Nikki (5 page)

There had been a gorgeous reception, and next morning Nikki’s parents had got on a plane to Richmond, Virginia, and crashed to their deaths.

Nikki finished dressing, got a cab and headed for the dinner. The dinner-ballet-midnight supper was part of a fund-raising campaign put on annually by a local confederation of women’s clubs in behalf of the Children’s Hospital. Dolores, married six years now and with two children, was president of one of the clubs sponsoring the affair.

She had written Nikki, making a nice unsentimental pitch, “Here’s a chance to dress up, have a ball, and feel virtuous about it at only $100 a ticket. What say?”

Nikki had answered, “Your note touches my lack of virtue and I enclose a check for ten tickets. Assume this will entitle me to nine men who also lack virtue??? Lovingly, The Storm Front.”

Nikki looked elegantly beautiful, and she knew it, when she entered the Sheraton-Palace for the dinner wearing a new strapless gown and a short white fur. She carried herself proudly, upper body erect, slender head borne high on the rising curve of her throat, and she moved with an easy grace and composure. Yet there was an atmosphere about her of tension under restraint, a crackling nervous vitality as bright as the firepoints of diamond light that glittered from her tiara.

A cocktail-time sound of music, talk and laughter surged from the banquet room as she checked her fur and moved to the entrance. She scanned the crowd of dinner-jacketed men and colorfully gowned women, indifferently aware of the attention she attracted. Her contact with local society was slight; she knew few of them, but here as elsewhere she was known by exaggerated reputation to many.

In the six years since she had left college she had been engaged three times, but the rumor persisted that Nikki Duquesne disposed of a fiancé a week. Once, and once only, two men had got brave-drunk and possessive over her and there had been a fight that had made the New York tabloids and gossip columns.

Now hostesses nervously anticipated some jungle melodrama involving her, and afterward when they hadn’t gotten it they felt vaguely cheated and resentful. The insidious part of it was that Nikki liked the spotlight and there was always the temptation to live up to people’s sensational expectations.

In the process of winning medals, ribbons, cups, trophies
ad nauseam
in swimming, diving, golf, riding and tennis Nikki had become a favorite of the news photographers. They loved catching her in bathing suits or with her short tennis skirt flying to show her sexy legs in action, and they delighted in her victory smiles and scowls of defeat. Winning, she radiated pure, unashamed joy; losing, she was stormy and photogenic.

When the sports reporters had begun noticing her, they jeered because she was society and money and an intellectual with a Phi Beta Kappa key, and scolded her for her attitudes and ego and the bad taste of her remarks. “I
love
to win.” “I
hate
to lose.” “I’m good at all sports. You name it … Nikki’s won it.” “Would I continue to love the game if I couldn’t win? Hell, no!” Yet, grudgingly at first, the sports tribe came to admire her superb skill and coordination, her spirit, and her unflagging drive even when outclassed. But even they minimized her solid accomplishments and played her up as the explosive heiress, the racy playgirl, the glamor girl, pet and problem child of café society.

She met all sorts of people, many with flashy public personalities and faintly scandalous reputations, and she was often linked with them in news stories. All in all, there was an aura of glamor and unreality about her which Nikki in the flesh did nothing to dispel. It hadn’t mattered that people confused her with her public personality. What had begun to matter was that she herself was no longer sure. Maybe she had become nothing but a glittering surface, rootless and depthless.

She saw Dolores on the reception line of young hostesses at the same moment that Dolores saw her. The blue eyes widened in recognition, the round face in its soft frame of blonde hair brightened, and she sent Nikki one of those endearing, half-shy smiles. The mere sight of Dolores, the feel of her gentle warmth and calm, soothed and reassured Nikki.

She felt a sort of dreamy sweetness and she wasn’t even conscious that the feeling took visible form in a charming, girlish smile until she felt the raw, cold flash of light from a photographer’s camera. She had an instant’s sensation of pain and violation, followed at once by the swift, angry impression of a night hunter using floodlights to blind and paralyze small game. She glanced down and brushed lightly at the brilliant material of her skirt, and when she looked up at the moonfaced, rather clownish-looking photographer, she was in control of herself, and her smile was dancy and impish.

“Hi, Nikki. That smile was a beauty.”

“Thank you. I remember you, don’t I? Two years ago when I was out here riding in the horse show?”

“That wasn’t me, Nikki! It was my bad twin. You mean those rear shots he got of you taking that red stallion jumper over the hurdles with your seat aloft? Tsk. He was a bad one. I don’t blame you for trying to bust his camera over his head.”

“Now you know very well I didn’t try to break your camera; I simply and politely asked you not to use the pictures.”

“
I
would’ve been gentleman enough to do it, Nikki. You ought to know that. By the way, are you out here to beat the panties off the local gals in the tennis tournament this time?”

“I’m entered, but I may withdraw,” Nikki said, starting to move on.

The photographer nudged a woman reporter nearby. “Hey, Society, this’s the real Duquesne, spelled N-i-k-k-i. She’ll mount your head on the wall of her trophy room if you misspell it, too.”

“Of course I know Miss Duquesne,” the society columnist said. “I’ve been admiring your gown. It
is
Balenciaga?”

“M’m h’m.”

“But
how
shall I describe the color … or colors?”

“Call it a collision of colors.”

“Oh, that’s good. Doesn’t it
just
describe those blocks and triangles of red, green, yellow, blue, black!”

“The gown’s in honor of tonight’s premiere of the new Stravinsky ballet. You know … discords and dissonances.”

“That
is
an angle. Thank you.”

Nikki smiled down at herself. The uneven hemline of the skirt lifted in front to show off the naked grace of her slim ankles and high-arched feet in open, stilt-heeled jeweled sandals. She brushed sensually at the full, lavish skirt and turned her hips subtly so that the skirt swayed a little.

“Nikki,” the photographer said, “how about another shot with a little more inspiration … y’know, uplift to the skirt?”

She looked at him writhingly.

“Now, now Nikki. I’m too young to die.”

Nikki shook her head, annoyance giving way to amusement. “All right.” She laughed. “I won’t grant a pardon, but I’ll give you a reprieve.”

The woman reporter touched her hesitantly as she started to move again. Something sly in her manner made Nikki wary.

“One more moment, please, if you’d be so kind?”

Nikki waited, her alert green eyes watchful.

“I know you’ve denied it officially, but …”

“If I denied it,” Nikki said lightly, “it’s because it’s untrue, whatever it is.”

“Of course.” The woman laughed. “But it is true, isn’t it, that when you were in Paris last year, riding in the International Horse Show, a rivalry developed over you which resulted in a duel?”

“No.”

“There were, however, arrangements for a duel … whether it was actually fought or not. Isn’t that true?”

“No,” Nikki said good-humoredly. “No duel, no arrangements, no rivalry. Not even two suitors.”

“But, Miss Duquesne, two persons, a count and a European industrialist, were specifically named.”

“I was at a large dinner party and met the count. I was in the group including de Corbie that attended the races. I never dated either of them. I had interesting conversations with each of them. Politics with one, economics with the other. Our involvement was not even remotely personal.”

The reporter smirked. “Politics. Economics. Oh, my!”

“Oh, my!” Nikki mimicked, her smile thinning. She felt herself tensing. Then she became aware that she was a focus of attention, surrounded by polite eavesdroppers. No! She wasn’t going to be goaded into losing her temper. A spectacle was precisely what they wanted. She smiled at the reporter archly. “I suppose there’s no point in trying to put a dull story over on the press.”

When Nikki reached Dolores they both spoke in tones of derisive affection.

“Hi, Taffy Head!”

“Hi, Storm Front.”

They took each other’s hands briefly and smiled, studying each other admiringly.

“That’s a sweet blue,” Nikki said. “A lovely gown. You’re looking wonderful. Like my new dress?”

“It’s an eye-stabber.” Dolores laughed, shaking her head. “Its very
Nikki
.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Nikki said, a trifle defensively.

“What’re you talking about?”

“I merely asked a question. Are you sore because I
did
show up? You looked faintly shocked when you first saw me.”

“A little surprised. I didn’t even know for sure you were in town. And you’ll admit you often don’t show up.”

“But I always phone or write.”

“I’m
glad
you came. Not sore. Am I getting through?” Dolores smiled rather too convincingly. It was clear she was becoming slightly nervous. Others were coming along the receiving line.”

“I’m clogging things,” Nikki said, glancing up the line. “I’ll get out of the way.”

“You do see the position I’m in, Nikki? After all, I’m a sponsoring hostess.”

“Of course I do, Taffy Head.” Nikki squeezed her hand and grinned. “I’ve got something to tell you, later. A real surprise.”

“Wait, you devil! You can’t walk off leaving me in the dark like that. Tell me quick.”

“It’s not a quickie thing. And no, it’s not that I’ve found the
man
. Something else.”

Dolores looked at her exasperatedly, then glanced anxiously to one side, smiled at an elderly couple approaching her. “Stand
beside
me,” she whispered urgently, then turned a charming smile toward the couple.

Nikki took her place beside Dolores, smiling contentedly, feeling pleased with herself. She herself hadn’t dared suggest that she stand there on the official reception line.

During a lull, Dolores said in an undertone, “I’ll bet there’s no secret or surprise at all. You just pulled that to make me keep you here so you could get into the act. Didn’t you?”

“Well, of course it is better on the main line than the sideline,” Nikki teased.

“I
knew
it. I told myself no, no, she won’t pull anything, but unconsciously I knew you’d manage to get in the spotlight, come hell or …”

“Tsk, tsk. You’re getting pink, and guests are coming.”

When there was another free minute Nikki patted Dolores’s arm and said, “Don’t sizzle, Taffy Head. I wasn’t after the spotlight, honest.”

“Oh, no! I suppose you weren’t up there hogging the press.”

“They held me … I didn’t push myself. I couldn’t help it. I give you my word.” Nikki looked at her seriously. “You know my word, Taffy Head, don’t you?”

Dolores nodded. “I believe you, Nikki. And maybe it’s not your fault … but it’s still a fact that you were getting the attention, and I saw some pretty important people back of you, fretting.”

More guests came along. Afterward Nikki said, “You mean I offended the local bigshots by getting my picture taken when they wanted to mug it?”

“Yes. It’s petty, I admit. And it can’t mean anything to you. You’re here today, in Europe tomorrow. We have to live with them; people who are important to Jim and me socially and to Jim in his business.”

“And if I anger them they can’t spit in my eye, but they can get back at
you
,” Nikki began laughingly. Then she sobered. “I’m sorry, Dolores. I see your position.”

“Well, don’t take it
that
hard, Nikki.”

“I’m just sorry, Dolores. It didn’t occur to me that I’m …” She looked down unhappily at her brilliant, clashing gown. “I’m too flashy. You’ve got a husband and home and kids and a respectable position, and I’m disruptive. As a friend, I’m a liability.”

“Ah,” Dolores laughed in genuine amusement. “Nikki, Nikki dear. We play it to the hilt, don’t we?”

“I’m not self-dramatizing. I wish I were. All I’m stating is fact. I’ll tell you what my surprise was. I’ve been flying in and out of town furnishing a new apartment right here in San Francisco. I didn’t let you know what I was up to till it was all done. I planned on making it my home. So I’d be near you and …” She started to laugh. She looked down and extended one foot. “Did you see what I’m wearing for an anklet?”

“Don’t change the subject. Nikki,
dear
, I’m delighted and very, very happy that you’re moving out here. It’s wonderful. Oh, stop that showing off your feet!” Dolores took Nikki’s arm, led her away from the line to a relatively private place.

“Several males looked,” Nikki said impishly. “What I wanted you to see was that it’s my Phi Betta Kappa key I’m wearing on my anklet chain. It’s a priceless private joke, putting that badge of intellectual achievement down at my feet. Don’t you think so?”

“I think it’s childish … and stop ignoring what I said. You’re my best friend; I want you near me. I’m very happy,”

“Your place is on the line of duty. See you at the dinner—or will I? Am I seated by you and Jim?”

“No. I’m at the committee table. You surely understand.”

“I do. I’d hoped to be near you at dinner, but I’m not angry or hurt.”

“Yes, you are.”

She extended her foot, pointed whimsically at the Phi Beta Kappa key on her anklet. “That proves I have—or had—enough brains to understand your position.”

“You don’t or you wouldn’t say it in that way, nor look at me so reproachfully.”

Nikki frowned and shook her head. “Reproachfully? Is that how I looked?”

“Yes.”

She bit her lip. “I swear I didn’t know. Because I’m not complaining, and I’m not accusing or feeling abused. I swear I’m not. What right have I to? Our lives are different. I don’t know what made me think I was still central in your scheme of things.”