He was accepted more readily by the adults, but naturally enough it was John who got most of the attention. Therese, every bit as meltingly lovely as John had told him she was, hugged him for a long time, bowing her slender neck to press her face sweetly into his shoulder before she let him go. John, embarrassed but pleased, clumsily stroked her hair and murmured a few words. But the brotherly embrace with Nelson, Gideon couldn't help noticing, was less spontaneous, a mere momentary resting of the fingertips on each other's upper arms, with a good foot and a half of open space between the two men.
Their greeting was equally restrained:
"John,” Nelson said, his cool tone rising slightly.
"Nelson,” John replied in kind.
When everyone was seated again, with Gideon tucked between Celine and Rudy, there were a lot of questions for John-about his job, about Marti, about when they were going to start having a few little Laus-and from there the conversation turned to general family reminiscences and eventually to stories about Brian. It had been a week now since the news of his death, and enough alcohol had been consumed so far tonight to make the atmosphere more jolly than mournful, more like a wake than a funeral.
Nick, dressed in the work-stained shorts he had been wearing that afternoon, plus a striped tank top and a faded, curly-brimmed Boston Red Sox baseball cap, basked in his dual role of paterfamilias and number-one storyteller. Gideon, with little to contribute, sat back and sipped his Scotch-and-soda, put the reason that he was in Tahiti more or less out of his mind, and gave himself over to enjoying the anecdotes, the shared affection that flowed around him, and the people themselves. Interesting people, wonderfully different from the quiet, undemonstrative uncles and aunts that had made the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners of his childhood such excruciating ordeals to a boy of eleven or twelve; he could still remember entire meals, or so it seemed to him now, when the only sounds from a dozen diners had been the steady, private clicking of forks and scraping of knives on the plates.
Not so the Druetts and the Laus, who were animated and spontaneous enough for three families. True, they had their idiosyncrasies-maybe Nelson was a little too self-important, and Maggie was a little too brusque, and Rudy a little too vinegarish, and Celine a little too self-absorbed…but they were a lively, entertaining bunch-and they all seemed genuinely fond of John (even Nelson, in his own superior way) and for that alone he liked them.
This relaxed and pleasant interlude went on until a private dispute between Maggie and Nelson grew too loud to be ignored. They were arguing about Tari Terui, and Maggie was flushed with anger.
"If you're saying that Tari is-embezzling, or-or-"
"Oh, spare me,” Nelson said. “I'm not accusing him of being a crook, for God's sake-"
"So what are you accusing him of?"
"Of screwing up, if you'll pardon the expression. The man is simply-and I've said this from the beginning, I don't think anyone can deny that-the man is simply not capable of handling figures. In the few weeks that he's had access to them, our books have become an incomprehensible mess. He finds something that doesn't make sense to him in accounts payable, and rather than come and ask someone in a position to know, he ‘corrects’ the entry, so that naturally it is no longer consistent with either the purchase order or the invoice-"
"You've never given him a fair chance, you've-"
"May I say something?” Rudy interrupted. “Unprecedented though it may be, Nelson is actually making a cogent point. I've been concerned with Tari's-shall we say, whimsical- approach to the finances myself."
"Then why aren't you helping him instead of telling us? You're supposed to be coaching him, not criticizing him behind his back."
"I've been trying, Maggie,” Rudy said, “but getting the man to understand is an ordeal approximately on par with a double root canal. No, worse. It's like having to sit through an entire performance of Cats."
"I'm not saying it's his fault,” Nelson cut in. “It's a well-known fact that the Tahitian numerical system lacks-"
"Oh, balls,” Maggie said disgustedly.
"People,” Nick admonished quietly. “We have company."
But Nelson was just warming up. “Let me give you just one example-our account with Java Green Mountain. We owe them for four thousand pounds of beans, duly purchased at $12.45 a pound and due at the end of the month. That's $49,800."
"Nelson…” Nick said a little less patiently.
"Only our friend Mr. Terui took it upon himself to ‘correct’ it for us. I suppose you could say he made only one teeny mistake, shifting the decimal point one little place to the left. But what would the result have been if I hadn't caught it? We would have sent Green Mountain a check for $4,980 and not the $49,800 we owe them."
Nick burst out laughing. “Hey, I like the guy's approach. Maybe we should put him in charge of the books."
Predictably, this failed to amuse either Nelson or Maggie.
"You don't want him to succeed,” Maggie said hotly. “Neither of you, not really. You just-"
Fortunately, one of the workers yelled “Chowtime!” from the cooking area at this point, whereupon everybody headed for the buffet table, most of them making a detour at the bar first. Gideon refreshed his Scotch, then helped himself to rice, string beans, and grilled mahimahi, surprising and perhaps offending the server by declining her offer to dress the fish with coconut milk hand-wrung from a clump of pulverized coconut wrapped in cheesecloth. Coconut milk was the one staple of the sweet, pleasantly bland Polynesian diet that Gideon could do entirely without. No doubt it would look pretty good if you were perishing of thirst on a desert island, but it was hardly something you'd use to spoil a two-inch-thick chunk of nicely seared mahimahi.
"Hey, Gideon,” Celine said as she resettled herself beside him with her plate, “why you think my hair's so thin?"
"Oh, it's not really that-"
"Sure, it is. You a scientist. Guess."
"Well, it's hard to say. In a lot of people-"
"Tennis."
Gideon studied his Scotch, “Tennis,” he said.
"That's right, tennis. Used to play all the time. Douglas Fairbanks teach me. Junior, not father. You looking at the number-one player, Papeete Racquet Club, 1948, ‘50, ‘51."
"But how,” Gideon asked, intrigued now, “did tennis affect your hair?"
Celine laughed. She had tiny, rounded teeth, like little pearls. “Not tennis, God love you. Too many showers with lousy shampoo.” She shook her head ruefully. “Didn't have no Vidal Sassoon back then. Oh-oh, they at it again."
This last was a reference to Maggie and Nelson, whose arena had now shifted to the French plans to renew nuclear testing, suspended since 1992, at Mururoa atoll, southwest of Tahiti. Nelson was all for them because of the economic benefits that a renewal of testing would bring.
"And what about the radiation?” Maggie wanted to know, having more than recovered her composure since the earlier dispute.
"Poppycock,” said Nelson. “Do you seriously think, for one moment, that the French government would put our lives at risk? Don't be ridiculous."
Maggie looked pityingly at him. “Unbelievable,” she said through a mouthful of prawn.
Nelson waggled a finger at her. “Can you point, in all honesty, to a single verified illness from all the previous tests?” Nelson demanded. “Has a radioactive cloud ever once passed over Tahiti? Has it? Has it?"
Aside from a faint similarity in the set of their lips, Nelson was about as different from John as one brother could be from another. Where John was big and beefy, Nelson was compact, with small, feminine hands and feet; where John seemed to take up more space than his size strictly demanded, Nelson seemed to fill less; where John was generally easygoing but easy to ignite, Nelson seemed to operate at a constant, irritable simmer. And altogether unlike John, he appeared to be totally devoid of humor.