"So who are you?"
He hadn't prepared a detailed alter-ego, as he had with the neo-Nazis and the faith-healer, so he simply said:
"Swift. Jonathan."
She nodded, almost as though she knew.
"I'm Evelyn Quayle," she said. "Please call me Eve. Everyone does."
"Eve it is."
"What do people call you?"
"Swift," he said.
"Fine," she said. "Would you catch that waiter and get me a fresh glass of champagne? They move so damn fast."
It was not the last she drank. She knew a great deal about the company they were keeping, which she furnished in greater detail the more glasses of champagne and compliments Grillo provided, one of the latter quite genuine. He'd guessed Eve to be in her mid-fifties. In fact she admitted to seventy-one.
"You don't look anything like that."
"Control, my dear," she said. "I have every vice, but none to excess. Would you reach for another of those glasses before they slip by?"
She was the perfect gossip: beneficent in her bitchery. There was scarcely a man or woman in the room she couldn't supply some dirt about. The anorexic in scarlet, for instance, was the twin sister of Annie Kristol, darling of the celebrity game shows. She was wasting away at a rate that would prove fatal, Eve opined, within three months. By contrast, Merv Turner, one of the recently sacked board of Universal, had put on so much weight since exiting the Black Tower his wife refused to have sex with him. As for Liza Andreatta, poor child, she'd been hospitalized for three weeks after the birth of her second child having been persuaded by her therapist that in nature the mother always ate the placenta. She'd eaten her own and been so traumatized she'd almost orphaned her child before it had seen its mother's face.
"Madness," she said, smiling from ear to ear, "isn't it?"
Grillo had to agree.
"A wonderful madness," she went on. "I've been part of it all my life and it's as wild now as it ever was. I'm getting rather warm; shall we step outside for a while?"
"Sure."
She took Grillo's arm. "You listen well," she said as they stepped out into the garden. "Which is unusual in this kind of company."
"Really?" said Grillo.
"What are you: a writer?"
"Yes," he said, relieved not to have to lie to the woman. He liked her. "It's not much of a trade."
"None of us have much of a trade," she said. "Let's be honest. We're not finding a cure for cancer. We're indulging, sweetheart. Just indulging."
She drew Grillo across to the locomotive facade which stood out in the garden. "Will you look at this? So ugly, don't you think?"
"I don't know. They've got a certain appeal."
"My first husband collected American Abstract Expressionists. Pollock, Rothko. Chilly stuff. I divorced him."
"Because of the painting?"
"Because of the collecting, the relentless collecting. It's a sickness, Swift. I said to him towards the end—Ethan, I don't want to be just another of your possessions. They go or I go. He chose the stuff that didn't talk back at him. He was that kind of man. Cultured, but stupid."
Grillo smiled.
"You're laughing at me," she chided.
"Absolutely not. I'm enchanted."
She sparkled at the compliment. "You don't know anybody here, do you?" she remarked suddenly.
The observation left him flummoxed.
"You're a gatecrasher. I watched you when you first came in, eyeing the hostess in case she set eyes on you. I thought—at last!—someone who knows nobody and wants to, and me who knows everybody and wishes she didn't. A marriage made in heaven. What's your real name?"
"I told you—"
"Don't insult me," she said.
"My name's Grillo."
"Grillo."
"Nathan Grillo. But please...just Grillo. I'm a journalist."
"Oh how boring. I thought you were maybe an angel, come down to judge us. You know...like Sodom and Gomorrah. Christ knows, we deserve it."
"You don't like these people much," he said.
"Oh my dear I'd rather be here than Idaho, but only for the weather. The conversation's shit." She pressed close to him. "Don't look now but we've got company."
A short, balding and faintly familiar man was approaching.
"What's his name?" Grillo whispered.
"Paul Lamar. He was Buddy's partner."
"Comedian?"
"So his agent'd claim. Have you seen any of his films?"
"No."
"There's more laughs in Mein Kampf."
Grillo was still attempting to suppress his guffaws when Lamar presented himself to Eve.
"You look wonderful," he said. "As ever." He turned to Grillo. "And who's your friend?" he asked.
Eve glanced at Grillo with a tiny smile on her face. "My guilty secret," she said.
Lamar turned his spotlight smile on Grillo. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"Secrets shouldn't have names," Eve said. "It spoils their charm."
"I'm suitably slapped down," Lamar said. "Allow me to correct the error and give you a tour of the house."
"I don't think I can manage the stairs, sweetheart," Eve said.
"But this was Buddy's palace. He was very proud of it."
"Never proud enough to invite me," she returned.
"It was a retreat," Lamar said. "That's why he lavished so much attention on it. You should come and look, if only for him. Both of you."
"Why not?" said Grillo.
Evelyn sighed. "Such curiosity," she said. "Well...lead on."
Lamar did so, taking them back into the lounge, where the tempo of the gathering had subtly altered. With drinks imbibed and the buffet scavenged the guests were settling into a quieter mode, eased on by a small band offering languid versions of the standards. A few people were dancing. Conversation was no longer raucous, but subdued. Deals were being done; plots being laid.
Grillo found the atmosphere unnerving, and so, clearly, did Evelyn. She took his arm as they ran the gauntlet of whispers and followed Lamar out the other side to the stairs. The front door was closed. Two of the guards from the gate stood with their backs to it, hands fisted in front of their crotches. Despite the drifting melody of show-tunes all celebration had gone out of the place. What remained was paranoia.
Lamar was already a dozen steps up the flight.
"Come along, Evelyn..." he said, beckoning to her. "It's not steep."
"It is at my age."
"You don't look a day over—"
"Don't sweet-talk me," she said. "I'll come in my own good time."
With Grillo at her side she started to climb the stairs, her age evidencing itself for the first time. There were a few guests at the top of the flight, Grillo saw, empty glasses in hand. None of them were speaking, even in whispers. The suspicion grew on him that all was far from well here; an instinct confirmed when he glanced back down the stairs. Rochelle was standing at the bottom, looking up. She stared straight at him. He, certain he'd been recognized and was about to have his bluff called, stared back. But she said nothing. She looked at him until he looked away. When he glanced back down to the hallway she'd gone.
"There's something wrong here," he murmured in Eve's ear. "I don't think we should do this."
"Darling, I'm halfway up," she replied loudly, and tugged on his arm. "Don't desert me now."
Grillo glanced up at Lamar, to find the comedian's eyes were on him just as Rochelle's had been. They know, he thought. They know and they're saying nothing.
Again he tried to dissuade Eve. "Can't we go later?" he said.
She was not about to be turned. "I'm going with or without you," she said, and carried on climbing.
"This is the first landing," Lamar announced when they got there. Besides the curious, silent guests there was not much to see, given that Eve had already stated her aversion to Vance's art collection. She knew several of the loiterers by name, and said hello. They acknowledged her, but only distractedly. There was something about their languor that put Grillo in mind of addicts who'd just found a fix. Eve was not one to be so lightly treated.