“I don’t know, hon.” He leaned close, but didn’t kiss her. “Bye-bye—kiss kiss. Don’t worry about the dishes, Felicien’s man will be in to pick them up. Love you much, hon, come back to us soon.”
Stepping into the hallway, Dobbsie felt he’d come out of a sweat-box. He loosened his silk cravat. His shirt must have shrunk a full size in there.
Felicien’s man—everyone knew his name was Sal, but they called him Felicien’s man—was waiting in the hallway, reading the princess of Yugoslavia’s memoirs.
“You can clear the plates,” Dobbsie said.
He found Dina Alstetter in the hallway, smoking a cigarette.
“And look at you, Deenie, in your green plaid Scaasi suit all jazzed up with that platinum Bulgari squiggle pin.”
“We have to talk.” She seized his arm.
The visitors’ waiting room was a ferociously cheery place cluttered with striped blue and yellow chairs and matching inflatable animals. There was a pot in the coffeemaker. Dina closed the door, leaning her weight on it.
“I talked a lot of froufrou,” Dobbsie said. “That story about Alice Mason—I could have used that in a column, but I gave it to Ash instead and people are going to just adore her for it.”
“I wanted you to see for yourself how sick she is,” Dina said. “They’re saying her blood gas is very low—she’ll have to be put on a respirator.”
“Jesus—is she terminal?”
“There’s no way she can recover.”
Dobbsie poured himself a Styrofoam cup of coffee that he absolutely did not need and dumped in two teaspoons of sugar that he absolutely should not have had.
“That bastard Dunk hasn’t visited, hasn’t phoned, hasn’t written. He’s dumped her.”
Cream, Dobbsie decided. What the hell, go for it. “I must say, even for Dunk, that’s remarkable.”
“He can’t be allowed to get away with it. Promise you won’t let him.”
The one subject Dobbsie had ever known Dina Alstetter to wax a tad tiresome over was her brother-in-law—all because Dunk had taken her to bed a few times and then married her sister. Why couldn’t Dina forgive Dunk his preferences and let the story die, instead of constantly drawing the whole world’s attention to what was really a rather pedestrian jilt-and-switch? A woman who had published in The New Yorker had no business obsessing over a man who had gone to Harrow on scholarship.
“Deenie dearie, what the hell control do I have over Dunk?”
“You can put it in your column—after she’s dead.”
The little nightlamp cast a pale circle of light around the sick woman.
Her breathing made a sound as though her ribs had cracked, each inhalation digging a splinter of bone deeper into her lungs.
Dina Alstetter sat motionless, slightly slumped in a chair with her hands folded in her lap.
Babe knelt next to Ash, whispering “I’m here,” stroking her arm, staring at that thin, beautiful, very old, and strangely, unexpectedly wise face. It was the face of Ash at thirty-six, but it was also Ash at ninety-six, Ash who had leapt in two weeks to that brink of farewell.
The gray New York dawn slid through the canted blinds, striping the hospital bed where Ash Canfield lay in coma. She had developed embolisms in both lungs. Beneath the blue satin De la Renta robe her body was covered with monitoring electrodes.
Her temperature registered 105.5 Her pulse made a faint, irregular blip on an amber screen. The respirator beside the bed forced air through a tube into her throat and down into lungs that had long since given up all effort.
Ash was moving her lips, trying to force sound out.
Dina leapt up. “Ash!”
“Nurse!” Babe cried.
A nurse and an intern hurried into the room. The intern removed the respirator and the nurse held a glass of water to Ash’s lips.
Ash forced a swallow and tried to speak. Her voice was scarcely a whisper. “When this is all over, we’ll all live together, won’t we?”
Babe’s tongue was helpless and her throat was dry.
“Yes, darling,” Dina said, “we’ll all get a lovely house together.”
“I want my viewing … in the best suite at Frank E. Campbell’s… Get my hair done … a little rinse over the gray. Dress me in that … pale blue gown … Babe made me. And give me … a really grand send-off … at Saint Bart’s.”
“Yes, darling,” Dina said.
“I’d like to be alone now. Dunk will be … on the phone, and I want … to be ready … Would you turn out the lights?”
Dina turned out the light.
When Babe looked back from the doorway, all that was left of her friend was the unmoving shadow of a shadow.
43
BABE AND CARDOZO SIGNED the visitors’ register. The room was softly lit. The immediate family formed a receiving line: Dunk, doing his best to muster a sorrowful charm; Dina, with a look of mourning dignity; Ash’s parents—DeWitt Cadwalader, a tall, gray man dressed in power; Thelma Cadwalader, a slender bejeweled woman with eyes warm and large and a benevolent smile; and Dina’s son, Lawson, a grave little six-year-old.
The count and countess de Savoie arrived directly behind Babe and Cardozo. They scattered condolences to the family, and then the countess saw Cardozo.
“Well hello, Dick Tracy.”
“Hi, your highnesses.”
The countess kissed Babe. “Quite a turnout. And live piano music—quelle élégance. But ‘Hey, Look Me Over’? Whose joke is that?”
“It’s not a joke. It was Ash’s favorite song.”
“Crazy, crazy gal. You just gotta love her.”
There was a mood in the place that was strange to Cardozo. This wasn’t an Irish cop’s wake where old women wept and men wearing their one good suit grabbed one another by the shoulder. Here the clothes were expensive and elegant and the room had the buzz of gossip. There was a glitter of polished oak and crystal, of jeweled women who had trundled to the viewing in the warm dark of limousines. Servants circulated with trays of wine. It had more the air of a party than a viewing.
The viewing line advanced slowly, past slip-covered sofas and wingback chairs, handsome antique tables laden with flowers.
Gordon Dobbs sauntered over and kissed Babe’s cheek.
“Hi, sweetie. Hi, Vince. Isn’t this a blast? One of Ash’s greatest parties—she knew it would be. I got the whole death scene. She was fabulously brave, fabulously serene. And wait till you see her—she looks absolutely great. The family had Raoul Valency Concorded over from Paris to do her. What a character. What a life. Catch you later.”
When they reached the casket, Babe kissed her fingertips and touched them to Ash’s folded hands.
Staring at Ash in her blue gown and bangle bracelets, Cardozo felt he was face to face with human fragility and insignificance and the one final earthly certainty, solitude.
Babe was shaking as though a wave had hit her.
He put an arm around her. “There’s a chair over here.” He steered her through the crowd around to a wingback chair.
“I just need to rest a moment,” Babe said.
“Sure—you rest.”
Something made Cardozo look up. Dina Alstetter was standing by the fireplace, staring at him. She motioned him over.
“Thanks for coming,” she said with an offhand tone.
“I’m sorry about your sister. She was a good person.”
“Thanks.” Her eyes held his. “There are some things I need to talk to you about.”
“Feel free to phone me.”
“I mean now.”
“I’m listening.”
“Not here.” She took a glass of wine and Cardozo followed her into the hallway.
They entered another viewing room. In the corner a woman was laid out in a silk-lined mahogany casket. She had pear-shaped ruby earclips and brown hair waved to her shoulders and she was wearing an evening gown. A hand-lettered plaque announced that her name was Lavinia Mellon Fields. The visitors’ register on the bookstand was blank. A sort of stillness submerged everything.
“Should we be here?” Cardozo said. “It doesn’t seem respectful.”