Hooked (13 page)

Cleo noticed that Gavin was becoming more remote. At the time when she had first been getting his name in the columns every day, she waited up for him, lying in bed with a book and looking up eagerly every time she thought she heard his key in the door. When he finally came home, they would be happy to see each other and tell each other what had happened that day.

In those months the sex had been good. They made love anytime Cleo initiated things. The position was always the same: he lay on his back while she straddled him. Gavin watched as she moved up and down, perspiration forming on her neck, her hair swinging over her face. She followed his instructions as he directed her to move forward a little, to go faster, slower, come down harder. He thought himself a selfless lover who considered only ways to increase her pleasure and he knew even better than she did how to get her excited.

As he became more famous, he became more withdrawn. No one knew anything about his visits to Washington except Cleo. Whenever he flew down to treat the President, he wore dark glasses to avoid being recognized. Soon he wore them around the house. Gavin’s expressions had always been opaque but now they revealed almost nothing as he concealed himself behind dark glasses.

He came home at night, lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling through his dark glasses. Cleo asked him about his day but he didn’t seem to hear her. Sometimes he would stroke his chest in silence as if unaware that she was in the room. When she asked him what he was thinking about, he told her that he had spent the day giving and had to crawl into his shell for renewal.

Cleo was frustrated and angered by his continual rejection. He refused to deal with the fact that she had far more rights to him as a husband than any of his patients did as a doctor. But he didn’t fully recognize his relationship with Cleo and certainly not with the same clarity that he saw his involvement with his patients. In fact, she came to think, it was probably the only alignment he was truly capable of handling. If someone needed and wanted the one thing he was capable of giving, his services as a doctor, he was comfortable. He was dominant in that setting; they submissive, needy, grateful.

At first Cleo thought Gavin wasn’t acknowledging her needs because he didn’t see them but soon it became clear that he was well aware of her but choosing to ignore her. He could see the symptoms but didn’t know how to heal the ailment that produced them.

Cleo couldn’t repair their marriage because Gavin had withdrawn into an impregnable view of himself. She threatened that careful construction because she remembered the “real” Gavin Jenkins and wanted him back.

She was competing with the only person in the world who could take her husband away from her — Gavin Jenkins.

President Santana and his wife, Suzanne, flew up from Washington to attend Adriana’s black-tie opening at Carnegie Hall. Their host was Nicholas Kiskalesi who was accompanied by the First Lady’s sister, Gail de Córdoba.

Nicky had arranged the foursome because he wanted to exploit his Denver oil shale concessions and a subsidy from the American government would vastly reduce the cost of the operation. Nicky was hoping that James Santana would be amenable and, as the dazzling first-nighters gossiped and speculated, the loyal Adriana Partos claque began to chant, “Adriana, Adriana.”

The star was backstage getting a final injection from Gavin Jenkins. When he withdrew the hypodermic, she sat at her dressing table, checking her makeup for the last time, remembering that she had always been able to channel her pre-performance nerves into artistic brilliance.

Even Ames, who stood near the door, had the wisdom to be silent. He realized that his star needed to concentrate in the few moments she had left before her performance. Instead of wishing her luck or making a joke to relieve the tension, he rolled up his sleeve and waited for the usual moments of bliss right after Gavin gave him his shot.

Ames and Gavin escorted Adriana to the edge of the huge curtain. The Steinway, brightly lit by spotlights, stood on the stage backed by thousands of red roses. Adriana took a deep breath, exhaled, kissed Ames first, then Gavin, and stepped onstage for the first time in almost ten years to a wild ovation.

The audience went mad with ecstasy and when the cheering died down, Cleo, who was seated in the audience next to Gavin, looked over the first-night crowd. She was not surprised to see that hardly a row in this glittering audience was not occupied by at least one person Gavin had treated.

“You belong here,” she whispered to Gavin. “You’ve earned your way—”

He turned toward her and smiled as Adriana raised her hands to play.

Adriana’s tour began as the triumphant comeback everyone had predicted. In the United States, critics had hailed her artistry, citing “the full return of the genius of a decade ago” and “a performance of unforgettable brilliance.” Adoring audiences demanded curtain call after curtain call.

As the tour went on, critics continued to be respectful: “her power and style are as impressive as ever.” But little by little the reviews were less positive. “A nostalgic shadow of her former virtuousity,” wrote a Canadian critic. Commented another: “A poignant echo—”

Adriana brushed aside the negative reviews, confident she would prove the nay sayers wrong but in Europe the London
Times
called her performance “shocking.” Berlin’s
Der Spiegel
said it was “a travesty.”
L’Osservatore Romano
remarked that her concert was “a sad reminder of past glories” and called for Adriana to retire permanently.

Two hours before her scheduled performance in Milan, the concert hall filled with an expectant audience, Adriana turned toward Ames and announced that she wasn’t going to perform.

“Pearls before swine,” she said, waving dismissively toward the filled auditorium from behind the curtain. “They don’t deserve me—”

“The critics are full of shit,” said Ames. “You know that—”

“No, I don’t know that,” she said. “‘A sad reminder—’” She quoted and burst into tears.

“The house is sold out,” said Ames, turning pale. “You
can’t
walk out—”

“Oh, yes I can—”

“Adriana, please,” begged Ames.

Adriana shook her head. “I’ll kill myself before I’ll go out there. I’d rather be dead than put up with their sneering—”

Ames panicked. Adriana was willful, he knew, not a woman given to idle threats, but he had to get her out there on stage. People had paid small fortunes for their tickets and they expected Adriana. Ames could hear the angry muttering and sense the wave of restlessness coming from the audience.

”Adriana, please,” he begged. “Let me give you a shot. You’ll feel better—”

Gavin had taught Ames how to give an injection in preparation for the tour. Ames practiced on grapefruits until he had perfected the technique. Adriana held out her arm, but even after the shot, she refused to go onstage. Ames, desperate, found a doctor who examined her and swore to the press that Miss Partos was suffering a viral infection and was running a fever of 103. She was physically unable to play, said the doctor.

Backstage, as the shot had its effect on Adriana and she became more reasonable, Ames injected himself from the kit Gavin had assembled. It contained needles and syringes and vials of injectable drugs. Gavin had written prescriptions for each drug, and in addition, prepared a letter, should any customs inspector become suspicious about the quantity of medication carried by the noted producer and world-famous pianist.

“Mr. Bostwick has been instructed in the proper use of intravenous injections of Methedrine (metamphetamine hypochloride). Methedrine in ampules of 1cc. (20mg.), other medications (listed below) together with disposable syringes, has been prescribed for use as needed….”

Adriana canceled Brussels the morning of the concert. This time Ames was unable to dig up a “friendly” doctor and the headlines flashed around the world.

Adriana blamed Ames and had a raging back stage temper tantrum. She threatened suicide and broke the mirror in her dressing room. After Ames calmed her down, he took a shot to steady himself and added an extra-strong dose for good measure.

He planned to stay in his room and lose himself in pleasant oblivion, but after a while, he changed his mind. Suddenly energized, he went to the bar downstairs, sat down, and ordered a glass of water.

“Perrier?” the bartender asked.

“What are you, some kind of wise guy?” snapped Ames. “I asked for water so move your ass—”

The bartender didn’t say anything, but filled a glass and put it in front of Ames.

At the other end of the bar was a tall, strapping man, about twice Ames’s size. A half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker stood in front of him. The woman with him had short, curly red hair and looked to be thirty pounds overweight. She was drinking a brandy alexander.

The man glanced over when he heard Ames speak to the bartender.

“What are you staring at?” Ames asked. “Haven’t you ever heard anyone ask for a glass of water before?”

“Cool it, buddy,” the man said in a heavy Southern drawl and continued talking quietly to the woman.

“Don’t you ignore me,” Ames said, getting up and grabbing the man by the shoulder. “I’m not one of those nigguhs you good ol’ boys like to push around—”

“Look, asshole, I don’t want trouble, and you don’t want trouble,” the stranger said, removing Ames’s hand from his shoulder. “Just drink your water and leave us alone—”

Ames didn’t answer but made a sudden lunge toward the the bar and grabbed the bottle of Johnnie Walker. He smashed it against the edge of the bar, soaking the carpet and his own suit with Scotch. He held up the bottle, the sharp, broken edges pointing at the stranger.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Ames screamed. “I’m not afraid of anyone—”

With that, the hotel manager appeared along with two beefy security guards. “Mr. Bostwick, we’re going upstairs now.”

Ames suddenly turned docile and, flanked by the two security guards, was escorted to his room.

The next day, when Ames and Adriana checked out, there was a substantial charge on the bill to cover the cost of damages the night before. Ames didn’t remember the incident but he didn’t question the bill. What did he care? It would be forwarded to Nicky Kiskalesi anyway.

In Stockholm, Adriana walked off the stage after playing only the first few bars of a Beethoven sonata. The stunned audience gasped in shock. Again, the headlines.

Ames, seeing his future go down in flames, injected himself with a double dose and proceeded to wreck the hotel lobby. He smashed the glass tops of the cocktail tables and used the sharp letter opener at the registration desk to slash the lobby’s leather sofas and the floor-to-ceiling draperies. When a bellboy attempted to disarm him, Ames knocked him out and it took the police to end the rampage.

The next morning the American ambassador got Ames out of jail. A representative of the Swedish government kept the story out of the papers but insisted that Ames and Adriana be on the next plane out of Sweden. A police escort made certain that they were.

In Vienna, Adriana collapsed on stage. The next day, she called an unscheduled press conference to announce that she was canceling the remainder of the tour. Again the headlines flashed and the stories that ran under them reported on Miss Partos’s haggard condition and the convulsive shaking of the hands that had once held genius.

Ames heard the news, not from Adriana and not from the newspapers, but from an enraged Nicky Kiskalesi. Ames was in the manager’s office of the Vienna Opera House trying desperately to appease the manager, who demanded the advance back, in cash, that moment. The phone on the manager’s baroque desk rang; he answered it and handed it to Ames.

Nicky informed Ames Bostwick that not only was his two-million-dollar fee canceled but that also he, Nicky, would personally see to it that Ames Bostwick would never again be able to raise a cent as long as he lived.

“You can’t do this to me!” Ames cried into the phone.

“I can,” said Nicky, “and, what’s more, I already have.”

Nicky hung up without another word, leaving Ames with a dead line and — he realized immediately — a dead line of credit.

Nicky put down the phone and turned his attention to the woman on the bed next to him. Now that Adriana was away on tour, her replacement was Gail de Córdoba.

Nicky had once considered Gail to be featherbrained, but she surprised him by turning out to be a useful ally in his dealings with James Santana about the Denver oil shale concessions. Gail had a direct pipeline to her sister, the President’s wife, and Nicky discovered somewhat to his surprise that she was far more astute and socially connected than he had originally realized.

Nicky had read the newspaper reports about Adriana’s collapse and seen photographs of her looking worn and exhausted, her lush russet-colored hair greyed and sparse, her body skeletal. Nobody would envy the man who had Adriana Partos at his side.

On the other hand, Gail was fifteen years younger and looked twenty-five years younger. She was the President’s sister-in-law and had invaluable contacts in Europe and the United States. Nicky was glad to be with her again and he lay back on the bed, closed his eyes, and gently stroked Gail’s hair as her head bobbed up and down between his legs.

It was Adriana who found Ames.

Although she wasn’t going to perform, not ever again, she decided that she would take her shot anyway and went to Ames’s room at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna. When he didn’t answer, she got the manager to open the room for her. She had decided that even if Ames had gone out, she would have the shot even if she had to inject herself. She wanted it that badly.

Ames was lyingface down in his bathroom, a half-empty syringe near his outstretched right hand. The Viennese doctor who was summoned by the Imperial’s manager, had Ames admitted to a local hospital.

He told Adriana that Ames’s violent and erratic behavior was most likely an effect of the drug and said he was shocked by the amount of amphetamine contained in the syringe.