Peking duck. Lacquered to perfection. Crisp skin. Warm moist pancakes. Spring onions and sweet bean sauce. Yes. If he were to leave London immediately, within eighteen hours he could be in Peking.
The black Phantom VI Rolls-Royce spilled noiselessly down South Audley Street and into Grosvenor Square. Achille van Golk grunted as he lifted his leg onto the jump seat in front of him. The pain. He narrowed his eyes and blotted out the white gold of a ten o’clock sun. He envisioned himself at Fung Tse Yuan, nodding with approval as Chen awarded the glistening honeyed duck to him. Indeed, had he not traveled farther for it than Marco Polo?
Pushing her pram onto the zebra, a nearsighted nanny stepped off the curb. The Phantom VI caught its breath sharply. “What is wrong with him?” Achille shouted through the glass to his secretary in the front seat. “Is he trying to kill me?”
The new black chauffeur (Rudolph) turned his semi-Afrosheared head quickly toward Miss Beauchamp (pronounced Beechum). “There is nothing wrong with him,” she said, without turning around to her employer, “except that he is not trying to kill you.”
“Where did you find him? Where is he from?”
“Poland,” she answered.
Achille was silent. His leg throbbed and he was chilly. He hunched his shoulders and pressed the sable collar of his black vicuna coat against his ears. He opened the rosewood bar and stared in disbelief at the three empty crystal decanters and the empty silver bowl. He snatched the microphone from its perch.
“Miss Beauchamp” (pronouncing it Beauchamp), “would you be good enough to explain to me, in front of your friend Stanislaus, why my decanters are empty and most especially explain to me why my nut dish is not filled with my nuts?”
“You should not have them.”
“I did not appoint you Keeper of the Cashews. Kindly remember you are a vastly overpaid boring spinster whose nonessential duties do not include sequestering my nuts or employing the Prince of Zanzibar.”
“He is from Poland. Outside Cracow.”
“Mozambique is outside Cracow.”
“We’re here,” she said, turning around for the first time. She allowed a small smile. “Does your leg hurt?”
Rudolph slid out of his seat and came around to open the door for Achille. Raising the enormous arms of his black fur-lined overcoat, Achille held on to him. They rocked back and forth until momentum propelled the bald man with one black eyebrow across his forehead out of the car. Achille brushed away the hand that helped him and walked painfully toward No. 44.
Miss Beauchamp rang the bell, and stood well back to allow Achille to fit through the door with ease.
“Good morning,” the nurse said, rising and pointing to the inner office, as though just having been chastised for not having risen quickly enough. “Dr. Darling is expecting you. Go right in.”
Miss Beauchamp opened the second door and Achille snorted before crossing the threshold. Andrew Darling, M.D., stepped from behind his drawerless desk and thrust forward a well-manicured hand. “Achille, how good to see you up and around.” He spoke in a voice one decibel below creating a public nuisance.
“Of all those people who have stuck their fingers up my ass, you are the last by whom I wish to be called Achille.”
“I’m your doctor!”
“Your perverse choice of vocation does not endear you to me, however pleasurable you have found my previous examinations. Nor am I particularly charmed by your latest medical fetish. Here.” Achille took a small bottle from his pocket and tossed it. Dr. Darling caught the specimen bottle with an audible intake of breath, and looked down to assure himself that the cap was tight. He saw written across the label in thick red marker Mis en Bouteille au Château.
Dr. Darling stepped back and placed the bottle on a comer of his desk blotter. “Do sit down, Mr. van Golk. I’m afraid I have some rather serious news for you.”
“Peter Pan has stolen your children again “
“Please have a chair,” Dr. Darling suggested, ignoring Achille’s comment. “Are you certain you don’t wish to be alone?” he asked, nodding politely at Miss Beauchamp.
“I am alone.”
Miss Beauchamp glared at Achille. He shut his eyes for a moment and then sat down.
“Don’t you wish to remove your overcoat?” the doctor asked.
“Is your diagnosis to take us through a change of season?”
“Mr. van Golk,” he bellowed, “you are not a well man.”
“Which is precisely why I came here rather than to my florist, however incorrect my instincts are beginning to prove. Doctor Da …, see here, I am a very busy man with a very busy schedule. And who knows what dermatological adventure you may have lurking around the comer. I suggest we save one another some time. How long do I have to live?”
“That will depend entirely upon you.”
“It relieves me to know it does not depend upon you, darling doctor.”
“Mr. van Golk, the results of our tests have already shown you to have gout, an enlarged liver, a duodenal ulcer, a spastic colon, severe hardening of the arteries, and a nasty case of the hives. You are calamitously obese. Unless you take immediate action to lose one-half your present weight, you will die of cardiac arrest within the year.”
“Doctor, surely there is no need to beat about the bush.”
“I regret I find no humor in your case, Mr. van Golk. Indeed, it is ironic that the publisher of LUCULLUS …”
“The publisher of LUCULLUS is the publisher of LUCULLUS precisely because he has eaten his way to the top. You will remember, darling doctor, I am not the publisher of The Tuna Fish Gazette. I have shaped the eating habits of millions so they might appreciate the most civilized of the arts, despite your medical hysterics over egg yolks. My body is a veritable canvas on which creative geniuses have developed their techniques. I am, myself, therefore, a living work of art. Every fold, every crease, every chin is the signature of creation. I am, doctor sweetheart, thrilled by the flowering of my own flesh.”
“Mr. van Golk, I do understand the unusual nature of this case. It is indeed unfortunate that so renowned a gourmet as yourself is faced with this problem, but you simply have no alternative. Unless you stop eating,” he said, lowering his voice for emphasis, “you will most certainly die. All this food will kill you.”
Kill me? The thought angered Achille. Not if I kill it first.
“You must take immediate action.”
I must take immediate action, Achille thought
“You must attack the root of the problem.”
The chefs, Achille thought. The chefs are the root of the problem.
“You must begin to diet,” whispered Dr. Darling.
Indeed, I must. The Ultimate Diet.