“INCREDIBLE,” SAID MIA, staring at the polished black stone slab in the front garden of the villa in Elms Walk.
“Absolutely,” I agreed. So that was what the Boker had bought with our savings: a tombstone for the topiary peacock.
She didn’t call it a tombstone—she called it a memorial tablet. All she wanted, she claimed, was to be constantly reminded of the transitory nature of plant life, the destructive power of certain individuals, and the necessity of opposing that destructive power energetically.
“In memory of Mr. Snuggles, Buxus sempervirens ‘Myrtifolia,’ slaughtered in a single night after twenty-five years of tireless growth,” Mia read aloud. “I suppose we should be glad she didn’t have our names carved on it as well.”
“No, Buttercup! Bad dog!” I hastily hauled Buttercup out of the flower bed, although she was in the middle of lifting her leg to do the only right thing to the memorial tablet. “We’ll have to find another way to the park when we take her for a walk. I’ll never be able to look at this tablet without dreaming of our phone.”
“I’d hoped so much that Grayson would get a new iPhone. Then we could have had his old one,” said Mia.
Today was the twins’ birthday, and Mia’s heavy sigh reminded me that I still didn’t know what to wear for this evening’s party, which was thankfully to be held at home and not at the Boker’s after all. Florence had had the “amusing” idea of sending a dress code out with the invitations. All guests related to Grayson and Florence were to come in blue; other students from our school in red; the people whom Florence knew from her charity work (a soup kitchen for the homeless) in green; white for all partners included in the guests’ invitations; and black for everyone who came into none of those categories.
Persephone was beside herself. She not only couldn’t wear her new blue Missoni skirt, she also thought that red didn’t suit her. Only when she thought of asking Gabriel to bring her as his partner (to which he had no objection) was she happy again.
My problem was different: I didn’t know which color would be right in my case. Apart from white and green, I could really have come in any of them. But Mia thought Florence would probably be furious if we wore anything blue. And for lack of anything red (Persephone had a point: red suits very few people, and I’m not one of them), I finally put on my black shirtdress, which did for almost any occasion, and jazzed it up a bit with tights in black and colored stripes. The last time I’d worn it was for a neighbor’s funeral in South Africa, and then it had been knee-length. Now it was a minidress, and a bit tighter, so presumably too sexy for a funeral but just right for this evening.
The best thing about the dress was the little pocket sewn to one side of it, which was the perfect size for a snuffbox from the rococo period.
The party was really meant to start at eight, but when I came downstairs at seven thirty, there were already a great many guests there. The soup-kitchen people in green had come early, many of them in the afternoon to help with clearing the living room and dining room. A lot of the furniture was now in the garage and the garden shed, leaving room for the small platform for the cover band that Ernest had provided as a surprise present for Florence and Grayson. The band was called the Chords, and Persephone claimed that they were known as a support band for Avec, but the fact was that neither name meant anything to me. However, they played well, and that was what mattered. The band had already arrived and gone through the mysterious and complicated ritual of tuning their instruments, which always makes musicians look as if human life were at stake.
Grayson and Florence were fully occupied welcoming the guests, who were now streaming in. Florence was smiling radiantly and looked beautiful in her new green dress, which I supposed she was wearing to show solidarity with her soup-kitchen colleagues. Grayson waved to me, and I was relieved to see him looking so relaxed. And glad that for the sake of a quiet life he’d put on a blue striped shirt instead of the white one he was wearing earlier. Florence had thrown a fit over the white shirt in the afternoon. “White! Are you trying to turn me into a nervous wreck? If you wear that, everyone will think you’re only one of the guests’ partners,” she had snapped at him, adding dramatically, “Can’t you do as I want just for once?”
Well, he obviously could. Although blue might not be the perfect color choice—on the other hand, of course he was related to Florence.