A Fine and Private Place Read Free Page B

afraid of a personal maid who can hardly utter an intelligible sentence in her own language, let alone mine!
    I’m growing paranoid. The old soul’s probably coming down with the flu and wishing I’d bathe and undress myself for bed once. Editta cara , I wish I could. Why N. insists on this slavish servitude, as if I were a sultana, I’m not quite sure. Of course, he’s the sultan, so I suppose it’s a matter of his image, his ego, not mine. I exist for greeting and planning and hostessing and being decorative around his kowtowing friends and underlings and big-belly business associates from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East—a kind of glorified five-star housekeeper, as P. truly calls me (but not in N.’s hearing!).
    There, I’ve got rid of the poor thing for tonight, anyway. I had to reassure her that the signore would never, never know. Maybe we could work out an accommodation, Editta and I, for the future. Happy, wishful thought. She’s so dad-blamed, all-fired scared of Nino, all he has to do is give her one of those evil-eye looks of his and she wets her mutandine , as Julio says with his customary refinement. And not from passion, either, she’s past the age. Poor Editta.
    Poor me. A bitch of a day, I repeat. My “cover,” as the spy boys call it (don’t they? or am I misusing the term? I must consult P., he knows everything)—anyway, my cover, or cover-up, or excuse, or alibi, or whatever, was that I was to do some Christmas shopping (Saks, Bergdorf’s, Bonwit’s, Georg Jensen, Mark Cross, Sulka, Brentano’s—the circuit), which would put me out of range of Crump’s Halloween eyes and Editta’s bunny nose and into the blessed pollution of Fifth Avenue, the tintinnabulation of the Santa bells, and the trivial perils of purse snatchers, panhandlers, and muggers. And with N. skillions of miles away, in West Berlin or Belgrade or Athens or wherever, scheming how to make his millions propagate more millions-what did Julio, or was it Marco, say yesterday the conglomerate is now worth, cold turkey? close to half a billion dollars ? how does anyone digest sums like that!—with him on the other side of an ocean I was free … free to spend most of the day with Peter! Even to be reckless. Such as now, writing his name full out and fancied up like H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n’s …
    P*E*T*E*R.
    P*E*T*E*R E*N*N*I*S.
    There! Oh, Peter darling …
    We were reckless sure enough. Luckily no harm was done. I think. But the way it turned out … Peter’s denouement … I don’t know. Who knows where harm lies? From which direction it can come, and when, and even why? Am I being paranoid really? Peter says that life in New York these days is an unending game of Russian roulette to which one either becomes inured or goes crackers. And after a while one even challenges it, he says—dares it sassily to do its lethal worst. While all the time, under the bravado, there cowers the wee sleekit mousie of a person being just—plain—damned-scared.
    What’s a mugger in the dark behind you with a knife blade at your throat compared with being in the clutches of a demon like N.?
    Dreadful thought. I’ve waked up well over a thousand times saying thank God it was a nightmare and finding out it wasn’t.
    I know people would consider me off my bloody wicket if they could hear me sound off about N. like this. Why, darling, he’s the kindest, most generous—and richest—man on four continents! And he absolutely, positively adores you, loves you madly . Oh, N. loves me madly, all right, the way a Jivaro loves his favorite shrunken head. Love … They should know what that word means to him. And what it means for a girl to have to endure over four years of …
    I need a drink, dear Diary.
    Better.
    It’s getting late and I’ve made hardly a start chronicling the day’s events. Well, who gives