“All of it?” said Emily, glancing over at the two dozen other bottles that stood against the wall: liqueurs and cognacs among the wines.
“Yes, everything. One blowout, to finish the best of the stuff.”
What was this about? They were like a retreating army razing a place rather than leaving anything for those who followed to occupy.
“What are you going to drink next week?” Oriana asked, a heaped spoonful of caviar hovering above her cleavage.
“Next week?” Whitehead said. “No parties next week. I’m joining a monastery.” He looked across at Marty. “Marty knows what a troubled man I am.”
“Troubled?” said Dwoskin.
“Concerned for my immortal soul,” said Whitehead, not taking his eyes off Marty. This earned a spluttered guffaw from Ottaway, who was rapidly losing control of himself.
Dwoskin leaned across and refilled Marty’s glass. “Drink up,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to get through.”
There was no slow savoring of the wine going on around the table: the glasses were being filled, guzzled and refilled as though the tipple were water. There seemed something desperate in their appetite. But he should have known Whitehead did nothing by halves. Not to be outdone, Marty downed his second glass in two gulps, and filled it to brimming again immediately.
“Like it?” Dwoskin asked.
“Willy would not approve,” said Ottaway.
“What; of Mr. Strauss?” Oriana said. The caviar had still not found her mouth.
“Not of Martin. Of this indiscriminate consumption-”
He was barely able to get his tongue around the last two words. There was some pleasure in seeing the lawyer tongue-twisted, no more the FanDancer.
“Toy can go fuck himself,” Dwoskin said. Marty wanted to say something in Bill’s defense, but the drink had slowed his responses and before he could speak Whitehead had lifted his glass. “A toast,” he announced.
Dwoskin stumbled to his feet, knocking over an empty bottle which in turn felled another three. Wine gurgled out of one of the spilled bottles, weaving across the table and splashing on to the floor.
“To Willy!” Whitehead said, “wherever he is.”
Glasses raised and tapped together, even Dwoskin’s. A chorus of voices offered up
“To Willy!”
-and the glasses were noisily drained. Marty’s glass was filled up by Ottaway.
“Drink, man, drink!”
The drink, on Marty’s empty stomach, was causing ructions. He felt dislocated from events in the room: from the women, the Fan-Dancer, the crucifixion on the wall. His initial shock seeing the men like this, wine on their bibs and chins, mouthing obscenities, had long since faded. Their behavior didn’t matter. Getting more of these vintages down his throat did. He exchanged a baleful look with Christ. “Fuck you,” he said under his breath.
Curtsinger caught the comment. “My very words,” he whispered back.
“Where is Willy?” Emily was asking. “I thought he’d be here.”
She offered the question to the table, but nobody seemed willing to take it up.
“He’s gone,” Whitehead replied eventually.
“He’s such a nice man,” the girl said. She dug Dwoskin in the ribs. “Didn’t you think he was a nice man?”
Dwoskin was irritated by the interruptions. He had taken to fumbling at the zipper on the back of Stephanie’s dress. She made no objection to this public advance. The glass he held in the other hand was spilling wine into his lap. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Whitehead caught Marty’s eye.
“Entertaining you, are we?” he said.
Marty wiped the nascent smile off his face.
“Don’t you approve?” Ottaway asked Marty.
“Not up to me.”
“I always got the impression the criminal classes were quite puritanical at heart. Is that right?”
Marty looked down from the Fan-Dancer’s drink-puffed features and shook his head. The jibe was beneath contempt, as was the jiber.
“If I were you, Marty,” Whitehead said from the other end of the table, “I’d break his neck.”
Marty shrugged. “Why bother?” he said.
“Seems to me, you’re not so dangerous after all,” Ottaway went on.
“Who said I was dangerous?”
The smirk the lawyer wore deepened. “I mean. We were expecting an animal act, you know?” Ottaway moved a bottle to get a better look at Marty. “We were promised-” The conversation around the table had ground to a halt, but Ottaway didn’t seem to notice. “Still, nothing’s quite as advertised, is it?” he said. “I mean, you ask any one of these godforsaken gentlemen.” The table was a still-life; Ottaway’s arm swept around to include everyone in his tirade. “We know, don’t we? We know how disappointing life can be.”