Security(31)

“Clauthilde, ?a va?” he asks, concern softening his usually shrill vocal timbre. “Ah, ne t’inquiète—non, non, je ne fais rien. Dis--moi.” Clauthilde is Henri’s daughter. She’s a graduate of the International Culinary Center. She’s currently a sous--chef in Lyon, working under a mad genius whose standards are impossible to meet. One wonders if she appreciates the irony of calling her father to ask for advice; her side of the conversation is, of course, inaudible.

Henri’s steps seem to glide to the dining area as he listens, his obesity at last countermanded by the grace often gifted to fat men. He walks this way only when talking to Clauthilde, and he talks to Clauthilde only in the strictest privacy. He sits in the chair nearest the bay window, leans back, and crosses his legs. I speak perfect French, but the first time I heard him give his daughter this speech (she calls to hear it at least once a month), I thought I’d translated incorrectly.

“My little love,” he says, smiling a sad, wise smile at the glowing ocean, “the chef did not mean what he said. He does not mean what he does. It’s a sad thing to be the slave of your art, but it is the only way to truly create. Making the world new requires leaving the old world behind and drifting alone in a space devoid of perspective. It drives men—pardon me, people—to terrible extremes. Extremes of beauty, of ugliness. It is not a life I wish for you, but you tell me you are determined to know. This torture of composing flavors that tongues taste and throats swallow with perhaps a polite nod, never knowing the creator’s heroic battle against insanity, his—or her—daily struggle to be more than merely good. This man who throws your dishes and calls you his fool, you may decide he is a monster, and I hope this for you. Or you may decide to hear instead his passionate invitation to court greatness, with all the suffering this implies, with no assurance whatsoever that greatness will embrace you in return. These are your choices.”

Across the hall, the Killer waits, sitting on the bed, tapping his fingers on his knee.

Henri slaps his knee at something Clauthilde says. “Oui, oui! C’est vrai!” He laughs, shaking his head at the ocean, “You will fall in love with this man, I think. I will escort you down the aisle to him in the same church we . . . Ha! You deny it!” He takes the phone from his ear, chuckles, and slips it back in his pocket. He finds it endearing when Clauthilde hangs up on him. He returns to the kitchen and shakes the saucepan over the flame again, humming the “Wedding March.”

Tessa has turned off the music in the kitchen. Brian is pressing the “Down” button by the main elevator. “He wants to see the pool,” Tessa tells Jules and Justin. She sounds completely done in.

“Are you okay?” says Justin, scouring the sink.

“Honey,” Jules says to him, “go ask Delores what she thinks of the champagne pyramid.”

Justin says, “Delores? Delores looks at me like I’m gonna—” Jules looks at him like she’s gonna—“I’ll go see what Delores thinks of our pyramid.” He flaps his hands in the air to dry them, expediting his exit.

“It looks great,” Tessa says, wiping the counter with a dishrag. “The pyramid, you guys did an amazing—”

“Tessa?”

Tessa sets down the dishrag.

There are the hums of the kitchen fluorescents, the chug of the dishwasher. There is Justin, in the ballroom, indicating the champagne pyramid on the far side of the silent auction table and asking Delores how she likes it. There is Delores regarding him peripherally, consoling herself, it is plausible to assume, that if Justin, this seemingly innocuous man, becomes suddenly violent, she, Delores, has a loaded revolver in her apron pocket.

Brian, at the main elevator, seems to be preparing himself. Idio-matically: “psyching himself up.” He takes deep breaths in and lets them out slowly. Brian uses breaths quite often to make himself do or say things he’s reluctant to do or say. I bet he does yoga. That would correspond to his sad, skinny little body, which I could break in half like a chopstick.

Could have. I could have.

“I can’t do this again,” Tessa says.

“Do what?” says Jules.

Tessa shakes her head. “You wouldn’t understand,” she says like she honestly wishes Jules would. Tessa passes Jules, the heels of her boots clacking toward the kitchen door.

Jules says quietly, “You decide what you can’t do.”

Tessa stops in the doorway. She smiles the complete antonym of a smile, and then points at a table in the southwest quadrant of the ballroom. “This one.”

Jules contains her surprise. Tessa means the place setting. It’s the simplest place setting. It’s almost stark: plate, fork and knife left, spoon right, water glass at two o’clock. A napkin in the shape of a sailboat. “You got it,” Jules says.

Tessa proceeds toward Brian. He smiles tightly at her once she’s at his side. She smiles tightly back.

“That’s a nice bracelet,” he says.

Tessa says, “Thanks,” and raises her left wrist. The frail gold ripples like a thread of water. She looks at the hollow elevator shaft.

“I noticed it when we were dancing. Was it a gift?”

“Yeah. Good guess.”

“Barely a guess. You wouldn’t buy yourself something like that.”

“It’s been eleven years. How do you know what I would and wouldn’t buy?” Her tone is playful and sharp. Playful to cover the sharp.