—Maybe the Mayor wants some time with her family.
—What fucking family? She’s got Albert and whatever stud they’re currently fucking. That’s not family. That’s not even a card game.
—Would it be out of place for me to ask you to cut down on the cursing?
—Yes.
—I thought so.
—I don’t understand people who get power and then just give it up. Just say, ‘Oh, what the fuck, I just don’t want it anymore. I’m retiring.
He literally spat the last word, contemptuous saliva hitting the limo’s floor.
—Not everyone’s like you, Mr Banyon.
—And thank God for that. What a pain in the ass the world would be then.
—Would it be out of place for me to agree with you?
—Out loud, yes.
—I thought so.
—And what for the love of God does she see in Max?
—If you don’t mind me saying so, your opposition to Max Latham seems out of proportion to anything he’s done.
—I’m not against Max Latham. I’m for Cora Larsson.
—And why would that be exactly? Again? Sir?
Archie’s history was populated by the ghosts of dead women. He should have known something when his first wife was named Belladonna. Archie and Belladonna married young and desperately in love. Belladonna, whose formidable bearing and pomegranate lipstick eschewed any attempt at a nickname, gave birth to four daughters in rapid succession: Dolores, Soledad, Ariadne, and Proserpina, Belladonna’s sense of humor showing an appealingly dark shade. When Thomas was born, Archie intervened. Belladonna had wanted to call him Actaeon.
Archie’s mother, who had died when Archie was a teenager but who at the time of his wedding could be dealt with as a sad memory rather than the ominous beginning to a macabre chain, had been strict and loving with Archie until her death, instilling him with confidence, kindness, and a respect for self, a parenting trick that Archie was constantly sad not to have learned. Archie’s mother was the reason he loved women so much and also the reason for the manner in which he loved them. Not in the big-rack-hot-ass sort of way that his friends so perplexingly did. Archie just found them easier to talk to, easier to share a meal with, easier to take advice from. It was clear to everyone that Archie had found a wondrous and powerful match in Belladonna, a brilliant, passionate, dark-eyed lawyer who was the only daughter in a family of eight sons.
Belladonna’s misfortune was to thumb her nose at fate one too many times. One day, when Poison and her daughters Pain, Solitude, Corrupted Innocence and Bad Marriage were sunbathing on the fourth-story roof of Archie’s northeast Hennington estate, an earthquake opened up the ground and reduced the building and the five women to rubble. Archie had been inspecting a vineyard on a horse which hadn’t even thrown him during the tumult. Thomas turned up later full of unsatisfactory explanations.
Archie’s grief, a deep and powerful thing even if he hadn’t been by then the richest man in Hennington, was finally only mollified by an endocrinologist called Maureen Whipple, a name Archie thought inoffensive enough not to anger the gods. Copper haired with copper-rimmed eyeglasses, Maureen was an amateur lepidopterist and singularly devoid of risky imagination. But she liked Archie quite a bit, and he liked her quite a bit right back. Eleven days after their fourth wedding anniversary, she was killed when a derailing train hurtled through her windshield.
Archie’s third wife, Anna Grabowski, about whom the less said the better, barely made it down the aisle before perishing in a trapeze mishap.
His fourth wife was a devil-may-care whirlwind named May Ramshead. Eight years older than Archie, she was a zoologist with a wild streak. She rappelled off of cliffs, swam with sharks, and had spent time as a rodeo clown. Two and a half years of blissful marriage later, May died peacefully in her sleep when her heart failed.
Archie finally took the hint and settled, at age sixty, for a single life with female friends. That was when he met and hired Cora Larsson. Contrary to the whisperings of those few existing enemies of Cora, Archie wasn’t responsible for Cora’s success. True, Archie had sent Cora poking into some fishy business dealings of then-Mayor Jacob Johnson, but it was Cora who had followed the now-infamous trail to the mysterious death of Johnson’s father and the millions stashed away in accounts under the name of Johnson’s mistress, a story so familiar it needs no rehashing here.
It was, however, Archie’s suggestion, with a helping hand from Albert, that Cora run for Mayor some twenty years ago. Archie was thirty years Cora’s senior, but he was, if the truth be known, in love with her and always had been. Thank goodness she was already married to Albert and also that Archie realized marriage to him meant certain death. He merely had to be her friend. He gave her money and advice when she ran for Mayor and threw the inaugural ball when she won. She was also the reason Banyon Enterprises hadn’t cheated the city in over two decades. Archie respected her too much to ever want to face the disappointment of her certain litigation. He loved her, and that was that, more than enough reason to support her.
—What’s with this traffic?
—It seems to be clearing up, sir.
—Thank God for that.
—Yes, sir. Thank God, indeed.
17. ‘The Tale of Rufus and Rhonda'.
—How’s your head, baby?
—I want to cut it off.
—But then you wouldn’t have one at all.
—I don’t care.
—Medicine’s not helping?
—I guess. It makes me tired.
—Try to sleep, then.
—I can’t keep my mind clear. It races and races and it’s all just thing after thing after thing.
—That’s the fever, darling. It can’t be helped.
—I’m so tired.
—Do you want me to tell you a story?
—Don’t you think I’m a little old for that?
—Do you think you’re a little old for that?
—Depends on the story.
—I’ll make it age-appropriate, how about that?
—Maybe.
—Okay, let’s see. ‘There was once a girl named Talon …’
—Stop. I don’t want to be the heroine.
—Why not?
—I just don’t. Please?
Max thought for a minute.
—All right. How about this?
There once was a great king called Rufus the Swarthy. (—What was he king of?) He was king of all the land. (—Which land?) He was king of all the Southern Lands. (—What were they called? —Just flow with me here, Talon.) He had arisen to the throne after his father was killed in a great war with the people to the North that had raged on and on for generations. King Rufus didn’t believe in war. (—That’s a pacifist, right? —Very good.) He had seen war take the lives of all of his friends and classmates and all the rest of the young men in his land. Now it had taken the life of his father, and