“A fine endorsement.”
“Now it’s up to you, Mrs. Randolph. You’re a real good judge, I’ll bet. You just watch yourself around here, that’s all.”
“I thought you said he met your approval.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about him.” Jack pulled back and set the glass back on its shelf. “Talking about everything else, everything and everyone else on this island, but especially that duchess and her husband, them two sleek blue jays in a nest, looking out for nobody but themselves. You watch yourself.”
“Watch myself? What for? When I can’t seem to buy myself even a peep inside that nest. I spent all morning at their damned headquarters, the Red Cross, stuffing packages and sitting through the dullest committee meeting in the world, going out of my mind, just to wrangle myself an invitation to the party at Government House on Saturday, and then the duchess finally turns up, and do you know what she says?”
Jack makes a slice along his throat. “Off with your head?”
“Worse. Enchanted to meet you, Mrs. Randolph.”
“That’s all? Sounds all right to me.”
“You don’t know how it is with these people. She locks eyes with you, see, like you’re the only person in the room, the only person in the world, pixie dust glitters in the air around you, and she takes your hand and says, Enchanted to meet you, and you think to yourself, She likes me! She’s enchanted, she said it herself! We’re going to be the best of friends! Then she drops your hand and turns to the next woman and locks eyes with her, and you feel like a sucker. No, you are a sucker. Sucked in by the oldest trick in the book.” There was a stir to my right, somebody approaching the bar. I glanced out the side of my eye and recognized, or thought I recognized, a certain man sliding into position a few stools down, tall, polished, Spanish or French or something, air of importance. Jack, on the other hand, made not the slightest sign of having noticed him. I leaned my elbow on the counter and said, “Maybe I ought to just read the stars and give up.”
“Give up?” said Jack. “Now what kind of talk is that?”
“The smart kind, brother. The realist kind.”
He glanced at last to the newcomer. “Excuse me one minute, Mrs. Randolph.”
The drink was finished. I stubbed out the cigarette. Jack had taken the newcomer’s order and turned to the row of bottles behind him. I stood up, a little more unsteady than I ought to have been after a single martini, and fished a shilling from my pocketbook.
“I beg your pardon,” said the gentleman to my right. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“Of course you couldn’t.”
“You are not leaving, surely?”
“I’m afraid I am.”
“But you haven’t eaten yet.”
“Maybe I’m having dinner elsewhere.”
“Now, Mrs. Randolph,” the man said slowly, “we both know that isn’t true.”
Up until this point, I’d been speaking into air. I wasn’t in the habit of addressing bold men, it was a stubbornness of mine. But you can’t ignore a fellow who calls you by name, can you? I turned my head. As I said, I had taken notice of him before. He was one of the regulars at the Prince George, and besides, you couldn’t help but notice him. He was tall and lustrous and strapping, dressed in a pressed suit and white shirt and green necktie, and even though his nose was large and his jaw a little soft, you had to admit he was handsome, especially when he looked at you dead on from that pair of wicked, intelligent eyes. Also, he had an elastic way of moving, like an athlete.
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
He held out a large hand. “Alfred de Marigny.”
“I’ve heard that name before, I believe.”
“I’m afraid I have something of a reputation.” There was a note of apology in his voice.
“I’ll say. If you believe all the stories.”
“Do you believe the stories?”
“Naturally. I’ll bet they’re a hundred times more interesting than the truth. Thanks for the drink, by the by.”
He lifted his eyebrows and signaled to Jack. “You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t say I wanted another.”
“Didn’t you? But please, Mrs. Randolph, sit down. We cannot have you standing like that. We cannot have you leaving like this.”
“Why not?” I asked. But I sat down.
He sat too, facing me, elbow propped on the bar. “What is this you are saying, about giving up? Give up on what?”
I reached into my pocketbook for the cigarette case. You know, something for my hands to do, something to occupy my attention while the most notorious playboy in Nassau settled himself on a nearby stool and fixed his attention on me. I tried to assemble a few facts in my memory. He was recently divorced from some wealthy Manhattanite who had left her previous husband for him. He was a yachtsman, a good one. A foreigner with a title of some kind, which nobody knew how he acquired, or whether it really belonged to him. In short, he was a—what was the word I had overheard? A mountebank. Fine ten-dollar word, mountebank. I plucked a cigarette and said, “Did I say that?”
“You did. I’m certain of it. Allow me.” He removed a matchbook from his pocket and lit me up in a series of deft movements: selecting the match, striking flame, holding it just to the end of the cigarette, so that the blue core touched the paper in a tiny explosion.
“Thank you.” I opened the case again and offered him the contents. He chose one and thanked me in turn. As we completed these little rituals, Jack returned with a pair of drinks: another martini for me, a whiskey for de Marigny.
When we had both tasted the waters, he said, “I hope I have not offended. I only wish to know if I might be of some assistance.”
“Out of the kindness of your heart?”
He pressed his hand against his chest. “I am a gentleman, Mrs. Randolph. I ask nothing in return.”
“Sure you don’t. Not that I hold it against you, mind you. It’s what makes the world go round.”
“What makes the world go round?”
“Favors.” I reached for the ashtray. “To answer your question, I’m a journalist. I’ve been sent here by an American magazine to give our readers an inside view of Nassau society in these interesting times.”
“By Nassau society, do you perhaps mean the duke and his wife?”
“Well. That is what’s interesting about it, after all.”
“I see.” He turned his face a few inches to the left, as if to regard the tables and chairs, which had begun to populate, mostly men in pale, pressed linen suits, like de Marigny, only shorter and pudgier, your commonplace middle-aged merchant, Bahamicus mercantilis vulgarii. A couple of conspicuous American tourists. “I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do for you in this regard, Mrs. Randolph. I am not a favorite of His Royal Highness.”
“Goodness me. Why ever not? I thought it was part of His Highness’s duty to make himself agreeable to his allies.”
“Allies?”
“I couldn’t