Mary Clark: Weep No More, My Lady

The facialist was new, a Japanese woman. The unwinding that had begun with the massage was completed by the warm mask she applied after the cleansing and steaming. Elizabeth drifted off to sleep. She was awakened by the woman's soft voice. "Have you had a nice nap? I left you an extra forty minutes. You looked so peaceful, and I had plenty of time."

While the maid unpacked her bags, Alvirah Meehan investigated her new quarters. She went from room to room, her eyes darting about, missing nothing. In her mind she was composing what she would dictate into her brand-new recording machine.

"Will that be all, madame?"

The maid was at the door of the sitting room. "Yes, thank you." Alvirah tried to imitate the tone of her Tuesday job, Mrs. Stevens. A little hoity-toity, but still friendly.

The minute the door closed behind the maid, she raced to get her recorder out of her voluminous pocketbook. The reporter from the New York Globe had taught her how to use it. She settled herself on the couch in the living room and began:

"Well, here I am at Cypress Point Spa and buhlieve me it's the cat's meow. This is my first recording and I want to start by thanking Mr. Evans for his confidence in me. When he interviewed me and Willy about winning the lottery and I told him about my lifelong ambition to come to Cypress Point Spa, he said that I clearly have a sense of the dramatic and the Globe readers would love to know all about the goings-on in a classy spa from my point of view.

"He said that the kind of people I'll be meeting would never think of me as a writer and so I might hear a lot of interesting stuff. Then when I explained I'd been a real fan of movie stars all my life, and know lots about the private lives of the stars, he said he had a hunch I could write a good series of articles and who knows, maybe even a book."

Alvirah smiled blissfully and smoothed the skirt of her purple-and-pink traveling dress. The skirt tended to hike up.

"A book," she continued, being careful to speak directly into the microphone. "Me, Alvirah Meehan. But when you think of all the celebrities who write books and how many of them really stink, I believe I just might be able to do that.

"To get to what's happened so far, I rode in a limousine to the Spa with Elizabeth Lange. She is a lovely young woman and I feel so sorry for her. Her eyes are very sad, and you can tell she's under a big strain. She slept practically the whole way from San Francisco. Elizabeth is Leila LaSalle's sister, but very different in looks. Leila was a redhead with green eyes. She could look sexy and queenly at the same time-kind of like a cross between Dolly Parton and Greer Garson. I think a good way to describe Elizabeth is 'wholesome.'

"She's a little too thin; her shoulders are broad; she has wide blue eyes with dark lashes, and honey-colored hair that falls around her shoulders. She has strong, beautiful teeth, and the one time she smiled she gave off just the warmest glow. She's pretty tall -about five foot nine, I guess. I bet she sings. Her speaking voice is so pleasant, but not that exaggerated actressy voice you hear from so many of these young starlets. I guess you don't call them starlets anymore. Maybe if I get friendly with her, she'll tell me some interesting things about her sister and Ted Winters. I wonder if the Globe will want me to cover the trial."

Alvirah paused, pushed the rewind button and then the replay. It was all right. The machine was working. She thought she ought to say something about her surroundings.

"Mrs. von Schreiber escorted me to my bungalow. I almost laughed out loud when she called it a bungalow. We used to rent a bungalow in Rockaway Beach on Ninety-ninth Street right near the amusement park. The place used to shake every time the roller coaster went down the last steep drop, which was every five minutes during the summer.

"This bungalow has a sitting room all done in light blue chintz and Oriental scatter rugs… they're handmade-I checked… a bedroom with a canopy bed, a small desk, a slipper chair, a bureau, a vanity table filled with cosmetics and lotions, and two huge bathrooms, each with its own Jacuzzi. There's also a room with built-in bookshelves, a real leather couch and chairs and an oval table. Upstairs there are two more bedrooms and baths, which of course I really don't need. Luxury! I keep pinching myself.

"Baroness von Schreiber told me that the day starts at seven A.M. with a brisk walk, which everyone in the Spa is requested to take. After that I will be served a low-calorie breakfast in my own dining room. The maid will also bring my personal daily schedule, which will include things like a facial, a massage, a herbal wrap, a sloofing treatment- whatever that is-the steam cabinet, a pedicure and a manicure and a hair treatment. Imagine! After I have been checked out by the doctor, they will add my exercise classes.

"Now I'm going to take a little rest, and then it will be time to dress for dinner. I'm going to wear my rainbow caftan,which I bought at Martha's on Park Avenue. I showed it to the Baroness and she said it would be perfect, but not to wear the crystal beads I won at the shooting gallery in Coney Island."

Alvirah turned off the recorder and beamed in satisfaction. Who ever said writing was hard? With a recorder it was a cinch. Recorder! Quickly, she got up and reached for her pocketbook. From inside a zippered compartment she took out a small box containing a sunburst pin.

But not just any sunburst pin, she thought proudly. This one had a microphone, and the editor had told her to wear it to record conversations. "That way," he had explained, "no one can claim you misquoted them later on."

"Sorry to do this to you, Ted, but we simply don't have the luxury of time." Henry Bartlett leaned back in the upholstered armchair at the end of the library table.

Ted was aware that his left temple was throbbing, and shafts of pain were finding a target behind and above his left eye. Deliberately he moved his head to avoid the streams of late-afternoon sun that were coming through the window opposite him.

They were in the study of Ted's bungalow in the Meadowcluster area, one of the two most expensive accommodations at Cypress Point Spa. Craig was sitting diagonally across from him, his face grave, his hazel eyes cloudy with worry.

Henry had wanted a conference before dinner. "Time is running out," he had said, "and until we decide on our final strategy, we can't make any progress."

Twenty years in prison, Ted thought incredulously. That was the sentence he was facing. He'd be fifty-four years old when he got out. Incongruously, all the old gangster movies he'd used to watch late at night sprang into his mind. Steel bars, tough prison guards, Jimmy Cagney starring as a mad-dog killer. He used to revel in them.

"We have two ways we can go," Henry Bartlett said. "We can stick to your original story-"

"My original story," Ted snapped.

"Hear me out! You left Leila's apartment at about ten after nine. You went to your own apartment. You tried to phone Craig." He turned to Craig. "It's a damn shame you didn't pick up the phone."

"I was watching a program I wanted to see. The telephone recorder was on. I figured I'd call back anyone who left a message. And I can swear the phone rang at nine twenty, just as Ted says."

"Why didn't you leave a message, Ted?"

"Because I hate talking to machines, and especially that one." His lips tightened. Craig's habit of talking like a Japanese houseboy on his recorder irritated Ted wildly.

"What were you calling Craig about, anyhow?"

"It's blurry. I was drunk. My impression is that I wanted to tell him I was taking off for a while."