Garden of Lies (52 page)

(probably just for effect). So Dickensian it hurt, right down to the coal fire in the grate—never

mind it was a good seventy degrees outside.

Devon Clarke, the star of their little show, was sitting center stage, perched on one plump arm

of the sofa, her tiny feet just skimming the badly worn Oriental carpet. A tiny woman well in her

fifties, she reminded Max of a parakeet, with her leathery pink skin and pointy features, her bright

green dress and the flimsy blue scarf knotted at her throat.

Directly across from her, behind a huge ornately carved desk, sat her caricature of a solicitor, a

heavyset, balding gentleman, replete with waistcoat, gold watch chain, and a suffocatingly tight

collar.

Max’s client, Booth, had authorized him to offer up to fifty thousand pounds to get her off his

back. But Devon Clarke seemed interested only in emoting. So far she’d lamented her way

through eight or so versions of the Book of Job, with That Beast, Jonathon Booth, as the fiendish

cause of all her affliction.

“... Would you like to know the real reason why he wrote that so-called book, that piece of

muck of his?” she was asking now, lighting up her hundredth or so cigarette.

“I wonder—” Max was determined to remain statesmanlike, “if such speculations can really

help our business here.”

“Because I refused,” she continued as if Max hadn’t spoken, “to star in his play. I told him

what I thought of it, too—a fat lot of self-indulgent nonsense. And boring, boring, boring!”

Max cleared his throat. Enough. This time he was going to nail her down, get this so-called

negotiation off the ground.

“Miss Clarke, my client and I deeply regret the distress you’ve suffered. And Jonathon, believe

it or not, is eager to make amends. In fact, he feels it would be in your best interest, as well as his,

to—”

“My best interest?” Devon interrupted with a hard, bright laugh. [314] “
My
best interest? Oh,

pardon me, but that’s rich. That’s positively
priceless.
May I tell you how that wretched beast,

your client, behaved on our honeymoon? Our
honeymoon,
for Christ’s sake. We were in Majorca,

and I was so sick, I had this beastly stomach virus. And where was he? With his suffering bride?

No, not a bit of it. Not for five bleeding minutes. Sickness, he says, declaiming like some over-

the-hill Hamlet, depresses him. Well I say, sod him!”

Max glanced over at Rose, seated in a rickety antique corner chair close to the fire. Now she

was rising, looking vaguely sheepish. What could she be up to?

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But I was wondering, Miss Clarke, if you might show me to

the, uh, Ladies. This place is kind of a warren, and I’m awful at directions, I’m afraid I’d just get

lost. ...”

Max had to strain a bit not to laugh. Rose could find her way across the Himalayas in a

blizzard. She was the only woman he knew who didn’t get disoriented in Bloomingdale’s.

What’s she up to?
he wondered.

The two women finally returned, looking oddly conspiratorial. What the hell was going on?

Even Rathbone looked wary.

Out of the blue, the actress demurely turned to Max, and said, “You were saying before, about

some sort of settlement? Well, who knows, perhaps Jonathon really is doing the right thing. This

whole matter has been such an ordeal, frightful really. And I’d just as soon not prolong the agony

any longer. ...”

Max looked at Rose, and she shot him a glowing look of triumph.

“... In fact,” she simpered, “I’m feeling a bit of a migraine. So I shall leave you two to conclude

things with Arthur.” She turned to her solicitor. “Arthur, darling,
don’t
be a bore and keep these

nice people waiting here all afternoon. They have made a generous offer, and I have accepted.”

A flutter of chiffon, a slipstream of Chanel N° 5, and Devon Clarke was gone.

Max, feeling euphoric, as well as slightly puzzled, could hardly believe his luck. Lourdes

didn’t have much over this.

In the back of a cab, headed back to the hotel, Max turned to Rose. “How—”

“Simple,” Rose explained smugly. “As soon as I got her alone, [315] I told her I agreed with

her. Men
are
such beasts. Then I suggested that maybe she was wasting her time suing Jonathon

when the best revenge of all was right in front of her nose.”

“And what, may I ask, is that?” asked Max, amused.

“Writing her own autobiography, of course. I mean, listening to all those stories, anyone could

see she’s just bursting to tell the whole world everything she’s ever done, with special emphasis

on the beastly Booth. All I did was sort of nudge her in the right direction.”

“You’re amazing, do you know that?” Max wanted to kiss her, badly.

Then, not knowing how it had happened, he
was
kissing her. And it was just like his fantasies,

Rose responding to him, mouth soft, willing, her arms cool and silky about his neck.

But in a moment, less than a moment it seemed, she was pulling away with a breathy,

embarrassed little laugh, and the fantasy dissolved.

“Oh, Max, I know how you feel. I feel a little crazy myself just now. Such a strange morning.

But let’s not get
too
carried away.”

Max felt a little sick to his stomach.
She must be thinking I’m just another middle-aged

married man off on a trip, looking for a little quick one on the side. Oh Christ ...

If only it were that simple. But what he wanted was more, so much
more ...
and, then, not so

much after all. He wanted Rose. That simple. And that complicated.

To reach out at night and feel her beside him. To see her across from him at breakfast not just

today, but every day. He imagined her swaddled in his old terry robe, hair frayed from sleep,

sipping coffee from a mug, scattering toast crumbs over the oak table in his kitchen.

Then he remembered his father at Edgemore Beach, looking like a boiled potato in baggy blue

swim trunks, making a show of ogling the pretty girls as they passed by in their two-piece bathing

suits. And his mother, pretending to be jealous, swatting him with the bottle of suntan lotion.

No fool like an old fool,
she used to tease, as if the very idea of baggy old Norm Griffin and

one of those girls were the
real
joke.

No fool like an old fool.
And that’s what Mom would say about [316] me now too. And if she

knew how much I want Rose, she’d probably laugh. And she’d be right.

Now he was no longer the golden boy, pride of the Griffins, Harvard scholarship winner,

corporate tiger, promoted to senior partner in an astonishing ten years. No, now he was just

middle-aged Max Griffin, growing soft like his pop, ogler of pretty girls. An old fool.

To try and salvage his pride, he said, “Don’t worry,” his arm about her shoulders, casually

though, as if he hadn’t noticed it was still there. “You’re a damned attractive woman, Rose, but I

like you too much to let anything get in the way.”

Rose, he could see, was immensely relieved. She laughed and said, “Oh, Max, I
do
love you.”

Jesus ... the words he’d longed for. He’d imagined her saying them a thousand times. But not

like this, not tossed off the way she’d say it about a favorite dress or a delicious meal.

Max, feeling as if he’d been punched in the gut, stared out the window at the Strand skimming

past, and saw that it had begun to rain.

Chapter 20

“Do I really look okay? I’m not overdressed, am I?”

Rose fussed with her sleeve. Probably silly, she thought, going overboard with this dress. But

what did she know about this kind of party? How was she supposed to know what people like

these would be wearing? At least Cinderella had a fairy godmother to wave a magic wand over

her; she’d just have to wing it.

“Stop worrying,” Max was reassuring her. “The dress is wonderful. There won’t be another

woman at the party who’ll look half as glamorous.”

Rose looked over at him. Max was seated on the deep-peach sofa in front of the fireplace (a

marble
fireplace
in her bedroom, she still couldn’t get over it).
He
looked totally at ease in his

dinner jacket—and why not? This was Max’s world—all of it—chic London, the Savoy Hotel.

Her gaze swept about the room, done in whispers of pink and cream and blue, the delicate little

bow-legged French tables and chairs, the huge bed covered in a rose satin quilt aged to the soft

nappy sheen of velvet. Yes, Max belonged. But where did she fit in?

“But that’s just what I’m worried about,” she moaned. Why couldn’t he understand? She didn’t

want people staring at her. She just wanted to blend in. Rupert Everest, Jonathon Booth’s

publisher over here, was related to the royal family. She’d read about a party of his once in
Time,

Mick Jagger drinking champagne from Julie Christie’s slipper. What could she say to such

people?

Rose stepped over to the bathroom door to look in the full-length mirror. The moment of truth.

She stood perfectly still, no twirling about to check herself from different angles or to see if her

hem was straight in back. The woman in the mirror wasn’t
her
at all—no, couldn’t be. Because

the real Rose Santini was still that gawky kid from Avenue K and Ocean Avenue, [318] in her

navy and white school uniform and oxfords. And this tall, slender, and sophisticated-looking

woman in high heels, hair swept up with glittering combs, was ... was ... well,
beautiful.

In the afternoon, Max had taken her shopping at Liberty’s on Regent Street. Thick oak

paneling on the walls, intricately carved banisters adorning the staircases, antique armchairs and

settees upholstered in a glorious peacock design, which Liberty, Max explained to her, had made

famous. Rose imagined she had died and gone to shopper’s heaven. Caught up by the

enchantment of the place, she’d splurged on a Burberry raincoat and matching cashmere scarf ...

and this dress.

Max was right, it
was
wonderful. Inspired by Renaissance design, it was fashioned from

rubbed velvet an almost incandescent deep violet that dropped straight to just above her knees,

then flared into narrow pleats—like the petals of a flower—each pleat opening onto a panel of

pale mauve antique lace. The sleeves were of the same mauve lace, full and gathered at the

shoulder and elbow, tightly fitted along the forearms and tapering to a V at the wrist.

Dark, vengeful triumph rose from some deep locked place inside her.
If you could see me now,

my dear faithful Brian, would you be sorry you left me? Would you want me back?

That
News
article, she was seeing it again, and all the others that had come after—the
Life

spread, those dramatic shots of the rescue, and the wedding, then a close-up of the two of them,

Brian and his wife, curled together on the sofa of their Murray Hill apartment; and another of

Brian at his typewriter—he was writing a novel about his experiences in Vietnam, the caption had

said.

Rose had torn them all to shreds, all those pages and pictures, but they were burned into her

memory nonetheless. Her mind turned to it again and again the way her tongue might seek out an

aching tooth. And each time, the same question going round and round, an endless unanswerable

riddle:
Why? Why, Brian?

She remembered again, how she had wanted to stay in bed forever, hide away in her dark

apartment for the rest of her life.

But after three black weeks, she had awoken one morning feeling ravenous, and wanting to get

up, get out. But even after a huge, hearty breakfast she could barely make it to the door, she was

so weak.

[319] The next day she made it out, and then down the stairs, clutching the banister tightly. As

she crept along like an old lady the three blocks to Washington Square, it came to her, a kind of

epiphany: each additional step she took was proof. She could not be beaten. She was
somebody.

And someday Brian would see that, too. Someday he would realize his mistake. And he would

regret it.

She remembered growing stronger in other ways too. Learning to ignore her grandmother’s

hectoring phone calls, Nonnie’s demands that she visit, call more often, write at least. By the time

Rose had finished her bachelor’s at N.Y.U., she felt as if she’d logged a million miles between

this new life and her old one on Avenue K.

Mother of God, even now Rose couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to get herself through

those grueling exams, and her note—a misnomer if there ever was one—for the
Law Review.

Her torts midterm had been a killer. A case for which she’d had to prepare a mock brief. God,

how could she ever forget
Lambert
v.
Western Securities?
She had sweated over it for weeks,

knocking herself out checking facts, researching precedents, poring over sections and subsections

of the Securities and Exchange Act. And Professor Hughes was the toughest, most demanding

teacher at NYU, a campus legend. It was rumored he never gave anything higher than a C+, but

Rose had been determined. Her diligence would win him over, she was sure; he would have to