Life Among Giants (41 page)

William withdrew, his shoes tapping off down the hallways back there, the maze of stairways. Tenke and I sat in silence, looking out at the view of the river, the coursing city beyond. I plucked one of the cognac snifters off the table, drank it down, aware again I was in my cook's clothes, that I smelled of the restaurant. My dancer began to slip in her chair. Her eyes drooped closed. I'd have to ring for William, soon, shout for him, however it was done in that beautiful house.

“I have a plan,” she murmured suddenly. “But I don't know how to carry it out.” She put a long hand awkwardly high on my thigh, intimately high, yawned extravagantly. “For that, I come to you.”

I thought a moment, said, “Kate hopes we might be able to use some kind of DNA testing. Put together some evidence, link Kaiser and Perdhomme. Brady and Perdhomme, I mean. Whoa.”

“DNA?
Link?
Evidence? Firfisle-mine, we are not needing any of that. We know what happen, we know exactly what happen.”

“
Th
en what do you propose?”

“We think it through, Lizano. We think it through together. Sometime very, very soon? Talk it through? Because right now, I am falling asleep.” She really was, her frame twitching with it. Still she whispered: “To kill for passion, okay,
ja,
maybe I unnerstand. But to kill for
money
?” She yawned again, a vast, exhausted thing, said, “High Side? I am home there Monday. After this thing of mine they're doing, this retrospective. You'll attend—I leave the tickets.
Th
en come see me, Lizano. Come row across your honest pond. Is time for us . . . is time . . . is for us to turn the game.”

I stood, looked for some sort of bell, something to call for William, couldn't see how it was done. I said, “I don't think it's a game, Tenke. I don't think it's a game at all.”

“You lovely, lovely man,” she said. Her breath deepened, but still she talked, began to mutter, several sing-song sentences, something about Emily, something about Dabney, something more in Norwegian. And then something clear: “Is all written out, you know. Everything is fate. All written out in Heaven, or written out in Hell.”

William's footsteps were coming up a stair back there. I picked up Sylphide's hand, brought it to my lips—a deep bow from my height down to her chair—kissed her elegant long fingers as so many fans and admirers had done before me.

23

A Tuesday night in late October, like any other Tuesday at Restaurant Firfisle, the start of our fifth year, a full book of reservations.
Th
e staff was buzzing: Sylphide's retrospective earlier in the month had been a smash, and now she was coming to Restaurant Firfisle for a private evening, party of three, her name right in the reservation book, greatest choreographer in the world. She'd been in the news as well because of Daniel Tancredi's admission to New York Hospital after the event, a coma from which he was not expected to wake. His care and prognosis was undisclosed and closely guarded, but some fink managed to get a few photos that turned up in all the newspapers of the world: Sylphide in the ambulance doors, clearly distraught, still in her gown.

Within a week William had called to say that Sylphide wanted me to know Daniel had been stabilized, a thoroughgoing stroke brought on by his cancer treatment, brain death likely; soon there'd be a decision for his children and Sylphide to make. And she wanted my advice in that. For the time being, however, Sylphide wanted me to know she was free to travel, and that her plans for India remained unchanged. She'd be in Westport one evening very soon.

My dancer let me know which evening by simply letting herself in through the glass patio sliders in my kitchen. She made her way silently to my living room, where I was deep in my new easy chair reading.

“I come to you when I'm alone,” she announced.

I jumped, struggled to sit up in the face of the vision—just this girl in blue jeans and blouse, the girl of Dabney's album cover, her toes turned in shyly. I hadn't seen her hair out of its bun since our poolhouse days.

In addition to William's call, I'd been receiving messages via Dr. Chun, destroying them in his sight after reading them, spy stuff. I'd sent my replies, which she in turn destroyed: Perdhomme and Kaiser would be coming again to Restaurant Firfisle in one week and one day—and in one week and one day and a few hours more she would accompany them to India, supposedly to investigate their blood banks proposal, whatever it was, saying she was doing it for Daniel. So Perdhomme and Kaiser couldn't kill me right away, I thought: I was needed as a prop.

Th
e dancer climbed on my lap. She kissed my face. “I feel very close,” she said.

“You are very close, Tenke. Close to me. Is that what you mean?”

“I'm not wanting to live without Daniel,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“You, I am used to living without.”

Since we'd last seen Perdhomme and Kaiser, we seemed to have had interlocking fantasies about them. It was like we'd torn a playing card and matched our two halves: my revenge fantasy would never have worked without hers, hers would never have worked without mine. Serious business, this transporting of fantasy into the actual world. But our plan was in place.
Th
is visit seemed to have its own purpose. Emily had left that morning, as Tenke no doubt knew, off around the world after the honestly quite moving and impressive and appropriate tribute to Sylphide, an event that had rocked Lincoln Center, rocked the city, shock waves still spreading round the world, what with Daniel's collapse as they'd arrived home.

Emily and I had had a week of harmony. Sylphide would outlive us both, we agreed, Sylphide would find the next very rich husband. All those legal documents, Tancredi's imminent death, that had had nothing to do with us. Nothing, that is, except for the idea embedded in there, Sylphide's idea, the idea that Emily and Lizard were fated to marry. We'd batted the idea back and forth. Not impossible. Not likely. But sex-drunk one evening I'd given her my mother's old engagement ring, nothing too impressive. Still, the gesture had moved Emily. We fell into a mutual warmth like we'd never had, a sense of caring, none of the usual badinage and bittersweet kisses, but something a lot like love. She wore the ring three days before giving it back, pretty considerate: she knew my mother's memory meant more to me than she ever would.

Sylphide in my lap rehearsed our plan for me one more time. It was very simple, really, and would be easy to abandon if at any stage things went wrong. Hard to see how we might get caught, though I suppose it's always hard to see anything at all with your face in the icy mists of the dish served cold. Also—she'd written this in one of her notes—if we did get caught, we'd get caught only after the fact, deed done. Well worth it, we agreed.

And that was it for soul-searching.

“I always wanted,” she said reaching into my shirt, “to make love with you here in the house across the way.”

“Across the wa-ayy,”
I sang softly, my froggy voice cracking, the refrain of Dabney's greatest ballad, one of several love songs he'd written for my sister, a number-one hit, as everyone knows, one of those chartbusters, months and months of constant play on the radio.

“I suppose it is impossible,” Sylphide said.

“It would hardly be right,” I agreed.

“My
Kjempe
,” she said, and slipping her hands in my pants pockets, tugged her Giant upstairs and to his lair.

E
TIENNE WAS UNHAPPY
with me, as he is periodically, because periodically I get these urges and go off on a food mission that doesn't involve him, make executive decisions, change a supplier. And that morning I'd put Pasta Pazzo on the night's menu before he got in, sent the proof by email to the printer (a local craft-letterpress subsidized by the Tenke
Th
orvald Foundation, almost free to us, but always a little like writing the evening's menu in stone). We had a good supply of green tomatoes for beautiful fries, I'd checked on that. And then I'd gotten busy making wild-mushroom sausages from the exquisite load of king oysters and black trumpets and chanterelles and odd picks that Ferkie had dropped the afternoon before.

RuAngela rushed into the restaurant clacking in her heels on the old floorboards, a flood of cheer and confidence, gigantic hug to overmatch my obvious dolor. Etienne moonwalked in behind her, earphones from his Walkman loud enough for all the world to hear—Salt-N-Pepa—and the two of them danced a little, fell into an embrace, the most affectionate long-term couple I have ever known. While E.T. got dressed for the kitchen, I pulled Ru-Ru aside and told her about the menu change. She would conduct the information to Etienne, a bad-news system we'd developed over years, and I'd give him twenty minutes to calm down. I trotted out of the shop with seconds to spare, crossed the street and over into the deep-autumn garden, started pulling green hog-heart tomatoes—there were hundreds of the fat, dense things. Seconds later E.T. was behind me: I hadn't got my twenty minutes. I hadn't got two. I held a huge hog-heart up to him, scent of the plant, fantastic.

“Ha!” he shouted. “Green tomato fries?
Th
at's a no-go, mo-fo! We don't have those herbs, you kidding?”
Th
e man was genuinely scary when angry—something about that extra set of eyes, all the jewelry dangling off everything, but more than that, just the rare window on a deep fund of rage.

“We've got VIPs coming,” I said gently.

“Oh, Mr. Enormous, this better be good.”

“It's Sylphide,” I said. “With those gentlemen from before.”

“Sylphide,” he said, theatrical gasp. He flung himself down beside me, started picking hog-hearts, placing them lovingly in our old olive-oil buckets one by one.

“You shouldn't call me mo-fo,” I said.

“I'm sorry for that,” he said.

“And the Mr. Enormous. I don't like that.”

Y
OU WANT EVERYTHING
to be normal on a big night. You want things to be normal all day. I waited till nearly two to call the staff meeting, and that was when I announced that my dancer would be coming. Back to work we went, the kitchen and dining room suddenly in performance mode, beautiful. I left, just as always, around two-thirty. Drove peacefully north, too vigilant in any case for the usual nap. I parked at a certain barn. And walked past nickering horses to a certain pasture, to a certain shaded corner Ferkie had shown me once offhand and that I'd been checking daily for a week: sure enough, the mushrooms had been there, every day more young ones pushing up through the duff, a kind of confirmation of Sylphide's and my plan, a growing galaxy of hundreds of pretty little specimens: either
Amanita phalloides
or
Amanita
ocreata.
Death cap or destroying angel, didn't matter which, but very likely
ocreata,
given the time of year (said the budding mycologist). I picked upwards of five pounds of the youngest ones, glowing white caps still attached to veils, placed specimen after juicy specimen lovingly into one of Ferkie's large collection bags, delicious-looking knobs and stems, phallic certainly, the dick in the word
phalloides,
little flecks of leaf and dirt, faint bruises.

Back in the kitchen, I only had a couple of hours to work. Etienne and RuAngela had left, just two of our cleaning people in the dining room, the daily hiatus, vacuum running, only Colodo Doncorlo, our pasta chef, at work in the kitchen. She was irritable, having had the Pazzo sprung on her. I shrugged—wasn't I back early, too? And got to work, lovingly washing the death caps or destroying angels myself, lovingly drying them, one by one.
Such robust, handsome mushrooms, compact and shapely. I chopped, one of the great pleasures of the kitchen, wielding my Masamoto, a big blade sharp as broken glass. For the sausage we kept and used the mushroom stems if not too woody; this added texture. I took the tiniest taste of the stem in my hand—it had a good bite, kind of thready, easily torn with the teeth, perfect. I swallowed it, not thinking, but not much worrying either: it had only been the most minuscule amount. Mushrooms cook down, of course, shrink terrifically, and
Amanitas p.
and
o.
are no exception, shrinking in the wine and butter and olive oil, darkening nicely, forming a beautiful stock to reduce. Each sausage might contain as much as a quarter pound of the original weight of the mushrooms, with just two ounces uncooked weight guaranteed deadly. Two ounces!

I lingered over the cooking, rubbed out some sage leaves, rolled a little fresh thyme, taking too much of the other kind of time, two trips to the garden, inefficient pleasure, dry-panning the herbs with just a little more
Th
ai fire-pepper than I thought I should (because that's always the amount that's right in the end), attending to every detail. So much of the art of the professional kitchen comes in consistency. I chopped another round of mushrooms, adding raw to the mix for tooth, as always, but in this case for potency, potency. I wasn't nervous. I wasn't full of doubt. And I wasn't afraid. I licked my knives constantly, kissed my fingers, added herbs, ground chilis, plenty salt, subtle spices, ate tiny morsels of the finished mixture, exquisite. But there was more to those sausages than that: they had the most subtle, lovely, rooty, earthy mushroom flavor I'd ever experienced, hints of fresh rain. I resisted eating spoonfuls of the mixture, but nibbled a little more, and then a little more again. Yes, yes, it was the single best food I'd ever tasted.
Th
e flavor would hold up a few hours, from what I'd read in the mushroom books, and I had read plenty.

Sylphide's reservation was early, six-thirty. She and her guests had one of the Tenke
Th
orvald Foundation's private jets reserved and waiting: overnight flight to Bombay, as the city was still called.

K
ATE AND
J
ACK
arrived just at five, per planning.
Th
e Firfisle staff already knew my sister from frequent visits.
Th
ey knew the drill, too—she was here to serve Sylphide and her guests; the others were to leave them alone. E.T. patted my sister's still golden hair, kissed her bright cheeks: oddballs attract. Of course Brady would know her, and of course he would know she knew him: how naïve we'd seem, what pawns.

Only Sylphide and I knew the full plan. Kate and Jack and E.T. and Ru thought we were all engaged in an undercover DNA collection, something we'd all agreed we had to do although no one at the current D.A.'s office (Jack's discreet inquiry) was even slightly interested in the cold old case.
Th
e Firfisle staff was not to touch or see or know anything: no one but the core of us should be implicated in any legal issues that might arise. And we'd all expressed a lot of confidence in things going right: DNA collected, positive analysis proving connection of both men to their crimes, D.A. interested once again, case reopened, a couple of old murderers convicted.
Th
e dancer's role was simply to bring in our quarry. Even Kate had seen the wisdom of that, though none of my explanations had convinced her of Sylphide's innocence.

Neurotic celebrity, we told the staff. Special requirements. My sister was to be treated by everyone on duty just as any other waitperson, someone you were used to, no special hugs or hellos. In the wait-station she put her hair up, immediately found one of our signature green jackets to fit tight. RuAngela put her on napkin-folding duty, no special treatment and a good idea to keep Kate's hands busy, keep her nerves down: surely if there were a weak link, Kate was it. She was very, very excited that her plan had prevailed. She was very, very unhappy that Sylphide would take part, and had said so repeatedly, heatedly. It took Etienne to settle her down—look at the role the dancer was playing, bringing the marks to table!—and later Jack to keep her calm and focused. “DNA,” he kept repeating, “DNA.”