Resurgence (32 page)
Elliot’s fellow band members could not be reached for comment, but the evidence spoke for itself when Verge took the stage last week minus the transparent tensions and hostilities that characterized the waning days of their original incarnation. To see and hear them now is to witness a far less manic and attention-grabbing spectacle on behalf of each individual. Now they are a cohesive unit whose sum is truly greater than its parts
.
No one is talking about how long this cohesiveness may last
—
if it will outlast this summer’s European tour as fillins for Vaughn
—
or if this level of unification is only possible on a limited basis. No one is talking about whether the members of Verge, especially Elliot, want it to last
.
There’s more, but he can’t read it when all he can think about is who did this—who left this particular publication on his desk, knowing he would read it and learn from it. Never mind who wrote the piece and compiled the pictures. Fuck that. He’s only interested in who set him up for this little eye-opener.
He scans over the text again, interpreting “depth and maturity” to mean the substance he’s always strived for. “Whirlwind” as describing his courtship of Laurel can’t be seen as a negative because it’s true. The “when maturity wasn’t always his” comment undoubtedly alludes to Aurora, but it’s subtle enough to let slip through the cracks. “Coolheaded, handson, and very involved” can be let slip too, for having originated with his own people. But there’s no denying Verge was set to self-destruct before the accident decided the matter. And there’s no denying the band is better now that nothing’s hanging in the balance, nothing needs proving, and internecine warfare’s not about to break out. Spot on, the estimates about any future for Verge. No one does know. Least of all him.
He flips back to the picture pages and sees through different eyes that the selections were not intended to depict him as gone stolid and static. Now the “less dominant, more in command” caption makes sense.
“Bloody hell,” he approves.
“Buddy heow,” Simon says, his nose just clearing the desk edge, Laurel standing a short ways behind him.
“How long have you been—”
“Long enough.”
“You left this for me to see, then?”
“Yes. It was in this morning’s delivery and I read it for the same reason I knew you would—to see what comprises the mature Colin Elliot. It’s the best unauthorized writing I’ve seen about you. Honest, perceptive, straightforward. I don’t recognize the writer, though. Brownell Gates, or something like that. Is he new to you?”
“Wouldn’t know. I don’t pay attention to names unless I see something libelous.”
“Then you didn’t see anything in the article you disagreed with?”
“I wasn’t keen at first about being labeled mature, but there’s nothing here I can deny. Was that your point?”
“My point?”
“Your point in leaving this for me to see, to hammer those truths home.”
“I wasn’t trying to hammer anything. I thought you might enjoy reading something accurate about yourself.”
“You’re not still pissed, then?”
“Pithed,” Simon says, earning Colin a lifted eyebrow from Laurel.
“If you’re referring to our earlier conversation, I wasn’t annoyed, I was disappointed, and I feel sure it won’t happen again,” she says.
“Probably not. Not since I rang Amanda’s Brooklyn number a bit ago and found her in residence, then rang Nate’s place and found him to be home as well.”
“You did not!” Laurel says.
“Yeh, I did. That’s how mature I am.”
“What did you say? What reason did you give for calling?”
“I didn’t say anything. To either one. Left them each thinking they’d harvested a crank call. And just so you know, I’m not making a whole lot out of their not being under the same roof, actually. And I’m not making a massive production out of their having the hots for each other. Nate’s better at separating business and pleasure than anyone I know.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, thank this Yates bloke, this writer who’s made me take stock before I became a laughing stock.”
“You were never close to being a laughing stock—not remotely—but you were close to becoming an incorrigible sorehead where Nate’s concerned, and an unrelieved skeptic about Amanda.”
Simon sidles round the desk, rather creeps up on him and demands a cuddle, providing a nonverbal means of dropping the inflammatory subject. Dropping the copy of
Celebrity Sleuth
into the dustbin provides a definitive break too, but not before he observes that someone went to a lot of trouble to land this thing on his English desk so soon after its American publication. If that’s a detail Laurel missed, damned if he’ll bring it up now.
Instead, he reminds her that he’ll be in London all day tomorrow, given over to the Harley Street physicians who will certify him for the tour.
“Oh, that’s right.” She removes Simon from his lap and retrieves the magazine he just tossed. “Good chance to road test the new security measures Bemus proposed.”
“There’s nothing to road test. You can’t seriously believe I agreed to additional manpower. Not on a regular basis, not for every little outing and errand. At concert venues, yeh. Whenever a mob’s assembled, I’ll go along, but the rest of the time I’m having none of this massive entourage shit they’re trying to stick me with.”
“Shit,” Simon says with perfect mastery of the sibilant, but it’s the corrupting father who gets bopped on the head with the rolled-up magazine.
“We’ll have to talk about that later, Laurel says. “I have an appointment with Anthony and I can’t be late—and
you
can’t let any more of those calls go unanswered.” She indicates the blinking lights on the muted phone and leaves him to decide just how handson, involved, and cooperative he really is.
Much the way Laurel Chandler arrived here nearly eight weeks ago, Amanda flashes an enticing glimpse of leg when she alights from the cab right on schedule. As with Laurel, Nate refrains from dashing out of the building to pay the cab fare. He instead waits in the lobby where they exchange businesslike greetings, then maintain silent, stare-straight-ahead elevator etiquette on the quick ride to his floors.
After that, it’s a whole new ballgame, with him lifting Amanda off the floor in a crushing hug and kissing her hard and long and deep.
“Tell me
that’s
not gonna happen again anytime soon,” he says when they separate.
“What? What are you talking about? Kissing?” Amanda goes through the motions of patting her hair back into shape like a church lady making sure her no-nonsense hat is on straight.
“Staying apart for the sake of appearances. I thought we were through with that shit after the backstage show at Albert Hall, and your weekend with Laurel and Colin when you presumably talked about—”
“Precisely
because
of my weekend with Laurel and Colin, I decided a little extra caution was in line. There was no time I didn’t feel Colin was scrutinizing me for some sign I was receiving direction from you and I can’t be sure Laurel wasn’t enlisted to the cause when she took me on that forced march I told you about and interrogated me almost every step of the way, so is it any wonder I insisted on staying at home last night and it’s a good thing I did because I got a hang-up call this morning and I’m pretty sure it was Colin doing a bed check and drawing more wrong conclusions about—”
“What time this morning?”
“Around nine-thirty. It wasn’t you, was it?”
“No, it was Colin. I’m very sure because
I
got a hang-up call a little after nine-thirty.”
Amanda looks away for a second.
“Go ahead, laugh. I would too, if I weren’t so goddammed tired of being viewed as a furtive puppeteer or something. I wonder what it’s gonna take to convince him I’m not.”
They move from the foyer into the salon, where he expects a replay of her integration with the posh surroundings of his London hotel suite—a quick approving once-over designed to preserve cool and conceal novice status. But she fools him—delights him—with a full-scale eye-rolling reaction.
“
Omigod
,” she exhales and does a slow three-sixty in front of the windows. “I knew your place would be off-the-scale-fantastic, but I didn’t know it would be
painful
.”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever put it quite that way before. Should I say thank you or apologize?”
“I’m sorry . . . This is stupid. Wouldn’t you think after all the grand places I’ve been lately I’d start getting used to . . . to this,” she stammers and windmills her arms. “But I’m not. I’m
way
out of my element. I don’t even know the right words to say.”
“You’re fine, honey, you’re saying the right words.”
He takes her by the hand and introduces her to the features designed to give rise to the kind of pain she’s speaking of. She’s visibly awed by the art collection there in the salon; in the library she’s stunned by the Klimt portraits.
“Do
you
ever get used to this?” She makes another swirling gesture to indicate more than just this particular room.
“No, I’m happy to say, and now it’s all new to me through your eyes.”
Before he altogether turns to mush, he leads her to the kitchen that she’s quick to recognize as a clone of Colin’s without showing any interest in its workings. And that’s okay. He has a cook.
“How did you like the Concorde?” he says to bridge a sudden awkwardness.
“I came over on a regular plane.”
He might have known as much when she wouldn’t give him the flight number or arrival time so he could pick her up.
He could light into her now about these extra precautions he thought had been ruled unnecessary before she left England, or he could commend her forbearance and her unwillingness to give even the appearance of serving two masters. Either expression has become tiresome from overuse, so he withholds comment other than to ask if she’d like to see the upstairs.
“Maybe not just yet,” she says, coloring slightly at the implication. “I don’t think we should waste any more time. I’d like to go over your notes and hear your theories before we meet with the investigator—this Harry Newblatt guy. Did he say what he has for you?”
“Not in so many words. When he called Tuesday—yesterday—he was in an outdoor phone booth and only stated that the info was promising.”
“I have to admit . . . I’ve thought of little else since you told me about returning to the Michigan accident scene, and about the missing head. Godness Agnes . . . I mean, what were you supposed to
think?
”
“Exactly what I did think, assuming I was capable of thought—that I was hallucinating when I initially saw her head attached. But that’s not what we should be dwelling on at the moment.”
He leaves her in a chair at the breakfast table—by now a regular site for issuing disclosures—and excuses himself to bring his notes from the study. When he returns, Amanda is fishing through her handbag for writing supplies, and it’s only then that he realizes the handbag is her single piece of luggage.
If that’s any indicator, she won’t be staying here after all, and if he opens his mouth to argue the point now, they’ll never get down to business.
She goes over the notes he worked from the day of the meeting with Mrs. Floss, and eliminates the same leads he rejected as too tenuous to follow. She spends more time on the description of his initial run-in with Mrs. Floss and the details of his latest exposure to the unpredictable old lady.
He watches Amanda progress the way he’d watch a savvy ten-year-old program a VCR the adults couldn’t master. He attempts to see the material anew—as he just saw his surroundings made new through her eyes—before filling in the gaps his notes didn’t cover.
“I can see why you haven’t gone to the authorities with any of this,” she says when she finishes. “Your strongest witness is certifiable and you’re not that reliable yourself . . . no offense, I mean—”
“I know what you mean, but let’s leave me out of it for now. I’d rather concentrate on whatever you think I’ve missed.
“I think you’ve covered it all. You indicate that Mrs. Floss seemed lucid right up until she fixed the lunch plate for her long-dead husband. That’s consistent with her behavior when I used to have to deal with her. She’d be rational up to a point and then fly right off the rails,” Amanda says.
“Did I know you had dealings with her?”
“Why would you? I was working for Laurel then.”
“Do you recall a specific instance, a date, or anything that would feed into what we now know?”
“I clearly recall the day when a series of dithery calls came in from Mrs. Floss who wanted Laurel to know her maintenance man hadn’t shown up until noon. I specifically recall how annoyed she was—Laurel, I mean—because Laurel didn’t have a maintenance man, she only told the loony neighbor she might be
looking
for one. Laurel went on to say the poor old thing regularly forgot Laurel’s family had dispersed, and on one occasion thought she saw someone on Laurel’s porch roof and—”