Read Online Sins of the Flesh by Colleen McCullough - Free Book Online Page A

these faces.
    True to his word that she belonged to him, Rufus Ingham took Delia on a round of introductions, feeding her information so guilelessly that no one on meeting her had any idea that Rufus was steering the conversation to yield maximum results for a sergeant of detectives.
    Perhaps due to her diminutive size, Delia wasn’t sure she could ever make a close friend of Rha Tanais in the same way she knew she could of Rufus Ingham. It was just too much constant hard work encompassing someone that big. Political cartoonists sometimes drew General Charles de Gaulle with a ring of cloud around his neck, and Rha inspired the same feeling in Delia. Whereas Rufus provoked emotions that shouted a friendship as old as time; having met him at last, she couldn’t imagine her life without him. Had Hank Jones been Rufus’s forty, he would have ranked with Rufus; how strange, that in the space of one short summer she should have met two men of great significance to her, when it hadn’t happened since her first days in Holloman. Women friends were essential, but men friends were far harder to find, as Delia well knew. Very happy, she let herself be introduced.
    Simonetta Bellini (born Shirley Nutt) bowled Delia over. The principal model of Rha Tanais Bridal, she was tall, thin, and moved with incomparable grace; her genuinely Scandinavian-fair coloring lent her an air of virginal innocence even her skin-tight lamé tube of a dress couldn’t violate. She could wear a hessian sack, Delia decided, and still look like a bride.
    “Fuck, a spoiled shindig,” she moaned as Rufus left to hunt fresh quarry.
    “I beg your pardon?” Delia asked, bewildered.
    “The creepy shrinks are coming. Rha says shindigs like this, the shrinks get to come, but they spoil the fun,” Shirl said. “They look at the rest of us as if we’re animals in a zoo.”
    “Shrinks do have a tendency to do that,” Delia agreed, her antennae twitching. “Why do they have to be invited?”
    “Search me,” Shirl said vaguely.
    According to Jess, Rha and Rufus asked the shrinks for their abrasive qualities, and according to Simonetta/Shirl, they were indeed perceived as abrasive. “You said shindigs like this one, Shirl—are there other kinds of shindig?” Delia asked.
    “Oh, lots. But the shrinks only come to this kind.”
    The quintessential bride, thought Delia, has gauze inside her head as well as on top of it.
    But as Rufus piloted her from guest to guest, Delia noted that Shirl’s aversion to “the shrinks” was universal. So universal, in fact, that she began to wonder how true Jess’s explanation had been. Would two such affable men honestly blight their shindig for the sake of mental stimulation? It didn’t seem likely, which meant Rha and Rufus invited the shrinks to one kind of shindig to please Ivy, who begged the favor of them to please Jess. Thus far it was an ordinary party for about fifty people; drinks and nibbles were to be succeeded by a buffet, apparently, but people were still arriving. There were mysteries here, but they seemed to be centered on Ivy and Jess, whose home this was not; nor were Ivy and Jess footing the shindig bill.
    While her body moved about and her tongue clacked acceptable banalities, Delia’s mind dwelled on Ivy and Jess differently than it had until this moment in their friendship, just two months old. I see far more of Jess than I do of Ivy, she thought; some of that is free choice, I know, but some is definitely Ivy’s doing—she travels to New York City frequently, she’s committed to Rha and Rufus by blood as well as business, and she lives an uphill walk away. Jess lives around the corner, our professions are slightly allied, and our schedules permit lunches once or twice a week. And while Ivy isn’t gigantic enough to be offputting for a midget like me, there’s no doubt she’s a Desdemona—borderline. So terrifyingly well-dressed! Funny, that Aunt Gloria Silvestri doesn’t cow me when it