Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,101
sisters? I can dig incest.”
The library was pleasantly crowded—Lisette decided she didn’t want to be cornered with Eddie Teeth. A dozen or more guests stood about, sniffing and conversing energetically. Seated at a table, two of the ubiquitous maids busily cut lines onto mirrors and set them out for the guests, whose number remained more or less constant as people wandered in and left. A cigarette box offered tightly rolled joints.
“That’s Thai.” Eddie Teeth groped for a handful of the joints, stuck one in each girl’s mouth, the rest inside his vest. Danielle giggled and fitted hers to her cigarette holder. Unfastening a silver tube from his vest, he snorted two thick lines from one of the mirrors. “Toot your eyeballs out, loves,” he invited them.
One of the maids collected the mirror when they had finished and replaced it with another—a dozen lines of cocaine neatly arranged across its surface. Industriously she began to work a chunk of rock through a sifter to replenish the empty mirror. Lisette watched in fascination. This finally brought home to her the wealth this party represented: all the rest simply seemed to her like something out of a movie, but dealing out coke to more than a hundred guests was an extravagance she could relate to.
“Danielle Borland, isn’t it?”
A man dressed as Mephistopheles bowed before them. “Adrian Tregannet. We’ve met at one of Midge Vaughn’s parties, you may recall.”
Danielle stared at the face below the domino mask. “Oh, yes. Lisette, it’s Mephisto himself.”
“Then this is Miss Seyrig, the subject of your charcoal drawing that Beth so admires.” Mephisto caught Lisette’s hand and bent his lips to it. “Beth is so much looking forward to meeting you both.”
Lisette retrieved her hand. “Aren’t you the...”
“The rude fellow who accosted you in Kensington some days ago,” Tregannet finished apologetically. “Yes, I’m afraid so. But you really must forgive me for my forwardness. I actually did mistake you for a very dear friend of mine, you see. Won’t you let me make amends over a glass of champagne?”
“Certainly.” Lisette decided that she had had quite enough of Eddie Teeth, and Danielle was quite capable of fending for herself if she grew tired of having her breasts squeezed by a famous pop star.
Tregannet quickly returned with two glasses of champagne. Lisette finished another two lines and smiled appreciatively as she accepted a glass. Danielle was trying to shotgun Eddie Teeth through her cigarette holder, and Lisette thought it a good chance to slip away.
“Your roommate is tremendously talented,” Tregannet suggested. “Of course, she chose so charming a subject for her drawing.”
Slick as snake oil, Lisette thought, letting him take her arm. “How very nice of you to say so. However, I really feel a bit embarrassed to think that some stranger owns a portrait of me in my underwear.“
“Utterly chaste, my dear—as chaste as the Dark Rose of its title. Beth chose to hang it in her boudoir, so I hardly think it is on public display. I suspect from your garments in the drawing that you must share Beth’s appreciation for the dress and manners of this past century.”
“Which is something I’d never suspect of our hostess, judging from this party,” Lisette considered. “I’m quite looking forward to meeting her. I assume then that Ms is a bit too modern for one of such quiet tastes. Is it Miss or Mrs Garrington?”
“Ah, I hadn’t meant to suggest an impression of a genteel dowager. Beth is entirely of your generation—a few years older than yourself, perhaps. Although I find Ms too suggestive of American slang, I’m sure Beth would not object. However, there’s no occasion for such formality here.”
“You seem to know her well, Mr Tregannet.”
“It is an old family. I know her aunt, Julia Weatherford, quite well through our mutual interest in the occult. Perhaps you, too...?”
“Not really; Danielle is the one you should chat with about that. My field is art. I’m over here on fellowship at London University.” She watched Danielle and Eddie Teeth toddle off for the ballroom and jealously decided that Danielle’s taste in her acquaintances left much to be desired. “Could I have some more champagne?”
“To be sure. I won’t be a moment.”
Lisette snorted a few more lines while she waited. A young man dressed as an Edwardian dandy offered her his snuff box and gravely demonstrated its use. Lisette was struggling with a sneezing fit when Tregannet returned.
“You needn’t have gone to all the bother,” she told him. “These little French maids