J. Kerley - The Broken Souls

Dani closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Popular at high school proms, Carson. Not adult events.”

I felt my face redden. “I didn’t know. Maybe there’s enough time to –”

“It’s all right,” she said, looking away. “It’ll be fine.”

“What’s with the limo outside?” I asked, happy to change the subject.

She ran to the window. “Do you think it’s for me? Could you check?”

The driver had been instructed to wait until a DeeDee Danbury was leaving, intercept her, and bring her via the white whale, not taking no for an answer.

“They’s a cold bottle of champagne in the back, suh,” he added. “Glasses in that box at the side. Cheeses and shrimps in the cooler.”

I fetched Dani. The driver opened the door with a flourish and drove off as smoothly as if on a monorail. I poured champagne and assembled plates of shrimp and cheese. Outside, Mobile slipped past and nearby vehicle occupants wrinkled their foreheads trying to peer through the mirror-black windows of the limo.

“Check it out, Carson,” Dani said, gesturing at the faces with her champagne glass. “They look like monkeys.”

The Channel 14 event was at the Shrine Temple, a high-ceilinged, marble-floored exemplar of baroque excess. Our driver pulled up front, jumped out to open the door. I think he bowed. We stepped into the path of Jenna Doakes, a weekend news anchor my girlfriend dubbed “Prissy Missy High’n’Mighty”.

Doakes regarded the departing limo with a raised eyebrow.

“Isn’t that a little Hollywood, DeeDee?”

Dani said, “You didn’t get one?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The station sent it for me,” Dani explained.

Doakes’s grin melted into confusion, then fear. She hustled away on the arm of her escort, shooting over-the-shoulder glances at Dani, like she was twelve feet tall and glowing.

The soirée was in the ballroom, entered via a dozen marble steps sweeping to the floor, spotlit top and bottom. The only thing lacking was the monocled guy announcing the arrivals.

We descended to the milling crowd. Soft light fell from above, a sprawling chandelier resembling a wedding cake iced with glass. The edges of the cavernous room were columned every dozen feet, walls of dark velvet. Forty board feet of food waited at the rear: carved roasts of beef, glazed hams, shrimp, crab cakes, cheeses, breads, sweets. A fountain dribbled minted punch. Three ice sculptures rose above the food: two swans and a four-foot-tall Channel 14 logo.

Three bars were at the edges of the room, black-vested barkeeps already pouring fast to manage demand. On the stage, a ten-piece band tuned up.

The round tables were filling fast with employees and clients and guests. I saw a vacant table near the stage. I couldn’t figure out why it was empty until close enough to see a tabletop placard announcing, RESERVED. We took a table with staffers from the station. Unfortunately, I was the only attendee in a gunslinger tuxedo.

The band kicked in and we launched into the mingle portion of the program, Dani moving like a dervish, barking “Hey-yas” and “How-de-dos” and spinning from one clot of revelers to the next. I finally got to meet the news director she adored, a shambling, fiftyish guy named Laurel Hollings. Hollings had missed a button on his shirt, mumbled when he spoke. He kept checking his phone, maybe hoping some major catastrophe might pull him from the event. I liked Hollings from the git-go, even more when he expressed admiration for my tuxedo, saying he wished he “had the balls to wear something like that”.

Dani talked shop with reporters, discussed industry trends with home-office types, schmoozed station clients – car dealers, realtors, mobile-home manufacturers, supermarket owners – with either modest propriety or bawdy wit, depending on the client. After a half-hour, she called for a minute off her feet.

The closest chairs were at the still-empty RESERVED table. I set my beer on the white tablecloth and took a seat, gnawing a roll while she slipped off her shoes and squeezed her toes, cursing the inventor of high heels.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a voice at my back and a finger tap on my shoulder. I swiveled to a pout-mouthed man wearing a bow tie, purple vest, and a name card announcing EVENT MANAGER.

I set my roll on the table, picked up my drink. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, but this table’s waiting for someone.” He pointed to the RESERVED card. I saw his glance take in crumbs of roll on the tabletop and a damp circle from my drink.

“The lady’s resting her feet. If the table’s owners arrive, we’ll move.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, ice on his vocal cords. “No one can sit here.”

“I hate to disagree with you, sport …” I said, about to point out we were already sitting. Dani heard my voice shift to the one I use for supercilious assholes. Her fingers tapped my wrist.

“Don’t be that way, Carson. There’s a table across the way. Follow me.”

We moved, EVENT MANAGER signaled for the bus staff to change the RESERVED tablecloth, like I’d left some kind of stink on the table.

The band stuttered to a halt in the middle of a rhythmically challenged “Smoke on the Water”, launching into “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here”. Heads swung to the door. A party of three men and three women gathered atop the marble steps as two photographers raced to shoot pictures. Behind this nucleus were several other men and women.

Forefront in the vanguard group was a tall, fortyish man with an older woman on his arm. She was the one person in the group who didn’t look direct from a Vogue eveningwear issue: white-haired, plank-faced, pale, eyes as dark as coal. A large woman, she wasn’t obese, but sturdy, a prize Holstein in a designer toga.

The tall man escorted her to the unoccupied table as pout-mouth whisked away the RESERVED placard. Only after she had sat and nodded did the others take seats.

I chuckled at the spectacle. “Looks like Buckingham Palace let out.”

“It’s the Kincannons, Carson. Surely you’ve heard of them.”

It struck a chord. “There’s a big plaque at the Police Academy that mentions a Kincannon something or other. Maybe a couple huge plaques. A program?”

“A grant, I imagine. The family is big on grants and donations and endowments.”

I studied the tall man: well-constructed, his tuxedo modeled to a wide-shouldered, waist-slender frame. His face was lengthy and rectangular; had he wished to ship the face somewhere for repairs, it would have been neatly contained in a shoe box. Judging by the admiring glances of nearby women, however, it was a face needing neither repair nor revision. He seemed well aware of this fact, not standing so much as striking a series of poses: holding his chin as he talked, crossing his arms and canting his head, arching a dark eyebrow while massaging a colleague’s shoulder. He looked like an actor playing a successful businessman.

“Who’s the pretty guy working the Stanislavski method?” I asked. “Seems like I’ve seen him before.”

A pause. “That’s Buck Kincannon, Junior, Carson. Sort of the scion of the family.”

“How are scions employed these days?” I asked. “At least this scion?”

“The man collects cars and art and antiques. Sails yachts. Breeds prize cattle.”

“Good work if you can get it,” I noted.

“He also runs the family’s investments. The Kincannons have more money than Croesus. Buck keeps the pile growing.”

The funds would be fine if they grew as fast as the throng gathering to acknowledge the late arrivals, I thought. An overturned beer truck wouldn’t have pulled a crowd faster. Several notables hustled over: an appellate judge, two state representatives, half the city council.