gray-green mape trees had been thinned out to make a pleasant, shaded grove, and there, just out of range of falling coconuts, the Polynesian feast that Nick had promised was being prepared by a busy team of Tahitians in tank top shirts, shorts, and baseball caps. Driftwood fires smoldered in two longitudinally split fifty-gallon oil drums set on pipe-metal frameworks, and mahimahi steaks, sliced pork, and huge Taravao Bay prawns were just beginning to sizzle on the grills atop them.
A few feet away, fresh palm fronds had been laid over a twelve-foot-long table to serve as a base for trays of fruit— neatly sliced papaya, watermelon, pineapple, and coconut—and a variety of native goods:
By the time that Gideon and John arrived, it was plain that the bartender, a coffee-guzzling Tahitian who contributed the sole touch of formality by wearing a waiter's white jacket over his shorts and Bart Simpson T-shirt (
There were six of them altogether: the three that Gideon had already met—Celine, Maggie, and Nick himself— along with Nick's other daughter, the beautiful Therese; John's older brother, the imperious Nelson Lau; and John's deadpan, ironic cousin, Rudy Druett, the roastmaster at Whidbey Island, who was in Tahiti for the time being, holding down some of Brian's old responsibilities and helping to prepare Tari Terui to shoulder them on his own when the time came.
Playing in the grass in the care of a nanny a few yards away were the Twin Terrors, Claudette and Claudine, Therese's daughters, two mumpish, fat-cheeked, un-terrible-looking little girls in pink-and-white frocks who refused outright, despite their grandfather's urging, to address Gideon as Uncle Giddie, which suited Gideon just fine.
He was accepted more readily by the adults, but naturally enough it was John who got most of the attention. Therese, every bit as meltingly lovely as John had told him she was, hugged him for a long time, bowing her slender neck to press her face sweetly into his shoulder before she let him go. John, embarrassed but pleased, clumsily stroked her hair and murmured a few words. But the brotherly embrace with Nelson, Gideon couldn't help noticing, was less spontaneous, a mere momentary resting of the fingertips on each other's upper arms, with a good foot and a half of open space between the two men.
Their greeting was equally restrained:
'John,” Nelson said, his cool tone rising slightly.
'Nelson,” John replied in kind.
When everyone was seated again, with Gideon tucked between Celine and Rudy, there were a lot of questions for John—about his job, about Marti, about when they were going to start having a few little Laus—and from there the conversation turned to general family reminiscences and eventually to stories about Brian. It had been a week now since the news of his death, and enough alcohol had been consumed so far tonight to make the atmosphere more jolly than mournful, more like a wake than a funeral.
Nick, dressed in the work-stained shorts he had been wearing that afternoon, plus a striped tank top and a faded, curly-brimmed Boston Red Sox baseball cap, basked in his dual role of paterfamilias and number-one storyteller. Gideon, with little to contribute, sat back and sipped his Scotch-and-soda, put the reason that he was in Tahiti more or less out of his mind, and gave himself over to enjoying the anecdotes, the shared affection that flowed around him, and the people themselves. Interesting people, wonderfully different from the quiet, undemonstrative uncles and aunts that had made the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners of his childhood such excruciating ordeals to a boy of eleven or twelve; he could still remember entire meals, or so it seemed to him now, when the only sounds from a dozen diners had been the steady, private clicking of forks and scraping of knives on the plates.
Not so the Druetts and the Laus, who were animated and spontaneous enough for three families. True, they had their idiosyncrasies—maybe Nelson was a little too self-important, and Maggie was a little too brusque, and Rudy a little too vinegarish, and Celine a little too self-absorbed...but they were a lively, entertaining bunch—and they all seemed genuinely fond of John (even Nelson, in his own superior way) and for that alone he liked them.
This relaxed and pleasant interlude went on until a private dispute between Maggie and Nelson grew too loud to be ignored. They were arguing about Tari Terui, and Maggie was flushed with anger.
'If you're saying that Tari is—embezzling, or—or—'
'Oh, spare me,” Nelson said. “I'm not accusing him of being a crook, for God's sake—'
'So what are you accusing him of?'
'Of screwing up, if you'll pardon the expression. The man is simply—and I've said this from the beginning, I don't think anyone can deny that—the man is simply not capable of handling figures. In the few weeks that he's had access to them, our books have become an incomprehensible mess. He finds something that doesn't make sense to him in accounts payable, and rather than come and ask someone in a position to know, he ‘corrects’ the entry, so that naturally it is no longer consistent with either the purchase order or the invoice—'
'You've never given him a fair chance, you've—'
'May I say something?” Rudy interrupted. “Unprecedented though it may be, Nelson is actually making a cogent point. I've been concerned with Tari's—shall we say, whimsical— approach to the finances myself.'
'Then why aren't you helping him instead of telling us? You're supposed to be coaching him, not criticizing him behind his back.'
'I've been trying, Maggie,” Rudy said, “but getting the man to understand is an ordeal approximately on par with a double root canal. No, worse. It's like having to sit through an entire performance of
'I'm not saying it's his fault,” Nelson cut in. “It's a well-known fact that the Tahitian numerical system lacks —'
