“Tacky,” said Marlene. “Mom always told us to give the guests the best stuff.”
“Ahh, but we’re not guests, we’re the help. Also, rich people are apt to be stingy, which is how they stay rich. Present company excepted, of course.”
As they approached the house they heard the hum of conversation and the unmistakable sounds of a tennis match in progress. The path opened on a broad flagstoned terrace below the house, on which several long tables covered with checkered cloths had been set. On the near side of the terrace a short walk led to two clay tennis courts. These, at least, were in prime condition. On the far side, the terrace dropped off to a large, murky, ornamental fish pond. There were about a dozen DA staffers milling around, looking ill at ease. Black servants in white jackets were serving drinks and tending hamburgers, and hot dogs were cooking on a huge fieldstone grill.
“Fun is at its maddest, all right,” said Marlene. “Let’s scoff up seven dollars worth of drinks and hot dogs and split.”
“I can’t do that,” replied Karp. “I muscled all my guys to come here and I’m obligated to stay to the bitter end.”
“Besides, it’s bad manners, dear,” said V.T. “We have to greet our hosts, tell them how delightful it all is, get drunk, puke in the bushes, and then split. Haven’t you ever been to a fancy garden party? And speaking of our hosts …”
Bloom, in tennis whites, his face flushed, was coming down the walk from the tennis courts accompanied by a woman and two other men, one of whom was Conrad Wharton.
“Aha, Newbury, Karp, glad you could come. Denise and I just slaughtered Chip and Rich here in doubles, straight sets. Got to work on that serve, Chip.”
Wharton was also in whites. His normally pink face was bright red and his lank blond locks were plastered to his forehead. He smiled sheepishly and said, “Well, yeah, I’ve got a long way to go before I can take you, Sandy.”
Bloom gave a high-pitched laugh. “You know it! OK, just make yourselves at home, kids. Plenty of drinks and food-swim if you want to, play a few sets. I’m going to change.”
“I better change, too,” said Wharton.
Bloom strode off to the house, with Wharton waddling after him. Ignoring Marlene, Mrs. Bloom immediately linked her arms through V.T.’s and Karp’s. She was a wiry, heavily tanned woman of about forty, with large teeth, a truncated nose, and frosted dark hair. She was in a white tennis outfit with little red pom-poms sticking up over her Nikes.
“Oh, you must be V.T. Newbury and Butch Karp. Sandy’s told me so much about you both. Oh, V.T., you know I think we have some friends in common. The Worthingtons have the place just down the road you know, and they keep their boat in the Hamptons all summer. Isn’t that a coincidence.”
V.T. allowed that the world was a remarkable place. Thus encouraged, Mrs. Bloom said, “Now, I know I can get you two handsome young men to find me a drinkie. To the bar, and don’t spare the horses!” She laughed gaily and moved off with irresistible force. Karp shrugged at Marlene and let himself be dragged along.
Marlene was left alone on the path with the other tennis player. He was a tall, gangling man in his twenties, with longish razor-cut hair tied back in a red-white-and-blue terry headband, a straight pointy nose and close-set dark eyes. After a moment he stuck out his hand.
“Rich Wool,” he said.
“Beg pardon?”
“I’m Richard Wool. I head up the data development team in the office. Under Chip, of course. And you are?”
Marlene took the hand gingerly. “Jane Eyre.”
“Well, Jane, and what brings you here? Are you a spouse or one of the paralegals?”
“Actually, I’m with the custodial staff. I work directly for Mister Karp.”
“Really? I didn’t know Karp had any custodial responsibilities. What precisely do you do?”
“Oh this and that. Keep his tubes blown out, and all. Look, Rich, I’d love to stop and chat, but you’ve got to mingle and I need to go back to the car and shoot some smack, so …”
She turned and started off. “What? What did you say?” he called to her back. But by then she had already turned onto one of the many side paths that led off the gravel drive. She wasn’t hungry and she certainly didn’t feel like getting drunk with Denise and Sandy. She figured to screw around for an hour in the woods, sack out or indulge her secret taste for Regency romances, one of which she had stashed in her handbag.
The path came out onto a little clearing overlooking what once had been a horse paddock, but which was now overgrown with high grass and wildflowers.
A columned, domed gazebo in white stone, the kind of structure the Victorians called a “folly,” stood in the clearing. It held two wide stone benches, on one of which sat a youth of about sixteen picking inexpertly at a guitar. Marlene went over and sat on the opposite bench.
“Nice guitar,” she offered. “A Gibson, right?”
The boy grunted, but did not look up. He was slightly overweight and sallow, with shoulder-length straight brown hair, none too clean. He was wearing a black T-shirt and cutoff jeans.
“You live here?” Marlene asked. “How come you’re not at the party?” Silence. “My name’s Marlene, what’s yours?”
He scowled and said, “Hey, lady, the party’s down the road. You wanna leave me alone?”
Marlene got up. “OK, sport, but you’re never going to get a good D Minor with your thumb all scrunched up like that.”
The kid played another sour progression and looked up. “You play?”
“I used to. Here, let me sit down next to you on the old bench.”
“You got a cigarette?”
“Yeah.” She reached into her bag and handed the kid a Marlboro. He lit up and she took the expensive instrument and hoisted it onto her knee. “OK, let’s see. Keep your wrist like so, and your fingers arched, like this. See? D minor, A seventh, D minor, then you can go B sharp, D seventh, and back to, There is a House in New Orleans, they, B sharp, call the Rising Sun, A seventh, and its been D minor again, see how it goes, me, go to G seventh, oh God, A seventh, am one, back to D minor.”
Marlene sang the rest of the song without interruption, in a high shivery contralto; then sang a few more by Joan Baez, some by the Beach Boys, and then taught the kid an Eric Clapton riff-by which time he was in love.
He turned out to be Brian Bloom, and his father had told him that if he showed his face at the party with that hair and that filthy outfit he would definitely be sent to military school and I don’t care what your mother says.
They smoked and chatted about music and families and agreed that Sanford Bloom was an asshole, the kid being surprised to find out that other adults shared his opinion of his old dad. Then Marlene began to play hard blues and after a while people from the party and people arriving from the parking lot began to drift into the clearing, attracted by the music, and sat around on the grass and the steps of the gazebo, listening. People came and went, going over to the terrace to get food and drinks and then drifting back to sit again and listen to the music.
Guma ran into Karp and V.T. at the edge of the crowd.
“Hey, Butch, look at this, a party within a party.”
“Yeah, there’s practically nobody left up at the house. What you been doing, Goom?”
“Oh, you know, mingling with the great and the near-great. Ate some burgers. Had a few brews. Got into a chug-a-lug contest with your guy, Butch, what’s-his-name, the actor.”
“Richie Krier?”
“Yeah. I should modestly add that I took both the quantity and the velocity crown.” He slapped his gut. “The kid was fighting well above his weight.”
“What happened to Richie, you child-molester?”