The Last Bastion

by Peter C. Wensberg

  “Well, uh, I have been on both sides of this question. I’m not sure that what we’re considering is right for us, but I believe it is right for those members who will follow us. I have not much enjoyed the past six months. The old Club has not been the same. I hope it will return to some semblance of normalcy after tonight. But I fear, well, never mind what I fear, in any case, I think we should do in good spirit what we are being forced to do anyway. So I, uh, support the motion.”

  “Why did Gland present this motion?”

  “Let’s vote and be done with it.”

  “Is there any more discussion?” A pause, and Walter Junior, inheritor and conscientious guardian of fifty years of Charles Club tradition, uttered the fateful words: “All in favor.”

  “Aye.”

  “Opposed.”

  A scattering of nays rattled around the room. So, said the President to himself and to the shade of Senior looking over his shoulder, it is done. “The motion is carried.” He adjourned the meeting to the backs of the members as they hurried in the direction of the bar, now secure for the foreseeable future.

  “Where is Seymour?” asked Roger.

  “Apparently at the Ritz. He wants me to bring him his walking stick.”

  “Imagine him sponsoring the motion! I mean, I can’t imagine it. I’m still not sure we’ve done the right thing, and I had persuaded myself weeks ago this was the only answer.”

  “Shall we try to get Leslie Sample elected?”

  “I think so. What do you think?”

  “I think Jack Daniel’s on the rocks, pardner.”

  A walking stick, especially one with an ebony shaft, a silver handle wrought to resemble a deer antler, and an amber ferrule which tapped smartly on the sidewalk made a pleasant walking companion. Not as comfortable as a Samoyed perhaps but not as demanding either. Seymour’s affectation of a cane was usually an indication of an acute ego-seizure. Once he had taken one to the wedding of an old girlfriend and wound up breaking it over the back of the best man during the reception in the garden. He carried a stick, perhaps this one, to the ill-fated Monet opening at the Museum of Fine Arts. Owen had not attended himself, but the account of Seymour’s depredations on the Champagne and the subsequent encounter with first Celia Dormant and later the museum security people had been often repeated at the Charles. It was pleasant to speculate on what might have set Seymour off this evening as Owen tapped along to the Ritz.

  He was in considerably better spirits. The depression which had nagged at him in recent weeks was lifting. Tonight’s meeting had surprised him. What had been deemed unthinkable not long ago had happened in a few moments. The club would change a little, perhaps, but the atmosphere of stress and acrimony would evaporate. The food would retain its high standard as long as Anton was there. Owen’s favorite chair beside The Window would be as welcoming as ever. Even venture analysis might prove to be less onerous. He was wearing a new suit, his first extravagance in months not considering his club bill. It was a lightweight brown wool that fit him comfortably and would do well throughout the spring, which was definitely just around the corner. As he turned the corner he saw a line of limousines at the hotel entrance disgorging passengers in evening clothes. ULTRA EL-4 said the nearest license plate. Owen looked in but did not recognize the driver.

  Inside the brass revolving doors he scanned the lobby, a heaving sea of furs, jewels and white shirt fronts. Gland stood in the center, arms clasped behind and beneath the tails of his coat, a rotund rock around which swirled tout Boston. Owen loped up the steps to his friend. “Seymour, how elegant. A tailcoat? Are you announcing your engagement?”

  “Not yet. Not yet. Where did you get that strange suit, just a little party for the Governor and a few hundred of his closest friends, ah, you have it, feeling a touch of the old injury to my leg, many thanks, that will see me through the evening. Where is she, we should be going up.” He extracted a gold hunter from his waistcoat pocket, flicked open the case, glanced unseeing at the time, snapped it shut and reinserted it in a series of gestures reminiscent of Bette Davis lighting a cigarette in her prime.

  “Is that the injury you got when you fell off the dumpster behind the Wellesley dormitory?”

  “No. It was an athletic injury. Ah, here she is. I believe you two know each other?”

  Demi was spectacular in a black dress which partially covered her breasts but allowed the greatest exposure to almost everything else. Either she was wearing a collar of rhinestones around her neck or she would have to be driven home in a Brink’s truck. The stones were so bright Owen blinked. “Hello there,” he managed.

  “Hello, Owen. Isn’t this a crush? Seymour, I think we should go on up. Thank you for waiting. There was a dreadful line.”

  Gland now seemed in no hurry. “How did the meeting come out?”

  “Well, Seymour, the Charles is no longer a single-sex club.”

  “Quite what I expected. As I was telling Demetria, I took a little straw vote a week ago and read the handwriting on the wall.”

  “There was a certain amount of surprise that it was your motion.”

  “Someone had to assume the leadership. It always seems to devolve on those who are most burdened. Well perhaps we should.”

  “What sport was it, Seymour?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What sport did you play? That caused the injury to your leg? It escapes my memory.”

  “Oh, that. It was nothing.”

  “You said it was urgent. That I should bring the walking stick to you. Here at the Ritz.”

  “Well of course it wasn’t urgent. Just a figure of speech. Many thanks, by the way.”

  “If you don’t actually need it, I think I’ll use it myself this evening. You won’t mind if I borrow it. Nice to see you, Demi. We must get in touch again.”

  “Yes, call me. Let’s go up.”

  “No, I mean in touch. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

  “Seymour, please.”

  “Give me my walking stick.”

  “Good night.”

  “No you don’t. HAND IT OVER.”

  Owen began to limp painfully towards the Newbury Street exit leaning heavily on the stick. Seymour looked at him in outraged astonishment, then followed. “GIVE it to me.” He lunged at the ebony shaft and Owen staggered against the wall clutching the handle in apparent desperation. As Gland pulled Owen began to sag against the wall, his right leg extended grotesquely. “GIVE it.”

  The doorman hurried in from the street. “What is the problem?”

  “It’s MINE!” Gland wrenched at the stick and Owen groaned sagging closer to the floor.

  “Here. Stop that. Can I help you, sir?”

  “Please,” said Owen, “I don’t want a scene. Just get him away from me so I can get home. I’m afraid the stitches have pulled.” As he dragged his leg through the door Owen glanced back to see Seymour in the arms of authority. A man in a three-piece hotel security suit had taken charge. Gland’s patent leather pumps danced three inches above the floor. Demi was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter 36

  “Do you do apartments?”

  Leslie started then swung around from the screen of her PC. “Owen,” she said with glee. “No, of course I don’t do apartments. I sell stuff. Big, expensive stuff.”

  “Then I better leave.” He made as if to rise from the plastic chair beside her desk. “I’ve come to the wrong place.”

  “No you haven’t. We can take care of all your needs here.” She grinned wickedly at him, swung back to the keyboard, jabbed it thrice and the screen went dark. “Now, just what are your needs?”

  “Is this your office?” He glanced around John Coster and Co. in the big basement room filled with desks and filing cabinets and a copy machine holding down industrial gray carpet.

  “Yes, don’t you love it? All of this from here to here is mine.”

  “I thought you were a big shot in this office.”

  “I am. The biggest, excep
t for, well, just say next to the biggest. We don’t spend much on the furnishings. We’d rather see it in bonuses. And besides this pit just makes the properties look that much better to the customers. Why do you want to rent an apartment, are you moving?”

  “I don’t and I am.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “That’s a different question. I’d have to try to answer that one over a drink.”

  “You’re on.”

  “In an hour? Say six-thirty at Ciao Bella? Or at the Club?”

  “I’d rather at Ciao Bella. I don’t feel all that comfortable at the Club.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want to join?” She ducked her head and Owen studied the white scalp where her dark hair was parted.

  “Yeah, probably it does. Mean I don’t want to join, I mean. But since my chances of being asked by the old farts are somewhere south of non-existent, it doesn’t make a lot of difference what I want.”

  “That’s very disappointing, because, by the power vested in me, I have the pleasure of inviting you to become a member of the Charles Club.”

  She stared at him, her red lips in a perfect O.

  “Yes. It’s true.”

  “Me? In the Charles Club?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Owen! You did this. You and Mr. Dormant.”

  “Yes. But the rest of the Club voted you in.”

  “I can’t believe it. Oh, now I’m sorry I said that a moment ago.”

  “Perfectly accurate. Nice old farts in the main.”

  “But I’d be afraid to. Am I the only one? Woman, I mean?”

  “No. A woman named Peg Cartright who’s old enough to be your mother. A few others.”

  “How did it all happen?”

  “Have you ever seen the ice go out in a lake? One minute it’s strong enough to hold you, or at least it looks like it. Then you notice a crack or two, and suddenly what was solid is a mass of little chips. As if winter were over in thirty seconds.”

  “Wait a minute. Sara, will you take my calls? I have to leave. Thanks, sweetie. Come on, Owen, we need to talk about this.”

  “Where?”

  “Still Ciao Bella. I’m not psyched to handle the Charles Club yet.”

  “Now, tell me the part about the ice breaking up again?” They sat at a little table in the window. DeLuca’s designer oranges were displayed for the early evening shoppers across the street.

  “Well, one thing about ice going out is that you never know just when it’s going to happen.”

  “But you know it will happen.”

  “Yes. And it did, about a week ago.”

  “But why me? You know and I know I don’t really fit in there.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Oh, come on, Owen, you love it.”

  “That’s right, I do. The Club sort of saved things for me. It was my bastion against the world. I think, as a matter of fact, the Club I imagined was the Club I enjoyed most. I seem to have a very strong imagination.”

  “Where is the lake?”

  “What lake?”

  “Where you saw the ice go out. Or did you just imagine that too?”

  “No. That’s a little lake in the mountains above Taos. Eagle Nest Lake. We used to rent a cabin up there when I was a kid.”

  She studied him intently. “Tell me about it.”

  “My mother and father and I were up there early in the spring one year. We had trouble driving in, we didn’t have a four-wheel, just an old Chevy pickup, because the road was soft, the frost just coming out of the ground, not wet enough for mud yet, but the earth can be soft as bread dough so you have to drive carefully. My dad kept to the crown, out of the ruts and away from the little ditches that already had some water in them.” He stopped.

  “What about the ice?”

  “We stood out on the end of the dock and watched it. There was just a little breeze. You could smell the spring coming. It was a perfect day. The pines were razor sharp against the sky. Just a little breeze. We knew something was going to happen, but we didn’t know what it was. Then we heard a sound like a great chandelier trembling.”

  “Go on.”

  Owen took a drink and cleared his throat. “The sound of a crystal chandelier. Tiny noises all around us, all over the lake, clear to the other shore. And what had been a sheet of ice was suddenly a ripple of little pieces of crystal. I couldn’t believe it. Even my dad had never seen it before. He let me take a rowboat with one oar out into it and my dog and I paddled around the end of the dock in the ice chips. I wish I could tell you how it smelled.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It smelled old. Like something opened up to the air. Like a garden when you spade it for the first time in the year.”

  She felt a knot in her stomach. “You’re going back, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes, I think I am.”

  “You want me to help you get rid of your apartment.”

  “I know it’s too small to bother with, but I don’t know what to do about the lease.”

  “What about your job?”

  “It never was much of a job. For a grown man, I mean.”

  “And what are you going to do back there? In Arizona, or wherever it is?”

  “I don’t know. Carry and pull, I guess. Take my dog off the leash. Do you ever take a vacation?”

  “Sure, I take a vacation. That and clothes are my only extravagances. And my BMW.”

  “And now the Charles Club. It can be expensive.”

  “Oh, I can charge that to John Coster and Co.”

  “What a good idea.”

  “If I do it.”

  “Please do it. Roger and I worked hard for you. You’re what the Club needs. Someone different. A breath of fresh air, as Roger says.”

  “You said there would be other women.”

  “Yes, but the members will pick women who are just like themselves. From the same, well, the same group.”

  “You mean class.”

  “Well, yes, class.”

  “I’m not from their class.”

  “Neither am I, but I found some good friends there. I spent some good times there.” Owen thought of the chair beside The Window, tulip magnolias nodding outside on Commonwealth Avenue. “Anyway, class is what you are, not where you are from.”

  “Will you go over there with me the first time?”

  “You’ve been there before.”

  “Yes, but I mean the first time as a, oh God I don’t really believe this, member?”

  “Yes, if you’ll think about taking a vacation in New Mexico.”

  “Let’s have dinner.”

  “Only if you pay. I’m unemployed.” Brent, walking by, dropped two menus on their table.

  Chapter 37

  Abel sat over his second cup of coffee in the deserted Dining Room. Sun streamed in the windows. A smell of baking sweetened the air. The kitchen rattled and rumbled behind him, the sounds of luncheon and dinner preparation not only more audible to his ears than to others, but more descriptive. He fancied he heard veal being pounded, vegetables chopped. This moment was the pivot of his day. He had ten minutes before he began his rounds, before the telephone began to ring, before the first members arrived for the first drink of the day, before the luncheon service, before the inevitable and increasing activity of the afternoon and evening. His day sometimes ended well past midnight. They don’t pay me enough to do this job, he told himself, but he knew he did not work at the Charles Club for pay. Most of his salary flew south to Portland Province on the eastern end of the island of Jamaica. It supported his elderly mother, his sister and her two young children, and perhaps one or two people he knew nothing about. If Abel had little to spend on himself his needs were commensurately few. He had a comfortable room next to Nilson with a big Air Jamaica poster and three watercolor paintings by his uncle on the walls. He ate well, better in fact than anyone else at the Club since Pesht only sampled and Nilson subsisted mostly on fish, preferably herring.
Miss Ontos took only lunch unless she worked late and had a snack before going home. Old Jane, her wait staff, and the other kitchen help fared well but they had neither Abel’s appetite nor his discrimination. Only the succession of long active days kept him from matching girth with some of the members.

  Already he was pondering the choice between Cape scallops, the tender little ones which were becoming so hard to find, broiled under a flame with Anton’s delicious garlic bread crumbs and butter on top, or perhaps a mixed grill—another Pesht specialty done in the English fashion. Because he scanned the luncheon menu in advance Abel had resisted the temptation to have the little dollar pancakes with Vermont maple syrup for breakfast that morning. Dinner would present another difficult choice between beef Wellington planned for a seating of twenty in the Large Reception upstairs or the choice item on the evening menu, sweetbreads financière. Abel sighed and finished his coffee. It was black and delicious and came from the Blue Mountain in Jamaica. If he closed his eyes he could see the Rio Grande at night winding down from the mountain to the sea under a full Jamaican moon. As a boy he had worked on the slender bamboo rafts lighted with luminarias and propelled by bargemen who were themselves powered by rum punch. Errol Flynn, he had been told as a child, originated the idea of rafting down the river and it had become a durable tourist industry. In those days Abel’s shoulders were broad and his waist narrow, a Jamaican gondolier. As he stood up to take his cup and saucer to the kitchen he glanced at his reflection in the tall mirror at the end of the room. ’Tother way round now, my mon, he said to himself.

  Roger Dormant sat alone, as well, in the Library. He looked up with a grimace as Abel entered to set out fresh ashtrays and match boxes and to straighten the periodicals on the reading table. “Ah, Mr. Dormant, I didn’t see you arrive. How are you this day?”