Truitt possessed. So much. What if he should come? Yes, her blue bottle with its subtle secret medicine was hidden deep in her luggage, shining in her mind with its deep clear cobalt. But to commit such an act under the eyes of another, of a son, the risk would be too great. She couldn’t inherit everything with a son in the picture. She was beginning to think she couldn’t inherit anything with so little work. It should be harder. It should not fall into your lap easily. Catherine had never once in her life been confused. Now she sat and waited for her plan to grow clear once again, clear and hard and bright.
She wore a stiff black skirt and a short black jacket. She wore a hat with a veil. Although there was no reason to go anonymously, she wanted a screen between her and the man she had waited so patiently to see. She felt a deep and complex anxiety, caught as she was between her own desires and the needs of Truitt to restore some dream which would never again be made whole, no matter what. Before Fisk and Malloy arrived to call for her, she ordered a sherry, and drank it back fast, feeling the warmth and calm begin to pervade her body. She felt an almost erotic thrill, the old taste, the warmth, and she wanted another, wanted another and another, but she washed the glass and rinsed her mouth carefully until there was no trace left, and waited for the sunset.
They were unaccountably late. She walked her rooms; she tried on her hat and felt the fabric of her fine dresses. What was beneath her hands was sure to her, the things she could feel would not betray her. She sat and waited. Her gardening books, delivered to the hotel in brown paper packets from the booksellers, lay open on the table in front of the window. The illustrations calmed her, the dream of Italy.
They arrived with the dark, awkward and alert. She put on her hat and walked the streets of Saint Louis with her two watchdogs, until they came to a restaurant advertising beef and fresh oysters, lit from within by the warmth of gaslight, the sort of place with sawdust on the floor and portly waiters with long white aprons wrapped around their waists. They sat and ordered small steaks. Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk refused drink, and put their notebooks on the table.
He came in at seven, dressed in fine clothes, cleanly cut, spotless, carrying a walking stick and an air of insolence and familiarity. Everything about him looked clean. He had an aura of ownership that impressed her enormously. He sat without being shown to a table, and the waiters brought him oysters and champagne before he had settled in his seat.
He ate the oysters as though each were its own specific moment in time. His face and his long black hair were luxurious, there was no other word for it, and Catherine peered at him through the haze of her veil, noting every detail, the way his hair lapped over his collar as he tilted his head back to down an oyster, the way his head bowed forward into his champagne, the way his eyes closed as the liquor washed down his throat, his lashes impossibly long, like a woman’s. A lock of hair fell into his eyes, and he tossed back his head. His shirtfront was sparkling, his tie of an exquisite dark silk, and he looked both artistic and antique. He was handsome, handsome in ways Malloy and Fisk would never have noted in their little notebooks, handsome in a way that could cause a woman to gasp. He was beautiful without being at all feminine, and his long strong hands hovered like great agitated birds over his food.
There was no resemblance between the son and the father. But of course, she remembered, Truitt was almost certainly not the father. Truitt was quintessentially American, good-looking without being extreme or disturbing, stout and standard and strong. The son was European, the aquiline nose, the high cheekbones, the swarthy beard, the blue hollows of his cheeks, his sharp, glittering teeth, the lidded, almost oiled eyes. He was slender. His slim frame would have fit easily inside the warehouse of Truitt’s body.
His eyes were black as the ice on the Wisconsin River, and just as cold. He existed, or seemed to exist, only for himself, for that moment in time when he ate his oysters and drank his champagne, aware that he was being stared at by every woman, women who sipped the details of his face and his body as he sipped his champagne, with obvious pleasure. The men looked at him with condescension, as though he were a child’s doll. He was not a person. He was an object of beauty, and he existed for that single reason and he existed for himself alone.
He ate three dozen oysters. When he was finished, one of the portly waiters went over to him and whispered in his ear. Tony Moretti smiled and nodded. He got up slowly and languidly, like a cat in the sun, and moved to a piano in the rear of the room. He didn’t speak or turn around, but sat simply at the piano and stared at the keys. The room fell into a hush. Ladies put down their forks. Through the veil of Catherine’s hat, he was reduced to white skin and black hair, like a photograph, grainy shadow and glowing light. Finally he lifted his hands and began to play.
He played a popular song, but he played it slowly and sorrowfully, as though it had never been played before. The notes, so light and inconsequential, took on a weight and a resonance that was altogether new, and entirely his. There was something small but magnificent about his performance, a little jewel, an invention of love. He played as though each note could be touched, could be held in the hand like mercury, touching and not touching, but miraculous in a minor way.
When he was done, there was applause, but he did not acknowledge it, merely picked up his walking stick and stood, the sorrow of the music now in his face, a self-conscious look he had probably practiced a thousand times in front of a mirror.
He felt his necktie, looked down, and looked across the restaurant floor. He began to walk slowly to the door, his eyes down. The diners went back to their food, the ladies casting admiring glances over their shoulders. Apparently there was to be no bill for Tony Moretti. Either he ran an account, or the brief music was enough. As he got to Catherine’s table, he stopped and crouched to the floor, running the silver tip of his stick through the sawdust.
Catherine was panicked. Malloy and Fisk studiously looked the other way, subtly sliding their notebooks into their pockets. Tony Moretti looked up, stared at Catherine with his liquid eyes.
“May I help you?” There was no air, no air in her lungs to bring the words out, but she did, in a short, soft gasp.
“I’ve lost my stickpin. From my necktie. A diamond stickpin given to me by somebody I loved. I thought I saw it here. Have you seen it here?”
“No. I’ve seen nothing.”
“Well, then. Gone. Are you in mourning?”
She was astonished at his forwardness. She glanced in quick nervousness at Malloy and Fisk. They looked down at their hands.
“No. I’m not. I am recently married, in fact.”
“I hope happily. You looked like you had lost someone, the way I’ve lost my stickpin. I’m glad that you haven’t.”
“I’m sorry you’ve lost your stickpin.”
“It’s of no importance. Of absolutely no importance at all. A girl gave it to me. She means nothing to me anymore. I just hate to lose things.”
He stood up, bowed slightly from the waist, and left the restaurant.
He was a calla lily, pure and white, meant for solitude and death. She turned to Malloy and Fisk. “I would never believe he’s Truitt’s son.”
“Make no mistake. He is the man Truitt is looking for.”
“He’s always been Mr. Truitt’s son. In San Francisco. In New York. He’s a liar and a wastrel, but he’s Truitt’s son, or the man Truitt calls his son, and now we have him.”
Fisk looked at her sadly. “He’s a lost cause.”
Malloy echoed the sadness. “And he won’t go home. Mr. Truitt has spent a great deal of money for nothing.”
“How do you know?”
“There are too many pleasures he would miss. He’s entirely his mother’s creation. Overly refined. Immoral in every way. A pretty nothing. Truitt won’t like him. Wouldn’t want him around for five minutes. They don’t have anything to say to each other, no language between them.”
“Nobody would like him, in fact.”
“Still…” Her heart was pounding. She could feel the music in her veins, like liquor, warming her blood.
“Exactly. Still.”
“My husband has missed the music. He has missed his son. He has an idea, a dream. We’re here to make the dream come true.” She was careful not to appear overly excited. She was a woman who had been asked to execute a complicated transaction, no more.
