A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

scattered across the floor, and brass cuspidors were, for some reason, placed beside each. There were forests of marble pillars—more than at Pompeii—and plastered on each wall, white fenestrations lavish with gold. Enormous black funerary urns were stuffed with rainbows of silk flowers, and over the elevator bay a plaster cornucopia spilled over with fruits that tumbled down to lodge with festive abandon between the doors.

“Whatever happened to good taste?” Tor mumbled, wincing as we crossed the vast floor.

“Wait till you get a load of Lelia’s place,” I said. “Her tastes run to French Decadent.”

“But you said she was Russian,” Tor said as we reached the elevators.

“White Russian—raised in France,” I explained. “Lelia can’t speak her native tongue too well—or any other, for that matter. She’s sort of a lingual potluck.”

“Goodness, if it isn’t Miss Banks!” said Francis, the elevator operator. “How many years has it been? The baroness will be delighted, ma’am—does she know you’re in town?”

This was Francis’s discreet way of saying he should phone upstairs to announce us. I told him to go ahead.

On the twenty-seventh floor, Francis unlocked the elevator doors with a key and we stepped into the large marble foyer, where the maid greeted us with a little curtsy and ushered us through another set of doors into the great hall—a vast marble corridor mirrored like Versailles at either side.

When she went off to find our hostess, Tor turned to me and whispered, “Who’s the baroness?”

“That’s Lelia,” I said. “I think it’s an affectation—like being a Romanoff: who’s to say whether you are one or not?”

As we waited there in the hall sounds reached us from several rooms away—a good deal of female shrieking, and doors banging shut. At last, a door was slammed with finality, making the crystal wall sconces tinkle.

One of the mirrored French doors flew open, and Lelia popped out wearing a long teal satin kimono with tendrils of marabou wisping about as she moved. Though it was nearly noon, her honey-blond hair was tousled as if she’d just rolled out of bed.

Clutching me, she pressed her face against mine once at either side, in the French manner, then gave me a big Russian bear hug, her marabou tickling my nose.

“Darlink! Happy happy happy! Too bad you must do the waiting, but Georgian is très mauvaise today.”

To compound the confusion of Lelia’s borscht-bouillabaisse lingo, she often forgot in midsentence what she’d been talking about, replying to something you’d asked on a different occasion. When she said Georgian’s name, it came out “Zhorzhione,” causing many to think she was describing an Italian dessert.

“I’ve brought my friend Dr. Tor to meet her,” I said, by way of introduction.

“Ce qu’il est charmant!” cried Lelia with sparkling eyes, appraising Tor.

She extended her hand to him, and damn if he didn’t kiss it!

“This beautiful man you are bringing—like a statue of gold he is. Vi nye ochin nrahveetis—and his costume, très chic—the finest Italian cut!” She touched his sport coat delicately, as if admiring a piece of art. “Always I am despairing for you, my darlink; you are working so hard—no time for the young men—but now you are bringing this handsome—”

“Stop despairing, Lelia,” I told her. Though Georgian might be difficult, I’d forgotten that Lelia was downright dangerous when it came to comments about my private life—not a subject I was eager to broadcast. Not that I had, in her terms, a private life. “Dr. Tor is a colleague,” I hastened to add as she accompanied us along the hallway.

“Quel dommage,” Lelia commented sadly, glancing at him like a trout that had gotten away.

“We’ve business to discuss with Georgian,” I explained, peeping into a few rooms where the mirrored doors were ajar. “What’s keeping her?”

“That one!” huffed Lelia. “Impossible! She dress like for driving the truck—but to change for the guests? Quel enfant terrible. What should a mother do? You go sit; I will make something nice to eat. Zhorzhione, she comes soon.”

Lelia settled us behind the louvered doors of the Blue Room—her favorite color—thus indicating that Tor had met with her complete approval. Lelia classified everyone by color. She kissed me, patted my hair, took one more approving look at Tor, and departed.

A few moments later, the beribboned maid reappeared bearing a little tray with a decanter of vodka and two crystal shot glasses. Tor poured us each a glass, but I motioned mine away. He downed his own in one gulp.

“Stolichnaya,” he said, licking his lips.

“Some judge you are,” I told him. “That’s Lelia’s home brew—it’s two million proof. You’ll be out cold if you do another like that.”

“It’s the correct way to drink vodka,” he assured me. “And it’s highly inhospitable to refuse a drink in a Russian home.”

When the maid returned to tell us that “Mademoiselle” would see us, Tor quickly polished off the vodka in my glass, too—no doubt so our hostess would not take offense—and accompanied us to the “Plum Room,” at the end of the hall.

The Plum Room had been a music room, and the walls were mirrored above the wainscoting. Everything else I remembered had been changed.

The old Bösendorfer piano was shoved into a corner across the room, all the upholstered chairs around it were draped with sheets, and the peach, mauve, and gray Aubussons, which had once graced the travertine floors, were now rolled up, tipped on end, and standing like pillars against the far wall.

Now the floor was spread with dark green tarpaulin, and scaffolding spanned the vast space like a huge jungle gym. Beneath the structure stood three angular mannequins draped in satin, sequins, and sprays of white feather; they were frozen in their poses and scarcely breathing.

High above, sprawled over the scaffold like a spider in a web, was Georgian, cameras hanging from her neck and others mounted on the bars all around her. Big klieg lights glittered everywhere, beacons in the otherwise darkened room.

“Hip,” Georgian said. A model moved her pelvis forward a few inches. “Naomi, I can’t see your thigh—good, that’s