The Fire Night Ball Read online

  While remaining technically chaste, the pair seemed to be having sex as they talked business. One evening, after trading sly innuendos, Harry observed: "I've never known a Wyoming woman to have a man's dirty mind like you do. Keep it up."

  "You, too," she purred throatily.

  "Madam, you've just proved my point."

  Harry had spent his life among rich, staid, boring Republicans; he enjoyed her hungry, consuming interest in their work and her smart, saucy banter. He also enjoyed spinning yarns for his protégé, as Marlena was socially inept and thoroughly gullible.

  With impunity, he dropped names of Hollywood royalty and contemporary robber barons, omitting the fact that his wife was responsible for these connections. He'd played golf with Bing Crosby, lunched with William Vanderbilt Cecil, been recognized by a former British prime minister for his generosity in the worthy cause of refurbishing the Salisbury Cathedral.

  "If I'd known he and the Archbishop were sucking each other's dicks, I wouldn't have given them quite so much!"

  She laughed at his jokes and hung on his every word.

  As he watched Marlena blossom, Harry felt more interest in her. The waifish young woman with the fast learning curve used her gifted memory to good effect, touching back on all he said with a thoughtful comment or insightful questions. Harry genuinely admired her acumen and was gratified by her intense focus on the project and on himself.

  Fascinated by her transformation, he felt as if he were Pygmalion and she his Galatea. His wife Lila, far more sophisticated and worldly than he, wasn't nearly so much fun to talk to. Seeing himself in Marlena's eyes, Harry's image of himself as an international bon vivant was restored.

  Nor was it all about his self-esteem. Under the stars on the upper-deck lounge, Marlena sketched out impressive blueprints of what her mind had absorbed as snapshots. She was an invaluable asset.

  "We steal only from the best," he said, toasting her drafting prowess. As the ship plowed its slow way across the Atlantic, the two debated the design of leather walls into the wee hours of the morning.

  They disembarked in New York on a cold, rainy day in February. That afternoon, at four o’clock sharp, they convened in the lobby bar at the Algonquin Hotel, where Harry had checked them into adjoining rooms. They sat down at a small table in two red leather chairs to discuss plans for Marlena’s activities in New York. From time to time, he would ring the bell for more drinks and peanuts. Five hours later, they were still there.

  A week later, they remained in New York, still meeting every afternoon in the lobby bar. Marlena had learned to order gin and dubonnet cocktails.

  Before these pleasant meetings were many long and grueling hours of work, requiring her to be up early and at the top of her game. In hip boots and a long camel coat, she rounded up treasures for jaded hotel guests to ogle. By day, she hunted through Soho’s dustiest corners for antique clocks, scoured warehouses for Empire furniture, and selected richly patterned Moorish carpets; by night, she stayed up late sketching prototypes for the individualized décor of luxury guest suites. Meanwhile, Drake dined with former fraternity brothers at the Harvard Club.

  Though she and her client often agreed, there were instances where they didn’t see eye-to-eye. She soon learned to change her mind or the subject, as the case might be. Though Drake might assume humility for his public front, he was stubborn and conceited, a classic Taurus. Marlena, though willful, presented the dreamy-eyed aspect of an Aquarian. She began to ebb and flow with his preferences, submitting herself to his every whim.

  Of course, as they say, opposites attract.

  One night, squeezed together as they ascended at a snail's pace in the creaky cage elevator that was run manually by an elderly, uniformed employee, midway the cage jolted violently to a halt and, as if by fate, they were literally thrown into each other’s arms.

  It was not by chance, however, but by willful choice that they continued clutching each other as they reached the top floor.

  Cheekbones burning, heart pounding, eyelids trembling, Marlena gazed bravely ahead and allowed her hand to remain in Harry’s as he steered her past the operator, out the elevator, and down the narrow corridor into his room.

  The door closed, and overnight, her life changed.

  Oh, the incredible passion of their union! An entire world, previously unknown, suddenly hove into her view, a volcanic planet characterized by smoldering desire, the crescendo of shuddering delights, and the final, mind-blowing explosion of orgasm! Why had she not known before about this dark star, the power of illicit sex?

  It's our discovery, ours alone; no one else feels this special intensity.

  After that night, only one of the two bedrooms was used. The maid, experienced in such matters and confident of being rewarded, discreetly made up both rooms each day with fresh linens and sprigs of lavender.

  Thus began the glory days of their affair, when every thrilling moment seemed a golden-throated harbinger for a blissful future. Lila Drake was a mere phantom on the loose as she cavorted through Europe’s priciest watering holes, leaning on Bob Drummond’s tanned arm. On the rare occasion when Lila flew into town, she and Harry barely spoke.

  They took obvious precautions to keep the affair hidden from prying eyes. However, there is an old Arabian proverb to the effect that there are three things you cannot hide--love, smoke, and a man riding a camel.

  Chapter Four

  On the television set mounted on the far wall of the doctor’s waiting room, Marlena watched national coverage of the Russian space walk. Astronaut Georgi Grechko from Salyut 6 EO-1 looked hot in his dazzling white Orlan spacesuit.

  "In Russia," the newscaster said, "Santa Claus is known as Grandfather Frost."

  "Marlena Bellum,” called out the gray-haired nurse. As she got up from her seat, a commercial announcement came on the television, and in a deep voice the announcer boomed, "Choosey moms choose Jif."

  Avoiding direct eye contact with the others, a young businessman and a married couple, she walked to the glass door. The businessman had constantly checked his watch and fidgeted, while the couple seemed placidly inured to waiting, the husband reading his newspaper and the wife idly leafing through a dog-eared copy of Life.

  Married squares and her creepy little home town at the holidays, she thought; what a drag.

  Marlena wished she were anywhere else, hanging out with her lesbian roommate in their loft in San Francisco's Castro district, getting it on with Harry in his penthouse suite at the hotel, or, the best idea yet, walking in outer space with Grechko.

  Could the Russian astronaut possibly feel any weirder than she did, entering Typhoid Ronnie's examination offices?

  "Date of birth?"

  "February 1, 1947."

  The nurse took her blood pressure and temperature, then measured her height and weighed her.

  “Five feet, seven and one half inches; one hundred and fifteen pounds. Step down and follow me, please.”

  Following the nurse, she thought: funny, how for seven whole years she'd been shuttling between San Francisco and Wyoming with nothing odd, weird, or even mildly disturbing ever occurring.

  Then she'd set up the holiday family reunion with Mama and Chloe and packed her bag for a guilt trip. Sure enough, ever since Saturday, life had taken on new dimensions.

  Now here she was on a Tuesday morning, signing on as her personal physician a classmate from Teddy Roosevelt Elementary. In her life in the City, what would be the chances of such a thing happening? As likely as getting struck by lightning!

  She felt loopy as a drunken sailor.

  Saturday morning, on an impulsive, nostalgic visit to her grandparents' empty Victorian (she’d always fondly called it “the pink house”) a chance discovery had packed the first disconcerting punch.

  Along with two brown spiral notebooks lying in a wooden sea chest in a corner of the dank basement (these turned out to be her childhood journals), she’d pulled from its dusty hiding place a tiny, hardbound book
by Thurston Scott Welton, M.D., F.A.C.S. It contained comprehensive instructions on the "Rhythmic Method of Birth Control.” Enclosed were menstrual calendars from 1947 to 1955 and a handy plasticized device to detect safe and unsafe dates for sexual intercourse.

  With the exception of two years, the calendars were marked in Faith Bellum’s distinctive, round handwriting.

  But, she couldn't help recalling, ever so clearly, how Mama, with her rosary beads dangling and convincing tears in her eyes, had once remarked: "It is God’s will and my greatest sorrow, Lena, you didn't have a little brother or little sister."

  Marlena was still digesting this information when she was caught off guard and completely blindsided Saturday afternoon in the hotel ladies' lounge. She was assailed by a barrage of foul words hurled by Letty Brown-Hawker, Alta's self-appointed witch-hunter.

  "Be gone, witch! Thou art accursed! If you fail to heed my warning, there will be two deaths on your head before the bonfires are extinguished."

  Surreal.

  Now, a decision was needed.

  Should she move from her posh hotel suite to Mill's Creek for the rest of her stay, as Chloe has urged her to do?

  If she did, she would have a chance to discuss these disturbances in the field with her cousin, the world-renowned evolutionary psychiatrist. Though Chloe was older than Faith, she couldn't be more radically different, and Chloe was willing to talk about their special powers.

  On the other hand, wasn't it best not to get hung up on puzzling events? Simply ignore them and forge ahead?

  "Forge ahead" was Marlena's mantra. She fancied herself a futurist, even imagined she carried a crystal ball around inside her head.

  But if I leave the hotel for a few days, I might feel safer.

  It was even possible Letty's harangue had triggered a reoccurrence of the persecution complex she'd suffered from as a child, causing her to vomit from anxiety. For sure, the weird scene was proving hard to expunge, though she was focusing her will on dismissing it.

  Alas, a talent Marlena shared with her mother and cousin--their gift of perfect recall--made forgetting even a fraction of a second of that freakish hullabaloo well nigh impossible.

  Chapter Five

  On Saturday afternoon, Marlena Bellum and Dr. Chloe Vye had kicked off their long delayed reunion by having a couple of drinks at B. L. Zebub's. Faith Bellum wasn't there yet; her train from Rapid City was arriving later in the evening. Marlena had ordered gin and dubonnet cocktails for them both.

  "It's Queen Elizabeth's drink," she informed Chloe, “a house specialty."

  Marlena then gave Chloe a behind-the-scenes hotel tour, running down the high points of their success story. Chloe's books took her on world tours and she was seldom at home, but even so, Marlena felt embarrassed she hadn't invited her older cousin to the Alta Hotel. The truth was, she had pushed her family away in recent years, assuming they wouldn't tolerate her situation. Now Chloe and Mama were all the family she had left.

  As they returned to the lobby, she began to feel sick to her stomach again and quickly excused herself to go to the ladies' lounge.

  When the heavy, carved wooden door swung shut behind her, a frothy mass of spittle hit her directly in the right eye, bubbling and burning as the spray found its mark.

  “Be gone, witch! Thou art accursed! If you fail to heed my warning, there will be two deaths on your head before the bonfires are extinguished!"

  The big woman's massive head was entirely swathed in a purple turban. There was a wilted corsage pinned to her chest, right at the level of Marlena's nose. The mingled odor of sweat and dead roses on Mrs. Brown-Hawker's heaving bosom made her feel nauseated.

  Accursed? Really?

  Letty shook a fat finger in her face and bellowed: "Marlena Bellum, I call you out as the reincarnation of Cassandra Vye and the devil's spawn! I invoke the hexing of Goody Brown against your evil spirit!"

  As Marlena tried to get past, her antagonist ranted, “There’s gambling, drinking, and fornicating going on all day in this devils' den. But you took it upon yourself to hide Mr. Drake behind your skirts and protect him from ME. Shame on you! Take care, Marlena Bellum. God rewards the innocent and punishes the wicked in this town. Remember, He punished the cold-hearted witch with the red hair whose blood courses in your veins. He will wreak vengeance on you and your paramour for opening Alta's doors to Satan!”

  Marlena calmly wiped the spittle from her face. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea what or whom you’re raving about, Letty. Will you please let me go by, or do I have to call for security?”

  "You and Drake was laughin' at your betters, and you throwed my letter in your waste can. A God-fearing woman from my church saw you do it. You were in a hotel room together, though you're bound to others by solemn vows in church. It's known hereabouts, Satan's whore, that Cassandra's evil powers are yours. And an untimely death awaits men who make the fatal mistake of consortin' with your kind.”

  Then Letty repeated her opening threat. "Be gone, witch! Thou art accursed! If you fail to heed my warning, there will be two deaths on your head before the bonfires are extinguished!"

  “Let me pass, please!”

  There'd been a struggle, but somehow she’d got past the draped bulk of Mrs. Brown-Hawker and fled into a stall.

  "A community of unforgiving souls" was how one outsider had described a cult of religious fanatics among the natives of Alta. This wasn't the first time these bigots had raised their ugly heads. Letty had been hell-bent on a mission to close them down for the past six months, ever since the fifth anniversary celebration of the hotel’s opening.

  The event was held on July 10, 1977, a propitious day of blazing sun and a cloudless sky colored a robin’s egg blue. The festivities were carefully planned to coincide with the anniversary of the Wyoming Territory becoming the 44th state in 1890. A day of pomp and ceremony was planned on the grounds of the 200acre hotel property.

  On hand were the Lieutenant Governor, the heads of the Union Pacific and Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroads, the president of the Iron Workers Association (founded in 1901), and a representative of the DOE, to whom Jimmy Carter had transferred management after re-opening the rich Wyoming oil field reserves to counteract the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74.

  The publisher of the Casper Star-Tribune was not on hand, but Drake was the biggest advertiser in the newspaper founded in 1891, and so the Star had sent instead an Overland Stage Company replica for the short parade that started off the festivities at 10 a.m.

  On another horse-drawn vehicle, pageant players representing frontiersmen, trappers, prospectors, and homesteaders from the late 1880’s sang songs from the Oregon Trail, interspersed with the peals of a fire bell from 1876 and tunes on a 1900 calliope. The parade ran along Sacajawea Pathway, a private two-mile stretch leading up Alta Mountain to the hotel’s massive stone facade.

  The parade was led off with a flourish by the Troopers, a Wyoming drum and bugle corps of national fame. Several female hotel staff were said to have swooned while watching the practice session the previous night under the lights on a local football field. It was hot, unseasonably so; the buffed lads had their shirts off and their horns held high.

  Industry press was well represented, including one of the foremost food critics in the nation. Slated for the speechifying event were the head of Amoco Oil Refinery, a tribal chieftain from the Black Hills, and, of course, Harry Drake, the king of the mountain. To enthusiastic applause, the three men were splendidly carted to the front of the grandstand (which was draped in the Wyoming flag and Drake’s ancestral Scottish banner) in a white carriage drawn by two Morgan houses named Indian Paintbrush and Pathetic Fallacy.

  From the eagle-eyed perspective of its young director, the anniversary ceremonies went off without a hitch. Marlena felt as though her fairy godmother had waved a wand. The local dignitaries were on time and stayed sober, the microphones worked, and Harry’s welcoming speech was well received. Flags flew in the sparkling sky;
sleek black limousines lined the entranceway; and, after an informal winemakers' reception in the banquet hall, the food critic, well oiled by the vintage wines, went to his suite smacking his lips over the vichyssoise, Prince Edward Island mussels, potato strips fried in duck fat, thinly slivered carpaccio, and foie de gras petit fours.

  In the glistening success story that would be reported in all the major travel magazines, there would be two incidents which weren’t covered but which marred and soured the occasion.

  The first occurred during the ceremonial aftermath. Over the objection of a small native faction, a new traffic stoplight had been installed at the intersection of Sacajawea Pathway and Hatter’s Field Road, the thoroughfare angling directly into Alta proper. A souped-up Camaro driven by a young male cousin of Thom Hawker ran the red light, colliding with the horses drawing the empty white carriage. Indian Paintbrush was euthanized at the scene while his partner, Pathetic Fallacy, sadly looked on. At noon, the young man lost his leg in Alta Hospital.

  The second incident carried repercussions that appeared equally serious in the minds of some religiously reborn natives who had objected, for five fruitless years, to the demonic nomenclature of the private club hidden within the bowels of Drake’s glamorous hotel.

  At ten p.m., dressed only in his birthday suit, a tipsy guest went out to fill his ice bucket, then wandered into the lobby to get assistance on finding his room.

  His nakedness amused the front desk staff. But it elicited loud, outraged shrieks from a grim-faced knot of elder natives standing in the lobby. Led by Letty Brown-Hawker and her husband, Thomas Hawker III, they were members of a newly re-opened WCTU chapter, which had recently been referred to by a Casper newspaper columnist as “the stillborn offshoot of a dead tree."