since she’d left him. Before this instant, she’d never really believed that their breakup was real.
Too tired to pull her air mattress into the bedroom, she fell asleep in the den, with the sound of the television to keep her company. A few hours later, she jolted awake to find the man in the three-piece suit watching her from the piano bench.
His beard had thickened with black whiskers, and his long teeth now came to sharp points, wolflike. He tapped his knuckles against the bottom frame, and said, “Satinwood, yes? They don’t make anything like they used to, do they darling? Build the door, Audrey. We love you madly.”
Part II
The Walking Wounded
(The Dead Have Always Outnumbered The Living)
Auld Lang Syne in the New Breviary
Martin Hearst, Jr., Society Reporter and Harvard University historian
January 2, 1894
Last night’s annual New Year’s Eve Gala at The Breviary was the social event of the decade. More ambitious than the Flavian Amphitheatre, more architecturally significant than the Sistine Chapel, The Breviary was the perfect venue in which to host the coming out party for the most elite and important generation the world has ever known.
The gala’s attending cast shone more luminous than the café society perched in balcony seats at the Paris Opera. These included the fifteen original investors in the building, whose names grace the streets of half of Greenwich Village (Reade, Astor, Worth, Bennington, and of course, my father, Martin Hearst). But out with the old, in with the next generation! This was the hour for The Breviary’s children to shine, and indeed, we donned our finest. Stars from the stage, both Paris and London, cheerfully handed off their engraved invitations and mixed with senators, oil and steel moguls, and diplomats. But they were the side attractions: it was we luminaries of The Breve that everyone wanted to know. Russian caviar, French champagne, roast pig drenched in genuine Canadian maple syrup; never was a party so lavish or so fine!
Our women sparkled in diamond earbobs, and we gents donned towering stovepipe hats and velvet coats. The air could have crackled with our confidence. Behold your inheritance, the reverberating walls full of giggles and raucous chatter announced, finally, a building fit for American Kings.
I know you’ll indulge me, as this column has won three People’s Choice awards from the Know-Nothing party, so here is my aside: I have never felt so loved or happy as I did last night.
At exactly eight o’clock New Year’s Eve, the guests assembled. Fox pelts adorned the spiked iron gates from a small hunt early that morning, and gas lamps burned the winter darkness into submission. A string quartet conducted by Arms Bueford of Carnegie Hall played Dvorak’s Quartet 12 in F Major. Champagne bottles popped and glugged, glasses passed, the music crescendoed, ceased, and my father, with an imperious wave at the crowd, handed his scepter down to me, his eldest son. Upon a fusillade of applause, I signaled for the party to begin.
The first waltz was reserved for The Breviary’s first generation. The second dance, for us. After freely given and wrested kisses (these foreign prudes!), a light second meal of foie gras and fresh venison was served at midnight, followed by more dancing, and a tour of each 5,000-square-foot floor. Later in the evening, we determined that Mr. Pingree of the Boston Pingrees was the best shot, as we’d set loose pheasants off the roof for the annual hunt. God knows, in that dark, where, or upon whom, those bullets and birds rained.
I chatted with every kind of celebrity, but in the end, felt most comfortable with my own kind. We are destined for greatness. Even the building tells us so, as it rocks us to sleep as lovingly as a wet nurse. Naturally, despite some of our parents’ objections, we’ve all converted to Chaotic Naturalism.
The party broke after dawn. I did not sleep but instead watched the sun rise with my sisters and brothers. It was then that our realization, hither-tofore unacknowledged, was spoken. We’d started the evening as children and had ended it as men. Soon we would run our parents’ companies and change the fate of the world With great powers come great responsibilities, and the crown, at last, weighed heavy.
After some sleep, we gathered again, and found that our collective resolve had remained. Our parents travailed a bloody civil war, the relentless English who impressed our ships, and the foolish French, who insisted upon aiding our wayward brothers. They untethered themselves from the