The Hellfire Club

him with an odd mixture of arrogance and diffidence. He wore a nice, slightly rumpled suit, his tie had been yanked down, and his fair hair drooped over his forehead. He appeared to have consumed more than a sufficient number of Mudslides. He had said something like I suppose you're going to pretend that you don't remember our old nighttime journeys anymore.

During Davey's denial, the man had tilted back his head and peered from one Chancel to the other in a way that suggested they made an amusing spectacle. Nora had endured ironic compliments to her 'valiant' face and 'lovely' hair. After telling Davey that he should come around by himself some night to talk about the wild rides they'd enjoyed together. Dart had released them, but not before adding that he adored Nora's scent. Nora had not been wearing a scent. Once they reached their table, Nora had said that she'd make Davey sleep in the garage if he ever had anything to do with that languid jerk. Give me a break, Davey had said. Dart's trying to get in your pants. He gets it all from old Peter O'Toole movies. More like old George Sanders movies, Nora answered, wondering if anyone ever got laid by pretending to despise the person he wanted to seduce.

Midway through the tasteless meal, Nora had looked up at the bar and seen Dart wink at her. She had asked Davey what his old pal did for a living, and Davey had offered the surprising information that Dick was an attorney in his father's firm.

Now Davey said to his father what he had explained to Nora at Gilhoolie's, that Dick Dart lived off the crumbs that fell from the tables of    Morris's wealthier clients; he took elderly widows to lunch in slow-moving French restaurants and assured them that Leland Dart was preserving their estates from the depredations of a socialist federal government.

'Why does he stay on?'

'He probably likes the lunches,' Davey said. 'And I suppose he expects to inherit the firm.'

'Don't put any money on it,' Alden said. Nora felt a chill wind so clearly that it might have blown in off the Sound. 'Old Leland is too smart for that. He's been the back-room boy in Republican politics in this state since the days of Ernest Forrest Ernest, and he's not going to let that kid anywhere near the rudder of Dart, Morris. You watch. When Leland steps down, he'll tell Dick he needs more seasoning and pull in a distinguished old fraud just like himself.'

'Why do you want Davey to know that?' asked Nora.

'So he'll understand our esteemed legal firm,' Alden said.

'Maybe Leland's wife will have her own ideas about what happens to Dick,' Nora said.

Alden grinned luxuriantly. 'Leland's wife, well. I wonder what that lady makes of her son going around romancing the same women her husband seduced forty years ago. Leland took them to bed to get their legal business, and Dick sweet-talks them to keep it. Do you suppose our boy Dick climbs into bed with them, the same way his daddy used to do? It'd be a strange boy who did that, wouldn't you think?'

Davey stared out at the Sound without speaking.

'I suppose you think the women are grateful,' said Nora.

'Maybe the first time,' Alden said. 'I don't imagine Dick gives them much to be grateful for.'

'We'll never know,' Davey said, smiling strangely toward the Sound.

Alden checked the empty places as if for leftover bits of lobster. 'Are we all finished?'

Davey nodded, and Alden glanced up at Jeffrey, who drifted sideways and opened the door. Nora thanked him as she walked past, but Jeffrey pretended not to hear. A few minutes later, Nora sat in Davey's little red Audi, holding a Mason jar of homemade mayonnaise as he drove from Mount Avenue into Westerholm's newer, less elegant interior.10

'Are you upset?' she asked. Davey had traveled the entire mile and a half of Churchill Lane without speaking.

It was a question she asked often during their marriage, and the answers she received, while not evasive, were never straightforward. As with many men, Davey's feelings frequently came without labels.

'I don't know,' he said, which was better than a denial.

'Were you surprised by what your father said?'

He looked at her warily for about a quarter of a second. 'If I was surprised by anybody, it was you.'

'Why?'

'My father gets a kick out of exaggerating his point of view. That doesn't mean he should be attacked.'

'You think I attacked it. Alden gets a kick out him?'

'Didn't you say he was disgusting? That he cheapened everything?'

'I was criticizing his ideas, not him, Besides, he enjoyed of verbal brawls.'

'The man is about to be seventy-five. I think he deserves more respect, especially from someone who doesn't know the first thing about the publishing business. Not to mention the fact that he's my father.'

The light at the Post Road turned green, and Davey pulled away from the oaks beside the stone bridge at the end of Churchill Lane. Either because no traffic came toward them or because he had forgotten to do it, he did not signal the turn that would take them down the Post Road and home. Then she realized that he had not signaled a turn because he did not intend to take the Post Road.

'Where are you going?'

'I want to see something,' he said. Evidently he did not intend to tell her what it was.

This might come as a surprise to you, but I thought your father was attacking me.'

'Nothing he said was personal. You're the one who was personal.'

Nora silently cataloged the ways in which she had felt attacked by Alden Chancel and selected the safest. 'He loves talking about my age. Alden always thought I was too old for you.'

'He never said anything about your age.'

'He said I was the oldest person at the table.'

'For God's sake, Nora, he was being playful. And right then, he was giving you a compliment, if you didn't notice. In fact, he complimented you about a hundred times.'

'He was flirting with me, and I hate it. He uses it as a way to put people down.'

'That's crazy. People of his generation all give out these heavy-handed compliments. They think it's like offering a woman a bouquet of flowers.'

'I know,' Nora said. But that's what's crazy.'

Davey shook his head. Nora leaned back in the seat and watched the splendid houses go by. Alden had been right about one thing: in front of every estate stood a metal plaque bearing the name of a security company. Many promised an ARMED RESPONSE.

He gave her a brief, flat glare. 'One more thing. I shouldn't have to say this to you, but apparently I do.'

She waited.

'What my mother does up in her studio is her business. It doesn't have anything to do with you, Nora.' Another angry glare. 'Just in case you didn't get what Dad was telling you. Pretty damn tactfully, too, I thought.'

More dismayed than she wished to appear, Noni inhaled and slowly released her breath as she worked out a response. 'First of all, Davey, I wasn't interfering with her. She was happy to see me, and I enjoyed being with her.' In Davey's answering glance she saw that he wanted to believe this. 'In fact, it was like being with a completely different person than who she was at lunch. She was having a good time. She was funny.'

'Okay, that's nice. But I really don't want you to wind up making her feel worse than she already does.'

For a moment, Nora looked at him without speaking. 'You don't think she does any work up there, do you?' Neither does your father. Both of you think she's been faking it for years, and you go along because you want to protect her, or something like that.'

'Or something like that.' Some of his earlier bitterness put an edge on his voice. 'Ever hear the expression 'Don't rock the boat'?' He glanced over at her with an unhappy mockery in his eyes. 'You believe she goes up there to work? Is that what you're saying?'

'I think she's writing something, yes.'

He groaned. 'I'm sure that's nice for both of you.'

'Wouldn't you like your mother and me to be, maybe not friends, but more like friends than we are now?'

'She never had friends.' Davey thought for a second. 'I suppose she was friends, as close to it as she could