"Coffee?” asked John, being helpful.
"Wrong,” said Rudy, “petroleum. Now: Would anyone care to guess the world's second-most-traded commodity?"
"Coffee?” asked John.
"Excellent guess,” said Rudy. “Somebody give that man a coconut. Last year, eleven billion pounds were traded at the wholesale level alone."
For all his waspishness, Rudy was amusing in a dry, puckery kind of way. With his balding dome, his pruney, disapproving mouth, and his baggy-eyed sad sack of a face, his sharp, funny thrusts rarely failed to surprise.
"I take it,” Nick said, on the dry side himself for the moment, “that you're suggesting that we don't accept their offer?"
Rudy nodded. “As before, padrone."
The others started talking again. Nick held up his hand. “Let's save some time. Maggie, Nelson-you think it's time to sell."
More nods. “A training center would be a fantastic legacy, Poppa,” said Maggie, her eyes shining. “A way to pay back all we've plundered from the island."
"Right, plundered. And Celine? You'd still like to sell the farm, of course?"
"You bet, Nicky! Buy a nice villa in Antibes, get out of this dump."
"So everyone feels the same as they did before,” Nick said reflectively. “The only thing that's changed is the money.” He turned to his right. His voice, his entire manner, became gentler. “Therese, do you want to say anything, honey?"
Therese looked startled. She too hadn't said much until now, and what little she'd said had left Gideon with the impression that she was very sweet, very solicitous of others- of John, of her parents, of her children-and not very bright. Not very self-assured either. Most of her remarks faded away in mid-sentence, in a soft, not unattractive flurry of confusion and discomposure: oh gosh, she seemed to be saying, there I've gone and put my foot in my mouth again, haven't I?
That said, she was certainly a knockout, with clear, fresh skin somewhere between copper and bronze, features that combined the best of her Chinese and American heritage, and as classically beautiful, heart-shaped, and perfectly symmetrical a face as Gideon had ever seen.
"What a skull she must have under there,” Gideon had said to John in quiet admiration shortly after they arrived.
"You be sure and tell her that, Doc,” John had said. “I mean, what female wouldn't love to hear that? No wonder you swept Julie off her feet."
Therese's reply to Nick's question was, as usual, self-effacing. As far as she was concerned, she would be happy with whatever he decided-but in her heart of hearts she hoped they wouldn't sell, that was all.
Nick prompted her to continue.
Therese chewed her lip and went hesitantly forward. Since she had been a little girl, not a day had passed, not a single meal, when coffee hadn't been discussed, and pondered over, and argued about. For as long as she could remember, the growing of coffee had been the focal point of the family. More than that, much more, it was the coffee farm into which Brian had poured so much of his energy and thought and devotion. He had left his stamp on it, and to her-she knew how silly this sounded-it was a kind of monument to him. The idea of abandoning coffee simply because someone offered them money-did they really need more money?-of letting all that work and achievement be bulldozed away for just another tourist hotel…
As usual, she trailed off into mumbled fragments. “I'm sorry…I just…I can't really…you know…” She hunched her shoulders and looked down at her hands.
Treacly as it was, Therese delivered it with such patient, awkward sincerity that Gideon found himself moved. Nick was moved too. Moist-eyed, he put his hand over his daughter's.
Nelson, who was not moved, rapped peevishly on the table. “Pardon me, but may I suggest that this has nothing whatever to do with Brian, for God's sake? We grow beans here, not holy relics, and the reason we grow them is so people can make something called coffee out of them. And what is coffee? Coffee is no more than a mixture of burnt hydrocarbons, alkaloids, and mineral salts suspended in an aqueous solution…"
That was one way to look at it, Gideon thought.
Next to him, Rudy raised his glass of Medoc in a salute to Nelson. “Here's to a true romantic,” he said.
Nelson glared briefly at him. “My point is-"
"Enough,” Nick said, his hand still on Therese's. “Tell Superstar we're still not interested. We're doing fine right here."
Therese, still looking down, said something so softly that Gideon couldn't hear it but read it on her lips. “Thank you, Poppa."
"Anybody have any more comments they just have to make?” Nick asked.
They knew better than to bother. Nelson sulked. Maggie pouted. The others went back to eating.
"That's that, then,” Nick said, his spirits visibly lifting. “Dessert time."
He turned in his chair to call over his shoulder.
"Hey, Poema…you suppose we could get a cup of coffee around here?"
Chapter 19
"You have reached Julie and Gideon Oliver,” Gideon was informed by his own voice, sounding very much like a robot, and a pretty listless robot at that. “We aren't available to take your call, but if you'll leave a message at the tone we'll get back to you."
This was disconcerting. Why wasn't Julie home? It was after 10:00 in Tahiti-past midnight in Port Angeles-and she hadn't said anything about going anywhere for the night. He chewed his lip for a few moments before it occurred to him to press the pound button to see if she had left him a message. When he did he was immediately relieved to hear her voice.
"Hi, love,” she said, sounding very much like Julie; bright, and sparkling, and pretty. “I hope you remember to listen for this message, because it's the sort of thing you always forget you can do, and if you call me and I'm not home and you don't know where I am you'll worry, right? But then if you did forget, then you're not listening now anyway, and you can't hear this, and if you didn't forget, then obviously you are listening, so what's the point of my babbling on about it?'
Gideon smiled as she caught her breath.
"Anyway, since you weren't going to be home for a while, I thought I might as well get out in the field for a couple of days and join the winter elk count in the Hoh quadrant; it's better than sitting behind a desk at the admin center, although you probably don't think so."
She was right about that. Two days of moldering in the rainiest river valley in the United States during the wettest, coldest, gloomiest month of the year, never getting quite dry, never getting quite warm, was not his idea of a good time. He liked the Northwestern winters all right, but he preferred to look out at them through a double-paned window with a log fire crackling in the fireplace behind him. And he preferred dry beds to wet sleeping bags. For an anthropologist, as she sometimes reminded him and as he readily admitted, he had an unseemly fondness for the soft life.
"So that's where I am,” she went on. “I hope everything's all right in Tahiti and I hope your corpse isn't too terribly messy. I'll talk to you when I get back. Hi to John. Tell him I'm meeting Marti for lunch on Wednesday. And that's about it. I miss you, Gideon. I wish you were already back.” She paused. Her voice softened and dropped a notch. “I do love you."
"I love you too,” he said to the recording, then left a message on the machine to that effect.
He leaned back, warmed by the call but feeling oddly vexed too. It didn't take him long to figure out why: he was always a little grumpy when Julie was away from home. The fact that he wasn't there either had nothing to do with the matter. When somebody traveled, he liked it to be him. Julie he preferred safe at home where she belonged-not that he would ever admit it to her. It was an attitude he didn't seem to have much control over, probably a genetic residue dating back to Australopithecus afarensis and before: man come back to cave from hunt, man want find woman waiting, cooking, loving…not out chasing stupid elk.