So that's Robert and Martin; usually, as you might suppose, the center of all eyes. But not today, not just this minute. Just this minute Robert and Martin and the nine other people here in the big front room of the main house were all staring hungrily, avidly, at Peter and David, waiting for them to get themselves under control, so they could tell all.
Both had been borne, had been half-carried, to this long sofa facing the fireplace with the brilliant flower arrangement in it, and both had been plied with drink, someone remembering that Peter liked vodka and grapefruit juice, and someone else remembering that David liked Campari and soda with a slice of lemon, and now everyone waited to find out what was going on.
Peter recovered first, and in fact had settled down to gasps and hiccups even before his vodka arrived, but then everybody had to wait while Peter did a miserable job of helping David recover, snapping at him with such useful lines as, "Pull yourself together," and, "Stop it, David, for God's sake," while David just kept on keening and sobbing in the most heartbroken manner you could imagine.
"Oh, do shut up, Peter," Martin finally said, and hunkered down beside the distraught David, holding up the cheery glass of red liquid and clear ice cubes and bright yellow lemon slice for David to see, saying, "David, come along, try to drink some of this, you'll feel much better, I promise, listen to Nurse Martin, now."
That did make David laugh, or at least giggle or snicker or something, through his tears, but the tears kept flowing, and David remained far too unstrung to hold a full glass of anything in those trembling hands.
Martin said, "David, we have the most wonderful new snorkel gear for the pool, it's phosphorescent, you glow in the dark, it's the most fantastic thing, you'll have to see it for yourself and advise us on it, it's probably madly carcinogenic, what do you think?"
David looked at Martin. His eyes were welling with tears, but they were grateful, too, and even amused. He gasped a bit, struggling to catch his breath. "Don't," he managed.
"Yes?"
"Don't . . ."
"Yes? Yes?"
"Smoke underwater!" David blurted out, and smiled through his tears, and looked up with comforted pleasure at his friends when they laughed, and the phone rang.
Utter silence. All eyes turned to Robert, as he crossed toward the phone. "If this is Susan," Robert said dangerously, "asking if she can bring dessert . . ." and left the threat unfinished, as he picked up the phone and said, in an amazingly normal tone of voice, "Skeat residence."
Pregnant pause.
"Yes, he is. Hold on." Robert turned and extended the phone toward Peter, at this point the more able-bodied of the two. "It's Freddie."
Peter knocked back half his vodka and grapefruit juice at a swig, put the glass on the floor, got to his feet, and strode over to Robert. David took the Campari and soda from Martin and drank it all down, his eyes never leaving Peter, who took the phone, cleared his throat, and said, "Dr. Peter Heimhocker here."
Everybody waited. Peter pointedly turned his back on the room, as though he would be permitted privacy at this moment in the exercise. "Yes, I recognize your voice." Accusingly, he added, "You took our things."
"Peter!" David hissed. "That hardly matters now!"
Gesturing violently at David to shut up, Peter said, "So would we, of course. Naturally." Then he seemed troubled, and said, "Well, that would be hard to say, we'd really have to examine you before we could do that sort of prognosis . . ."
"Oh, God," David said, brokenly, and handed his empty glass to Martin, who handed it to the canapй waiter, who knew what to do with it and went away and did.
Peter was saying, "We'll be back in the city Monday, we could — Well, if you don't trust us, I don't — oh, come now, you're the untrustworthy one, aren't you? I mean—" He took a deep calming breath, listening, and then apparently answered a question. "We're upstate. North of the city. A hundred miles north." Deeply troubled, Peter put a palm over the mouthpiece and turned to Robert. "He wants to know can he come up?"
"Yes!" said everybody in the room, all at once, except David, who cried, "God, no!" but was ignored.
Into the phone, Peter said, "If you really want to — all right, fine. Where are you now? I know you're in New York City, I mean where in New York City? Freddie, I just want to know where I'm giving you directions from, all right? I swear to God, you're the most paranoid heterosexual I ever met in my life."
"Pity," Robert said.
"All right, fine," Peter said, making no effort to hide his exasperation. "Do you know where the Taconic Parkway is, north of the city?" To the others, he said, "He says he'll find it." Into the phone, he said, "Do not cross the Hudson River. Stay to the east, as though you were going to New England. Come up the Taconic to the North Dudley exit, then drive east toward North Dudley, oh, about half a mile. Then turn left on County Route Fourteen, take that to Quarantine Road, take a — I don't know why it's called Quarantine Road, they named it two hundred years ago, it's perfectly safe. Freddie, the condition you're in, I don't think you need to worry about anybody else."
That made the other people in the room raise their eyebrows at one another. In the little silence, the canapй waiter gave David his new Campari and soda, and David wept quietly into it.
"All right, you take a right on Quarantine Road, it's a dirt road, and about three miles along on your left you'll see a very tasteful wrought-iron archway with entwined S's over a blacktop drive going — entwined S's." Peter exhaled, not calmly. "An S, Freddie, the letter S, and another letter S facing the other way, and they twine together, like vines. Freddie, it's the only archway on Quarantine Road. You come in there, about a mile—"
"Seven-tenths of a mile," said Robert.
"Seven-tenths of a mile," Peter said, through gritted teeth, and showed his tension even more by adding, waspishly, "If you were to go a full mile, of course, you'd drive right through the house without noticing. What? Nothing, I'm just—" Peter closed his eyes, swayed slightly, clutched the phone, opened his eyes. "I apologize to everyone," he said, into the phone and into the room. "I've merely been under something of a strain lately."
"Oh, God," David moaned, in agreement, and slurped Campari.
"It will take you—" Peter said, and broke off, and said, "Well, I don't know where you are, do I? It will take you two to three hours to get here, depending where you're coming from. Are you going to leave now?" Peter looked at his watch. "It's twelve-thirty-five."
"I'm forgetting lunch," Martin murmured, and beckoned again to the canapй waiter.
"Let's say," Peter said, "you should get here sometime around three. All right? What are you driving? A van. I don't suppose our lab equipment is still in it."
"Peter!" David hissed. "Don't antagonize him!"
"Yes, that's what I thought," Peter dryly told the phone. "You wouldn't, would you, like to give me a number I could call, in case you don't show up? No, I didn't think so."
Peter hung up, and gazed sardonically across the room at David. "Don't antagonize him?"
"The time has come, boys and girls," Robert said, "for class to hear today's story."