Conspiracy Theory(92)

Ryall fixed his bow tie. He never wore ordinary ties, because they made him look even more like Porky Pig than he usually did. He checked his cuff links. He’d learned long ago that only French cuffs would do with the people he cared most about talking to. The self-buttoning kind were for middle managers and people who had jobs teaching in community colleges. He went to the door of his bedroom and looked down the short hall to the woman pacing back and forth across his living room carpet. Then he made a face. God, how he hated these women who pretended not to have money when they did. There was something beyond snobbish about an American upper class that prided itself on looking as if it were sleeping in Dumpsters, or worse. He wondered where she had gotten that stretchy-tunic thing she was wearing: Price Heaven, Kmart, Wal-Mart, Marshall’s. Even when he was flat broke and eating ketchup in hot water for lunch, Ryall Wyndham had bought his ties from Asbury’s and his shoes from John Lobb.

He checked himself out in the mirror one more time. If there had been plastic surgery to make you taller, he would have had it. He considered liposuction. He could get it done, but he would have to be careful not to let it get out. He really did prefer the nouveau riche in some ways. They wouldn’t have given a damn if he’d got himself sucked, and some of them would have sympathized.

He brushed off his jacket—a good tweed, from J. Press—and went out toward the living room. She heard the door open and stopped where she was to wait for him. She had a copy of Town and Country in her hands, one of the ones he kept on the coffee table because they contained stories he had written, or pictures of himself in the parties columns. She put the magazine down and straightened up.

“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said. “I’m afraid I really do just kick back and pay very little attention when I’m at home. I shouldn’t, really. It gets me in the most difficult situations, and more often than you’d like to know.”

“There’s nothing difficult about this situation,” Anne Ross Wyler said calmly. “I surprised you. That happens. I should have called first.”

“No, no. Drop in any time. Really. I love to have company. And at a time like this, I find it perfectly understandable. You must be awash in grief. I know I am. Charlotte was one of my oldest and dearest friends.”

Ryall caught the sharp uptick of the left eyebrow. He’d been expecting it. Annie Wyler was famous for her eyebrows. He ignored it. He did not ignore the fact that he got a deep and abiding sense of satisfaction from the fact that he’d anticipated it.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said. “You look positively exhausted. And I don’t blame you a bit, of course. Two family funerals in the same week. I don’t know what’s happening to the Main Line. Even a few years ago, it was the safest place on earth. You could go anywhere there, even at night. Of course, Charlotte and Tony had security, but that was because of Tony’s position. He had to worry about international terrorists. I don’t know what I’m going to do if it turns out that international terrorists have begun to target Society. I’ll be scared to death to go out in the evenings, and it’s my life’s work.”

Anne Ross Wyler sat down, without looking behind her to see if a chair was there. Ryall felt his mouth purse up and did what he had to do to straighten it out again. He hated this about these women too. He hated the way they just expected things to be where they needed them to be, and the way the things were always there. Any normal person would have looked around to make sure she wasn’t about to fall on her ass.

“So,” he said. “What can I get for you? Coffee? Tea? I’ve got some excellent Ceylon, just arrived. I order it from a company in Bangkok. It’s the only place on earth you can still get decent Ceylon, I don’t care what anybody says.”

She was staring at him, placidly, waiting. Why didn’t she talk? God, he hated this about them too, the way they never got wound up, the way they just let you go on until you’d made a complete fool of yourself. Somebody ought to be appointed to teach some manners to the women of the old Main Line.

“Well,” he said.

Anne Ross Wyler took her tote bag off the floor and put it down on her lap. She reached inside it and came up with a long manila envelope. She opened the envelope and came out with a small handful of snapshots. Whatever was she going to do? Ryall didn’t think she would be bringing him family snaps of Tony and Charlotte to use in the column. She didn’t like the column, and she hadn’t seen too much of Tony and Charlotte over the last few years. She couldn’t stand Charlotte. There was something else he’d love to tell the world: How these old families stuck together in spite of the fact that they found each other’s company poisonous; the way Charlotte Deacon Ross had alienated even Tony’s long-suffering relatives. Surely, Anne Ross Wyler was long-suffering. She was also that creature he despised most in the world: the victim of social conscience guilt. She probably thought she was so damned holy, running a house for prostitutes, giving up on parties and expensive clothes just so that the rest of the people she knew would feel utterly and irredeemably inadequate.