The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine Read online

  I had been specifically instructed by Hector never to enter through the main gate. But there had to be something wrong. I debated. I knew David wouldn’t be home for hours, so I buzzed the gate. It opened.

  The house was uncharacteristically dark. The only light came from a first-floor room with walls of glass.

  Before I could get out of my car, Hector opened the front door. He exchanged glances with the valet. His look indicated that my car was not to be parked, but left to idle.

  “We had an explicit agreement, Mr. Cleary. No front gate.”

  “I understand, but Matilda and I had a definitive plan to see each other tonight. I leave for New York tomorrow.”

  “I think Matilda would rather be alone this evening,” Hector said. “It’s best you leave, Mr. Cleary.” He subtly glanced at the video cameras. Matilda had told me he turned them off when we were together, but he probably hadn’t realized I would come barging in when the garden door was locked, so the cameras must have been on.

  Hector was my only ally, so I was gambling on a losing bet by ignoring him. Nevertheless, I brushed past him and walked through the parlor, where the two Jasper Johns hung. One was a map of the United States, which was ironic since the woman of the house had only been to a pinprick of our vast country.

  I walked down the hall, toward the lit glass room, and heard the sound of Debussy on a lone violin, which I assumed was Matilda. I had never heard her play before, and I was astonished at just how good she was. In fact, she would have been considered concert-level had she opted to perform for anyone besides Hector and her father.

  I inched the door open. Matilda was sitting on an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair in the middle of an octagonal room. She held a violin delicately tucked in between her soft neck and athletic shoulder, and she was dressed in a white goddess-like gown that pooled on the floor. Wide gold cuffs covered her wrists, dangly earrings hung from her ears and an ornate headband haloed her sharply bobbed black wig. Her eyes were outlined in a smoldering, liquid black, and her lips were the color of blood.

  She was dressed as Cleopatra.

  Is there a moment in every relationship when it becomes life-threateningly dangerous? When you realize that your heart is so comfortably resting in someone else’s hands that should they decide to drop it you would never fully recover? In the case of my relationship with Matilda Duplaine it was at this very moment.

  I stood watching her, and then she became aware of my presence. She rested her bow on a stand.

  “Why was the door locked?” I asked.

  “You mustn’t be here,” Matilda said. “The cameras are on.”

  “I don’t care about the cameras. I’m tired of sneaking around. Why were you keeping me out?” I repeated.

  “Because I would prefer to be alone tonight. Didn’t Hector tell you? I told him to turn you away.”

  I walked up and brushed Matilda’s face with my fingertips and touched her red-stained lips, tracing their slightly imperfect shape. Her eyes were bloodshot and her makeup ran.

  “Have you been crying?”

  She didn’t answer. I licked the top of my index finger, and I wiped away the teardrop-shaped spots of salt that had calcified on her cheeks.

  “Matilda, what’s the matter?”

  Matilda turned and walked away, toward floor-to-ceiling doors that opened to the vast grounds. The rolling hills were speckled with priceless sculptures illuminated by spotlights. The doors were open, and the air filtered through Matilda’s long dress.

  “I’ve spent all this time, all these hours, learning about the world. And I’ve fooled myself into thinking that it was enough, that there was no difference between being out there and reading about it in books. And for a while I was content with it. I made myself believe it was all the same. But when I met you, the world shifted on its axis—at first only a little bit, but now it’s seismic. And I’ve been plagued by the fact that I don’t know where you are when you aren’t with me. It sounds silly or selfish or jealous, but tonight I was upset with you because you weren’t here.”

  “It was a work thing, Matilda—” I began defensively.

  “I try to imagine what your newsroom looks like or what restaurant you’re in. If you’re at a party I try to think of it vividly—the food they serve, the drinks at their bar, what the view is like. Is it a city view or a view of the ocean?” Matilda paused. “And tomorrow—tomorrow you’ll go to New York, and when you’re gone I’ll watch Annie Hall alone in the screening room, or Manhattan, and I’ll think that’s where you are, in that movie. But it’s not real, Thomas. And just this evening, when you were at a party with my father and I was dressed for it but not there, I realized there’s a gap between us. It’s small now. But I’m worried it will keep growing, keep getting bigger until it becomes a schism too big to cross.”

  I didn’t respond, because her story was one I couldn’t dispute. I had thought of it, too, and I was beginning to wonder how to sustain this odd relationship long-term. Matilda walked toward me and took my hands.

  “I’m sorry I kept you away, that I locked the door. It wasn’t right. But for the first time I’m worried—about us.”

  “Matilda—”

  “We mustn’t talk about it. Not now, not before your trip. How was the party?”

  “Dull, without you there.”

  “You look like a king or an emperor,” Matilda said.

  “Nero. Emperor Nero.”

  “Ah, Nero. He was a corrupt man who fiddled while Rome went aflame. He was known for having captured Christians to burn them in his garden at night for a source of light,” Matilda said. “He was so devastated over the death of his wife that he didn’t cremate her. Instead he stuffed her body with spices so she would be embalmed. I hope someone loves me that much someday, that they will fill me with spices when I die because they can’t bear to say farewell. I’m not worthy of anyone’s love. Not like this. Not here.”

  “I love you here, and I would love you everywhere,” I said. “Every corner of the globe—the top of the pyramids in Egypt, the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, the bistros in Paris, the snowy Himalayas, the fjords of Norway. There is nowhere I wouldn’t love you.”

  “Imagine loving someone so much you love every strand of their hair. That’s how much I love you,” Matilda said.

  There is nothing quite like having a girl tell you she loves you, and I was still reveling in the sweetness of it when Matilda put her hand beneath my jaw, tilting my face slightly. The movement was wobbly, unsure.

  I had imagined this moment, every scenario. Would she lean to the left or the right? Would she close her eyes or leave them open? Would she put her hands on my face or wring them on her lap?

  But what happened wasn’t what I had imagined at all.

  She was the one to kiss me, nervously, because it was something she had never done before—with me or with anyone else. At first she just brushed her lips on mine, and she was on the precipice of doing something more, but she didn’t quite know what to do. I took over then, leaning into her and kissing her. She tasted of tears and toothpaste, salt and sweet.

  So often in life you imagine a moment and it lets you down, but the first time I kissed Matilda Duplaine was bigger than all of my daydreams put together. It was a kiss that turned me inside out. I never wanted to let go of her.

  “Did I do okay?” Matilda asked.

  “Perfectly.” I stroked Matilda’s fake Cleopatra eyelashes and the sun freckles on her chest.

  “That was wonderful.” Matilda looked down and then up at me. “It felt so nice I don’t know how I went without it for so long, and I want to do it again and again.”

  I leaned in and kissed her again, more passionately this time.

  “Come away with me,” I said, when I forced myself to pull away from her.

  “I can�
��t,” Matilda said, as she put her fingertips on the side of my face. “There’s so much to learn.”

  “I’ll teach you. We’ll go someplace just the two of us. Someplace far away.”

  “You’ll get bored with me.”

  “Never. I want you to see everything that I see, to hear everything that I hear. And I want you to love me everywhere—not just here. I want to know that if you walked into the world and you met a million men you’d still come back to me.”

  I wanted to take her away right then, but it wasn’t to be. So instead, we walked outside together, hand in hand, and looked at the rolling hills of sculptures. I thought again of the party, of the dual lives I suddenly and inexplicably found myself living, and I wondered if either of them were even real.

  When the end of the night rolled in, Matilda and I kissed again, in the warm breeze of the sculpture garden. We held on as long as we could, knowing our minutes together were numbered.

  The clock struck midnight, and I escaped out the garden door. We had cut it close this time, for David was the type to skip out of parties early, not late. Sure enough, when I drove through Bel-Air’s white pillars, David’s sedan passed me on the narrow street.

  The car was going too fast for those tight roads, as if there were a destination that needed to be reached expeditiously. The rear window was rolled down halfway, a set of eyes and bushy eyebrows peering over its glass. David Duplaine had his fingers on the pulse of all of Hollywood, and I wondered, not for the first time, if he had his fingers on mine, too.

  Sixteen

  Set deep in the San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys is a middle-class neighborhood of modest homes, hundred-degree temperatures in the summer and what appears to be an extraordinary amount of dust. For the upper class, the only reason to visit this part of town is the private airport.

  I am a chronically early guy—a vice, I joke, because I’ve spent more time waiting in the car than working—and I arrived at Van Nuys Airport a half hour before “ten-ish,” our scheduled departure time. The gleaming airplanes were lined up in their hangars, perpetually on call to the whim of their wealthy proprietors. I couldn’t help but be a little bit giddy. I told myself again that none of this was mine—quite the opposite, in fact, because I was deceiving the very man who was sharing it with me.

  I drove to the front gate and gave my name to a young man carrying a clipboard. He rolled his pen down the list twice, then again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not seeing your name on our admittance list.”

  “There must be a mistake,” I said. “I’m supposed to be traveling with David Duplaine. To New York. At ten.”

  The guy shot an odd glance in my direction, but I chalked it up to my decidedly middle-class car and general appearance, which were both incongruous with the types who generally populated the admittance list.

  “I appreciate that, but your name is not on the manifest,” he said a bit more aggressively this time. “Perhaps you can call Mr. Duplaine and he can speak to the front desk.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  I didn’t have David’s cell phone number, so I dialed Lily. It went directly to voice mail, and I was confronted with her greeting:

  “If it’s good news, leave a message; if not, hang up.”

  I hung up and leaned out my window. “I’ve left a message for him. I’ll just pull over and wait for him over there,” I said, imagining David’s and Lily’s wrath when they would arrive to find me waiting in my car beside the front gate because David’s third or fourth assistant had forgotten to add my name to the list. I was certain someone would be fired over this.

  I pulled to the side and parked, glancing a few times in my sideview mirror, waiting for a car carrying Lily and David to arrive, at which point they would wave me in and curse at the man at the gate for his error.

  It didn’t happen, though.

  I waited for fifteen minutes and then a half hour. Our rough departure time came and went. I tried Lily again, but it went directly to voice mail. This wasn’t highly unusual since Lily was the type to dial out, but never receive. If she needed someone she did it on her time.

  Finally, I took a gamble. Panic was setting in. I had missed my commercial flight, and suddenly 26C and a half-sized bag of peanuts were enormously appealing. I needed to get to New York to cover the auction of Joel Goldman’s art.

  I dialed David Duplaine’s house to speak to Hector.

  “Duplaine residence.”

  It was an unfamiliar voice. Hector was the only one allowed to answer the phone, and he hadn’t had a day off in decades.

  “Duplaine residence. May I help you?”

  “Is Hector available?” I asked.

  “Hector is no longer employed here. May I help you in his stead?”

  I was stunned. I thought of the evening before, of my brazenness, of ringing the buzzer, driving up the front gate, brushing past Hector with video cameras blinking red warnings and then kissing Matilda in the conservatory—probably under the spotlight of a multitude of cameras.

  Suddenly the situation in which I found myself made sense. In their world of lawns shaped with tweezers, butlers with dry-cleaned white gloves and birds of good breeding, there were no oversights. Assistants—even third or fourth ones—didn’t make mistakes like leaving their boss’s guest on the tarmac.

  David Duplaine had discovered I had been there last night. My heart sank.

  I got out of my car and walked up to the man carrying the clipboard. He looked at me warily.

  “I need a favor from you—working-class guy to working-class guy,” I said. “I’m supposed to be traveling to New York for work, and I was going to be flying with David Duplaine. I know he keeps his jet here, and my guess is he already left without me. If he did I have to know, so I can go to the other airport—the one where guys like me fly out of—and go commercial.”

  The man hesitated for a moment, and that hesitation told me all I needed to know.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Once in my car, I sat there for a moment—a moment I didn’t really have. In front of me a shiny white airplane awaited its turn to leave. It was unadorned but for a single magenta stripe and tail number. There is not a lot of waiting at Van Nuys Airport, so it was a mere minute or two before the plane took off. It took off to the east, over the rows of carbon-copy houses, and I wondered if it was taking the same flight plan David had taken, if it was going to New York. I watched the plane until all that was left was a thin trail of exhaust in its wake. It reminded me of when I was a little kid and I watched my father drive off to work, and I would worry he was gone forever, that he would never come home.

  * * *

  My last-minute flight to New York was over one thousand dollars, money I didn’t have. I had missed my earlier flight, and my ticket wasn’t the changeable sort.

  I sat in one of the last rows—as Lily had predicted—and I ordered a beer. As soon as I did, I found myself counting the dollars for it in my head.

  Love blinds, they say, but in my case love tended to have much more dire and far-reaching consequences. My loves were always the high-risk kind with stakes too rich for my blood. It was as if I was playing in the high-roller room with a couple of bucks in my pocket.

  As I drank my beer I was finally clearheaded enough to objectively sort through the facts. If David had discovered my relationship with Matilda—which, after being left on the tarmac, I was pretty sure he had—the consequences would be catastrophic. I had learned over the past few months that Los Angeles was the smallest big town in the world, and David had every one of its most powerful men in his contact list. David was known to be dangerously vengeful, and he would smear my name across town like wet newsprint. I had been fortunate to get this second shot at life, but there were no more second chances for me. If I failed gloriously and publicly
in the two most important news cities in the States, that was it. I was done. I had already been through a public undressing once at the Journal, and I couldn’t go back to those sleepless nights and days of shame.

  On that thought, I ordered another beer, and my mind went to Matilda.

  Matilda: put simply, I couldn’t imagine life without her. In our string of days apart I was beginning to miss her terribly; a gray film had descended over the days I couldn’t see her. I needed to get to her, but there would be no way. Security guards had turned their backs to me when Hector had informed them to, but now they knew better; none would succumb to the same fate as Hector. And, certainly, Matilda would be in trouble, too. But what could David do to her? After all, as Matilda had pointed out that first evening in the bowling alley, she had been grounded for a very long time now. She had simply fallen in love. Even David couldn’t possibly view that as a foible.

  And then there were Hector and Lily—both of whom I had betrayed, despite everything they had done for me.

  Five long hours into the flight, after much reflection, I pulled the shade up and gazed out the window. We were below eight thousand feet, then seven, then six. There were low willowy clouds hanging over the city. I could feel Manhattan’s energy even six thousand feet in the air.

  I had thought it would be an emotionless thing—an uneventful return to a city that had left me brokenhearted the first time around.

  But, in light of recent events, I was wrong. As I finished my fourth beer, I prepared myself—no, braced myself—to see Lily. I was to meet her at a brownstone on the Upper East Side, but I was beginning to suspect there was a strong possibility I would have to find other accommodations—far less glamorous ones.

  * * *

  I directed the cab driver to Carole and Charles’s brownstone, where Lily had insisted I stay. David had opted to stay at a hotel nearby on Central Park. The decision was a fortuitous one in the sense that I would temporarily avoid David, but there was still Lily to contend with.