“Yeah?” I asked. I tried to put myself in the headspace of the character I was playing. The lonely, estranged, less-than-successful uncle of some far-flung Duchamp connection. “Twenty year old, wanting me, you’re saying?”
“Not unheard of,” Adam told me. “But don’t fall for it. They reel the kids back in when the grandkids come around, or your loving wife decides to come back on her own, and then you’re stuck coming to these godawful meetings and whatnot, stuck on the fringes.”
“And,” one guy groused, “It’s not like they’re your kids, you know?”
“Hear hear,” a few of the guys echoed. There were some clinks of beer bottles and glasses of stronger spirits. A few women glanced back at us, giving us annoyed looks. Not so happy their husbands were openly drinking, it seemed.
“It’s a trap,” Adam said. “Just do what you need to do for your cousin, but you walk away as fast as you can.”
“But… some twenty year old, and me?” I asked, again.
There were some chuckles.
“You keep saying girls,” I said. “Do the boys run into the same thing?”
“You’re really new,” one replied. “Yeah, the boys do run into some of the same pressures, but you tell me, how many boys are in this room, compared to the girls?”
I glanced around. In the Behaim family, it was a fifty-fifty split, but the little Duchamps were all girls.
“I think I get it,” I said.
“More likely,” another one of the men said, “One of the widows is going to make a play. Get their hands on you before one of the younger girls do, to remove you from the picture.”
“Or grill you,” Adam said. “Get all the dirt they can, to make sure you’re a viable candidate for their daughters. Descend on you like a flock of harpies if you aren’t, humiliating you. And they’re good at the harpy thing.”
“Now I’m worried,” I said. If they start questioning me in detail, I’m fucked. This conversation is hard enough. “Wondering what I got myself into, coming here.”
“Tell you what. We’ll run interference,” Adam said. “Buy you time to run.”
I smiled, then clinked my bottle against his. “A fraction less worried now. But it’s best if you don’t try to look like you’re running interference. Maybe you could promise to step in if I can’t dislodge ’em?”
“I think we could do that… What’s your name, by the by?” he asked.
That gave me pause.
“Less I tell you guys, the less anyone can get out of you when they start asking the questions,” I said, quirking one eyebrow. “I mean, you don’t really care, do you?”
He laughed. “Not really. Well said, well said.”
The conversation switched away from me, outside of the periodic question about smartphones or hockey.
It afforded me the chance to look around the room. There were certain lines drawn in the sand. The very young children of the two different families seemed to mingle, but as the ages rose, they seemed to segregate more into groups. Very few of the adult Behaims were talking to adult Duchamps. Outside of a few out-of-towners, the only real intermingled group in open discussion was… Laird’s.
I’d spotted him, in a group with Sandra Duchamp and a few other members of the family.
How was I going to play this? I couldn’t do anything if I was kicked out. But if the group shrank down to only the practitioners…
How were they going to play this? Did this family reunion factor into what he was going to pull against me? An order of execution? A massed army?
No, it didn’t fit their styles. They weren’t aggressive. They weren’t vicious, per se.
What, then, could a few dozen practitioners pull?
I saw Sandra Duchamp break away from the group.
I saw, too, the connections that formed between her and anyone. She smiled, and did a somewhat poor job of smiling in a genuine way, greeting this person and that.
Heading in our general direction.
I could see it in the connection strength. She was connected to people. The one who sent out the invitations, or the orders. If she focused her attention on me, there would be questions. If I was lucky. If I was unlucky, she’d tear right through the glamour as if it were tissue paper.
No. I had to believe in the glamour. Confidence. The glamour was stronger. Having an audience helped. I’m stronger, I’m not that easy to break. She won’t see through it.
I wasn’t entirely able to convince myself.
I took a drink. Because the man I was pretending to be would drink, and I deliberately looked away, so she wouldn’t see that I knew her. I definitely didn’t want her to see any connection.
She looked right past us. No recognition, not even an attempt at recognition. She paused to shoo one cluster of kids away from the fireplace, which was burning with a low flame.
No, her focus was shifting elsewhere as she moved towards our end of the room. To the front hall-
The door opened.
There was a cry, a cheer that built in volume as more people caught on and joined in.
A boy in a suit, a girl in a knee-length dress and tights, each about twenty-five. Holding hands.
“Hey!” Adam called out, joining the cheer. The other men joined in, and I joined in with them.
The bride-to-be smiled, but it was a polite smile, very small. The groom didn’t change his expression in the slightest.
I allowed myself to relax as the evening progressed. With so many unwitting bystanders around, there wasn’t much to be done. There was no fucking way I was going near Laird.
Dinner was served, buffet style, and the various rooms of the house were soon filled with people eating. Most of the little ones sat at the table, the elderly ate in the living room, and the adults without children to feed ate standing up, holding their plates with one hand and using forks with the other, putting wine glasses, beer bottles, and glasses of soda on any available surface.
Ordinary.
I took it for what it was, eating genuinely good food for the first time in a week or so, and going back for seconds, just so I could take a different route across the ground floor and get a sense of what was where.