“Good for what’s his name,” he said absently; his work was calling to him from the top of the tower.
“Oh, Addison, he’s your son-in-law! Callum Christie is his name.” She sighed, tried once more. “This afternoon I saw a rerun of Quo Vadis – goodness, didn’t they give the poor Christians a hard time? Lions dragging human arms around – brr!”
“I know scads of Christians I’d happily throw to the lions. Rob you blind six days of the week, then go to church on Sunday and fix it up with God. Pah! I’m proud to stand by my sins, no matter how awful they are,” he said through his teeth.
She giggled. “Oh, Addison, honestly! You do talk nonsense!”
The salad had gone; Addison Forbes put down his knife and fork and wondered for the millionth time why he had ever married an empty-headed nurse halfway through medical school. Though he knew the answer, just didn’t care to admit it; he hadn’t had the money to finish, she was crazy about him, and a nurse’s income was just enough. Naturally he had planned to get through his residency before contemplating a family, but the fool woman fell pregnant before he graduated. So there he was, battling with an internship and twin daughters she had insisted on naming Roberta and Robina. Despite their homozygousness, Roberta had inherited his medical bent, whereas Robina the airhead had become a successful teenaged model before marrying an up-and-coming stockbroker.
His repugnance for his wife hadn’t dissipated with the years; rather, it had grown until he could hardly stand the sight of her, and had private fantasies of killing her an inch at a time.
“You would do better, Robin,” he said as he rose from the table, “to enroll in some degree program at West Holloman State College instead of scoffing popcorn in a movie theater. Or you could throw pots, which I’m told is what middle-aged women with no talent do. You couldn’t take a refresher course in nursing, you’d never manage the math. Now that our daughters have left the safety of your maternal river for a life in the ocean, your river has turned into a stagnant pond.”
The same ending to the same meal; Addison stalked off up the spiral stairs to his padlocked eyrie while Robin shrilled after him.
“I’d sooner be dead than run a vacuum over your stupid eyrie, so leave the door open, for God’s sake!”
His voice floated back. “You’re nosy, my dear. No, thanks.”
Mopping at her eyes with a tissue, Robin mixed the creamy Italian through her salad and flooded her meat loaf with cranberry sauce. Then she jumped up, ran to the refrigerator and unearthed a container of potato salad she’d hidden behind the cans of Tab. It wasn’t fair that Addison visited his pitiless regimen on her, but she knew exactly why he did: he was petrified of falling off his wagon if he saw real food.
Carmine Delmonico stood leaning his shoulders against the florid blue and gold pheasant painted on the restaurant window, a big brown bag tucked in the crook of one arm. His eyes followed the bright red Corvette idly, then widened when it backed neatly into the curb and Miss Desdemona Dupre extricated her impressive length from it lithely.
“Wow!” he said, straightening. “Not the kind of car I had picked for you.”
“It will appreciate, not depreciate, so when I sell it I won’t lose money on it,” she said. “Shall we go in? I’m starving.”
“I thought we’d eat at my place,” he said, beginning to walk. “The joint’s jumping with undergrad Chubbers, and my face is well known these days thanks to the Holloman Post. A pity to make the poor guys go to the john to take a swig from their brown bags.”
“The Connecticut liquor laws are archaic,” she said, walking with him. “They can be killed in a war, but they can’t drink.”
“You’ll get no argument from me, though I expected you to put up a fight over where we eat.”
“My dear Carmine, at thirty-two I’m a trifle old to bridle girlishly at eating in a man’s apartment – or is it a house? Do we have a long walk?”
“Nope, just to the corner. I live on the twelfth floor of the Nutmeg Insurance building. Ten floors of offices, ten floors of apartments. Dr. Satsuma has the penthouse, but that rich I am not. Just modestly well off.”
“Modesty,” she said, preceding him into a marble foyer, “is not a quality I associate with you.”
“What I like most about you, Desdemona,” he said as they zoomed up in the elevator, “is your way of saying things. At first I thought you were taking the mickey out of me, but now I realize that it’s natural for you to be kinda – pompous.”
“If to avoid slang is to sound pompous, then I’m pompous.”
He ushered her out of the elevator, fished a key from his pocket and opened his front door, flicked a light switch.
Desdemona walked into a room that took her breath away. Its walls and ceiling were dull Chinese red, a carpet the same color covered the floor, and much thought had gone into the lighting. Fluorescent strips concealed by a pelmet ran along the perimeter, illuminating some of the loveliest Oriental art she had ever seen: a three-leafed screen of tigers against gilt squares, a wonderfully droll and tender ink painting of a fat old man asleep with his head pillowed on a tiger, a group of tigers young and old, a mommy tiger serving a homily to a baby tiger, and, to break up so many tigers, a few panels of ethereal mountains painted on white stone inside intricately carved black frames. Four upholstered Chinese red tub chairs stood around a Lalique table of frosted ostrich plumes beneath a round piece of inch-thick transparent glass; above it blazed a small, matching Lalique chandelier. Two places had been set on that flawless table, of thin plain crystal and thin plain china. Four Chinese red easy chairs were arranged in a group around a squat, large ceramic temple dog with a sheet of glass on its head. Around the walls a few cabinets in black lacquer broke up so much redness. Interesting, that this shade of red was not discordant or irritating. It was just intensely sumptuous.
“Ye gods!” she exclaimed feebly. “The next thing you’ll be telling me you write highly intellectual poetry and cherish a thousand secret sorrows.”
That made him laugh as he carried the bag into a kitchen as white as the living room was dull red, immaculately clean, quite intimidatingly tidy. This man was a perfectionist.
“Far from it,” he said as he emptied the steaming food into lidded bowls. “I’m just a Wop cop from Holloman with a yen for beautiful surroundings when I come home. White wine, or red?”
“Beer, if you have it. I like beer with Chinese.
“This place is not at all what I expected,” she said, taking two of the bowls while he stacked the rest up his arms like a waiter.
He drew her chair out, seated her, seated himself.
“Eat,” he said. “I got a bit of everything on the menu.”
Since both of them were hungry, they polished off the large amount of food, each deftly wielding chopsticks.
I am a snob, she thought as she ate, but we English do tend to be snobs unless we come from Coronation Street. Why do we forget that the Italians ruled the world before ever we did, and for longer, and with greater success? They gave birth to the Renaissance, they have adorned the world with art, literature, and the arch. And this Wop cop from Holloman has the air of a Roman emperor, so why should he not have ascetic feelings?
“Green tea, black tea, or coffee?” he asked in the kitchen as he stacked the dishwasher.
“Another beer, please.”
“What did you expect, Desdemona?” he asked from the depths of his easy chair, his cup of green tea on the temple dog table.
“If there had been a Mrs. Delmonico – after all, there might have been – good Italian leather and a conservative color scheme. If a policeman’s bachelor quarters – perhaps bits and pieces from Goodwill. Are you married? I ask only out of politeness.”