sounded deadly, whatever they were.

    He leaned closer to her, squeezing her hands. "That's what I was bred for, Mother," he said. "By him and by the coven. But when the strong members died-Minnie and Roman and Abe-I began to ask questions. I was in my teens then. A lot of the rites and rituals were laughable, and a lot were-repulsive. I like humans, most of them, no matter who created them; I'm half one, aren't I? Half you? More then half, look at me!"

    She nodded, biting her lip.

    "So I rebelled," he said. "Your half of me got stronger than his. Those few years we did have together"-he shook his head, his eyes wet-"I tried so hard to keep the memory, the warmth and sweetness, the goodness of you…" He knuckled an eye, trying to smile at her.

    Caressing his cheek, she said, "Ah my Andy

    …"

    They leaned to each other, pecked lips.

    She backhanded her cheek, smiling at him, blinking.

    He shifted, loosed gilt buttons at his waist. "So as I said," he said, "I rebelled. He has no control over me while I'm here-more proof that my human side is stronger-so I decided to make GC into what he meant it only to look like, something good for humanity. Andy's message is simple and true and it doesn't turn anyone off except the PA'S, and you know what, Mom? It works. The temperature's gone down a few degrees. Everybody's a little less short-tempered. Teachers and students, bosses and employees, husbands and wives, friends, countriesall going a little easier on each other. In a way, it's a tribute to you, Mom. Not in a way, that's what it is: a tribute to everything you gave me in those first few years."

    She studied him. Said, "How does…" "He feel?" He sighed, smiled. "How can I convey it? Picture a conservative father whose son joined the Peace Corps, then multiply it by ten."

    She smiled at him, and said, "You know how to press a liberal's buttons."

    "I'm a great communicator," he said, smiling back at her. "He's furious. We're on the outs. But while I'm here he can't do anything to stop me. If he could, he would have by now." He glanced at his watch, multidialed, black and gold.

    "I have to go," he said, getting up. "So soon?" she said, getting up too, brushing his hand from her elbow. "I've got visiting dignitaries," he said. "You didn't eat anything! There's all this foodl" He reached into his jacket, chuckling. "Mother," he said, "from tomorrow on, you're not going to be able to get me out of your hair." Putting a card on the coffee table, he said, "The written number always reaches me, in minutes." He put his arm around her; they started toward the door. "There's a first-rate hotel in the lower floors of the building I'm in. We'll move you over there tomorrow morning. I'm in the rJenthouse-the fifty- second story, overlooking the park. You can't imagine the view. GCNY has three floors, the eighth, ninth, and tenth." In the foyer, he buttoned his shirt collar. "Do you think you'll be up to a press conference tomorrow afternoon? It would help if I knew now."