It was true that Joyce had never been happier. When Dodd came to town, they caught up over drinks at swank Brentwood hideaways, a routine Frances-Leigh lobbied for and was immensely satisfied to see take hold. The amazing thing was, they even flirted. Yet on the romantic front, Joyce had no time or desire. Her life was filled by Ketchum and the others — her Westwood children. Men fluttered around like butterflies, but she was no collector; she took her leave from fancy fund-raisers on the arm of Father de Kooning, her walker and biggest fan, and that was just fine.
Shortly after his move to Cañon Manor, Marcus Weiner spent many a Saturday at Frenchie’s, refining and embellishing his prodigious gifts. The first thing he did was re-create the Persephone, the original pastry that had drawn Bluey in years ago, making sure it was delivered to her cottage at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills. According to Winter, whenever the old woman partook of that favored treat, she broke lustily into song and a certain woodenheaded Mr. Jones was invariably invoked.
One person who particularly benefited from Marcus’s drop-ins was none other than the proprietor’s daughter. Amaryllis Kornfeld-Mott proved herself a studious yet inventive helper, with the knack of being one step ahead of her tutor, even when at his most unpredictably daring. Sometimes he challenged her — threw down the gauntlet and stood back, hands clasped behind him like a Russian maestro commanding a scherzo to be played at speeds beyond human capability — in this case, the prodigy pulled it off and then some. They simply took over, relegating Gilles to the front register, and the only thing left for him was to get coffee and cupcakes for the old folks who shuffled in. During lulls, the poor baker tried to small-talk, but so involved was the pair that they wouldn’t even notice; if they did, he was shooed away forthwith. Back at his post, he heard Marcus roar at his pupil or clap with delight upon tasting her morsels, and the coffee-sipping pensioners wondered what the hell was going on. The pâtissier got carried away enough that he often forgot to remove his old-style tweed coat, which became dusted with confectionary powders as a field by snow. Even when Amaryllis was enrolled in Pitzer College, she came home on weekends to see Cody and Saffron, and to attend master classes with the man she loved as a father — the man who had once fed her and the babies and who carried her on his back, where she would forever in both their eyes remain.
Toulouse was still in love. It was unnecessary to remind her of the pledge he had made — she knew full well his feelings. She did love him, but could not jump, as Lucy had with Travis Tryeferne; perhaps, thought Amaryllis gloomily, that was her flaw. The truth was, too much had happened in her young life for her to ever have a passionate, clear-cut feeling. Eroticism and emotions had been commingled, and mangled too, and ghosts conspired to put a governor on her ability to sort it all out. Things had been done to her of which she never told a soul. Eventually, she would, thus opening a door to the world; it can be assumed that Toulouse Trotter would be standing there, first in line, in forthright, timorous fashion, holding a slender stalk of honeysuckle and passionflowers. She would let him in. But that time was not now, nor would it be for some years. There would be other loves and other heartaches for both, the lesser ones which they’d share as best friends do. By that time (the time they found each other), Amaryllis would have consecrated a Westside Frenchie’s, hard by Le Marmiton, and its wafery creations would make her name — and bake it too.
What was Toulouse Trotter doing while the door to her heart remained closed (or at least secured against entry of all but an occasional breeze of sweet nothings)? Well, he was doing the things that young people do while casting about for “meaning.” Taking a leaf from Lucy’s earliest Smythson, he attempted to write what he thought to be a touching absurdist play about his cousin, called Prince Headward (after careful consideration, the somewhat sacrilegious title was revised to Edward the First). Sadly, the title was its high point. He traveled the world, notching this and that power spot on his belt, taking care to avoid places visited during the famous Four Winds holiday — not an altogether easy task. He became enamored of Cambodia and New Guinea, Java and Madagascar, Abu Dhabi and the Maldives, Zanzibar and Nepal, and kept the river on his right during the requisite near-death, near-homosexual experiences of an inveterate adventurer; he had dalliances with nymphomaniacal girls who spoke pidgin English; he sometimes stayed with families who thought him a poor vagabond — in short, got up to all the normal mischief that could be expected of any self-respecting scion.
He never stayed away too long (whenever home, he bunked at Cañon Manor), and sent his parents a raft of letters, which Trinnie thought so wonderful she threatened to have published under the title Off the Road. Particularly savored was the antic account of Toulouse’s re-enactment of his father’s legendary walk from Oxford to the great earthwork of Silbury Hill, a path William Morris himself had once trod as an undergrad. He called his dispatches “News from Anywhere,” a nod to the log Marcus kept all those years and had long ago given him for safekeeping — a gesture so intimate that his son had immediately handed it over to Harry and Ruth.
The young man at last fell upon the career of medical doctor, with a specialty in maxillofacial reconstruction; he had no stomach for blood, so it didn’t pan out. His studies did get him writing again, penning thoughts on morbidity and mortality (which had become a clichéd literary genre in itself) — but the trenchant, tender quality of Dr. Trotter’s observations proved anomalous, and anomalously marketable at that. Now wisely engaged in dermatological pursuits, he wrote as elegantly of lupus as he did of childhood acne, though readers generally conceded his finest essay to date concerned a dog — his own.
Toulouse had meant to meditate on his cousin’s infirmity but wound up memorializing Pullman instead. In “A Harlequin Romance,” he wrote how as a boy his mother had tried to put him off Great Danes, owing to the breed’s short life-span, and recounted that tragicomic year of vicarious hypochondria wherein Pullman was needled, massaged and therapized. But the dog turned eight, then ten, then twelve, then fourteen … an age thought impossible for the breed.
Then he disappeared.
At first, Toulouse thought that in a misguided act of charity, his mother and the Monasterios had taken it upon themselves to incinerate the finally dead creature and concoct a story of his mysterious departure. But they withered under his interrogations — he had after all inherited the digger’s formidable “nose”—and the young man concluded that if they had been responsible, they’d have surely come clean under his assault.