“It… it’s not that kind of business.”
“What kind?”
“The kind where you can say how’s business?” she said and smiled so warmly that I almost asked her to dance.
“Are you busy?” I said.
“Well, no, not in a regular business sense.”
“What are your hours?”
“Nine to four,” she said.
“And Mr. Tripp?”
“Oh, he’s usually here when I arrive, and he frequently leaves after I do. I’ve offered to come earlier and stay longer, but Mr. Tripp says that is not necessary.”
“Is he busier than you are?”
“I… well, frankly, I don’t see why he would be.”
“And how busy are you?”
She shrugged and spread her hands. Her nails were beautifully manicured and painted a pale pink.
“There are some phone calls, there are some letters. Sometimes I make restaurant reservations, sometimes travel arrangements…” She paused. “I read a great deal.”
“Good for the mind,” I said. “They eat out a lot?”
“Mr. Tripp has lunch with people nearly every day.”
“Dinner?”
“I rarely make dinner reservations,” she said.
“They travel much?”
She uncrossed her legs, and crossed them the other way. When she had them recrossed, she smoothed her skirt along the tops of her thighs.
“Mostly I make arrangements for the children, during school vacations.”
“They do a lot of that?”
“Oh, yes, they’re very well traveled. Vail or Aspen usually, in the winter. Europe sometimes, during summer vacations. And they were always flying off to visit friends from college.”
“Family travel much together?” I said.
“Mr. Tripp and the children would sometimes go places, especially when the children were small.”
“Ms. Nelson?” I said.
“I don’t think Ms. Nelson liked to travel,” she said.
I sat for a while and chewed on that. Ann Summers sat quietly, pointing her stunning knees at me: alert, compliant, calm, and stunning.
“And Mr. Tripp comes here early, and leaves late, even though there’s not much work to do?”
She nodded.
“What do you think of that?” I said.
She paused for a moment, and bit her lower lip very gently, for a moment. Then she shook her head.
“I am Mr. Tripp’s employee. I like to think also that I am his friend. In either capacity I am entirely loyal to him,” she said. “I would not speculate about his personal life.”
“Not even to me,” I said, “after what we’ve meant to each other?”
Ann Summers shook her head slowly.
Her smile was warm. Her teeth were very white and even. Her eyes were lively, maybe even inviting. There was something about her that whispered inaudibly of silk sheets and lace negligees, some unarticulated hint of passion, motionless beneath the flawless tranquility of her appearance. I sat for a moment and inhaled it, admired it, contemplated the clear, unexpressed certainty that exotic carnal excess was mine for the asking.
We both knew the moment and understood it.
“Monogamy is not an unmixed blessing,” I said.
She nodded slightly, and smiled serenely. “Please feel free,” she said, “if you need anything else…” She made a little flutter with her hands.
I stood.
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks for your help.” I was pleased that my voice didn’t rasp.
At the door I looked back at her, still motionless, legs crossed, smiling. The sunlight from the east window behind her caught the red highlights in her hair. Her hands rested motionless on her thighs. The promise of possibility shimmered in the room between us for another long moment. Then I took in a big breath of air and went out and closed the door.
chapter nine
I HAD LUNCH with Loudon Tripp at the Harvard Club. In Boston there are two, one downtown in a tall building on Federal Street, and the other, more traditional one in the Back Bay on Commonwealth Ave. Despite the fact that Tripp’s office was downtown about a block from the Federal Street site, he chose tradition. So did I. Instead of my World Gym tank top, I wore a brown Harris tweed jacket with a faint maroon line in the weave, a blue Oxford button-down, a maroon knit tie, charcoal slacks, and chocolate suede loafers with charcoal trim. There was a herringbone pattern in my dark gray socks. I had a maroon silk handkerchief in my breast pocket, a fresh haircut, and a clean shave. Except maybe that my nose had been broken about six times, you couldn’t tell I wasn’t wealthy.
Tripp was wearing a banker’s gray Brooks Brothers suit with narrow lapels, and three buttons, and trousers ending at least two inches short of his feet. He had on a narrow tie with black and silver stripes, and scuffed brown shoes with wing tips. You knew he was wealthy.
Tripp shook hands democratically.
“Good of you to come,” he said, although I had requested the lunch.
The Harvard Club looked the way it was supposed to. High ceilings and carpeted floors and on the walls pictures of gray-haired WASPs in dark suits. We went to the dining room and sat. Tripp ordered a Manhattan. I had a club soda.
“Don’t you drink?” Tripp said. He sounded a little suspicious.
“I’m experimenting,” I said, “with intake modification.”
“Ah,” he said.
We looked at menus. The cuisine ran to baked scrod and minute steak. The waiter brought our drinks. Tripp drank half his Manhattan. I savored a sip of club soda. We ordered.
“Now,” Tripp said, “how can I help you?”
“If it is not too painful,” I said, “tell me about your family.”
“It is not too painful,” Tripp said. “What do you wish to know?”
“Whatever you wish to tell me. Talk about them a little, your wife, your kids, what they liked to do, how they got along, anything interesting about them. I’m just looking for a place to start.”
Tripp smiled courteously. “Of course,” he said.
He gestured at the waiter to bring him a second Manhattan. I declined a second club soda. I still had plenty left of the first one. Club sodas seemed to last longer than vodka martinis on the rocks with a twist.
“We were,” Tripp said, “just about an ideal family. We were committed to one another, loved one another, cared about one another completely.”
I nodded. The waiter brought the second Manhattan. Tripp drained the remainder of the first one and handed the glass to the waiter. The waiter completed the exchange and moved away. Tripp stared at the new Manhattan without drinking any.
“The thing was,” he said, “not only were Olivia and I husband and wife, we were pals. We enjoyed each other. We enjoyed our children.”
He paused, still staring at the untouched drink in front of him. He shuddered briefly. “To have so good a thing shattered so terribly…”
I waited. He picked up the Manhattan and took a small sip and replaced it. I ignored my club soda.
“I know it sounds, probably, too good to be true, nostalgia or something, but, by golly, it was good. There’ll never be anyone like her.”
He broke off and we sat quietly. In the silence the waiter brought our lunch. I had opted for a chicken sandwich. Tripp had scrod. The food was every bit as good as it was at the Harvard Faculty Club where I had eaten a couple of years ago.
There weren’t many women in the dining room. At a table next to the wall two men in suits were ordering more drinks. One of them was a U.S. Senator, still pink from the steam room, whose drink, when it arrived, appeared to be a tall dark scotch and soda. At the table next to me were three guys dressed by the same costumer. All wore dark blue suits with a thin chalk stripe, white shirts with discreetly rolled button-down collars, red ties. The ties varied-one red with tiny white dots, one a darker red with blue stripes, one blue paisley on a red background. He who would be a man must be a non-conformist. One of them was holding forth. He was large without being muscular, and his neck spilled out a little over his collar.