What's The Worst That Could Happen?

24

Dinner at the Lumleys’. Lutetia enjoyed the Lumleys because, although they’d been rich for more than one generation, they still liked to talk about money. Harry Lumley was in commercial real estate in various cities around the globe—at the moment, briskly withdrawing himself from Hong Kong and Singapore—while Maura Lumley was in cosmetics, specializing in strangely colored lip and nail treatments for high school girls. “There are millions in those little idiots,” Maura liked to say. “All you have to do is draw it out of them.”

They were ten tonight at the Lumleys’, in their Fifth Avenue penthouse duplex overlooking Central Park just north of the Metropolitan Museum. The other three couples were also rich, of course, the gentlemen being captains of industry, or at least captains of stock shares, and their wives being extremely attractive in that lacquered way required of women who have married recent money. The conversation ranged over politics and taxes and dining experiences around the globe. It was all very pleasant, very ordinary, very reassuring, and it wasn’t until the sorbet that Lutetia noticed Max wasn’t saying anything.

Now what? Managing Max was a full-time job, and not always an easy one. Lutetia didn’t mind the work, she knew she was good at it, but there were times when she wished he had come with an owner’s manual. Usually at an evening like this, Max would be very much an element of the party, full of gossip, full of jokes about politicians, full of ethnic humor and racial humor and class humor and economic humor, but tonight he was merely being attentive, smiling at other people’s humor, eating distractedly, adding nothing to the occasion, looking at his watch from time to time.

He’s a million miles away, Lutetia thought, but in which direction?

From that point, through the rest of the meal and on to the brandy or port on the terrace afterward, Central Park a great black sleeping beast stretched out below them, Lutetia did her best to involve Max, stimulate him, make him enter into the spirit of the occasion. She even went so far as to remind him of two or three of his favorite stories, asking him to regale the group with them; something she never did. And the worst of it was, he readily agreed, only to produce an amiable but mechanical recital, without his usual clever dialects and mischievous facial expressions, so that his efforts—or hers, through him—produced only mild laughter, merely polite.

He wasn’t sullen, he didn’t appear to be angry, his manner wasn’t what you could call worried, there was nothing hostile about him. He just wasn’t Max, that’s all. Lutetia began to be afraid.

It wasn’t until they were in the limo, going through dark Central Park on their slightly roundabout way home, that the penny, or the shoe, or whatever it was, dropped. Lutetia had resolved not to raise the subject, not to pose any questions, not to do a thing except watch Max with extreme care, ready to jump at the slightest unexpected sound, so he was the one who at last broached the topic: “The judge,” he said.

She looked at him, alert, wary. “Yes?”

“He apparently has . . . I’ve apparently given him power over me beyond . . . It’s certainly not what I thought this legal square dance was all about.”

“He displeased you.”

“If he were crossing the road ahead of us,” Max said, gesturing at the winding blacktop road in the dim-lit leafy park, “I’d have Chalmers run him down.”

Chalmers was the driver. Mildly, Lutetia said, “Do you think Chalmers would do it?”

“If I told him to, he’d damn well better.”

“What did the judge do, my dear?”

There were really quite a few lights in the park. Max’s face was now plain, now in shadow. It seemed to Lutetia his expression was pained. “He humiliated me,” he said.

Oh, dear. Lutetia well knew there was little short of death you could do to Max Fairbanks worse than that. She herself might argue with him, defy him, even sneer at him, but she would make damn sure she was out of the country first, if she ever decided it had become necessary to humiliate him; by divorce, for instance, or a public affair with a poor person. Sympathizing, grateful to Max for having shared his pain with her, she took his hand in both of hers and said, “You give these little people power, Max, they don’t always use it well.”

In the next passing streetlight, she could see his grateful smile, and smiled back. She said, “Tell me what he did.”

“First he threatened to open the entire Chapter Eleven again, which would cost us millions. Literally, millions. Walter and that other fellow, Weisman, groveled at the bastard’s feet while I sat quietly in the background—”

“Good.”

“And at last he agreed to a compromise. And even that I didn’t understand until afterward, when the lawyers explained it to me.”

They were out of the park now, driving down the well-lit Seventh Avenue, and Lutetia could see Max plain. What he had been covering back at the Lumleys’, hiding with a veneer of polite good humor, was a haggard vulnerability, an uncharacteristic self-doubt. Still holding his hand in both of hers, she said, “What was it? What did he do?”

“He took away the Carrport house.”

This was so unexpected she very nearly laughed, but realized in time that Max would not put up with being laughed at over this matter. Swallowing her amusement, she said, “What do you mean, took it away?”

“It has to be sold, and the proceeds added to the Chapter Eleven pot.”

Lutetia studied him, not understanding. “I don’t see—That’s annoying, of course, but why does it hit you so hard ?”

They were stopped at a traffic light. He shook his head, angry with himself, and looked out at busy midtown, just before midnight. “I suppose I’ve made a fetish of that house,” he said. “I enjoyed—You were never there.”

“You never wanted me there.”

“You never wanted to be there.”

That was true. The Carrport house was a part of Max’s corporate business, and nothing to do with her. It was used for corporate matters of various kinds, which would bore her, and also, she suspected, for hanky-panky, about which she didn’t want to know. “I wasn’t interested in a suburban house on Long Island,” she acknowledged. “But why was it so important to you?”

“I was the host out there,” he said. “The master, the thane. I enjoyed that, bringing management out, being, I don’t know, lord of the manor or some such thing. That was the only place where I was physically the commander of my armies, all gathered around me. Feudalism, I suppose. It may sound foolish . . .”

“As a matter of fact,” she told him, “it sounds quite real. Not something you would have normally told me.”

“That’s true enough.” Max shook his head. “Not something I’d even told myself before. I never understood how important Carrport was to me.”

“So this judge,” Lutetia said, “he didn’t merely take away a corporate asset, he stole a part of your pleasure in who you are.”

“Irreplaceable,” he said.

“Oh, no, my dear,” she assured him. “You’ll get over it, and you’ll find some other symbol. It was only a symbol, really, not actually you. Some other house, a plane, a ship—Have you thought about a ship?”

He frowned at her, as though she might be making fun of him. “A ship? What are you talking about, Lutetia?”

“A number of men,” she said carefully, “financial giants, somewhat like you, have found comfort in commanding a yacht. You could dock it here in New York, travel all sorts of places in it, have your management meetings aboard it, do all the things you used to do in Carrport.”

He looked at her with growing suspicion. “You don’t like ships. You don’t like being on the water.”

“I was never interested in Carrport either, remember? This would be your place. Even better than Carrport, I should think. Master of your own ship, on the high seas.”

Really suspicious now, he said, “Lutetia, why are you so good to me?”

“Because, my dear,” she told him, with absolute truth, “you’re so good to me.”

The car had stopped now in front of the theater. The show inside—Desdemona!—had broken nearly an hour ago, and the lobby was half-lit, visible through its bank of glass doors. Arthur, their doorman/lift operator, came out of the lobby, crossed the broad sidewalk still rich in pedestrians, and opened the rear door for them. Lutetia emerged first, and just heard Max, behind her, say to Chalmers, “Wait.”

They crossed the sidewalk together, following Arthur, Lutetia saying, “You told Chalmers to wait? Are you going out again?”

“I’m going to Carrport.”

Arthur held the lobby door, and they stepped through, Lutetia staring at Max, saying, “Are you mad? You just told me the judge took it away from you!”

“I’m permitted one last visit,” he explained, as Arthur opened the elevator doors and they boarded. “To remove my personal possessions, inventory that shouldn’t be sold with the property. One overnight.”

“Now? It’s nearly midnight!”

“When else am I going to do it?”

The elevator sped upward and Max gave her the open frank and honest look she mistrusted so. “I have to leave tomorrow in any event, then I’m in Washington, then Chicago, then Sydney, then Nevada, on and on. The place has to be put on the market right away.”

The doors opened at their reception room. “Wait,” Max told Arthur, as Lutetia clapped the apartment lights on.

As they crossed the reception room, Lutetia said, “So you won’t come back here tomorrow, but go from Carrport straight to Kennedy and fly south.”

“That makes the most sense,” he said. “I’ll just grab the papers I need, and my overnight bag. I’ll be out there by one, sleep, have most of the day tomorrow to do my inventory, say my . . . good-byes, to the house.”

And have it off with some tootsie, Lutetia thought. Her antennae were always very good. Following him into the bedroom, she said, “I’ll come with you.”

He stopped, as though he’d run into a glass wall. Turning, he said, “You will not.”

“But I really should,” she said. “And I want to. You’re right, I never did see the place out there, and this will be my last chance. Now that I know it means so much to you, I feel I should be with you when you say your farewells.” Resting a loving hand on his forearm, she said, “I want to feel close to you, Max, you know that. I want to be a help to you.”

“But you don’t want to—You have so much to do here.”

“As a matter of fact, no,” she said, and smiled her sunniest smile. “The next two days, my calendar is absolutely empty. I can’t think of anything nicer to do, anything more romantic, than to be driven out to your thane’s castle with you for your final night there, to spend the night with you, there, in the symbol of your inner self. There must be fireplaces. Tell me there are fireplaces.”

Trying for a friendly smile, nearly accomplishing it, he said, “Love petal, you don’t want to do that. An unfamiliar house, you’ll be uncomfortable, away from everything you care for, stuck in—”

“But you are everything I care for, dearest,” she assured him, and then allowed slight doubt to color her features as she said, “Unless . . . You don’t have any other reason for going out there by yourself, do you?”

“Of course not, sweet minx,” he said, and spontaneously hugged her, and let her go. “You know me better than that, my warm bunny.”

“Then it’s settled,” she announced, innocent and happy. “Off we go!”

“Off we go,” he echoed, less exuberantly. He looked as though the dinner he’d eaten at the Lumleys’ might be disagreeing with him. He sighed, and his next smile was a brave one. “I’ll just get my . . . things.”