“Yes, Mother,” Norma said, lowering her eyes.
When Ada reached the bottom of the stairs she glided slowly toward them, her aquiline nose raised high in the air. She reminded Mitch of an ancient bird of prey. An osprey, perhaps—proud, fierce and defiantly alert, her hooded eyes sharp and keen. Ada combed her pure white hair straight back. Her face was still beautiful. It wasn’t an old face. It was a lived-in face. Her hands shook slightly, but she stood strong and straight. She wore a pair of eyeglasses on a chain around her neck. No makeup or lipstick. She was dressed in a bulky black turtleneck, wool slacks and sturdy walking shoes. A tweed jacket was thrown over her shoulders like a cape.
“Besides which,” she continued, “Astrid was a great dame in her own right. Somebody ought to be getting her life story down on paper instead of trying to ‘summon’ her every year with a crystal ball and a bad Romanian accent. True story: My mother never even knew Astrid existed. Hell, I didn’t meet her myself until I was forty. But people knew how to keep secrets in those days. Not like now. Now everyone wants to share. What fun is that?” Ada turned her piercing glare on Mitch. “You must be this Mitch person. Well, speak up. Are you or aren’t you?”
“I am,” Mitch responded, a bit awestruck. “How are you, Mrs. Geiger?”
“First of all, the name’s Ada. Second of all, don’t ever ask someone my age how they are. They might actually answer you, individual organ by organ, and it will consume the entire evening’s conversation. I have health problems. They’re not very interesting problems. Now let’s leave it at that, shall we?” She took him by the arm and pulled away from Norma and Les, her grip surprisingly strong. “I’m glad you could make it, Mitch. I know you had zero to do with this freak show they’re putting on for me. Or I prefer to think you didn’t.”
“I didn’t, actually. And meeting you this way is an incredible honor for me.”
“Nonsense. It’s entirely due to your efforts that today’s young people have so much as heard of my movies. I wished to thank you.”
“I was just doing my job.”
“Hah! You say that as if most people actually do their jobs. Your lady friend is the one who draws dead people, am I right?”
“Why, yes. She’s very talented.”
“Of course she is, of course she is,” Ada said impatiently. “Where is she? I need to speak with her.”
“She’s running late,” Mitch said, wondering why the grand old director wanted to speak to Des.
Jory reappeared now to see to her. “How about a nice cup of your herbal tea, Mrs. Geiger?” she asked, raising her voice.
“You needn’t shout at me, tootsie,” Ada barked. “I’m not deaf.”
“I’m sorry. I just wondered if you’d like a cup of your Lemon Zinger.”
“I would. With a generous slice of fresh ginger…”
“And a half teaspoon of honey. I know, ma’am.”
“I can’t abide most American tea,” Ada explained to Mitch. “It tastes like monkey piss to me. I’ll make it myself, if you don’t mind,” she told Jory. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I, well, don’t trust you.”
“At least let me help you,” Jory offered.
“If you must, Dory,” Ada said imperiously.
“It’s Jory, ma’am,” she pointed out as the two of them started for the kitchen.
Norma let out a suffering sigh as soon as they’d disappeared through the service door. “I love the old dear, Mitch. But, as you can see, she is absolutely impossible. Not that she’s any different now than she was when I was a girl. She’s just more so.”
“I like her,” Mitch said admiringly. “She’s real.”
“Ada’s one of a kind, all right,” Les agreed. “Thank God.”
“I don’t know how I shall ever make this up to poor Jory,” Norma fretted.
“Have she and Jase worked here long?”
“Their whole lives. Their father, Gussie, was caretaker here going all the way back to Astrid’s days. He raised the two of them on his own out in the cottage. When they were old enough to work, they stayed on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d best see to dinner—and rescue the girl.”
“Come on, let’s get you that drink,” Les said, steering Mitch toward the taproom.
The castle’s taproom was paneled, cozy and clubby, as in the Union League Club, circa 1929. There was a hand-carved hardwood bar with half a dozen stools before it. Behind it, an antique wall clock seemed to be keeping perfect time. There were tavern tables and card tables, and comfy leather armchairs parked before the fire that was crackling in the fireplace. There were Rex Brasher Audubon Society prints hanging from the walls, built-in bookcases filled with hardcover volumes of literature and history. A vintage Brunswick pool table with ornate carved legs and hand-sewn leather pockets anchored the middle of the room. An amber glass light fixture was suspended over it, casting a warm glow over the green felt. The sound of Teddy’s piano was fainter in here, but Mitch could still hear it—just as he could hear the howl of the wind through the chimney flue.
A slender, striking blonde with very long straight hair was standing over by the fire in a sleeveless black dress and stiletto heels, sipping a martini and looking rather sulky. The great Aaron Ackerman sat gloomily at the bar, both hands wrapped around a snifter of single malt Scotch, a bottle of twenty-one-year-old Balvenie parked at his elbow.
A second couple, both in their twenties, were working away at a tavern table in the corner. She was busy inputting notes in a laptop computer. He was busy negotiating with someone on his cell phone: “I understand you perfectly—Oliver wants a limo from JFK. But I can’t give him one. If Oliver gets a limo, then Quentin will want one.” Spence Sibley from Panorama Studios, evidently. “I swear, no one is getting a limo. This is not the damned Golden Globes!”
“Now what can I get you, Mitch?” Les asked as he bustled around behind the bar.
“Whatever you have on draft will be fine.”
Les drew a Double Diamond for him in an Astrid’s Castle pilsner glass and set it before him on an Astrid’s Castle bar coaster. Mitch began to wonder if he’d be seeing that damned logo in his sleep tonight.
“We’ve never had the pleasure, Mitch,” Aaron spoke up, sticking his hand out toward him. “I enjoy your work thoroughly.”
Mitch shook Aaron’s hand, which was limp and sodden. “Thanks, glad to meet you,” he said, even though he was far from it. As far as Mitch was concerned, Aaron Ackerman was one of the most despicable figures in modern American journalism.
If you could even call what Aaron Ackerman did journalism. Mitch didn’t. Aaron specialized in skewering public figures for fun and profit, a brutal form of personal destruction that had come to be known in media circles as Ack-Ack. Ada Geiger’s grandson got his start during the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a member of what Mitch called The Young and The Damp, that perspiring, attention-starved legion of bow-tied baby neo-conservatives who began popping up all over the cable news channels to pummel Bill Clinton and tout their own right-wing agenda. Aaron had two things going for him that quickly set him apart from the others. He had a very famous left-wing grandmother and he had a giddy, unabashed love for toxic tirades. The man became a full-fledged star with the publication of Incoming Ack-Ack, a collection of his most outrageous diatribes, which spent a dizzy twenty-eight weeks atop the New York Times Best Sellers list. Among his targets: tax-and-spend liberals, mealy-mouthed moderates, yuppies, gays, feminists, environmentalists, New Yorkers, Hollywood political activists, the French—anyone and everyone whose world vision didn’t march in lock-step with his own.
Aaron Ackerman spared no one—not even his own grandmother. He’d gone so far as to Ack-Ack her just this past weekend on Larry King Live, labeling her “a misguided paleo-leftist relic.” He’d even called Ada’s films “objectively, tragically awful.”
He was in his early thirties and had the blinky, nose-twitchy look of someone who used to wear thick glasses before the advent
of laser eye surgery. He had a jiggly, shapeless body and an extremely big head. Not in the sense that it was swollen, though it was, but in the sense that it was just a really big, meaty head. Mitch couldn’t imagine what size hat the man wore. Aaron had a rather simian shelf of bone where his eyebrows were. One brow, the right, was often arched in a manner that reminded Mitch of pro wrestler turned movie star The Rock—minus the calculated irony. Aaron did have an affluent surface shine. His curly black hair was neatly trimmed, teeth bleached camera-ready white, fingernails buffed and polished. And he was impeccably dressed in a navy-blue blazer, pink shirt, polka-dot bow tie and charcoal flannel slacks. But the man still had the word shlub stamped all over him. He lacked physical ease, reeked of insecurity.
“I’m surprised you’re here for Ada’s tribute,” Mitch said to him, sipping his beer. “After what you said about her on television, I mean.”
“That happened to be a great deal of nothing,” Aaron said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He had an orotund style of speaking, a manner so pompous and self-satisfied that he practically cried out to be mocked—which he had been to devastating effect on a recent Saturday Night Live by guest host David Schwimmer. “And it was by no means personal, merely something that I needed to do so as to create space between us in terms of the public Aaron. Naturally, the private Aaron is an entirely different matter. I love my grandmother dearly.” He paused, peering in Mitch’s general direction without actually looking at him. It was more as if he were looking through him. “Surely you can understand that, can’t you?”
“No, I’m afraid not. I only have the one me.”
Aaron seemed shocked by this. “Really? How very disappointing.” Now he turned in his stool to face the slender blonde over by the fire. “Mitch, allow me to introduce my lovely wife, Professor Carly Cade. Carly, say hello to Mitch Berger.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mitch,” she said in a voice that was well-bred, lightly Southern-accented and quite mature. As Mitch moved toward her outstretched hand he realized that Carly was not as young as he’d first thought. Not that he could tell how old she was, but she sure wasn’t in her twenties. She parted her shiny blond hair in the middle and combed it straight down like a teenaged girl, framing her face like half-closed curtains. It was a face that seemed peculiarly expressionless, almost as if she were wearing a mask over it. She was petite, maybe five feet three, and looked terrific in the little sleeveless black dress she had on. Her arms were toned and taut, her legs shapely and smooth.
“Your hand is absolutely frozen,” Mitch said as he released it.
“If you think my hand is cold, you should feel my toes right now,” Carly said, shivering. “I feel like we’re in the real Dorset tonight, don’t you?”
“The real Dorset?”
“In England,” she said. “Where they have no central heat.”
“We have central heat,” Les said defensively, throwing another log on the fire. “But when it gets this windy, it just goes flying right out the windows.”
The wind was definitely howling. In fact, Mitch thought it might even be picking up.
“They do have such things as sweaters, you know,” Aaron said, looking his bare-skinned wife up and down in a most proprietary fashion.
“Aaron, I can tell you don’t know one thing about women,” Les said.
“You are so right, Les,” Carly agreed. “I have spent a fortune on this dress. I have huffed and puffed for two hours a day at the gym so I can wear it. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to throw some old sweater on over it.”
“I think you look great in it,” said Mitch.
“Why, thank you, kind sir.” She treated Mitch to a dainty curtsy. “I like this man, Aaron. I just may have to run off with him.”
“Sorry, I’m taken,” said Mitch, who was trying to figure out how Carly Cade had ended up married to a mean-spirited weasel like Aaron Ackerman. She was pretty. She was classy. She wasn’t dumb—Aaron had gone out of his way to identify her as a professor.
“Mitch, you’re probably wondering what a major babe like Carly is doing with a beltway wonk like me,” Aaron said, gazing through Mitch.
“Not a chance,” Mitch smiled, sipping his beer.
“Believe me, everyone in Washington does,” Aaron assured him, his tone suggesting that the subject of their marriage was Topic Number 1 wherever people of power and influence gathered. Senators, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices—they all talked about Aaron Ackerman and his comely blond wife. “They call us the beauty and the beast. You can guess which one I am. All I can say on my own behalf is that I’m the luckiest schnook in town.”
“And don’t you forget it, Acky,” Carly said tartly, tossing her blond head. “It’s like I always tell people, Mitch. I believe in equal opportunity. I’ve already been married to two handsome, athletic men with impeccable social skills. Now it’s Aaron’s turn.”
“He doesn’t need to hear about your other marriages,” Aaron grumbled at her peevishly.
She held her empty martini glass out to him. “Acky, will you get me a refill?”
He snatched it from her and took it to the bar, where Les did the honors.
“So how did you two meet, Professor?” Mitch asked her.
“God, don’t call me that. Every time I hear the P-word I think of some old hag with a mustache and a hump. Make it Carly, okay? I was up in D.C. for a symposium on U.S. global hegemony at the American Enterprise Institute. I live in Charlottesville, teach modern political history at Mary Baldwin College over in Staunton. Anyway, the two of us were seated next to each other. I knew Aaron’s work, of course. We started talking, and I ended up inviting him down as a guest lecturer. After that, he just swept me off my feet.”
“Translation: I got into her sweet little pants my first night there,” Aaron boasted, returning with her refill.
“Acky, he really doesn’t need to know that.”
“You told him I swept you off of your feet. I was merely elaborating.
“You were not. You were being disgusting.”
Over at the tavern table, the young man from Panorama was still negotiating on his cell phone: “I understand you perfectly—Quentin wants a limo. I’m just a little taken aback, because Oliver has already agreed to a town car. His people don’t want to make this into a big glitzy deal. This is not the damned Golden Globes. Those were Oliver’s exact words.”
His companion bit her lip as she continued to labor at her laptop.
“Feel like a game of eight-ball, Mitch?” Aaron asked, blinking at the vintage pool table.
“You’re on.”
Les racked the balls for them while Mitch and Aaron chose cue sticks from the rack mounted on the wall.
“How about a small wager just to make it interesting? Say, a hundred dollars?”
“Let’s make it ten,” Mitch countered. “So there won’t be any hard feelings.”
Aaron let out a derisive snort. “What are you, short on nerve?”
“Acky, he’s trying to be a gentleman.”
“Really? I never realized that ‘gentleman’ was synonymous with ‘wimp.’”
“Actually, why don’t we make it five?”
“What is your problem?” Aaron demanded.
“He’s trying to spare your feelings, if you ask me,” Les said.
“I don’t recall asking you,” Aaron snapped.
“Why don’t you break, Aaron?” Mitch offered, chalking his cue.
“Don’t you want to flip a coin or some such thing?”
“That’s okay. Go right ahead.”
“Suit yourself. But, frankly, you carry this nice-guy act a bit far. It’s somewhat embarrassing.” Aaron broke thunderously but to no avail—he sank nothing.
Mitch promptly went to work. “Three-ball, corner pocket,” he said, dropping it crisply.
“Kindly explain something to me, Mitch,” Aaron said as he watched him line up his next shot. “Why don’t you get an honest television job instead of
writing for that biased liberal rag of yours?”
Mitch’s newspaper was by no means biased. It was scrupulously even-handed, and Aaron knew this. He was just trying to get a rise out of Mitch so he could show his pretty blond wife how devastatingly clever he was.
“Nine-ball, side pocket,” he said, sinking it.
“Seriously, you need to get your face on TV,” Aaron persisted. “The air time will double your book sales.”
“I’m a journalist, not an entertainer,” said Mitch, who had turned down a number of offers to review movies on television.
“God, that is so beneath you, Mitch. Those labels are demonstrably obsolete. We are communicators, nothing more or less. Accept it. Take advantage of it. You’re well-spoken, make a nice impression. And compared to Roger Ebert, hell, you’re Brad Pitt.” Aaron let out a big, booming laugh. “I like that line. I’ll have to use it.”
“You just did, Acky,” Carly pointed out tartly.
“I meant on the air,” he growled at her. “Mitch, I’m privileged to know any number of prominent people at CNN, Fox News… I’d be happy to put out some feelers for you.”
“That’s very nice of you, Aaron, but I’m fine right where I am.”
“But how can you be? That’s not possible.”
“I assure you, it’s very possible.”
“Acky, you’re doing it again.”
Aaron arched his eyebrow at his wife. “Doing what?”
“Laboring under the misapprehension that someone is unhappy because he’s not you,” she said. “Mitch is a smart man. Good at what he does, successful at it. If he wanted to be doing TV, he’d be doing TV. Since he’s not, that means he doesn’t want to. So shut up about it, okay?”
The Burnt Orange Sunrise Page 6