The dreaded day arrived and Harry came home early for once, armed with a pair of three hundred dollar porcelain candlesticks from Ludwig’s, and French champagne from Motta’s and a whole side of smoked salmon from somewhere else. And an hour later a team of fancy caterers showed up, led by a cocksure Argentine gigolo, and took over Louisa’s kitchen because Harry said their own servants weren’t reliable. Then Hannah raised a God-awful stink for no reason Louisa could fathom – aren’t you going to be nice to Mr Delgado, darling? After all he’s Mummy’s boss and a close friend of the President of Panama. And he’s going to save the Canal for us, and yes, Anytime Island too. And no, Mark, thank you, this is not an occasion for you to play ‘Lazy Sheep’ on your violin, Mr and Mrs Delgado might appreciate it but the other guests would not.
Then in walks Harry and says, oh Louisa, go on, let him play it, but Louisa is adamant, and gets into one of her monologues, they just pour out of her, she can’t control them, she can only listen to them and groan: Harry, I do not understand why every time I give an instruction to my children you have to march in here and countermand it just to show you are master of the house. At which Hannah throws another screaming fit and Mark locks himself in his room and plays ‘Lazy Sheep’ non-stop till Louisa beats on his door and says, ‘Mark, they’ll be here any minute,’ which was true because the doorbell rang just at that moment and in marches Rafi Domingo with his body lotion and his insinuating leer and side-burns and crocodile shoes – not all of Harry’s tailoring wiles could save him from looking like the worst kind of stage dago, her father would have ordered him round to the back door on the strength of his hair oil alone.
And immediately after Rafi, enter the Delgados and the Oakleys all in short order, which proved just how unnatural the occasion was, because in Panama nobody shows up on time unless it’s a stiff occasion, and suddenly it was all happening, with Ernesto sitting on her right side looking like the wise, good mandarin he was: just water, thank you, Louisa dear, I’m afraid I’m not much of a drinker, to which Louisa, who is by now the better for a couple of large ones taken in the privacy of her bathroom says to be truthful neither is she, she always thinks drink spoils a nice evening. But Mrs Delgado down the table on Harry’s right overhears this and gives an odd, disbelieving smile as if she has heard better.
Meanwhile Rafi Domingo on Louisa’s left is dividing his time between clamping his stockinged foot on Louisa’s whenever she lets him – he has slipped off one crocodile shoe for the purpose – and squinting down the front of Donna Oakley’s dress which is cut on the lines of Emily’s dresses, breasts pushed up like tennis balls and the cleavage pointing due southward to what her father when he was drunk had called the industrial area.
‘You know what she means to me, your wife, Harry?’ Rafi asks in mouthfuls of execrable Spanish-English, down the table to Harry. Lingua franca is English tonight for the Oakleys’ benefit.
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Louisa orders.
‘She’s my conscience!’ Huge laugh with all his teeth and food showing. ‘And I didn’t know I got one till Louisa come along!’
And finds this so wonderfully funny that everybody has to toast his conscience while he cranes his neck for another helping of Donna’s decolletage and wiggles his toes up and down Louisa’s calf, which makes her furious and randy at the same time, Emily I hate you, Rafi leave me alone you sleazeball and take your eyes off Donna, and Jesus, Harry, are you finally going to fuck me tonight?
Why Harry had invited the Oakleys was another mystery to Louisa until she remembered that Kevin was floating some sort of speculation to do with the Canal, Kevin being something in commodities and otherwise what her father used to call a damned Yankee hustler, while his wife Donna worked out to Jane Fonda videos and jogged in vinyl shorts and wiggled her ass at every pretty Panamanian boy who pushed her trolley for her in the supermarket, and from all she heard not just her trolley.