The LeBaron Secret (41 page)

This, of course, is one of the annoying things about Joanna. She tends to take over and start controlling the conversation, which Sari herself should be doing. If Sari is not careful, she will have surrendered the hostesship of her dinner party to the tyranny of wit and beauty, but she is so busy trying to keep her eyes from traveling back to Mr. Littlefield's aroused state that she can think of nothing to say. Interrupting Joanna, she makes a statement that even embarrasses her with its banality. “Well, I hope everybody has a good appetite because we have quite a nice dinner planned,” she says. “Cookie has worked very long and hard …” And she finds herself blushing, thinking:
Very long and hard
.

There is a little laugh from Joanna, and Sari knows that Joanna has noticed the Littlefield situation, too—Joanna, who notices everything. Joanna winks at her, and then turning to the young man, says, “Are you from San Francisco, Mr. Littlefield?”

He stares at her dumbly, as though he has not understood the question. Then he repeats, “San Francisco?”

Melissa says, “Maurice, I think—”

Joanna laughs brightly again. “Melissa, dear,” she says without a trace of sarcasm, “where do you find such
interesting
young men?”

“Maurice is—” Melissa begins, but she is interrupted by Thomas, who has stepped into the room to say, “Dinner is served, Madam.”

Thank goodness, Sari thinks, as the group makes its way through the portrait gallery toward the dining room, with Thomas propelling her chair. At least Mr. Littlefield's peculiar problem will soon be concealed under the folds of the table linen.

The dinner begins smoothly enough. Sari has memorized her seating chart, and directs each guest to his place, and Thomas has stationed himself just slightly behind the hostess's chair, where, in his role as her majordomo, he will supervise the service. Mr. Little-field has picked up one of the white napkins and is scrutinizing, farsightedly, the heavy gold embroidery. “What's this?” he says.

“It's your napkin, Maurice,” Melissa says a little sharply.

“No, I mean what's
this?
It says
Alleb
on it. What's that mean,
Alleb?
”

“That's my monogram,” Sari says. “
A-L-Le-B
.”

“A cucumber velouté,” Thomas says, as the soup course arrives.

While the soup is being served, Sari notices that Mr. Littlefield has managed, with difficulty, to light another cigarette, and she also sees that he has lighted the end with the filter tip. She whispers to Thomas, “An ashtray for Mr. Littlefield, please.”

Beside her, on her left, Harry Tillinghast is saying in a low voice so that the others cannot hear, “You made a very serious mistake, Sari, when you fired Eric the way you did. I've always admired you as a businesswoman, but that was a mistake.”

“Well, what would you have done, Harry, if your marketing director had decided to organize a palace revolution against you? Pin a medal on him?”

“In my opinion, that was a mistake in judgment, Sari, and counterproductive.”

“Well, it was my decision to make. Besides, we're not going to talk about—”

“Did you drop your napkin or something, Allie?” she hears Peeper say to Alix, who is seated on his left, and she looks down the table in time to see Alix's hand quickly withdraw from where it must have been touching Peeper's knee. Oh, dear, she thinks, what can be done to divert this evening from what suddenly threatens to become a disaster? She takes her first spoonful of soup, and the others follow her lead, except for Mr. Littlefield, who is still smoking his cigarette with the wrong end lighted. This creates an acrid smell, like burning rubber, that mingles unhappily with the gardenia perfume from the scented candles. “A toast,” she says, a little desperately. “To all of us! To long life, peace, and happiness!” And lifts her glass.

“Is this Baronet wine?” Mr. Littlefield asks, and the room falls silent. It is a question that, somehow, has never been asked at Assaria LeBaron's table. “Well, is it?” he asks again.

“No, actually it is a Monbousquet, nineteen seventy-nine,” Sari says at last. “French. Our wines are inexpensive jug wines.
Vins ordinaires
.”

“But of course they wouldn't always have to be,” Harry says. “Baronet possesses the vines, and the capacity, to produce truly noble wines. Under a different label, of course. Have you ever thought of that, Sari?”

“Yes, thought of it and immediately dismissed it. I know my market, Harry.”

“But there's a whole new upscale market that could be tapped. Young urban professionals—”

“I know all about yuppies,” she says. “But I also know my market. What do you know about wines, Harry?”

“Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. I've had my office do a study on it. Demographic profiles—”

“Yes. Studies. Demographic profiles. But I've learned this business from the ground up, as Joanna says. I've fought off the larks—”

“Larks haven't been a problem for years, Sari. Pesticides took care of them.”

“Yes, and do you know I miss them? They were beautiful birds with a beautiful song. Beautiful, voracious birds.”

Turning to Mr. Littlefield, on her right, Mildred Tillinghast says, “I hope you'll forgive all this talk about the family business, Mr. Littlefield.”

Sari cannot let this comment pass. “It's not
your
family business, Mildred,” she says sharply. “At least not yet!”

“But, Sari, Harry and I own stock!”

Down, down, she can feel her evening descending, ineluctably, into the widening whirlpool of discord she had so hoped to avoid, and the downward descent seems to be gathering a momentum that she can no longer control.

Turning back to Mr. Littlefield, Mildred says, “What business are you in, Mr. Littlefield?”

“Business?”

“Yes. What do you do?”

“I'm a rock star.”

“A rock star. How very—”

“Oh, my God!” Sari cries, because she has just realized who Mr. Maurice Littlefield is. “You're the one who killed the snake!”

“
Bugger bit me!
”

Once more, the table falls silent.

“Tell me,” Sari says, trying, if it is still humanly possible, to rescue the evening, “how did you and Melissa meet?”

“We didn't meet, exactly,” he says. And then, his face still hotly flushed and his eyes wide, still not having picked up his soup spoon, he begins, “Listen, let me tell you a story, lady, a story about that snake that will knock you off your feet!” The silence at the table becomes one of shock at the enormity of this gaffe. But, unaware that he has committed one, he repeats it, and in a much louder voice. “I mean, this will really knock you off your feet!”

“
Maurice
,” Melissa says in a low, warning voice from across the table.

“Wait! Let me tell it. The snake's name was Sylvia. I mean that was its name, Sylvia, and there was this girl in the group named Marty, in I think Omaha, and this Marty she really loved that snake. She used to tie it around her, she used to wrap it around her, you know, her neck, and she used to even stick it down under her dress to make it look like, you know, she had these big tits, and she'd play with that snake—crazy, man!—like she really loved it, and it was like that Sylvia really loved this Marty, and she'd wrap herself around this Marty like she really loved this Marty, and Sylvia never done nothing to hurt this Marty, see? So in I think Omaha we had this gig, and this Marty was out on the stage with Sylvia and I—Sylvia, who was this snake—and Marty was wrappin' the snake around her, stuffin' it inside her dress to make it look like these big tits, you know? You know? You know? And—
whee!
” He is shouting now, and he flings his head back, and the cords of his thin neck stand out. “Whee! There goes my head! Hold me down, Major! Hold me down, Captain Marvel, 'cause I'm up on the ceiling, I'm up in the stars, I'm out in space, man! Whee! I'm climbin', man, climbin' to the fuckin' stars, man!
Ace me out!
Ace me out of a fuckin' sp-i-i-i-n! Sing to me, sugar! Sing to me, Lucius! Dance on the head of my dick, Lucius! W-o-o-o-o-o-o! This is Star Wars, baby, and here comes Darth—”

“
Maurice!
”

“W-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo! I'm trippin', man!” And all at once his head topples forward, his whole body sags, and his head falls into his soup bowl, sideways, with a soft splash.

“My dress!” Mildred Tillinghast cries, half rising and gathering the folds of her Galanos skirt about her knees.

“My Spode!” says Sari. And yet, miraculously, the soup bowl from her treasured set of porcelain, so thin that through it you could see the outline of a bird's foot, remains unbroken from the apparently inconsequential weight of Maurice Littlefield's head. Meanwhile, all the men at the table are on their feet to assist the young man out of his velouté.

Melissa has also risen. “I'll handle this,” she says in a taut voice. “Stand up, Maurice!” she commands. “
Stand up!
I'm taking you downstairs.” She pulls him slowly to his feet, and soup dribbles from his face down across his shirt and jacket and necktie while Sari and Thomas exchange looks of mutual consternation.

“I'll be right back,” Melissa says, and there is silence from the rest of the table as, with one hand firmly grasping the young man's elbow, she steers him on an unsteady course out of the dining room.

“Well!” Sari says at last. And then, determined not to lose control of the gathering, she says to Thomas, “Just remove his place setting, Thomas. Mildred, you and Harry can move a little closer together. I know it means husband next to wife, but the circumstances are a bit—unusual, I guess you'd all agree. Mildred, is your dress all right?”

“Yes—I think so. Was it something I said, Sari, that made him do that?”

“I doubt it,” Sari says. And then, “Tell me—I want to know what each of you thinks—is Claus von Bulow guilty? I think he's innocent—either innocent or stupid to have kept the hypodermic needle. Peeper, what do you think?”

“I think …” And for the next few moments, everything is a forced babble of chatter, as everyone tries to put behind him or her the Littlefield episode.

“I'm prepared to sweeten my offer, Sari,” she hears Harry Tillinghast, on her left, say to her. “Thirteen point two five shares per.”

“I thought it was thirteen a little while ago.”

“I'm sweetening the sweetener, Sari.”

“It's still chickenfeed. My company's shares are worth a damn sight more than thirteen point two five of yours.”

“
Your
company, Mother?” Eric says.

“We're not here to talk business! This is not a business dinner. How often must I remind you?”

Now Melissa has returned to the dining room, and takes her seat at the table again. “I'm terribly sorry,” she says. “It's entirely my fault. I was trying something, an experiment, and it didn't work. It's really a tragic story. It has all the classic ingredients. Born and raised in some dreadful little East Texas town—an alcoholic mother, and a father who was a wife beater and a child abuser. Ran away from home when he was ten. Got into drugs. But underneath all the sordidness, there is this really remarkable natural musical talent. That's what I hope to rescue somehow. But the problem is shyness—a terrible shyness. It affects him in front of audiences. So he'll take an upper to feel better, and then a downer to bring him down from the high, and then he'll snort a line of cocaine to bring him up again, or sniff some amyl nitrate. I'm trying to rehabilitate him, that's all, because of the very real talent that's there—trying to let that talent come out. I thought, perhaps, if he could join a normal family for a nice, normal little dinner party—”

A normal family
, Sari thinks.

As though reading her thoughts, Melissa adds, “A supposedly normal family, anyway. But obviously he wasn't ready for it. I even dug out an old suit of Daddy's for him to wear, so he'd look at least halfway decent. But he wasn't ready. He just wasn't up to it. Anyway,” she says, looking around the table for reassurance, “he's my little project right now—to try to rehabilitate him, to try to get him to stay off the drugs. And it's only because of the—I assure you—really extraordinary natural musical talent that he has, talent that it would be such a shame to see wasted. I'm going to keep trying. I'm not going to give up yet. But tonight was a mistake, and I apologize.”

From the others at the table, she sees only looks that express varying degrees of skepticism.

“The child has been hurt, damaged, all his life,” she says. “I can't help it, but my heart always goes out to the damaged children of this world!” There is silence as each person at the table thinks, in his or her own way, of Melissa's troubled childhood. “They need so much, and receive so little,” she says. “All they ask for is a little love, and faith, and kindness, and reassurance and understanding. Anyway, that's all I'm trying to provide for this poor, lost little boy.” Then, almost defiantly, she adds, “And I don't care what any of you think!”

Finally, Joanna says, “Melissa and her little projects. You've always had them, haven't you, dear? Well, I for one think it's very Christian of you. I say bravo, Melissa.”

“Anyway,” Sari says with unnecessary enthusiasm to fill the silence that follows, “let's not let any of this spoil our dinner.”

“Turbans of sole, with a crab stuffing,” says Thomas quietly, announcing the next course.

By the time the dacquoise has been served, it is almost possible for Sari to believe that the peaceful, pleasant gathering she had imagined is actually occurring. But then it is Harry Tillinghast—Harry, who will not let go of a subject until he has wrestled it to the floor—who feels he must go back to his favorite topic. Remarking on the sweetness of the buttercream filling in the dessert, he finds an occasion to make a bad pun about the sweetness of his stock offer. “We all know how Sari feels about it,” he says, “but what about the rest of you?”