He had wanted to drive her all the way back to Amsterdam and take the plane from there. But they both fell so in love with Venice that they lingered till it was nearly time for Jason to report for duty.
Their parting at the airport disconcerted him. After they’d kissed and embraced dozens of times, Jason swore fervently that he would write her at least once a week.
“Please don’t feel you have to say these things, Jason. It’s been very lovely and I’ll always think of you with affection. But we’d both be very silly to think that we’ll sit pining for each other for two years.”
“Speak for yourself, Fanny,” he protested. “I mean, if you felt as strongly for me as I do for you —”
“Jason, you’re the nicest man I’ve ever met. And I ye never felt as close to anyone. Why don’t we just see what happens — as long as we have no false illusions.”
“Have you read the Odyssey, Fanny?”
“Yes, of course. The couple were separated for twenty years.”
“So what’s twenty-four months compared to that?”
“The Odyssey, my love, is a fairy tale.”
“Okay, my cynical little Dutch girl,” Jason replied, affecting a John Wayne posture to impress her, “you just promise to answer every letter I write and we’ll see what happens.”
“I promise.”
They embraced a final time. He walked off toward his flight. As he reached the door of the plane he looked at the observation gate and saw her standing there.
Even at that distance he could see tears streaming down her cheeks.
Danny Rossi woke up slightly confused at finding himself in a strange, if lavish, hotel room. Because of his packed concert schedule he was used to changing bedrooms as often as pajamas. But he had always been sure of exactly where he was. What country. What city. What orchestra. What hotel.
As he tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind, he perceived five glittering gold statuettes on the dresser just beyond the bed. Then it slowly began to come back to him.
Last night had been the annual Grammy Awards ceremony, honoring the best achievements in the record industry. It had been held at a festive gala in the grand ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. He had flown in just in time to register at the Beverly Wilshire, change into a tux, and hurry down to the limo where two PR toadies were waiting to escort him to the ceremony.
Danny’s victory as best classical soloist was not unexpected. After all, the awards are as much for playing the media as playing an instrument. And he had become a master of both.
While it was arguable that his interpretation of the complete Beethoven piano concerti was the best thing put on disk during the previous twelve months, it was indisputable that his publicity campaign was nonpareil.
But what had created the stir last evening was the fact that he had won a second Grammy for best solo jazz album. This was the culmination of a pleasant little irony that had begun the night of his debut with the New York Philharmonic, when he had improvised all those show tunes at the party.
The gentleman who had requested an audience did indeed contact him the following day. He turned out to be Edward Kaiser, president of Columbia Records, and he was absolutely certain that there was a vast “crossover audience” that would lap up Danny’s musical trifles like cotton candy.
At first Rossi on Broadway had a slow but steady sale based mainly on Danny’s gradually growing popularity. But his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show launched him higher than astronaut John Glenn. It accelerated sales from three thousand to seventy-five thousand “units” per week.
The Sullivan broadcast also came at an especially fortuitous time. For the evening it was aired, the Grammy ballots were in the mail to the voters. Earlier, smart money would have picked Count Basie as a surefire winner. But after Ed’s monotonal but hyperbolic introduction (“America’s great new musical genius”), it was a totally different ball game.
Thus it was that Danny wrote another page of musical history — winning Grammies in both the classical and jazz categories in a single day. Indeed, as Count Basie himself was overheard to remark, he was “a lucky little pécker.”
Who knows how many units per week they’d be selling after this!
As Danny put the mosaic of his mind into place, he still could not account for the presence of all the gold statuettes glittering there in dawn’s early light.
Where the hell had the others come from?
But that, of course, might be explained once the mystery of why he was in this strange hotel room had been solved.
He heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. Someone was performing morning ablutions. He had clearly shared the room and — from the look of it — the bed with someone the night before. Why was his normally razor-sharp memory in such a haze?
Just then the crystal tones of a female voice sang out, “Good morning, honey.”
And making an impeccably coiffed and diaphanously clad entrance from the bathroom, triple Grammy Award winner Carla Atkins appeared.
“Hey, Carla,” Danny enthused, “you certainly were a hit last night.”
“You weren’t too bad yourself, baby,” she cooed, creeping under the covers next to him.
“I take it you’re not talking about the Grammies?” Danny asked with a smile.
“Hell,” Carla laughed in her lower register, “those little statues aren’t any good in bed. I think the two of us deserve a special award, don’t you?”
“I’m glad you think so,” Danny answered candidly. “I just wish I could remember more about my evening with America’s greatest vocalist. Did we drink anything?”
“Oh, a little bubbly downstairs. Then when we got up here I broke open a few amies,”
“Amies?”
“Yeah, honey. Amyl nitrite. You know, those little pills with the invigorating smell. Don’t tell me that was your first time?”
“It was,” Danny confessed. “Why can’t I remember if I enjoyed it or not?”
“Because, baby, you were higher than a rocket ship. I had to stuff you with downers or you would have danced on the ceiling. Are you interested in some breakfast?”
“Yeah, now that you mention it,” Danny replied. “What about five or six eggs and bacon and toast —?”
Carla Atkins smiled. “I get the picture,” she said and picked up the phone to room service and ordered breakfast for “a quintet.”
“Quintet?” Danny asked after she had hung up. “Yeah, baby — those little fellahs over there.” And she pointed at the five Grammies shining in a row.
The stewardess offered him champagne.
“No, thank you,” Danny said politely.
“But, Mr. Rossi, you should be celebrating your victories,” the flight attendant said, smiling invitingly. She was very pretty. “Well, call me if you change your mind — and congratulations.”
After lingering for yet another awkward second in the hopes that Danny would ask for her phone number, she went reluctantly off to attend to some of the other stars who were also flying that afternoon in the first-class cabin from Los Angeles to New York.
But Danny was deep in thought. He was racking his brain to reconstruct what had occurred after he had walked into Carla Atkins’s hotel room.
Little by little it was coming back to him. First, the thrill of being with the undisputed star of the evening. Then the thrill of being intimate with her. And then the sensation of those pills she had brought out.