About two in the morning, just as she'd finally fallen asleep, he returned the call. His manner was suspiciously convivial.
"Have you been partying?" she asked him.
"Just a few friends," he replied. "Nobody you'd know. Harvard guys."
"When are you coming home?"
"I'm not quite sure yet. Thursday or Friday."
"Is Garrison with you?"
"No. Why?"
"I just wondered."
"I'm having some fun if that's what you're getting at," Mitch said, his tone losing its warmth, "I'm sick of being a workhorse, just so that everybody stays rich."
"Don't do it for me," she said.
"Oh don't start that-"
"I mean it. I-"
"-was quite happy with nothing," he said, doing a squeaky imitation of her voice.
"Well I was."
"Oh for Christ's sake, Rachel. All I said was, I was working too hard…"
"So that we could all stay rich, you said."
"Don't be so fucking sensitive."
"Don't swear at me."
"Oh Jesus."
"You're drunk, aren't you?"
"I told you, I've been partying. I don't have to apologize for that. Look, I don't want to have this conversation any more. We'll talk when I get back."
"Come back tomorrow."
"I said I'd come Thursday or Friday."
"We've got to have a proper conversation, Mitch, and we've got to have it sooner rather than later."
"A conversation about what?"
"About us. About what we do. We can't go on like this."
There was a long, long silence. "I'll come back tomorrow," he said finally.
While Rachel and Mitchell played out their melancholy domestic drama, there were other events occurring, none of them so superficially noteworthy as the separation of lovers, which would in the long term prove to have far more tragic consequences.
You'll remember, perhaps, that I made mention in passing of Loretta's astrologer? I don't know whether the fellow was a fake or not (though I have to think that any man who sells his services as a prophet to rich women is not driven by any visionary ambition). I do know, however, that his predictions proved-after a labyrinthine fashion that will become apparent over the course of the next several chapters-to become true. Would they have done so had he kept them to himself? Or was his very speaking of them part of the great plot fate was laying against the Gearys? Again, I cannot say. All I can do is tell you what happened, and leave the rest to your good judgment.
Let me begin with Cadmus. The week Rachel returned from Dansky was good for the old man. He managed a short car trip out to Long Island, and had spent a couple of hours sitting on the beach there, looking out at the ocean. Two days later one of his old enemies, a congressman by the name of Ashfield who had attempted to start an investigation into the Gearys' business practices in the forties, had died of pneumonia, which had quite brightened Cadmus's day. The illness had been painful, sources reported, and Ashfield's final hours excruciating. Hearing this, Cadmus had laughed out loud. The next day he announced to Loretta that he intended to make a list of all the people who'd attempted to get in his way over the years whom he'd now outlived. Then he wanted her to send it into The Times, for the obituary column: a collective in memoriam for those who would never cross his path again. The conceit had gone out of his head an hour later, but his lively mood remained. He stayed up well past his usual bedtime of ten, and demanded a vodka martini as a nightcap. It was as he sipped it, sitting in his wheelchair looking out on the city, that he said:
"I heard a rumor…"
"What about?" Loretta said.
"You saw that astrologer of yours."
"Yes."
"What did he have to say?"
"Are you sure you should finish that martini, Cadmus? You're not supposed to drink on your medications."
"Actually, it's rather a pleasant feeling," he said, his voice a little slurred. "You were telling me about the astrologer. He told you something grim, I gather."
"You don't believe any of that stuff anyway," Loretta said. "So why the hell does it matter?"
"Was it that terrible?" Cadmus inquired. He studied his wife's face woozOy. "What in God's name did he say, Loretta?"
She sighed. "I don't think-"
"Tell me!" he roared.
Loretta stared at him, amazed that a sound so solid could emanate from a body so frail.
"He said something was about to change all our lives," Loretta replied. "And that I should be ready for the worst."
"The worst being what exactly?"
"I suppose death."
"Mine?"
"He didn't say."
"Because if it's mine…" he reached out and took her hand "… that's not the end of the world. I feel quite ready to be off somewhere restful." His hand went up to her face. "My only concern is you. I know how you hate to be alone."
"I won't be long following you," Loretta said softly.
"Oh now hush. I won't hear that. You've got a good long life ahead of you."
"Not without you I don't."
"There's nothing to be afraid of. I've made very good financial arrangements for you. You'll never want for anything."
"It's not money I'm worried about."
"What then?"
She reached for her cigarettes, fumbling with the packet a moment. "Is there something about this family you've never told me?" she said.
"Oh I'm sure there's a thousand things," Cadmus remarked blithely.
"I'm not talking about a thousand things, Cadmus," Loretta said. "I'm talking about something important. Something you've kept from me. And don't lie to me, Cadmus. It's too late for lies."
"I'm not lying to you," he said. "I meant what I said: there are a thousand things I haven't told you about this family, but none of them, sweet, I swear, none of them is very terrible." Loretta looked somewhat placated. Smiling and stroking her hand, Cadmus quickly capitalized on his success. "Every family has a few unfortunates in its midst. We've got those. My own mother died miserably. But you know that. There was some business done in the Depression that doesn't reflect well on me, but-" he shrugged "-the Good Lord seems to have forgiven me. He granted me beautiful children and grandchildren, and a longer, healthier life than I ever dared hope I'd have. And most of all, He gave me you." He tenderly kissed Loretta's hand. "And believe me, darling, when I tell you there's not a day goes by without my thanking Him for His generosity."
That was more or less the end of the conversation. But it was only the beginning of the consequences of the astrologer's prediction.
The following day, when Loretta was out at her monthly lunch with several philanthropic widows of Manhattan, the old man wheeled himself into the library, locked the door, and took from a certain hiding place behind the rows of leather-bound tomes, all undisturbed by any curious reader, a small metal box, bound with a thin leather thong. His fingers were too weak to untie the knot, so he took a pair of scissors to it, and then lifted the lid. If anyone had witnessed him doing this they would have assumed the box contained some priceless treasure, his manner was so reverential. They would have been disappointed. There was nothing glorious in the box. Just a small book that smelled brown with age, its cover stained, its pages stained, the handwritten lines upon those stained pages faded with the years. And between the pages, here and there, loose sheets of paper, a small fragment of blue cloth, a skeletal leaf that went to motes of grey dust when he tried to pick it up.