The Last Bastion

by Peter C. Wensberg

  “You seem to be telling me. I said it was sticky.”

  “Your daughter is pulling your chain, Roger. Please go on.”

  “Another alternative would be to rescind the spouse privilege.”

  “You mean,” said Celia, returning a fork full of garden stuff to her plate, “you would have women members in a club wives can’t use?”

  “Well, yes. Actually, no one is advocating that tack.” Dormant drained his drink and waved at the waitress.

  “I’m very glad to hear it. Where are you going, Ann?”

  “To Diego’s. To have my hair cut. I’ll meet you at the car at four-thirty. Thank you for lunch, Daddy,” she said pushing it away untasted.

  “Don’t be late. The traffic will be wretched. And don’t show up all spikey.” Her daughter shot Celia an enigmatic look as she moved her angular frame among the tables toward the door. “Go on,” said Celia to Dormant. “I can’t wait to hear the next idea.”

  “Well, none of this is much joy for the members, I can assure you. It’s an impossible situation. We really don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you beg for mercy at the feet of the Greek goddess?”

  “Do you think that would do any good?”

  “No.”

  “Well, the Nominating Committee has discussed the idea of looking at both the prospective member and the spouse,” said Dormant without much conviction. His corned beef hash had hardened as it cooled into the shape of a face. Two poached eggs stared coldly up at him.

  “No one in Boston will ever be elected under those circumstances. Would the wives vote?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “If they were members, I suppose they would.”

  “In other words, make the spouses members.”

  “I imagine that is what it would mean.”

  “Just one big happy family.”

  “Yes.”

  “No more escaping to the Club.”

  “No.”

  “No escape at all.”

  “No.”

  “The last bastion falls.”

  “Yes.”

  “If it weren’t so funny, Roger, I’d feel sorry for all you poor, old, harried, hapless men.”

  “We’re not all old,” said Roger.

  Chapter 9

  They sat across from each other, exhilarated by the white tablecloths, the silver, the two roses in the bud vase, the uncomfortable wooden chairs. Garlic and some less definable essence, perhaps almonds, perhaps basil, perhaps both, struggled unsuccessfully to overwhelm her fragrance. His senses reeled.

  “What is your perfume?”

  “Do you like it? It’s Poison.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Well, do you like it?”

  “I’m dying of Poison, even before dinner.”

  “I suppose that means you don’t like it.”

  “No. It means I’m famished and a little drunk, and it has nothing to do with dinner.”

  “If that’s a compliment, thank you.”

  Am I color-blind, he wondered. I can’t discover what color her eyes are. She wore a large soft sweater with a gold chain and some sort of gold bar that hung between her breasts as she leaned a little toward him. He took a deep breath. “Why would they name a perfume Poison?”

  “Why would they name a perfume Tabu, or Number Five, or anything? And who are ‘they’?”

  “The nameless, faceless They. Well, I’ll never be able to buy you Poison.” The proprietress smiled as she set two ponies of bourbon before them. “Cheers,” said Owen.

  Demetria sipped her drink and looked at him with her appraising gaze. “Don’t buy me perfume, Owen,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it is such a cliché. Perfume, flowers, a heart-shaped box of candy on Valentine’s Day. Buy your mother perfume.”

  “My mother is dead.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be flippant.”

  “That’s all right. She died years ago, when I was a kid. I never gave her perfume. I wish I had. I gave her a pin-cushion once.”

  “That’s sweet. What did your mother do?”

  “I thought you were supposed to ask where she lived.”

  “Well, what did she do, and where did she live?” They laughed.

  “We lived in Santa Fe. Well, in Tesuque, really. That’s a little town just outside Santa Fe. We had, have, a place down by the river. She didn’t do anything. I mean, she raised me, and looked after the house and the two hands who ran the place, and cooked for all of us.”

  “Who else was all of us?”

  “My father.”

  “Was there a lot to do?”

  “Well, not by current standards. She didn’t have a career. She went to college, University of Colorado, but she didn’t want a career.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I don’t know. She never said anything about it. To me, that is. She baked bread.”

  “Was she a wonderful cook?”

  “No. She baked bread, and she fed us well, but …” He stopped and took a drink.

  “Was she a wonderful housekeeper?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m asking all the wrong questions.”

  “She kept the place clean. But it was just a ranch house. There were always boots and pieces of tack and shotguns in the living room. It was, well, it was what it was. I haven’t been back there in a while.” They sat in silence for a moment, the noise of the room building slowly around them since they had arrived early, the late afternoon light on Tremont Street fading quickly into patterns formed of windows and headlights. “Tell me about your mother,” he said finally.

  “Well, she was a great cook,” Demetria smiled wryly. “She was a serious cook. We came to meals prepared to eat. Moussaka, pastitsu, arni yemesto, amygdalopita—that’s almond pie. She began cooking in the morning and only stopped to go shopping, or to clean the house. Once a week, she cleaned the whole house from top to bottom. It was a big old Victorian in Newton. The woodwork was worn from scrubbing. I mean, the paint was literally worn away in places.”

  “Are you a good cook?”

  “I can cook. Every Greek girl can cook.”

  “You don’t sound as though you enjoy it.”

  “I can do it. But I don’t like to. I spent almost five years losing weight after I left home. And other things,” she added.

  “How many children in your family?”

  “There are three of us; my brother, Stephan; my sister, Sophie; and me. Stephan is a lawyer. Sophie was married, but now she lives in Athens. I was supposed to get married, too. Raise children. My mother died brokenhearted because they brought up three healthy kids, stuffed them with food, bought them warm clothes, but no grandchildren happened.”

  “Why didn’t you get married?”

  “I wanted to be a lawyer. To go to law school like my brother. To do something.”

  “And you did.”

  “Yes. Let’s order. You can’t be interested in all this.” She picked up the menu. “This is like a French bistro. The wife is out front, the husband is back in the kitchen. But they’re from England, you know.”

  “I am interested. In your family, I mean. I want to know all about you. You did go to law school. You did do something.”

  She laid her menu flat, carefully avoiding the roses in the slender crystal flute. “Yes, I went to law school. Not to Harvard Law, like my brother. I went to B.U. and then to Mass. School of Law. Have you ever heard of it? No, I thought not. It’s a little dump over behind the State House that takes whatever is left over from the good schools. I couldn’t afford anything better. My father is a wealthy man by his standards, but he wouldn’t put his daughter through law school because it wasn’t right for a woman to be a lawyer. A woman was supposed to cook and keep house and have babies. Like my mother,” she said snapping the menu upright.

  “And my mother.”

  “Well, I wasn’t having any of it. I put myself t
hrough Boston University, and through law school. Myself.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Are you ready?” asked the waiter.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Well, I’ll come back.”

  “No, no,” said Owen. “We’ll order. Are there any specials? Anything you want to tell us first?”

  “The menu is written out each day. This is not a fern restaurant. Everything is special.”

  “I’ll have the asparagus vinaigrette to start, and the scallops provençale,” Demetria said.

  “I’ll have the same. And please bring us a bottle of …,” he glanced down the wine list, “ah, what do you recommend?”

  “A bottle of Sancerre,” said Demetria, “well chilled, please.” She handed her menu to the waiter. “Thank you.” She favored him with a thousand megawatt smile and he stepped back, blinded. “I hope you don’t mind my choosing the wine. It’s an interest of mine.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I subscribe to a few of the magazines. I go to tastings. I know people in the business. Quite a few of them, as a matter of fact.” She laughed. “But I never, repeat, never accept presents. Not cases, not bottles, not splits, not nips. Not nothing,” she finished flatly, as she tore a piece of French bread in half.

  “So that means I can’t give you a bottle of wine, either.”

  “Why this obsession with presents? No, you can’t, as a matter of fact.”

  “What I meant was, how did you put yourself through law school?”

  “Oh,” she flashed the smile on him and it turned his guts to water. “I worked as a cocktail waitress. That gave my father something to think about.”

  “Was he angry?”

  “He disowned me. That’s what Greek fathers do. I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

  “What prompted you to choose the Sancerre? I don’t know much about wines.” The scallops had vanished in a splendor of garlic. They were finishing the bottle over coffee and crème caramel.

  “First, it’s very good. Second, it’s not expensive: Third, it’s consistent, the vintage is not critical. Fourth, it’s from Provence, so it matched our choice of entrée. Fifth, I like it a lot if it’s really chilled.”

  “If I teach you to ride will you teach me about wine?”

  “I’ll teach you about wine if you promise not ever to take me near a horse.”

  “No, I won’t promise you that.”

  “Madame would like to offer you an after-dinner drink. A liqueur? A cognac?” As he stood at Owen’s side, the waiter bounced a little on the balls of his feet like a dancer warming up.

  “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you.” Demetria turned to Owen. “I told you, I don’t accept presents. Please tell her we had a lovely dinner.” The waiter vanished. “Shall we?” she smiled. As they were putting on their coats she explained. “The important things about learning wine are to read and to taste. I’ll loan you Hugh Johnson. Good night,” she waved at the proprietress.

  “Do you know her? I didn’t think you’d been here before.”

  “I haven’t. We renewed her last month. There was a hearing, a brief one. Several neighbors appeared for her. It’s a good operation. A real addition to the South End. Where can you taste wines?”

  “At my club. I never think about ordering it.” She looked at him curiously. The door opened and chill air cut through the warm melange of odors. “Shall we take a cab, or walk a little?”

  “What club are you talking about, Owen?”

  “The Charles Club.”

  She stepped back inside the door and it slammed, causing the hostess to frown. “Please call me a cab,” said Demetria in her direction. “Who do you think you are?” to Owen.

  Owen smiled. “That’s better than what do you do, and where do you live.” She didn’t laugh. “I think,” he cast a doubtful glance at her face on which a shadow had fallen. “I think I am a solitary person in need of the friendship of a good woman. That is who I think I am.”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “I think you are the woman I have always wanted to meet.”

  “I am the Chairperson of the Massachusetts Licensing Board, did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you, and I think this is one of the most blatant, most insolent … attempts I have ever seen in my life. I should have known. That bug Seymour Gland set this up, didn’t he? The question isn’t who you think you are. You can play Gary Cooper all you want. The question is, what do you take me for?” A cab pulled up, the front door slammed again and she was gone.

  Owen stood looking at the empty street framed in the frosted glass of the door. Gary Cooper? Why did people keep bringing up Gary Cooper? His mouth had been injected with Novocain. He couldn’t feel his teeth or his tongue. What the hell was Seymour thinking of? Why hadn’t he said anything? Owen decided to walk home. He smelled Poison.

  Chapter 10

  The Long Table occupied the center of the Dining Room which was half again as large as the Other Dining Room and, next to the bar in the Lobby, the busiest in the club. No seats were reserved at the Long Table. Members sat wherever there was an empty chair. Four bottles of wine, two red and two white, stood open. The conversation, as always, was brisk and a good deal louder than that which emanated from the other tables.

  “Architecture is the opiate of the masses.”

  “Really. I should have thought opium was the current opiate of choice,” said Dormant thoughtfully.

  “Cocoa, surely,” put in Gland. The Long Table was almost full.

  “Not religion, in any case.” DePalma sounded acerbic.

  “The developers use architecture to foist their loathsome schemes on a gullible public and the ant-brained bureaucrats who are supposed to regulate such things.” The Architectural Critic might have had a second drink before lunch.

  “Foist?”

  “I said foist. I stand on foist. They spread their ideas of architecture, which seem, by the by, to have been developed watching prewar movies whose sets were doubtless concocted by bisexual set designers and other European second-raters who came to Hollywood because their standards of taste were unacceptable in their country, as we say, of origin, like peanut butter …”

  “Peanut butter?”

  “Precisely. Peanut butter. They spread it over those huge stacks of condominiums and offices like a sticky peanut glaze, circa 1935. Every new building erected in Boston in the past five years looks like the old Jordan Marsh store or something left over from the New York World’s Fair of 1939.”

  “I am in real estate myself in a small way,” Gland said modestly.

  “Architecture is supposed to create living space, working space, designed for the needs of humans. The developers seem bent on creating a movie location, a—what do they call it—photo opportunity. All this pseudo-, this quasi-architecture is being slathered on the outside. And what, allow me to ask you, is on the inside?” The Architectural Critic raised his brows in question.

  “Oh, well …” Dormant looked around for another conversational avenue, but they all seemed closed.

  “Ficus trees. Atriums filled with ficus trees. A maze of sterile corridors and tiny cells. Windows that won’t open. Climate control. Ninety dollars a square foot. Humanity is sacrificed. The only ones who benefit are the builders and those benighted cinema crews who are always loafing around town blocking traffic and dishing out overtime pay to police who should be out on the firing line in Mattapan or Blue Hill Avenue.”

  “Or directing traffic,” said DePalma.

  “No self-respecting Boston police officer willingly directs traffic, although they may condescend to step in and correct the situation if traffic is flowing smoothly.”

  “Would you pass me the white, please?”

  “People stand dumbly by and watch these monstrosities erected where perfectly serviceable business blocks once stood; and as long as they see red brick and a m
ansard roof they feel the town is not being prostituted.”

  “I rather like some of the restoration that is going on around the city,” said Roger with a view to stemming the flow.

  “Restoration, you call it? When they gut some inoffensive structure, eviscerate it to the very footings, prop up one or two facades to establish the fiction of a historic preservation to capture the tax advantage, then puff some sickening glass soap bubble up out of the wreckage: is that your idea of restoration?”

  “Actually …”

  “You walk into the lobby of what used to be the beautiful old Mercantile Exchange with its N.C. Wyeth murals and what do you find? Twenty elevators surrounded by a pestilential swamp of ficus trees and little carts selling French bread. God in heaven.”

  At the Long Table Owen took the last remaining seat between Roger Dormant and Seymour Gland. Roger turned to him more eagerly than Owen’s rather dour expression might have warranted. Recent urban development quaked beneath the hammer-blows of the Architectural Critic holding forth directly across from him, a face unknown to Owen.

  “What’ll you have?” asked Old Jane with customary disregard of ceremony.

  “Consommé, please,” said Owen, “and the scrod.”

  “How about those Celtics?” she replied reasonably.

  “No dessert and black coffee,” said Owen, handing her the slip on which he had carefully transcribed his planned luncheon.

  “Old Jane is becoming impossible,” remarked Gland, patting his lips with the Charles Club linen. Owen looked at him, somewhat reassured to see the old, familiar, critical Seymour.

  “I see no change,” Dormant said.

  “Clam chowder,” said Jane setting a cup in front of Owen.

  “Probably out of the consommé,” said Owen as he tasted the chowder, which was, as always, excellent.

  “No, but really,” expostulated Gland, “the club is slipping. Quite slipping. In many ways.”

  “Perhaps women won’t want to join. Did you read today’s pronouncement by the Massachusetts Licensing Board?” asked Dormant.

  “Crab cakes.”

  “Jane, I ordered the scrod,” Owen said to her departing back.