A further surprise came at the restaurant. The waitress-dancer he had so looked forward to meeting had a sort of feral coldness about her when they met, and now, seated at the far end of the table between the Sephard and Laura, she regarded the table with an unmistakable hauteur though she couldn't have been much older than the graduates and their dates. She was plainly a woman of the world with Levantine features tending toward thinness, and whatever warmth she might have was well concealed. Nordstrom was pleased with the meal (a galantine of duck, mussels steamed in white wine, striped bass baked with fennel, leg of lamb that had been boned and butterflied then stuffed) but the crowd was giddy and drinking too much to concentrate on food. They all had plans. They were excited to a degree almost equal to Nordstrom's excitement about having no plans. The raw point of the evening was that everyone, through the graces of Phillip's mouth, knew that Nordstrom had given away all of his money and was going on a long trip. In fact, he thought, they had a certain advantage over his future as he wasn't at all sure about the trip—departure day three days hence —though the sheaf of tickets was back in a leather folder at the hotel. But it was the fact of his giving the money away that made him, in their eyes, a monkish wild man off on a pilgrimage. He was appalled. He knew most of them from last summer in Marblehead but he noted that he had become radically changed in their eyes. The girl next to him assumed he was going to India and expressed disappointment at his itinerary. He had thought of them previously as au courant and rather far to the fashionable Left but now they seemed to stand decidedly more than himself as smack-dab in the middle. He remembered how so few of the sixties' radicals did anything so rash—say not pay their taxes—as to actually end up in jail for their beliefs. It was a hoax in that most of them seemed to own boutiques now. There was something amusing here that couldn't quite be traced. Everyone is just fucking around as usual, he thought. If I were home, which no longer exists, I'd be dancing now. He began to get an inkling that the point was to be dancing in your brain all of the time when his daughter who was seated next to him sensed his bleakness, squeezed his hand and kissed him on the ear, saying please come visit. He felt the intensity of her concern and nodded yes.
The evening wore itself garishly thin. He noted that Laura and the waitress-dancer—Sarah by name—were making frequent trips to the toilet, he guessed for snorting cocaine. A number of couples left for a disco and the party closed in together but still lacked the ease and camaraderie of wine. They were in an anteroom and the Sephard had the waiter close a partition. Phillip lit a joint and passed it. Another couple left and now there was only Laura, Sarah, the Sephard, Phillip, Sonia, the close friend of Sonia who wanted desperately for Nordstrom to go to Katmandu, and Nordstrom. The party warmed as the Sephard told witty stories, so deft that Nordstrom laughed deeply and forgot himself. He saw Laura's eyes motion to him and then over her shoulder to the rest rooms.
Nordstrom made his way to the rest room and stood mugging in the mirror for no reason. There was naturally a toilet in there which meant he was in control again. If one sat on the stool, he thought, that made one the king of a dubious country about six-by-eight feet, but only if you could lock the door and in this case you couldn't. Even the lock on the stall was broken. It might be better to give up the idea of kingship before it went awry. The mirror revealed a man much stronger than the man felt. He knew it didn't matter if the image was himself or not. Jo-Jo the Dogface Boy, Marvin, Farley Cudd—any name would do. The dog was there at suppertime without being called. Anyone knew that when you had to be called it was usually for something unpleasant. Before they cut a tree down the timber cruiser made a mark on the tree for the lackeys with chain saws to follow, and the mark had to be construed as the tree's name. Nordstrom was grinning at the idea of names when Laura and Sarah entered. O these days. Women in men's rooms. What next? he thought. Sarah poured a line of cocaine along her forearm and offered it up to him.
"Frankly, I'd rather fuck."
Sarah widened her eyes mockingly and looked at Laura whose eyes glittered. Then she laughed.
"I heard you've become a lunatic," Sarah said.
"I thought you didn't like rich businessmen."
"They have definite advantages over poor businessmen."
She lifted her arm closer to Nordstrom's nose. He snorted it off as he imagined a crazed pig or dope fiend would. Laura laughed leaning against the urinal.
"Nobody addressed my first suggestion," Nordstrom said.
The two women looked at each other and he was intrigued that they were taking him seriously. He had simply been trying to keep control of his country by mounting an offensive.
"Let's flip." Sarah drew a quarter out of her purse.
"Okay." Laura drew closer and kissed him on the cheek. "Of course it's adultery for me but there are extenuating circumstances. I'll take heads."
Nordstrom slid his hand down Laura's buttocks feeling the cheeks clench a bit as they used to do. When the quarter was in the air Phillip blundered in.
"What's happening in here?" he said with a drunken leer.
The ladies bustled out and Nordstrom wondered what the final penalty might be for strangling his future son-in-law. The quarter jangled against the wall but he did not look down as he walked out. The coke made him feel like he had been locked in some sort of hyperthyroid refrigerator.
Back at the table the ladies looked at him and laughed. He slowly concocted his most murderous stare that had been used to good effect against business opponents in the old days. They became nervously silent but Nordstrom persisted until everyone at the table was alarmed. He had won the round, as paltry as that might be, but it was somehow important. Phillip returned to the table mumbling about having found a quarter. The Sephard's face stiffened as the partition abruptly opened. A tall black man looked in, elegantly dressed in a gray pin-striped suit. Behind him and staring over his shoulder was an Italian, a cutout from the movies of a gangster psychopath. The tall black man eased around the table and grabbed Sarah's wrist squeezing it painfully. Then he walked away dragging her, a half ambulatory doll, the pain of her twisted arm bright in her face.
"See here . . ." Nordstrom said, moving away from his chair.
"Fuck off, dude," the black man said.
Nordstrom hit the man rather too hard, low on the cheek, and the man spun around losing his grip on the girl. Then his knees buckled and he sat down hard before bouncing up still dazed. Laura and Sonia began screaming and Nordstrom turned to see the Italian very close with the muzzle of a pistol aimed at his stomach. The black man rubbed his jaw and stared at Nordstrom.
"You'll die," he said smiling.
Two waiters and the manager rushed in belatedly at the screaming. There was no point in taking a chance.