Read an Excerpt

1
 
It was a lovely party. Everyone said so; even Harry Crandall, emeritus professor of biology, who ordinarily spent the whole evening talking about his beloved slime molds. This evening he had been cajoled into discussing the Late Beethoven Quartets, quite a departure for him. He was an authority on the subject, as everyone expected he would be. He only held forth on subjects on which he was an authority. The host, Walter Sloane, and his wife Laura circulated among their guests. It was a small party: just the Sloane family and a few friends. There was only one stranger present, a young man with a very odd name, something like Snoopy or Ucky. Walter Sloane’s daughter had brought him along as her date. He was not one of the usual crowd so everyone ignored him; by far the easiest way.
 
It was a lovely, lovely party; everyone said so. It would have been just about perfect if the hostess had not died. As it was, everyone enjoyed themselves very much.
 
“Naked masses of protoplasm,” Harry Crandall was saying, diverted momentarily by a question concerning his favorite subject. “That’s all they are. Fascinating creatures, I tell you. Slime molds belong to a class of extremely peculiar organisms, Myxomycetes …”
 
Freda Simms gave her distinctive loud cackle. “He’s off again. Good old Harry.”
 
Ruth Abrams looked worried. She always looked worried. She was a short heavy-set woman with the mild-mannered face of a not very intelligent sheep. “Freda,” she said reproachfully. “He’ll hear you.”
 
Freda Simms smiled. Her hair tonight was red; a distinctive shade of brilliant red. It looked as if it had been painted on her head by an industrious child with finger paints. It stuck out wildly in all directions and bobbed as she talked. She spoke constantly, nervously, gesturing with a cigarette.
 
“I’ve convinced Eddie to show me how he does his makeup,” she said.
 
Ruth Abrams looked doubtfully at Freda’s boyfriend.
 
“Clown makeup is an art form,” Freda continued. “Isn’t it, Eddie?”
 
Eddie seemed to agree. Eddie was a silent creature; a man of few words, thought Ruth. She glanced around nervously and hoped someone would rescue her soon. Freda was a dear friend, but honestly, a clown …
 
Although perhaps a clown was better than Freda’s last boyfriend, who had been introduced at a party much like this one. His name had been Charlie and he had been a professional skydiver. The romance had blossomed until one day Charlie had had a minor technical difficulty with his parachute.
 
Harry Crandall was back on the Late Beethoven Quartets again. Ruth could hear his voice droning on. Usually the host, Walter Sloane, found some minor point that he could disagree with and picked a fight—more than one party had been broken up by the women because Harry and Walter were at each other’s throats over the prospects of the local baseball team, or the merit of some obscure work of literature, or that forbidden topic, politics. But tonight Harry was droning on undisturbed. That probably meant that Walter Sloane didn’t know a thing about the Late Beethoven Quartets.
 
Ruth looked over at Walter. Tonight he seemed to be having a decent time, although the sight of his closest friends eating his food and drinking his liquor usually made him apoplectic. Rich as he was, he saved every dime. She had been with him once in a restaurant when he called the manager over because he had put a quarter in the jukebox, which then refused to play his selection. “I want ‘Old Man River,’ ” he had roared, to the delight of the other patrons.
 
Freda Simms and her boyfriend were now hotly debating something to do with the circus—Indian versus African elephants, it sounded like. Ruth cast an agonized glance around the room. Her eyes rested briefly on Isabel, Walter Sloane’s daughter. She looked beautiful as always, with her straight silk-blonde hair drawn back in a knot and those striking blue eyes. She was sitting in the corner, deep in conversation with the young man she had brought along tonight. Next to them sat her teenage brother, Richard—another product of Walter Sloane’s first marriage. Ruth wondered vaguely what Richard was doing here. He didn’t usually put in an appearance at his parents’ parties. Isabel was always there, of course, an unobtrusive presence at your elbow, offering food and drinks, scuttling back and forth from the kitchen—as though they couldn’t afford to hire help, and as much as they wanted!—another example of Walter’s notorious miserliness. She dragged her attention back to Freda, who had gone on to another topic and was now saying,
 
“The last time I was in Monte Carlo—”
 
Monte Carlo, indeed! Ruth felt a prickle of resentment. Some people didn’t have the money to travel to Monte Carlo whenever they liked. Of course Freda had always been rich. She didn’t know what it was like not to be. And of course she had never had children. Children made a big difference; yes, a very big difference.
 
Over in the corner, Isabel Sloane was saying,
 
“What are you doing here, Richard?”
 
Her brother shrugged.
 
“No date for tonight?” she asked teasingly. Her brother’s blond good looks were very much appreciated by the female members of his high school class.
 
Her brother grinned at her. His usually morose face lit up.
 
(“When he smiles he looks almost human,” she had told a friend recently. “The trouble is, he never smiles.”)
 
“Oh, shut up,” Richard Sloane said, but his tone was friendly.
 
The young man who was with Isabel leaned back, regarding them with an amused eye.
 
“When I was Richard’s age I couldn’t stop going to parties,” he said. “It was sort of a mania with me. When my brother and sister wanted to find out where I was, all they had to do was call around the neighborhood and see who was having a party. I was never invited, but I went anyway. I would do all kinds of affairs: weddings, cocktail parties, receptions. Funerals. I once got thrown out of an embassy on East Seventy-first Street in New York for crashing an official reception. The Vice-President was going to be there and they were all excited about the security breach, but all I wanted was a snack.”
 
“I hate parties,” Richard Sloane said firmly.
 
“Oh, well, you never know. Maybe you’ll grow into it.”
 
“Mrs. Abrams needs a drink,” said Isabel and bolted toward the bar. Her companion watched her go with a feintly worried look in his eyes. But all he said was:
 
“Know anything about Boccherini?”
 
“No,” said Richard.
 
“ ‘Well, this is your big chance. There’s someone over there who appears to be an expert.”
 
Harry Crandall had switched topics once again and was now being dazzling and authoritative on the works of a slightly earlier composer.
 
“Let’s hope that Dad doesn’t know anything about it either,” said Richard gloomily. Professor Crandall had trapped his host and hostess in his immediate circle, and Walter Sloane was clearly growing restive.
 
Walter’s wife Laura was listening with a frozen smile to the details of Boccherini’s early life when her stepdaughter Isabel handed her a drink.
 
“Thanks, sweetheart. Did you look after the others?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Oh, thanks. Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about. Excuse us for a moment, Harry.”
 
She steered Isabel over to a corner. “Thanks for the rescue,” she whispered.
 
“It’s okay. It’s better than slime molds, anyway.”
 
“I don’t know how his wife can stand it.”
 
Isabel looked over to where the tall thin figure hovered anxiously over a tray of tempura vegetables. “She’s too busy monitoring her own cholesterol level,” she said.
 
“I had those vegetables made especially for Heather,” her stepmother replied. “She won’t eat meat, she won’t eat fish, she won’t eat caviar. She won’t eat anything. Including those vegetable things. You’ll see.”
 
“I told you, she won’t touch anything that’s been fried.”
 
“But darling,” Laura Sloane said piteously, “if it’s not meat, and it’s not fried, then I ask you, what is it?”
 
Laura Sloane was a big good-looking woman with an easy way about her. She dominated her husband and his children so naturally that they never had time to think about or resent it. She was tall and slightly heavy, with deep-set brown eyes and honey-blonde hair. Laura was always doing big things: selling or buying companies with her father’s and first husband’s millions; traveling around the world; even, in one notorious instance, hang gliding. She had been left a widow at a young age and it had been years before she met Walter Sloane and remarried. In those years, she had become known for her flamboyance, she and Freda Simms both; they had been friends since high school. They had traveled the world, learned to speak twelve languages between them, sailed on foreign seas and laughed their way out of any mishap. Once, when Laura had been dumped by a man she was seeing, she had rented a plane and written the word BASTARD in large plumy letters across the sky above his house. She and Freda had the same loud laugh and the same charming way about them. Even Laura’s marriage to Walter Sloane, three years before, had not dimmed their friendship, although it was a well-known fact that Freda hated Walter’s guts and the sentiment was warmly returned.
 
The adventures, however, had not continued after Laura’s second marriage. She seemed at last to be settling down.