As he turned his most brilliant smile on Caroline, Ross said to me out of the corner of his mouth, “What a quick study you were, practicing with the gun you had me steal from Eddie. I told you everything would come out fine as long as you didn’t jerk the trigger. You did just like I taught you: exhale and slowly squeeze it.”
I was so pleased I put my hand on his thigh underneath the table.
Lunch at the Locanda was just as I had imagined it would be. Ross was gentle and funny with Caro, and she seemed to take an instant liking to him almost from the moment I introduced them. Good thing. He was going to be in our lives for a long time to come.
Still, Caro insisted on going out alone in the small hours of the night. I asked Ross to watch over her from a distance when she went, and prayed that time would heal her wounds.
Gradually, she grew calmer. Truth to tell, Ross was a good and comforting companion to us both.
“All my life,” he told me one day in Venice, “I’ve settled for things. I was an Army brat, so I had to settle for making new friends almost every year. I didn’t really want to be a PI, but I could never get my detective’s shield in the NYPD; written tests were never my thing. The girl I fell in love with didn’t love me, so I settled for someone I liked but didn’t love. That lasted a half-dozen miserable years. Then, my luck changed.” He smiled at me and my heart lifted. “I was hired by VanDam.”
By the time we arrived in London it appeared that Caroline had returned to her old, sunny self. I was desperate to renew the sexual part of my affair with Ross, but with Caro around there never seemed to be a good time. Besides, as Ross pointed out, we’d be far better off in the long run if we waited awhile longer. He was right, but being discreet was playing havoc with my hormones. Killing Willie, being set free, had made me as randy as a rabbit.
My agent had booked a two-night engagement at the Royal Albert Hall. I was to play with the Royal Philharmonic, so there was a full week of rehearsals at the hall, more than was necessary for a solo recital. Also, there were egos other than mine to contend with. The conductor, a man whom I had always admired but had never before met, turned out to be a prima donna of the worst sort. Temper tantrums were not uncommon, and my own temper grew increasingly short. I’d work all day and then have difficulty sleeping at night. Ross was wonderful during this time. He sat in the dark, deserted theatre with Caro until the tightness of my expression forced him to mount the stage and calm me down. He did this so many times that the musicians, generally a jealous lot, soon grew used to his presence on their exalted pulpit.
“Careful,” he mouthed to me during a break late in the gruelling rehearsals. “This man is a maximum boor, but he has the power to ruin you.” Ross, a quick study if ever there was one, had already seen just how small and incestuous the world of classical music was. I appreciated his candour-and his concern, which was about 180 degrees from what Willie’s reaction would have been. My late husband no doubt would have belted the maestro in the face, if he’d bothered to show up at all.
“I’ll remember to love him as if he were my own brother.” I looked up at the tiers of seats. “They don’t look like holes, do they?” I drank from a bottle of Evian water Ross handed me. “The first time I came here, I couldn’t help thinking of the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life.’ I wonder if Lennon was tripping when he wrote the lyrics.”
“’I’d love to turn you ooon,’” Ross sang softly in a surprisingly good tenor voice.
I laughed and, draining the water, kissed him warmly on the cheek. “I’m so glad you’re in my life.”
I watched him climb down from the high stage and disappear into the darkness of the theatre, where he took his seat beside Caro. The rehearsal carried on. But, gradually, I found that I was playing by memory alone. My mind seemed to be oddly detached from my body, elastic as gum, as distorted as if I was in a house of mirrors. Tripping like Lennon in the seventies.
My stomach turned abruptly queasy, and I stopped playing. My hands, arched and ready, hung suspended above the keyboard. They looked like spiders spinning a web, and I wanted to scream. I missed my cue and, feeling like I was about to vomit, I lurched drunkenly to my feet.
The bench upended behind me with a great clatter, and the orchestra ceased to play.
“I… I…”
Somehow I became aware of Ross running down the centre aisle toward me while everyone on the stage was transfixed, unable or unwilling to make a move or sound.
“I… I…”
Ross mounted the steep steps three at a time, and I tottered toward him on legs I could no longer feel. He seemed to be standing at the edge, waiting for me. I was almost to his strong, welcoming arms when I lost all control of my body. I knew I was going over the edge, and my arms began to flail. I made a desperate lunge for Ross’s powerful shoulder, but it was too late. My fingers grasped only air.
I fell, past all the thousand holes in Albert Hall.
I saw a quick flash of the maestro’s face, distorted by shock. Then I struck the floor with a numbing blow. A great roaring filled my ears, drowning out even the thunder of the screams and shouts of those all around me. It was the first chord of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It was the rush of my own blood.
I remembered that toccata came from the feminine past participle of the Italian toccare, which meant “to touch.” Bach’s majestic chord touched me in the stunned release of my own breath.
In an instant, even that was gone.
“Welcome back.” Ross, smiling faintly, stood over my hospital bed. “We thought we’d lost you.”
“Mom!” On his left I could see Caro, her face a sea of worry. “You’re tougher than anyone believed. You came through.”
I had a sudden urge to grab her and hold her tight, but I couldn’t move.
“You’re paralyzed, Perse.” Ross took a deep breath. “You broke your neck and your spine in four places.”
Terror gripped me and, looking into Caro’s sorrowful face, I was overcome by a desire to tell her how much I loved her. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
“I’m afraid your speech was affected too,” Ross said. “Temporarily or permanently, the doctors don’t know.”
Ross must have seen all the blood drain from my face, because he asked Caro to fetch a doctor. Properly terrified, she fled. Then he did something really weird. He leaned over the bed, but instead of kissing me, he put his lips against my ear.
“You know what I thought about on those night-time walks with Caroline?” he whispered. “Why settle for the mother when I can have it all? That’s what I want. And, for once in my life, I’m going to get it. The way I see it, you’re yesterday’s news, someone else’s history. VanDam made you over. Now I’ll do the same with Caro. Face it, Perse. You’re dangerous. I mean, you pulled the trigger on your own husband. How many women could do that, hmm? Not many, I imagine. It takes a cold, calculating mind; a certain cruelty. Lying next to you, who could sleep? I figure if you did it to him, one day, you could do it to me.”
Why did his words fill me with so much dread? Because they expressed precisely the same pity and contempt I had harboured for Willie.
“By the way, if you haven’t guessed by now, that was acid in your Evian.” He meant LSD, of course. One of the drugs of my lost youth. “I thought maybe you’d kill yourself in the fall, but, no, like Caro said, you’re too damn tough. So here you are.” He pulled away for a moment to check my horrified expression. Then, to my dismay, he put his lips back against my ear and continued his horrific whispering.
“So I seduced her, and, hey, what d’you know, she was ripe for it. Like mother, like daughter.” A little laugh, evil as sin. Sick with shock, I tried to turn my head away, but his hand held me fast. The smell of him, which only yesterday was intoxicating, now made me want to gag. “My God, what a juicy morsel she is!”