House on Fire

15

The old man, steadied by the statuesque Natalya, made his way slowly into the dining room. Most of the rest of the crowd hung back, except for the kids, who ran ahead. I noticed they had their own table, for which I was grateful.

I lingered behind with the rest of them, eavesdropping while pretending to look around at the decor.

I heard one of the smaller kids say, “Is Grandpa gonna marry that lady?”

“Yes, sweetie, he is,” Megan replied. “Her name is Natalya.”

I went back to Sukie’s side. She and her sister Hayden were conversing quietly. I feigned distraction and overheard Sukie say, “I don’t like the way that woman looks at me.”

Hayden replied, “Hey, I’ve seen Gold Diggers of 1933. I don’t need to live through it. And what’s the deal with her lips? She’s looking more and more like the Joker, don’t you think? I mean, talk about duck lips.”

The room we entered wasn’t the huge formal dining room I’d passed walking in. This one’s walls were lacquered in oxblood with marble busts in low-lit niches every few feet. A long table, covered in a pleated white tablecloth, set for close to a dozen people. Around it, gold-painted bamboo chairs. The table was next to a huge stone fireplace, but no fire was lit; it wasn’t cold enough.

The four grandkids sat at their own table next to the far end of the main one, far from where Conrad Kimball and Natalya were seated. My place card read Susan Kimball Guest in fancy script. I was seated not far from Conrad, with Megan on my right. Which was exactly who I didn’t want to be seated next to for the entirety of dinner. Megan seemed to know too much about what “Nick Brown” did. I looked to my left and saw a card that read Paul Kimball. That was the absent eldest son. Sukie was on the other side of the table from me, fairly distant. We could wave at each other, that’s all.

Then a stoop-shouldered, gray-haired guy came into the room, apologizing noisily. I recognized him as Paul, the oldest Kimball child, mid-fifties. On his arm was a tall woman I recognized as a superstar MIT professor, a Moroccan-born artist and architect and designer. It would be sexist of me to mention that she was also fashion-model-beautiful and had pouty red lips and a wild head of curly brown hair, so I won’t. She was known to be extremely smart.

“So sorry, Dad. I was stuck in revision hell.” Paul went up to Conrad and kissed him on top of the head. Conrad responded by patting his son awkwardly on the shoulder. Paul handed him a gift-wrapped book.

“I said no gifts!” the old man barked.

But he tore off the paper anyway. I was close enough to see that it was a hardcover by someone named Yuval Noah Harari, titled Habitus. It meant nothing to me.

For some reason there was an eruption of squabbling at the kids’ table, and then the two moppet-headed terrorists ran to Megan, who turned around and said something quietly that made them race out of the room.

The two of them returned a minute later, together lugging a big set of Titleist golf clubs festooned in red ribbon with a big bow on top. They brought it to the head of the table. Conrad wagged his finger at Megan and said, “I see what you’re doing here. You’re having the kiddies do it so I won’t yell!”

“Guilty as charged,” Megan said with a smile. “You know me too well.”

To the boys Conrad said, “How did you know I wanted new clubs?”

“You always want new clubs, Grandpa,” one of them said.

“Well, you got the kind I like and everything.”

A couple of servants were dishing out dinner, which looked like whole racks of barbecue pork ribs and greens and cornbread and something else. A woman was pouring iced tea. It was a Texas barbecue on Wedgwood china.

Then a man entered the room, a bland-looking man in his forties with rimless glasses and hair that was either blond or gray-white, it was hard to tell. Hard blue-gray eyes. I wondered if that was his head of security, Fritz Heston, who was said to be sort of his consigliere. He went up to Conrad and began whispering, his head bowed. Conrad’s rheumy eyes widened, and he turned his head to look directly, and unambiguously, at me.

As if they were talking about me. I caught the old man’s eyes. As he listened and nodded, he squinted and blinked a few times, staring at me the whole while.

I couldn’t suppress a little wriggle of anxiety.