The second party was much nicer. The hostess hadn't really faded, Quentin quickly concluded. It was Washington that had faded; she had an elegance that felt pre-war. Not World War II, either. More like World War I. Could that graceful era possibly have survived in this house? The age when undersecretaries were all men of good families with old money, serving their country as a civic duty and not as a rung on the ladder? That's how it felt, for the first hour at least. But then he began to see that his lobbyist partner had been right. Even in this old-fashioned gathering, there were those who tried just a little too hard and those who remained just a little bit too aloof. It was as much about status as the other party had been, except, of course, that the other one was more nakedly obvious about it.
I might have been like these people, Quentin thought. If I hadn't just stumbled into money by being a pretty good programmer at exactly the right time for that to bring millions of dollars down on the heads of unsuspecting geeks. I might have been on the outside looking in; at the bottom looking up. Now I'm on the outside, all right, but above, looking down. I don't need anything these people have to offer. What I need, they don't even care about. Some of them probably even have it, and are wasting it, losing it—an adoring wife or a husband who gets taken for granted, ignored, hurt, left behind on the upward climb. He spotted a couple of these—women who were clearly uncomfortable in their designerish or designeresque dresses, women who belonged at a PTA social like Quentin's mom, bringing cookies to the bake sale. There was nothing for them here. Not even their husbands. Their husbands were here, yes, but not for them.
There was a high-ceilinged library with a ladder that rolled around the walls hanging from a rail. Quentin had seen such places in movies and the urge to climb the ladder was irresistible. He pulled out a book at random from the topmost shelf.
"All right, you can borrow that one, but don't lose my place."
Quentin turned to see who had produced that strong but aging woman's voice and nearly lost his footing.
"Oh, don't fall, please, the family fortune couldn't stand another lawsuit. That's why I gave up gossip."
It was the hostess. Quentin put the book back and climbed down. "I didn't mean to meddle," he said. "I've just never climbed a library ladder before."
"And I'm too old to do it anymore," she said. "That's why I have my assistant put all the mystery novels up there, so I won't forget and read them a second time by accident and then get disappointed when I realize that it's only that one again. Except that it happens anyway, even with the brand new ones. I've read them all. Seen them all. Met them all. Served expensive alcohol to everybody, and they all look the same."
"How many times have you met me?" asked Quentin. As always, he found himself sliding into the style of conversation that seemed appropriate. Polite, self-deprecating wit, that's what was called for, thrust and riposte but no one ever bloodied. He didn't analyze it, he just slipped into the role.
"Let's see," she said. "Lonely, bored, hoping to connect with somebody but unwilling to believe that you're actually good enough for anybody."
"Oh, I'm good enough," said Quentin. "Male, mid-thirties, no pot belly, all my hair, good teeth, and money."
"But you don't want the kind of woman who keeps that list, am I right?"
"So I guess you're the one I'm looking for."
"Me? Don't be silly. I married my husband for money and I've done rather well at hanging on to it in spite of taxes, recessions, inflation, and those people who make you look at pictures of starving children before they let you say no to their charity."
"Did he know? That you married him for money?"
"My dear, in those days it didn't occur to decent people to marry for any other reason. My family was old money and his was newer. Mine had more prestige and his had more zeroes after the two and the four. His mother traded on the connection to get a better grade of guest at her parties, and I was able to help my sisters live in the style to which they were accustomed until they married even richer men than my Jay. Everybody won."
He hadn't realized that there were still people who lived in such a Jane Austen world. "Did you love him?"
"Jay? I thought not until he had an affair with a secretary during the war, and then I was insanely jealous for a while and I thought that meant I loved him. Later his libido calmed down and we gardened together for a few years before he got Alzheimer's at sixty and faded away and died. Those few years in the garden, I think I did love him then. That's really above average, in my experience. Not everybody gets those years in the garden."
"I don't even have the garden."
"Neither did we, till we planted it together." She smiled, but he could sense that the intimate moment was over. She was ready to move on. So he made it easy for her.
"I'm feeling guilty. I'm monopolizing the hostess."
She studied him for a moment, as if passing a verdict on him. "There's a clever young woman out on the back porch, admiring a gnarled cherry tree that hasn't borne fruit in years but I keep it because my Jay and I planted it together and he kissed me there. It's a magical spot, and I've been prowling the party looking for someone to send there to join her."
"I've kept you talking so long, I doubt she's still there."
"Oh, I told her if she stirred from that spot before you got there, I'd never let her back in my house."
"You told her you were sending me? But you don't even know me."
"I told her I was sending a young man I wanted her to be nice to for my sake because he was so lonely at this party."
"Was I that obvious?"
"No. There's always a lonely young man at my parties. It's in the nature of young men to be lonely. Did you think you were unique?"
"So you're a matchmaker."
She turned and headed for the door, slow of step but making rapid progress all the same. "I have a garden that doesn't get used enough, that's all. Think of yourself as plant food." And then she was gone, back to the party.
The young woman was in the garden, just as the hostess had promised. For a moment, seeing her from behind, he thought he knew her. He even thought, madly enough, that it was her, the one he had seen in the grocery store and then at the door of the townhouse. But then she turned and her hair was reddish and her face was really nothing like Lizzy's or even the other woman's, but she seemed nice enough. Bored, but nice.
"So you're the lonely young man?" asked the woman.
"And you're one who's supposed to cheer me up?" asked Quentin.
"She's such a matchmaker. She forgets things though. Such as, this is the third time she's sent me to wait under the cherry tree."
"I take it the previous times didn't work out?"
"One of them did. I didn't find true love, but I did find a candidate for Congress from a Philadelphia suburb."
"Is that where you're from?"
"No, it's where he was from. I'm a headhunter, Mr...."
"Fears."
"Oh, you sound dangerous. Or at least hostile."
"Yes, it sounds like 'fierce,' but it's spelled F-E-A-R-S."
"What an interesting contradiction," she said. "Written down, you're timid; spoken, you're dangerous."
"Unfortunately, I'm not a candidate for anything."
"Neither am I," she said. "I'm not working tonight. I'm really here for old time's sake. I love the grande dame, and her garden, and her matchmaking. I had to come to one more of her parties before I leave."