Kristine Katheryne Rusch - Beautiful Damned.pdf

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KRISTINE KATHRY RUSCH
THE BEAUTIFUL, THE DAMNED
CHAPTER 1
I Come From The Middle West, an unforgiving land with little or no tolerance
for
imagination. The wind blows harsh across the prairies, and the snows fall
thick.
Even with the conveniences of the modem age, life is dangerous there. To lose
sight of reality, even for one short romantic moment, is to risk death.
I didn't belong in that country, and my grandfather knew it. I was his
namesake,
and somehow, being the second Nick Carraway in a family where the name had a
certain mystique had forced that mystique upon me. He had lived in the East
during the twenties, and had grand adventures, most of which he would not talk
about. When he returned to St. Paul in 1928, he met a woman-- my grandmother
Nell -- and with her solid, common sense had shed himself of the romance and
imagination that had led to his adventures in the first place.
Although not entirely. For when I announced, fifty years later, that I
intended
to pursue my education in the East, he paid four years of Ivy League tuition.
And, when I told him, in the early '80s, that, despite my literary background
and romantic nature, I planned a career in the securities business, he regaled
me with stories of being a bond man in New York City in the years before the
crash.
He died while I was still learning the art of the cold call, stuck on the
sixteenth floor of a windowless high rise, in a tiny cubicle that matched a
hundred other tiny cubicles, distinguished only by my handprint on the phone
set
and the snapshots of my family thumbtacked to the indoor-outdoor carpeting
covering the small barrier that separated my cubicle from all the others. He
never saw the house in Connecticut which, although it was not grand, was
respectable, and he never saw my rise from a cubicle employee to a man with an
office. He never saw the heady Reagan years, although he would have warned me
about the awful Black Monday well before it appeared. For despite the
computers,
jets, and televised communications, the years of my youth were not all that
different from the years of his.
He never saw Fitz either, although I knew, later that year, when I read the
book, that my grandfather would have understood my mysterious neighbor too.
My house sat at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by trees whose russet leaves
are-- in my mind-- in a state of perpetual autumn. I think the autumn
melancholy
comes from the overlay of hindsight upon what was, I think, the strangest
summer
of my life, a summer which, like my grandfather's summer of 1925, I do not
discuss, even when asked. In that tiny valley, the air always had a damp chill
and the rich smell of loam. The scent grew stronger upon that winding dirt
path
that led to Fitz's house on the hill's crest -- not a house really, but more
of
 
a mansion in the conservative New England style, white walls hidden by trees,
with only the wide walk and the entry visible from the gate. Once behind, the
walls and windows seemed to go on forever, and the manicured lawn with its
neatly mowed grass and carefully arranged marble fountains seemed like a
throwback from a simpler time.
The house had little life in the daytime, but at night the windows were thrown
open and cars filled the driveway. The cars were all sleek and dark--blue
Saabs
and midnight BMWs, black Jaguars and ebony Cararras. Occasionally a white
stretch limo or a silver DeLorean would mar the darkness, but those guests
rarely returned for a second visit, as if someone had asked them to take their
ostentation elsewhere. Music trickled down the hill with the light, usually
music of a vanished era, waltzes and marches and Dixieland Jazz, music both
romantic and danceable, played to such perfection that I envied Fitz his sound
system until I saw several of the better known New York Philharmonic members
round the comer near my house early on a particular Saturday evening.
Laughter, conversation, and the tinkle of ice against fine crystal filled the
gaps during the musicians' break, and in those early days, as I sat on my
porch
swing and stared up at the light, I imagined parties like those I had only
seen
on film-- slender beautiful women in glittery gowns, and athletic men who wore
tuxedos like a second skin, exchanging witty and wry conversation under a
dying
moon.
In those early days, I didn't trudge up the hill, although later I learned I
could have, and drop into a perpetual party that never seemed to have a guest
list. I still had enough of my Midwestern politeness to wait for an invitation
and enough of my practical Midwestern heritage to know that such an invitation
would never come.
Air conditioners have done little to change Manhattan in the summer. If
anything, the heat from their exhausts adds to the oppression in the air, the
stench of garbage rotting on the sidewalks, and the smell of sweaty human
bodies
pressed too close. Had my cousin Arielle not discovered me, I might have spent
the summer in the cool loam of my Connecticut home, monitoring the markets
through my personal computer, and watching Fitz's parties with a phone wedged
between my shoulder and ear.
Arielle always had an ethereal, other-worldly quality. My sensible aunt, with
her thick ankles and dish-water blonde hair, must have recognized that quality
in the newborn she had given birth to in New Orleans, and committed the only
romantic act of her life by deciding that Arielle was not a Mary or a Louise,
family names that had suited Carraways until then.
I had never known Arielle well. At family reunions held on the shores of Lake
Superior, she was always a beautiful, unattainable ghost, dressed in white
gauze, with silver blonde hair that fell to her waist, wide blue eyes, and
skin
so pale it seemed as fragile as my mother's bone china. We had exchanged
perhaps
five words over all those reunions, held each July, and always I had bowed my
head and stammered in the presence of such royalty. Her voice was sultry and
musical, lacking the long "a"s and soft "d"s that made my other relations
sound
like all their years of education had made no impression at all.
 
Why she called me when she and her husband Tom discovered that I had bought a
house in a village only a mile from theirs I will never know. Perhaps she was
lonely for a bit of family, or perhaps the other-worldliness had absorbed her,
even then.
CHAPTER II
I Drove To Arielle and Tom's house in my own car, a BMW, navy blue and
spit-polished, bought used because all of my savings had gone into the house.
They lived on a knoll in a mock-Tudor style house surrounded by young saplings
that had obviously been transplanted. The lack of tall trees gave the house a
vulnerable air, as if the neighbors who lived on higher hills could look down
upon it and find it flawed. The house itself was twice the size of mine, with
a
central living area flanked by a master bedroom wing and a guest wing, the
wings
more of an architect's affectation than anything else.
Tom met me at the door. He was a beefy man in his late twenties whose athletic
build was beginning to show signs of softening into fat. He still had the
thick
neck, square jaw and massive shoulders of an offensive lineman which, of
course,
he had been. After one season with the Green Bay Packers -- in a year
unremarked
for its lackluster performance-- he was permanently sidelined by a knee
injury.
Not wanting to open a car dealership that would forever capitalize on his one
season of glory, he took his wife and his inheritance and moved east. When he
saw me, he clapped his hand on my back as if we were old friends when, in
fact,
we had only met once, at the last and least of the family reunions.
"Ari's been waiting ta see ya," he said, and the broad flat uneducated vowels
of
the Midwest brought with them the sense of the stifling summer afternoons of
the
reunions, children's laughter echoing over the waves of the lake as if their
joy
would last forever.
He led me through a dark foyer and into a room filled with light. Nothing in
the
front of the house had prepared me for this room, with its floor-to-ceiling
windows, and their view of an English garden beyond the patio. Arielle sat on
a
loveseat beneath the large windows, the sunlight reflecting off her hair and
white dress, giving her a radiance that was almost angelic. She held out her
hand, and as I took it, she pulled me close and kissed me on the cheek.
"Nicky," she murmured. "I missed you."
The softness with which she spoke, the utter sincerity in her gaze made me
believe her and, as on those summer days of old, I blushed.
"Not much ta do in Connecticut." Tom's booming voice made me draw back. "We
been
counting the nails on the walls."
 
"Now, Tom," Ari said without taking her hand from mine, "we belong here."
I placed my other hand over hers, capturing the fragile fingers for a moment,
before releasing her. "I rather like the quiet," I said.
"You would," Tom said. He turned and strode across the hardwood floor, always
in
shadow despite the light pouring in from the windows.
His abruptness took me aback, and I glanced at Ari. She shrugged. "I think
we'll
eat on the terrace. The garden is cool this time of day."
"Will Tom join us?"
She frowned in a girlish way, furrowing her brow, and making her appear, for a
moment, as if she were about to cry. "He will when he gets off the phone."
I hadn't heard a phone ring, but I had no chance to ask her any more for she
placed her slippered feet on the floor and stood. I had forgotten how tiny she
was, nearly half my height, but each feature perfectly proportioned. She took
my
arm and I caught the fresh scent of lemons rising from her warm skin.
"You must tell me everything that's happened to you," she said, and I did.
Under
her intense gaze my life felt important, my smallest accomplishments a
pinnacle
of achievement. We had reached the terrace before I had finished. A glass
table,
already set for three, stood in the shade of a maple tree. The garden spread
before us, lush and green. Each plant had felt the touch of a pruning shears
and
was trimmed back so severely that nothing was left to chance.
I pulled out a chair for Ari and she sat daintily, her movements precise. I
took
the chair across from her, feeling cloddish, afraid that my very size would
cause me to break something. I wondered how Tom, with his linebacker's build,
felt as he moved through his wife's delicate house.
She shook out a linen napkin and placed it on her lap. A man appeared beside
her
dressed as a waiter -- he had moved so silently that I hadn't noticed him--
and
poured water into our crystal glasses. He filled Tom's as well, and Ari stared
at the empty place.
"I wish he wouldn't call her before lunch," she said. "It disturbs my
digestion."
I didn't want to ask what Ari was referring to. I didn't want to get trapped
in
their private lives.
She sighed and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "But I don't want to
talk about Tom's awful woman. I understand you live next door to the man they
call Fitz."
I nodded as the waiter appeared again, bringing fresh bread in a ceramic
 
basket.
"I would love," she said, leaning forward just enough to let me know this was
the real reason behind my invitation, "to see the inside of his home."
Tom never joined us. We finished our lunch, walked through the garden, and had
mint juleps in the late afternoon, after which everything seemed a bit funnier
than it had before. As I left in the approaching twilight, it felt as if Ari
and
I had been friends instead of acquaintances linked by a happenstance of birth.
By the time I got home, it was dark. The house retained the heat of the day,
and
so I went into the back yard and stared at the path that led up to Fitz's
mansion. The lights blazed on the hillside, and the sound of laughter washed
down to me like the blessing of a god. Perhaps Ari's casual suggestion put
something in my mind, or perhaps I was still feeling the effects of the mint
juleps, but whatever the cause, I walked up the path, feeling drawn to the
house
like a moth to light.
My shoes crunched against the hard-packed earth, and my legs, unused to such
strenuous exercise, began to ache. Midway up, the coolness of the valley had
disappeared, and perspiration made my shirt cling to my chest. The laughter
grew
closer, and with it, snatches of conversation --women's voices rising with
passion, men speaking in low tones, pretending that they couldn't be
overheard.
I stopped at a small rock formation just before the final rise to Fitz's
house.
The rocks extended over the valley below like a platform, and from them, I
could
see the winding road I had driven that afternoon to Ari's house.
A car passed below and I followed the trail of its headlights until they
disappeared into the trees.
As I turned to leave the platform, my desire to reach the party gone, I caught
a
glimpse of a figure moving against the edge of the path. A man stood on the
top
of the rise, staring down at the road, as I had. He wore dark evening dress
with
a white shirt and a matching white scarf draped casually around his neck. The
light against his back caused his features to be in shadow-- only when he
cupped
his hands around a burning match to light a cigarette already in his mouth did
I
get a sense of his face.
He had an older beauty-- clean-shaven, almost womanish, with a long nose, high
cheekbones and wide, dark eyes. A kind of beauty that had been fashionable in
men when my grandfather was young-- the Rudolph Valentino, Leslie Howard look
that seemed almost effete by the standards of today.
As he tossed the match away, a waltz started playing behind him, and it gave
him
context. He stared down at the only other visible point of light --Ari's
knoll--
 

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