Shades of Fortune by Stephen; Birmingham

changed, and she also knows immediately who must have done it. But she decides to let the seating remain as it is, though she can’t refrain from a slight feeling of annoyance at Aunt Nonie. Nonie is always creating mischief like this. Let it pass, she thinks. She will not let it disrupt the planned flow of her evening. Now, in the dining room, fingering their Mireille samples, everyone is exclaiming over the packaging.
    â€œElegant.”
    â€œLovely.”
    â€œSophisticated. I love the colors. Black and gold.”
    â€œAnd the bottle. A perfect teardrop shape.”
    â€œLook—the bottle is by Baccarat!”
    â€œIt certainly looks expensive,” Edwee says.
    â€œThank you, Uncle Edwee.”
    â€œSuggested retail is a hundred and eighty dollars an ounce,” young Brad says.
    â€œI’d pay that.”
    The soup course is served, and Felix moves around the table, pouring the wine. From the head of the table, Bradford Moore turns to his mother-in-law, who is seated on his right, and says, “It’s wonderful to see you, Alice. You’re looking positively radiant tonight.”
    Alice, who actually still looks a bit uncomfortable, despite her valium, covers her wineglass with two fingers of her right hand before Felix can fill it and says, “Why do people keep telling me how wonderful I look, Brad? Is it to remind me of how awful I looked before?”
    â€œI didn’t mean it that way at all, Alice,” he says. “You always look wonderful.”
    â€œNo, I don’t. You know I always don’t.”
    â€œAlice is so sensitive, ” Granny Flo says to the table at large. “That’s always been Alice’s problem.”
    Hearing this, from the other end of the table Mimi says brightly to everyone, “Once we’d settled on the black-and-gold color scheme for our packaging, we wanted the perfect models—one dark, one fair. And voilà! Sherrill and Dirk!” She lifts her wineglass. “I’d like to propose a toast: to the Mireille Woman and the Mireille Man!”
    â€œHear, hear.”
    And, half-rising, young Brad says, “And I’d like to propose another: to my brilliant, beautiful, and sexy mother. Here’s to you, Mom!”
    â€œHear, hear.”
    â€œThank you, Badger.”
    In Nonie’s new arrangement of the seating, her young friend Williams is now placed at Granny Flo’s right, to take advantage of her good ear. “It’s such an honor to be seated next to you, Mrs. Myerson,” he says. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
    â€œYou have? What have you heard?”
    â€œHow charming you are, how gracious—”
    â€œDid my daughter tell you that?”
    â€œShe. And others.”
    â€œWhenever Naomi Myerson starts talking like that, it means she wants something. Money, usually.” She turns to her other dinner partner and says, “Who are you?”
    â€œMy name is Jim Greenway, Mrs. Myerson,” he says. “I’m researching a story on the Myerson family, for Fortune .”
    â€œThere wasn’t any fortune. Didn’t you know that? When my husband died, it turned out he’d spent it all. I had to sell everything—everything except my paintings. Did I tell you about my friend Mrs. Perlman’s little dog?”
    Sherrill Shearson is now on Edwee Myerson’s right, and turning to her somewhat loftily, aware that she is a member of a lower social order, he says to her, “You certainly make a handsome couple. Are you two married?”
    She giggles. “Are you kidding? Dirk’s bisexual.”
    Nodding, Edwee takes this information in, and his eyes travel across the table to where Dirk Gordon sits, carefully spooning his soup, and he gives the younger man a long, appraising look. “Really. How interesting,” he says.
    From across the table, too, Edwee’s wife catches this look of calculating appraisal.