Hot Mahogany

Stone arrived home, still angry and depressed, to find a creamy envelope under the front door knocker, apparently delivered by hand, since it was Sunday. Inside, he ripped it open and read an engraved dinner invitation for that evening from Harlan Deal. RSVP was crossed out. “Just come” was scrawled next to it.

Why the hell would Harlan Deal want him at his dinner party at the last minute? He tossed the invitation onto the front hall table, went into the library and made himself a drink. He did not often drink this early in the day, but it was the only thing he could think of that would change his mood.

He switched on the library TV, settled into a chair and began surfing the channels, looking for something to take his mind off his day. A shopping channel was selling wedding dresses; an Asian evangelist was marrying four hundred identically dressed and unsuspecting couples in a football stadium; Martha Stewart was teaching her viewers how to plan the perfect wedding.

He switched off the TV and turned on the local classical music radio station. Fucking Mendelssohn again. He switched to the jazz station. Ella Fitzgerald was singing “Making Whoopee.” “Another bride, another groom,” etc. He switched off the radio.

He took his drink upstairs, stripped off his suit and lay on the bed. Drinking horizontally was hard. He pressed the button on the remote that raised the head and foot of the bed. Easier. He drained his glass, set it down and dozed off.

He woke, befuddled and hazy about date and time. A glance at the clock on the wall told him it was half an hour before the dinner party. He splashed some water on his face, got into his evening clothes and left the house, taking the invitation with him. What the hell.

Harlan Deal lived in a Fifth Avenue penthouse in an elegant old co-op building with a spectacular view of Central Park. He would, wouldn’t he? A uniformed maid took his coat and an actual tails-wearing English butler showed him into a huge living room hung with a collection of mostly large abstract paintings and occupied by a larger group of people than he had expected to see, at least fifty.

He spotted a Motherwell, a Pollock, a Rothko, two Hockneys and a Frankenthaler without even trying. All Harlan Deal needed was an eighteenth-century mahogany secretary from Newport, but it wouldn’t have looked so good among the classic modern furniture, all Mies and Breuer. He spotted no one he knew until Harlan Deal broke out of the crowd and greeted him, hand out.

“Good evening, Mr. Barrington,” he said. “I’m sorry for the short notice, but I’m very glad you could make it.”

A waiter appeared, took his drink order and was back in a flash with a Knob Creek on the rocks. Harlan excused himself to greet other arriving guests.

Stone wandered around the room, looking at the art, then walked out onto a large terrace that had been glassed in for the winter. Central Park, lamplit, stretched out before him, and across the park the lights of the tall apartment buildings on Central Park West glittered in the distance. He was alone on the terrace, except for a woman who stood at the north end, looking out toward the reservoir.

She held a martini glass in her left hand, displaying a bare third finger. Stone moved closer, and she turned to face him. He froze for a moment and took her in. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen: tall, slender, raven hair perfectly coiffed, nails perfectly polished, perfectly dressed in a longish thing that Stone reckoned was Armani. He exhaled.

“Come closer,” she said. “I can’t hear you, if you stand way over there.”

“Good evening,” she said, holding out a hand with long fingers and a large emerald ring. “I’m Tatiana Orlovsky.”

Stone took the hand, cool and soft. “I’m Stone Barrington,” he managed to say.

“Because God meant us to be alone together.” There was some laughter a few footfalls behind him. “But not for very long.”

“Your name has a heavy Russian accent,” he said, “but your voice does not.”

“My name has been in this country since my grandfather stole a lot of very good jewelry from a titled Moscow family during the revolution in 1917 and stowed away on a ship bound for New York,” she said. “I, on the other hand, have been here for only thirty-four years, and English is my only language.”

“Oddly enough, we do. . . . At least, my mother does. My grandfather was clever: He borrowed money on the jewelry, invested it in the stock market, redeemed the jewels and spent the rest of his life building a business and a lifestyle in which the jewelry would not look out of place.”

“No. It’s a string of cubic zirconia that cost less than two thousand dollars at Bergdorf’s. The design is a copy of a Harry Winston necklace, though.”

She must have seen the look on his face. “Oh, no. I don’t . . . I mean, I’m not . . . I’m in the process of being divorced, at the moment. I’ve stopped wearing my wedding ring.”

Stone’s heart soared again. “I’m relieved to hear it,” he said, “because I’m opposed to adultery. I’m afraid that, in your case, I might have gone against my principles.”

“I’m flattered that you would think of abandoning your principles,” she said, “but I’m glad you don’t have to.”

“It means that I handle the cases that they would rather not be seen to be associated with.”

“That sounds a lot more interesting than drawing wills and managing estates.”

“Believe me, it is, and it suits me perfectly. Before I was an attorney I was a police detective, and that experience has come in handy when dealing with people like Harlan Deal.”

“I have in one instance, but, I’m happy to say, it won’t be a regular thing.”

She glanced inside. “Why don’t we go inside and eat some of our host’s very expensive food?”