“That’s right,” he smiled. “But I’d rather be listed as your unknown admirer.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Perino. I didn’t mean to put my foot in my mouth.”
“I’ll forgive you if you give me this dance,” he said.
She looked at the dance floor, then back at him. “Here?” she asked doubtfully. “Or back at the main house?”
“Here,” he said, laughing and leading her onto the floor. “I’m not really as old as I look.”
Chapter Twelve
The Meyer Davis orchestra began playing “Three O’Clock in the Morning,” and the sound of it filtered through the half sleep into Number One’s bed. A vague memory stirred and he pushed himself upright, pulling the pillow behind him. He sat there thoughtfully for a moment, then pressed the button on the night table beside him.
A moment later Donald came into the room. As usual, he was dressed as if he had never gone to bed.
“Tell Roxanne I want to see her,” Number One said.
“Roxanne?” Donald’s voice was puzzled.
Number One looked at him. Then he remembered. Roxanne was gone. Many years ago. That was the trouble with memory. You never outlived it, only people.
“Get me dressed,” he said. “I want to go downstairs.”
“But the party is almost over, sir,” Donald said respectfully.
“I don’t care,” Number One said, annoyed. “Get me dressed.”
Twenty minutes later, Donald pushed the wheelchair out of the room and down the long corridor. Number One held up his hand as they came to the balcony overlooking the grand staircase leading to the entrance hall. Donald paused and they looked down.
The guests were still thronged around the door as they waited for the parking attendants to bring their cars. They were still talking brightly and seemed reluctant to leave.
“It must have been quite a party,” Number One said.
“Yes, sir.”
“About how many people do you think?”
“Between four-fifty and five hundred,” Donald answered.
Number One looked down at the crowd silently. People never changed. They weren’t very different than the people who came to his parties all that many years ago. He looked back at Donald. “I don’t want to get caught in that crowd,” he said. “Take me to the library elevator.”
Donald nodded and turned the wheelchair around and they went back along the corridor. At the end of the corridor, they turned into another that led to the other wing of the house. They stopped in front of the elevator door and Donald pressed the call button. The clock on the wall next to the elevator door told them it was ten minutes to four.
The discotheque was silent, only the musicians were left, disconnecting their electronic amplifiers and gathering their instruments. Somehow, now that they were not playing they seemed oddly awkward and their monosyllabic instructions to each other were strangely stilted and archaically formal.
Angelo put his drink on the bar and looked at Elizabeth. She seemed curiously pensive and into herself. “I guess we’re the last,” he said.
She glanced around the darkened room. “I guess so.”
“You’re down,” he said shrewdly.
She thought for a moment, then nodded.
“It’s always like that after a big one,” he said. “Somehow you gear up for it and while it’s happening, everything’s a ball. But the moment it’s over—boom! You crash.”
“I could use a drink,” she said.
He signaled the bartender.
“No,” she said quickly. She looked at him. “What I mean is—I would like a drag. Liquor doesn’t turn me on. I don’t like the taste of it.”
“All I have are cigarettes,” he said.
“I’m cool,” she said, opening her small evening purse, taking out what looked like a package of cigarettes. She opened the fliptop box and shook out a corktip filter cigarette. She placed the cigarette in her mouth.
He held the light for her. “That is cool,” he said. “I’ve never seen them like that.”
“There’s a dealer who brings them in from Canada. You can get your favorite brand. Kent, Winston, L&M’s, Marlboro, you name them.” She dragged deeply and then giggled. “Only you have to be careful sometimes you don’t pass them out by mistake.”
He smiled.
She looked at him. “Do you turn on?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “But not when I’m drinking. They don’t mix.”
She dragged again on the cigarette. This time she held the smoke in her lungs for a long while before she let it out. She blew the smoke out toward the ceiling. “I’m beginning to feel better.”
“Good.”
She laughed. “Matter of fact, I’m a little high.” She looked at him. “But then I figure that I’m entitled to it. I haven’t had one drag all night, even though everyone else was turning on.”
“So I noticed,” he said dryly.
She took one more pull on the cigarette then ground it out in a tray on the bar and got to her feet. Her eyes were smiling again. “Okay, Mr. Perino,” she said. “I’m ready to go back to the manor house and face my family.” She laughed humorlessly. “What’s left of it, that is.”
He took her arm and they walked out into the garden. The hanging lanterns went out, plunging the paths into darkness. She stopped abruptly and faced him.
“It really was a farce, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t answer.
“You know my mother’s leaving for Reno tomorrow to get a divorce, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Then why the hell did they have to put me through all this?” she exploded. Suddenly she began to cry. The hard, bitter sobs of a child.
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her. She dabbed at her eyes and stepped toward him, burying her face against his chest. “What were they trying to prove?” she sniffled.
He held her lightly, almost impersonally. “Maybe they didn’t want to cheat you out of anything.”
“They could have asked me,” she said.
“The one thing I’ve learned about parents, Miss Elizabeth,” he said quietly, “is—that they always ask when they shouldn’t and that they never ask when they should.”
Her sniffling stopped. She looked up at him. “Why do you call me Miss Elizabeth?”
In the night, his teeth flashed whitely. “Because it’s your name. And I like the sound of it.”
“But almost everyone calls me Betsy.”
“I know,” he said.
She touched her eyes with the handkerchief. “Do I look all right?”
“You look all right to me.”
“I hope my eye makeup didn’t run. I don’t want anyone to know I’ve been crying.”
“It didn’t,” he said.
“Good.” She returned the handkerchief. “Thank you.”
“Not at all,” he said, putting it back in his pocket.
They walked along silently for a moment, hand in hand. Suddenly she stopped and looked up at him. “Do you believe in astrology?”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” he answered.
“I do,” she said firmly. “I’ve just had my chart made up. You’re Taurus, aren’t you?”
“How did you know?” he smiled. He really wasn’t. He was a Leo.
“You had to be!” she said excitedly. “It was all in my chart. I was due to meet an older man and he would be a Taurus and I would dig him very much.”
He laughed aloud. “And do you?”
A mischievous smile came to her lips. “You wouldn’t want me to make a liar out of my chart now, would you?”
“Miss Elizabeth,” he smiled. “That’s the very last thing in the world I would want to do.”
Abruptly she put her hands on his face and, standing on her toes, kissed him. Then her mouth grew hot and opened and her body clung to him. His arms tightened around her, almost crushing the breath from her, then let her go as quickly as he had taken her.
He looked down, shocked at his own unexpected response to her. “Why did you do that?”
She smiled a secret smile and suddenly she was no longer a child. “Now you can stop calling me Miss Elizabeth,” she said.
Number One came through the elevator doors into the library. A lonely barman was there cleaning away the remnants of the party. He looked up when he saw them.
“Don’t put away the whiskey,” Number One said.
“Yes, Mr. Hardeman.” The barman picked up a bottle of Canadian and placed it on the bar.
Number One turned to Donald. “You find my grandchildren and bring them here. All of them. Betsy too.”
Donald hesitated.
“Go on, do what I say!” Number One snapped.
Donald still hesitated. “You’re not going to drink, are you, sir?”
“No, goddamnit!” Number One roared. “What kind of a fool do you think I am? You fetch them here!”
“Yes, sir.”
Alicia was the first to enter the library. “I didn’t know you were still awake, Grandfather.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Besides, I thought at least one time this evening we should all be together. Where’s Loren?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t seen him for several hours.”
“Donald will find him.”
Igor and Anne were the next to come in. “Grandfather,” Anne said, crossing the room to him.
He held up an interrupting hand. “I know,” he said. “You didn’t know I was still awake.”
“Are you all right?”
“I never felt better,” the old man said. He looked up as Elizabeth and Angelo appeared in the doorway. He gestured to her. “Come in, my child.”
Betsy ran across the room to him. “Great-Grandfather! I didn’t think we’d see you tonight!” There was a genuine pleasure in her voice.
He smiled at her. “I didn’t want to miss seeing you, especially tonight.”
“Great-Grandfather, you’re lovely!” She kissed his cheek.
He saw Angelo begin to walk away. “Angelo!” he called after him. “Please join us.”
Angelo hesitated.
“Please do, Angelo,” Betsy said quickly. “I know Great-Grandfather feels as if you’re one of the family.”
Number One glanced at her, then at Angelo. He smiled. “That’s an official invitation.”
Angelo came into the room. Donald appeared in the doorway behind him. “I can’t seem to find Mr. Loren anywhere, sir,” he said.
“He should be around somewhere,” Angelo said. “We arranged to meet here after the party. I’ll help you look for him.”
“No need to bother,” Loren’s voice came from the open terrace door. He came into the room. “You’re half an hour late, Angelo,” he said. “I told you we’d meet at three fifteen.”
“I’m sorry,” Angelo said. “I’m afraid I lost track of the time.”
Loren shot him a hard glance, then turned to his grandfather. “Now that we’re all here, Grandfather, what did you have in mind?”
Number One looked up at him. “I thought since this may be the last time we are all in this house together, it might be nice if we shared a final drink.”
Loren nodded. “That’s a nice sentimental gesture.” He turned to Alicia. “I’ll bet you never thought my grandfather was so fond of you that he would offer a farewell toast.”
Number One’s voice was suddenly icy. “Being my grandson doesn’t excuse bad manners. I think you owe Alicia an apology.”
“I owe her nothing!” Loren flashed. “She’s already gotten all she’s going to get from me.”
The old man’s voice became even colder. “I won’t allow Hardeman women to be spoken to like that.”
“In a few weeks she won’t be one,” Loren retorted.
“But right now she is still your wife,” Number One snapped. “And, by God, you will treat her with respect or—”
“Or what, Grandfather?” Loren asked sarcastically. “You’ll cut me out of your will?”
“No,” the old man said quietly. “I can do better than that. I’ll cut you out of my life.”
There was a long silence in the room as they stared into each other’s eyes. Loren’s eyes dropped. “I apologize,” he mumbled in a low voice.
“Barman.” Number One turned his chair. “Give everyone a drink.”
They were silent while the servant filled glasses and handed them around. Then they turned to Number One.
He held up his glass. “First—to the debutante. May she have many happy years.”
He touched the liquor to his lips while they all drank, then he raised his glass again. “There’s one other thing I have to tell you,” he said.
“This is the last party that will ever be held in Hardeman Manor. When your grandmother and I built this house we had dreams that it would be filled with the laughter and the sound of our family. But it didn’t quite work out that way. I guess neither of us ever thought that our children would go their own way and make their own lives. Maybe it was foolish of us to even dream of it, but now that the dreams are gone, I have no use for it.
“Tomorrow, Hardeman Manor will be closed. In the course of the next few weeks, certain personal things will be removed to Palm Beach and at the beginning of next month the State of Michigan will take it over to do with it what they will. That’s why I wanted this last party to be held here. To just once more feel this house alive with people.”
Number One looked around him. He held up his glass. “To Hardeman Manor, to my wife, to all my children, and to you.”
He touched the glass to his lips, hesitated a moment, then threw the liquor down his throat. He coughed once, the tears coming to his eyes, then smiled. “Don’t look so sad, children,” he said gruffly. “It just shows you how far an old man will go to find an excuse to drink a shot of whiskey!”