Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [85]
“Here comes someone now to ask you,” Victoria says conspiratorially.
“For heaven’s sake, Victoria, the man is older than my father,” Olympia says, thinking immediately of, and then dismissing, the irony inherent in the statement.
Rufus Philbrick takes Olympia’s hand. She introduces him to Victoria. Philbrick bows slightly in her direction. “I knew your father,” Philbrick says. “We did some business together. I liked him very much. I hope you and your mother are enjoying your summer?”
“Oh, we are,” Victoria says. “Thank you. And I am reminded that I should go to her. If you will excuse me . . .”
Together, Philbrick and Olympia watch Victoria thread her way through the guests who have come out onto the lawn.
“Have you made any other friends this summer?” Philbrick asks her, and Olympia has a sudden image of the night Philbrick and Haskell sat at the dinner table together.
“Actually, I have been much occupied with other matters,” she says.
“I hope nothing serious?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “Nothing too serious.”
Olympia has an unbidden and powerful urge to tell the gruff and well-intentioned man the story of her and Haskell. To tell someone, however inappropriate. To say the words aloud, to give them life. It is a reckless urge, not unlike that of standing at the edge of a precipice and having an overwhelming desire to jump.
“To your very good health, my dear,” Philbrick says, summoning a waiter to refill his champagne glass. “I think the chap who will one day snatch you away will be very lucky indeed.”
Olympia looks up at the man who owns hotels and thinks how different in tone his words are from those of Cote, for Philbrick’s contain nothing of the suggestiveness of the poet’s.
“Oh, I hope I shall not be snatched too far away from my father and mother,” she says lightly to forestall the rest of the sentence.
“You seem adventurous to me, Olympia Biddeford.” He thinks for a moment. “Yes, I can see it. You will meet a cattle rancher and will go west and will own hotels and will have eight children.”
She laughs. “I hope you are not as good at prophecy as you are at business.”
He smiles and regards her over the lip of his glass. Around them, there seems to be a change in the pitch of the general conversation, a ratcheting up of the volume, which causes them both to turn in the direction of the porch, nearly filled now with guests.
“I had a look through your telescope,” Philbrick says. “I am told it is your father’s present to you on your birthday.”
She nods.
“Marvelous instrument. Quite keen. I could see all the way out to Appledore with it earlier this week.”
“One could not tonight,” she says.
“No, but the mist is always intriguing, do you not think?”
Olympia wonders suddenly why she never sees Philbrick with a wife or children. Does he live alone? In one of his hotels? She studies the porch, where the guests seem to be converging in a cluster. She reflects once again, there in the presence of Philbrick, that each of the glittering and perfectly groomed persons at the party has come into the world in the manner of the Rivard child; and further, that most on the porch have at one time or another, if not actually often, opened their mouths and their legs and been naked in the presence of a lover and have strained for pleasure and have cried out, and perhaps have even made indecent or terrible sounds; and further, that there are couples at her house who have known each other in these intimate ways this very day. And all of this causes her to wonder at the disparity between the silk dresses and the natural postures of the body, and to think: How far, how far, we are willing to go to pretend we are not of the body at all.
“Ah,” says Philbrick. “Hale has arrived. Our guest of honor.”
“No more honored than you,” Olympia replies.
He looks at her and smiles broadly. “I knew you for a democrat,” he says.
They watch together as the personage makes his way out onto the