Many of David and Peter's friends summered up in the central Hudson Valley, around the river town of Hudson and eastward from there toward — but not into — New England. This influx into the rural dairy world of upstate by all these sophisticated New Yorkers of a certain type had done wonders for the region, particularly in culinary ways: an unusual range of restaurants; arugula and goat cheese in the supermarkets, for God's sake; excellent variety in the local wine shops. David and Peter, wedded to their research and happy as Darby and Joan — Darby and Darby, anyway — in their city townhouse, had never bought or rented a summer place in the country, but they'd frequently accepted weekend invitations to this or that hideaway in the woods, where the goings-on tended to be . . . unbuttoned.
Until now, that was the only way they'd ever known Bradley Cummingford, merely as a fellow guest at summer outings, but they'd always been aware that he somehow or other had a serious side as well, in which he wore grown-up male clothing and was treated with respect by lawyers and judges and businessmen. When they found themselves at the mercy — to put too strong a word on it — of the tobacco lawyer, Mordon Leethe, and when it became evident there was no one around who was both knowledgeable in the arcane and frightening world of the law and reliably on their side, one of them — it doesn't matter which one, it really doesn't — remembered Bradley, and they made the phone call, and met with him in his offices in a downtown skyscraper — high floor, tall windows, lovely view of La Liberty lifting her skirts above that awful sludge in the harbor — and once they got him to believe that yes, they had strong reason to believe they had created an invisible man, on whom a large tobacco company had some sort of nefarious designs, he looked somber, almost severe, and said, "Well, you two have been silly, haven't you?"
Peter, not used to this more responsible Bradley, said. "Is that a legal term, Bradley?"
"You don't want to know the legal term, Peter," Bradley said, and gazed levelly at him until Peter coughed and looked away and muttered, "I'm sorry. I'll be good."
"Better late than never," Bradley said. "Now tell me the rest."
So they told him everything, and he made many tiny notes on a long yellow legal pad, and said he'd see what he could do. Then, for a week, he couldn't do a thing; every time they called, Bradley had the same news: "He's ducking me. But he can't do it forever." Until, late yesterday, when they called him — he never called them, you notice — he said, "Tomorrow morning, you will threaten to go public."
"Oh, please," they cried. (They were on the speakerphone in their office at the time.) "Bradley, are you out of your mind? A premature disclosure of this experiment would make us laughingstocks, Bradley, it would ruin us in the field forever, we'd be lucky to get published in Omni!"
"I didn't say you were going public," he corrected them, infuriatingly calm.
"Well, it certainly sounded like it."
"I said you will, tomorrow morning, threaten to go public, to protect yourselves from unknown consequences of Mr. Leethe and his friends' activities. You will make this threat against my counsel and advice, I might add."
In their office, Peter and David smiled in relief at one another. They hadn't been wrong about Bradley, after all. Peter said, "Bradley, you are a slyboots."
"Well, we'll see," Bradley said, and now they had seen, and Bradley was a slyboots. Mordon Leethe had been flushed from his lair, was on his way here, would meet with them and with Bradley.
But first Bradley by himself. In he came with his expensive attachй case, briskly shook hands, and surveyed their parlor with a critical eye. "Haven't you anything less comfortable?"
David stared. "Less comfortable?"
Peter said, "This is where we talked with him last time."
"It's obviously too small for four," Bradley said, gazing around a room that could have — and often had — accommodated eight with no problem. "What else do you have?"
"Well," David said, dubiously, "there's the conference room downstairs."
"Oh? What's that like?"
"Very plain," David told him. "Comfortable chairs but, you know, officelike. TV and VCR and all that at one end, a long rectangular table."
"Fluorescents in the ceiling," Peter added. "Nothing on the walls. When we eventually do make a public announcement about our work here, that's where we'll hold the press conference."
"Sounds ideal," Bradley said. "Lead me to it."
So, having brought him upstairs, they now brought him downstairs again, where Shanana the receptionist read her correspondence-school lessons and watched the street outside and answered the occasional phone call. Peter said to her, "Shanana, when Mr. Leethe gets here, show him to the conference room, will you?"
She looked at him, alert and willing but uncertain. "The conference room? Where's that?"
"The coffee room," he explained, because the coffeemaker was kept in there.
"Oh." She looked just as alert and just as willing, but even more uncertain. "You're going to be in there?"
"Yes," he said firmly, and went after David and Bradley, who'd already gone on into the . . . conference . . . coffee . . . press-announcement room.
In there, Bradley was looking about in happy satisfaction. "This is perfect," he said, and plopped his attachй case onto the table down at the far end, opposite the entrance, with the TV and VCR and the pull-down slide-show screen all behind him. "You two both sit on my right here," he directed, "along this side. When Leethe arrives, he'll sit down there, with his back to the door. People always feel slightly uneasy with their backs to the door in an unknown room. Whether they're aware of the feeling or not, the unease is there."
"Bradley," David said, sitting nearest him, "you're brilliant."
It was clear that Bradley agreed with this assessment, but, "We'll see," he said, and opened his attachй case and brought out both his yellow legal pad and a manila folder. "Sit down, Peter," he said, since Peter was still standing, then Bradley sat down himself and said, "Before Leethe gets here, let's define exactly what it is you two want."
"We want our invisible man back," Peter said.
"Unharmed," David added.
"Without publicity," Peter said.
"You also, I take it," Bradley said, twiddling his Mont Blanc pen, "want to retain your relationship with NAABOR."
"I never thought we had a relationship with NAABOR," David said.
Peter said, "We're funded by the American Tobacco Research Institute."
"A golem belonging to NAABOR," Bradley pointed out, "as their own annual stockholder statements are proud to claim."
"We're not stockholders," David said.
"You aren't totally unworldly either," Bradley told him. "You know who's financing you, and why. And the point is, you don't want to put that relationship at risk by whatever happens in connection with this current matter."
"God, no," David said. "We don't want to lose our funding."
"What we want, in fact," Peter said, "is everything. We want our invisible man, and we want our funding, and we want our privacy maintained until we are ready to go public."
"The question is," Bradley said, "what in all that is negotiable, and to what extent—"
"None," Peter said, and Shanana entered, saying, "Mr. Leethe is here."
Bradley offered her a big moonlike smile, and probably raised those invisible eyebrows of his. Getting to his feet, motioning for Peter and David to rise as well, he said, "Thank you, dear. Show him in, please."