Small, dark, and handsome, Raj wore shades of black and gray. His glasses were gold-rimmed, his hair parted on the side. His body was slight, and his eyes unusually large and beautiful. He had been an academic once, and then a lawyer, but at the moment he spent most of his time wrangling with an unreliable Bentley, two Westies, and a rich ex-boyfriend. He lived in a cottage in Palo Alto, the pocket-sized guesthouse of a larger estate where, as he put it, he worked at home, buying, trading, and selling rare books.
“We’re going to have a competition,” George explained from the stove where he was searing tournedos of beef. “Nick’s Latour versus your Petrus. And both against my Heitz.”
When George decanted the Latour, the friends watched with some solemnity, each anticipating the taste to come. The two French wines which promised greatness. The luscious Californian, from a year they knew to be exceptional.
“A toast,” Raj insisted.
“Well,” George began, “the markets are down….”
“For the moment,” Nick said.
“Bush and Gore are neck and neck.”
“Not an attractive image,” said Raj.
“I don’t think we can toast necks.” George fingered his glass. He knew what he would be toasting secretly. His great new find.
“What, then? Or whom?” Raj asked pointedly.
“I don’t have a whom,” George said.
“I’m relieved to hear that.”
“Why?”
“Because you get so boring, darling,” Raj confided. “Love does not become you.”
“To old friends, then.” Nick raised his glass.
The wines were great, and better by the minute, even as the drinkers softened. Just as wines opened at the table, so the friends’ thirst changed. Their tongues were not so keen, but curled, delighted, as the wines deepened. Nick’s Latour was a classic Bordeaux, perfumed with black currant and cedar, perfectly balanced, never overpowering, too genteel to call attention to itself, but too splendid to ignore. Raj’s Petrus, like Raj himself, more flamboyant, flashier, riper, ravishing the tongue. And then the Californian, which was in some ways richest, and in others most ethereal. George was sure the scent was eucalyptus in this Heitz, the flavor creamy with just a touch of mint, so that he could imagine the groves of silvery trees. The Heitz was smooth and silky, meltingly soft, perhaps best suited to George’s tournedos, seared outside, succulent and pink within, juices running, mixing with the young potatoes and tangy green beans crisp enough to snap.
They finished dinner with lemon sorbet garnished with fresh mint, and carried their glasses and their bottles into the enormous living room where they sat on George’s monumental chairs, built like heartwood thrones. George lit a fire, and as the three friends watched the flames in the great fireplace, Nick became dreamier, Raj more argumentative, and as for George, he found himself discoursing on every subject—from books to cars to the economy to the school shootings in Columbine.
“Kids are numb,” George said. “They live in a simulated world, a gaming cyber world, and they lose the distinction between the virtual and the real. They want to feel. This is a fin de siècle problem.”
“I disagree,” said Raj. “It’s a First World problem. Americans, Japanese, Koreans live a virtual life because they can afford a violent simulated world. In other countries the real is quite real. All too real. If you walk through Calcutta, the real will find you, and chase you down the street and try to kill you or steal from you or both.”
“Granted,” George said, a little miffed. Generally an unrepentant aesthete, Raj turned political and brought up India when you least expected it. “But I’m making a different point. Violence isn’t just a matter of impaired judgment. It comes from sensory deprivation.”
“This is First World deprivation that you’re talking about,” said Raj. “Boredom, anomie, et cetera. Other people can only aspire to that sort of spiritual bankruptcy.” He smiled rakishly. “I know I do.”
“Even now?” asked Nick.
“Of course. Having achieved a certain level of comfort, I look for more, whenever possible.” Raj took a long sip of the Latour.
“Then you’re never content,” said Nick.
“If I have the luxury to choose, then I prefer the chase; I like pursuit better than so-called fulfillment. Everybody does.”
Nick shook his head. “Not true.”
“You’re no exception,” Raj insisted. “You love risk. It’s an erotic pleasure.”
“It is not.”
“Look at your positions in Veritech and Inktomi. Look at you playing with Angelfire. It’s just gambling, and gambling is just like risky sex.”
“You forget,” Nick told Raj, “that I’m actually interested in new technology. I’m not a thrill seeker. I’m investing in the information revolution.”
Raj held out his glass for George to refill. “Violence is luxury, and in America the revolution comes with a prospectus and a public offering.”
“Do you really think we’re all so decadent?” asked George.
Raj cast his eyes over the enormous room with its bookcases like upended treasure chests, its massive beams, its woods glowing in the firelight and resonating with the crackling logs so that the whole house seemed cello-like. “We’ve got an acquisitive gene. We want and want, and there’s no way around it.”
“I think you’re discounting the nature of discovery,” George said. “You forget that some aesthetic experiences satisfy. This wine, for example.” He held up his glass. “This Petrus is an end in itself. I want nothing more than to taste this wine.” He grasped the thick edge of his armrest. “This chair. This oak is solid. There are objects sufficient in themselves, and experiences which are complete. There is such a thing as excellence, and I do know it when I see it, and when I find it I am fulfilled. I don’t want to keep on hunting endlessly. If I’m restless, that’s not because I want to be or because I can’t help it. I’m not chronically dissatisfied; I’ve been disappointed. There’s a difference. When I discover something beautiful and right and rare, I’m happy. I’m content. I am …”
“What did you discover that’s so beautiful and right and rare?” asked clever Raj.
“You’ll be jealous,” George demurred, savoring his secret. “Consumed with jealousy.”
“Try me.”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” asked Nick.
George thought of the recipes for trout and leeks, the descriptions of sea salt. “All of the above.” How he delighted in puzzling his friends. How he loved secrecy. Childishly, tipsily, he enjoyed his secret so much that he could not keep it any longer. “I’ve discovered a cookbook collection. A great one. You can come with me to the owner’s house and look. You can touch them if you like, but you can’t have them. I made her promise.”
“Who is she?” Nick asked. “Is she a whom?”
“She is not a whom; she is a witch, and she lives in a little house crammed with crap, and a cat named Geoffrey.”
At which Raj began to sing in a light tenor: “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry. / For he is the servant of the living God duly and daily serving him …”
“These are the most important books I’ve ever found directly,” George told Nick. “I have never unearthed anything like this on my own. It’s like opening an ancient Egyptian tomb and stumbling upon a gold sarcophagus….”
“… at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way,” Raj continued, for he had been a choral singer at Cambridge. “For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness….”
“I said I’d keep the books together. She wants a private sale.”
Raj broke off singing. “The books are good. They’re wonderful. Strange about the oven, but nothing’s burnt.”
“You saw them!”
“Yes, of course.” Raj’s eyes sparkled. He was so pleased with himself. “I saw them several weeks ago.”
Now George set down his glass of wine, and his evanescent joy burst and dissipated all at once. “Sandra showed them to you first.”