The band was playing Keep Your Sunny Side Up! American Good Foods had rented the ballroom at the Dorchester in London for its press party announcing the opening of the H. Dumpty chain. The room was filled with reporters, cameramen, food editors, restaurant people, executives, and the customary “fillers” who made a gathering into a crowd. Four chefs stood in a circle in the center of the room and made omelettes. Waiters dressed as Humpty Dumpty carried large trays laden with glasses of champagne. Huge baskets were filled with yellow and white sunflowers, daisies, and chrysanthemums.
“Is it true, Mr. Ogden, that your firm has funded a study to disprove the dangers of egg cholesterol?”
“Well, how many chickens have coronaries?” Max smiled and drank some of the ginger ale that was in his champagne glass.
“And what about your chefs? Mr. Ogden, are they all imported from France?”
“Just our head chef, Auguste. All the others will be trained by him.”
“Someone said you had tried to hire each of the chefs who were killed recently.”
“Why don’t we forget about that. It’s last month’s news.”
“How will H. Dumpty be different from the other omelette restaurants in London? Why do you think we need another fast-food outlet?”
“Fast food is only for people who are fasting. We’re different We’re using only fresh ingredients. Nothing in a tin can, nothing frozen, nothing packaged.”
“Isn’t that rather un-American of you?”
“Good business is never un-American.”
“How about a picture of you making an omelette?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Max began walking through the crowd, smiling, saying his excuse me’s as he nodded hello to people he had never before seen. Word spread among the photographers that he would be making an omelette, and they began converging upon the circle of chefs. Max walked over to Auguste. “I’ll give you a dollar later,” he whispered. “I want to make one.”
“You will ruin everything,” Auguste hissed angrily.
“Two dollars.”
Auguste shrugged his shoulders and stepped aside. “Okay, gang. Here’s how you do it. Take two eggs from Mother Nature’s specially designed ‘crack pack,’ tickle them with a steel fork, and add a teaspoon of water. Use a seasoned pan that’s been doing nothing but omelettes, add butter—not margarine—and get it really hot. Let the butter bubble and then, before it turns brown, add the eggs. Scratch their backs with the fork a few times and start folding. No omelette should take longer to make than thirty seconds. Fold it out onto a plate and voilà!’ Who’s daring enough to taste it?”
“I am.”
Max turned quickly. It was Natasha. She smiled at him and extended her arm to take the plate. He stared back, smiling broadly. Natasha wore a metallic-silver-and-brown zebra-striped pants suit. Her beige satin blouse matched the turban on her head. Without taking her eyes from him, she cut into the center of the omelette.
“Aren’t you going to taste it, Miss O’Brien?” a reporter asked.
“Where have you been since the murders, Miss O’Brien?”
“Are you two planning to get married again?”
Max walked around the table and took Natasha’s hand. They made their way through the crowd, out of the ballroom, and closed the door behind them. Max took her in his arms and they kissed, holding each other tightly. Then Natasha slowly rubbed her cheek against his.
Max sniffed and cleared his throat. “Well, you sure screwed up my press party.” They kissed again, but were jostled apart by someone trying to open the door. “Let’s find someplace we can be alone.” He took her hand and began walking down the carpeted hallway looking for a door, for a place to be alone. He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them. With his other hand, he opened the first door he found.
“I may be drunk,” announced a small woman in an enormous flowered hat, “but I’d recognize the two of you anywhere. I’m the bride’s aunt.” The room was filled with hundreds of people, and the band was playing Sunrise, Sunset. Natasha and Max looked at one another and started to laugh.
“It’s my hat, isn’t it?” the woman said, drinking a glass of champagne. “Well, I don’t care.”
“So, what are you doing without a little food? Look how skinny you keep her. Over here.” A large man with a cigar in his mouth grabbed Max by the arm and led them to the buffet table.
“I’m so pleased you could come,” a passing woman in a purple gown said to Natasha. “You’re looking so well.”
“Millie, what are we doing here?”
“Being alone,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “They’ll never find us here.” He took two plates and handed one to her. He dug a spoon into a chopped liver swan that wore a gold crown inscribed Good Luck, Brenda and Bernie. “We never had a swan,” he said. “Maybe when I grow up …”
“Millie, we are grown up.”
“Did we grow up good?”
“I think so.”
“Have some cole slaw,” he said, heaping her plate. “What are we going to be now that we’re grown up?”
“Together.”
“Like Brenda and Bernie?”
“No.” She turned from him. “Have some meatballs.”
“Then like who?” he asked as they continued walking around the buffet.
“Like you and me.”
“You mean together, but not Together.”
“I’m just not ready for a chopped liver swan. But I love you, Millie, and I want to be with you.”
“Why did you run away? You should have seen me the day I came to the hospital to get you. I’d rented a carriage with two white horses. And then they gave me your letter. ‘I need time. Be patient. I’ll be back.’ It was like a mash note from General MacArthur.”
“I needed the time, Millie.” She spooned some herring over his meatballs. “To collect myself and try to put the pieces back. I missed you so. I had to stop myself from phoning.”
“Where the hell were you?” He began piling her plate with sardines, as the band played If I Were a Rich Man.
“I went to Vienna. It was the only place I could feel close to Hildegarde. I went back to look at the house we lived in. I walked down familiar streets remembering things she had said. I did a lot of crying.”
“A whole month of crying?”
“No,” she said, putting some turkey slices over his herring. “I went back to New York. I sat home mostly. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get myself to hate Achille. Even knowing that he meant to kill me too.”
“Well, if you’re here to start the Achille van Golk fan club…”
“You know what I mean. There was so much more sadness than anger. Oh, Millie, there was such a great sadness.”
“As sad as what’s on your plate?” he asked. They looked at the dishes, piled high with herring mixed into meatballs and dozens of sardines pressed into chopped liver. They laughed, put them down, and walked onto the dance floor. He put his arms around her.
“I’ve been offered a job as editor of LUCULLUS,” she said.
“I heard.”
“I’m taking it.”
“I heard that too.”
“What haven’t you heard?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t heard why.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder as they danced. ’To be near you.”
“Yeah? But not as near as …”
“Brenda and Bernie? No.”
“Isn’t London or LUCULLUS the last place you’d want to be?”
“I don’t want any ghosts, Millie. I have to come back here to get rid of them. Otherwise I’ll carry them around always.”
“Yes, General.”
“Millie …”
“Yeah?”
“You haven’t said you loved me.”
He kissed her on the mouth. He kissed her on the nose. He kissed her on the eyes. Then he kissed her ear and whispered, “So fuck the swan!”
Achille lay on the bed in his locked room at St. Anthony’s Clinic. It had been an exhausting day. But the long month of waiting would end tomorrow when he left for Geneva.
The designs for his suite at the Enstein Clinic were finally finished to his specifications. The suite would duplicate exactly his flat on Hertford Street. He had even completed the arrangements for Cesar to travel first class with him in the morning. He was most upset about the decision not to transport his wine cellar, but clearly the wine would not travel well and those bottles that did would take years to regain their composure. The sale of his cellar would bring him more than enough to duplicate most of it from local merchants in Geneva.
However, apprehension that the French or Italian police would reopen the case nagged at him. If they were to pursue it, and if somehow they found a witness who could testify to his presence in either Paris or Rome on the days in question, he would have to plead insanity and have the courts negotiate his being institutionalized. But, his solicitors explained, the longer the police took in commencing their investigations, the less likely they would be to find anyone who remembered seeing him. The thought that he could not release himself at will was intolerable.
And there was still the problem of Estella. Enstein assured him that she would not recall his last visit unless there was an improvement in her condition. In which case, not only would she remember the visit, but her testimony could be accepted in any court The immediate project, then, was to ensure that Estella did not recover, and that their weekly luncheons continued. Enstein had agreed for medical reasons it would be best not to tell Estella that Achille was himself living in another wing.
He knew he would not miss London. At least not for a while. Surely the clinic was the best place for him to be while he was on his diet But after that? Who knows?
There was a knock at the door.
“There is no one here,” he called.
“Dinner, sir,” the nurse replied.
“Ah, yes, time for victuals at the Château d’lf.” He heard the key in the lock and then watched as Sister Angelica wheeled in a large cart. “And what have the saints preserved for me tonight?” he said, raising himself to a sitting position.
“It’s a surprise, Mr. van Golk. Some gentlemen were here from a food club, the friends of good food, I believe?”
“Les Amis de Cuisine?”
“Yes, that’s it. I knew it was an Italian name. They came by in a truck and said that they knew you were leaving in the morning and they wanted to express the esteem in which they hold you by bringing you a special dinner.”
“A belated attempt to curry my good favor,” Achille said.
“Well, I know they had to get special permission. And they made me promise not to peek until I brought it in here.”
“Well, let’s see what those ingrates have sent. Ah, Lafite ’45.”
“The gentlemen said they had already taken out the cork so that it would have … sneezed?”
“Breathed. Wine breathes. Now please leave. I find your clothes very depressing.”
“But I’m supposed to serve you dinner.”
“Better to serve the Lord. He’s less demanding. I wish to be alone.”
“But Mr. van Golk, the rules explicitly require …”
“I make the rules within this domain. And I choose to dine alone. Get out!”
“I shall report this at once.” She turned and left. He heard the key in the door, locking him in.
As if greeting an old friend, Achille stood up and put his hand to the Lafite. The temperature was perfect. Such a noble companion for dinner. He picked up the crystal wine glass and gently began pouring. His mind flashed to the Château. Laughing with the Baron in the Salon Rouge as they drank his last bottle of the 1869 vintage.
Achille held his glass to the light. He stood tall, greeting the authority and breeding in his goblet. Smiling, he swirled the wine and lifted the glass to his nose. Violets. Raspberries. He sipped. He sighed. Superb.
He leaned over and lifted the cover from the Georgian silver platter. When he saw what was there, artfully arranged on trimmed toast, elegantly garnished with sprigs of parsley, Achille dropped the cover to the floor.
He shuddered and then began to cry.