Page 22 of The Dinner Party

“That’s right.”

Apparently, they are serving imaginary animals at their dinner club. “The abominable snowman isn’t real.”

“Oh, it is very much real,” Mr. Wentworth assures you. “She’s real, and she put up one hell of a fight. But in the end, we got her. And she was quite delicious.”

You’re not sure what to say to that, so instead you ask, “What are you serving tonight?”

“Oh,” he says, “I’ll let that be a surprise.”

Surprise? Well, whatever it is, maybe you can sample a tiny bit. This will probably be your only chance to taste a dragon or Godzilla or whatever the hell it is they’re making in there. Although you love animals and hate the idea of them being kept in cages, you also respect the food chain and are not a vegetarian.

“Now…” He rubs his hands together eagerly. “We still have a little time before dinner. Would you care for a tour of the house? Or would you like to go straight to the kitchen?”

To take a tour of the house, turn to Chapter 38 (page 93)

To go straight to the kitchen, turn to Chapter 46 (page 111)

38

There’s no point in sitting around the kitchen doing nothing, so you decide to take the tour. You’ve never been inside a huge mansion like this before, and you bet it’s pretty cool.

“Thank you,” you say. “A tour would be wonderful.”

“Splendid!” Mr. Wentworth exclaims. “A little walking will help me work up my appetite for our magnificent feast tonight.”

You follow Mr. Wentworth up a large staircase with a banister wider than your thighs. It almost feels like somebody is watching you, and when you turn around, you notice that Carson is standing at the foot of the stairs. He is following you with his eyes, a deep crease between his pale brows.

You are in danger.

Your neck tickles slightly at the memory of his hot breath whispering in your ear. He seemed so worried, but you’re still not sure why. Mr. Wentworth seems eccentric, sure, but definitely not dangerous.

Maybe it was a pickup line. Sort of like taking a girl to a scary movie.

The flight of stairs feels almost endless, and when you get to the top, you are out of breath. Mr. Wentworth, on the other hand, is not the slightest bit winded. He is at least forty years older than you, but he seems to have boundless energy. Without so much as a pause, he leads you to a closed door at the very end of the hall. He pauses with his hand on the knob. “This,” he says dramatically, “is our home theater!”

He throws open the door. You’re not sure what you expected—possibly a large movie screen and rows of stadium seats, a popcorn machine. Instead, there is just a video camera on a tripod, which is pointed at a twin bed covered only in a stained sheet.

“Um, very nice,” you say.

“We get a lot of use out of it,” he assures you. “Especially on Super Bowl Sunday.”

“I’m sure…”

The next stop on your tour is a room he refers to as the “library.” Again, you expected rows of bookcases, but instead, there is only one single stack of books piled up to the high ceiling, teetering on the brink of collapse.

“This is your library?” you say in disbelief.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?”

“Um.” You peer at the stack of books. “If you want to read one of them, how do you get it out of the stack?”

“Exactly!” he says, as if that answered your question.

He closes the door to the library, and you continue to the next door. “This,” he tells you, his voice thrumming with excitement, “is our Olympic-sized swimming pool.”

He opens the door, and while the space is certainly large enough for an Olympic-sized swimming pool, the only water in the room is a small puddle in the center of the room. But Mr. Wentworth looks so proud of the display that you feel compelled to say, “Wow.”

“Ah,” he says, “if you’re impressed now, wait until you see the top floor.”