Determinedly Blonde

12

Determinedly Blonde

   Tracy didn’t meet him at the airport but Ben hadn’t expected her to. Not that it was a working day, it was Sunday, but Tracy had long since explained, clearly and cogently, the pointlessness and inefficiency of attempting to meet arriving passengers— Yeah, yeah.

    Funnily enough Mortimer appeared in the lobby as he was struggling with his luggage, his umbrella—it was pouring—and the flowers he’d picked up at the airport when it had dawned that he had nothing for her. The guy didn’t offer to carry something or even to call the elevator for him, but then Ben hadn’t expected him to.

    “By yourself, again, huh?” he drawled, eying him sardonically.

    What? Forget it, whatever the guy meant, it wasn’t worth enquiring. Resignedly Ben, juggling his burdens, tipped him a twenty, and rang for the elevator.

    Mortimer didn’t go away, he hovered. Was there maybe something that needed doing in the apartment and he was waiting for the usual bribe? Uh—no, Tracy would long since have settled that one: her tactic was to give him a steely-eyed look and threaten to report him to the management. True, it wouldn’t have worked from any other resident, but Tracy carried it off, no sweat. She’d only had to mention once exactly what the management company was and who her personal contact there was. Whether Mortimer knew that this company was in fact owned by Worth, Inglis, her father’s family firm, was a moot point. Well—owned: major shareholders, same difference.

    “Something up?” said Ben in a bored voice.

    “Not if you don’t think so, guy. But I tell ya what, I’da stuck with the other one, no contest!” He lounged off. A mutter which might have been “Ball-breaker” floated back to Ben as the door to the back regions banged after him.

    Firmly repressing the thought that the only way the guy’s remarks could possibly make sense would be if that dream trip to the Big Apple with Isabella and the elf had been real after all, Ben got into the elevator and was borne aloft to Tracy’s loving arms.

    —Not. Now, some guys mighta gotten home around five on a miserable cold, wet day after an overseas trip to the warm, welcoming smell of—well, slowly baking Boston baked beans? Slowly simmering pot-roast? Slowly ditto braised brisket? Mom had a superb recipe, “Wine-Braised Brisket with Tart Cherries,” that she’d gotten off a Jewish friend—to die for. Had to simmer for around four hours. Yeah, well, dream on. She answered the door in her exercise gear, again. Uh—no, not again. Whatever. In it. This lot was grey, and the headband was pink. At this hour on the weekend—like, not after work, when she had been known to assume it and exercise grimly or, depending on the weather, run grimly, for an hour, but on the weekend—this was a Real Bad Sign.

    Ben didn’t ask why she’d had the chain on when she musta been expecting him: he knew what the answer would be. “Hi, hon’,” he said weakly. “Been exercising, huh?”

    “Obviously. You could do with taking some exercise, too,” she replied grimly.

    Uh—could she know about Isabella? Nonsense! Just his guilty conscience.

    He came in and pecked her cheek. She didn’t offer a warmer embrace so he didn’t venture on one, she’d long since pointed out that a woman didn’t like to be smothered (var. slobbered on) at inappropriate moments and there was a time and place for everything.

    “Ugh! You’re wet!” she cried, retreating precipitately.

    “Uh—yeah: pouring out—”

    “Must you be so inconsiderate? I’ve got another quarter hour to do! Now I’ll have to change!” she snapped, brushing at herself.

    “—out there,” he muttered, subsiding. Not that he hadn’t been pretty down already.

    “And don’t drip all over the rugs!”

    “Sorry.”

    “Hang it on the stand!” she snapped, walking off.

    Glumly Ben removed his not-very-wet coat and hung it on the stand. It was far too late to say “These flowers are for you, hon’,” or anything like that.

    “And take your shoes off!” she shrieked as a parting shot, disappearing into the bathroom.

    Glumly he removed his shoes.

    Gee, know why there was nothing simmering on or in the cooker? Well, not only because Tracy didn’t cook fattening food, no. She was on yet another diet. Raw food. This did mean that he had to suffer, too—uh-huh, yep.

    “Tracy,” he said weakly over the beautifully laid table, “I could do with something hot, I’ve had a long flight and it was Hell getting in from JF—”

    “Rubbish, Ben, look at yourself! You’ve obviously been stuffing yourself in Europe! Your cholesterol count must be sky-high!”

    “—K,” he muttered, subsiding.

    “Broccoli soup,” announced Tracy, ladling it out of the unnecessary soup tureen. White china. Very plain pattern that she claimed was traditional: it was allowed to have a tiny twisted something as its knob. Mighta been a flower bud, with a great stretch of the imagination. The dishes were likewise. Minute string-like raised thing round the edges, one minute twist in it. Tasteful—yeah. Not too modernistic: right, Tracy.

    Ben didn’t brighten: he’d had her idea of a vegetable soup before. And it wasn’t steaming, this was a Real Bad Sign.

    And gee! Know what? It was raw broccoli, whirred up in the bl—Oh, beg your pardon. New blender, huh? Much more efficient, because— Yeah. Whatever. He didn’t ask if there was anything in it besides cold raw broccoli, because he didn’t want to know. He ate it: putrid though it was, it was better than being screamed at. And there’d be worse to come.

    ... Well, no: not worse. Hard to know, on reflection, what could be worse than raw, whirred-up broccoli. It was bad, though. Cold again. Good for you: our primitive ancestors... While possibly they had eaten raw vegetables and raw nuts—this’d be before they learned about fire, would it?—while possibly they had, they had also, or Ben Anderson was a Dutchman in his clogs, eaten MEAT! Very probably raw at first, and then— Forget it, Tracy’s raw food diet included only those foods which would have been naturally available to our primitive ancestors. Nothing processed. Leave that saltcellar! She got up and pointedly removed the silver salt and pepper set that had been a present to her from her misguided parents—whether for a birthday or house-warming, or what, he couldn’t for the life of him recall, possibly because his brain was starting to freeze. Tasteful. Plain, but with a traditional look: just a minute string-like raised thing one half-inch above the bottoms, one minute twist in it. Yeah.

    When they’d finished the delicious raw carrot purée scattered with raw sesame seeds, the extremely good for you grated strips of raw beets, not scattered with anything, and the mixed nut purée scattered with coriander leaves, this last not entirely unpalatable but he could have done without the lecture on essential oils, fatty acids, and good cholesterol that was served up as a relish with it, Tracy announced there was dessert in his honour but don’t take it as a precedent. Funnily enough Ben didn’t brighten.

    Large white dinner plates—he had almost gotten used to this weird aberration—decorated with raw blueberries and raw strawberries, the plate itself, but not the berries, dotted with brown, uh, dots. Briskly Tracy explained exactly why cinnamon was very good for you.

    “Yeah, great. Uh, maybe some plain yoghurt’d go good—”

    No. Dairy was out.

    Just as well he didn’t take milk in his coffee, then, wasn’t... it. Oh, God! No!

    Yes. Coffee was unspeakably bad for you. It wasn’t a natural product, Ben, do you have any idea what processing it undergoes before—

    Ben was now yawning uncontrollably. He’d read somewhere that that was a psychological reaction to—uh, well, he couldn’t recall precisely what, but he was pretty sure the kind of reaction a person had when they were feeling very put-upon, disadvantaged, and, frankly, bullied. Briskly Tracy decided he was jetlagged, he better go to bed. No, she was going to watch a play on PBS: a modern production, sounded real interest— Ben went gratefully to bed.

    As the next day was Monday they both had to go to work. Not that she ever did fancy sex in the mornings. Funnily enough he wasn’t in the mood in any case. Humanly impossible with the case of diarrhoea that goddamned raw food had given him.

    “Rubbish,” said Tracy coldly to his plaint. “You obviously need to detox.”

    Gee, there it was. Shimmering horribly, in all its steely, cold glory. The magic word. Like what he’d been dreading since approximately five-ten yesterday evening.

    He couldn’t even fix it with a nice pile of hot toast, because there was no bread. Processed, right? Right. At one point in the past he’d sneakily put a packet of pancake mix right at the back of a cupboard, but no. Vanished. Gone with the wind. Ooh! God! Talking of which— He made a rush for the bathroom again.

    Rather naturally James Kingston had been expecting him at his desk, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, first thing this morning. He eyed the haggard yellowish figure that staggered into his office around half twelve very drily indeed, and let the silence lengthen.

    “I did call,” said Ben lamely.

    “Yeah. What was it: airline food? Airline booze?”

    “No,” said Ben palely. “Tracy. Raw food diet.”

    Kingston was seen to take a deep breath. Then he was seen to let it out again. “Look, siddown,” he said tiredly.

    Trying in vain to summon up a smile, Ben sank onto the visitor’s chair in front of the desk.

    “Ben,” said his immediate boss tiredly, “didn’t I once try to tell you that that girl’s sheer Hell on wheels?”

    He seemed to be waiting for an answer, so Ben managed: “Uh—yeah.”

    “Plus and, unless I’m misremembering, here, that you oughta dump her?”

    “Yeah,” he agreed glumly, not pointing out that given the amount of booze the man had put away on that particular night, the probabilities all lay on the side of misremembering. In fact of not recalling a goddamn thing.

    “Right. Look, all women get bees in their bonnets about healthy eating and controlling the male half’s cholesterol level and that sorta crap, but only the certifiable foodie weirdoes take it to that extreme! For God’s sake, Denise only gave me vegetarian lasagna and a glass of spring water after that trip to Austria!”

    “Don’t,” said Ben very, very faintly, passing a hand over his face.

    “Huh? Oh—cream pastries. Right,” said Mr Kingston grimly. He watched with some satisfaction as Ben gulped. Then he said detachedly: “A salad’s not bad.”

    “James, it was mushed-up raw broccoli, cold, miscalled a soup, and grated raw carrot and beets with squashed, damp nuts!”

    “You’re lucky it wasn’t that kale muck,” replied Mr Kingston detachedly. “Don’t tell me the sex is that good!”

    “What sex?” retorted Ben sourly.

    “In that case, what are you hanging on for?” said his boss slowly and evilly.

    Dully Ben replied: “I dunno. Habit, I guess. Uh, well, suitable in every way… Old Man Maze and your father both approve of her.”

    “Yeah,” said James Kingston wryly. “Ever met Pat Haines-Mortenson? –I should say,” he amended, as Ben shook his head, “Pat Galbraith Morgan Swinnerton Haines-Mortenson. –Elliot Swinnerton’s ex,” he elaborated.

    “Uh—yeah!” said Ben, very startled. “Jesus, are they divorced?”

    “Yeah. Very shortly after State sent him to Peru.”

    Ben racked his tired brain but couldn’t come up with anything along the lines of coups or some such that had been going on in Peru round about the time that Elliot Swinnerton had gone off there. “Had she met this Haines-Mortenson guy by then?” he groped.

    “Not as far as is known. Peru’s too far away from whatever gym she was going to at the time and whatever diet guru she was worshiping at the feet of at the time, plus and the unspeakable so-called restaurants associated with the said diet guru—geddit?”

    “Yeah. But I wouldn't say Tracy— Hang on. Old Haines-Mortenson must be ninety-odd, surely? You’re not telling me—”

    “No. Bobby Haines-Mortenson is a grandson. Don’t bother with the math, he’d be fifteen years younger than Pat, at a conservative estimate.”

    “Right,” said Ben limply. “Tracy isn’t that bad.”

    “Not yet, you mean. But that isn’t only my point. Back in the Dark Ages—well before you joined the firm—old Maze and Dad both informed me graciously that Pat was approved, and wined and dined me at the goddamn club on the strength of it.” He watched with sour satisfaction as it sank in.

    After a few moments he added: “I’ve never ceased to thank my lucky stars that I met Denise before I’d actually put the ring on the bitch’s finger. –It was the very day,” he said with a reminiscent little smile, “that she’d led me coincidentally past Tiffany’s window.”

    “Shit,” said Ben faintly.

    “Quite. My cousin Kate—don’t think you’ve ever met her: really decent woman—she’d invited me to a family thing that evening that was much too down-market for Pat to deign to put in appearance. Added to which it was the sacred something evening—forget what. Yoga or some such. It was one of the greatest evenings of my life! Ordinary people—Kate admits herself that marrying George saved her life, she’d have ended up like the rest of them if she’d never met him—with meatloaf for dinner, and there was Denise, in a little blue sweater that Pat wouldn’t have been seen dead in!”

    “I get it,” said Ben glumly.

    “That house of ours is Dad’s apology,” added James Kingston calmly.

    “Uh—what?” groped Ben.

    “For tearing a strip off, to the point of threatening to cut me out of his will, after I dumped Pat and announced I was engaged to Denise. Mom forced him to put the best face he could on it, and he did turn up for the wedding, but I don’t think he addressed a word to anyone on her side. Didn’t come round until the first grandchild. Hence the house. Denise didn’t point out to him that it was merely biology, though she certainly said as much to me!” he ended with a chuckle.

    Right, and this was the woman that had screamed at him for coming home drunk that night…

    No, on second thoughts you couldn’t blame her, the man had been paralytic. Why in God’s name hadn’t he told him this cautionary tale back then? Uh—maybe that was before Elliot Swinnerton had gotten the Peru posting?

    “I think what I’m trying to say, Ben, is that you’re on course to ruin your life if you stick with Tracy. Look, I’m not kidding when I say that for a guy the years between thirty and forty are the most important of his life. It’s not just a matter of having kids—though I’m not discounting that—it’s a matter of, well, establishing the pattern that you’re gonna be living by for the rest of your life. Consolidating yourself. Uh—I guess I mean,” he said going rather red, “your innate self, Ben. Who you really are—even who you should be. Well, I can’t do the psycho-babble—’nother reason for dumping Pat Galbraith,” he noted by the by—“but that’s it. You don’t wanna end up in your forties finding you’re somewhere where you don’t wanna be and you’ve lost ten years of your life you’ll never get back. –I’m not talking about your goddamn career,” he warned as Ben opened his mouth.

    “No, I didn’t think you were. Thanks, James. Uh—I did meet a girl in England,” he admitted, gnawing on his lip.

    His boss eyed him ironically. “Unsuitable, is she? Little hand-knit wool sweaters?”

    “No—Jeez, was it? No wonder your father slagged you off. Um, no… She’s too young for me, really, and—uh—not corporate wife material, I guess,” he said dully. “Anyroad, her parents dragged her off home after Copenhagen: she was just overtired and a bit chilled, but… I dunno what he does—retired, I think—but they’re both the worldly sophisticated type, in spades. But Isabella’s very… naïve,” he ended gloomily.

    “I can’t see what’s bad about that,” said James Kingston flatly.

    “Maybe not… She’s not a city girl. Think she grew up in some small English village.”

    “Uh-huh. She been launched yet—the débutante shtick, that sorta crap?”

    “Uh—none of them mentioned anything like that,” said Ben, rather startled. “She has done a degree, that’s right, but she can only just have finished it, she can’t be more than twenty-two.”

    “That’s not too young. She must be a bright girl, then.”

    “Uh—yeah, but, well, like I say, naïve. I think—no, well, this sounds dumb, and I admit several belts of Irish whiskey were in there somewhere, but I think she believes in leprechauns. Well, kind of. Willing to admit the possibility, y’know?”

    “Ben, you’re starting to sound like a guy that’s talking himself out of something. You better go home before I sound like a guy that’s about to lose his temper. –Go on, get out of it. You’re not gonna do the firm any good with a gut full of broccoli gas, are you?”

    “Uh—no. Thanks, James,” said Ben morosely, going.

    In his wake James Kingston shook his head, looking sour. Then he picked up the phone.

    “Hey, honey,” he said as it was answered. “You done anything about dinner, yet? –Well, yeah, I do have an idea. What about meatloaf?’

    The phone made startled noises.

    Smiling, James admitted: “No, but then no-one’s is as good as Kate’s! But I do fancy it, yeah. –Just had Ben Anderson on the mat, green as grass, after that bitch Tracy’s idea of a welcome-home dinner last night: mushed-up cold broccoli soup followed by something I forget, but equally raw and vegetarian. Vegan, even. –Yeah, that’s it: raw food diet. –No,” he said drily to the indignant yacking that had greeted this statement: “apparently she couldn’t, not even for one night. I talked to the guy like a Dutch uncle, but whether he’s gonna get up the guts or whatever it is he needs to dump the selfish little cow— Yeah, well, sort of. A girl he met in England. Trying to talk himself out of her, far’s I can see. Um, well, sounded very sweet, as a matter of fact. Naïve, was his word. A lot younger, only around twenty-two, but so what? …No, as matter of fact the parents sound goddawful—up-market rich Brits: think nothing of dashing over to Europe because their daughter’s got a mild chill and hauling her back from Copenhagen.” Here the phone quacked at length. He just smiled and waited it out. “Yeah, well, Tupelo was where I hadda be, and it was only sunburn, hon’. Beside, your mom’s got far too much sense to rush off at a tangent like that, even if they could’ve afforded the fares! …Uh, well, might be a bit late, I’ve got a meeting that might drag on but I’ll do my best, okay? …What? Friday? Denise, honey, with Harry and Susie? –Yeah, it’ll be a taste of real life, all right! Okay, why not? Thanks, hon’, I’ll ask him. –Huh? Well, my choice’d be meatloaf again! –No, your mom’s pot-roast’d be great, if you want to bother. –Sure he eats meat—when allowed. With any luck she won’t want to come. …Yep, the Pat sort, I told him that, the fool. Dunno if it sunk in, though. Yeah, see ya, honey!”

    Never mind the “little hand-knit blue sweater” crap, Denise Kingston, when encountered at various corporate receptions and similar corporate garbage that the wives and girlfriends were expected to attend, had always been respectably and suitably dressed, not that Ben had taken all that much notice. But if she hadn’t been, she would have stood out like a sore thumb, right? Right. Neat little black dresses, not extreme but reasonably fashionable and not cheap, had been his impression. Tracy-approved pearls in the ears, not extreme but just right, of course, otherwise they wouldn’t have been Tracy-appr— Right. Oh, yeah: at one frightful get-together there’d been a Tracy-approved larger pearl on a stri— Not a string, guy, what are you thinking? On a Tracy-approved something or other. His recollection was hazy but he had an idea it hadn’t been gold. Silver anything—except for tableware—had been condemned by Tracy as apt to tarnish, so it wouldn’t have— Quite. Platinum? Very probably. Yeah, well, the point was that Denise Kingston, whatever she might have been back in the Dark Ages when the guy had first met her, was now the very picture of the approved corporate wife.

    Ben did try to intimate this nicely to Tracy but when he had to admit that it would be just a family dinner with the two teenage kids present, she dug her toes in. Along the lines of: Regardless of what you might have suddenly taken into your head to do, Ben, I had already planned out this week for us—and blah, blah, didn’t she ever notice when a guy had stopped listening in favour of meditating on hari-kari? So Friday night Ben fronted up on his ownsome to the big Kingston Junior house on Long Island.

    The door was opened by a small Goth. Ben had to swallow.

    “Hi, you Ben? Mom says you better come in the family-room, Dad’s in the garage, swearing at the SUV, Harry’s done something dumb to its dumb motor.”

    “Hullo, uh, Susie, isn't it?” replied Ben feebly to this intel.

    “Yeah. –Not in there, we only use it for Dad’s corporate crap!” she said scornfully as he turned for the first door on the left, a vague recollection of a horrible corporate  cocktail party having surfaced.

    “Oh—right,” said Ben numbly, following the kid down the hall— Sweet Jesus! Silver hoops in the calves? Oh—no, they were attached to the somewhat-holed pantyhose, he realised limply as, having passed a couple of closed doors, she went into a room right at the back of the sufficiently long and imposing front hall—indeed, kind of under its imposing curved staircase, with its very suitable varnished banister and its very suitable, in fact nigh to Early American, turned, white-painted balusters.

    The house was an example of that typical fake Early Americana beloved of the upwardly-mobile corporate executive: two floors plus an attic with charming gables, giant modern cupola-ed front hall opening onto a multiplicity of large reception rooms that no Early American could have afforded, not even if they owned a place the size of Monticello, white or sometimes just off-white panelling everywhere, marble floor in the said hall, giant chandelier or two—the Kingstons only had one, but it was giant, all right—depending from the said cupola— That style. What good old Bob Masters would have stigmatized as “Twenty-First Century ’Orrid Type Two”, in short.

    “Mom says you can siddown, she’s busy in the kitchen,” said Susie in a bored tone.

    “Thanks, Susie,” said Ben weakly. He made to sit but the kid shrieked: “Not there!”

    “Uh—sorry,” he croaked feebly. This was beginning to feel like he’d fallen down the rabbit hole—not that the black-lipped, white-faced Susie with her spikes of very evidently dyed black hair and her nose stud and spiked dog-collar was like any picture of Alice he’d ever seen—though, true, hadn’t there been a rather Goth movie of it? Made by the guy that did those rather Goth Batmans, was it? Tim, uh, Burton? But he didn’t think even that guy woulda turned Alice into that. The kid was short, yeah. And female, yeah. Plus the usual complement of human limbs. There any resemblance to the conventional picture of Alice ended. But the rabbit-hole feeling was very much reinforced by the Kingston family-room. It was… ordinary. No, more than that: ordinary to the point of stereotypical! Large beat-up couches, ditto large saggy armchairs, a green-topped card table standing drunkenly before one of the couches with a board game and a selection of coloured counters about to slide off of it, over there a broad-leaved pot plant very much the worse for wear, against the far wall a table-tennis table—well, cut-down version, it didn’t look full-size—holding a football, a baseball glove, a couple of piles of books and a tangle of what might have been sporting gear. Brightly coloured, anyroad. The floor had once been nicely varnished wood, but the varnish was worn and scuffed and in several places had very evidently had liquids spilled on it. That was, on what was visible of it for the kinda chewed, faded rugs—that one there would be where the expression “matted” came from. Likewise the expression “dead cat.”

    “So, uh, something wrong with this armchair, Susie?” he asked feebly.

    “Mom said not to let you sit on it ’cos it’s the one Rover likes. It’s got hairs on it.”

    “Oh! So you got a dog?” offered Ben, beginning to smile.

    She managed to look down her studded nose at him, short though she was. “I wouldn’t call him that.”

    With this she walked out.

    That left Ben, the extravagantly ordinary Kingston family room and a choice of very tired, saggy seats, didn't it? Weakly he subsided onto a couch which might once, way back in its history, have been a smart brown leath— Uh, no. Smart brown Naugahyde. Horribly saggy though it was, it was, in fact, quite comfortable. He sat back, wondering how long it would take James to do whatever it was he was doing to the SUV…

    He was at the stage of wondering whether he should go look for somebody, when a thin, gangling teenage boy shuffled in. “Mom said I gotta get you a drink,” he growled.

    “Thanks. Harry, is it? –Yeah,” he said to the kid’s grudging nod. “Well, thanks, Harry.” He waited, but no offers were made. “Well, uh, gee, what does your Dad usually drink at this hour?”

    “Dunno.”

    Oh, God. “No, it's okay, Harry. I guess I’ll wait for the others,” he said on a desperate note.

    “Mom’ll yell at me,” replied the kid morosely, shuffling the giant sneakers.

    “Well—well, just a beer, I guess, thanks,” he said feebly.

    “If there’s any left,” the kid noted to the ambient air, shuffling out.

    Ben had already begun to wonder if he should have come, after all, but at this point it began to occur forcibly that he shouldn’t have come. Obviously he was only in the way of their usual Friday night routine. He looked glumly across the room at the view of a real ancient television cabinet, the giant sort, made of very nice varnished wood, and the mangy, dying pot plant atop it. Not to say, the pair of grey exercise tights—putatively exercise tights—that were dangling from the top of it…

    “Jesus!” he gasped as the scraggy, lumpy rug off in one corner of the big room suddenly rose to its feet and yawned widely.

    “Rover!” said a sharp soprano voice. “Stop that! Leave it!” –As the creature advanced on Ben.

    He rose shakily to his feet—the more so as that couch really got a grip on you, y’know?

    “Hi, Denise. Thanks very much for inviting me. Hope I’m not disturbing your Friday routine,” he said awkwardly, one eye on the dog. It had stopped, but it hadn’t sat, in fact it bore all the earmarks of a dog that the minute its owner’s eye was off of it was gonna come and slobber all over you.

    “What Friday routine?” replied Denise Kingston with a loud laugh, brushing a stray brown curl off her forehead. Her sweaty, unmade-up forehead, noted Ben dazedly. And that there was a blue hand-knit sweater, all right, or he, Ben Anderson, was a Dutchman in his—

    “It’s lovely to see you!” she added, handing him one of the opened beer bottles she was clutching.

    “Thanks,” said Ben very feebly indeed. –Clogs, quite.

    “Get OFF, Rover!” ordered Denise, sinking onto, make that into, the equally saggy, all-enveloping tan fake-leather armchair next his sofa. “Horrible, isn’t he?” she said conversationally, following his gaze.

    “Y— No!” replied Ben quickly, reddening like an idiot.

    “That colour is mostly natural,” said Denise fairly. “Though none of us have been able to categorise it. Kinda pale fawn cum pale grey? Verging on dirty oatmeal, comes close, I think. James claims it’s ‘grawn’: mixture of— Yeah!” she said with a laugh as Ben choked. “But Harry’s one’s better, I think: ‘dirtmeal.’”

    Ben took another look at the ghastly mutt and collapsed in a dreadful fit of splutters.

    Denise Kingston, droopy blue hand-knit and all, just smiled serenely and drank beer straight from the bottle.

    It was all like that. James finally surfaced, very ruffled and grease-marked, not that it mattered, he was in a pair of what Ben’s brother-in-law called “honourable jeans”—ancient, nay, aeons-old denim, worn to Hell and gone, one knee sporting your more traditional faded tartan patch, the other your slightly less traditional patch in a bright floral plastic substance. Possibly the remains of a kitchen tablecloth? Ben could just remember Gramma having one of those—aeons back, right. Ben never did find out what Harry had done to the SUV, but it must have been bad, because the thing was gonna have to be towed. Ouch. After two beers James became less bitter about this and was able, Denise having gone back to the nether regions, to ask Ben why the Hell he’d worn a suit. To which the only likely answer was an extremely pathetic “Because you didn’t tell me not to.” If he said “You never told me it was informal” James would be able to snap back with something about the suit, and not having dared to say any such thing because what he, Ben, understood by informal was not what normal folks understood, and it was just a family dinner. Words to that effect.

    “Okay, dumb. Misread the signals,” he said glumly instead.

    “Yeah. Take that tie off, guy, the mere sight of it’s strangling me,” his host sighed.

    Feebly Ben removed his tasteful, informal-dinner-type tie and shoved it in his pocket.

    They didn’t eat in the formal dining-room into which the cocktail party crowd, he dimly recalled, had been able to overflow to refresh themselves with the dainty corporate nibbles set on out silver trays on the giant polished rosewood dining table, but in the spacious kitchen itself. This had obviously, once upon a time, been designed as your fake Early American, upwardly mobile executive kitchen. Everything that opened and shut, cupboards gleaming white with slightly curlicued edges to the raised panels on their washable doors, elaborately curlicued silver metal handles on said doors, very possibly designed to match the elaborately chased handles of the best silverware, all appliances tactfully built in behind matching doors, apart from the enormous modem cooker, expanses of grey slate floor and grey granite bench tops… Yeah.

    The cupboards were still there but the flooring was a very ordinary vinyl—not unpleasant, a light sandstone colour. Denise explained happily that it had a proper underlay: those slate floors were murder to stand on and led to early arthritis, Ben, don’t let anyone tell you different! At the dining end of the big room, beyond the now pale oatmeal shade of the replacement bench tops—no good cook wanted to work on grey granite, Ben, you couldn’t see what you were doing, let alone if the things needed cleaning—there was no sign of the Early American dining suite for which the room had doubtless been destined. The table, laid with very ordinary plasticised place mats, was a solid wooden thing—pine would’ve been Ben’s bet—with a matching set of six sturdy chairs—there being more than room for them, the room was huge by normal standards. Ben thought of Jessica’s English kitchen, and had to swallow hard. Pleasant though her house was, the kitchen and the sitting-room together would have fitted into the Kingston house’s kitchen and been swallowed up. Denise had done her best to humanize it with a charming old wooden settle, piled with cushions, and a selection of very down-home pine dressers and sideboards, the shelves laden with very ordinary crockery and glassware—the mugs hanging from the hooks on one dresser in particular being an illustration of twenty years of bad taste, frankly. One dresser was also laden with books. In addition the shelves sported small pot plants, mostly but not all succulents, that there behind James’s head was a definite African violet, Mom had those, too. Plus assorted trivia of the ornamental sort. Possibly not all of which was meant: next to the African violet was a plastic robot that was the twin of Damian’s Alexander Robot.

    “It doesn’t work,” offered Harry suddenly.

    Ben jumped. “Huh?”

    “That robot of Dad’s. It doesn’t work. He won’t let me fix it.”

    “Don’t they just have batteries?” he groped.

    “Nope. ’Ee’oh uh-trol’,” he explained indistinctly through a mouthful of superb pot-roast.

    “Don’t speak with your mouth full, Harry,” sighed his mother.

    “He’s a pig,” noted Susie to the ambient air.

    “That’ll do,” said James heavily. “It’s remote controlled, is what the Martian in our midst is trying to communicate, Ben, and I won’t let him fiddle with it, no.”

    “It was the last mania but fourteen, but he still hasn’t given in and let Harry fix it,” added Denise comfortably.

    Ben smiled feebly. “Right, goddit.”

    Harry had now managed to swallow—not without difficulty. “I’d use modern technology—no sweat. Rip the works out—”

    “No,” said James flatly.

    Harry looked down his nose at him. “It’d be easy, Dad. You’re a dinosaur. But okay, I don’t give a rat’s, I got better things to do.”

    Susie snorted loudly. “Computer crap? Huh!”

    “That’ll do,” said Denise limply. “It wouldn’t do you any harm to learn something, once in a while.”

    “Yeah,” Harry agreed. “Instead of assuming that everything ya pick up works by magic, like your dim little peers.”

    “That’ll do,” announced James. “Or keep on at each other and go without dessert, I’m easy,” he added fairly.

    Not surprisingly, both kids glared and subsided.

    The unbelievably good pot-roast, with green beans on the side just the way Ben liked them, and oven-roast potatoes and sweet potatoes to die for, was followed by the ultimate in peach cobblers.

    “That,” said Ben reverently, as the last crumb vanished, “was the best meal I’ve had since my Gramma’s kitchen when I was about half Susie’s age. Bless you, Denise!”

    She blushed, laughed, and disclaimed, obviously very pleased.

    “And why you’re not the size of a house, James, I can’t imagine,” he added as having unanimously banished Denise to the family-room to put her feet up, and generously allowed the kids to vanish to their rooms, the menfolk loaded the dishwasher. –Behind one of those Early American white curlicued doors with the silver metal curlicued handles—right.

    “The house is fitted out with a full-size gym—exercise bike, the lot,” replied James simply. “Don’t look at me!” he added hurriedly. “Dad again. Our tenth wedding anniversary.”

    Shit, what did poor Denise get, if anything? Or was she expected to exercise obediently, corporate-wife-wise, on the running machine while he was on the exercise bike?

    “I see,” he said feebly.

    “Come on, the Scotch is in the other room,” said James kindly, taking his arm. “He offered to renovate this room, too, before you start,” he added as they went into it, “only Denise burst into tears, so that stopped him in his tracks.”

    “Yes, amazingly!” beamed Denise, now on one of the sagging couches with her house shoes off and her feet up, the bright green and red striped socks well displayed. By now Ben wasn’t entirely surprised to see them: with the droopy blue sweater she was wearing a very old, baggy pair of grey sweatsuit pants. Not merely not the same species as Tracy’s ranks of scarce-worn-before-discarded ditto, but not even the same family!

    By the time Ben got home he was still feeling so happy, what with the food and the down-home atmosphere of the Kingston ménage, that he said cheerfully to Tracy: “Hey, you shoulda come, honey! The pot-roast to end all pot-roasts, and James and Denise are unbelievably down-home in their own house!”

    “How much have you had to drink?” she replied evilly.

    “Uh—couple of beers before dinner, one Scotch after it,” he said weakly, his mood rapidly dissipating.

    She gave him an evil look. “I hope that’s true. This pot-roast was drenched in fat, I presume?”

    Ben sighed. “Yeah. Likewise the ultimate peach cobbler. Just knock it off, will ya?” He went morosely through to the bathroom and firmly locked the door after him.

    Apparently undeterred, Tracy screeched: “And put those clothes in the laundry basket, you stink of unwholesome fatty food!”

    He probably did, given they’d been sitting in the kitchen amidst the smell of— Not that he hadn’t been going to, anyway. Glumly he dumped his clothes in—

    “The suit in the CLEANERS’ bag!” she screeched.

    Oh, yeah. This was a new—well, newish—innovation. It made it easier for Tracy, meant she didn’t have to search all through the laundry basket in order to sort out the clothes which needed— Yeah. Put it like this: new enough for him to forget half the time. Morosely he fished the suit out, found the empty bag at the bottom of the basket under a pile of Tracy’s stuff—mostly exercise gear, this woulda been a Bad Sign, only for its happening every week—and shoved the suit in the said bag.

    Three weeks later things hadn’t noticeably improved. Ben was spending as much time in at the office as possible—doubtless preferable, his boss reflected sourly, to spending as much time in bars as possible. However, the atmosphere of gloom which hung about him was not conducive to good client relations, or good interpersonal relations in the workplace, or, indeed, anything. Those office buddies who issued casual invitations to happy hour or just a quick one after work or whatever were turned down sourly. A well-meaning effort by one of the secretaries, a little bunch of flowers on his desk—not inexpensive in the Big Apple at this time of year—was ignored. Possibly not deliberately, but the oversight certainly didn't improve the atmosphere. James was now at the point of biting his tongue not to really tear a strip off.

    It was still cold, but the trees in Central Park were showing brave little flags of bright green, and the TV was already showing pictures of the cherry blossom in D.C., when the date of the big Worth, Inglis anniversary party rolled round. Like death and taxes—quite. It was only a cocktail party, and huge though it was, and unlikely though it was that any individual’s absence would be noticed, one was expected to attend, if one had received a gracious gold-embossed invitation on heavy cream card. Several of the senior staff at Fluss, Evert, Maze were invited, though not those at Ben’s level. But as Tracy’s intended, he would of course have to attend.

    James came into his office looking grim. “Are you going to the goddamn Worth, Inglis hooley?” he demanded without preamble.

    Ben jumped. “Uh—yeah, I guess,” he said glumly. “I have to buy a new suit for it.”

    “Why?” replied his boss sweetly. “The whole office is under the impression that half the floor space of that up-market loft conversion of yours is filled with racks of your suits.”

    “Ya mean that moron Kyle Bannerman’s been shooting his mouth off,” spotted Ben unerringly, if morosely.

    Unmoved, James replied: “That’s right. Also about Tracy’s idea of an intimate dinner for two couples.”

    “She doesn’t like that Maureen that Kyle was going about with,” replied Ben morosely.

    “I gather it was mutual,” said James sweetly. “Never mind that. Why are you going to the fucking cocktail thing?”

    Ben blinked at him. “What? Aren’t you?”

    “Ben, why are YOU going?” shouted his boss.

    Ben scowled. “Networking. Like the rest.”

    “BULLSHIT!”

    —In the outer office filled with secretaries and P.A.’s, onto which the glass-sided offices of those at Ben’s level in the hierarchy opened, all the heads were now raised.

    James just waited.

    “Okay,” said Ben sourly. “I’m going because I can’t think up a reason not to that’d spare me the screaming from Tracy.”

    James took a deep breath. “Can’t you see—” He paused, possibly realising for the first time that he’d left the door open—or possibly not, Ben reflected sourly: there were no flies on James Kingston, and never mind he was Kingston Senior’s son, he’d never have gotten to a position of real responsibility in the firm if he hadn’t been extremely acute as well as extremely capable.

    He shut the door. “Ben, guy, can’t you see that this is the ideal opportunity to break with the ball-breaking bitch?”

    Having seen this coming quite some time since, Ben had his act together, and so was able to reply with sour satisfaction: “Alliterative.”

    “Look, you goddamn fool, your work’s starting to suffer!” shouted James heatedly.

    “That’s the nub of the matter, is it?” replied Ben with sour satisfaction.

    “No, it isn’t. But as heretofore,” said James evilly, “you had given all of us the impression that you care about your work—”

    Ben sighed. “Yeah, okay, knock it off.”

    James just waited.

    “Uh, look, if I do break it off,” said Ben, swallowing, “what am I left with?”

    The immediate answer that sprang to mind was “No sex” but James managed not to produce it. “Absence of Tracy’s nagging; isn’t that better than now?”

    “Yes, but…” Dully he admitted: “I sort of assumed—well, not planned out, as such. No, well, maybe it was… You know. Nice house, consolidating the career, couple of kids, all the usual…”

    “With her?”

    He licked his lips. “Y— Um, well, no-one else was interested, I guess.”

    Hell, it was just like him and Pat Galbraith! Denise had already told him he oughta get a contact number for the English girl out of Ben, but there was no way a guy could just— And Ben had flatly refused to come for a drink after work. It was pointless trying to remind him that for the past several years Tracy Inglis had kept him well away from anything that looked like it might be interested. Heavily James pointed out: “You’re an attractive guy with good prospects, Ben, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t find someone else. Matter of getting out there and making yourself available, isn’t it?”

    “Maybe I oughta look around me at this goddamn cocktail party, then,” he said bleakly.

    “Gallows humour, Ben,” replied James shortly, walking out and leaving him to it.

    Tracy stared, eyes narrowed, at Ben in the suit candidate. “Very suitable,” she pronounced at last. “We’ll take it.”

    Once upon a time—so long ago that it was hard to remember—Ben would’ve made a joke along the lines of “It has to be suitable, because it’s a suit!” Years of being put down, first by a cool “Feeble, Ben,” and more latterly by an ice-cold “Fatuous, Ben,” had somehow gotten him out of the habit. So though he couldn’t help thinking it, he couldn’t raise a smile. Not even a secret, hidden smile. So “we” took it, i.e. he used his credit card. Grimly Tracy reminded him that a proportion of that could be claimed as a work-related expense. Ben just nodded meekly and didn't remind her that their Tracy-approved accountant didn’t think so. Only partly because it had been Hell on wheels selecting the guy when she decided they should both dump their accountants and look for a joint one.

    “Maybe I could wear that green tie you like with it,” he offered meekly.

    She took a deep breath. “You can’t select a tie until I’ve finalized my outfit. Or do you want us to look like a pair of tasteless clowns?”

    Actually, he didn’t care. “No, right,” he agreed glumly.

    “That reminds me, what happened to that good silk Paisley tie you wore to that awful dinner with the Kingstons?” she demanded.

    “Uh—no, I wore the dark green and red one you said was rather English-looking,” he fumbled.

   “‘What? Not that delightful restaurant dinner with Mr and Mrs John Kingston! That thing at James Kingston’s house: you came home without your good Paisley tie!”

    “Uh—did I? Oh, yeah: he said I didn’t need to wear a suit and made me— Uh, yeah. Um… Went to the cleaners with the suit?” he hazarded.

    “No! It wasn’t in the bag!” she snapped.

    Jesus, weeks back, and she remembered— Yeah, sure she did. “Uh…”

    “You’ve lost it, haven’t you?” she snapped.

    “I guess,” he admitted glumly. “Maybe Denise will’ve found i—”

    She sniffed. “With her housekeeping?”

    Ben swallowed: that was his fault. He’d misguidedly tried to describe, over a belated Saturday breakfast—not for that, no: she didn’t like it in the mornings, right? –Right. No, after she’d been for her run. He’d tried to describe how delightfully casual and down-home Denise was in her natural habitat. Went over like a bucket of lead—yeah.

    “No, well, I can buy another one,” he said peaceably.

    “Not until I’ve finalized my outfit for the cocktail party,” replied Tracy with horrible—hah, hah—finality.

    As well as the dress, there was the question of the hair, of course. Tracy stared, eyes narrowed, at her reflection in her long mirror. Ben just sat meekly, not volunteering an opinion, on the long unnecessary piece of furniture at the foot of the bed. She’d long since forbidden him to sit on the bed, it rumpled the covers. So maybe that was what this long thing was for? Though to his butt it sure didn’t feel like it. According to her, its seat was padded. Padded with steel, ask him. It lifted up so as you could store your spare quilts in there. Not only they didn’t have any spare quilts, they didn’t have any quilts, because Tracy had refused, coolly but kindly, Aunt Kate’s offer of a couple of beautiful hand-sewn ones, genuine Early American quilting patterns. So Ben’s Mom had decided she wouldn't give him that one from the guestroom that he’d always admired, after all.

    At long last she produced a discontented flicking of the determinedly blonde hair, now about shoulder-length, and a discontented: “The lightly curled look’s in, now.”

    If she said so. “Your hair looks good, Tracy,” he offered without hope.

    She peered—it’d be the roots, but he knew she wasn’t gonna mention them if she died for it. “I’ll talk to Jacques.” Pronouncing it, as always, “Zhah-k.” Ben happened to know, after Paris, that it was pronounced “Zhack”, rhymed with “shack,” but as he had a fair idea the guy hailed from spitting distance of the Hudson River he hadn’t bothered to raise the point.

    “Uh-huh,” he agreed. “Got an appointment?”

    Tracy looked down her nose at his reflection in the mirror. “Before an important engagement like the firm’s cocktail party? Of course, Ben, don’t be ridiculous.”  She returned the stare, eyes narrowed, to her own reflection. “I could wear it up.”

    “You look good with it up,” he offered temperately. She did—at least, very smart—but that style, with her features more chiselled than ever in the wake of the raw food thing, and rather cat-like, too—no offence intended to any cat—that style made her look real hard. Real hard. And cold.

    His thoughts wandered off in the direction of cats. He didn’t dislike them—now, that fat grey cat of Isabella’s, that had been a lovely cat! –Uh, no, hang on, that was a dream cat! Okay, it had been a real nice, fat, round-faced dream cat. Aunt Kate had once had a Siamese. It had a strange loud cry, not a miaow or a mew, but a kind of cross between a growl and a yowl. Uh… a gryowl? No, impossible to pronounce! It had been, though. But the poor cat couldn’t help it, evidently that was the Siamese voice. It was a beautiful creature, very sleek, but the fur—the standard dark chocolate and cream, according to Aunt Kate—didn’t strike as all that soft or silky, really, until you stroked it. Then you realised—Ben smiled as the memory of the sinuous, warm body and the silky feel of the fur came back to him—then you realised it was like pure silk!

    “Pure silk,” he murmured.

    “What? Rubbish, Ben!” Cogently Tracy examined the drawbacks of silk fabrics in general and specifically in the instances of… Ben didn’t listen. Presumably that new dress she was now trying on wasn’t silk, then.

    “It’s a real nice dress, Tracy,” he said pacifically when she seemed to have run down.

    “I should hope so!” She stared, eyes narrowed, at her reflection in the mirror. “Deceptively simple. Smart, but not over-smart: some of those things I looked at—!”

    Yeah, those woulda been the less expensive ones. Oh, God, now she was on about “Kate”. Likely they’d get the whole rundown, from the wedding dress through to— Correction, from pre-wedding dress, when the more casual, off-the-peg, girlish look had been okay and of course she had exquisite taste… Incidentally, Tracy, wasn’t it kinda down-market to refer to Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge by her nickname? Bob Masters had certainly suggested as much, at a point when Jessica’s burbling on the same couture theme had gotten too much for him…

    “Mm?” he said, coming to with a jump.

    “Why don’t you ever LISTEN? I said, go get your blue ties! –Only the ones suitable for EVENING!” she screamed as he vanished into his closet.

    Yeah. Okay, the new dress was deep blue—Not navy! If she said so. You didn’t want to stand out vulgarly, but on the other hand “everyone” would be in black… Whatever. Had his new suit been selected with her deep blue in mind? Oh, who cared!

    Every faintly blue tie in his closet, blue, grey-blue, silver-blue, blue striped or even blue dotted—Where did this thing come from? Biff! Waste-basket!—was eliminated. They would have to buy him a new one.

    He didn’t point out that this was conspicuous consumption at its worst, he just shut up and let her drag him along to, surprisingly, not the dearest little menswear boutique in the whole of New York, N.Y., but Saks. Where she had just happened to notice—Not those, thank you. We’re interested in your more select lines.—Where  she had just happened to notice the very tie. It was a nice tie, sure, but his closet was bursting with— Ben just lay low and said nuffin’ like Br’er Rabbit, and “we” bought it.

    Saks, it might be remembered, was handily situated on Fifth. Guess what else was handily situated on Fifth?

    “We’ve just got time,” she said, looking busily at her watch, “to check out Tiffany’s.”

    That was it, then. Curtains.

    Certainly Tiffany’s sold more than diamond engagement rings. Hope flickered for a tiny instant as she headed away from the jewellery, then died. They also had fine china, did he know they’d designed a White House dinner-set for Lady Bird Johnson? (No.) Tracy stared, eyes narrowed, at a display of some of Tiffany’s china…

    “Thank you,” she said graciously, as after some time a smooth gentleman—who had doubtless summed up the quality of her new coat and new purse—asked if he could help her, madam, “but we haven’t compiled our list, yet.”

    His eyes lit up and he immediately offered to show her every dinner-set design they had; and of course—taking another look at that chunk of yellow metal on her wrist, Father Inglis’s effort for her twenty-fifth, not too dressy, so as she could use it for day wear, unquote—Tiffany’s did design to order, madam!

    Tracy was very gracious indeed and, assuring him that they would give it their earnest consideration, at long last led the weak-kneed Ben away.

    “What were you thinking?” he croaked, when they were finally outside, breathing refreshing gasoline fumes and cold air. “Dinner-sets commissioned for the White House? Your father may be doting but he’s not crazy, Tracy! How could you even let such a notion cross your mind? I never thought even you could be that greedy!”

    Gee, there was a ringing, tingling silence on the pavement in the cold air and gasoline fumes of Fifth outside Tiffany’s flagship store.

    Tracy was very flushed. She took a deep breath. “I’ll overlook most of that, Ben, because I can see you meant well. I most certainly had no such notion. I was merely checking out the designs. As I really do think a moment’s consideration might have told you!”

    “Well, sorry, but you gave the guy the impression—”

    “I did not!” she snapped.

    “Added to which,” said Ben sourly, “we’ve got a perfectly good dinner-set. Thought you liked that plain white china look, with the restrained little decoration?”

    She produced a light laugh. “Don’t be silly, Ben! It’s suitable for our present circumstances, of course! But anyone who wants to be taken seriously, in a decent house, has to have serious china on the dinner table. Everyone we know would laugh at us if we just made do with our old set!”

    “Your old set,” muttered Ben, hunching into his overcoat.

    “Exactly. Suitable for a bachelor girl,” said Tracy very firmly indeed. “It’s a pity we haven’t the time to look at rings, today. I’ll consult my schedule. –Hurry up, Ben, flag down a taxi, it’s freezing!”

    Glumly Ben looked for an unoccupied taxi in the ever-thickening New York traffic…

    The dread day had come—death and taxes, right. The new hairdo would have to do, though she wasn’t entirely pleased with these streaks at the temples, she shouldn’t have let Jacques talk her into them: after all, she was a natural blonde—

    Ben swallowed hard, he’d caught that, trying not to listen though he was.

    Though the way they emphasized the sweep of the hair back into the twist was quite elegant, didn’t he think?

    He jumped. “Uh—yeah. If you really wanna go to this hooley, you better get a move on.” He made the mistake of looking at his watch.

    “We are NOT late!”—Gasp!—“Why are you wearing that old thing? Go get—”

    Okay, double mistake. Glumly he stumbled off to get the watch that Tracy’s father had given him for Christmas. Rolex. Probably a hint he oughta pop the question real soon. Well, it woulda been more of a hint if the old bastard had given it him in person before he had to leave for Europe, but old Inglis didn’t do that. By proxy. Courier. No kidding.

    Gee, they hadn’t been there—it was at a hotel, no way could this crowd have fitted in the firm’s lobby let alone the conference room—they hadn’t been there three minutes before Tracy, with sizzling indrawn breaths, had discerned five other women wearing dark blue Kate-like dresses. Very, very fortunately none the exact same model as hers. Ben left her talking bitterly to a crowd of girlfriends and slid off to the bar. Open bar, but as waiters always circulated with trays of indifferent champagne or very weak cocktails at the Worth, Inglis anniversary cocktail party, the strong impression was that you weren’t supposed to patronise it.

    “Double Scotch. Rocks,” he sighed, leaning heavily on its pristine, shiny surface. “Got Black Label? –Good.”

    He fancied there was a sympathetic look in the guy’s eye as he poured it, but he was too well-trained to comment.

    He did have time to get it down him and think seriously about another before Tracy, steely-jawed, was at his side. She took his arm—ow! Grip of steel, right: matched the jaw.

    “Don’t you dare get drunk tonight,” she said in a steely undervoice.

    “Why? I won’t be expected to perform later: might as well,” he returned sourly.

    Gee, she actually went bright red! “Be quiet! You know perfectly well that my régime—”

    Yeah. It wasn’t actual celibacy, it was something to do with phases of the moon—not them phases, please, how crude! The actual phases of the actual Moon, not Goddess Tracy’s individual ones. You did the exercises at X, Y, Z hours and N days of the moon cycle, eating only raw foods on days A, B, C, detoxing with a fluid diet on days Whatever, taking measured doses of protein on days Whatever Else, also a weird grey-green powder at intervals— Sea air was in there, too. If all else failed a ride on the Staten Island ferry in the pouring rain, no kidding. Naturally the exercise bike and interminable sessions at the gym were in there as well. Actually the strange grey-green powder had something to do with the sea motif, crazy though that mighta seemed to those unacquainted with the diet fads of the upwardly-mobile female New Yorker. Uh… kelp? And prune juice only once a week, hadn’t he been listening? They were dried fruits, it concentrated the sugars! Yeah, well, very infrequent sex was what it amounted to.

    “Ah! There’s—” Tracy dragged him off to network with someone very influential from “the firm.” –How come “the firm” was always her father’s goddamn firm, not his, mused Ben as he was introduced to a middle-aged, solidly built guy who did look sorta vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place him.

    “Golf? No,” he said to the guy’s question.

    “I have been encouraging him to play!” said Tracy brightly and untruthfully.

    “Good for taking out the frustrations,” noted a thin, sardonic-looking guy who was with this guy but hadn’t been introduced, so he couldn't count in the scheme of things. “And for causing even more of them, naturally.”

    The first guy looked real put-out, hah, hah!

    “Ben plays squash, of course,” added Tracy casually.

    “Badly,” Ben allowed. “Also good for taking out the frustrations; only if you’re real bad, the other guy’s frustration level goes sky-high. So it’s swings and roundabouts, really,” he finished smoothly. –Not his: one of Bob’s; he’d said it about golf, but the cap sure fitted.

    “Tennis?” pursued the first guy: was he a games fetishist or some such?

    “Well, yeah, when the opportunity arises,” Ben agreed.

    “Knew I’d seen you before,” said the guy with satisfaction. “Never forget a face. You played my son, Jason—Yale versus Princeton.”

    Okay, the guy was a face fetishist, that was donkey’s ages ago! “I guess I did,” Ben agreed very weakly indeed.

    “Of course! Yale versus Princeton!” cried Tracy. “Didn't Yale win, that year?”

    “Not any year I played, no,” said Ben with some satisfaction.

    “No, we trounced you,” agreed the—presumably—Princeton alumnus. “You did all come over to the house afterward, Anderson, but I don’t think we were introduced: all you young people went off with Jason to the games room.”

    Oh, yeah! It was all coming back to him. Jason Whatsisface had been very, very rude about his dad’s games room and the crap in it and they had all gotten very, very high on a mixture of hash and Tequila. There’d been a very curvaceous blonde somewhere in there, too—not a tennis player.

    “Of course, sir,” he said nicely. Fortunately this seemed to satisfy Jason Whatsisface’s dad—he didn’t seem that old, or else he’d worn well, or maybe he’d been married off to a suitable heiress very young. And the talk turned to the unexpected takeover bid by a large multinational of a small firm that Worth, Inglis had never thought had anything that might interest said multinational, there had gotta be more to it…

    After that Tracy thought he absolutely should meet— Oh, and there was that real nice guy from the Fed, surely Ben must remember him! Young, but so what? Never mind all that, Ben, you never know who might have influence in the long run (darkly). Okay, okay, he was here to network. He networked…

    “Networking?” asked James Kingston quite some time later.

    “Of course, James!” trilled Tracy. “How are you? Great to see you again! And Denise! So kind of you to have Ben home to dinner; I was so sorry I couldn’t make it that night!”

    Ben hadn’t managed to absorb enough weak cocktails to render him semiconscious, so he remembered to look at Denise’s dress. Yes. Little black number. Nice pearls in the ears. Plus and the short brown curls, last seen all over the show, kind of brushed up and back in a real smart do.

    She was tactfully admiring Tracy’s dark blue. Tracy brushed at it discontentedly. “That’s kind of you, Denise. But I dunno… It’s rather ordinary, really.”

     “No, no, it’s lovely! It really suits you!” smiled Denise. “I wish I could wear blue!”

    Ben felt his jaw sag in spite of himself. He rolled a frantic eye at James. What about that famous little blue knit? James looked back at him, completely bland.

    “Boy, is that guy the complete poker face!” said Ben with feeling as a Worth relative swooped on the Kingstons and he and Tracy were able to look round for fresh networking fodder…

    “You’re talking garbage,” warned Tracy in a steely undervoice, several networked conversations later.

    “Yeah, it’s this networking,” he sighed.

    “Ssh!”

    “Hey, shouldn’t we have stayed to talk to that Worth guy, back there? Given that the guy’s an actual Worth?”

    “Ssh! –Not one of the main branch,” she mouthed.

    Jesus God Almighty! And land of the free to you, too. Likewise, Lady Liberty.

    Time passed. More networking. Fewer cocktails in circulation. Some lucky guys were getting sloshed over by the bar. Others, less lucky, had been led away by their partners in life.

    More networking. The networkers had now sorted themselves out into the exact pecking order and you were no longer chatting with gracious bonhomie to your subordinates. Not Ben, of course: none of his subordinates had rated an invitation. Relentlessly Tracy dragged him over to join Father Inglis and his group of well-dressed, well-fed, well-manicured gents: urban predators all. –Not, alas, one of Ben’s. Another of Bob’s.

    Introductions, Ben being put forward as “My daughter’s partner.” Ouch.

    Funnily enough this group wasn’t drinking weak cocktails or indifferent champagne, they were knocking back the Bourbon and the single malt, what time their well-dressed, dieted-to-Hell-and-gone partners in life monitored every last glass in order to have fuel for the recriminations later. Well, apart from Alice Sunderland, who was straight out of Betty Ford: she just stood there looking gloomy with a glass of spring water in her fist.

    Ben grabbed a tumbler as a waiter came up with another round. Ugh! Bourbon! Never mind, it was alcoholic.

    “Ah!” Father Inglis signalled across the room with a sort of mixture of jolly patronising and frantic hope—very odd.

    The well-dressed, well-fed, well-manicured guys he was waving at kindly joined them.

    This was Yikes, never thought a mere B. Anderson would find himself in the same group as him, from State—Inglis was positively fawning. And this was—didn’t think Inglis had met him?—Peter Rasmussen from the Bundesbank.

    By now those who knew their place had quietly slithered away, considerably reducing the size of their group, so Inglis was easily able to make introductions all round.

    “Of course: good to meet you, Herr Rasmussen,” said Ben cordially. “I was in Germany just recently. How is Liselotte Schomburg, these days?”

    Rasmussen’s broad, blond face turned purple, in fact he looked as if he was about to explode, and that thin, sardonic-looking guy that had been with the fetishist Princeton alumnus and now was with the presence from State broke down in sniggers.

    “I have no idea,” the German said coldly. And turned on his heel and walked off.

    “Gee, well done: that hit home! –It’s all over Bonn. And Berlin,” the thin guy explained kindly to the sagging jaws of Inglis’s select group.

    A fattish guy who looked as if he could be quite jolly out of Inglis’s orbit grinned at him and put in: “It’ll be all over New York, now, I can guarantee you that! And D.C.!”

    “I see,” said Inglis, trying to pull himself together. “Very amusing, Rothschild.”

    Roths-who? Ben gulped in spite of himself

    “Pretty, is she?” asked another guy on a tolerant note.

    “Very, if you like the six-foot managing sort. Blonde—Aryan stereotype,” drawled the Rothschild guy. “The Valkyrie of Wache, Messenhauser & Vacca, they call her. Rasmussen’s been doing her for years, but she’s just dumped him for a toy-boy half his age.”

    “Less, I’d say,” said Ben drily.

    He winked at him. “Know him, do you?”

    “Yeah, we met just at the time he captured the Valkyrie.”

    “Then why did you say that?” gasped Tracy, recovering from her stupefied horror.

    “Gee, I guess because I knew it, Tracy,” he drawled.

    Very red, Tracy said grimly to the company, not meeting anyone’s eye: “I’ll have to ask you to excuse Ben; we’re on a detox diet and I’m afraid he forgot that once the system’s been thoroughly cleansed it can’t take alcohol at all. Come on, Ben.”

    And, head held high, though still avoiding anyone’s eye, she seized his arm—ow!—and led him away.

     “How could you?” she cried, once they were in the taxi.

    “Shut up, Tracy. I don’t give a rat’s about the fucking Bundesbank.”

    “And in front of him!”

    “Huh? Oh—him. He’s a political appointment, Tracy, he’ll be out with the next change in the Administration. Plus and he’s a nullity.”

    “That’s irrelevant!” she snapped. “You let yourself down, and you let me down, and may I add, you most certainly let Father down, in front of people who matter!”

    “Yeah? So that Rothschild guy—lemme get this straight—isn’t he merely ‘not one of the main branch’, allee same like that Worth guy, after all?”

    There was a minuscule pause while Tracy worked out the double negatives. “He’s a Rothschild,” she said in a steely voice—no, a voice of titanium, that was a good one, wonder if he could work it off on good old Bob? “Isn’t that enough?”

    “Dunno. –I rather liked the look of him. Sense of humour, too. Though I do grasp that in your book it ain’t so much the ‘not one of the main branch,’ that’d rule him out of contention for Nice to Know—though I’m not discounting it—as the Jewishness.” –Racist though it seemed, this was spot-on. He knew damn well that back in the by and by Tracy had been seeing a real nice guy from Harvard, slated for a bright future. Ronny Blackman. Up until one or possibly two of her kind girlfriends had informed her that the name was actually Weismann, the family having escaped from a Prussian pogrom some time in the later 19th century. The name change had been when the anti-German feeling alongside the anti-Semitism in the U.S. at the time of World War I had gotten too much for them. The same kind girlfriends had of course imparted the lot, “confidentially,” to Ben.

    Tracy took a deep breath. “Please don’t introduce irrelevancies, Ben. I realise you’ve drunk far too much to be making sense, but I’m afraid my tolerance level for your continual refusal to take anything seriously has just about peaked.”

    Peaked, eh? Good one: thought that sentence was gonna peter out, for a moment, there.

    “We’ll discuss it tomorrow,” she ended grimly. “It’s more than time we got things straight between us.”

Next chapter:

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