“Yes,” she said.
He went right into “Rhapsody in Blue.”
“And they say America is devoid of culture,” Father Metz bellowed.
“Stuff and nonsense!” Puffin clicked his tongue. “They’ve obviously never seen the ‘I Love Lucy’ reruns.”
“Or listened to jazz,” Temple agreed.
“I say, Claire,” Puffin Hedges said, “is Breslinsky your husband’s name or your family name?”
They all looked at her, interested in her reply.
“My family name. My married name is Benedetto.”
“Ah. Now do you spell Breslinsky with y or with an i?”
“With a y.” She took a rough brown sugar cube meant for coffee and dropped it in her delicate and almost-see-through Rosenthal cup. It dissolved to a puddle of amber. She thought how nice that in the future he would look for her work.
“Hmm. Now the Christian Poles spell ‘Breslinski’ with an i.”
She looked up, surprised. “Really?”
“Yes indeed.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh yes. So let’s see. So that means your father’s family would have been Jewish. Your father’s father.”
“You are only a Jew”—Father Metz swallowed the last of his cake—“if your mother was a Jew.”
“Well, yes, but,” Stella said, “there are a lot of Jewish people who would say that is not technically so.”
“Oh, it is so.” Father Metz looked over his specs. He wore them low down on his nose for reading, and there they sat, conveniently out of the way at all times, even when he went looking for them.
“Hang on a minute here.” Claire laughed in a labored way. “I’m afraid, as far as I know, I am Irish as the lakes of Killarney, Polish as kielbasa, and both sides as Catholic as Saint Anthony’s Lost and Found. I know they shortened the name to Breslin at one time to sound more American. My father changed it back when he was young. Maybe it got misspelled going back and forth.” She laughed, a strained laugh. “Knowing my father’s spelling, that could well be.” No one took much notice of this explanation.
Puffin filled his empty cup. “I suppose it is a bit of a shock. You walk in the room one thing. Then you walk out quite another.”
Claire shrugged. “I’m just not so sure you’re right.” In her mind she was reviewing her father’s Polish aunts, lining them up in her mother’s chaotic kitchen; those aunts with babka and jars of homegrown fennel and cherries carried in overcoated arms in spring, she thought of their disapproving faces, their high cheekbones and pudgy noses … Naaa … Still, she wondered. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
They all scrutinized Claire’s until-now Christian face for attic-nook remnants of hidden Judaism.
“You have,” Temple Fortune interjected softly, “what I would call a determined face.”
He was drinking, Claire noted, not tea but a particular brand of Franconian wine, a Boxbeutel from Würzburg. She could do with that herself, she thought, and wondered if anyone would ask.
“Thank you,” she said, pleased that he would examine her face at all, “I think.”
“Now Stella.” Puffin continued on his theme, walking over to her and putting his hand under her chin. “Stella has what everyone would call a beautiful face.” Stella flinched and moved his hand away, appalled.
“For a minute I could have sworn you were going to say an Aryan face,” Claire said.
“Yes, it is that,” Father Metz agreed. They all looked intently into Stella’s Aryan face.
“Classical.” Temple nodded his head approvingly.
Bibi Wintner, at the sideboard, dropped a china tea ball onto the iron trivet, and it cracked into three pieces.
“Oooh.” Cosimo stopping playing, complained out loud. “I liked that one. It had the roosters painted on it.”
On second thought, Claire thought, maybe he is off.
Cosimo went over to the sideboard and took the pieces from Bibi Wintner. He cupped them in his hand and held them like a little bird fallen from its nest.
“It was pretty,” Stella agreed. “Never mind,” she crooned, “perhaps Evangelika can mend it. She’s awfully good at mending things.” She looked from face to face. “You’d never know they had been broken. In her purse she keeps nails and a hammer.”
Fräulein Wintner stood there glaring at the floor. Her mouth was pressed into a tight, dark line. She left the room.
Claire wondered what was going on. She turned and found Temple undressing her with his eyes. Instead of turning away, she narrowed her own and held his gaze. Now he knew that she knew that he knew.
“Who’s pretty?” Father Metz’s hearing wasn’t half as good as it used to be. He struggled into a huffing, corpulent try at a sit-up. “Mara?”
“Nails and a hammer,” Puffin said crisply. “Not Mara.” The way he said it implied there was no question it could be Mara.
“Mara Sauberei,” Temple Fortune said loyally, “was the loveliest girl in Munich at one time. She was so brilliant, you could hardly look at her.”
Claire doubted, somehow, that Mara would be heartened by this report.
“That the one”—Father Metz tapped his cheek with his palm—“who looks so ill?” All these young women, to him, were becoming a blur.
“She has,” Cosimo interjected, “a green and guilty aura.”
Temple Fortune became upset. “It’s this ghastly place.” He got up, walked in a circle, sat down. “It’s bloody haunted!”
“Temple brought Mara here to recover, didn’t you, Temp?” Puffin said soothingly.
Temple glared at Puffin. “It’s this place, I tell you.”
“Uh-oh.” Puffin went quite meek. “I must have missed something.” He got up and trundled across the Oriental. He lit a cigarette. His socks were down around his blue-veined, hairless ankles.
Father Metz, attempting a fresh approach, said smoothly, “Fräulein Morgen is one of the great ladies of fashion.”
“Well?” Puffin waved his arms like some demented circus ringleader. He had on somebody else’s hat. “We have right here an expert on the subject, Claire Breslinsky with a y. Photographer of fashion. And that, my dears, will sell.”
Claire was beginning to feel fed up. “Yes, but fashion isn’t really about selling,” she said. “And once it is, it doesn’t.”
“Sure it does,” Father Metz said.
“She means the spring of fashion, doesn’t she?” Puffin explained, overly patient. “The source.”
“Of course you’re right,” the priest agreed. He loved this kind of thing. “And if it does, it usually shouldn’t.”
Claire felt wrong. She shouldn’t have said that, she realized. It was the sort of thing Temple Fortune would have liked to have said himself. Her having claimed it as her own left him rather at the opposite end, a place itself accusing him of motive in his art. And not so obscurely at that, especially after his bit about making expenses. Oh well. What was wrong with that? He couldn’t be where he was if he were so fragile, would he? Still, she sensed she’d placed herself against him somehow, if only by refusing to allow him to defend his girlfriend around her. Of course he loved her, why shouldn’t he?
“My father …” Cosimo, who’d gone back to his Schumann after the broken-china incident, stopped playing and folded his music book shut. He certainly had everyone’s attention. “My father felt that art was merely a vehicle to riches. He never grasped the joy one could experience creating it. It wasn’t his fault, really. His father dead. And Omi—Grandmother—she was plain stupid. So he never had a chance, you see. He never learned to love art.”
“Never mind,” Claire couldn’t stop herself from saying, “my husband feels the very same way.” Was that Stella administering an Indian burn to Cosimo’s wrist? Good Lord.
Of course, Temple Fortune reminded himself, she’s happily married.
“It’s always the ones who pay the bills who feel that way,” Puffin said. “Oops”—he looked from Claire to C
osimo to Stella—“sorry, loveys.”
“That’s all right,” Claire said, wondering suddenly if Iris’s diamonds would have fit in Hans’s expensive French clock, which sat so charmingly ticking away the years on the mantel. “You’re probably right. Or at least half right. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m exhausted, tired.”
“Not every day one is suspected of murder,” Puffin said genially.
“You have more crust than a baker saying something like that, here, now,” Temple Fortune said.
“Nevertheless,” Cosimo said, “it’s true.” What did he care what some Brit filmmaker thought.
“I’m leaving,” Puffin said.
“Splendid,” Temple said.
“And I’m going to bed.” Cosimo yawned.
“Coming, Temp?” Puffin Hedges stood waiting at the door for Temple in what he felt was an appropriately haughty pose.
“Go on ahead.” Temple didn’t look at anyone. He tossed a knight from the chessboard into the air.
Stella went over and gently patted Father Metz’s arm. He’d fallen asleep. Abruptly, he woke up and shouted, “Will sie das Auto?” Does she want the car?
Stella clucked appropriately calming words and hoisted the old fellow to his feet. The dog got up as well.
“You’re going to have to hold the dog,” Stella said over her shoulder as she supported him out. “He makes such an awful racket when Father tries to leave.”
“I’ll get him.” Bibi Wintner rushed over and grabbed the dog by the scruff of his neck. The dog yelped in pain.
Shocked, Claire couldn’t move. She hadn’t even noticed Bibi Wintner had come back in.
Temple Fortune went over and smoothly removed the dog from Bibi’s grasp. “You’ll be awfully tired after all that’s happened. Here. Let me.”
“All right.” She looked at him gratefully and patted her nice hair. The lace of her slip peeked out from her prim skirt’s long-standing tussle with static as she left the room.
Stella rose gracefully and shook hands formally, first with Claire and then with Temple Fortune, before she glided out the door.
The clocks did their rich minuets.
Temple turned and looked at her. “Alone at last.” He smiled.
“Yes,” she laughed. She felt unsure and got ready to bolt. To make sure she didn’t, she took hold of the wooden banister atop the hope chest beside her. She was not going to look back on this moment years down the road and wonder what would have happened had she had the courage to stay and challenge her infernal shyness.
“Wine?” He held the bottle up by the neck.
“I’d love a glass of wine,” she said. Thank God. Now that pearly feeling of bliss would loosen her shoulder muscles and she would, if nothing else, sleep well.
Neither of them knew how to begin. Then he said, “Mara told me about your photographs the day we all met. She was very excited. Mara doesn’t usually get that way about women, you know. If she feels strongly or is impressed with them at all, it’s to despise them. She said she liked your work so much because you did story pictures. I think she meant she enjoys the labyrinthian plot somewhere in the background.”
“I beg your pardon! I think she must know what she meant.”
“Sorry?”
“I mean I hate it when men explain what it was their girlfriends meant.”
They regarded each other carefully.
“There’s a nice word.” She went to meet him halfway. “‘Labyrinthian.’ Not one I would use. An English person’s word. Story pictures will do very well for me. But then, I am American.”
She was referring to Puffin’s comment earlier on, he knew. “I am not British either,” he admitted. “I’m Irish.”
“Hoo. I knew that.”
“Did you.” A statement.
“I did. Here’s something else that will surprise you. I remember you as Douglas Dougherty, the guitar player for the Salty Dogs.”
“No! Oh, God. No one remembers that.”
“I do. So now you know my deep secret.”
“You mean my secret, don’t you?” He sipped his wine.
“Mine too. You were a fantasy of mine. My favorite fantasy, I’m afraid.” There.
He blushed. The room grew warm. A mixture of power and tenderness encompassed her.
“I’ve embarrassed you,” she said. Her words came out so slowly and separated. She could hear them still in the airless room. There they were, over the edge.
“I am so glad you have,” he said. “I haven’t felt this particularly beside myself in a very long time.”
“If that is true,” she said, “I’m glad.”
“You doubt my essence?”
“Only my ability to affect it.”
“Well, don’t,” he said. “Then we might be matched.”
“I think we might be,” she agreed.
There was nothing courtly or romantic in the way they felt: their eyes held on to each other, the inevitable, lustful recognition of the hunter and the hunted. Which, she only wondered, was which? She had a hard time holding on to her face. It wobbled away from her, her mouth loose and rubbery and uncontrollable.
She turned her back, walked across the room, grabbed hold of her face and squeezed, and put her teacup on the cluttered tray. The clock was in front of her. She would never be able to get that clock open and shut without breaking it. It was too intricate, too sophisticated. Temple came and stood beside her. “Let me help you with that,” he said. Their arms were crossed, both holding on to the tray. They stood like that, like ice skaters dancing, looking down at their similar hands, not old or young, long pinkish fingers from the same tribe, scrubbed clean and holding tight. They both wore silver rings with small hunks of turquoise. Hers was from the Himalayas, and his from New Mexico. They watched, spellbound, each other’s almost identical adornment. The door opened abruptly and the wind blew in, frightening them both. No one was there. The hall was dark, the light gone out. She pulled away and lifted the tray.
“Leave it,” he whispered and she put it down.
“Oh, here you are, oh good.” Isolde came galloping in. She wore a peach satin robe, and her long dark hair flew in racy tendrils when she moved her head. Claire wondered if she ever slept. She did, she knew she did, she’d seen her sleeping, but Isolde was one of those people always on their guard, even in sleep, and when she woke it was right up, not groggily and bewildered like herself (needing forty minutes on her own and a potful of coffee). Isolde would open her eyes and start right in on the same conversation she was having when she’d put out the lights.
“I’m going to kill that little housekeeper,” Isolde fumed, pacing the room, not noticing the soft dissolve of Claire’s and Temple Fortune’s passion.
“Where is she?”
“She’s gone to bed,” Claire murmured.
“She has, has she? That bitch. Wait till I get her. I’ll kill her. Do you know what she did? First, and if this isn’t bad enough, she accuses me of having an affair with Puffin Hedges! Of all people! And then, when I laughed and told her that wouldn’t work, she accused me of murdering Hans. Murdering Hans! She told the police I was up on the second floor with Hans before he died. Can you believe it? She actually incriminated me in a murder investigation!”
Claire was calmed by the news. She hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell the police where Isolde had been. She probably never would have. Then again, she might have. This was not just the matter of an unseemly affair but someone’s life, never mind that everyone seemed better off that he was dead.
“She always dreaded me,” Isolde said, fumbling with the cigarette box.
“What, that wee lass?” Temple said.
“She’s the housekeeper,” Isolde said. “She ran all Hans’s affairs. Wee lass?” she implored Claire. “Men are so innocent! That little bitch! Always sticking her little pig nose in where it doesn’t belong. So eine Drecksau!” Isolde slammed shut the empty, elaborate china cigarette box. “Who’s got one?” she demand
ed, holding two fingers in the air and standing, other hand on hip. Joan Crawford in a multi-rage.
Where would Claire ever find a friend like this again? She knew well enough not to say a word, though. As no one ran to accommodate Isolde, she glared at them, seeing them finally.
“Aha,” she declared. “I’ve interrupted something.”
Temple nimbly picked up the tray and put it out the door on the floor. He shut the door. “I was just going to offer Claire a job shooting stills for our film,” he said.
“Is that what you were about to do?” Claire said.
“Claire doesn’t handle that line of work.” Isolde dismissed the idea with a condescending frown. Then: “I’m going to have that little vixen out of here. Just you wait. She’s poured her last little bit of venom on me, that one has!”
“I’d love to shoot the stills,” Claire said. “Does it pay actual money?” Maybe she really could afford Father Metz’s car. Even without the cigarette campaign.
Isolde regarded Claire with astonished contempt. “Claire”—she practically stomped her foot—“you couldn’t be more stupid! Where is your sense of strategy?”
“Not as much as you’re used to, I’m sure,” Temple continued, troubled. “But I’ll talk to Puffin about making it a little more than a regular would get, all right? After all, it’s to our benefit. Someone of your talent, aye?”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“You can’t go anywhere, can you?” He laughed.
“No,” she agreed, “I am yours entirely.”
He winced as though he had been struck.
So no sense of strategy was indeed the best strategy. Isolde was furious. Not only didn’t they fear her, they didn’t even notice her! “Do you know what I’m going to do?” she said, glowering. “I’m going to marry him straightaway. I’ll marry him this weekend. I’ll fix her cart.”
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