The Groaning Board Read Free

nice to see you. Try the quail
salad. I’m sure you’ll like it. Excuse me. Tom, I thought Ellen was here with
you.”
    An exaggeratedly female/male voice
responded, “She went upstairs to study. Said she’d be back.”
    “...mesclun with a raspberry
vinaigrette,” A.T. was saying.
    “Fine,” Smith said. “Now for
dessert.”
    Wetzon watched her partner for some
reaction to what was happening around them unrelated to the menu for Smith’s
dinner party. It was amazing that Smith didn’t seem ! to have
absorbed any of it.
    “She’s upstairs with him,” Micklynn
cried in an anguished voice. She began wringing her hands obsessively,
wandering one way a few steps, then another.
    “Excuse me a moment.” A.T. jumped to
her feet. “Mickey is letting everything get to her today.” She caught hold of
Micklynn. “Come on now. Ellen’s a good girl. You know that.”
    “I don’t know that at all. I told her
she wasn’t to have. him in the apartment.”
    Wetzon, the voyeur, was jolted from
her rapt attention to the scene by a swift, sharp kick. Elaborately, Smith
handed her a printed list of desserts. Wetzon had been wrong; Smith was as
fascinated as she was by the combustion.
    “Come on, Mickey. Ellen’s an A
student, she’s not into grunge, she helps us out after school. Lighten up.”
    “You’re buying into her fiction,”
Micklynn said hotly. She twisted from A.T.’s grasp and flung her long braid
behind her, scattering flour, and disappeared up a flight of stairs Wetzon
hadn’t noticed because it was half hidden by lush hanging plants.
    A.T. cast a worried look after her
partner, then came back to the table, where Smith and Wetzon were pretending to
be absorbed in the dessert menu.
    “Nothing serious, I hope,” Smith
said.
    “No. Not really. We made an important
business decision today, and of course she’s worried about Ellen.”
    “Well, I can certainly understand a
parent’s problems in dealing with adolescent behavior,” Smith said. “My boy
came through it, and while it wasn’t easy, I was able to bend with all the
changes. He came back to himself and now he’s finishing his first year at
Harvard.”
    Wetzon rolled her eyes. Who was Smith
kidding with all that bullshit? In her dreams was she able to bend with all the
changes. Smith’s son, Mark, had concluded his otherwise uneventful adolescence
by coming out, revealing he was gay. The resulting trauma had been Smith’s.
    “Ellen is a wonderful girl,” A.T.
said. “You might have s een her when you came in. She’s lovely,
smart, and quite mature for her age.”
    “Which is—?” Wetzon asked.
    “Sixteen.”
    “I would have liked to have a
daughter,” Smith said with a n ostentatious sigh.
    Sure, Wetzon thought. The competition
would have made semipro.
    “So would I,” A.T. said. “But Ellen’s
not Mickey’s daughter. She’s a relative of Mickey’s first husband. Mickey took
Ellen in two years ago after Ellen’s mother died in an accident.”
    A volcano of sound erupted above
them.
    A.T. raised her voice over the
commotion. “I’d suggest a hazelnut torte with a lemon cream filling. We’re
talking forty people?”
    “Yes.”
    “Four tortes will be more than
enough. And two big bowls of strawberries and a bowl of crème fraîche.”
    “What do you think, Wetzon?”
    “Personally, I prefer rice pudding.”
I
    “Oh, hush. You and your rice pudding.
We’ll go with the hazelnut tortes, A.T. And I’d like Eli Zabar’s skinny bread,
if you don’t mind. Um... have we left anything out?” Now they were all talking
louder to be heard over the shouting. j
    “I don’t think so, but we have plenty
of time in case there’s anything you want to add.” A.T. rose and took a large
white envelope from a drawer in one of the buffets. “Our ; press kit
includes a copy of our standard contract. I’ll have one drawn up with the menu
we discussed.”
    The noise above them stopped
abruptly. Footsteps thundered down the stairs; a