Something about the repeated use of the word ‘ape’ made him bulge his lower lip with his tongue and allow his hands to dangle, knuckles inward, from his elbows. He crossed his eyes and mimed picking a nit from his hair and popping it in his mouth.
“Really, these are the wildest generalizations,” he said, composing his features, and now rather enjoying himself. It was childish, he realized; like making faces at the teacher’s back as she wrote on the blackboard, but rather wicked fun. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were still alone.
“Sad,” she said. “Pathetic.”
The finality in her voice made him suddenly irritated with her. He leant forward and silently mouthed “Oh do fuck off you stupid woman.” He could see twin images of himself in her opaque lenses, bulging faced, exophthalmic.
“You too, asshole,” she said, getting to her feet and strolling over to the drinks table where she poured herself a shot of whisky. “Still, I enjoyed the show. I liked the ape best.”
Henderson’s hand shook so much that Californian wine slopped over the rim onto his trousers. With a brief drum-roll of glass on wood he set it down and dabbed at the stain with his handkerchief. He leant back in his armchair as a shiver ran the length of his body. He opened his mouth to say something but all that emerged was a thin, reedy piping noise — like a sick or injured peewit — but nothing else. His seized brain had gone out of control. No conceptual structures existed to cope with this sort of massive social shame, a gaffe of such epic proportions.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and leapt to his feet in alarm. It was Loomis Gage.
“Sorry to have missed you earlier, Mr Dores.” He seemed not to have noticed Henderson’s starting eyes or oozing brow. He felt like a horse saved from a burning stable, almost whinnying in panic.
“Don’t mention—” the words turned into a cough. He pounded his chest with a fist. “Not at all.”
“I trust Cora’s been looking after you.”
“We’ve been having a most interesting conversation, Dad. Haven’t we, Mr Dores?”
“Pweep.”
“I want you to meet my other guests.” Gage swept his arm round. “Our preacher from Luxora Beach, the Reverend T.J. Cardew and his wife Monika.”
Henderson turned to greet the couple in the doorway. The Reverend T.J. Cardew was a dapper, fleshy, youngish man (mid-thirties, Henderson guessed) with curly black hair and long thin sideburns that terminated sharply at his jawbone. He wore a sober black suit, a red shirt with silver metal tabs on the collar and a loud checked tie. His wife sported a lime-green dress over which she’d thrown a white net shawl. She had square gold framed glasses and reddish brown hair which was wound and back-combed into a beehive. She had a big frame and seemed larger all round than her husband. Her face was sullen, despite her bright red lips and pale blue eyelids. The primary colours did little to disguise the fact that she was deeply bored.
Henderson shook hands with them both. He tried not to look at Cora.
“How do you do? How do you do, reverend?”
“Very nice to know you, Henderson. Just call me T.J.”
Henderson doubted that he’d actually ever be able to do this, but smiled encouragingly.
“T.J. knows Europe well,” Gage confided. “And Monika there is in fact of German origin. Mr Dores is from England.”
Monika Cardew looked marginally more interested.
“Where in Germany are you from?” Henderson asked dutifully.
“Berlin.”
“We met,” T.J. interjected, “when I was serving there. As chaplain to the 43rd airborne.”
“An army bride,” Monika said flatly. She had a noticeable German accent.
“What’ll it be, T.J.?” Gage asked.
“Oh, I think a drop of the Goat, as usual, Loomis.”
“You must try some of this, Mr Dores,” Gage said, holding up a squat brown bottle. Henderson took it from him and looked at the label. “Henry’s Goat,” he read. “Sour Mash Bourbon.” On the label was a fine engraving of a tethered goat, and in the background a queue of people waiting outside a tumbledown wooden shack.
“Sippin’ whisky,” Gage said. “The secret of my survival.”
Gage poured him out a large measure in a small glass. Henderson, still shaky from the sudden revelation of Cora’s normal vision, allowed himself a sizeable gulp. The liquid had a thick smooth quality and slid down his gullet as easily as an oyster.
“Very pleasant,” he said, before what seemed like a small fragmentation grenade exploded in his stomach. A column of flame rose up his oesophagus. He shuffled his feet and breathed thin streams of hot vibrating air out through his nose. Some sort of dazed smile, he hoped, registered on his features.
“Goodness,” he said.
“Sort of creeps up on you,” Cardew laughed unattractively.
Gage administered more drinks and regularly pressed the bell to summon Alma-May.
“That boy sure loves his modern music,” Cardew said, acknowledging the bass rhythms vibrating from Duane’s room.
“Do you like rock music, Mr Dores?” Cora asked him innocently, lenses unsparingly focused on his face.
“No I don’t as a matter of fact. I prefer classical music.”
“You and Cora have something in common, then, Mr Dores,” Gage said, putting his arm round his daughter. “She is a wonderful pianist. Will you play something tonight for us, honey? After dinner?”
“No.”
“No persuading our Cora.” Cardew beamed. Gage seemed unperturbed by the abrupt refusal. Alma-May came in with a tray of canapes followed by Freeborn and Shanda. Shanda’s eyes were bloodshot and she looked sulky. Henderson stood up and offered her his seat but Freeborn steered her away to a sofa.
“I understand your daughter is with you, Henderson,” Cardew said. “That’s nice.”
“Well, actually,” Henderson began, then decided that it might be as well to leave the reverend in his ignorance. Cardew leant over.
“I understand too that she’s a very attractive teenager.”
Henderson didn’t know how to respond. “Takes after her mother,” he commented edgily.
“Oh, yes?”
“How is Patch?” Henderson said.
“Who?”
“Patch. Your dog. Scratching on heaven’s door, with no fear.”
“I’m sorry?”
“In your sermon. On the radio. I listened to it.”
“I don’t own a dog, Henderson. I’m allergic to fur.”
“But you—”
“What you might call poetic licence.”
“Some more Goat?” It was Gage dispensing bourbon.
“Please,” Henderson offered his empty glass. He was getting used to its virulence.
Gage seemed in a good mood. His plump face was flushed, his dense hair a little tousled.
“The man who made this stuff in the old days was called Henry Stewart. A Scotchman. He had his own still in back of his house and he also had a prize billy goat. And the good ole boys, when they wanted a refill, would take their nanny goats along to be sired. If they were asked where they were going they would say they were going round for Henry’s goat. And the name stuck.”
“Fascinating story.”
Gage sat down on the arm of Henderson’s chair.
“In fact that’s how I met Hem and Scotty in Paris. In the twenties. I was in the American bar at the Ritz and these two guys came in. They’d already had one too many, I could see. Then this one guy — Hem — says, “You got any Henry’s Goat?” I couldn’t believe it. I went right on over and introduced myself. Seems Hem got a taste for it when he was working on the Texas Star Bugle.”
“You mean the Kansas City Star,” Henderson said politely.