They walked up the stairs into the Four Seasons restaurant and checked in at the desk.
“Is this the power lunch place?” Peter asked, looking around.
Stone thought he looked very handsome in his blue suit. “Yes, right over there, in the Grill Room. We’re dining in the Pool Room.”
“They play pool here?”
“No, they have a pool.” They were led to a table at poolside. Stone ordered champagne for Arrington and himself and Peter asked for fizzy water and was brought San Pellegrino.
When the champagne came, Stone raised his glass. “Happy birthday, Peter.” He nodded to the captain, who brought over two giftwrapped boxes. “The smaller one is from your mother.”
“But she already gave me my laptop,” Peter said.
“It’s a second gift,” Arrington said, “and it has strings attached.”
Peter ripped off the paper. “Wow!” he said. “You’re letting me have a phone?”
“The strings are: you leave it with me when you return to school.”
“Oh,” he said, looking disappointed. He opened the other box. “An iPad! Wonderful.” He switched it on.
“It will need charging,” Stone said. “Leave it until later.”
Peter put the gifts back into their boxes, and a waiter took away the tattered wrappings. Peter looked at them both. “Thank you so much,” he said. “I think you two should get married,” he added.
Arrington put her face in her hands. “Oh, God!”
“You need to edit your thoughts before speaking, Peter,” Stone said.
Arrington took her hands away. “You certainly do, young man. My marital status is not at your disposal; in fact it’s none of your business.”
“Yes, it is,” Peter replied. “It will make me happy.”
“You’re already happy,” she said. “Stone and I will make any decisions about our personal lives without your further input. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, but not sheepishly. “Oh, and I want to change my name.”
Arrington looked at him, baffled. “What’s wrong with Peter? It’s a very nice name.”
“No, I want to change Calder to Barrington.”
She stared at him, speechless.
“You don’t know what I’ve had to go through at school for having a movie star for a father. I don’t want to hear that at my next school.”
Arrington’s face became sympathetic. “Oh, I’m sorry, Peter, I didn’t know.”
“It wasn’t so bad in L.A., because lots of kids had movie people for parents, but in Virginia it’s very, very different.”
Arrington thought about it for a moment, then turned toward Stone. “What do you think about this?”
“I wouldn’t be in the least displeased,” Stone replied.
“Do you think he’s old enough to make that decision?”
“It’s your decision, really,” Stone said, “but it needs to be decided, one way or the other, before he gets any older.”
“What would we tell them at the school?” Arrington asked Peter.
“That we’re changing my name from my stepfather’s to my father’s.”
“I suppose that’s accurate,” she said.
“I would be a lot more comfortable in myself,” Peter said.
She looked at her son, then at Stone. “How can I object?”
“Welcome to the Barrington family, Peter,” Stone said, “such as it is. You and I are the only living members.”
“Thank you, Dad,” Peter said.
“He never called Vance that,” Arrington said.
“He asked me to call him Vance,” Peter said.
“Yes, he did,” she admitted. “I wondered why he did that.”
“Because he knew something I didn’t,” Peter said.
The captain came with menus, and the subject was put aside while they ordered. Then, when the menus had been taken away, Peter said, “Next subject: my new school.”
“Oh?” Arrington said. “What about it?”
“I want it to be Knickerbocker Hall.”
“That has a familiar ring,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Right here, in New York,” Peter said. “On the Upper East Side.”
“A boarding school on the Upper East Side?”
“It’s not a boarding school,” Peter pointed out.
Stone intervened. “Peter now has a home in New York,” he said.
Arrington was looking back and forth between them, her brow furrowed.
“It has a performing arts program, including a film school. I want to do college-level work there and then go to Yale Drama School.”
“Was this your idea?” she asked Stone.
“Only the part about his living with me while he’s in school. The rest is entirely his; I didn’t know about Knickerbocker.”
“Let me think about it,” Arrington said.
“And I want to be eighteen,” Peter said.
“You will be, in two years,” his mother pointed out.
“I mean, when I go to Knickerbocker, I want them to think I’m eighteen. I don’t want to be the only sixteen- year-old among a bunch of eighteen-year-olds.”
Arrington looked at Stone questioningly.
“I think he can pull it off,” Stone said. “Look at him; listen to him. I don’t know any eighteen-year-olds that grown up.”
“But I would miss sixteen and seventeen,” Arrington said, plaintively.
“I wouldn’t miss them,” Peter said.
They put all this aside and dined well. When they had finished their entrees and ordered dessert, Arrington sighed deeply. “All right, I agree,” she said.
“Agree to which things?” Peter asked.
“All of them. You’re Peter Barrington, you’re eighteen, and you can go to Knickerbocker what’s-its- name.”
“Hall,” Peter said.
“And to Yale, too. That’s assuming you can get into these places.”
“I can,” Peter said.
“He never lacked confidence,” she said to Stone.
“Sometimes confidence is justified,” Stone said.
They had a birthday cake for dessert. It had eighteen candles.
10
S tone woke the following morning with someone fondling his crotch. “Is that you?” he asked.
“It had.” better be,” Arrington replied. “And it seems to be working.”
“I can vouch for that,” he said.
She climbed onto him and took him inside her.
“You’re all wet,” he said.
“Normally, I would take that statement amiss, but on this occasion, you’re perfectly correct.” She moved gently up and down. “I liked the way things went last evening,” she said.
“So did I, and I like the way things are going now.”
