VIII. Raising Cain
45
The day of the Last Supper, as he was to come to think of it, Marty shaved three times, once in the morning and twice in the afternoon. The initial flattery of the invitation had long since faded. Now all he prayed for was some convenient get-out clause, a means by which he could politely escape what he was certain would be an excruciating evening. He had no place in Whitehead’s entourage. Their values were not his; their world was one in which he was no more than a functionary. There could be nothing about him that would give them more than a moment’s entertainment.
It wasn’t until he put on the evening jacket again that he began to feel more courageous. In this world of appearances, why shouldn’t he carry off the illusion as well as the next man? After all, he’d succeeded at the Academy. The trick was to get the superficies right-the proper dress code, the correct direction in which to pass the port. He began to view the evening ahead as a test of his wits, and his competitive spirit began to rise to the challenge. He would play them at their own game, among the clinking glasses and the chatter of opera and high finance.
Triply shaved, dressed and cologned, he went down to the kitchen. Oddly, Pearl wasn’t in the house: Luther had been left in charge of the night’s gourmandizing. He was opening bottles of wine: the room was fragrant with the mingled bouquets. Though Marty had understood the gathering to be small, several dozen bottles were assembled on the table; the labels on many were dirtied to illegibility. It looked as though the cellar were being stripped of its finest vintages.
Luther looked Marty up and down.
“Who’d you steal the suit off?”
Marty picked up one of the open bottles and sniffed it, ignoring the remark. Tonight he wasn’t going to be needled: tonight he had things figured out, and he’d let no one burst the bubble.
“I said: where’d you-”
“I heard you first time. I bought it.”
“What with?”
Marty put the bottle down heavily. Glasses on the table clinked together. “Why don’t you shut up?”
Luther shrugged. “Old man give it to you?”
“I told you. Shove it.”
“Seems to me you’re getting in deep, man. You know you’re guest of honor at this shindig?”
“I’m going along to meet some of the old man’s friends, that’s all.”
“You mean Dwoskin and those fuckheads? Aren’t you the lucky one?”
“And what are you tonight: the wine-boy?”
Luther grimaced as he pulled the cork on another bottle. “They don’t have no waiters at their special parties. They’re very private.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I know?” Luther said, shrugging. “I’m a monkey, right?”
Between eight and eight-thirty, the cars started to arrive at the Sanctuary. Marty waited in his room for a summons to join the rest of the guests. He heard Curtsinger’s voice, and those of women; there was laughter, some of it shrill. He wondered if it was just the wives they’d brought, or their daughters too.
The phone rang.
“Marty.” It was Whitehead.
“Sir?”
“Why not come up and join us? We’re waiting for you.”
“Right.”
“We’re in the white room.” Another surprise. That bare room, with its ugly altarpiece, seemed an unlikely venue for a dinner party.
Evening was drawing on outside, and before going on up to the room, Marty switched the lawn floods on. They blazed, their illumination echoing through the house. His earlier trepidation had been entirely replaced by a mixture of defiance and fatalism. As long as he didn’t spit in the soup, he told himself, he’d get through.
“Come on in, Marty.”
The atmosphere inside the white room was already chokingly thick with cigar and cigarette smoke. No attempt had been made to prettify the place. The only decoration was the triptych: its crucifixion as vicious as Marty remembered it. Whitehead stood as Marty entered, and extended his hand in welcome, an almost garish smile on his face.
“Close the door, will you? Come on in and sit down.”
There was a single empty place at the table. Marty went to it.