hundreds, each filled with a different material, granular or liquid, each a different color.
“Hey, Sweetie. You did great,” she said to Evelyn, who walked by without comment and disappeared through a door at the other end of the room. Dione smiled at us as if there’d just been a pleasant exchange, and dug her hands into the dough.
“Most people need love, I knead bread. That’s K, N, E, A, D.’ It’s a joke,” said Dione, through short puffs of exertion as she squeezed and beat the dough, occasionally lifting it off the table and slapping it back down again.
“You bake?” she asked Amanda.
“I hardly cook,” she answered.
“Great exercise—for the forearms and the olfactories,” she said, calling my attention to the symphony of smells that swirled around the room. Not all pleasant, including the one coming off Dione herself. But I could also pick out spices, like curry and nutmeg, cinnamon, maybe, and coffee. There must have been a loaf or two of bread in the oven, with its unmistakable aroma. My ability in the kitchen trailed Amanda’s by a considerable distance, so I’m sure there were things wafting around the air that would have impressed a more cultivated nose. To me it was more like an assault my olfactories were struggling to withstand.
“So, your red jumpsuit must be at the cleaners,” I said to Dione.
She smiled broadly.
“What a kick, huh? They only just worked it out today. You can blame Amanda.”
Amanda put her hands out like somebody was about to swing a stick at her. She looked at me like I had the stick.
“Oh no, I had nothing to do with that.”
“When Butch called you about the Council Rock you told him about Sam’s big old car. That gave him the idea.”
“Come over to Oak Point and we’ll return the favor,” I said. “Just give me time to install the lift. Don’t have as big a crew.”
“No, no, you can’t repeat the same performance. It has to be distinctively right for the moment,” said Dione as she left the center island and walked over to a large cabinet that held a stack of stereo components.
“Bach, Mingus or Green Day? What’s your mood?”
“Smirnoff,” I said.
Amanda frowned at me.
“Bach would be lovely,” she said.
“I was getting to the drink requests. Though I thought you were an Absolut man.”
“I used to be, but now I’m rethinking the gray areas.”
The music blasted out from all corners of the room, causing both of us to jump a little. Dione apologized and turned it down.
“Sorry, I was trying to listen to NPR over the French horn. Need company when I’m baking bread.”
When she moved away from the center island I could see she was barefoot and wore a pair of blue-jean cutoffs that struggled to contain the vaguely contoured mass of her thighs and butt. Also that she was braless, though containing those mighty globes probably wouldn’t have done much to improve the situation. I doubted any undergarment could have restrained her nipples, which stuck out from her T-shirt like a pair of artillery rounds.
“And for the lady, Pinot Noir is what I remember,” she said, swinging open the doors of another tall cabinet, this one stocked floor to ceiling with bottles and cans—food, wine, liquor, household cleaners, olive oil, motor oil, anything that came in a cylindrical container.
“That’d be lovely,” said Amanda.
“I’m not sure about the Pinot part, but the Noir seems to suit you,” said Dione, pulling the cork like a veteran sommelier.
“Noir means black, even I know that,” said Amanda. “Should I be flattered?”
“No, merely impressed,” said Dione, while I stood there feeling again like I was watching a Kabuki play without a libretto, or whatever you call the thing that tells you what the hell is going on. I had about thirty years in heavy industry, ten of which I ran a technology operation in support of a huge global corporation that made billions refining fundamental resources like air, iron and crude oil. I got to see a lot of things, and work my way around a lot of people, many of whom spoke a different language, prayed in mosques or performed their trades under the threat of secret police. A lot of times things were a little strange and confusing, but at least we shared a frame of reference. We were all basically trying to do the same thing, which was to squeeze the greatest return on investment out of every molecule of matter God chose to make accessible to human manipulation. It was all ostensibly about science and engineering, though I guess you could say there was considerable art in the pursuit. I was beginning to feel, however, that none of it could prepare me for artists.
On cue, Butch and his merry men burst into the kitchen, all naked, drying themselves off and joking around, shoving and snapping towels at each other’s butt. They were followed by two women, young and furtive, their towels cinched up tight around their chests. Dione opened the refrigerator and dispensed Gatorade and soda as they moved through the kitchen and out another door, I assumed heading upstairs to dress, though I wouldn’t have bet on anything at that point. Throughout the parade Amanda leaned unflinching against a stack of shelves, sipping her wine.
“Well,” she said, after the last guy cleared the room. “I supposed that was the long and the short of it.”
Dione toasted her with her wineglass and I went over to the tall cabinet to see if I could find something clear and astringent you could pour over ice cubes. Dione apologized again and dug out a liter bottle of some fruity flavored version of Absolut. I accepted it magnanimously.
“So how do you like living out on Oak Point?” Dione asked Amanda. “It must be exciting, being so close to the water. The primordial soup.”
“The soup’s over on the ocean side,” I said. “The Little Peconic’s more like a broth.”
“I’m happy there,” answered Amanda, ignoring me. “It’s a good place to collect yourself.”
“She’s already joined the neighborhood watch,” I said. “Which mostly involves keeping an eye on the bay”
“So I suppose you know a threat when you see one?” asked Dione, returning to strangle some more bread dough.
“I used to. Now I’m not so sure.”
“More gray areas?”
“More gray hair. Getting harder to keep up.”
Amanda let out a sympathetic little sound and wrapped her arms around me.
“Don’t listen to him. He keeps up fine.”
Dione picked up a slab of dough and slammed it down hard enough to cause a little piece to fly up and hit me on the cheek. She grinned at me and knocked it away with a swift flick of her finger.
“I don’t doubt that to be true.”
Butch appeared in the kitchen wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sandals and baggy off-white cotton pants that stopped at mid-calf His wet hair was combed straight back and his face scrubbed pink. His eyes would widen occasionally, setting off the irises in a field of white. I wondered if he’d trained himself to do that, an appropriate accessory to the mania that surrounded him like static electricity.
“We’re planning to gather in the Great Hall of the Ancients in about five minutes. What sort of fruit do we have? I’m thinking of a big basket, overload it like the horn of plenty.”
“He means the barn,” said Dione. “Will this do?” she asked Butch, pulling a soft woven bag, the kind sophisticates use to haul groceries, down off a high shelf. “I’m not sure what we have in the way of fruit.”
It wasn’t hard for me to imagine, given everything else in the kitchen, that she had an orchard full of apples, peaches and pears piled inside one of the towering cabinets.
“Your call, darling,” he said. “I’ll rally the troops. You bring the fruit and the guests, configured any way that pleases you.”
“I’ll carry the bag,” I said.
The Great Hall of the Ancients was as Dione had said. The original barn built at the same time as the farmhouse, where the guys I used to work for kept racks and bins filled with salvaged parts, a tool crib and several oddball sports cars in various stages of restoration. All of that was gone, replaced by a wide open space, causing
