Allegra’s film-noir words came back to haunt him: “It was a setup.”
But if it was a monstrous strategem — to what end?
One last ominous question stuck in his craw. If Allegra did know that Larissa’s son was his lover — which she had to have! — why the fuck wouldn’t she have mentioned the meta-connection to Jeremy right away? And if for some unbelievable but still feasible reason she hadn’t yet gotten around to divulging it, what would have prevented her from just spitting it out as she cried in his arms at the Geshe’s soirée, when she was utterly raw and defenseless? What was there to gain by protecting such intel? Unless she was a… co-conspirator, involved in something truly iniquitous—no! How could she be? Leggy was too much a naïf, too dumb, really (ah, there: he said it) to be so clandestine, so Machiavellian. Wasn’t she? He wondered if he was reading too much into it. Maybe the explanation was simple. Maybe Allegra not disclosing that their lovers were mother and son was merely a result of her spectacular narcissism — a princessy self-involvement that trumped the possibility of any revelations that were off-point (herself being the only point), no matter how striking or singular.
Allegra emerged from the powder room and Jeremy walked her down.
Rejoining the group, she faked it pretty well, falling back on all that familiar, funky flower-child Eros, hanging mostly with the half Rodarte and the one-third Haim (too intimidated by the whole Tartt) whilst muttering spotty apologies in regard to her absenteeism and general agita, courtesy of an alleged stomach bug — though she really did have the runs. Dear Jeremy stood close by for support.
Dusty came into her room around two a.m., naked and stoned. Allegra had planned to confess everything but said nothing, sublimating rage, confusion, panic and fear into bodylove. Dusty knew something was wrong, even very wrong, but was energized by the demolition of language and analysis. Their love was potentiated, and for a moment, the niceties of psychotherapeutic dynamics among couples were forgotten.
They lay in a field of golden land mines that went off one after the other, leaving them eyeless, limbless, heartless — dead and alive all at once.
She hadn’t left her favorite suite at the Gansevoort in three days.
She came to New York alone, a sort of getaway, half for the birthday party Meryl and Bill Irwin were throwing for Edward Albee’s eighty-eighth, half to see Todd Haynes about a film project.
She had planned on staying a week but things changed.
When Ginevra heard from her — a disjointed rush of torn, hyperventilated syntax — she asked her to come to the office straightaway. Dusty balked and the therapist went over to the hotel instead. She answered the door in big movie-star sunglasses but the disguise nobly failed. Like a victim in a cerebral European horror flick, the skinscape and very bones of her face had already begun to metamorphose into something unknown and misbegotten. She returned to the couch where she’d been living.
“There’s tea,” she said, nodding at a pillaged room-service table.
“Have you spoken to her?”
“No.”
“Is your friend still here?”
“No.” A long pause, then: “They both left.”
Two days before, on a bright, freezing Sunday, Livia had called. (As it happened, she was in Brooklyn visiting a just-born grandchild; she’d learned through Allegra that Dusty was in New York.) She needed to see the actress — a “personal matter,” which seemed to rule out any news about the search — and would rather it didn’t wait until they were back in L.A. An hour later, her old ally arrived at the hotel with Snoop Raskin. The news came quick, like a rogue wave.
“I was able to locate the babysitter,” he said. “Claudia Zabert.”
“Okay,” said Dusty with a generic smile, too disoriented by the incongruity of their sudden presence to even know she was afraid.
“And — this is going to be difficult.”
His entire face blistered and lurched like a satellite photo of a surgical strike, before returning to a blank composure of unbombed grids.
“Your daughter is Allegra.”
“What?”
Livia tensed and moved closer, self-deputized into suicide watch.
“It’s — Allegra. She’s Aurora. The one you’ve been looking for. They’re the same.”
Dusty tried to say what again but slurred “Grallegwa?” as if in the midst of a stroke. Sinatra’s boy soldiered on.
“It’s my understanding that your mother—Reina—gave Ms. Zabert five thousand dollars for ‘expenses,’ and after leaving Tustin, she and the girl — whom she renamed Allegra — spent time in Northern California. San Bruno, San Francisco, San Rafael. They lived in campsites and motels and with various acquaintances of Ms. Zabert’s. There are at least five recorded arrests for panhandling, vagrancy, and prostitution — it’s actually somewhat remarkable Ms. Zabert was able to maintain her physical ‘custodianship’ of the girl, such as it was. There may have been an involvement in a cult known as the Children of God or ‘the Family,’ but I believe that would have been something she dabbled in on an expedient basis in order to procure food, clothing, and shelter, and have other needs met. Ultimately, they settled in a commune near the Salmon River — this would have been 1981 or thereabouts, when the girl was age three. The commune was located in the Siskiyou Mountains and fairly remote; Ms. Zabert may have been seeking to avoid or escape certain legal pressures and predicaments. She and the girl experienced the communal lifestyle for approximately six years. Toward the end of their stay she joined a second cult, in a less casual way than she had before, and left the commune — with the girl, with ‘Allegra-Aurora’—traveling extensively in Asia, India, and other regions where the members of that group may or may not have had ‘affiliations.’ I’m of the understanding they were living in the U.K. when the girl returned to the States at age fifteen, accompanied by an adult female who, to my knowledge, had no relationship with the cult or Ms. Zabert. I’m fairly confident that at this point in time, Allegra was a runaway. Ms. Zabert did not choose to follow her and remained behind, working as a housekeeper for a family in Knightsbridge.”
She looked into Livia’s eyes, imploring her to be allowed to awaken from this nightmare. But all the woman could manage was to tenderly say: “Dusty…”
She turned to Snoop — pleading now with her executioner.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“I wish it were.” He’d been careful not to go off-book but allowed himself that improv. “The degree of certainty is one hundred percent.”
What could anyone even do with such information? The profusion of detail and deadpan Dragnet delivery belied the sheer horror. It was like trying to parse the meaning of a massive heart attack or a bullet to the brain. The shock was so great that Dusty wasn’t even sent reeling; instead, she felt something akin to being catapulted into space and embalmed at once. A second opinion would be futile, as it didn’t seem possible the detective could make such an assertion without already being in possession of invincible documents, inalienable proofs. To present anything less than an airtight case would be a recklessly unpardonable moral and professional sin, because if he was wrong… no — he couldn’t be. Snoop Raskin wasn’t a foolhardy man, nor was he prone to career immolation.