At the restaurant, they settled into a banquette in the Grill Room. Familiar faces grinned or glowered in every corner: two former cabinet secretaries (state and commerce); a movie actor renowned for his durable good looks and short stature; his powerful agent; a TV network president; the playboy scion of an Italian automobile fortune; the prime minister of Denmark; a deputy mayor; and enough CEOs to fill an issue of Fortune magazine, not to mention several other book biz people of Hamish’s rank who were huddled with their best-selling authors. The room’s graceful geometry and restful lighting affected Maggie like a calming drug. She ordered shrimp and corn cakes with ginger cilantro sauce and a salad of julienned root vegetables. Hamish ordered the hearty ragout of venison with herbed polenta.
“I want to tell you about my next book,” Maggie said as the waiter delivered their drinks—she, pale Madeira, he, a single-malt Scotch whisky, neat.
“Your diligence amazes me,” Hamish said, “under the circumstances.”
“I have a large establishment to run, and Kenneth will have his slimy lawyers pulling every string in the superior court to drag out even a temporary separation agreement. Besides, I have a point to prove. I want to carry on without him and his filthy lucre. Which brings me to the next point. Joyce is apt to ask for a shockingly large advance.”
“I’d say the money boys at Trice and Wanker understand your value to the firm, both present and future,” Hamish said with a wink. “What’s the book idea?”
Maggie smoothed the linen tablecloth. “Housekeeping,” she said.
Hamish drew back in his seat, gazed ruminatively at a distant chandelier, glanced back at Maggie, sipped his whisky, and said, “Houskeeping?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean as in cleaning up the house.”
“Cleaning, redecorating, refurbishing, yes.”
Hamish fidgeted in his seat, glanced at various points on the ceiling, and pronounced, “It’s brilliant.” The photographic opportunities came to him now in a rush: Maggie on tiptoes with a feather duster, Maggie hanging wallpaper, Maggie somewhat dishabille, on all fours, scrubbing pine planks with a wire brush, the deep cleft between her freckled full breasts exposed by the camera … He knocked back the rest of his drink in one gulp and sucked air in noisily over his teeth. “Clarissa was a bust in the housekeeping department,” he remarked when the whisky fumes cleared his windpipe. “Couldn’t make a bed to save her life. Wouldn’t have known the front end of a vacuum cleaner from the ass end of a hair dryer.”
Maggie had always wondered why they’d never been invited to Hamish’s apartment during the Clarissa years. The four of them would meet for dinner in the city, of course, but always in restaurants.
“My boy Hooper found himself a girl who has no idea how to set a table,” she said. “It’s remarkable. I believe a lot of modern women are absolutely lost when it comes to the fundamentals. Even some of the bright ones—”
“Madame,” a waiter announced, cradling a bottle of Perrier-Jouët, two flutes, and an ice bucket. “From the gentleman behind you.” Maggie turned 180 degrees to see Frederick Swann at a table not ten yards away, the singer’s lean, earnest, smiling face enveloped in its nimbus of golden Renaissance curls. He was seated with Earl Wise, chief of Odeon Records, the Hungarian film director Franz Tesla (Last Train to Graz, This Rotten Earth), and two young women of actressy demeanor. As Maggie’s eyes met his, Swann made a little writing gesture in the air, as though he were wielding a pen. “Ahem. Madame?” the waiter said and proffered a folded message:
My Dear Ms. Darling,
Never have I passed a Christmas Eve more agreeable than the gala in your lovely country home. You are a goddess. I shall be recording here in New York the next several months. Might we manage to meet discreetly so that I can admire you at leisure? I am at the Royalton, registered under the name Sir Humphrey Davy.
Humbly,
Swann
Maggie visibly blanched as she read the note, then turned a palpable scarlet, swiveled again in her seat, smiled at Swann, and silently mouthed the words thank you. Swann smiled boyishly in return.
“What was that all about?” Hamish inquired.
“He had a good time at my party Christmas Eve.”
“Let me see the note.”
“No,” Maggie giggled, thrusting it inside her tunic.
“It’s a mash note, isn’t it.”
“Not at all. It’s a thank you.”
“No secrets, Maggie,” Hamish said. Though waggling a finger at her in a kidding way, he was plainly unamused.
“Getting back to housekeeping—”
“Don’t make a fool of yourself with that young man. You could be his mother.”
“What a sweet thing to say.”
“I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“You’re jealous!”
“You’re damn right I am,” Hamish said, refilling his champagne glass. “He’s got more hair than I do. And the sonofabitch will still be prancing around up here in the fresh air thirty years from now when I’m in the bone orchard pushing up daisies— What in the hell?”
A commotion seemed to erupt around the captain’s station near the restaurant’s entrance, harsh words foreign to this serene setting that had silenced the buzz of table conversation. A glass broke. All heads turned to see four figures in paramilitary drag and ski masks rush into the room. They carried automatic machine pistols low at their sides so the weapons were not immediately conspicuous. The quartet posted themselves at equal intervals around the large room with soldierlike precision. Once in position, the figure in the middle hoisted his gun overhead.
“Yo! Can I have your attention please?” he said.
As soon as he said that, of course, all the restaurant patrons exclaimed loudly.
“Shut up! Of course this is a robbery. Listen carefully. Mens, put your wallets and your watches on the table please. If you got one of them plastic Casios, keep the motherfucker. Women, put your handbags and jewelry on the table. There will be no further instructions. Do it right and nobody gets hurt.”
Three of the figures pulled nylon sacks out of their camouflage jumpsuits and began circulating from table to table, scooping up booty. Maggie carefully removed the rhinestone drops from her earlobes, though they were worth less than fifty dollars. These days, one didn’t dare wear real jewelry on the streets of New York. She was rifling her handbag when one of the robbers arrived at the table.
“Just give it up lady,” he said, raking Hamish’s billfold and Rolex into his sack. “All of it.”
“I’m keeping my car keys. They’re of no use to you.”
“Who said?”
“Look, it’s parked way down on Forty-third Street.”
“What kind of wheels it is?”
“Nineteen ninety-eight Ford Fiesta,” she lied.
“What’s a nice lady like you drivin’ a piece of shit like that for?”
“It was my husband’s idea.”
“Oh, yeah?” he turned to Hamish. “Well, you a cheap motherfucker—”
“Yo!” the leader barked from the center. “Shut the fuck up over there.”
The robber took the handbag and the earrings and moved on, leaving Maggie her keys. Shortly, the gang reassembled at center.
“The Businessmen’s Lunch Posse would like to thank y’all for your cooperation,” the leader said. “Remain seated and nobody will get hurt. Have a nice day.” He fired a dozen rounds into the ceiling as punctuation and the quartet departed while everyone’s stunned attention was focused overhead on the falling ceiling debris. The entire operation took under ninety seconds. When the patrons realized that the robbers had indeed gone, the room swelled with astonished voices and a good deal of nervous laughter too. To Maggie, whose ears still rang from the gunfire, it seemed eerily as if a party had resumed.
“Were you trying to get us killed?” Hamish asked.
“Hal, I absolutely have to be at Kennedy Airport at three-thirty to pick up a dear friend who is in the midst of personal crisis of the gravest kind.”
“Maggie, you do not try to reason with armed robbers.”
“All right. Next time I won’t say a word.”
“Next time! If there is a next time, I’m moving to Switzerland.”
A waiter brought out their meal at that moment, apologizing on behalf of the management for the terrible inconvenience of the robbery and saying that their lunch was on the house. Then the police arrived. The patrons were asked to remain until an officer came around to interview them. In the meantime, Maggie dug into her shrimp and corn cakes while Hamish, still smoldering, barely pushed the food around on his plate.
“I’m going to buy a pistol,” he announced gloomily.
“Oh, I see. Trying to reason with them is stupid, but pulling a pistol on four men with machine guns is smart.”
Hamish glared at Maggie as though from the entrance to some dark bunker where all the entitlements of manhood were stored.
“Can I taste your venison?” Maggie asked and went prospecting on his plate without waiting for an answer. “Hmmm. Fabulous! They have a way with game here.”
The two set off for Hamish’s office barely fifteen minutes later. His mood improved along the way, and upon arrival he began spouting a play-by-play of the brazen robbery for every editor and coffee girl on the third floor. While he held forth, Maggie called in to report her credit cards stolen. Finally, she got Hamish to extract a hundred dollars from petty cash to cover the parking lot bill at the airport and the bridge tolls home.