The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (41 page)

In the days that followed, a flood of details emerged, revealing the character and past of the shadowy neofascist Ludovico Borghini. The reporters had by then dubbed him “the master slasher.”

The week following the opening, Isobel stayed on as guest of the Metropolitan, with Manship as an unofficial personal tour guide. Manship had naively assumed that, on her first visit to New York, she would want to see the sights, all the typical things and places first-time visitors gravitated to—the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, Little Italy. In addition, he had planned a number of small dinner parties in her honor, inviting lively, amiable people, many from the theater, thinking she would enjoy that most.

He was relieved when she asked, almost apologetically, if they could “skip all that.” The itinerary he’d worked on so diligently had struck him as a bit trite, anyway. The World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty, after the horrific ordeal she’d just been through, also seemed hopelessly inappropriate.

Though Foa had gone to some pains to apprise him in advance of the Roman horrors, Manship could only guess at the true depths of the ordeal. The young woman he saw before him now—subdued, withdrawn, just barely sociable—struck him as very sad. Hardly the feisty, self-assured young woman he’d met in Fiesole, she was in a state of shock and in the process of trying to heal.

She seemed most at peace when they walked out in the park together, or prowled the museum during off-hours, losing themselves in its endless wings and sparsely populated galleries.

She found it particularly pleasing to sit in the little garden out back of 5 East Eighty-fifth Street. She would perch on the tiny white marble bench beneath the pergola where Manship grew grapes, from which he occasionally made bad wine. It reminded her of Italy.

Sometimes she would go off with Maeve for an afternoon of shopping, or go with her to her small rented studio on Greene Street and marvel at her energy as she scrambled up and down ladders, dressed in paint-spattered jeans and sneakers, putting the final touches on paintings scheduled to be shown at her upcoming exhibition.

Isobel had been taking most of her meals at the hotel. Finally, Manship asked one night if she would consent to have dinner at number 5, where Mrs. McCooch would be happy to prepare a bird, or perhaps one of her savory Irish stews that they might eat before the fire in the library.

That was the first time he’d seen her light up since her coming to New York, and he felt encouraged. It was then he understood that it wasn’t
he
who was being rejected, but, more likely, noise, excitement, glitter. What she wanted now, needed more than ever, was calm.

One night toward the end of the week, Manship kissed her. Like a man long out of touch with romance, he had planned it. It was a clumsy kiss, occurring in the dark entryway of a dental office on the corner of Eighty-third and Fifth. A chaste, fumbling thing, it had taken her by surprise, and he regretted it the instant it was under way. When he attempted something more ambitious, she turned her head away and gently drew him out of the shadows of the doorway. She seemed miserable, utterly crestfallen.

He had the sense of a humiliating defeat. They were standing now on Fifth Avenue, just at the entrance to the Stanhope. Light from the lobby streamed across his anguished features.

“Tomorrow?” he asked hopefully.

“Do you really want to? Or are you just being kind? You don’t have to, you know. There’s no need—”

He watched her with a sense of infuriating helplessness. She was shaking her head back and forth as if she’d lost for the moment the power of speech. But it was her eyes that nailed him—the Chigi eyes, full of mystery and sorrow. They’d finally overtaken him, so slowly, so gently, he could scarcely recall the moment when he’d first succumbed to their lovely sadness.

“I
do
want to,” he said. “And kindness has never been one of my strong points.”

He kissed her again. This time, it went better. Deeper, harder, more satisfying. They’d both fallen into it, occasionally jarred and bumped by the crowds streaming in and out the revolving front doors as they spun past them into waiting taxis and the night.

T
HE END OF HER
visit loomed, as he knew it must. It was Thursday. She’d booked a seat on the Alitalia flight from New York to Rome for Saturday evening.

It was Mrs. McCooch’s night off. That last night, Isobel wanted to “do dinner,” as she said. She longed to “putter at a stove.” She missed her kitchen back in Fiesole.

She cooked him a risotto with fresh porcini mushrooms imported from Tuscany that she’d found at a little Italian greengrocer around the corner on Madison Avenue. She simmered these in a pale sauce of
pomadora
sprinkled with a dash of freshly ground Parmesan.

Afterward, she tossed a salad of endive and radicchio in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. She’d roasted a chicken and the odor of thyme and fresh garlic drifted on the warm currents of air suffusing the kitchen.

Manship brought up a fine old barolo from his tiny cellar, and they finished off with a dark, bitter espresso, fresh raspberries, and hard almond biscotti, dipped Tuscan-style in a saucer of golden amber Vin Santos.

“I don’t suppose,” he said, shifting uneasily in his chair, “I could prevail on you to stay a bit longer?”

They hadn’t talked much during dinner. The absence of talk never seemed to bother her. Now, its sudden intrusion into the meal made her visibly uncomfortable. She peered into the bottom of her espresso cup as though she were reading some melancholy tidings in the calligraphy of dregs spattered there.

“Do you recall that night in Florence? You took me to dinner and I made a great pig of myself.”

He smiled in spite of his sense of gathering gloom.

“You asked me to go to New York with you,” she went on.

“And you politely declined my offer just as you’re about to do now.”

Despite the painted smile on his face, she was determined to finish. “I had the feeling then that you were reaching out to me, that there was something more on your mind than just having me in New York as some kind of centerpiece for your show.” She looked down again into her cup. “I confess I thought the worst.”

He was about to protest, then conceded in his mind that much of what she said may have been true.

“I liked you,” she went on. “That’s why I sent that note to you about Pettigrilli. As it turned out, I nearly got myself killed in the bargain.”

He smiled sadly. “I’m sure I offended you with all of my grand talk of theater connections. I was certain you wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible. Besides, there was that young man.”

“Young man?”

“The fellow I saw at your place that afternoon …”

“Tino?” She laughed. “One of my bigger mistakes. He had some very bad habits. I sent him off.”

Manship pondered that a while. “Is there someone else?”

She shook her head, sending a shower of ash-blond hair sliding across her cheek. “No, there’s no one else.”

“Then why not stay with me a bit longer? Much longer. As long as you want.” He was surprised at the sudden ardor and at how quickly he’d upped the ante.

“I must get home,” she said with her typical quiet firmness. “I must get about my work, make something of my life.”

“I have to make something of mine, too. Why can’t we do it together?” It sounded to him like a proposal of sorts.

She leaned slightly backward, fixing him shrewdly with her gaze. “What’s kept you alone so long?”

“You mean since Maeve?”

“Yes. That would be how long?”

“Over ten years.” He divided the last of the espresso between their two cups, then raised his eyes toward the ceiling as though reading his thoughts from there. “When you’re a bachelor about town”—he groped for words—“and have a certain kind of high-profile job …”

“High-profile?”

“Visible—talked about. Occasionally written about. That sort of thing.”

“Ah, yes. I see.”

“Everyone you meet then has a woman they’re certain is perfect for you.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I see.”

“You do?”

“Yes, of course. That’s the way in Italy, too.”

“So,” he went on, “what inevitably happens is that you find yourself in lots of places you don’t care to be, and often among people you don’t particularly care to be with. It’s a distraction and usually a waste of time. Then, when you finally realize what you’ve been doing, it’s too late. You can’t have that time back.”

Listening, she gnawed her lower lip.

Manship dropped a lump of sugar into his cup and began to slowly stir it. “For the last year or so, it’s occurred to me I don’t have much more time to squander. And so, when I had dinner with you that night in Florence, I confess that what started out with entirely commercial motives, getting you over here as a centerpiece for the show, as you say, became something else. Don’t ask me to explain. It’s completely irrational.”

“What did it become exactly?”

“I don’t know. At least I didn’t know then. I’m not sure I know now. All I know is that something in me has changed. Call it a shift of priorities. My feeling about things—my work, my life. Everything.”

She looked at him sympathetically, he thought, for the first time. “How so? Tell me.”

“If I could put it into words, it would sound ridiculous.” He laughed, more at himself than anything else. Then, elbows on the table, he leaned forward. “It feels very natural sitting here in this kitchen with you, having dinner together like this. It’s as if we’ve been sitting here this way for years, and that we’ll still be sitting here together like this for years to come.”

She looked at the table with its uncleared dishes and cozy disorder.

“At this same table,” he went on, “with the same chipped china, the same tarnished flatware, the same old cut-glass cruet of oil and vinegar, full of thumbprints that Mrs. McCooch refuses to clean, and that same bowl of lump sugar she refuses to fill more than halfway.”

She looked up, about to say something, then changed her mind. “I really should be going.”

“It’s early.” Manship glanced at his watch. “Not quite eleven.”

“I still have some packing. Letters to write …”

Her eagerness to be off saddened him. It was, he thought, as if in her mind she’d finally settled some long-standing and deeply unpleasant problem.

“Tomorrow’s your last day,” he said. “How would you like to spend it? I thought we might—”

She lay a light tremulous hand on his sleeve. “If it’s all the same to you, I must attend to some matters by myself.”

It was as though the legs had been cut out from beneath him. Never before had he known such thorough rejection. Its terrible gentleness was especially hurtful. As if she pitied him.

He shrugged it off with seeming ease. “If that’s what you want. But I insist on taking you out to the airport tomorrow evening.”

She looked at him doubtfully, a hint of reproach in her eyes, then shook her head. “I do think it’s better I go myself.”

“But why?” The question tore from him, full of exasperation and regret. “Is it me? Is it something I’ve done? Am I so awful?”

She put a finger to his lips in order to calm him.

“It is,” she said in a tone of quiet authority, “to prevent me from once more making one of my big mistakes.”

Two days after Isobel’s departure, Manship was summoned upstairs to the boardroom, then ushered into the sanctum sanctorum by Helen Mirkin, who was uncharacteristically flustered by events that morning.

He entered a large, airy room, encircled by windows giving onto panoramic views of the city sweeping east and west.

Though it was a cool October day, bright and crisp, there was a sense of heat in the room, and the vaguely unpleasant odor of nervous sweat hovered all about. Upon entering, Manship could feel the tension rise at once.

Thirteen people sat around a long mahogany Duncan Phyfe table. It was one of those typical boardroom tables that took itself very seriously; it exuded self-importance. The thirteen who sat there were silent, glaring into papers, shuffling reports, fiddling with eyeglass frames as they worked hard at the job of being unperturbed.

At one end of the table sat Van Nuys in his shirtsleeves, somewhat redder in the face than usual. At the other end was Osgood, smiling and looking very much in command of himself.

Manship had the impression he’d come in on the tail end of a fight. He had no doubt that he had been the subject of it.

Osgood finally broke the awkward silence when it appeared no one else would. “Walter, perhaps you’d be good enough to tell Mark why he was called here this morning.”

Scarcely able to contain his pique, Van Nuys shuffled papers a while longer, the red of his face deepening to an apoplectic purple.

“Before we go any further, Mark,” Van Nuys began (the use of his Christian name when usually Van Nuys addressed him only by his surname was in itself portentous). “You’re aware, I’m sure, that Bill Osgood has elected to resign the directorship of the museum on the first of the year in order to pursue personal interests.”

“I am,” Manship replied without much enthusiasm.

“I should then inform you that the board this morning, by a tally of seven to six, has voted to appoint you to the position of director. A vote,” he added, “that I strongly oppose. May we have at this time your reaction to the proposal?”

Manship had known for the past eighteen months that he’d been shortlisted for one of the most coveted positions in the elite, highly rarefied world of museum administration. He also knew that ever since Bill Osgood had made known his intention to take early retirement, the board had initiated a search for a suitable replacement. Thousands of dollars had been spent employing the services of top head-hunters in the field to locate precisely the right man. A combination of credentials, meaning a graduate degree that is, a full doctorate from a top school—and a minimum of ten years of practical administrative experience at a leading institution, was taken for granted. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, a distinguished and luminous old family name instantly recognizable to people of wealth and social standing was deemed to be indispensable. As of yet, no suitable candidate had emerged at the conclusion of the search.