by translating or deforming the real name of his victim. “And George?” he added, meaning Georgina de Marien.
Georgina was my father’s acknowledged “platonic girlfriend,” and my mother had nothing nice to say about her, either. For at least ten years now, my mother had been in the habit of inviting a woman who would prove an amusing companion for her husband, since she had little time to pay attention to him herself, given that L’Agapanthe was as difficult to run as a busy hotel. The ideal woman for this task had to please my father, which implied gaiety on her part, good looks, and the ability to accompany him on his long swims in the bay. This lady friend should also, however, suit my mother, by not harboring any desire to flirt with my father for real or play at being mistress of the house—so she had to be astute enough to understand any such obvious prerequisites. Well, such a pearl doesn’t turn up every day. So once my mother had assured herself that Georgina was not an adventuress, she assigned her the part.
The drama in question had been running for a long time, though, and my mother shared the philosophy of one of our neighbors, who made it a rule never to rent her house more than three years in a row to the same person, to make sure of remaining the lady of the manor. My mother was therefore preparing to banish Georgina from L’Agapanthe once she had laid the groundwork with enough cutting remarks in that regard.
And yet Georgina was a nice person, who never spoke ill of anyone or had any intention of vamping my father. She would naturally have loved to have a touch of romance in her life, but she wasn’t prepared to go to the mat over it with my mother, whose temper she feared as deeply as she appreciated her hospitality. Besides, she was independent and happy to be so. Born Miro Quesada, she was the daughter of a man known as the Guano King, just as Patiño was the Tin King. A Peruvian, she came from a family that had Spanish roots and numbered among its members two presidents, many intellectuals, some newspaper magnates, and one hero of the hostilities with Chile during the War of the Pacific. With no need to work for a living, Georgina de Marien began traveling after the death of her husband, but she neither went off to spas nor embarked on short cruises. Rather, she traveled like a diplomat sent from post to post and had gone in succession to London, Rome, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and New York.
Friday, 6:00 p.m.
Hidden behind his Paris-Turf, Frédéric greeted me when I showed up at L’Agapanthe that Friday like a puppeteer announcing the arrival of Punch and Judy, with a jolly “Are we ever going to have fun!”
Charles Ramsbotham, who had shown up shortly before I did, had just broken all the rules in the book by giving my father a Jet Ski, even though he knew perfectly well that all guest gifts ought to be purely symbolic gestures.
A man of concrete and practical mind, Charles could never remember any of these rules of savoir vivre for very long, for he had no patience with such subtleties. As a guest, he thought it shameful to offer what he considered “crud,” which was doubtless suitable for the impecunious friends of my parents, but not for him, for his lifestyle was so opulent that one might well have thought him even wealthier than he was. Indeed, his generous character and personal ethics impelled him to treat his friends with the same lavish generosity with which he indulged himself. This led him, every year, to offer my father some costly gadget such as a GPS or a satellite telephone with worldwide coverage, a device that had the considerable merit of keeping Charles temporarily occupied (until he had mastered the operating instructions and tested his gift for his hosts) in a house where he was bored stiff.
“This is too much, simply too much! Just because this idiot charters private planes and helicopters to go have coffee in the Dordogne or in Moldavia where he requisitions entire hotels and dislodges all their clients, that doesn’t give him the right to do as he pleases!”
My mother was letting off steam in her bathroom, where she had taken refuge to explode in private.
“Don’t work yourself up into such a state!” pleaded my father, trying to calm