to torture.” He chortled. “I mean, no one in Hell is supposed to be happy. Oh, Claire, Bosch is a genuine genius! His work, his work -!”
“So you keep telling me,” she said rather dryly.
Biddy the dog bustled over to put its head in Claire’s lap. Her long, thin hands pulled at its ears rhythmically until its eyes closed and it groaned in bliss.
“We’ll have a Bosch menu to celebrate when you get back,” Claire said with a laugh in her voice. “Guacamole with plenty of chili, tandoori chicken, devil’s food cake…Shostakovitch and Stravinsky, some Moussorgsky thrown in…An old chambertin…”
“Speaking of music, the record’s stuck in a groove. Fix the daube, will you?” he asked, moving to the never- used dining room.
Claire walked around the kitchen efficiently while Charles, now in his chair, watched her. First she took the tiny potatoes off the Aga hotplate, strained them in the sink, patted a dab of butter over them in their bowl, then carried the bowl to the table. The daube she divided into two pieces which she placed on two old Spode plates and put one between each set of knife and fork. Last to come was a bowl of blanched green beans. Not one container or plate clinked accidentally against another; Claire Ponsonby laid everything on the table exactly. While the dog, knowing itself unneeded in the kitchen, went back to its square of rug and put its chin on its paws again.
“What do you intend to do tomorrow?” Charles asked when the daube had been replaced by treacly black demitasse espresso and both of them were savoring the smell-taste of mild cigars.
“Take Biddy for a long walk in the morning. Then Biddy and I are going to hear that talk on subatomic particles – it’s in the Susskind lecture theater. I’ve booked a taxi there and back.”
“It should not be necessary to book a taxi!” Charles snapped, watery eyes gone dry with anger. “Those unfeeling cretins who drive taxis ought to know the difference between a guide dog and any other dog! A guide dog, piss in a taxi? Rubbish!”
She reached out, put her hand on his unerringly; no groping, no slipping. “It’s no trouble to book one,” she said pacifically.
The dinner menu at the Forbes house was very different.
Robin Forbes had tried to make a nut loaf that didn’t crumble ruinously the moment a knife hit it, and drizzled thin cranberry sauce over it to, as she said to Addison,
“Ginger it up a tad, dear.”
He tasted the result suspiciously and reared back in horror. “It’s sweet!” he squeaked.
“Oh, darling, a tiny bit of sugar won’t cause another heart attack!” she cried, striking her hands together in exasperation. “You’re the doctor, I’m only a humble R.N. of the old-fashioned, non-degreed kind, but even nurses know that sugar is the ultimate fuel! I mean, everything you eat that isn’t built into new tissue is turned into glucose for right now or glycogen for later. You are killing yourself with
“Thanks for the lecture,” he said bitingly, ostentatiously scraped the cranberry sauce off his nut loaf, then piled his big plate high with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, celery and capsicum. No dressing, even vinaigrette.
“I had my weekly talk with Roberta and Robina this morning,” she said brightly, terrified that he would notice that her loaf was meat loaf from the deli, and that creamy Italian dressing lurked under her own modest salad.
“Did Roberta get accepted into neurosurgery?” he asked, only slightly interested.
Robin’s face fell. “No, dear, they rejected her, she says because she’s a woman.”
“And rightly so. You need a man’s stamina for neurosurgery.”
No point in going there; Robin changed the subject. “But,” she said chirpily, “Robina’s husband got a big promotion. They can buy that house they love in Westchester.”
“Good for what’s his name,” he said absently; his work was calling to him from the top of the tower.
“Oh, Addison, he’s your son-in-law! Callum Christie is his name.” She sighed, tried once more. “This afternoon I saw a rerun of
“I know scads of Christians I’d happily throw to the lions. Rob you blind six days of the week, then go to church on Sunday and fix it up with God. Pah! I’m proud to stand by my sins, no matter how awful they are,” he said through his teeth.
She giggled. “Oh, Addison, honestly! You do talk nonsense!”
The salad had gone; Addison Forbes put down his knife and fork and wondered for the millionth time why he had ever married an empty-headed nurse halfway through medical school. Though he knew the answer, just didn’t care to admit it; he hadn’t had the money to finish, she was crazy about him, and a nurse’s income was just enough. Naturally he had planned to get through his residency before contemplating a family, but the fool woman fell pregnant before he graduated. So there he was, battling with an internship and twin daughters she had insisted on naming Roberta and Robina. Despite their homozygousness, Roberta had inherited his medical bent, whereas Robina the airhead had become a successful teenaged model before marrying an up-and-coming stockbroker.
His repugnance for his wife hadn’t dissipated with the years; rather, it had grown until he could hardly stand the sight of her, and had private fantasies of killing her an inch at a time.
“You would do better, Robin,” he said as he rose from the table, “to enroll in some degree program at West Holloman State College instead of scoffing popcorn in a movie theater. Or you could throw pots, which I’m told is what middle-aged women with no talent do. You couldn’t take a refresher course in nursing, you’d never manage the math. Now that our daughters have left the safety of your maternal river for a life in the ocean, your river has turned into a stagnant pond.”
The same ending to the same meal; Addison stalked off up the spiral stairs to his padlocked eyrie while Robin shrilled after him.
“I’d sooner be dead than run a vacuum over your stupid eyrie, so leave the door open, for God’s sake!”
His voice floated back. “You’re nosy, my dear. No, thanks.”
Mopping at her eyes with a tissue, Robin mixed the creamy Italian through her salad and flooded her meat loaf with cranberry sauce. Then she jumped up, ran to the refrigerator and unearthed a container of potato salad she’d hidden behind the cans of Tab. It wasn’t fair that Addison visited his pitiless regimen on her, but she knew exactly why he did: he was petrified of falling off his wagon if he saw
Carmine Delmonico stood leaning his shoulders against the florid blue and gold pheasant painted on the restaurant window, a big brown bag tucked in the crook of one arm. His eyes followed the bright red Corvette idly, then widened when it backed neatly into the curb and Miss Desdemona Dupre extricated her impressive length from it lithely.
“Wow!” he said, straightening. “Not the kind of car I had picked for you.”
“It will appreciate, not depreciate, so when I sell it I won’t lose money on it,” she said. “Shall we go in? I’m starving.”
“I thought we’d eat at my place,” he said, beginning to walk. “The joint’s jumping with undergrad Chubbers, and my face is well known these days thanks to the
“The Connecticut liquor laws are archaic,” she said, walking with him. “They can be killed in a war, but they can’t drink.”
“You’ll get no argument from me, though I expected you to put up a fight over where we eat.”
“My dear Carmine, at thirty-two I’m a trifle old to bridle girlishly at eating in a man’s apartment – or is it a house? Do we have a long walk?”
“Nope, just to the corner. I live on the twelfth floor of the Nutmeg Insurance building. Ten floors of offices, ten floors of apartments. Dr. Satsuma has the penthouse, but that rich I am not. Just modestly well off.”
“Modesty,” she said, preceding him into a marble foyer, “is not a quality I associate with you.”
“What I like most about you, Desdemona,” he said as they zoomed up in the elevator, “is your way of saying things. At first I thought you were taking the mickey out of me, but now I realize that it’s natural for you to be kinda – pompous.”
“If to avoid slang is to sound pompous, then I’m pompous.”
He ushered her out of the elevator, fished a key from his pocket and opened his front door, flicked a light switch.
