DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL: Chapter One

November 27th, 2006 at 05:48am Michael Conniff 2

DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL
By Michael Conniff
Copyright © 2005-2006
All Rights Reserved
 
 
 
 
Chapter One
Innocence Regained
 
It’s none of my business. It never was. But there it is. I’m a sap, a dope. I’m the guy who could never say no and can’t start now.
 
And if not me, then who?
 
That’s what they say. They say, Who knows the story better than you, Bagdikian? Arnie, Arnie, Arnie. You’re the one who beat the O’Kells, the one who took them to court and then took them to the cleaners. They found Tom O’Kell belly up on the beach in Southampton because of you.
 
They say if not you, Baggie, then who?
 
That’s what they say – they know who they are – the O’Kell survivors, the next generation, the ones Eleanor O’Kell tried to cook up in a test tube. They found me out here in Aspen after I fell off the face of the earth, closed all my accounts, said goodbye to everybody, shut my life down like a drawn shade in a summer place—no mail, no email, no voice mail, no cell, no phone, no nothing, not even a fax.
 
Amanda Madison knew where to find me.
 
I trusted her with that, with everything, with the idea that she would never ever tell anyone where I was or where I was going. But she knew where to find me. She knew how. And when she did both of us knew how hard and how easy it would have to be.
 
This easy. As easy as saying yes to the Hotel Teatro, top floor, with views of Denver on both sides. Then arriving there first, finding his and her bathrobes, soaking in the drawn bath, the champagne bath they call it, with the champagne on ice. Dropping off, sliding into the ooze, dreaming of her and of us and of before, then hearing the pop, finding the glass at my lips, the champagne running down my throat before I open my eyes to see it’s her in the matching robe, holding the glass for me like a kind of special formula, and then stepping back to untie the robe and let me see a human form that has to be the DNA of desire, everything I ever wanted and all the things I will never have—then having all of her in the water with me, a bath built for two, for this and for that,  for all the time in the world, for being in one place at one time: for this moment, maybe our last moment together. I turn her but I don’t even have to, because she knows how I love her back, how I love to see her from behind, all muscle and hair, her hair longer now, falling back down into the water until I hold it in my fist.
 
We keep it there forever, up and down, and we make the sounds we save for each other. We say the words, too, a vocabulary of nonsense that is just a way of saying something when nothing need be said, the sound echoing against the marble of the bathroom and the shower walls you can see through. She turns over her beautiful shoulder in such a way that I know our time has come. Water pours out of the bathtub and then she comes to rest full-body against mine, her back flat against my chest, her hair against my mouth and my face and my neck. If we could look at each other we would.
 
“I can live without you, Baggy,” Amanda Madison says. “I know that now.”
 
“I know how it is.”
 
“But that’s not it,” she says. “That’s not why I’m here.”
 
“Oh Jesus,” I say.
 
“I know,” she says.
 
“I’m out.”
 
“They need you.”
 
“They suck your blood and then they spit you out.”
 
“That was Atomic Tom. That was him. This is them. They are his survivors.”
 
“How did they get to you?” I say.
 
She arches her back and the water comes up between us without the warmth we started this with. I squeeze both of her breasts together until my fingertips make it to her nipples and I pull them all the way out, twisting as I go. She gives in right away, her legs pointing out in a hard “V,” and we go with that for God knows how long, until she flips over and we have nothing left.
 
“They got to me the same way they get to you,” Amanda Madison says.
 
“The Innocence Project.”
 
“Of course.”
 
“How much?”
 
“Does it matter?”
 
“Maybe,” I say.
 
She says nothing.
 
“A million,” I say – and then I wait before I say, “Maybe three.”
 
“Ballpark,” she says.
 
“Jesus H. Christ,” I say.
 
“Every man has his price, Baggie. So does every woman. Especially for a good cause. Five million doesn’t walk in the door at The Innocence Project every day.”
 
“What did you say you would do for five million?” I say.
 
“This,” she says.
 
“This?”
 
“Yes,” she says. “This. I said I could find you. I said I could get a message to you.”
 
“For five million?” I say.
 
“Ballpark,” she says.
 
She digs her fingers into my chest to pull all the way up so her lips and tongue find mine until there is no difference between us. With my big toe I turn it to hot all the way until we are floating like the laws of nature will never apply to us again.
 
“So what’s the message?” I say.
 
 
 
I step out from under the awning and feel the closeness of the Denver sun when you’re a mile high to begin with. I’m waiting for my car when the door to the Teatro shuttle, an Escalade, swings open and the doorman points me that way.
 
“I’m waiting for my car,” I say.
 
“If you would, sir,” he says.
 
I step up into the back seat of the Escalade and I see there’s a man driving up front that I know from that other life of mine, only this time it’s as if I’m having my eyes examined and the doctor is saying this one, or that one? This one or that one? The man was like that one, the one you tell the doctor that’s not as good as the one before. Charles Evans was behind the wheel, all right, but now he was dough in a cashmere overcoat. Friend of the family, the O’Kells called him, the close intimate, the financial guy. By the time I left New York for good I knew that Charles Evans knows all and sees all, that he had forgotten more than any of the other O’Kells would ever know. If you ever had to follow the money you would find the crumbs all lead to his door – at least the crumbs he hadn’t kept for himself.
 
“Mr. Bagdikian,” he said.
 
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” I said.
 
He turned just enough to see me. His face had fallen into folds that flapped when he moved and made his eyes even smaller than before.
 
“The mountain air agrees with you,” Charles Evans said. “But I can’t even catch my breath.”
 
“It takes about a week. You huff and you puff and you pass gas and then it’s like you’ve been here your whole life and you can’t even remember what it was like before. It’s good for you. If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger.”
 
“And I understand there are great advantages when you come down to sea level,” Charles Evans said. “Though I understand you never do.”
 
“No need to leave when you live in paradise.”
 
“I’ve been there, of course,” he said. “I used to ride to Teddy Forstmann’s little do in his Gulfstream. Aspen door to door. How could I say no?”
 
“Not many would’ve.”
 
“But then I couldn’t breathe for days and days. By the time I could I was back on the Gulfstream heading due east. Teddy’s Gulfstream brought me here this morning.”
 
“Dear old Teddy.”
 
“No need to condescend, Mr. Bagdikian. It does not become you.”
 
“To be honest, you’re looking a little worse for the wear.”
 
“You were always honest, Mr. Bagdikian. I always enjoyed watching you work for that reason. The righteous man. The untouchable man. Very impressive.”
 
“You came to court?”
 
“Long before you ever met Tom O’Kell.”
 
“He needed to know what he was up against. So you watched me try a case.”
 
“Exactly,” Charles Evans said. “Cases, actually.”
 
“He wanted to know my price.”
 
“And you didn’t have one. Your woman –?”
 
“She’s not mine. She’s not anyone’s.”
 
“Yes,” Charles Evans said. “I understand she makes quite a point of that.”
 
He knew everything about us and about me already – or he wouldn’t be here right now. I knew that. I knew that if you had money, all the money in the world, then there was almost nothing you could not find out. I knew Charles Evans knew everything about me, the places I went to in Aspen, the things I ordered for dinner, the women I slept with, the woman I slept with again. Information cost money, but if you had both then information was worth much more.
 
“You followed her here,” I said.
 
“Not literally,” Charles Evans said. “But we have kept a close eye on your friend. It’s amazing what one can do with computers and video cameras these days.”
 
“Don’t go near her,” I said. “She’s out of this now.”
 
“That’s really up to you, Mr. Bagdikian,” Charles Evans said.
 
“She’s ‘untouchable.’” I put the word in quotes. “You know that from before. If you go near her I will bring you down. I’ll bring the whole thing down. And you will go down first. I don’t care what it takes.”
 
“Of course, of course.”
 
He waved a hand at me that was so fat you would never find the knuckles. We had gone around the block and we were back on Arapahoe. The Teatro was just up ahead.
 
“How long before you get to the point?” I said.
 
The Escalade stopped in front of the hotel and doorman swung the door open.
 
“I think we’ve been there and back,” Charles Evans said.

Entry Filed under: Books, Fiction, Aspen, Drop Dead Beautiful, Mystery