A Matter of Time by David Manuel Page B

day of heavy lifting
     to maintain.
    That’s just jealousy, he rebuked himself. He might be getting thinner, but alongside Body Beautiful over there, he felt as
     shabby as Inspector Colombo’s old raincoat.
    What was sad about Buff was that he was trying sohard to be happy—or at least give the appearance of being happy.
    The sunset had been a disappointment, obscured by a low layer of approaching clouds. And now, as it grew darker outside, the
     window on Dan’s left began to act as a mirror. In it, he could see the reflection of the real mirror over the sideboard behind
     him. Which meant that he could see Buff’s face without the latter realizing that he was being observed.
    Buff’s expression, when no one was looking in his direction, became worried, impatient, almost tortured. Whatever was on his
     mind, it was not the joys of wedded bliss.
    The last guest, to Dan’s right, was Laurent Devereux. The Frenchman, sixty-ish, was director of an import-export firm headquartered
     in Paris. Next week he would lead a seminar at a global communications convention to be held at the Southampton Princess.
     He had left the City of Lights a week early, he told them, because he was
très fatigué
. And what better place to rest and mentally prepare for
la bataille
, than this
charmant pied-à-terre
, so far from the Princess, where he would be instantly
engagé
, and rest would be
impossible
.
    To Dan,
Monsieur le Directeur
did not appear all that tired, but perhaps the French gauged fatigue differently. There was no denying his Gallic charm,
     and to judge from the sidelong glances that the older ladies present were throwing him—what, jealousy again? No. Well, maybe.
     Put Brian Dennehy next to Louis Jordan, and who would any woman look at?
    Well then, did he harbor an aversion to
Les Français? Mais non, pas du tout!
He took his wife to every subtitled movie she wanted to see. He liked the old ones;
films
noirs
, Peg called them. Their gritty realism had it all over Hollywood, and their tough guys—Gabin, Montand, Belmondo—seemed a
     lot tougher than the homegrown variety.
    But the last French flick, a
Palmes d’Or
-winning attempt at bringing Marcel Proust’s life to the screen, had been deliberately obscure, something Dan considered obscene,
     the height of French
hauteur
. Watching it, he had tried to imagine anything more painful, like sticking needles in his eyes.
    Feeling a twinge of guilt over where his thoughts had gone, Dan turned to Devereux. “Did you, by any chance, see the new Proust
     movie?”
    With an expression of faint distaste—as if he’d just sampled a vintage he would ask the
sommelier
to return to the kitchen—Devereux shook his head. “I’m afraid,” he said with a charming smile, “I’m really too busy for the
     cinema.” And he turned back to his plate.
    Nice put-down, Frenchie, thought Dan. Maybe, after all, he was a bit of a Francophobe.
    It was not long before the guests became friends—not unusual at Sandys House, where the return rate was 95 percent.
    More details began to emerge. Their host’s modified RAF moustache really was an RAF moustache. Barely 20, Flight Lieutenant
     Cooper-Smith had interrupted his Oxford education to fly with Transport Command in the Burma Theater. Ms. Brown, the stock
     broker from Anaheim, had anticipated every major downturn of the market—including the present one. Her grateful clients referred
     to her as “The Unsinkable Maudie Brown.”
    Margaret Chalmers had rowed at Wellesley, as had her daughter. Her brother had rowed with Grace Kelly’sbrother when they were members of Philadelphia’s Vesper Boat Club.
    Ron Wallace told about his boat-swapping arrangement with Ian Bennett, to which St. John observed, “I went to school with
     Ian’s father.”
    Dan revealed he was the Chief of Police of a village not much bigger than Somerset, which had become so quiet that he’d not
     thought about it once down here.
    Jane MacLean was a