called out, “Thank you, Mr. Hausner. That will be plenty for tonight.”
Valium injected in the left buttock brought him back to the recognizable world, while Klaus flew over the Atlantic to fetch him home.
“Was that you I saw sneaking into the university this morning?” Portia fixes Manuel with her eyes. She wears a military cap today along with some sort of sailor getup, complete with bell-bottom trousers.
They stand holding takeout coffees on the sidewalk below the entrance to Jean-Paul’s brownstone. The judges and a select group of federation members have been invited for a breakfast meeting.
“Excuse me?” Manuel says.
“With our youngest competitor in tow, both of you looking worse for the wear?”
“Excuse me?” Manuel crafts an indignant tone, but he is hoarse, his throat not yet lubricated by coffee.
“You should know better,” she adds before edging past him and mounting the iron staircase.
The front door is already open, and Jean-Paul greets her with a kiss, then waits for Manuel, who ducks the kiss but receives a comradely embrace.
“I hope that you have slept well,” Jean-Paul says.
“I can only speak for myself.” Portia raises her crescent eyebrows, then sails past both men into the high-ceilinged room where she pirouettes, taking it all in. She strokes the dining table that is set up as a buffet, then runs her hand over an accompanying chair and notes, “Hans Wegner wishbone chair, very nice.” Without a trace of self-consciousness, she lifts one of the asymmetrical plates. “Vintage Russell Wright. Jean-Paul, you suffer from impeccable taste.”
“Blame my wife.” Jean-Paul stands in his collared shirt and pressed black pants, looking embarrassed.
“And where is this celestial being?”
Before Jean-Paul can answer, the doorbell rings and he hastens to greet the newcomers — the judges Visnya Brocovic and Jon Smyth, both looking achingly chipper.
As greetings are exchanged, Manuel rubs his eyes with his fists, grinding the optical orbits until he sees flashes of light. The front door continues to swing open and shut as federation members arrive. His head throbs — nothing to do with last night’s romantic fiasco.
“Do not come home,” Lucia ordered during his morning phone call to the weary homeland. “There is nothing here — zero.” Then she pleaded, “Stay, Manuel, and send money.”
“Pastry?” Jean-Paul offers a tray of delicacies.
Portia makes a little gasp of pleasure and coasts her hand above each item on the platter until her fingers seize a miniature brioche.
The guests draw file folders from a stack and sit on folding chairs that have been set up around the perimeter of the spacious room. The walls, Manuel notes, are decorated by abstract paintings, the artist’s palette knife yielding layers of colour and unusual dumpling shapes.
Seeing his interest, Jean-Paul says, “My wife is the artist.”
He looks proud, so Manuel quickly mutters words of praise.
“I hiked up Mount Royal as the sun was rising,” Portia announces to the gathering as she brushes pastry crumbs off the flap of her nautical shirt. “From which vantage point I watched the city spring to life.”
Visnya appears cross. She finds Portia’s athletic feats undignified in a woman of her age.
“Time to call the meeting to order,” Jean-Paul says, clinking a spoon against his water glass.
Twenty-two musicians and teachers have gathered this morning to attend to the important question: who will succeed old Gregorio as president?
Portia teeters at the edge of her chair, face bright and expectant, folder set on her lap. Gregorio himself is not present. A reoccurrence of an unpleasant disease keeps him home in Milan under the devoted care of his wife and widowed daughter.
“Who’s running for election besides Portia?” Jon Smyth asks.
“I see three names on our list,” Jean-Paul says, directing him to the material they are supposed to have read and carefully considered.
“I’d just like to add,” Portia says, clearing her throat, “that I feel confident that any one of the nominees would do a fine job, and I will happily bow to whomever gains your favour.”
Still, she can’t restrain herself. “As we are well aware,” she continues after a tiny pause, “the organization has become an old boys’ club and technologically backward. I aim to change this.”
There are mutters of agreement and even a trickle of applause. Then Jean-Paul taps his glass again. “May I remind you that elections are the final item on our agenda. I draw your attention to the first point of business — how shall we thank Gregorio for his decade and a half of careful stewardship?”
There is a short, troubled silence. Everyone has a Gregorio story, often involving some small humiliation or misunderstanding.
“Lifetime honorary membership,” someone suggests.
“Scholarship in his name?”
“We commission a guitar-shaped pin.”
“Cufflinks.”
Someone snickers, then cufflinks versus tie pin occupies ten minutes of heated discussion before Jean-Paul cracks the tabletop. “How many in favour of a scholarship?”
A few hands shoot up.
Meanwhile, Portia is mouthing something in Manuel’s direction; an instruction is being issued. An ominous feeling creeps into Manuel’s already churning gut, for Portia remembers things with hideous clarity. She will have recalled, for instance, that episode in Mexico City, not his finest hour, and now this new slanderous accusation caws into his morning brain: Was that you I saw sneaking back this morning with our youngest competitor in tow?
What right has she to monitor his actions?
He nods back, very curt, inviting no further communication. The voting continues, and Portia slips out of her chair to perch on the arm of Manuel’s modernist settee. She whispers in his ear, “Can I count on you?” and places an icy hand on his shoulder.
He stares straight ahead, pretending to be intent on the business of the meeting. Cufflinks are surely more useful than a tie pin. Gold is too expensive and would deplete the coffers of the federation.
“For the proposed virtual conservatory?” The hand sinks farther into his flesh.
Jean-Paul glares at the pair of them as he tots up numbers of raised hands.
“I need you,” she breathes.
“Why?” Manuel can’t bear women who drag him into their personal dramas.
“No private cabals during the meeting,” Jean-Paul says, staring at them with a fixed smile.
Portia glances up. “Carry on, love. We’ll be done in a flash.” She presses her magenta lips to Manuel’s ear again and confides, “Without you onboard the idea will be DOA.”
After this pronouncement, she pulls away and returns to her chair, bowing apologetically to Jean-Paul. Everyone notes the way she dangles one long leg over the other, sailor on shore leave.
Manuel steams: why should he lend his name to her enterprise? He won’t agree to be her hand-picked director of the Internet conservatory, an unpaid position. Yet if he doesn’t, he understands, last night’s girl will be brought into the picture. A disaster for Trace, as his vote would be cast off as tainted. There could be a nasty scandal, one he can ill afford. So unfair. After all, he tried to persuade the girl to go back to her dormitorio.
Perhaps not hard enough.
The front door of the apartment kicks open, and Jean-Paul glances up. His face changes.