“I’m just having fun with you. That’s acceptable, isn’t it?”
Lici considered him again. She took a long drag on her cigarette and jetted the smoke. “Just know that I’m onto you. I didn’t want you thinking you had us all fooled.”
“You seem to think I’m much more interesting than I really am. Hidden agendas, secret motives, counterfeit Scotsmanship. Do you see a fair number of detective movies, Lici? Perhaps read a Dashiell Hammett novel now and then?”
“Don’t be vulgar.” The cigarette flared between her lips one last time, then she dropped it and crushed it under her heel. “I had my doubts that you’d ever set foot in the Plaza.”
“So you came to check up on me?”
“Please,” she said. “I was meeting friends for tea.”
“I’m surprised,” Francis said.
“That I have friends?” Lici said, robbing him of a punch line.
“No,” he said. “That you drink tea. I had you figured for something stronger. But you’re welcome to follow me, if it will set your mind at ease. I’ll even introduce you to the staff. Collier must be around somewhere—he’s the concierge—and that’s Bobby at the front door, and Andy the elevator boy, for taking us to the seventh floor. He’s quite the wag, that one.”
“Now you’re inviting me back to your hotel room. What would Anisette think? She’ll be heartbroken.”
At the mention of Anisette’s name, a spark flared in his chest. He might have blushed. “Isn’t that half the reason you’d do it?”
“She was engaged to be married. Did she tell you that? The wedding would have been two weeks ago—a May bride. She broke it off when it became clear to her that her fiancé was a thug. But that’s not the story anyone tells. There are advantages to being a thug from a good family. A better family than ours, apparently.”
Francis fumbled for a response.
“Oh, it’s no secret. It was quite the scandal.” She leaned in, as if sharing a confidence, but spoke in a harsh stage whisper. “Anyone on Fifth Avenue will tell you that Anisette is hysterical. That she had a nervous breakdown—walking the streets in the middle of winter, with her clothes torn and her hair like a madwoman’s. That her fiancé and his family were so lucky to learn of her condition before it was too late.”
He tried to square the image of Anisette alone and in winter with that of the girl he had escorted through the park. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re going to hear it sooner or later, and I’d rather you ran off now, before my sister and my mother get any more ideas about where this is all leading. My parents treat Anisette like she’s made of porcelain, and maybe she is. But I’d rather not see her shattered by the likes of you.”
“I think there’s more to Anisette than you realize.” He pictured her with the violin, at her house by the sea, and radiant in the gallery full of Rembrandts.
“You think you know her better than I do? Really? Do you know she still plays with dolls?”
“And what do you play with?”
“Clever, indeed,” she said. “But I still don’t trust you.” She turned toward the door, then paused and cast over her shoulder a look that was equal parts Marlene Dietrich and Edward G. Robinson. “Good-bye, Angus. Or whoever you are.”
Cronin was stewing by the elevator, but before Francis could reach him, he was again intercepted—this time by the concierge.
Collier was beaming. “Your Lordship! Wonderful news! Your brother has returned!” He clamshelled Francis’s hand between his and gave it a vigorous shake before remembering himself—Don’t touch the aristocracy—and placing his hands over his heart. The details of young Malcolm’s return poured out of him, but Francis took in hardly a word of it. Bodies in pastel fabrics and summer-weight suits moved through the lobby, laughter erupted as friends exchanged hellos, somewhere a piano tinkled through a tune he had heard but could not name, from the street came the whistle of the bell captain summoning taxis, Collier continued a recitation of miracles and good Samaritans, and over by the elevators Cronin slouched with a garment bag full of formal attire and the gun Francis would use to kill the king. All of it washed over him. The only thing that mattered was that Michael was back. He was safe. And tomorrow Francis would do what was necessary to keep him that way.
THE FARM
WHEN IS TOM COMING home?” Henry looked up from his dinner, fixing his mother with those eyes, more black than brown. He asked the question innocently enough, as if it had just occurred to him that there was an empty chair at the table. But it had to be the hundredth time he had asked her in the past week—maybe even the hundred thousandth. He had wailed when they left Tom at the depot and only the ice cream brought an end to the tears. She had paid the man in the ice cream parlor with a ten-dollar bill for a ten-cent scoop, and wasn’t that sure to get some folks talking—as if Alice hadn’t given them plenty enough already to set their tongues wagging.
Along with the ice cream had come a white lie: Tom would be back soon. Without that lie, Henry would have bawled while the ice cream melted onto his fist, then cried some more that he had lost his treat. He quieted himself, and only when he had finished the last soggy bits of the cone did she wipe his face of tears and snot and chocolate. She told him that Tom had to go on a short trip, which meant that Henry was the man of the house, and wasn’t it a good thing that he knew so much about caring for the new calf? And wouldn’t Tom be proud to see how hard Henry could work?
In the days that followed, the question kept coming and Alice did her best to answer in a way that would satisfy the boy without making any promises. “Any day now,” she would say. “Soon, I suppose.” But tonight at dinner, when Henry asked, Alice snapped. “Will you stop asking questions I can’t answer!”
Henry didn’t blink. Slowly his lip began to quiver and his eyes turned from coal to wet, limpid tar and then he was wailing again, whereupon the baby picked up the chorus. Alice sat there between them, one on each side and the smooth back of Tom’s empty chair across from her, and she let her face sink into the cradle of her hands.