Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

Catharina looked stricken. “You never told me you didn’t want me to go. Willie-”

“I did want you to go. You deserved your life with Adrian.”

“But if you’d told me you cared…”

“What? It would have changed anything? Never mind, Catharina, you know I despise these emotional discussions. Let us consider our options, shall we? It seems to me the best thing for us to do now is locate the Minstrel-if for no other reason than to keep Hendrik from getting it.” She looked at her sister and asked matter-of-factly, “Do you have it?”

“No, of course not!” Catharina was indignant. “I’d have thrown it into the ocean, you know that-and so did Johannes. I hate that stone. If you ask me, it died with Johannes. There’s no one to carry on the tradition.”

“What?” Wilhelmina asked sharply, suddenly acutely alert. “Catharina, what did you say? There’s no one to carry on the tradition?”

Catharina was frightened by her sister’s wild look. “That’s right, there isn’t. Why wouldn’t Johannes just turn the Minstrel over to someone else in the business and let another diamond family take over as caretaker? Just because the Peperkamps have had it for so long doesn’t mean-Willie?”

Wilhelmina was shaking her head, more pale and shaky than she’d been in a long, long time-since she’d heard the boots of the Gestapo Green Police outside her window. She said woodenly, “Another family wouldn’t be the Peperkamps.”

“Well, of course not, but…” Catharina grabbed her chest and gulped for air as she realized what her sister was getting at. “Juliana- no! She can’t have it! She’d have told me!”

“Would she?”

“Yes!”

Catharina quickly cleaned up the table, her hands shaking violently, knocking a cup to the floor. It broke, but she paid no attention, gathering up the tray and fleeing from the little storeroom into the kitchen. She threw everything into the giant sink and began sobbing uncontrollably, shutting out what was happening, shutting out the truth.

Her daughter had the Minstrel’s Rough. Catharina knew it.

“I’m staying with Juliana,” Wilhelmina said quietly behind her. “I’ll look in her apartment for the stone and let you know what I find. Johannes must have given it to her during one of the few times he saw her-perhaps even in Delftshaven, when we were all together. And right under our noses, too. He wouldn’t have told you because you wouldn’t have approved and because I would have felt it my obligation to tell you.”

“Why?” she asked hoarsely.

“Because you’re her mother.”

Catharina said nothing, not looking around as her sister left.

For seven years Juliana could have had the Minstrel. Seven years! And without ever once hinting to her own mother, confiding in her! What else did Juliana know? What had Johannes told her that she’d been waiting to hear from her mother all this time?

“Juliana, Juliana,” she whispered, “why don’t you talk to me?”

But she knew. Because you don’t let her. She protects you, too, like everyone else does.

A brisk wind had kicked up. Juliana pulled her glittery shawl more tightly about her and headed around the corner to the Club Aquarian, running hard into a wind tunnel. She’d turned into J.J. Pepper in the bakeshop restroom. The giant shawl had disguised the mohair coat, and she’d tucked her blond hair under a black, rhinestone-studded turban. Her red vinyl boots, gobs of makeup, two handfuls of rhinestones around her neck and on her wrists and the black twenties shift she’d worn under the coat, guessing she wouldn’t have to take it off for her mother, had completed her bit of subterfuge.

She’d left the man in the Burberry coat making a halfhearted attempt to pretend to be interested in a gallery window as he smoked a cigarette. Halfway to the club, she’d realized that now Aunt Willie would have to deal with him alone and had felt a passing guilt. But her stalwart old aunt had outwitted Nazi occupiers for five years; she could handle someone following her on the streets of New York.

Instinctively protective of her fingers, she shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets; she’d forgotten gloves. The brisk air revived her, pushing back the bone-deep fatigue and the thought of Matthew Stark’s dark eyes searching hers in the stairwell of her uncle’s tenement. Had he guessed yet that she had the Minstrel’s Rough? What would he do when he did?

A group of corporate types had the entrance to the Club Aquarian blocked, anxious for their after-work drinks-maybe even to hear J.J. Pepper perform. They all looked so normal. She wondered if that was what she was missing in her life: normality. Sometimes she dreamed about living a nine-to-five life, what it would be like to put on dress-for-success clothes in the morning and rush out to a corporate job with a properly stodgy briefcase tucked under one arm, to be in an office with people all around her. After work she could dress up and go to a concert if she wanted to and sit in the balcony, anonymous. She would have a life she could count on, routines.

The long, daily hours alone at the piano were her only constants. She could wear whatever she felt like, and there was no clock to punch, no one to tell her what to do-except Shuji. But she didn’t have to listen to him or to anyone else. And there was seldom anyone around to see her sweat, concentrate, hurt.

She thought of Matthew Stark again-his remoteness, his wry sense of humor, his strong sense of self. He didn’t give a damn what The New Yorker or Vogue or anyone else said about her. Toots, he’d called her. Sweet cheeks. It was a change from the most beautiful concert pianist in the world.

She wondered where he was. What he was doing. If he was thinking about her as much as she was thinking about him.

Len was at the bar, and he didn’t mention her lapse into classical the other evening. “Another time we’ll talk,” he said. “You’ve got a crowd waiting.”

Nodding gratefully, she kicked off the vinyl boots and slipped on J.J.’s gold T-strap shoes from her satchel, then went straight to the piano. There was a crowd-an appreciative one. She didn’t think she could do much for them. She was too tired, too preoccupied. She wanted to know what Aunt Willie and her mother were saying to each other. She wanted to know who was after the Minstrel. And why. What she was supposed to do about it. How Senator Ryder was involved. What Uncle Johannes had been doing in Amsterdam. Who Hendrik de Geer was. How Matthew’s buddy was doing.

She wanted answers, and all she had were questions.

That wasn’t true. She had one big answer: she knew where the Minstrel was.

She began with a few Eubie Blake pieces, slipped in some Cole Porter, and then was moving. Lost. Transported. She focused on the music, on her playing. She stayed with it. Controlled it instead of letting it control her. Then lost the need to control or be controlled and played only to play. She could feel the motivation, if not define it; feel the need. For the first time in months, she had something real to communicate. Mood, feeling, loss, confusion, terror. It was all there at her fingertips.

When she finished, she bounced up, filled with energy, sweating, exhausted. She grinned at Al, who had her Saratoga water waiting. Len was there at the bar, clapping with the rest of the crowd. It felt good. She’d moved them, but more important, she’d moved herself.

“See those walls?” Len said. “They’re shaking, babe. I knew they would be when you put it all together. You’re letting loose, not holding on so tight. I like it. Now what’re-” He stopped and narrowed his eyes, watching her go white as she stared down the bar, mouth open, her entire body stiff. “Shit, not again. Stark?”