The Gilded Life Of Matilda Duplaine. Alex Brunkhorst

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СКАЧАТЬ husband, because I do. Ridiculously so.” Emma blew George an air-kiss as she sat down at the head of the table.

      Emma sat to my left, Carole my right. While the first course was served, my presence was still new and exciting. Lily and Emma shelled me with rapid-fire questions—“Do tell. What was it like to grow up in a town like Milwaukee?”—and Charles and George interjected here and there. They dropped plenty of names—movie stars, studio heads, political figures. Just hearing those names gave me a rush. I felt as if I was a part of it. Had I chosen to whip out my notebook or betray confidences, I would have had enough fodder for ten juicy stories. Instead I kept quiet, hoping an off-the-record meal would create more on-the-record content later.

      The novelty of a stranger at the table had grown thin by the time we reached the entrée, and as I ate my Alaskan salmon theatrically drizzled with an exotic sauce and accompanied by a vegetable I didn’t recognize, I was generally ignored.

      I didn’t mind being left out—situations like this were exactly why I had become a reporter in the first place. Although I could’ve chosen more lucrative occupations to be sure, my fascination with people had led me to the world of journalism. It was my job to observe behavior and collect information. For example, over the span of entrée to dessert wine, I noticed that Emma picked up a call from someone she later called her “stylist” and I saw George shoot his wife a “Don’t be rude” look when she did so. It was obvious that Lily didn’t care for Emma’s choice of heavy goblets by the way she lifted her glass a quarter inch off the table and then immediately put it back down, as if the sip of wine wasn’t worth the exertion. Charles and George seemed to be best friends—this was clear by the way they knew the minutiae of each other’s lives. Charles, for example, asked about the weekly Billboard numbers for one of George’s albums, and George in turn expressed concern for Charles’s pet pigeon that had mysteriously disappeared three mornings earlier.

      Despite the odd pigeon comment, if I were to home in on the two most interesting characters at the table it would have been Carole and David. I say this because introverted people intrigue me. I always think they have something to hide or, at the very least, want people to believe they do. It was too early for me to say if this was the case here, but there was something about these two that made me want to know more.

      I watched each of them closely, searching for clues. In the span of an entire dinner there was only one: just after our main course, David’s cell phone vibrated, indicating a text message. He pulled out his phone and glanced at it. Carole watched discreetly, and then she made eye contact with him.

      “Is everything okay?” Carole asked, voice low but concerned.

      “Work thing,” David responded. “Never sleeps.”

      “How was your dinner, Thomas?” Charles asked, changing the subject.

      “Delicious. You’re a wonderful cook, Emma.”

      “I can’t take credit for it. But I can take credit for hiring the chef. Cordon Bleu, Paris. I went there personally and dipped my spoon into all of their kettles. I liked Francois’s the best.”

      Charles raised his glass in toast and everyone went back to their side conversations. The dessert wine went on for another half hour or so, and I found myself staring through a large picture window at a majestic date palm covered in blue lights. That tree had to be a hundred years old. I looked at the lights intently until they blurred together into a filmy blue that saturated the air. To my right, I noticed Carole gazed at the same blue air. She seemed lost in it. When she finally tore her eyes away, she stood up from the table. She took her drink with her and never returned to the room.

      * * *

      Twenty minutes later the group congregated for a postdinner brandy in what Emma called “the card room.” I had never been to a house with a room dedicated to cards before, but it made sense since Emma had specifically said that she loved “anything old-fashioned,” and cards would have certainly fallen into that category.

      The glass room was lined in lattice more suitable for the outdoors than an interior space, and its plants had been allowed to run wild. Two oversize square tables were illuminated by massive pagoda-shaped chandeliers, their crystals generously casting off light.

      Admittedly, I had never been a card guy—in fact, I didn’t even know how to play simple games like bridge or poker—so I excused myself to make a phone call, but instead slipped outside to have a stealth cigarette, a habit I had picked up a few years earlier and never quit. I settled into a lounge chair next to a grass-bordered body of water that resembled a swamp. Its water was green and murky and my eye caught an occasional minnow swimming beneath its lily pads. Were it not for the diving board at the northwest end, I wouldn’t have even known it was a swimmable pool.

      I lit a match and put it to the tip of my cigarette. What a night it had been. I was here in Bel-Air with some of the most important people in a city full of important people. I was so high I never wanted to come down. I knew Lily’s motive for the invitation, and it had nothing to do with feeding a sweet Midwestern kid a home-cooked meal. Over crème brûlée, Lily had insisted everyone at the table give me quotes about her father. She was no fool, and she knew that favorable quotes from some of the most important people in the industry carried heavy weight.

      But then I reflected on a scene from that afternoon—of Lily’s fingers on my neck. I wondered if there had been some other reason for Lily’s invitation.

      I took a puff of my cigarette. I watched its golden tip light the clear, starry Bel-Air sky. We were in the middle of the city, but the quiet sky belonged in a countryside somewhere. It made me feel vaguely existential, as if above and beyond us there was nothing—nothing to hope for, no afterlife, nothing to make us choose one course of action over another.

      The leopard cat jumped onto my lap and snapped me out of my reverie. Just then I heard a slight rustle from a dark spot in the corner of the property.

      I saw a single shadow, but then it divided in half—into two separate shadows. The gestures of their hands and their body contact indicated a familiarity, and I was certain they were two of the dinner guests who had slipped outside for a side conversation. But despite my journalist’s curiosity, I instinctually turned away. I had always felt uncomfortable intruding on others’ privacy, so I looked at the swimming pool instead. An orange minnow slithered against the pool’s muddy edge, and the leopard cat’s eyes grew large, but he didn’t pounce.

      Then, as quickly as they had appeared, the shadows were gone.

      I finished my cigarette and headed back into the house.

      “Wanna come in, big guy?” I asked the leopard cat, whose eyes shone like green lights. I held the door open for him, but he darted away into the deep black night.

      I found the card room on my second try. I opened the huge wooden doors, expecting to find two of the dinner guests absent. They were all there, though, engaged in a six-person game of poker. I shouldn’t have finished the cigarette.

      “Thomas, where did you disappear to?” Lily said.

      “I fold.” Carole threw in her cards.

      “I fold,” George repeated.

      “The swimming pool,” I said.

      “Would you like to borrow a bathing suit?” Emma asked. “We usually swim in the buff, but we have extras in the pool house.”

      “No, thank you. I went outside for a cigarette.”

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