Read Online Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons - Free Book Online

her mid-thirties.
    “Thank you, Barrett, dear,” said Nina.
    I went to greet Willi, but Mr. Thorne had already let him in and we met in the hallway.
    “Melanie! You look marvelous! You grow younger each time I see you. Nina!” The change in Willi’s voice was evident. Men continued to be overpowered by their first sight of Nina after an absence. There were hugs and kisses. Willi himself looked more dissolute than ever. His alpaca sports coat was exquisitely tailored, his turtleneck sweater successfully concealed the eroded lines of his wattled neck, but when he swept off his jaunty sportscar cap the long strands of white hair he had brushed forward to hide his encroaching baldness were knocked into disarray. Willi’s face was flushed with excitement, but there was also the telltale capillary redness about the nose and cheeks which spoke of too much liquor, too many drugs.
    “Ladies, I think you’ve met my associates . . . Tom Reynolds and Jensen Luhar?” The two men added to the crowd in my narrow hall. Mr. Reynolds was thin and blond, smiling with perfectly capped teeth. Mr. Luhar was a gigantic Negro, hulking forward with a sullen, bruised look on his coarse face. I was sure that neither Nina nor I had encountered these specific catspaws of Willi’s before.
    “Why don’t we go into the parlor?” I suggested. It was an awkward procession ending with the three of us seated on the heavily upholstered chairs surrounding the Georgian tea table which had been my grand-mother’s. “More tea, please, Mr. Thorne.” Miss Kramer took that as her cue to leave, but Willi’s two pawns stood uncertainly by the door, shifting from foot to foot and glancing at the crystal on display as if their mere proximity could break something. I would not have been surprised if that had proven to be the case.
    “Jensen!” Willi snapped his fingers. The Negro hesitated and then brought forward an expensive leather attaché case. Willi set it on the tea table and clicked the catches open with his short, broad fingers. “Why don’t you two see Miz Fuller’s man about getting something to drink?”
    When they were gone Willi shook his head and smiled at Nina. “Sorry about that, love.”
    Nina put her hand on Willi’s sleeve. She leaned forward with an air of expectancy. “Melanie wouldn’t let me begin the Game without you. Wasn’t that
awful
of me to want to start without you, Willi dear?”
    Willi frowned. After fifty years he still bridled at being called Willi. In Los Angeles he was Big Bill Borden. When he returned to his native Germany— which was not often because of the dangers involved— he was once again Wilhelm von Borchert, lord of dark manor, forest, and hunt. But Nina had called him Willi when they had first met in 1925, in Vienna, and Willi he had remained.
    “You begin, Willi,” said Nina. “You go first.”
    I could remember the time when we would have spent the first few days of our reunion in conversation and catching up with each other’s lives. Now there was not even time for small talk.
    Willi showed his teeth and removed news clippings, notebooks, and a stack of cassettes from his briefcase. No sooner had he covered the small table with his material than Mr. Thorne arrived with the tea and Nina’s scrapbook from the sewing room. Willi brusquely cleared a small space.
    At first glance one might see certain similarities between Willi Borchert and Mr. Thorne. One would be mistaken. Both men tend to the florid, but Willi’s complexion was the result of excess and emotion: Mr. Thorne had known neither of these for many years. Willi’s balding was a patchy, self-consciously concealed thing— a weasel with the mange— while Mr. Thorne’s bare head was smooth and unwrinkled. One could not imagine Mr. Thorne ever having
had
hair. Both men had gray eyes— what a novelist would call cold, gray eyes— but Mr. Thorne’s eyes were cold with indifference, cold with a clarity coming from an absolute absence