Carefully, so as not to muss their outfits, they climbed into her Toyota Solara convertible, it's top raised against the evening chill (his car was a VW Passat wagon, although both vehicles were titled jointly) — and got no farther than halfway to Loblolly Court before they had to park it and walk the remaining distance anyhow, such was the crowd of earlier-arrived sedans, vans, and SUVs lining the road, their owners either already at the party or, like the Feltons, strolling their costumed way toward #12.
"Would you look at that?" Dick said when they turned into the tree-lined keyhole drive at the head whereof shone the Hardisons' mega-McMansion: not a neo-Georgian or plantation-style manor like it's similarly new and upscale neighbors, but a great rambling beige stucco affair — terra-cotta-tiled roof, great arched windows flanked by spiraled pilasters — resplendent with lights inside and out, including floodlit trees and shrubbery, it's palazzo design more suited in the Feltons' opinion to Venice or booming south Florida than to Maryland's Eastern Shore. "How'd it get past Heron Bay's house-plan police?" Meaning the Community Association's Design Review Board, whose okay was required on all building and landscaping proposals. Susan's guess was that Tidewater Communities, Inc., the developer of Heron Bay Estates and other projects on both shores of the Chesapeake, might have jiggered it through in hopes of attracting more million-dollar-house builders to HBE's several high-end detached-home neighborhoods, like Spartina Pointe. She too thought the thing conspicuously out of place in Rockfish Reach, but "You know what they say," she declared: "De gustibus non est disputandum" — her chosen party password, which she was pleased to have remembered from prep school days. "Is that the Gibsons ahead of us?"
It was, Dick could affirm when the couple — she bed-sheet-toga'd like Susan, but less appealingly, given her considerable heft; he wearing what looked like a white hospital gown set off by some sort of gladiator thing around his waist and hips — passed under a pair of tall floodlit pines flanking the entrance walkway: Hank and Becky Gibson, Oyster Covers like Sam Bailey, whom the Feltons knew only casually from the Club, Hank being the golfer and Becky the tennis player in their household.
"Et tu, Brute!" Sue called out (she really had been doing her homework; that "Bru-tay" phrase sounded familiar, but Dick couldn't place it). The Gibsons turned, laughed, waved, and waited; the foursome then joked and teased their way up the stone walk beside the "Eurocobble" driveway to #12's massive, porte-cochèred main entrance: a two-tiered platform with three wide, curved concrete steps up to the first marble-tiled landing, and another three to the second, where one of the tall, glass-paned, dark-wood-paneled double doors stood open and a slender, trim-toga'd woman, presumably their hostess, was greeting and admitting several other arrivals.
"A miniskirted toga?" Hank Gibson wondered aloud, for while the costume's thin white top had a fold-and-wrap toga look to it, below the elaborately figured multipaneled belt were a short white pleated skirt and sandal lacings entwined fetchingly almost to her knees. "Amo amas amat!" he then called ahead. The couple just entering turned and laughed, as did the hostess. Then Sam Bailey — whom the Feltons now saw stationed just inside the door, in a white terry-cloth robe of the sort provided in better-grade hotel rooms, belted with what appeared to be an army-surplus cartridge belt and topped with a defoliated wreath that looked a bit like Jesus' crown of thorns — called back, "Amamus amatis amant!" and gestured them to enter.
Their sleek-featured hostess — more Cleopatran even than Sue, with her short, straight, glossy dark hair encircled by a black metal serpent-band, it's asplike head rising from her brow as if to strike — turned her gleaming smile to them and extended her hand, first to Susan. "Hi! I'm Patsy Hardison. And you are?"
"Sue and Dick Felton," Sue responded, "from around the bend at Ten-Twenty Shoreside? What a beautiful approach to your house!"
"And a house to match it," Dick added, taking her hand in turn.
"I love your costumes!" their hostess exclaimed politely. "So imaginative! I know we've seen each other at the Club, but Tom and I are still sorting out names and faces and addresses, so please bear with us." As other arrivals were gathering behind them, she explained to all hands that after calling out their passwords to Sam Bailey, whom she and Tom had appointed to be their Centurion at the Gate, they would find nametags on a table in the foyer, just beyond which her husband would show them the way to the refreshments. "Passwords, please? Loud and clear for all to hear!"
"De gustibus non est disputandum!" Sue duly proclaimed, hoping her hosts wouldn't take that proverb as any sort of criticism. Dick followed with "Ad infinitum!" — adding, in a lower voice to Sam, who waved them in, "or ad nauseam, whatever. Cool outfit there, Sam."
"The Decline and Fall of the You Know What," their friend explained, and kissed Sue's cheeks. "Aren't you the femme fatale tonight, excuse my French. Ethel would've loved that getup."
"I can't believe she's not in the next room!" Sue said, hugging him. "Sipping champagne and nibbling hors d'oeuvres!"
"Same here," the old fellow admitted, his voice weakening, until he turned his head aside, stroked his thin white beard, and cleared his throat. "But she couldn't make it tonight, alas. So carpe diem, guys."
Although they weren't certain of the Latin, it's general sense was clear enough. They patted his shoulder, moved on to the nametag table on one side of the marble-floored, high-ceilinged entry hall, found and applied their elegantly lettered and alphabetically ordered stick-on labels, and were greeted at the main living room step-down by their host, a buff and hearty-looking chap in his late fifties or early sixties wearing a red-maned silver helmet, a Caesars Palace T-shirt from Las Vegas, a metallic gladiator skirt over knee-length white Bermuda shorts, and leather sandals even higher-laced than his wife's on his dark-haired, well-muscled legs. With an exaggeratedly elaborate kiss of Susan's hand and a vise-hard squeeze of Dick's, "Dick and Susan Felton!" he announced to the room beyond and below, having scanned their name stickers. "Welcome to our humble abode!"
"Some humble," Dick said, his tone clearly Impressed, and Sue added, "It's magnificent!"
As indeed it was: the enormous, lofty-ceilinged living room (What must it cost to heat that space in the winter months? Dick wondered), it's great sliding glass doors open to a large, roofed and screened terrace ("Lanai," Susan would later correct him), beyond which a yet larger pool/patio area extended, tastefully landscaped and floodlit, toward the tidal covelet where the Hardisons' trawler yacht was docked. A suitably toga'd pianist tinkled away at the grand piano in one corner of the multi-couched and — cocktail-tabled room; out on the lanai a laureled bartender filled glasses while a minitoga'd, similarly wreathed young woman moved among the guests with platters of hors d'oeuvres.
"Great neighborhood, too," Dick added, drawing Sue down the step so that their host could greet the next arrivals. "We know you'll like living here."
With a measured affability, "Oh, well," Tom Hardison responded. "Pat and I don't actually live here, but we do enjoy cruising over from Annapolis on weekends and holidays. Y'all go grab yourselves a drink now, and we'll chat some more later, before the fun starts, okay?"