Diane Davidson - Dying for Chocolate

3.

“And when we have brought the water line in here,” the headmaster was saying with a practiced flick of his pointer at the illuminated screen, “then we will enter into Implementation Stage Two. . . .”

At the headmaster’s table, Adele Farquhar touched the undercurl of her severe, dark pageboy. Busy as I had been, I had not seen the general deliver her in his Range Rover. It was almost eleven o’clock. The alums stirred in their seats, checked their Rolexes. Any dummy knew that Implementation Stage Two meant More Money. The alums were exchanging looks— How much longer could he go on about this? A perplexed buzz rose from the tables. Forever.

My legs ached from standing. The buffet table looked defaced. The food was almost gone, except for what I had saved for Philip. But he had not arrived. If he didn’t come soon, he’d be out of luck.

And then he strolled in, acting like he owned the place. His black blazer, white pants, and shock of blond hair gave him the look of a male model. He scanned the room from behind Ray Bans. A hum of admiration rose from the women. I took a deep breath, let it out. The only time I heard a female gurgle of approval was for congealed salad.

“How’s my favorite cook?” Philip said in a low voice once he arrived at the serving table. When he leaned his slender body over the table he was so close I could read the engraved words on his gold lapel pin—PROTECT OUR MOUNTAINS! The politically correct shrink gave me an inviting openmouthed smile.

I shook my head and stared at the sunglasses, then spoke to Philip’s aristocratic nose. “Fine. How’s my favorite psychologist? Hungry?”

“Ravenous.” He took a manila envelope out of his briefcase. “Fund-raising, I swear,” he said under his breath. “They ran out of decals and I had to bring in more.” He signaled to the headmaster with the envelope, then asked, “Is this thing almost over? Can we still get together afterwards?”

I nodded to both questions. Philip strode up to the head table and handed the envelope to the headmaster, who betrayed great relief.

Elizabeth caught my eye and waved as if she had a wand in her hand. As Philip wound back through the tables, his sister kept her eyes on him.

The headmaster started to talk about money by trying to make it sound as if he wasn’t. He had abandoned the pointer and was droning on about the Phase I Drive for Investments. This year’s desperately needed improvement, it appeared, was an Olympic-size heated outdoor pool. For the past month, alumni, parents of students, and friends of the school had been hitting on (okay, he said, “going around to”) local businesses, giving them the Pool for the Preps pitch. If they gave, the business got a GET INTO THE SWIM! decal. Parents then patronized the SWIM!-decaled businesses. The headmaster reached into the envelope and proffered one of the decals.

This sounded vaguely illegal, I reflected as Philip turned to me and grinned conspiratorially. I handed him his plate, then quietly emptied pitchers and scraped platters. Philip moved toward the wall to get a better view of the headmaster. I watched as he lifted his plate and then held it close under his chin as he ate.

I put down the platter I had been holding. In that moment, I saw nothing but Philip. I saw him as he had been more than a dozen years before, when we had ditched a sophomore mixer. I had just transferred to the university from an eastern women’s college and knew no one. This blond, handsome fellow had come up to me and said, Do you want to get out of here? And I had said, Sure. We had walked through cool evening air redolent with the smell of smoke from wood-burning fires. Philip pointed to birds flitting between the trees: Oregon juncos, he said, returning to their winter nests. He bought us gyro sandwiches. We dripped sandwich juice and minted yogurt on paper napkins as we strolled by Boulder Creek. I remembered Philip holding his napkin carefully under his chin, looking less like a cool sophomore than a well-trained four-year-old.

He had kissed me briefly, a taste of mint. But our dating was haphazard and short-lived. I didn’t even remember telling Philip I was leaving school to get married. I just let him go, like a balloon.

Timing, I kept telling myself. That was the wrong time. Here was Philip, holding the plate beneath his chin, wanting to be together again. But I had feelings for Schulz, not to mention ambivalence about relationships in general. I wasn’t sure this was the right time either.

Elizabeth was squeezing through occupied chairs to get to the back of the room. When she arrived at the serving table, she whispered, “The food’s great and most of my friends are here.” She smiled to dismiss her earlier complaint.

I felt like telling her to phone the Mountain Journal with a review, but I did not want to interrupt the world’s most boring headmaster. I noticed Philip eyeing his sister. I said, “Your brother’s here.”

She said, “And?”

I smiled.

“No news to report yet,” I said. “Can’t rush these things. You know,” I added.

“I’m depending on you to keep an eye on him,” she said in a low voice.

Philip sauntered back. He said, “Want to get out of here?”

I said, “Absolutely.”

Elizabeth offered him a bite of sausage cake. “It’s not good for you,” she said with a sly smile, “but Goldy made it, so it’ll taste super. You have time to visit now?”

He chewed, winked at me, then shook his head to her question.

He said, “Call you?” When she nodded, he grinned and gave me a time-to-go look. “If we don’t leave, we’re going to get caught in the crush.”

I glanced at my watch: 11:30. Rain still streaked across the tall windows of the dining room. With some effort, we could load the platters and boxes into the Thunderbird in one trip. The school staff had promised to do the dishes. The headmaster was winding down: he had gone from the fund-raising pitch to a discussion of Elk Park’s policies on drugs (they were against them), parties with alcoholic beverages (ditto), and casual sex (ditto ditto). The alums’ interest seemed to pick up with this last topic. Philip and I placed the last of the pitchers in a crate and together we carried my supplies through the mud and rain to the Thunderbird’s trunk.

Philip gave a short wave before he started his car, a BMW 325 I-X the color of vanilla pudding. For at least the hundredth time, I thought I should have become a shrink instead of a caterer.

Cold spring rain pelted and washed and blew over our cars as we bumped over muddy ruts on our way out of the staff parking lot. We passed the buses and cars that had brought the students for orientation, then came up on the pool construction site. A six-foot-high chain-link fence surrounded the excavated area. The headmaster had just informed us that the plumbing was in and that the concrete would be shot in under pressure in the next few days. The school’s board of trustees was forging ahead to build the pool before they actually had the money. Not a luxury, they’d said, but a necessity. Ah, rich folks.

When we drove past the construction-site fence, I waved and flashed my lights at Philip. He did not respond, but signaled to turn onto Highway 203.

As we started down the narrow two-lane, the raindrops turned to white flakes. I sighed; I’d known it was coming. Snow in Colorado on the third of June is not the dry type that powders the ski slopes in winter. Instead, fat wet spring flakes plopped on the car like bits of mashed potatoes. The T-bird’s windshield wipers strained against the weight. At our altitude this was—my New Jersey relatives were always appalled to hear— seasonal weather. As we headed downhill I wondered if the Thunderbird had on snow tires.