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Clete saw the look Peter von Wachtstein was giving him and had an epiphany.
I know what you’re thinking, Hansel!
“How come you and Dorotea, who you last saw only a week ago, just got to enjoy the splendors of the nuptial couch, while I—without the opportunity to do the same since last July—sit here sucking on a glass of wine and a black olive with my equally sex-starved wife but two kilometers away?”
Or words to that effect.
Clete and Dorotea walked across the polished hardwood floor toward von Wachtstein.
“I have several things to say to you, Hansel,” Clete said as he took two glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon from a maid, handing one to his wife.
“Really?” von Wachtstein said.
“‘Life is unfair,’” Clete intoned solemnly.
“Is it?”
“‘Fortune favors the pure in heart.’”
“You don’t say?”
“‘Patience is a virtue, and all things come to he who waits.’”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dorotea asked, confused.
“Hansel, you may wish to write some, or all, of that down,” Clete concluded.
Clete looked around the room. With the exception of Father Welner, who was smiling and shaking his head, everyone looked baffled.
“Why don’t we go in and have our lunch?” Clete went on. “I’m sure that everyone—Peter especially—is anxious to get this over and move on to other things.”
Frade stood at the large double doors between the library and the ornate dining room and waited politely as his guests passed through.
When the last of them had done so, Clete looked around the library.
With a couple of exceptions, he thought, it’s just like it was the night I found Peter here listening to the phonograph. Then there was only one leather armchair and footstool. Now there’s two, because Dorotea wanted her own.
And, of course, when this was my father’s library, there was no hobbyhorse or baby blue prison pen to keep the kids from crawling around—or any other accoutrements of toddlers and infants.
My father never had anything to do with kids.
Would he have liked it—or not given a damn?
His reverie was interrupted by Lavalle.
“Mi coronel,” the butler said, “there is a telephone call.”
“When did you start calling me ‘mi coronel,’ Antonio?”
Both Dorotea and Lavalle had told Clete—many times—that gentlemen referred to their butlers by their surnames. Clete thought it was not only rude but also that gentlemen referred to their friends by their given names, and Antonio Lavalle often had proved just how good a friend he was.
“When you were promoted, mi coronel,” Lavalle said with a smile.
Clete smiled and shook his head.
“Tell whoever it is that we’re having lunch and I’ll call back.”
“It is el Señor Dulles.”
