Act of Darkness(10)

“I want to talk to Victoria Harte.”

“Well,” Gerri said slowly, “if you wanted to tell her you weren’t going to that cocktail party tonight—”

“Of course I’m going. Stephen needs me.”

“—or that you weren’t going to Long Island Fourth-of-July weekend—”

“I have to go to Long Island Fourth-of-July weekend. I promised Stephen. That’s the weekend we’re going to, you know, get things settled.”

Gerri looked at her curiously. “Do you really think so? That it’s going to be settled your way, I mean?”

“Of course I do. It has to be settled my way.”

“Has to?”

“The only thing that could stop it is that slimy little Dan Chester. And you know what Amenhet-Ra said. I’m going to find a way to destroy my enemy.”

“Right,” Gerri said again. “Well, why don’t you get what’s-her-name to channel a message from Amenhet-Ra to Victoria Harte. That’s about the only way you’re going to get in touch with her. She wants your head and Stephen Fox’s both. If I were you, I’d be careful what you eat or drink if she’s been near the food.”

“Gerri.”

“I’ve got to finish this mail and pick up your dress at the cleaners. Will you let me get back to work?”

Patchen had to let Gerri get back to work, because Gerri shut the door in her face. Patchen stood looking at it, nonplussed. Gerri was invaluable, of course, and the best secretary Patchen had ever had when it came to dealing with the detail, but there were times Patchen really didn’t think it was working out.

She went back to the couch, and sat down again, and picked up one of the crystals. She was just jumpy, she thought. It was all that negative talk—all those bad emanations—about her and Stephen. That was what had done it. Of course Stephen was going to divorce Janet and marry her. He had to. It was in her horoscope.

Besides, Patchen was twenty-seven, and Janet Harte Fox was old.





[6]


USUALLY, WHEN JANET HARTE Fox knew she had a political party to attend, she left the Emiliani School early, just after four, when games were over and prayer classes had not yet begun. Leaving early was one of the small prices she paid for being allowed to do what she wanted with her time. There were dozens of these small prices in her life, all of them thought up by Dan Chester and almost all of them having to do with the Emiliani School. It was Dan’s opinion, and therefore Stephen’s, that if she wanted to “do a little do-good work with retarded children,” she ought to do it at Kevin Debrett’s clinic in McLean. The Emiliani School was a cluster of refurbished buildings in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods in the District of Columbia. It was dangerous getting there from Foggy Bottom, and just as dangerous getting back. Worse, in Dan’s opinion, was actually being there: the Emiliani School had a “rep.” It had been founded by a little cluster of retired sisters from the Order of St. Francis as a place to bring up children with birth defects whose mothers, alerted in advance by amniocentesis, had originally intended to abort them. Because what amniocentesis most often pinpointed was Down syndrome, most of the children at Emiliani had that. Janet was always secretly amused that old Sister Mary Ambrose, who had founded the school in the first years after Roe v Wade, had named it after St. Jerome Emiliani, patron saint of orphans.

Now it was twenty minutes to six, there was a cocktail party at seven, and Janet was still at Emiliani, sitting at a long table in the writing classroom on the first floor of St. Charles Borromeo Hall. Next to her was a seven-year-old girl named Mary Alyse, who was working with great concentration on a large sheet of paper, making letters with a purple crayon. At the front of the room, near the blackboard, was Sister Mary James, an ancient nun in a habit so abbreviated it looked like a waitress’s uniform. That she wore a habit at all was dictated entirely by the preferences of the children, who liked to know, in as clear a way as possible, who was a nun and who was not. Within the limited framework of their experience, that distinction was very important. Nuns, even nuns they had never met before, could be trusted on sight. Other people required a period of testing.

Mary Alyse had drawn a large, wavering upside-down V in the middle of her paper. She sat back, contemplated it, and sat forward again. Then she drew an even wavier line across the V’s middle and sat back again. She smiled.

“A,” she said, with confidence.

“That’s right,” Janet said. “A.”

“I write,” Mary Alyse said.

“That’s right,” Janet said again. “You did write. And you’re going to go on writing.”