The Trust by Norb Vonnegut Page B

speed.
    After meeting with Huitt Young, I phoned my boss first thing. Her assistant said, “Katy’s in back-to-back meetings. Mind if she calls you at seven tonight?”
    “It’s a date.”
    I assumed SKC would rubber-stamp my election to the Palmetto Foundation’s board. But Anders never called, thereby delaying the answer till the next day. Odd. Managers are good about responding to their top salespeople. I made a mental note to send my boss back to obedience school for remedial training.
    In some ways, I was glad Anders never called. She would have interrupted my dinner with Claire. We went light on the food at Carolina’s, split a Bibb salad and an order of steamed mussels. But we didn’t hold back on lubricants. After a couple of martinis, we downed at least one bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. Maybe it was two.
    During dinner, I steered clear of the topic foremost on my mind. Call it professional interest. Or prurient curiosity. I really wanted to know how Palmer had divided the remainder of the estate between JoJo and Claire. I don’t care how long somebody’s been in my biz. Inheritances are always fascinating, especially when the family situation is complicated. We had a doozy here in downtown Charleston, and Huitt never breathed a word to me.
    He’s a good lawyer.
    I walked Claire home to Legare Street after dinner. Didn’t expect to stay. But we were huddling on a Charleston bench—green-black, aged, pitted from countless asses—in the secluded garden behind her house. The night air had finally turned cool. And we changed from white to red, working our way through a heavy Australian cabernet to stay warm.
    Claire’s features were soft and fragile under shadows from the quarter moon. During high school, I would have given anything to share an intimate moment with my Daisy Buchanan. By “intimate,” I mean private, not sexual. Although, who am I kidding? Sexual would have been just fine in those days. More than fine. Claire was the stuff of boyhood lust.
    You get the point.
    *   *   *
    The thing is, Annie and I are a team. She’s the one who reached me after the death of my wife and daughter. She’s the one who defended me when I ran into a problem with SKC several years ago and became embroiled in the fallout from a Ponzi scheme. She stuck her neck out.
    When the dust settled, Annie reminded me that spontaneity and flirtatiousness can be fun. It’s okay to lighten up. I think that deep down, it’s the stupid stuff I like about her. The way she dresses in an explosion of colors, layers of stripes and prints and renegade textures that somehow work together. I don’t think anyone, except for Evelyn, has ever intrigued me the way she does.
    Like last week.
    Before I heard from Palmer, Annie called me after one of her classes at Columbia. “I have good news and bad news.”
    “Go with the bad.” I knew this game.
    “You’re taking me to a chick flick in the Village tonight.”
    “Yikes. That is bad.”
    “But you get to hold my hand all through the movie. And I’m an absolute marshmallow after a good cry.”
    How could I resist?
    *   *   *
    Claire and I were sitting there, drinking too much wine, savoring the sweet Southern scents of tea olive and camellia. With regard to the wine—cabernet sauvignon is a totally agreeable way for a man and a woman to spend an evening, the cool side of mild, under the stars.
    There was something different about Claire. She had pushed the bangs out of her face. And it struck me that she had opened a window into her thoughts. I was in her garden for a reason. Maybe to discuss something unsaid over the past two days.
    Every so often, a passing car interrupted the rhythmic sounds from her fountain. A marble bull’s head, mounted to the garden’s stucco wall, spit water into an ornamental pool brimming with mottled orange-white carp breaking the surface. I waited for Claire to take the lead on issues of substance.
    “I’m so proud of my