1

AUGUST, 1963

ithin only hours of her husband’s burial, Mrs. Pearce Wclimbs Pepper Tree Lane. Gusting, incendiary Santa Ana winds shake giant live oak and hickory and sycamore trees, but beneath their tumultuous high canopies, the night air barely rustles through the branches of modest pepper trees said to have started out as fence posts—then in true movie-magic fashion sprouted, budded, and grew into full-sized trunks gnarled with knots and burls. Now arching limbs with fronds of slender pepper leaves form a shadow-fretted allee at the entrance lane to the deserted Hollywood Bowl. The newly-made widow glances about in fear of trespassers more sinister than herself, lurking, she fears, in pitch shadows between boarded-up concession stands, or on empty café terraces. She hesitates in a pool of chalky light cast by an art deco lamp pole. Her tiny, oval-shaped Cartier watch hasn’t worked in years, but it must be near midnight. All afternoon long she had tried to tell herself that this was a hoax, some sort of hideous prank—but no, the elegant copperplate script of her bizarre summons could only be Vita’s!—besides, who else would bring her out at this hour to so outlandish a place! From her purse Mrs. Pearce slips a piece of paper and for the umpteenth time reads the sole communication in twelve years from her remaining child. She holds the paper up to feeble light, Vita and squints. Fifty-eight, she looks seventy. Strands of prematurely thin white hair straggle from beneath a mink toque, while the diminished frame is droopily draped by a matching jacket with matted fur and padded shoulders. Either unashamed, or unaware of the shabbiness of the demode outfi t (still her best), Mrs. Pearce stands erect with a graceful, resolute set to her head and shoulders. In reduced circumstances she is not someone to be mocked. Nor is her former beauty entirely destroyed by glare from the lamp pole, or by too-lavishly applied makeup. Hers was never the beauty you see on movie posters, rather more the somber ethereal beauty of a stone face you might expect to fi nd inside a niche on a French cathedral. Tonight Mrs. Pearce’s heavy-handed maquillage betrays a desire to mask—not a widows’s grief—but a mother’s need to conceal the imprint of drinking—to look her best for her daughter! “Forget her, Edith, to hell with her.” Those were Ken’s last words. “She’s not coming back, ever.” ‘But she has,’ Mrs. Pearce thinks. ‘Did it take her father’s death to bring her home!’ She stares at the much-crumpled paper in her hand, delivered in so disgusting a fashion. She’d seen it as soon as she looked down into the coffi n—folded many times, compacted into a tight knot...tucked between poor Ken’s dead, cold knuckles. Instinctively she had reached to pull free the paper wad. Glimpsing the fl orid strokes of familiar copperplate, she was fazed not at all by her daughter’s sadistic outrageousness. She had long experience of that—why, she fi rst heard of Vita’s astonishing East Coast marriage by chance, reading of it in Vogue’s society column. Tonight she has to settle for six stark but artistically scrawled words: ‘MIDNIGHT AT THE BOWL COME ALONE’ She climbs past box offi ce ticket booths up a concrete ramp to a row of chain-link barricades. One gate, Mrs. Pearce sees, is nudged open, its padlock dangles loose—‘Does she have anything to do with this? What should an ambassador’s wife know about picking locks!’ 3

She searches nearby shadows for signs of movement. A night guard? Had she imagined hearing footsteps? She listens to her own ragged breath, of that she can be as sure as she is of the irritating susurration of winds overhead in parched pepper tree branches. A gust comes ripping up the ramp, rolling and twisting and piling fallen leaves in creaking heaps against chain-link. The ramp seems longer, and steeper, but then it’s been twelve years since she was last here. With a sharp intake of breath she confronts the great amphitheater. She squints to make out in darkness the hundreds of concrete tiers with wood-slat benches that spiral up the mountainside. On a high ridge, wind-breaker circles of eucalyptus trees writhe against a sky smoldering red from wild fi res. Lower on the mountain’s fl ank, hissing winds cause heavy boughs of Aleppo pines to rise and fall with the majestic slowness of a funeral dance. Mrs. Pearce enters Promenade 2, behind garden box seats piled with folded canvas chairs and collapsible picnic tables. In the black hollow of Daisy Dell, the hulking acoustical concert shell glows with ghostly luminosity. Cautiously Mrs. Pearce negotiates steep, low-rise steps descending between box stalls. Wind gusts lessen. She breathes in the bittersweet scent of pine and realizes why her daughter set their reunion in this place—to taunt her! To provoke, annoy, and show ill will. Her eyes strain to pierce darkness inside the shell, where Vita had stood alone, center stage, backed by the philharmonic orchestra. The Young Artists’s Concert had been underwritten by Edith’s, Inc., the lucrative family restaurant chain cruelly mocked by Vita. Again, as often in the past, Mrs. Pearce—Edith Pearce— visualizes how young, how beautiful her daughter had looked with her auburn hair loosely waved over bare shoulders, how fl awlessly her milk-white skin gleamed in the wash of spotlights. Thousands and thousands of faces spreading up the mountainside had beamed as her child winged her way through dizzying high notes and thrilling trills. Edith crosses plywood covering a drained refl ecting pool, ripe with the fungoid stench of decay. Using utility steps she Vita climbs onto the shell’s huge stage. Sensor device lights fl icker. The famous concentric acoustical panels curve overhead like claws. Edith whirls—rats?—another trespasser? Her hand fumbles to grasp what she’s carrying inside one voluminous pocket of the mink jacket. Tears and perspiration cause heavy liner to streak. She sobs out loud in fear and in despair at her guilt, her loneliness, her longing to make everything different from the way it was. High on the Bowl’s uppermost rim, a fi gure dressed in all- black watches from beneath heaving Aleppo boughs. Nostrils fl are as they fi ll with burning-acrid, pine-sweet air. The beautiful face is pale, but radiant against a sky pulsating rose from out-of-control fi res. Vita can make out the fi gure on the stage far below: seen from this height and distance her mother is less than an inch tall—so trifl ing, piffl ing an adversary. Gripping the Davis 32 cal derringer inside her leather jacket pocket, Vita strides down into the amphitheater. 5

BOOK ONE ATHENS

(Three Months Earlier) Vita 7

1

ita betrayed few signs of nervousness, or irritation, when Vasked to lift her single Vuitton suitcase onto a low counter and open it for inspection. Resigned to not meriting immunity when unaccompanied by Christian or his embassy minions, she stood still and erect. Her beautiful face remained expressionless as a cavalier customs offi cer fl ipped through the over-sized, ornately embossed U.S. State Department diplomatic passport that she handed to him. Furtively she tapped the Pentelic marble fl oor with the spiked iron tip of her sturdy umbrella, surely an odd thing to be bringing into arid Athens. Vita permitted the corners of her lightly lip-sticked mouth to tilt upwards, in a fl icker of a smile, as the offi cer fl ushed: spread before his eyes, covering the top layer of the fully packed suitcase, was a cornucopia of the skimpiest, most translucent underwear imaginable, minuscule panties and brassieres of peach-colored lace so gossamer as to be described by Arabs as “woven air.” The offi cer perfunctorily ran his hands around outer walls of the suitcase, snapped it closed, and returned the diplomatic passport to Vita’s haughtily extended hand. Cleared, she did not advance with other disembarking passengers into the lobby. She waved away a porter and lugged the heavy suitcase herself along a corridor out toward domestic island fl ight gates. Her stalker watched from behind the glass barrier Vita separating customs queues from the lobby. The man failed to register any peculiarity in the sight of a woman immaculately coifed, wearing a Chanel travel suit and Ferragamo pumps, and toting a big suitcase with no signs of physical strain. Not especially perceptive, her husband’s operative did not sense Vita’s intensely focused energy or note that she was uncommonly strong. And brazen. But but not so brazen as to dare risk fl ying an unnecessarily indirect route from Los Angeles through Singapore and Bombay to Athens using anything other than her own diplomatic passport—not to mention her correct gender! The transformation had to be made now as certainly Christian had tracked use of her passport. Leaving the Air India 707 on the tarmac Vita had intuited his agents watching. Palpably, she’d sensed the invisible tentacles of surveillance rising hairs along the nape of her lovely neck. Inside a remote public she bolted the door shut. She opened her suitcase and swept aside the diversionary layers of underwear that had concealed a knapsack pre-packed with peculiar creativity. Out came a man’s shaving kit, and on the sink’s ledge she lined items having nothing at all to do with grooming for either female or male. A Bombay movie make- up artist had found in her own stock strands of wool crepe in a shade close to the sienna of Vita’s hair; guru of a prominent hijira transvestite commune, the woman had instructed Vita on how to tightly stretch silky crepe between two fi ngers and shave off particle stubs—beard stubble! Vita twisted open the lid of a small canister, careful not to tip out its precious contents. She fl icked a lighter and held its fl ame under a vial of adhesive, then spread melted paste over satiny skin of her lower face. Dabbing a blush brush in the canister she patted crepe clippings over her jaws and chin. She switched to an eye shadow brush for the space between her upper lip and nostrils. Rapid, deft application, she found, avoided the dreaded Senator Nixon-look. The restroom door handle jerked back and forth, but Vita ignored the cackle of cleaning women. She needed ten minutes more. The voices trailed away and she told herself that the 9 women, being Greek, welcomed any opportunity to lighten their work load and would not return. She crouched on her knees over the toilet bowl, and gathered together thick hair into a topknot. From the nape of her neck to the occipital bone, hair with the color and sheen of polished mahogany had been given a squared buzz-cut. This oddity until now had been concealed by an upper, swept-back layer falling to her shoulders. Vita dragged an electric razor in swatches across her scalp and watched coppery strands swirl, vanish as repeatedly she fl ushed. Before the mirror she dabbed in smears of petroleum jelly, to make shorn hair stand up straight. She used little scissors to shape sideburns and perfect her man’s crew-cut. Injections of anabolic steroids she’d taken in L.A. to boost her weight-lifting had added bulk to her lower face—she ran her hand along a regular Mount Rushmore jaw line, with its fi ve o’clock shadow! Without plucking, her eyebrows were scruffy. Sun and wind had chapped her lips, so instead of applying balm she rubbed in foundation to further kill the color and blur the edges of lip lines. She stripped naked, and stepped into men’s Jockey briefs which slipped easily over her narrow hips. Hundreds of leg- lifts and crunches in a rented West Hollywood studio had left her belly ripped by abs. The steroids hadn’t (yet) caused hair to grow in the cleft between her breasts, so it was a shame (she rightly thought) to obliterate such a fi ne pair with ace bandages wound across her chest, under the arms, around the back and tightly fastened. From her knapsack she pulled out one of three sweatshirts with padding sewn into the shoulders and back—she put it on and scrutinized the refl ection of her masculine, V-shaped upper torso. ‘Will it play! Not onstage, but outside—in daylight? In real life!’ Confi dent it would, Vita found delectable the fact that Christian himself had unwittingly shown her that so outré a charade was possible. As a respite from escalating marital hostilities, her husband had taken her on a four-day cultural tour of neighboring Albania. They were escorted by a cultural attaché to the mountain village Vita of Barganesh to watch folk dances. As costumed youths whirled and leaped, Ambassador and Mrs. Granger sat in the places-of- honor with village elders, three men with crinkled, tobacco-brown faces, wearing their traditional white caps and baggy trousers. They sprawled about Vita with their legs open wide, downing shots of raki. In bellowing baritone voices they shouted orders to women and children who submissively addressed them as “pasha.” Pasha or no pasha, Vita found the old men irritating, so very declasse with their brash familiarity and the way they kept grasping and poking at her as if she were a cow for sale at the fair. Vita’s venomous displeasure morphed into elation during the return drive to the capital, when the attaché informed Ambassador Granger that he and his wife had just enjoyed the company of a dying breed in the Balkan peninsula, less than a hundred left—sworn virgins. The Barganesh elders were not men but women, biological women who in their teens had lost their fathers and brothers in blood feuds and had themselves taken vows to abstain absolutely from sex, marriage and child-bearing, so they could lead their lives as men. “Revenge is their fi rst duty on becoming a man,” said the attache. “They’re fearless.” Vita recollected from haute monde cocktail chatter titillating tales of military cross-dressers. Like Christina Davies, the regina di tutti, who escaped exposure in the Duke of Marlborough’s army by learning to piss standing through a metal tube painted silver. Or Angela Brulon, who rose from fusilier to sergeant-major in Napoleon’s army and was found to be a woman only by surgeons removing shell splinters after the Siege of Calvi, in 1799. Even a New England Episcopalian prig like her husband knew that fi ve-hundred American women living and fi ghting as men in the Civil War survived to collect their pensions. So in this airport public toilet, with the approach of zero moment, Vita felt as if she were one with all female soldiers, and with the Albanian village elders whose fi rst duty as “a man” is to shed blood. She inspected her ungainly umbrella to make sure that its concealed deadly component was secure. Roughly the size of a small tent, the umbrella was a product of the Malabar monsoon coast that had been lethally customized for Vita by Bombay’s 11 oldest manufacturer. Before leaving the toilet, Vita pleasurably made a fi nal check of the mirror refl ection of her new male self...military crew cut...scruffy eyebrows...thin but well-shaped, colorless lips... most masterly of all the faint shadow of discernible beard stubble! With a chiding snort she realized what she’d almost forgotten— the most obvious goddamned give-away of all. From a side pocket of the knapsack she took out a square of colorful, paisley- looking Indian cotton, not unlike a cowboy’s neckerchief, and loosely knotted it about her throat. She had noted back in L.A., especially near college campuses, how affectations such as strings of junk beads were in vogue with kids going around sucking on stinky marijuana joints and calling themselves “hippies.” A bandana was the simplest way to conceal from view that crucial spot on her lovely, smooth throat where there should’ve been, but revealingly was not—an Adam’s apple. Off the terminal’s lobby Vita abandoned in a rental locker her Vuitton suitcase containing the Chanel travel suit and Ferragamo pumps, not to mention (‘merde!’) those priceless lace panties and brassieres hand-sewn by Italian nuns. Her meager possessions crammed into a knapsack consisted now of worn jeans and the padded sweat shirts—plus the just-stolen passport of a Pepperdine athlete, along with his ID cards. A man raced past, knocking Vita against the locker’s metal door. “Rectal tissue!” she shouted, avoiding use whenever she could of common, coarse epithets. To her own ears her modulated tenor voice natural enough. Noting a fl ashy suit and pointy-toed, tasseled loafers that were pure Italian-American low life, Vita smirked at the man’s idiotic half-walk, half-run, pigeon-fashioned sprint across the marble lobby. Was Christian so frantic as to have hired a North End Mafi oso punk? Vita strode through the lobby with the knapsack slung from a shoulder, insouciantly as any pasha...jauntily swinging the sinister umbrella. Her stride was butch. She’d begun in L.A., while scouting campuses, by wearing tennis shoes a size too large, and progressed to men’s shoes two sizes larger than her own. Women from girlhood on take steps by putting their toes down fi rst, while boys step down on the middle part of the foot. Now, oversized Vita track shoes ensured that the wife of the American ambassdor left the airport terminal confi dently walking fl at-footed.

* * * “SIRIUS..? SIRIUS..!” The Bostonian voice brayed over the rented car’s dashboard speaker left on at high volume, attracting unwanted attention from drivers parked nearby. The man, whose moniker was ‘Sirius,’ slid behind the steering wheel to snatch the short wave radio’s hand mic while madly twisting the volume knob, “Yes-sir!” “Where are you, Sirius?” “Ellinikon…in the parking lot, sir.” “You have her in sight.” Sirius’s lips pursed, o-shaped. “You’re watching her as we talk?” “No, sir—she vanished—into thin air.” “Thin air?” Christian saw that sarcasm, if not buried in static, would be lost on this Cro Magnon upon whom, pitiably, he depended to bring Vita back under control. “Amazing, isn’t it—been in Greece an hour and already she’s vanishing into air like fucking Athena.” Sweat beaded the foot soldier’s oily forehead. “I’ll re- establish contact, sir. I’ll hire extra men. We’ll have her back in sight by midnight. But, sir…” “…yes, Sirius?” “I’m working blind, sir. You haven’t told me—” “—you had her in your line of vision, Sirius. I warned you she’s slippery.” The distressed speaker paused, dismayed by the enormity of what he was reduced to having to think and say. ‘Hundreds of people have come into contact with Vita at embassy functions in Bangkok, here in Athens, in New York or Washington. She thrills everyone with her beauty, wit and intelligence. How for so long has she managed to slip the net? Hide her true nature? Escape notice!’

13

2

mbassador Christian Granger slipped his Saab Sonett into Athe single space off the embassy’s semi-circular gravel driveway. He sat for a moment to collect himself, and to secure a dash panel concealing the short wave radio installed when Sirius arrived from Boston. The Mafi a man had been contracted by a family attorney, who made inquiries and acted as go-between in dealing with a detective agency specializing in marital affairs. Absolute discretion guaranteed, no questions asked. Use of a headset meant keeping on the sports car’s soft roof, just as well since the air of Athens was a miasma of dust and exhaust fumes. Crucial for Christian to avoid were C.I.A.- maintained, voice-activated recording devices in government limousines. ‘Spooks on the third fl oor,’ the ambassador calculated, glancing up, right above, at french doors and balcony of his own offi ce, ‘aren’t obvious enough to nose around my car. But how long before they question why I’m driving myself?’ In the rear view mirror he watched Marine guards in their glass booth at the main gate. Across an expanse of emerald grass, Greek workers argued among themselves while indifferently pointing water hoses at rondos of exuberant red canna lilies. Towering above black spires of cypress along Avenue Vasilis Sofi as was the City’s largest structure, the Hilton Hotel. Marines in ceremonial uniform saluted as Christian Vita entered the 19th century mansion. He strode across checkered black and white marble tiles to an anteroom presided over by his secretary. Alycia was immaculate in her plain but expertly cut cashmere suit. She greeted him formally before swiveling in her chair to place both hands with splayed, ringless fi ngers on the desk before her. “Deputy Hatfi eld has called, repeatedly, asking to see you as soon as you return.” Her lowered voice, while beautifully modulated, took on that edge of disdain Christian noted whenever she was forced to refer to Jerry Hatfi eld, their deputy of public and cultural affairs who, as any reader of newspapers knew, was chief of station for the Central Intelligence Agency. “What does the deputy want?” “Really, sir, I have no idea. All he did was ask me to tell you he’d like to see you.” “Then let’s get him down and see what he wants.” “Yes, sir,” said Alycia, managing to coat even those two words with exasperation. She accepted that the spy agency is housed in all embassies and operates theoretically under the supervision of the ambassador. But she was convinced that Jerry Hatfi eld actively sought to undermine her boss. She suspected that his spies routinely checked her fi les so she carried important papers home in her suede briefcase. She conducted phone conversations assuming that the third fl oor was listening in. Christian entered what formerly was the main salon of a shipping magnate’s home. At his direction the fl oor had been stripped of parquet laid down by Germans during their Occupation; original oak planks from the once heavily forested isle of Samos gleamed again with high sheen. From a stucco ceiling medallion hung a crystal chandelier of Byzantine design, used only when receiving dignitaries. Christian himself preferred natural light, or the subdued glow of the desk lamp with blue Murano glass shade that was a gift from Vita. Her lamp and his telephones, one red, one black, were the only objects allowed on the glossy surface of the sea captain’s desk. His offi ce, like his Saab Sonett (one of six designed and manufactured by airplane engineers) resonated with the austere aesthetics of Zen Buddhist monks by which Christian endeavored to govern all aspects of his life, especially his ambassadorship and his glamorous marriage 15 to Vita. He took from a concealed galley fridge a split of Pellegrino and stepped through Fortuny curtains onto the balcony. Sipping, he stared up at marble reliefs on the Hilton tower. He considered these gigantic carvings by modern master Iannis Moralis to be the only mitigating aspect of the pre-cast concrete monstrosity. Now the looming central fi gure of The Charioteer seemed ominous… rigid, unyielding in his struggle to weld power over fi erce horses with necks elegantly arched in rebellion. ‘Vita!’ Christian could identify with the plight of the warrior-horseman. He had no idea what his tempestuous young wife had been doing for the past two months. Worse, what she intended to do now she was back in town. That she had eluded Sirius in an under-used terminal was to be expected, Christian supposed: it was naïve to hope that a low-grade operative could match his wife for nerve and cunning. He thought back to their fi nal disastrous hour together at the Residence. It had not been just another tantrum, but a violent attack. He’d been faster and defl ected her blow with his arm. Instead of hitting his head the heavy crystal vase was knocked from her hands and smashed on the fl oor. Her parting diatribe reverberated in his mind’s ear: “You don’t get it, do you, darling? You’re locked in your ivory tower and can’t smell waves of shit lapping up at you. Killing you would be painless—you’d be out of it that way and wouldn’t suffer. No, darling, I’m gonna maximize your goddamn terror!” Alycia’s static-laced voice on the phone speaker clawed at his nerve-endings. He dribbled water down his tie. “Deputy Hatfi eld is here, sir.” “Send him in, Alycia, please.” Jerry Hatfi eld entered, and Christian motioned him to a straight-backed chair before his desk. A graduate of Des Moines Business College, and formerly a salesman for General Electric, the C.I.A. station chief had a low threshold of tolerance generally for the Harvard-Yale-Princeton crowd “with their degrees in rowing,” and specifi cally for his nominal superior with that Boston bray and pussy cultural affectations, such as ‘a goddamned Japanese garden at the Residence!’ With a blank Vita expression Hatfi eld watched his ambassador return the mineral water (‘Eye-talian, wouldn’t ya’ know?’) to the fridge, which he knew also stored bottles of ‘Soviet-commie’ vodka prohibited by the State Department. Hatfi eld’s eyes slid up the wall to State’s offi cial photo-portrait of Striped-Pants, standing, in one of his perennial charcoal pinstripe suits (‘Jermyn Street, not Brooks Brothers’), and beside him, perched on the edge of a gilt chair, was the high-handed bitch of a wife—the second, no less, and waaaay too young to be a member of the diplomatic corps, even as classy as she looked in one of her froggy getups. What galled the ex-GE salesman most was that to the couple’s right where, traditionally, there should be at least a fold of Old Stars and Stripes, was a hoity-toity arrangement of roses, irises and lilies. Hatfi eld aimed his neutral expression with hard eyes at the bare surface of the sea captain’s desk. His ambassador’s display of enlightened austerity, Zen or no Zen, he saw as unbridled arrogance. ‘His shit don’t stink, his desk has no clutter,’ the intelligence man refl ected. Aloud he said, “I want to review the PPMA with you, sir, if I may.” The chief of station (COS) produced his weekly “Precis of the Prime Minister’s Activities.” Christian was scornful not only of the agency’s infatuation with acronymic gibberish, but also application of the word ‘precision’ to these grammatically tortured, wildly mistranslated summaries of transmissions from audio devices embedded in pieces of furniture at the prime minister’s offi ce and home. Christian was angered by the near certainty that furniture in his own Residence was similarly riddled with C.I.A bugs. Hatfi eld could placidly sit before him cognizant of his marital crisis, aware that Vita was not, as offi cially stated, recovering from minor surgery at her family’s home in Los Angeles. The sleazy bastard probably had on tape her smashing of the crystal vase. The spy chief’s eyes glinted. “I thought I ought to talk to you about this week’s précis. It’s…personal.” Christian nodded and shifted into a position that appeared to be, but was not, more relaxed. “You have a guest at the Residence, Mr. von Reichenbach.” “Baron von Reichenbach stays with me during his 17 quarterly consultations with the prime minister, who’s a personal client.” Christian’s voice didn’t betray the stress caused by Vita’s disruptive absence, which he suspected was premeditated and timed to coincide with Klaus’s spring visit. He had hoped to make things right between his wife and his lifelong protector and mentor. During the one call Vita had made from L.A. he pleaded with her to return for Klaus’s stay, so they could reconcile their differences while maintaining an appearance of normalcy. Her blunt response had been “I’ll be there,” and she hung up. Hatfi eld continued. “Monitoring has recorded Mr. Reichenbach yammering away at the prime minister to take actions inimical to America. Downright hostile, as a matter of fact.” “Such as,” said Christian. “Terminating the lease at Suda Bay, forcing shutdown of our most strategic naval base in the Mediterranean.” “Greek politicians,” Christian snapped, “started campaigning to get our bases off their soil back before ink dried on the Truman Doctrine. Status quo demagoguery.” The C.I.A man plunged ahead. “We have on record Mr. Reichenbach, head of Europe’s richest bank, enumerating the numinous ways—that’s a quote, sir—the awe-inspiring ways the PM can re-structure his government’s fi nances so as to make good on campaign promises. This Swiss banker’s danglin’ before the PM various and nefarious means by which he can move Greece away from dependence on American aid. Your friend, sir, seems hell-bent on waging his own personal war against America.” Christian rose and went to the french doors. Hatfi eld looked steadily at the pin-striped back during a full two minutes of silence. It required effort to mask his glee at the prospect of reporting to Langley. ‘President Jack hears about bastard-banker Baron Hymie, and Striped-Pants’ll be up Shit Creek in a chicken wire canoe without a paddle—hot damn!’ Aloud he ventured, “Given the circumstances doesn’t it seem out-of-joint, sir, for the Residence to be hostin’ an open adversary of our government?” Christian forced Olympian reasonableness into his tone. “Your eavesdropping on private conversations between Baron Vita von Reichenbach and the prime minister hardly makes either man open adversaries. Dissent in private is permissible and part of the democratic process. The baron is a friend of my family. Always, and under any circumstances, he is welcome in my home.” “This means you’ll accompany Mr. Reichenbach to the shindig he and the PM are attending up in Kolonaki?” Christian thought how he loathed this so-called ‘intelligence’ goon, whom he believed to be not only sleazy, but fundamentally dishonest as well. “Baron von Reichenbach conducts his business without involving me. We restrict our visits to my home. No, I won’t be at the Galleopi reception.” Hatfi eld shuffl ed notes back into a plastic folder so soiled it could’ve been brown, but might just as easily have been blue. Rising, he was unctuously polite. “It would be remiss of me, sir, if I didn’t inquire after your wife. We’re all hope’n she’s recoverin’ from surgery and’ll be back with us reel soon.” “She’s fi ne, Hatfi eld.” “Still rest’n in L.A?” ‘Is the bastard wary,’ Christian thought, ‘or it is my imagination?’ Customs at Ellinikon can tell him Vita arrived two hours ago unless she was foolish enough to risk entering under a false passport, which she’s not.’ “My wife’s fi ne, Hatfi eld.” “That’s good to hear, sir,” boyishly grinned the spymaster. “It must be a bitch hav’in a guest at the Residence without the presence of her charmin’ self.”

* * *

Christian located the errant Greek butler, who felt that Vita overly enjoyed the authority her marital status bestowed, and who, in the absence of her exacting and galvanizing energy, had lapsed into indifferent, perfunctory service. “Serve drinks in the back garden when the baron returns, but Georges—make the brandy and sodas mild.” Christian worried about his friend’s health. His color was terrible, his breathing asthmatic. Too many cigars, too much rich food and fi ne cognac. 19

Christian changed from his pin-striped suit into a Japanese cotton hakata and clogs. With a disregard for appearances he strode across the lawn. Now that his marriage was shot to hell the Zen garden he’d created at the property’s far extremity was his solace. He recalled that Klaus had been the only friend to openly oppose his marriage to Vita. The von Reichenbachs hosted the discreet ceremony and wedding party in New York City, then he and Vita enjoyed honeymoon skiing at their chalet outside Zermatt. But Klaus voiced reservations. Vita was his junior by at least decade. She was beautiful and possessed of a vivacity and movie star sophistication considered to be the antithesis of a suitable wife for a diplomat. Worse was her lack of a proper background. She had arrived out of nowhere without a family and a past—or without a family and a past that she cared to display. Klaus warned that she was an unknown and for an ambassador- designate a choice full of risk. Christian had loved Klaus no less for his candor. He rationalized that Swiss rectitude prevented his friend from appreciatingVita’s potential. He wanted to prove he’d made a glittering, correct choice. He’d found a new young wife of beauty, talent and elegance, whose name itself referred to hymns of praise: Hindu Vitas contain the supreme sacred knowledge of which aristocratic Brahmins are the sole guardian and interpreter. Vita was perfect, were it not for the one truth Christian had refused to see—she was a freak. Her grace, her bearing, her authority were the result of simply being a superb actress. Christian strolled pebbled paths meandering through exotic grasses and twisted dwarf pines. Bats squeaked as they fl itted from the black tips of spear cypress. Spread across a vast plain below were the glittery lights of the City. At the heart of his garden the ambassador sat on the wood bench near a moss-covered stone lantern. The black surface of an ornamental pool refl ected royal papyrus stalks in terra-cotta urns. Under lily pads drifted orange and black-and-white koi, those expensive toys of medieval Japanese emperors…survivors from Vita an age of luxury. Christian’s heart was heavy, as his garden fi lled with the lovely chartreuse-violet light of dusk. He stared at black water. Wobbly patches of orange and black-and-white formed, then dissolved as koi circled and dove deeper. One rebel—uncommonly beautiful, with a swirling fi ligree of fi ns iridescent yellow and pearl—shot to the surface with a splash, its open round mouth gaping at a fallen azalea blossom. ‘Vita!’ His stomach contracted into a tiny shard of ice when he realized that his future, his career, the good name of his family depended on the efforts of a defi cient mob soldier: ‘Sirius has to bring her in under protective custody.’ He had in place necessary legal paper work to have his wife involuntarily incarcerated at a secret clinic outside Zurich that treats criminally disturbed members of the world’s wealthy or infl uential families…one of those immaculate retreats with guarded gates and strong bars at the windows. Evening shadows deepened. A quivering ray of light bisected the pool’s surface, a refl ection of the fi rst and brightest star in the sky. Not Venus, as visitors to the Mediterranean imagine, but Sirius the Dog-star: forty times brighter than the sun Sirius burns with a fi erce red intensity, and is the augur of scorching summer days ahead and of disasters. Christian watched Georges crossing the lawn, carrying brandy snifters on a silver tray. The butler was followed by Klaus von Reichenbach, who as a concession to informality had traded his suit jacket and vest for a gray sweater. Christian thought of his station chief’s warning and bitterly conceded that in light of circumstances it would, in fact, be improper to have his friendship with the Credit Suisse president on display at the Galleopi affair. ‘All these years and we can’t be seen together in public. Poor Klaus—he’ll have to go alone up to Kolonaki, and endure the modern Nike alone.’

21

3

“ Irini!” shrieked the minister of culture. “Irr-riiiiii-ni!” The housekeeper sauntered out to fi nd her mistress grappling with a knot of gossamer fabric on one bare shoulder. Holding up a pair of glasses, the minister peered over the parapet of her penthouse rooftop. “Assholes!” she snarled, stabbing an index fi nger at policemen, fi ve stories below, who’d stopped Mercedes sedans to assist formally dressed couples up impossibly steep sidewalks. Against the imminent arrival of the prime minister barricades sealed off streets near the peak of Likavittos Hill, that perfectly conical eruption of limestone rising six-hundred feet higher than its famous fl at-topped neighbor, the Akropolis. “POPTZIS!” exploded the ex-movie-star-turned-politician, shaking off Irini’s competent hands. She stalked about spitting abuse into a phone receiver held at the other end by the red-faced deputy police chief of the exclusive Kolonaki neighborhood. While adjusting the St. Laurent gown the phlegmatic Irini ignored the histrionics of her mistress, Galina Galleopi. Her mother had been housekeeper for Galina’s widower father, and in a family of six men Irini had grown up as a surrogate sister. Often she had pondered how so great a man as Spyros Galleopos, Mayor of the City of Athens, could be enslaved by an obstreperous brat like Galina—turning cartwheels in short dresses Vita along the corridors of city hall and shouting at disapproving offi ce workers, “I’ll have my papa jail you!” Irini herself endured worse as Galina’s lifelong factotum. The dream of every Greek is to be betrayed, so the maid lived in perpetual bliss. The latest treachery to be savored came when Galina hired a professional dresser for her opening of a European Peace Summit. Irini was left to sit in the kitchen and watch the festivities on television. Mobs surged about the base of the Akropolis to witness leaders of England, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain lift champagne glasses—suddenly spotlights fl ooded high bulwarks. There alone among gleaming white temple columns stood the slim fi gure of Galina, sheathed in a red tunic by Balenciaga. As she intoned the welcoming proclamation her whiskey voice sounded even richer, more thrilling over the body mic suspended between barely covered breasts. Thousands of European visitors cheered the radiant modern goddess, while Greeks around the world joked that only Galina Galleopi could upstage the Parthenon. Irini had wept with happiness thinking of the pride Spyros would’ve felt. Puffi ng on her cigarette, The Living Legend of All Hellenes looked about for some distraction to delay her entrance at the party fulminating downstairs. Close by she heard voices. “Irini? Maurice, is that you?” “Cherie!” gushed her secretary, a tubby Frenchman who ignored Irini’s sour expression and propelled Galina back to the parapet. “Look, there by the streetlight—he’s mine!” “Jesus Christ,” ejaculated Galina, “how does a moldy pusti* nab a boy like that!” The cultural minister peered through her glasses to study la bella fi gura of “the young man” on the sidewalk below. Evening bells from the chapel at the peak of Likavittos caused pigeons to fl are up from rooftops—Vita lifted her face skywards. Freshly tanned, her skin glowed in violet twilight with the illusion of healthy masculinity. She wore a loosely-fi tted, Italian man’s suit with a burgundy shirt and a bold tie, a stylish outfi t marred

*derogatory for gay 23 by the oversized, ugly umbrella that she so resolutely clutched. With convincing macho insolence Vita slouched against the lamp post. “He’s beautiful!” Galina sighed, willing to overlook the preposterous umbrella. “Can he come up?” giggled Maurice. “He’s impressed that I work for you.” “Has he fucked you yet?” The Frenchman blanched.“Galina, c’est ne pas gentile!” “A big cock jammed up your ass is gentile?” Maurice’s lip protruded. Galina glared. Maurice con- ceded, “Non, pas de tout.” “Ah,” exhaled Galina, a smiling Eros. “He said if he could come to the party he’d go to my apartment after for a drink.” Galina’s ego pulsated to learn that an invitation to her party was desired so badly as to cause a beautiful young man to have sex with a dreary pusti like Maurice. “This is a party for Andreas’s banker. I can’t have pustis everywhere.” “He’s not some Mykonos tart, Galina, he’s in medical school.” Galina let out her raucous, iconoclastic guffaw. “Bullshit! Horseshit! Cowshitgoatshitratshit! A face like that and brains? You are naïve if you believe that.” “Galina, compulsive lying makes you think everyone else is lying.” “Darling Maurice, I never lie. I create.” “Whatever. But he’s a medical student in Los Angeles.” “If he’s speci-lizin’ in gynecology,” said Galina, running her hands over her hips and affecting a Mae West accent, “bring’im on up. I feel like I need an examination.” “At your age you need someone to apply rust remover,” Maurice sniffed. “Ella, pusti mou!” bellowed Galina, who loved a joke on herself nearly, but not quite as much as ones she made at the expense of others. “Bring your boy to my party, but behave. Andreas may be a socialist but that doesn’t mean he likes pustis.” The swell of laughter told Galina time was ripe for her Vita entrance. Maurice watched as Irini used a battery of brushes to make fi nal adjustments to the immortal face. Mussing dazzling blonde hair, the seventy-six-year-old Galina stalked out of her bedroom and down the spiral staircase. 25

4

lood-red gladioli spears were massed inside Minoan grain Burns set haphazardly, or so it seemd, against a dazzling whitewashed wall. White linen modular sofas were interspersed with lacquered black cubes, the top surfaces of which were little forests of cocktail glasses and over-fl owing ashtrays. Outside walls wholly of glass sliders was a garden-terrace from which invited (plus one uninvited) guests gazed down a thousand feet at the City’s zillions of pinpoint lights glittering for miles in all directions, from the harbor at Piraeus across a vast plain to Mount Parne, in the northeast. Gracelessly but effi ciently the C.I.A. contracted agent posing as “bartender” circulated, to offer champagne. Party-goers admired abstract oil canvases by Ghika, or plaster copies of classical nudes in the National Museum. More reverently they contemplated the gold- and tortoise shell-framed photographs infesting the lid of a baby grand: Galina bussing, being bussed by fellow femmes fatales…Garbo, Loren, Monroe, Dietrich, Bardot, Callas. Ignored at the keyboard composer Manos Hadjaitzakis improvised on his infectious movie themes made popular worldwide by Galina’s raspy recordings. Party talk trilled in counterpoint to the silvery, pouncing notes of Greek melodies. Vita

The penthouse buzzed with talk intense and witty, talk designed to be overheard and repeated. Manic chatter prevented party-goers from being caught staring (so gauche) at either the Akropolis spectacularly on view in the distance! at the prime minister of Greece seated right before them on a sofa! Pleasurably guests recounted ordeals endured in the name of security. Ousted from chauffeured limousines to climb a street “steeper than Matterhorn, darling, and in THESE heels.” Scrutinized by prowling, stern-faced men who registered each face and scanned torsos for unusual contours to clothing (“That handle on my Uzi, dear, is by Gucci!”). Guests out on the terrace gaped at a hovering helicopter and at rifl emen in business suits on neighboring rooftops. The “bartender” freshened the brandies of Prime Minister Andreas Miaoulis and Baron Klaus von Reichenbach, who, while conversing, remained oblivious to the crowd seething about the sofa reserved for them. The housekeeper Irini patrolled to make sure no one intruded on their privacy. Party-goers were mystifi ed by this unrecognized—unexplained—fossilized non-entity who so unfairly was allowed to monopolize the PM’s attention. “Darlings,” guffawed Galina as she worked the crowd, “don’t ask me about old men”. But out on the garden-terrace, under the dense canopy of a potted ornamental lemon tree, the secretary Maurice volubly gossiped with a couple. “Entre-nous, cheris, il EST Credit Suisse! He’s head of the most powerful banking family in Switzerland!” “That Methuselah?” said the husband. “He can’t still be up for hardball, Maurice.” Chirped the wife, “He look’s more like—” “—a carp,” snapped Vita. This bizarre, abrupt interjection made the couple stare at Maurice’s date who, so far, had stood mutely beneath leafy black-green branches on which little yellow globes glowed like lanterns. How apt was the beautiful “young man’s” observation: for the banker’s eyes, watery and bulged behind thick glasses, along with the under-bite of the mouth plus a non-chin, caused the old man indeed to resemble— “A carp,” continued Vita in her tenor voice, “is an ordinary 27 goldfi sh. A harmless ornament unless over-fed and in-bred until it swells into something monstrous.” “No Swiss banker is likely to be up for canonization,” said Maurice, “but the baron is not un monstre. He’s the prime minister’s personal banker—” Vita virulently broke in “—who set up accounts from which bribes are paid to Italian parliament members. Who while thousands of Romanian orphans starved helped the Ceausescus fi nance a new palace with fi fteen-thousand rooms and forty-two- hundred gold door knobs. For three hundred years his family’s been stashing stolen booty in their vaults under the Bahnhofstrasse. You could fi ll Zurichsee twice over with the blood shed by depositors into numbered accounts—every successful criminal, assassin, and dictator on the planet!” “A reformer!” the wife giggled nervously. The misdoings of the Zurich fi nancial oligarchy were a matter of no great urgency to Vita, but solidly “in character” as a socially conscious student she glared. Maurice, feeling that extreme measures were called for, seized an elbow of the passing Galina—the couple fl ed like minnows with the arrival of a larger and solitary predator. “Galina, cherie,” said Maurice, “I want you to meet Jeff, who’s been in India.” “India, how quaint,” exhaled the spokeswoman for Hellas. “He was telling me about Hindu medicine men.” “Ah,” sighed Galina, whose knowledge of the medical world could be summed up in the name Hippokrates. The septuagenarian’s near-sighted eyes roved over the youthful, well muscled chest before her. Said Maurice, “Where was it, Jeff, that you were treated by fakirs?” “Kerala. And they weren’t fakirs,” said Vita faux- peevish. “They were Vedic gurukkhals. Masters.” Galina gazed into “Jeff’s” liquid eyes. Had the old movie star been less self-absorbed, and more observant, she would’ve noticed something terrifying in their black depths that glinted with malicious glee. Maurice shrilled, “Ah oui, gurukkhals. Tell Galina about Vita the ropes.” Vita knew, or cared less than Galina about the medicinal traditions of any culture, but she could hear herself talking in earnest tones and being believed. Freely she fantasized out loud: “It’s a treatment where the gurukkhal massages his patient’s feet with a mixture of clarifi ed butter and castor oil for seven days. The massages are performed with the gurukkhal hanging upside- down from ropes.” “The Indian rope trick!” squealed Maurice. “And the needles, tell her about the acupuncture.” Vita shifted her stance so that less of her face was in shadow. Galina, to study more closely the exquisite molding of “Jeff’s” lips, leaned closer. “Acupuncture,” Vita extemporized, “is Chinese. Gurukkhals practice techniques learned from traveling Japanese monks. Surgical needles are used to probe the body’s 108 pressure points—64 are fatal so the gurukkhal must be skillful.” “Darling,” said Galina to Vita, in a husky tone that alerted Maurice that he might be on the verge of losing his date, “why would a man with a body as good as yours let quacks stick needles into it?” “Chronic pain in my knee,” said Vita, viperishly smiling into Galina’s eyes. Maurice interjected, “The needles—doesn’t it hurt?” “Sterilized steel, nine inches…inserted here…” Two pairs of feverish crotch-watching eyes dropped as Vita gripped her leg and pulled trouser fabric tight over a shapely thigh. “Pressure point twenty-six, where the needle went in.” Galina extended fi ngers as if to touch. Vita jerked back under densely leafed branches, thrilled by the extent to which the lecherous old movie star had fallen for her charade. Previously, the cultural minister and the wife of the American ambassador—the second highest-ranking woman in Greece, after the prime minister’s wife—had air-kissed and conversed at offi cial functions. ‘Now here she is,’ Vita thought, ‘getting her panties moist over my boy-thing—fool!’ Out loud, she pedantically repeated, “Pressure point twenty-six, that’s 29 where the needle went in.” “I’d have fainted at the sight of the needles!” whinied Maurice. “Hipokritos,” bellowed Galina, “if you had as many nine- inch things sticking out of you as you’ve had stuck in you, you’d look like a goddamn porcupine!” “Galina!” “Darlings, I must go,” said Galina, stooping to prop the pretentious student’s umbrella back against the lemon tree’s giant terra cotta urn. Galina swept into the kitchen where she and Irini synchronized their watches. She made, and Irini ignored, threats of what she would do should anything “fuck up.” The bodyguards were ordered to remain where they were. Politely the cultural minister interrupted Prime Minister Miaoulis and von Reichenbach, who smiled at her explanation and rose. Galina stepped into the center of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, please!” Expectant silence rippled outward. “My very special guests...” Her bow to the prime minister and his banker elicited applause. “...and all of you, my special guests!” drew more applause, giggles, and cries of ‘hear-hear’ from the British. Galina continued, “My ministry has a surprise for you. Please join me on the terrace.” Party-goers pressed close. While Prime Minister Miaoulis shook hands, Klaus Reichenbach stared before him, looking as if he would pay a considerable sum of money to be instantly transported back to his fortress-mansion on the Zurichsee. The C.I.A. man held aloft foaming champagne bottles. Freezing on a ministerial expression, Galina Galleopi steered her prime minister and the Credit Suisse president to the terrace railing. The crowd closed in with scant regard for rank. Maurice squirmed into place behind von Reichenbach. Beside him, “Jeff”—clutching “his” umbrella—blocked the view of the British attaché’s Cockney girlfriend. Irini jacked-up the sound system’s volume for Stravinsky’s Firebird. When the housekeeper cut all the lights, plunging the penthouse terrace into darkness, party-goers whooped and Vita whistled at the spectacular view. Strobe beacons fl ashed from military installations on encircling mountaintops. The starless sky smoldered along the Aegean shore, where great Piraeus harbor burned with myriad industrial sodium lights and refi nery fl ares. At sea, strings of light bulbs glittered from the masts of cruise ships, while oil tankers sent out blinking red and green signals. Then at the heart of the City’s stupendous electrical grid, both on land and sea, a singular patch of darkness—magically— fl ooded with gold-tinted light: gleaming high against black sky was the Akropolis, with its ramps twisting up cliff-battlements to the Propylea gate; the karyatid maidens supporting on their heads the roof of the Erechteum; soaring above all, the columns and pediment of the Parthenon. Galina’s staff at the cultural ministry had commandeered the Sound and Light amphitheatre, where they whimsically manipulated multitudinous banks of colored fl oodlights. The spectacle of light playing hide-and-seek with the planet’s most celebrated monument was operatically enhanced (as hostess Galleopi had intended) by Stravinsky’s exultant melody. Prime Minister Miaoulis smiled broadly. Galina set about wiping the dour expression off Klaus Reichenbach’s face by pressing her lips close to his hairy ears, to intone those fragments of the Akropolis’s history she considered provocative—or could remember. The C.I.A. man weaseled through a press of bodies with spewing bottles. Giddiest was Maurice, who amidst the jostling managed to cop feels; his nimble fi ngers darted among the folds of his date’s suit in search of the smooth, fi rm fl esh he knew to be there. Gripping her ugly giant umbrella, Vita, as “Jeff,” cried out aloud, alone in solitary evil exaltation. True, she had calculated that a party hosted by a fool such as Galleopi would be boisterous in clichéd Greek fashion, rife with opportunity. But at her most optimistic she’d not envisioned herself standing in darkness behind Christian’s bastard mentor, shielded by drunks raving and shrieking over distant fi reworks. To know that both she and her victim, on the terrace, were in the direct line of vision of suited rifl emen on neighboring rooftops, and of a professional protection 31 squad behind in the penthouse kitchen, rendered the approaching zero moment magnifi cent by its boldness, its audacity. Triumphantly Vita gripped her umbrella. Irini turned Firebird to maximum volume as distant fl oodlights simulated the sacking of the Akropolis by the Persians. Thousands of kilowatts of light fl uttered in waves through pine groves. Blood-red shafts stabbed at stone battlements. Orange light fl ickered inside the Parthenon, while its pediment glowed under a cascade of pink sprays of light and fi re from Roman candles. Party-goers roared their approval over Firebird’s fi nal ecstatic chords: Glass shattered. A woman shrieked. The C.I.A. man dropped on a knee to hurriedly scrape up shards. Maurice’s hand gripped “Jeff’s” muscled, taunt thigh. “—oowww watch y’re bleedin’ self!” wailed the Cockney girlfriend, as she took the thrust of Vita’s elbow in her belly. Maurice recoiled at “Jeff’s” violent shake-off. Klaus Reichenbach’s hand clutched Galina’s arm. “Madame,” he croaked. “I feel...” Galina and Prime Minister Miaoulis supported the banker as they struggled to get him inside. Irini reacted instantly, the bodyguards seconds later. The old man was lowered onto a sofa. Pinkish light from a halogen lamp intensifi ed the blood-red hues of gladioli spears thrust between the white marble hooves of The Horseman of Thermopylae. “Call a doctor,” the prime minister ordered. “No,” snapped Irini, “there’s one on the second fl oor. I’ll get him.” The Greeks debated whether to give water or brandy. The baron looked up with a face white as the sofa’s bleached linen. “Andreas...sorry...my doctor—” His voice stopped like someone had fl ipped a switch. Shoulders rocked forward, a tremor wracked his body. His head fell back, the eyelids fl uttered, and a dollop of blood oozed between parted lips and streamed down the front of his white shirt. A column Vita of blood made hideous sounds as it spurted from the mouth— so much blood, lusciously red against bleached sofa cushions, whitewashed walls and the white marble statue. Only the gladioli and the blood were red. The banker’s rictus grin was aimed at the battered marble head of the horse, reared with wild eyeballs and teeth barred in the frenzy of combat. Galina Galleopi and Prime Minister Miaoulis stood still as bodyguards made futile gestures. Ever in touch with her truer feelings, Galina let out an explosive exhalation: “All over my fucking sofa!”

33

5

“ IRIUS?….SIRIUS!” SStatic crackled over the Mafi a soldier’s ear-piece. ‘Every friggin’ time I go to eat!’ Sick of peppery slovakia and bitter FIX beer, chased with Tums, Sirius had found a red- and yellow-striped American style hamburger joint strung with fl uorescent light tubes. At a standup counter he squirted purplish, rancid ketchup over a fried egg beaded with green olive oil, and precariously perched atop a furry gray meat patty, a white shred of lettuce, and a jonquil-yellow bun. Sirius again had left the volume on high, so the Boston bray blasted against his eardrum. When he jerked his head the over-easy egg slithered off the burger. He glared at the toe of a tasseled loafer, where bursted yolk and splattered ketchup turned highly polished lizard skin…orange. “Where are you, Sirius?” “Here-sir, at Omonia Square,” said the soldier, mispronouncing the name of the old Athenian business district like the cleaning compound. “Are you secure?” Sirius glanced about. His eyes met those of three Greek men motionlessly holding their worry beads, fascinated by the sight of an Amerikanos talking into his jacket lapel with his fancy Vita shoe plastered with yolk and ketchup. Sirius whirled furiously, daring red and yellow wall tiles to snidely comment. “Secure, sir.” “Listen and tell me what you hear.” The soldier inclined his Breelcreamed head toward open glass doors, and strained to hear above the clatter at sidewalk tables and the screeching of traffi c around the rotary. “Sirens, sir, in the distance.” “Sirens, Sirius, ten blocks away in Kolonaki. At an apartment building where the prime minister is attending a party—22 Marinaki Street. Get there as fast as you can. I’m on my way. There’ll be police, so watch out. Penetrate my wife’s disguise. Look for the essentials…height, weight, build. One way or the other she’ll stand out, as she tends toward the rococo.” “Row-koko?” “Fanciful, Sirius, imaginative, kinky. Capisce?” “Gotcha.” The ambassador breathed deeply, to restrain himself. “Hurry, Sirius.”

* * *

Jerry Hatfi eld’s expression remained blank, but tension at the corners of his mouth and his half-defocused stare betrayed excitement fulminating inside the C.I.A. station chief. He had been called at home and told that the Swiss banker “died suddenly” at the Galleopi party, that the PM’s motorcade swiftly departed and the U.S. Army Hospital summoned a pathologist. Driving to the embassy, on Adrianos Street, Hatfi eld mentally composed the FLASH dispatch that would get the news to Langley in time for analysis that day. The baron banker seemed hell-bent on causing the agency trouble but unexpectedly, delightfully, he was a non-issue now. Hatfi eld debriefed the bartender who testifi ed that he’d clung to the banker and the PM throughout the party but had seen or heard nothing of signifi cance. The guest list included no one outside the usual Kolonaki crowd. The PM’s security detachment assumed the old man collapsed from a stroke and had questioned 35 no one. There was hemorrhaging. Reichenbach coughed up a lot of blood. Strokes don’t usually lead to excessive bleeding, so Hatfi eld put in a call to his contact at the army hospital and was told the autopsy would take another two hours. Dismissing the bartender, the spymaster descended to a subterranean communications trailer buried beneath the embassy mansion, in a limestone cave similar to ones that riddle the Akropolis. While entering his report into an encrypting machine, Hatfi eld indulged in pleasant reveries: ‘...the bastard Swiss banker dead…a boon for C.I.A…a blow for Striped-Pants just when his wife’s gone AWOL...Ellinikon made positive ID on the photo-portrait...for sure Mrs. Hot-to-Trot Vita Granger cleared customs—so why’s everyone acting like she’s still in L.A? Does Striped-Pants know where she is? Is his marriage cracking—hot damn! The station chief’s motor raced Grand Prix-style as he considered his ambassador’s suddenly dead friend and suspiciously absent wife—a whooole shit-storm of bad luck. The spymaster didn’t believe in coincidences unless he himself had arranged them. To his regret he’d had nothing to do with the disastrous turns Christian Granger’s life was taking...yet. He transmitted the encrypted cable, adding a postscript which employed the ambassador’s agency cryptonym: SEE THIS! REQUEST SEARCH BY REGISTRY FOR BIO/INFO ON WIFE DP/COLT MAIDEN NAME UNKNOWN ABSENT AND CURRENTLY ESTRANGED FROM DP/COLT FRIENDS STAFF CONFIRM ALLEGED RECENT SURGERY IN LA HOSPITAL ALSO VERIFY USE OF PASSPORT REPORT NEEDED SOONEST!

* * *

Despite the appalling circumstances, Christian wondered if Galina Galleopi wore anything under her full-length mink coat. It would be like her, cabinet minister and a grandmother, no less, to motorcade across town late at night buck naked under her furs. Such was his desperation for distraction, no matter how frivolous, from the horror going on inside the laboratory of the U.S. Army Vita

Hospital, in Ellinikon. His professional demeanor wavered as he looked through a door’s glass panels at Klaus’s body on a stone slab, tilted down to a sink. The civilian pathologist wore a plastic bib over his vested suit, and used a rubber hose to keep the slab fl ushed clean of blood and other matter. The naked corpse was slit from neck to crotch. The pathologist was removing organs, weighing them, casually plopping them into canisters of formaldehyde. “Chris, darling!” groaned Galina, stalking up from behind to operatically embrace him. Christian winced. He loathed having anyone, even a living national symbol, use the familiar diminutive form of his given name. He accepted that Galina’s offensiveness was congenital, thus unavoidable, and allowed himself to be engulfed by bony arms inside the mammoth mink coat. “Darling, my party—ruined!” moaned the ex-movie siren. Fighting to keep wild strands of peroxided hair out of his mouth, Christian studied the faces of Swiss embassy personnel and Greek security offi cials. They regarded him sympathetically, taking him perhaps to be Galina’s reserved source of private consolation. Galina, immersed in her own performance as bereaved hostess, would hardly register the irregularity of the presence of the American ambassador at the autopsy of a suddenly deceased Swiss citizen. Christian—whose terror was about to begin—steered Galina into a corridor, where her husband waited. Dressed in slacks and a cardigan sweater, Jules Levin was scanning a book on Byzantine atonal music. Galina collapsed into a chair, and the men, before taking places on either side, greeted each other warmly. Christian felt affection for this reserved man who for nearly half a century had played invisible ringmeister to the six-ringed circus known to the world as Galina Galleopi. The self-effacing Levin was there to soothe Galina’s turbulence and curb her more reckless impulses. Christian imagined that tonight Levin had been sequestered in his study working on the restoration of Byzantine scores, which were his passion. When the party ignominiously disbanded he joined his wife to lend support. 37

Unknown to most people, Levin was never far from Galina’s side. Let her be leading demonstrators in London, exhorting the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles, and he would be watching from a trailing limousine. Let her be whipping up emotions at a rally from the steps of Parliament in Athens, he would listen from the shadows of the great Ionic columns. Should Galina take it upon herself to do an exhausting tour of poor villages in northern Greece, he would resign himself to sitting in kafeneons, watching through the doorway as his golden-haired wife led citizens in Greek dances. Always he was there, never far from her side. “What happened, Galina? Tell me,” said Christian. “It was awful. Blood everywhere,” said Galina, eyes reddening at the thought of her sofa cover. Christian glanced at his watch. The pathologist would be another hour. Given that much time Galina would end up doing a full-scale Medea. “The party, Galina. What did Mr. Reichenbach do before he collapsed. Start with the time he and the prime minister arrived.” “Ten to eight.” “Who was with them?” “No one. The bodyguards cleared everyone earlier, so they watched from the kitchen. Andreas and the banker entered alone.” “Did Mr. Reichenbach look agitated or fl ushed?” “He looked like any old man which is shitty. But he was most courteous, the poor darling, when I invited him to the opening of my ministry’s exhibit of Macedonian jewelry. Chris, darling, why don’t you have your people—” “After greeting them, Galina?” “I led them to the sofa Irini kept free. With new linen covers—” “No drinks?” “They had drinks. The bartender was with me when I greeted them.” “Do you know him personally?” said Christian, realizing that the bartender probably was C.I.A.’s operative at the party. Vita

With dread, he thought of his aged and ailing friend being served what proved to be a fi nal drink by some social mutant contracted by the agency President Jack privately called “Murder, Inc.” “He’s a hideous Cypriot who works at the Hilton, but he’s loyal to me.” Galina made world headlines protesting a C.I.A.- supported right wing junta, so Christian longed to inform her that she was a steady employer of at least one C.I.A. miscreant. “Who did Mr. Reichenbach and the prime minister talk to?” “No one. They sat on their asses and spoke to no one. It wasn’t the banker’s fault, it was Andreas. You know how anti- social he can be. The bastards sat there like a honeymoon couple ignoring my party.” “Who was there, exactly how many guests?” “Forty-seven.” “Do you have a list?” “Irini has it.” Jules Levin touched his wife’s arm, “Galina, I have it here.” He handed a folded sheet of paper to Christian. “This is complete, Galina? No one else except you, your housekeeper, and the bodyguards?” “Yes.” “I want to understand what happened before Mr. Reichenbach collapsed. Try to remember in detail. Let’s talk it through—what do you call it, when staging the action of a play?” “Blocking,” said Galina. “Yes, let’s block the last fi fteen minutes of the party. Every movement, every gesture.” Put to Galina in theatrical terms the questions now fascinated her. She sat up straight with her handsome face fl ushed. “I’m in the kitchen,” she said. “With the bodyguards?” “What do those assholes have to do with it? No, darling, with Irini. The timing must be perfect. I have to herd everyone outside and Irini has to phone the Akropolis to cue them.” “The bodyguards stay in the kitchen?” “The baboons stay where I tell them, which is in the kitchen. I break up Andreas’s honeymoon with his banker. I 39 explain that I have a surprise spectacular. They are agreeable, so we go outside.” “Slowly, Galina...exactly where is everyone?” “Andreas and I are on either side of the banker. People push close to shake hands. I take Mr. Reichenbach’s arm to steer him.” “Is the bartender there?” said Christian, disgust mounting like bile in his throat. “Right beside me to make sure our glasses stay full— Chris, I’ll give you his name.” “Is anyone else near the prime minister or Mr. Reichenbach?” “At the railing everyone crowds in behind. We’re packed so tight Maurice of all people keeps rubbing my ass.” Christian ran his eye down the list. “I don’t see a Maurice.” “Maurice typed the list. He’s my secretary.” “Your secretary was at the party? Standing behind the prime minister when one of your guests happens to die?” “Maurice’s a pusti, darling, harmless.” “J. Edgar Hoover is homosexual—you want to stand with your back to him in the dark?” Galina grimaced to show that she was au courant with gossip about the tyrannical American F.B.I. chief. “Now,” said Christian, “we come to the last few minutes of the party. Omit nothing.” Galina Galleopi leaned back to rest her head against the wall. Her husband lit a cigarette and passed it to her. Greedily she inhaled and blew out smoke. “We’re at the railing…Andreas, me, the banker. Maurice is behind, then the British attaché with his Cockney slut. The lights go out and fl oodlights hit the Akropolis—fantastic! The columns all gold above the city! People go crazy, shouting and spilling champagne in the dark. Irini turned the music full blast—Chris, darling, don’t you think it was diabolical of me to play Firebird? It’s so orgasmic!” “Very diabolical, Galina, but Mr. Reichenbach, your guest who’s got ten minute to live—how’s he looking with this orgasmic activity going on around him?” “Bored,” snapped Galina, “so I put my lips as close as Vita

I could bear to his hairy ears and described the battle with the Persians. How their soldiers, bloody and frenzied, are scaling battlements, raping women, sodomizing boys. Floodlights fl ash— Roman candles explode, eighty-fucking-thousand drachmas worth of pink fi re burning in the sky over the Parthenon! Then it happens.” “What? Concentrate, Galina!” “...city lights...pink fi re in the sky...” “What do you hear?” “...shouting...whistling—breaking glass!” “Someone drops their drink?” “No, someone knocks the bartender’s tray. He’s taken our drinks so there’s broken glass, which I must remember to deduct—” “The bartender’s there,” said Christian grimly. “Do you hear anything else?” “The Cockney slut ranting at Maurice’s boyfriend, who must have jabbed her with his elbow. Then Mr. Richenbach claws my arm and says, “Madame…I feel...pain...” Christian stared hard and denied himself the pleasure of whalloping Galina Galleopi in the face: “Maurice’s boyfriend, Galina?” “Not a boyfriend, a trick. Maurice met him in the square and begged me to let him into the party. He could never get such a beautiful boy without my help.” “So with you playing Our Lady of the Deviate Heart your secretary brings an unknown man in off the streets who stands behind the prime minister and his guest—in the dark? Is this what you’re saying, Galina?” “Put that way it sounds irresponsible, but Maurice and the boy are harmless pustis.” “How do you know the boy was harmless, Galina—or homosexual? He was a stranger, unknown to everyone including you and your secretary. Taken in off the street.” “Look at him! An American student who’s been to India and full of all kind of shit about Hindu medicine. But the prettiest boy I’ve ever seen. In a Versace suit carrying an umbrella over his arm—a goddamn umbrella in Athens! We get point-fi ve fu- 41 cking days of rain a year. How could such an affected boy be anything but a pusti?” Color drained from Christian’s face as he stared at linoleum tile beneath his shoes. For a second of incredulous time his imagination whirled out of control, spinning fantastic scenarios. ‘India—Sirius had said getting off the plane Vita carried her purse and an umbrella…’ Out loud he exclaimed, “An affected pretty boy!’ “Too pretty to be a man,” said Galina, shivering pleasurably inside her mink coat. Jules Levin looked at his wife with amusement. Christian said weakly, “Describe this…pretty boy. Was he tall?” “No, not so tall, but very developed in the—what do you say, pec—“ “Pectorals,” said Christian in disbelief. “Yes, his pectorals were bigger than my tits.” “What color were her—his eyes, Galina?” “He was standing in shadow. How could I see through those luscious eyelashes?” “I’ll be there,”Vita had said! His beautiful wife masquerading as a man! Christian was amused by Thai transvestites in Bangkok sex shows, or by cross-dressing in London and Tokyo theaters, but perversion was for that class of people, not for his own wife. He was repulsed. Only with an effort of will could he regain control of himself and force his mind to concentrate on getting through the next fi fteen minutes. Exhaling, he let his gaze expand to include Galina and her husband. “Klaus Richenbach was my oldest and closest friend.” “I’m sorry, Christian,” said Jules Levin. “He’s been with me all week and he was OK. His death seems…unreal.” Galina Galleopi said nothing, which normally would’ve triggered a call to the wire services. Christian said simply, “What did this student call himself, Galina?” “I’ve forgotten. I’ll ask Maurice.” “I need to know now. The full name.” “Darling, it’s four in the morning. Maurice will be furious Vita if I call.” “Galina, it’s critical to locate this...boy...” Jules Levin touched Christian’s arm, “I’ll call Irini. She’ll be happy to phone Maurice now.” From the anteroom the pathologist made a bow of courtesy to Galina. Majestically gathering fur about her shoulders she joined offi cials who stood in a respectful semi-circle. The pathologist, craving a cigarette, was brief. Klaus Reichenbach, he said, died of fi brillation of the lungs. A ruptured blood vessel in the left sac resulted in a lethal absence of muscle coordination. The banker choked to death on his own blood. “What caused the vessel to rupture?” Each of the offi cials glanced at the American ambassador, who had asked the probing question. The pathologist shrugged. “Stress. Age. Cigars. Rich food. Take your pick.” Questioned by a Swiss offi cial the pathologist explained that the army hospital was equipped to perform only thin-layer chromatography, not the more conclusive mass spectrometry test. He assured the offi cial that the vital organs of the deceased contained only “the most minute and diluted quantities of ordinary toxins.” “Then,” said the prime minister’s assistant, “I see no reason why the remains of the deceased should not be certifi ed to leave the country.” Christian followed the pathologist into the laboratory. “Doctor.” “Yes?” said the pathologist, sucking on his cigarette. “Are you satisfi ed with your examination?” When Greeks want to express impatience (which is often) they utter the sound ‘po-po-po,’ accompanied by the gesture of making circles in the air with one hand. The pathologist made his po-po-pos and drew smoky circles with his cigarette hand. “How can I be satisfi ed? An autopsy takes eight hours. They gave me three.” “What else would you have done, time permitting?” The pathologist went to a stainless steel table where Klaus Reichenbach’s clothes were folded. He spread the suit jacket 43 over one hand and ran the other over the fabric of the jacket’s side panel. “See this? Put your fi nger here.” Christian felt the tear in the cloth, a slight but defi nite puncture. “There’s one in the shirt to match,” said the pathologist. “And the body?” “That’s more diffi cult to say. There’s a corresponding spot with discoloration, but it’s impossible to identify so small a puncture without a probe. The tissue closes over the wound.” “A probe for what?” The pathologist blew out a cloud of smoke. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing...” “Tell me what you can, er...imagine. Hypothesize the most radical possibility.” Christian saw a glint in the Greek’s eyes and put on an attentive expression. The pathologist lit a fresh cigarette. “The most sophisticated murder weapon today is still the one discovered by medieval artillerymen. The slender rapier used to clean-out the ignition port of canons was also capable of making penetrating thrusts through the joints of armor into vital organs. Jewel thieves and jealous wives found that this blade required little strength or skill to use. For assassins it’s the most secretive way to strike as it causes little external bleeding, the tissue closes over the wound and often murder isn’t suspected. The victim doesn’t even realize he’s been stabbed. This instrument has only one use which is to quickly and steathfully kill.” The melodramatic Greek paused before uttering his climatic revelation. “The stiletto!” “A stiletto,” repeated Christian. “Most countries outlaw its manufacture. To fi nd one you have to go to places like Pakistan or India.” “India…” croaked Christian, losing his color. “Anyone can kill with a stiletto…a child…your yia-yia*,” said the pathologist, meditatively drawing on his cigarette. “All you need is nerve.”

*grandmother Vita

‘Nerve!’ Christian felt sick. “A new stiletto…what would it look like?” “Like not much at all. A thin blade about eight-to twelve- inches long made of steel, or these days even of hard plastic. No different, say, from the spoke of a bicycle wheel.” ‘Or the strut of an umbrella!’ Christian thought. ‘KGB butchers shooting toxic needles from umbrellas on London Bridge—Amazon natives puffi ng poisoned thorns out of blow pipes—too absurd to be real. Besides, who bothers over the death of an old man known to drink brandy and smoke too many cigars. Klaus died what appears to be a natural death but jesus- god-almighty, help me, it’s not natural! Goddam you, Vita!’ Under the emergency entrance portico, Galina Galleopi and Jules Levin waited for their limousine. Christian emerged looking haggard. He’d known for some time his wife was in trouble, on the verge of a breakdown. The causes were something he’d never considered, he admitted. His sole concern was to give her the most advanced psychological treatment possible; he had arranged to have her legally committed to the exclusive and publicly anonymous W______Clinic, outside Zurich. Perfect rest and isolation from outside infl uences was what Vita needed. After a month or two there under skilled treatment there would be a change for the better. Now she had murdered Klaus in cold blood. In so deviously premeditated and evil a fashion, she was fl aunting her cruelty for him alone. Galina lavished on Christian a fi nal embrace. Jules Levin handed him a slip of paper. “The name you want is Jeff Hammond. H-a-m-m-o-n-d. That’s what the young man told Maurice.” Turning to his wife Levin added, “Irini said not to worry. The cover’s soaking in cold water. It’ll be fi ne.” 45

6

appily Vita studied hair on her legs—it’d grown in thick. HNow that the itching was over she enjoyed running her fi ngers through a fl eece of copper-colored hairs with sun-bleached tips of gold. She gripped a calf to admire the heft of muscle. Such furry defi nition! She refl ected that she’d done nothing a college boy wouldn’t do, starting in L.A. with steroid injections and work- outs with a trainer. In a rented West Hollywood studio at nights she’d burned through hundreds of leg-lifts and crunches, and pumped out supersets of push-ups. This body sculpting reached its zenith under the unwitting tutelage of a Pepperdine College swimming champion she encountered on Palorem Beach, in Goa. Jeff had been awed to be the exclusive object of attention from so beautiful and sophisticated a woman who was married, never was he allowed to forget, to an ambassador. Vita’s hold over him allowed her to dabble in male bonding, to adopt the laconic slang, practice the abrupt gestures and master the nuances of collegiate machismo. She began to feel as though masculine blood was naturally fl owing in her veins, that superfl uous feminine gestures and emotions were falling away. The Pepperdine athlete was baffl ed by Vita’s insistence on Vita joining him when he improvised workouts on a school playground. Hardest to do was the one-arm pull-up on the crossbar of a swing- set. At fi rst Vita couldn’t manage a single repetition. She would hang by one arm straining to lift her body weight to chin level. Jeff gripped her saronged hip to boost her through the diffi cult curling, lifting motion. When she stalled he tightened his grip on her hips, urging her on with “Pull pull pull dammit PULL!” The boy goaded her into attempting exercises far beyond her capabilities, to vent frustration at his being intimately exposed to a body so tanned, so toned, yet held to be off-limits. Despite the non-sexual status he’d been assigned he couldn’t take his eyes off her sweet ass tightly wrapped in a sarong, or those mouth- watering tits taunt and quivering under gauzy native blouses. Vita noted the canine look of longing on his handsome face and in the end decided it was easiest to get what she needed—the passport he carried in the seat pocket of tight jeans—by putting the horny boy out of his misery. In a state of euphoria during their last workout together, Vita pumped out twelve reps of the miserable one-arm pull-up. “Pull,” Jeff exhorted, “pull! Three more!” She froze. “Two-more-TWO-MORE!” Chin hooked on the crossbar, Vita felt her shoulders and arms on fi re. As her torso lowered Jeff’s eager hands trailed under the hem of her gauze shirt. Callused fi nger pads skittered over her ribcage; for every inch she dropped the fi ngertips climbed one rib higher towards her breasts. Limp, dangling from the bar, Vita gazed wide-eyed up into a yellow evening sky fi lled with squawking crows. Hot breath rippled hair on the back of her neck as she breathed in testosterone-laden boy-sweat. Her heart pounded. Hands cupped her breasts, with a thumb and an index fi nger kneading one nipple which hardened. She dropped and landed with a whumpf! sending up pink clouds of dust about their bare feet. Without a word they walked to an empty beach’s far end and crawled inside a sea grape thicket. Mouths joined they peeled off each other’s clothes— Forcibly Vita shut down the memory and sat up on her bed in the student hotel, near Omonia Square. 47

She refused to let her mind recall the thrill of running her hands over young, hard, male fl esh dusty and slippery with sweat. ‘When acting a role,’ she thought, ‘forget you’re acting a role. Be what you’re pretending to be all the time.’ Mentally she chanted her mantra, ‘I am not a woman, I am a college boy, I am a college boy, I am…’ Nothing in the room contradicted her, not the track shoes and dirty white socks strewn on the fl oor, nor the French suit hanging from a nail on the wall. The customized monsoon umbrella—minus its deadly “strut”—now lay at the bottom of the hotel’s garbage chute. The only tangible evidence of Vita’s correct gender and identity was sewn into her backpack’s lining: her diplomatic passport, bank-banded U.S. $50 and $100 bills totaling $65,000, and a treasure trove of heirloom jewelry—the ring Christian gave her when they married, a band fashioned out of exquisite metal fretwork taken from the handle of a samurai sword; his fi rst anniversary gift, a gold oval-shaped watch from Cartier’s, in London. Vita considered herself bountifully funded for what she had to do. Not during the pleasurable frenzy inside the sea grape thicket, nor afterwards under infl uence of the euphoria of his last dinner with Vita, did the besotted Jeff realize that not only was his passport gone, but his wallet with driver’s license and student ID card as well. He was stripped of identifi cation. Early the next morning Vita was gone. Not that he suspected her in any way of having anything to do with it. He blamed his own carelessness. His purloined passport was put to sinister use in Athens, having been altered with an instamatic photo of Vita’s newly created male persona. She amazed even herself at how with a bit of make-up contouring her face could be sculpted to looked remarkably similar to that in the tiny photo of the handsome Pepperdine champion—heroic masculinity, Vita gloated, can be faked. She kept a razor and a can of foam on her private room’s sink, so she could enact the morning ritual of shaving. Be what you’re pretending to be all the time! In Jockey briefs and a sweatshirt she would stand at the sink with the door casually left open; as her neighbors padded to and from the showers she Vita could feel their glances on her backside. She would elaborately outline her lips and nostrils, then use the disposable razor to strip foam from hairless cheeks with fi rm strokes. She savored the sliver of pain she felt when deliberately she cut herself: nicks lent “ultimate truth.” The hostel’s mid-day graveyard silence was broken by heavy footsteps. Vita tensed. The racket crescendoed outside her door. The proprietress knocked, inserted her key, threw open the door. Towering behind the Greek was a husky, red-headed young man with a backpack dangling from hands that Vita noted were huge. She lay, with one leg raised to shield her bulgeless crotch. The Greek babbled about her rooms being full. Vita saw that paying to keep a single would arouse suspicion. Better to accept the inevitable roommate. “Hi, I’m Randy Horn!” The proprietress shut the door behind her. Vita glared as Randy Horn dropped his backpack. He wanted to clasp hands ole’ buddy-style, but she didn’t move. Dropping her voice to tenor range she muttered, “I’m Jeff.” “Glad to metcha, Jeff,” said Randy Horn. “I’m from Maii- con, Jaw-jer. How ‘bout ya’self?” “Pasadena.” “Pasadena—fuckin-A! I’m a Rose Bowl fan m’self. Look, guy, sorry ‘bout crash’n in like this.” “No problem.” “This city’s got a problem,” said Randy Horn, arranging toiletries alongside Vita’s at the sink. “Got a fuckin’ room shortage problem. Tried every D-category pit in Fodor’s before fi ndin’ this place for ten bucks. In the islands ten bucks gets you a fuckin’ house. You checked out the islands yet? Me and an Aussie took a boat to Ios where Cliff Richard’s ‘sposed to have a place. Never saw the dude so we went to Mykonos—queers out the wazoo. But Matala was cool. That’s on Crete. Two bucks a night and you sleep in caves on the beach. Fucking waves crashing up at you and painted on the wall of your cave in fucking huge blue letters, LIFE IS THE MOMENT. That is truly fucking true. The Aussie’s still there with his German bimbo. The beach’s crawlin’ 49 with bare-assed poontang. None of this thong shit, man, totally bare-assed, boogledy-boomed, butt-fucking-naked! Bushes and krogers everywhere.” Vita was unable to resist asking, “Krogers?” “Krogers,” grinned Randy Horn, cupping his hands in arcs out from his chest. “Bigger than life.” Vita repressed the urge to wipe the ingratiating grin off the boy’s face by unhooking Ace bandages and shaking her own fi ne pair at him. Seeing the tight set of her mouth, Randy Horn abandoned his monologue and undressed. Slipping out of boxer shorts he stood facing Vita naked. She watched him scratch his balls and give his fat cock a tug, and turned onto her side, “I’m taking a nap.” “Good idea, buddy,” said Randy Horn. “Soon as I get clean I’ll grab some zzzzs myself. Gotta look good tonight.” He sauntered down the hall with a towel around his waist. Under the shower’s needles of cold water, he good-naturedly lathered and shifted about in the stall to rinse. Scrubbing thighs he watched water trickle down into glistening, coppery pubic hair. His cock began to swell. He gave it a few playful strokes. ‘Whoa, ole buddy, plenty of time for that tonight. I got the name of a club in the Plaka. If we can get that Pasadena pretty boy to chill there’ll be no shortage of pussy.’ Back in the room “the Pasadena pretty boy” was asleep, but his creator, Vita herself was very much awake. Her bluff was about to be called—even if it weren’t, for how long could she stand being cooped up listening to such god-awful, Georgia cornpone mush. Randy Horn examined himself in the mirror. He used two fi ngers to force a blackhead, fl ossed his teeth, then hung the damp towel on a nail. Naked, he sat on the bed to sprinkle talcum powder on his feet. As he massaged his toes he looked at the sleeping fi gure beside him. Vita shifted onto her stomach and stretched out her legs: the sweatshirt bunched above buns enticingly encased in snug white Jockey briefs. Shaking powder into his pubic hair Randy Horn noted Vita with approval how tanned his roommate was, on the short side but lean and mean, built like a swimmer. He rubbed powder around the base of his cock and permitted his eyes to follow the beautifully rounded curves of his new buddy’s butt-cheeks...skin honey-gold and smooth as a girl’s— “Holy shiiiiiiiiit!” he thought, staring at his burgeoning hardon. “What the fuck’s going on here!” 51

7

irius was scared. The old man back in the North End Sdidn’t tolerate fuckups and failure to track down a rich, runaway wife was a fuckup. He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to eat. Luckily he’d found Apotsos’s. The grease-balls he’d hired to help comb hotels told him about the place. Greeks, the Mafi a soldier thought, may not know sheep shit from Tootsie Rolls about surveillance, but they know how to chow-down. He had gone into the kitchen and pointed at what he wanted, then seated himself in a corner of the cavernous ouzerie. The soldier gazed appreciatively at appetizer dishes covering his table: pale green, pan-fried zucchini circles…purple Kalamata olives…tiny, sweet green peppers, roasted, blistered and shiny with olive oil...coral-hued salmon roe whipped with garlic and thick yogurt...goat cheese deep fried straw-gold and glistening with drops of juice from sweet Cretan lemons. The walls at Apotsos’s are dingy red and covered with antique tin signs advertising the likes of Black Cat Cigarettes or Pommery Champagne. Blue clouds of cigarette smoke drift in layers in the high recesses of the ceiling, where sunlight oozes through grime-gray skylights. Politicians from neighboring Parliament Building squeeze in around marble-topped tables. The chaos of argumentative voices, bazoukia music and clattering china make Apotsos’s the best place in the city to trade secrets. Vita

The soldier grunted with contentment as he used a fork to probe inside a crock still hot from the oven: a froth of cheese and spinach into which poached eggs had been sunk strategically. His fi rst mouthful was moistened by golden rivers of yolk. His earpiece clicked and he swallowed hard into the pinhead mic clipped inside his lapel, “Here-sir.” “You’re saved, Sirius.” “Sir?” “Saved, which proves your Sicilian saints look after the handicapped. Get a pencil.” The soldier jerked a pen and pad from a passing waiter’s back trouser pocket. The Greek spun around but Sirius glared him down. The waiter left, smirking at the drop of egg yolk on the tip of the Amerikanos masturbator’s nose. “OK-sir.” “Write. F-2-0-2-2-4-1-9. That’s the number of the passport issued to one Jeff Hammond. H-a-m-m-o-n-d.” “Got it.” “Take your Hellenic colleagues to Omonia Square and cover the student hostels. Check tourist police cards with passport numbers.” “No sweat, but who’s Jeff Hammond, sir?” “He’s a student stuck traveling in India. A good-looking boy from California who got himself into a situation where he was no longer inside his jeans and too preoccupied to notice hands that were relieving him of his passport. He missed his fl ight home and the monsoon’s arrived. Poor Jeff Hammond sits in the consulate munching soggy granola bars, while happy Indians slosh about in fl ooded streets kissing each other and garlanding themselves with necklaces of marigolds. Jeff’s waiting to be issued a temporary passport. His is in use here in Athens.” “I don’t get it, sir.” “You must be used to that by now. I’ve told you my wife tends toward the fanciful but you can’t make the connection. Never mind. Tattoo F20224149 on your forehead and you’ll get by.” “Yes-sir.” “Call when you locate the passport—anytime. I’ll come 53 right away.” “Yes-sir.” “Don’t let the passport or person holding it out of sight, regardless of what they look like.” “Right.” “Don’t go anywhere near my wife, Sirius. If she gets wind of you—you’re fi nished.” “Sir?” “She could, Sirius, if she so chose, convert you into tartar.” “Tar-tar?” “Raw meat, Sirius.” The earpiece clicked off. While scooping up a remaining morsel of lamb testicles dribbled with mustard sauce, the soldier reminded himself of all the broken jawbones and fractured ribs he’d left behind in the North End. ‘A broad trash me? Her and whose army?’

* * *

Perikles Togias pondered the capriciousness of fate. A month ago he’d been harvesting tobacco in his home village in northern Greece earning six-hundred drachmas a day. Today he was making four-hundred an hour tending fl owers on a penthouse terrace on Mount Likavittos. The wheel of fate had turned and he’d come up on top. Perikles stood with chest out, feet apart beaming at the capital spread beneath him, white blocks of buildings as far as the eye could see! The slopes of Imitos, the mountain nearest downtown, were mauve and olive with spring heather. In air pure and blue as ether he could see clear through interstices between the Parthenon’s columns all the way to Piraeus, where island ferries, like colts released from the corral, chased each other out of the harbor over the purple Aegean. Perikles had arrived broke and a cousin had taken him on at the family fl ower stall on Avenue Vassilissis Sofi as. He worked without complaining, with effusiveness toward customers, so a woman hired him to replant her rooftop garden. Impressed by his Vita cleverness in hiding utility ducts and TV antennas she referred him to a friend and soon Perikles Togias was a trend among Kolonaki women. Still he was astonished to fi nd himself standing on the terrace of Galina Galleopi! Of course she was a whore, some said a lesbian as well, but she was the daughter of Spyros Galleopos and a famous cinema star. He hadn’t seen Galina yet. The hairy maid gave him instructions, so he set about tending terra-cotta pots fi lled with geraniums, crocuses, and grape-hyacinths. The same fl owers, Perikles thought, that country women grow by the bushel in oil cans. The most laughable thing about Athenians were the fortunes they spend on rooftop gardens to remind themselves of the farms they’d run away from. He added nutriments to the soil of a hibiscus tree struggling to produce red blossoms. He pruned dried twigs from trellises with climbing clematis and honeysuckle. While replacing potted lemon trees Perikles spread burlap sacks, to avoid spilling dirt on marble tiles. He dragged replacement trees toward urns lined near the front railing. He used his hands to scoop dirt and loosen clumps so that root-balls lifted out easily. Sifting, he felt metal, a sharp, odd shape. He shook it free of dirt. What a strange thing to fi nd in an urn, even in Kolonaki. Perikles had never seen a knife like this for the good reason that such weapons are outlawed in Greece, as they are in most civilized countries. A wicked instrument, the gardener thought, one that could come only from some depraved place like Istanbul. The blade was nine-inches long, extremely narrow, and very sharp. Oddest, its stone handle was carved into the fi gure of a standing man with a big belly and the head of an elephant! Perikles tried to rub the heathen blade clean of blackish stains. With both hands he held the stiletto up in sunlight to examine it closely. “Darling!” the famous voice boomed from the sky. Perikles Togias wet himself. Since boyhood he’d listened to that rich, hoarse voice on radio and in movie theaters. Now it came right down on top his head from above. He twisted his neck to squint at the rooftop parapet where golden hair was ringed 55 by a nimbus of sunlight. The goddess-face remained a circle of darkness from which glared bulging, myopic eyes. “Darling, what is that fucking thing in your hands?”

* * *

Hatfi eld tossed a lime-green tennis ball at the miniature hoop fi xed to a fi le cabinet. Rim shot. Balls rolled across the parquet fl oor on the embassy’s third fl oor, as the station chief studied State’s eight-by-ten glossy portrait of young Mrs. Granger with the ambassador. Hatfi eld tossed a ball at the hoop. ‘...she’s back...’ Net shot. ‘...with Striped-Pants claiming she’s still in LA...’ Rim shot. ‘...does Striped-Pants know where she is, or has she dropped out of sight…? Why? What kind of game are these two playing? If separation was in the works their lawyers would be calling, but taps have caught nothing. Has the vixen got his excellency by the nuts over something? The butler reports the usual tantrums...the smashed crystal…’ The spymaster laid down the tennis ball and leaned forward to restrict his vision to the face of Vita Granger. By consensus throughout State she was considered to be the most ornamental wife in the diplomatic corps, ranked by some as a great beauty like Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy: the same high forehead, swept-back coppery hair, skin pale as an alabaster, and sultry, smoky eyes and wide mouth. What the station chief didn’t like was the face’s androgynous broadness, and the squarish shape of the jawline. In the black pools of the eyes did he see cruelty? willfulness? Hatfi eld longed to work up a psychological profi le, but fi rst he had to locate the bitch. Stepped-up surveillance was in order. He’d insert extra agents into the Residence housekeeping staff. Order a tap on pay phones in the Hilton lobby, where Striped-Pants had often been seen recently. But he overlooked the one place his ambassador spent time alone these days...aimlessly, apparently aimlessly cruising the City in his vintage Saab, with its top on. Vita

8

“ ot her, sir.” G“Where?” “The cafe on top the subway…at Monastirion.” “Twenty minutes, I’ll be there. How far away from her are you?” “Sixty, seventy feet—” “—don’t move closer. I’m on my way.” “Yes, sir, she’s sitting—” “Pray that she remains sitting. Lose her this time, Sirius, and Mr. Fratelli’s homecoming gift will be a new pair of tasseled concrete loafers you can wear in Boston Harbor. Stay with her!”

* * *

Cups and saucers vibrated, water glasses clinked together as the train roared under a crosswalk jammed with cafe tables. Before tunneling underground the subway line cuts through ruins of the Agora, the civic and fi nancial center of ancient Athens. Marble blocks lay tumbled beside rail tracks. Chinaberry trees straggled up above retainer walls to form a canopy strung with light bulbs over the improvised ouzerie. 57

Fallen chinaberries pinged on metal tabletops as the train’s vibrations crescendoed. Oblivious to the uproar Vita studied her tennis shoes: each black high-top looked back at her with seven columnar pairs of tiny metal-circled eyes, in multiple warning. Someone was watching. Vita concentrated to expand her central cortex powers and scan the crowd of high-energy Greeks. The pulsations she intercepted were focused on herself, hostile, and coming, Vita determined, from somewhere there to the right— no, further back—there! Standing at a brightly-lit periptero* was a man she recognized from his garish suit and inane behavior as being either American or Australian. He balanced a sesame seed twist on a sleeve of his bile-colored jacket, while struggling to pry open a honey packet tab. The tab wouldn’t give. The pastry kept slipping. To watch was a joy—how could this low grade mongrel, Vita wondered, be an impediment to leaving Athens? She had eluded Randy Horn. Her backpack was stashed in a Piraeus locker and she was booked on a late night ship. She could afford to pleasurably watch Sirius use a fi ngernail to pry loose the tab—the sesame twist fl ipped off his arm, honey oozed onto his sleeve. Panicking, the Mafi a soldier smashed the packet to the ground and began brutally wiping. He remembered to glance back at his quarry but the chair where she’d been sitting was empty. ‘Fucking shit!’ Vita walked fast, half-ran through twisted alleys. At a fl ea market she slipped between racks bulging with army fatigues. She shed her football jersey with red block letters and emerged wearing an olive camoufl age T-shirt, with a cap visor pulled low over her face. The vendor noticed her neither in athletic nor paramilitary mode. Streaming crowds swept her into tumultuous Monastirion Square, where midnight shift workers shoved toward the subway station. Drunk tourists hollered obscenities as they tottered down from belly dancing in clubs in the Plaka. Vendors of warm pistachio nuts and soft porn magazines shouted, “Legete! Legete! Buy! BUY!” Rising above this carnal uproar was the tiny

*a sidewalk kiosk, throughout Greece the equivalent of a 24-hour store Vita

Church of Pantanassa, its entire Byzantine structure about the size of a stretch limousine. Absurd, Vita thought, the red-tiled, elliptical cupola over a basilica with a single aisle. She was grateful, though, for shadows in its deeply recessed doorway. She spotted Sirius skulking along the fringe of a mob bottlenecked at subway turnstiles. She watched his eyes methodically sweep over the heads of hundreds of workers. He was in his early 30s, Vita observed, with a double chin and a complexion that looked like a lunar landscape. A 200-pounder, built, and probably quick, a serious fuck in his bilious suit and pointy-toed loafers. Conditioned to hunt and kill he would recognize her by height, weight, and body movement no matter how she dressed. She stepped from the Pantanassa’s doorway and fell in with a fl ock of tourists entering Adrianou Street. They ignored the handsome, intense college boy, distracted as they were by open air displays of woolly fl okati rugs, or by sardonic teenagers fl ashing postcards of the satyr with the gigantic dick. Vita would’ve felt safe had she not sensed the hound behind her elbowing his way through the crowds. She didn’t look back for if he knew that she knew she was being followed he’d close the distance between them. She tried to shake him by ducking into an alley and following it to Pandroussou Street, which was emptied of late night shoppers. She walked fast, changed sides of the street and turned at every corner, from Dexipou onto St. Theklas, right onto Skouze, then left onto Apostoli, and right onto Perikleous until it ended at Eolou. Hidden Eolou Street was dark with no living thing in sight. Vita entered an arcade for tailors and leather workers. The air grew cool and damp, and she knew this was a place where sunlight never reaches. Blade-like slivers of red light from burglar alarms glinted on black windows behind padlocked grills. The arcade tunneled through a city block in near-total darkness. Vita felt her way along. She tried to relax and clear her mind of all thoughts save those of sound. Behind her she could hear her own footsteps on terazzo tile with each step detonating echoes. It occurred to her that this was actually the sound of two 59 other footsteps matching her own! The hound was careful to remain still and breath shallowly, but Vita sensed his mongrel aura. She took tentative steps and he stirred. Fear gripped her innards, not of the hound, but the deep- seated fear of getting caught...again she felt the cold terror of having handcuffs snapped onto her wrists...she could smell the cigar smoke on the cheesy suits of detectives who led her from her mother’s Pasadena mansion...she cringed as she visualized herself wearing the lovely moiré gown with the orchid blossom pinned behind her ear—in handcuffs! Vita and shame might be utter strangers, but the dread of being caught was her bosom buddy. She had felt no remorse at age sixteen for putting a bullet through her step-father’s forehead— he’d laughed at her, hadn’t he? Shooting the degenerate bastard had been a positive pleasure. It had been her arrest later that same night that had mortifi ed her—never, never again would she go through that. She sprinted. Bursting out of the arcade she confronted demonstrators marching along broad Athinias Street. Flashing domes of police cruisers cast a blue sheen on the black robes and stove-pipe caps of Orthodox priests at the head of rows of gray-haired women. Screaming and red in the face, they waved crosses and placards and chanted one of the few Greek words Vita understood: “OXI! OXI! NO! NO!” Medieval, Vita thought, even for Greeks. She looked back at Sirius who, like her, hesitated to consider options. Homophobic police were to be avoided, Vita thought, as they might hone in on her male masquerade. Pigs, Sirius thought, were to be avoided because of the .22-caliber Beretta pistol harnessed under his suit jacket. Vita dashed into Athinias to get around a cab attempting to drive down the sidewalk. Demonstrators strode past and, by chance, she caught the eye of a deranged-looking man who seized her elbow to pull her along with him. She offered no resistance as marchers closed in around her. Sirius gaped in confusion. Vita gaily winked and extended her middle fi nger, waving it at him as Vita she moved forward encircled by marchers. She had no idea what the protest was about, not that it mattered, Greeks protest everything. Placards lettered in both Greek and English read ‘ZIONIST PLANS WON’T SUCCEED!’ ‘CONTI—THE ANTI CHRIST!’ Demonstrators stormed the neo-classical stone mass of Opera Cinema, where the three-story marquee was hugely fi lled by the title of Zachary Conti’s new movie, The Greek Passion. Basing his fi lm on a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, Conti had scandalously secularized Christ’s life by having him fornicate with Mary Magdalene. Enraged Athenians, not unlike ones who in 4 BC rioted at the premier of Aristophanes’s sex comedy Lysistrata, smashed projectors at the Embassy Cinema, on Akadamias Street. The screen had been slashed at another on Sokratos. The prime minister had ordered police to stop the rampage. Demonstrators screamed at helmeted men armed with plexi-glass shields and tear gas canisters. Vita looked at the contorted faces of the priests and shrieking women. Mad, she thought, like furies. “SHAME!” “DISGUSTING!” “WE HAVE ONLY GOD LEFT!” Under the theater’s canopy counter-demonstrators hoisted their banner: ‘CENSORSHIP IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH SOCIALISM.’ Majestically, a white-bearded priest stepped forward to shake his fi st at advancing policemen. Vita’s central cortex system imploded. ‘The hound’s right beside me!’ 61

9

he refused to look sideways by so much as a centimeter. SShe didn’t have to see him. She could smell his predator’s sweat tinged with Canoe, feel him ready to pounce from just beyond the periphery of her vision. A line of policemen separated them. Sirius considered how to seize Vita’s elbow without drawing attention, but he waited too long. A white-haired yia-yia swung her cross in a wide arc, to slam a policeman in the chest—four others leaped for the woman like leopards. When the mob convulsed a wedge was driven between the Mafi a soldier and his quarry. Sirius was thrown back, Vita propelled forward. The soldier struck out in rage with his fi sts pummeling bodies on all sides. He longed to pull out the Beretta. He could feel cool metal in his palm and see the path it would clear. To calm himself he punched a woman in the face and brutally kicked her, while straining to catch a glimpse of the rich bitch’s cropped head. Metal canisters clanked on asphalt. Tear gas fumes fi lled night air. A hush fell as the mob shifted, veered, dispersed. Vita burst free of bodies pressed close, and ran. Vita

As police phalanxes advanced a vacuum formed in front of the Opera Cinema. Sirius leaped in and sent counter- demonstrators sprawling. He sprinted up Athinias wreaking havoc among slavaki vendors, who heroically wheeled their carts in pursuit of fl eeing demonstrators. At Omonia—or Concord—Square, Sirius’s hunter-eyes located Vita sprinting, far from being out of breath as she dodged aggressive rotary traffi c. She vanished into crowds clogging escalators down to subway concourses. Thinking ahead, and fast, Vita stayed inside a knot of people until she spotted a ticket machine with no line. As she jammed in a fi fty-drachma coin she saw Sirius turn a far corner of the concourse. She felt his eyes lock onto her cropped head. Thunderous vibrations underground shook the concourse. Vita knew to forget the ticket, duck under a turnstile and plunge into a mob funneling down a stairway. On the platform she was hit full in the face by the wave of warm air that precedes a highspeed train. Cars streaked by, rush hour for midnight shifts at Piraeus port so it was twelve cars long. The barrel-vaulted station fi lled with the high-pitched squeals of brakes and the whosh/thud of automatic doors. Vita dashed into the lead car and turned and stretched her neck to watch Sirius fl ail his arms at bodies congested at the stairwell. ‘Close, dammit, close!’ she hissed, pounding on automated doors. The hound lunged from her line of vision but she knew he’d made it. The train lurched into motion. Vita pictured him shoving his way through packed cars, closing on her. Athenians, like grapes, hung in clusters from overhead straps. Vita was intensely aware of bodies squashed against hers…elbows and breasts and stomachs and buttocks and shoulders…faces closer, Vita thought, than faces ever get except when fucking. All around were bright Greek eyes, gazing and curious. It struck Vita that at such close proximity everyone could plainly see she was a woman in male drag. She was being silently mocked, ridiculed right to her face by contemptuous Greeks. She felt more exposed than had she actually been butt-naked. Keeping her face aimed at the fl oor with eyes fi xed on 63 dusty shoes, she squeezed to the lead car’s front end: outside the bolted door’s glass panel rail tracks blurred and reeled ahead at 50 mph. On the system map posted overhead Vita counted three stops before Piraeus. Already the train was slowing for the fi rst. When doors snapped open, hysteria erupted. Vita imagined frantic heaving and shifting throughout the train…crushing, battering rams of bodies leaving and entering that would hinder the hound’s advance. She pressed her back against the bolted door and breathed deeply, to steady her nerves. Doors groaned shut. The train moved on. All the fi dgeting and adjusting of positions ceased. Everyone froze into a rigid stillness familiar to riders on big city subway trains, but unbearably painful for Greeks who are more at home with continuous, restless movement. For three or four minutes at a time, from one station to the next, they must stand still with chins held high, necks stretched, expressions agonized like martyrs on an ikon. A gearing up, Vita knew, for the next expenditure of maniacal energy for their frenzied stampede to ALL be fi rst off the train. Vita’s eyes focused on the operable door at the car’s opposite end. ‘He must be close,’ she calculated. Her eyes teared. Her nostrils dilated in fear and anger. Immersed in a fl ash, self-pity party she realized she was staring right into the mongrel’s eyes— outside the door with his knuckles pressed against the glass panel! Panicky, Vita looked out a window at the black hulk of boat-shaped Peace and Friendship Stadium, in New Faliron, the stop before Piraeus. ‘Four more minutes!’ With horror Vita watched Sirius’s leering face as he wedged inside the car. She pushed her way into the bulge of people coming to a boil around a door in anticipation of imminent, fi nal mass exodus. She knifed through plastered-together bodies until stopped by the broad, squat back of a housewife, who had captured the alpha spot, with the tip of her nose pressed into the rubber seam of the sliding doors. The woman lugged a string bag fi lled with frozen packages of okra, and pretended to ignore the pretty tourist boy tugging at her elbow, begging to slip in front. “Parakalo, please, parakalo!” Vita the fool-boy chanted. The housewife refused to move, using her free hand to confi dently smooth her moustache. ‘You hairy cunt,’ thought Vita, badly wishing she still had the stiletto. She and the housewife jostled together as the train snaked and clattered across an acreage of spur tracks at the Piraeus terminal. Bodies swung, lurched when the train changed speeds. Momentarily it stopped, fi lling Vita with new terror—she twisted and strained to see the hound’s sleek head bobbing above other heads and shoulders, the horrible Breelcreamed helmet slithering toward her. The train belched back into motion. Fluorescent lights fl ickered. Body heat inside the car rose and thickened. Droplets of sweat formed on Vita’s forehead and her upper lip. Disgustingly, but not without slightly arousing her, a single long drop very hot and insinuating rolled down between her breasts. Icy chill from the block of frozen okra penetrated her thigh. The train glided alongside a platform. Bodies writhed against her back and sides with fi ercer determination than her own to get off—how could that be, Vita thought, with hell’s hound just feet away. The walls of the railcar were about to burst, she was sure, with the pressure of so much aggressive energy. In black glass door panels she watched refl ections of contorted faces heaving about her own—out of blackness an outstretched arm and hand reached for her shoulder! Sliding doors snapped open and she leaped in front of the housewife. The housewife grunted and rammed her block of frozen okra into Sirius’s kneecap when he clutched her shoulder instead of Vita’s. The enraged soldier shrieked in pain and rage. Startled by noise and chaos on the platform pigeons whirred in the shadowy air of an immense vault. Hundreds were running and shouting so no one bothered to stop the college boy who slipped under an exit turnstile and sprinted away. Nor did anyone call police when a fl ashily dressed Amerikanos slugged a housewife while getting off a train. Under the terminal’s main portico Sirius skid to a halt to gape at soaring bows of ships looming overhead: sea- 65 stained hulls and tiers of deck railing with lifeboats slung from davits; candy-yellow booms and gantries; white super-structures sprouting jungles of antennas, interlocked rings and spinning radar bars. Smoke drooled from the spot lit funnels of a ship from Crete, which bore the insignia of naked boy and girl Minoan bull dancers. Poseidon Quai seethed with travelers boarding midnight ships for Egypt, Cyprus, Israel, and Dubrovnik. An industrial wharve nearby writhed in dust and smoke under banks of sodium lights. Sirius spotted a lone fi gure running beneath a gigantic billboard fi lled cinemascopically by the sculpted jawline of Clint Eastwood in his new Italian “Western”—the scowl no doubt the result of being made to look down on so oily and messy a spectacle as Piraeus Harbor. Outside a cement plant Vita slacked to a fast walk to avoid alarming workers punching the time clock. She darted inside an enormous shed shadowy and dim, where no one seemed to be working and which vibrated with the roar of machinery. She slipped along aisles between mountainous stacks of concrete blocks, trying to clear her mind, relax her muscles for the time when she’d need to think and act faster than the bloodhound in pursuit. She climbed an iron stairwell, mesmerized by the peculiar noise of machinery which seemed to come from above. No longer a grinding, but the pelting sound of a hailstorm. Corrugated metal walls and the roof of an empty loft shivered and shimmied. Through open portals Vita took in fl ashing strobes, pinpoint factory worklights, jets of fl ame from a refi nery, and sodium lights enveloped in gaseous clouds. The night sky and greasy black sea of the great harbor glowed hellish red-orange. Her face grew radiant as she stepped out onto a catwalk. Nothing irreversible had happened yet, she thought. From the moment he’d picked up on her in the Plaka she had led the hound on a merry chase and outmatched him every step of the way, admittedly at the end with the chance help of Kyria Moustach. How delicious it would be, Vita went so far as to think, to permanently rid herself of so gauche a mongrel. The catwalk ran parallel to the source of the curious Vita pelting noise: conveyor-belts crisscrossed in the air, borne on high stanchions from stockpiles of sand and rock, to the mixing tower. Vita advanced alongside a powerful, hurrying river of crushed rock. The conveyor belt’s clanking was less deafening in open air, but Vita could appreciate the force of tons of pebbles rushing forward at fi fty feet per minute! The uneven motion of the belt’s rollers caused pebbles to boil as they streamed beside her feet—what would happen if she missed her footing and slipped? Sixty feet below, Sirius stepped from behind a stanchion. In a double refl ex Vita nearly panicked but did not. Serenely she gazed at the hound while it glared up at her. She had nowhere to run. It had trapped her and probably it had a gun. She had to confront the beast and put it out of her way. At an opening in the handrail a plank had been placed across the conveyor-belt, even though it was only a yard across and easy to jump. Swiftly but not without thought, Vita crouched to unlace one of her hightops. Footsteps clacked on iron switchback steps. She tied one end of the shoelace to the opening’s vertical bar, then stretched the other end to the opposite bar—it would hit below the knee. As the fusillade of footsteps clattered closer she leaned her weight into pulling and tying tightly as she could. Carefully she stepped over and crossed the plank. The lace was invisible in night air. Sirius stepped onto the catwalk with his Beretta in hand. Vita kicked the plank sideways into the river of pebbles and it rocketed away. She fi gured the mongrel wouldn’t be game enough to shoot a rich man’s wife. Sirius walked towards her. At the rail’s opening they confronted each other across the conveyor-belt. Vita fought to hold his eyes, ‘Don’t look down, you bastard!’ she thought. Aloud she hissed, “Fetch, boy, fetch!” She turned and dashed away and missed the effi ciency of the shoelace. When she looked back Sirius was on his knees on the belt, thrashing, and bleeding from face cuts. His feet scrambled wildly, trying to dig through the torrent of fl owing pebbles for traction. Arms fl ailed, fi ngers slipped as the soldier grabbed at the belt’s casing. Vita kept pace with his body as it hurtled forward. 67

The terrifi ed soldier looked up into her grinning face as she stamped his fi ngers. With a scream Sirius shot the fi nal feet of the conveyor into empty space. He was conscious when he landed, and being a strong animal he remained conscious for subsequent seconds as his pain and horror intensifi ed. The Mafi a man lay spread-eagle in a metal bin as thousands of pebbles buried him. His body jerked in pathetic attempts to rise above the deluge, but it bent under the weight with an impotent kicking of the heels. His rage gave way to new terror as a clam-shaped gate at the bottom of the bin opened, and he felt himself tumbling inside a downward-pouring jet of pebbles. Other bins groaned open to release rock, sand, and powdered limestone. Convulsions wracked his body as organs ruptured and membranes ripped apart. The tower’s huge scale dropped its load (nearly a ton) into a funnel. Twisted into the fetal position, Sirius’s body was pounded through the funnel’s narrow end. The Mafi a soldier slipped into his tomb. The iron drum was the size of a small room and held at a sharp angle by a hydraulic lift, constantly rotating. Sand, rock and lime forced by water into the drum were blended by steel blades which lined the interior like the concentric walls of a sea- shell. Liquefying concrete whipped through the drum. Sirius felt a great coolness as the sharpened steel blades sliced off both legs. The drum spun upward and he felt he would vomit from the sinking, swooning sensation. But his mind no longer troubled him, because by then the next swirling edge of the blade had sluiced through the back of his skull, bringing with it bone fragments, blood, and all the brain tissue that might have cared. Glittery-eyed, Vita looked down into the funnels of the mixing tower. She listened but heard no screams rising above the roar. ‘Just rewards for anyone wearing shiny suits and pointy- toed loafers.’ When the machinery was shut down by remote control, Vita swung her body over the side of the catwalk. She landed ten feet below, sprang to her feet and scrambled along a rooftop, looking for any place to climb down into the streets. She’d have Vita no trouble boarding her ship to Egypt. ‘Workers will tell police they saw a man chasing a young guy who—after I have fi fteen minutes in a toilet—exists no more.’ Vita’s sense of omnipotence throbbed as she realized that no one, no one knew a thing about the stolen passport, her male masquerade, or her connection to either the dead banker or the late, pureed punk. ‘Except for bastard Christian. No one knows a goddam thing but him!’ 69

10

‘ he’s gone. She got away.’ S In darkness, with a crystal glass of melted ice and an empty decanter beside him, Christian sat on a rough stone bench in his garden. Vodka couldn’t obliterate the images in his head. This afternoon Hatfi eld had spread black-and-white police glossies across his desk. Blank-faced he’d listened to how the victim was identifi ed from bits of paper and plastic inside a mangled wallet, as “Antonio Stronzo, age 29, a resident of Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.” Plant workers, at Piraeus, testifi ed to having seen a second male fi gure on the conveyor but couldn’t say what happened. The surviving youth vanished. Police located Stronzo’s rented car near the Plaka with a short wave radio provisionally mounted under the dash. Christian had hastily removed its companion unit from the Saab, so that his C.I.A. chief couldn’t link him to the gruesomely destroyed mob punk. Now he considered what to say to Mr. Fratelli, back in Boston. He’d never met the man personally, but he’d been told that Stronzo was a nephew. He preferred not to think what compensation the old don would extract for the terrible mishap. Looming before his mind’s eye were the glossies of pathetic remains embedded in chunks of cement: a fi nger, a hank of hair, the toe of a lizard-skin loafer. That Vita could be linked to such Vita images seemed unreal. Physical proof of it had come earlier this evening, surprisingly, from Galina Galleopi. Flashing smiles at a Kolonaki cafe crowd the cultural minister had fl ung herself into a chair and taken from her Chanel bag an object wrapped in a scrap of velvet. Brevity can be more startling than prolixity, so Galina handed over the object to Christian and bluntly stated that her gardener found it buried in an urn on her terrace. Christian had run fi ngers over the thin blade, darkly stained. His insides turned to water, seeing that even the self-absorbed old movie queen had made the connection between this vicious weapon and Klaus’s death. What tales would emerge from her perfervid imagination? Christian’s face shone unhealthily in darkness. The votive candle in a stone lantern had burned out. The inauspicious red rays of Sirius, the Dog-star, slanted obliquely onto the refl ecting surface of the koi pool. Shattered starlight writhed in black water like a headless serpent covered with luminous scales. The ambassador roused himself and walked unsteadily along gravel paths twisting among dwarf pines. Surveillance sensors glinted in black shadows of cypress. He tried to gain control over his thoughts and make sense of Vita’s aberrations, which repulsed him by their cruelty. From a fold of his hakata he took the stiletto wrapped in velvet and held it under a sensor’s red glow. A resonance of evil seemed to vibrate in the air. Not fanciful, Christian thought, when he saw what he’d been too distracted earlier to notice. The blade’s stone handle was carved into the image of a standing fi gure with the big belly of a man, a surplus of hands and arms, and the head of an elephant— Ganesh, the Hindu god associated with prosperity. His statues are seen everywhere in India over the doorways of shops and banks. Christian grimaced at Vita’s crude irony: Ganesh is the protector of banks, and banker Klaus was fatally stabbed with a Ganesh stiletto by Vita, while impersonating a man—Ganesh loves duplicity! Playfully, perversely, Vita was leading Greek police and his own C.I.A. chief on a chase for a non-existent male. Even if the bizarre facts were known who would believe them? ‘She’ll get away with this!’ His head aching, his stomach heaving, Christian 71 pondered how such madness had come about. Had it been there from the beginning? The cyclopean red eye of a sensor glared. Christian began enumerating specifi c memories…scenes… conversations…fragments of things his young wife had said, things she’d said he could only half remember. He stared at pebbles glowing beneath his clogs and found himself standing on another gravel pathway…a mansion on Massachusetts Avenue, in Washington...a party, his fi rst since being named ambassador- designate…the fi rst time he saw Vita’s face…

* * *

...he stepped out of December night air into a pink marble foyer, where a functionary took his overcoat. The fi rst frost had settled over hills surrounding the capital, and fur coats bulged inside the cloakroom. He moved alone in the reception line past the Turkish ambassador and his wife, who stood with extended hands at the entrance to the main salon. A smile of satisfaction rose to his lips. He fi lled his lungs with the rich smells of cigar smoke and perfume, and from a waiter ordered a shot of iced, peppered vodka. Christian had never doubted that this moment would arrive, but he refl ected that certain past events would’ve derailed a lesser man. A decade ago the von Reichenbach family rescued him from fi nancial ruin and social embarrassment after the bankruptcy of his private investment fi rm. He served as New York City’s chief of protocol, and achieved a new identity through such whimsical projects as penning the introductory essay for an exhibit of samurai artifacts at the Guggenheim Museum. He sat on the boards of foundations, cultural institutions, a newspaper chain, and served as delegate-at-large to the National Convention. Party bosses were charmed by Christian’s urbane sophistication and drafted him to chair committees. With his career back on track Christian decided to rectify the one truly dreadful mistake he’d made, his society marriage to Jeanne Foster Beale of Middletown, Virginia. When their daughter reached boarding school age Christian asked for a divorce and counseled by her Vita family Jeanne consented. No indiscreet details reached the press and the marriage was considered to have ended “with dignity.” Christian was named national co-chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect and his ambassadorial appointment had come three months into the President’s new term. “Another vodka, sir?” Christian declined, while gazing into a gilt mirror at his refl ection towering above bronze chrysanthemum blossoms in a Chinese urn. His features were too leonine to be considered handsome. It was his physique, that of the decathlete he once was, which attracted both sexes; age combated by exercise added desirable bulk to long legs and arms. At forty-four he was ready to make a new beginning, confi dent that his future held uncommon distinction and rare pleasures. He looked around at guests swilling cognac and champagne. The air was furry with body heat. Each step he took into the room brought another wave of some complex, strong scent wafting up from a woman’s bare shoulders or neck. A supper buffet was set inside a glass greenhouse off the library; the air was warmer, even more fragrant with the press of guests at the table, the odors of fl owers, linen and rich food. Candles cast long gleams on the silver covers of chafi ng dishes. The clouded facets of cut-glass shone palely in comparison to diamonds encrusting the snatching fi ngers, as women stacked their plates. All wore gowns either strapless, off-the-shoulder, or low-cut. Too much fl esh, Christian thought, too much food. He watched a woman with powder caked between bovine breasts methodically pile chilled shrimp on top a salmon mille-feuille, which was balanced on her wrist above a steaming plate of lobster thermidor. He looked away in disgust. Then he saw her pressed against a greenhouse wall. Whenever anyone wedged by she seemed to draw back against cold glass. A nearly-bald young man was earnestly talking at her, Christian saw, probably about some riveting subject such as power shortages in Istanbul. The bureaucrat paid no attention to the empty glass in the girl’s hand, or to her fi ngers tapping its rim. What impressed Christian was the solemnity of her beauty when she scarcely looked twenty. What told him she possessed 73 worldliness as well as beauty was her choice of clothes. While other women were as brazenly painted and bejeweled as Zulu warrior-dancers, this girl with her radiant skin had elected to wear an unadorned chocolate velvet suit with only her hands, throat, and face revealed. Christian wished the crowd would vaporize so he could see the rest of her. As if divining this, the girl abruptly excused herself and slipped away from the bureaucrat. Christian knifed through the crowd and reached the greenhouse door just as she did. He stretched his arm over her to open it, and felt his body in slight contact with her back, bent there beneath him. She spoke over her shoulder, “I’ll suffocate if I don’t get fresh air.” “You don’t like crowds?” he said, following her outside. “Only if they’ve bought tickets.” They stood on the embassy’s terrace overhanging Rock Creek Park, the wooded gorge that winds through northwest Washington. Bare wisteria vines were matted on gray stone of a Himalayan range of turrets and cupolas above their heads. “You’re an actress.” “Cabaret performer by default. I wanted to be an opera singer.” “You’re not big enough. Ever seen a diva smaller than a buffalo?” “You don’t like buffaloes?” “I like perfection, like you,” said Christian. The girl looked wide-eyed into his face. Her body remained still as he bent to kiss her. Their lips touched tentatively, exploring the shape of each other’s mouth. He felt the tip of her tongue against his teeth, then his tongue engulfed by the heat of her mouth. Driven by wind dry wisteria leaves, singing and fl ailing, thin and wild, swept across the terrace. From the gorge came the noise of Rock Creek’s onslaught. Draughts of icy air cleared Christian’s head of cloying party scents. He moved his lips over the beautiful face marveling that this girl wore no perfume—skin clean, fresh and naturally sweet as autumn apples! The greenhouse door burst open and out tumbled the woman with the bodacious bosom, coughing and gagging. She’d Vita choked on her mille-feuille. Her escort looked embarrassed as Christian and the girl pulled apart with glowing faces. She took Christian’s hand to lead him down terrace steps. Obnoxious noises receded as they groped along stone blocks of the mansion’s foundation. The steep slope was carpeted with dried laurel leaves and the vines of poison ivy, causing the beautiful girl in low heels to stumble and press heavily against Christian. He ran his hands over shoulders, fl anks encased in fi nely-cut velvet. He and the girl fell together against cold stone with their mouths inside each other’s and tongues twining like furious snakes. Rock Creek smashed over boulders, obliterating party sounds, but Christian glanced up at windows brilliant with light. “Should we..?” he said. The girl nibbled at his lips. “What about her?” he persisted. “The choking buffalo?” “Suppose she lumbers down to throw up?” “You talk sexy.” “Guards patrol,” said the ambassador-designate. “Too cold,” said the ruthless girl. “They’re watching TV with drivers in the limos.” She swiveled from beneath Christian, away from icy stone. “My ass is freezing.” “Let me help,” he murmured. Running hands under the severe, elegant skirt he found no underwear, only naked fl esh. “You dress formally wearing no panties?” “A girl who wants to be kissed doesn’t wear a veil.” Christian’s cock spasmed inside his trousers. Frantically his fi ngers circled her waist searching for the skirt’s snaps. She gasped, “No, put your hands on the hems, on the sides… easy...now slide, ooh yeah, slide it up, slide it up...” The velvet skirt ascended. Her whole body trembled not from cold air, but from the slick thrust of Christian’s fi ngers inside her. “… sweetfuckingjesus!” he crooned. The girl unfastened his belt, lowered his zipper, pushed wool trousers down over his hips, gripped the slit in his boxer shorts and ripped—his cock sprang free, fully hard and jamming and swinging. Christian thought he would cum watching 75 delicately shaped hands stroking, glowing in a white blur. A branch snapped and their eyes swerved. Christian was too startled to speak, but the girl laughed. “Look...there—” A young fox stood watching, its eyes glittering from refl ected light above. “He’s gorgeous,” she said. “How do you know it’s a he?” “I know.” The fox fl icked its tail and melted away. The girl’s fi ngers continued to do their work, cupping Christian’s balls in her hands and squeezing. “Mmmm?” “Argghhhh!” Her hand moved along the shaft. “Does it hurt if I bend it like this?” “Nothing you do hurts. It feels so good—EASY!” She put the toe of her pump in a stone fi ssure and raised herself, while pressing down on his shoulders. Christian lifted, clenching, thrilling at muscled buttocks. Her torso climbed his and a free hand guided his unruly cock to the place they both wanted it to be. The girl bit his ear as she took him in with one silken thrust. Her hips moved in urgent little circles. Spiked to the wall by her grinding Christian felt like he was being raped, with his cock furiously assaulted, torn boxer shorts hanging at his knees, his ass mashed against cold stone. He felt the fi rst of her convulsions, muscles in her belly rippling up against his, then collapsing concave. She caught her breath and the convulsions took on new life. Christian’s legs trembled and burned with pain while he supported her weight, thrusting, ramming in on top of her orgasms to keep them going. Jolted by their ferocity he spurted into her with such force that their bodies jerked and shuddered, as if they were being stabbed. The girl unclenched her legs, but kept her arms locked about his neck. They listened to the triphammer beat of their hearts and shivered as sweat trickled over exposed fl esh. They helped each other restore their clothing. To shake leaves from her low heels, the girl braced herself against the slender trunk of a poplar and fl akes of ice sprinkled down into their hair. Back on Vita the lighted terrace Christian examined ruinous creases in her skirt and screaming stains on his trousers. She waited under the port cochere while he collected their coats. Bare, black tree branches, touched by frost, glistened like silver lace. Inside limousines fl ickered tiny television screens. They strolled out of the pebble driveway side by side, shoulders touching. At the P Street Bridge a chalky glow from globular streetlamps lighted bronze lions on their guardian pedestals. Christian loved crossing this bridge at night because it reminded him of Paris, or Vienna. Midway across he took the girl’s arm to stop and lean on the balustrade. Blankly she gazed at the panoramic view beyond glittery treetops rising up out of the gorge: the spiny obelisk of the Washington Monument, the graceful dome of the Jefferson Memorial, at the tidal basin. Christian was moved by the beauty of these massive forms washed with white light against the night winter sky. Then when he gazed down into the alabaster-pale face beside him, radiant in lamplight, he went weak. Moments ago this girl had fucked him raw up against a foundation wall; now she seemed as calm and solemn and ethereal as the great national monuments. Beauty like hers, he thought, is as noble as the ideals of our leaders memoralized in stone. The ambassador- designate fl ushed at this sophistry. His brain darted to catch up with whatever the girl might be saying. Something about an engagement at Brown’s Cafe, near Ford’s Theatre, where she was the current rage as chanteuse and perpetrator of wicked impressions of Washington luminaries. The Post’s Style Section had run a half-page feature on her, hadn’t he seen it? “A beautiful girl doing impersonations of ugly politicians—why? how! Did you study with someone?” “Thank you, and no. I grew up in L.A. No need to study how to fake things. It’s in the air. My mother helped by throwing me out when I was sixteen. Piled my clothes on the lawn and told me to get out of her house before she killed me. A boyfriend of hers gave me a job at his club on Santa Monica Pier. I had to give up studying voice with Professor Vianello at the Hollywood Bowl, but I was earning my own money. Two hundred a week 77 singing The Boy from Ipanema for sailors, four times a night in a sarong.” Christian listened to this Dickensian tale without his critical faculties, overlooking that the girl had answered nothing. Gratuitously she related an adolescent trauma which could have been true, but was improvisation. They crossed into Georgetown. “What about you?” asked the girl. “Once you got the platinum spoon out of your mouth, what did you do to become a diplomat?” “How do you know who I am?” “I asked, someone told me.” His ego palpitating (‘She noticed me fi rst!’), Christian spoke of his widowed mother on Beacon Hill, of his navy days, briefl y of his failed marriage (but not of a nearly grown child), and of the years spent working on Wall Street. The girl listened with animation as he described his discontent with the all-consuming preoccupation of turning money into larger sums of money. “Yes,” she interjected, sweeping a wind-strewn lock of hair from her eyes, “that’s my mother—a money-grubber! So mundane.” They turned into 27th Street, a block long and lined on both sides with gingko trees. Interlocking canopies of cupped, fan-shaped leaves held the light from streetlamps and burned like bonfi res. Sparks of gold fl ew up in their faces as the girl kicked the toe of a pump through piles of leaves. She stood on a townhouse stoop behind Christian while he fumbled with keys. The door swung open to a dark hallway. Their acquaintance barely an eventful hour old, he placed his hands on her shoulders and gravely looked into her eyes. “I’m Christian Granger.” The girl laughed, “Yes, I know!” “And you are...” “Vita.” “Vita..?” “Vita.” He switched on a credenza lamp that cast ivory light on a Steuben bowl fi lled with yellow roses and blue daisies. Regency Vita chairs rested against a wall of pink eighteenth century brick. Vita’s lips curled into a feline smile of satisfaction as she recalled the living room of her childhood, with the “Spanish” brass- and red velvet-suite sent out by Levitz to thousands of southern California bungalows. Vita cringed to remember the framed reproduction of a butte at sunset with cow skeletons in the foreground. Now— pridefully, greedily—she gazed at a family oil portrait painted by John Singer Sargeant above this Georgetown fi replace. In this historic townhouse, where she was about to make her new beginning as its mistress. Christian turned up the thermostat, and took her coat and suit jacket to hang with his overcoat. Both of them stood looking at their elegant refl ections in a Sheraton mirror. Vita loved nothing more than gazing at herself, unless it was watching someone else do the same. She watched the refl ection of his hands circling her waist, searching again for snaps. Her own fi ngers reached for the blouse’s top button and when she got to the bottom, white silk swung back to reveal breasts barely contained by a miniscule, fl esh-colored French bra. She shed blouse and bra while Christian released snaps and with a soft silibance the velvet skirt crumpled to the fl oor. Vita stood naked in diffused, ivory light with the alabaster skin of her belly glowing, auburn pubic hair glistening with highlights of gold. She held his eyes in the crystal mirror and purred, “When some esteemed Bostonian ancestor of yours a hundred years ago looked in this mirror—you think he ever saw bare pussy?” Christian fell asleep inside her. Her buttocks arched to fi t the hollow of his groin. He cradled her shoulders and buried his face in her rich hair. He woke at the bitter hour of four with drafts of cold air wafting about the bedroom, like the tentacles of an octopus. Too disoriented at fi rst to locate the pain, he realized with a jolt it was the girl clutching at his ribcage. With hands drawn up like claws she dug into his fl esh, crying and sobbing, “It—it kept—going off—the gun—over—and over again—it—” He stifl ed these ominous words by pressing his mouth against hers. Her body shuddered and her hurtful fi ngers relinquished his fl esh. Possessive after six hours of acquaintance, Christian folded Vita into the curve of his strong body and made a vow: ‘I 79 will protect you. I will save you from a hurtful past!’

* * *

He slammed his fi st against the trunk of a giant cypress. As the Greek sky whitened with dawn stars faded, one star at a time obliterating itself. The strongest, the most stubborn, refused to disappear: Sirius, the Dog-star fl ickered its sickly, rusty light. Christian was miserable. ‘Klaus is dead,’ he thought. ‘I killed him as much as if I, not Vita, held the obscene stiletto in my own hand.’ He felt as if his sinews were being wrenched apart by pain and regret so overwhelming it could only be grief. He’d caused the death of the man he loved most, the friend who had guided him for so long, and so wisely. His beautiful young wife wanted to hurt him, to torture him with the cruelty of her reasoning. A spouse never gets away with killing a mate! Murder is too swift, too momentary in its gratifi cation. Vita saw there was greater pleasure to be had in making him accomplice to her senseless killing of his cherished friend. If publicly revealed, her madness would mean ruination of his career, his reputation and his family’s good name. His stomach turned over, vomit ascended, descended in his throat as he realized his wife wouldn’t stop with Klaus. How could she? Resist maximum exercise of her power? The jolt of a synapse in his brain, and with terror he saw what it was that Vita wanted him to see: ‘Oh, god—Herve! He’s in Cairo. She took the night ship to Alexandria.’

Vita

81

BOOK TWO CAIRO Vita 83

11

drop of water, a silver ampoule, unexpectedly cold, fell A on the back of her hand. Vita glared at the window as if she held it responsible for letting wind-driven rain seep through crevices in its rotting sill. Loose panes shivered, while desiccated palm fronds outside scratched against glass. A squall gusting along the delta coast bruised the twilight sky purple-black and turned the sea bright bottle-green. Waves crashed with explosions of spume on the seawall of the ancient port at Alexandria. Vita dried the back of her hand over a candle on her table. The dank bar of the Cecil was full of Arab businessmen, but her companion was the bottle of Stolichnaya for which she’d paid thirty dollars, and with which she was holding a dialogue—about drinking it all. ‘With wogs ogling,’ she thought, ‘and me looking like a major bull dyke.’ In the Cecil’s heyday Winston Churchill and Aristotle Onassis played chess in the bar, Mati Hari held assignations in the lobby, and E.M. Forster wrote Passage To India in his room on the fourth fl oor. The eyes of Justine and Darley, the central fi ctional lovers in Lawrence Durrell’sThe Alexandria Quartet, fi rst met, and held, as they checked their refl ections in the Cecil’s mirrored alcoves fi lled today, as then, with dusty potted palms. Vita

For Vita, the venerable hotel was a place of torture. No matter where she looked she felt mocked by splintered, multiple- mirrored images of her ragged crewcut and grunge clothes. She had registered by giving the desk clerk a U.S. $50 bill rather than the college boy’s stolen passport. This put her at risk of being questioned by police. Worse, she knew she must strike everyone as looking neither particularly male nor female, which rendered her appeal to the businessmen dubious. Her mood was black. She looked out the bar window at the rain-swept Corniche, the cobblestone pavement curving about the harbor. A buggy passed, drawn by a mule struggling to dodge sudden gushes of salt water from conduits in the seawall. Every opening of the carriage was lashed with canvas and the driver’s face was swathed in strips pulled loose from his turban. Vita recognized it as a love-carriage hired hourly by Alexandrians with nowhere else to go to fuck. She pictured the adulterous couple inside and hoped they got caught. Or contracted herpes. Venting spleen brought no cheer, but soon she was distracted by parasensory emanations which overrode the effects of vodka. Horny Arabs, she thought, couldn’t be sending out such powerful emissions. It was too soon for Christian to have another goon onto her yet. These warning signals were of gale strength, but not threatening. Unexpected waves of—what? tenderness? love!—made Vita’s eyes tear. From the bar David could see only hacked-off hair and shoulders slumped under a recklessly draped shawl. A woman drunk alone in public among Arabs raised his protective urges. When she looked up, his jaw dropped unattractively and he fl ushed—her face was strong and noble like in his daydreams, where his woman was always the queen and he the king...there was war, with savage enemies fi ghting on all sides to destroy their people...his queen stood on a high parapet to watch him leave for battle. Stunned by the conjunction of his day dreams with reality, David gazed at Vita’s face lit by wavering candlelight against the stormy sky. He rose and crossed to her table, leaning close. Vita took in liquid brown eyes and a shelf of blond hair. Beautiful, she thought, like a collie, probably with the same IQ. Mutely she 85 stared into her drink. “It’s more fun,” said Lassie, sitting opposite, “to drink with a friend than alone.” Vita grimaced. “Not if he’s some homespun sage dispensing unsolicited wisdom in the form of platitudes. I’ve had enough of Brahmin wisemen, thank you.” “How ‘bout if I play the fool?” “You’ll succeed admirably, I’m sure of it.” Protective notions evaporated when David saw she was no girl. She was older than him, traveling alone, not wearing a wedding band. And brazen. Yael would never dare speak so impudently to a stranger, man or woman, much less sit alone in a bar. Breathlessly he said, “My name is David.” Vita’s eyes widened, as if such a name were not possible. “David Kinor. And yours?” “Vita.” He waited expectantly. “Vita. My mother believes in astrology so she gave me and my sister names selected by her numerologist. Such is her mentality.” Vita downed more Stoli, while wind caused the palm tree to do its nerve-jangling watusi against windowpanes. “You’re here to see pyramids and mummies?” So indifferent to history was Vita that the boy-pharoah Tutankhamen himself could drive up under the Cecil’s portico in his chariot to take her on a personal tour of his tomb, and she would groan with ennui. In a hard voice she said, “I’m running from my husband.” “He’s dangerous?” A little thrill jitterbugged up and down David’s spine. “He’s powerful and he wants me back. I’m a possession that’s gone missing. And you? What’s a bar-hopping Jew doing in this United Arab Republic of Egypt?” In reply David got up and went to the bar. From a brass bowl fi lled with fruit he took an orange. Back at the table he leaned to remove the glass from Vita’s hand, placed the orange in her palm and closed her fi ngers over the top of it. Vita watched muscles in his forearm fl ex, miniscule hairs glitter on the back of his hand in candlelight. Vita

“From Haifa,’ he said, “grown on the irrigated and tended soil of Israel. Not genetically engineered and puffed-up like American pulp, but tender and sweet.” Vita gasped, “You’re a farmer!” “Worse, a salesman. I sell beautiful Jewish produce to Egyptians who have the richest soil on earth laid down by the River Nile, but who’re too lazy and unorganized to farm it themselves.” “But why sell in enemy territory—Arabs, for Christ’s sake!” “Where’s the fun working your own safe home turf? My dad used to make his brothers and sisters dress up on week-ends to drive across the border into Beirut. ‘Come on, you chumps!’ he’d say. He loved the exotic food and music and bellydancers. He loved the risk.” “Risky fun, hm?” purred Vita, eyes fl ashing like fi refl ies. “Last time I read the papers there’s fi ghting. For fun the Egyptians let you dash back and forth across the border with your sack of oranges?” David slipped a Greek-Cypriot passport from his jacket pocket. He fl ipped it open and held it across for Vita to examine. Beneath his photograph with noticeably less sun-streaked hair was the name ALI ABD RAHMAN. “That’s me when I make the rounds of wholesalers here and in Cairo. Ali Abd Rahman, a good Muslim from the island of Cyprus, well-known for its fair Greeks and Arabs.” “A blond Jew passing himself off as a Muslim—you’ve got balls.” “Big ones, too, in s’allah,” grinned David. “You speak this Arab rubbish?” Vita said, holding the counterfeit passport close to scrutinize the grain of paper and offi cial imprint over the ID photo. She noted that the perforations matched perfectly, when Christian said over-lapping perforations were the quickest way to tell a fake. She demanded, “Where did you get this?” “Khan al-Kahlili.” “Khan al-Kahlili?” “You’re in Egypt and never heard of Khan al-Kahlili?” 87

“Flog me.” “I’d love to and in Khan al-Kahlili people would pay to watch. It’s the old Islamic quarter of Cairo. The biggest souk in the world. Filthier, more depraved than what even some Arabs can imagine.” Veda dreamily brushed the fake passport against her lips. “Can you get me one?” “Whaa-t?” said David, aroused by glimpses of the pink tip of her tongue. “Can you get me a passport with a different name—a new identity?” “Sure.” Vita reached to touch his hand as she croaked, “For real.” Crying was easy. She didn’t have to think of Kay dying from pneumonia, a lost pet…or…Lance’s bullet-ridden body. Her tear ducts operated autonomously and fl owed at full tilt now. Downing more Stoli, she sobbed, “Help me.” David wrenched the glass from her hand and drained it. He’d eaten nothing but a cheese sandwich, so vodka on top of beer detonated a ground-zero blast. Their exit from the bar was solemn, slower still was their progress up the lobby’s staircase. Vita slumped against David whose body, army-conditioned and normally a responsive machine, scraped against peeling walls. By the time they reached the fi fth fl oor they were in each other’s arms. Stained-glass fanlights from the ceiling cast harlequin patterns on an Ottoman carpet runner. The door to Vita’s room stood between two Egyptian-Gothic columns, squat and billowy as if with elephantiasis. “Where’s your key?” slurred David. “In my purse.” “You don’t have a purse.” “Oh.” “You don’t have a purse ‘cause you’re dressed like a guy.” “That turn you on—girls who look like guys?” “NO.” “O-oo, touchy. Now where’s the key? Never mind, give me a credit card.” Vita

“Huh?” “American Express, dork. Never leave home without it.” David produced instead his laminated driver’s license. Vita leaned close and working by touch slipped an inch of plastic into the door crack, found the lock and pressed gently. The door swung open. They tumbled into darkness, with no time for David to wonder what kind of past Vita had where popping locks ranked among her social skills. Cursing and knocking into furniture they reeled about until Vita collapsed into his arms. He couldn’t understand a word she was saying, hysterical gabble, or maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was the vodka on an empty stomach. Or could it be the exquisite pressing of her tits against his chest through the thin fabric of her T-shirt? Their room was under a sloping mansard roof, where raindrops exploded like miniature grenades on bronze plating. The last thing David remembered was a fusillade of thunder as they fell fully clothed into bed. He’d passed out. Vita had not. Nor was she as drunk as she’d been pretending. She fought off sleep to savor the security she felt from pressing against his inert warm, strong body. She considered the possibilities: ‘…this game stud who speaks Arabic…has a counterfeit passport for dabbling in blackmarket wholesaling… who takes risks—fun risks, like his dad!’ The night was long, the storm gathered force. It kept dragging David back to consciousness with sounds of wind and rain battering the old hotel. Structural beams creaked, gutters fl ooded, shutters ripped free and banged wildly. From everywhere in the darkness of the alien room came the drip-drip-drip of water, as if torrential sheets of rain had penetrated to the inner recesses of the old stone building. Outside, waves smashed and growled on the seawall. In the small craft harbor, bells clanked on clicking yacht masts. At sea, emergency sirens shrilled from anchored tankers. More terrible for David, right in his ear, were the gasps and choking of the beautiful, older woman whose body oppressively pushed against his own. He kept waking to fi nd himself hugging her tight. Hours dragged, and each time he woke he fell back into deeper sleep, sleep seeded with unnatural 89 disturbances. It was predawn when the storm subsided. Drizzle hissed down onto the bronze roof, a blanketing susurrus above their heads. David lay in pearl-gray light, listening. Then he realized he was naked. He’d not undressed, he was sure of that, so how during a night spent in such drunken, tangled closeness had either he or the woman gotten out of their clothes? Still he was naked, very naked. He felt something wet and rough sliding between his toes. The thing withdrew, then darted deliciously into the tight crevice between the little and fourth toes—was there a cat in the room? He raised his head off the pillow to watch Vita’s head bobbing over his feet. No one had ever tongued his toes, “shrimping” he thought it was called. None of the whores around the port in Haifa, certainly not the school girls, neighbors or family friends who’d taken him into their beds. He was awed to fi nd his toes being sucked by this rich married American woman. It didn’t disgust him—it just seemed—it felt—soooo good! Any moral or aesthetic quibbling was short-circuited by the thought: where’s the aggressive tongue headed? what’s its destination? His ever-ready cock thickened, lengthened in anticipation. The tongue tired of feet and darted over ankles. It wove its way around calves, then skipped over bony kneecaps right up to inner thighs, where long did it dawdle…to savor the silky hardness of a soldier’s muscled fl esh. David felt prickly spikes of Vita’s cropped hair on his balls. His cock shot up his belly, eclipsed and veered to the right of his navel. The tongue licked velvet hollows formed by cubed abdominals, dancing, prancing around but refusing, positively refusing to touch the rampaging cock. Red as rhubarb, the cockhead vibrated furiously, but was ignored by the teasing tongue. The tongue went and got itself excited making moist sweeps around pectoral muscles, fl icking at tiny, brown, dry nipples—suddenly Vita’s face loomed over David’s. Their eyes locked. What they held had nothing to do with tenderness. They were the bright, glittering eyes of two strong animals whose fi xed stare says, ‘let’s play.’ Vita

David fl ipped Vita onto her back. She landed with a thud on the mattress, and liked it. It was his turn to tease so he straightened his forearms in military push-up position over her… the only part of their bodies touching were their riveted mouths. Vita inhaled the warmth of his breath, smelling of vodka and oranges. She felt nothing but his hovering lips. Detached from fervid hands, arms, thighs, torso, she was conscious of nothing but his sweet mouth on hers. One other part of him touched her. On her mound she felt the fi rst rubbings of his cockhead. Fully thick and rounded, hard and slick as avocado, it nudged her fl aring ridge of hair…pushing against furrowed fl esh, sliding, gently but relentlessly opening up her pussy. Vita groaned, and her eyes grew huge and wet and shining with little bubbles of saliva forming at the corners of her lips. She rocked back on her pelvis, hooked her legs over David’s shoulders, and ran her hands down his chest and thighs as if matter-of-factly feeling the knap of a new sable coat. He entered her tentatively, advancing just so much, just so little, giving her time to feel his length and hard bulk. Vita locked her teeth onto the tip of his tongue and bit down hard. “HURTS!” “Yeah,” she said. “Hurts.” “Bite. Bite me. Fuck me.” David started his pumping strokes, fast, slow…then long, deep toe-curling strokes. On the fast strokes Vita thought he would cum; on the slow ones she thought she would. She took care of that. Whenever he rode into her, mashing himself at the end of each thrust, Vita burrowed her ass into the mattress, arched her chest and eased back her pelvis, slipping away as though suddenly uninterested. His cock would attack, striving to maintain penetration. Then Vita would drive her pelvis forward and treat his young cock to wild, rhythmic delights. Withdraw, yield…resist, engulf…she kept up the blissful torture: on and on and on and on it went with David hovering—but not able to reach—orgasm. ‘A hover-fuck!’ he thought. ‘A fucking hover-fuck!’ 91

When their duration had been surpassed*, Vita grinded her hips and stretched her hand down under his butt, so that her fi ngernails raked his balls from underneath. He spewed spiky jets of cum inside her, yelping and uttering sweet obscenities. Their bodies convulsed. As soon as Vita’s fi rst oceanic wash of orgasm ebbed David felt the walls of her cunt palpitating against his cock which valiantly surged in slow undulations, hardened and lengthened. During the frenzied fuckathon that followed he learned the profound difference between twenty minutes of pleasure and three hours of wracking orgasms. Vita’s animal moans and violent paroxysms scared and excited him—already he didn’t want to lose her. They drifted in and out of sleep. Their shuttered hotel room remained in twilight, silent save for groans and love commands as they twined among sheets reeking of sweat and semen. When David woke for good it was midafternoon. The fl oor was tiger- striped with yellow sunlight through the slats of shutters. The bed beside him was empty and he heard the unmistakable sound of Vita in the bathroom, loudly peeing. His cock stirred. She emerged naked and he watched with half-closed eyes, through his eyelashes, as she crossed to the window. When she lifted her arms to unfasten the shutter’s latch he took in the lines of her neck, her back, and mandolin curves of her ass. He longed to touch her. He untangled himself from sheets and climbed out of the slippery bog of their bed. Throwing open a shutter, Vita stood with her back pressed against his chest. Her shoulder blades dug into his fl esh. He slid his tumescent cock along the satin crevice of her ass, and nuzzled his head against hers. Together they gazed out at a new Alexandria washed clean by the storm. The sea sparkled with sun-sequins. Shiny caiques bobbled as gaily as jonquils in the harbor. Children’s kites fl uttered against a perfect sky. Horse carriages clip-clopped around the Corniche. Smoky, violet shadows veiled the stone fretwork balconies of once-palatial

*A sublime Chinese technique called ‘so far—and no further’ Vita buildings, sham Moorish, old Bavarian, Taj Mahal. David no longer saw the city as a fi lthy Arab backwater— meeting this exotic, fi ercely orgasmic woman had changed everything. He felt transported in the same way that many men before him, men more worldly and sophisticated, had felt in Vita’s presence. Impetuous, liberating desire fi lled his body. He was intoxicated by the potent animal smell of growing hair and clean scent of her skin—she wore no perfume! When he put his lips behind Vita’s ear, to whisper, it was without any compunction. No thought did he give to Yael, his loyal companion since childhood and devoted fi ancé. It was not that he loved his cousin any less; but now he also loved Vita in that sudden, unstable way that scares most men. He looked at Vita’s profi le. Her eyes were riveted on some point out over the blue sea, lost in ethereal infi nity beyond the horizon. Her unknowability held him entranced. “Come to Cairo with me,” he said. “I’ll show you everything there’s to see in that fi fth-bag.” “Yes!” Vita harshly ejaculated. He extended his arm to point. “See at the end of the dock…the trees next to the silo? Guess what happened there two thousand years ago.” “What?” said Vita, stifl ing a yawn. “That’s where Cleopatra killed herself.” “Did she really?” said Vita, deeply uninterested. All she could remember of Cleopatra was that she was the queen of Egypt who’d once popped out of a rug, why, and for whose benefi t she couldn’t remember. David tweaked one of Vita’s nipples. “That’s where the cobra bit the tit.” “How did her tit get anywhere near a cobra?” “It was a temple snake, kept under leaves in a basket. She sat holding the basket, removed the lid, and—” “—why?!” “Guilt. She’d abandoned her lover Marc Antony in his hour of defeat and she felt shamed. So she killed herself.” Vita snuggled against David’s nakedness and airily sniffed, “What a fool!” 93

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ita perched on two fi rst-class seats, claiming them for Vherself. David sat opposite. He liked it this way so he could look at her. To facilitate such canine-like adoration, Vita gazed faux wistfully out the window with her chin propped on a curled hand and crooked elbow. Both legs were neatly tucked beneath her on the worn velvet seat. Whenever her body shifted David could sense its feline litheness and see its taunt, strong muscles. Only in the army had he come across so hard-bodied a woman, and nowhere one more beautiful! As the decrepit train called the Falcon Express rattled out of Alexandria, he marveled at the dazzling transformation. Who would recognize her as the morose, androgynous backpacker of three days ago? Coppery, cropped hair bronzed by sun was moussed and spiked. Sable eyes touched with mascara were almond-shaped and shining. The dusky rose beneath her cheekbones seemed (but was not) natural. Through moistly parted lips he glimpsed the pink fl esh of her mouth, catching light. Tantalizing was her insistence that she was fl eeing a powerful and possessive husband. She refused to say anything about their traumatic marriage, nor would she talk about her own Vita family or any previous life. A chameleon-like genius for altering her appearance made David wonder if she had been a model or an actress? Today she’d trashed the slacks of a cheesey pants suit from an Alexandrian department store and worn only its black tunic-top cinched at the waist with a belt picked up from a street vendor, a pseudo-Cleopatra affair of fake garnets and lapis lazuli. Coolest, David thought, were the black fuck-me pumps with straps criss-crossing up her calves. He squirmed pleasurably in his seat to accommodate the vascular events in his lap, yeah... He had to put distance between them if he was going pay attention to anything she might say. Screwing was fun, sure, but it had to mean more. It was only the animal, biological way of introducing minds to each other. David felt compelled to establish a rapport. A man in a white robe and dirty yellow turban shuffl ed into their compartment, tugging a rattling trolley. He raised a polished slat-table and plunked down glasses. Vita watched him pack tea leaves, sugar cubes and shredded mint into the bottom of a glass. Her tigress gold-brown eyes narrowed as the man’s hands trembled while pouring hot water. Swaying with the train’s motion he slipped the glass into a brass fi ligree holder—syrupy tea sloshed into the saucer. Vita commanded him to make another. David reached for the offending glass and saucer. “You’re not at the Cecil anymore.” ‘I’m not back at one of my mother’s fried chicken chuck- wagons either,’ Vita thought; but aloud said, “I can’t abide a mess.” David’s nerve-endings tingled. The high-profi le husband may exist, after all. Only the rich are that far removed from mundane realities like sloshed tea. ‘She’s a perfectionist,’ he thought, ‘used to having things exactly how she likes it. The best in everything and she’s taken me as her lover!’ This uncharacteristic puerile conceit was sparked by the notion of the dangerous rival—David envisioned himself shielding Vita from a husband who hired detectives to stalk, harass, or worse. The Falcon Express clacked and swayed around the 95 shores of Lake Mareotis, the salt marsh that fl anks Alexandria at the rear. Vita’s eyes glittered at the sight of sand dunes stealing in from the desert, slipping into lagoons lush with palms, papyrus and misshapened carob trees. High-shouldered birds with odd bills stood gazing sideways. Naked brown boys slid down the banks of alluvial channels, wiggling mud-streaked butts at the train. Vita royally waved back. She was pleased with herself to be traveling with this handsome Israeli who had as good a reason as she to hide his identity. Together they would register under his Muslim alias at a Cairo hotel. He would help get her a fake passport, then tactfully she would shed him, men being as convenient and as easily disposable as plastic razors. Meanwhile she supposed she had to show interest in his life, Jewish bourgeois though it must be. To more skillfully goad David into the pleasures of self- revelation she had earlier this morning, while he’d been in the shower, perused the contents of his wallet: driver’s license, receipts, club memberships, standard photos of mom and the girlfriend. It was clear at a glance who he got his looks from— the mother was fair, beautiful, a real Grace Kelly. The girlfriend’s dark Semitic prettiness Vita found generic and of little interest as it posed no threat to her. Her attention had been snagged by a worn snapshot she knew David must have carried for years. While concentrating intensely on sounds he made in the shower she had run a fi nger around the photo’s frayed edges, like a blind medium. She pressed it against her nostrils to inhale virile, musty odors of leather and sweat. She extended her psychometric powers out towards the much younger mother seated under a grape arbor, surrounded by grinning, sun-dappled children. It was easy to pick out David, towheaded and angel-faced. With a jolt Vita saw that the little girl shyly holding his hand was the same vapid face of the adult girlfriend—a cousin, a neighbor, a lifelong girlfriend? No, his fi ancée! That explained the barely discernible circle of white skin on his fourth fi nger. Vita pondered a lasting affair between a boy and a girl. It was preposterous and so against human nature that the idea Vita of it disturbed her. To betray such interest would not be to her advantage, so as the train started across empty desert she asked questions to which she already knew the answers, to indirectly draw him out. “You get your looks from your dad?” “Not at all, from mom. Her family immigrated during the second aliya, from Warsaw. That’s why I’m fair, the Polish blood. I’m a coarse version of her, same hair, same features. She hasn’t got knobby knees, of course. She’s beautiful!” “Go ahead, Oedipus, screw her. Give the rest of us a chance.” David blushed. “Once a year we do have a date.” Vita’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m all ears.” “It started when I was a boy. Every summer she’d get our neighbor to drive us to Capernium to see British actors perform in the ruins of the Roman amphitheatre. That’s how I knew about Cleopatra, from Shakespeare. We went even during my military duty.” Do heterosexual men ever outgrow the need for tit, Vita asked herself. Out loud she snapped, “I asked about dad and you tell me about mom—enough already. So you don’t look like him, he’s dark?” “He was a sabra, native born. His family’s pure Semitic, dark.” Vita noted that David used the past tense, so indelicately she probed. “He’s dark and likes excitement...danger?” David stared at sand dunes. “He was a dare-devil.” “Like you!” Vita cooed. “I don’t know. I never knew him.” Vita savored the pain she saw in his eyes. “He left you and your mother?” “He left us. Not of his own free will. He just left.” Vita sat expectantly. David was moved by tears he saw glistening in her eyes, by the tender emotions he knew she was feeling for him. “Dad was one of the fi rst pilots for our air force. When I was born he was fl ying patrols over the Negev water pipeline, dropping bombs on Egyptian soldiers. He’d put my mother under the protection of our neighbor, Abbed Mukhtar. Arabs and Jews 97 in Haifa don’t live in separate quarters. I was born in Abbed’s parlor, and later it was him who gave me a loan for my fi rst car. He’s the kindest man I’ve ever known. “Once before going to battle, during the Yon Kippur War, Dad and his fl ight partner quibbled over which plane to fl y, number twelve or number eighteen. Dad took the less popular plane. They took off and fl ew low along the coast, maintaining radio contact while dropping bombs on Egyptian concentrations. Dad fl ew on to Asheklov, strafi ng with his machine gun even after he lost radio contact. “It was Saturday night and everyone went crazy with happiness. The Egyptians had been driven back. My mother was waiting with other wives at the airfi eld offi ce when the planes, numbers twelve and eighteen, were coming in. Suddenly my mother saw a black pillar of smoke not far from the runway. One of the planes had crashed and the pilot was surely dead, but she didn’t know which one. He was twenty-eight, the same age as me.” “A hero!” Vita gushed. “At what price? Mother’s a practical woman, life had to go on, she had me and my sister to raise. There were men who wanted to marry her, but she couldn’t...she wouldn’t. After Dad, she says, I’m the only man in her life.” The train jerked to a stop but that didn’t account for the look in Vita’s eyes. She felt a surge of renewed hatred for her own mother, as she contemplated wrecking havoc in the life of another grasping and presumptuous motherly tyrant. The damp fl oor of Vita’s interest in David sprouted like poisonous mushrooms. The Falcon Express crept through suburban Cairo. The sky looked like cotton candy, a sickly pink, greenish-hued ball of gossamer pollution. Highways were gridlocked with cars, motorbikes, sixteen wheelers, mule carts, and open-bed trucks loaded with soldiers. The train stalled on a trestle bridge. The cesspool Vita glared down into was not the Nile, but an ancient network of canals jammed with houseboats. Sprouting along the banks like bacterial growth were shanties made by the homeless from fl attened oil cans and palm fronds. A chemical plant towered with steel pipes, exhaust vents, and smoke stacks billowing and Vita

fl ashing with strobe lights and smoke and fi re. Vita’s glare intensifi ed at the sight of the giant red corporate logo of BULON-MADAGASCEAUX S.A. Herve Bulon! Now what could be more fun, REAL fun, than ridding the planet of that useless parasite? Vita had never forgotten her single encounter with the thirty-nine-year-old heir to a French chemical empire. Christian had spent most of their honeymoon skiing alone with Bulon on the high slopes at Gstaad. She could still see the tycoon’s grinning blond head ringed by icy, February sun: big teeth in blue shadow and deeply-etched brackets at each corner of the mouth. He reminded her of a pirate and she’d not been surprised when, in an apres-ski bar, the hand sliding under her panties was that of her new husband’s best friend. She knew the same hand had already explored the crotches of Chrysanthi Niarkos, Theona Isse, even that Hong Kong fi lm slut Sindy Tang—she—she, Vita!—had been his goddam fourth choice. David snapped about when Vita kicked the edge of his seat. “Not you,” she said, pointing her chin at the chemical plant. “Him. Bulon.” “You know Herve Bulon?” “I met him once. He’s my husband’s best buddy…for the time being...” “Bulon’s the most powerful foreigner in Egypt. He still invests in the place.” “Invests!” snorted Vita. “He doesn’t invest, he rapes.” “Right,” said David, “the factories he can’t build in France he spreads along the Nile. Six of them lowering the water table, poisoning the soil and ruining farm land. He’s one of the little foxes that ruin the vineyard.” Vita looked at David, pleased. Her contact with the Bible having been minimal, she assumed he was quoting from her favorite Bette Davis movie. “Yes, he’s one of the little foxes that ruin the vineyard and destructive creatures have to be put down. Someone should put down Herve Bulon.” “Kill a fox another fox will take its place. Kill Herve Bulon and another Bulon will pop up to take his place.” “Then why kill a Syrian, Lebanese or Iraqi when another Syrian, Lebanese or Iraqi will turn up? Use that rationale and 99 your borders will end up around Tel Aviv.” David’s face darkened. Hiding the smirk on her face, Vita rose to gather her things. She’d always noticed that if you speak the truth in a frivolous way nobody believes you. Nothing causes a man to lower his guard so completely as a woman who goes around saying silly things. During a short train trip, she had learned enough about this Jewish mother’s boy and his dead hero-father to keep him under control. Purposefully, she took his arm as they stepped off the train in Cairo Station. David felt a rush to be arriving with so titillating, glamorous a woman at his side. In the pit of his stomach he savored a delicious foreboding of danger to come. He would’ve ignored even Christian Granger, had the ambassador been there to warn him with the Japanese saying, ‘If you trust a woman, eventually you will be disembowelled.’

* * *

At Gamal Abdel Nasser International Airport 707s taxied past blower-machines out to clear drifting sand. Arctic blasts of air-conditioning iced the edges of plate glass windows in the fi rst class lounge. Hunched in a padded leather chair was a man in a dark suit with a gray-speckled crewcut. He studied a U.S. Navy intelligence map of Cairo. During his fl ight from Paris he’d drawn red ink circles around certain areas of the City. At the center of downtown were little Zamalik and Roda Isles, in the Nile, and the west bank, which he considered the least profi table places to search. Only a fool foreigner would attempt to hide near the international luxury hotels, embassies and American Express offi ce. Next he ruled out Tahrir Square, the nexus of the subway and bus lines. His cobalt-blue eyes shifted to the Islamic quarter, to the west, with its hundreds of mosques and souk at Khan-al- Kahlili. A possibility given the exotic proclivities of his subject, but he decided to start in the suburb of Giza. Rich Arabs and foreign residents gaze at the Pyramids across their AstroTurf- green lawns fronting Tudor castles, alpine chalets, Palladian villas and Hollywood bungalows. Waiters and clerks in Giza’s Vita discreet cafes and boutiques take notice—and remember—their privileged residents. The policeman, whose name was Skip, was an American Interpol agent-on-furlough. He was undaunted by the task of having to fi nd in a city as vast and chaotic as Cairo a person who didn’t want to be found. He owed it to Christian to succeed. He’d never heard his old San Diego navy pal sound so unraveled as on the phone. Christian, the epitome of aristocratic self-control, was near the breaking point. An unhinged wife running out of control suggested a side of Christian’s life Skip was sure his friend didn’t want him or anyone else to see. He accepted that. He’d bring the wife in with no questions asked, for he owed Christian his life. Once when they’d been SEALs, diving in caves under the cliffs of La Jolla, he’d been caught by a rip-tide. Christian pulled him out. 101

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he parrot cleared its throat experimentally. TDelicately lifting its leg chained to the perch, the big bird made rough low sounds which broke predawn silence in the lobby of the Moon Hotel. Suddenly the parrot let loose with a loud, stereophonically-precise imitation of knocking on the outer wood door. The bird kept up the knocking sound, its eyes fi xed on a curtain which concealed the cot of the bawab, or doorman of sorts. He’d smoked hash until the fi rst call-to-prayer, at four, but the racket lifted him from his stupor. “Arrggggghh! By the crinkley skin of the Prophet’s scrotum, what’s that pounding! Am I the bawab at Shepheard’s where they come and go at any hour of the day or night? No—this is not Shepheard’s and there’s no one knocking…it’s that feathered djinn.”* The bawab eased back into unconsciousness, crooning, “...winged djinn of al-Amar, fl y me to the moonn...al-Amar, al- Amar ...the moooo-on, the moooooooooo...” The parrot hawked and spat contentedly on its perch. The only other sound in the sleeping hotel was the rubbing of a coffee pestle. Cyma, a university student who worked

*evil spirit Vita as chamber maid, gripped the stone mortar and rotated the pestle with a grim expression. She needed that enchanted cup of caffeine to work its magic and drive off the gloom of the dank kitchen, and her anxiety. An hour ago she’d slipped out of the tiny apartment she shared with her mother and father, two brothers, and an invalid grandmother. Lanes in Bulaq quarter had been fi lled with the homeless asleep on straw mats, and insomniac old women sitting in dark doorways holding incense burners. Flares of naphtha lamps glowed in subway tunnels as she took the train to Tahrir Square, then transferred to #66 bus for the ride out Abd al-Aziz Street. The ancient bus, the student thought, was a microcosm of Cairo, overworked and on the verge of a breakdown. She squeezed onto an aisle seat and breathed shallowly against a smell she detested, that ubiquitous masculine odor of cigarettes and acrid sweat. Typical of men, Cyma thought, to smell like goats. Normally she studied during the commute, her eyes straining to read textbook tables in dimly fl ickering light. This morning she had clutched her books and thought only of the American—she had to be American with such tanned, creamy skin—beautiful even with hacked-off hair like a man’s! She had seen the couple when they arrived yesterday. Climbing the stairs the man remained in shadow, which was fi ne with her, but the woman stepped through a shaft of light and at that instant their eyes had met. All the woman had done was smile…yet there was a special intensity. Or did she imagine it? Was she simply overworked and starved for romantic escape? Like the City was she on the verge of a breakdown? Cyma climbed from the bus and wove through alleys to the hotel’s rear garden door. Fiercely gripping the stone pestle, she realized her plan was mad. She would make breakfast for the beautiful woman and take it to her room early. Madame, the hotel owner, was strict about economies and served guests nothing more than a complimentary cup of coffee in the lobby. Being an Arab Madame could not comprehend the desire to have the privacy of one’s bedroom invaded by a stranger. But Cyma knew from 103 her reading of Collette, cette grande dame of Sapphic love and sensuality, there’s no indulgence more appreciated by a woman of non-Arabic breeding than breakfast in bed. She savored her coffee-sludge as she took inventory. She’d polished one of Madame’s brass trays. At Groppi’s she’d picked up a bag of those expensive buttery croissants that foreigners love. On the table was a dewy, red-yellow-green mango. As she worked her confi dence faltered. ‘She’ll take me for a peasant. She’ll laugh at me! If I knew something about her, I’d have something clever to say.’ The student stepped out of the kitchen to listen. The bawab would be unconscious at this hour, so she decided to make a quick study of the beautiful woman’s passport. She stitched through twisting hallways of the hotel patched together from two seventeenth-century merchant houses, with the blatant intent of disorienting strangers, and in keeping with the Arab passion for secrecy. Reaching the lobby she listened to the bawab’s tortured breathing behind the curtain, as she riffl ed through guest mailboxes for an American passport. Stealthily she checked the drawers of Madame’s desk and gasped at the sound of a drawer being slammed shut! She looked around. She was alone, but again noise of slammed drawers reverberated through the lobby. The parrot chuckled. Cyma glared at the big bird and went on searching. She found passports bundled with a rubber band. As she shuffl ed the stack the parrot amused itself by imitating the sound of crinkling paper. The bird tilted its head up toward the ceiling to better project the subtly obnoxious sound of paper being crinkled. Cyma never heard the bawab until he was at her side clasping her wrist. “Thief!” he hissed. “Let go, fool!” “Let go a thief? By the hole between the Prophet’s buttocks, I will not let go a thief!” “Fool!” rasped Cyma. The parrot reverted to making its door-knocking noise. “What’s the thief stealing?” the bawab chortled, wrestling Vita the stack from her hand. “The room maid needs a passport? Leaving the country? Going to Paris? What are you up to, sharmouta, you dirty rag!” “Nothing,” said Cyma, reddening. “I want to know the name of a guest.” “A guest! A friend of yours? What grand maids at the al-Amar. Which guest, slut?” “The American lady who came yesterday.” The bawab danced a little jig. “Ho-ho! It’s the American lioness you’re interested in, not her yellow-haired lover-boy. What they say about you at the hammam is true. Twisted sharmouta! You want to run that camel-tongue of yours up her hairy love-hole. By the warts on the Prophet’s great prick, I’ll tell Madame!” “Whore! Whore!” shrieked the parrot. Cyma pushed past the bawab. “You’ve wasted your time, slut. The American lioness has no passport.” Cyma whirled. “Every foreigner has a passport.” “Not all of them. Some are clever. And rich.” “How do you know?” “I saw.” “Saw what?” “Madame register the happy couple. The lioness stood behind her lover-boy as he gave Madame his passport and made sweet talk. When Madame asked for the lady’s passport, the lioness made excuses about it being packed at the bottom of her bag. ‘Many regrets,’ said Madame (the bawab did an excellent mime of his employer), ‘but our tourist police require that I see it.’ Lover-boy leaned forward and fl ipped through his passport. I was on the steps above so I could see what he slipped Madame— twenty pounds!” Cyma regained her composure as she stitched back to the kitchen. She didn’t have to worry about the bawab, who couldn’t afford to make trouble by going to Madame. And the beautiful woman traveling without a passport, with a man who’s not her husband! The maid’s spirits soared as she gave ornamental fl ourishes to the breakfast tray she was 105 about to carry upstairs.

* * *

Naked, Vita crouched on the windowseat and threw open a shutter—startled pigeons whirled up through the slender towers and nipple-tipped caps of minarets. Touched by yellow sunlight from the east the swirling tips of pigeon wings looked like scattered confetti. Gazing over the old quarter’s chaotic roofscape, Vita ignored a goat chasing its tail on a nearby top fl oor, left unfi nished to avoid taxation. She did take note of the rear façade studded with latticed windowseats, or mashrabiya, the chief function of which Vita instinctively grasped: women can see into their garden and alleys without being seen themselves. With contempt for all mashrabiya in existence Vita leaned on the sill to let her naked skin soak in moist, sweet-smelling air of dawn. In a garden below jasmine vines smothered crumbling mud brick walls, and fi re truck-red poinsettia fl ickered in shadows under a fi g tree. Vita’s sated fl esh quivered. She was enveloped by a voluptuous sense of security. It would be days before Christian’s agents tracked her to this obscure love hotel buried in a baked- mud, medieval ghetto. By then she’d have a counterfeit passport to go with her new identity. To reclaim her femininity, what fi ner place to be than this 1001 Nights of Arabia marketplace of Khan al-Kahlili…with fabrics from all over the Arab world…tailors adept at knocking out copies from a magazine photo…herbal pharmaceutical practitioners whose homemade aloe-based soaps and lotions already were deep cleansing and softening her sun- ravaged skin. She pressed her fl anks against velvet cushions. Her fi ngers traced delirious movements over her naked fl esh. No longer was she the only conscious presence in the room, for she could hear the rustling of sheets by David’s strong soldier’s body. She felt his eyes move along her spine and knew that her thrust-out ass must be making his blood go tropical. He was stroking himself under the sheets. She smirked. How can you take seriously a species whose sexual apparatus operates so simplistically—fl ash a bit of T&A and a cock gets hard. His male vigor kept her up at Vita nights bucking her way through Allah-knows-how-many seismic multiples. What a voracious cuntivore, this sanctimonious Jewish mother’s boy! She tried (but failed) to imagine some doe-faced Esther back home, in Haifa, inspiring, much less enduring such heroic stroking. It struck Vita that she was seeing a new, fi ercer David. She moved her ass in the slow, undulating circles she remembered seeing with Christian at a sex show in Bangkok. When her fi ngers slid down into shadow between her legs, around her pussy, David threw off the sheets and slipped out of bed. She felt him soundlessly coming up from behind. “Stop!” she commanded. “Don’t do the obvious and grab my ass. Do something I don’t expect.” He stood close without touching, so she waited. His tongue touched an earlobe, slipped inside, rimming the outer curve, wetting it with saliva. Nowhere else did his body touch hers. All sensation came from the tip of his tongue inside her ear. “...mm-hmm...” she purred. “...mm-hmm?” “...mm-hmm! Build on it. Elaborate. Touch me in one other place.” “Just one?” “Just one.” “My choice?” “Your choice.” Vita experienced the most tentative sensation, infi nitesimally quick and light, but steady, and it grew until she was conscious of both her nipples being rolled between his fi ngertips. His lips nipped her shoulders with kisses. Hot streams of his breath raised hair on the nape of her neck. She gazed out the window at rays of sunlight striking the pink Muqattam Hills, and squirmed in protest when he tried to tug her back to their bed. “...no...NO!” “—come on—” “...here...do it here...” “—people can see—” “...so? ...fuck me, fuck me now, fuck me HARD!” David thrilled at her lewdness. He gasped when she 107 reached back to clamp his cock at the base, and slid a ring of fi ngers along the length of the shaft, murmurring, “Big.” “Yeah...!” exhaled David. Staring at his aching cock held by her shapely hand, his brain fl ooded with images. Vile. Filthy. It wasn’t like he wasn’t himself, oh no, he was very much himself, that other self he was careful to keep hidden from family and friends. During the night he’d shot seven loads and was ready again. To stave it off he looked out at mashrabiyas and visualized giggling women inside—that was like being hosed down with sexual Tabasco. He watched Vita stare off into the corner between the windowseat and bed, where she’d strategically positioned a folding three-panel mirror. It made him hot to see her looking so fi xedly at his body...the balled muscle of his shoulders, jutting buttocks and slabbed pecs glistening with sweat. His eyes moved back and forth between his own mirror-image and the grip he held below on Vita’s hips: his thick, wet dick glistened as it jack- hammered beneath the swell of her buttocks. He watched the corresponding, rhythmic sway of oh so fi ne tits. They held each other’s eyes in the mirror. Vita thrilled at this raw animal display. She took delicious pleasure in the knowledge that she was perverting in David a normal healthy lust, pulling him with her down into the mud from which she fancied that grand passions arise. The hotel room was silent, save for the clicking sounds his cock made slamming in and out of her streaming cunt. Knocking at the room’s door! “Don’t stop!” Vita commanded. The knocking was hostile, David sensed, and his cock slipped out. In the frenzy of orgasm he couldn’t keep from loudly groaning as his cock bucked and spasmed and jerked, its scorching-red head spewing jism over her ass. Wads fl ew, glittery opals in bright sunlight. Vita reached back to catch splatters dripping onto her legs. She used fi ngers smeared with cum to rub the bud of her clit and bring on her own copious wetness. They collapsed together on the windowseat with David’s body folding over hers. Shuddering with subconscious repulsion at his excess he felt his heartbeat slam against his ribcage, obliterating all other Vita sounds. Even while convulsing with a cluster of orgasms Vita wondered about the knocking that had gone away...

* * *

…and was not surprised minutes later when the knocking resumed. David had sequestered himself in the bathroom where he would spend half-an-hour in steamy solitude. He was fastidious about cleaning his body which pleased Vita as it gave her time to withdraw, and sit gazing into the mirror without a thought in her head. She rose from her makeup table and went to open the door wearing an improvised sarong of nearly transparent gauze. Boldly she looked into Cyma’s face, then at the tray in her hands. “Croissants!” she gushed with ebullience. “Don’t lurk there like the phantom of the hallway—come!” Cyma’s terror evaporated under the impact of such spontaneous totalitarianism, as she padded into the room. Vita sauntered to the dressing table letting her hips insolently sway a shade more than necessary. She felt the girl’s eyes drinking in her body, moving over her back as rapaciously as David’s had earlier. Ah, thought Vita, only this...how many times in spa saunas and steam rooms had she felt other women’s eyes on her body. Sometimes their envious stares seemed as lustful as those of men. This didn’t bother Vita. As sexed-up as David was keeping her she could afford to toss a few crumbs to this sex-famished, third world dykeroo. She motioned Cyma to set the tray on a corner of the cluttered dressing table. Languidly she took her seat on the hassock. “Nice,” she said, pretending to admire the arrangement of poinsettia beneath slices of pink-orange mango. Pats of butter and dollops of ruby pomegranate jam complimented the golden croissants. Steam rose from a white pot of Arabic coffee. “With such an eye for color,” Vita smiled, “you must be good at… ceramics? needle-work?” Cyma stiffened, “I am a student at the university, madame.” Vita’s eyes shot up to the face refl ected in the mirror, pleased 109 to see that pride went with beauty. The girl held the arrogant stance of a Bedouin princess with lustrous, sable-colored eyes; deep, beveled Arabic nose; and plum-colored lips which stuck-out in a way that made Vita want to smash them in for her. Provocatively she crossed her legs. “How extraordinary, the university! You must be one of the few women there?” “I am studying nursing, madame.” ‘Nursing!’ Vita could not believe her ears. Her face shone with a curious radiance as her mind’s eye fi lled with an image of Herve Bulon’s hateful pirate-smile. All her adult life, once free of her mother, Vita had noticed that things usually seemed to turn to her advantage. It seemed only fair so she rarely gave it a thought—but nursing! This girl could be studying to become an accountant, a hairdresser or secretary—but a nurse, one of those non-entities who in the course of a normal workday have access to all kinds of forbidden substances. A quiff-sniffi ng Flo Nightingale at that! “How fascinating!”she gushed with basilisk eyes glittering. “You must be good with numbers and equations. Keeping straight anti-bodies and serums…antidotes and toxic substances...poisons…” Stress laid on the last word was scarcely subtle, so Cyma commented, “I have taken a course in toxicology.” “It’s been eons since I was at college,” said Vita, a high school drop-out. “I’ve forgotten everything…toxicology means poisons?” “Yes, madame.” “You must know all kinds of lethal substances. Things we don’t think of as being poisonous.” Cyma had been staring at Vita’s bare legs, but looked up into her face. “Why does madame ask?” Vita forgave this impertinence and, with an actor’s professional breath control, feigned confusion. She glanced faux-fearfully at the bathroom door. Cyma heard sounds of thumping about in the shower. The student looked back to Vita’s legs, scarred and nicked obviously by a shaving blade, yet chose to make the connection Vita was directing her to make, fanciful even by Arab standards. “…he...beats you?” Vita

This released inside Vita a glee she could barely contain (‘Any man on the planet—strike me!?’), but she maintained a distressed demeanor. “Men are animals!” growled Cyma, scowling at the bed’s obscenely tangled sheets. “...yes...” said Vita wistfully. Cyma saw there was more to Vita than elegance. ‘She’s done much, this one. If that’s what she likes, I can give her more passionate bites and slaps than any man.’ She said no such thing but reverted to the servile, circuitous manner expected of Arabs. Sinking to her knees she reached out as if to touch Vita’s nicked calves. She cooed, “Madame, travel in my poor country has denied you of the care a lady needs. Such beautiful skin, but in need of restoration. Why don’t you come to the hammam with me?” “Hammam?” “The baths, madame. Cairo has many bathhouses. I go on afternoons I’m free from class. It is wonderful, madame, truly!” “Truly,” said Vita, picturing a hundred naked women lolling about and using dried mud and honey to remove each other’s body hair. “I have a friend,” said Cyma, lowering her eyes to look at the points of Vita’s breasts visible under the gauzy sarong. In the maid’s enfl amed imagination the mauve areolae looked like twin bruises infl icted by the blond brute. How she longed to caress and kiss and soothe. “I have a friend who gives massages. She will rub into your skin ointments and oils that will restore beauty worthy of a lady like yourself.” Touched by such groveling, Vita turned to the breakfast tray. “Is this included with the room?” The tips of Cyma’s ears went red. ‘She sees through me! She’s disgusted and will throw me out.’ “You made this for me, didn’t you?” said Vita. Cyma’s lips protruded. “Look at me,” ordered Vita. The maid’s eyes lifted and Vita saw terror. ‘This Sultana of Twat knows I can get her scholarly ass fi red. She’d best remain 111 obedient.’ “What is your name?” “Cyma, madame.” “Cyma,” Vita richly intoned, pausing for so long she thought the girl would faint from fright. “And my name is Vita.” “Madame Vita,” Cyma murmured, barely audible. “Just Vita. ‘Madame’ makes me feel older than God’s wetnurse,” said Vita, who in two weeks’s time would turn thirty- two-years-old. “Vita. Say it.” Stunned by her unexpected deliverance, Cyma huskily intoned, “Vita!” When David threw open the bathroom door and stood naked inside a rolling white cloud of steam, Vita was alone. She sat on the hassock before the mirror. “Who were you talking to?” “No one. Only the maid.” Vita

14

‘ LEASE LEAVE YOUR VALUES AT FRONT DESK’ P Vita’s eyebrows lifted at the hand-printed sign as David dropped off their room key. The veiled owner of the Moon Hotel sat in a swivel chair, bracelets and amulets jingling as she used the tip of her pin to manipulate buttons of a Texas Instrument calculator. “May your day be a happy one,” she chirped with a wave of a chubby paw as they left. Chained to its perch the parrot was busy in rehearsal, doing the plip-plop-plop of a bathroom tap with a defective washer. Out in the street the bawab leaped up from the rubber tire where he’d been sitting and puffi ng on his short stemmed hubble- bubble, fi lled with hash-fl ecked tobacco. He did a dance of agitation around Vita and David. “You go to the souk? You go alone—fools! By the hole between the Prophet’s buttocks, you will be robbed!” As they fl ed Vita slipped on huge, Jackie Kennedy sunglasses and draped her head with a silvery scarf, rakishly fastened to one side and spread over a shoulder and bare arm. “Great,” said David, “I feel like I’m out with a local bundle.” “When in Rome,” Vita smirked. 113

It was true, women elbowing through the convoluted alleys were swaddled in voluminous layers of fabric. Cairo may be the cultural capital of the Arab world, its women the most liberated, but still the veil prevails. Women take pains to be dressed not only fashionably but Islamically correct as well. Good hijaab, or proper Islamic dress, requires that frosted bouffant coifs be draped with scarves, that the latest eyeliner shades from Milan remain hidden behind slips of translucent black mesh, and shoulder pads or platform shoes be worn under the dreaded milaya, a shapeless, ankle-length overcoat in solid dark colors. Vita absorbed all this and more during her fi rst twenty-four hours and vowed that in public and with fervor worthy of a convert she would, for strategic reasons, maintain good hijaab. David and Vita were expulsed from alleys into the riotous square of al-Hussayn Mosque. The seven-hundred-year-old place of worship reputedly houses the head of the Prophet’s grandson and is the second holiest spot in the Muslim world. Its roofed courtyard holds four thousand men—women and infi dels are forbidden. On AstroTurf fronting the grandiose, neo-gothic façade, worshippers at all hours of the day and night crouch on all fours with compasses sewn into the helm of their prayer rugs to assure perfect alignment with Meccca. Ear-splitting cries from fruit juice vendors compete with thundering sermons of holy men over loudspeakers. Fat sheiks disgorge from black Cadillacs lined like gleaming sarcophagi in front of the Mosque. A little park was brilliant with Delta farmers’s wives huddled together under palm trees, raucous as parakeets in billowing layers of acid yellow, lime and watermelon pink. A mother fi shed a breast out from the side slit of her fl owery gown and pushed a taut purple nipple into her baby’s mouth. Vita made noises of disgust and tugged David through the mob. At the concrete pillars of a raised expressway she paused to rearrange her headscarf. Just then—right above—her husband’s navy buddy, Skip, leaned over a guardrail to glare at men and women streaming beneath him, all with the upper part of their bodies concealed by goddam veils or turbans. Even tourists wore sunglasses, head scarves and wide-brimmed straw hats. The furloughed Interpol agent felt intimations of a Vita nightmare. He’d distributed ID photos of Christian’s wife in Giza, where women wear western clothes and wealthy Egyptian matrons are careless about their hijaab. Boutique clerks and cafe waiters would remember a woman as striking as Vita Granger, but Skip realized the bitch was not in Giza. ‘She’s here,’ the Interpol man thought, ‘hiding bold as brass in the one part of town where everyone’s anonymous. You could paste her goddamn face on a billboard and it’d produce nothing.’ Skip held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, against waves of exhaust fumes in the expressway’s bike and mule cart lane. Stripping off his jacket he jogged to chase a taxi. His last assignment had concluded with the confi scation of atomic bomb- making-quality uranium hidden inside air condition equipment in the hold of a ship, in Istanbul. His face had been visible in TV coverage which was why he was on furlough. Christian’s call for help had been a boon. But up against a madwoman playing catch- me-if-you-can in this medieval pig sty, Skip saw that he could be defeated by the legendary brilliance of the insane. Hijaab means ‘concealment,’ the smallest fragment of exposed fl esh among repressed Arabs being as maddening to men as full view of a woman’s breasts. Skip realized that adherence to hijaab by Christian’s wife was a lie, a ploy, it made her invisible to any means of surveillance, gave her freedom to move through the souk utterly unhindered by locals in whatever business she might be about. Vita’s silvery, insinuating laughter rang in David’s ears as they stepped from under the highway into deeper shade cast by the massive dome and tulip-capped minarets of al-Azhar Mosque, the oldest university in the world. Through keel-shaped arches they glimpsed mullahs in robes and snowy white turbans sitting cross-legged with rare Korans spread out on the red-veined marble pavement. Acolytes with shaved heads listened as the holy men interpreted the words of the Prophet. “Right out of the Old Testament,” David said to thin air, for Vita had wandered away to watch a Nubian fortune teller squatting in a niche before a group of women. From his blue robe he took a copper bowl and a cloth bag, poured sand into the bowl and with the tip of a black fi nger drew circles in the sand. 115

The women fl uttered as he drew lines out from each of the circles. David squeezed Vita’s buttocks. “Want your fortune told?” “Why? I make my own. I already know.” David steered Vita towards a taxi stand, but she stopped at booth with no phone inside. The glass was smeared with graffi ti, rippling red and blue curvilinear script which to Vita looked earthworms. “David, let’s get the passport.” “Later. Khan al-Kahlili never closes.” “Fifty-dollars won’t hold off Mrs. Moon forever. She’ll want my passport.” “We’ll stall.” “No, now.” “I have distributors to see.” “They work everyday except Friday.” “Vita, this is business!” “The passport is my safety. I’ve told you my husband is a powerful man.” “Right.” “Do you know how powerful?” “No.” “He’s the American Ambassador to Greece.” David had learned not to question Vita’s grandiose pronouncements, better to indulge than challenge. Vita knew what he was thinking and spoke in a fl at, menacing tone. “It took him fi ve days to track me down in Athens. By now he knows I entered Egypt on a stolen passport.” “An ambassador’s wife traveling on a stolen passport?” “No choice. I had to.” “Stolen from who?” “A college kid.” “A college kid...a guy—the hair! You’re incredible.” “Thank you, even though you didn’t mean it that way.” “You cleared customs in Alexandria disguised as a guy, using a stolen passport?” said David, wonderingly. “Then I threw it into the sea.” “You have no passport on you?” Vita

“I didn’t say that, but I need a fake to stay ahead of his agents.” “Ok.” “OK?” said Vita, pressing her palm against his crotch. “What’s in it for me?” David grinned. “Think of it more as what you’ll go without if I don’t get a passport.” “You’d stoop to anything as obvious as blackmail?” “I’ll stoop to even this,” smiled Vita, tweaking his cock inside his pants, “to get what I have to have.” They crossed al-Hussayn Square to Muski Street and veered off into the fancy crochet of Khan al-Kahlili’s narrow streets and alleys. Vita’s nostrils fl ared at shifting odors of mint, dust, rotting mango, donkey shit, strong Arabic coffee, jasmine. She gulped down the smells and noise and colors of a place where few Westerners venture; where men with coffee-colored skin wear gelabias and skullcaps; where blue sky is blotted out by overhanging merchandise—fabrics of every hue, polished brass and copper kitchen utensils, leather goods, reed cages for fattened pigeons, or straw baskets to house cobras. All sense of direction is lost, nothing makes sense to non-Arabs. Streets are laid out with no rational thought but an instinct for the labyrinthine. David had penetrated the souk only once before so he made many wrong turns, which pleased Vita. They followed an alley until it dead-headed at the entrance to an abandoned 17th century merchant’s mansion. A Romanesque arch with zigzag moldings was fl anked by columns knotted like ropes, and scalloped niches dripping with carved stalactites. From shadow emerged a boy naked except for baggy trousers, dragging a burlap sack which squirmed and ballooned with a life of its own. The boy opened the throat of the sack to let Vita peer down into a writhing Medusa’s nest of scorpions and snakes caught in Moquattam Hills. She looked the boy in the eye, “So?” The boy frowned. He pulled out a black snake about fi ve feet long and wrapped it around his body, letting it glide across the bare skin of his chest. Without warning he lifted the snake’s head, spat into 117 its mouth and pressed with his thumb on the back of the snake’s head. The whole length of the reptile’s body went as straight and stiff as a walking cane. Vita gasped in admiration as the boy grinned and waved the petrifi ed snake about in the air. “Easy,” said David proprietarily, “exert violent pressure on the snake’s primitive brain and you induce a cataleptic state. That’s how Moses fooled the pharaoh.” “Like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments,” said Vita, as David gave the boy a handful of change. The deeper they penetrated Khan al-Kahlili the quieter the great souk became. Alleys narrowed. Cobblestone paving turned to dirt lanes packed hard by centuries of foot traffi c. No more shops or vendor’s stalls, only anonymous three-story buildings where doorways were imprinted with cobalt palms to ward off evil djins. The air was clammy, tomb-like, the only sound the dripping of moisture on stonework. Near the square the bazaar had been embroiled in tremendous uproar and agitation, but here hidden lanes were locked in some strange inertia, drenched in unfathomable silence. Vita stopped to peer into an artisan’s basement workshop. Children sat at rows of tables silently working designs into sheets of brass and copper. “How gorgeous,” she gushed, pointing to the mosaic a little girl was piecing together from chips of wood, ivory and mother-of-pearl. David whispered into Vita’s ear, “She probably works ten hours a day.” “You’d rather have her out in the street with a bagful of snakes to spook tourists?” “These kids are illiterate. They never go to school.” Vita exhaled her breath dismissively. “As if school teaches anything useful. They’re learning to make beautiful things.” Would she take so cavalier an attitude, David naively wondered, if she knew of the vice and criminality fulminating in these alleys and hidden workshops? Vita showed no signs of fear, brushed off his protective hold on her elbow and veered to look at whatever caught her eye. David could not imagine the exhilaration Vita felt being in a place where everyone has something to hide—a hive, he thought, of scum and villany. “Hot shit,” he said, “found it!” Vita

The cobblestone lane was so closely lined on both sides with rowhouses that latticed bay windows almost touched. Old and heavy, these mashrabiyahs were supported by huge, ornately- carved corbels between which fl owed decorative calligraphy. An ostrich stood in the empty lane with its head turned around to scratch its back with its beak. A shaft of sunlight shimmered with dust motes. David stepped into a recessed doorway to ring a buzzer. Vita read the listings on a brass plate: El Katook Lawyer Unwanted Hair Removed by Fatima Mustapha Gyath Work Permits Specialist. A grilled plate rattled open and up popped a face with one eye. David passed his business card through the grill. The face’s hand held it close to the socket that was not a black pit. The lone eye read, ‘Ali Abd Rahman, Fresh Produce, Nicosia, TELEX 15-32-4679.’ The plate slammed shut. Intercom buttons were furiously punched, guttural Arabic erupted. David and Vita were motioned in, then up shadowy stairs. Their wait was a long one for they’d come without an appointment. Admission would’ve been denied had not the name Ali Abd Rahman, David’s Muslim alias, caused the creator of his forged passport to retrieve sensuous memories of the handsome fair Israeli. Mustapha Gyath, a Turk, was a harmless non-entity licensed to prepare papers for the illiterate country people who daily enter Cairo, seeking work in factories. In his secret persona Mustapha Gyath was one of the criminals most sought after by the Egyptian government, known only as The Scorpion. It was The Scorpion who prepared for C.I.A., KGB, and MOSSAD agencies impeccably faked documents designed to embarrass and control various Arab governments: passports, maps, Swiss bank statements, love letters, military documents. Gyath’s forgeries of ancient scabbards pass the carbon dating tests of art museums (the forger’s artisans study designs in the National Museum; carve their own scabbards from real ancient bones pilfered from abandoned cemeteries; feed the artifact to a turkey—one pass through that creature’s formidable digestive track lends an aged and venerable appearance; and bury caches of 119 scabbards in the sands outside the city for a few months to further the aged appearance). No fakery is beyond the capacity of the hidden workshop of the Scorpion: He Who Buries in the Sand, But Whose Sting Is Fatal. “How do you know this man? How did you ever fi nd him?” said Vita. “Business contacts. A friend who consults for our government set me up with him.” “Ah, your MOSSAD,” said Vita faux-knowledgeably, recalling that Christian said Israeli businessmen, known as kula, feed information to their country’s superlative spy agency as a matter of patriotic duty. David shrugged. Vita thought she’d never laid eyes on such an ordinary- looking man as the one who entered the room. David spoke in formal Arabic. “I beg your pardon, Mustapha Gyath, for intruding on your time without fi rst writing.” The Turk responded in a fl at, atonic voice, but from deep within his eyes came a lascivious glint. “The pleasure of seeing you, Ali Abd Rahman, suffi ces.” “My friend needs your help. She needs a passport.” There was some slight change in the pupils of the forger’s eyes, indicating interest or perhaps indicating no interest at all. “You are American, madame?” said Mustapha Gyath in perfect English. “Yes.” “Your husband,” said Gyath, permitting his eyes a swift glance at her antique and obviously rare ring, Samurai in origin, “is rich or infl uential?” “Yes,” said Vita, impressed that her nationality, her exalted marital and social status had been effortlessly comprehended. “We are estranged.” Gyath sat fl awlessly immobile and stared at the desktop with the concentration of some antediluvian reptile. Finally he spoke. “Blank American passports are diffi cult to obtain. It will be expensive.” “Can you do it?” “Yes, madame.” Vita

“How much?” “Seven-thousand U.S. dollars.” David bristled, but Vita put a hand on his thigh to steady him. She looked at the Turk. “Seven thousand, agreed. How many days?” “Five.” “No sooner?” “No sooner, many regrets,” said the forger with fi nality. As Vita never in her life had read any book all the way through she had no way of knowing—but she intuited—she knew that this Turk was le vrai chose, Big Time, surely, the Han van Meegeren* of the Arab world; and she was that kind of egoist who loves nothing more than groveling before one whose talent she judges to surpass her own. This man, Vita thrilled, has behind him an opus magnum of deceit and treachery, yet he had not turned her away. ‘He senses potential in me. I merit his assistance!’ So confi dently she re-assessed David’s future. His neo- Luke Skywalker idealism was getting on her nerves. He’d served his purpose. She was hidden from her husband’s agents and in a week she’d have the new passport. The chamber maid had access to a university laboratory and could get what she needed to take care of Bulon. Still she concluded that it was better to keep David on as a pleasurable enough buffer between herself and that ‘brazen Bedouin muff-diver who acts like she’s carrying her own three-piece set between her legs.’

*Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), considered in Europe to be history’s greatest forger: his “Rembrandts” passed the scrutiny of museum procurers. 121

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lue puffs of smoke and the scent of grilled meats wafted Bfrom under the arcade of Hotel al-Hussayn. Vita chose a café next to a dry cleaners, charmed by the English translation of a banner in its window: ‘LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME!’ Smoke belched from a fl aring oven and stacked up in layers to the arcade’s vaulted ceiling, where punkah fans shuffl ed hot air about. Cloying aromas of lamb, garlic and cigarette smoke fi lled their nostrils. Their ear drums were battered by Arabic pop caterwauling from a radio wired to tinny speakers. As soon as they seated themselves at a corner table, in shade, somewhat cooler if no quieter, they were mobbed by turbaned waiters. “I’d kill for an iced carafe of Stolichnaya,” said Vita when a pitcher of water was ceremoniously placed on the table. “Forget it, Allah forbids,” said David. Turbans hovered. An elderly gentleman in a suit struggled to get his waiter’s attention. Red-faced, the man grabbed the hood of the waiter’s gellabia and when the man whirled about jammed a whole chili pepper into his mouth. Everyone laughed, no one louder than Vita, as she dove into a basket of hot bread Vita circles. “What’s this?” she said, raking pita through a creamy fl esh-colored paste. “Tahina...ground chick pea and yogurt.” “Gourmet peanut butter. Here—” She held a chunk of bread oozing tahina to David’s lips and watched his tongue manipulate the gooey mess into his mouth. Languorously chewing he let his eyes rove over her upper torso which, to the rapacious eyes of surrounding males, was concealed by good hijaab. But as the tahina’s smoky fl avor resonated inside his mouth, David saw that his gaze could penetrate the loosely draped layers of native gauze. He could trace the curves of her naked breasts and sense their perfect roundness, their fullness pressing against wispy fabric—for his eyes only Vita contrived to show bare tit— nipples! He lifted his eyes to her throat, pulsating as she greedily swallowed. “What is it?” said Vita, with the arrival of their main dishes. “Roast pigeon.” “Oy-ve.” Fiery red tomato wedges and mint leaves wreathed whole pigeons, crusty and gold after turning on the oven’s rotisserie, tiny body cavities packed with aromatic rice, giblets and pink peppercorns. Vita attacked with knife and fork, then with her fi ngers. They were mesmerized by the sight of each other’s lips lapping greasy fi ngertips…tongues ejecting bones stripped bare…white teeth picking at morsels of gamy fl esh. Outside, al-Hussayn Square broiled in midday heat. Worshippers huddled in shady keel-arched niches of the Mosque. Farmers’s wives in the park leaned together in their brilliant robes, like wilted geraniums. Heat etherized crowds in the arcade cafes, where cats ceased to prowl and lay sprawled dreaming. The Egyptians gazed at each other through veils of cigarette smoke. Everyone sipped boiling tea (on the theory that it raises the body’s internal temperature while lowering the skin’s), but Vita demanded ice from the waiter. Daintily she sucked on shards. She pressed one against beads of sweat glistening on David’s cheekbone, to watch droplets trickle down under his shirt’s wilted 123 collar. Satiated with honeyed pastries, they sat over demitasses of coffee. They gazed through an arch at blue sky billowing with white cumulus, against which loomed the architectural complexities of al-Hussayn Mosque...nippled-tipped, breast- shaped domes…sturdy, thrusting minarets with rounded caps... curved, embracing stairways...the tight, hair-network of stone lattice in windows…black shadows of deep crevices. David’s hand slipped under Vita’s peasant skirt to caress a bare knee. Her leg shot forward to force his fi ngers higher on her thigh, to within inches of her crotch. His fi ngertips felt moist heat and the spidery brush of pubic hair. Without his having anything to do with it, two fi ngers slipped into the wet channel of her pussy. He glanced at men at adjoining tables—did they realize he was fi nger-fucking this beautiful woman right before their envious, lustful eyes? He croaked, “Let’s go.” Vita squirmed free and rose without speaking. It took them six minutes to reach the Moon Hotel, two minutes to shake free of the stoned bawab, another three minutes to get inside their room. They met at the foot of the bed with four arms and four hands and twenty fi ngers in a frenzy of peeling, stripping, unzipping, unbuttoning, untying, pushing, pulling, sliding, shoving, and tearing. David’s tie got tangled with his belt in the zipper as his hands ploughed through layers of gauze to expose Vita’s breasts. His heart did a drum solo at the sight of them falling free. He cupped them, pressing them together, and rubbed her nipples across bare slabs of his pecs. Vita ran hands down the back of his loosened pants to feel his butt-cheeks. It excited her so, running feverish fi ngers over curved, deeply muscled globes with a marble-like sheen. Stubble burned Vita’s face as David ground his mouth against hers. Heat, there was so much heat! Waves wafted up from the fl oor layered with oriental rugs and tiger-striped with afternoon sunlight through shutters. Sweat oozed over their bodies. Fresh sweat for Vita was the greatest of aphrodisiacs (as well as nature’s own lubricant). She ran her palms over David’s chest, spreading sweat between the cleavage of his pecs, making Vita the honey-skin shiny and slippery. “Ice,” she whispered. “Huh?” “Ice! We need ice—don’t you remember, in the café?” she said, tracing the ridge of his cheekbone with a fi ngertip. “Go get some.” She jumped off the bed, pulling him with her. She thrust the brass ice bucket into his hands and twisted a shocking- magenta scarf around his waist sarong fashion. “The machine’s by the stairs. Hurry!” “I’m naked!” “Allah be praised,” she said, pushing him into the hallway and slamming the door shut. In the adjoining room Cyma stood motionlessly. This was her last room before leaving for the university. She set down a bundle of linen and listened to the low, thrilling chortles emitted by Vita. Her nostrils had fl ared as she decoded sounds that could be made only by two people shucking off their clothes. The student looked at the cheap souk tapestry depicting camels at the foot of the Pyramids, which hung over a sealed door that once connected the rooms. She knew the door on the other side backed the double bed, and was disguised by a paper- appliqué arch over the doorframe that Vita had draped with gauze scarves. Pushing aside the tapestry Cyma examined the old- fashioned latch…that familiar, vital aperture which since childhood had framed images as powerful as a movie close-up. Without the slightest compunction she dropped into a crouch and put her eye to the keyhole. In a world where females are conditioned to view life through the slats of a shutter or a mashribiya screen, it was only natural. The door opened and in trotted the blond Jew brute. His bare legs moved into Cyma’s circular range of vision, fi xed at a point level with the bed’s pillows. Vita squatted naked on her haunches with her back to the keyhole. The brute stood before Vita with a bucketful of ice in his hands, which intrigued the girl. One eye soldered itself to the keyhole. An apricot wisp of gauze fl uttered in currents of hot air stirred by the ceiling fan: a veil of 125 pale gold rippled over the two splendid naked bodies. Vita ripped off the brute’s sarong. The nursing student stared fascinated and repulsed by the grotesque arrangement at the bottom of his torso—that ridiculous, dangling, useless, messy piece of cartilage. She had to concede, as males go, he was a perfect specimen. His physical desirability enraged her, as she watched Vita fi ll her palms and press ice against his chest, running her hands in obsessive, desirous circles over the glistening torso. ‘How he excites her!’ Cyma thought bitterly. She lowered deeper into a crouch and unfastened the top buttons of her smock. How hot it was! Voile curtains hung fl at and lifeless in the furry heat of sun-slatted darkness. To see better, to see more, she pressed against the sealed door with her sandaled feet digging into the stinging synthetic pile of carpet. Sweat oozed between her toes and poured from her throat over her bare breasts under the smock. Through the keyhole she watched the couple kiss. The Jew wrapped both arms around Vita while rubbing her back with shards of ice. Drops of water ran down Vita’s back, rippling musically over the spine’s vertebrae and puddling in the dimples of her buttocks before vanishing into the crack. No woman’s ass, Cyma thought, could be any more tightly and perfectly cleft. The Jew sank to his knees and kept his head at a level that had the maid imagining his lips on Vita’s breasts. His hands snaked around her waist and moved over her ass. A shard glistened as he pressed it into the crack. Cyma soundlessly moaned as the shard disappeared between her legs—he slid the ice into Vita’s pussy! Uttering incomprehensible sounds Vita tumbled back onto the bed and buried her head in the pillow inches from Cyma’s eyes. She thrust her breasts into the air for she knew the girl was watching. Waiting for David she had sensed a presence from behind the sealed-off door and pleasurably imagined the maid at the keyhole. Moaning unnecessarily Vita swept her hands across the mattress until she found a pillow that she hurled away for no reason at all. She visualized the almond eyes and plum lips inches from her tits thrust into the golden light, behind wavering veils of gauze. Vita

Vita’s omnivorous appetites were fueled by her ability to detach herself, as it were, and fl oat in space, watching as she and her partner expertly performed acts of sex. Coupling exhibitionism with narcissistic voyeurism she was able to create and, at the same time, view her own private and profoundly exciting pornography. David held an ice chip between his lips and traced circles around the nipple of fi rst one, then the other of Vita’s breasts. Mauve tips hardened and swelled right before Cyma’s eyes. The maid thrust a hand under her smock and twisted her own nipple. Vita parted her knees and lifted her legs: Cyma’s fury increased as David positioned himself. Never having seen any man other than her father fully erect, she watched the yellow- haired Jew guide his cock into Vita’s pussy. Cyma trembled. How she hated the Jew! She’d love to kill him with her own hands. What joy it would be to sink her talons into his balls and gnaw off his scalp with her fangs! Her face red with hate and lust the girl pushed her smock half-open and pressed her hand down into her crotch, rubbing the heel of her palm against her clitoris—never before had it felt so delicious! Oblivious to the dangers of being caught in such a position she watched the Jew lunge in and out of Vita, glistening with sweat and sex-juice. For someone whose body had been penetrated only by the fi ngers or tongue of another woman, the sight of it, veiled by gold, was devastating. When a creamy ring formed around the base of the Jew’s cock, Cyma collapsed sobbing onto the fl oor into her own tortured ecstasy. 127

16

avid sat on the edge of the bed, watching Vita. He loved Dto look at her sleeping face. He would lean close to breath in the potent odor of newly-grown hair and her body’s natural fragrance, like fresh citrus or grass—none of those female musky scents that clung to Yael in the mornings. He stroked Vita’s cheek, feeling petals of dried salt on her skin from her tears of the night. With a single fi nger he traced the soft in-curve where her lips met. She opened her mouth to suck his fi nger—it made him want to strip off his suit and crawl back in bed with her! Rough sleeper that she was, Vita had shed the sheet and was gripping it between her thighs. She lay on her side with one arm drawn up and a hand resting like a bent twig on her breasts, the other gracefully extended toward the fl oor. David watched the pulse beat evenly at her wrist and marveled how, after such nocturnal turbulences as voracious sex, cacophonous calls-to- prayer from neighboring minarets, the nightmare sounds Vita made in the sticky darkness of their bed, the clawing at his chest as shudders wracked her body—how she calmly sleeps now! Outside their shuttered window minaret loudspeakers blasted: “I praise the perfection of God, the Desired, the Existing, the Single, the One, the Sole!” Seven times a day the faithful are summoned to worship, but for David it was a reminder that again he was late getting off Vita to work. At the door he turned for a last look at Vita’s naked body among twisted sheets. He failed to notice the intense expression on her sleeping face. She was not asleep, nor had she been for some time. She lay with her eyes closed, breathing shallowly through her mouth, waiting for him to leave.

* * *

The student-maid kept near the mashrabiyah in a front room, watching for David to leave. As his broad shoulders disappeared among crowds in the alley, Cyma would sneer with contempt, ‘Gonads on the prowl. Good riddance!’ She would take Vita her breakfast. It was expected now, the brass tray with coffee, a roll and butter, fruit and a fresh blossom. She would fi nd Vita wrapped in a sarong before the dressing table mirror. While Vita greedily ate they admired clothes and fabrics she kept fi nding in the souk. She demanded fastidious housekeeping of others, but not of herself—clothes were spread everywhere, on display so that she could try combinations to suit her mood. She would parade about improvising outfi ts, draping a length of cloth from her chin, seductively wrapping it around her torso. She and Cyma had many laughs about violating good hijaab, because al-Azhar mullahs admonished women in radio broadcasts against “out-fi ts that excite vice by displaying bodily protrusions.” They collapsed giggling into each other’s arms whenever their creations defi nitely called too much attention to Vita’s “bodily protrusions.” The student had to fi ght the urge to reach and touch out-thrust breasts veiled by wispy fabric. With Cyma, Vita regained the insouciant femininity she’d suppressed in order to emulate a college boy’s machismo. Her voice reclaimed its crystal clarity. Her gestures again became fl uid and graceful. She reveled in experimentation with tunics, scarves and shawls, for the layering of garments shielded her face and obscured her true height, weight and other physical details. She could pass Christian himself in an alley and go unrecognized. The intimacy affected by Vita infl amed strong passions 129 in Cyma. Such uninhibited capering with this beautiful foreign woman wrecked havoc with her emotions. Sometimes it seemed like a dream as she watched Vita stride back and forth before the window, where sunlight fi ltered through fl uttering voile curtains originally red, now bleached pale to silvery pink. ‘Do you like this?’ or ‘Is this better?’ demanded Vita, a whirling black shadow against the sun-drenched curtains. Vita displayed herself with supreme shamelessness, but never appeared entirely naked before Cyma, nor permitted embraces to endure any longer than what was sisterly. The closest Cyma could get to Vita’s nudity was sitting beside her on the hassock before the dressing table. When it came to new ways of applying makeup Vita’s attention span was limitless. Exploiting this, Cyma introduced her to kohl. The girl’s skill with the potions and implements of cosmetics was as great as any she’d ever have as a nurse; for she knew that in beauty lies power—as some writer* said, had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter the whole face of the world would have been changed. Kohl, the eyeliner of Nefertiti and Cleopatra, was fi rst made fi ve-thousand years ago by burning olive pits inside sealed copper pots. The ever-so-fi ne powder was stored in vials sculpted from amber or gold into the shape of exotic birds. Inside the vial the kohl adhered to a stick which was applied to the inner lids— but the diffi culty! Kohl is more subtle than any modern eyeliner and the lightness of touch must be honed. Vita’s fi rst attempts were calamitous, but she practiced. She tolerated Cyma’s demonstrations, pressed close on the hassock with heir thighs rubbing, their eyes inches from each other’s. Cyma thought she might be having a stroke there was such ringing in her ears, a pounding of her heart and tightness in breathing. The Moon Hotel—Khan al-Kahili—the City of Cairo—the whole world vanished as she lost herself in eyes made more god-like by makeup she had applied with her own hands. All existence was contained within Vita’s pupils with their glorious autumn colors of amber and russet, and the crackling inside their maroon depths of secret fi res.

*Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Vita

* * *

David left Vita behind in their room, but Vita did not leave David. Images of her fi lled his head throughout the day, everywhere he went in the City. While his taxi crept along the raised highway with the driver puffi ng on a cigarette, hawking up phlegm and singing along with the blaring radio, David stared out at smoky chaos and conjured up visions of Vita’s moist fl esh, her nakedness, her eyes...those wide-set, puma eyes... At Tahrir Square, the red block letters BULON MADAGASCEAU S.A., on the company’s headquarters in Egypt, were a reminder of Vita’s life with her husband and his powerful friends, that part of Vita which couldn’t belong to him. Plunging into the subway’s fumy hole he was hit by a gritty blast of air that seemed to be whirling in off the Sahara. The escalator was taking one of its frequent days off and the OUT OF ODOR sign made him grin—how Vita loved these maladroit translations into English. Once he swiped for her the placard posted in the lobby of a downtown building: THE LIFT IS BEING FIXED FOR THE NEXT DAY. DURING THAT TIME WE REGRET THAT YOU WILL BE UNBEARABLE. The train surged with a whoosh! and tunnel walls went black, lights fl ickered, and Vita’s face kept coming between the passengers and his eyes. Her mouth, throat and breasts rose up before him with the sharpest clarity like a movie close-up. In these private mental porn reels he could choreograph movements and make every part of her body respond to his touch in a way that made him want to cum. Uncontrollably, lust-attacks struck in public. At a distributor’s offi ce in Nasser City he watched the controller examine his invoices. The woman was in no hurry. Her heavy, pharoaic face betrayed as much interest in his prices and shipping dates as if she were reading the phone book. Occasionally she grunted and jiggled the gold bracelets on her wrist. Fluorescent light glinted palely on gold...the glint of gold... the glint of the gold cigales at Vita’s earlobes...the controller fades away into a luminous golden mist in which Vita materializes in 131 lilac twilight air above his face...slivers of gold clicking back and forth from her ears. Her eyes hover just above his and her lips move. He can’t hear what she’s saying, but he knows, he knows what she’s saying—the words ‘eat me’ reverberate through the twilight room in his mind, ‘eat me hard!’ Remembrance of this inviting obscenity caused his cock to do its obelisk imitation inside his pleated trousers. Sweat oozed over his chest. Helpless to stave it off, his vision fi lled with the wide-screen image of Vita sitting on her haunches, straddling his face...his hands gripping her hips and pulling her cunt down over his mouth, his vision blurrs with the rich cinnamon color of pubic hair. His tongue starts in the lower folds, working from side to side, licking with long, upward strokes, opening up her cunt fully. The tongue moves toward the top of her slit, teasing it; then using his hands to part the outer lips he touches her clitoris with the tip of his tongue, putting the glistening knob, shiny and hard as an unripe berry, between his lips and gently sucking. He pushes his mouth hard against the soft folds of wet, sopping fl esh, and shakes his head from side to side, and laps in the fl ow of salted- honey juices. Red-faced David looked up from his lap into the face of the controller, glaring, waiting for an answer to some unheard question.

* * *

Vita expressed curiosity about Arabic perfumes, so one afternoon Cyma announced that her class had been canceled (it had not) and she would take Vita to al-‘Atabar Square. Cyma had found it odd that a rich woman would travel with no French perfumes. Odder still, Vita never seemed to wear any sort of artifi cial scent, but exuded instead her own naturally intoxicating smell. The nursing student cared not at all about Vita’s taste in fragrances, but to make an excursion and be seen together in public she saw as the fi rst step in getting Vita to the hammam. She was cautious though and left by the kitchen door, while Vita as usual went out past the owner in the lobby. Sitting Vita on his tire in the street the bawab watched with speculative glee as they rejoined and, holding hands, faded into streaming crowds. They slipped deep into Khan al-Kahlili…past souk al- Ni’heh with the ear-splitting clamor of coppersmiths…through clouds of acrid spice aromas in souk al-Ittereen…under brocades hanging overhead and catching glints of sunlight, in the Market of the Golden Threads. Stepping through a gloomy archway they entered the most secretive market in the city, the quarter of perfumiers. Mud streets lined by tottering houses hiding behind carved wooden lattices. Twisting alleys so narrow they were little more than dark tunnels blocked by chicken coops. Men wore grubby pajamas or long nightshirts. Women with heavy, protuberant faces were hooded in voluminous black shawls. Men and women alike scrutinized Vita as she passed in her artfully draped tunic and scarves, while Vita inwardly praised herself for being so ‘at home in the real Cairo.’ Al-’Atabar Square is a market fi lled with masses of blossoms grown by farmers’s wives in rich Nile mud, under the strong African sun. Normally indifferent to scenery Vita was dazzled by the brilliant scherzo of color: purple iris, rich rose, fi re-red gladioli. Amid mud and dust, she thought, so much fabulous color! The perfume shops are in rowhouses less than eight- feet-wide but up to sixty feet deep, covering the same space as plots originally rented to medieval vendors by Jarkas al-Kahlili. Successive generations of the same families have sold the rarest essences to Marmelukes, Ottoman Turks, Napoleon’s soldiers, lords of the British Empire, and today’s oil rich sheiks. A gimlet-eyed merchant ushered Cyma and Vita into a cubicle and seated them on fat ottomans. Under a tulip-shaped art deco lamp he laid out trays loaded with vials. Air rippled with the scents of musk, jonquil, patchouli, tuberose, honeysuckle, ambergis, bergamot, and sandalwood. Vita was quick to detect the most prevalent of all scents—vanilla—plain old household vanilla. “It’s the base note of most fragrances,” said Cyma, “because of childhood associations. Everyone’s mother smelled of vanilla.” 133

It was true, Vita bitterly thought. She remembered her mother telling Father to make sure sellers put an apple pie in the oven before showing their house, as buyers would be sure to respond enthusiastically to the smells of cinnamon and baking dough. Vita herself had hated that cloying, vanilly smell her mother gave off with the pastry bag dribbling icing down her forearms and her cheesy gingham dress splashed with powdered sugar. She had been mortifi ed when her mother turned to selling her pies and cakes to neighbors after Father’s real estate business went bust. As self-analysis was alien to Vita she failed to connect the sweet smells of baking with her aversion to perfume. The elemental component of vanilla subconsciously brought back the pain she’d felt the day Father had driven away with his belongings thrown in the car’s back seat. Seeing the unreadable look in Vita’s eyes, Cyma resisted questioning her directly. She tailored her pedantry more like a fi sherman spreading his net wide, hoping to blindly bring in an unknown and elusive catch. “The skilled parfumier,” she said in her university student-voice, “begins with the happy smells of childhood, smells from the kitchen and garden. He adds the subtle and secretive scents of adolescence, when the sex glands begin to mature. Floral and herbal oils by themselves are too sweet and don’t actually stimulate the pheromone-receptor cells in our nose, so for this the perfumier adds some truly terrible substances. Perfumes are a love-hate conundrum.” Vita’s eyes widened. “A love-hate conundrum?” “To repel and attract at the same time, great perfumes do that. They contain some awful things.” “Such as?” “Animal secretions, mostly.” “What kind of secretions?” “Nasty. Civet is one.” “Civet comes from where? Pretend you’re in class—tell!” “Civet is taken from the wildcat’s...anus.” “Surely with civet we’ve touched on the hate-end of the conundrum,” said Vita. “Tell me another.” “...castoreum...” “Dare I ask...” Vita

“...scrapped from the balls of deer.” “Can’t these delectable substances be made synthetically?” “Civet is made in the lab, castoreum, no.” “Are any of them...harmful?” Cyma looked at Vita. “There are toxins everywhere in plant and animal life. In concentrated form normally harmless herbal substances can kill.” “Name one.” Vita’s eyes glittered like shiny bits of jagged glass. “One so common you wouldn’t think of as being poisonous.” Cyma felt Vita’s thigh press against her own on the ottoman. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I have a friend at school whose uncle killed his family and himself during the summer fl ood, when the crops were ruined. He put neagala root into a goat stew instead of ginger. Women abort with Croton tiglium and Plumbago rosea, even though in mild doses both substances can cure dyspepsia, fever and rheumatism. The most common poison is mulukhiya. It grows along the Nile, we make a soup from it, but in concentrated form it’s very dangerous. Not as strong as cobra venom, but stronger than poisonous mushrooms. It’s an herb Europeans call Jew’s mallow.” “Jew’s...mallow...?” smiled Vita, lewdly over-enunciating. “What form does it take, liquid or powder?” “Liquid.” “Only liquid?” “Yes.” “Is it hard to make?” “No.” “No?” “All you need is a Soxhlet continuous extractor.” “Which you have at the university.” “Yes, in the lab.” “You could do it.” “Do what?” “Make concentrated Jew’s mallow.” Cyma looked Vita in the eyes. “I could.” As they left al-’Atabar Square she took Vita’s arm. “This is the best time at the hammam, before it fi lls with children.” 135

“No,” said Vita sharply, “not now.” Cyma’s ire matched Vita’s own. “You don’t want to go with me, do you?” Vita was more impressed than offended by this university girl who presumed to imagine she could blithely sweep an American ambassador’s wife off into a bathhouse to be served drugged tea—then, to put it in its baldest terms, have her pussy tongued. Also Vita was titillated. She’d never done it. She’d had a man’s fi ngers, tongue, or dick inside every orifi ce of her body, but she’d never gone lesbo. David’s Hallelujah Chorus- style stroking, fi ne as it was, was beginning to pale. Vita longed for some erotic treat to freshen her palate. Would licking-the- loop with this Bedouin princess have the same pungent kick, say, of a white truffl e as opposed to black, bitter wild asparagus to the usual garden variety? This was not to say that Vita intended to indulge her curiosity before fi rst bringing Cyma to heel. Fatima Nightingale, with her access to a Soxhlet-whatever, must be made to desire her body so terribly she’d do anything. Vita pretended to study her watch. “He expects me back— he gets furious. We’ll go to the hammam...when he’s out of the way...” The nursing student’s eyes hardened.

* * * “Yael?” Feelings of guilt drove David to the telecommunications center at American University, as overseas calls on the Cairo system can take up to thirty-six hours to connect. The voice most familiar to him, after his mother’s, sounded faintly from Haifa, hundreds of miles across the eastern Mediterranean. “David? David! Where are you?” “Cairo.” “What’s wrong?” “What do you mean?” “You never called before.” “I was thinking of you.” Laughter. “How sweet!” Vita

“What are you doing?” “This second? Unpacking. I just got back from Caesarea with Aunt Vera.” “How is she?” “The same horrible bitch she’s always been, but she loves Caesarea. Took her binoculars and spent hours birdwatching.” David snorted, “Your Aunt Vera wouldn’t know a magpie from a bald eagle. She uses those binoculars to peek.” “That’s not true—” “—it is true. She peeks. She’s a peeker. She probably examined every piece of furniture in the villas up by the Castle.” “Well, she liked what she saw and wants to have our wedding there.” Silence over the radio link. “She says, being halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa, it’s convenient for everyone. She’s thinking of the whole family.” “Since when does she think about anyone but the illustrious Freidmans? You know what she says about my family. ‘Those Kinnors, what a tribe! Grabbing at chicken wings and sinking their teeth in with fat drooling down their chins! And the sounds they make!’” “You’re cruel. She’s never that blatant.” “She is. I heard her say it at Ariel Yahuda’s bar mitzvah.” “It’s true what she says. Anyway, she’ll help pay for the French caterer from the Tower Restaurant.” “Another way she hopes to intimidate the Kinnors— French food. Why can’t we have kishkas, kneidelach dumplings and honey-poppyseed cake?” “We’ll see.” A moment of silence in Egypt, over the airwaves, and in Israel, then “...Yael—do you miss me?” “There’s too much to do to miss you with the wedding three months away.” “…at night..?” “Oy-ve, business must be terrible.” “Don’t be a bitch like Vera.” “I get up at fi ve, go to bed at nine, I never stop. There’s no time, beautiful darling, to moon over you. If I knew you weren’t 137 coming back—if something happened—don’t be morbid! We’ve always been together, it’ll never be any different. How can I miss you when you’re always there?” David said nothing, nor did he hesitate to take his fi rst step on a new path; from now on deceit and treachery would guide his actions. “Will you be back Wednesday week like you planned?” said Yael. “…later…a few days...” “OK.” “I’ll see you then.” “Of course you will, beautiful dummy, I love you.” “...I love you...”

* * *

Vita had put together a makeup case in Khan al-Kahlili, but her favorite skin cream could be bought only at a boutique in the Meridien. She had to risk a trip downtown, thronged with tourists, among them, possibly, her husband’s agents working with ID photos. She needed Cyma to enhance her cover. The student skipped another class, even though she was on a government stipend she could lose from truancy. Escorting Vita to the Meridien Hotel was not to be missed. Vita hailed a taxi in al-Hussayn Square and bundled the girl inside, dressed in her best milaya and headscarf. Cyma had never before ridden in a taxi and sat stiffl y, staring at clogged traffi c in a fog of exhaust smoke. When the taxi burst into glittery July sun on the banks of the yellow Nile, everything suddenly looked clean and monumental: bronze statues on Kasr el-Nil Bridge, the Opera House at the tip of Zamalek Isle, and concrete-and-glass hotels and embassies lining the riverbank. The taxi turned onto a balustraded bridge over the channel between the east bank and al- Roda Isle. Interlaced branches of jacaranda shed blue blossoms over quiet streets, where policemen in colonial shorts and berets directed traffi c at the intersections. Brown-skinned boys ran along a sidewalk kicking a soccer ball. Vita

Cyma, born in Bulaq ghetto, stared at the green lawns of mansions overlooking the Nile, with whitewashed walls half- buried under cascading bougainvillea, golden, vermilion and fuchsia. Bitterly she watched a tall black soufragi, turbaned, gloved, and with a scarlet sash at his narrow waist, serve crystal glasses of iced hibiscus tea to a party of women in pants suits. Under the Meridien’s portico she clung to Vita, whose demeanor grew disdainful as they brushed past doormen. In a sleek boutique it took only minutes to purchase the white jar with the silver cap from Montreaux, Switzerland, which contains the richest skin cream in the world, made with sheep placenta. Cyma watched Vita pay for the three-ounce container enough money to feed an Egyptian family for a month. ‘Decadent,’ she thought, ‘but glamorous.’ Vita led Cyma by the arm into a garden with giant sycamore and banyan trees. She stopped a handsome soufragi and ordered glasses of iced fruit juices. Sipping, they strolled an allee ablaze with scarlet fl ame trees. Limestone steps strewn with yellow and violet blossoms led down into the brown waters of the Nile. They sat on cool stone with their toes touching the edge of the water. Cyma spoke fi rst. “I see for myself now what it’s like to be rich.” Vita found this distasteful. She expected money to roll in quietly, unceasingly, as it had always done. Money nourished the fantasy elements in her existence, it guaranteed continued unreality. All she had to do was safeguard her beauty, which she considered more as a corporate asset. But she didn’t want to talk about money. Cyma continued, “It means freedom to go anywhere, be anything. You are accepted in Al-’Atabar Square, Roda Island, al-Hussayn Square. Wherever you are, people know you’re rich and that makes you free.” Vita gazed across the Nile to the Hilton Hotel where a double-decker ferry was fi ghting a strong current to dock. “It’s not that simple,” she said. “There are traps.” “Traps?” Cyma raised an eyebrow. “Traps. Deals you make with men that are not easy to get out of.” 139

“Men! How can you make deals with men? They’re pigs!” “They’re not animals,” said Vita, regarding Cyma closely. “They’re children.” “Men are brutal, children aren’t.” “Men are more childish than brutal. At their most brutish, their fi xations remain infantile. Scientists who built the fi rst atomic bomb called the detonation tower ‘the cradle.’ The bomb was ‘Big Boy.’ The plane that dropped it was named after the pilot’s mother. Boys, all of them, worrying right up to the end about having a bomb or corporation or Rolex or dick bigger than everyone else’s.” Charmed, Cyma burst out, “Then why did you marry! Why do you stay with another man? Why do you think I’m half killing myself to get through nursing school? Freedom! To have my own paycheck. To live in my own apartment. To eat only when I’m hungry and sleep only when I’m tired. To share my own bed with whomever I please. Why do you stay with men?” Vita confabulated. “I’ve been stupid. My mother was stupid. She never did anything except by using men, my poor dumb father, then Lance. I’ve been like her, until now. Now I know better! And you can help me, Cyma.” “Me? How? Tell me!” Drawing from her fathomless well of insincerity, Vita faced the girl and took both her hands into her own. “Do you promise to do whatever I ask?” “Anything. By the Prophet’s daughter, Zuneida, I promise to do what you ask.” Vita removed her hands from the girl’s, and stared as though hypnotized by the ferry rotating near the Hilton’s dock. Its big screws churned up mud from the river bottom which spread like tentacles across the water’s surface. “Mallow,” said Vita. “Jew’s mallow.” Cyma was still. Vita also, but inwardly she thrilled at how easy it was to make this arrogant university girl believe anything (‘Poison one of the most accomplished fucks I’ve ever had?’). She leaned close to softly but insistently intone into the girl’s ear, “Get me a half-pint bottle of concentrated Jew’s mallow. Then Vita when he’s out of the way—we’ll go to the baths.”

* * *

David cut short seeing wholesalers in the evenings to rush back to that great hubble-bubbling alfresco salon, al-Hussayn Square, where Vita waited. He wanted to be with her again. To sit with her in a cafe over demitasses, while surrounded by housewives passionately indulging in vicious gossip and intrigue with their kohl-lined eyes fl ashing behind scarves and sunglasses. Children skipped through the arcade making imitation fart sounds with their hands. A little boy, frantic to get the attention of his father talking with a group of men, ran around, lifted his father’s gellabia and shouted up into his rear end. A man with a tambourine promenaded his red-assed baboon, while a dwarf sat at the taxi stand playing a mandolin. Slanting rays of sunset turned the Moquattam Hills rose and the sandstone facade of al-Hussayn Mosque gold. Violet shadow fi lled the recesses of keel-arched windows. Slender, pointed minarets, like missiles on their launch pads, were festooned with strings of colored light bulbs. Vita and David got their legs sprinkled by the water wagon wetting the dusty street. “Did you know,” she said, “they get big baksheesh for spraying drawn blinds at LuLu’s cabaret with cold water scented with rose petals? Every hour. Isn’t that fabulous? Rose-scented air to keep the belly dancers happy!” “How’d you learn that?” “Cyma told me.” “Who’s Cyma?” “The room maid.” “With the doe-eyes and an ass tight as a rubber tire?” “Yes...Bambi Goodyear’s a university student. I chatted her up, to bolster her confi dence.” “You’re not as terrible as make out to be.” “I do what I can,” said Vita cryptically. For dinner they would have a salad only, to avoid taking the edge off their favorite nocturnal activity by over-eating. They joined strolling crowds of women in tightly wrapped 141 milayas, swinging fat buttocks and jangling their bracelets and ankle amulets. Men in dirty gellabias peddled pornographic handkerchiefs, postcards and plastic toys. There was the underground, ever-fl owing river of sex and of unsatiated appetites. Waving fi stfuls of money crowds stampeded the candy wagon, a canopied, mule-drawn extravaganza of fl ashing lights and calligraphic scribbles in mad-Van Gogh colors. Glass cases with shelves backed by mirror and fl uorescent strips were crammed with golden packets of every possible combination of sugar and honey with almonds, dates, coconut, and pomegranate. In the park a crowd circled a Neopolitan man and his wife in tailcoats and top-hats. David put his arms around Vita’s waist as the vaudeville couple leeringly performed an ancient ditty:

‘O fairies, o buggers, o eunuchs exotic! Come running, come running, ye anal erotic.

‘With soft little hands, with fl exible bums, Come, o castrati, unnatural ones!’*

The hot African night rang out with the frenetic, arrhythmic tintinnabulation of singing, hand-clapping, whistles, music from hundreds of radios, fi nger-cymbals, and hand-drums. Country women let out occasional zagarits, those hair-raising, ululating cries of joy produced by a sharp utterance coupled with quick, tremulous motions of the tongue. Vita pressed close to David with her thigh brushing his, her twining fi ngers insistently rubbing the side of his hand. Her hand snaked around his waist and dropped to stroke his butt. With lips touching his earlobes she would murmur some incomprehensible utterance, then break into a run to lead him on a chase through alleys veiled

*Satyricon by Petronius (27 - 66 AD), translation by William Arrowsmith. Vita in dense chocolate shadows. Their shrill laughter and sandals slapping against cobblestones reverberated against dark shuttered buildings with the ring of anarchy. Their room at the back of the Moon Hotel was stifl ing with the terrible heat of the day. The ceiling fan, dating possibly from the time of Tuthmosis III, did little to cool their naked fl esh so Vita engineered a solution better than ice. In sarongs they climbed a ladder Cyma had shown her in the hall linen closet; pushing open a trapdoor they climbed onto the hotel’s fl at roof. Powdery dried mud squished between their toes as they threw down blankets to make a pallet. Shedding sarongs they tumbled together with entangled arms and legs, fi erce embraces that bruised their bodies and made their bones crack. They remained oblivious to a panoply of stars blinking and shimmering, none brighter than al-Kalb, the Dog-Headed Guardian of the Horizon, burning with its malignant fl esh-hued glow. An occasional shooting star traced an arc above minarets and domes. At this hour in the old quarter shadowy rooftops were abandoned even by goats. Naked in cooler air David and Vita made no effort to stifl e yelps and moans. Their mingling limbs resembled a group of Hindu statues caught in a demonic whirlwind of madly twisting, bending legs and arms, fl ying off in all directions with mamboistic fervour. Between wracking orgasms they would clasp each other with legs interlocked, nipples brushing, and an inch of blue-white light between their faces. They would stare wordlessly into each other’s eyes. David knew that rationalizing, justifying, denying were no good. He knew he ought to soak his dick in rubbing alcohol, pack his bag and get the hell home. But he couldn’t do it. He craved sex with the pertinacity of a starved animal. He desired Vita to the point of frenzy. Lust had eaten away inside him, gutted him, and left him bound to her despite the atavistic premonition that it would end miserably. He was risking everything—for what! He clasped her shoulders with both hands and begged her to say something, but Vita would raise her head to mutely stare into the deep upper darkness. 143

17

o make housebirds sing more sweetly Cairenes line their Tcages with mirrors, to give them “mates.” The same illusion works at Fishawi’s. The nine-hundred-year-old teahouse is hung everywhere with mirrors: big rectangular mirrors in wood frames, slender gilt Empire mirrors, mirrors of every shape and era. Mirrored alcove walls create a labyrinth of arches, tables and chairs where none exists. A handful of patrons becomes a mob; each fractured refl ection adds its own energy to the noisy fray. But nothing can be seen clearly as there are no windows or natural light. The most rays from ancient crystal chandeliers can do is feebly carve out from gloom the curve of an arch, the loop of a waterpipe tube, or the hook of a man’s nose. The faces and bodies of endlessly shifting crowds remain insubstantial shapes moving through cumulus clouds of Cleopatra cigarette smoke. Waiters hiss to clear a path. The air smells like a lion’s cage at the zoo, so a crippled girl circulating to sell jasmine blossom- necklaces does good business. Men suck on their nargilehs, each exhalation of breath releasing a musical bubbling of water; they are the old-fashioned kind brought from Mecca with incised brass stands, fat glass bowls, and brightly-colored tubes. Fishawi’s regulars are mostly harmless shopkeepers, artisans, or students who live and work nearby and drop in to Vita gossip and enjoy their daily rations of hash. Other habitues are more sinister and the State Security Investigation Unit listens in. Government agents seldom score for it is impossible to monitor illicit activities of crowds that fi ll tables at all hours of the day and night. What’s the use of hidden cameras where faces or documents can be glimpsed only in half-shadow, or as multiple refracted jags from mirrors? Bribed waiters, even those with the sharpest ears, cannot penetrate the meaning of mono-syllabic conversations held by men ostensibly playing cards, with a slow and hash-induced intensity in dim pools of light swirling with blue-gray wisps of smoke. Vita spent what little time she had mercifully free of Cyma or David here in the old teahouse. She knew it was foolish to call unnecessary attention to herself, but she couldn’t resist trying out her new Mata Hari persona among scheming men who accepted her presence and whatever secret business she might be about. From doormen at al-Hussayne Hotel Skip heard of the souk’s most venerable teahouse, the one hidden from the vulgar hordes of pilgrims and tourists, yet cosmopolitan enough to tolerate the presence of women. He had checked in four or fi ve days running and immediately recognized Vita when he fi rst saw her enter—how could he not? Every detail of her beautiful face was imprinted on his brain, but it was the artistic drapings that gave her away. Not the style of a local woman, not real hijaab. It was a sham. The Interpol man’s cobalt eyes narrowed. ‘So clever, but she can’t stay away from this Casablanca-looking dump.’ He slipped to a back table keeping his head averted from her direction. Christian had forewarned him of his wife’s remarkable extrasensory perception, so he didn’t let his thoughts focus on her. In the periphery of his vision the Interpol policeman watched refl ected copies of Vita in the ocular maze, sitting, reading, as though lost in a daydream. She slumped with a fringed shawl shielding her face. She studied her newspaper with an expression that, if seen, would’ve appeared simultaneously astonished, yet smug—a week in Cairo and already fate was pointing the way just as it had done in Athens! On page one of the International Herald-Tribune was 145 a photograph of an ancient statue laying on the ground; a small inset photo showed smiling Herve Bulon shaking hands with the president of Egypt. CACHE OF STATUES FOUND UNDER TEMPLE AT LUXOR French Industrialist To Pick Up Tab Vita pushed aside her gold-ringed glass of tea to read. LUXOR--REUTERS SERVICE--During routine work, laborers on Tuesday unearthed a trove of statues which has lain hidden for sixteen centuries under this crown jewel of temples on the Nile fl oodplain.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni called the discovery “the most important since World War II.”

The statues will be offi cially presented to the nation June 29, in ceremonies at the temple led by President Nasser. With the president will be industrialist Herve Bulon, of Bulon-Madagasceaux A.G., who has promised to underwrite the cost of a new wing to the Luxor museum to house the statues.

This small desert town has begun clean-up operations to welcome President Nasser and a host of foreign offi cials, including British Museum Director Lord David Lytton-Eckersley, French Minister of Culture Andre Melroux, and the fl amboyant Greek Minister of Culture, Galina Galleopi. “This is a very exciting discovery,” Hosni said. “It’s like fi nding a stash of beautiful furniture that escaped burning in the French Revolution—sitting in an antechamber at Versailles.”

The minister was referring to the fact that millions of tourists in the past decade have walked over the magnifi cent treasure buried right beneath their feet. The discovery was a matter of “pure luck,” according to Hosni. Worried that rising temple, offi cials sent workmen out to collect soil samples from the courtyard’s north-east corner. Workmen drilled three feet before fi nding the fi rst statue. A total of twenty statues have been located so far, the largest being eight feet tall and said to represent the pharoah Amenhotep III, who ordered the temple built in 1550 B.C.

Vita

Vita’s interest evaporated as the article petered out into genealogical details of gods and pharaohs. She turned to the sidebar on Herve Bulon and noted that it made no mention of his factories being a chief cause of the rising groundwater table, which threatens antiquities along the Nile. ‘Nothing but lifestyle fl uff,’ she sniffed, ‘…the mansion on Rue Faubourg, the stud farm in Kentucky, the monster yacht at Monte Carlo, and sporting companions from the international diplomatic community— bastard Christian!’ The sidebar informed Vita that Bulon would occupy a suite at Luxor’s premier hotel, the Winter Haven. His usual extravagances when traveling included a corps of bodyguard aides-de-camp, telex and espresso machines, and his own supply of bottled water and Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee—“…the tycoon refuses to drink any coffee but his own…” Vita looked positively radiant as she read the sidebar’s conclusion: By underwriting the cost of housing this newly- discovered magnifi cent treasure, Herve Bulon is doing the people of Egypt a great favor.

But will his generosity be rewarded with A CURSE? In 1923, Lord Carnavon fi nanced the excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamen, also in Luxor. Within three months of the tomb’s opening, the British lord died mysteriously in Cairo--reputedly from an insect bite. Five other people involved in the tomb’s opening also died under unusual circumstances.

Will the CURSE OF THE PHARAOH rise from the shadows of the past to stalk today’s playboy tycoon? The glee Vita felt reading this tabloid trash was tempered by the intrusion of warning signals. Someone was watching, hidden in the smoky glitter of the mirrored teahouse. Putting money on the table she rose, walked away, then paused and returned for the folded newspaper she’d left, slipping it into a fold of her tunic. Skip debated. It was too soon to fl ush his quarry. Her lair was nearby, he was reasonably sure he could pin that down 147 later. More important was to learn what she’d been reading with enough interest to circle—all the mirrors had picked up that deliberate action, done with great concentration, and caught in multiple images—using an eyeliner pencil to highlight some phrase—what! As Vita melted into alley crowds he found a copy of the Herald-Tribune. He studied the front page below the fold with the paper turned from right to left, as she’d held the paper. It makes no sense, Skip thought, there’s nothing but a story on statues found in Luxor. An archaeological dig holding the interest of the glamorous Mrs. Granger? He forwarded his report by American Express courier to Christian Granger in Athens. Discreetly he noted that “visual identifi cation has been made and the subject shows nothing more than usual touristic interests, local color in the markets and antiquities, etc.” How much more suggestive the report would’ve been had Christian come clean with him and fully confi ded about Reichenbach’s death and his fears for Bulon. The Interpol man would’ve been alerted, alarmed had he seen the phrase Vita highlighted with her eyeliner, stabbing the paper with exclamation points: “...refuses any coffee but his own...” Vita

18

‘ EET ME AT THE CITADEL’ was scrawled in shock- Mred lipstick across the dressing table mirror. ‘Right,’ David thought, ‘the highest open spot in the City with a sandstorm coming.’ Stripping off his suit he studied Vita’s elegant copperplate super-imposed over the refl ection of the room’s voluptuous disorder. Not like Yael, he thought, whose clothes were folded and put away in a closet scented with lavender; whose modest dressing table was covered by a fringed tallit, with silver hairbrushes and a few bottles of perfume and makeup lined in neat rows. When he’d met Vita, at the Cecil, she was traveling with a knapsack full of men’s clothes. How fast she collected beautiful things and with such abandon. Her dressing table was barely visible under a spangled convolvulus of cut-glass vials of emollients, pots of makeup, pencils and brushes, unidentifi able (for a man) toilette implements, and souk trinkets of coral, amber, ebony and mother-of-pearl. Tugging on jeans David noticed papers tucked in among feminine clutter…papers he hadn’t noticed before. Unable to resist the impulse, his fi ngers rifl ed through…receipts…Upper Nile tourist brochures…a ticket—he pulled out a one-way, fi rst class rail ticket to Luxor. 149

‘She’s leaving without saying a goddamn word!’ He slammed down the ticket and yanked on a T-shirt.

* * *

The bawab sat in the lobby cleaning his pipe. The parrot watched from its perch while imitating the sound of a bubbling nargelih. The bird switched to its door-knocking imitation with the sound of David’s sandals clattering down the steps. His father’s battered bomber pilot’s jacket fl apped open. He tossed the key down with such violence that the bawab felt impelled to leap up and do his little jig of agitation. “She’s gone!” he screeched. “By the tattered and festering foreskin of the Prophet, she’s gone out.” “I know,” David snapped. “She left a message.” “The lioness has gone out by herself this time...” “So?” “...often she goes with someone else.” “Who?” The bawab rolled his eyes and lewdly touched the corners of his lips with the tip of his tongue. “She goes into the souk with—with that—“ “With who?” “—that sharmouta, that dirty rag,” said the bawab, eyes bulging. “Who are you talking about? Make sense, man.” “That slit-slavering chamber maid!” David pushed past the bawab, thinking him mad.

* * *

Scraps of newspaper whipped across the empty parking lot in the Muqattam foothills. Hot gritty air clawed at his face. Wind tried to rip the pound note from his hand as he slipped it through the cab driver’s cracked window. The khamsin! The satanic summer wind with a Christian name that blows during the fi fty days between Easter and July, bombarding the villages and cities Vita of Egypt with sandstorms. David dreaded having sand weigh down his eyelids, scorch the membranes of his throat, and turn his eyes as red as conjunctivitis. Overhead loomed the battlements of al-Qal ‘al-Gabal, or the Citadel of the Mountain, which since the twelfth century rule of Salah al-Din has been Cairo’s chief military defense. Leaning into wind David climbed steps and ramps. Slyly hidden among minarets were the same radar towers which signaled artillery forces that had fatally crippled his Dad’s plane. Full of anger and sadness he reached the fortress’s summit plateau, which is dominated by the Mosque of Mohammud Ali Pasha: thin, soaring Persian minarets and clustered domes billowed up into the sky. On a cliff parapet lined with cannons David saw the streaming black garments of a lone fi gure. “VITA!” he shouted. The wind pounced on the sound and smashed it against massive blank walls of the mosque. Her broken name whirled about with dust-devils. “VII-TA! VII-TA! VITAVITAVITAVITA!” She could see anger in his face as he ran towards her. She laughed and whirled circles, letting her black scarves and caftan fl utter and whip about in the wind. She threw out her arms to pull him up onto the parapet with her. “You’re out of your fucking mind!” he shouted. “There’s a storm coming!” “Where better to watch it than from here!” She collapsed into his arms and they embraced in a rough swift way, as though they would’ve liked to tear off bits of each other’s fl esh in their fi ngers. The air glowed red as the khamsin gathered strength. Clouds whirling with pink sand moved toward the City. Hidden behind bruised-copper clouds, shorn of its rays, the sun cast a scorched iridescent sheen the color of worn vermilion. David went to pull Vita back from the lip of the battlement’s cliff, which dropped sheer three hundred feet. She refused to budge. He pressed close to smell if she was drunk— she wasn’t—but demons capered behind eyes unnaturally bright with maniacal exhilaration. “How little I’ve seen of Egypt,” she babbled, rocking heavily against him, “only this City, really.” 151

“That’s not enough?” “Abu Simbel? Dendur? Karnak? Haven’t you read the papers? They found statues at Luxor. The president’s going up next week. Everyone will be there, the bastard Bulon included.” Vita broke free and strode along a parapet less than a yard wide. Buffeted by wind gusts David kept his eye on the edge. He got a queasy thrill looking down at rooftops far beneath their feet, then up into Vita’s face starkly beautiful with little makeup and pinched by wind. He felt her weight pressed against him. Over the wind’s moaning he could barely comprehend her fantastical chatter. “..his factories destroy, so he’ll be there full of himself. The perfect time to take him down.” “Planning to strangle him with your scarves?” “Nothing so pleasurable.” “What about Nasser’s security, won’t they object to your assassination plans?” Thought Vita, ‘What good did security do Klaus Reichenbach?’ The parapet had no guardrail. Glancing about, Vita saw no one in sight. David walked with an arm loosely hooked about her waist. He tried to ease them back from the parapet’s edge, but she tripped and fell dead weight against him—she felt his arm slip from her waist and saw the other fl ail at air! She grabbed onto the bomber jacket and pulled him back! Seeing his face drain white she erupted into mocking laughter. She thrust her face into the jacket’s folds across his chest. Her features were hideously contorted with laughter and sobbing and gasping as she breathed in the fi ne smell of leather! She inhaled the scent of her father’s expensive boots and belts, and again could see the goddamned empty closet stripped of his clothes! Furiously she broke free and ran. Knuckled foothills darkened to the color of dried blood as sand clouds drifted closer, reddened by the dying sun. When David caught up he was still pale, slack-jawed and staring in shock. Vita

Vita had stopped to shield her eyes and focus on a distant battlement, where a lone man in a suit appeared to be looking in their direction. “Him,” she rasped, “he followed me yesterday.” “Invite him for a stroll and push him off a cliff,” snarled David, grabbing her arm. Vita yanked free and vanished into ruins of the Striped Palace. Built seven hundred years ago with alternate courses of yellow and black stone, it had been the home of sultans with their fi erce warriors, holy men, wives, concubines and eunuchs. David and Vita wound through corkscrew passageways gleaming with encrimsoned light that slanted through the smashed arches of litten windows. Vita’s face glowed in eerie red light. With gaiety shrill and false she chirped along as though David were a stranger to whom she’d been introduced at an embassy party. “Did you know,” she ventured, “that Mohammud Ali lived in one of these palaces?” “You haven’t bothered to see Tutankhamun at the National, but you know about the Butcher Pasha?” “Cyma’s told me fabulous tales.” The bawab lewdly touching the corners of his mouth with the tip of his tongue fl ashed before David’s eyes. “You and this Cyma spend a lot of time together.” “Why not? You’re out money grubbing.” Nonchalantly, Vita gazed through a fragmented arch of red granite at the sand- muted glimmer of Cairo: domes and minarets, skyscrapers poked up against bruised-red sandstorm clouds, like linen soaked in blood. “It’s most marvelous,” Vita said in a calm voice touched by awe. “Mohammud Ali took his afternoon naps in a garden of hand-crafted, life-sized gold and silver trees. Clusters of emeralds and rubies hung from the limbs instead of fruit. He fl oated in a pool of quicksilver on a leather mattress tethered by silver cords to silver mooring posts. His sleep was guarded by a blue-eyed albino lion.” Retorted David, “Mohammud Ali slaughtered two hundred beys he’d invited to a banquet. The streets in this place ran with their blood. Mohammud Ali was a mass murderer.” “With style!” Vita’s words were blotted out by a rise in the wind’s moaning. Exiting from the Striped Palace her eyes 153 darted like scattershot up machicolated battlement walls. Arched doorways were fl anked by baton pillars for arrow slits, vacant, eye-like windows from one of which, she was sure, her husband’s bloodhound watched. She tugged David into another ruined palace. Wind whistled and howled about shadowy coffered ceilings, while around their feet was a rustling also like wind—rats! Vita gripped the bomber jacket to pull David’s face close. She ran fi ngers over his cheeks and clasped the back of his neck, with thumbs kneading the hollow at the base of his ears. Her voice was full of pleading urgency. “Do you know what it’s like? To know there’s someone watching, following—” A stone crashed nearby. Vita shrieked. Shattered chips pelted their legs. Rats scuttled in a rustling wave. She lunged into darkness and dashed through tunnel-vaulted corridors looking for a passageway with light at the end. Following, David shouted, “Vita! Vii-taaaa! VIII-TAAAAA!” They sprinted across open ground seething with sand. The khamsin gobbled up battlements and palaces in furious pink clouds. Ahead was the only place of refuge, the isolated little Tower of the Spiral Well. Vita dashed into its single door. A naked light bulb hung on a wire from the domed ceiling. The electric current was threatened by the storm; fl ickering, sickly light was devoured by the circular pit the round, windowless tower was built to cover. Vita leaned over clammy masonry of the pit’s rim which was fi fteen feet in diameter. She tossed in a pebble and listened as it dashed against the sides of the shaft. She never heard it hit bottom. Like the light, it got swallowed up in darkness. She moved to a stepped ramp that descended, spiraling down around the pit’s central shaft. David grasped her shoulders. “Let’s get out of here. This business with your husband—his spies—it’s crazy.” “Crazy that he’s stalking me?” “There’re easier ways to end a marriage.” “A diplomat and scion of Boston’s most hottentot Back Bay family putting on a spectacle in divorce court? Where the outcome depends on people with the mentality of supermarket Vita clerks?” Vita’s nostrils spread at the odor of decayed fungus. She jerked free and stepped onto the ramp. “We don’t have a light,” David protested. “Arabs carry fl ashlights?” she smirked, running a hand over the outer wall until she found a niche with candle stubs and matches. Sulpher sizzled, igniting the wood with a slowness that rubbed David’s nerves raw. The blue-gold fl ame cast a glittery, reptilian sheen over roughly hewn limestone. “Vita, let’s get out of here.” “What’s wrong, soldier-boy? This place give you the willies? You like taking risks. Don’t you wanna’ know what’s at the bottom of this slime-hole?” Vita waggled her eyebrows like Harpo Marx before darting down into darkness with the candle. Descent was tricky on shallow, rough-cut steps. Their toes shoveled through watermelon rinds, oily paper falafel cones, and guava juice cans. The deeper they went the stronger the rancid, cumin smell of ancient spit. Strange in the Islamic world where representation of the human fi gure is forbidden were hideous cartoon fi gures painted on the stone walls, half-human, half-animal, nightmare phantoms to which primitive superstition gives rise. “Repressed graffi ti artists,” said David. “You’ll fi nd this in every hole in Cairo.” Admiringly Vita looked at monstrosities daubed in the garish hues of spray-can paint, quivering obscenely in bluish light and dancing shadows. The air grew clammier. The darkness was dense enough to nearly snuff out their candle. Descending, they held onto each other. Impulsively Vita kept leaning to brush her nostrils against the leather jacket. She inhaled its male pungence spiced by the animal odor of hair feathered down over David’s cheek. Half-shuffl ing, half-sliding down around the spiral shaft, she clung to him with feelings violent and chaotic. Her nails scraped worn denim at the crotch of his jeans. He grasped her arm and snarled, “You bought your ticket.” She held the candle to his face to see into his eyes. “No, shit?” “I saw it.” “I hid it.” “I found it.” 155

“You rifl e through a woman’s things?” “You left it on your dressing table.” “Hidden in the open. A snoop—” “YOU’RE LEAVING, GODDAMIT!” “I’m leaving fi rst, that’s all,” said Vita, breaking his hold. David had no choice but to follow. She held the candle. Down and around, down and around they went, two- hundred feet inside the limestone plateau. From clammy walls the bulging eyes of demons fl ared out from huge weird shadows that darted about, reared up, or suddenly slid away in front of them. Slipping in muddy ooze they came to the ramp’s bottom step. Vita waved the candle over a circular pool: seepage from the water table fi lled this buried cistern; the ramp was built for buffaloes to ferry water to the palaces during a siege. Vita breathed in enveloping scents of limestone and earth. She watched a rat paddle away. Others crouched on the cistern’s ledge, enormous with ravenous, red eyes. Overhead the outlines of graffi ti spray-painted fi ends were distinct, but their colors had faded and blurred in the cistern’s moist vapors. Disfi gured by uneven stone they took on ghastly vivacity in aqueous light: human fi gures with crocodile jaws spouted blood...winged falcons clawed the air with bloody talons. Vita leaned to cover David’s mouth with her own, pushing apart his lips and stroking the walls of his throat with her tongue. The fl ame snaked up her wrist and she dropped to plant the candle in a crack between stones. David loomed with hips thrust forward, legs spread. She tugged at his jeans. He squatted. When his lips got close to her’s she made that hissing cat’s sound, and with both hands shoved him back onto slimy steps. Before he could spring to slap her, she straddled his legs and pinned him down with all her weight. She yanked open the jacket, pushed it off his shoulders, and with a quick motion twisted the T-shirt over his head around the back of his neck. He sprawled half-naked. The candle cast bars of light and shadow over his soldier’s abdominal ridges. His chest felt like a radiator to her caressing fi ngers. He fl exed, and shadow blackened the Vita cleft between cobblestone pecs. Big, Vita thought, animal, excited. He arched his back expectantly when her fi ngers popped the snap on his jeans. She tugged to get the zipper over the bulky ridge—fl aps fl ew apart as the thick keel of his dick lobbed free and sprang up his stomach. Her palm slipped underneath the hard cock to gently bounce it, to savor its length and heft. The bloated shaft was beautiful, Vita thought, smooth, unveined, the color of coral, and the head a darker rose, swollen and glossy. She bowed her head low with hair fanning across his belly. David felt her tongue, her lips, then she swallowed him down whole. Any self-control he might’ve had was shot to hell by her vacuum-sucking and the elasticity of her helping hands. Her serpentine tongue whiplashed the fl aring cockhead, lapping at salty beads of pre-cum. David fl ung back his head to stare at fi ends leering with mad, Fuseli, ping-pong ball eyes. Vita let him slip from her mouth when she felt the quivering thrusts of his butt and wild jerking in his gut. Furiously rubbing her clit she watched him spew glistening wads. David lay still with knees raised and body arched to avoid seepage of mud into his hair or over the exposed curves of his buttocks. Pools of semen dribbled along his ribcage turning cold and sticky; but he felt fi ngers circling and massaging and making his skin seem dryer, if not cleaner. Vita hovered to lick off dried fl akes which in the cistern’s viscid air, redolent of rot and mold, had the clean warm smell of freshly bleached clothes. David felt his cock stir as he stared at a falcon and a crocodile tearing apart the feather- and blood-spewing corpse of a wild pheasant. He couldn’t see Vita’s face, could only feel the silky scratch of her hair on his belly. A palm circled his tumescent cock, knowing fi ngertips stroked the fl esh-shell, making him hard again as he watched the pheasant’s corpse disintegrating in a falcon’s claws and jaws of a crocodile. What was he doing seeking love, passion—a life partner!—in this horrible place? What kind of woman was sexually aroused by being in this fi lthy Arab stink-hole! He croaked, “on the cliff—you tripped—?” Vita laughed, clear and tinkling like a wind chime. “You 157 were scared, weren’t you? You wanted to live so badly!” Her hand kept up its stroking as her voice turned hard, precise. “We were excited. We stumbled. You fell and I grabbed onto your jacket, your father’s jacket—I saved your life.” In his vision blurred and warped by tears Vita merged with hideous images of demons and wild beasts. Looming over him she tucked up layers of black fabric and straddled his thighs, swaying, shivering, half-naked on smooth oval haunches in gold light.

Vita

19

ita ran a fi nger through sand coating the slat of a shutter. VGlass panes were fastened, but sand had penetrated miniscule crevices. She looked down into the garden at poinsettia and fi g trees buried under layers of what looked like pink gauze— the khamsin had blown all night. She hadn’t seen the chamber maid in two days. “But for the will of our generous Prophet,” the fat, veiled owner had exclaimed when queried, “I wouldn’t hire worthless university girls. This Cyma tells me she can’t work because of examinations.” In a burst of Muslim charity the woman added, “May Allah cause her to fail!” Vita sat on the hassock at the dressing table. She let her eyes rove among silvery crackles radiating out from her face in the ancient mirror. She knew the girl would not fail to show and well could she imagine what would happen at the hammam. They would undress in a locker room and wrap themselves in towels. In a public alcove, on cushions, they would be served mint tea drugged with a mild opium derivative. She’d be lead into inner chambers, her towel taken, then Cyma would go into action. Vita quivered, but when knocking came at the door she forced herself into the perfectly artifi cial state of composure of an actress at the rise of the curtain. 159

“Yes? Come in.” Silence. “Come in,” she ordered. Cyma entered and closed the door behind her. “Where have you been!” Vita exclaimed, injecting huskiness into her voice. “Did you look for me?” “I asked Madame if you were sick. Why have you avoided me!” Cyma assumed her haughtiest Bedouin-princess stance. “You’re ready to go to the hammam?” Defi ance stimulated Vita. Crude bargaining acted on her like an aphrodisiac. “Yes,” she smiled broadly, “but do you have it?” The nursing student reached into her milaya’s inner pocket and withdrew a small jar fi lled with ochre liquid. Holding Vita’s eyes she handed it over with an exaggeratedly deliberate gesture. Veda matter-of-factly unscrewed the tightly sealed lid and sniffed. Odorless. She dipped the tip of a fi nger into the concentrated poison and held it to her lips. Cyma’s eyes widened as daintily she tasted. ‘Faintly sour,’ thought Vita, ‘nothing espresso won’t mask.’ Aloud she said, “How strong is it? How much—is needed?” Images fl ashed before Cyma’s eyes of the room’s other hated occupant: male, a Jew, and worst, Veda’s lover. “Forty c.c. is fatal. With an eye drop a spoon averages four to six c.c.” “To be on the safe side, eight doses are needed?” “The more small doses the better. The effects are less… pronounced.” “Not a problem,” smirked Vita who herself had no mechanical addiction and who scoffed at Herve Bulon who, to his great risk, did. Cyma’s exhilaration was potent. Having grown up among women whose lives are so rigidly cicumscribed by men, she felt little horror at striking out at the oppressor. Virulent anger and resentment are as much a part of everyday life as feeding oneself. Violent impulses can be repressed for only so long. Cyma felt bonded to this rich American bold enough to rebel against crude male lust. Blinded herself by lust as crude as any man’s the girl failed to observe the reptilian glitter in Vita’s eyes, refl ected in Vita the mirror. For all her quick intelligence she did not sense the catastrophe that lay waiting for her. Vita expected the hammam to be in an obscure alley. Cyma led her instead to al-Mu’zz li din Allah, architecturally one of the grandest city streets in the world. So absorbed was each woman in her own violent or carnal scheming that Islam’s most spectacular medieval mausoleums went ignored. Their unseeing eyes grazed over arched entrances framed by rose granite pillars and fl uted hoods; facades studded with latticed balconies and stalactite-encrusted cornices; windowless stone walls crossed by bands of beautiful calligraphy from the Koran. To delay the inevitable, Vita paused and pretended to admire the Tomb of Sultan Qayt-Bay, its bulb-shaped dome a paragon of décorated masonry with angular fretwork carved over sinuous and grooved arabesques that culminate in nine-point stars. This stalling sharpened Cyma’s pleasure of anticipation. Soon all she desired, so far denied, would be laid bare, hers to enjoy—enough to make her heart cry out with gratitude to the Prophet! She propelled Vita by the elbow into a short alley at the end of which was an ordinary door, painted anti-djinn blue. Inside the hammam was as exotic as Vita had imagined, only more so. They sat cross-legged in an alcove where a window-lattice fi lled with pieces of colored glass cast luminous patches of gold, lilac and marine on the marble fl oor. Vita was given the plumpest pile of cushions before a low, round brass table. A crone laid out tea glasses stuffed with sugar cubes and sprigs of mint. They were naked save for towels twisted about their heads and torsos. Cyma sat opposite Vita, and between them hulked Aida, whom Cyma had introduced as her friend and “an expert in the ointments and beauty secrets of the old harem days.” Vita registered Aida’s solid peasant build and sullen-yet-interested expression, as she sat toadily staring at the steep rise of her tits under the towel. ‘Nothing like a soft-sell,’ thought Vita. The crone fi lled their glasses with hot tea, releasing a minty cloud of scent. It did smell lovely, fresh, almost enchanting, Vita thought, everything this little tea party is not. She sipped. The tar-like taste underlying the sugar and mint gave away the opium. 161

She rolled the hot brew around in her mouth, savoring its weird fl avor. Confi dent she could handle these Egyptian dykes Vita relished giving herself over to the drug’s euphoria. Languidly she draped her arms and legs over cushions… feeling drowsy, but a drowsiness that made her aware of lightness and freedom. Everything fragmented and fl oated before her eyes in a dreamy haze…women in black robes, raucous as crows, arriving and departing with armloads of cushions, toiletry bags, and boxes of sweets...mothers and their children giggling and pulling off layers of clothing behind mashrabiya screens. The ugly Aida stared at her legs, straining to see under the towel. Cyma looked on with frank licentiousness. Tension went out of Vita’s body. She felt as if unseen hands were caressing, stroking, stretching her body out into one smooth solid line. The opium infi ltrated her bloodstream and rendered her helpless. Cyma and Aida, each holding an elbow, guided her through narrow corridors with whitewashed walls, up and down little marble steps. Everywhere fl oors were fl ooded with hot water: water, said the Prophet Mohammed, is the most scared element. Steamy water lapped at their ankles. Moist heat pulsated through stone walls, a furry heat generated by furnaces buried beneath the ancient bathhouse. Aida thrust open a wooden door and out rolled a ball of steam. Vita’s eyes accustomed to air which seemed to be fi lled with shifting layers of white veils. She was surrounded by naked brown women and children whose heads, arms, shoulders appeared, then vanished in waves of steam. A disembodied hand reached out of the mist. Shrieks of laughter reverberated around a domed rotunda fi lled with boiling white clouds. Inside an arched wall niche Vita was seated naked on a low stool before a marble fount, where scalloped spouts gushed steamy water. Aida sharpened razor blades while keeping her hawk eyes riveted on the delta of cinnamon hair between Vita’s legs. Cyma stood sponging. Vita arched her body and threw back her head in an attitude that could’ve been either ecstasy or the last throes of death. Smoky water fl owed over her shoulders and breasts; her glazed fl esh seemed encased in a drawn and Vita moving membrane pierced twice by out-thrust nipples. Aida grunted, possibly a signal to Cyma. They led Vita to the hexagonal marble slab beneath the dome, where clusters of women sat pleasurably rolling fl eshy buttocks about on an expanse of heated marble while manicuring their nails, etching henna designs on their palms, plaiting hair, and gossiping (“Look at Farahshah, how fat she’s gotten eating apricot pancakes!”). Aida laid Vita out on her back and straddled her feet. Months of male impersonation had left her legs a sorry sight—splotched with stubble, bruised, nicked, but not beyond the restorative capabilities of Aida’s strong hands and fi nely- sharpened blades. Vita savored the razor scraping her calves, steel edges peeling away desiccated layers of skin. She felt her pores opening to cool steel and steam heat, her whole body giving itself up to deep cleansing and expansion. She pressed her buttocks against the slab to absorb its penetrating heat. In her drugged state the swish of water and thermal marble made her imagine that she was fl oating on a subterranean river of molten lava…a river of unknown possibilities fl owing below the surface of everyday life. The scrapping stopped, then resumed around her navel. Sharpened steel fl ew in quick, fl y-like movements, wisping away hair from above her pussy. Had she powers of resistance she would’ve protested as the razor lurched through pubic hair, ripping it away. A chill descended on skin that’d always been warm. She lay with her feet held, legs spread, pussy exposed. She lifted her head and two little girls looked her in the eye. They’d been squatting to watch Aida work. Thought Vita, you have to try everything once—having your cunt shaved with kids watching. The opium tightened its grip. Around Vita writhed a melee of raw and nude fl esh: a fl exed knee, a bent back, open thighs, and breasts of every size and shape, some grotesquely gargantuan and sagging, some no more than mere bumps. Others, like Cyma’s, were ripe and perfectly-shaped. Groggy as she was, Vita registered that her own were among the best in view and were drawing envious, or desirous looks. She forced heavy eyes up to giant squinches on which 163 the dome rested. Barely she could make out the carved blazons of some forgotten amir who’d built the bathhouse for his wives and concubines. The dome’s hollow was forty feet across, and its smooth inner skin was pockmarked with holes fi lled with colored glass. Sunlight shot down shafts of gold and lilac that crisscrossed and penetrated through rolling clouds of steam. Abruptly the scene shifted but like in a movie it was a quick cut, and immobile, Vita never saw it. When she woke she knew she was no longer under the dome. She didn’t know how she’d gotten to wherever she was. The air around her was cool, still, silent. What little light there was came from some obscure source, a silvery, twilight phosphorescence more like an emanation than true light. Vita could make out the delicate tips of keel arches on slender columns; and at the edge of her warped vision she saw the squatting hulk of Aida, as she blocked entrance to this hidden chamber. No longer could she hear sounds of hissing steam or running fountains. The everyday good cheer of women and children seemed far away. Their laughter and shrieking reached her as watery echoes, like reverberations from distant times. Naked, Cyma straddled her torso to massage with oil. The kneading and cupping of her breasts and stroking of cat-like delicacy excited Vita. But unfortunately for Cyma the warm oil came from eucalyptus. The opium infi ltrated that patch of the brain where smell and memory mingle; acrid eucalyptus resonated in Vita’s nostrils to trigger fl ashes of hateful San Fernando Valley landscapes of childhood…suburban “Spanish” bungalows set in melancholy eucalyptus groves…shadeless sidewalks Vita had walked fi lled with furious resentment that she’d been born here in Glendale, not there in Pasadena! Her schoolgirl daydreams had been of that privileged enclave with its gingerbread mansions, emerald lawns, and air scented with rose, magnolia and orange— how Vita loathed the stingy medicinal odor of eucalyptus! She would’ve struggled to free herself had not Cyma begun sucking her nipples; rather not sucking, but teasing... the tongue moved closer, ever closer, but refused to touch. Her nipples ached with tightness. Then came sharp little nips of teeth at the hardened tips and so thrilling, fi nally, was the swirl of the Vita tongue she thought she would swoon. The student sucked with a willingness to suckle longer than a man, the sucking being a pleasure unto itself, not a prelude to “sticking it in.” Choked noises erupted from Vita’s throat. Cyma stroked her inner thighs and fi ngered her newly-shaved pussy, glistening with moisture. The exposed smooth mound fl ushed and trembled as two fi ngers held apart the outer lips, drawing back the membrane- hood to expose the clitoris, pale against the camellia-scarlet of the inner lips. Enfl amed, Cyma buried her mouth in tight shifting ridges of pink fl esh and put the bud of the clit between her lips. Yelps shook loose from Vita’s throat. The girl slid both hands under Vita’s ass to feel its luscious curves. A fi nger found the asshole and gently pushed inside. The rocking of Vita’s hips grew more urgent—sinking, she felt the fi nger inside her hole, rising, she felt the tongue curling around her own fattened bud. Vita pictured her clit to be the swollen tip of a tiny hard cock and furiously she ground it into the girl’s ravenous mouth. Hearing a strangled, half-bird cry Cyma raised into a crouch to fi ngerfuck herself while watching the convulsions of Vita’s ecstasy. She thrilled at breasts arched impossibly high, the fl uttering muscles of the belly, and the beautiful face with its open-mouthed, ravaged expression. Cyma’s physical craving may have been momentarily satiated, but her passion for Vita intensifi ed. She wanted—she needed—a kiss. Her hands and arms trembled as they supported the weight of her body bending closer. Her lips stopped short of Vita, whose own were parted to expose glistening teeth. Eyes shut, Vita shuddered at faint sounds of laughing children. Stray hairs brushed her cheek as Cyma leaned close. Along with bitter eucalyptus she now breathed in the cloying residue of an Arab beauty wash of warm milk and vanilla beans—vanilla! ‘...the base note of most fragrances because everyone’s mother smelled of vanilla!’ Vita’s eyes popped open, glittering with hatred. Her face grew swollen and hideous. She inhaled roughly, and hallucinated on the sweet baking odors of home which rekindled memories of her mother and long ago endearments that, still, repulsed her. 165

“Oh, Mother, I love you. I do!” “Say it...say it—once more...” Edith saw to it that they were alone together at nights when they climbed the stairs to Vita’s room. Tenderly she would remove Vita’s extravagant outfi ts and makeup, and comb her hair, and put her into bed. She would kneel to wrap her arms about Vita and hug her passionately. Vita, who was not at all sleepy, would yawn and stretch voluptuously. She felt her mother’s arms pressing her close, and imagined that her hands were actually on her breasts. Edith kissed the soft, fl awless skin near her lips. Vita felt repugnance, a thrill of revulsion, as she whispered in her mother’s ear. “Oh, mother, I love you. I do!” “Say it...say it—once more.”

* * *

Some minutes later, when they parted at the corner of Mu-zz li din Allah and al-Muski, Cyma stood erect showing no emotion. She felt gutted, her insides had been scooped out. Vita’s eyes had been so close to hers she could see tiny gold lines radiating out around black pupils. The eyes were supposed to be the one place you could look at another human being and see what really went on inside. How full of contempt those beautiful eyes had been— why? She offered friendship, absolute loyalty, everything she had to give, and Vita replied with ingratitude and hostility. They were not friends, they didn’t know each other, she had not been loved for her beauty or for any other reason. The marvelous, stolen hours spent together had been part of some hidden agenda. Cyma felt a wrench in her breast thinking of the sex they’d just had. She thought for the fi rst time in a different way about the exotic odors always clinging to Vita and her clothes. Unlike anyone she’d ever known Vita wore no known perfume and used no scented facial cream or bath oil. She couldn’t identify or describe the smells naturally produced by Vita’s skin. They were strange, but not unpleasant. They called up visions…again Cyma could see the splendid naked body beaded with sweat, stretched out in the silvery phosphorescence of the bathhouse’s secret Vita chamber. Vita’s odors had welled up like colors, rich, complex hues of a priceless tapestry…ranging from chocolate to amethyst.. from pink to lapis lazuli and pale green… ‘Phenylpyruvic acids!’ The student remembered a journal article about inherited biochemical imbalances in the mentally disturbed which result in odors. Found in urine phenylpyruvic acids are said to produce the sweet odors often noticed emanating from the insane. Cyma grasped that—yes!—Vita could not be gauged or measured by any standards applied to other human beings. The awful fi nality of madness was there. It was more than she could bear. She felt as if she were in the grip of a fi t and would fall down in the street. She stood trembling, with crowds shoving on all sides. Tears streamed, while the evening sun shone scarlet on her cheek. 167

20

hey agreed on having their last dinner together in Giza, Tbut went about getting dressed in turbulent and separate states of mind. David was frantic for Vita refused to say anything other than, yes, she was leaving on the fi rst train tomorrow. Attempts to draw her out were met with a blank amnesiac stare. He couldn’t let her walk away like this! Sweat trickled under his fresh linen shirt. He longed to get in the shower again, but when she got back from wherever she’d been all afternoon, she wouldn’t say, she had locked herself in the bathroom. He listened to sounds of her in the shower—he couldn’t help himself, what with all the little porn reels she’d implanted in his brain. He sat on the bed in his sweaty shirt, wishing for a cigarette. In the shower no matter how hard or long she scrubbed with soap and unguents under scalding water Vita couldn’t rid herself of the stench of eucalyptus. Her skin reeked of the oil’s odor which, coupled with the cloying vanilla scent of Cyma’s nudity, had sparked a fresh yearning to hurt and humiliate her mother. This hatred was born that bright southern California afternoon when she’d watched Father’s car pull out of the driveway and speed away. She hadn’t actually seen him at the wheel for her view was blocked by clothes piled in the back seat. Vita

She had quietly entered the house, skirted past her mother fi ddling with pies in the kitchen, and climbed the stairs to her parents’s bedroom. Often she would go into Father’s closet to inspect his folded silk handkerchiefs, his tuxedo, and riding breeches—she loved to breathe in the smell of fi ne leather belts and riding boots. But on this afternoon she had stared with dry eyes and a blank expression into an empty closet. Later when Kay came in from playing their mother called them into the kitchen for cake and milk. Solemnly she told them that their father was gone and “now it’s just the three of us.” Kay started to cry. Vita listened with a properly grave expression, but her mind was busy making its own assessment. Father had not left them because of the widow Hoffman. Her mother was using neighborhood gossip to blackmail him out of the house. She was always harping not about love, fi delity or poor morals, but about money and his failure to fi nd work. Vita didn’t blame Father for the crazy real estate market that had crashed and driven him out of business. What did her mother expect him to do? Take a factory job? Drive a truck? Vita doted on Father for his fi ne clothes and grand manners. She was proud of his disdain for work beneath him. Let her mother grovel for pennies. What else could you expect from the daughter of a garage mechanic who got herself knocked up by a guy because she thought he was going to be rich? Evening traffi c had Cairo gridlocked. David and Vita sat without speaking or touching as their taxi inched its way downtown. Vita’s mind was busy reliving her mother’s heinous crimes, hardest to accept had been her success—who would’ve thought a cluck like her could parlay a home baking business into southern California’s most popular chain of family restaurants? Beverly Hills, Malibu, Laguna, everywhere you went you saw her name in art deco neon: EDITH’S. Money poured in. Their taxi crossed al-Tahrir Bridge to Zamalik Isle, brilliant with the spot lit shell of the Opera House. Vita’s glare focused on tuxedoed and bejeweled couples exiting their limo— the stultifyingly dull life she was fl eeing. Her mouth twisted into an ugly smile. ‘Cosi Fan Tutti,’ thought Vita, ‘wouldn’t she love to see me screeching away in an all-white production of Mozart 169 in the middle of the Nile!’ A grand piano had been the single most expensive purchase Edith made after daringly opening her fi rst restaurant. Then came lessons with exclusive teachers in Pasadena. She let Vita drop out of high school to devote her whole time to music. Edith, frumpy in expensive new clothes, had accompanied Vita to her audition for Professor Vianello, the conductor at the Hollywood Bowl. The taxi passed from the grandeur of Zamalik Isle into the garish sleaze of Pyramid Road with its shouting pimps, poisonous falafel stands, belly dancing bars, strip joints and casinos. Vita rolled down the window to listen to a different sort of music from Mozart, music which to her was more poignant...sad music of human vanity, lust, rapaciousness, even depravity. By the time the taxi rattled into Giza she was pouring herself over David, like butter on turnips. She ordered the driver to let them out before the town square. She didn’t want to risk, so she said, running into diplomatic corps friends in the cafes. On their last night she wanted to be alone with him, she insisted, running a hand down the small of his back over his butt. They wandered back streets until they came to a restaurant in a palm grove at the edge of town. The Greek owner was gratifi ed by the entrance of such a handsome couple and moved a table for them into the garden. Jasmine vines curled above their heads and river breezes clicked in palm fronds. Vita ordered a bottle of retsina and demanded that it be put in a bucket of ice. David took his fi rst sip and winced, “Tastes like toilet bowl cleaner.” “I’ll take your word for that.” They ordered a lavish dinner. Hot pita bread spread with sesame paste, pickled turnips, beetroot, radishes, sprigs of mint. The earthy fl avors so stimulated their senses that when the entre arrived—Nile catfi sh baked inside parchment with leeks and baby shrimp—they were both giddy. Vita swirled the icy, pine-scented wine around in her glass and peered over its rim into David’s face. Her eyes in fl ickering candlelight had the brown lustre of brushed fur backed with gold. The cigales in her ears fl ashed. “You’re beautiful.” “So are you.” Vita

“Men aren’t beautiful.” “Don’t be provincial, of course men are beautiful. Some men. You are.” “If you say so.” “I do.” He’d let her trim his hair with little scissors so that one side of his face fell under a graceful tumble of hair iridescent with its hues of corn- and wheat-blond. She insisted on buying him clothes at an Italian boutique on Roda Isle, claiming she couldn’t bear to be accompanied in public by someone in “Mormon chic,” as she labeled his dark suit and excruciatingly white shirt with a neatly knotted tie. Tonight he wore pleated slacks of a soft fabric that clung to his body, and a linen jacket unbuttoned. He was tieless and the collar of his dove-gray shirt was open to expose the smooth base of his throat. Under the table he slipped off a loafer to ply bare toes through warm sand. Vita had awakened him to new sensations thrilling in their intensity. With her life burned with a brighter, higher fl ame—he loved her. “Your husband,” he said. “What are you going to do?” “Destroy him.” “Why? Why not just leave him?” Vita jerked free. “He wouldn’t suffer enough.” “Isn’t being without you pain enough? An ambassador’s wife—you being here with me must be stressful for him?” “Our togetherness, choucrout, is the least source of stress for his excellency long about now, said Vita, thinking of Herve Bulon and his impending demise. David watched her teeth sink into a grilled slab of cumined eggplant and imagined she was biting into his fl esh. “Be serious,” he said. “I am serious and your questions are personal.” “I’m not entitled to ask personal questions after spending two weeks in bed with my tongue up your cunt?” Vita sucked in air. “Don’t get lippy or you’ll be going on a cunnilingus-abstinence regimen, starting tonight.” “You wouldn’t. You want it, too.” “I do. But I’m capable of restraint.” 171

“How about deceit?” “You and deception are not exactly known strangers,” said Vita, eyes fl ashing like fi refl ies. “Tell me straight—is your marriage over?” “Yes.” Her nostrils quivered. “What’s it to you? What is it you think you want so desperately?” “To make you happy.” This naiveté left Vita staring. “Let’s get out of here,” David continued. “Egypt’s rotten…ancient, broken-down, ignorant, decadent—” Vita sprayed a mouthful of wine across the table. “Wearing a $500 jacket paid for by an older woman and calling Arabs decadent!” David grasped her hands. “Come to Israel with me. Meet my friends and family. We’ll eat French food in Caesarea, then drive into Galilee.” “Holy Galilee, too!” Vita groaned. “We call the sea Lake Kinneret which means ‘harp,’ like my name Kinor, because of breezes that blow off Mt Harmon. We’ll sleep in the open in Mt. Canaan Forest. You’ll love it…it’s wild and undisciplined...gorges crossed by wooden bridges...red cliffs...and the trees. You’ll see and smell fresh pines and cedars planted by Herzle—you know, Theodore Herzle, who started the Zionist movement in Paris. There are groves planted for Abba Eban and Golda Meir. Our great leaders remembered not by worthless monuments like here in Egypt, but by living forests full of deer and birds.” “While we’re romping through these Elysian forests, what’s mother going to say?” “My mother? What’s she got to do with it?” “Mom? The one you have a date with every year? What’s she going to say about her baby, her boy, the apple of her one eye, mothers being cyclops, traipsing around the country with—with a shiksa. An American shiksa. A married American shiksa!” “She’s not like that. She’s not narrow.” Vita hissed, “Then what about Miss Fiancee?” David blushed, “Whaaa-t?” “Your betrothed.” Vita

Her words were like small caliber bullets in his brain. “NO—” “Don’t lie!” “I—” Vita snatched his hand and held the fourth fi nger to the candle’s fl ame. Visible was pale fl esh where he’d worn an engagement band. “You were wearing it the fi rst night at the Cecil. You think I missed it getting you out of your clothes? And the receipt in your jacket pocket for the twenty-minute tête-à-tête with Rachel or Esther or Ruth back in Haifa.” “Yael,” said David mournfully, “her name is Yael.” Mindful of other diners Vita kept her voice low, but it was coarse and vibrating with simulated rage. “How will Yael feel about you running through national parks, as you eloquently put it, with your mouth clamped to the pussy of a shiksa? Shitlips! Pontifi cating about decadence, lover of heroes and noble trees, while you’re up to the goddam tiredest boy-trick in the world. Pretending to be serious when all you wanna’ do is the bone- dance!” She sprang up like an animal with lips drawn back and hair swinging over her face—missing only was a long, whipping tail. Eyes round and glittering, a hissing sound came from between clenched teeth. She whirled away so fast David couldn’t see that it was all enjoyable feline faux-fury. She fl ounced out of the restaurant and broke into a run. Red-faced with all eyes on him David settled with the Greek and followed, as Vita sprinted up the asphalt road into desert. “Vita!” “Fruit vendor!” Sodium lights glared chalky pink. Neither could see where they were going, they ran blindly. “Vita!” “Liar!” “Vita!” “Fruit-sucking pussyhound!” “BITCH!!!!” Vita shot through a pink wall of light. Sand fi lled her sandals. David was gaining. As her eyes adjusted the darkness 173 ahead seemed solid and impenetrable: overhead were stars but the sky in front of her was uniformly black. It was not sky and Vita knew where she was—at the base of that ancient pile of three million stone blocks known as Khufu, One Belonging to the Horizon. The north face of the pyramid vanished on either side of her into darkness. Vita moved closer, impressed: size, brute power excited her. She kicked off her sandals and tucked the crepe-de-chine miniskirt up under her fake Gucci belt. Each fi fteen-ton block in the lower courses of Khufu’s masonry stands waist high, so she had to scramble on her knees and elbows— cuts, rips in her dress, dust in her face fueled the indulgent fun. David reached the pyramid’s base. “Catch me, soldier-boy!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Vita, there’s police.” “Tourist police?” “Be reasonable.” “If I were reasonable, Lassie, you wouldn’t be here. A diplomat’s wife dining with a fruit salesman? I’ve held private conversations with prime ministers, but these days I’m reduced to playing backgammon with a two-legged collie who can’t even beat me.” She climbed higher. David peeled off the jacket, kicked off his loafers, and vaulted barefoot up the pyramid’s fi rst two courses of stone blocks. “Self-dramatizing windbag!” “Windbag?” “Nudnik!” “Windbag—nudnik—this is some new lingo?” “Nudnik, nag!” shouted David, ducking the cloud of dust and stone chips kicked down at him. “Nag nag NAG!” Vita panted, “Liar—cheat—BOURGEOIS!” “Better bourgeois than a run-away OLD shiksa!” “Chacun a son gout. Fuck you, Hymie!” Limestone blocks of the pyramid’s upper courses grew smaller, climbing more treacherous. David stopped. “We know you’re old—” “Cro Magnon!” Vita

“—old enough to be my ancestor—” “—cock-worshipping cretin!” “What we don’t know—are you an abused runaway wife—or did your hot-shit husband throw you out. Is Buzz-Cut here to get back the diplomatic passport stashed in the lining of your new bag. Mr. U.S. Ambassador to Greece couldn’t take any more of your enthusing at receptions over stylish mass murderers. Or maybe he caught you sitting on an aide’s face…brushing your teeth with the chauffeur’s dick.” Near the peak of Khufu they slipped on scree. Vita scrambled higher and spat down her words. “Yael’s been your faithful mate all your life—FOR TWENTY-SEVEN GODDAMN YEARS—“ David grabbed a foot and twisted; dust blinded him as she screamed in his face, with wine-soured breath, “DOES YAEL FUCK OTHER MEN ?” “...christ, no...no...” Vita yanked free and leered. “Leaving her at home you’re off waving that fat cock of yours in the face of the fi rst shiksa boooored enough to take you in.” Vita blew wisps of hair from her face. “Nice.” David turned his tear-stained face down into dust, still Vita heard him rasp, “Cunt…evil cunt!” She pressed close, to hiss in his face, “Fuck you, you self- righteous faggot slag!” Whistles blew. Policemen on the ground played lights over David and Vita splayed like spiders against the pyramid’s high face. Painfully they climbed down. While police perfunctorily reprimanded them, a slim shadow scurried about nearby in darkness. When the police had gone the shadow darted up. “Pssst! Pssst!” Vita whirled. “Hee-hee,” chortled the shadow, “I am Farak. I am the night watchman. It is forbidden to climb, but please follow. I will show you a way.” Vita snatched David’s linen jacket and used it to wipe blood and dust off her legs. The men watched as she cleaned her face with a sleeve. She threw the jacket in the sand, straightened 175 her dress and fl uffed her hair. Without a word she followed the little watchman in the blue robe and white turban, with his beaked nose and pistol eyes. David trailed behind. Jitterbugging as he walked Farak led them around a huge slanting corner of Khufu, towards the pyramid which Arabs call ‘Khafre Is Great.’ Khafre looks bigger due to its higher position on the plateau, the steeper angle of its slope, and remaining striations of original limestone casing near its peak-tip. The illicit trio picked through ruins of mortuary temples and the smaller pyramids of queens and royal children. Stones and gravel gleamed in a silver-blue wash of moonlight. They came to ‘Menkaure Is Divine,’ the smallest of Giza’s three great pyramids. Farak solemnly turned to address them. “It is forbidden. It is dangerous, so follow me and do exactly as I say.” They made the easy, quick climb up knee-high blocks stacked at a fi fty-one degree slope. Vita didn’t even have to take off her sandals, still Farak kept gallantly offering his hand with murmurs of “m’amseill… m’amseill...” At the tip of Menkaure, an area about the size of a pool table, Farak pointed down at tiny dark fi gures circling the base, and said, “I must go and pay many people. To keep them away.” Vita thrust fi ve-pound notes into his hand. The watchman’s eyes crackled like fi recrackers. “How long you want to stay here?” “All night,” said Vita. Farak giggled. “You are right. No hurry—this is one time in your life.” He scrambled back down the pyramid. The moon was full. Looming before them in blue-white light, the vast triangular face of Khafre was cold and perfect as a theorem. Vita dropped to her knees before David in a bed of shattered limestone. He looked down at her breasts palely visible in moonlight beneath crepe-de-chine. She lay a palm fl at against a pants leg to pull soft fabric tight and outline his burgeoning cock. She wrapped her mouth around the shaft and forced hot breath through cloth. David stared into the sky at the white lunar disc as she sucked through fabric at his aching cockhead. Dropping, he pulled her into his arms and thrust his hands under the miniskirt. She wore a thong. His hands circled and caressed naked buttocks Vita cold, smooth, hard as the stone on which they painfully crouched. Vita pulled away from his grinding lips. “One time in our lives, huh?” David nipped at her ears with his lips, knowing how hot it made her. “Who else but us—you and me—would be here, in a place like this?” “Yael?” “Yael would never do this. Yael wouldn’t come to Egypt. She wouldn’t do a lot of the things you do.” “Like suck dick? In moonlight Vita saw David’s face redden. She squirmed and fl exed the muscles of her buttocks, provoking one of his fi ngers to slip into the crack. Putting her mouth to his ear she whispered, “Does Yael give head that makes you squeal?” “...no...” “Does she do it at all?” “...sometime...” “But not often.” “...not often...” “Nor enthusiastically, or with gusto.” Vita clasped harder. “She doesn’t like doing it. An orgasm she can fake any time she pleases to stroke your ego, but sucking dick is work. Why make her do it?” “I don’t make her do anything. We do everything that people who have sex do—because we love each other!” “Then why are you sitting here in moonlight on top of a pyramid with your fi nger up my asshole?” David grunted, gripped the thong and ripped it off. Vita yelped as it sailed away into night air. He did what he’d seen her do on Khufu, and tucked the crepe-de-chine skirt under the metal mesh belt so that Vita squatted half-naked in his lap. She devoured his mouth with cannibal kisses while brushing his pecs with her nipples. Artfully she rotated her ass as he massaged, any distraction to keep his hands from getting between her legs: a pussy shaved bare by an ugly Egyptian dyke, Vita knew, was more than a Jewish mama’s boy could stomach. Earlier it’d been easy to lock herself in the shower—now radical tactics were called for. 177

While David caressed her buttocks she arched so that they parted, and eager fi ngers pried open the tight crevice. He rubbed her hole. Cyma had awakened her there with both fi ngers and a probing ‘camel’s tongue’—Vita wanted more. She pressed down on his index fi nger, crooning. She wanted to be fucked that way. She wanted him to split her open so she could feel the pain—the power—of taking him inside her hole. What better way, she thought, to ruin David for any doe-faced menchsa than by fucking him on their last night in the most devastating way known to any couple regardless of gender? “...no, I’ll hurt you...” “So?” “...no...” “Have you ever?” “No.” “Never?” said Vita, lathering with saliva. David felt puckered skin press against the head of his cock. An almost imperceptible movement made him gasp as his thick, fl aring cockhead slipped past the quivering, tight ringed-muscle of her sphincter. Her nails dug into his shoulders. Her forehead pressed against his and he lapped at sweet-smelling sweat dripping off her cheek. She remained still, not moving at all, but yes, moving, slipping down, impaling herself with infi nitesimally fractional movements. She felt a burning-hot clamp around the center of her body. Her ears fi lled with the sound of her own heart pounding, but with strange slowness. She cried out loud as she opened to him. The pain was impossibly intense, as if he were splitting her in two from the inside out. Her nails drew blood from his fl esh as she convulsed. Their mouths soldered, they clutched each other, bruised and bleeding in their bed of stone shards. “Say it!” David commanded. “Say what?” “What you’re thinking—feeling, goddamit!” “The most stupid, meaningless words a man and woman ever utter?” “Say it!” Vita ran her hands through hair made rough but silky by desert sun. She pulled his face close to hers. Her black eyes, Vita wide-set as a puma’s and full of moonlight, bore into him. It was not within her capabilities, to say to him, “Don’t ever touch me again—you will suffer!” David soundlessly mouthed words of love into her ear. The huge white moon was at its zenith. Unseen by either of them, foxes scaled shattered stone ledges of the pyramids, in search of warmth.

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t six the next morning Vita waited in the lobby. They’d Agotten back with time enough to shower and gather her bags. David hustled to get a porter and a taxi. The parrot, chained to its perch, stared sloe-eyed at Vita and made low chuckling sounds. Behind the registration desk the veiled owner of the Moon Hotel banged away at her Texas Instrument calculator. “Madame?” said Vita suddenly. “Yes, madame?” “May I speak with you?” “You honor me, madame, of course.” Vita glanced at the bawab who was lurking in the doorway. Lewdly, he winked at her. The woman ushered Vita into her parlor off the lobby. With elaborate courtesy they seated themselves on a gilt, much- tufted settee in the style labeled by European visitors as ‘Louis Farouk.’ “I don’t know what to say,” said Vita, who while in the shower had mentally composed a script. The hotel owner played her part and promptly delivered Vita’s cue. “Allah praises the plain speaking of truth.” “It’s about—Cyma—the room maid.” Vita

“Yes?” said Madame with relish. “Maybe I encouraged her without meaning to, of course.” “I’m sure madame was generosity itself. Your generosity is so enormous, it is bigger than a mountain that shields us from the burning sun.” The hotel owner tended to over-play her supporting role. “She’s working her way through school,” Vita continued, “so I felt I should show interest, to encourage her. I had no idea...” “Please, madame, do not be shy with me. Did that insolent girl insult you?” “Oh no,” said Vita, imparting an Arab fl avor to her dialogue, “she was a paragon of courtesy. Too much so, in fact. It’s just that she misinterpreted my intentions.” “That is what the university teaches!” said Madame with fi re. “They teach these silly girls to twist the truth. To make games with words. Please tell me, madame, what did she do?” “She took me to the hammam yesterday.” “You went to the hammam with that girl?” Madame’s back stiffened. “Madame,” Vita said carefully, “I don’t want to see things tourists see. I want to know how people in Cairo really live. I thought the hammam would be a good way...” “Naturally!” the owner ejaculated. “Madame is a true friend of Allah’s people. The Prophet said that water is sacred, so it is natural you should visit the hammam.” Vita kept her face down, but looked up obliquely through her lashes to gauge Madame’s reaction. “It was the heat, the terrible heat. I was lost in great, rolling clouds of steam. I was suffocating on the awful, wet heat—I must have fainted—when I came to...” Madame, ever the thespian, expectantly waited. “...she was touching me...in a sinful way...” Vita lifted her eyes. The woman’s face fl ushed mottled purple. “Such carnal behavior is an abomination to our Prophet. I will not tolerate that girl. I will fi re her immediately.” Vita held the woman’s eyes. “I think that is best. You 181 have your hotel’s reputation to think of. Also, Madame...” She took from her purse a Koran she’d bought in the souk. It was bound in soft pigskin and embossed with a gold fretwork of grapevines. Protruding conspicuously from the luxury edition of the holy book was a U.S. hundred dollar bill. Madame extended her fi ngers to grasp the Koran, but Vita didn’t let go, and spoke with exaggerated articulation. “Friends are trying to fi nd me but I don’t wish to be found. Sooner or later they’ll come here asking questions. I’m sure, Madame, I can count on your discretion. You’ll tell them you know nothing of me.” Vita held the top of the Koran, Madame the bottom. “After I have fi red that abominable university girl, I will forget that you honored me with this conversation. Allah praises discretion and teaches us taqiyya.” “Taqiyya?” said Vita, letting go of the Koran. “Taqiyya, madame, the truth is elastic.” Vita rose, and Madame remained seated with the holy book on her lap. “May Allah watch over your journey, madame, and lighten your load.”

* * *

On the platform at Cairo Station guttural shouts forced David to stand close to Vita, to make himself heard. Steam wafted out from beneath long green rail cars bearing in bronze letters the legend, ROYAL EXPRESS CAIRO LUXOR ASWAN. Turbaned porters handed Vita’s leather bags in through an open window. David pulled her closer. “Ten days, Vita, I’ll be back.” Her expression was blank. “There’s a new account in Luxor, a nine-story American hotel under construction. You’ll be at the old Winter Haven? It’s the only place there now.” Vita nodded. Porters shouted for baksheesh. She half turned from him, face lowered. Sunlight fi ltered by the grimy glass of a canopy overhead seemed to slide down her forehead to her arching brows, as on a marble statue. There was no way of knowing what she was gazing at in the distance, Vita or what her thoughts might be. “Goodbye, then,” said David, sighing. “Shalom, Vita, shalom.” And she was gone.

* * *

He spent the day wrapping up business in the City. He’d booked a seat on the midnight bus to Port Said, onto Haifa through the Sinai and Tel Aviv. The Moon Hotel was dark when he returned to pack. The bawab rattled about the lobby ejaculating over “the big excitement.” The morning chamber maid had been fi red. The stoned doorman repeated with delectation insults which had been exchanged by the maid and Madame. David left the man happily gurgling on his cot behind the tapestry. The fat green parrot remained silent. David climbed the stairway and fumbled with the key. Pushing open the door he switched on light and stepped inside. He blinked. Their room had been stripped. When you’re in love a room can become a whole world; this room at the back of a seedy love hotel buried in Khan al-Kahlili he’d shared with Vita for a week. It had become a world of shifting, intricate patterns of color, of sunlight rosy and diffused, and the excitement of Vita’s beautiful naked body. Their hideaway life in bed every night, during stolen afternoon hours had been the most marvelous experience of his life; but he had sensed that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. And suddenly she was gone, taking with her valuable items—the room had been stripped bare. ‘Maybe the maid. But why should the quiet university student be fi red the same day Vita leaves?’ He threw himself across the bed without bothering to kick off his loafers. He propped his chin on the edge of the mattress and stared into a crack of the plank fl oor and tried to think straight. Did he love Vita, was he in love with her? His desire, lust, passion for her were over-whelming. He thought of her all the time, she occupied his thoughts even when working, but he didn’t know her at all. She’d never told him anything, really. When he shared his thoughts and feelings, she remained silent but seemed not to 183 listen. She was somewhere else. His eyes followed a crack of the plank fl oor until it vanished under the bed. He saw the soft shimmer of silver and reached to pull out a piece of fabric. It was the remnant Vita twisted about her hips while sitting before the mirror…a square of loosely- woven cloth, a gossamer fl ame-stitched pattern of raspberry and turquoise interwoven with silver threads. He ran the improvised sarong through his fi ngers, feeling how worn it was in places. He imagined it pulling and twisting over the contours of Vita’s hips and buttocks. He lifted the sarong to his face and buried his nose in it. Her smell! The scent of her body was a composite perfume strong and penetrating: the bitter odor of growing hair; drops of perspiration on her neck, under her breasts, under her arms; her breath both acid and sweet, like lemon and honey; and beneath it all, the ghostly scent of her cunt when awakened by heat. ‘Goddamn you, Vita!’

Vita

22

he doorman at the Hilton was taken back by Christian TGranger’s curtness. Of all VIPS in Athens the American ambassador was among the most gracious, but not tonight. Christian sat with the glass shield up for the drive to the Residence, in suburban Kafi ssia. He was free now to deal with the urgent courier message he’d gotten from Skip, before leaving for dinner with a delegation of Dallas businessmen and the Hellenic Trade Board. The Texans were angling for incentives to open electronics plants in depressed rural Greece. Christian had barely been able to politely listen to the drawling pomposities of the Texans, and had excused himself as soon as coffee and brandy were served. He reached forward to press a button and a portion of the burlwood fascia fl ipped down to expose a wet bar. There was no ice, but a decanter of vodka and crystal glasses. He poured a shot and drank it neat. Sipping a second shot he slouched in the seat and waited for the strong warm relaxant to take the edge off his anxiety. According to Skip, Vita had left her salesman. Christian surmised that the Israeli, no matter how desirable, was an expediency. More disturbing was coverage in the Herald-Tribune of his friend Bulon’s involvement with excavations at Luxor. Like the Galleopi party, Christian thought, it was the sort of quasi- 185 offi cial, theatrical event that so attracted Vita. Here the threat was greater. Klaus had been an old man indifferently protected by government agents. Herve was young and alert, shielded round-the-clock by devoted aides and bodyguards. Vita wouldn’t get close enough to do harm, but there was the chance she’d be caught—her identity revealed. This would lead to catastrophic exposure of her madness and their marital nightmare at an internationally publicized cultural event. Christian downed straight peppered vodka. If he sent Skip to Luxor Vita would bolt. If he arrived himself to try to reason with her she’d create a diversionary scene. He must proceed with caution, and do nothing to alert or antagonize her. He would join Skip in Cairo. When Herve and the press cleared out of Luxor, they would move in and quietly take his wife into their protective custody.

Vita 187

BOOK THREE LUXOR Vita 189

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ud banks collapsed and caved into the Nile, an immense Msliding sheet of yellow-brown water streaming with bright green tubers. So treacherous were crosscurrents and whirlpools that the feluccas of fi shermen remained tethered, huddled behind a stone jetty. Spring rains far to the south in the Ethiopian highlands had swollen the river to fl ood level: inch by muddy, slimy inch turbulent waters scaled the embankment at Luxor. Clicking palms and striped minarets poked up above a warren of mud brick houses. Pot hole-riddled lanes were clogged with mule wagons, Dodge taxis, and camels struggling under over-loaded saddlebags. A single asphalt road ran before the two world-renowned structures that give this backwater desert oasis its distinction: Luxor Temple, erected 5000 years ago by the then-ruler of the world, and the Winter Haven Hotel, built in 1920 as the villa of an Italian merchant-aristocrat. Equally venerated today by travelers, the complexes sit side-by-side on the highest stretch of the embankment. The bronze letters WINTER HAVEN glinted in early morning sunlight at the base of a central pediment, near the roofl ine. Rosy light bathed white stucco walls of upper stories and the tower, while guests enjoyed breakfast on a verandah at Vita tables that lined a balustrade. Oblivious to her unimpeded view of the surging Nile, Vita sat over a cup of coffee laced with brandy. She fi shed out a half-drowned fl y and laid it on the gold rim of her saucer. The fl y convulsed, gathered itself together, then erratically fl ew off toward a suspended coil of fl ypaper black with the clustered corpses of fellow fl ies. Witnessing this willfully suicidal fl ight helped Vita focus on Herve Bulon, who at this moment was enjoying his third espresso of the new day, in exclusive privacy overhead. The industrialist had commandeered the tower suite, dedicating a phone line to his own personal use, installing telex and espresso machines, assigning adjacent rooms to aides. On fi rst striding through the lobby Bulon naturally noticed Vita— what libidinous man wouldn’t? She’d been sitting ensconced in a gilt armchair as purposefully as Neferititi on her throne. She was no less supremely confi dent than that ancient queen in her newly polished beauty, which—on the very day of her thirty-fourth birthday—was at its zenith. Vita knew how good she looked. She knew that Bulon saw how good she looked and she wanted to rub his nose in it. She wanted to haul him down by his scalp, if she could, to lick the salt off her cunt. She hated her husband’s best buddy for his arrogance—even more for the aides who made sure he was at all times unassailable. Vita contemplated Bulon’s tower suite two fl ights up a fi re stairwell from her own room. The concentrated mallow was on her dressing table inside an exfoliant bottle. All that was needed was opportunity—oh, for the boldness of Cesare Borgia! Each of the Borgias was known for their pet stratagem...a hat pin dipped in arsenic…a hollow ring fi lled with poison that could be tipped into the wine glass of distracted victims. But for audacity and simplicity Cesare was le rex di tutti. He would smear poison along one side of a knife blade, then during the fruit and cheese course, halve a pear and casually eat his half. The victim-guest would be lulled into going ahead and eating the half where the poison had come off the blade. Even the suspicious family of the deceased could not believe it possible to so easily poison half a piece of fruit. Veda was in awe of her superiors—Caesar Borgia was a genius and she was not! 191

She gazed across the yellow Nile and emerald cane fi elds, to where a pair of seated fi gures carved from red stone loomed against pink hills and vaulting blue sky. Vita registered the imperturbability of the Colossi. She too must remain quiet, sober, and wait. The answer would come. She reminded herself that the most spectacular discoveries are accidental, not planned. Columbus set out to reach China and stumbled on America. Inspiration would come, and ready, she would strike. Fortune favors the audacious. Like Cesare. From the Nile wafted palpitant, moist heat with its watery scent, musty and female. Lulled by brandied coffee Vita drifted in euphoria as closely-lined tables fi lled with late risers. Chatter pregnant with possibilities rippled around the edges of her meditative calm. “Has he seen you? Does he know you’re here?” “Not yet.” Vita placed the women in their mid-thirties, divorced, newly initiated into the jet set crowd. Her eyes caressed the Issey Miyake frock of one woman, a short skirt and layers of tank-tops in crinkled polyester of dazzling red, turquoise, and ochre. Perfect for the desert, Vita mused, as she listened. “…they watched me the whole time, Herve, his sister, that gorgon governess. Always at the door, just down the hall. Counting every minute, every hour. They never let me have a moment alone with Jaime, my own baby!” Two new voices cut in, male, British: “...so the Royals are at Windsor Castle and the Queen says to Princess Ann, ‘Ann, let’s go for a drive in my new Bentley,’ and Ann says, ‘…duh, ok..’” In front of Vita sat another guest. She could see shiny patent leather shoes under the table, and above the newspaper he held in front of his face, the dome of a bald, egg-shaped head. Vita simultaneously listened to both conversations.

“They’re driving the Bentley “I mean, Marella, he’s torturing down country lanes around me with this limited visiting”. the castle. It’s a gorgeous day, the windows are down, “What does your lawyer say?” Vita

Ann’s beehive is tossing in the wind. “He doesn’t say ca-ca. Suddenly a robber jumps out of the hedgerow in front of the Bentley, At six hundred an hour.” so the Queen jams on the brakes.

Vita saw from the inclination of the egg-shaped head that the little man was following the women’s conversation.

“The robber goes to the driver’s “But you’re Catholic! Who- side side and says, ‘Give me yr’ ever heard of a French Catholic money!’ The Queen’s voice fl utes mother who can’t get custody up out of the Bentley, ‘We don’t of her child--telex the Pope! carry any money.’ The robber says, ‘Then give me all yr’ joolry!’ “Marella, I’m scared.” After hesitating, the Queen fl utes, ‘We aren’t wearing any jewelry.’ “You should be. Herve is mad. The robber can’t believe his ears. I can’t imagine what he’ll do He looks into the Bentley, and when he sees you here!” sure enough, all hands, wrists, and throats are clean as a whistle! “Marella, tell me what I should ‘No bleedin’ joolry!’” do?”

Egg-Head, Vita saw, tilted closer to the women.

“The robber is royally pissed. He “Kidnap Jaime.” shouts, ‘Out! Out of the car!’Ann “Kidnap!” and the Queen get out of the “Kidnap him.” Bentley. The robber gets in and “NO!” drives off. So here’s the Queen and “He’s your own child, kid- Ann walking back to the castle. nap him. Have a Gulfstream Ann’s awfully quiet for while, waiting to get you across the then she says, ‘But, mum, I don’t border.” understand. What about that 84- “Are you brain-dead, Marella! 193

carat Cartier chain-bracelet Get myself out of that Bastille- you were wearing?’ The Queen style chateau? Insanity!” blushes, glances down at her lap, “Then you’ve got only one and says, ‘I, er...tucked it away.’ other choice.” ‘But, mum, what about the triple “Yes! What!” strand of giant gray pearls you were wearing?’ Glancing at her “Kill Herve.” lap, the Queen says, ‘I tucked those away, too.’ ‘But, mum, what “Marella!” about that ruby-and diamond- studded, sunburst brooch you were “Kill the bastard!” wearing!’ ‘I tucked those away too.’ ‘But, mum, what about that ruby- “MARELLA!” and diamond-studded, sunburst ‘You can do it, cherie. You’ve brooch you were wearing?’‘I got a pistol. Shoot him.” tucked that away, too,’ sniffs the Queen. ‘Too bad Maragaret “Never, never!” wasn’t here, we could’ve saved the Bentley.’ “Then lose Jaime.”

Egg-Head leaned as far away as possible from the men’s raucous laughter. “There’s no court in France “We could’ve saved the Bentley! that won’t let you off with That’s a good one! If Margaret manslaughter.” had been there--ho-ho--we “No! No, no, no!” could’ve saved the Bentley. “DO IT!” That’s a riot!”

“Take the elevator to the tower,” said Marella. “When the door opens aim over the aide’s shoulder and put a bullet through Herve’s head.” “I couldn’t—any other way, but not that...” Vita strained to hear. The women’s heads leaned together, their voices dropped to excited whispers. Vita

A waft of blue Gitane smoke drifted under Vita’s nostrils. She hated the smell of cigarettes and turned to confront the perpetrator, who stood with her back to her at one corner balustrade. Easily the chicest female on the verandah other than herself, the woman was delicate, slender as a doe, with her hair slicked back into a soigne knot at the base of her neck, and dressed all in white, fi tted slacks and a smock with padded shoulders. She expulsed another cloud of smoke, so Vita made a theatrical coughing sound. Impervious to Vita, the “young” woman stared off into sky at a fi ligree of scaffolds encasing the Luxor Ramada Renaissance Hotel under construction. Vita could barely comprehend the impossibly accented voice, as it rasped, “Dey are after mine bluud!” “I should’ve thought you have no blood,” snapped Vita, “more like nicotine percolating in your veins.” The woman wheeled to face Vita who was shocked— ’She’s older than God’s wetnurse! How could I ever have thought...’ Tinted hair was immaculately slicked back from a high forehead, fi tting the woman’s erect head like a monk’s cap. The nose was vulpine. The lips were thin, but well-shaped and enhanced by slashes of atomic-red lipstick. The skin betrayed no hint of sagging, but it had been subjected to decades of savage Eygptian sun, the chain-smoking of unfi ltered cigarettes and liberal use of diet pills and recreational substances. It was skin chemically cured, like rawhide, and as extravagantly painted as that of a mummied pharaoh. The old woman’s eyes were non- existent. Habitual squinting (vanity prohibited the use of glasses) had caused a network of lines, as numerous as tributaries of the Nile delta, to sprout from the corner of each kohl-lined eye. Vita realized who she was. The legend was emblazoned everywhere, on the hotel entrance’s brass plaque, on stationary, matches, menus, even stitched on pillowcases:

THE WINTER HAVEN LUXOR ETCHE VERY, PROPRIETOR 195

Etche Very was equally shocked by Vita. Hoteliere doyenne and arbitar elegantiarum of Upper Egypt, she was accustomed to universal deferential treatment from local potentates right up to the wife of the President of Egypt. Lesser mortals, such as paying guests, young females especially, positively groveled. Madame Very was stunned by Vita’s beauty and impertinence. And delighted. “You are right, dar-link,” she said, making a sound like a crow gargling. “I do not have bluud in mein veins— plasma, pure plasma—how else vould I do all dat I do!” After a bout of coughing and raspy chuckling, she jabbed a red fi ngernail at the scaffolds. “Dese bastards are trying to kill me!” For half a century the Winter Haven had monopolized Luxor’s upscale tourist business. Its prices were moderate and the rooms had old-world charm. Lacking were such delicate ameneties as modern plumbing or air conditioning, but as Etche Very would squawk, “Who needs air conditioning vith dese fresh river breezes? No, dey are trying to kill me, dese idiots...dese morons…dese...eem-beciles!” “Who?” said Vita. “Who vat?” said Etche Very, who avoided as much as possible listening to anything anyone else might be saying. “Who is tryingto kill you, delectable as the idea may be.” Madame Very sprang forward like a tigress and stabbed the sky above their heads with one scarlet-tipped arrow of an index fi nger. “Dat Frrrr-ench fairrr-rry-boy! Dat sheety Bulon bastard vants mine bluud.” The highrise hotel was owned by a consortium formed by Herve Bulon, Egyptian businessmen and the American franchise corporation. Madame Very’s anger was presently fueled by Bulon’s exploitation of the buried statues. Their discovery was attracting photo spreads in magazines world-wide, portraying the playboy tycoon as generous benefactor of a new museum. “Dat bastard can’t vait to take all my gutt business and leave me vith sheety backpackers,” she snarled, sucking on her cigarette. “Why don’t you get rid of him?” Vita casually said. “Vat did you say?” “Kill. Him. He’s the money partner. Without him, the hotel falls through.” Vita

“Dat is true,” said Madame Very, exhaling smoke, “but Jesus Christ, I am a proprietor, not a murderer.” “Expand,” snapped Vita, pointedly shifting her stare toward Bulon’s gaudy ex-wife. “Others would like to kill him as well. You can get lost in the crowd.” “Ah her,” sighed Etche Very, blowing out a cumulus cloud of smoke, “she eez such an em-becile, dat von, she couldn’t succesfully kill herself.” “Why not do it yourself? You’re smart. Unless of course, you’re scared.” Etche Very’s squint-shut eyes popped open and visible were two pebbled orbs of lion-yellow. “SCARED!” she squawked, “SCARED?” Vita thought the woman was having a coronary trauma, so red and contorted was her face. Vita persisted, leaning close to croon, “He’s upstairs. You’ll never have another chance like this.” Etche Very growled and smashed out her cigarette. “It’ll be so Macbeth, hostess murdering guest,” smiled Vita, who had perfect recall of every plot synopsis she’d ever read. “But I can understand you being afraid—at your age...” Too furious to speak, Etche Very yanked up a sleeve and violently thrust the underside of her arm into Vita’s face. The tattoo of numerals was miniscule and blurred, but legible: 685163. Vita had heard of World War II but its grimer realities remained a closed mystery to her—until now. She knew what the tattoo signifi ed and was impressed. This old crocodile was there and had survived. Etche Very fl ourished her arm in the air under Vita’s nose and hissed, “Nazis didn’t scare me and neither does Herve Bulon!” She stalked away, too furious to remember to light another cigarette. The man with the bald, oval head lowered his newspaper to study Vita slouched against the balustrade, meditatively tapping one front tooth with the sharp corner tip of the envelope she dreaded opening. 197

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16 June, Port Said

Dearest Vita,

I’m stuck here another night. The wholesaler thought I said a shipment was due the second week of August on their calendar—which would be during Ramadan, so they’re going nuts. Typical Arabs. My hotel’s on the Canal, full of dock-workers. They drink beer and play cards all night with some disco queen blasting on their boom box, moaning her way through multiples—which doesn’t help—I keep thinking of you sitting at your mirror, wearing nothing but the sarong you left behind. I have it. I sniff it sometimes (just kidding). My teeth sweat when I shut my eyes and see you coming at me, dropping the sarong and crawling up over my legs to straddle my cock. You lean to let me to kiss your tits, the tip of my giraffe-tongue swirling your nipples and making them hard. Right now I’m playing with my own nipples and getting hard (not kidding). I MISS YOU!! Now that I’ve spoken from the gut, I can tell you what I’m thinking. Vita

How you lie to me! You get your kicks telling me nothing and keeping secrets. I ask about your husband and family, and instead of answering you bend over to pick up the tortoise-shell comb that’s fallen to the fl oor and put it back in your hair humming to yourself, pleased at having said nothing at all. You look like a beautiful little girl with your mouth pouty and rounded, when you lie, like you’re waiting for a kiss. How can I be in love with such a liar as you—you’re as unreal as one of the Arab’s crazy djinns. This is from the heart, Vita. We’ve been together a only short time, you think I’m naive and know nothing—but you’re wrong. I love you no matter what you’re hiding, or running from. I love you for everything you are. You need me. You know it’s so, you know how good we are together.

Your David 199

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he Winter Haven’s entrance is immodestly grand with Tbroad steps leading up to a porte-cochere of Victorian wrought-iron. In breezy shade, Pushpesh Pant gravely sucked a Tums. The pain of an ulcer brought slight twitches to the corners of his mouth, but the maitre d’hotel appeared as stoical as the Colossi out in cane fi elds—with all his rooms full, chamber maids out sick, and the arrogant French tycoon demanding a maid of his own. Pushpesh Pant considered that his guest list read like a rollcall for the cultural leaders of Europe: Sir Charles Lytton- Eckersley of the British Museum, Andre Melroux of France, and the Italian minister of culture, fi lm tycoon Gatti Andreotti. The big world was descending on Luxor and its premier hotel all because of the discovery of buried statues. But for the maitre d’hotel only one pedestal personage mattered, and SHE was on her way to his hotel! A police contact phoned to say her military plane had touched down. Many a monsoon afternoon of his childhood had been spent inside a cinema losing himself in the incandescent smile of the blonde Greek siren. Now she was on her way to his hotel! She was an old woman—still it was HER. Cigarette smoke drifted over his shoulder and Pant prayed to all the gods to deliver him at this moment from her. Vita

Etche Very stood beside her maitre d’hotel. His stress level soared. His volatile employer had been excessively mild and from experience he knew this forebode trouble, something was building. He understood his employer well. He knew she was not wholly human, that normal emotions had long since been cauterized, which he considered natural enough given her life history. The pampered daughter of a prosperous Jewish merchant, in Budapest, Etche Very would’ve been the fi rst woman admitted to the national medical school had it not been for the outbreak of World War II. She survived two concentration camps with her mother and sister, then later escaped from communist insurgents during the bloody Hungarian Revolution. Following the loss of a child and a bitter divorce, she had spent four decades out-maneuvering Egyptian police and revenue offi cials. Etche Very was the embodiment of sitzfl eisch, the ability to survive against any odds, but at a price. She had come to feel or care absolutely nothing at all for anyone. Whenever she encountered a new face she experienced only one of two sensations, either curiosity or incuriosity. Pant had noted a pronounced curiosity, as well as unprecedented solicitousness towards the beautiful American with hard eyes. Madame Very had taken her passport into her offi ce (an all-white, inner sanctum strewn with Lalique crystal) to study at leisure. He’d caught her serving the American tea in the lobby off a silver tray, no less, the very picture of gracious servility. Pant knew to brace himself for some ghastly, fresh outburst of maliciousness. It fell to this gentle man to soothe the feelings of guests and employees alike whose feelings had been hurt, nay, ravaged by Etche Very’s adder-tongue. As maitre d’hotel his chief duty was not, as is usual, to do the owner’s dirty work, rather to make amends in the devastating wake of Etche Very having done, with relish, her own dirty work. The hoteliere stood beside him puffi ng on a cigarette. Pant implored the gods to prevent her from in any way offending HER. A motorcade rattled up to the steps of the Winter Haven. From the fender of a dusty Mercedes waved tiny fl ags, one for the United Arab Republic of Egypt, the other the blue and white fl ag 201 of the Republic of the Hellenes. Pant stiffened. Etche Very chuckled. Military policemen got off their motorcycles and glared at gathering tourists. Security agents leaped from the limousine to scan the hotel’s rooftop and nearby trees. An aide held open the rear door, while inside the dark interior there was a stirring of blonde hair. Galina Galleopi burst from the Mercedes like Alciabedes himself emerging from his triumphal chariot, all sun-gilt and gold. The crowd shouted as the septuagenarian movie-star- turned-politician fl ung out her arms. The bleached hair swung about a face mostly covered by huge sunglasses. The ancient body was splendidly encased in a Chanel suit of jonquil-yellow boucle lined with navy silk. Watching from above Etche Very gave a crow-like gargle, “Dat Grrr-eeekk gasbag!” Pushpesh Pant fl inched in dread of what surely was to come. Tourists gathered in gaggles to gape as Galina ascended the grand staircase, stopping, turning every ten steps to fl ash the goddess smile. Wire service reporters and a photographer recorded the entrance, for once again Galina Galleopi had captured international headlines. Her radiant face beamed out from newsstands and supermarket check-out counters. The voluble minister of culture had launched a crusade which horrifi ed museum boards around the world, by demanding that the British Museum return to Athens the marbles taken by Lord Elgin, in 1898, from the Parthenon. What madness! This would set a precedent that could empty museums of their antiquities collections. And the Galleopi woman was cunning. She rebel- roused support through the auspices of UNESCO and wherever she went she rallied sizable crowds. The British Museum was undergoing a siege of picketing in London, at Galina’s behest. “Galina!” shouted the chorus of reporters. Galina stood defi antly with her bleached mane tossed back, and smiled in a terrifying manner right through the chorus out at all creation. Vita

“Galina, do you really think you can get back the marbles Lord Elgin stole?” “It was not Lord Elgin,” bellowed Galina to the cosmos, “it was his wife! I have her letters. Lady Elgin bragging about having crated a whole pediment and twenty melotopes in one afternoon. If it took a woman to get our marbles out of Greece, it will take another woman—a Greek woman—to get them back!” The photographer squatted to catch arms violently fl ung up to the heavens. Drawing upon the psychic energy she used to horrify crowds as Medea, or Electra, Galina Galleopi roared her decree to tourists, seemingly even to huge black gamooses* lolling in mud across the Nile: “THE BRITISH MUSEUM CANNOT HOLD HOSTAGE THE VERY NATIONAL SYMBOLS OF MY PEOPLE!” There was whistling and cheering, and with timing unequaled by any Greek since Aristophanes, Galina turned to sedately climb into shade under the the porte-cochere. Pushpesh Pant approached. He heard his voice waver he sepulchrally intoned, “Welcome, Madame, to the Winter Haven. It is an honor to have you as our guest.” Galina beamed. “Yes, dar-link,” piped Etche Very, deep from within a cloud of cigarette smoke, “you are a vel-come addition to de an- teeq-uities!’’ Galina blinked. “Why yes, it’s thrilling to be in a place fi lled with magnifi cent art inspired by us Greeks.” “Darrr-link,” purred Etche Very, “de Grr-eeks came two- t’ousand years after dese people.” Galina looked around at her entourage with saucer-wide eyes, then looked Etche Very straight in the eye. “I’m sure you’re right about the dates, dear, having lived through it and all.” Galina guffawed and beamed at her admirers who tittered, none louder than Vita who stood on the edge of the cluster. Etche ery’s face fl ushed purple and one red-tipped hand clawed the air at her side. Pant restrained his employer, while an aide hurried

* Egypt’s ubitiquous water buffalo 203 hurried Galina Gallopi through the lobby. “Who is that old cunt?” hissed Galina. “Please, Galina, language! People can hear.” Inside the tiny, silk-lined elevator the aide patiently explained to his turbulent charge. “Galina, that old woman owns this place, and until the Ramada gets built it’s the only place within four hundred miles that has a toilet you’d put your fanny down on. So leave her alone.” Galina fl icked back her mane as elevator doors opened. Flanked by aides she strode along the hallway. An aide stopped to fumble with the key to room 47. The door of room 48 opened and out came the silver-haired director of the British Museum, Sir Charles Lytton-Eckersely. The shocked peer stared at Galina Galleopi, coldly nodded and strode past her. Red-faced, Galina scurried into her suite. Downstairs, Etche Very was chuckling. “Dey vill have ‘tings to talk about in de ele-vator!”

* * * Soon the hoteliere was not laughing, but shrieking. Vita heard the crow-like screech while climbing the emergency stairwell. She slipped into the hallway and looked through an open door. Pushpesh Pant watched as Etche Very attacked three chamber maids. “EE-diots! Mo-rrrons! Eeem-beciles! How many times do I have to tell you! You do eet dis vay! Not like a goddam peasant, but dis vay!” The hoteliere yanked back the bedspread and starched sheet. Puffi ng on her cigarette she folded the sheet’s hem, then smoothed it fl at under pillows misted with cigarette ash. “See? Dis vay! MY VAY!” “Or,” cooed Vita, entering, “you could do it this way. My way.” Etche Very watched as Vita deftly performed the same manoeuvre, only this time the folded, pressed helm of the sheet correctly showed the embroidered legend:

THE WINTER HAVEN LUXOR ETCHE VERY PROPRIETOR Vita

“I like dat!” exhaled the hoteliere. “Dat eez gutt, dar- link. But tell me…you said dat your mother vas a rich voman… dat you never vorked a day in your life. So how did you learn to make beds?” “Madame Very,” said Vita carefully, “I have managed embassy Residences that entertain royal guests. There’s no detail of household luxury I cannot see to. Things a servant can never grasp.” “Ah, an embassy Residence? Your husband—” “—Madame, despite your pretensions to fi ve-star service, you obviously don’t have your staff under control, so I will help you.” Etche Very bristled at such chupzpah, but was overwhelmed by curiosity. ‘What does this bitch mean? She— help me!’ Vita pressed. “You’re short of maids, who anyway are worthless unless closely supervised. The King of Thailand told me that he felt at home in my Residence. So I will take care of your tower suite. Mr. Pant can supervise the third and fourth fl oors. You, Madame, can keep an eye on the lower fl oors.” Slits of yellow eye blazed as Etche Very considered this outré proposition. She lit another cigarette. “Poosh-pesh,” she said, jabbing a red fi ngernail at the maids, “take dis trio of em-bi- cility and poot dem to vork.” Pant, unhappy, shooed the giggling girls out of the room. Etche Very regarded Vita. “You said your mother owned restaurants and smelled of grease. Vy are you suddenly villing to dirty your hands vith meeee-nial vork?” “I’m bored,” said Vita. Etche Very grunted. “And vat do I pay you? An eli-gant voman does not vork for no-ting. Vat do you vant from me!” “I do not yet know what compensation I require, but when the time comes, you’ll pay.” Etche Very blew out a stream of smoke. “I have done vorse deals. Vith de Nazis, vith dese sheety A-rabs. So you vill take care of de tower yourself? You vill take care of dat Bulon bastard for me?” “Yes,” said Vita, holding the yellow snake-eyes, “I will 205 take care of Bulon.” “Come!” Etche Very ordered. They passed through the fi re door. A guest room door opened and out popped the egg-shaped head. The man thoughtfully listened to clattering footsteps of those two improbable women. The only entrances to the tower suite were the stairwell used by staff and a private elevator for occupants. The moment Vita and Etche Very entered the master bedroom, an aide looked in from an adjoining room. He was in his mid-twenties, excessively handsome, and wore a silk shirt open down over his smooth polished chest and trousers of a soft fabric which clung to the bulge of his crotch. Vita mused, ‘Has Bulon come around to boys?’ She’d always thought that overly zealous and competitive sports activities were a cover Christian and Bulon used for a bit of butt-fucking on the sly. Maybe Bulon, being French Catholic and a purer sensualist than a New England Episcopalian prig like Christian, has turned from men to boys. ‘Why not,’ thought Vita, ‘with that witch of an ex-wife stalking after him in her Issey Miyake frocks!’ Etche Very smirked at the beautiful aide, “Ve are de cleaning vomen.” Ganymedes recognized Etche Very, and left. The hotelier launched into a tirade of commands and demonstrations Vita tried to ignore, as she studied the room. It was large and square, fi lled with cherry wood furniture. The walls were whitewashed. On top of a bureau a Chinese vase held pink and mauve hydrangea blossoms. White voile curtains fl uttered at louvered doors to the balcony. Vita concentrated on Herve Bulon’s possessions. There was nothing personal, just his electronic traveling companions. The most vital dominated the bedtable—the espresso machine. ‘Simple, obvious,’ thought Vita, recalling Ceasare Borgia, ‘a caffeine addiction that’s been broadcast in the tabloids.’ Blotting out Etche Very’s carping Vita directed the full force of her attention on the sleek Krups’s coffee maker...within easy reach…always in view of alert eyes. Nearby were sealed bottles of water and cartons of vacuum-packed bags of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, impossible to access without causing Vita notice. Vita’s eyes shifted to demi-tasse cups and saucers… spoons...a stack of coffee fi lters— “SO?” To jar Vita from what seemed to be a semi-catatonic state, Etche Very squawked with the hoarse cry of a carrion bird. “You can do eet? You vill take care of Bulon for me?” “Not for you,” said Vita, more to herself, “but I will take care of him.” Madame Very marched down out of the tower. On the fourth fl oor she chuckled as she passed the adjoining rooms of Sir Charles Lytton-Eckersley and Galina Galleopi. She paused to correct an arrangement of canna lilies spiked with blood-red spears of gladioli. Giving the fl owers a fi nal glare, she lit another cigarette and continued on her way down into the bowels of the old hotel. Etche Very lived her waking hours with the conviction that her employees, Massood Oroomchi excluded, were thieves, all of them. “Dey rob me blind,” she would retort at any casual mention of her staff. She kept linen, china and silver in locked closets and held the keys herself, more than sixty on a brass ring especially made for her by Dr. Gucci. Her most effective ploy in countering thievery was the habit of constantly patrolling the hotel. Employees never knew when she might stealthily appear like a malign genie at their elbow. Prowling labyrinthine basement corridors, Madame Very ducked into a closet to peer through louvered panels into the cavernous main kitchen. She watched all-male workers sitting on up-turned pots to peel garlic. She heard a man’s voice shriek in falsetto, “Do eet my vay! DO EET MY VAY!” Into her range of vision pranced the dishwasher, a jolly Lebanese named Sassime, who had stripped off his shirt, wrapped a tablecloth around his pudgy body and tossed one corner over a bare shoulder. He strutted about in his improvised white couturier gown jabbing a fi nger and shouting, “Do eet my vay!” The Egyptians contorted with laughter. Etche Very gurgled, “Dat goddam idiot eez eem-i- tating me!” Minutes later she regally chatted with guests in her lobby, but was distracted by unanswered rings at the switchboard. Spouting smoke and abandoning her guests, she dashed behind 207 the registration desk to snatch up the phone headset. “Gutt afternoon,” she intoned in her smoker’s basso profundo. “Dis eez de Vinter Haven Ho-tel. May I help you?” The androgynous long-distance voice crackled, “Good afternoon, sir. This is the American Embassy calling from Cairo. Can you tell me if you have a guest registered under the name of Mrs. Christian Granger? Or Vita Granger?” Etche Very’s periscope eyes scanned the master guest list. “No, dar-link, ve have everyvon else in de vorld here, but no Vita Granger.” “Sir, what about under Pearce? Vita Pearce?” “No Vita at all, dar-link.” “Well, thank you, sir.” “You’re vel-come.” “Good afternoon, sir.” “Gutt afternoon, miiiss!” Etche Very put down the headset and lit a fresh cigarette from the end of the one still burning between her scarlet lips. ‘Vita—so that’s the bitch’s name! I didn’t think it was Kay, like it says on that shitty fake passport. Mrs. Vita Granger...Mrs. Christian Granger—Jesus Christ! Really she is the wife of a goddamned American ambassador!’ Vita

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21 June, Haifa Dearest Vita, I woke this morning, shivering. Sea breezes blew in through the open slider, but I was too cold to get up and close it. I lay back on the pillow remembering how a week ago we always slept with my body pressed tight against yours, our arms and legs intertwined without any gap. This morning an empty pillow lay where your face ought to be, and a draft blew in through gaps at my neck, under my arms, all over—no wonder I was cold! I lay thinking, why am I alone, why are you not here in my arms! Last night when I got home mother fi xed my favorite dinner of tomato soup, black bread and lamb chops, with good Israeli red wine. We ate by ourselves at the table in the kitchen. After I cleaned up and washed the dishes she served coffee and raisin cheesecake. We stayed up late, like we usually do, and I talked about you. Vita, I know you’ve had bitter experiences with your mother. That’s why I try to explain my closeness to my own. I can’t imagine it being otherwise. I don’t say mother is perfect. She has her faults like everyone else, but she’s not a narrow person. 209

She doesn’t pay attention to popular prejudices or opinions, she makes up her own mind and she’s fair. Some things you can’t tell your mother(!) but I explained how I see now that Yael has always been a substitute for her. She and Yael are so much alike, they’re peacemakers—you— you’re a provocateur! They sooth quarrels between our uncles over politics, or Aunt Vera’s kvetching over trivia. With them I’m fi lled with happiness and serenity, everything is peaceful and harmonious. But is this how it should be? Does a man feel for his wife the same things he feels for his mother. When I’d fi nished, she talked quietly, sometimes reaching across to take my hand. She talked about Dad, the cowboy pilot, restless, bored, looking for excitement—how he loved Cairo. Can you imagine a Jewish bomber pilot night-clubbing in Cairo! She said she had accused him of having an Egyptian girlfriend. We have a snapshot of him and his buddies on the terrace at Shepheards in his khaki shorts and clogs, his beret cap crazily cocked over one eye. So cool. Dad wanted adventure. To be up in the clouds with big open spaces and the feeling of being on top of everything. Mother reminded me how he paid for his passion. She can’t help but see it that way. She can’t accept that I’m like him. Life has to be a series of beginnings and setting out into the unknown, and you, Vita, are the unknown. I wonder what you’re doing in Luxor. I know you’re not seeing temples—met any interesting people? Strangled Herve Bulon yet? Are you aching for me like I’m aching for you?

Your David Vita

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ire-red light set glass panes aglitter, causing them to Fblaze. The Winter Haven’s facade ignited with cornices and pediments curling up at the edges, like burning paper. Each sinking of the summer sun sent tongues of rose-pink and saffron fl ame lapping from corner to corner. In shadow the iron porte cochere gleamed with a blue sheen. Horse-drawn carriages clip- clopped up and down Sharia-al Nil, where tourists and strolling townspeople kept glancing up at windows as if to glimpse the glamorous guests. Festive with strings of light bulbs cruise boats behind the jetty rocked in rising fl ood waters. Out in the western desert the red fi reball touched the rim of the horizon, drenching the sky with unimaginable color, a golden incandescence, rose-red, saffron, then luminous pale green. Cherry-hued clouds hung motionlessly above indigo sugarcane fi elds. Suddenly the molten red sky was extinguished and night fell swiftly. Snowy egrets dropped by the dozens out of the violet sky to settle onto branches of eucalyptus along the embankment, making it seem as if the giant trees had burst into blossom. Floodlights washed the hotel’s white, neo-classical façade. Black shadows delineated windows separated by fl uted 211 columns, and crowned with alternating arches and pediments. French doors opened onto the empty lobby blazing with chandeliers—guests were in their rooms dressing for festivities at the temple. First to appear was the bald little man with elaborate mustaches, wearing a formal, if slightly demode, dinner jacket with a red coronation in his boutonniere. He stood with hands folded behind him and his sharp green eyes taking in the lobby’s splendid furnishings. He studied a Second Empire clock on a credenza. The clock’s face was gold, as were fl anking, ornamental winged sphinxes; but something was wrong, so he stood staring— and listening. Between marble columns hung a tapestry depicting the frolicking of animal-human gods; behind was a cardroom where the estranged wife of Herve Bulon spoke in hushed, emphatic tones. The former detective strained to hear. “Marella!” hissed ex-Madame Bulon. “I’m so humiliated. You can’t imagine.” “I can imagine a lot. Tell!” “The Swiss Guard controls the elevator, so I used the fi re stairwell. Before I could get to the master bedroom I was stopped and told that Herve was to be disturbed under no circumstance. Me—his wife!” “Ex,” said Marella. “Still, I have my rights. He can’t do this—he can’t!” The anally-minded detective realized what was troubling about the clock. Although perfectly centered on the credenza the asymmetrical wings of the sphinxes made it seen off-kilter. He adjusted the clock to one side. When his sharp ears turned back to the women’s conversation the lobby had begun to fi ll, and he was forced to listen to the cackle of a pair of British yuppies in safari garb. “You know what Edmond’s like. No one gets the goods on him even in Bangkok. At tit bars where half the birds are TVs Edmond’s telling everyone not to drink the cocktails because they drug them so the girls can rob you. Edmond’s in a dark corner with half-naked waitresses crawling over him and he’s drinking a canned soda. Ho-ho—it’s so funny—I have to laugh when I Vita think about it.” “What happened?” “Police found Edmond robbed and passed out in a gutter—” “—NO!” “Edmond Maxie on his arse in the gutter—and you’ll never believe it! Since tourists are wising up to drugged cocktails, these clever Thai transvestites inject their nipples with tranquilizers. They entice the fools to suck on their—ho-ho— tranquilizer-laced nipples!” Rubbing tears from bloodshot eyes, the man said, “You have to remember that Edmond is a Pisces, and a Pisces with Aries in Sagittarius, they’re like shooting stars. You can’t do anything with them. Oh, Madame Very! You must tell us your sign!” “Feces, dar-link.” The hoteliere paused to strike a pose while making imaginary adjustments to white calla lilies massed in a Lalique vase, on the round table beneath a tripod-chandelier of white Alexandrine glass. Madame Very had not yet gowned and painted herself, still everyone turned to admire the smart lines of the habitual white work pants and smock with padded shoulders. Such impervious grandeur of self-regard made her guests feel, as intended, like peasants. Ever alert for those planning to pilfer faux-precious objects strewn about her lobby, Etche Very let her slit-eyed glance slide beyond the calla lilies, and planted it in the back of a woman who was scrutinizing an ebony cigarette box with a golden sphinx for a lid. “Faberge made fi ve of dese,” she rasped, abruptly coming up from behind. “Two are in Buckingham Palace and I own tree.” The woman jerked her head up and down in sincere appreciation at having been singled out for attention. She accepted Etche Very at face value and failed to appreciate that the venerable hotelier was an inventive fantasist of the highest order, who lived in a world unhampered by truth or even verisimilitude. She imposed her own reality upon the rest of the world, doubling, tripling, quadrupling the value or signifi cance of any hotel item admired, broken, or stolen by guests or employees. No one 213 escaped retribution for any offense whatsoever—not even the stark naked middle-aged man who ran into Etche Very while fl ashing an upper fl oor hallway. She had squinted and snarled, “Poot on your clothes, siirrrrr, you vill catch cold!” Madame Very lit a cigarette and circulated among her guests. She dispensed bits of salacious gossip, outrageous opinions and shrewd perceptions, all in her atrocious English with the charming and carefully cultivated and maintained Old World accent. “Madame Very, we’re seeing the Valley of the Tombs tomorrow. Now that locals are getting touchy about what we wear, what do you think? I’m not sure that yachting trousers are the thing to wear in a tomb.” “Do not vorry,” croaked Etche Very, “de pharaoh vill not notice, he is dead.” This witticism brought the hotelier to her favorite set- piece: death. “Eet eez no’ting eli-gant to die in mine hotel,” she would begin, then proceed to elaborate in sepulchral tones on the frequency with which elderly guests inelegantly suffered strokes in the heat. On the necessity of getting bodies to the embalming doctor, and quickly, without alerting other guests that one of their number had expired. To surreptitiously get fresh corpses clear of her hotel, Etche Very had considered keeping an empty piano case on hand. The coffi n could be put inside the case for removal through the lobby. But she decided that to treat a guest’s death in so cavalier a fashion would not be in “gutt taste.” Titillating guests required only the tiniest fraction of her brain, so Madame Very was at the same time busy reviewing her organizational plans. The hotel would empty from seven to eight- thirty. Guests would be at the temple, where she herself had no intention of venturing. She had lived half her life in Luxor without setting foot in its world-class monument. Ruins are reminders of transitory success, an unpalatable fact for high achievers such as herself. Presently her hotel was the largest structure on the banks of the Upper Nile and she considered it to be a perpetually living entity. What was Luxor Temple but a pile of sandstone to be shit on by vultures and stared at by bourgeois tourists? Tonight her restaurant would fi ll with the most elite guests Vita she’d ever serve, including Herve Bulon—how she hated him! She made herself focus on work at hand. She would supervise the kitchen and waiters. Pushpesh Pant would cover the restaurant door and see to the night housekeeping on the upper fl oors. The American who calls herself Kay but whose name is Vita—Mrs. Vita Granger—will see to Bulon’s suite. The young bitch’s attention to the fi ner nuances of housekeeping was exemplary and the industrialist had relayed his satisfaction. Etche Very pondered this Vita-person…wife of an American ambassador traveling under a counterfeit passport…two air express letters in four days from Israel...phone calls from Haifa not taken. Is she running from the ambassador or from a pressing lover? Both? Greedily she inhaled smoke. What a commanding presence, this Vita! Not superfi cial prettiness but real beauty, severe and majestic. Beauty that dazzles men and women alike. There’s more, the hoteliere surmised, some connection to Bulon like the ex-wife who’s making a fool of herself. Is this Vita-bitch a spurned lover who’s insane and plans to kill the bastard? The old woman felt a thrill. “Maybe she’s a homicidal maniac. Maybe she’ll do it!’ Happily she gurgled, like some great white, exotic bird of prey. ‘Tonight I may need that piano case!’ 215

28

erchants shook their heads at the spectacle of news Mpeople roaming the embankment like jackals, fellahin farmers gaping, soldiers with rifl es patrolling—because of some fool buried statues! Barricades sealed off roads. Police speedboats fought fl ood currents along the shoreline. Armed men crouched on the Winter Haven’s roof. Sharia al-Nil had been swept clear of donkey carts, kebab vendors and touts with Neferititi busts. Red and white banners proclaimed, WELCOME PRESIDENT NASSER. From behind mud brick houses with overgrown gardens levitated a gigantic red moon. Looking more like a visiting planet than a mere satellite, the scarlet sphere rose into black sky behind the fl oodlit pylons, obelisks and colonnades of Luxor Temple. The huge stone faces of Egypt’s ancient pharaohs, lit from below, gazed out with regal, blank expressions. Townspeople pressed close to watch invited guests stroll with studied casualness in formal attire among the magnifi cent ruins. Soldiers stood shoulder-to-shoulder to form a barrier. No one in the crowd at fi rst noticed a hum, a throbbing, but the more alert soldiers did, and tightened the cordon. The noise increased to a roar. With terrifying velocity a Soviet-made SSX9 helicopter swooped down to hover above the splendid temple. Jet engines Vita screamed as blades clawed air and fought with gravity. Strobe- laser beams crisscrossed and penetrated dust clouds as the great chopper bearing the gold star of Egypt settled to earth. A step- ladder protracted. Smiling General Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged. He saluted his honor guard, then strode along a royal purple carpet to where Herve Bulon, government ministers and visiting cultural leaders waited at the head of Avenue of the Sphinxes. Security police held back photographers shouting and thrusting their cameras into the air. No one thought to keep an eye on the volatile Greek cultural minister, so Galina Galleopi seized the moment. Blonde mane swirling she bolted forward and the night air whitened with fl ashes. President Nasser had never met Galina but allowed himself to be embraced. Utter strangers, they maniacally beamed smiles at each other. Shaking free of Galina the president turned to Herve Bulon, who accompanied him along the reception line, shaking hands. President Nasser led his distinguished guests into the temple complex of what once was the most powerful city in the world. Giant pavement slabs of Avenue of the Sphinxes were lined by plinths on which crouch lion bodies with royal human heads. Nasser and Bulon admired the red granite obelisk, the twin of which today stands in Place de la Concorde, in Paris. Passing through a monumental pylon-gateway of truncated pyramids the modern potentates entered the Peristyle Court, which is bound by seventy-four huge carvings of Rameses II, pursuer of Moses and the Israelites into the Red Sea. Each statue is fl anked by columns with elegant papyrus-bud capitals. The temple’s innermost courtyard honors the builder- pharaoh Amenhotep III. Here the newly unearthed statues were roped off but open to the starry sky. Tonight they were being offi cially presented to the Egyptian people, with the cost of a new museum underwritten by Bulon-Madagascaux A.G. President Nasser gravely listened as a curator identifi ed deities represented by the statues, including Amon-Re, King of the Gods. But none loomed larger than the fi gure of the mortal builder himself, Amenhotep: eight-feet-tall, polished and gleaming in spotlights, a perfectly preserved carving from a single piece of red-brown quartzite. The curator explained that the statues had 217 all been lined in a pit and cushioned by small stones in advance of an invasion by Roman troops in 400 AD. For two thousand years visitors to the ruins had walked with the statues just beneath their feet. Workers doing routine maintenance had struck the fi rst statue three feet down. Unrecognized by the news pack but at ease in such altitudinous society, the elderly bald man with the improbable mustaches stood with his chest puffed out, as dignitaries singled him out for private chats. When President Nasser was steered before microphones placed near the statues, with Herve Bulon at his side, the celebrated retired detective slipped away. The speechifying of politicians held little interest for him, and tonight he was especially restless. This afternoon he had sat at the desk in his hotel room, distracted by footsteps moving up and down the fi rewell steps. He refl ected on scraps of conversation overheard from the industrialist’s unstable ex-wife, who was the object of gossip and ridicule. He pondered on the beautiful American who inexplicably seemed to be working as chamber maid for the playboy tycoon. What does it mean, he’d asked himself. Does it mean anything, or am I so old that I imagine evil where there’s only harmless drug use, a custody struggle, or promiscuous sex? The retired detective had worked himself into a state of anxiety. He showed his guest pass to a soldier who escorted him out. He stopped to whisk powdery dust off his pumps. This he did automatically while his thoughts careened hurly-burly through the redoubtable gray matter of his durable brain. He hurried toward the Winter Haven, shaking his head. The festive night air, he felt, was redolent with evil.

* * *

Etche Very took her guardian stance at the entrance to the courtyard restaurant. She stood with one hand on a cocked hip, leisurely exhaling cigarette smoke over a serving cart loaded with dessert goblets, a chafi ng dish of Grand Marnier creme, and a Lalique bowl pyramided with raspberries fl own in from Scotland. She watched a waiter scoop berries into a goblet, discreetly attempting Vita to pick out one that was rotten. In a cloud of smoke a hand shot forward and a glistening red nail fl icked the rotten berry back into the goblet. “Dar-link,” she hissed into the waiter’s ear, “tell dem eet eez a blackberry!” She watched with satisfaction as Pushpesh Pant serenely seated guests fi ling back from the temple. The restaurant, which doubled the hotel’s annual revenue, fi lled a U-shaped arcade lining the inner courtyard. When Etche Very bought the dilapidated villa it had been a patch of dried mud surrounding a stone cistern fed by the trickle of a spring. She had dug out the spring and channeled its cool, gurgling waters into hundreds of little irrigation ditches, transforming the courtyard into a vision from Omar Khayyam. Fat, golden oranges burned like lanterns above the white froth of cotton shrubs and azalea. Footpaths sprinkled with powdered black coral were bordered by zinnia, roses, and canna lilies. Beds of mint mixed their heady fragrance with jasmine and honeysuckle vines twisting about the whitewashed columns of mastaba arches. Begowned, bejewled and in full war paint, Madame Very stalked among tables bestowing crooked, squint-eyed smiles on her guests. She would utter a sharp, incomprehensible command to passing waiters, then stoop herself to personally adjust the pleat of a starched tablecloth or to straighten silver. Guests waiting for tables were seated in wall niches with their cocktails resting on replicas of King Tut’s famous little crossbow-legged hunting table, in the National Museum. They were shocked to have the old lady in the white couturier gown stoop to change their ash tray: the queen on duty, taking care of her royal guests. Gatti Andreotti and Cinecitta Studio cronies pushed tables together, creating a typically Italianate uproar. Andre Melroux dined with a woman who was not his wife. Ex-Madame Herve Bulon sat near the entrance with her friend Marella, startling in the trendiest Milan boutique garb. Looking splendid in his white dinner jacket, while seated against jasmine-wreathed mastaba columns, the retired detective sipped red pomegranate syrop from a poene glass. Rich locals bribed Pushpesh Pant to be admitted and given shadowy tables at the arcade’s far end, which constituted Etche 219

Very’s own Elba, her Outer Hebrides. They knew to behave for the terrifying owner in the white gowns spares no one. They could recall when Ibrahim Mafouz, owner of the town’s department store, had been dining on fresh lobster for the fi rst time and slipping leftover chunks into his jacket pocket. Etche Very had approached holding a chafi ng dish of freshly whipped mayonnaise. Before the shocked merchant could protest she emptied the mayonnaise into his pocket. The detective set down the poene glass, fastidiously wiped his lips, then threaded his way through tables. In the toilet he labored before the mirror with his mustaches. ‘Ce humidite est terrible!’ Near the mirror a small square window opened on a stairwell that connected the arcade to the subterranean kitchen. He witnessed a strange scene. The beautiful American woman, dressed to the nines, was stuffi ng something into a trash can. She pushed whatever it was in her hand deep into trash, then ducked into the ladies toilet. Satisfi ed that the splendor of his mustaches had been restored, the man stepped around the corner and, using a handkerchief to protect his fi ngers, picked through oily trash to retrieve what Vita had buried. He lifted it out and stared. ‘Tres curieux,’ he mused. Under the arcade Etche Very murmured gracious excuses in execrable French, as she leaned across Andre Melroux’s table to adjust a sputtering candle. Her beaded gown lost its snowy whiteness, caught for a moment in a greenish glint from the fl ickering candle which fl amed as she trimmed. The French cultural icon sighed appreciatively as the old woman turned, showing nothing but her bare back, before vanishing like a genie in her own cloud of cigarette smoke. The starry, black African sky glittered. A gecko in the garden shrieked. Etche Very’s head jerked to look to where Vita motionlessly stood in shadows, wearing a clinging, sleeveless, low-cut gown. Red, red as freshly spilt blood. Vita

29

ace down, eyes on the fl oor, Vita faux-modestly threaded Fher way through tables. Conversations broke off mid- sentence, silverware paused halfway to lips, waiters halted, all eyes swerved. It was like Moses brandishing his staff at the Red Sea—the whole being of everyone parted and folded back before her advance from shadow into the arcade’s brilliance. Etche Very seethed with envy and resentment. In token of Vita’s housekeeping ministrations she’d been forced to part with a spectacular Gianni Versace knock-off from her lobby boutique, Neo Cleo. “Dar-link,” she snarled, “dat dress looks goddamn elli-gant on you.” The gown was a classic: its hemline a millimeter below the kneecap, as no woman’s knee is attractive; a silk blend clinging without a trace of crease to the slim torso (the hard, fl at belly, especially); sleeveless, and cut to reveal upper curves of breasts. Vita wore red silk heels and carried a red silk envelope purse. What held every eye were the glorious lines of her limbs and the gown’s startling simplicity—its brilliant, pure red. The hoteliere burned at having been so profoundly upstaged. The detective set down his poene of pomegranate syrop. 221

Though old he was not immune to the splendor of Vita’s body, but at the moment he was interested in the glint he saw in her downcast eyes. An enigmatic smile hovered, like a moth, on her lips. Shyness and modesty, he thought, are not what this one’s feeling. While too far away to listen as Vita greeted Etche Very, he surmised that spoken words did not at all convey what each was thinking. “Dar-link,” hissed Madame Very, leaning close, “you look elli-gant, but Jesus Chrrrrr-ist! How do you vork in dat dress? Are you taking care of ‘tings?” “Rajasthani women,” said Vita with forced airiness, “carry rocks in baskets on their heads for road construction while wearing brilliant saris and all their jewelry.” “Den vat do dey vear to a party?” Vita shrugged. Etche Very thrust her face up at Vita, nearly touching an earlobe with atomic-red lips, and rasped, “Are you taking care of dat bastard—tell me!” “Don’t stroke out on us,” said Vita, smiling into yellow, pebbled snake-eyes. “I have just now...initiated...what you yourself are afraid to do.” Etche Very fl ushed, not easy, for her ancient parched face was contoured by enough elaborate makeup to service a troop of kabuki actors. Still a perceptible radiance fl ooded her features as she pictured the bastard Bulon dead, murdered in her own tower suite, and she nothing to do with it—nothing provable. It was impossible to continue her interrogation, for there was a burst of applause from the lobby. Flanked by aides in dinner jackets, and with the hauteur of Hera, Galina Galleopi strode forwards. Pushpest Pant looked on with horror as Etche Very’s rouged cheeks ballooned. She huffed and puffed, blowing out blasts of air. “De Grrrr-eeek ty- phoon!” she squawked, chuckling herself into a fi t of coughing. Everyone but the maitre d’hotel laughed. Galina was like a tigress at the waterhole, brazenly looking around to enjoy the effect her entrance was having on lesser creatures. Her fl ashing smile was aimed at the hoteliere. “What a lovely gown, dear, did you make it yourself?” Etche Very wore a white, empire-line sheath encrusted on Vita the bodice with pearly beads. From the upper sleeves streamed wispy petals of white tulle reaching to the fl oor, fl uttering whenever she jabbed the air with long red fi ngernails. “Darr- link,” the hoteliere snarled, making the term of endearment sound like an obscenity, “if I could sew like dis, vould I be making beds and coo-kkkking for YOU?” “Is it Balenciaga?” Galina pressed on. “I adore Balengiaga, but for me it’s always Chanel.” “Yes,” exhaled Etche Very, her voice crawling through the night air as coolly as mentholated smoke. “Chanel eez gutt for de beeeg heeps.” She blew a stream of smoke in the general direction of the Greek star’s ample hips. Galina, forewarned of the hoteliere’s predilection for all- white, wore a jet black Chanel suit of raw silk, thickly encrusted on the hems with gold sequins. Around her neck were bundles of twisted gold chains glittery as her newly-bleached hair. Galina,Vita,and Etche Very were surrounded. Everyone wanted the attention of these formidable females, these man- eating Arsinoes who ruthlessly proclaimed their existence, who glamorously made their presence known and their supremacy felt. Other women, such as ex-Madame Bulon, shrank to insignifi cance, while the men were reduced to slavering sycophants. Lacquered and pomaded, Etche Very stood like an iridescent, painted gargoyle, erect, with one hip cocked to the side. Acidulous witticisms burst from her scarlet lips like seeds from an exploding pod. Full of life-enhancing malice, she had never withered. Her whole stance toward life remained that of a punk. Dazzling as the noon Greek sun was Galina Galleopi, with tousled blond hair and gold chains bundled at her throat. For millions of fi lmgoers her huge eyes conveyed the tragic despair of Clytemnestra, Antigone, and Helen. After fi rst meeting Galina, the great Madame Colette wrote a poem which ended, “She has only to raise her eyes and the Acropolis is there”. Splendid as the two old women were, neither could outshine Vita. Their honed artifi ce was no match for the sheer perfection of bare skin, white teeth, toned arms and legs, and a full radiant head of hair freshly hennaed to a rosy blush, a kinky 223 spray around her face. Calmly, Vita stood with all the beauty that youth lavishes on a face and body. The air around her was heavy with the scent of roses and whiskey in crystal glasses. Etche Very scrutinized her face: ‘What’s making this girl so beautiful? She’s never looked this way before!’ The old woman’s senses tingled as she grasped that such other-worldly radiance was not the product of youth alone, but of something primitive—somewildness—violence—yes!Only bestial violence, Etche Very thought, gives so glorious a sheen to beauty. She could hardly stop herself from running up to the tower suite to see the murdered tycoon sprawled on the fl oor. Galina, too, studied Vita’s face. She experienced not only Sapphic stirrings, but a disturbing sense of deja-vu. “Have we met?” “I think not,” said Vita,“at least not in this reincarnation.” ‘Shit,’ thought Galina, ‘another Aphrodite who’s been to India and gone mystical.’ “My name is Kay,” said Vita, gazing into Galina’s eyes. ‘India...India,’ thought Galina, prodding her brain to retrieve some memory. ‘Why did I think of India just now?’ Aloud she purred, “Call me Galina.” Etche Very leered. “What else would I call you?” smiled Vita. Etche Very puffed out her cheeks. Galina did something she rarely ever did, withdrew into herself and actually thought. Her agile mind scanned recent memories, fl ickering through the mental Rolodex she kept on the hundreds of new faces she encountered each week. Meanwhile Madame Very launched into one of her very favorite set-pieces: “A frrr-iend of mine in Hunga-rrrrry, dar- links, he vas a count. He had dis vife dat he loved very much. Ven she died he gave a funeral dinner. Dere vas black gravel in de drive, black ink colored de vater in de fountain, and black velvet draped de dining room. Black violets vas on de table and dinner vas served on black Vedgewood by naked, black vaitresses! And de food—do you know vat dey ate, dar-links? Beluga caviar vith Turkish olives and Russian pumpernickel…black bean soup... smoked sausage vith black pu-rrree of truffl es—and for desserrrt, Vita dar-links, dey had chocolate mousse vith black cherries!” Galina thought, ‘When’s this antediluvian crocodile going to shut the fuck up? Where was it? I know I’ve seen this face—these eyes! It was in Athens...a function...something shitty happened. The banker—my sofa, all the blood—yes! That’s where I’ve seen these gorgeous eyes. But—but—am I going mad? This woman—she was a goddamn MAN!” A gecko shrieked.

* * *

In his tower suite, Herve Bulon stripped off the dusty suit and stood naked before the mirror. He had reason to be pleased with himself. Papers in Europe would run pictures of him with the Egyptian president and old statues, cancelling out the negative publicity of niggling environmentalists. Stepping under a thin spray of tepid water, he regretted not being downstairs to enjoy himself. He had been forced to retire early to avoid risking an embarrassing public encounter with his ex-wife. ‘Has she no pride as well as no brain? She made a scene last month at the King David. She knows she can’t beat my lawyers. She’d better cut the best deal she can. No court’s going to hand over my son to a coked-up tramp like her.’ A handsome aide was there when he stepped out of the shower, holding a black terry cloth robe. In the bedroom another Ganymede said, “A telex from Delhi, sir.” Bulon scanned the proffered piece of paper while thoughtfully scratching his balls. “Nothing else?” “No, sir.” “We leave at seven, have the crew onboard early. Wake me at six. Mention Delhi to me again. And put in a call to Lazarus about Simone—now, it’s not too late in Paris. I want her off her my back.” “Call now?” “Do it.” At the door the apologetic aide turned and said, “Sir, the Krup’s on.” Bulon confronted his espresso machine. The ON switch 225 was a stutter of infrared on its sleek black surface. He tried to peel off a paper fi lter, but they stuck together. He fl exed the stack and peeled one off. Emptying a vacuum-sealed package of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee into the fi lter, he snapped the plastic seal of an Evian container and poured it into the grid. Came the sound of steam escaping under pressure...a soothing drip drip drip as water trickled through grounds and the paper fi lter...into a demitasse. Bulon turned off the switch, then fl ipped it back on—mais, oui, he would need a second cup! He’d given up drugs, cigarettes, drank only wine, but how could he survive without these potent, fragrant shots of caffeine, these silver bullets against life’s murderous onslaughts of merde? Holding the saucer and demitasse in one hand he stepped onto the balcony. He sipped faintly bitter coffee while listening to the ominous rush of fl oodwaters. Below him the river was running strongly, its swirls and eddies fi red with dancing tongues of golden light from the hotel façade. Star-lit darkness glimmered over black Theban HiIls bounding the horizon. The industrialist thought of pharaohs who had had themselves buried in crypts tunneled into stone cliffs. Tombs fi lled with tons of gold and jewels. What power and wealth they’d had, Herve Bulon thought, these ancient rulers— armies, slaves, educated servants, wives, ministers, butt-boys, mistresses. What fi ne fucking they must have done under the muraled ceilings of their palaces on the edge of the desert! The warm glow of caffeine hit the tycoon’s bloodstream causing his brainstem to twitch, and sense of his own omnipotence to swell.

Vita

30

erve Bulon woke at fi ve a.m. with a two-foot-tall gnome Hin a red plastic rain slicker astride his chest, beating him with a croquet mallet. That’s what it felt like. His throat was scorched and his chest throbbed with an unpleasant tightness. He swung out of bed, naked, to the Krups. He tried but failed at fi rst to peel off a single fi lter. Flexing the stack he managed to separate one. He ripped open a vacuum- sealed bag and poured grounds into the fi lter. Snapping open a container he tipped water into the machine’s grid. He hit the ON switch to have another cup ready when he got out of the shower. He needed caffeine to help shake the bug he’d woken with. Downstairs, Pushpesh Pant expedited the departures of VIP guests. Aides had settled the considerable bill so the maitre d’hotel had only to graciously bow and murmur his best wishes as Herve Bulon slipped into a Mercedes sedan waiting under the porte-cochere. The Krups, in its customized Vuitton carrier, sat on the front seat beside the chauffeur. From the verandah Etche Very watched her nemesis exit, alive, seemingly vigorous. Sucking on a cigarette, her mouth twisted into a grimace. ‘How could I’ve been such a goddamn fool as to think the American was for real—a hot-air exhibitionist 227 like the Galleopi idiot!’ She felt genuinely humbled that she’d been gullible enough to imagine that this Vita-woman was anything other than a bored, rich tourist out looking to dramatize herself. A connoisseur of the worst in mankind, yet she had let herself believe that Vita might be a maniac who would get rid of Bulon! She glared at the rising Ramada Renaissance Hotel. The retired detective watched with unaccountable feelings of relief as the self-assured young tycoon was driven away. He studied Etche Very. Aware of Bulon’s controlling interest in the new hotel, he could imagine her dark thoughts. Rallying, Madame Very stubbed out her cigarette. “Ah, monsieur!” she rasped, her squint taking in his immaculate tan traveling suit with the pink rosebud pinned onto the lapel. “You Frenchmen know how to dress vell.” “I am not French, madame, I am Belgian.” “Vatever. Did you enjoy your stay, monsieur?” “Mais oui, madame, it was interesting to observe so many distinguished guests in your hotel at the same time... Andre Melroux, Herve Bulon...” Etche Very grunted, so the man continued, “Et mon Dieu, les femmes! Ex-Madame Bulon…the ravishing American assisting you.” “You still have an eye for les femmes, monsieur?” “Why not? This American, so much elegance and poise... so intense—curious...” “Curious, monsieur? Vy do you say dat?” “You do not fi nd it curious that such a woman would do housekeeping, even in so illustrious a hotel as yours?” Etche Very was bored by very mention of Vita. The bitch had appeared, made a production of herself and proven to be bogus. Etche Very wished her gone. She snapped, “A rich voman plays chamber maid for a millionaire, so vat? Rich vomen get dere kicks in strange vays. I have seen so many.” “Perhaps,” said the formerly celebrated detective, “but last night in your restaurant, I witnessed an interesting scene. Right before her entrance through the garden in the red dress, this American beauty was outside the kitchen…rummaging in the trash.” Etche Very’s squint hardened. Vita

“Curious, non, to see a woman dressed to the nines taking pains to bury something in the trash? I retrieved what she was seeking to rid herself of.” Curiosity overpowered Etche Very. “And?” she croaked. “Would you like to see what is was, madame? “Monsieur, vould you like me to roll over vith my paws in de air before you tell me!” The man withdrew a packet that had been crumpled, then precisely re-fl attened and folded. The hoteliere’s face reddened even though she saw they were not the kind used in her machines. Stolen property is stolen property, she felt, even if she wasn’t the rightful owner. She snatched the packet and glared at it. “A mere bagatelle,” said the man, “still I found it odd. But you have more important matters on your mind, madame?” “Yes, monsieur, I do. You return to vork, to affairs of de vorld? “Non, madame, those days are past. Now I make only les vacances.” “Dat eez nice.” “Non, madame, it is not nice. It is dull. But what can one do,” said the man, delicately tapping his temple. “The gray matter is no longer what it used to be, so—” “Ah, bon voyage, monsieur.” “Merci, madame. Au revoir.” Etche Very stuck the packet into her smock’s pocket, so disturbed that she forgot to light another cigarette.

* * *

During the Gulfstream IV’s quick hop to Cairo, Bulon passed time by issuing commands into a Dictaphone reverently held by an aide. He ordered a physician to be on hand to administer anti-viral shots for whatever it was he’d picked up. From Nasser International he was driven to his conglomerate’s headquarters on Tahrir Square. The Krups was installed, so he could begin sipping what turned out to be a series of twelve cups while catching up on accumulated work. 229

By midafternoon he felt so ill he informed his offi ce he’d be working from the hotel. As the Mercedes glided through blossom-strewn streets of Roda Isle, he refl ected with ill-tempered resignation that a man like himself should be inhibited by something as insignifi cant as a microbe. His entrance into the Meridien’s lobby attracted the slavish attention of staff members. He smiled weakly at the gorgeous Lebanese from the cosmetics boutique, and swore to himself that he’d fuck her kohl-laden eyes out as soon as he felt better. Striding toward the elevators he reeled with shock as a familiar, much loved voice called out to him. Bulon whirled and stared. “You sly bastard!” he snorted, throwing himself into the arms of Ambassador Christian Granger. Bulon waved away his retinue and pulled Christian with him into the private elevator. As soon as the doors closed, the Frenchman embraced his friend and roughly kissed him on the lips. “How good it is to see you—but why! Why are you here!” “I’m not allowed to surprise mon copain?” smiled Christian, “especially when he’s got the Egyptian government eating out of his hands?” “Amazing what charm and money can buy, non?” “From a head of state with no charm or money, no. But I’m glad to see you! You look...fi ne.” “I look like merde, because I picked up something at the Winter Haven Mausoleum. I feel terrible,” said Bulon, looking into Christian’s face. “What about you, mon cher?” He traced a fi nger around dark circles under the eyes. “Is it American foreign- fuck-up-policy or those idiot Greeks doing this to my handsome diplomat.” “Neither,” said Christian. “It’s Vita. My wife—she’s gone.” Christian was relieved to see that his friend didn’t react to mention of Vita, so she hadn’t made herself known to him in Luxor. He fell into uneasy refl ection as the elevator door opened and Bulon led him by the arm along the hallway. “Wives! Merde! You’ve read about mine—stalking—feeding the tabloids a banquet, demanding custody of Jaime. Can you imagine any court turning a child over to her? And you’re having Vita trouble with your elegant Vita.” Bulon took Christian’s hands in his. “A few hours, copain, the doctor’s giving me shots. I need more coffee and rest. Tonight we’ll have late dinner, just you and me.” “I could use a nap myself,” said Christian. “I’m glad you’re here.” “Always, my friend. We’ll get your Vita back if that’s what you want. I’ll get rid of Simone which is what I want. Never again will I marry. Fuck women, but never marry one.”

* * *

Doubting that he could sleep Christian went to talk to Skip, in a room adjoining his own. He felt guilty over not coming clean about Klaus, the mangled mob soldier, his unfounded fears for Herve—how to confess such horrors? All he wanted was to leave tomorrow with Skip for Luxor and, with the press gone, quietly take Vita into protective custody. Alone in his own room he pushed open a glass slider. In adherence to Zen principles of austerity he loathed air conditioner, preferring the palpitating heat outside, thick with rising vapors of the Nile. He took a cold shower. While shaving he frowned at his refl ection and vowed to start taking care of himself. He slipped into a black terry cloth robe, did twenty minutes of stomach crunches, then poured a moderate shot of vodka over ice. He stepped out onto his twelfth fl oor balcony. In torrid twilight wisps of blue haze were snagged by treetops covering Roda Isle. The Nile looked like a glittery necklace, with lamps on little boats darting back and forth, headlights gridlocked on Corniche Expressway, and the spot lit arches of bridges. At the edge of the desert, in Giza, banks of lights fl ooded the Pyramids. Christian stretched on a chaise lounge to read by candlelight. Always he traveled with a novel, usually by a favorite Japanese writer. The story he was reading now concerned another famous river, the Minase, where at its juncture with the larger Yoda River the Emperor Gotoba had built his summer palace. The narrator- pilgrim squats in reeds on a sand bar with a fl ask of sake, to enjoy the beauty of river waters in the silver-blue light of a full 231 moon. Watching local boats go about their unknown business, the narrator recalls that these shores were known since Heian times for their licentiousness. Courtesans cruised the area, lying in wait for palace courtiers and soldiers, poling their little boats among the marshes. His imagination fueled by raw sake, the narrator conjures up visions of long-ago drinking parties on boats among the reeds, with gay laughter, the sound of koto music and fi re-fl y glow of colored lanterns. This made Christian think of the transience of human efforts, striving for pleasure as well as for achievement. Great deeds vanish as quickly as the frivolous parties of these ancient fl oating women. These refl ections led Christian into a disturbing meditation on the character of the woman for whom he was compromising so much of himself—Vita! The words of the Japanese master* struck home with force: Suppose there are two women equally beautiful, equally pleasing to my aesthetic tastes. A is kind and honest and sympathetic. B is unkind, a clever liar. If you ask which would be more attractive to me, I’m quite sure that these days I would prefer B. I would be susceptible to the woman with bad character. Occasionally there are women whose faces reveal a streak of cruelty—they are the ones I like best. When I see a woman with a face like that, I feel her innermost nature may be cruel, indeed, I hope it is. If could fi nd a woman who was really bad, and if I could live with her—or at least live in her presence, on intimate terms with her—how happy I would be! Christian read this with a jolt. Rarely did literature speak so directly, or with so much provocation. It was as though the writer had divined his hidden, half-formed thoughts.

But her badness musn’t be obvious. The worse she is the cleverer she has to be...of course there are limits—homicidal tendencies would be hard to put up with, yet I can’t rule them out entirely.

Christian drained his vodka. The mesmerizing buzz of mosquitos lulled him into troubled sleep. How long he slept he didn’t know, but when he woke it was because of urgent

*Junichiro Tanazaki, The Reed Cutters (1994, translation by Anthony Chambers) and Dairy of a Mad Old Man (1965, translation by Howard Habbitt). Vita knocking. The candle beside him sputtered, a mosquito drilled in his ear. Getting up, he straightened his robe and went to the door. He was confronted by a Egyptian in military uniform and a handsome young European with tear-streaked cheeks. The military man spoke. “Sir, you are Ambassador Christian Granger?” “Yes.” “I am Colonel Sarwat Iskander of the State Investigative Unit. May I ask, sir—were you to have late dinner tonight with Monsieur Herve Bulon?” “Yes, what time is it, please, I fell asleep.” “It is just before ten, sir.” “It can’t be—Herve—M. Bulon would’ve rang me.” “No, sir,” said the colonel, “Monsieur Bulon could not call you. He is dead.” Christian stared. The young man blurted, “Murdered!” “It appears to be so,” said the colonel. “If you would kindly dress, sir, you may follow me.”

233

31

ittle work gets done early morning as Cairenes devour Ltheir newspapers. Housewives chatter over tabloids in tenement stairwells. Merchants scan trade papers sitting on a stool in their doorways. Commuters on the subway have seven morning papers to chose from. The homeless squat at street corners having the more sensational stories read to them. Twenty-one daily papers are required to satisfy the unquenchable Egyptian thirst not for news, but for entertainment—the more infl ammatory and salacious, the greater the intoxication. The City woke to screaming headlines, with the lead morning paper, Al-Ahram, representing the height of restraint with INDUSTRIALIST BULON DEAD CAUSE UNKNOWN. Those last two words touched off a frenzy among the tabloids: CURSE OF THE PHARAOH STRIKES BULON DEAD!!! FRENCH TYCOON MURDERED BY ANCIENT KING!!! AMON-RE REVENGES LOOTING OF HIS TEMPLE!!! Side by side were photos of Bulon’s sheet-shrouded body on a trolley in a fl ash of camera lights, captioned NOW; and a living, smiling Bulon with the statues in Luxor, labeled TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO. Sidebar articles recounted “the mysterious death” of Lord Carnavon (from an infected Vita mosquito bite) after his opening of King Tutankhaman’s tomb, in 1929. Today’s facts were provocative for within thirty hours of presenting the newly excavated statues to the nation the funding patron was dead—truly, mysteriously so. Before banks of microphones at SIU headquarters Col. Sarwat Iskander informed reporters an investigation was underway, but that autopsy results wouldn’t be released until members of the Bulon family arrived for briefi ng. An afternoon paper quoted a Meridien employee who’d caught a glimpse of the enshrouded body and claimed that Bulon died “with a hideous grimace on his face.” Evening TV anchormen hinted at poison and by mid-night Colonel Iskander conceded that the chemical tycoon had died “as a result of apparently intentional doses of a toxic substance.” Iskander concluded, “We will fi nd the killer.” Christian Granger stayed in his room with the television off, speaking to no one but Skip and to him as little as possible. He was immobilized by the shock of having seen Herve’s naked body sprawled on sheets. In agony his friend had bitten his bottom lip almost in two; a stream of blackened blood mixed with the vomit encrusting his chin and throat. Christian was hit by waves of nausea. His mind felt numb, his thoughts viscous and unmanageable. In pursuing Vita he had stepped out over the abyss...and was confronted by her evil. He steadied himself by keeping in mind that exposure of his wife’s homicidal madness would ruin him. Accustomed to suppressing personal traumas in order to present a polished public demeanor, he met Herve’s brothers and sister at the airport. He accompanied them to a military hospital where they formally identifi ed the body. As he joined them for a somber dinner served in their suite at the Meridien, to plan funeral arrangements, his misery deepened. He could barely bring himself to swallow bites of fi ne food, or sip rare wines, so great was his disgust at his own duplicity. Herve’s brothers and sister accepted him as a family intimate, even as he concealed from them that it was his own marital catastrophe that had led to their brother’s and his best friend’s horrible death. The next morning waiters served coffee to the Bulons, 235 their lawyer, and Ambassador Granger, seated in gilt armchairs in a hotel conference room. Present were Ambassador Achille de Francueil, as well as a representative of the Surete, France’s equivalent of the FBI. An aide to President Nasser opened the briefi ng by offering condolences from the people of Egypt. An investigative report was given by Colonel Iskander who began by authoritatively reading from an index card. “Monsieur Herve Bulon died from bronchial aspiration caused by paralysis of the brain, which was induced by the deliberate administration of a concentrate derived from Tiliaceae Carchorus olitorius L. This plant is known to Arabs as nalta Jute and to Europeans as Jew’s mallow.” The colonel slipped the card into his jacket pocket and looked into upturned faces. “Jew’s mallow grows wild along the Nile. Its leaves are used by housewives in salads or to make soup. Egyptians eat it regularly unaware of any risk, and there is none. Unlike mushrooms or snake venom Jew’s mallow does not exist naturally as a toxic substance. The plant is deadly only when processed by someone with biochemical knowledge of alkaloids and with access to laboratory equipment.” Iskander paused to let this sink in. Christian saw that the military man was presenting not a report of an ongoing investigation, but an argument that had reached its conclusion already. “The manufactured poison was put into coffee. Its bitter taste would be noticeable in mineral water or wine, the only other liquids M. Bulon routinely drank. The fi nal cup of espresso on the bedtable contained about fi ve centigrams which would’ve had no effect on so healthy a man. Death was caused by accumulated doses totaling more than a hundred centigrams—in twenty-four hours’s time M. Bulon drank as many as thirty demitasses. He complained of increasing symptons of illness, but delayed, most regrettably, in seeing a doctor.” “His activities in Luxor are fully documented. We have examined staff logbooks for discrepancies and found none. M. Bulon worked in his suite at the Winter Haven Hotel leaving only to examine progress on his hotel project, or to consult with museum offi cials. At no time was he alone with anyone other Vita than staff members. Their names—” Jacques Bulon interrupted, “Colonel, I’m sure company records are accurate, but my brother was adept at arranging private interviews. He could’ve easily seen someone whose name doesn’t appear in the logs.” Iskander gave his reptilian smile. “Naturally, monsieur, we are investigating that possibility. There were at least two other people in Luxor who had strong interest in your brother and might have wished him harm. Simone Vivare, his estranged wife who’s fi ghting a well-publicized custody battle, had engaged in harassing your brother and had gone so far as to make public threats. Prior to your brother’s death, she was in a desperate state of mind. Now she will gain custody of the child.” The Bulons looked grim. The colonel continued. “The owner of the Winter Haven also had reason to resent your brother. His new hotel was not to her advantage and that venture is now at risk. We will determine if your brother had any contact with either of these women or with any other individual. But this will not materially affect our investigation. The ex-wife and hotel owner may have had motives to harm your brother, but neither possess the required chemical knowledge, nor did they have the opportunity to do so.” All eyes were fi xed on the colonel. “According to the autopsy report M. Bulon died from accumulated doses of mallow, administered with the precision and regularity of a nurse caring for her patient in a hospital. Only four people had steady access to him during the required time- frame.” “That’s absurd!” burst Jacques Bulon. “No one could slip poison into thirty cups of coffee unseen. Impossible!” “The impossible,” said Iskander, “is something you want to examine very closely, monsieur. I will take you step by step through the facts. The fi nal cup contained fi ve centigrams of mallow. The supply of bottled water and sealed coffee bags have been tested and they were uncontaminated. The grounds in the fi lter were harmless. So you see…fresh coffee…water… the remaining grounds are pure. Only the espresso in the cup is poisoned. 237

“His killer put it there. In liquid form as powder is too diffi cult to produce, nor does it dissolve easily. Your brother drank coffee while working without paying attention to whoever was serving him. The poison could be quickly put into a demitasse with an instrument as common as an eye dropper.” Jacques Bulon helplessly stared as Iskander read the names of the company suspects. What the colonel was attempting to argue was out of the question, but Christian saw that the Egyptian wasn’t going to yield. He intended to shift any further investigation onto the French. Iskander turned to the Surete man. “I have liaised with M. Chatagnier, who has access to the backgrounds of these men, French citizens all. Monsieur?” M. Chatagnier rose. “Monsieurs, Madame, I have interviewed the aides. Their accounts of how time was spent in Luxor support each other. Barring minor discrepancies, no one testimony contradicts any of the others. There are times when only one of the four was present with M. Bulon, so those accounts cannot be corroborated. They have voluntarily taken polygraph tests and no one gives any indication of lying. We have reviewed their personal and professional backgrounds. They have worked with M. Bulon for at least fi ve years, one of them is related by marriage, and none is known to harbor ill feelings. We can fi nd no motive for any one of the four to have killed their friend and employer.” The Surete man hesitated. “A critical point is the nature of the poison. Jew’s mallow derives from a local herb which indicates a knowledge of Arab homeopathy. This suggests the presence of some as of yet unknown person.” “See!” ejaculated Jacques Bulon. “The aides are devoted to Herve. No one has reason to want him dead. No motive—no rationale—it’s absurd!” Colonel Iskander stared at Jacques Bulon. “Forgive me, but it is not absurd. These aides are the only persons who could’ve administered multiple doses with regularity. It is for my colleague at the Surete to discover a motive. The suspects are educated men who have resided in Egypt long enough to be familiar with our plant life. Any one of them could’ve gained Vita access to laboratory equipment. There is no other reasonable explanation, unless you believe M. Chatagnier’s suggestion that there is some unknown party at work here. With due respect to my colleague that is like searching for a phantom.” Back in his room Christian gripped the balcony railing and stared at the levanthian faces of the Pyramids glinting in sunlight. ‘A specter! A phantom! Vita has murdered Europe’s most prominent banker and France’s most highly profi led manufacturer, leaving behind no more trace than that of a phantasma. Investigators will never link her to either death.’ Vita had no known connection to either Klaus or Herve. As his wife and a member of the elite American diplomatic corps she was above suspicion. He alone knew. She’d made him her accomplice. He had killed Klaus and Herve, just as surely as had Vita. He was withholding information that could compromise Skip’s professional standing. An envoy for the American government he was guilty of silently witnessing a criminal investigation cast guilt on innocent aides, an old lady hotel owner and an emotionally unstable former wife. “..Her badness mustn’t be obvious. The worse she is, the cleverer she has to be..” Herve was dead with Vita four-hundred miles away and her presence acknowledged not even by Herve or his aides. How had she managed it! Attempts by investigators to reach the truth were bound to end in futility. This barrenness, Christian saw with admiration, was not real, but artifi cial and ingeniously crafted, the product of a creative mind. He loved Vita for the artistic perfection she gave everything—but—but— “...homicidal tendencies would be hard to put up with!” 239

32

n the back row of an Egyptair DC-9 David gazed out the IPerspex oval, looking haggard and sullen. He let his eyes get lost in billowing cumulus to escape the pain. He had not eaten nor slept, nor spoken to anyone, nor listened to anything going on around him. His mother fended off angry family members and tried to delay spread of the news. Hugging him close before he left, she had said, “You and Yael have been each other’s closest companion. Can this change so fast? Will this new woman be as single-minded in her devotion to you?” The ferry trip from Haifa to Cyprus had been miserable. His mind remained locked on those fi nal irrevocable moments with Yael. They had sat together under the grape arbor, in sun- dappled shade where air was scented by hyacinths and roses. His mother had gone out and seen to it that no one would call unexpectedly. The Sabbath quiet was broken by the moaning of ship horns in the harbor, or by soft jazz from distant radios. They talked of friends and family. David would’ve been at ease had not Yael positioned herself so that no part of their bodies touched; normally their shoulders would’ve rubbed, she would’ve rested her hand on his thigh, or he would’ve taken her hand out of affectionate exuberance. But they were separated by a wedge of Vita air charged with unsettling energy. David thought, how beautiful she is! Dark hair, lustrous and clean, pulled back from her pale forehead and held in place with a tortoiseshell beret. He could sense the fullness of rounded breasts under the thin fabric of her fl ower-speckled summer dress. His heart needed his life with her, the home and family they’d always shared. Yet betraying her trust and lying to her had been the most natural thing to do, for his body had this other violent need for sex with Vita. Half of him was here at home with Yael, the other half was somewhere out there with Vita. Had he fantasized that a double life could be normalized? When he reached to take Yael’s hand she pulled away. “Say what you have to say.” David thought he would throw-up. “I—we—we can’t be married, Yael, it’s not right.” She held his eyes. “I knew when I picked you up at the bus. Your hand was on my arm and I could see that the skin under our ring is tanned. It wouldn’t be tan if you’d been wearing it, but you haven’t. There’s only one reason. You’ve met someone— why else would you take off our ring? And the phone call, it was in your voice. You were trying to convince yourself to prove that everything’s alright. But—it’s not—no, it’s—it’s—” David couldn’t see her face as she crossed the courtyard. He listened to the retreating sound of her footsteps as she ran through the house, and tears had streamed down his face. Now in the corridors of Nasser Airport David fi ltered through throngs of robed sheiks and mini-skirted Emirate wives returning from Paris with malayias slung over their shoulders. Stopped by congestion at a newsstand his eye was caught by the Herald-Tribune’s front page photo of a weeping woman and distinguished-looking men in morning coats. The caption read, HERVE BULON INTERRED AT FAMILY ESTATE. The woman was identifi ed as sister Madeleine Bulon, fl anked by brothers Paul and Jacques, and the third man as family friend, U.S. Ambassador to Greece Christian Granger. David was paralyzed by the fi nal sentence: “For details surrounding the industrialist’s murder, see page 3A.” ‘Murder!’ 241

His armpits turned into little saunas, as he quickly scanned to determine that Bulon died of poisoning in Cairo, nowhere near Vita in Luxor. No poison, he remembered, has delayed reaction. He crumpled into a chair to read further. Police are holding in custody Bulon’s four aides—who else, David rationalized, but someone with a long-standing grudge? The poison derived from a local plant which indicated an Arab with access to laboratory equipment. ‘Doesn’t sound like an aide,’ he thought, ‘nor Vita either...but wait…the maid she spent her afternoons with in the souk—she was a nursing student!’ David felt queer, listening in his mind’s ear to Vita’s thrilling voice, “..someone should kill Bulon..so easy to do, really..” He went to the Egyptair ticket counter to book a seat on the earliest fl ight tomorrow to Luxor. He had appointments to keep in the City, but how would he keep his mind on anything until he got to Vita? His cheeks burned with wind-whipped sand at the taxi stand. He stepped behind a Plexiglas shield and folded his paper to study the front page funeral photo: ‘U.S. Ambassador to Greece Christian Granger—so he exists—the powerful husband, Bulon’s friend.’ To David the diplomat’s face looked smug and secure behind the shield of money, social class and Anglo-Saxon good looks. Used to having everything. Is he forcibly hanging onto Vita, trapping her in a failed marriage until the end of his ambassadorship? Will he or his agents be in Luxor? David felt a surge of boldness. The pain of breaking with Yael receded and he felt a craving for danger, the intoxicating thrill of challenging a powerful adversary. ‘The ambassador drove her off. Now she’s mine!’ Vita

33

stub of cigarette ash broke and delicately scattered over A ivory petals of rose blossoms fl oating in a Lalique bowl. Etche Very paid no attention. Her hotel was full of tourists who’d fl ocked to see the new statues and in whom she had no interest. Daily operations she left to Pushpesh Pant and sequestered herself in her offi ce, a windowless room the walls of which were curtained entirely with white silk brocade. A pair of glittery high heels lay like exhausted kittens near Madame’s bare feet, on plush white carpet under the glass and chrome desk. There was much to do. Money earned the previous week had to be channeled through local banks to international branch offi ces of American Express until it reached, in a manner least likely to come to the attention of the Internal Revenue Service, a bank account in the name of Etche Very’s sister, who was a pathologist of some renown in Bala Cynwood, Pennsylvania. The two sisters had survived a concentration camp together and were the only members of their immediate family remaining after World War II. They settled in different countries to build new lives, but their bond never weakened. Etche Very considered Hedda to be the only, single other human being of note in the universe. Should the Egyptian government expel her, or should corporate hotel chains diminish 243 the stature (i.e. profi tability) of the Winter Haven, she was well prepared to begin another new life with Hedda and their accumulated funds. Naturally she didn’t expect her hotel to fail, nor did she have plans to retire or ever die, even. She’d once witnessed an aged Edith Piaf perform while being supported at the elbows by two men, and had turned to her companions to rasp, “Dat’s how I’m going—on mine feet!” She was very much on her bare, shapely, pedicured feet while busily fabricating spread sheets for the edifi cation, rather, mystifi cation of tax offi cials. She placed trunk calls on her white telephone to Cairo and New York, to collect rumors regarding the fate of the Luxor Ramada Renaissance. Would the multinational consortium go ahead with the project after the violent death of its aggressive young chairman? Her town spies reported on a construction slow-down. Etche Very permitted herself feelings of optimism that the consortium would fl ounder, disintegrate, and sell-out to local potentates who were breath-takingly incompetent. The Winter Haven would triumph! She owed this to the murder of Herve Bulon and followed press coverage closely. She was captivated by the sheer theatricality of the crime. It was like life imitating a B-grade movie—the funding patron dead within hours of presenting the old statues to the public. She couldn’t help but chuckle as she moved her squint over gaudy clippings layering her glass desk, with their Indiana Jones-style headlines and comparisons with Lord Carnavon’s demise from a mosquito bite. Such improbable circumstances, she felt, would hinder serious investigation and herein lay the genius of the murder: it was plotted by a subtle mind, with audacity and with style. Etche Very sobered. She lit a cigarette and sat up straight in her white-and-gilt Second Empire chair. The furrows in her forehead deepened as she considered the disturbing possibility that she, Etche Very, the cynosure of cynicism, renowned for on- the-spot intellectual vivisections starting with the jugular, had underestimated the beautiful American and written her off as a blow-hard exhibitionist like Galleopi. But Bulon was dead as promised. Had this Vita anything to do with it, or was it just fantastic coincidence? Madame Very was held transfi xed by the Vita possibility that someone else was a more successful liar than she, that someone else’s activities were much worse than her own. Pushing aside tabloid clippings, she studied an article in Stern magazine. According to the German weekly the poison was derived in concentrated form from a local herb by someone with access to lab equipment. The liquid poison, Tiliaceae Carchorus olitorius, or Jew’s mallow, was put into the industrialist’s coffee probably with an eye dropper. A mild alkaloid it would’ve been fatal only in accumulated doses which indicated a staff member. Etche Very knew the only outsider allowed into the tower suite had been Vita—but she was never alone with the bastard, one of the Ganymede watch-boys was always there. The supply of sealed water and ground coffee was not tampered with. How could anyone have administered numerous incremental doses? It made no sense, no goddamn sense at all. The hoteliere sucked so hard on her cigarette that its paper tip fl ared and crumbled. A brain tremor caused her to rummage about for what the fuss-pot little Frenchman had given her. She held the packet in her hand and the squint tightened. They looked ordinary, yet she had the tantalizing feeling that the solution was right here under her nose, simple if not obvious. Easily she peeled off one and held it under her nostrils…odorless…normal color, texture—then with a fl ashing synapse of the brainstem she knew how it was done. ‘The Egyptians tested the water and coffee supply, but there’s one thing they didn’t think to test. These are harmless because they’re leftover—the ones the murdering bitch got rid of. If the colonel tested the ones taken from Bulon’s room at the Meridien…’ Etche Very was astounded not by her own brilliance—a given—but by Vita’s. Her curiosity mounted. Nova-red lips downturned into their signature, sardonic grimace as she contemplated the Herald- Tribune’s funeral photo of Ambassador Christian Granger, an intimate of the Bulon family. She considered the embassy in Cairo calling for a Mrs. Christian Granger. ‘This Vita with her fake passport…does the hottentot ambassador know his wife is a killer—that she poisoned his friend!’ 245

* * *

The desert wind hurled itself against the old hotel like a demented animal, violent and erratic. A shutter ripped loose with an explosive bang—Vita let out a scream. Predatory gusts rushed into the room whirling newspapers into the air, swirling the bedcover into folds, and licking her naked skin with its gritty, hot breath. She scrambled to fasten shutters and close inner panes. She stooped to gather her wind-strewn reviews, tittering, barely able to contain herself when she thought of Cairo, all of Europe, intrigued by her ingenious dispatch of Bulon. Not since Lizzie Borden, a media hound if ever there was one, Vita thought, had any one woman so thoroughly tantalized a mass audience. The giggles stopped, as once again she felt over-shadowed by the consummate genius of an artist greater than herself: a blood- drenched, double hatchet murder on a bright, hot August morning with no credible suspect other than Lizzie, and not a shred of forensic evidence that experts from Harvard could fi nd. The New York Times had lambasted Fall River offi cials for bringing a respectable lady to trial so irresponsibly. Borden claimed the inheritance she would’ve lost to her step-mother had she not intervened, and lived to old age in the new mansion she built, then left the remainder of her fortune to an animal shelter. The Borgias themselves, Vita thought, would’ve gone down on their knees before Lizzie for such audacity. Vita pridefully reminded herself that there was no evidence physical, circumstantial, or speculative linking her to the murders of Bulon and Reichenbach. Unlike Lizzie she would not be brought to trial—but then again, she’d never have Lizzie’s audience to marvel at her brilliance. That could change, Vita feverishly realized. Tonight she was to dine with the old crocodile, not in the courtyard restaurant, thank you, but at Madame’s private cottage hidden somewhere in that Omar Khyyam jungle. An elegantly hand-written note delivered to her room instructed her to appear at eight. ‘What to wear!’ Vita’s eyes darted over open leather bags and a room strewn with gauze tunics, stripped caftans and tasseled Vita scarves. ‘I paraded about Cairo in this trash?’ Cackling, she collapsed onto the bed with disjointed thoughts fl itting through her brain like sand devils outside in the street. Her eyes watered while she indulged in memories of her former life in an embassy Residence…breakfast in bed while watching her personal maid maintain the dressing closet…double-hanging rows of gowns and suits in plastic bags…shoes and purses stored in cubicles… and tissue-lined drawers fi lled with the most divine underthings ever created…frail lace in the palest tints of fl esh, lilac, and ivory. Vita slammed her fi sts into the mattress. Her face grew red and ugly as frantically she crammed her clothes into bags. The gaudy scarves she’d give the maid for a tip. The room and restaurant bills she didn’t worry about. Tonight she’d settle with the old cunt. It was Madame Very who owed big time. Scooping up newsprint Vita carried the bundle into the bathroom, threw it in the tub, found matches and set it on fi re— whoosh! Suddenly she snatched out the burning front page photo of the funeral in Paris. She dropped it on the fl oor and stamped with a bare foot. Smoke smoldered about Christian’s erect shoulders in his morning jacket. Vita glared at his grieving handsome face, with her serpent’s tongue fl icking over dry lips. ‘Bloodless bastard!’ Vita needed to see him suffer, to watch him disintegrate, to know that she was destroying him, slowly, with terror and humiliation. This was their bond.

247

34

ind had bent and twisted and broken oleander branches Wheavy with frothy blossoms glowing in darkness. Vita picked her way along paths of crushed black coral. Breaking free of the garden’s jungly tentacles she gave a sharp intake of breath—Madame Very’s hidden bungalow glittered before her like a jeweled Faberge objet. Through open french doors she took in a phantasmagoria of blazing crystal chandeliers, gilt rococo mirrors, stained glass Art Deco lamps, tasseled brocade draperies, urns fi lled with peacock feathers, Japanese screens, Sevres bonbonieres, Chinese porcelain bowls potted with red and yellow tulips. Jammed together in a medium-sized parlor was the accumulated result of decades of ruthless haggling with pawnbrokers, auctioneers and ruined aristocrats. Vita felt sickened by such gargantuan “greed of the eyes.” Madame Very waited on front steps. Freed from the constraints of her professional all-white wardrobe the hoteliere wore a lilac caftan brazenly striped in turquoise, oxblood, black, and ochre. She ushered Vita to a table set al fresco on the verandah with cane armchairs plush with cushions covered in the caftan’s same striped fabric. Gratifi ed by Vita’s pained expression, Etche Very queried, “Eez eet too much?” Vita

“By far,” snapped Vita. Chuckling, Madame Very graciously held back a chair for Vita to seat herself. A muscular Arab in an immaculate white jacket materialized to open a bottle of wine. He tipped a portion into Madame’s glass to taste, but she snatched the bottle out of his hands and waved him away back into obscurity. “In vino veritas,” she croaked, as she fi lled Vita’s glass to the rim with Bull’s Blood. “Then let’s hope,” said Vita, grimacing at her fi rst sip, “you’re not serving this noxious syrup when detectives interrogate you.” “Ahhh, de Su-re-te...” drawled Madame Very, laying out the syllables as if they were contaminated and had to be cautiously manipulated at the end of a pair of invisible tongs. “Vy vould dey be interested in an old voman like me?” “Bulon did not die a natural death,” Vita smiled brightly. “Your hotel now has no competition. You toast in Latin. You probably even know about… Tiliaceae Carchorus olitorius—” “—I know dese are Ophrys apifera,” snarled Madame Very, jabbing Jungle Red nails at a Lalique vase erupting with bee orchids, improbable confections of pink tongues and maroon speculums with yellow-striping. “But dar-link,” she continued, “hoteliers don’t kill utter sheety hoteliers—dey are part of de business. Su-re-te police vill not vaste time here. Dey are busy vith de ex-vife, dat Simone Vivare. A mutter’s custody of her child is a better ‘ting to een-vesti-gate.” The women peered through swirling smoke, wavering candle fl ames and exotic blossoms to see each other’s face, fl ush from strong wine and the pleasure of so much ill will and deceit. The ghostly Arab reappeared to set before them gold-crested plates with an appetizer course of crisp, ruffl ed crepes fi lled with creamed veal guyas. They ate (and smoked) in silence, considering how to safely broach their respective strategic interests. Vita opened. “They will want to know everyone who had access to the tower.” “I vas dere vonce. Vith you.” “You gave me a master key. I came and went for the next 249 forty-eight hours.” “Did you see Bulon of-ten?” “I was never in the same room with him.” “Gutt. If dey ask, I vill tell de trooth. A backpack gurl vith housekeeping skills took care of de tower, to pay her beel. M. Bulon vas pleased to have so buuu-ti—fool a chamber maid.” While Vita considered this, Etche Very gargled, “Ven dey ask de iden-tity of dis buuu-ti-fool gurl, I vill geeve dem infor-ma-tion off dat fake passport of yours.” “Which will lead nowhere.” “Vy should eet!” expelled Madame Very, yellow eye-slits ablaze with glee at her secret knowledge of Ambassador Christian Granger’s marital life. “Dis ad hoc chamber maid could not have been present ven de bastard vas drinking so goddam many espressos—de em-becilic Simone Vivare, maybe...” “So,” said Vita, “neither the Winter Haven owner nor the mystery cleaning girl had the chance, or convincing motive, to poison Bulon.” Etche Very smiled her crooked smile and sucked on a cigarette. Vita shivered with sensual pleasure induced by Bull’s Blood, the glow of candlelight and beauty of the bee orchids. She was impressed that this tough old woman with her innate peasant intelligence was entering into a conspiracy. She felt a tipsy rush of kinship. Etche Very felt no such thing. She sensed danger (and signaled Ahmed to remain close by in shadow), but she couldn’t reign in her insatiable curiosity. She had managed to shake off childhood religious indoctrination, both Jewish and Catholic, but she held onto the wisdom of that most pragmatic of saints, Thomas Aquinas: “Though evil is neither good nor of God, nevertheless to understand it is both good and from God.” Madame Very could never resist peering down into the abyss of the human heart. “But vy?” she rasped. “Vy vat?” said Vita with a leer. “Vy did you do eet!” “Do what?” snarled Veda. “We’ve established that the Winter Haven owner and the temp maid couldn’t have done Vita any‘ting!” Etche Very’s fi st clinched the damning packet of evidence inside her caftan pocket. She longed to pull it out. She’d never had the chance to ask a killer why she killed. But looking into the obsidian depths of Vita’s eyes, the hotelier pulled back. She dared go to the edge of the abyss, but she wouldn’t jump. She sat silent, still. Unrestrained by sanity Vita chattered on. “Vy vy VY! Curiosity kills the catty. Quid pro quo, Professor Very, was there ever a Monsieur Very?” “Dere have been many monsieurs,” said the hotelier sotto voce. “I fucked my vay across Europe and do not care who knows eet. I vould’ve done any ‘ting to get out.” “Like my mother. Daughter of a garage mechanic, fucked my poor dumb dad to get out. Thought he’d get rich.” “Did he?” said Etche Very, repressing a fl ash of rage at the implication, even from a madwoman, that her origins might be anything less than Olympian. “Yes...for a while. It didn’t last. It couldn’t last, the real estate boom. He went bust and the pretentious, money-grubbing bitch dumped him. She threw out my father.” Hearing the tremor in Vita’s voice, Etche Very saw no harm in dispensing biographical nuggets she perenially used to promote herself as Survivor. “Don’t tell me about loss, dar- link,” she growled. “I vas born during de Virst Vorld Var. Ven I grew up, I left uni-vers-ity because Jewish people couldn’t go to medical school. Den dere vas de Second Vorld Var and I lost evrrry‘ting—my family—friends—homes! I lost two husbands in de var. My fi rst husband died from hunger in Prussia, and he vas a very, very rich Jewish man. In de concentrrra-tion camp vee traded our diamonds for brr-read...you cannot believe de tings ve endured.” Vita snapped, “Jews don’t hold the franchise on deprivation. I know what it’s like to be in prison, to have nothing—no clothes, decent food, privacy. I know what it’s like to fi ght to survive.” Etche Very’s nerve-endings tingled. “You vere in a prison?” “It was a...misunderstanding. A juvenile indiscretion.” 251

Madame Very gave a confi ding chuckle. “I am no strrr- anger to eendisc-rrrrretions, dar-link. Vat sort?” Vita snipped off an orchid blossom and twirled it between her fi ngers. “What else but a man. Not a man really, more of a facsimile who made the fatal mistake of laughing at me. I lost my head.” “Dat eez natural, dar-link, you vere a child,” said Etche Very, surmising a charge of manslaughter with a term in juvenile prison. “After you paid for your eendisc-rrrrretion, you made a new start?” “Yes,” said Vita, fl inging away the orchid. “Ahhh,” sighed Madame Very, thinking how well quid pro quo worked with this one. “Tree times I’ve started over from no’ting. I had a lot of money, den many times I vas wery, wery poor. Ven I got to dis ass-hole countrry of E-jeep I had only von dress!” “You started by getting a new husband.” “How else! I had damned near fucked cobras but fucking a-lone vould not get me new citi-zen-sheep, a passport. I had no family, no i-denti-ty, I had to marry. But dat vas de last time. Vy should I marry and make von man miserable when I can stay single and make hun-drrreds miserable?” She chuckled herself into a bout of coughing, then continued. “Seriously, dar-link, I like men, I fuck men, I respect a few men, but never again vill I marry von. Dey do not vork as hard as I do. Dey are not as smart in business as I am, dey do not love buuuti-fool tings like I do, dey do not drink, smoke, or fuck as much as I do. Dey are smaller dan life—my life!” This paean to self-reliance pleased Vita, but brought back up her guard. ‘She’s schmoozing me.’ “Madame, you’ve just shown me what you owe for my services. You will help me start a new life—testosterone-free.” Yellow eye-slits blazed with 20/20 steeliness as Vita took from the pocket of her khaki shirt a charred fragment of newsprint. She pressed it fl at before sliding it across the table. So sincere was the hoteliere’s scrutiny Vita didn’t guess that she had spent time already studying the funeral photo, pondering the bereavement of Christian Granger. Vita

“On the right is my husband.” Madame Very blurted out what she was burning to know. “How did somevon vith a prison record marry a goddamn ambassador!” “Skillful evasion. Luck. Pussy enslavement.” “Homo e-rrrectus!” Choking on smoke and raucously chucking, Etche Very gasped, “Dar-link, dat eez de vay to control men. Pooh-sey enslavement! Seet on dere faces ov-ten enough and dey are docile as leetle boys!” Vita plucked another orchid. “He’ll be here. The funeral was Monday, he’s on his way. If you think the Surete has questions, wait til he’s cornered you. He’s negotiated with the Chinese.” Etche Very stubbed out the cigarette she’d just lit. “Vat do I tell hem?” “Evrrrry-ting!” Vita kneaded the orchid. “The calls from Haifa. Identify me as the mystery cleaning girl.” “You vant me to tell your husband evrry-ting about de murder of his frr-iend?” Vita pressed the torn blossom to her nostrils. “Coming from you, I doubt he’ll believe any of it.” “Ven I tell him vat I know,” said Madame Very, curling her fi ngers around the packet in her caftan pocket, “I tink he vill be...de-vas-stated.” Vita smiled, “Requiescat in pace.” Etche Very looked at shredded petals. ‘She’s mad. I have to get rid of her.’ Vita was a dangerous liability, of no further use. The ambassador-husband would have no choice but to do as asked. From her sister’s brilliant, expository letters, Etche Very knew that elected politicians in America can survive sordid scandals, but the diplomatic corps is the last governmental bastion of integrity and rectitude. A man whose personal life is out of control cannot be trusted at the table, either for negotiation or dining. Etche Very yearned to know how a diplomat could have gotten himself involved, to the point of marriage, with so sinister a woman. “So ven do you leave, dar-link?” “Tomorrow. At sunrise.” 253

“Sunrise, Jesus-Chrrr-ist!” “Carpe diem. And not by means of public transport. I’m taking that heap Mr. Pant ferries you around in.” The hoteliere fl ushed and sputtered. Ahmed kept her Cadillac Seville polished to an immaculate, blinding white, a rarity of great distinction on the dirt roads of Upper Egypt. Vita cut her short. “That Mary Kay-pile is a turd on four wheels. You need to refurbish your image and you can well afford it with the business I’ve saved you. Mercedes makes a sedan in bordello- white.” “Dat eez de only car—” “—Bulon is dead. Time to pay up.” Vita sprang to her feet and tilted back her glass to swallow any remaining Bull’s Blood. She crossed the verandah, melodramatically whirling to spit out her last demand. “One other man besides my husband will come looking for me. To him you say nothing. You understand—nothing! If you do, I’ll come back! I’ll show up in your worst nightmares and make Auschwitz look like Club Med.” Vita vanished into the wind-ravaged garden. Etche Very blew out candles and dismissed her manservant. She sat with her hands resting in her lap, an unlit cigarette before her. No one was there to see the change that came over her, but she looked like what she was, an old woman. Thin, slumped shoulders shriveled inside the padded caftan, overly made-up lips drooped into an inverted U-shape. This girl had taken it out of her. All the evil she’d known in her life she could understand; to survive she herself had played at being bad and hard. But this girl was evil undiluted…potent…evil mindless, faceless, primeval… and it frightened her. Vita

35

he airport taxi dropped David under the porte-cochere Tbarely an hour after Vita had driven out the rear service alley. Etche Very made fi nal, half-hearted protests. Vita promised to phone and say where the car could be picked up. Pushpesh Pant showed Vita how to operate the car—clearly she had no familiarity with any sort of control panel. She refused to say where she was going, but from his police friend Pant learned that the Cadillac was seen driving at a slow and uncertain pace on the road north, along the Nile. At the front desk David was told that Kay Pearce, the name on Vita’s counterfeit passport, had checked out earlier this morning. Truthfully, Pant said he had no idea what her next destination might be. David crossed Sharia al-Nil to ticket offi ces along the embankment and determined that no morning boats or train had departed. No one had rented a car to a single woman. She’d not been at the desert airstrip for the return fl ight to Cairo, so where had she vanished to? The smug Indian was holding back, David was sure of it. The comings and goings of a guest like Vita would not go unnoticed. So he returned to the lobby fi lled with milling, 255 sunburnt tourists in shorts and tank tops, cameras slung around their necks. The maitre d’hotel was busy repeatedly answering the same questions and policing children attracted by Madame’s faux gold artifacts. David made himself insignifi cant in a corner near the portal columns and animal-god curtain. Stone-faced, he sat with his bag at his feet trying to get a grip on his anger. Was she gone or still in town? Had she gotten his letters? Why had she not taken his calls? After the pain he’d caused back home to be with her, why was she not here waiting for him! The animal-god curtain billowed, rippled, and two men in suits emerged from the inner cardroom. They’d been on his fl ight in fi rst class and had deplaned ahead of everyone else. Until now he’d not seen their faces—Ambassador Granger! The tall, military-looking companion could be the stalking fi gure from the Citadel during the khamsin. Buzz-Cut strode out the front entrance. Christian Granger stood as if uncertain what to do, glancing about. David leaned forward to will him into meeting his eyes—it happened for an instant, with the ambassador looking haggard…puzzled. He gave a formal nod in David’s direction before starting for the elevator. David’s anxieties evaporated. He felt the impulse to act— like his dad, who ended the squabble by taking the less popular plane and getting on to battle. The powerful husband and his muscle were here. Vita had fl ed. He had to fi nd her fi rst! He joined Pushpest Pant under the porte-cochere, where shade was cooled by breezes off the high fl ood waters of the Nile. “Sir?” The Indian turned, discreetly but methodically sucking on his Tums. “I asked about a guest—Kay Pearce.” “And I told you she left early this morning.” “She didn’t take the plane. No train or boat has left. Where did she go?” “Sir, we don’t track guests when they leave.” “She didn’t rent a car. How could she leave?” Pant shifted the Tums to the other corner of his mouth. Vita

“Who knows how, or where this lady has gone? She is very, er… enterprising.” “And beautiful,” said David. “Yes, very beautiful.” The maitre d’hotel had not liked the American woman— such presumption. Attempting to emulate the divine Bette Davis, in Jezebel, or beautiful, distraught Vivien Leigh, in Gone With the Wind, shocking society in their red party dresses! Worse was the misalliance l’Americana had forged with the old lady. He resented the pleasure his employer took in excluding him from her maneuverings. She had to be in control and know more than everyone else. Still he had to admit that the American was beautiful, as beautiful as any of the faces that populated his daydreams… Hedy Lemarr, the Gish sisters, Rita Hayworth, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Galina Galleopi, Sophia Loren... Elevated by thoughts of such glorious pulchritude, Pant’s mind and spirit drifted away from the verandah to hover somewhere out in ethereal blue air over the Libyan Desert. Encouraged by the man’s dopey expression, David stepped closer. “Sir, I have to fi nd her.” The corners of raspberry-colored lips twitched. “You are not alone. Her husband also is inquiring about her whereabouts.” David tried to appear unfl ummoxed. “Is he alone?” “As a matter of fact, no.” “Did the other man look like police or military?” “...possibly,” said Pant, animation creeping into his expression. “You see why I have to fi nd her? She needs help.” “The husband is not here to help?” “Would she be running if he were!” The blind but fervent solipsism of this handsome young man sent Pant’s mind reeling back off into his secret paradise of cinematic reveries. It was like See You in Paris where Farley Granger, with his intense dark eyes and chiseled features, fought to free Claudette Colbert from her tyrannical banker husband. He motioned David to follow. “You’re aware of who the husband is?” said Pant, as they 257 strolled the length of the verandah. “The American ambassador to Greece.” “That doesn’t deter you from romantic heroics? “A rotten marriage is a rotten marriage, no matter what the material or social benefi ts.” “You can give the ambassador’s wife what she needs?” “All a person needs is love.” Pant looked David in the eyes and saw that they were clear, unblinking with no fl icker of guile or cynicism. Confronted by such bold purity but thinking of the devious femme Americaine, the maitre d’hotel replied, “Are not some people incapable of love?” “It’s harder because they’ve been scarred by bad experiences,” said David, “but all of us need physical security and affection. Animals respond to love with complete trust. How can you think humans are not capable of as much?” Pant swallowed his Tums. “She left in our car.” “What!” “Madame Very turned the car over to this Vita.” “You know her name. Does the old lady?” “Madame found out her real name, somehow.” “And handed over her car?” “As I said, this Vita is enterprising.” “Where was she going?” “She wouldn’t say.” “Does the old lady know?” “No,” Pant said with satisfaction, “she knows less than I do. My police contact told me the car went north.” Pant felt expansive. The old lady had played her game, now it was his turn. The diplomat-husband would grill Madame, but she was unaware of the handsome young Israeli also in pursuit of her pal Vita. He would help the idealistic lover win the wife of the powerful husband—like See You in Paris! “North?” said David. “What’s north of Luxor?” “Four-hundred empty miles of desert until you get to Cairo.” “Why would anyone drive to Cairo?” “Why would anyone drive in Cairo?” said Pant, thinking Vita pleasurably of the luxury white sedan gridlocked in the capital’s fi lthy air, described by locals as being like a full ashtray turned upside down. “What kind of car?” A grin spread across the Indian’s face. “Vintage Cadillac Seville, 1951.” “What kind of shape is it in?” “It satisfi es Madame perfectly, but speedy transportation is not one of her requirements. Even on fl at desert it doesn’t go faster than fi fty miles-per-hour.” “What time did Vita leave?” “Early, a little after six.” David looked at his watch. It was nearly nine, a three- hour lead, but probably she’d gotten no further than 150 miles away. “Does anyone in town rent motorcycles?” Pushpesh Pant beamed. “Hm...a motorcycle—yes, that would do—you can catch up with her. Go to the tourist shop next to the bank. Ask for Anwar Rocancourt. He rents out a big bike. Tell him I sent you.” David clasped Pant’s hands, “Thank you, sir, I promise I’ll do the right thing.” ‘But will the woman?’ thought Pushpesh Pant. He struggled to think of an exit line. Vaguely he gestured with his hands, “The gods go with you, young man.”

259

36

avid felt the warm sap of emotion pumping through his Dbody as he reeled out the Triumph 550 to 70 mph. The bike was old and grimy, but he’d been assured it would do over a hundred. The alleys of Luxor had been hot, humid, dust-choked, so in Anwar Rocancourt’s toilet he’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt. He pressed his salesman’s suit down into his leather shoulder bag and strapped it onto the bike’s rear rack. He waited until clear of town to pull off the road, under a spreading mimosa dusted with fuzzy yellow and pink blossoms. Popping the cap on a warm bottle of beer he spread his map across the handlebars and sat trying to fi gure out where he was going—where Vita was going, if driving north. He saw that in the 400-mile stretch between Luxor and Cairo only a single road turns west into desert. A tract to the necropolis at al-Kharija Oasis is not a likely route nor destination, he thought, for a vintage Caddie Seville and a driver like Vita. East of the Nile four roads cut across stony wilderness to the Red Sea. David traced the route from Qina, an hour ahead, to the coastal town of Hurghada. He calculated that Vita had good reason to avoid Cairo Vita and Nassser Airport, for her husband’s agents would be sure to intercept her. But Hurghada was 200, not 400 miles away. It was a fi shing village-turned-snorkeling-mecca, over-run with bohemian hordes and serviced by ships—hundreds of ships weekly passed through the Canal and Hurghada’s port on their way to the Emirates or India—India... ‘She fl ew to Greece through Bombay. She’s driving to Hurghada for a ship to Bombay catch her fl ight back to Los Angeles!’ David refolded the map, chugged warm beer, fastened his helmet and raised to kick-start the Triumph. A barefoot girl in a mauve-rose gown approached, balancing a basket of scallions on her head. She smiled into his eyes and gave a smart salute. He grinned and saluted back. He had a battle plan hastily reasoned, one that wouldn’t be much of a stretch, either, for Striped-Pants and Buzz-Cut, but he knew—he felt—somehow he would get to Vita fi rst. His confi dence deepened as he watched the onion-girl saunter across fl ooded fi elds. Farmers in white gellabias chanted as they regulated pivoted pole-and-bucket shadoofs to raise water from one level to the next: surging brown, silt-laden waters overfl owed. Naked children hurled themselves off muddy banks, oblivious to clouds of mosquitos and beds of water cobra. Glittering with gold bracelets, veiled wives squatted outside their mud-and-straw brick huts amid curly fat leaves of summer squash, the purple whorlings of cabbage and wild emerald springing of scallions. How far removed this primitiveness made David feel from home in Israel, where agricultural tracks outside Haifa have computerized irrigation sprays, geodesic domed greenhouses and desalination plants. How it excited him to see these fellaheen families lustily giving themselves over to communal agricultural life in all its Biblical intactness. He gunned the Triumph to swerve around mule carts loaded with sugar cane. Heat boiled up off tar-sticky asphalt under his sandaled feet. He hunched over handlebars and leaned into a hurtling wall of wind as if he wanted to race the Nile, which coursed alongside smooth as vinyl, but moving, ever-sliding downward, sweeping thousands of tuber-clumps on their way to the sea. His anguish at the pain he’d infl icted on Yael and his 261 mother was whipped away by hot wind. He felt free. Blue sky ahead was pierced by minarets and silver-tufted palm groves. The black soil of freshly plowed fi elds stood out like India ink against brilliant green. At the farmers’s market in Qina the Cairo highway intersected with Route 79. At a cafe operating the town gas pump David wheeled in to top off his tank, fi ll the reserve and strap on two litres of water. He asked the gellabiaed attendant if he’d seen a white luxury American car pass? A gold tooth glinted as the teenager grinned and pointed at 79, turning out into the desert. David knew the futility of asking an Arab the time of any occurrence, so he consulted the map and saw that it was 186 miles to the Red Sea shore. Vita had a three-hour lead but the Triumph was closing in at double her top speed. He traced the road across desert plateau to treacherous Ash al-Milaha—and smiled: the vintage Caddie would never make it, she’d slow to a crawl. The asphalt road ran black and shimmering straight across an endless plain. The fl atness melted into a sky drained of color by noontime sun, bone-white and burning, an indistinguishable vastness of iridescent whiteness. There were no other vehicles in sight. Empty miles fl ashed by without anything to fi x the eye on. David stared at the long, low horizon line as it disintegrated into dots that would themselves rise up to become a procession of camels, palm trees in an oasis, or the heads of racing ostriches— mirages! Barreling along at 100 mph he was half-blinded by shards of wind-blasted rays on his helmet’s dome; his eyes struggled to disentangle optical illusions which shimmered, scintillated, sharply formed, abruptly changed shapes or vanished. Mirages! Vita! Chasing a woman who lies as naturally as she breathes, deceptive even about her gender. Is there such a person as Vita at all. He’d never seen her real passport. He’d never allowed himself to imagine her full potential for treachery, yet he was throwing away half a lifetime with Yael. He cringed to think that his mother might know his folly—that he’d come back to fi nd Vita on the run. He leaned from side to side into wind to counter the forces Vita of hot backdrafts. Heat from the highly-revved engine scorched denim tightly stretched on his thighs. Anger turned to lust and he felt himself getting hard with excitement as he rubbed against hot metal. He throttled heavily, for visible through dun-colored haze was the threatening silhouette of Ash al-Milaha. Sand stung his hands and arms. The close air under his helmet visor tasted harsh, metallic on his tongue. Wind laden with fi ne particles of sand gusted from all directions, misting under the mouthpiece and mingling with his breath. His eyes burned. He downshifted to pull off the road, and wheeled about to see the spectacle coming up from behind. ‘Fuck!’ The khamsin turned the sky pale red, near ground the color of raw liver. Billowing, and propelling dust spouts across the desert like pillars of smoke, the storm cloud advanced—there was no place to take shelter. Sand would blind and choke him. Rummaging through his bag he changed sandals for loafers and two pairs of socks. He twisted a T-shirt around his neck as a scarf, zipped up his dad’s bomber jacket, and buckled the helmet down inside the up-turned leather collar. His best hope was to overtake the Cadillac. The storm would be bottled-in by Ash al-Milaha. Even a madwoman wouldn’t try to drive through it, Vita would be forced to stop. But he couldn’t regain speed on the road’s convolutions through gullies and around stony foothills, where low places were blocked by meandering draa dunes, wind-driven ridges of sand. Once he was nearly forced off the road by the only vehicle to pass in an hour, an open wide-bed truck loaded with Bedouin who stood rigidly with wind lashing at their robes. David kept his eyes fi xed on mountain peaks towering so close he could follow the hairpin turns of the high switchback road. He saw a moving speck. It vanished, then reappeared—a blur of white! The khamsin struck horribly, a roaring, hurling maelstrom. Engulfed by sheets of driven sand David was blinded by the brightness of crystals seething in sun above cloud layers. The solar disc metamorphosed into a brilliant moon which reeled 263 crazily through racing clouds. Mountains, the road were snuffed out by blankets of sand. He couldn’t see his own white knuckles gripping the handlebar. The headlamp’s shaft of light got swallowed up by sand. Blindly he started up a switchback climb, staying on the inner shoulder bound by cliff-face. To maintain low speed on the steep gradient he downshifted, and the motor screamed. He was afraid gas lines would clog with sand and the engine overheat. He ploughed along dragging his feet for ballast, searching for crevices or an overhang, any place for protection; but the repudiating cliff- face was sheer and unbroken. Churning sand slashed at his helmet. Hot gusts of air seared his lungs and sand weighed down his eyelids. Sensory inversion made it hard for him to tell up from down, whether the bike was moving or standing still. His muscles ached from fi ghting for control. Within minutes he couldn’t remember how long he’d been climbing the switchback, or calculate how far ahead Vita might have gotten. Catching her was less important now than just getting inside the goddamn Cadillac! Sheets of sand washed his bubble-helmet bringing on a hissing, gritty twilight. The T-shirt at his throat seemed to disintegrate in the scouring onslaught of sharp-edged mica particles. Tears blinded him and he lost control. With a sickening lurch that set his gorge rising, the Triumph lunged upwards and ahead in a panic of screaming revvs, ricocheting against the cliff- face. The bike stood still, or was it vaguely sliding? He gulped a breath, choking and spitting out sand. He tried to breathe in rasping gasps but there was not enough air. His body seemed icy, his heart immense and thudding against the ribcage. A buzz fi lled his ear canals and bored into his brain. Cowering, he threw his arms over the helmet, and cried out in confusion and disbelief.

* * *

...thirty minutes earlier...inside the Cadillac, Vita was irked. She’d driven only one car before, the great shiny Buick convertible her mother had given her on her sixteenth birthday. She’d never held a driver’s license since, for as a diplomat’s wife Vita she was chauffeured in austere government limousines. She was offended by the Seville’s interior profusion of faux white leather and wood paneling, not to mention the pervasive, fumous stink of the old lady’s cigarette smoke mingled with Guerlaine. The highway across desert plain posed no problem as she simply steered down the centerline. But the nothingness of the drive agitated her anxiety. The stench of cigarettes and perfume was a constant physical reminder of the old lady and the collusion she’d been forced into. The murder in Athens had gone undetected by anyone except for Christian, whom she’d made her passive accomplice. In Luxor, by necessity, an unspoken partnership had formed. Vita rationalized: ‘The old crocodile won’t talk to police, but she’ll trade her last piece of Lalique to conspire with a diplomat. Christian can coerce her into claiming the car was stolen, not loaned in payment for services rendered. Will either of them dare call in police? Risk having me talk about what’s been going on lately? I think not.’ Vita stared at mountains ahead. A trickle of sweat crept like an insect down the indentation of her spine, as she registered dizzying heights and ruggedness. The black road snaked around foothills and migrating draa dunes. Cresting a windswept rise the road dipped and vanished beneath rippled waves of sand. Vita jammed on brakes as the Cadillac ploughed through sand and fi shtailed to a halt. The wheels spun for traction, sand spurted up like fountains. Vita fl oored the accelerator. The car’s back end slewed around, yanking the steering wheel out of her hands. She screamed and clutched the padded leather steering wheel, as if it were the reign around the neck of a demented bull ready to hurl her to destruction. She regained control of the behemoth, but her insides were watery when she steered it onto the fi rst zigzag leg of a switchback climb. The automatic transmission knocked as the car slowed to a crawl. Vita hugged the inside cliff-face. The outside shoulder had no guardrail. It was like take-off in an airplane, she thought, with foothills and dunes falling away below. Wind gusted harder. Sand pelted her forearm braced in the open window. She rolled it up and fumbled for the air conditioner switch just as the road crested the zigzag leg and 265 coiled into a hairpin turn. The shoulder under the Cadillac’s front fender dropped off sheer—beyond the hood was empty air! Vita swerved the Cadillac against cliff-face to the sound of metal scraping rock. Keeping her foot soldered to the brake she gaped at the jagged ridges and saw-toothed peaks of Ash al-Milaha: out- thrusts of pinkish-gray limestone and black basalt. Wind-scoured, pot-marked, it was a god-forsaken wilderness of stone ravaged for millennia by the most hostile climate on earth. Reaching heights of two-thousand feet the coastal mountain range is much crenolated and turned-in on itself, with twisted, secretive valleys and treacherous inter-connecting gullies. Vita panicked as her eyes followed the road’s steep gradients and loops* corkscrewing up into sand clouds snagged by the highest peaks. There was no sane option, she saw. Trying to back down the switchback was as suicidal as going forward. Incredibly, things worsened when she nosed the Seville out into the hairpin turn and found herself bumper-to-bumper with a Chevrolet truck. A mist of sand masked the driver behind the windshield. Vita knew it was up to her to go into reverse and give him room to clear. The chassis moaned as she inched backwards. The faceless driver edged past. She saw that the open truck was fi lled with Bedouin, ghostly fi gures wedged together, shrouded in robes and kufi yeh headdresses. Faces were swathed with strips of cloth so it was impossible to tell their sex or age. Eyes showed through the slits of rags, like a battery of daggers aimed down at her. Then abruptly the ghouls with wrapped heads vaporized into veils of sand. The road leveled off at the base of a slope fi lled with scree, boulders, and spiky gassis trees. Idling the Seville along the shoulder Vita clawed at the dashboard to fi nd the lever for cool air. Hot blasts hit her feet. The reeking interior was like a sauna. Soaked in sweat Vita cursed the instrument panel, the old woman and her Guerlaine, the khamsin, THE WHOLE GODDAMNED UNIVERSE! *built by the Italian Army during World War II, it was the greatest feat of engineering in modern Egypt. Vita

A hole billowed open in whirling curtains of sand outside the windows. Vultures perched on a decaying gassis trunk with hideous heads and necks crooked down under their wings. Vita burst into fright-giggles. The khamsin slammed into Ash al-Milaha. An ocean of sand was driven through the gorges by hurricane force winds. Gassis trees bent to the ground. Vultures huddled immobile, coated with sand and looking like statuary on the roof of Notre Dame. The Seville’s windshield darkened with sliding sand. Half on, half off the road, Vita hit the brakes and with an asthmatic shudder the engine died. The car rocked. Vita listened to the groaning of the chassis and sand pelting the windows. She was trapped in a claustrophobic space with repulsive smells. It seemed like she was suffocating under hissing blankets of sand. She sucked in air between her teeth and kept her eyes squenched shut. Her temples throbbed. ‘Bedouin somewhere back there!’ she thought. ‘Shiites to boot, who’d love to slit the throat of an infi del or rape a white woman in a big American car!’ She slipped from under the steering wheel to lock the doors. Crouched on her knees on the expansive front seat she rotated her head trying to see in all directions at once. Vaporous clouds outside would thin momentarily and she would gasp at the sight of some insubstantial gray form, more imagined than seen. Tumultuous sand swirled over and around the car in grotesque patterns. The wind grew stronger, more devious, no longer a single blast, but a maelstrom of whirling currents and eddies. Worse than the wild cacophony of howling and roaring were the lulls: intense fear comes in waves, the body can’t stand it for long at a time. The calm between waves made Vita’s skin crawl, with the wind’s low, sobbing moaning like the sound of a woman in labor. Something slammed down on the trunk! Vita bolted upright, rigid as a doll, to stare wide-eyed out the rear window. There was a whirlpool of sand as thrashing arms pounded on the trunk! She made pitiful, low whimpering 267 sounds as the Cadillac’s rear end rocked up and down. The frantic beating stopped. Tentacles of sand trailed along the driver’s-side windows. Black arms fl ailed about a swollen, gigantic head. Two palms, fi ngers splayed, slammed onto the window. Vita shrieked as a gaping mouth, raw as a wound, sucked at glass right beside her. Vita

37

hristian waited. All morning Madame Very relayed Capologies for her indisposal through Pushpesh Pant. Then mid-afternoon he was summoned and ushered into her personal inner sanctum. The maitre d’hotel seated him, bowed, and left him to wait some more. Faintly amused, the diplomat surveyed madame’s “offi ce.” Windowless walls were draped entirely with white brocade. Wall-to-wall carpet was plush and white. A white Empire chaise lounge competed in grandeur with the gilt and white Louis XIV chair behind a starkly moderne desk: a glass slab-top bare save for neatly aligned papers, a white shell Mont Blanc ink pen, and a white telephone. Even in the dim glow of an ancient crystal chandelier it was impossible for visitors to ignore the Lalique name plaque etched with Madame Very’s managerial credo, borrowed from Elizabeth Tudor: ‘I will have here but one mistress, and no master.’ The drama of the hoteliere’s entrance was equal to the décor. A billowing of brocade along one wall was accompanied by hoarse, staccato whispering, then the abrupt appearance of Madame in an all-white embroidered caftan. She was shadowed by her manservant in his fi ercely starched white jacket, bearing a silver tea tray. 269

“Excellency!”Madame croaked, groveling over Christian’s hand. Etche Very gestured him back into his chair and, herself, graciously began pouring and serving with murmurings of “… excellency…your excellency…” She took her seat behind the glass desk, and they sipped steaming Oolong tea while regarding each other closely. Christian was alerted by the inordinate amount of makeup. Rouge, foundation and kohl couldn’t mask the old woman’s tension, and Christian was not surprised. From the Cairo consulate’s fi ve-page summary on Etche Very and her naturalized American sister he had quite a precise knowledge of the hoteliere, though he was confi dent there was much more to know. He caught the woman’s squint sliding down to papers before her and realized she was possibly as well-briefed as himself. Best to cut to the chase. Slipping an identifi cation photo from his jacket pocket he leaned forward to lay it fl at on glass before his adversary. The hoteliere picked up the photo-portrait and studied it with a thoughtfulness that suggested she’d never before in her life laid eyes on the face gazing back at her. “Bee-uuutifool,” she croaked. “We-ry bee—uuutifool.” Christian waited for elaboration, but the woman sat stiff and straight and alert in her Louis XIV chair with claw-like hands folded in her lap. “My wife was your guest last week.” “I had no idea she vas your excellency’s vife.” “You recognize her.” “Nat-u-rally! How could von forget a bee-uuutifool face like hers?” “Did you speak often with her?” “She vas we-rrry charming.” “She said nothing to indicate that, as my wife, she belongs to the American diplomatic corps?” “She said no’ting about belonging to anyvon. She vas… er, reti-ceent about her personal affairs.” “And not wearing her wedding ring, I suppose.” Etche Very coughed. “…er, I am afraid she vas not, excellency. Vita

They looked hard at each other. The old lady had the advantage for there was no way Christian could prove she’d either known or surmised Vita’s marital and social status. He had to take what she said about Vita at face value, which was ludicrous since self-serving lies were the woman’s modus operandus. “How did my wife strike you, madame, frankly, if I may ask?” Again Etche Very coughed, and tittered, “I do not understand your excellency…does not ev-vrrrryvon fi nd your vife a bee-uuutifool and eli-gant lady?” “They do, but surely, madame, you are more observant. Besides the obvious, what else did you notice?” Etche Very straightened papers. “Did her behavior in any way seem…odd?” Madame coughed, this time without the titter. From a slit in her caftan she withdrew a cigarette, fl icked a slim white porcelain lighter, and inhaled. “Dere vas de matter of her beel. She vas vorried it seemed to me about monnn-nee.” “Her stay here for nearly two weeks was beyond her means? Is that what you’re saying?” “I am saying, excellency, dat your vife made an unusual request of me.” “Which was?” Etche Very sucked on her cigarette. “Last veek vas crazy. Ev-vrrrryvon in de vorld vas here. De rooms vas fool and two chamber maids vas saying dey vas sick and could not vork. Massood and I vas keeling ourselves, so your vife offered to help.” One of Christian’s cheeks twitched and he felt a fi lm of moisture on his hands. “How could my wife possibly help you with housekeeping shortages?” “Do not vorry, excellency, your vife did not clean rooms,” Etche Very chuckled. “But she did perform a great service for me.” “What was that, Madame Very?” The hoteliere stubbed out her cigarette. “Many we-ry important people vas here, including…as you know…a gutt friend of your excellency’s.” 271

Christian stared, with color spreading up his throat. Etche Very sepulchrally intoned, “I vas grrrrr-ieved, excellency, to read of M’sieur Bulon’s death in Cai-rrro. He vas a grrrr-eat business leader and so charming a young man. His death eez a great sadness for me.” Christian whipped his anger back into its cell in his brain. The old Jewess was toying with him and with gross hypocrisy: she had hated Herve for his new hotel project, still more for his youth and greater wealth. “What has this to do with my wife, madame?” Etche Very slipped out a cigarette but did not light it. “M’sieur Bulon vas not getting de service he felt he deserved. He vanted his own goddamn maid—excuse me, excellency, but it vas a diffi cult time! Your vife said she vould take care of de tower suite herself, to pay her beel. I vas not so surprised—I have seen rich vomen do crazy ‘tings so many times before. I could see she had eli-gant housekeeping skills and I knew M’sieur Bulon vould be happy to be luuked after by so bee-uuutifool a young voman.” “My wife oversaw housekeeping for Mr. Bulon?” “No. She did eet herself. She vorked alone and he vas we-ry satisfi ed.” Tension tremored in the pit of his stomach, as Christian refl ected, what if this conversation were being recorded. He’d not put it past Etche Very. She’d said nothing so far to implicate herself. She’d been plausible, reasonable even, but arrogance was creeping into her obsequiousness. The safest option would be to terminate the conversation, but he couldn’t do it. He had to know what she knew. “Mr. Bulon may have been pleased with service he got at the Winter Haven, but his satisfaction was short- lived. He was dead within twelve hours of leaving.” “A terrrr-ible tragedy,” gargled Etche Very with relish. “More than tragedy, madame—it was murder.” Etche Very lit her cigarette, inhaled deeply, and the squint parted enough to give glimpses of glittering, mineralized orbs of pupil. Christian could see that she was game for battle and he was unwilling to retreat. “Don’t you think, Madame Very, there’s cause for alarm Vita when a man dies from poisoning after being in close proximity to two women with serious grievances against him? Child custody and the future of a prosperous business?” A white-clad Etche Very sat sphinx-like writhed in swirling strands of silvery smoke, as Christian continued. “Simone Vivare will get custody of her child along with generous renumeration from the Bulon family. As for yourself, madame, surely you are relieved that Mr. Bulon’s hotel project is in jeopardy. Completed, it would turn your Winter Haven into the Upper Nile resort-of- choice for British pensioners and backpackers.” Etche Very’s face reddened beneath layers of foundation. Claw-like hands gripped the edge of the glass slab. So angered was she that the over-done, Olde World accent all but vanished. “My hotel, excellency, is the premier hotel on the Upper Nile. So it vill always be!” Christian took the folded consulate summary from his inner jacket pocket. He slipped on glasses and scanned, while Etche Very watched with cobra alertness. “I see, Madame Very, that innkeeper was not your fi rst career choice. Had it not been for Nazi insurgences into Hungary you would’ve been one of the few women admitted to the National School of Medicine.” “Yes,” stated the venerable hoteliere. “Nazi persecution deprived you of what I’m sure would’ve been a distinguished medical career, but you saw to it that your younger sister got the opportunity you lost. Dr. Hedda Solomon today is Pennsylvania’s leading forensic pathologist.” “Hed-da eez de leading path-olo-geest for de entire region, your excellency. De medical examiner in New York Ceety consults vith her.” “Your sister,” said Christian, “and perhaps you as well, have specialized knowledge of toxic substances like the one used to murder my friend. He died as the result of deliberate and skillful administration of cumulative doses that began at your hotel. You and Dr. Solomon are in close contact—three phone calls this past week, I see.” Etche Very chuckled and the heavy accent re-surfaced, thickened. “Eet eez a gutt ‘ting, excellency, dat Hed-da and I have, as you say, a knowleeege of poisons. Vith dat knowleeege 273 ve can dee-fend ourselves.” “Mr. Bulon was a close friend. I will know the truth about his death.” “As you vish, excellency, I vill help you. But I varn you—eet eez going to be pain-fool.” Christian maintained a neutral expression, manifestation of the professionalism on which he’d tried to build his public life but which was artifi cial; inwardly he seethed at being mocked and condescendingly reduced to ineffectualness by this gorgon Jewess. Etche Very insolently rolled an unlit cigarette between her fi ngers. “Yesterday I vas eenter-rrrogated by an agent of de Surete—” The squint aimed itself down at a paper. “—a Louis Chatagnier. I told hem I vas in de tower suite von time to geeve een-structions to a tempo-rrrrrary housekeeping voman. Dis vas co-rrrrobo-rrrrated by Bulon’s aides. Reel vatchdogs, dese boys. Dey said I vas dere only vonce and I vas too busy to ‘tink about geeving multiple doses of poison. I may have had a motive—al’dough hotelieres don’t usually go around poisoning von a’nudder—but dis Chatagnier fool could see I didn’t have de op-portuniteee.” “I’m glad to hear you’re cleared of suspicion, madame. I didn’t necessarily think that it would be otherwise. Did the Surete man ask about, er…this temporary housekeeper?” “I told hem exactly vat I’ve told you, excellency...so far...” The pause was not subtle. ‘Get on with it, you old cunt,’ Christian thought. “An eli-gant young voman could not pay her beel and offered to take care of de tower suite herself, since I vas short of maids.” “Did Monsieur Chatagnier ask for the woman’s identifi cation?” “He tuuk een-formayshun from her passport.” “What was the name on that passport?” The squint dropped. Eet vas…Kay…Kay Peerce, excellency.” Christian thought, ‘Kay Pearce, the name of her sister. How like Vita to tell a lie close to home, the better to act it out.’ Vita

Aloud he said, “Was there any irregularity with the passport? Did you consider that it might be counterfeit?” “Vy shooood I ‘tink dat!” rasped Etche Very. “Eet vas an ordina-rrry American passport and she vas a tee-pical, bee- uuutifool, rich voman—rich vomen never have any monn-nee.” Etche Very permitted herself a quick bout of chuckling and coughing. “Vy shood I ‘tink any‘ting seen-ister?” She knew. Use of the word ‘sinister’ told Christian she knew what Vita had done, maybe even how. No longer did he have the option of terminating the interview, he had to see it through. “When you heard of Mr. Bulon’s death what was your immediate reaction?” The cigarette burnt to a column of ash in Etche Very’s fi ngers. Ignoring it, she leaned forward on her elbows. “I vas curious, excellency, we-ry, we-ry curious!” Having radiated deceit and hypocrisy, fi nally the woman said something Christian knew he could take to be the truth. What was to follow, the result of a formidable curiosity, would also be true. “What is it, Madame Very, that arouses your curiosity?” “Ev-rrrry’ting!” Her posture lost its discipline, its rigidity, as she slumped in the Louis XIV chair. “Dis E-jeeptian eenspector…he claims von of de vatchdog-boys poot twenty doses of poison into espresso vithout anyvon seeing. Absurd!” “Equally absurd is that the temporary housekeeper, who you identity as my wife, did so either.” “Dat eez vat I ‘taught! Dat eez vy I vas so curious. De whole ‘ting seemed eem-possible.” “Seemed?” said Christian. He felt sick to his stomach in the smoke-fi lled, dimly-lit, all-white seraglio-offi ce with the ominous stirrings of draperies. With dread he asked, “Does it seem impossible now?” “No, excellency.” “Tell me, madame…please, be frank—tell me what you know.” Miserably Christian saw that from the start the woman, not himself, had been in control. Effortlessly she had led him to the chopping block and now she about to chop off his dick. “Housevifes in E-jeep,” Etche Very began, “grow Jew’s mallow in dere gardens. Eet makes dee-leeecious soop. Plenty 275 of people in Cairo can ac-cess basic labo-rrratory equeepment to dis-teel conceen-trrrated mallow. Using an eye dropper an angry housevife can easily spice up her husband’s coffee—or de mother-in-law’s—anyvon she hates. Jew’s mallow is a gutt alter- nateeve in de A-rab vorld to divorce, or going to court to settle a dispoot.” Seeing the grim look on Christian’s face, Etche Very stifl ed a chuckle. “Dis domestic scenario vould not vork vith M’sieur Bulon. He vas alert. He vorked all de time vhere de vatchdog-boys noticed ev-rrry ‘ting. No human bee-ing could slip poison into twenty espressos. Only a ghost could do dat.” ‘A phantom the colonel had mockingly said at his briefi ng!’ Christian held Madame Very’s squint. “Colonel Iskander says someone did.” “He eez an ee-diot eef he believes dat!” snapped Etche Very. “Vat he pub-licky says eez eempossible—inconceevible— goddam illll-ogical!” She mashed out the stub of her cigarette. “E-jeeptians tested M’sieur Bulon’s sealed packages of coffee— sealed containers of vater—vet grounds in de feel-ter. Dey even tested shuugar cubes. Poison vas found only in de espresso on de bedtable, so de colonel claims some-von poot it eento de cup. But dere eez von ‘ting de military mo-rrrron did not ‘tink to test.” She reached into the caftan’s slit to withdraw a packet of papers. Fluffi ng brightly snowy, ruffl ed papers into their original circular shape, she set them before Christian. Coffee fi lters. At her climatic moment of triumph Etche Very was constitutionally unable to share credit for her inductive brilliance with the Belgian detective, who’d produced this physical evidence. “I found dese in de trash in your vife’s room. Dey are not for my machines. Dese are for a Krups machine. Dey are normal feel-ters vhich separate easily—harmless. You vife had to get reed of dem, you see, because dey vas…leftover. Eef de colonel tested feel-ters taken from M’sieur Bulon’s room at de Meridien he vould fi nd dat dose feel-ters steek together. Dey are diffi cult to separate because dey have been satu-rrrrated with Jew’s mallow conceeen-trrrate. Your vife vas we-ry, we-ry clever—she fi xed eet so dat M. Bulon himself ad-meen-istered de fatal doses! De bottoms of about ‘tirty feel-ters had sucked up enuff poison to Vita keel a goddam camel. Ven de liquid poison vas absorbed she dried de feel-ters in strong sunlight, or if dere vas not enough time vith her hairdryer, den poot eet back vith M’sieur Bulon’s supplies—goddam BRILLIANT!” Christian felt a trickle of piss in his twill trousers. ‘One call and she can get Iskander to probe, he’ll have to. Information off the forged passport will lead nowhere but it’s too big a risk. She’ll expose Vita if she has to.’ He tried to speak. Tried again. His throat closed up, while his heart beat in rhythmic thumps. He was being forced him into criminal conspiracy with this horrible woman. “What—do you want—madame?” Etche Very had the grace to fl ush at his blunt accusal of blackmail, but snapped, “De same ‘ting, excellency, you vant—survival!” She launched into an aria as cynical as it was impassioned, on the dangers of constructing a ten-story corporate hotel with its vast energy and water requirements on the “eek- ologically t’rrreatened” banks of the Nile, so close to a “vorld- renowned archeological treasure like Loo-xor Temple!” The rasping voice grated on Christian’s eardrums, cigarette smoke stung his eyes, sweat poured down his ribs from his armpits. He wanted to get the hell out of this bordello and breath fresh air. Madame’s squint tightened as she referred to a paper. “On T’ursday, in New York Cee-ty, de board of de Renaissance Ramada Co-opo-rrrration meets to discuss de future of dere hotel here in Loo-xur. De chairman eez Meester Al-fred Mooney… who I belieeev eez a gutt friend of yours, excellency. You and Meester Mooney hosted fundraising events for de Gooooooo- ggenheim Museum.” Christian prayed for a plague to wipe Bala Cynwood, Pennsylvania, and Dr. Hedda Solomon off the face of the earth. ‘How else could this Nile crocodile have found out about me and Al Mooney! That was ten years ago.’ “I am sure Meester Mooney eez disturbed. Vithout M’sieur Bulon’s leadersheep de new hotel vill be in de hands of local A-rabs who have no experience vith beeg hotels. Your excellency knows de danger of fa-natical Shiites attacking tourists. Meester Mooney vill listen to a trusted friend. He vill 277 respect your excellency’s o-peenion dat eet vould not be vise to open a hotel far avay from Cairo…in de desert.” During eight years of diplomacy Christian had never misused his power or infl uence, nor compromised his personal code of ethics; now, fatally, the ground under him had shifted. If he was to survive, Vita’s involvement in Herve’s death must never be known. No one did know except for this gorgon: brocade rippled behind the all-in-white destroyer of whatever remaining shreds of inner peace he might have held onto. He spoke slowly and deliberately. “When I talk to Mr. Mooney about Herve’s death, certainly I will point out the complications you mention. I can make no guarantees what his reponse will be.” Etche Very’s subtle, fertile mind was used to the obfuscations of powerful men. She took Christian’s bland response to mean that he would in fact do his upmost to dissuade the Ramada Renaissance chairman from continuing with the Luxor project. ‘My hotel will survive!’ she thought, suppressing the urge to smile. She stood and solemnly extended her hand. “For Meester Moon-ey to hear de facts from you personally, excellency, vill make a difference, I am shure.” Christian rose. Feeling that some vital part inside him was forever tainted, he took the woman’s dry withered hand in his. “I am sorry, excellency, ve met in dis vay. I regret dat vhat I’ve told you causes pain. Please accept my assurances dat I vish you and your vife no ill vill. I hope you vill be able to fi nd her—soon, and do vat you ‘tink best.” “Thank you, madame. I am sure I can count on your discretion.” Christian walked out of the offi ce. He closed the door, paused, and listened for sounds behind him. He didn’t know what he expected to hear...a cough, a raspy chuckle, the rattle of china, a hoarse command to whoever might be lurking behind brocade? All he heard was silence. Tomb-like silence.

* * *

He entered the lobby where the only other sentient being—that, Vita just barely—was a desk clerk dozing upright on a stool. He went out a french door onto the empty verandah. Annihilating heat drove the most fervid temple-goers into shuttered rooms. Christian stepped into shadow cast by the hotel’s tower. He slipped off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt sleeves to roll them up. Leaning against a balustrade he stared into space to steady himself. He was hit by waves of heat and humidity. The fl ooding river’s stench was yeasty and rank. Somewhere a pariah dog barked angrily. There was no human in sight on Sharia al- Nil. Empty spaces were fi lled with hurtful, glaring sunlight. His eyes settled on the river’s surface, which from bank to bank was the length of a football fi eld and fl owing with terrifying velocity. The engorged river rushed north ripping up and sweeping along tubers and reeds, knawing at mud banks and causing them to collapse and dissolve. Decomposing, Christian thought, like his own life. His superiors at State had requested that he return to Washington. How could he face a personal review when he alone knew with certainty that two close friends had been murdered by his own wife whom he still loved. For him alone Vita fl aunted an obscene cleverness and evil sense of showmanship—she caused Herve to poison himself. Christian stared at the Nile, letting it pour into him. He visualized thousands of cubic feet of muddy waters sweeping past every second, an unstoppable fl ow as inevitable as the actions of the river’s ancient, primitive deifi cation—Hapi. Neither god nor goddess Hapi was a strange bearded creature with a massive penis and cavernous vagina; the river’s annual fl ooding was his/ her altar. At this moment Christian realized that Vita’s hold on him was weakening. He felt the horror subsiding and a sense of fatalism taking over. There came into his consciousness, not in a fl ash of desert light, more like the creeping rise of loamy waters up the embankment, the awareness that he’d been moving towards this moment. He saw how his love for Vita had been perverted. In madness there can be no love. Inner turmoil gave way to a sense of wonderment that evil so frightening could have come from what in the beginning had been good. Afternoon silence was ripped by laughter. Christian 279 looked around. It was a young woman in shorts and halter. She and her boyfriend hesitated under the port-cochere before stepping into brazen sunshine. With sadness Christian watched their faces which were radiant from love-making. The girl slipped her arm around the boy’s waist. Laughing, they started down the grand steps towards the riverbank. In the shade of acacia and sycamore they would enjoy a walk that Christian knew would last past sunset into the violet Egyptian evening. As the boy glanced over his shoulder Christian was struck by clean-cut features. A fl ashback, and he remembered the young man who’d stared so intently at him this morning in the lobby. Good-looking he’d been, and holding his eyes as if trying to communicate something. ‘The Israeli salesman—that was him! Vita got away, somehow, and he’s helping her. He’s still into her. Jesus God!’ Christian sickened at the thought of what the young man’s fate would be after Vita had used him up, like she had used him up.

Vita

38

ashed against glass the lips and cheeks and nose looked Mhideous: sand-encrusted skin seemed to be dissolving in some leprous form of eczema. Terrifi ed, Vita was slow to recognize the distorted features. “SHITHEAD!” she shrieked, fl ipping the lock switch. David heaved open the Cadillac’s door. Sand swirled about his shoulders as he threw his helmet on the fl oor and slid into the driver’s seat. Just in time he turned to see Vita’s balled fi st—he went to pull her into his arms but she slugged him. Blood trickled from a nostril. With jaw muscles clenching, unclenching, his handsome face looked heavy and stupid as he snarled, “I could’ve killed myself getting to you!” “Bastard!” Her cheekbones stood out, scarlet patches on skin drained white. “You lurch up from out of nowhere looking like The Mummy—goddamned Bedouin are back there! The storm—I couldn’t see—they—” The Cadillac’s interior was stifl ing, but Vita shivered. She choked like a boulder was caught in her throat, or in her lungs, stopping her from taking a breath. Her jaw jabbered and her teeth clattered as she collapsed against David’s chest, careful to keep her face hidden. 281

He wrapped his arms around her and gently rocked, whispering nonsensical things, telling her “everything’s gonna’ be alright…ssssh, easy baby…breath in and out, easy now… there…” He’d seen it before, these panic attacks, men in combat reduced to crying, gasping children. No matter how good an actress, David thought, she can’t fake it. Quickly assessing this bold, unexpected re-appearance of a lover she’d thought disposed of, Vita buried her triangular face like the blade of a hatchet in the gritty folds of the bomber jacket about his neck. Lavishly, she groaned, “Thank god you’re here! I was scared. I’m so glad you’re here!” “Then why did you run away! You knew I was coming.” Her eyelids fl uttered. The panic was gone but David couldn’t tell what had taken its place. She glared at the dashboard as if waiting for a Teleprompter to pop up. David persisted. “You didn’t take my calls but you got my letters, didn’t you? You knew I was coming but you ran. What are you running from—really?” “Really? A power-mad husband and storm-troopers aren’t real enough for you?” “How about Herve Bulon?” snapped David, images of Ambassador Granger’s grieved face fl ashing before his eyes. Vita blinked. David said, “Bulon’s dead.” Tinkling, wind-chime laughter. “I read that, too,” Vita said. “Amazing, isn’t it? I didn’t have to lift a fi nger—there was a line ahead of me. The pomaded cobra who owns the hotel. The shit-brain ex-wife. And of course the Ganymedes.” “Ganymedes?” “Bulon was holed up with very pretty boys, prettier than you. One of them felt jilted most likely.” Vita giggled unconvincingly. David’s expression hardened. Vita’s strong arms with rounded biceps shot up with electric suddenness to grasp his face with both hands…fi ngers caressed the nape of his neck at the base of the skull…thumbs insistently massaged just below his earlobes… He was ready for this and pulled away. He’d had no sex in seventeen days and could probably shoot a load if the tooth fairy winked at him. He steeled himself. He would not be goaded into Vita lust against his will. Vita was even more ready. She knew, as well as she knew that Moses starts forest fi res, that the mind has nothing to do with it. It’s all in the balls, nearly the whole of life for a male is in his balls. So she took her hands off David and scooted across the expansive leather seat to the passenger side. She sat on her haunches facing him. Heat inside the car was overpowering. Whether it came from the howling sand storm, from the old car’s over-heated engine, or from their own sweaty fl esh, Vita couldn’t say. The cruelest heat, she fancied, was welling up from inside themselves. While holding David’s eyes she began unfastening… slowly, faux-sluttishly…the buttons of her khaki shirt... David looked angry but interested. Khaki parted to reveal the inner slopes of her breasts. Her hands slithered round to release the clasp of a French demi-bra— breasts burst free, conical, hard-nippled. David slipped from under the steering wheel, but even faster Vita straddled his lap. She shucked the shirt with the exaggerated deliberateness of a stripper and cupped her breasts in her palms. She leaned close to brush his lips with her nipples, to leech away his resolution. “Lick.” “…no…” “Lick!” “No.” “Don’t be a pussy. Do it. You want it.” “It’s not what I want.” Again the tinkly wind-chime laughter. “It’s not what I want now,” said David. “I want you to know—you’ve got to know what I’ve done to be here.” Vita shoved a breast into his mouth. With both hands she grasped the back of his head as—resolve obliterated—he sucked one nipple while rolling the other between his fi ngertips. Moments earlier Vita had been terrifi ed. Now she thrilled at the delicious contrast between the hot, wet softness of his mouth and the dry roughness of calloused, gritty fi ngerpads. She unsnapped her jeans, pressed back the fl aps and pushed his free hand into her crotch. Shaved pubic hair had grown back along the center ridge 283 of her mound only, leaving the rest smooth, bare as a child’s. This novelty excited David, but not as much as did the liquid engulfment of his fi ngers—already Vita was so wet. Her fi ngers fumbled at his fl y until the snap popped through its slit. He lifted his butt while Vita tugged the jeans down around his knees. He shrugged off the bomber jacket. Vita put her lips against his to laugh into his mouth, as she ripped open his shirt and yanked the T-shirt over his head. Near naked, he slouched and buckled under the scrape of her nails through sheets of sweat washing over his ribcage. She thrust a hand between slippery thighs to grasp his balls and squeezed til he gasped, “Ayyyyy! Jesusgod, stopppit! You don’t know what I’ve done!” “THIS is why you left Yael,” panted Vita. “She doesn’t exist anymore—it’s you and me now!” “—you and me—” groaned David. The khamsin rocked the Cadillac. As if to drown out the wind’s howling they kept the twilight interior alive with moans of pleasure, muttered obscenities, and the slapping of moist skin slippery as quicksilver. Vita’s hips went into a wild corkscrew motion, her stomach muscles bunched. She pounded the roof with her palms and as the car rocked kept up her squealing and banging. The Krakatoa-like eruption of her orgasms made David blast away into her again. Then it was over. They were left gasping and staring at each other. The white leather seat was slick and creamy, obscenely sticking to their knees and thighs as they moved apart. David slipped under the steering wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Hot air blasted from dashboard vents until he adjusted the lever for cool air. Repulsed, he pulled on T-shirt and jeans reeking of gritty sweat and cum. With greater equanimity Vita refastened her jeans and tucked in the pressed khaki shirt, buttoning it under her chin ultra modest. In the visor mirror she began restoration of her face using saliva and Kleenex. David looked on as she reassumed the demeanor of a normal person, even that of an ambassador’s wife. The khamsin petered out. The air was still, but densely fi lled with sand. The only sound inside the Cadillac came from Vita hissing air vents. It was like being marooned, David felt, in a stinky bathysphere at the bottom of a silt-fi lled pond. Nonchalantly he broke the silence. “The ambassador is here. Your husband.” In the mirror he saw Vita’s eyes swerve. “Really?” “I saw him.” David caught the fl icker of fear in her eyes with a sense of triumphant—she wasn’t as blaise as all that. “Did he notice you?” “He looked, but didn’t really see me.” “Don’t bet on it. He’s sharper than you, by far.” “Sharper than you?” “No one’s that sharp, fruit-vendor. This was at the Winter Haven?” “In the lobby.” “When?” Her voice was like a rodent’s squeak. “What time, exactly?” “About eight.” Vita looked at her watch and calculated. “Did you see him talking to the constipated maitre d’hotel?” “Intensely, for ten minutes.” David got the same satisfaction at spurring on Vita’s anxiety as Massoud Oroomchi had derived from going behind Madame Very’s back. He was learning. Vita glared at sand suspended in air like fog. “We have to get out of here. He’s had fi ve hours…time to grill the old woman…catch up…he and his kapitan could be coming up on us.” “So? Let them.” Vita tinkled, “Put an end to—” “—to what?” “Do we sit here stroking your tiny boy-ego? I’ve got to get to Hurghada…to Sharm el-Shiek, where there’re hotels, boats, planes…” “So you can run away? Vita rapidly blinked. “No,” she stuttered, “yes—so we can fi nd somewhere to be alone. Together.” “Is that what you want?” Vita spontaneously burst into tears and fl ung herself 285 against him. “Jesus-god David, help me!” “That’s how we started. You crying for help. Twenty-two days ago in the bar at the Cecil. Back when I was still engaged to Yael.” Vita raised a tear-streaked face with eyes hooded like a snake. “You helped me get a passport in Cairo and it worked! They couldn’t fi nd me. This time we’ll make it. It’ll be different this time, I promise.” Her low voice, almost a whisper, shook his nerves by its weird tension. “There’s no wind,” she pleaded. “We’re almost to the summit pass. Lead in your car, it’ll be easy for me to follow.” “I have a motorbike.” “A bike!” Serpents writhed in malachite depths of her pupils. “A bike—of course, the helmet! All the sand—The Mummy! Poor baby…” She brushed the bomber jacket like she was beating him. “The bike’ll be easier to follow. We’ve got to get out of here. He’s gaining on us.” David retrieved his helmet off the fl oor and eased open the door. As Vita nudged him out, he wavered. “Don’t you get it?” she hissed. “His storm trooper has police powers. They’ll stop us if we let them. We have to go NOW.” The cliff-crevice where he’d abandoned the Triumph was fi fty yards back. He used an oily rag to clear gas lines of encrusted sand, and the engine started. With the helmet fastened he had visibility and could breath easily enough. This time he grinned when he came up on Vita from behind. Signal and tail lights fl ashed crazily as the Caddy lurched off the shoulder onto the road. He pulled alongside when she rolled down her window. “Don’t go fast, or far ahead,” she ordered. “If only I could ride on the bike with you.” “Leave the old lady’s Seville to be stripped by Bedouin and pushed off a cliff into a gully?” “Which is where it belongs, but no—that would provoke her. Go slow and stay close.” The storm had dissipated, exposing saw-toothed peaks to bright sunlight. Summits glazed with sand gleamed while ravines fi lled with shadow and shreds of trapped clouds. The road made steep climbing loops so Vita drove on the centerline Vita at 15 mph. David stayed in second gear, keeping a yard or so between himself and the Cadillac. Whenever the road went into hairpin turns Vita cursed and wrestled with the steering wheel. David listened to groans of the chassis right behind and looked off the shoulder down a sheer plunge into a ravine. His head snapped about when he felt the scrape of the Cadillac’s bumper against his bike’s fender. Throttling to spurt ahead he looked around at Vita gripping the wheel with both hands. She stared either straight at him—he couldn’t tell for sure—or at the terrifying fi nal ascent. He steered towards the shoulder unable to resist seeing over the edge, to look down into the gorge at jagged rocks… where wind-driven sand had stripped tree trunks bare of bark…. where vultures fl apped from boulder to boulder to shake their wings free of sand. He could hear gravel crunching under his bike’s wheels, but the sound he was more conscious of was the Caddy’s old engine straining to climb the gradient: the noise mushroomed inside his eardrum. He was struck by the sudden paranoid feeling that Vita was going to rush to push him over the precipice! He glanced back to see her bumper inches from his bike’s fender. Behind the windshield her face was pale and the eyes had that disturbing, unfocused stare of the blind. The Cadillac nudged his fender. Throttled hard the Triumph leaped forward in a spray of gravel. He watched in his mirror as the Cadillac with Vita at the wheel fell away behind him. Was he insane? Or was she? He knew she loved him, no matter what she said or how bizarrely she behaved. ‘She needs me, I’m sure of it. She’s desparate… but love is…strange...so strange.’ At the summit pass he wheeled about to watch the Caddy labor up towards him. The sky was brownly veiled by the dying sand storm, but ahead were clear skies and sparkling sea. When Vita reached level road he slammed his fi st up at her and roared away. She smiled. The seaward face of Ash al-Milaya dwindled into foothills rolling down to a coastal plain. The road went into tame looping 287 so David gamely hit 70 mph. Tracking his insouciant descent from distant puffs of exhaust, Vita daringly speeded up to 40 mph. His defi ance excited her. The highway crossed a fl at, cigar-colored plain that was the prehistoric bed of a gulf. Nowhere in sight were other vehicles, or even the ubiquitous huts of Bedouin with their goat herds. The only movement was the wheeling and diving of gulls over blue sea. Cooling vapors on his parched skin drove David out onto beach. He swerved the bike in circles sluicing up sand. He stopped to stretch, and to witness the Caddie’s wobbly approach. Catching a whiff of himself he stripped naked. As the car jerked off onto the shoulder, he ran into the sea. Vita strolled across the beach seemingly, but not actually indifferent to his male nakedness…the play of muscle across broad shoulders and V-shaped back…the thrust of sturdy legs and clenched buttocks as he kicked through through shallows, churning up sea-foam. ‘How beautiful he is!’ Turquoise water bright as neon swarmed with schools of fi sh. David plowed through beds of sea anemones. Too late he saw wobbling spiky patches of black and tried to leap aside. The spine of a sea urchin jabbed into his foot. Pain sprouted up his calf. He stood on one leg and twisted his torso to grasp his foot and pull out the spine. The wound puckered and the sting of poison spread. Waves retreating around his leg cast refl ections on his downturned face. Then expressions of excitement—joy— fl ashed across it, for Vita had shed her clothes and was wading towards him. It’d been three weeks since he’d been able to look at her naked. Despite pain, his cock sprang out hard and bouncing as it eyed the scant growth of coppery public hair barely shielding her pussy—had she shaved it for him? He stretched out a hand, but she dove past him. He leaped, grabbed her legs and pulled her under with him. They twisted, turned…limbs intertwining...fl at palms circling each other’s torsos and rubbing their skin clean of encrusted sand and fl akes of dried semen. Tiny fi sh darted between their faces while they twisted each other’s nipples. Vita thrust a hand under his balls and ran a fi nger up to his asshole, pressing inside. They burst to Vita the surface. On fi re, David ground his mouth against hers while Vita stroked him to climax…milky strands swirling in crystalline water about their bellies. They drifted into shallows, dragging their toes in silky sand. David embraced Vita from behind, covering her body with his. The lukewarm water was like a luxuriant pillow, so salty that it bore helped them effortlessly stay afl oat. The sun-dazzled sea was layered in azure and purple, with an orange triangle of a sail in the distance. A fi shing felucca, Vita thought. Her eyes narrowed. “What are those?” “H-mm…those what?” She pointed at the low silhouette of a string of islets. 289

39

ita’s arrival on the island created a disturbance that, Vnormally, would not have been tolerated by the thirty inhabitants—fi shermen all. Even though she was traveling with an able-bodied man who gave every indication of being her husband, the islet is the solitary domain of men who leave their wives and children in homes back on the coast and spend solitary weeks working. Vita could not have remained one night had it not been for the special and inexplicable dispensation they got from the islet’s unoffi cial fi gure of authority. The fi shermen obtain supplies and whatever meager luxuries they enjoy, such as tobacco and the Cairo tabloids, from a personage whom face to face they respectfully address as Madame Baghat. “Madame” because fi rstly she is a nasty, greedy, ill-tempered woman brimming at all times with spite and malice; secondly, she isn’t a local woman nor of Bedouin stock. Her age, nationality or family origins are unknown, and her gender suspect, a mystery no man cares to penetrate. Under fi ve feet tall Madame Baghat is a toad-like fi gure in robes presumably washed, but never changed or varied. Her most distinctive facial feature is the thick line of fi ne hair rimming her upper lip, which prompts fi shermen normally to refer to her as Aba-Chanab, or Vita

‘Mother of the Moustache.’ Twice a week Madame Baghat wakes at 4 a.m. to go into Hurghada for supplies. She has herself ferried in her own outboard, which is maintained and piloted by a very thin man with a pockmarked face. It was during one of these buying excursions that Vita and Madame Baghat fi rst met. David did not witness the encounter and in days to follow he would linger over how it happened. Was it with malicious forethought that Vita had deliberately lost him in the busy port? How had she managed to bond so quickly, so conclusively with the sinister couple? Was her treachery such that within hours of being rescued from the sandstorm she entered into some secret pact with strangers? He had been leery when she brightly jumped out of bed at 7 a.m. The previous night they’d eaten grilled lobster and drank lots of beer. They stumbled along the waterfront and crashed at the fi rst bungalows they came to. Next thing he knew she was reaching under the sheet at the foot of the bed to twist his toes. “Get your sweet ass moving,” she chirped and yanked the sheet off, leaving him naked and exposed to sunlight through an open curtainless window. It was critical before breakfast, Vita insisted, to take care of Etche Very—they couldn’t risk having the hoteliere collaborate with her husband, or call in police. They dashed to Red Line Car Rental, near a Shell station. Paying an exorbitant fee Vita arranged to have the motorbike loaded into the Cadillac’s trunk and driven back to Luxor. She refused to phone Etche Very herself, with the grandiose claim that “Christian might’ve pressured Cairo into installing taps.” She insisted David make the call, so he gave in and spoke with Pushpesh Pant. He assured the maitre d’hotel that the Cadillac and rented bike would be returned the following day, and thanked him for his help. The romantically-minded Indian tactfully inquired about “the lady in trouble.” David said they were together and “everything was fi ne.” When he came out of the phone booth Vita was gone. She’d wandered away from Red Line. This was nothing new. In Cairo she strayed off on her own in Khan al-Kahili to look at whatever caught her eye. Hurghada’s main dirt street buzzed with robed fi shermen 291 and veiled housewives out buying supplies for the day. They were outnumbered by invading hordes of fair-colored strangers in cut-off jeans and tank tops, hauling monstrous backpacks (like camels, locals thought), sun-burnt, and glassy-eyed from too much beer. David glanced into scuba shops, pizza huts, postcard- cigarette stalls, but no Vita. He waited for her to wander by over coffee and a sweet roll, at a table set outside a whitewashed cube crudely painted with red stripes—a hand-painted sign over its door read PEPPERMINT TWIST LOUNGE. Then he decided to check back at the bungalow. Stepping into their room he was struck by a sickening déjà vu—it had been stripped bare, like in Khan al-Khalili. A girl sweeping the concrete fl oor said Madame had paid the bill and left. His leather bag sat on mattress beside a bundle of laundry. There was no use asking where Vita had gone. Crowds in dusty streets thinned under the glare of noon sunlight. Heat seared the skin on his arms and his T-shirt was sticky. He ducked into a passageway between whitewashed buildings. His spirits climbed at the sight of dazzling turquoise sea, fi shing trawlers and scuba boats streaming in and out of the small craft harbor. Like at a carnival horns bleated and fl ags fl uttered. The air smelled of fi sh, sea-salt and diesel fumes. The port master’s concrete block complex housed two passenger ticket offi ces. He tried both. Queries about a woman of Vita’s description were met with shrugs. But at another agency in a peeling, two-story colonial building nearby the reception was more genial. A terrazzo fl oor was layered with kilim rugs. Pukha fans in the ceiling shuffl ed about stifl ing air. David tugged denim away from his thighs, where it clung damply, as he waited behind a pair of Saudis in wool robes and full headgear. He studied a wall board list of sea routes in Arabic and English, running his eyes down the column of destination ports…Eliat, Agaba, Yanbu’ al Bahr, Jidda, Oseif, Khartoum…Zanzibar—Bombay! “May I help you, sir?” said a pleasant voice in Oxford English. David looked into the handsome face of an Arab about Vita his own age, wearing a burnoose over a starched white shirt and black tie. He stepped closer. “Yes—please. Has a woman has been here…dark red hair, like henna…wearing khaki shirt and slacks—she’s very beautiful.” The agent looked up through long eyelashes. “I regret to say no beautiful woman has been here so far. She is a friend of yours?” “Yes.” The man grinned engagingly. “You have lost her?” “Yes—no,” said David, realizing that the guy was hitting on him. “The ship to Bombay stops here twice weekly—the next one is day after tomorrow?” “Correct.” The Arab’s voice seemed to break. “Has anyone recently inquired about this ship?” “No.” “Do other agencies sell tickets for it?” “We are the line’s only representative in Hurghada.” “Are there any other ships to Bombay?” “No regular passenger service, but…it is complicated to explain.” David gazed into almond-shaped gray eyes. “Try me.” The Arab didn’t blink, but blamelessly held his eyes. “Freight ships have passenger cabins. The food is rudimentary, the atmosphere dull, but some people prefer that to a crowded passenger liner.” “My friend is one of those people. It’s easy to book a freighter cabin to India?” “No, reservations can be made only by people who have contacts inside the shipping industry. There are no more than ten cabins on a ship and they’re not available to regular travelers, who usually prefer to fl y.” David broadened his smile. “You have the contacts to make a booking?” The agent fl ushed. “For you, I would do my best.” “It’s not for me, it’s for my friend. But no one today has requested a freighter booking?” “No, it has been dull here today.” “That can change,” said David, straightening. “Thanks 293 for the information. You’ve been a help.” “It is my pleasure.” “Well, goodbye.” David got a few steps away before the handsome youth made his bid. “I hope you fi nd your friend. If you don’t…every evening about eight I have a drink at the new Sheraton. It is a very nice atmosphere. I will be happy if you join me—your friend, too, should you…er, recover her.” David grinned. “I’ll remember, and thanks.” On the jetty the sun hit him like a blow. Blinded by light refl ected on water he fumbled for sunglasses. ‘I fl irted with a guy, for Chrissake!’ Queers were always coming onto him, it was true, but he’d never fl irted back before. Things had changed since meeting Vita. He wished he had a cigarette. He gazed at fl at-bottomed scuba boats swarming off shore, like fat fl ies, over coral reefs. Scanning caiques moored in the small crafts harbor his eyes were snagged by an unexpectedly big and revved-up looking outboard. A stick of a man was loading supplies onto the rear deck—beside him was Vita! With her was what appeared to be a pygmy. David began walking…walked faster, broke into a jog, jumped off the jetty onto a wood pier, then sprinted. He held his eyes on Vita as if to bar her from vaporizing and eluding him again. Before he was close enough for her to hear his feet pounding on planks, her head uncannily turned and her eyes registered his approach. She touched the pygmy’s arm to excuse herself and started towards him, unhurriedly, very blaise. “Where have you been!” was her greeting. What a pleasure it would’ve been to whallop her across the face, but he endured the formal peck she gave him on the cheek. “Come!” she gushed. “It’s fabulous! You’ll see.” Stifl ing anger, David let himself to led to the pygmy who, really, was only a very short, hideous woman in nasty robes. He was not surprised that Vita spoke the constipated-sounding French of well traveled Americans, as she fl uted, “Madame Baghat, permittez-moi de vous presentez mon ami…Da-vid…Kin-nor,” but he was shocked by the woman’s response. From the lips of a Vita gargoyle came the sweet, melodious voice of an angel. “Je suis enchantez, monsieur, de faire votre conaissance.” “Madame Baghat has a house she’s willing to rent,” said Vita, “on an island thirty kilometers out. No scuba divers, no Aussie backpackers. A private paradise to ourselves.” David beheld a hairy upper lip while marveling at the rich timbre of the woman’s voice, a speaking voice one would expect of an opera singer or the secretary of a corporate president, but not from a fi sherwoman. “Oui, M’sieur Da-veed, ma petite villa, il est plain, tres simple, mais il est gentil et tranquil. It serrait beaucoup de plaisir a vous et Mam’selle Vii-ta.” She and Vita smiled at one another. After a quick exchange David could not follow, the gnome barked at her pockmarked boatsman, who stepped forward. “Everything we need is on the island,” Vita said. “But there’s one thing I want to buy new. Her man will show us where.” Glancing back at her new friend, she added, “Trente minutes, madame, restez-vous bien sure.” “Oui, d’accord,” crooned Madame Baghat. “A bientot, Mam’selle Viii-ta.” Vita followed the stick-man, but David took her elbow. “You don’t know these people! You’re gonna hop in a boat and go thirty kilometers out to sea with them?” Vita whirled. “A month ago you got shit-faced in a bar during a raging storm and went with an androgynous-looking woman who used your plastic driver’s license to pick a door lock. You followed her into a dark hotel room not even knowing whose it was—that turned out to be fun, didn’t it?” “Drunk I could see your sweet tits. I knew you were a real woman.” “Then be a real man, not a facsimile. Your dad was an Israeli bomber pilot who drove into Beirut to see bellydancers— where are your balls? Your sense of fun—adventure!” They followed their grim guide through alleys to the main street, where stores were closed for mid-day. The thin man rattled the grill of one door. Chuffi ng and muttering imprecations, a blurry-eyed old man wearing a fi lthy yellow tuban let them into a large space fi lled with mattresses. 295

“Madame Baghat’s villa no doubt will be tres charmant,” Vita wryly said to David, “but we want to be particular about what we sleep on.” She eliminated most of the store’s stock, striding about and dismissing stacks of cheap box springs as being “neolithic.” But she found what she wanted, futon-looking mattresses covered in clean white cotton and labeled MADE IN INDIA. Using the old man’s ballpoint pen and pad she negotiated the price of four. “Two each stacked side by side,” she said to David, waggling her eyebrows, “equals comfy king size.” She had the futons rolled and wrapped in brown paper, loaded onto a hand trolley, and with a teenage helper they started back to the harbor. Vita waved the trolley ahead and ordered the thin man to inform his mistress that she would be there “tout suite.” To David, she breezily added,“Et maintenant, pour luxe.” Along the tourist strip she had noticed “Ye Olde Pub” painted in gothic script over form-stone with plastic Tudor beams, annexed to a delicatessen. They loaded shopping sacks with wedges of Australian cheeses, tins of Greek Kalamata olives, a slab of prosciutto from Friuli, packets of Belgian chocolate, and a basket of dried Turkish apricots. From the personal stock of the pseudo-hippie owner Vita wrangled a crate of Valpolicello, from Bertani, the same that she and Christian had sipped over dinners at Harry’s, in Venice. They struggled with their sacks along the pier. “This is nuts,” said David. “These people are drug and arms runners. Thieves who hit on tourists.” “You want to run home and play house and make babies with Yael? Eat lampchops and potato pancakes for dinner and watch TV for the rest of your life?” David clamped Vita’s wrist. He felt fear tingling at the tip of his spine, rippling down over his buttocks. Her thrilling voice made hair rise on the back of his neck, as she rasped, “You want something bigger than life in Haifa, don’t you, fruit vendor, something more! Goddamit, you’ve gotta—JUMP!” Over her shoulder silver-blue sea glittered, as David’s mind went through the motions of trying to resist manipulation. ‘She has a power, something,’ he thought. ‘If she gets an idea Vita into her head, I’ll do it. I won’t be able to stop.’ He refused to acknowledge to himself that had he been an hour later getting to the harbor—had he not happened to scan the small boats—he would’ve missed Vita. They would not be together which is what she intended. She was temporizing. This new, doomed adventure was never meant to happen. Madame Baghat gaily waved. “Donnez moi ces-la, Mam’selle Vii-ta,” she said, easily hauling in sacks. For a dwarf, David noted, she was amazingly strong. Her eyes rapaciously took inventory and her fl ying fi ngers could scarcely restrain themselves from caressing shiny wrappings and tins of costly import foods. The pencil-shaped pilot untied mooring lines, but held the boat close to the dock while gunning big Evinrude engines. Easing clear of caiques he aimed the outboard’s bow at Gifatin Channel, which runs between the harbor and a string of low protective islets. Madame Baghat sat dangling her feet, robes from the high captain’s stool. Her man stood at the wheel staring ahead as they rounded the northern tip of Gifatin Sa’l Hashish, between buoys off Franken and Merlin Points. Beneath the sea’s glassy surface coral gardens wobbled orange and gold and violet and green-mauve. Madame Baghat said the crossing would take an hour and urged Vita and David to make themselves comfortable, even though there was no place to sit, much less lounge. “Vous-etes chez vous!” the stunted woman intoned. David and Vita inched to the foredeck. When the outboard broke free of the tiny Gifatins, the engines roared open full throttle and the bow shot up into the air and lunged forward. Slammed against the bulkhead they clutched each other to keep from loosing their footing. Vita giddily cursed, while David thought how neither their landlady-to-be, her weasel-looking man, nor this powerful boat could possibly be engaged in legitimate business. The engines were suped-up. The cabin’s interior and main hold were packed with crates marked by calligraphy David could not read. The cockpit and rear deck were stacked with harmless cartons of 297 orange soda and sacks of whitewash lime. He glanced back through the giant windshield to catch Madame Baghat staring at him with a blank expression that instantly transformed itself into a smile, frightening for its falsity. ‘Drugs, guns…plastic explosives for Saudi terrorists,’ he thought with revulsion. In a fl ash he thought of the explosion that May morning on a neighboring street in Haifa, which had trapped and burned to death twenty-six Jewish children inside their school bus. Hostile associations burgeoned when he noted the course the boatman set: due northeast to the tip of Sinai Peninsula, towards the resort village of Sharm al-Sheik, which had not always been a resort. The fi rst divers there had not been backpackers but elite Israeli naval commando frogmen. The “resort village” was owned by the MOSSAD and run as a safe house for Jews smuggled out of Ethiopia. When at night the sea was calm refugees were crowded onto small boats and guided by the frogmen to Israeli ships anchored offshore. Four thousand Ethiopian Jews escaped. Others did not make it, but drowned when their boats were gunned down and sunk by Egyptian patrol planes. David thought of wreckage and of the bodies of Jews seeking a new home, but lost at sea in the same waters he was crossing now on a lark. “Look,” Vita shrieked. “Look!” Three dolphins broke the sea’s surface before the bow. Vita squealed watching the playful pod weave in formation over and beneath each other, before splitting off and vanishing into crystal depths. “It’s an omen!” she cried. “A lovely omen!” Dolphins love to frolic in the surge created by a moving bow, so David knew it was no omen. But since Vita rarely showed interest in children or animals he took her delight as indication already of a healthier state of mind. ‘If we could get out of this backward place and home to Haifa, everything will be all right.’ They settled into the rhythm of the heaving bulkhead, with Vita snuggled into his arms. David resisted at fi rst because of his sweaty clothes. He was amazed that after schlepping bags through the heat and dust of Hurghada Vita’s khaki shirt was crisp and smelled warmly of bleach and sea-salt. Her auburn hair had grown in thick; streaming wind made swatches writh Vita about her shoulders into his face—its intoxicating animal odor! He nipped at the nape of her neck with little kisses, and wondered as he always did at the exotic scents that welled up from her skin, smells vivid and sensual as colors: the shell-pearl green of honeydew melon…piquant, blue-violet sea smells. Unlike the nursing student in Cairo he’d never heard of phenylpruvic acids and had no knowledge of the biochemical imbalances these acids trigger in the mentally disturbed, resulting in mysteriously sweet body odors. Breathing in the colors and smells of Vita, David, unlike Cyma, was doomed to feel only fi erce fl ickers of lust. They clung to each other as the outboard skidded across open sea at 40 knots. David’s heart soared with the rush of wind and the thump of the boat’s prow against waves. Wind-whipped spume exploded against blue sky, and he felt a surge of happiness. This woman, he thought, quickened his existence. She made him burn with an intensity he’d never felt. “Mam’selle Vii-ta, M’sieur Da-veed, regardez-la!” A smudge on the horizon came into focus as a knob of rock. Visible were cliffs pounded by surf, but no coves or beaches. The thin man throttled back. As the outboard approached the islet appeared to be a rock stipped bare, unfi t for humans or animals. Vita refused to catch David’s eyes as they scanned a hostile shoreline. Then the boat turned hard to starboard, and rounded the little promontory that protected a natural harbor. The abrupt appearance of color and life made Vita gasp. The boatman shot through a breakwater and without slackening speed sluiced through a bobbing fl eet of boats: sail- driven outriggers, fi shing dhows, bowl-shaped transports with lateen rigging. Such color! Inverted sails dyed plum and ocher, hulls and cabins painted glossy orange, turquoise, green. Curved prows of the dhows were marked with a single painted eye, the ancient talisman of the Mediterranean. The thin man revved his engines in reverse at the last moment to neatly slide the outboard alongside a low jetty. Madame Baghat stood imperiously in the cockpit with hands folded on her belly, waiting for a trio of fi shermen to respectfully approach. She indicated Vita’s leather bags, the futons and shopping sacks. Waving an arm towards a hillock 299 behind the harbor, Madame barked instructions. Other men came onboard to unload sacks of lime and cartons of soda— but none of the crates in the central hold, David noted. How did this female Quasimodo weld such power and control? He trailed the woman and Vita across a pebble beach segmented by wood tracks used for hauling boats up out of water for repair. Fisherman sanded hulls stripped for repainting; or sat cross-legged on mounds of yellow synthetic nets, mending. Vita breathed in acrid scents of creosote, motor oil, wood smoke, urine and sea salt. Fishermen nodded to Madame Baghat and carefully sized up David; but to the man they refused to even see the young foreign bitch in her tight trousers strutting about like a man. Staring through Vita they willed her into nonexistence. Vita strode toward the door of the largest whitewashed cube at the back of the beach boatyard. Madame Baghat abruptly gripped an elbow. “Alors, Mam’selle Vii-ta, quel horrors la bas! C’est mon emporium pour les hommes, c’est n’est past gentile. Vien ice, c’est plus jolie.” Vita permitted herself to be steered to one side, where wood tables and chairs were shaded by spidery tamarisk branches and a cane-thatched canopy. “Assiez-vous,” the gnome urged, “et avais plaisir du the. Donnez-moi quelques minutes pour l’organisation. Assiez-vous, soyez chez vous!” Out stumped a man with one leg amputated at the knee, from a fi shing accident. He carried a tray which rattled with tea glasses, and which prompted Madame Baghat to snarl. The cripple muttered his response in some alien dialect. Madame Baghat whirled and stamped into her store, returning a few minutes later with a dish of honeyed pastries. “Mangez, Mam’selle Vii-ta, M’sieur Da-veed! Plaisir-toi-memes! Je retourne tout suite.” The tea was weak, the pastries stale, but Vita smiled with apparent satisfaction. While she wolfed down soggy wads of phyllo, David watched a tabby cat near their feet, in shade cast by a boat’s hull. With swollen jowls and fearsome canines it vivisected a rat with surgical precision and delicately used huge front paws to extract entrails. The tubby tabby gobbled intestines and viscera with as much relish as Vita devouring the terrible pastries. David remembered the scene she’d made a month Vita ago in the train, over sloshed tea, and marveled that a midget fi sherwoman could cast so tranquilizing a spell over Vita. Madame reappeared with three men and a donkey, the saddle-baskets of which were loaded with sacks of lime, buckets and long-handled brushes. The procession climbed a stone- paved alley between fi shermen huts. Whitewashed walls were poked with deep-set black windows with shutters tightly shut. Cats skittered from beneath the donkey’s hooves and trampling feet. These strays were far scrawnier than the grand tabby which reigned over the harbor store and which benefi ted in other ways from Madame’s protection—the tails of these unfortunates were broken at a painful angle. David scornfully thought how Arab males enjoy torturing animals, or submitting their women to female circumcision. ‘Barbarians!’ A track meandered over a ridge through boulders and thickets of thistle parched gold. Blue sea fl ashed against blue sky. Madame Baghat stopped her caravan, and grunted, as she waded into a bramble patch at the head of a ravine. She squatted to switch on a well pump and open a spigot to let water gush into a cistern lodged in rock. The track winded down through a grove of fi g trees, between giant boulders into the cup of a hollow overlooking peacock-blue sea—Vita cried out. Their leather bags and new futons sat outside the door of a cottage plain and simple as a child’s drawing, a white cube with blue shutters. Vita swooped into an empty, dust- and cobweb-fi lled main room. David groaned, “There’s no bed, chairs—what is this shit?” Madame Baghat melodiously fl uted, “M’sieur Da-veed, vous etes un mauvais jeune homme. Attendez-vous deuxes heures, alors vous et Mam’sell Vii-ta serrait chez vous!” The gnome was good as her word. Unloaded, the donkey was sent back to the harbor for supplies. The men used long-poled brushes to clear cobwebs from the cottage’s beam- and stick-thatched ceiling. A hose was connected to the water main so that fl oors could be fl ooded and walls scrubbed. Mixing lime powder and water, Madame Baghat’s crew slathered on whitewash. Vita strolled into the bathroom at the rear, which was 301 a concrete slab provisionally walled in. Tigress-blazing eyes moved over a stone basin, a tap dripping into a plastic bucket with dipper—an Arab shower—and foot-rests straddling a hole in the slab which sloped downward. Her nostrils contracted at the stench. Hoping for a rift in the new alliance, David watched Madame Baghat’s eyes lock onto Vita’s face. Vita turned and said, simply, “Wants some work done here, doesn’t it?” The privy’s walls were tin sheets haphazardly nailed onto a fl imsy wood frame. Pulling loose one corner of tin Vita looked out. She yanked and tin clattered to the fl oor. She tugged at another sheet, but it wouldn’t give. Madame Baghat watched with saucer eyes as Vita yanked harder and cursed. She interceded, “Attendez-vous, Mam’sell Vii- ta!” She twisted rusty nails out of the frame and with one foot gave a powerful kick. Vita laughed and joined in. The women hooted as they went about smashing down tin sheets and wood slats in a din of noise and dust clouds. Outside was a cliff-face of rock: leakage from the pipe connecting the cottage to the cistern caused crevices in pink limestone to sprout tangles of jasmine. A thicket of barbary fi g with prickly green pads and bulbs of coral gave privacy—overhead was blue sky. “Madame,” crowed Vita, “je serrais transforme votre petit pauvre prive en un toilet de jardin Balinese.” She had David haul out debris. Using her own hands she artfully spread and arranged pebbled scree over the patch of dirt separating the fl oor slab from the ravine wall. Then she instructed David on binding together tall slats with scraps of wire to form a tripod. She pilfered the fi shermen’s big goat skin canteen. David and the dwarf perplexedly watched as Vita emptied and turned the hide inside-out. With childlike concentration she used a nail to punch closely spaced holes in the bag’s bottom. Fastening the perforated bag at the tripod’s apex, she left room enough beneath to stand. Inspired by such cleverness, Madame Baghat attached a spare length of hose to the wall tap, ran it up into the mouth of the suspended water- bag. She turned on the tap and the hide ballooned. Vita smiled proudly as she washed her hands under a steady shower spray of Vita sun-heated cistern water. Madame barked orders. Her men poured a carbolic compound into the basin which foamed and fi zzled. The acid eradicated fi lth in the toilet hole. At Vita’s command, which the men obeyed without looking directly at her, whitewash was repeatedly and heavily rolled onto every square inch of the fl oor and walls. Soon the new toilet was a dazzling white cube overlooking a little Zen-looking rock garden. The donkey ferried furnishings until sunset. There was no electricity but paraffi n lanterns were dispersed throughout the now pristine cottage. The main room had a wood table and two chairs. Futons were stacked on a traditional Arab sleeping platform and covered with striped Bedouin blankets scented with lavender. A cylinder of butane gas was connected to a portable stove top. Vita and Madame Baghat merrily lined a stone-slab shelf with exotic tins and bottles of wine with their elegant Italian labels. “Real girlfriends, you two…” David muttered under his breath into Vita’s ear. “Screw, sweetie,” she smirked. “Get Circe and her swine out and I will. Til you scream.” “Promises,promises!”saidVita, humming the unhummable title song from the new hit Bachrach musical. David cockily strolled outside. To establish good will he helped fi shermen load gear onto the donkey and waved as they climbed the trail out of the hollow. The unsmiling men didn’t thank him or wave back, but vanished into shadows. ‘Fuck’em,’ he thought, as he stood listening to laughter inside the cottage, and to the splash of waves below on rocks in the cove. He waded through gold thistle to the cliff’s edge and gazed across the smooth surface of the Red Sea. The water was rose with refl ected light from the luminous evening sky. On the distant Sinai Peninsula he could see massive red mountains, crinkled slopes and ravines which looked like childishly wrapped packages tinted magenta and purple. Gold shards of light glittered on geodesic desalination domes at Sharm al-Sheik. His hostility from earlier in the day had lifted, neutralized 303 by work and excitement, blown away by sea breezes. He’d made progress, he mused, in getting Vita out of Egypt. They were here together in the same spot (probably) where Moses guided Hebrew slaves across the Red Sea, during a sudden low tide in advance of a tidal wave generated by an earthquake. On the horizon were familiar reminders if not of any promised land, but at least of a real life, of a new home on the gentle shores of Lake Galilee— he and Vita would be free. Of her strong-arm husband and his operatives, of the expectations and demands of his own family. Isolated on this desert rock in the sea they could spin their own cocoon…in their cottage above a cove…an Arab hut serendipitously transformed by Vita’s creativity and love of beautiful things. The charm and intelligence of a diplomat’s wife enabled her to tap the resources of a troglodyte like Madame Baghat, who maybe wasn’t so bad after all…guilty of running contraband Turkish cigarettes and arak for fi shermen. Vita had seen beyond superfi cialities to the woman’s humane potential, David fantasized; for Vita had seen nothing more than the possibility of exploiting Madame Baghat without having to give anything other than baksheesh in return. This was the free- wheeling, dreamlike way his brain was working. The sun’s fi reball slipped into the Red Sea. Mountains on the distant Martian-Sinai landscape were no longer visible, only peaks glowed like dying embers. A breeze whipped back the fringe of hair over David’s forehead. He felt a joy stirring deep within, like the subterranean spring that fed the cistern on this islet-rock; but it was joy tinged with dread and atavistic fear. He felt panicky as he heard again in his mind’s ears the sound of Yael’s footsteps clattering through his mother’s empty house. Now that he was bound to Vita constant gratifi cation of lust was not enough; but he was unable to understand what needed to be done, or how to go about it. There are times, he thought, when you can only take the next step.

Vita

40

avid was stabbed in an eye by needle-shafts of sunlight Dthrough interstices of the twig-thatched roof. He pulled a scratchy wool Beduoin blanket over his head as Vita shifted onto her side, and he was overwhelmed by another sensation—that of buttocks fi rm and rounded as cantaloupes, tightly cleft with skin cool and goosebumped, sliding with single-mindedness up and down the shaft of his cock, causing pre-eruption, Vesuviusian fury. He threw back the blanket and swung his legs off the bed platform. Before he was out of the room Vita had turned onto her stomach to slip back into feline oblivion. He winced as he stepped into the open air bathroom. Sunlight glinted off rock-face and glowed inside the whitewashed cube. He twisted a spigot and stuck the hose into the improvised shower bag-cistern. Strong spray under the tripod was faintly redolent of animal hide. He took water full in the face, and stared through wet lashes up into the blue dome of morning sky. He lathered with Vita’s expensive almond soap. Foam splattered onto blossoms and leaves sprouting from rock crevices. He couldn’t help but appreciate the artistry with which cosmetics and toiletries were arranged on natural ledges; gold caps and cut- glass vials sparkled, thrust together in a promiscuous tangle of 305 green-black vines and white star-jasmine blossoms. Vita had made it look like some exotic beachhouse in a glossy magazine. His mind leaped hundreds of miles north to the farmhouse on the shores of Galilee that someday would be his. It had been built by his mother’s father with savings used to move the family from Warsaw to the new State of Israel. His grandfather had been among the fi rst to plant apricot and almond and walnut trees on stony red hills above the great lake. The family prospered and built homes in Haifa—David was the only grandchild to show interest in the original family home. Built of rough, local rock the cottage was squat and charmless, but he loved to eat at the table under the courtyard’s grape trellis and look out at the blue waters of Galilee. With Vita he could make it into a beautiful summer home. Squatting to lather between toes, his eye was caught by movement on an open patch of pebbles under fat fi g leaves. He watched two mantises approach each other. The strappling green mantis stood upright on its four hind legs. Whenever one of its dangling front legs tremored, the challenging brown mantis shot back…then advanced with long, hack-saw front legs stretched out tentatively, antennae pricked forward. In shade David could see the curious inner glow of bulbous eyes. The green mantis turned her head 45 degrees, to better size up her suitor. The brown male took lightning strides and landed on top of her. His legs gripped her wing covers, his antennae found hers and began stroking. The female quivered as the male began his pumping. David inched closer, to see what he must see. The female’s triangular head pivoted from right to left, left to right. The blur of her movements was so fast that he missed seeing the male’s head come off—but there it was, clamped like a tiny fi g, under the crook of her green praying arms. She bit into the head and the glow of eyes was extinguished. The headless male humped even more strenuously, all inhibitions removed. Without thinking, David cupped and shielded his own genitals as the beautiful green female greedily devoured crumbs of chitinous shell and hairy legs…remains of her just-departed mate.

* * * Vita

David noted that homey morning rituals were quickly established. A loaf of bread still warm from the oven was delivered outside their door early, by one of Madame Baghat’s minions. While David heated water for Nescafe, Vita busied herself with childlike gravity concocting specialties from their garden and larder… dewy ripe fi gs wrapped in proscuitto and grilled on slabs of bread under shavings of parmesan. They moved chairs and the table to the cliff’s edge, so that they could sit eating above fi ery blue waters in their private cove. David savored this exotic domesticity although he knew it would be impossible to guess what Vita’s actual thoughts might be. He would catch her blankly staring out to sea while twisting chunks of bread between her fi ngers and rolling them into tiny balls. He would ask her what she was thinking. “You!” she said, tossing a chunk at him and erupting into that spooky laughter of hers, as she savored his ignorance. Or he would come out of the bathroom and fi nd her gone. He would hustle up the trail over the ridge to the harbor, where tables and chairs outside Madame Baghat’s store were fi lled with fi shermen after a night’s work. He avoided looking at the Arab’s faces, but listened to their conversations and imagined them talking about Vita and himself. Their voices sounded sounded guttural, threatening, angry; but David knew they were having ordinary conversations, their tone meant nothing. Peering into the store he would see their heads bent together, eyes glistening. Vita’s radar registered his glare, and he hated the false laughter she used to defl ate his irritation. Madame Baghat did her part by chiming in, “M’sieur Da-veed, vous etes vraiment mauvais! Pauvre Mam’sell Vii-ta!” “Poor Mademoiselle Vita, my ass” he snarled in an undertone. Vita pried herself free of her new friend, or was it co- conspirator? They parted, but not until Vita had consulted posted nautical charts. She noted that Dahab Island has a coastline of under three miles and was shaped like a sperm. On the brow of the swollen “head” in the north was the lighthouse and a single shrine; to the southwest the rugged stone “body” tapered away in the yellow sand dunes that give the islet its name—Dahab is 307

Beduoin for gold. Vita led David out of the harbor on a track heading in a southerly direction. Within minutes rock turned into sand… open expanses of yellow-ocher sand, low dunes rolling and undulating—the island ended right before their eyes…dissolving into aquamarine sea. There was no boat in sight, no other human, nor any tree, rock, or Bedouin shack…only sand and water and sky empty under the wheeling, diving of gulls. They threw down their shoulder bags, stripped naked and sprinted competitively over fl at, hard-packed glistening wet sand. Incoming waves collided gently and spread like lacy fans before sinking into the bright mirror of the sand’s surface. David watched fl ashing refl ections of their bronzed limbs, as he pushed to outrun Vita. They veered into the sea, churning up white froth. Vita dove and struck out in a strong crawl stroke. Aquamarine water was smudged with darker hues of a reef table. Far out from shore Vita glided in a breast stroke with her face underwater…eyes wide open…arms forward-stretched… fl ying low, like Superman, over clumps and fi ligree branches of coral silvery green and yellow and mauve. Out of shadowy hollows fl uttered fl at-bodied, neon-yellow butterfl y fi sh. Vita raised her face to gulp in air, then jackknifed down through a school of Emperor anglefi sh, black with a gold crown and stripes of regal blue, purple, white. David grabbed an ankle and pulled Vita beneath his body. She twisted free to slither deeper into a grove of orange- and pink-branched coral which glowed with the myriad eyes of shrimp busy mating and laying eggs. They drifted through wavering tentacles of soft coral. Vita made a face at a passing fi sh shaped like a football with huge orange eyes set back in the middle of its body, and a blue V extending from displaced eyes forward to the elongated slits of blubbery yellow lips—a Picasso triggerfi sh. Lungs bursting they shot to the surface. The stony dome of a coral plate was carpeted with a shaggy bed of sea anemones, Wiggling toes through silky pistils they found they could stand upright in water chest deep. Vita Vita lounged backward to fl oat with her legs locked about David’s neck—his mouth tantalizingly placed inches from her pussy. A scant growth of auburn hair glistened with drops of salt water. She gazed wide-eyed up into blue sky as David’s tongue burrowed like a lively animal between the outer labia. He lapped with slow, deliberate strokes while stroking himself underwater. Vita’s yelps of ecstasy mixed in the air with the squawks of circling gulls, curious, it seemed, about the erotic feast going on beneath them. Frenzied, they slipped off their bed of sea anemones. Their bodies twisted and tumbled into deeper, bluer depths. Lemon Gobies fl ed at turbulence caused by these bizarre invading creatures with long writhing limbs. Expert positioning, perfect joining even while free-fl oating in watery space, made it seem to them as if they’d been fucking each other for a lifetime. Their bodies never separated; each new twining of legs and elbows and shoulders and hips found a new better fi t, bringing even more intense ecstasy. Satiated, they lay side by side in shallows without speaking or touching. In the savage noon blaze, silence was broken by occasional wild shrieks of scavenging seagulls. Distant horns of ships passing in commercial lanes north of Dahab Island brought back to David—possibly to Vita, but who could say—the threatening outside world. Here, seemingly, there was nothing to threaten their stolen hours together. David had no way of recalling the poet’s lines: ‘Who is as safe as we where none can do/Treason to us, except one of we two.’* Vita lay with half-shut eyes. David raised himself on his elbow, to shade his eyes with a palm and watch her face. Her eyes snapped open so startlingly wide he could see gold webbing of the dark irises. Her lashes were long, but were he ever—and never was he—honest with himself, he would’ve had to admit that the obsidian eyes had a certain fl atness and cruelty. “Did you kill Bulon?” He almost snickered out loud at this absurdity. He held his breath and listened to the melodious percussion of little waves breaking on sand. “Did you?” “I would tell you if I did?”

*John Donne (1572-1631) 309

“Why not? I won’t tell anyone.” “I care? Christian knows. That’s what counts.” She jackknifed up and fell on his mouth with kisses, kisses like tremendous, beathless stabs punctuating laughter that welled up inside her…a jeering, unstable laughter. He saw her face, now uplifted right over him, white as sea foam and contorted with unfathomable feelings. Vita leaped up and ran. David watched the retreating back of her nude fi gure running, running as though pursued by demons. He was left staring at her footprints in sand.

* * *

Brilliant stars burned like a bonfi re shooting off shimmering sparks, tails that arched before fading into oblivion. Glow-worms in shrill dry grass gave back their ghostly mauve lambence to a sky hanging so clear, so close above their heads. With naked limbs entwined but thoughts impossibly distanced, they lay on a Bedouin blanket spread near the cliff-edge of their cove… enhancing the illusion of the invulnerability of their private refuge…giving their lovemaking an exhilarating edge. Groans and obscene commands mixed with the hiss and snarl of waves surging around rocks. The mindless sawing of cicadas stimulated their nerve endings. As hours passed each orgasm brought them closer to exhaustion. They stared at each other, at the remnant of darkness that was the black area just below their bellies lighted by bronze moonlight. Later, much later when the moon was gone, they lay in darkness. David crouched over Vita’s body sprawled wantonly limp. He moved his lips down a leg and pressed her foot close to his cheek. Reverently, he covered her toes with kisses.

Vita

41

ita tired, or so she said, of idyllic beaches and coral reefs. VShe insisted they explore the north end of the islet. David protested. “It’s dangerous. Snakes. Scorpions. Cliffs. The sea’s too rough to swim near the channel.” “An Israeli warrior, for Chrissake! Toughen up.” “We’re at war?” Vita rolled her eyes. From their cottage they followed the pebbly bed of a ravine as it climbed inland. Red boulders teetered overhead. Tentacles of stunted fi g trees and prickly scrub snatched at bare arms and legs as they passed. Blocking their way, a monitor hissed and lewdly rolled its forked tongue in and out—Vita threw pebbles, screamed until the big lizard scrambled away kicking up dusty scree in its wake. The gully was blocked by boulders that had cascaded down from higher ground. Vita nimbly climbed from rock to rock with David right behind—in his face, tightly encased inside khaki shorts, were buttocks curved and taunt as she stretched, strained. She stopped with a gasp. Casting a shadow over them was a huge goat, the biggest goat David had ever seen. Looming immobile, unmovable as a 311 boulder on which it stood, the beast had cloven hooves like anvils, rooted to rock at the level of Vita’s face. Its massive chest was a Black Forest of knotted, wildly twisted dreadlocks of black wool. Curved-back horns dissolved into a blinding nimbus of sunlight; from shadow, yellow eyes glared with demonic intensity. The creature snorted and its foul hot breath fi lled the air. The bodies of Vita and the he-goat fused into one black mass over David. He felt overpowered by waves of dizziness, and gripped onto a boulder, stared down at his feet to regain equilibrium. In his mind’s ear there boomed a monstrous roar of negation. He sense not only the end of his time with Vita, but the annihilation of any future happiness he might ever know— physically he forced himself to throw off these crazy sensations. He lifted his eyes up to empty blue sky. Vita and the goat were gone. He bounded up boulders and looked in all directions. No animal. The goatish apparition had vaporized in the searing sunlight. Vita was striding ahead, up the long slope of the islet’s northern dome. He sprinted. There was no path, only patches of pink dust meandering through wind-eroded chunks of limestone. Spikey skeletons and brittle tendrils of gorse survived without water, tough and enduring as the sterile rock. Vita and David forged ahead with their skin stinging in heat, their hair sopping, necks streaming. At the highest crest of Dahab Islet the white cube-and- dome of Abu Minquar’s shrine was stark against the blue porcelain sky. Ignoring the holy man’s shrine, Vita led the way down a slope towards the treacherous northern shoreline. She jeered, “I thought you said there was nothing to see.” Below them, on a low cliff, perched the islet’s most signifi cant and impressive structure, a government maintained lighthouse. Vita nonchalantly strolled over to the concrete steps of the beacon tower. A man in army pants and an immaculate undershirt stepped from the doorway of the watchhouse, startled to confront the fi rst foreigners he’d ever seen reach this desolate spot. Vita greeted him in French, with the gracious manner of a diplomat’s wife, and informed him “how fascinated” she and her friend would be if they could look inside. The soldier replied in Vita rough French that there was nothing to see but a rotating lamp at the top of the tower. This brought forth a fl ash of white teeth and tinkling laughter along with Vita’s usual effusions. The Egyptian smiled, and acquiesced. Vita made introductions. Scarcely able to keep his eyes off her discreetly revealed breasts, the man shook hands with both she and David, assuming them to be harmless American tourists. His old fashioned courtesy, even fueled as it was by ordinary horniness, came as relief after the surliness and sauciness of Madame Baghat and the fi shermen. The south end of Dahab was a lost world far removed from the military precision, modernity and protocol that prevailed inside the lighthouse which, they learned, was manned in alternating shifts round-the-clock by four watchmen. Saying as little as possible, David wondered if the Egyptian might later learn that he’d shown his charts, his telescope and electronic radio equipment to not only a Jew, but the son of an Israeli pilot who dropped bombs on the nearby Sinai. Would there be retribution—Arabs, if nothing else, David thought, are paranoid. Dahab Island lighthouse lies 375 miles south of the entrance to the Suez Canal. Oil tankers, military craft, passenger ferries, cargo and fi shing fl eets thread their way among fi shing and scuba-diving boats scattered the length of Giftoun Channel. The watchman adjusted the telescope so that Vita and David could take a look at a tanker, close in enough to see a fl ash of sunlight on the gold tooth of a naked black deck worker dousing himself with a bucket of water. David stayed on the telescope, but Vita sidled up to the watchman’s desk stacked with charts and log books. She watched and listened intently as the soldier entered into his “Record of Shipping Movements” the tanker’s name, its signal marks, the time, and the amount of red plimsol visible above the hull’s water line, indicating the amount of crude onboard. He tapped out this information on a telegraph key to cargo owners in Emirate ports of destination, alerting them to begin their preparations. What he didn’t tell Vita was that this data went to army headquarters in Cairo; and what the soldier himself did not know was that the 313 intelligence agencies of at least six nations, C.I.A. and MOSSAD chief among them, routinely intercepted and recorded his chronicle made on Dahab islet of both commercial and military traffi c in these strategic waters. David stared at powerful currents sweeping past like great hurtling rivers. He listened to the growl of waves smashing on rocks. Ever since Phoencian and Roman merchant ships plied this coastline the sea has been a marine graveyard, with more than a thousand charted underwater wreckage sites. Brutal northerly headwinds or southwesterly monsoonal fronts generate currents that drive ships against coral reefs just below the water’s surface. Grimly, David thought of the bodies of Ethiopian Jewish refugees never recovered, but that remained trapped among the wreckage of rescue boats gunned down and sunk by Egyptian planes. How was it that Vita was always leading him into these dangerous places? He was aware of her voice behind him questioning the watchman in salon French, but with a tone that was purest American, clipped and authoritative. He picked up on port cities and military times. He glanced around in time to see the soldier look Vita in the eye. She let out her semblance of laughter and straightened her back so that khaki pulled snugly across her chest. She resumed a rambling discourse in French. Their voices lowered, and David saw that the Egyptian did not smile as they talked softly, earnestly for several minutes. Vita made parting courtesies. The soldier escorted them outside, to watch them walk away. David shook off the notion that he and Vita had exchanged anything other than trivialities. Morning calm was over. Wind whipped down from the islet’s summit. With whistling moans dust devils spun across a sun-blasted plateau of sea-cliffs. Sand-laden wind and the corrosive surge of waves over centuries had acted like acid causing limestone to foam up off its granite bed like petrifi ed soda fi zz. Vita and David slipped into potholes or snagged their bare, sandaled feet on wafer-thin sharp stone ridges. Spume from crashing waves fl ew up into their faces to burn their eyes. The lighthouse watchman shouted but he was too far behind to be comprehended over the sea’s growling roar. He Vita waved his arms as if to motion them back. “Vita,” groaned David, “enough!” “NO!” she cried, hobbling crazily along the cliff’s rim. “NO!” She fl ung out her arms to the sea. “Look!” At the edge she braced her body against wind gusts by curling her sandals over a razor-wedge of rock, for better purchase. With each thrilling annihilation of a wave against the cliff, her eyes opened wider and she fl ushed. David had seen this manic exhilaration before…desire and excitement exacerbated by closeness to the edge of a dangerous abyss…on the high parapet at the Citadel…on the hairpin looping of Ash al-Milaya. He stepped back with a tingling frisson of alarm, but was unable to fi ght sexual gnawing in his gut. Vita groped along the fearsome ledge to where—oddly, unexpectedly—the cliff cut inland from the churning sea. She waved him over to see a small miracle. Together they peered down at what once had been a cave but had collapsed, creating a crooked fi nger of sea between sheer corrugated walls of limestone. At the tip of the blazing blue fi nger, in place of a nail but proportionately the same size, was a deposit of gold sand. Vita clasped him about the waist and ran one hand inside his shirt, with her fi ngers circling his nipples. “See? See! Didn’t I tell you there was something here for us? Why don’t you ever trust me!” ’Trust you!’ David inwardly sneered; but he was forced to concede that an inlet such as this had to be unique in the whole chain of islands—leave it to Vita to fi nd it with her knack of pushing a situation to an extreme limit wherein lay some ecstatic happening. They clambered, slithered down rock-face onto the hidden rondel of sand. So small a beach, it was barely larger than their futon mattresses. They saw at once that they could make love with their toes in blue water and sun beating down on their backs. While stripping naked their feet sank into freshly deposited sand, pure and clean, silky-soft as a featherdown pillow. Vita squealed as she slipped off the beach’s shelf into a rock-pool that glowed like quivering, liquid turquoise. They splashed, dove, and swam in circles to wash their bodies clean of sweaty grime. 315

They rolled and side-slipped into each other’s arms down to a sandy bottom. When lack of breath drove them to the surface David watched Vita’s eloquent body, arms spread, spiraling into sunlight with exploding coils of hair swerved behind her by the water’s concussions. They circled each other in still water bounded by enclosing, crypt-like walls of stone. Then abruptly Vita struck out in her powerful crawl stroke, heading in a straight course for open, furious sea outside the safety of their haven. David watched the rippling muscles of her back and shoulders as her beautiful body sluiced through glittery foam. “Vita! Vita!” She stopped swimming and whirled about to tread water. He could not see her eyes…those fl at, black orbs…but the expression on her face…the strained set of her neck and shoulders—she radiated wild fearlessness. ‘How thrilling she is!’ David mindlessly thought, drinking in all he could see of her fi gure set against the glittering sea’s cross-currents and lethal rip- tides. Without any hesitation he lunged out to reach Vita with absolutely no premonition of the fi nality of this, his last conscious act.

Vita 317

BOOK FOUR LOS ANGELES

(Three Weeks Later) Vita 319

42

n acorn woke Edith, the brass acorn at the end of a Adrawstring clicking against venetian blinds. There was no other sound. It had been four days since Ken could stir, or speak to her. She glanced across from her double bed to his— both raised on blocks to hospital height—and saw that he was breathing weakly through his mouth. The windows were open to let in fresh Valley air scented by mown grass, mimosa, and citrus trees. Ribbons of early morning sunlight slipped through blind slats with the sole purpose, it seemed to Edith, of festively striping the bird’s nest fern she so detested but which Ken insisted remain on his bed table. He allowed no other fl owers or potted plants sent by family and friends. Edith hated the fern’s crumpled blades that impertinently thrust toward the ceiling, but she knew why Ken wanted it—the unruly vertical plant blocked his view of the oxygen cylinder. She had emptied a hall linen closet to fi ll it with medicines, syringes, spare cylinders, other sickroom supplies. Hanging on the inside of the door was a clipboard on which she noted Ken’s pulse and blood pressure. Her fi gures were checked by the nurse who came every afternoon except Sunday. The nurse signed off on medications and had shown Edith how to give injections by Vita practicing on a lemon. The worn carpet Edith kept clean using a manual sweeper instead of the noisy vacuum cleaner. She aired their closet and had Ken’s clothes dry cleaned—even though they both knew he would never wear them again: the tuxedo, the monogrammed shirts and handkerchiefs, his riding breeches and shiny boots. Once Ken had been a stunt rider for the movies, and even when dying he remained vain—Edith thought how alike they were, Ken and Vita! Both living in their own streamlined, horsy heaven with their grand manners and fi ne ways that hinted at things superior to her own commonplace nature. Always Vita doted on her father but withheld love from her no matter how much she did. During gritty times after the real estate bust, without any help from old Mr. and Mrs. Pearce, Edith had made sure Vita and Kay got three full meals a day and as much milk as they could drink. She scrimped to see that there was money for piano and dance lessons. A baby grand piano had been her big purchase after successfully opening her fi rst restaurant. She paid for tutoring with Professor Vianello, in Pasadena, which had culminated with the underwriting of Vita’s concert with the philharmonic orchestra at the Bowl. Still Vita could so easily put her on the defensive and hurt her so badly. Edith swung her legs off the high bed and stretched to fi nd her slippers. With a cuff she’s expert at using she took Ken’s blood pressure. Checking his pulse, counting to herself, she looked down into a face which despite illness was still handsome. Using small scissors she kept his hair and sideburns trimmed, and removed unsightly old-man hairs from his nostrils. Ken had insisted on it for as long as he could insist, now she insisted on it. How hard it was to look at Ken without seeing Vita—the same chiseled, arrogant look around dark eyes, the strong nose, and tanned complexion with a scramble of freckles. In the lower face the resemblance ended for Ken’s mouth had a slanting weakness that Vita’s never had—oh, no, there was nothing indecisive about Vita’s beauty, it was potent, and frightened her mother. Edith pulled a ratty chenille housecoat about her waist. On her way out she dropped soiled towels in the closet hamper. She went downstairs to the living room which these days was 321 used merely as a passageway to the kitchen. They had few visitors, no one rang at the front door except for the nurse. The air was fusty. The living room remained in perpetual twilight. Cobwebs linked the iron spears on which hung velvet drapes once crimson, but now a rusty rose. Especially hideous were straight-backed chairs with beaded seats that Levitz decades ago deemed suitable for Valley “Spanish bungalows.” With fl ashes of self deprecatory humor Edith likened herself to the old English lady in the late night movie she’s watched many times—the woman jilted on her wedding day, who stopped all the clocks and forever left her house like it was. So it was here. While Vita served a two-year sentence in the juvenile prison at San Luis Opisbo, Edith had sold Lance’s Malibu beach house and the Pasadena mansion to pay debts and expenses incurred with the liquidation of her restaurant chain. She auctioned off heirloom furniture and possessions—she hadn’t wanted to keep any relics of the Montesque family. She returned to live in the model show house Ken had built in Glendale, on Pearce Drive, which today is re-named Olive Street. On release Vita fl ed to the East Coast, and Ken moved back in with her. They had meant to go on with their lives, to renovate the house and make new friends, but somehow they never got around to any of it. Now it was too late. One thing in the depressing living room Edith did keep in mint condition was the grand piano. She dusted, polished its satiny black top. She kept stacked on the bench exercise books by Bach and Czerny. She maintained this altar to her lifelong belief in Vita’s talent. Among her happiest hours had been those after work, while resting on her bed and listening to her beloved daughter practice at the beautiful instrument she herself had paid for. She didn’t know the name of the pieces, but often Vita would play something by Chopin that she liked best of all because it reminded her of rainbows. She had even thrilled when, in a rage, Vita would fl ing herself at the keyboard and furiously bang out the can-can from Orpheus. Edith didn’t know what it was but she knew it was wild obscene music. In the kitchen sink Edith rinsed out her glass from last night, smelling of Jim Beam and melted ice. She set the glass Vita bottom-side up on a dish towel. Grimly she noted the level of whiskey inside the bottle, before putting it behind fl our and sugar canisters that sat empty and unused. Baking was a humiliating remainder of the past—like the English lady with her decaying wedding cake. Edith took the garbage bag from under the sink and went out the back door, across the yard to put it in the can in the alley. The bag fi lled with whiskey bottles she dropped late at night behind the nearby convenience store. Back inside she poured herself a glass of water over ice. She climbed stairs to the bedroom, where Ken lay inert, silent. She sat down at her dressing table. Trying to suppress pent- up frustration and resentment she gathered scattered bills from the nurse and the pharmacy that every month took up most of the pittance she and Ken received from Social Security. Folding the papers into a bundle, she slid open the dressing table drawer littered with empty lipstick tubes, remaining scraps of jewelry, the old pair of glasses she refused to wear. Her hand moved to push the bills to the back of the drawer and her fi ngers touched cold metal. She withdrew the pistol and stared in amazement that she had kept it all these years. It was the old Colt. 45 Ken left behind in the den desk when she kicked him out. Alone at night in the house with two girls she had felt safe from burglars, or from increasing incursions into suburban neighborhoods by city street gangs. She had transferred the pistol to her offi ce on Sunset Boulevard, when Edith’s, Inc., began to pull in large daily cash deposits. Then on that catastrophic night of the concert at the Bowl…when her accountant and lawyer summoned her away from the celebration party for an emergency meeting…to inform her that Lance, her socially prominent second husband, had managed to empty all accounts, that she had to fi le immediately for bankruptcy...she had snatched up the Colt .45 before rushing to confront Lance at the beach house, where she knew he and the 16-year-old Vita had gone after the party. Why! Why had she taken the gun? Had she ever intended to use it? Edith slipped the pistol to the back of the drawer. She 323 picked up a hairbrush and gently brushed thinning hair. Her eyes roved over miniature gold-framed photos covering the tabletop. There was an instamatic snapshot of her and Ken in each other’s arms inside a booth on Santa Monica Pier, taken before their wedding, with both of them looking radiant. Rondo class photos of Kay and Vita. Little Kay’s dance recital in Carmen Miranda make-up and costume. And numerous shots of Vita at the various peaks of her startling adolescent fame. Edith reached to pick up the largest photograph, one preserved in an ornate tortoise-shell frame, a photograph that was infamous: The Los Angeles Times’s front arts page coverage had captured Vita in a white moiré gown with a white orchid pinned to one side of softly waved hair, standing before cheering crowds with out-stretched arms. Edith cupped the picture in both hands, head bowed. “Always thinking of her, aren’t you, Edith?” Ken’s voice, hoarse from disuse, broke the bedroom’s silence. He’d not spoken in days. Edith’s head jerked around and his eyes held hers. His face was white. He missed a breath and she moved towards him. He breathed again, a fl utter, then a full breath. When tentatively she sat on the edge of the bed, he repeated, “You’re always thinking of her, aren’t you?” She looked at her hands, said nothing. “All these years and she’s the one you think of most.” “That’s unfair, Ken, I think of you. Or I wouldn’t be here.” “You’re with me, Edith, because without me there’s no Vita. I’m her father. I’ve always been your link to her. You chucked me out and married the Montesque scum to win her back. What a pair—Vita and Lance Montesque! When I brought her back to you in that pile in Pasadena, it was only Vita that you saw, not me.” “That’s the past, Ken.” “No, Edith, you’re lying and deluding yourself. Vita is all you’ve ever cared about.” “And what if it is? I can’t help it.” Ken coughed, making a choking sound. Edith held the plastic hospital canister with attached straw to his lips. He sucked Vita in little sips of water, gasping. Edith sat on the bed’s edge. Rather than reaching to give him an injection, or connect the air cylinder, she stared at venetian blinds with a blank expression that gave little indication of her seething anger. When her husband again spoke his voice was faint, remote, as if coming to her from distant times. “…Kay was worth three of Vita—“ “I loved Kay! She was a sweet, perfect, loving child. I grieved for her!” “The same week you went ahead and opened your business.” “Damn you, Ken!” Edith sprang from the bed and went back to the dressing table. “I lost Kay, I lost my baby. I had to go ahead and open the restaurant as advertised—I couldn’t fail. I had to succeed for the sake of the child who had been spared.” Ken pushed himself up on the pillow so he could look head-on at his wife. “Bullshit, Edith—bullshit! I was there when Kay came down with pneumonia. You were not there, you were off with Montesque at his lake cabin—that was OK, I had the kids for the weekend. But I couldn’t reach you. The hospital was full. We had no place to take poor Kay. Mitzy Hoffman insisted we bring Kay to her place and she called in Dr. Alden. He and a nurse set up the oxygen tent. Finally you got there. I watched you, Edith, I saw what you were thinking. When the nurse turned off the oxygen tank and pulled the sheet up over Kay, you sat on that little love seat Mitzy keeps in the hall. Vita threw herself at your knees and started grieving in that phony actressy way of hers. I watched your face, Edith, as you thanked God that it was Kay—not Vita—that had been taken.” What Ken said was true, but Edith was furious that he’d known all long of the guilty, leaping joy she’d felt that Vita had been spared, and now was throwing it in her face. Unaware even of what she was doing she fumbled for the photo of Vita at the Bowl, and clenched it in her hand. Ken’s breathing grew ragged as he stared at his wife, eyes glittering with distressed intensity. “Forget her, Edith,” he rasped. “She’s never coming back. You’ve wasted your life on her, short-changing Kay and me. Let go of her, Edith, treat 325 her like a bad tooth—yank it out, and be done with her. VITA’S ROTTEN, GODDAMIT!” Savage anger shot through Edith. She slammed down the photo-portrait on the table top. Glass shattered, the fragile tortoise-shell frame splintered with an ugly noise. Edith leaped up and went down the stairs. Eyes fi lled with tears she burst into the kitchen, blinking against sunlight that hurtfully glared on tile counters and walls. When Ken built his model home he may have been naïve as to furniture, pictures, and other things of an aesthetic nature; but he had been determined to make his home a jewel of utility. Bathroom and kitchen walls were of the newest green and white porcelain tile, clean and shiny as an operating room, everything in its proper place, spigots gushing sprays of scalding water. Edith up-ended her glass on the counter. She reached behind canisters for the Jim Beam. She poured a shot and downed it. She gripped the counter ledge and waited for the burning explosion inside to obliterate pain. She shut her eyes and winced until a warm glow radiated throughout her body. She put a few ice cubes in the glass and fi lled it with more whiskey. Sipping, she stared out the window. Under fl awless blue Valley sky sunlight glinted on black-tipped cypresses and red- tiled roofs of suburban Glendale. Dark foliage glittered with tiny globes of yellow and orange citrus. ‘Greece!’ thought Edith. She’d never been outside California, but from pictures it looked like where Vita lived, as an ambassador’s wife. “She and I are seeing the same things.’ Edith gulped whiskey. From under the sink she took a scouring pad, dampened it and began to scrub systemically at yellow age stains and rotting grout between tiles. Warmed by Jim Beam and thoughts of sunny Greece she had no conscious thought of Ken upstairs. Her subconscious knew that what she was doing was horrible. She should be there to give an injection, to connect the cylinder, or phone the nurse. She knew all these things she should be doing, but she thought of nothing but eradicating ancient stains and rot. She hummed as she worked. After twenty minutes she stood back to look at her success. The sink was old- fashioned looking, but there were no visible stains. Vita

She washed her hands and rinsed her face with cold water. As she started up the stairs she had no fear. She simply walked into the bedroom and saw, as she anticipated, that Ken was dead. He lay with dark eyes wide open, fi xed on the ceiling, his mouth gaping open. His face as white as the porcelain tiles of which he’d been so proud. Edith knew there was no need to take his pulse or give an injection. There was no need anymore for the nurse. He was gone. Kay was gone. And like Ken said, Vita would never come back. Finally, she was alone.

327

43

ita sat waiting, irritably. Her chair was steady, solid, Veven comfortable, but the table’s legs were bent and twisted even though the circular top remained impossibly level, if smeared with dust from plaster—tremors had caused chunks of the ceiling to cave-in. Amid mangled electrical cables and fractured structural beams, one end of a sofa and a pole lamp from an upper fl oor poked down, askew at crazy angles. By the up-ended lamp’s weakly glowing ochre light Vita planned on browsing the Times—that is, if she ever got her coffee. At her feet a fi ssure in the fl oor zigzagged toward a ridge of concrete debris, behind which a tall, striking young woman expertly manipulated a spigot to steam and froth cappuccino. Just back in downtown Los Angeles, Vita happened on AfterShock Café where the décor simulated the catastrophic aftermath of a big quake. Some Angelenos took offense at these grim trompe l’oeil effects, but they suited Vita’s black mood. She had landed at dawn in Long Beach after the voyage from Bombay, cooped for twelve days inside a freighter cabin, or in a mess hall where cappuccino was not offered. Had she taken a commercial fl ight Christian would’ve been able to track her. She taxied straight to the fi rm on North Grand Street that managed her Vita investment portfolio; living overseas she had maintained contact by phone or embassy telex lines, with a string of ever-changing consultants. The latest, the one who greeted her, was hopeless. He didn’t realize she was an ambassador’s wife and kept her waiting for forty minutes! A weasel-like creature with dandruff, he unceremoniously pointed her into a cubicle piled with papers and reeking of cigarette smoke. He grew more repulsive as he talked. His ferret eyes were unable to meet Vita’s or to even focus on her face. He addressed his unintelligible ramblings to the basketball calendar tacked just over her shoulder, or to her chair’s armrest. He assumed a pitying expression whenever she asked that he explain terms like “cross-index buyouts” “transfer fees” or “compressed liquidation.” The bottom line news, when Vita sharply demanded that he give it to her, was that her investments, in silver and Asian electronic companies, had shrunk to below $8,000. Vita very nearly pitched a tantrum, but let herself be escorted by a manager to the elevator. Her parting shot had been “my lawyer will contact you.” Before the elevator doors opened in the lobby she knew that no lawyer could recoup her investments. She had been professionally swindled. ‘How hateful life can be!’ Vita thought, wishing that an earthquake would annihilate the goddamn city. Then before her on the “dusty” table appeared the most beautifully presented cappuccino she’d ever seen—the big circle of a bowl-sized cup was covered with thick foam into which strands of cocoa powder had been swirled to create fl oral patterns. She looked up—far up—into the smiling face of the waitress who towered six-feet- plus. “Worth the wait?” Despite herself, Vita smiled. “I knew you would like it,” said the waitress. “That you wouldn’t accept anything less than the best.” “You’re clairvoyant, to know intimate things about a stranger?” queried Vita. “No, but I notice things. Like your ring. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful and unusual.” Vita slipped into a preening feline mode as she extended her hand so that the girl might examine, and more deeply envy, the ring crafted from wire fretwork taken from a 16th century 329 samurai sword. Christian had bought it on auction at Sotheby’s to celebrate their fi rst wedding anniversary. Vita casually fabricated, “It was a gift from one of the Toinnomiya Royal Princes, when I was guest at his villa in Kyoto.” The waitress remained respectfully silent for a moment which seemed proper, then said in a perfectly pedestrian manner, “I was right. You are used to only the most beautiful things. I have to take care of other tables, but I’ll be back to see if you want anything else. My name is Empress.” Vita stopped the cup at her lips, astonished that this strange-looking amazon might be mocking her. “Empress?” “Empress Kilpatrick,” smiled the girl, leaving before Vita could comment. Vita picked up her paper. Never did she read anything at length, but the scanning of newspapers and glossy magazines was a daily ritual. Her eyes would graze over photos, headlines, sub- heads, occasionally pausing to register a paragraph or so. These gleanings she sprinkled throughout conversations so as to appear informed—it had been newspapers and tabloids that had led her to the banker in Athens and to Herve Bulon in Cairo. Now her eyes fl ickered over page one photos of Negroes throwing rocks at Los Angeles policemen. Of no greater urgency to Vita was the fl ap between President Kennedy and Khrushchev over Cuba. ‘Such noise,” Vita thought, “over a dinky island that produces— what—bananas, cigars, tacky clothes?’ She fl ipped to the social pages hoping for shots of Jackie, but there were none; so she went onto the movie ads, splashiest was one for a musical about New York’s lower West Side. ‘Street gangs, for Christ’s sake, Puerto Ricans!’ A smaller ad was for one she might want to see, with her absolutely favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn, and invitingly entitled Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Before tossing the paper Vita checked back pages to see if anyone big had died. There were no article-size obits with a photo portrait, so disdainfully she glanced at Obituaries/Funeral Announcements, where three columns of small-type, single paragraph obituaries were reserved for the nobodies. Her eye was arrested by the fi rst obit at the top of the middle column. She Vita read not at all, her mind simply locked onto the words “Pearce, Ken—” then her own name came leaping up at her—“Mrs. Vita Granger, wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Greece.” Pee trickled inside her panties. Her face went white. Uttering a hideous sound somewhere between a groan and a scream she swept an arm across the artfully “damaged” table, crashing her cappuccino into the fl oor’s “fi ssure.” The table toppled. AfterShock’s thinning lunch crowd stared as, clutching newsprint, Vita sprinted out of the dining area. Tears blinded her, made everything go wobbly. Corridor walls seemed to buckle and press in on her. Loose cables of dimly fl ickering lights appeared to snatch out at her hair. Absurdly, a shiny new pay phone was mounted onto an exposed, crumbling support pillar. Vita slammed through a door marked LADIES into a white-tile bathroom where, mercifully, the earthquake motif ended. She bent over the sink, heaving. She’d eaten nothing and vomited up streams of fl uid bitter with espresso. She sagged in a heap, clutching the terrible obituary page. She didn’t hear or see Empress Kilpatrick in the doorway. The waitress hesitated, then entered, snapped the lock, and crouched down. Vita stabbed a fi nger at the top center obituary. “Father— he died! He’s dead—dead! I’ll never see him again!” She toppled into waiting arms. Empress wrenched away newsprint, held onto it but did not read as she wrapped her arms around Vita’s trembling shoulders and crooned, as if to comfort a child. Mesmerized by the husky voice with its pleasant, faint southern drawl, Vita snuggled against this complete stranger to absorb animal warmth, and the comfort of arms and shoulders made strong by carrying loaded trays. She whimpered, “Don’t let go, please, don’t—let—go!” “I’m here, I’m here,” crooned Empress, moved by the raw, heart-wrenching grief of this beautiful, highly wrought and obviously wealthy woman. She glanced at Vita’s right hand clasped in her own, but saw no wedding band, only the exquisite samurai ring from the Japanese prince. Resting her chin lightly on Vita’s head she breathed in the cleanest-smelling hair and body odors ever. Even in a distraught 331 state at a burning August noontime this woman exuded mysterious and wonderfully exotic scents. Having made the rounds in Hollywood now for eight months Empress was familiar with every fragrance, cosmetic or hygiene product on the market. But never had she been so enchanted by the physical aura of another person. ‘Not only is she rich,’ the girl thought, ‘she has breeding and refi nement.’ This spoke to the profoundest part of the nature of this fi ercely ambitious nineteen-year-old from Mississippi. She leaned back on her haunches to look Vita in the face. “Do you have a car, m’am, or a driver? I’ll get him for you.” “No!” Vita panicked. “No!” She tightened her grip on the girl’s arms. “Don’t leave!” Uncontrollable sobbing threatened to recommence. “We can’t stay here—but don’t worry, m’am. I’ll look after you.” Empress rose and lifted Vita to her feet. She guided her out of the restroom with an arm about her shoulder, to shield her tear-streaked face from curious eyes of employees. They slipped out of the restaurant by the rear fi re exit.

* * *

Empress Kilpatrick had always been a quick study. Before entering grade school she knew she was different from other children. She was special. The daughter of a maintenance worker for the gas & electric company in Jackson, Mississippi, she may have gotten her height from her father, but not his County Kerry blue eyes or fair complexion. Her arresting face came from a mother who was pure Choctaw Indian: dusty complexion, a broad face with angular, overly prominent cheekbones, and narrowed, pitch-dark eyes. Before reaching seventeen Empress sprouted up to six- feet-one. Ridiculed by her father for being no petite southern belle she grew largely indifferent to the opinion of others. She knew her strongest attribute was her voice. She was an average student but she joined the debate club, where for the fi rst time she Vita did something well. She decided she wanted to be a politician or a university president or some kind of leader who inspires people with stirring speeches. Fate intervened with the spring Class Capers, when Empress was chosen to star in a sketch about the Cajun queen who loses her lover in a mine collapse, and mourns him with the hit song Fever. Her class lost the competition, but Empress earned standing ovations: amid black clouds of coal dust the Cajun queen in a tight red dress stood straddling her dead lover’s body. To the rasp of a snare drum, the pulse of a single bass guitar, and snapping fi ngers, Empress delivered the scorching lyrics in a voice smooth as satin, slippery as the skin of an eel. A pin-spot clung to those Choctaw cheekbones, and made black eyes glitter as she crooned, “..Fever (fever, burn through) in the mornin’/An’ fever all through the night..”* On graduating Empress briefl y endured the typing job her father arranged at the gas & electric company. Then having asked for no one’s advice or permission she announced she was using the earnings she’d saved to go to Los Angeles and get started in show business. Three weeks later Empress got off a Greyhound bus in downtown and took a city bus north to Sunset Boulevard. She was as let down as any fi rst-time visitor, for there are two Hollywoods: the nirvana of glamour and luxury that exists in the imagination of fi lm-goers; then there’s the reality of the seedy town—once onion fi elds, acres of cheap land on which to erect barny studios—that is home to the movie industry. Undaunted, Empress jumped into doing what she’d come to do, which entailed hours of walking streets thronged with Hispanics or middle easterners; hot streets lined with characterless red brick or limestone offi ce buildings from the 1920s, fi ve or six stories high, mostly vacant on the upper fl oors, but at sidewalk level phantasmagorias of red & yellow signage for bargain shoe stores, evil-smelling taco or falafel stands, pawn shops, gun stores, bail & bond offi ces, tattoo parlors, massage parlors, and strip joints. Gutted buildings sheltered heroin dealers and their victims. Hollywood, thought Empress, was worse than the worst

*Fever lyrics by Little Willie John, music by Davenport & Cooley 333 parts of her Mississippi hometown, the difference being that on the bottom here were Hispanics, not Negroes. Mindful of limited funds Empress lived on $70 a week and spent money only in places that counted. She brought early morning coffee to the newsstand man who let her read his own copy of Variety, for audition postings. She paid higher rates to have her resume printed on linen stock, but got a discount from a studio photographer taken by her exotic, native American looks. She compiled lists of agents, make-up and hair stylists, and began dance/postures classes. With an improved rendering of Fever she landed a job that caused ripples of approbation back in Mississippi—she was one of a chorus of twelve to back up star performers such as Carol Burnett on CBS’s popular The Gary Moore Show. Not at all seduced by early success, Empress reminded herself that no longer was she the only one who was special. Hollywood was full of gypsies who’d left towns across America because of special looks or talent. They grew ruthlessly competitive, and in Empress’s opinion, reckless and foolish. Bad food, late hours, liquor and pot, crude sex—stand-up quickies in offi ces or other public places whenever and wherever it held prospects, no matter how tenuous, of Getting Cast. It wasn’t that Empress was a prude, but she thought too highly of herself to be exploited in so obvious a fashion. Her sexual needs were less in command of her actions than the ambition to succeed. She intuited that if she wanted to remain “special,” if she was to be the one chosen for “success,” she had to distinguish herself from the undisciplined hordes who fi lled fl op boarding houses along Franklin Avenue or in Whitely Heights. CBS had its recording studio near the farmers’s market, on Fairfax. Once when taping ended early, instead of wandering between stalls loaded with fresh fi sh, vegetables and fruit wishing she had a kitchen, Empress took the Third Street bus downtown. She wanted to see the new Dorothy Chandler Pavilion everyone was talking about. She was not impressed by its steel, glass and concrete exterior, but a box offi ce lady let her in for a peek at the barn-like auditorium…in dim house lights Empress stood gazing with incalculable thoughts at the giant stage built for opera Vita productions. Mozart, Puccini or Verdi were not on her mind when she considered that in March the biggest stars in Hollywood would be watched by a world-wide television audience, as they climbed onto THIS stage to claim their gold statuettes. Elated, Empress strolled down Bunker Hill, along First Street, lured by historic towers of downtown. She recognized the pyramid-crowned pinnacle of City Hall as the Daily Planet building Clark Kent dashed in and out of on the TV series, Superman. She recalled that Martians blasted the smithereens out of the building in Orson Welles’s infamous The War of the Worlds, a radio broadcast by her network. The 1928 landmark monument survived to appear in dozens of movies Empress had watched on late night television. To get off the street, and cool down, she sat in the lobby admiring elaborate Corinthian columns with gilt capitals and the great dome with inlaid mosaic. ‘Not Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center or Times Square,’ Empress thought, ‘but more what a city should be.’ Leaving by the Spring Street exit, Empress passed the moderne hulk of the L.A.Times building. She climbed Second Street back up the hill to catch her bus. With no lessening of her good opinion of downtown she passed an undesirable stretch of dilapidated buildings. One blackened, red brick façade was criss-crossed by iron fi re escapes that had been lined with fl ower boxes of gaily planted dahlias. On a whim, Empress went into The Matsugae and found that it offered not only daily room rates, but long-term studio/kitchenettes. Empress negotiated a monthly rate for a corner studio on the third fl oor, with its own fi re escape and fl ower boxes. On her way out she discovered a café off the lobby the décor motif of which, bizarrely enough, was the aftermath of an earthquake. The Matsugae’s clientele were Japanese businessmen who, after forced evacuation during the war, were busy re-vitalizing the Little Tokyo shopping district along South Alameda. The outré décor appealed to their black sense of humor for their homeland is an earthquake- and tsunami-plagued island. AfterShock Café held pleasant associations for Empress—she’d come to L.A. and landed a job on national television because of those precious moments she’d held a high school stage, as the 335

Cajun queen mourning her dead lover in a collapsed mine amid “rubble” and “destruction.” Empress moved into the Matsugae’s studio/kitchenette. She worked two lunch and three night shifts at AfterShock. The TV show would be dark in the summer so she had to build up savings. Tips were good and soon she and another waitress, Janet, an actress, had gone in together on an old Buick for $200, which they shared for all those drives out the freeway for auditions in Hollywood or Burbank. Everything was going so smoothly Empress wondered how soon her next break would come?

* * *

She considered this beautiful, grieving woman she was taking in…wearing a ring she says was given her by a Royal Japanese prince… Empress got Janet to fi nish off her lunch tables and in return promised to cover the night shift. Vita permitted herself to be guided into the cage of the Matsugae’s antiquated, sub- code elevator. She kept her eyes on her feet and made no attempt to loosen the controlling grip Empress had on her arm. Her whimpering sobs rose above the lift’s creaking. Vita’s tear-streaked face remained expressionless when confronted by a studio apartment furnished with fl ea market furniture, carpeted and wall papered in hues of mud or moss. Empress had no time or funds to decorate. She’d taken personal possession of the studio by tacking to the kitchenette wall a large print of a somber Cezanne still-life: dark and shadowy except for at the center where brilliant apples rested on a white cloth. Centered on a drop-leaf table below was a pot of white tulips. Empress said, “I’ll make tea and let you rest.” Vita nodded but looked fl ustered. “…my bags…I left them at the desk…” “Don’t worry, hon—“ Empress stopped herself from calling Vita ‘honey’ because she knew homey, southern familiarity would grate on the nerves of so cosmopolitan a woman. “I’ll have them brought up.” Vita

Empress seated Vita on the neatly-made single bed in one corner. When she knelt to slip Vita’s shoes off she saw in the dark eyes a fl icker of gratifi cation at this accommodating servility. It was not lost on Empress that her unexpected houseguest whose name she didn’t know, but hadn’t the nerve to ask, docilely responded to a light-handed blend of authority and obsequiousness. The clever girl suspected that this was due to more than grief. “There are things going on inside this beautiful head of hers,” Empress speculated. Vita lay prone, hands sepulchrally folded on her chest staring at fl akes of paint peeling from the ceiling. Empress busied herself in the kitchenette. While water came to a boil she washed a cluster of red grapes, sliced neat chunks of chevre, set them out on a white platter with stone wheat crackers, beside the white tulips. As the tea steeped she added a shot of dark rum. She propped a pillow behind Vita’s head so that she could hold the hot mug, and sip. Color had returned, the sobbing had ceased, and Empress noted an air of feline satisfaction. “I hope you can sleep. Rest, and forget things for a while. I have to work the night shift, but I’ll be off by nine. We can talk and make plans for tomorrow. I’ll help you do whatever you need to do.” She reached to pat Vita’s folded hands, allowing her fi ngers to caress, to linger over silvery, clustered strands of the prince’s ring. Vita was taken back by these gestures of kindness. It had been so long since she experienced ordinary, human compassion that she doubted they exist outside of books and movies. “Why,” she said, blissfully unaware she was quoting, “do I always depend upon the kindness of strangers?” “Strangers are the only people you can trust, truly,” said Empress, who would give her eye-teeth to play Blanche. “Family, friends, boys, they all fi nd reasons to betray and cause hurt.” Vita yawned, “Smart—for someone so tall.” The spiked tea did its work and soon Vita appeared to be asleep. Seated at the drop-leaf table, sipping rum on ice, Empress watched the ragged breathing of her nameless houseguest, the 337

fl ickering of eyelids, a twitching of the hands. Inelegant snoring told her that the beautiful woman was asleep. From the pocket of her waitress-apron she took the balled- up obituary page she’d wrestled from the woman’s clenched fi st. She unfolded and smoothed newsprint, to read the top of the middle column:

Pearce, Ken, of 45 Olive Street, Glendale, died peacefully on the morning of August 7, after a long struggle with respiratory illness. At his side was his wife, the former Edith Bettison, who was a prominent local restaurant entrepreneur. He is predeceased by his beloved daughter,Kay, and survived by his wife Edith and his eldest daughter, Mrs. Vita Granger, who is wife of the U.S. ambassador to Greece. Ken came to Hollywood at the age of 20 and worked as a horse stuntman in many movies. Later he--

‘…wife of the U.S. ambassador to Greece!’ Empress’s mind reeled. ‘I knew it! I knew she’s special. A diplomat’s wife sleeping in my poor little bed!’ Empress pushed away icy rum and refl ectively gazed at the snoring wife of U.S. Ambassador Granger. ‘Not wearing her wedding band, only the Japanese ring. Why is she here instead of with her husband in Greece? She came back alone to Los Angeles not knowing her father had died—she reads it in the paper. Is she estranged from her family as well? Serious trouble?’ With not a whit less sympathy for the improbable plight of her houseguest, Empress couldn’t restrain her mind from leaping ahead into empyrean realms with shining images of embassies… handsome diplomats in limousines….exclusive international residences…Marine guards in ceremonial dress. True glamour and excitement, not the ormolu of show business. Why, look at Grace Kelley—daughter of a Philadelphia grocer who went from being a Hollywood star to living married to a prince in a palace on the Mediterranean! Was not she, Empress Kilpatrick, capable of the same? She pondered ‘…is this troubled woman who needs my help—could she be…the fi rst step..?’

* * * Vita

Vita slept for fi ve hours. Not the oblivion of rest, but the shallow sleep of the tormented, fraught with moaning, the twisting of her body into hurtful and unnatural positions, and the clutching of hands at air before her face. In her nightmare David’s grimacing face loomed with teeth barred in pain, tiny air bubbles gushing from his open mouth, bloody clouds and tentacles of yellow hair swirling about his face in explosive watery torrents: a powerful rip-tide entwined his legs in among jagged edges of steel of ship wreckage smashed against the reef’s razor-edges; his pleading eyes bulged as he grasped onto Vita’s strong hands—all that kept him from being sucked in, shredded by iron shards of the shattered bulwark—she let her hands slip—when she woke Vita popped up like a prostrate jack-in-the-box with her heart thudding and her face clammy with perspiration. She ran her hands over the narrow day bed as if to force herself remember where she was. She fi lled with despair at waking in yet another hotel room…endless alien rooms. She looked at the ugly kitchenette. The white tulips and magnifi cent Cezanne print went ignored as she dove into cheese and grapes and bread, tearing off chunks and washing them down with tepid tea. She recalled that Empress said she’d be working until nine, so there was time to think, before the girl returned. Slipped under the tulip pot was newsprint pressed and neatly folded. Vita’s hand reached for it, but was halted by feelings of dread. While she’d slept her suitcase and purse had been set on the fl oor near the bed. She went into a tiny bathroom and stripped off soiled clothes. In the shower stall she let steaming water wash over her. The girl’s soaps and shampoos were of a very high quality, indeed, so she began a prolonged methodical massaging of her scalp and face. Turning off hot water she shivered with delight as cold sprays of water rinsed away expensive suds. Toweling dry, she pulled fresh clothes from her suitcase; of her face, make-up or hair, amazingly enough, Vita gave not a thought. In the kitchenette she poured a shot of dark rum, with no ice. She took the terrible newsprint page and stepped through 339 an open window onto the third fl oor fi re escape. Below on Second Street cruisers scrambled from police headquarters with red domes fl ashing and sirens screaming. From her high vantage point Vita surveyed turmoil beyond a hinterland of rail switch tracks, warehouses, and rows of sixteen-wheelers parked along the dry Los Angeles River bed. Black smoke billowed into twilight air as the sun’s red fi reball sank into the Pacifi c Ocean. Riots had erupted. Enraged by police brutality mobs of Negroes, swelling from dozens into the hundreds, threw rocks and hurled obscenities at cruisers. Plate glass was smashed, storefronts destroyed as looters plundered and torched white-owned businesses. Police clubbed, handcuffed, loaded Negroes into armored vans. Tension had reached fever pitch when the LAPD chief publicly described rioters as “monkeys in the zoo.” Streets fi lled with violence and hatred. Vita saw all of this with pleasure and urged rioters on with her own silent mantra, ‘Destroy the whole goddamn city!’ Seated on iron griding with knees up, her back pressed hard against brick wall, Vita forced herself re-read her father’s obituary. Tears oozed from her eyes and trickled down over her cheeks. With red rays of the dying sun’s fi reball in her face, the fl ush of anger and grief was not noticeable. “Pearce, Ken died peacefully on the morning of August 7—” ‘—two days ago! If I’d gotten here sooner I would’ve been with him. Now I’ll never see him again!” “..after a long struggle with respiratory illness. At his side was his wife, the former Edith—“ Vita sneered. Thudding in her breast came faster and faster. “I should’ve been with him—not her—she never loved him. Never! She got knocked-up to trap him, dumped him when he lost his money—used him like she used me—I had the talent she never had. I loved Dad and he loved me! Why did it have to be him—why not her? Why couldn’t SHE die!’ Vita knew she would never fi nd inner peace so long as her mother lived. ‘SHE has to die!’ Vita fumbled for newsprint to read the last sentence of her father’s obituary: “A memorial service and viewing will begin Vita at 10 a.m, August 10, at Burock’s Funeral Home, 24760 Cerebus Avenue..” The more Vita tried to concentrate the more confused her thoughts became. She knew Empress would help, would do anything she asked, but would she understand? Could she possibly? Could she be trusted? No! How could she tell the girl what she intended to do? To move into the common, everyday world of trust and friendship, of caring, and shared confi dences, would be fatal. Vita knew she was alone and this was how it had to be. She must stay unencumbered for what she must do. Filled with incendiary rage Vita cursed out loud, ripped newsprint into pieces and hurled it over the railing. Startled pigeons burst up into red sky like a single black cloud.

341

44

he old hotel towered on its escarpment above fumy traffi c Ton Sunset Boulevard. Beneath a turret of the Loire River Valley-style chateau, Christian Granger looked over the parapet of his private terrace down into four-and-a-half acres of thickly rounded cylinders of cypress, stands of eucalyptus, pine trees, and weird corkscrew Hollywood juniper. His life might be in shambles, but here he was free of surveillance devices and vigilant eyes of Marine guards. The hotel’s protective staff kept tabloid photographers at bay—the acid-crazed rock singer who raced his Harley Davidson through upper fl oor corridors was brought under control without police or paparazzi participation. Nude under his black terry cloth robe, the disgraced diplomat stepped from beneath a green-and-white striped awning to look up at morning sky clear and blue as a pigeon’s egg. The air was sweet, cool on wooded slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains. Piled helter-skelter up slopes was a luxury ghetto of Mexican haciendas, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages, in an eye- aching, stomach-churning mélange of confl icting architectural “styles.” While being served breakfast on cantilevered decks or on vertiginous terraces by Hispanic maids, the City’s privileged could see across the vast basin to where black smoke smudged Vita the southern horizon. Over-sized television screens fi lled with images of rioters being handcuffed and hauled into vans—three thousand arrested so far—but that seemed remote as upheavals on streets in Beirut or in New Delhi. Nothing to interrupt the day’s deal-making or shopping. Relieved of duties for an indefi nite period of time, Christian could muster little interest in anything outside his own misery; he was disgusted by bouts of self-pity. Whenever descending from his seventh fl oor aerie he used the stairwell, as did many guests. Face-to-face encounters in an elevator were to be avoided. One rarely saw other guests except for glimpses of shoulders or backs slipping in and out of shadowy doors. The main salon and dining room never fi lled. The only place you might see a recognizable face was at the front desk, and even that was as confi dential as a consultation with a doctor or a banker. The spectral air was heightened by an immense hush. High decibel noises from wild parties or venomous arguments could not penetrate thick fortress- like walls of a building erected in 1928 as an earthquake-proof imitation of Chateau Amboise, with its foundation embedded in solid rock. The hotel functioned more as some bohemian sanatorium with an open-minded, round-the-clock room service that permitted long-term guests to sequester themselves for weeks on end, in suites of well laid-out rooms with generous proportions. Many guests were driven by the stress of high-stake creative projects. Christian knew that another New Englander, Nathaniel West, wrote his famous summation of Hollywood, The Day of The Locust, in a rear third fl oor room. He himself was here, as a penthouse recluse, to salvage his career and his marriage. Christian was comforted by an atavistic sense of security as he walked corridors with a strip of worn carpet and walls bare save for wall sconces, timeless even with electrifi ed candles. Every surface was off-white but as some wit* noted the only reason everything was off-white was that once it had been plain white. Christian felt like he was back home in one of those stern

*writer Eve Babitz (1964- ) 343

Back Bay mansions of childhood. As he stepped into the reception area he was met by the manager, who greeted him with no trace of either hauteur or obsequiousness. “Good morning, sir. How are you?” “I’m fi ne, Philip. Thank you for asking.” “I have the material you requested, sir.” Christian followed Philip across a somber salon with its stone-tiled fl oor, wood-beam coffered ceiling, and arched entranceways. Inside a window niche, waiting for Christian on a desk were municipal reference manuals, a house telephone, and a silver tray with an insulated ceramic pot of tea, black Chinese with lemon, no sugar, as Philip knew the ambassador preferred. “I’ll be out on the fl oors. If you need something dial ‘2’ and Susan will see to it for you.” “Thank you, Philip. I’m sure what I need is here.” Christian settled into the armchair and for several minutes, to calm himself, sipped tea and stared at a fi ligree of shadows cast on the wall. To fi lter harsh California sunlight the arched window was fi lled with panes tinted pale yellow and violet; pressed against the panes were boughs of poinsettia, lending an ecclesiastical air—Christian could imagine himself back in the Episcopalian rectory of his Beacon Hill childhood. He watched the starched white jackets of waiters moving solemnly like supplicants between shadowy Gothic arches in the courtyard garden. On his return to Athens from Luxor, he’d been instructed to turn daily administration of the embassy over to his deputy. He’d fl own to Washington. At his consultation in Foggy Bottom the words were not spoken, but he was fairly sure that he would not be asked to return to his post. Vita’s diabolical genius precluded her being linked to the murders of Klaus and Herve—she was not suspected by anyone anywhere of any offense. But his C.I.A. station chief had seen to it that Langley kept State informed on the breach in his marriage. His wife’s conspicuous absence from the Residence and from embassy functions had titillated Athens gossip-mongers. Christian was sure Vita had returned to Los Angeles although he had no tangible proof. He’d been unable to track her Vita on the airlines, but she could’ve fl own using a counterfeit passport; or she could’ve taken a ship, and he was unable to confi rm entries with port offi cials at Long Beach. He knew she was here. There was no other place she felt compelled to be. She had to settle affairs with her mother. Christian did not allow himself to imagine what this entailed, he only kept thinking, ‘The mother’s the key.’ He checked the Greater Los Angeles phone book and as anticipated found more than three-hundred listings for the name Pearce. He had no idea in which town of the metropolis the family lived, to narrow his search. He sighed, and slipped from his breast pocket a small notebook covered in yellow Thai raw silk. He’d found it when he ransacked Vita’s capacious closets, after she’d fl ed the Residence. She left behind most of her possessions but had taken, he noted, valuable pieces of jewelry such as the Cartier watch, the emerald earrings, the samurai ring. No papers were left behind, save for the yellow silk notebook casually tossed into a shoe box—an oversight on her part—or deliberate? Had she wanted him to fi nd it? Had she ever attempted, really, to escape from him, or only to stay ahead of his operatives? Had she not intended form the start that they would have this confrontation? The horror she’d unleashed, was it not he himself who had been her target? On the fl ight from Greece he’d studied the address book enough to know that most of the entries were for people they met while in Bangkok or in Athens. At a glance it would seem that Vita had had no life prior to their marriage; but as he searched through jumbled notes, abbreviated or coded in Vita’s elegant script, he isolated three phone numbers with the 213 Los Angeles area code. He checked Dun & Bradstreet cross index of phone numbers with street addresses: two were listed under Hispanic names in East L.A, not likely to be the same people who’d held the numbers a decade ago when Vita last lived in the City, and the third he couldn’t fi nd, probably these days an unlisted number. He was distracted, as always, by Vita’s artistry—a whole page of doodling raised to fi ne graphic art. Complex yet graceful Islamic-looking geometric patterns. Along the bottom rim of a hexagon was a carefully, almost ritualistically inscribed number that was not a telephone but a 345

TELEX listing. He took up a corporate guide that did cross-index downtown phone/TELEX numbers. His fi nger traced down long columns of numbers until he found it—Vach & Vach Financial Consultants, at 460 South Grand Street. Vita set up investment accounts before going abroad. He had never pressed her for details on their earnings or for details. He had wanted her to have her own sense of independent wealth. He realized that not even in wildcat L.A. would an investment banker release client information over the phone to an unknown voice claiming to be both spouse and an ambassador to boot. So he dialed State’s consulate offi ce on Wilshire Boulevard and introduced himself to the deputy director. After exchanging pleasantries he requested the man’s assistance in obtaining from Vach & Vach Financial a street address for his wife’s family. He wanted, he said, to deliver a gift to his mother-in-law while in town and had misplaced the information. Inclined to please a diplomat with the same distinctive Bostonian accent as the President, the consulate director said he would make the call immediately. While waiting, Christian topped off his tea and studied remaining pages in the silk address book. Anxiety mounted— what if this fails? But the consulate director returned the call and related that the local address given for the account of Mrs. Vita Granger was 45 Olive Street, in Glendale. Back in Dun & Bradstreet Christian found the number listed under “E. Pearce.” He knew the mother had divorced Vita’s father, and was a widow from a second marriage. ‘E. Pearce…’ he thought: Vita would never speak of her family, but she’d let slip often enough snide references to her mother’s successful restaurant chain, Edith’s, Inc. ‘Edith Pearce at 45 Olive Street, in Glendale!’ Christian gloated. He drank the last of his tea and reached for the house phone. He breathed deeply. He’d spoken by phone to the Oval Offi ce, numerous times to heads of state, and frequently with some of the richest men in New York and Europe—then why did he feel icy cold when dialing an old woman in wretched San Fernando Valley? “Good morning, this is the Pearce residence,” a ridiculously childish and high-pitched voice answered. Christian Vita was startled to hear in real life a voice so similar to that of the young Negro actress* who’d stolen scenes from the likes of Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind. Hesitantly he asked, “This is the residence of Mrs. Edith Pearce?” “Oh yes, sir, it is. How may I be of assistance?” “May I speak to Mrs. Pearce?” “Oh no, sir. Oh, no! Mrs. Pearce is prostrate with grief.” Christian used his formal diplomat’s voice. “I am very sorry to hear that. I am from out of town, so may I ask…” “Oh, sir, it’s her husband, Mr. Ken. He died on Monday and she’s speaking to no one at all.” “I understand, and I am sorry to hear of his death. But please—can you tell me where the funeral will be held so that I can send my condolences.” “Yes, sir, please do that. The viewing of the body will begin tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock and the service will start at 11, offi ciated by the Reverend Horace Arbuthnot. It will be at Burock’s Funeral Home, located at 24760 Cerberus Avenue, in Glendale, California. Please attend, sir. Mrs. Pearce is so in need of consolation.” “I will do that, and thank you for your help,” said Christian. “Oh, you’re most welcome, sir. Goodbye.” Christian hung up the phone. He hadn’t asked the charmingly effusive woman, probably the housekeeper, if Mrs. Pearce’s daughter was there—he didn’t dare alert Vita, if she was there with her mother. He was hit by a wave of pessimism. As a negotiator he knew that half the battle was to sit down at the table knowing you will get what you want, and usually he did. But here in this sterile wasteland of southern California he felt stripped of his powers. How to understand and infl uence the minds of people who abandoned family homes across the country and moved to this garish commercial outpost on the Pacifi c—to get sunshine, and succumb, eventually, to boredom and spiritless lethargy. People

*Butterfl y McQueen (1911-1995) 347 come to California, Nathaniel West had written in these same same hotel rooms, to die. Christian had the bad luck to arrive to apprehend Vita at the time of her father’s death. She would be more volatile than usual, more impossible to deal with. Stripped of authority and without professional help with police powers, he must confront by himself Vita and possibly her family as well. The mother? She was the pivotal fi gure—why else did Vita refuse to acknowledge her existence? Could the mother be counted on for help, or would she be hostile? She had divorced Vita’s father so that she could remarry a man named Lance—what had happened to the step-father? Mrs. Pearce now was said to be mourning her fi rst husband—had they reconciled? Was the mother resentful after the long estrangement imposed by Vita? Christian pondered what could be at the heart of bitter confl ict in this family he had never known? With bitterness he saw that had he not remained for so long dazzled by Vita, and learned earlier of her family as Klaus had urged, his life now would not be in ruin and Klaus would be alive. Christian leafed once more through the silk-covered address book searching for the phone number at Olive Street. But of course it wasn’t there. Vita wouldn’t have entered her own mother’s or father’s phone number. No matter estranged they might be, she would’ve known it by heart.

Vita

45

hat bothered Empress was that her grieving houseguest Wrefused to contact her family even though, surely, they were engaged in arranging the funeral. She might insist on being called ‘Vita’ as if they were friends, or equals, but would say nothing of her own mother who must be suffering more than herself. These unsettling thoughts preoccupied the girl when—at eight in the morning, unnecessarily early, but Vita had insisted—they sat inside the old Buick clogged in traffi c on the 101 Hollywood Freeway. Winds had blown neither in off the Pacifi c, nor through mountain passes from the desert, so air in the basin stank of a trapped miasma of exhaust pollution. The sky was skanky, a wooly, brown-gray ceiling against which postcard-palm trees straggled looking like desiccated stalks in an autumn garden. With fl ashing eyes Vita glared at the passing streets of her glamorous and turbulent adolescence. For Empress the names on new bright green interstate exit signs had a near-mystical ring…Sunset Boulevard…Melrose and Hollywood Avenues. Near the ridged peak of rocky Mt. Lee the fi fty-foot-tall letters ‘HOLLYWOOD’ lurked in smog, as traffi c below inched its sorry way through Cahuenga Pass. To prod Vita out of what she took 349 to be introspection, Empress pointed her chin toward graffi ti scrawled over the rough-plastered side of a building next to the freeway, ‘LAST STOP FOR CAPPUCCINO BEFORE 101.’ Vita did not appear amused, but when windows on the driver’s side fi lled with the colors of autumn foliage she did show interest in the art deco entrance to The Hollywood Bowl. The marquee was blank save for the pedestrian message ‘Closed for the Season.’ Empress saw the fi erce concentration with which Vita focused on those insignifi cant words. Vita thought, ‘Closed—empty—no one to interfere. Where better to take her down?’ “Someday,” Empress said brightly, “I’ll headline there.” “I already have,” snapped Vita automatically. Empress looked wide-eyed. Vita regretted having let this slip for she had decided that no matter how much tempted she would let no intimacy form between herself and this provocative girl who obviously idolized her. But like a bull at the slightest fl ip of the cape, Vita couldn’t resist responding to any mention of stardom. “My break was a three-minute spot on Bud Smith’s Snack-O-Ham afternoon TV show. I was there to lend tone to an otherwise abysmally working class enterprise. I was the beautiful, young coloratura trilling and la-dee-dahing her way through La Traviata…Barber of Seville…the mad scene from Lucia de Lammermoor. So big of a whore was I that I did vocal gingerbread over the philharmonic playing The Blue Danube.” Empress gaped. “You held the stage at the Bowl!” “Alone. At sixteen…center stage…me…no one else! The philharmonic was at the back of the shell where they belonged. All I could see were thousands and thousands and thousands of people in rows spiraling up the mountainside to bright stars in the sky…cheering and clapping and whistling—like a force of nature—a great roaring of the ocean—for me—ME!” Drivers hit their horns when Empress let the Buick’s engine go dead. She re-started and fl oored the accelerator, to mitigate road rage; but Vita withdrew and went back into that secret place to which the girl was already accustomed to seeing her retract whenever pressed. Empress told herself she must be patient. In Vita time she would ferret out details of a career that started with a philharmonic concert at The Bowl and culminated in marriage to an ambassador. Vital pieces of information were missing, but Empress was ever aware of the seismic, undulating aspects of Vita’s nature, the odd behavior, the intensity, suppressed emotions so powerful they sent out emanations she could actually feel, whenever Vita leaned close to hammer in some point. Empress was not frightened, not at all. She felt challenged. She would learn. She knew that the future belongs not to the bold, but to the subtle.

* * *

Christian got to Burock’s Funeral Home well before he knew Vita or anyone else would. The hotel had leased him a burgundy Mercedes 1200N convertible sedan. The manager Philip highlighted on a schematic map the route over Cahuenga Pass on 101 to Barham Boulevard, merging into the Ventura Freeway, exiting on North Brand Street in downtown Glendale. He found Burock’s on a corner of Cerberus Avenue. Turning, he drove past a parking area empty save for two cars no doubt belonging to employees. Halfway down a leafy side street he made a U-turn and slipped the sports convertible under low-hanging boughs of a magnolia tree. He could watch both entrances, for in an hour the chapel-parlors would open to the public. The sky was blue and clear right up to violet cut-outs of the rugged Verdugo Mountains, barring the north end of San Fernando Valley. Lawn sprinklers twirled sparkling sprays of water on grass so unnaturally green and manicured that it looked like AstroTurf. The funeral home was a red brick, two-story English colonial structure with ivy-green doors and white shutters, a style Christian assumed satisfi ed the WASPish aspirations of Glendale suburbanites in the next world, as well as in this one. He sat staring without seeing anything, really…meditating at a low level of withdrawal…when a rattletrap Buick crossed his range of vision. It inched along in front of Burock’s. He registered that the driver and single passenger were women, and 351 even before he consciously realized what he was seeing he knew the passenger was Vita. The Buick turned into the parking lot, stopped, went into reverse to shimmy back out and park parallel on the opposite side of the street, facing the Mercedes at a distance of about two hundred feet. He fl ipped down the sun visor and sank low in his seat even though he knew the convertible was not visible in shadows under the magnolia. He raised miniature fi eld glasses he used at sporting events, focused, and for the fi rst time in months stared into the beautiful face of his wife, behind the glass of a chipped and smudged windshield. Fears that he would fail again to gain control over her fl ailed at his mind with their wild wings—he must!

* * *

Empress put the Buick in ‘Park’ and went to get out as Vita laid a restraining hand on her arm. “No,” she said, pleadingly. “I have to…see Father alone. That’s why I made you come early, so I can be with him when there’s no one else. I have to. You understand, don’t you?” “Sure, I”ll wait,” said Empress. “Take all the time you need. Come get me before the service starts, OK?” Vita pecked her on the cheek. “You’re so good to me. I promise I’ll pay you back. I’ll do something marvelous for you.” “I know you will, darling,” said the girl out loud, while thinking ‘and if you don’t—I’ll do it for myself.’ She squeezed Vita’s hand. Vita got out. While being tracked within the luminous white circles of her husband’s fi eld glasses she crossed the street and stepped inside Burock’s front entrance. The lobby was outfi tted as a “living room” with fake antique furniture and windows swathed in heavily pleated, gold rope-looped portieres. Vita could see the receptionist in an adjoining offi ce, and while waiting to be noticed scornfully glared at an arrangement of plastic fl owers on the coffee table. With a smile spread from ear to ear the receptionist tottered out on platform wedgies. She had Vita an unruly, asymmetrical mass of bleached hair, and a full-busted torso corseted into a chocolate-colored blazer that Vita spotted as being polyester. A brass name tag read ‘Dolly.’ “May I help you?” Dolly asked, sounding as if this were her single goal in life. Vita meekly replied, “I’m here for the Pearce—er... service. I’m early...” “That’s fi ne, dear,” smiled Dolly. “Make yourself comfortable on the sofa. Can I bring you some tea?” Vita smiled weakly. “No, I’m fi ne. Thank you.” “Let me know if you’d like anything.” Vita nodded and sat on a button-tufted sofa. From her purse she retrieved a ballpoint pen and notepad she’d taken off Empress’s pathetic kitchenette table. She knew what she would write, but after putting down the six words in natural scrawl she crushed the paper and started on a fresh sheet, this time in the fl orid copperplate she always affected. ‘This she’ll recognize right away,’ Vita gloated. She folded the paper in half, in quarters, then twisted it into a bundle which she cupped in a palm. She made sure she heard Dolly back at her desk dolloping out bonhomie on the phone. She rose and tentatively started along the main hallway. A placard posted outside the fi rst chapel bore a family name that was not her own. A second chapel was dark, empty. She looked along the dimly lit hall to where fl uorescent light from inside the last door cast a weird oblong shape on the fl oor. The placard read ‘PEARCE FAMILY.’ Vita entered as if sleepwalking. She hesitated at a strip of purple carpet that ran between rows of folding chairs up to her father’s open casket. The wall behind was draped with satin brocade, and the coffi n was fl anked by wicker stands fi lled with white gladioli. Vita approached. Midway she got her fi rst glimpse of Father’s strong hawk-nose. His forehead and thinning hair came into view. She stepped forward to grip the coffi n’s thick rim and look down into a face once so similar to her own. Now it was cold and dead, drained of natural color, coated with horrid mortuary makeup and powder. Death, in separating them forever, had robbed them even of their likeness. Having shed all the tears 353 she could shed, with no more left, her eyes were dry. She burned with a fury so cold that she felt nothing at all. In this spirit she bent over and lowered her face to Father’s. Keeping her eyes wide open she kissed his lips. They tasted of wax. She straightened. Her eyes moved over the breast of his suit to his hands clasped on his belly—the gold wedding band glinted in strong light from a ceiling spot. Her nostrils fl ared and her fi sts clenched. She took the knotted paper and tucked it between two of Father’s cold knuckles, very precisely, so that the bundle covered the wedding band yet exposed, readily noticeable, a bit of copperplate writing. She slipped out a side door, across the hall, into the dark chapel. She moved a folding chair near the door in such a way that she remained in shadow, but with a clear view of the open casket. ‘She’ll be here soon!’

* * *

Christian studied the girl his wife had left sitting behind the steering wheel, using the fi eld glasses. ‘What an extraordinary face! Those cheek bones, the black pools of her eyes!’ Strange- looking, he ruminated, and no older than a girl but seemingly unperturbed, while studying papers propped against the wheel. She would look up to stare straight ahead and in eyes that seemed to be looking into his own, Christian perceived signs of intelligence. Who is she, he thought, a family friend or neighbor? Why is she waiting in the car instead of inside with Vita? Is it possible they just met? They seem affectionate, looking into each other’s eyes when speaking. Vita bussed her which he found odd; in the years he’d known his wife he had to admit that she was strictly a man’s woman with no time for women. She’d never been close to any of the wives in the diplomatic corps. But this girl she treated as an equal, and the girl did not appear to be the type to be easily manipulated. She was content, or so it appeared, to sit out on the street for as long as Vita might choose to leave her there. Vita

Christian glanced at arriving mourners clustered before Burock’s. They would provide cover with time to move out of sight should Vita reappear. He got out of the Mercedes, straightened his jacket and slipped on a pair of sunglasses. As he strolled towards the Buick he refl ected that what was required was gossamer as well as steel; his curiosity would have to be as light as gossamer, his questions delicate as the touch of a cat’s paw. He went to the open window by the empty passenger seat. The girl behind the wheel met his gaze without smiling, but not rudely. She waited to see what this handsome older man had to say to her. Smiling, Christian leaned forward. “I saw my wife get out and go inside.” A pause. “My name is Christian Granger.” “You—you’re Ambassador Granger?” “Vita told you about me?” “No,” said Empress. “She’s said nothing, so little about herself. I read your name in the obituary for her father.” Said Christian, “I learned of his death from their housekeeper.” “Vita—your wife, sir, was in the restaurant where I work when she read the paper. She was upset.” “May I ask your name?” Empress’s dusky cheeks darkened. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir. My name is Empress Kilpatrick.” “I’m happy to meet you, Empress,” said Christian. “I’m a singer on The Gary Moore Show…but I guess diplomats don’t watch variety shows. We’re dark in the summer so I have to waitress. Your wife was at one of my tables when she read the obituary. She sort of—broke down. I had to do something—I took her up to my studio…at the Matsugae Hotel, downtown. She could barely speak…and she seemed to be alone. I couldn’t leave her.” “No, of course not. That was kind of you. She seems to be fond of you. My wife doesn’t open up easily to strangers.” “I told Vita—your wife, sir, that often strangers are the best people to trust.” “Empress,” said Christian, “you helped my wife when I was unable to be with her. I am grateful, and would be more 355 grateful if you call me by my name…Christian, not ‘sir.’” “Oh yes, sir—” Empress fl ushed “—Christian…but it seems odd…I’m an entertainer—you’re an ambassador.” “Not for much longer. Besides, when I met Vita she was doing a cabaret act at a nightclub in Washington.” Empress was gratifi ed by this intimate detail. Christian was dismayed—he’d never spoken of Vita’s past even with Klaus. Why now, and with this stranger? He saw mourners on the green lawn turn to watch a car pull up to the curb. A man in the back seat got out to open the front passenger door and assist a woman dressed in black hat and veil, black dress, gloves and stockings. Christian sighed, “That must be Mrs. Pearce.” “You’ve haven’t met her?” said Empress wonderingly. “No. I haven’t. I’ve never met Vita’s family.” Empress sympathetically held his eyes as if willing him to say more. In silence they watched the grieving Mrs. Pearce. Clearly, Christian thought, Vita got her looks from her father. Even behind the veil he could tell that this woman’s face was ordinary. Stripped bare of makeup, it was a plain face. Either age or prolonged pain had cut deep grooves on either side of her mouth and scooped out dark circles under her eyes. She could’ve been anywhere from fi fty to seventy. Christian noted that the only thing Vita got from her were the legs—the black knit dress rode up well above knee caps to reveal shapely legs for a woman of any age. Christian leaned into the car and looked steadily at Empress. “I came for Mr. Pearce’s service. But there are diffi culties between my wife and myself, this is not the right place to settle that. I’m going to let Vita and her mother have the day to themselves.” Empress thought it unlikely that being left to themselves was something either woman desired. ‘The ambassador knows that. He’s not talking straight to me,’ the girl thought. ‘He’s too proud to admit—what? Failure, defeat?’ “Empress,” Christian said, “will you help me?” “Yes,” the girl said with not a nanosecond of hesitation. “Whatever you ask.” Vita

Christian took from his wallet a personal card, and on the back wrote the hotel’s phone number and his own suite number. “I’m going to stay in until you call. Give the switchboard your name and they’ll connect you. However many hours it takes, I will wait until Vita is in a place tonight where she and I can meet. I must see her. Will you call me?” Empress read the card: ‘His Excellency Christian Granger, The American Ambassador to the Republic of Hellenes.’ She turned the card over to look at Christian’s graceful handwriting. “I will call,” she said, adding no promises or assurances. A blunt ‘I will.’ Christian smiled soberly, then turned to walk away—if only he hadn’t! Had he waited he would’ve been able easily, unobtrusively to take control over Vita without interference; for in twenty minutes there would be no one in front of Burock’s other than the girl Empress. What made him delay the confrontation with his wife? What impulse drove him to involve this exotic-looking girl with the black eyes? Had he gone ahead and apprehended Veda at this opportune time he would’ve averted the horrible catastrophe that was to occur within twelve hour’s time. Inside the funeral home Mrs. Pearce was met by Will Burock and the Rev. Dr. Horace Arbuthnot. Over his black robe the rector wore a surplice that Vita’s mother found “showy” for a funeral—maybe the crisp white and fl oral embroidery was an attempt to compensate for a non-descript physical appearance. Mrs. Pearce was not a naturally religious woman, so when the rector put his hand on her arm and leaned close to offer solace, his fl at California whine grated on nerves already taunt. When the clergyman intoned into her ear, “Jesus saith to his disciples, Ye now have sorrow,” she resolutely pulled away. She was greeted by her sister Blanche who lived in Calabasas and with whom she’d not spoken in years. They exchanged formulaic courtesies and condolences. Fortunately she spotted the teary-eyed, smiling face of Betty who looked splendid in a Sunday garnet silk dress, with her white hair neatly crimped under the rim of a little straw hat. Betty had been her housekeeper ever since she started the restaurants 357 and had stayed on in the evenings to look after Kay and Vita. She clasped the frail woman’s hands. “Betty, stay with me. You knew Ken as well as any of us. He’d want you here with me.” “Oh, Mrs. Pearce, I so want to be here!” Betty said in her inimitable, whimsical cadences. When Will Burock saw that his assistants had fi nished arranging late-arriving fl owers on wire racks and moved them inside the chapel, he discreetly motioned Mrs. Pearce. With the funeral director on one side, Betty on the other, Blanche and her neighbors, the Gesslers, fi lling in behind, Mrs. Pearce started her walk down the wide hallway to the last chapel. Organ music lugubriously oozed from speakers in ceiling air vents. Stepping into the chapel she stopped to look at the fl owers—the wall behind the casket was blanketed with forced hothouse blossoms. With satisfaction Mrs. Pearce noted that the Rev. Dr. Arbuthnot in his busy surplice faded away into insignifi cance. She started down the purple carpet, steeling herself to weep no more. All the folding chairs were taken by friends and neighbors who respectfully stood as she passed. In the empty chapel across the hall Vita, too, rose, but with no respect intended. She stood to get a closer view. With feelings of revulsion she looked at poor old Betty, still being exploited by her mother after all these years with pittance pay. The horrid, low-class Gesslers! Barely-remembered faces from her childhood and adolescence grotesquely marked by time… but the face she wanted most to see was veiled. ‘How like her!’ Vita venomously thought, ‘to get herself up in heavy veil and gloves—gloves in Glendale!’ Vita tensed as her mother stepped forward, to lightly rest her hands on the casket’s rim. Vita’s ice-pick eyes glared with concentrated malevolence, her dry lips parted. Mrs. Pearce looked for the last time into her husband’s face with one thought: ‘He’s always been there, since I was seventeen. When I chucked him, he was there waiting for me. No more. He’s gone.’ The cruelty of death, Edith realized, lies in its fi nality. Vita

She went to step back from the casket when something about her husband’s clasped hands drew her eye. She stared in disbelief at the paper twisted about Ken’s fi ngers—how— offensive—ugly, cruel! She reached to remove this blight. When she yanked the folded paper from cold, hard knuckles it unraveled, and she audibly gasped with shock at the unexpected sight of the unmistakable copperplate. Betty and the Gesslers heard her distinctly groan “Vita!” before she fainted, sliding down the side of the casket onto the fl oor. Amid a fl urry of scrambling legs and helping arms and hands, Vita could clearly see the knotted paper clenched in her mother’s fi st as she lay in a heap on purple carpet. Confi dent that her mother would obey her command she left the funeral home, unnoticed by anyone.

359

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y the time Vita and Empress got back downtown exhaust Bpollution had been wafted out to sea. Oleander hedges on the freeway median that earlier had been drab and motionless now swayed, shivered with leaves fl ashing silvery-green undersides. Palm fronds atop spindly four-story-tall trunks whirled and clicked. Vita insisted they roll down the windows—that Empress fl oor the accelerator so they could feel on their skin desiccated winds gusting in from the desert. Empress found it inappropriate that only minutes after saying her last farewell to her father Vita should revel in these sensuous, autumnal winds Spanish settlers called vientos de Satan, “the breath of Satan.” She would’ve found it suspicious had she known that as soon as she went into AfterShock, to set tables for the dinner shift, Vita slipped out the Matsugae’s rear exit back into the violent streets. Bunker Hill and the fi nancial district were abandoned as rioters continued to stop and beat up white motorists. Sirens screamed from jail vans and ambulances and fi re trucks. Convoys of National Guardsmen rolled into the City and curfews were enforced. Destruction worsened as “Satan’s breath” fanned fi res burning in white-owned businesses looted, then torched by vandals. Insidious Santa Ana winds whipped paper scraps and Vita garbage into the air. Dust devils twirled like tiny tornadoes disseminating mold spores and pollen irritants that caused the skin to itch, hair to curl, nerves to jump. Hospital emergency rooms were unable to keep up with stabbing and shooting victims— during Santa Anas, they say, anything can happen. Exiting the alley behind the Matsugae, Vita was gratifi ed to see that Broadway was mobbed. To take the edge off their anger poor families thronged to Woolworth’s Five & Dime, Salvation Army, Army & Navy outlets, and bargain shoe and electronics stores: like two bloated yet insatiable anacondas, crowds writhed along both sides of Broadway to ingest the wares of vendors mobbed on sidewalks under projecting store canopies. ‘Like Africa!’ Vita thought, striding into the mob, ‘…like souks in Marrakech, Cairo…markets in Mombasa, Jo-burg.’ Close, pungent air was dense with wind-whirled grit and blue smoke from charcoal braziers, where women roasted corn cobs, pan-fried okra, or boiled pots of peanuts. Teenagers hawked produce thrown out by supermarkets, reeking overripe mangoes and bananas and turnips. Makeshift tarpaulin stalls bulged with used clothes, glittery scarves and plastic jewelry, and a prodigious array of women’s wigs and hair-straightening and skin-lightening products. On a blanket spread on the sidewalk Vita rummaged through used (stolen) shoes, for what she would need for the strenuous night ahead: high-top, lace-up black sneakers. She tied the laces together and slung them over her shoulder. She perused rickety tables loaded with amulets carved from bone, knitted skull caps, batik sarongs, plastic combs or Afro picks, and pirated 8-track tapes. Amplifi ed transistor radios blared above the boom of wind and the roar of excitable shoppers, and Vita kept picking up on the insinuating, rallying cry of DJ Magnifi cent Montague as he segued from song to song crooning, “Burn, baby, burn!” What exhilarated Vita was not the primitiveness, but the danger. Her face was the only white face in sight and every eye slewed around to glare as she shoved her way through the crush. She could see hostility in their eyes and this made her bold. When towering roughs with bulbous Afros made mocking noises from 361 the back of their throats, Vita stared them down, as if defying them to act on their hostile impulses. What these people couldn’t know was that she shared their anger, she was as rebellious as they were—like them she was taking defi nitive action. Off Broadway, on Fifth Street, she spotted what she’d come for. The shop’s plate glass was protected by iron bars, and a horizontal white sign running the width of the building read in block red letters, GUNS & AMMO. The man behind the counter looked up when she entered. He was short, bald, and of indeterminate age and race, although the thick, clipped mustache stained yellow-white by age and nicotine made Vita think he was Egyptian or Lebanese. Piggy eyes watched as she looked inside a glass case containing pocket knives, switch blades, blackjacks— and two of the same high intensity fl ashlights used by police. Pointing, she said, “Let me see one of these, please.” The man grunted. He handed over a fl ashlight and Vita twisted its handle—a strong ray struck the shop’s back wall. Vita stood playing the white circle of light over peg board with brackets holding handguns. She steeled herself: a pistol, Father’s Colt. 45, had been the root cause and central image of horrifying nightmares all these years. Never had she held a gun in her hand—except, for once, when dealing with that degenerate Lance Montescue, at his beach house. Vita moved towards the pistol board, and weakly said, “I want one of those.” “Why didn’t ya’ say that’s wha’cha want without mess’in with de fl ashlights?” The voice was like the crust of burnt toast. “I have to be able to see what I’m shooting at, don’t I?” Vita smirked, recovering her chutzpah. “Yeah, with de niggers running wild it’s hard to see what you’re shootin’ at night…them being black.” The man snickered. Vita thought a nice place to aim a test shot would be that spot between the man’s porcine eyes. Better yet, the plastic pen holder in his shirt pocket, right over his heart, that read PREPARATION H. “Ever shoota’ gun, lady?” “Once. I didn’t miss.” The man snickered again as he turned to make a selection Vita for Vita to inspect. When his hand moved to a Colt pistol she burst out, “NO! Not that one.” “Too big and scary for ya,” chuckled the man. Then he took down a Davis .32 cal derringer and extended it. With a pale, blank face Vita took the small pistol, and felt how snuggly it fi t into her palm. “De Sat’rday night special,” the man said. “Get ten feet close, point, pull de trigga’ and ya’ gotta’ dead nigger at ya’ feet.” Saying nothing Vita handled over a $100 bill. The man bundled the pistol and fl ashlight in brown paper. The packet slipped into her jacket pocket. At the shop’s door Vita turned to say, “Instead of Preparation H—ram a prickly stalk of aloe up your ass. Works better.” Wind ripped the door out of her hand as she stepped onto the fi lthy sidewalk. From multitudinous transistor radios on Broadway, The Supremes blasted Baby Love, while in the background Magnifi cent Montague crooned: ‘Burn, baby, BURN!

* * *

In AfterShock, when Empress had double-checked that her tables were in order, she skipped the employee meal and went into the Matsugae’s lobby, where there was a phone booth. She folded doors shut and sat for a moment to collect her thoughts. It still seemed wondrous to be holding the thick, linen personal card of His Excellency Ambassador Christian Granger. More wondrous was to read on the backside, in elegant male handwriting, a phone number with a Hollywood prefi x and a suite number. Using the same professional control as when before the television cameras, in those seconds before the red ON THE AIR light fl ashed, Empress dialed. A refi ned switchboard voice answered with the name of the hotel that caused Empress to catch her breath—the innermost sanctum of Hollywood’s power elite! She gave her name and asked to speak to Ambassador Granger in Suite 7A. After the briefest of hesitations the voice said, “One 363 moment, Miss Kilpatrick, I’ll connect you.” “Empress?” the Bostonian voice answered. “Yes.” “How are you?” “I’m fi ne…thank you.” After a pause. “Empress….it’s me—Christian.” “I’m out of my league!” “If you were, do you think I would be placing my trust in you?” “You’re a diplomat. You know the right things to say.” “Not always. But in this case what I say is true. “OK.” “You’ve said nothing to Vita about our…meeting?” “You don’t trust me entirely, do you?” “Empress, I never asked you to say nothing to her…” “What we agreed on—that I help you—implied that I would say nothing to her. I haven’t. I’m taking your word that you—rather than Vita, who’s upset—know best what to do.” “Are you always this cautious, Empress?” “I want to try to make sure I know what I am doing before I do it. Everything we do has consequences, doesn’t it?” “Our actions do have consequences. And you are right to question me. I have not been open with you. I can’t—not yet. So I suppose you’re right to be skeptical—I’m asking you to take my word on blind faith.” There was silence on the line. It was Empress who broke the impasse. “It’s presumptuous of me to expect explanations. I apologize. I’ll do what I promised. Vita is meeting her mother later tonight. They’re having drinks somewhere in Hollywood.” “Vita says she’s meeting her mother for drinks?” “Yes. Like you Vita doesn’t know me and doesn’t trust me. She’s not lying to me, but she’s holding back what she’s thinking. Or planning…” “Empress, when this is over I want to know more about you. How so young have you become this, er, realistic about people? Do you see through everyone. Don’t answer now, it would be too much for me to take in. First I have to take care of Vita

Vita—that’s critical.” Empress lowered her voice. “I’ll do what you need me to do.” “Did Vita say where she and her mother were meeting?” “No. She said her mother had to wait until neighbors and relatives had cleared out and left her alone. It will late tonight. I work until nine and Vita said we can drive to Hollywood then with plenty of time.” “Did she give indication at all where?” “No. Vita has a way that makes you dare not push her.” “You’ve come to know my wife well in a short time. But it’s not a problem. My hotel’s on the edge of downtown Hollywood. Call when you drop her off, I’ll be there soon.” Said Empress, “Unless the curfew stops us we should be there by 9:30. When I let Vita off, I’ll call again.” “I’ll come right away.” “Good.” “Thank you. I won’t forget this.” Silence. “Please, Empress. Believe me.” “I do…Christian…” said the husky Cajun Queen-voice.

365

47

olice barricaded entrances to the 101, but cars were waved Pthrough once a cursory sweep of fl ashlights showed that passengers inside were white—Negroes were ordered out to be searched. All eight freeway lanes would’ve been empty had it not been for the shrilling, fl ashing, hurtling at high speeds of emergency and fi re fi ghting vehicles. Palm trees shook madly in strengthening winds. The high dome of the sky was deep blue, but behind black silhouettes of encircling mountains apricot and cherry-red bursts of light fl ared like napalm: so-called “murder winds” gusted up to 90 mph through canyons and valleys where there’d been no rain since April—thickets of oily sage chaparral exploded into wildfi res. Hills fl amed up spontaneously. Scattered blazes near Topanga Canyon threatened to converge and spread toward multimillion-dollar cliff houses above the beach in Malibu. The City of Angels was under attack. Torched white- owned businesses blazed, while outlying wildfi res burned with greater ferocity and devastation. The night air was vibrant with lawlessness and catastrophe. Hot Santa Ana winds put people on edge, no one more so than Vita. She raged with primal fury: ‘Why—why did Father have to die! Why not HER? It should’ve been her, goddammit!’ Hatred infused every action Vita took. So advanced were Vita her delusions she believed that circumstances—Fate—conspired to guarantee her success...like at the Galleopi party in Kolonaki ...or at Luxor temple. All the rioting and looting and wildfi res and mass evacuations were mere incidents staged to ensure that there would be no police, militia or emergency crews patrolling Hollywood streets, to interfere with her plans. No authority fi gure except for the long-standing, vital one, and HER she would deal with. Wind blew so hard the Buick’s windows trembled as if about to crack and shatter. While mutely driving Empress sensed, right beside her—eerie waves of feeling, a strong current—of what? hate? could it really be hate? She stole glances at this grieving diplomat’s wife she’d befriended, and wondered at how helpless she was to comprehend what was going on behind the beautiful exterior. Did Vita suspect anything? Did Vita intuit that she’d gone behind her back to conspire with the husband? Was this extraordinary couple about to get the better of her? Yes, they were going to dump her! Vita would go off with her mother and Christian Granger would follow quietly to avoid public embarrassment. Good breeding dictated that gratitude be expressed, no doubt there would be remuneration. Empress dreaded the prospect of watching Ambassador and Mrs. Christian Granger return to their privileged, elitist life in Europe, leaving her behind in the netherworld of show business. This the girl did not intend to allow to happen. She could’ve pounded her hands on the steering wheel in frustration. There was nothing she could say. Vita might well chat along for hours at night as though they were sisters; but of what was really on her mind—her husband, her mother—she would say nothing. Her chatter was like the inky clouds an octopus spews when threatened. Light from passing expressway sodium pole lamps rhythmically fl ashed inside the car. Empress studied Vita’s composed exterior. She examined the appropriately plain black slacks and leather jacket. The Italian jacket had padded shoulders and should’ve pinched in at the waist, but it puffed out as though its pockets were stuffed full—of what? Why obliterate the line of so fi nely tailored an outfi t? 367

“Exit here,” Vita ordered not rudely, simply unable to suppress eagerness. Her evil euphoria engorged itself as the Buick shimmied along Sunset Boulevard, empty save for red trucks screaming toward fi res in the west. Short-circuited traffi c lights fl ashed continuously amber, then crazily red-amber-green- red-amber-green. Forlornly lolling about on street corners whores and their pimps went un-harassed by cops, un-patronized by johns. Wind-whipped garbage wafted about like mutant forms of urban tumbleweed. Vita directed Empress onto North Orange Street. There was a sprinkling of room lights in the decrepit Roosevelt Hotel at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard, opposite Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Empress knew all about The Roosevelt (the fi rst Academy Award ceremony was conducted in its ballroom; “Bojangles” Robinson taught Shirley Temple how to tap dance up the lobby staircase; Errol Flynn made his gin in the barber shop). Everyone today knew that Monroe held her fund-raising sex parties in various suites. Poor Marilyn, Empress thought, all her beauty, talent, sensitivity, yet driven to screw pizza delivery boys or dentists or fat old producers to pay bills. Rumors claimed that after an hour spent with Monroe JFK paid six months of her mother’s nursing home bills, the mother who’d abandoned her. How sad and sordid the movie business. The reason to rise above it, Empress refl ected with the optimism of youth. What she couldn’t know about the Roosevelt was its signifi cance for Vita. Here her mother had thrown the celebration party after her triumph at the Bowl, three blocks away. Friends and supporters had fi lled Dakota’s Bar & Restaurant and the balustraded upper tier of the colonial Spanish lobby, with its magnifi cently painted ceiling. A heady gathering, fl owing with champagne, worthy of the glamorous golden ‘40s—that is, until her mother was called away to meet with her lawyers. Then the horror had begun. Empress would never know any of this because for Vita this night, conversationally, never happened; it existed buried inside her tormented psyche. …Christian knew nothing… …but her mother knew… Empress pulled alongside a shadowy curb. A gust rocked Vita the car. Vita took her hands out of jacket pockets where she’d kept them. She turned towards Empress who abruptly forestalled her with, “I have a girlfriend who lives in Whitely Heights. I’ll visit her until whenever you think is a good time to pick you up.” “Choucroute, you were up at six to get me to Glendale, then you worked tonight. You’ve done enough. I’ll get a cab back.” “You’ll never get one tonight, not with the fi res.” “Empress…I haven’t seen my mother in a long time. Who knows what’s to happen? She may drag me back to her hovel to stay with her. We have catching up to do.” Empress said, “I won’t be seeing you again?” Vita was not so self-absorbed that she didn’t hear the pleading tone. “Of course you will. Don’t be melodramatic. You understand that I have to take care of my mother?” Empress had no way to grasp that shop-worn sentiments were being perverted to foreshadow such immense evil, the worst evil there is. “Look,” confabulated Vita, with her hand on the door handle, “whatever happens I’ll be back tomorrow. You’re not getting rid of me this easily.” Empress smiled at this absurdity. The air between herself and this woman had solidifi ed, had become the defl ective medium off which their words bounced and spun. She broadened her smile as she was required to do during the bow-taking lineup on The Gary Moore Show. Leaning close to take Vita’s hands, she said, “I’m being silly, I know. I can’t bear to think that I won’t see you again. I want to know everything is alright. You know, I care for you, Vita.” Vita gave the fi ercest smile a human face is capable of producing; inside black pupils lightning fl ickered, as inchoate impulses and anxieties careened about her brain. She wondered if this could possibly be true: does anyone ever care what happens to anyone else? ‘Could this silly goose of a girl—be a little in love with me? Absurd!’ With a benedictory wave of her hand, Vita strode towards the hotel’s side entrance. At that instant Empress noticed something that made her 369 decide she was not going to leave Vita to her own devices and desires, dangerous as she suspected they might be. Throughout the drive she’d assumed that with the subdued jacket and slacks Vita wore low pumps; but watching her cross the sidewalk she spotted one of the two purchases Vita had made Broadway. Empress knew that no woman no matter how blase ever went into Dakota’s, with or without Errol Flynn behind the bar, wearing lace-up track shoes. As soon as Vita vanished through revolving doors, Empress drove by the front entrance on Hollywood Boulevard and turned at the corner onto Hawthorn and then back onto North Orange. She circled the block in time to see Vita brush past a sinister-looking Pakistani doorman under the main portico. She crossed the street and walked a block to North Highland. Empress drove at 20 mph to keep well behind. She was intrigued as she knew that at this juncture North Highland exited downtown to merge with 101—nothing ahead but the freeway. She swerved to avoid hitting palm fronds and bark ripped down by winds. She kept her eyes on the all-in-black fi gure boldly striding up the stiff grade of Cahuenga Pass. Dead ahead was the black acreage of The Hollywood Bowl, where trees heaved in the malevolent winds. The girl’s consciousness fl uttered as she recalled from this morning the fi erce passion with which Vita had spoken of her debut performance at The Bowl. She squinted her Choctaw-huntress’s eyes to watch Vita pass the marquee reading CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. She skirted the monumental fountain statues by Oscar-statuette sculptor George Stanley, Muses of Music, Dance, and Drama. The fi gure of Vita herself became a disincarnate shape dissolving away into dark parking lots. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ exhaled the lapsed Irish-Catholic girl, “is she nuts!” She waited ten minutes but Vita did not reappear. She vanished into fi fty-six acres of woods engulfi ng the natural amphitheater on the mountain slope. Night blotted out the crackling electric grid below of the sprawling megalopolis. Vita

Empress wheeled about the Buick and drove to a White Castle on Franklin Avenue, where there was a pay phone. She put in a dime and dialed the number Christian had written on the back of his card. Again a cultured switchboard voice answered but when she asked for Ambassador Granger, this time the voice inquired, “Is this Miss Kilpatrick?” Floored, Empress said, “Yes…it is.” “I’ll connect you, Miss.” “Empress?” Christian said, picking up before she had time to collect her thoughts. “Yes.” “Where are you. It’s after eleven.” “We were late leaving. I’m at a White Castle.” Embarrassed, the girl glared at plasticized snow-white “medieval stone block” siding. “Vita and her mother are reuniting after a decade’s separation over 15-cent burgers?” “That would be more believable than what’s happening.” Christian waited. “She had me drive to the Roosevelt Hotel. She said they were having drinks in Dakota’s. I gathered Dakota’s has some signifi cance for them. But as I let her off I noticed she was wearing tennis shoes, the high lace-up kind basketball players wear. I waited, and saw her leave the hotel to walk to North Highland— which is strange—North Highland goes to the freeway, but she kept going.” “What’s she wearing?” “A leather jacket and slacks. Black, very tailored and appropriate, but the sneakers look weird.” “Indeed. Where did she go?” “I don’t know—I mean, it’s bizarre. She disappeared at the entrance to the Bowl.” “The Hollywood Bowl?” Empress knew of no other Bowl, so said nothing. “It’s closed for winter. There’s nothing there.” “With the riots, probably not even a night guard.” “Empress, it’s late. I have no idea what’s going on, but this is something you don’t have to get involved in. You’ve done 371 enough. I’ll take it from here.” Empress drew in her breath. She’d lied to placate Vita, but she knew she had to play it straight with her husband who seemed genuinely concerned. “That’s what Vita said, not to involve myself. But I am… Christian… I am involved. I’ve worried about Vita. I have to know she’s OK.” Christian was silent for a moment. “You’re not afraid?” “Of what?” “It’s a dangerous out there, Empress. Looters…gangs egged on by these winds…fi res. It’s risky.” “Then I’ll go back to The Bowl. You may need me. You’ve seen my bomb, I’ll park it behind the shell. When you get there we can see how things look, together.” “Stay in the car. Don’t go into the amphitheatre. Understand? “Yes.” The girl returned to the palm-lined entrance on North Highland. She scanned parking lots and saw no vehicles, no sign of guards. Turning off headlights she eased the Buick into the loading zone fl ush up against the backside of the concert shell. Built to block out freeway noise the 60-ton shell fi lls what used to be a sylvan hollow called Daisy Dell, where the natural resonance was so extraordinary that when tested acoustically, in 1922, a BB gun pellet dropped from a height of one foot onto the skin of a kettle drum could be heard sharp and distinct at Bolton Canyon’s high rim. The shell’s Zonolite coating emitted a grayish luminescence. Its curved, sloping hump made Empress think of a tribal stone talisman, like Stonehenge or a Mayan pyramid. She shivered at premonition of something primitive and violent in the offi ng. She tried to ignore it—things like that, she thought, mean nothing. The Mercedes sports sedan with its roof on drove past the Fountain of the Muses. Empress fl ashed headlights and the little car knifed through darkness towards her. Christian slid it in beside the Buick, and for a brief while they sat and looked at each other through open windows. Empress was fi rst to open her door and get out. Vita

Christian followed suit and they met standing face to face before their parked cars. Their eyes accustomed to darkness and they looked into each other’s face. Christian marveled again at the girl’s strange beauty, those broad native American cheekbones, the black pools of wide-set eyes. There was no sound around them, other than that of wind sliding in a rushing wave over aerodynamically molded curves of the great shell. “Where do you think she is?” Empress asked. “She’s waiting, inside somewhere, waiting.” “You think her mother will come to such a place…on a night like this?” “I think her mother will come anywhere she demands.” ‘And you?’ Empress wondered. ‘Do you always give in to Vita?’ The inexperienced, but shrewd girl and the seasoned diplomat averted their eyes, fl ummoxed, unable to put into words fl eeting and subversive thoughts. A taxi entered by the Muses’s Fountain and stopped at the foot of Pepper Tree Lane. Empress and Christian stared transfi xed as a woman got out by herself. She paid the driver and the cab left. The woman stood still and erect for several minutes, looking about as if in disbelief at fi nding herself alone in this God-forsaken spot. Having seen her for the fi rst time this morning in front of the funeral home, Christian knew from her height and assured posture that this was Mrs. Pearce, his mother-in-law for seven years, and of whom he had never known anything, not even her fi rst name. Empress said softly, “She must love Vita very much to come here by herself like this.” “Yes,” Christian’s voice was bitter, “and that’s dangerous. To focus on someone—anyone—so intensely is like a poison. Love can easily be the most destructive force there is.” He took the girl’s hands in his. “Empress, go now and leave this to me. Go, please.” “No!” They stared at each other. “I can’t leave. I know you have to do this alone, but I’ll wait in the car. You might need me. I’ll be OK—Christian.” 373

He let go of her hands. “You’re sure you want to do this?” “Yes. Don’t ask why. I couldn’t say why now.” Christian waited until she was back inside the Buick. “Do the doors lock?” “The windows don’t roll up. Go—go!” Obediently, Christian started off toward where he’d seen Mrs. Pearce enter the abandoned park. Vita

48

rs. Pearce climbs Pepper Tree Lane. Gusting, incendiary MSanta Ana winds shake giant live oak and hickory and sycamore trees, but beneath their tumultuous high canopies, night air barely rustles through the branches of modest pepper trees that started out as fence posts—then in true movie magic fashion sprouted, budded, and grew into trunks gnarled with knots and burls. Arched limbs and fronds of slender pepper leaves form a shadow-fretted allee at the entrance lane. The newly-made widow glances about in fear of trespassers more sinister than herself, who she’s sure lurk in deep shadows between boarded-up concession stands, or on empty café terraces. From fi fty feet away, Christian Granger watches. He’s never stalked anyone—one more humiliation to which Vita subjects him. He studies the mother-in-law he’s yet to meet, as she stops under an art deco lamp pole to fumble in her purse. She’s not old, really, Christian thinks, but looks it. Prematurely thin white hair is tucked under a mink toque and the matching jacket with padded shoulders cloaks an emaciated frame. Startling is the face: a mouth thick with lipstick that in the pinkish light seems a liverish magenta hue; dark eyes with creases at the corners that are accentuated, not softened by liquid foundation and powder; clownish eyebrows so lushly drawn with 375 liner as to resemble a pair of fuzzy caterpillars. Such god-awful makeup, Christian surmises, is her attempt to mask the imprint of drinking and to look her best. ‘In these hot winds she wears her ratty old mink. Even in grief she wants to impress Vita.’ He is moved by pity. Mrs. Pearce slips from her purse a piece of paper. Her hands tremble as she reads for the umpteenth time the six, stark words: ‘MIDNIGHT AT THE BOWL COME ALONE’ She climbs past box offi ce booths up a ramp to chain- link barricades, where she discovers one gate nudged open—its padlock dangles loose. ‘Has Vita anything to do with this?’ her mother wryly wonders. ‘What should an ambassador’s wife know about picking locks.’ Christian closes in, slipping under the ramp. Hearing his barely perceptible footsteps Mrs. Pearce, right above, stops to search shadows for signs of movement. A night guard? Did she imagine the footsteps? She listens to her own ragged breath, of that she can be as sure as she is of the irritating susurration overhead of evil winds in parched branches. A gust comes ripping up the ramp, rolling and twisting and piling fallen leaves in rustling heaps against chain-link. The ramp seems longer, and steeper—but then, it’s been twelve years since she was last here. Thrashing branches abruptly stop and the night air is unnaturally still. She confronts the abyss of the abandoned amphitheatre, squinting to make out in darkness hundreds of concrete tiers with wood-slat benches in a great spiral up the mountainside. On a high ridge, wind-breaker circles of eucalyptus trees writhed against a sky red from wild fi res. Lower on the mountain’s fl ank hissing winds gust and whirl through Aleppo pines, causing heavy, needled boughs to rise and fall with the majestic slowness of a funeral dance. Tentatively Mrs. Pearce enters Promenade 2, behind garden mezzanine box seats piled with folded canvas chairs and collapsible picnic tables. In the black hollow of Daisy Dell the hulking acoustical shell glows with ghostly luminosity. Cautiously Mrs. Pearce negotiates steep steps descending between box stalls. Wind gusts lessen and she breathes in the bittersweet scent of Vita pines, then realizes why Vita set their reunion in this place—to taunt her! To provoke, annoy, and show ill will. She was not an educated person nor had she any talent or sensitivity for the fi ner things of life. She was, she knew, and never had Vita let her forget it, an ordinary person. But because of her prodigy daughter she could appreciate the historic signifi cance of this place. These box seats once were reserved for the likes of Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Chaplin, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Korda, and Miss Fay Wray, as they applauded Douglas Fairbanks and Tyrone Powers in their 1926 production of Julius Caesar; Vladimir Horowitz when he gave his fi rst outdoor concert; Sergei Rachmaninoff who performed while visiting another child prodigy in Pasadena; or Miss Katherine Hepburn, who landed her own hot air balloon in front of the shell during a symphonic performance of The 1812 Overture. None of these great stars, not even the horrid Beatles last year, nor Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Al Jolson or Fred Astaire, had fi lled the Bowl with its record crowd: for in 1936, 26,410 people paid to hear the voice of the diminutive French singer, Lili Pons. ‘An opera singer, like Vita!’ thinks Mrs. Pearce. Professor Vianello, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, had chosen his sixteen-year-old prodigy coloratura—her own Vita! As she approaches the huge shell, Edith’s eyes strain to pierce pitch-dark shadow at center stage. In her world Lili Pons herself would pale beside the remembered sight of Vita, standing alone backed by the philharmonic. How young, how beautiful she had looked with her auburn hair loosely waved over bare shoulders, how fl awlessly her milk-white skin gleamed in the wash of spotlights. Thousands of faces spreading up the mountainside had beamed as Vita winged her way through dizzying high notes and thrilling trills. Christian slips through the open chain link gate, and feeling foolish, skulks from one patch of shadow to the next, cast by thirty-fi ve-foot-tall pedestals built to house banks of spotlights. The grandiose, pseudo-Babylonian Hollywood scale pleases him and reminds him of pylons at Luxor Temple, or neo- Roman imperial stands erected by Albert Speer for Nazi rallies. He watches Mrs. Pearce stumble in darkness and thinks 377 of Vita’s cruelty, doing this to her mother: the ugliest of things happening in this grandest of places: right perfection wrongfully disgraced. Then in a fl ash: ‘Evil is good perverted.’ Edith crosses plywood covering a drained refl ecting pool, breathing in the fungoid stench of decay. She climbs utility steps onto the 7,000-square-foot stage. Sensor device lights fl icker. Concentric acoustical panels curve overhead like claws. She is overwhelmed by the sensation of being dragged along towards some incomprehensible and inescapable horror. In black shadow at the shell’s base, stage right, Christian steps on dry twigs. Edith whirls—rats?—another trespasser? Automatically her hand slips into one voluminous pocket of the mink jacket. Tears and perspiration cause eye-liner and streak. She sobs out loud in fear and in despair at her guilt, her loneliness, her longing to make everything different from the way it was. High on the Bowl’s upper rim, a lone fi gure dressed in all-black watches from under heaving, strong boughs. Nostrils fl are as they fi ll with burning-acrid, pine-sweet air. The beautiful face is pale, but radiant against a sky pulsating rose from out-of control fi res. Vita can make out the fi gure on the stage below; from this height and distance her mother is less than an inch tall…so trifl ing, piffl ing an adversary. What Vita cannot distinguish is the black silhouette of her husband standing in blacker shadows, at stage right. Gripping the Davis .32 cal derringer inside her leather jacket pocket, she strides down into the amphitheater.

Vita

49

ita’s descent covers a distance of 525 feet and takes six Vminutes to make. The slope of the amphitheater is steep, at 51 degrees; hundreds of upper concrete steps are high-rise, at nine inches—Vita takes them in a controlled stride keeping her body erect with arms swinging at her sides, to build momentum. Wind gusts at her back make her feel like a demigod making her entrance, triumphant, inevitable. One more time she has to confront her mother in order to be able to leave her forever, to shed her and be delivered from her. Midway at Promenade 2 she stops to marshal her evil energies. She sees ahead on the dark stage that she has not yet seen her: the near-blind bitch keeps making frantic movements, looking this way and that. From shadow Christian spots his wife. A bolus of epinephrine makes his heart pound. ‘Got her, goddammit—got her!’ Vita’s hand remains inside the jacket’s bulkily loaded pocket, as she approaches box seats before the covered moat. Snakelike, she glides forward with a lascivious eagerness not to miss the moment when her mother sees her. There’s a choking sound as Edith fl ings out both hands, to croak “Vita! Vita! VITA!” Pointing the high intensity fl ashlight up at her face 379 while pressed beneath her chin, Vita switches on the beam— lips, nostrils, eyebrows leap out from darkness like a warped, disembodied mask. “Vita, my god!” The goblin-face lewdly wobbles, leers. “Stop it, Vita! Stop it!” With the grace of a ballerina Vita then arches an arm above her head and aims the light, like a baby spot, down at her face. Insolently she inclines her head from side to side, to allow mother to drink in the beauty of her perfect three-quarter profi le. Like a switchblade her voice cuts through night air, “Is this better, mommie dearest?” Despite her grief and fear and frustration Edith feels those old heat-lightning fl ickers within herself, and as always has no resolve to fi ght them down. It is unnatural and unhealthy the way she strains to drink in her daughter’s face. All these lost years she has dreamed of the scent of Vita’s skin and hair…like a dreamy drug… dreamy... When she speaks her voice is broken, weak, but due to the amphitheater’s paranormal acoustics her beloved daughter hears her words distinctly. “You look beautiful, Vita… you haven’t changed—not at all! You’re more beautiful…than ever...” With a violent out-thrust of her arm Vita shoots the blinding beam into her mother’s eyes. Edith fl ings a hand and an arm up to shield her face not from light, but from the stare of cruel eyes. “Those eyebrows, mommie dearest—been freelancing as a Shriners’s clown? Or do you think the Clarible maquillage conceals the hag you’ve turned into?” Vita switches off the fl ashlight. Edith lets her arm drop and waits for her eyes to re-adjust to twilight darkness. Claw-like concentric rings overhead glow weakly with luminescence. But twenty feet from the lip of the stage, across the chasm of the covered moat, Vita remains a black fi gure standing still and straight. Edith inches her way downstage. “Stop!” the fearsome apparition orders. “Vita—we buried your father this morning. It’s been harrowing…people standing around to stare at poor dead Ken— Vita and at me.” “I was there. I was there before you, to be alone with Father.” “Why didn’t you join me! Why do the horrible thing you did—jamming paper into his hands?” “Father wasn’t offended. You think I’m going to make it easy for you?” Edith brushes her eyes clear of tears and tries to not think of streaked eyeliner. “No, I suppose not.” In their confrontations, no matter how hard she tries, Vita has always had the capability to hurt and humiliate. Why should it be different now? “So. What do you want of me, Vita?” Vita steps onto the moat’s raised ledge. In loosely fi tted jeans and lace-up running shoes she stands with legs spread as she assumes the role of interrogator. Beneath her, under plywood, rats scuttle. “Father died…because of his lungs?” “Yes.” “In the hospital?” “No, not that! He wanted to be at home with me.” Vita made a sneering noise. Edith fl utters. “I kept our bedroom like it’s always been, not like a sickroom. I emptied the hall linen closet to store his medicines, the air cylinders—“ Vita snaps, “I get the picture and I’m touched. But how did you take care of him properly? You don’t know a damn thing.” “A nurse came every afternoon except Sunday. She showed me how to chart his pulse and breathing. I practiced giving injections using a lemon—” “—injections of what?” “…costeroids, mainly. I knew how to regulate the oxygen. I was with him all the time. Our beds were raised so I could always see him.” “Dr. Schweitzer,* I presume?”

*1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer 381

Edith asserts, “I was with him until the end. Until he died.” Rage ferments inside Vita, but she makes her voice go fl at and dull. She speaks through her teeth. “On Monday...” “…yes…” “…what time?” “…in the morning…” “What time?” “I don’t know, Vita. I was upset, I don’t remember.” “You didn’t notice the time the man you’ve used for thirty- fi ve years DIED, goddammit!” “It was mid-morning…9 or 10...” “Were you haranguing him?” “No, Vita. It wasn’t like that between Ken and me. We— we had made our peace—like you and I should.” “It’s not that easy, Mother. I want to know what Father said—did he say anything?” “Yes—no.” “Yes? No?” “What I mean…he’d not talked for three days. The nurse and I watched round-the-clock to make sure that his breathing was OK. Then…Monday…before he died…he did speak—I was so happy!” Vita trembles. “What. Did. He. Say?” “We spoke of you.” Edith sees the trap she’s set for herself—if she repeats Ken’s last words it will be catastrophe. She’s terrifi ed when the black fi gure of Vita lunges with a crash onto plywood over the scavenging rats. “Tell me what he said!” Edith has always lied badly. She can never to do it convincingly. She fl ushes and fumbles. But in darkness, separated from her daughter by the moat’s chasm, she feels that she can do it—she has to! She can’t tell Vita what her father’s last words had been. “We talked about you, Vita.” “You’re trying my patience, Mother. Stop your goddamned obfuscating.” Edith weakly smiles at her daughter’s attempt to intimdate with use of fancy words. “We said…we said said how much we Vita wanted you to come home. We wanted to see you, have you with us again at home.” “Like the Real McCoys? Overlooking that like you threw Father out—divorced him so you could have sole ownership of the chuck-wagons.” “It wasn’t that simple, Vita. There were other issues—” “—like shoving me into bed with Lance! Sixteen- goddamn-years-old and you wanted me in bed with the degenerate you felt guilty about fucking yourself—” “Vita! That’s—” “—no, you lying bitch—YOU brought the gun to the beach house that night so YOU could kill Lance—but YOU didn’t have the guts. You were too much of a simp to do it yourself. So you dropped the gun on the fl oor, turned tail and ran, and left the pistol so that I would do it! YOU ALMOST RUINED MY LIFE!” In shadow Christian shrivels, at last facing the horror of his self-deception. No longer could he delude himself that his personal and professional life adhered to the highest principles of ethics and aethestics, that his ambassadorship and his marriage were distinguished by intelligence and beauty. No! He had allowed raw ugliness into his life by marrying a murderess. Vita was and had always been a killer. For this he had ruined his career and caused the wanton killing of his closest friends. Wretched, he watches Mrs. Pearce, who stands trembling. When she speaks her voice is strong and sure. Christian tries, but fails to take solace from her futile rebuttal: “Lies. Lies. That’s all lies, Vita!” Vita paces back and forth on plywood, speaking in a calmer voice. “Mu-thaaa, you must stop calling everything a lie. Especially when we know you’re lying most of all to yourself. One might think you are truly deluded if you imagine we’re going to hug and get sticky, and forget the vile things you’ve done to Father and me.” Edith creeps to the lip of the stage. Her eyes strain to look down into her daughter’s shadowy face so close to her own, at last, after all these lonely years. She smells the stench of rats. “Vita…I know I did things that were…wrong. I know that. But everything I did—everything—I did it for you and Kay.” 383

“Kay? Ohhh, Kay. You remember Kay.” “Don’t be absurd, Vita. I loved Kay! She was a perfect sweet child. She wasn’t…diffi cult…like you, Vita.” Vita smiles. “It’s refreshing, Mother, to hear you still have some slight contact with reality. Be that as it may…you went ahead the day after sweet-perfect Kay’s funeral opening your fi rst chuck wagon.” “I had to. I had to open as advertised—I couldn’t risk failing. I had lost Kay, I had only you—for the sake of both of you I had to—SUCCEED!” “FOR YOURSELF—NOT FOR ANY GODDAMN KAY OR VITA! You put Kay in a tutu so she could wobble her way through pas de deux from Coppelia, when what Kay wanted was to get muddy playing football with the boys. All Kay would have ever wanted out of life was some lunk-head to make babies and play house with. You never knew Kay—you never loved Kay!” Edith’s back stiffens and her eyes fl ash. “You’re right about Kay. She was a sweet, loving tom-boy. But what about you? Did you not love the clothes I bought? The grand piano so you could practice at home when I let you drop out of school? Lessons with Professor Vianello? And this—THIS—” Edith fl ings out both arms as if to embrace the whole amphitheater —”fi lled with thousands of people cheering you? YOU!” “I was sixteen-years-old. What did I know about anything? You robbed me of a childhood. It was years before I learned I had no—no real talent. I was a fl ash-in-the-pan wunderkind, every town in the world has one.” Vita strides to the left side of the moat and slips her hand inside a leather pocket while mounting utility steps. “No, no, no, no, no. You never loved Father…Kay…or me. You used Father until you saw he would never be rich. You tried to manipulate Kay but she died. Me you were able to exploit. You were right there beside me every goddamn step of the way—HERE!—backstage, in my dressing room in your fancy new clothes—soaking up the adulation and attention I earned. You were nothing but the slut- daughter of a garage mechanic. All you could ever do was bake your lousy pies and cakes. I had beauty and talent, everything you wanted. You used me! Used me!” Vita

Edith rasps, “So I never loved you. What about your husband, Vita, does he love you?” “I do.” The baritone voice projects from shadow. Edith and Vita jerk about to face Christian, at stage right, who steps forward. “I do,” he repeats. “YOU! BASTARD!” shrieks Vita, gripping the Davis .32 derringer inside her pocket as she steps onto the stage. Red cyclop-eyes of sensors fl icker. Ring-claws smolder in near darkness. Collecting her thoughts, regaining her bravura, Vita scoffs, “Finally you’re up to speed with me. Can we assume goons are lurking behind, or did you manage this on your own?” “I’m alone. I’ve come to help you.” So saying, Christian moves closer to the woman who for eighteen remaining minutes is his mother-in-law. “Mrs. Pearce, I’m sorry you and I are meeting for the fi rst time…like this. I give you my condolences on the loss of your husband…Vita’s father. It’s regrettable we’ve never met before, and I take responsibility.” “Thank you, sir. I appreciate what you’re saying. Ken and I naturally wished we could’ve met you. We followed your… postings…in Thailand, and in Greece…” Vita makes ugly noises. “Mother, don’t curtsey. I know your old pussy is wet and steamy at being patronized by Beacon Hill’s most glittering scion—and—a personal representative of the President. But attempt a little class.” “Vita,” says her mother, “it’s no good hating. It’s wicked. We should try to love— “LOVE—LOVE!” Vita screams with corpse-eyed exuberance. “Where is this love! Where is this love! I can’t see it. I can’t touch it. Can’t feel it—never have. All I can do—is— HEAR—HEAR your goddamn meaningless words.” “Vita, she’s your mother. She loves you—“ “No!” snarls Vita. “What she imagines is love is not—it’s something in the blood, these ravings. When I dropped out of her womb she lost something when there was not much there to begin with. Ever since she’s been trying to wring things out of me that she’s never had. It has nothing to do with love—it’s blood lust.” Demons claw at Vita’s heart; hate and misery and despair 385 swell up in her guts and spill over. Christian and Mrs. Pearce are struck dumb by this stream of hurtful words pouring over them. With her hand back in her pocket to clutch the derringer pistol, Vita moves closer to her mother. “Now that his excellency, my esteemed husband is with us…now that you know I’m not listening to any more of your delusions…let’s go back to Monday morning when Father died. No more the McCoys at home together. I want to know what Father said—exactly what you and he said. I want the truth!” Edith Pearce looks down at the stage fl oor. “WELL? What did you argue about? What did you say to upset him?” “Nothing, Vita. Your father—Ken…was—at the end. He spoke only briefl y. He went back…sleeping—“ “Sleeping! Sleeping…just like that—” “Vita, I had read his pulse. It—his breathing were…like they had been for so many weeks…weak…but his breathing was steady.” “Did you call the nurse?” “There was no need, Vita. He was the same as he had been…” “Did you sit there with him there…on the bed?” “I did for a while…then… “Then!” “I straightened up, collected dirty towels and went down to the kitchen—” “—ah, all the pancake...your old date, Mr. Jim Beam, was waiting.” Edith fl ushes. “It…helps...” “While you and Mr. Beam were there alone what did you do? What were you thinking about, you vile bitch, when you knew Father was weak…when you knew, as you say, he was at the end?” “I—I don’t know. I tried to steady myself—why, I cleaned the sink!” “…Ma’ McCoy scrubbing her sink,” sneered Vita. “…yes, it’s crazy, but I became obsessed with stains in the grout—I wanted to get them out. I scrubbed, I scrubbed and got Vita most of it out.” “For how long—how many minutes were you trying to remove old rot?” “I don’t know, Vita…minutes…maybe twenty—” “—gargling whiskey and cleaning the sink for twenty minutes? WHILE MY FATHER WAS DYING!” Edith bows her head, sobbing. Vita inches closer. “Then what, Mother—what happened!” “I went back…to see…” “What did you fi nd?” “He was dead. He was gone.” Vita whirls, as if to run away. She faces curving, concentric rings with her back to her mother and her husband. She lets out a long wail, a keening moan, but louder than a moan, followed by terrible cries that sound real, not staged, that come from a soul in torment. When she turns she speakes in a voice pulled up from out of her entrails. “MONSTER! You’re a monster! You let my Father die! You knew he was dying and you scrubbed the sink so he would die alone—ALONE! I should’ve been there with him—not you! not you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!” Christian’s command halts Vita’s lunge at her mother. “STOP!” For years he had soothed Vita after nightmares in which the recurring horror had been that of a gun going off— he knows she’s not be armed now. He can overpower her. He moves closer to Mrs. Pearce and speakes in a gentle voice. “I’m here to take Vita with me, Mrs. Pearce. I’m taking her into my protective custody. I’ve made arrangements…with a clinic in Switzerland…to give her the help she needs.” “I don’t understand.” “Nor do it,” sneers Vita. “What fresh fantasy is this?” Christian pulls from an inside jacket pocket a folded laboratory plastic sack. He extends the bag out so that Vita can see what’s inside.2 With bravado she smirks, “…and?” “Klaus’s blood is on the stiletto’s blade—I’ve had it tested—“ “—pray tell what this science fi ction has to do with me?” “—the coffee fi lters came from Herve’s bed table at the 387

Meridien—saturated with the distilled poison you used—“ “—stilettos—poisoned coffee fi lters—what is this! Agatha fucking Christie?” Mrs. Pearce looks searchingly at Christian. “Mrs. Pearce,” he says, “I am so sorry, but I must tell you— Vita—she—she killed my two closest friends. This has nothing to do with you—she did it to get at me.” Both of them know this is false. Vita’s murderous rages had germinated and blossomed out of, fi rst, her mother’s, then his own blind, unquestioning love: ‘Evil is good perverted.’ Edith turns to face Vita. Her voice is hard. “Your Father was right.” Vita glares with a fury so cold she can’t speak. Her hand tightens on the seductively curved handle of the pistol, ready to pull it out but her mother’s words cause her to hesitate. “Ken was right, what he said about you. His very last words, Vita—do you want to know what they were?” Vita jerks her head up and down. “He said you were rotten. You’d always been. He said Kay was worth two of you. He said I should forget you—treat you like a rotten tooth and yank it out.” “FATHER LOVED ME!” Vita shrieks. She stares past her mother at her husband. “SHE’S LYING. FATHER LOVED ME! WE UNDERSTOOD EACH OTHER! HIS LOVE WAS THE ONLY LOVE I EVER HAD! Veda lunges toward Edith. “YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT FROM ME!” She would’ve pull the trigger had she not realized that her mother’s arm was extended straight ahead gripping in one hand Father’s old Colt .45, aimed straight into her face. Hair streaming, her eyes fi xed and gaping, Vita erupts into wild peals of laughter: “YOU—YOU KILL ME?” The explosion inside the shell is deafening. Mrs. Pearce and Christian duck away using hands to shield their ears from roaring reverberations that gain in strength; it seems that the concrete shell will crumble and collapse from impact of some catastrophic trauma deep inside the earth. The air fi lls with the acrid stench of burnt gunpowder. As the noise and smell dissipate, the husband and the mother stand looking down at what is at their Vita feet. Vita is on her back with arms by her sides and legs stretched out before her quite naturally, as if she had merely lay down on the stage fl oor to rest. The only indication of disaster is the single neat, round black hole in her forehead. Beneath the graceful fanning out of her hair a black pool of blood from the exit wound oozes across the stage fl oor. Vita exists no more. With a clank the Colt .45 drops from her mother’s hand. Edith and Christian stand motionlessly for many minutes. Lamenting moans of wind whip over the shell. Christian cannot conceive of summoning police, nor does he have any notion of what to do with Mrs. Pearce. He detects tension in her face, with involuntary twitching of muscle around the eyes and lips. Her hands remain balled-up. Her legs tremble as if they might give way and collapse beneath her. Slowly and with tremendous effort she lowers herself to her knees and kneels beside the prone corpse of the beloved daughter to whom she has given, and now taken, life. Christian can think of commonplaces to utter, conventional questions to ask, but he can think of nothing real—nothing that will help this tortured woman. What use are words? Mrs. Pearce betrays no signs of discomfort at his remaining by her side, silent. An indefi nable amount of time passes. Christian hears distant sounds. His eyes scan the amphitheater near the chain-link gates. Mrs. Pearce, too, hears them. She lifts her head with the alertness of a tigress guarding her cub. A male voice shouts and beams of light fl ash over the stage. “DON’T MOVE!” Shafts of light freeze on Christian, standing, and Mrs. Pearce, kneeling. “HANDS IN THE AIR!” Shamefully Christian and Mrs. Pearce hold their hands above their heads. Two police detectives in suits and a uniformed offi cer run down the side aisle and leap onto the stage. The senior detective strides toward the body of Vita. Without touching, he examines the wound in the forehead. He looks at the Colt.45 nearby. Using his handkerchief he gathers the pistol into his 389 jacket pocket. “Whose gun is this?” “…mine…” “Did you fi re the gun, m’am?” “…yes…” “Show me your identifi cation, m’am.” Mrs. Pearce fumbles in her purse and produces a driver’s license that expired six years ago. “Edith Pearce, 45 Olive Street in Glendale—correct?” Mrs. Pearce nods. “What is your relation, Mrs. Pearce…to…” “…my…daughter—she’s my only daughter.” Mrs. Pearce clutches her face with both hands, making no sound. The detective looks at Christian. “May I see your identifi cation, sir?” “Show me yours, offi cer.” Christian reads the proffered laminated card that identifi es the detective as Lieutenant Jeremy Cloade, LAPD, Hollywood precinct. Christian hands over his diplomatic passport. The detective doesn’t conceal his surprise that the man before him is the U.S. ambassador to Greece. “What, sir, is your relation to the deceased?” “She is my wife.” Detective Cloade gives a sardonic smile. “Mother— husband—dead wife and daughter—a regular Greek family.” The detective takes out a pair of cuffs. “OK, Mrs. Pearce, both your hands, please. We’re going in.” Christian says, “Lieutenant Cloade, I’m posting bail for Mrs. Pearce.” “That you may do, sir. But the court clerk’s offi ce won’t open until nine. Until then Mrs. Pearce is mine. She’s coming with me.” Edith Pearce pays no attention as the detective snaps cuffs onto her wrists. She is preoccupied with watching Vita’s body being lifted and secured onto a collapsible stretcher. Policemen lower the stretcher from the stage and start up the side aisle past towering pylons. Detective Cloade walks ahead leading the procession. Christian supports Mrs. Pearce at her elbow as they follow the Vita stretcher, with its pathetic burden. A lull in the winds makes black pine trees go limp. Shadows fall down from their solid mass in great shovelfuls like black earth into a grave. The cortege passes through chain-link barricades and down the ramp. Near a box offi ce ticket booth, Christian’s eyes meet those of Empress Kilpatrick. The girl has pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head to cover unruly hair. So still does she stand, so tall is she, so enigmatic is her expression, that to Christian she seems to be some archaic priestess. He realizes that it was she who summoned police. Empress steps forward. Christian murmurs to Mrs. Pearce and lets go her elbow. Without speaking, and with a blank expression and dry eyes, Empress moves to stand beside Christian as they look at the body on the stretcher, covered by a sheet. Together they walk Pepper Tree Lane, with their shoulders lightly touching. At the parking lot the stretcher is loaded into a waiting ambulance. A uniformed offi cer accompanies the body, while Detective Cloade and his partner escort Mrs. Pearce in the cruiser. The cars move away. Empress and Christian look across empty pavement. Neither speaks, nor makes a move to leave. Christian feels on his arm the girl’s strong hand.