Once More With Feeling (5 page)

Elisabeth lifted her chin and smiled at the
others. "Missy, let me get you another drink."

"I'm heartily sick of pasta, Casey. I can't
imagine what made you choose that place or this cab." Gypsy leaned
against the backseat of the battered gypsy cab without making
enough room for Casey. As horns bellowed behind them he squirmed in
beside her, squeezing his lithe body into position like the last
piece of a complicated jigsaw puzzle.

"I chose it because your expectations were
ridiculous. If you want to eat at a place like Aureole, give me a
month's notice. Without it you'll get pasta in the Village."

"Bad pasta!"

"Mine was excellent."

"You have no taste. You're still a poor
mick-spick from Hell's Kitchen. If it's got meat in it, you think
it's gourmet."

He snuggled in tighter. "So speaks the girl
from the wrong side of Cleveland. Pierogi more your style, Gypsy?"
He laughed as she punched him. "Kielbasa? Sauerkraut?"

"I'm as Irish as you are, you jerk!"

"Which is only half-Irish, as you've neatly
pointed out. What's your other half? Slovak? Polish? You're sure as
hell no WASP."

"I'm half-Romanian Gypsy. And if you don't
show some respect immediately, I'll put a curse on you!"

"You already have. I must be cursed to want
to spend time with you." He grabbed her flailing fists and held
them tightly.

"Mister," the driver said, turning in his
seat with the world-weariness that even a week of driving the
streets of New York could produce. "Gotta have number and street.
You never gimmet. Number. Street."

"Sure, I know," Casey said. He gave the
address of the studio. "And remember, go by way of Brooklyn,
okay?"

"What?" The cab driver's English wasn't up
to complicated instructions. Gypsy made a practiced guess that the
man hadn't lived outside of Latin America for more than a year.

"I told you before. I want you to take half
an hour to get us there." Casey clasped Gypsy's flailing hands
together in one of his and fished in his pocket with the other.

"What are you talking about? And why are we
in this, this . . . jalopy?" Gypsy tried to wriggle from his grasp.
The cab was an old gray Ford that had seen better days and never
seen official licensing. It had been waiting for them when they
emerged, and Casey had told her it was a gypsy cab for his Gypsy
woman.

Casey managed to free his wallet. He plucked
two bills from it and handed them over the front seat. A volley of
fluent Spanish followed. "
Comprende
?" he finished.

"Yeah," the driver said.

"And remember just drive. No free
shows."

"Yeah."

"Casey, I have to get back to the
studio!"

"Didn't you hear my instructions?" Casey
slipped Gypsy's arms over his head. He forced her back against the
worn plush seat. "We're headed there right now."

"What in the hell do you think you're
doing?"

"Showing some creativity."

"You're showing some balls, that's
what!"

"Not yet, but very, very soon."

She tried to kick him, but it was a weak
attempt.

"It's getting dark and the windows are
tinted. I made sure nobody's going to see us," he assured her. As
if to make his point he drew his trenchcoat over them so that the
driver's view was blocked, as well.

"Do you think I care about that?"

He smiled grimly. "That's right. Stupid
me."

"You take way the hell too much for
granted!"

He released her hands. They stayed where
they were.

His didn't. He lifted her skirt, and she
smiled a little. She knew what he'd find. Her thighs were warm,
smooth and bare. He slid his hands up to her hips and found them
bare, too. Some of the thrill seemed to go out of the seduction.
"You slut, you knew, didn't you?"

"Knew what?"

"Knew we were going back by way of Brooklyn.
Either that, or you forgot your underwear this morning."

Her smile widened provocatively. "What makes
you think I own any underwear?"

"What's a man got to do to surprise you,
Gypsy?"

She ran her tongue slowly along her bottom
lip. Then she pulled his face down and did the same to his.
"There's not a man alive who could," she whispered against his
mouth. "But if you want to die trying, that's all right with
me."

By midnight the Whitfield house was empty
again. Even the caterer had gone home.

Elisabeth supposed Owen had gone to bed,
too. His bed. In his room.

She turned off the last light. The Roman
temple atmosphere of the house was most pronounced when nothing but
moonlight filtered in through the tall windows. She had argued with
Owen when he showed her the drawings. She had wanted something more
casual, an English country house with tasteful clutter. Laura
Ashley had once lived to design for women like Elisabeth. But Owen
had won, and now, of course, she was glad. The house was
extraordinary.

Even if it no longer felt like home.

She hugged herself since there was no one
else there to do it. The terrace with its silver moonlight puddles
and strange beckoning shadows was a temptation. But the night was
cool, although the spring day had been warm. She didn't want her
flesh as chilled as her heart.

It was funny how quickly a life could
change. She had conceived tonight's party as a chance to relax with
close friends, then she had poisoned that innocent impulse by
inviting Anna.

"Bess?" Owen's voice whispered from the
shadows behind her. "Are you coming to bed?"

"I don't know. Am I?"

"What's wrong with you tonight? You're a
million miles away."

She felt his arms come around her. Her own
hug had felt warmer. "I don't know."

"I doubt that."

She had her opportunity to confront him now.
The moment had arrived to tell him what she suspected--no, what she
knew. Because now she did know. An evening of watching Owen
exchange intimate glances with Anna had strengthened her
suspicions.

One stolen moment at the evening's end had
confirmed them.

The time for confrontation ticked slowly
away. She had been trained from infancy to contain her feelings,
and she could not articulate them now. She could not tell him that
she had seen him embracing Anna on the walk to Anna's car, that she
had seen him pull Anna into the shadows and hold her as close as he
held his own wife now. She could not admit that she had spied on
them, that she had abandoned her ethics and stalked them like a
pulp fiction gumshoe. She wasn't sure how immersed Owen was in this
affair or what was left of their marriage. She was only sure that
somehow she had to retain her dignity.

"I don't understand why you told Attila
you'd do that story," he said, when she didn't respond.

Anger flashed through her. Anger that he
would so badly misunderstand her silence. Anger that he expected
her to be at his beck and call while he was falling in love with
another woman. "You're angry because I said I'd go to the lecture
at Stony Brook instead of shopping with Didi Caswell?"

"I was counting on you. It's not like you to
back out of a commitment."

"I like writing for Attila, Owen. I know
it's a little job, not an important job like yours. But it's all
mine."

He was silent, but he tightened his arms
around her. As apologies went, it was the most she would
receive.

She wasn't ready to pull the plug on their
marriage. A part of her still hoped that whatever Owen had found
with Anna would fade and die with time. And she knew she had to be
here waiting for him when it did. "I can still take Didi shopping
in the morning," she said, reluctantly offering an olive branch.
"But I'll have to skip lunch. Can we take them to dinner that
night, instead? Or a show?"

"I've already confirmed the plans."

"Are you trying to tell me that you never
make changes in your schedule?"

He was silent for too long. "I'll explain
about lunch and see if we can do something in the evening," he said
at last.

"Fine."

"Why don't you come up to bed now?"

She wanted to refuse. She wanted to laugh.
After what she had witnessed she was no more interested in sex than
in giving another dinner party with Anna as a guest. But far too
often these days there was a good excuse not to make love with
Owen. How long until their marriage was nothing but excuses? And
how long after that before she was a single woman again, reading
about Anna Jacquard Whitfield on the pages of
Town and
Country
?

"I'll be up in a minute," she said. "Where
will I find you?"

"In our bed."

That seemed significant. Owen had a room.
His room. But the bedroom she slept in each night was their room.
And where was her room? Or her life?

She wandered the house for a few minutes,
although there was nothing to check or do. She wandered, hoping for
a miraculous end to her anger or her fears. She told herself that
Owen was waiting, and that lovemaking might breach the wall that
was fast going up between them. She had to try to win him back,
because if she didn't, she would have no marriage, no life at
all.

But in the end, it didn't matter, because by
the time she climbed the stairs and slipped in beside him, Owen was
already asleep.

There were worse ways to travel than the
studio's limo. Not too many years before, Gypsy had considered
herself lucky to have subway fare. At age eighteen she had thumbed
her way to New York after discovering that her parents planned to
commit her to two years of community college and a continued life
of squalor in the Dugan insane asylum. Her mother had broken the
news with her usual tact. If Gypsy wanted a college education, she
could damned well work for it by living at home and taking care of
the rest of the Dugan brats who had followed right behind her with
rhythm method precision.

Instead she had come to New York with
nothing in her pocket except the money she'd gotten from selling
her stereo. Actually she'd sold her parent's portable television,
too. They still hadn't forgiven her for it, even though she'd
presented them with a complete home entertainment system on their
last anniversary.

Outside the limo's tinted windows, the
Nassau County vista was as monotonous as only suburbia could be.
There was little of interest here, but Gypsy could smell money
somewhere off in the distance, along the Sound where the Great
Gatsby and his society pals had partied the nights away. She had
partied there herself, and would again. And last week she had said
"yes" to a June houseparty in the Hamptons. As her star rose, so
did her invitations.

She had come a long way from an overcrowded
Cleveland hovel where scenic meant a day when pollution from
neighborhood smokestacks blew west instead of east. She had no
gypsy blood. She had been born plain old Mary Agnes Dugan, and she
was the offspring of every insipid immigrant group that had grubbed
and plodded through Cleveland's factories and mills. But she shared
with the gypsies their disdain for the ordinary and their
unconventional methods of getting what they wanted. After years of
listening to her mother scream the word at her, Gypsy had proudly
taken the name as her own.

The glass pane separating her from the limo
driver slid from view. "Miss Dugan?"

The young man at the wheel was one of the
countless rent-a-bodyguards who materialized in and out of her life
on eight-hour shifts. He was the best-looking of the lot, with a
blond crew cut and baby blue eyes. More than once Gypsy had toyed
with the idea of asking him to guard her body in the most intimate
ways, just to see what he'd say.

She dimpled appropriately and leaned
forward. "What is it, Randy?" She took her time with his name,
caressing it slowly with her vocal cords.

Color rose in his clean-shaven cheeks. "I
just wanted you to know that we'll be there before too long,
ma'am."

"That's just fine. I'm enjoying the
ride."

The glass slid back into place. She was
enjoying the ride. She never let on, but she still got a thrill
from the luxuries that were now hers to enjoy. The limo was larger
than her first New York efficiency. And she had shared that with a
man until she found a job sorting mail at NBC. She wasn't a hooker,
despite the opinion of the right-wingers who regularly bombarded
the show with mail. She was merely a woman who knew what she had to
trade, and traded it wisely.

The landscape outside the tinted windows
grew less jumbled as they neared the Suffolk County border. Now
there were occasional glimpses of fields and woods. To one side of
the expressway they passed a shopping mall that sprawled like a
small city.

Gypsy wished there had been a spectacular
shoot-out in the food court or a celebrity kidnapping at Macy's or
IKEA so that the mall could have been her destination. Lecturing to
a crowd of graduate students and professors sounded as dull as the
missionary position, but it shored up her image as a serious
television journalist. The studio had prepared a talk for her that
made
The Whole Truth
sound like the last bastion against the
erosion of free speech.

The limo slowed, although there didn't seem
to be a tie-up in traffic. The glass slid away once more. "Miss
Dugan, I need you to put your head down."

"What?"

"Head down. Now."

She obeyed, falling limply across the
leather seat like a wounded bird. "What's going on?"

Randy didn't answer. The limo gathered speed
again. There was nothing better to hold on to, so she gripped the
edge of the seat and dug her fingernails into the soft leather. She
was wearing a conservative--albeit short--linen suit, and she
pictured what it would look like when she sat up again. She was
about to meet her public looking like Peter Falk in an old
Columbo
.