“Have you?” Ed replied.
“Hello, Sarah,” Brandon Chambers said. “It’s nice to see you, honey.” And then he looked at Ed’s friend. “You must be Lieutenant Canidy,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Canidy reached across Sarah to shake his hand. “How CIO you do, sir?”
“I was doing a lot better, frankly, Lieutenant,” Brandon Chambers said, “before I found out about this China insanity. I’m glad you’re here.”
Sarah wondered what the “China insanity” could mean.
Ann’s brother Mark walked up to the car and shook Ed’s hand.
“You’re out of your mind, you know, Ed,” he said. “I thought you’d be smarter than that.”
“And it’s nice to see you, too,” Ed replied. “Dick, this is my cousin Mark. Mark, Dick Canidy.”
“The other crusader,” Mark Chambers said dryly. “How do you do, Lieutenant?”
“And the lady, Dick,” Ed Bitter said, “is Mark’s wife, Sueellen.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Chambers?” Dick Canidy said.
She walked to him and gave him her hand.
“Please call me Sue-Ellen,” she said. “Any friend of Eddie’s, et cetera.”
4 6That’s very kind of you,” Dick Canidy said.
“I’m Sue-Ellen,” the woman said to Sarah, giving her her hand. “Why don’t I get in the back with you and Lieutenant Canidy and leave the front seat to the broadbottomed lairds of the manor?”
Sarah slid across the seat and got out the driver’s side, and then climbed in the back. Sue-Ellen Chambers got in the middle, and Canidy got in beside her, while the other three men took suitcases from the plane and put them in the trunk.
“Is my leg bothering you, Lieutenant?” Sue-Ellen asked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get the first name.”
“Dick,” he said. “No. I was afraid my leg was in your way.”
“There’s never enough room in the backseats of convertibles,” Sue-Ellen asked, “is there?”
“Nice flight?” Ed asked as they drove off.
“While we waited for you,” Brandon Chambers said, “I figured it out. I made two hundred thirty-five miles an hour from Nashville to Mobile and then two hundred thirty from Mobile here.”
“That’s faster than an F3F- I ‘ ” Ed replied.
Sarah noticed the hairs on Ed Bitter’s neck, and wondered what they’d be like to touch.
Sue-Ellen Chambers pushed herself off the backseat with a hand on Dick Canidy’s leg.
“Sorry,” she said to him, and then to Ed, “I don’t remember this car, Eddie. Is it new?”
“I’ve had it just over a month,” he said.
“It’s very nice,” she said, then slid back, wiggling her hips.
At the house, they all went back to the pool, where they sat around a large umbrellaed round cast-iron table.
Robert appeared with what looked like a pitcher of tomato juice and glasses for all of them.
Sarah took a sip of the tomato juice. There was a bite to it. There was something alcoholic in it, gin or vodka, and Worcestershire, too, and some other flavors.
“Sarah, honey,” Mr. Chambers said. “Would you excuse us? We’ve got a little private family business to discuss with these two innocents.”
“Oh, certainly,” Sarah said, flushing. “Excuse me.”
“Excuse us,” Mr. Chambers said, “but this just won’t wait.”
She went to the far end of the other side of the pool and sat down in an unusual wicker chair. It had a funny little parasol to shade whoever was sitting in it from the sun. She pushed herself all the way into it.
She could hear Mr. Chambers’s voice, of course; but she was surprised that she could hear Ed’s too, faintly but clearly, like at Carnegie Hall. She had once gone to Carnegie Hall when there was nothing going on, and her father had demonstrated that it was possible to stand on the stage and whisper, and the whisper was audible in the very last row of seats. Something like that was happening now.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Lieutenant,” Mr. Chambers said, and was interrupted by Ed Bitter.
“You’re making him uncomfortable, Uncle Brandon,” he said.
“My question, if you don’t mind my asking,” Brandon Chambers went on, ignoring him, “is how your parents reacted when they learned you were going to China.”
“We’re not supposed to discuss any of this,” Ed Bitter said.