The Girl in the Face of the Clock (7 page)

One corner of the room had a collection of old-fashioned “anniversary” clocks under glass domes. Another corner teemed with carriage clocks of every size. The walls were hung with regulator clocks. Scores of brackets held scores of bracket clocks. Table clocks sat on every table. Mantel clocks occupied every mantel. There were clocks with human faces and clocks with painted scenes. There were big clocks that had pendulums and tiny clocks that fit into nutshells. There were ormolu clocks, lantern clocks, cartel clocks, and skeleton clocks. Against every inch of wall space not taken by a window or a Renoir were fine long case clocks with gold and silver faces standing at attention, like an army awaiting orders.

“Do you like clocks?” asked their general.

“I sleep next to one,” said Jane weakly. “He wakes me up in the morning.”

“Me, too!”

“Why am I not surprised?”

A door on the far side of the room opened and a squat woman in a white uniform marched out.

“Perry Mannerback, what you doing here?” she demanded angrily, her hands on her hips. “You supposed to be having cocktails with Aunt Eunice. You supposed to be there for dinner. She call twice.”

“I'm just here to pick up something, Olinda. This is Jane Sailor, Olinda. Jane's my new bodyguard-assistant. Olinda winds all the clocks. And she takes care of me, don't you, Olinda?”

“Olinda going take care of you with a skillet, one these days,” said Olinda, shaking her fat fist. “You get out fast and go see Aunt Eunice.”

“Okay.”

“And you eat your vegetables tonight at dinner. You hear me, Perry Mannerback?”

“I will, I will.”

Olinda muttered something in Spanish that sounded unmistakably like a curse, then huffing with disgust disappeared back behind the door through which she had come.

“Come on,” said Perry, laughing. “We better get that magazine and scram out of here before you have to give Olinda a karate chop or something. I think it's in my study.”

He was already in motion. Jane followed her employer though the long room. At the far end, he opened a pair of double doors. Two big, beautiful Irish setters excitedly rushed up to meet them as they entered a smaller room (this one only four times the size of Jane's entire apartment). Perry squatted down, gave the dogs hugs, and happily let them lick him all over.

There were clocks here, too, though not as many as outside. Mostly they sat on end tables and on the gigantic Louis XV rococo and gilt bronze desk that dominated the room. On three walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with leatherbound books. The ceiling was elaborately detailed plasterwork, and the wood of the bookcases matched the paneling on the single exposed wall behind the desk.

It was the painting on this wall that took Jane's breath away. It was about six feet high and perhaps seven feet across. The subject was a naked woman sitting on a staircase. She stared out defiantly at the viewer, her bare chest arched forward. In between her carelessly parted legs was a garishly glazed ceramic clock without hands that Jane recognized right away.

It was Grandmother Sylvie's clock. It was just as hideous as Jane remembered: blue columns, red base, yellow central dial. No wonder she had decided to keep it in the basement. And she knew very well the worn wooden stairs with too-high treads on which the nude sat, too. They were the stairs from Aaron Sailor's loft on Greene Street, the stairs he had fallen down eight years ago.

“My father painted this,” said Jane in a subdued voice.

“Isn't it great?” demanded Perry. “A clock with no hands. It says something about the fleeting nature of existence, don't you think?”

“I suppose so,” said Jane, somehow doubting that philosophy was why this painting had appealed to Perry Mannerback. Was he one of those guys who bought
Playboy
for the stories? Perry might be a little boy, but he was a little boy who had been through three wives, Jane reminded herself. She was a little disappointed with him for wanting such a painting. And perhaps with her father for having painted it. There was something blatantly sexual about this nude that Jane had never seen before in Aaron Sailor's work. It was almost a portrait of lust.

The two dogs came over to sniff Jane's scent and lick her hands as Perry rummaged through his desk for the magazine he was looking for.

“I've never seen this painting before,” Jane said after a moment, unable to take her eyes off the nude.

“I was just walking down the street and saw a picture of it in the window of this gallery on Madison Avenue,” said Perry, closing the final drawer of the desk and turning his attention to a basket of papers underneath a gilded French library table. “I went right upstairs and bought it. That's when I met your father. He was there with the dealer lady, and we discussed art and everything. And the fleeting nature of existence.”

“I wonder who the model is. She's very beautiful.”

“I don't know her,” said Perry, suddenly shooting bolt upright. “I have no idea who she is. No idea whatsoever.”

“I didn't say …”

“It's just a painting of a woman,” Perry declared indignantly. “It was the clock I was interested in. Only the clock. I never met her. I have no idea who she is, none at all.”

His denial was so overstated that Jane again wanted to laugh at what a dreadful liar he was. Only this wasn't funny.

“Those are the stairs of my father's loft that she's sitting on,” Jane pressed. “The stairs he fell down.”

“Oh really?” said Perry Mannerback, his voice even louder and more unnatural. “Is that so?”

“Yes, that's so.”

“Come on,” he said, abandoning his search and walking hastily to the door. “Aunt Eunice is probably having a conniption. She'll have to find out about sex chat rooms on her own. I'll have Leonid take you home after he drops me off.”

Jane followed him back through the vast living room filled with clocks, the smiling red dogs bringing up the rear. Perry began chattering about Aunt Eunice, clock dials, Mars Bars—obviously anything to change the subject.

But now Jane knew for certain that Perry Mannerback knew more about her father than he was telling. What did he know? Why was he lying? And who was the woman sitting naked on Aaron Sailor's stairs?

The next day, Perry Mannerback arranged for Aaron Sailor to be brought from the nursing home in Great Neck to the head trauma unit of Yorkville East End Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side for tests.

On the way to Aunt Eunice's apartment at the Dakota the previous evening, Jane had mentioned in passing how the aide at Royaume Israel had dropped Aaron Sailor out of bed and that he had mysteriously begun to speak. She had done so merely to make conversation and break the tension that had developed between her and Perry because of the painting in his study. Naturally, she hadn't revealed what her father had been saying, only that he had begun to talk. Perry hadn't even seemed to have been listening.

Jane had arrived at the OmbiCorp office at ten o'clock the next morning—her second Friday on the job, the first being last week at the circus—ready for another day of philanthropy and fun, fully prepared to pretend that the incident with the painting had never happened.

Instead of dashing off as usual, however, Perry had sat her down on his big office sofa, fixed her in a serious, puppy-dog gaze, and asked if she would permit him to get Aaron Sailor the medical care he deserved.

Jane's first reaction was horror. Aaron Sailor was gone. Nothing would bring him back, certainly not more doctors, more tests. What could she say, however? Please don't try to help my father? Don't even go through the motions, just leave him there in Great Neck, warehoused in the dark?

Dealing with all the bureaucracy that such a move required would take forever, Jane had protested. It was already taken care of, Perry had answered. It would cost a fortune, she had said. Perry had replied that he had a fortune. Miss Fripp then promptly appeared with some papers for Jane to sign. By the time the feature at the Armex Patterson Fifty-seventh Street Cinema got out at three o'clock, Aaron Sailor had been brought in by ambulance from Long Island for a week at one of the foremost cranial-injury treatment centers in the world.

“Now, don't you worry about a thing,” said Perry as they pulled up in front of MoMA, where he had a board of directors' meeting that afternoon. “I'm sure the doctors at Yorkville East End will be able to help. They took out my tonsils and Dad's gallbladder. They're the best.”

“I'm sure,” said Jane uncertainly, as he got out of the car. “I'll see you on Monday.”

“Oh, I forgot to ask,” he said, leaning in the window. “Can you go out of town with me next week?”

“Go where?”

“Seattle,” said Perry excitedly. “I've just learned about a clock there that I may want to buy. Very rare. We have to act fast, before the competition gets wind of it. Seattle's a really neat place. We'll see the Space Needle, Pike's Market, all kinds of fun stuff. We'll stay overnight. Or maybe a few days if we feel like it.”

Jane frowned. Perry Mannerback was already paying her a ridiculous salary to do practically nothing. He was treating her father to a series of exorbitantly expensive medical tests. Now he wanted to take her on what sounded like a vacation. Was a hired playmate allowed to say no? Jane felt obligated and hated it. She had never had a job like this. What were her rights?

“It'll be strictly business,” said Perry, misunderstanding her discomfort. “I don't have any ulterior motives, believe me. I'm not that kind of fellow—no, no, not in this day and age. You don't have to come if you don't want to. I just think it will be fun. We'll fly first class. I always fly first class. You'll have your own hotel room and everything.”

“Look, Mr. Mannerback …”

“Please call me Perry. We're friends now. Everybody calls me Perry.”

“Look … Perry,” said Jane, “I appreciate what you're doing for my father, I really do, but it's just …”

“You want to be here when they're doing the tests, don't you?” said Perry, trying to snap his fingers. “Of course you do. How could I be so stupid?”

“No, no, it's not that,” said Jane. “My being here isn't going to make any difference. Nothing's going to make any difference.”

“You mustn't say that. There's always hope.”

But there wasn't. Not for her father. Her father was gone, Jane wanted to scream. Why couldn't anybody admit the truth?

“All right,” she said in a quiet voice. “I'll go to Seattle with you.”

“You will?”

“I said so, didn't I?”

“Wonderful,” said Perry Mannerback, clapping his hands. “We'll have a great time. Leonid, you take Miss Sailor right over to the hospital to see her father, then wait for her and take her home. She's got to rest up over the weekend for our big trip.”

“Yes, Mr. Mennerbeck,” said Leonid from the front seat.

“We'll pick you up at your apartment on Monday morning, nine o'clock sharp; our flight's at ten-thirty. Pack for a few days in case we decide to stay over. We'll have a lot of fun, you'll see.”

Perry marched off into the museum with the same satisfied expression on his face as when he wrote out a check to a struggling Off Off Broadway theatre group or for a child with a leaky heart valve. The limousine inched into traffic. Jane slumped back in her seat.

There had been altogether too much for her to absorb about Perry Mannerback and his strange, frenetic world in one week. Too many new people. Too many facts. Too many questions. She really did need a weekend to rest, but tomorrow was the evening she had promised to go out to dinner with Dad's rapacious art dealer, Elinore King. That would be about as restful as a night in a cement mixer.

Along the way to the hospital, people turned and tried to make out who she was, sitting there in the back of the big black limousine. No, I'm nobody important, Jane wanted to roll down the window and shout. I'm just a poor dope who's in over her head and doesn't have the sense to get out.

Yorkville East End stood out like a castle amidst the elegant apartment buildings of East End Avenue. A few blocks away was the mayor's residence, Gracie Mansion. In Carl Schurz Park across the street, children played, dogs frolicked, and signs warned of rat poison. Leonid dropped Jane off at the front door of the hospital and went to try to find a place to double-park.

If Royaume Israel was medical dead storage, Yorkville East End was the front lines of the war against injury and disease. The central waiting room bustled with the kind of well-heeled visitors you expected to see at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the city. Doctors in business suits barked urgent orders into cellular telephones. Others in green scrubs marched down the halls like soldiers on parade. Nurses and orderlies in starched white uniforms pursued various life-and-death missions.

As instructed by one of the three crisply efficient receptionists at the front desk, Jane followed a yellow line on the floor through a maze of corridors and double doors until she came to a well-lighted wing somewhere at the north end of the sprawling hospital complex. A wall plaque proclaimed this to be the head trauma unit. Here, a nurse at a central station directed Jane to a semi-private room down at the end of the hall, explaining that her father's tests would start in the morning.

It was a small room, painted a cheerful apricot, with a pair of windows looking out over the East River. Curtains attached to tracks in the ceiling could be pulled around each of the two beds to give the occupants an illusion of privacy. A television set was mounted on a large extendable metal arm at one side of the room, though the room's occupants weren't watching anything, both of them being unconscious and hooked up to banks of electronic monitoring equipment. One was a heavy set African American man whose head was turbaned in bandages and who was breathing laboriously. The other was Aaron Sailor.

There was an armchair in the corner of the room, next to a tiny desk—in case a patient made a miraculous recovery and wanted to alert the family by letter, perhaps. Jane sat down and stared at her father's still form. The electronic lines on the monitor attached to various parts of his anatomy moved in lazy patterns that she couldn't interpret. A few new inscriptions now graced the cast on his arm. One read: “Hearty good wishes for a speedy recovery. Cordially, Benton Contino.” Another said: “So very sorry for your suffering, Reema.”

Her father's roommate suddenly started to wheeze a little louder. The lines on his monitor began to do a tango. This man's injury apparently had been a recent one. Perhaps there was still a chance he could wake up and return to his life and loved ones with nothing more than a big headache and a raise in his health insurance premiums. Jane wondered whether she should call a nurse or something, but the electronic activity soon quieted down.

Jane sat for a few more minutes, wanting desperately to feel something. Love. Pity. Hope. Nothing came except depression and a vague sense of guilt. Her thoughts drifted to tomorrow night's dinner with Elinore and her husband. At least she'd get fed, Jane told herself. She could have a couple glasses of wine and beg off early with a headache. And Elinore might even be able to tell her something about the nude in Perry's painting, the one he had acted so mysterious about. Then, next week, Jane would be on the West Coast with Perry.

Jane had worked in several different cities in California but never anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. She'd once been up for a job choreographing a season of fights at the Oregon Rep, but they'd gone with somebody else. Seattle was supposed to be a beautiful area and one she'd always wanted to see.

A trip with Perry might even be fun. Jane never got the chance to fly first class and they were bound to be staying in a nice hotel. She'd be collecting a salary all the while, besides. What was so terrible about that? And what was wrong with Perry Mannerback paying for some of the best doctors in the country to see what they could do for her father?

As if on cue, a deadened voice from the still figure on the bed interrupted her thoughts.

“Don't do it, Perry,” said Aaron Sailor. “No, Perry, no.”

“Janie, darling” screeched Elinore King, throwing her beefy arms around Jane and kissing the air. “I'm so happy! Here you are! Here we are! Isn't it wonderful?”

Jane tried not to look shocked. Though she had spoken to Elinore a few times since the Fyfe Museum had become interested in Aaron Sailor's work, Jane hadn't seen her in person for nearly eight years. To say Elinore had changed didn't begin to describe the situation.

Her father's dealer was still a few inches shorter than Jane, but she had somehow expanded to three times her previous size. Elinore's delicate features—the small eyes, little teeth, and tiny turned-up nose that had been pretty the last time Jane had seen her—now looked piggish in her bloated face. What had once been long blond hair was now short and hamster-colored, and so brittle-looking that Jane had to suppress an urge to give it a little squeeze to see if it would break.

Elinore had stuffed herself into a gray silk Mandarin-style tunic, which might have been exotic on a thin young model, but on Elinore looked like someone's bad attempt to gift-wrap a barrel. A fifteen-thousand-dollar Rolex graced her wrist. Great globs of gold dangled from her earlobes. Her fingers sparkled with diamonds and rubies in thick settings.

“Welcome, welcome,” said an eager male voice.

Elinore spun around like a three-hundred-pound top.

“I'm saying hello to her, Gregory, just let me say hello. Why are you always interrupting me? He's always like that, Janie, always interrupting me.”

“What a wonderful, wonderful pleasure,” said Gregory King, reaching over Elinore to sandwich Jane's hand in both of his. “Simply fantastic. Elinore's told me so much …”

“Please, Greg, please!” said Elinore. “I'm trying to talk to her.”

Jane had never met Elinore's husband and was somehow expecting a sleazy huckster type. To her surprise, Gregory King turned out to be a tall, handsome man who looked like Cary Grant had at fifty: sensitive brown eyes, a strong chin, thick black hair with a distinguished touch of gray at the temples. He wore an elegant blue suit, a quietly patterned tie, and a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. His hands were warm and strong.

“Come on, let's sit down,” said Elinore, grabbing Jane by the arm and leading her another two steps into the room. “They better have our table ready. Greg, tell them to give us our table. You're going to love this place, Janie.”

“You're going to absolutely love it,” echoed Gregory King happily, motioning to the hostess.

Jane smiled politely as the woman led them to their table and Elinore rattled on nonstop about how nice it was to see Jane and what a wonderful place this was and how she and Gregory were such an “in” couple, always on the prowl for wonderful new restaurants to take out all the important people that they knew.

Les Matins
was an intimate, one-room affair with no more than twenty tables in a space that had been designed to look like a country farmhouse. The floors were wide pine planks. Baskets hung from the ceiling. A gas fire burned in a tiny fireplace, producing further atmosphere without additional heat.