Dead at Breakfast

  Alex had reached the part of the paper that concerned itself with the private lives of public idiots, which today, oh surprise, was in a busybody ecstasy over the spectacle calling herself Artemis.

  Artemis. That child knew as much about Greek mythology as this poodle. Here she was, doing a perp walk into the Brentwood police station, having crashed her Jaguar at three in the afternoon on the way to a rehearsal for her latest “comeback” tour. She’d been released from her third court-ordered stint at Betty Ford ten days ago.

  Comeback tour. What the hell had she done to her hair, it looked as if it had been boiled and left to mat, like felt. Who were these geniuses who thought she was actually going to be able to lose fifteen pounds and stay off drugs long enough to remember the words to her songs, and prance around onstage in her little spangled hooker costumes in city after city, and sing the way she sang these days, that sounded as if she was shredding the inside of her larynx? Without blowing her pipes out, if nothing worse? Twerking, would that be next? She made him physically ill.

  Look at that hair. When she was three she’d had the hair of a Botticelli Venus. If she were right in front of him, he’d hold her down and shave her head, let her spend a few months looking like a hairless monkey, maybe she’d learn to respect the gifts she’d been given.

  He turned to the Sudoku. At his feet the dog had gotten up and was wandering around, incapable, apparently, of realizing that it was tethered. It seemed to smell something interesting. He shifted his bulk, put down the paper, and turned his attention to the scene before him again. There was a lone catboat out on the lake, skimming lazily across the path of the sun. A herd of fat white clouds, drifting like great “îsles flottantes” on that marvelous nursery dessert, were breaking up the sheen of light on the water. And over on the other side of the perennial bed, there was now a figure moving.

  It was crawling along the edge of the bed on all fours, stopping to work at the stalks of things to strip away crisp and curling leaves, to pinch or behead the spent flowers. Putting on his sunglasses to cut the glare, Alex could see that the figure was a small, slender man, not a boy as he’d thought at first. A slight old man in a very old flannel shirt, towing a large rubber bucket behind him, into which he threw his cuttings. Alex thought of bonfires of the cuttings from grapevines and olive trees in his childhood, how the stinging smoke scented the air and your hair and clothes and made your eyes feel burned. He’d love the times of year that he went with the others to work on the rich farm down the slope that belonged to people from Argos. When he first grew rich he took The Wife and daughter, who was still called Jenny, back to Greece to see where he’d come from. But when he got to Argos, it looked like a grubby market town, not the glowing metropolis he’d thought to startle with his newfound glory, and when they reached his home village, he didn’t even stop to look for the “rich” farm. Instead he pointed out a substantial house in Stemnitsa as they drove through without stopping and afterward The Wife enjoyed telling people she’d seen where he grew up and it was an absolute hovel.

  The fleshless little man was standing on the near side of the flower bed now, frankly watching him. His version of erect was painful to see; there had been a man on the rich farm who’d misunderstood the fancy farm machinery and had an accident that left him much like that. Something bad had happened to this one, anyway.

  “That’s the dog,” said the bent figure, looking at Colette.

  “It’s certainly a dog,” said Alex. He was admiring himself as if watching this scene from one of the floating cloud islands, the prosperous man of affairs making time to be civil to a rude mechanical, who would never guess that he had once been such a one himself.

  “That’s the dog upset my Walter,” said the man. His tone was surprisingly aggressive, for a menial addressing a guest.

  Alex looked at the poodle. She was lolling in the grass, now that the figure had approached and been accepted, and as if she knew they were speaking of her, she rolled onto her back with all four paws in the air and her bottom teeth just showing, her ears lying open and pink on the grass like hair bows.

  “And you are?” said Alex pleasantly.

  “Earl.”

  “And how did the dog upset Walter?”

  “Yaps.”

  “Ah. Well, I don’t doubt that,” said Alex. “Fortunately my room is too far away for me to hear her.” He picked up his newspaper.

  “Shouldn’t be left alone in the room,” said Earl.

  “And you see, she hasn’t been. She’s out here with me. Please tell Walter I’m sorry he was inconvenienced.” As an afterthought, he reached into his pocket and peeled a twenty off a roll of bills. “Please give this to Walter and tell him to buy himself a drink. If he’s old enough to drink.” Maybe this person was supporting a grandson.

  “He’s eighty-seven,” said Earl. He did not take the money. Mr. Antippas looked at him, decided he must be a little deranged, and put the bill back in his pocket. Then he hoisted himself out of his chair and towered over Earl, just to make the point that he was not, in case his good manners had deceived this troll, someone who could be toyed with. Then he unhooked Colette’s leash and said to Earl, “I see you’re busy.” He walked back toward the hotel, let himself in the side door to the wing he thought of as the Animal House, ascended to the room shared by The Wife and her sister, and tossed the dog in. The door locked behind him, and as he went down the stairs, he heard Colette take up her howls of complaint.

  Cherry Weaver was in the kitchen, sitting on a stool near the salad prep, eating a curried turkey wrap and sobbing. It was not an attractive sight. Her mother was elbow-deep in steaming sudsy water, cleaning the stockpots.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she said, “and he was like he knew that but he could only keep me until the end of the month. So I could make my plans.”

  Her mother turned around to look at her daughter, now sporting oily dressing on the skirt of her moss-colored Oquossoc Mountain Inn uniform. Mrs. Weaver snapped a paper towel off the nearest roll, and handed it to Cherry. “Blow your nose,” she said and turned back to her work. It was nearly impossible to cry and eat at the same time and keep your mouth closed while doing it, and Beryl Weaver didn’t really feel she had to see what that looked like. She thought about what a pretty little thing Cherry had been. And very sweet, always the one to make you a ceramic ashtray or bring a handful of candy corn to you from her treat bag at Halloween, in her grubby damp hand. But that had been quite a time ago.

  “And he said anyway it had nothing to do with that reservations thing, it just like wasn’t working out. But I know it did.”

  Mrs. Weaver kept scrubbing. She wished Cherry hadn’t grown up to look so much like her father. Her children didn’t seem to know the meaning of work, and this one had never had more than a teaspoonful of brains, but she had been biddable. She was going to end up emptying bedpans and wiping wrinkly old behinds over at Ainsley Nursing just like her feckless sister. She’d hoped, she really had, that this one at least wanted to try for something you could do in life without wearing rubber gloves.

  “Couldn’t you ask Chef Sarah to talk to him?” Cherry snuffled, while chewing huge bites, rushing, since technically, her lunch break was over.

  Mrs. Weaver turned to look at her.

  “So we can both get fired? I like my job, thanks.”

  “She’d never fire you for asking.”

  “You don’t keep good jobs by asking for special favors.”

  Mrs. Weaver finished rinsing the big stockpot and reached for a clean kitchen towel. She looked at Cherry, then pointedly up at the wall clock, which stood at two minutes past one. Cherry stuffed the last inch of turkey wrap into her mouth, jumped up and took her plate to the sink, and hurried out, chewing. Her mother hoped she would stop in the ladies’ and fix her smeared eye makeup, but she wasn’t going to bet the farm on it.

  Sarah, as it happened, had already talked with Gabe about Cherry Weaver. It was the eighth of the month, so she had ta
ken his lunch tray up personally. Gabe proposed to her every month on the eighth, and every month she laughed, but they both knew she enjoyed it. She’d told him the first time that she would never marry again, and she had her reasons. He had told her that never was just a word, and that he was persistent. He had no idea how close she had come to accepting him this morning, but instead of answering him immediately, she happened to ask if he had any idea why Cherry Weaver was weeping in her kitchen, and he had dropped his head into his hands.

  “I hate firing people,” he said from behind his fingers.

  “I was afraid of that,” said Sarah, and gave him a chance to explain why he felt he had to do it. And felt, as she left him, that perhaps it was just as well that the moment had passed. There would be other months, and this was not the best of times.

  Maggie and Hope were playing honeymoon bridge in the lounge at the cocktail hour. The Maynards and Bonnie McCue came in together, having just finished Walking Meditation on the lawn in the violet light of sunset. Lisa and Glory and Alexander the Great were nearby, sharing a baked herbed goat cheese Glory had made in the afternoon.

  As goat cheese went this was rather good, Alex thought. Too bad The Wife hadn’t learned this trick, he loved goat cheese. He put a large mound of it onto a cracker and popped it into his mouth like dropping a letter into a mailbox. It slipped out of sight with barely a movement of the great jowls, as if he had swallowed it whole.

  How did he even taste things? Maggie wondered. She watched Glory recross her long tan legs and flip a lock of silky multihued blond hair over her shoulder. She was wearing a buff-colored suede jacket and a very brief matching skirt (surely it was rather cool for so much bare flesh now that the night chill was coming on). Maggie noticed Alex watching the legs, as if they had been put on earth for his benefit.

  The Wife was chattering about the pumpkin polenta gratinée she had made, which they would have for dinner. What, could someone please explain to him, was the point of pumpkins? Great tedious starchy things, he didn’t even like the color. And he wished his wife wouldn’t wear pants. Glory never did, at least not around him. She knew what a man liked and she liked to see that he got it. Especially in bed, not that he’d had that pleasure lately.

  The young moron from the reception desk was coming toward them, oh god, she had food stains on her skirt, carrying a dark red retro telephone, with a dial and a long cord dangling from it like some article of clothing the girl had neglected to tuck in.

  “A call for you, Mrs. Antippas,” Cherry Weaver said. She shoved things around on the cocktail table to make room for the phone, then dropped to her hands and knees to plug the line into a jack somewhere behind Glory’s chair.

  “How adorable, it’s just like the old days at the Polo Lounge!” Glory said. “Where did they get the phones?”

  “Flea markets,” said Lisa.

  “People’s cells don’t work here, so,” said Cherry, and left them. Lisa picked up the phone, looking as if she doubted such instruments still conveyed human speech.

  “Hello?”

  On the other side of the continent, her son Jeremy was a mess of resentment and relief. “Finally! Mom! I’ve been trying to call you for a day! Where are you?”

  “We’re in a wrinkle in time,” she said. “It’s kind of adorable. Nothing invented since 1980 works here. Why, what’s up?”

  “Jenny’s dead,” yelled Jeremy.

  “Jenny’s what?” she said stupidly, her eyes suddenly wide and stunned. “She’s dead?” Glory and Alex went stiff and said “What?” at the same time.

  “She’s dead, it’s in the papers, they keep calling me and I didn’t know what to say. Where are you?”

  “But . . . ! Was there an accident?”

  “She hung herself in her cell. She was arrested again.”

  “I know that part. Are you sure?”

  “Well of course I’m sure, Mom, that’s why I’ve been calling you!”

  Alex grabbed the phone from his wife.

  “Who is this, Sophie?”

  “Jeremy. Dad, Jenny’s dead. I don’t know what to do!” and he started to cry.

  “Hang up, I’ll call you back from my room.” He slammed the phone down, heaved himself out of his chair, and left the lounge moving more swiftly than Maggie would have thought he could.

  The women stared after him. Then Lisa jumped up and followed, walking as quickly as she could in her high-heeled sandals. Glory looked as if her brain had frozen and she was waiting for it to reboot. Then she too got up abruptly and hurried after her sister, holding her hand over her mouth.

  Bonnie McCue hurried across the room and dropped into the chair beside Hope.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked. “She’s dead! Artemis!” She looked as if she might cry.

  Hope looked up from her hand. “Wait, who are we talking about?”

  “The pop star, Artemis. She killed herself last night.”

  Hope put her cards down and looked at Bonnie. “How really terrible,” she said. “I read the Boston Herald this morning, in the library. She had just been arrested.”

  “That was yesterday’s paper. The papers don’t get to the village until afternoon. Mr. Rexroth drives down for them every evening.”

  “Who is Mr. Rexroth?”

  “The old guy with the drooly dog? You’ve seen him. They’re out on the porch most of the day because Lisa’s poodle is driving his dog crazy.”

  “The seersucker guy, the minister?”

  “He wears the backward collar but he’s been retired for years. Or maybe retired.” She made air quotes with her fingers. “He may be just a little bit cracked. He’s been writing the same sermon since Hurricane Irene.”

  “How do you know all this?” Hope asked, frankly fascinated.

  “I got visiting with the girl who was cleaning my room this morning. I love a Chatty Cathy. Mr. Rexroth came here a few summers ago and sort of never left. He goes to Florida for a couple of months in the winters, but otherwise he lives here. He does errands for Mr. Gurrell for a break in his rent.”

  Just then, as if to illustrate the lecture, Mr. Rexroth strolled in from the front veranda with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. Eyes followed him hungrily as he crossed the lounge to the library. Then in ones and twos, people rose to follow him, like ants converging on a ribbon of syrup.

  The Antippas group did not appear for dinner, and everyone agreed that they must be going, or gone, back to California. The papers said the family was “in seclusion,” which was sort of true. Jeremy, Sophie, and Ada, Jenny’s half-siblings, had been mobbed by paparazzi and had stopped going outside. The entertainment press were now making a great rhubarb about a funeral, clamoring for an extravaganza, and running placeholder stories about Michael Jackson’s death and even about the national grief convulsion at the demise of Rudolph Valentino.

  Mr. Rexroth was looking piously pleased during dinner, which he ate alone with his own copy of the New York Post. The terrible yapper was leaving and he could resume his quiet pattern of writing in his room in the morning, and strolling with Clarence after lunch by the lake.

  Earl took his meals in the kitchen, sometimes early with the kitchen staff, sometimes after the dinner rush. Usually Sarah would make a plate for him and keep it in the warming oven, but tonight she had forgotten and was not in the kitchen herself. Oliver, the sous-chef, said she had a migraine and had gone to bed. Mrs. Weaver assembled dinner for Earl and sat with him while he ate.

  “I had about all I could take,” Earl said to her. “That dog upset Walter. It upset everybody. Oughtn’t to have pets if you can’t teach ’em.”

  “No, that’s right, Earl.”

  “Sorry what happened to their girl. But I won’t be sorry to see the back of them.”

  “I don’t think you’re alone there. Would you like more chicken?”

  “Is there pie?”

  “Yep, I saved some.”

  “I don’t think I’m alone either.”

  Sh
e took his dinner plate away and served him a slice of pie.

  DAY FOUR, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9

  When Lisa and Glory were girls, Lisa was the effortlessly pretty one. Glory was the fat competitive one. Their mother had been a beauty, and a model. Like most people, Mrs. Poole valued most what particularly distinguished her in the world. She took her daughters to have their legs and armpits waxed when they were barely into puberty, convinced (incorrectly as it happens) that if they never shaved, eventually they wouldn’t have to. Waxing hurt, but it was fun to have a spa day with their glamorous mother once a month. They’d all have their faces cleansed and hydrated, their feet pumiced and massaged, and their toenails painted while they ate watercress with minuscule scoops of chicken salad served to them on trays with pink linens. Mrs. Poole also made sure that her daughters were, like her, accomplished equestriennes. Riding clothes were so becoming to a woman. Theirs was a sunny, sporty childhood, uncomplicated except that being a twin is never uncomplicated.

  Gloria was her father’s girl. One summer when Lisa was confined to a darkened bedroom, not allowed to read or watch TV or think, basically, as she recovered from a severe concussion suffered in a horse show accident, Mr. Poole took Glory on a trip all the way to Vancouver on the TransCanada Rail Express train, just the two of them. They played backgammon for hours as the scenery streamed by, and ate fancy meals in the dining car. She had her own roomette. They saw the Rockies and Beautiful Lake Louise and Vancouver Island. Then they flew down to L.A. for a couple of days, because her father had some business there. What the business was Glory never knew, but they had dinner every night with a woman named Marie Elise whom her father seemed to know extremely well. Marie Elise was chic, funny, and apparently rich in her own right; Mr. Poole reported with something like awe that she was on the boards of several major corporations. Glory learned that everyone in Los Angeles was thin and beautiful and drove exciting cars. The last night they were in town Warren Beatty, a movie star whom their mother had a fantastic crush on, joined their table for dessert; Marie Elise was his financial adviser.