Olympus ssc, p.3
Olympus (SSC), page 3
It was piteous to witness the air going out of poor Bradley’s sails. “But—but it can’t go any further—ought not to be allowed to go any further—not after the business with Young Chapin—not again—not Amanda—not with a—with a—a servant, for God’s sake!” We had never seen him so transported by ardor. Some of us would be put off our golf game for days after.
Keats-Smythe shrugged. “Hard to see how there’s any remedy. Perhaps it will burn itself out. These things do.”
This might have been a source of comfort, had not Bradley been aware—as were we all—that Keats-Smythe’s own mother had been a volleyball instructor at the Caribbean resort at which his father and then-bride Lucinda Keats-Smythe (nee Carter) had spent their honeymoon. The first Mrs. Keats-Smythe also believed that all socially unfeasible flings run their course. She did not realize that some courses have their sequential finish lines at the divorce court and the hymeneal altar.
“To let herself…go like that.” It was the ultimate faux pas in Bradley’s book. Unbridled impulse, however romantic, had no place under the stringent leash laws of his strictly ordered universe. He skewered Eames with a hard stare. “How long has this been going on?”
“Less than six months, surely. Ashtoft Junior wasn’t even on the premises any earlier.” Eames tucked away his watch fob. “How should I know? I’m as good as a stranger here myself, these days. You of all people should be aware of that.” He gave Bradley a meaningful look whose precise intent escaped the rest of us.
“There’s been so much for me to catch up on.” His eyes flashed.
Bradley was momentarily discomfited enough to avert his gaze. “Well, it won’t do,” he grumbled. “Steps must be taken.”
“What sort of steps?” Eames inquired, a wicked smile making his thin Ups almost visible to the naked eye.
“Why—why, whatever steps are necessary to nip this—this misbreeding in the bud. In the bud, I say!” Eames chortled, a deep, rich, gloating sound that would have begged the question of justifiable homicide had Bradley been paying sufficient attention. “You make young Ashtoft and Amanda sound Uke a common mongrel and a pedigreed borzoi caught doing the dirty under the very eyes of the judges at Crufft’s. What do you want done? Spaying all ’round?”
“Firing that upstart would do,” Bradley growled, sounding for all the world like an AKC entrant himself.
“Fire Ashtoft Junior?” Eames smirked. Something sinister lurked behind his every variation of good cheer, from lip-quirk to broadest guffaw. I was beginning to think I liked him better morose. “Impossible.”
“Why so? If Benjamin Winthrop learns what that blackguard’s been up to with Amanda, we won’t have time to open the front door before the scoundrel’s pitched out ass over teacup.”
“—to be followed, ankles over sugarbowl, by his father. Oh, yes, be certain of it: Dismiss Ashtoft Junior and Ashtoft Senior wiU take umbrage intense enough to leave Benjamin Winthrop’s own paternal indignation panting in the shade.”
Eames raised his glass to read the future through a film of Bombay gin. “Granted, our Richest Member will at first be glad for having been informed of his daughter’s capers. ‘Whom do I have to thank for this?’ he will ask. And your name will be mentioned, no doubt, and all will be beamish well-done-stout-fella as far as the eye can see. But before he has gone a week without the ministrations of our good Ashtoft—with the first improperly chilled bottle of white wine, the first snifter of Cointreau at his elbow when he called for cognac at his fingertips—his gratitude will fade like a rose on a griddle. The second time he asks, ‘Whom do I have to thank for this?’ I should be in a distant country, were I you.”
Eames was in his glory. The well-tempered malice now flowing from his every word struck me as strangely arbitrary. “What’s gotten into him?” I wondered, sotto voce.
Not quite sotto enough, for Prescott overheard. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?” He adopted that intense, confiding tone most used at funerals to comment on the lifelike appearance of the corpse. “Or didn’t you know—? No, you’d have to be a hermit not to.”
“Not to know what?” I replied, somewhat testily. “Which scrap of utterly vital Club gossip have I overlooked this time?”
There was no room in Prescott’s mind for noting sarcasm, or much else. “Sshh,” he cautioned. Ashtoft Senior had floated back into our presence, bringing an abrupt end to all discussion concerning himself, his offspring, and any Amanda-tampering the lad might undertake. The others had turned to arguing the merits of la nouvelle cuisine over real food. Using one hand to shield his mouth so that our sidebar chat might not attract attention, Prescott contrived to bring me up to date: “Everyone knows why Eames flew off to the Continent: Our cold fish Bradley’s quite the
Wall Street shark, and he persuaded Eames to invest heavily in some properties over there.”
“Heavily? How much was invol—?” A reproving look from Prescott brought me to my senses. I should have known better than to ask about specific sums.
“Heavily enough to necessitate that two-year jaunt of his, when the whole deal threatened to go sour. Bradley, nota bene, did not practice what he preached—invested nothing in the recommended venture, couldn’t have cared less when things turned teetery.”
“Yes, but to go abroad when there are other people to handle that sort of thing for one—!”
“Letting other people handle matters was what jeopardized Eames’ finances in the first place. He would take no more chances, and he is a firm believer in the hands-on method of financial intervention—very literal, very direct; a little primitive, if you want my opinion.” He sipped his drink and purred into the glass, “Alas, the lady of Eames’ heart was also rumored to be a great advocate of the hands-on method.”
“I never knew Eames had a lady.”
“Not anymore he doesn’t, thanks to Bradley. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it leaves the glands cold.”
“Who was she? What became of her?”
Prescott placed his empty glass to one side. “Those secrets are Eames’ alone. She married another, that much is sure. Whether she’s dead, divorced, still happily wed, or off men entirely and turned to the D.A.R., your guess is as good as mine.”
He picked up the fresh drink which the ubiquitous Ashtoft Senior had caused to replace his spent measure and added, “Carlysle might be able to tell you. He’s the one found out the few bits we do know. He gathered them the day after Eames’ return, when he encountered the poor fellow in the Club bar a tad, shall we say, in the thrall of the grape. You’ll have to ask Carlysle himself if you wish to learn more. Or Eames.”
Precious little chance I had of that. Eames left clams looking like magpies. Carlysle, however, was one of the party currently in the billiard room next door. I excused myself on a common enough pretense and sought him out while our resident gastronomes debated the life-or-death question of the proper wine to drink with a really bosomy Stilton. The Olympian eye of Ashtoft rested over all, taking in everything, betraying nothing.
“Eames’ lady?” Carlysle thoughtfully chalked up the end of his cue. “’Fraid you’ve got me there; sorry. I was lucky to get as much out of him as I did. He had his head down on the bar, spouting a lot of gibberish about frailty-thy-name-is and vengeance-shall-be-mine-anon. Actually said anon, he did, right out loud. He was clutching something in his right hand. Dropped it when he reached for another round, and it bounced under one of the tables. I wish you could’ve seen how he almost bowled me over, diving after it!”
“What was it?”
Carlysle shrugged and made his shot. He missed. “Damn. Damned if I know. Sparkly doodad. Soon’s he got it back, he pressed it to his lips, mumbled something like, ‘Call in one debt to pay another,’ and laughed. That’s what comes of majoring in the Humanities, I suppose. Join us?” He offered his cue.
I declined and returned to the library. In my absence, Benjamin Winthrop had returned, accompanied by a man whose tight curls of glossy black hair made a striking contrast to his pale golden-brown, almost yellow eyes. Whoever he was, he reminded one of a predator—a charming predator, but a predator nonetheless. To my mind, he seemed entirely capable of waltzing a debutante thrice around the dance floor before she noticed the raw and dripping haunch of something small and furry protruding from his mouth. Even then, were he to offer her a nibble, she would accept with rapture.
He was not conventionally attractive, after the fashion of Ashtoft Junior. Despite this lacking, there was a hypnotic quality to him which made me fear that, were he to prove to be an insurance salesman, I would spontaneously fling myself upon him with the plea to sell me as much additional whole-life coverage as he saw fit.
Such men are dangerous.
Bradley sulked in his chair, nursing his single-malt. Eames’ cautionary words appeared to have had their effect: He made no move to inform Benjamin Winthrop of Amanda’s belowstairs alliance and feigned temporary deafness as our Richest Member called for our attention.
“Gentlemen, may I introduce Dr. Dion Sonoma?” He presented him to us as proudly as Ashtoft Senior displaying a carefully laid-up and cherished bottle of Montrachet.
“Charmed.” Dr. Sonoma spoke with an unplaceable European accent and radiated hazardous levels of Continental savoir faire. If he also clicked his heels together in the Prussian manner, the effect was dampened by his top-of-the-line running shoes. He wore denim and leather exclusively, both well weathered, yet he contrived to carry them off with a panache that left the rest of us feeling decidedly shabby in our bespoke Hong Kong tailored suits.
“You’re the same Dr. Sonoma with the rocks?”
Keats-Smythe inquired when it was his turn to shake the man’s hand.
“Yes, he’s the one,” Benjamin Winthrop said, clapping him on the back. Dr. Sonoma’s secret smile was even more disquieting than Eames’ smirk. “And what do you think? He’s agreed to give one of his famous lectures right here at the Club next Wednesday evening, free of charge.”
“Famous?” Prescott echoed, still behind the discreet shield of his hand. “The first I ever heard of the man was not fifteen minutes ago, in this very room.”
As if Prescott had spoken aloud, Dr. Sonoma himself responded, “You do me too much honor, sir.” Hood his eyes how he might, there was no way on earth Dr. Sonoma could look truly modest. “My fame is, as yet, strictly local. So it has always been, in the beginning. Yet the times change. The moment hangs upon the vine of Time, ripening as we speak. The—”
“If he starts in about the Harmonic Synchronicity of Thingummy, I’m leaving,” Prescott whispered, causing me to miss the rest of what Dr. Sonoma was saying.
I could not miss our Richest Member’s next declaration, though. “It’s the least he can do,” said Benjamin Winthrop, “seeing as how it’s a personal favor for his future father-in-law.” The wholehearted, incipiently familial manner in which he embraced Dr. Sonoma wiped clear all possibility of misinterpretation.
Bradley choked on a half a mouthful of Glenfiddich and spritzed the rest all over the library. We took it in turns patting him on the back while Ashtoft Senior materialized at once to blot up the widely asperged liquor with a sponge.
There were not sponges enough on the whole bed of the Mediterranean to absorb what would be spilled on Club property come Wednesday.
* * *
The turnout for Dr. Sonoma’s lecture was all anyone might wish. I like to take the charitable view that the full Club membership really did crave to hear him speak on “Crystal Consciousness: Psychic Sham or Speedway of the Soul?” and likewise panted like the hart after cool waters to purchase autographed copies of his privately published book of the same name. We have always supported the Arts.
Cynics may say that Arts be damned, we showed up out of well-considered fear of offending our Richest Member. True, Benjamin Winthrop’s money does underwrite most Club functions involving mass quantities of dance cards, crepe paper flowers, and gin.
One year a new member, one Thomas Yates, politely declined to allow Winthrop to play through on the links. That was the year Mrs. Yates’ candidacy for president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Decorating Committee came a cropper because of a sudden and vehement lack of funds to support said committee’s projects. It was likewise the same twelvemonth during which Yates’ daughter could not “come out” at the Amaryllis Cotillion, there unexpectedly being no Amaryllis Cotillion. (Cynthia did “come out” later that same year, although not in precisely the manner her parents had hoped. The consolation that the other lady involved was a successful commodities trader with an M.B.A. from Wharton did not assuage Mrs. Yates.) Yates himself led a domestic life of purebred hell from then on and gave up golf entirely. But to put such things down to more than the veriest coincidence is unworthy of a gentleman.
Besides, Benjamin Winthrop might find out I said anything about it.
Therefore it was standing room only in the Oak Room for at least an hour before Dr. Sonoma mounted the podium. The Ashtofts, Junior and Senior, were busier than a hostess who has lost her place cards at the last minute. Ashtoft Junior’s face was a study in misery. His surging blood had surged its last, all inner hydraulics monkey-wrenched past mending by the shocking announcement of Amanda’s engagement. He could not have looked more dumbstruck had one of our members mistaken his head for a polo ball. My father wore just such an expression for the whole of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s incumbency.
I took pains to arrive early enough to command a good seat, one sufficiently to the fore to make my presence easily visible should Winthrop or Amanda choose to count the house, yet far enough back to permit me an unobtrusive lecture-long doze. I had hardly settled myself in when the place beside me was taken by Eames.
“A wise choice of seating,” he said. “You always have been one for safety precautions.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” I replied.
“You will.” He raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes to indicate the large EXIT sign prominently displayed above the French doors nearby. “Very soon.”
“Eames, tonight I am not in the mood for hidden significance, and I have always hated cryptic utterances as a matter of policy. What in heaven’s name are you nittering about?”
For once, Eames did not twist his lips into a wry-but-knowing grimace, but rather chose to sigh. “The first row. Why did it have to be the first row?”
Here was a statement both noxiously cryptic and fraught past the gunwhales with hidden significance. I ground my teeth. “Why did what have to be the first—?”
“It will only be the worse for her, once the bloodletting starts. She was always so fastidious about her wardrobe, too. It looks like…could it be that’s a silk ensemble she’s wearing? Oh, dear, even if she does speak to me again, she’ll be in a snit. Still, when a man’s just saved your life, you might be convinced to shelve the problem of stain removal, at least temporarily.” He fiddled with his watch fob like a madman.
“Bloodletting?” I didn’t like the sound of that—who would?—but in view of certain incidents in the Club’s past history I had cause to like it less still. “Explain yourself!” I demanded.
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll get out all right,” was his inadequate reply. He laid the fob on his open program so that the light glittered off the crystal and glowed upon the exquisitely formed silver features of the leering, vine-wreathed face above. “The front row…tsk. And here I thought she was mad at Amanda. I have been out of the swim,” was the only other thing he said.
Quickly I scanned the first row of seats, hoping to gather some clue to Eames’ ravings from the persons seated there. Benjamin Winthrop and Amanda had the best seats, naturally, with poor Bradley not two places off. The gaze of pure, hopeless longing which he lavished upon her kept being intercepted by Gloria VanderSee.
Gloria was an old chum of Amanda’s. Her divorce was the talk of the Club, as had been her marriage. That is quite the sort of thing one must expect when one weds in such haste as to overlook the fact that one’s intended is in the ethnic habit of using too many spices and too few forks. Small wonder it scarcely lasted two years.
Two years…
There are times when the pieces of Life’s little jigsaw persist in getting themselves lost between the sofa cushions, but there are other times when they all seem to fall into order as naturally as the Preakness follows the Derby. I seized the moment, along with Eames’ wrist, just as Dr. Sonoma made his entrance. Eames’ protests as I dragged him into the hall were muted by the usual prelecture susurrus in the audience. I am not remarkably strong, but four years of pulling for Harvard crew does leave one with residual upper-body strength convenient to have in an emergency.
I flung him down onto a satin-covered bench beneath one of our Founder’s many portraits. “If there is to be any bloodletting upon Club premises,” I expostulated, “it’s going to be yours unless you tell me what little treat that love-addled brain of yours has cooked up, Eames.”
Eames pretended indifference to my threats. “There’s nothing you can do about it now,” he said, cool as a pamplemousse sorbet. “The wheels have been set in motion.”
I seized him by the necktie and practiced a choke-chain maneuver I’d previously employed to good effect with my pet Weimaraner, Sunnyland Wunderkind Otho II of Bickering-Wensleydale.
“Those wheels,” I snarled, hauling him skyward, “are attached to the underbelly of a juggernaut that will squash you flatter than a Vassar girl’s bosom. If you wish to kill Bradley, couldn’t you have done it more discreetly? Good Lord, man, Gloria VanderSee is as tasty a finger sandwich as ever graced the brunch of Eros, but even for her sake, must you make your every vendetta a public spectacle?” I let him drop to the bench once more.
The charge of Causing a Scene (with Malice Aforethought) brought him up short, even before his rump hit the upholstery. Breeding is forever. Realization shamed him to the core. “What have I done?” he whispered.
