November! They say time flies when you’re having a tawdry affair.
“Lionel arrived in her life on the same day as this Jane Johnson,” I said. “Don’t you think that’s a funny coincidence?”
“Hmm,” said the man lying next to me, meaning, I’m half asleep and I’ve no idea what you’ve just said, but even while semi-conscious I know better than to ignore you, Vivian Schuyler.
I nudged his ribs. “Violet and Lionel.”
“Violet. Sweetheart.” He turned his face into my neck and went still.
“Just listen to this. It’s in the second letter, dated May twenty-first: ‘The most extraordinary character walked into my laboratory yesterday, an old student of Walter’s. His name is Lionel Richardson and he’s some sort of soldier, about six feet tall with one of those large and brutal bodies, like something you might see on safari, thickly muscled, with straight black hair. He’s rather alarming to sit next to; one feels as if one will be swallowed up at any instant. We took him to a café later, where we were accosted by an American woman who wants Walter to take her son into the laboratory for the summer. The son, by the way, is not yet twenty. Altogether an extraordinary evening.’ Amazing, isn’t it? And he sounds like a dreamboat.”
“Mmm.”
“And I checked it against the Metropolitan archives, and it’s the same day as the correspondent mentioned seeing the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré—that’s Jane, she’s a real husband-hunter—with her son at the Bluebird café.” I leaned my head back in the pillow and sighed to charm the angels. “It’s the best feeling in the world, isn’t it? When your research fits together like that, and all of a sudden you realize these were real people, living real lives, and . . . Are you listening?”
This time, no sound at all emerged from Doctor Paul’s body, which lay heavy and slack against mine, one arm thrown across my middle. And really, who could blame him? His shift last night was supposed to end at ten o’clock, and I’d gone to the hospital to meet him there, but no—some sort of emergency surgery, a kid hit by a car—he would be out in an hour, in another hour, and at about midnight I’d realized that the huddled couple at the other corner of the antiseptic waiting room must be the child’s parents, because they kept lifting their reddened eyes hopefully to the door whenever it moved, and the man’s hand was locked so hard with the woman’s that the bones of his knuckles shone white through his skin. I had sat there in a cold lump, no idea what to do. Couldn’t just walk up to them and say, Hello there, dearies, I’m Dr. Salisbury’s lover, and I can assure you those clever old hands can perform all kinds of miracles, or even I know Dr. Salisbury personally, and he’s the best new resident surgeon in years, and if anyone can save your darling angel, he will.
And just as I’d made up my mind to do just that—the second greeting, not the first—the door had opened and Doctor Paul himself walked through in his stained blue scrubs, and from the weight of grief on his face I knew the news was as bad as news could be. I had felt an instant compulsion to run to him, to toss my cashmere arms around him and give him the unrestrained Vivian, but he didn’t even see me. He walked right past my crossed and shapely legs and pulled up a chair next to the parents. He took the woman’s hand like a sandwich between his own, and I thought, Oh my God, oh my sweet twinkling stars, I love you so much, I can’t even breathe, I think my heart just stopped, somebody save me.
When I brought him back to my apartment an hour later, I’d thought he would want to go right to sleep, maybe accept a little comfort of the strictly platonic sort—look, a girl could take a rain check once in a while, in a good cause—but instead he threw me into the bedroom and engaged me like a lion, like a beast of the wild, in such a speechless frenzy of erotic energy that I, Vivian Schuyler, could hardly keep up. And I thought, as he lay sleeping and senseless the next instant, trusting and comatose along the length of my back, well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? To combat death with life. To fight back.
I lifted my other hand and ran it through Doctor Paul’s too-long sunshine hair, darkening at the roots now as November took its toll on all of us. Morning nudged through the cracks in the blinds. I needed my coffee and cigarette, but I couldn’t dislodge my poor dear doctor, could I? I reached for Violet’s gold watch, where it sat always on my nightstand, and wiped the glass with my thumb. Perpetual seven-oh-three. When time stopped for Violet and Lionel.
I said quietly, so I wouldn’t wake him: “I still don’t know when they began their affair. She mentions seeing him at a party at Jane’s apartment and that he’s recovering from an operation. And then he turns up in Wittenberg, where she and Walter rent a villa every summer. But it seems as if the more she likes him, the less she writes about him.”
I looked down at Doctor Paul’s head, tucked into my neck like a child’s, and touched the delicate tip of his ear with my finger. “I guess I can understand that.”
A plaintive gurgle emerged from my belly. I strained my neck to place a kiss on Doctor Paul’s peaceful head and then detached myself, limb by limb, from the tangle we’d gotten ourselves into. I tucked the bedclothes back around him, found my robe, and picked my way through the strewn clothes into the living room.
No sign of Sally. Surprise, surprise. I started the coffee going and rummaged in the icebox. If the mingled scents of bacon and Yuban couldn’t rouse my sleeping stallion, nothing could. I whipped the eggs to a proper froth and started a batch of toast, and I was just jabbing the fork in the toaster when a pair of arms came around my waist and a pair of lips collided with my temple.
“You again,” I said.
“Like a bad penny. That smells fantastic. Are you sharing?”
“I might, if you’re a good boy and find the plates.”
He didn’t move. He’d put his pants back on but not his shirt. I felt his heart beat between my shoulders. I reached to flip the bacon on the back burner.
He said, “I’m sorry about last night.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
“Are you . . . ?” Cleared the old throat. “I wasn’t too . . . ?”
“Doctor. This is Vivian, remember? I’ll let you know when I’m not enjoying myself.”
“Mmm.” Another kiss.
He was making me right at home in his skin-scented middle. Ready to let the bacon burn and the eggs scramble themselves. “Mmm yourself,” I said.
“So. Another thing.”
“There’s more?”
“Last night. In my primal haste.”
“Hmm. Yes. We forgot a little something, didn’t we?”
“A big something. My fault. I’m sorry, Vivian, I was just so . . . God, it was such hell yesterday . . . and there you were . . . I wasn’t thinking straight . . .”
“I know. My fault, too. Heat of the moment.” I peeled myself from his arms and poured a cup of coffee. “Here. My magic beans will make you all better.”
“I do feel better. It’s you I’m thinking about.” Sip. Soulful, worried eyes. “How close are you?”
“Close. Not too close, I think.” Pretty damned hair’s-breadth close.
“Jesus. It won’t happen again, I promise.” He stretched out his not-coffee hand and stroked my tumbled locks. “Or there’s the Pill.”
“I do know this doctor. He could get you a prescription.”
“Do you, now. Might be a good idea. If we’re planning to make a habit of this.”
I tried not to grin. I really did. So did he. But.
He said: “Thank you for last night. You saved me. You do know that.”
“Anytime. And I do mean anytime.”
He leaned forward and kissed the strands between his fingers. “I love this hair of yours.”
Look, now. A man holds your hair in his hands and kisses it, the man who made love to you last night, and I dare you not to wrap your hands around his sweet skull and kiss him silly, until you’re crashing into the icebox together, spilling hot coffee everywhere, giggling and groaning, all choked up with mutual worship. And then he stops suddenly and crushes you into his bones—your robe’s come undone by now, naturally, and your bare skin attaches to his bare skin—and says, “It’s been magic. This month with you, it’s been heaven,” and what the hell are you supposed to say to that?
“Yes.”
“I just . . . Almighty God, Vivian, I love you so much. I just need you to know that. When I fall short of you. Give you less than you deserve. I love you, you can’t imagine. You’re the world to me.” He said it violently, into that hair of mine he said he loved. In another second, he’d be proposing.
“Great guns,” I said. “I think the bacon’s burning.”
• • •
DID I MENTION today was a Wednesday? Well. Today was a Wednesday, and what with all the bacon and the shenanigans, I slunk like an alley cat into the Metropolitan offices well past my usual hour of lateness. And I am not, as you may have noticed, the world’s earliest alley cat to begin with.
But. I had lateness privileges now! Everyone knew I was now among Lightfoot’s chosen. Even Agatha did no more than snap her Wrigley’s at me as I waved my cheeriest and whipped around the corner before Gogo could triangulate my position from her radar station outside her father’s office.
“Hello there, Vivs!”
Gogo was perched atop my desk, right smack between the telephone and the empty fact-checking box, gams crossed, topmost footsie bounce bounce bouncing. Her face wore a brilliant pink smile.
She knows.
Gathump gathump, went the old heart. I swung my briefcase into place. “Hello there, honey. What’s cooking?”
Who told her? Where did she see us?
“You are. You’re cooking. Look at that dress! And your hair. It’s all . . .” She motioned.
I coughed. “New style.” The Salon Doctor Paul Deluxe. “You like?”
“Mmm. I want one just like it.”
“Wouldn’t suit you at all, dearest. So. What are you up to this morning? Don’t you have some advertisers to charm?” My heart was slowing from a gallop to a trot. There was not a drop of guile in Gogo. If she knew about Doctor Paul, she wouldn’t go about confronting me all sideways like this. She would come at me straight, with bathtubs of tears and that lost-koala expression that did me in, every time.
Gogo laughed. “Not today. I’m doing the decorations for Agatha’s anniversary party, and then I’m going shopping for a new dress.”
“Nothing beats shopping to heal a broken heart.”
A bit of sparkle in the eyes. “Absolutely.”
Doctor Paul had been right about Gogo. After a week or so of despair, she’d begun to bounce back nicely. She’d returned to work, the smile had reappeared on her face from time to time, the old sunshine had begun to beam out from her baby blues. Maybe she was stronger than I thought. Maybe I was in the clear.
It didn’t make me feel any less squalid as I stood before her, though.
I could meet her eyes. Just. But I couldn’t return to girly intimacy with her, I couldn’t lean forward across her bed and share secrets. What if she could see right through my eyes and periscope downward to the guilty depths of my hippocampus? What if she could see the memory of Doctor Paul and yours truly, locked together on a sofa, against a wall, atop a kitchen counter, asleep in his bed in a Gordian knot of perfect accord?
She took my hand. “Come with me. I miss you, Vivs. You’ve been working so hard.”
“I miss you, too, Gogo. But I can’t come with you this afternoon. Some of us have a real job, you know.”
“Then come tonight to Daddy’s place. Please? We’re having dinner together. I want you to be there, Vivs. I asked Daddy. He said it was a wonderful idea. He wants you there, too.” A bit of the old lost koala to the eyes, a bit of plaintive quiver to the voice.
Dinner with Lightfoot. The chest quaked. Did he know something? He couldn’t confront me with his own daughter right there, could he?
I could proclaim I was already engaged this evening. But what had Paul said this morning, as we rushed down the stairs together, all tardy-faced and laughing? He couldn’t get away until midnight. He’d meet me at my place. So. I couldn’t say I wasn’t free.
Unless I lied.
I couldn’t lie to Gogo. I know, I know. Everyone says that once you involve yourself in the Big Lie, the little lies line up behind like ducklings, until they just paddle effortlessly out of your mouth, one by one, sometimes two at a time. Not the case with me. Instead, since I began playing alley cats with Doctor Paul, I knew an unstoppable compulsion to accord myself with scrupulous honesty everywhere else. As if that could somehow atone.
I squeezed her hand. “I can make it. What time?”
“Seven o’clock sharp.” She popped off my desk and gave me a sticky pink kiss. “Don’t be late!”
• • •
BACK IN THE STACKS. I loved the stacks. They suited my newfound need to hide myself in obscurity, among people who no longer existed. The truth was, though, I’d reached a bit of a dead end, as I told Tibby when he walked in without warning through the Furniture Repository door at—I checked my watch—one o’clock in the afternoon.
“Miss Schuyler. How is your research progressing?”
I looked up the patrician line of his nose. “The truth is, I’ve reached a bit of a dead end.”
“It happens.”
“Would you like to sit down?”
“No. I came to tell you that you’re wanted downstairs. Miss Brown’s fortieth anniversary party. Everyone’s required to attend.”
“Miss Brown?”
“Our receptionist, Miss Schuyler. Miss Brown? Miss Agatha Brown?”
“Oh! Agatha! Forty years, is it?” I whistled. “Certainly, a party’s in order. Knees up, I say.”
“Indeed.”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed the shapely legs. “And you haven’t got better things to do than to come and fetch me personally?”
“I’m the only one with a key.”
“Now, now, Mr. Tibbs. I can tell when a man wants to have a private word with me.” I motioned to the other chair, which, in fairness to Tibby, might or might not remain intact under the weight of human hindquarters. “Do sit.”
His professorial vest squeezed out a sigh. He sat. “You’ve exceeded your three weeks. As I’m sure you’re aware.”
“It’s been a little rougher seas than I imagined at the outset.”
“Well.” I looked down at the letters before me, the stack of biographies, the folder from the Metropolitan archives marked BERLIN 1914. “I have Violet’s letters home. There aren’t many, and they’re all to her sister Christina, who evidently wasn’t privy to her innermost thoughts, if you know what I mean. I know she met this Lionel Richardson in May of 1914, and he stayed with them at their summer villa in Wittenberg, along with Jane and her son. It seems the whole crowd from the institute joined them at the end. Einstein, even. Einstein!”
“All this, with war in the air? Wouldn’t that be aiding and abetting the enemy?”
“Walter seems to have been the cosmopolitan sort. And anyway, the war took everyone by surprise. As you know. But I suspect Violet and Lionel began their affair there in Wittenberg, because here”—I pointed to the next-to-last letter—“Violet stops mentioning him at all. And then, poof, there’s nothing, not a single letter, except for this.” I picked up the final missive, a postcard, and handed it to Tibby.
“‘Having a lovely excursion. All well. Will write more soon. Violet.’” He looked up. “I see what you mean.”
“But look at the date on the postmark. July twenty-sixth. That’s before Walter was supposedly murdered in their flat in Berlin. So obviously they, the two of them, the three of them, Lionel and Walter and Violet, they all left Wittenberg for some reason. The question is why. Possibly because the political situation was worsening, but from all I’ve read, the final declaration of war came as a shock. It wasn’t until the mobilization order went out that people, the man on the street I mean, believed they were actually going to fight. I suppose the shrinks would call it denial. Everyone thought that civilization would prevail.”
Tibby took his reading glasses out of his pocket and squinted. “I can’t read the name of the town on the postmark.”
“Neither can I. It’s too smudged. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s not Berlin.”
He removed his glasses. “Are the archives any help?”
“They might be, if there were any correspondence from Berlin after July twenty-fifth, when Austria declared war on Serbia and set the whole thing going. I suppose everyone was leaving the country by then.”
“Hmm.”
“Why ‘hmm’?”
“Because it’s odd. Because you’d think there would be a flood of chatter. Any good journalist would stay until the bitter end.” He looked back at the rows of wooden cabinets. “Have you looked in the confidential files?”
“The what?”
“The confidential files. The ones containing particularly sensitive information. The real dirt, as they say.”
I climbed to the tippy-tips of my four-inch heels. “WHAT DID YOU SAY? NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WERE CONFIDENTIAL DAMNED FILES!”
Oh, he smiled at me, old Tibby, with the patience of a governess instructing her charge. He fished around in his tweed jacket pocket, produced a set of keys, and dangled one in front of me. “Someone is telling you now.”