“I’d like to speak to you about Michael Esposito,” Stein said quietly.
He looked around wildly. “Michael? Do I know a Michael? Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Your former business partner and intimate companion?”
“Oh, you mean Miss Espe,” Vane exclaimed with an exquisite mixture of self-deprecation and world-weariness. And for the first time he sounded like what he was-a man at the end of middle age who had suffered one more disappointment than he could endure.
Stein looked down directly into Vane’s troubled eyes. Gay or straight, pain is pain. “Is there a place where we can talk privately?”
Vane’s private retreat was part gymnasium, part French kitchen. Giddy laughter accompanied the pop of the cork as Vane cracked open the second bottle of chilled Fume. He kept a mini refrigerator alongside his Pilates machine, and Stein noted that both appliances had been well used. He had lived through the worst of everything, seen death often enough and at close enough range to clear his eyes of bullshit, and it had made him a reliable barometer. His only problem was the same as everybody else’s. He fell in love with the wrong people.
He had been fooled at first by Paul Vane’s Scarlet O’Hara excesses. But Vane was a solid citizen.
In the preceding forty-five minutes Stein had had all his pre-judgments about Vane dispelled and all those about marketing confirmed. It was about making people feel horrible about themselves and offering the product to save them.
“Let me see if I’ve retained any of this,” said Stein. “Manufacturers of designer products like Espe distribute only to exclusive salons. They don’t want discount drug chains to sell their goods at a cheaper price-God forbid the public should benefit.”
“Amazing,” Vane praised him. “The man has perfect retention.”
“I knew that, too.” Lila pouted.
“Of course you know it,” said Paul. “But we expect it of you.”
Lila was sitting on the pommel horse. The first glass of musky amber liquid had gone straight to her head. The second had whetted the warm spot between her legs and put her censor to sleep. “You should see his closet,” she giggled. “Three pairs of jeans that he still calls dungarees. Two sport jackets, previously owned. And no air-conditioning. How can you marry a man who doesn’t believe in air conditioning?”
Vane refilled their empty glasses. “That’s just what she needs,” Stein said.
“Do you think I’m smashed?”
Stein leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
“Thank you. I’m sober enough to recognize the most patronizing kiss I’ve ever received.”
“I love this woman,” Vane exulted. He went on to outline the marketing plan that had been devised to create the maximum buzz around the release of Espe New Millennium. Only one salon in every area would be granted the license to market the product.
“Luckily you’re connected,” Stein said.
“One would think.” The sigh that Paul Vane let out could have changed the atmosphere of Jupiter.
Stein perked up, catching a glimmer of the unspoken truth. “Are you saying he didn’t choose you?”
“C’est la guerre. C’est l’amour.”
“The dirty little rat,” Lila shot.
“I bet it was that other place we passed,” Stein remembered the long lines. “They seemed to be doing a land office business.”
“Not all of us are in land,” said Vane.
“It must have hurt you not getting the franchise.”
“Why would I be hurt? Just because I took the little trollop in? Gave him a home, gave him love, made him a reasonably civilized human being, taught him the business, taught him all of my secrets, and as a reward he left me and marketed the things I gave him freely? Why would that hurt?”
“I only meant financially,” Stein murmured.
“Of course. I forget that straight men can make the distinction.”
Time had worn thin some of the zeal that Vane had once possessed in defending his lover’s transgressions. Only a frayed inner grace still remained. “Young men don’t know what love is,” Vane said. “If any of us ever do. Yes, he hurt me, but that’s what people do who are inexperienced in the world. It’s up to those of us who know better not to hurt back.”
“That’s very evolved of you.”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’re lucky if the worst thing that happens to you is that a lover leaves. At least the little shit is enjoying himself.”
“I’d make him suffer,” said Lila.
“I love this woman.”
Stein declined having his glass topped off. Lila accepted. “You knew Nicholette Bradley pretty well,” Stein ventured.
“God yes. The poor angel. Can you imagine?”
Vane nodded toward the gallery of photographs on his wall of celebrity clients. Prominent among them were several of her Vogue covers and layouts for the old New Radiance shampoo ads.
“Do you have any idea who could have done it?” Stein asked.
“It’s too ghastly to think.”
“No enemies? No rivals?”
“You couldn’t do anything but love her.”
Stein nodded ruefully. “True.”
“You didn’t know her,” Lila scolded.
It was a long shot that Vane would supply something helpful. He was just a bystander, like Stein, a victim of collateral damage. Stein felt the irrational desire to hug him. “We’ll be out of your hair in a minute he said. No pun intended. I just need to hear you say, so I can tell my boss, that you are not hijacking any shampoo.”
Lila had become Vane’s staunch defender. “Stein, that’s rude and ridiculous.”
Vane was feeling wicked himself, or flirting, or showing off. “Why would I steal what I can make right here in my sink?”
Stein had a bad premonition. “What are you saying?”
Vane extended his arms to them both like an ambidextrous courtier. “Would you like to see the plant?” He conducted them into a smaller room that was painted white and furnished with laboratory sinks and copper tubing. Shelves and cabinets were lined with retort jars containing all manner of exotic ingredients: dried and freshly preserved orchids, berries, buds and small twigs.
“Anybody can make what is essentially Espe New Millennium shampoo. It’s not the formula that’s copyrighted; it’s the name and the packaging. Ninety per cent of the products on the market have the same ingredients.”
Stein marveled when reality outflanked irony. “Are you saying that anyone could brew up a vat of Espe shampoo but they couldn’t call it Espe because Espe doesn’t exist outside its packaging?”
“That is the million dollar secret.”
“More like twenty million,” Stein observed.
“Probably closer to four hundred million worldwide. But I just make the bare necessity to satisfy my regulars.”
Moments earlier Stein had thought he was done with shampoo but now it looked like Mattingly and Michael Esposito had been right, that Paul Vane had been knocking them off. But why was Vane showing him? His shell cracked with barely a tap. Lila was crashing off the high and getting cranky. “Stein, can we go? I’m hungry.”
An 11”?14” photo hung on the wall above one of the sinks that struck Stein with a vague sense of familiarity. It was Nicholette Bradley cavorting on a beach with another girl. Stein noticed the photographer’s logo under the photo-an aperture opening like a flower petal. He remembered the envelope he had found in Nicholette’s bedroom with that same logo. Weird things began to snap together.
“Is David Hart an acquaintance of yours?” Stein asked.
It was Paul Vane’s turn to be surprised. “How would you have known that?”
And then a voice emanated from the recesses of the room that said, “I was waiting for someone to introduce us.” A figure materialized. Stein thought at first it was a hallucination. The person standing in the doorway was the image of young Michael Espos-ito. Punk-blond hair, snakelike curl of the lips.
“Speak of the devil,” Vane said. Meet David Hart in person.”
“I’ve been listening to the conversation,” David said. “We are not amused.” On that, he abruptly strode from the room. And Paul Vane did what any man would do who feared that he had lost thelast person on earth allotted for him to love.