“You know Felix, of course.”
Ottaway, the fan-dancing lawyer, nodded. The bare bulb threw light on his pate, and exposed the line of his toupee.
“And Lawrence.”
Dwoskin-the lean and trollish-was in the middle of a sip of wine. He murmured a greeting.
“And James.”
“Hello,” said Curtsinger. “How nice to see you again.” The cigar he held was just about the largest Marty had ever set eyes on.
The familiar faces accounted for, Whitehead introduced the three women who sat between the men.
“Our guests for tonight,” he said.
“Hello.”
“This is my sometime bodyguard, Martin Strauss.”
“Martin.” Oriana, a woman in her mid-thirties, gave him a slightly crooked smile. “Pleased to meet you.”
Whitehead used no second name, which left Marty wondering if this was the wife of one of the men, or just a friend. She was a good deal younger than either Ottaway or Curtsinger, between whom she sat. Perhaps she was a mistress. The thought tantalized.
“This is Stephanie.”
Stephanie, the first woman’s senior by a good ten years, graced Marty with a look that seemed to strip him naked from head to foot. It was disconcertingly plain, and he wondered if anyone else around the table had caught it.
“We’ve heard so much about you,” she said, laying a caressing hand on Dwoskin’s. “Haven’t we?”
Dwoskin smirked. Marty’s distaste for the man was as thoroughgoing as ever. It was difficult to imagine how or why any human would want to touch him.
“-And, finally, Emily.”
Marty turned to greet the third new face at the table. As he did so, Emily knocked over a glass of red wine.
“Oh Jesus!” she said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Curtsinger said, grinning. He was already drunk, Marty now registered; the grin was too lavish for sobriety. “Couldn’t matter less, sweet. Really it couldn’t.”
Emily looked up at Marty. She too had already drunk too much, to judge by her flushed complexion. She was by far the youngest of the three women, and almost winsomely pretty.
“Sit down. Sit down,” Whitehead said. “Never mind the wine, for God’s sake.” Marty took his place beside Curtsinger. The wine Emily had spilled dribbled off the edge of the table, unarrested.
“We were just saying-” Dwoskin chimed in, “what a pity Willy couldn’t have been here.”
Marty shot a glance at the old man to see if the mention of Toy-the sound of weeping came back as he thought of him-had brought any response. There was none. He too, Marty now saw, was the worse for drink. The bottles that Luther had been opening-the clarets, the burgundies-forested the table; the atmosphere was more that of an ad hoc picnic rather than a dinner party. There was none of the ceremony he’d anticipated: no meticulous ordering of courses, no cutlery in regiments. What food there was-tins of caviar with spoons thrust into them, cheeses, thin biscuits-took a poor second place to the wine. Though Marty knew little about wine his suspicions about the old man emptying his cellar were confirmed by the babble around the table. They had come together tonight to drink the Sanctuary dry of its finest, its most celebrated, vintages.
“Drink!” Curtsinger said. “It’s the best stuff you’ll ever swallow, believe me.” He fumbled for a specific bottle among the throng. “Where’s the’ Latour? We haven’t finished it, have we? Stephanie, are you hiding it, darling?”
Stephanie looked up from her cups. Marty doubted if she even knew what Curtsinger was talking about. These women weren’t wives, he was certain of it. He doubted if they were even mistresses.
“Here!” Curtsinger sloppily filled a glass for Marty. “See what you make of that.”
Marty had never much liked wine. It was a drink to be sipped and swilled around the mouth, and he had no patience with it. But the bouquet off the glass spoke quality, even to his uneducated nose. It had a richness that made him salivate before he’d downed a mouthful, and the taste didn’t disappoint: it was superb.
“Good, eh?”
“Tasty.”
“Tasty,” Curtsinger bellowed to the table in mock outrage. “The boy pronounces it tasty.”
“Better pass it back over before he downs the lot,” Ottaway remarked.
“It’s all got to go,” Whitehead said, “tonight.”