Stuart Woods - Hot Mahogany

“Did you send a gift?” Dino asked.

“I sent a very nice silver bowl from Tiffany,” he replied acidly.

“Did you have it engraved?” Genevieve asked.

“Of course.”

“With Eliza’s initials or his?”

“With one of each.”

“That’s mean.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Now she can’t take it back.”

“So what?”

“Suppose she decides not to go through with it?”

“Then she’ll still have a very nice silver bowl and a reminder of her former fiancé.”

“You’re hoping she won’t go through with it, aren’t you?”

“I’m hoping no such thing. She’s a free woman, and she can do whatever she wants. She will do whatever she wants.”

“No, she won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wants you, not Edgar.”

“She told you that?”

“She didn’t have to.”

“You divined it, then?”

“I know her very well.”

“I thought I did, too. I thought she’d never marry a doctor.”

“She may not.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“I kid you not,” Genevieve said. “I don’t think she’ll go through with it.”

“Well, she’s leaving changing her mind kind of late, isn’t she?”

“She won’t make a decision until she has to.”

“And when do you think that moment will come?”

“You’ll have an opportunity to stop it, Stone.”

“Genevieve, are you telling me that you expect me – that Eliza expects me – to leap to my feet when they get to the line in the ceremony about… Well, you know the line.”

“I don’t expect you to, but I think Eliza does.”

“So I’m supposed to kidnap her from the church and drive her away in my little red sports car while Simon and Garfunkel sing the sound track?”

“That would be nice.”

“It would be insane.”

“Dino,” Genevieve said, “help me out here.”

Dino leaned forward and looked at Stone. “Kidnap her and drive her away in your little red sports car. If Simon and Garfunkel don’t show up, I’ll sing.” He leaned back.

“I don’t want to discuss this any more,” Stone said. No one spoke for the rest of the ride.

The church was at Madison and Seventy-first, next door to the Ralph Lauren store. Stone and Dino walked halfway down the church and took seats on opposites sides of the aisle, while Genevieve went into an anteroom to assist the bride.

Stone looked around. It was as motley a collection of people as he had ever seen. Half of them were wearing scrubs, as if they had left the hospital in the middle of surgeries; others were dressed in jeans and parkas; and a few were dressed quite elegantly – Edgar’s friends, he supposed. Somebody was playing jazz tunes on an electric piano, while a couple of other musicians played bass and guitar. Stone wondered what the Episcopal priest thought about that. Then he felt himself dozing off.

A slamming door snapped him out of it. The priest was entering, and he gave the audience an apologetic shrug for the noise. He was joined at the altar by Dr. Edgar Kelman, the renowned surgeon, then the trio swung into some uptempo Mendelssohn, and Stone heard foot-steps behind him. He looked back to see Eliza coming down the aisle, with Genevieve right behind her. Eliza looked lovely, and for a moment Stone’s heart began to melt, but when he made brief eye contact with her he spun his head around, eyes front. The ceremony began.

Stone sat rigid, his jaw clamped shut, as the priest recited the ceremony. Then he came to that awful line, “If any person here knows any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.” Stone held his breath.

He was sure the dead silence in the church lasted at least two minutes, but then realized that it was probably more like five seconds. The priest continued, and Stone exhaled in a rush. Half the audience, including Genevieve, turned and looked at him questioningly. Then the priest pronounced them man and wife, and everybody clapped.

The happy couple strode quickly down the aisle, and as they passed, Eliza tossed her bouquet into Stone’s lap, getting a big laugh from everybody.

Stone tried not to turn red.

Stone arrived home, still angry and depressed, to find a creamy envelope under the front door knocker, apparently delivered by hand, since it was Sunday. Inside, he ripped it open and read an engraved dinner invitation for that evening from Harlan Deal. RSVP was crossed out. “Just come” was scrawled next to it.

Why the hell would Harlan Deal want him at his dinner party at the last minute? He tossed the invitation onto the front hall table, went into the library and made himself a drink. He did not often drink this early in the day, but it was the only thing he could think of that would change his mood.

He switched on the library TV, settled into a chair and began surfing the channels, looking for something to take his mind off his day. A shopping channel was selling wedding dresses; an Asian evangelist was marrying four hundred identically dressed and unsuspecting couples in a football stadium; Martha Stewart was teaching her viewers how to plan the perfect wedding.

He switched off the TV and turned on the local classical music radio station. Fucking Mendelssohn again. He switched to the jazz station. Ella Fitzgerald was singing “Making Whoopee.” “Another bride, another groom,” etc. He switched off the radio.

He took his drink upstairs, stripped off his suit and lay on the bed. Drinking horizontally was hard. He pressed the button on the remote that raised the head and foot of the bed. Easier. He drained his glass, set it down and dozed off.

He woke, befuddled and hazy about date and time. A glance at the clock on the wall told him it was half an hour before the dinner party. He splashed some water on his face, got into his evening clothes and left the house, taking the invitation with him. What the hell.

Harlan Deal lived in a Fifth Avenue penthouse in an elegant old co-op building with a spectacular view of Central Park. He would, wouldn’t he? A uniformed maid took his coat and an actual tails-wearing English butler showed him into a huge living room hung with a collection of mostly large abstract paintings and occupied by a larger group of people than he had expected to see, at least fifty.

He spotted a Motherwell, a Pollock, a Rothko, two Hockneys and a Frankenthaler without even trying. All Harlan Deal needed was an eighteenth-century mahogany secretary from Newport, but it wouldn’t have looked so good among the classic modern furniture, all Mies and Breuer. He spotted no one he knew until Harlan Deal broke out of the crowd and greeted him, hand out.

“Good evening, Mr. Barrington,” he said. “I’m sorry for the short notice, but I’m very glad you could make it.”

“Thank you for asking me, Mr. Deal.”

“Harlan, please.”

“And I’m Stone.”

A waiter appeared, took his drink order and was back in a flash with a Knob Creek on the rocks. Harlan excused himself to greet other arriving guests.

Stone wandered around the room, looking at the art, then walked out onto a large terrace that had been glassed in for the winter. Central Park, lamplit, stretched out before him, and across the park the lights of the tall apartment buildings on Central Park West glittered in the distance. He was alone on the terrace, except for a woman who stood at the north end, looking out toward the reservoir.

She held a martini glass in her left hand, displaying a bare third finger. Stone moved closer, and she turned to face him. He froze for a moment and took her in. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen: tall, slender, raven hair perfectly coiffed, nails perfectly polished, perfectly dressed in a longish thing that Stone reckoned was Armani. He exhaled.