Willow (26 page)

"Well," Linden said.
"Thank you." I started off the patio, but he caught up with me immediately.
"I don't know why she did that." he said. "What?"
"Told you all those things. She hasn't spoken of those things for years. And that answer she gave you... surely, it was something she has been thinking about a long time, but she never said it to inc."
"I'm very grateful."
"No," he said. "I'm not Irving to get you to appreciate it. I'm telling you I appreciate it." He smiled. "There's something about you. Isabel. Something special.
I
think that was what made me want to paint you"
I
started to shake my head.
"No," he said, taking my hand and looking at me so intently my heart began to skip beats. "I want this to be the greatest painting
I
have ever done.
It
will be. Will you go sailing with me tomorrow to nu; private bay?"
"But you've already begun on the beach here," I said, not wishing to upset him.
"That doesn't matter. The painting isn't there. It's here." He pointed to his temple. 'I do my best work at the bay. It's only about half an hour at the most I'm a good sailor, better than Thatcher, believe me," he said.
"That's not my concern."
"What is, then?" he practically demanded.
I thought a moment. "Nothing. Okay. I'd like to see your bay."
"Great," he said. smiling. "No one, no one, has gotten my mother to talk like that," he repeated, and started back toward the patio. "I'll see you in the morning."
Spirited, he rushed into the house and left me standing there.
Why was it I felt as if I were standing in quicksand?

13
The Party
.
It was six-fifteen, and I was getting ready to go

out to dinner with Thatcher. He had called and left word with Jennings that he would pick me up at seven-thirty.

Mr. Bassinger had called as well. Fearing something had happened to the house or Miles. I phoned him back as soon as Jennings gave me the message.

"Is there anything wrong, Mr. Bassinger?" I asked as soon as he said hello.
"Your aunt Agnes has been calling me and saying things that were very disturbing."
"Like what?"
"She is convinced you're at the mercy of some fortune hunter down there. Willow, someone who is taking advantage of your vulnerability. She actually threatened to hire a private detective to locate you and follow you around. I can't say she won't do it." he warned.
"If she does. I'll never speak with her again."
I was almost ashamed to ask him about Miles's fantastic tale. but I did. "You did check on my father's office
^,
when you were in the house, didn't you, Mr. Bassinger?"
"Oh, yes. Nothing was turned on and running, and Miles said nothing to me about any computers. It was probably all a dream that he has already forgotten. I did speak with him in detail and outlined how your father provided for his needs. He'll be fine once the house is sold."
"I'm glad."
I
said. relieved.
"You are all right, are you not. Willow?
I
would hate for your aunt to have even an inkling of truth."
"Don't worry . She couldn't be more wrong about me and what I'm doing."
"It has to do with the papers I gave you, doesn't it?" he asked. "Yes."
"I don't know what was in them, of course, but I feel confident telling you that there is nothing your father would want less than being the cause of any further unhappiness for you. Willow."
"I know. Thank you."
I
said.
It was, of course, my biggest and deepest worry: would
I
cause my mother more unhappiness, and would I do the same to myself?
The knock at my door startled rue.
"Come in." I called. and Thatcher appeared. He looked concerned, upset, his eyebrows turned in on each other like those of a man with a very bad headache,
"I thought we weren't going until seven-thirty," I told him. I was in my robe. and I had yet to fix my hair.
"No, we're not late or anything. I just... Bunny got hold of me while I was driving back from Miami,"
"Oh"
"She told me what you were doing with Linden Montgomery."
"I see."
"You're posing for him?"
"Yes. It's nothing. really. Not nude,"
I
added quickly, thinking that was his concern.
"I'm glad of that, but regardless, I don't think you should get too involved with that guy, Willow. He's far too unstable. I mean, you've seen his work and how he behaves."
"I understand. Don't worry,"
I
said.
"But I will worry. I feel partly responsible, introducing you to him and all." he insisted.
"I think I will know when to back away from him, Thatcher. It's all right." I said a little more firmly.
He shook his head. "Okay," he said. "but don't say
I
didn't warn you when he becomes even more bizarre."
"Right," I said.
He nodded but stood there staring at me.
"I'll be fine. Thatcher, Really, I will," I said, smiling to reassure him.
"Okay. I'll go shower and change for dinner." He started to turn and stopped. "Actually, from the way she spoke. I think my mother was really more upset that you chose to be with Linden over being with her at her charity ball meeting. She insists you missed a great opportunity. I told her not to worry.
I'd
make up for it tonight."
"What do you mean? Why tonight?"
"Before the day ended. I received an invite to the party on Hope Farris's yacht. Hope is the seventyyear-old heiress to the Farris fur empire. She's been married five times, and I had the honor of doing the prenuptial agreement for the last one. The marriage lasted fourteen months. She's celebrating another successful divorce tonight," he said. She was recently quoted in the newspaper as saying, 'For someone like me to be married and to escape with only the loss of a used Rolls-Royce is a fortunate accomplishment.' The reason I remember," he said with a wide, silly grin of pride, "is that it is all the result of my work."
"Celebrating a divorce? Why get married if you've failed four previous times?"
"Another Palm Beach game.," he said. "What of it? We'll have fun."
"But a yacht party? I don't know as I have anything to wear for that."
"With a black dress and a rope of pearls, you can go anywhere according to Franklin Noyce, the resident fashion guru of the month. and I know you have the black dress."
But not the pearls,"
"Bunny has enough to string between here and Europe. She'll provide them." he said. "I'll let her know. Hey, don't look so worried. You're going to have a good time and meet enough of the A-list to get all the information you need to complete your work."
"Okay," I said.
I'll be fine in a day or two, I'll be able to tell him the truth and end this fictitious story,
I
hoped. Would he be angry or happy after that? Surely, he would understand. If he really cared for me, that is.
He left. and I returned to working on my face and hair. It wasn't twenty minutes before Bunny burst into my room with ropes of pearls dangling around her neck.
"It's the Fashion Firewoman!" she cried, "Here to put out the burning of beauty."
I couldn't help but laugh.
"It's not funny. I'm serious. Put on your dress," she ordered, "and we'll see what works the best."
"I'm really not into jewelry," I said as I slipped into my new black dress.
"Of course you are. Every woman is into jewelry, either in her fantasies because she can't afford it or in real life because she can. We've been created to wear the world's gems. What's a diamond without a setting to be worn on a woman's finger or in her earlobe or around her neck? Just some glittering raw stone greedy men will kill each other to possess. Precious stones are not meant to be in safety deposit boxes. They are meant to adorn our bodies, and that's that," she said as if she had the power to pronounce the final word on any subject and end any argument.
I sighed and shook my head. She stood back and studied me a moment. "If you're going to wear your hair up like that, you need matching earrings," she decided. "I have the perfect pair for this necklace.' She lifted it off the pile around her neck. "It's from the Etoile collection. Cultured pearls. Do you know anything about pearls, dear?"
"My mother had yards of them, but I never paid much attention to what she wore." I said honestly.
"What a pity. I made sure my daughter had a proper education when it came to precious stones. Who wants to be made the fool and ooh and aah over imitation jewelry? There are plenty of sorry young women in this town who thought the ring they were given was a flawless diamond only to find out from a jeweler that it was either a VS1 or a WS2. When it comes to diamonds especially, you have to pay attention to the four C's, my dear."
"The four C's?"
"Clarity, color, cut, and carat. Don't be impressed by the women you see here wearing big diamond rings. Why, some of them don't even know they're wearing cubic zirconia, imitation diamonds. My eyes are trained well enough to tell.
"Anyway, this necklace is sixteen inches long with a cultured Tahitian pearl clasp. The diamonds are set in platinum-- and look at their clarity."
"It sounds expensive."
I
said.
"Expensive?" She considered it. "I think it was fourteen thousand."
"Bunny, you're not serious. You want me to borrow a fourteen-thousand-dollar necklace?"
"And the earrings. I think they were six or seven"
"I would be too nervous," I said, backing away from her and her pearls.
"Oh, please." she said, her face pained. "It's all insured."
"But fourteen thousand."
She grimaced. "The only other one I would suggest," she said, lifting it off her neck. "is this, also cultured pearls...." She paused. "Do you know the difference between natural and cultured pearls?"
"No," I said, "but something tells me I will soon."
"You should know." she chastised with her eyes as well as her tongue. "Natural pearls are born quite by chance when the oyster can't get rid of some particle inside and coats it with layer upon layer of a smooth, hard substance called nacre. It takes years to make this tiny bead into a wonderful, lustrous pearl. To make a cultured pearl, the oyster's shell is opened with surgical precision, and the irritant, usually a mother-of-pearl bead, is placed inside, which causes the oyster to produce the nacre.
These happen to be Japanese Akova." "And how much was that?"
"This?" She stared at it a moment. "I think... yes. Asher got it at Tiffany's. He paid something like ten or eleven thousand."
"Don't you have any costume jewelry?" I asked.
"For what purpose? I don't understand these women who own beautiful things but get copies made to wear out in public. Why own the original? Stop worrying. You're not exactly going to walk on the streets of some city ghetto. You'll be quite safe, and the other women will envy you.
"I think I'd rather have a woman's envy than a man's love." she said with a laugh.
Two days ago, that remark might have shocked me, but at the moment, it seemed a perfectly natural thing for Bunny Eaton to tell me.
In the end, I took the second choice, and she sent down the matching earrings. At precisely seventhirty, Thatcher came by.
He wore a stylish tuxedo and looked positively debonair. He paused in the doorway and gazed in at me. He was silent so long I thought he was trying to decide how to get out of taking me. Maybe he thought
I
looked too plain to be at a party with these wealthy Palm Beach women.
"Well?" I finally said.
"My God. Willow, you're absolutely beautiful."
He said it with such depth of sincerity and appreciation it took my breath away. For a moment. I couldn't speak. and I felt as light as air. I glanced at the floor to see if my feet had left it and if
I
was floating.
"It's your mother's pearls," I said, and he laughed.
"Hardly. This is one of those occasions when the woman bedecks the jewels and not vice versa."
"Thatcher Eaton, where do you come up with these great lines?"
I
teased.
He stopped smiling. "From my heart. Willow, from my heart," he said.
The teasing grin flew off my face, and he kissed me softly.
"Come on, let's blaze a trail through Palm Beach society," he urged.
How could I not feel on top of the world here? I was with a very handsome, very successful man. I was wearing expensive jewelry. We were getting into a Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible and going to a yacht party on a wonderful warm night in Palm Beach. I was doing all this. me. Willow De Beers; not a pauper but, until a few days ago, just another college student expecting to attend the weekend beer bash at Allan's fraternity. I truly felt like a princess.
"I'm a little nervous about this, Thatcher. I've never been to a yacht party,"
I
admitted.
"A party is a party. There's just more of everything here: more servants, perhaps, and more glitz. The Germans drink beer at their parties. The French drink wine at theirs. People in Palm Beach drink champagne, that's all. A student of human behavior such as you should understand that." he added with a wink.
He could make all this seem as common and ordinary as he wanted. I thought, but the moment we drove up to the dock and heard the music and saw the lights, the women glittering like diamond statues, the parade of servants with silver frays, and the recognizable celebrity faces here and there, I threw his attitude out the window. My legs actually trembled as we walked up the gangplank to the deck, where a very pretty hostess stood ready to greet us and all the other arriving guests. She handed us glasses of champagne.
"Good evening, Welcome," she said, and we stepped onto the deck.
A six-piece combo was playing. I saw tables of roasts, lobster, platters of shrimp, freshly roasted turkeys. Cornish hens, pheasant under glass, almost anything anyone could think to have at a party, with bowls and bowls of salads, a fresh vegetable bar that looked as if it had been lifted from a farmer's market and brought here, and a table just for breads and rolls.
"Let's find Hope Farris and then get something to eat," Thatcher said. "I'm starving."
We were practically elbow to elbow with people. The yacht was the biggest I had ever seen, but, according to Thatcher, apparently everyone Hope invited had decided to attend.
"She's probably disappointed." "Disappointed? Why?"
"Everyone overbooks his or her parties. The worst thing is to throw a party and not have it well attended. It could take you down ten points on the Alist meter. My parents invited two hundred for the weekend."
Two hundred! Your mother told me a hundred, a hundred and twenty-five,"
I
said.
"That's what she expects on such short notice, but you never know."
We paused, and he smiled at someone, waved to another.
'Good mix. I see dozens of trust-fund babies, some nouveau riche like Thomas Carter over there, owner of UX.com, and a number of the old ruling class. That's Mildred Callwell, one of the grande dames of Palm Beach society-- her husband owns Perk-Up Coffee, And that elderly lady in the wheelchair back there wearing the diamond tiara and clinging to the butterfly Judith Leiber purse like it contains her emergency heart medicine is Countess Von De Myer. She does have a legitimate title and actually lives in a castle in Belgium,
"You see those two men." he said, nodding at two very elegant-looking gentlemen, identically slim, with identically tan, almost identical black mustaches and styled hair. They were standing back, smoking long, thin cigarillos, and smiling slyly at the beautiful young women who walked by them.
"Yes."
"They're what are known as walkers. They haven't got anything, even though they look rich and successful. In return for free meals and entertainment, they escort wealthy women to events like this. Some pretend to hold titles like duke or baron this or that, but everyone knows they are full of what makes the grass grow greener."
"If everyone knows they're phony, why would any well-to-do woman want to be seen with them?"
"You need to have someone on your arm, and it's nice to have someone who makes a good appearance. The party givers want there to be more men to ask the unescorted women to dance, make conversation, that sort of thing. It's like those men who are hired by cruises to dance with women.
"Besides, there's always the possibility same people don't know they are all show and no substance," he said. "Illusion and reality, huh? Your topic. right?"
"Right," I said nervously. He was always reminding me about my supposed purpose for being there. "Oh. I see the Carriage sisters." I groaned.