Read Online A Certain Age by Tama Janowitz - Free Book Online Page A

that could read minds, break into a trot with just a thought from its rider, he was not as slow-witted as he appeared. "So how are you getting around?" she asked nervously. "Did they give you a good replacement?"
    "A what?"
    "A replacement while they fix yours."
    His face crinkled with disappointment. "Might they . . . have done that?"
    "Gosh, I don't know!" she said. "I suppose . . . maybe if you asked."
    "I didn't think ... to ask."
    "Well, they should have offered."
    "I took Mother's . . . car and driver ... for the evening. Mother . . . gave up driving. She says . . . there's too much traffic these days."
    "That's true!"
    "When she first started . . . coming here ... as a girl ... it wasn't at all . . . fashionable. And it was . . . the country. In those days ... it took five hours ... to get to Southampton."
    "Five hours!"
    "The roads . . . were single-lane ... or something. Now
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    . . . it takes almost that long . . . because of the traffic." She laughed merrily. He looked up at her almost suspiciously, as if she might be making fun of him, but then he studied her eager, guileless face and relaxed, pleased with himself. "Do you want to . . . sit outside? It's so . . . nice out, and it might be . . . easier to talk."
    "Oh, I would love to! I'll just grab one last glass of wine on the way out."
    They sat at one of the little tables for what seemed an interminable length of time, beneath a striped canvas umbrella decorated with hundreds of twinkling lights. "Did anybody see John?" Natalie said, sailing feverishly past.
    A waiter circulated announcing that dinner was being served. The line at the buffet already coiled out through the dining room toward the pool. Charlie stood protectively behind her. He was very attentive. This was a good sign, she thought, if she could keep thinking of questions and acting interested in his responses. The man ahead of her turned around. "This line is moving incredibly slowly," he said in an Italian accent. "But I do not mind if it gives me a chance to talk to you."
    "Oh yes?" she said nervously. Charlie, who was the same height as she, was already beginning to scowl and jostled her forward slightly, like a bulldog using his stout chest to bully an owner's leg into submission.
    "I am Raffaello di Castignolli," the man said, looking down at her with a bemused smile.
    "Florence Collins," she muttered. "And this is Charlie Twi-gall."
    "How do you do?" Raffaello said. He was incredibly handsome, in an artificial way, as if a magazine page for men's cologne had been pumped into life by the exhaust pipe of a vacuum cleaner. His black hair was sleeked back, his navy suit was sharp-shouldered and expensive, he gazed at her with the expression of a man accustomed to assessing sports cars. The only thing that
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    wasn't quite right was the suit, a little too flashy-Italian, a bit on the gangster side—too much for the Hamptons, midsummer. "I could not help noticing you when you were coming down the stairs," Raffaello said. "It was very amusing, how you pulled yourself together only as you reached the bottom of the flight. You have, as they say, an inside persona and an outside person you show to the world. For one moment, I am thinking, your inside persona is let accidentally slip. But for me, I could tell something had happened even before I caught a glimpse of your face."
    She smiled weakly. He was expressing interest in her, she supposed. But to be evaluated—summed up—was to also let her know that he was in the superior position, and she the inferior. He was too handsome, too alien in his Europeanness; it made her nervous and he knew it.
    "Here's a plate, Florence." Charlie reached around and handed her a plate from the top of the stack as they got to the head of the line.
    "I helped make some of the food, last night!" Florence said. A waiter stood behind the table, carving a flank of tuna steak, dried and charred on the outside, bright pink and raw inside. After carving, he plonked each