“So?”

“Her last name was French. Not ‘Miller,’ but her first name was blurred. I couldn’t read it. You related to anyone like that? She looked pretty fancy.”

“No, I’m not related to anyone like that. Why?” And now the lies had even begun with Mark. Not just sins of omission; now they were sins of commission too. Damn.

“I don’t know. I was just curious. She was interesting looking, in a fierce, unhappy sort of way.”

“And you fell in love with her, and decided that you had to find her and rescue her, so you could both live happily ever after. Right?” Her voice was light, but not as light as she wanted it to be. His answer was lost as he kissed her and eased her gently onto the bed. There was at least an hour of truth amid the lifetime of lies. Bodies are generally honest.


Chapter 3


“Ready?”

“Ready.” Whit smiled at her across the last of their coffee and mousse au chocolat. They were two hours late for the Marshes’ party at the St. Regis, but no one would notice. The Marshes had invited more than five hundred guests.

Kezia was resplendent in a blue-gray satin dress that circled her neck in a halter and left her back bare to show her deep summer tan. Small diamond earrings glistened at her ears, and her hair was swept into a neat knot high on her head. Whit’s impeccable evening clothes set off his classic good looks. They made a very spectacular couple. By now, they took it for granted.

The crowd at the entrance to the Maisonette at the St. Regis was enormous. Elegantly dinner-jacketed men whose names appeared regularly in Fortune; women in diamonds and Balenciagas and Givenchys and Diors whose faces and living rooms appeared constantly in Vogue. European titles, American scions of society, friends from Palm Beach and Grosse Pointe and Scottsdale and Beverly Hills. The Marshes had outdone themselves. Waiters circulated through the ever-thickening crowd, offering Moët et Chandon champagne and little platters boasting caviar and pâté.

There was cold lobster on a buffet at the back of the room, and later on there would appear the pièce de résistance, an enormous wedding cake, a replica of the original served a quarter of a century before. Each guest would be given a tiny box of dream cake, the wrapping carefully inscribed with the couple’s name and the date. “More than a little tacky,” as Martin Hallam would note in his column the next day. Whit handed Kezia a glass of champagne from a passing tray and gently took her arm.

“Do you want to dance, or circulate for a while?”

“Circulate, I think, if it’s humanly possible.” She smiled quietly at him, and he squeezed her arm.

A photographer hired by their hosts snapped a picture of them looking lovingly at each other, and Whit slipped an arm about her waist. She was comfortable with him. After her night with Mark, she felt benign and benevolent, even with Whit. It was odd to think that at dawn that morning she had wandered the streets of SoHo with Mark, then left him reluctantly at three that afternoon to phone in her column to her agent, clear her desk, and rest before the onslaught of the evening. Edward had called to see how she was, and they had chuckled for a few moments about her mention of their lunch in the morning’s column.

“How in God’s name can you call me ‘dashing,’ Kezia? I’m over sixty years old.”

“You’re a mere sixty-one. And you are dashing, Edward. Look at you.”

“I try very hard not to.”

“Silly man.” They had moved on to other topics, both of them careful not to mention what she had done the night before….

“More champagne, Kezia?”

“Mm?” She had drifted through the first glass without even noticing it. She had been thinking of other things: Edward; the new article she’d just been commissioned to write, a piece on the outstanding women candidates in the upcoming national elections. She had forgotten all about Whit, and the Marshes’ party. “Good Heavens, did I finish that already?” She smiled at Whit again, and he looked at her quizzically.

“Still tired from the trip?”

“No, just a little dreamy. Drifting, I suppose.”

“That’s quite a knack in a furor like this.” She exchanged her empty glass for a full one, and they found a secluded corner where they could watch the dance floor. Her eyes took in all the couples and she made rapid mental notes as to who was with whom, and who was wearing what. Opera divas, bankers, famous beauties, celebrated playboys, and an extravagance of rubies and sapphires and diamonds and emeralds.

“You look more beautiful than ever, Kezia.”

“You flatter me, Whit.”

“No. I love you.”

It was foolish of him to say it. They both knew otherwise. But she inclined her head demurely with a slender smile. Perhaps he did love her, after a fashion. Perhaps she even loved him, like a favorite brother or a childhood friend. He was a sweet man; it wasn’t really difficult to like him. But love him? That was different.

“It looks as though the summer did you good.”

“Europe always does. Oh, no!”

“What?” He turned in the direction that had brought a look of dismay to her face, but it was too late. The Baron von Schnellingen was bearing down on them, with perspiration pouring from his temples, and a look of ecstasy at having spotted the pair.

“Oh Christ tell him you’ve got the curse, and you can’t dance,” Whit whispered.

Kezia burst into laughter, which the chubby little German Baron misinterpreted as delight.

“I am zo happy to zee you too, my dear. Good evening, Vitney. Kee-zee-ah, you are exquisite tonight.”

“Thank you, Manfred. You’re looking well.” And hot and sweaty. And obese, and disgusting. And lecherous, as usual.

“It is a valtz. Chust for us. Ja? Nein, but why the hell not? She couldn’t say no. He was always sure to remind her of how much he had loved her dear departed father. It was simpler to concede one waltz with him, for her “father’s sake.” At least he was a proficient dancer. At the waltz in any case. She bowed her head gently and extended a hand to be led to the floor. The Baron patted her hand ecstatically and led her away, just as Whit whispered in her ear, “I’ll rescue you right after the waltz.”

“You’d better, darling.” She said it through clenched teeth and a well-practiced smile.

How could she ever explain something like this to Mark? She began to laugh to herself at the thought of explaining Mark and her anonymous forays into SoHo to anyone at the Maisonette that night. Surely the Baron would understand. He probably crept off to far more unusual places than SoHo, but he didn’t expect Kezia to. No one did. Not Kezia, a woman, the Kezia Saint Martin … and that was different anyway. Like the other men she knew, the Baron conducted his adventures differently, and for different reasons … or was it different? Was she simply being a poor little rich girl running away to get laid and play with her Bohemian friends? Were any of them real to her? Sometimes she wondered. The Maisonette was real. Whit was real. The Baron was real. So real it made her feel hopeless at times. A gilded cage from which one never escapes. One never escapes one’s name and one’s face and one’s ancestors and one’s father or one’s mother, no matter how many years they’ve been dead. One never escapes all the bullshit about Noblesse oblige. Or does one? Does one simply get on the subway with a token and a smile, never to return? The mysterious disappearance of the Honorable Kezia Saint Martin. No, if one leaves, one leaves elegantly and openly. With style. Not fleeing on a subway in total silence. If she really wanted SoHo, she had to say so, if only for her own sake. She knew that much. But was that what she wanted? How much better was SoHo than this? It was zabaglione instead of souffié Grand Marnier. But neither was very nourishing. What she needed was good, wholesome steak. Counting on Mark’s world for sustenance was like hiding with a six-month supply of Oreo cookies and nothing else. She simply had one world to offset the other, one man to complement another, and the worst of it was that she knew it. Nothing was whole…. “Am I?” She didn’t realize that she had said it aloud.

“Are you vat?” the Baron cooed in her ear.

“Oh. Sorry. Am I stepping on your foot?”

“No, my beauty. Only my heart. And you dance like an angel.”

Nauseating. She smiled pleasantly and swirled in his arms. “Thank you, Manfred.”

They swept gracefully about once more, and at last her eye met Whit’s, as the waltz drew to a merciful close. She stood slightly apart from the Baron and thanked him again.

“But perhaps they play another?” His disappointment was almost childlike.

“You dance a very handsome waltz, sir.” Whitney was at their side, bowing slightly to the perspiring German.

“And you are a very lucky man, Vitney.” Kezia and Whit exchanged a beatific glance and Kezia bestowed a last smile on the Baron as they glided away.

“Still alive?”

“Very much so. And I’ve really been hopelessly lazy. I haven’t talked to a soul tonight.” She had work to do and the evening was young.

“Want to stop and talk to some of your cronies now?”

“Why not? I haven’t seen any of them since I got back.”

“Then onwards, milady. Let us throw ourselves to the lions, and see who’s here.”

Everyone was, as Kezia had observed upon entering. And after a round of a dozen tables, and six or seven small groups standing near the dance floor, she was grateful to spot two of her friends. Whitnev left her to them, and went to share a cigar with his senior partner. A little congenial talk over a good Monte Cristo never hurt. He waved her on her way, and vanished in a cluster of black and white emitting the pungent fumes of Havana’s finest.

“Hi, you two.” Kezia joined two tall thin young women who seemed surprised to see her arrive.

“I didn’t know you were back!” Cheeks almost met as kisses flew into midair, and the three looked at each other with pleasure. Tiffany Benjamin was more than a little drunk, but Marina Walters looked bright and alive. Tiffany was married to William Patterson Benjamin IV, the number two man in the biggest brokerage house on Wall Street. And Marina was divorced. And loved it that way, or so she said. Kezia knew otherwise.

“When did you get back from Europe?” Marina smiled at her, and appraised the dress. “Hell of a neat dress, by the way. Saint Laurent?”

Kezia nodded.

“I thought so.”

“And so’s yours, Madame Hawkeye.” Marina nodded pleased assent, but Kezia knew it for a copy. “Christ, I got back two days ago, and I’m beginning to wonder if I was ever away.” Kezia spoke while keeping a casual eye on the room.

“I know the feeling. I got back last week, in time to get the kids back to school. By the time we’d done orthodontists, shoes, school uniforms, and three birthday parties, I forgot I’d ever been away. I’m ready for another summer. Where’d you go this year, Kezia?”

“The South of France, and I spent the last few days at Hilary’s in Marbella. You, Marina?”

“The Hamptons all summer. Boring as hell. This was not my most glowing summer.”

Kezia raised an eyebrow. “How come?”

“No men, or something like that.” She was creeping toward thirty-six and was thinking about having something done about the bags under her eyes. The summer before, she had had her breasts firmed up by “the most marvelous doctor” in Zurich. Kezia had hinted at it in the column, and Marina had been livid.

Tiffany had been to Greece for the summer, and she had also spent a few days with distant cousins in Rome. Bill had had to come home early. Bullock and Benjamin seemed to require the presence of its director almost constantly. But he thrived on it. He ate it and slept it and loved it. The Dow Jones ticked somewhere in his heart, and his pulse rate went up and down with the market. That was what Martin Hallam said in his column. But Tiffany understood; her father had been the same way. He had been the president of the Stock Exchange when he finally retired to a month of golf before the fatal heart attack. What a way to go, one foot on the Exchange, and the other on the golf course. Tiffany’s mother’s life was less dramatic. Like Tiffany, she drank. But less.

Tiffany was proud of Bill. He was an Important man. Even more important than her father. Or her brother. And hell, her brother worked just as hard as Bill did. Gloria said so. Her brother was a corporate lawyer with Wheeler, Spaulding, and Forbes, one of the oldest firms on Wall Street. But the brokerage house of Bullock and Benjamin was the most important on the Street. It made Tiffany someone. Mrs. William Patterson Benjamin IV. And she didn’t mind vacationing alone. She took the children to Gstaad at Christmas, Palm Beach in February, and Acapulco for spring vacation. In summer, they spent a month at the Vineyard with Bill’s mother, and then off they went to Europe; Monte Carlo, Paris, Cannes, St. Tropez, Cap d’Antibes, Marbella, Skorpios, Athens, Rome. It was divine. Everything was divine, according to Tiffany. So divine that she was drinking herself to death.