It was a terrible thought to realize what had been Hilary's fate … but how could he have known … if only … he began coughing terribly as he thought of it, and eventually had to hang up the phone. And John went back to work. There was a mountain of files waiting for him on his desk, after being in Florida all week, and he stayed in the office until seven-thirty, and then stopped for a hamburger at the Auto Pub on the way home. It was nine o'clock when he got home, and the phone was ringing. It was Sasha.
“Where've you been all night long?” She sounded suspicious and angry.
“At my office. And I stopped and had something to eat on the way home. And how are you, Miss Riva?” There had been no preamble, no inquiry as to how he was, and she hadn't called him in Florida all week, even though he'd left his number on her machine, but he knew she'd been busy with rehearsals.
“I'm all right. I thought I'd done something to one of my tendons yesterday, but thank God I didn't.” Nothing had changed in his absence.
“I'm glad. Want to come over for a drink?.” He half wanted to see her and half didn't. The week in Florida had been incredibly depressing and he needed cheering up, but on the other hand he didn't want to listen to the familiar litany about her ligaments and her tendons.
“I'm exhausted. I'm already at the apartment. But I'm free this weekend. We could do something tomorrow.”
“Why don't we go somewhere? How about the Hamptons or Fire Island?” The summer had already set in, and it was hot everywhere. It was going to be a beautiful weekend.
“Dominique Montaigne is having a birthday party on Sunday. I promised him I'd be there, and I can't let him down. I'm really sorry.” Ballet, ballerinas, dancers, rehearsals, performances. It was endless.
“That's all right. We could go for the day. I'd love to get out of town and lie on a beach somewhere.”
“So would I.” But he knew she would lie down for exactly half an hour and then she would start prancing around and flexing muscles, so nothing got stiff while she was relaxing. And there were times when it was extremely unnerving.
“I'll pick you up at nine o'clock. Okay?” She agreed, and he hung up, feeling suddenly sad, and indescribably lonely. She was never there for him when he needed her, and instead he found himself thinking about a girl he didn't know, who had been bounced between foster homes and juvenile hall more than twenty years before. It was crazy to be thinking about her now. He felt like Eloise with her imaginary characters. It made about as much sense, but she had become so real to him in the last week. Much more than he wanted.
The next day he and Sasha went to the beach. In the end they just went to Montauk, on Long Island, and it was relaxing and nice. He jogged along the beach while she exercised, and they stopped for a lobster dinner on the way home. It was eleven-thirty that night before they got back to his apartment, and fell into bed like two kids. She was in a good mood, and they made love without Sasha's complaining once that his passion was going to do her great bodily harm or permanent damage. And wrapped around each other, they slept until ten o'clock the next morning, when she bounded out of bed, looked at her watch, and gave a shriek that woke him.
“What's wrong? … where are you? …” He squinted in the sunlight streaming across his room, and saw her rushing into the bathroom, and heard her turn on the shower. He threw back the sheets, and lumbered slowly in to see what she was up to. “What are you doing in there?” The bathroom was full of steam, she had her hair tied in a knot on top of her head, and her face was turned full into the shower.
“What does it look like?”
“What are you doing up so early?”
“I promised Dominique I'd be there by eleven-thirty.”
“Oh for chrissake. What's the hurry?”
“I'm making lunch for everyone.” She announced as she turned off the shower and started to dry herself off.
“That's interesting. You never cook here.” He was annoyed. They had had such a nice day the day before, and now she was in such a hurry to leave him. He had wanted to make love to her again before she left, but she was all business.
“This is different.” She explained, looking as though what she said made sense. “These are dancers.”
“Do they eat differently than everyone else?”
“Don't be silly.” He wasn't silly. He was just tired of the endless aggravation. “I'll call you tonight when I get home.”
“Don't bother.” He walked out of the bathroom, picked up a cigarette on his dresser, and lit it. He rarely smoked, but when she upset him particularly, it seemed to ease the tension, or add to it, he was never quite sure which, but it did something.
“John,” she said, smiling angelically at him as she brushed her hair with his hairbrush, “don't be childish. I'd take you along, but they're all dancers. No one brings outsiders to these events. You know”—she smiled and for the first time he saw something vengeful in her eyes—“kind of like when you visit your family in Boston.” So that was it. Or part of it anyway. Well, to hell with her games, and her dancers. “Will I see you tomorrow night?” She hesitated doe-like in the bedroom.
“Possibly. I have a lot of work to do on Monday.”
She walked over to him with her firm, lithe body straining against his and kissed him hard on the lips which visibly aroused him. He was standing naked in his bedroom doorway. “I love you.” She had a way of taunting him that he half loved and half hated, and before he could say anything to her, she was gone, and he wanted to scream in frustration.
For lack of anything better to do, he called his younger brother, and spent the day in Greenwich with them, playing doubles with Pattie and Philip and their son, and swimming in the pool with their daughter. It was a relaxed, easy day, and he was always embarrassed to admit to himself, as he did on the drive home, how intensely they bored him. But they were decent people, and they were family after all, and it had been a pleasant escape from New York and the reminders of Sasha.
The phone was ringing when he got home, but he didn't answer it. He didn't want to hear about Dominique and Pascal and Pierre and Andre and Josef and Ivan or any of the others. He was sick to death of them all, and even a little bit of Sasha. And the next morning, he went to Arthur's law firm and went through the files of George Gorham's estate himself after Arthur gave him carte blanche, and he found exactly what he had wanted. Arthur could have found it himself, years before, if he had looked. The last contact they had had with Margaret Millington Gorham was in 1962, at which time she was already the Comtesse de Borne and living on the rue de Varenne in Paris. There had been no contact since then, but she couldn't be too hard to find. And a search of the Paris telephone directory that afternoon showed her still living at the same address, listed as Borne, P. de, and the address was the same one. Now if she was only still alive and could tell him where Alexandra was, he'd be in business.
Chapter 19
“Not again!” Sasha looked outraged, but he was unmoved this time. Business was business. “What did you do, get a job with the airlines?” She was incensed. This was his third trip in as many weeks.
“I won't be gone long.” Things were a little cooler between them than they had been.