Authors: John Saul
Alison, dressed in a pink hospital gown, was perched nervously on the edge of the examination table, while Risa, pale and looking even more nervous than her daughter, sat in a chair that she'd pulled close enough to the table so she could hold Alison's hand.
"Who, exactly, is clinging to whom?" he asked, winking at Alison. "Seems like your mom's a lot more frightened than you are."
"I think we're both scared," Alison said.
"I'm not scared, exactly," Risa said, the tremor in her voice belying her words. "I mean, I'm not worried, really…I'm just…" Her voice trailed of.
"Terrified?" Conrad offered. "Well, there's no reason to be. I know what I'm doing, and my team is the best in the business." He leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek. "But I really hate it when the family starts scaring the patient."
"I'm not scaring her," Risa insisted. "I'm just—"
"Here to help," Conrad finished for her. He turned back to Alison. "Okay," he said. "Let's get to it. I know you're feeling embarrassed, but in about two minutes you're going to laugh at how stupid it all seems, especially when I start drawing lines on your chest."
"I don't think it's stupid—" Alison began, but then, apparently deciding her mother had expressed enough nervousness for both of them, bit her lip and stood up.
Risa offered her daughter what was supposed to be an encouraging smile but only turned out to be another worried look, and Alison closed her eyes and opened the front of the gown.
As Risa watched, Conrad sat down on his swivel stool, gauged the symmetry of Alison's build, then took a black felt-tip pen from the top drawer of the credenza and quickly began making the marks he needed on his stepdaughter's torso. He swiveled back and forth on his stool a few times to make certain the marks were exactly where he wanted them, and when he was completely satisfied, put the felt-tip back in the drawer.
Less than two minutes had passed.
"All done," he announced, and Alison opened her eyes in surprise. Then, realizing the gown was still open, she quickly wrapped it around herself and sat down. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"
Alison reddened but shook her head.
"Okay, the next thing that's going to happen is that Teresa will come in here, start your IV, and get you prepped." He turned to Risa. "Once the IV starts, Teresa will show you to the family waiting room, and I'll come get you as soon as we're finished."
Risa nodded.
"Alison? Still want to go ahead? All you have to do is say no, and then wait for the ink marks to wear off."
Alison took a deep breath and shook her head. "No way am I going to chicken out now."
"Well, if you're not going to, I'm not going to. So let's go make a little magic for you. See you in the O.R."
With a wink at his wife, Conrad left mother and daughter alone.
* * *
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER Conrad entered the operating room to find Alison, still conscious but very groggy, draped and lying on the operating table. Teresa and Kate were both already working, the nurse double-checking the instruments and supplies, while the anesthesiologist monitored Alison's vital signs.
"Ready, Alison?" he said.
She nodded without opening her eyes.
"Okay, then." He raised his mask to cover his nose and mouth. "You're going to sleep now, and I'll see you in the recovery room."
He nodded to Kate, and moments later Alison was sleeping deeply as soft strains of Stravinsky played through the speakers.
"Bring up image fifty-six, please, Teresa," Conrad said. "That one's always inspiring." If he even saw the look that passed between Teresa and Kate, he gave no sign, and Teresa stepped over to the computer keyboard. A moment later a photograph of a woman's torso appeared on the large monitor that hung from the ceiling at the foot of the operating table. Usually, the monitor displayed the reference photographs Conrad Dunn was using for whatever reconstructive process he was performing: if a patient wanted the lips of one movie star or the cheekbones of another, or the chin of yet a third, the monitor would display the original he was using as a model. But for a routine breast enhancement he'd never used anything; for a reconstruction, yes, but all he was doing today was the simple insertion of a pair of implants.
Beyond that, both Teresa and Kate knew exactly whose breasts image number fifty-six displayed: Margot Dunn's. Indeed, every slide from thirty through 274 displayed one aspect or another of Margot's face and body.
Now, as Teresa pulled the sheet back from Alison's torso and disinfected her skin one last time, Conrad Dunn's eyes fixed on the perfect breasts the monitor displayed. While Teresa finished the sterilization process, he at last turned away from the image on the monitor and shifted his full attention to the patient on the table.
"Everybody ready?" Without waiting for a response, he held out his hand. "Scalpel, please, Teresa," he said.
* * *
"IN A WEEK or so she'll be good as new," Conrad declared as he clipped the last suture and looked at Alison's new breasts with a critical eye. "In fact, she'll be a lot better than new."
"That's why they come to you, Conrad," Kate said. "You always make them better."
Conrad acknowledged the compliment with the smallest tilt of his head. "Can you bandage?" he asked Teresa.
"Of course," the nurse replied, already picking up the first gauze square with a hemostat.
"Good job, people," Conrad said, leaving the room as he pulled off his mask and gloves. He deposited them, along with his paper gown, in a hazardous waste disposal bin in the scrub room, washed his hands again, and felt the exhaustion of a long day settle over him as he made his way to the waiting room.
"All done," he said to Risa, whose head snapped up from the magazine she'd been paging through the moment she heard the door open. "She sailed through it like the champ that she is."
Risa stood up and hugged him. "Thank God."
"God?" Conrad echoed. "How about thanking me? I don't remember God going to medical school." He led her over to the couch, where he collapsed next to her. "She's being bandaged now, and then Teresa will take her to the recovery room. When she wakes up, I'll get her settled in her suite for the night, and then I'll be home."
"Can't I see her?"
"Not until she's out of recovery—maybe in an hour. So you can either hang around here counting the seconds, or go home and break out a bottle of champagne. Tell you what—I'll call you when she's awake and you can come back, say hello, and then we'll both go home and celebrate."
"I just feel like I should be here," Risa fretted.
"You will be," Conrad reminded her. "Just not until she's awake. Now scoot. Tell Maria we'll want dinner in, and I'll be hungry as a bear." He stood up, took Risa's hand, and drew her to her feet. "And tell Ruffles that he'll have to sleep with us tonight, but that Alison will be home tomorrow."
"Okay." She smiled, then leaned against him again. "Thanks," she whispered, wrapping her arms around him and looking up into his dark eyes. "You're so…good!"
Conrad looked down at his wife and saw the lines of exhaustion around her eyes.
Maybe—if he had time—he'd just tighten those eyes up in the next month or so.
* * *
"WINE CELLAR DOWN THERE," Maria said in her broken English, not looking at Risa as she pointed her spatula toward a door on the far side of the kitchen.
Risa opened it and flipped on the light, illuminating a long, steep stairway. As she gazed down into the basement, she realized that she had not only never seen the rooms under the house, but until this moment hadn't even known there
was
a basement.
She started down the stairs, and as the door at the top swung closed behind her, felt the vibration of machinery and knew it must be the air conditioners, furnaces, and water heaters that supported the huge house. The vibration turned into an audible hum as she walked down the silent, industrially carpeted hallway that ran away from the base of the stairs. The door to the pool equipment room, clearly marked, was on her right, and just beyond it was another room with a glass panel in the door. Through it she could see a digital thermometer reading 57° and soft glowing lights beneath a series of wine racks.
Inside the wine cellar—which must have been stocked with at least a thousand bottles of more varieties than she knew existed—she quickly found the champagne section, chose a bottle of Dom Perignon, then took another bottle, for good measure. With any luck at all, this could turn out to be a very romantic evening.
She turned the lights down again and left the wine to its aging, closing the door firmly behind her.
She was retracing her steps back toward the staircase when something in the air stopped her. Frowning, she sniffed. Yes, there was something there. Something sweet. Pleasant.
And totally incongruous in this purely functional area of the house.
She opened the door to the room opposite the one housing the pool equipment, and found the source of the humming that permeated this level of the mansion. It was a large equipment room, with a furnace, five air-conditioning compressors, and what looked like a powerful generator, along with half a dozen large gray metal boxes that presumably contained the electrical circuits and switches needed to keep the whole thing functioning. Risa closed the door, and seeing nothing ahead but the pool equipment room and then the stairs back up to the kitchen, turned the other way and ventured farther down the hallway, where it took a turn to the right.
An unmarked door lay at the end of the hallway, where the scent was stronger. It seemed to be emanating from behind the door.
Could something have broken open in a storeroom?
Risa approached the door and sniffed the air again. The scent was definitely stronger. She turned the knob, cracked open the door slightly, and a wave of fragrance washed over her. She set the two bottles of champagne on the hallway floor, then pushed the door the rest of the way open.
The disembodied face of Margot Dunn stared at her.
Risa gasped and took an involuntary step backward, tripping on the carpeting but catching herself just before she fell.
Heart racing, she peered into the room again and realized that what she'd actually seen was nothing more than a softly lit life-size photograph of Margot.
Her pulse starting to drop back to normal, she groped for the light switch that should be next to the door, found it, and flipped it on.
The light in the room came up, a warm glow that filled the room from invisible fixtures. Risa stepped farther inside, and saw a lighted vanity against one of the walls, the top covered with ornate, blown-glass perfume bottles, one of which was open.
Combs, brushes, and a hand mirror—along with a profusion of pots, jars, and bottles of creams, lotions, and makeup—were all carefully arranged on the vanity's spotless glass top.
She moved to the middle of the room and gazed around her. Framed, poster-sized photographs of Margot Dunn at the height of her modeling career covered the walls.
A three-way mirror stood in a corner, another in the corner opposite. Three racks built along one wall held samples of Margot's signature clothing. A mannequin, wearing a slinky black Valentino dress, stood next to a blow-up of the famous
Vogue
cover with the photo of Margot wearing that same dress.
Next to the vanity there was a three-panel changing screen with a silk robe casually thrown over it as if Margot were behind it even now, changing into something…what?
More comfortable?
What the hell was going on in here?
Though she knew it was impossible, Risa still found herself walking over to glance behind the screen to make certain that Margot truly wasn't there. A pair of lace-topped, thigh-high black hose was draped over a small chair behind the screen, as if Margot had just taken them off a moment ago.
Risa shivered, though the room was far from cold, and her skin began to crawl with the feeling that she was not alone.
Could Conrad be home already? She stepped out from behind the screen, but nobody was there.
Except there
was
somebody there: Margot Dunn, who had been dead for a year, but whose essence filled this room to the point where the dead woman's presence was almost palpable.
Risa opened one of the drawers in the vanity—Margot's silk lingerie, neatly folded, filled it to the brim.
She opened the large jewelry box—apparently, every piece of Margot's magnificent jewelry lay perfectly aligned, as if waiting to enhance their owner's beauty. Unlike Risa's own jumbled and tangled jewelry box, Margot's earrings were sorted in matched pairs, her necklaces neatly coiled, her rings lined up in velvet slots.
And in the bottom drawer, lying alone on the black velvet lining, there was a key.
Risa looked around for something the key might fit, but saw nothing.
She closed the jewelry box, put the stopper back in the perfume bottle, and took a step toward the door, even while wishing she'd never come into the room at all. And then, as she stood alone amid Margot's clothes and jewelry and makeup, with Margot's eyes watching her from every frame on every wall, she recalled Conrad's voice on that first night of their honeymoon in Paris.
Margot!
It had been Margot's name he'd called out, not hers.
Before their wedding, he'd cleaned all of Margot's things out of the closets, taken all the photographs off the walls, and removed everything that she might find difficult to live with, and she'd loved him for it.
But now she could see that he hadn't gotten rid of it at all, hadn't gotten rid of any of it. He'd only brought it down here to store it in the basement.
But as Risa took another look around, she knew this was no storeroom.
It was a shrine.
A shrine to a woman who was dead.
Except that to Conrad, Margot apparently wasn't dead at all.
How often did he come down here? Did he prefer Margot's perfume to her own?
She pictured Conrad prowling the room, caressing his dead wife's lingerie, stroking the glimmering fabric on that black Valentino gown.