Joris knocked on the table for attention. Nina wondered why this man had to go to prostitutes. He didn’t seem the type, but possibly there was no type.
Joris said, “I’m telling you now I’m not writing something. I’ll talk. I’ll get up and talk, of course. You can put it on TV if you want to, fine. I’m talking not writing.”
Elliot held his hands in the air. “Well we can sort this out. I don’t know. Maybe you can read something.”
“No,” Joris said, half standing.
Iva put her hand on Joris’s arm and leaned toward him. She had something for his ears only, apparently, and in the act of getting closer she hunched her shoulders forward minutely. Nina caught it.
“Oh my,” Nina said to Ned, softly. But it was over before Ned could be a witness.
Something was mollifying Joris. He had kept his eyes in a proper direction during Iva’s encroachment. Nina had seen him blush.
Nina realized she didn’t know what she’d been eating. Everything had been delicious but her mind had been elsewhere. If she had to compliment Iva she wouldn’t know what to compliment.
She told herself to grow up. She thought, We had butter lettuce salad cups with something in them and clam appetizers and green bean casserole and lobster risotto.
Elliot was a puzzle, with his long, waxy face. He was the tallest and the thinnest, but he had dog eyes.
She realized she had gone robot with her food because her mind had been on her inner sanctum. She could swear that she was having a faint prickling sensation there, which was impossible. But there was something physical. No more wine, no X rays. Maybe she was imagining it. If it persisted, she would call Ma.
The help were clearing.
Oddly, Gruen had left lumps of lobster on his plate. He’d eaten only the rice. And his clam appetizer was untouched and she wanted it. Was he being observant when it came to shellfish? Maybe he just wasn’t hungry. She was worried for Ned that Gruen might not want to sign the petition. Hussein was the Bank of America for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Maybe nobody would sign, none of them. That was all Ned needed. It shouldn’t hurt him but it would. She looked at Elliot again. Could she see any indications that he might not sign? How could she? She was being ridiculous. Well, he was wealthy and he was in the business and finance upper tier so it was possible that he wouldn’t want to stand out, say, if the names of the signers got printed up in a Times ad. She didn’t know if that was the plan. Elliot was being remote. But from everybody, not just Ned.
She could feel that Ned was preparing to say something to the group.
Ned said, “I think we should just speak out. Free-associate. Get a timer and we each say what we have to say.”
Nina wanted to know what that might be. I am shuddering, she thought. Don’t let it be some ghastly remake of their idiotic exhibitionism.
Gruen said, “Yes, we could read things. Anything. From emails he sent to that thing he wrote about comedy. You said you wanted something about that, Elliot.”
“What thing about comedy?” Ned asked.
Joris said, “It wasn’t something he wrote, it was an interview in Der Spiegel about fifteen years ago. It was his explanation of what we were doing in those days. The interview was about Kundera and Dreyfus but it was after the Germans caught a neo-Nazi mental patient wanting to kill Douglas, in Stuttgart. But he talked about his NYU life, for some reason. He talked about what he called Abstract Comedy. Abstract must mean not funny. We were young, of course.”
“I was never told about this interview,” Ned said.
“It’s in German.”
“So let’s forget it,” Ned said.
“Forget it,” Iva said.
“We could be a panel,” Gruen said. “Reminisce.”
Elliot raised his voice. In his official tone, he said, “This is important. It has to be done right. There is a German foundation involved …”
Gruen broke in. “Wait I remember what Douglas said he wanted when he died.”
“Stop interrupting,” Elliot said.
“But this is what he said. He wished if we all outlived him we would go to some park and hide in the trees and when somebody came by we would shout Great Pan is dead. He said that.”
Joris groaned. Iva looked at Gruen coldly. Nina whispered to Ned, “He thought quite highly of himself.” Elliot heard this. He pressed his hair down with both hands and said something about coming to talk to them one at a time that night, late, or tomorrow.
The last course arrived. Nina murmured to Ned, “Oh. A dessert trolley.”
25
It was pouring again. Ned batted at the strings of rainwater trailing from the bulky cornice above the front door.
They were waiting for a wheelbarrow to be brought to them so they could go down to the cabin and transfer their belongings to the new room in the manse. The scene before them had changed a little. A substantial white trailer had appeared down the lawn, off to the side. A lit-up sandwich sign set up next to it said Serv-U. Flashlight beams swung in the darkness.
A young black man in a Serv-U uniform — yellow jumpsuit, knee-high yellow rubber boots — was accompanying Gruen and Joris to the tower to help in their relocation. Another of the Serv-U men ran up and abandoned a wheelbarrow directly in front of Ned and Nina, saying nothing. He hurried away. He had been an old black man with one milk-white eye, wearing a drenched watch cap. Serv-U was probably one of the minimum-wage day-labor outfits that raked up workers from among the homeless and unemployed in Kingston, which was richly supplied with them. He and Nina seemed to be on their own. Nina would hold up the golf umbrella while Ned pushed the wheelbarrow. They set off.
As they were turning the corner of the manse, Nina told Ned to stop. He was confused.
“Wait,” she said sharply, startling him. Gesturing unclearly, she led him to a spot close to the house and pointed upward at a deck two floors above.
She spoke into his ear but she was too close. He pushed her away and quietly asked her to say it again so he could understand.
She said, “There’s a traveling fight going on. You don’t pay attention! It started back in the middle of the house and now it’s here.” One of the sliding doors leading to the deck was in play. It had been slammed shut and then opened and slammed shut again.
Iva and Elliot were fighting. Elliot was better than Iva at keeping his voice under control. She was in a volcanic state, threatening to call someone, apparently weeping. One of the two of them made a sound closer to a growl than Ned had ever heard anyone make.
“I shall talk to him, and he will come.” That was Iva.
“Pressure him, and not only will he not come, he won’t even send the video.” That was Elliot. It was very intelligible. Something that sounded like rough body contact, or someone falling, was happening now. Then the traveling fight evidently moved off into other venues in the house. A voice distantly yelling was Iva’s. Ned was holding his breath.
“I have no idea what this is,” Ned said.
“I do,” Nina said.
“You just got here,” Ned said.
“Somebody important is not coming.”
“I guess,” Ned said, “that would be Kundera not coming.”
“They’re upset. And Dreyfus won’t be coming either,” Nina said.
“That’s not funny,” Ned said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, and strode off with the umbrella. He followed. Over his shoulder he could see that Serv-U workers were unspooling electric lines from the trailer to the tower and the manse. It looked as though they were going to be around for a while.