IN LONDON tall men stood in attendance at the hotel entrance and regarded the new arrivals dispassionately. Steve, Patrizia, Neva, the twins, Ian, Alix, and Poppy swept past like some well-appointed band of itinerant jugglers or magicians, circus performers impersonating aristocrats. An understatedly luxurious scarf of ostrich feathers trailed behind Poppy, a plume of smoke from her neck.
Spending a few days in London after the wedding before returning to New York, the family had settled into a routine of meeting for dinner and spending their days separately, the twins taken to parks or attractions by Neva, or Patrizia when she wasn’t consuming, Ian and Alix off to neighborhoods and galleries, Poppy left mostly on her own to wander. Steve worked in his London office or at the hotel.
At dinner Ian asked Poppy, How do you like London?
I love it, of course, but I’m a bit lonely this time.
I’d have to say the same.
They both watched Alix covertly as she sat at the far end of the table, her eyes piercing the menu, her expression puzzled, angry, hopeful, and irritated all at once. Poppy unfurled her napkin.
She’s deeply depressed, said Poppy.
Who?
You know who. The saintly nun. Sister Alix.
Ian looked down the long table at Alix’s judging, critical squint.
How did you two become such enemies?
Whatever do you mean? My biggest worry is that something will happen to her. I pray to God every day that she doesn’t injure herself, said Poppy drily, ripping a piece of bread.
No really, how did it happen?
I always looked up to her. And she can’t stand that. She prefers to be pitied, or despised.
Are you always so smart?
Only sometimes. Mostly I’m a spoiled brat.
He didn’t think she was. He never would. But he would hear her call herself that again on the floor of his apartment as she cried into his arms and she would use that phrase later to describe him when he found her with her lip bleeding and her cheek bruised yellowish blue.
After the main course the waiter returned for the millionth time and brushed the crumbs from the table into a silver scoop. Another waiter carried a fan of dessert menus at the ready like giant playing cards, as if there might be some fabled game of high-stakes poker among these groomed and shining outlaws. When the meal was entirely finished they grabbed their satchels and donned their light outerwear and moved back into the night. The waiters stood side by side. They waited in their uniforms, buttons gleaming, watching the party of eight drift effortlessly through the dining room. All glowing in the rosy-amber chandeliered lighting, these wondrous lucky humans, like science-fictional royalty. Replicas of some species that roamed the earth millennia ago, long before anyone could remember.
Neva saw upscale tourists from around the world and spiffy locals with their children navigating the parks throughout the day. The Blessed. Former nomads and hunter-gatherers celebrating the cultivation of nature into paths and borders, little rivers and charming gardens. They nodded to her, and their children ran up and tried to engage the twins and sometimes balls were tossed or words exchanged.
She saw young women with clotted mascara so thick it looked like caterpillars were growing from their eyelids. They were smoking cigarettes, walking arm in tattooed arm, eyeing the world suspiciously. She saw the elect themselves rolling prams big as small cars, the future lucky ones snuggled tenderly inside, and she saw herds of consumers carrying glossy shopping bags like weaponry and shields, armed with crests and titles of every description, their logos twisted from humble images of leaves or fruit or clouds into distorted symbols, brightly colored fragments of life as reduced and severed from nature as if they were cutoff human ears or human teeth or human limbs and the carriers themselves at first seemingly benign but on closer inspection crazed looking and wild in their anxious eyes and raw laughter. Neva did not know whether to love all of these people or hate them or forgive them or denounce them or accept them for what they were: a visitation from some alien planet that had entirely taken over this one.
Back at the hotel, foremost among these visitors, unreal in dimension and disarming with his benevolent gaze, awaited Steve. His office was too crowded and he preferred to do business today in his hotel suite. The enormity of his skeleton especially when he rose from a chair and unfolded himself was disorienting, an optical illusion. He was not muscular or fat or even broad, but of another scale entirely from everybody else. He was alone in the room and when Neva entered with the twins earlier than expected she was surprised to see him in a chair, his legs outstretched, a device in his hands, his reading glasses perched on his nose like a bird on a branch of a gigantic wind-twisted tree.
It’s fine, he said, without looking up from his reading. The boys can stay in their room. I have some business to do here.
Neva settled the boys, who were tired from a day at the Tower of London imagining beheadings and the vomit of gore that would spew from lopped heads of naughty kings and upstarts, in front of an even-more-gruesome video game for Roman and the annotated Sherlock Holmes for Felix.
Then she closed the door behind her and walked through the central living area toward her own small room and saw Steve engaged in conversation with another man. He must have entered quietly. Neva stood in the corner of the vast yellow-fabric wallpapered room and watched them. When Steve’s eyes quickly glanced at her he gave her a silent nod. Or he seemed to nod. She felt that he had indicated that she should stay. Then he continued speaking to the man.
His name was Grant. He was a young distant cousin of Steve’s but one whom Steve took seriously, perhaps because of a long history with Grant’s parents. He was in his early thirties and he was a chef. He had big plans for a restaurant empire. He needed a permit to build on a genius location in Laos, on the water. But there was a problem getting the permits. The local officials were being difficult.
Steve had no contacts there.
Grant knew that. He said he’d find the contacts but he needed help persuading the officials. He said he knew that Steve was brilliant at this sort of negotiation. He said Steve must have people who could help.
Three weeks later Ian traveled with Jonathan and Grant to Vang Vieng. Steve had suggested that Jonathan bring someone along to babysit and as it turned out Ian had time off from the show while some construction work was being done in the theater. Ian was there to keep Grant out of trouble while Jonathan conducted business. Ian did not have any real idea what the business was but he was happy to take a few days in Laos with the lovely girls who threw flowers from the hillsides and swam slick and topless in the water and the Bob Marley music pouring like tequila into the river and Grant introducing him to new pleasures. One day they went on flying fox swings over the Nam Song while tripping on hallucinogenic cocktails from beachfront bars. A few days later amid the seasonal rushing of the river two Australian men were killed while tubing without life jackets and drifted back downriver bloated and naked, their skin the blue-pink ombré of iridescent fish. Then it was time to go home.