Lord of All Things Read online

  Hiroshi told him the number. He dialed it, then went out into the corridor.

  “Hi, Dorothy, it’s me, Rodney,” Hiroshi heard him saying. “My lame-brained roommate has just told me everything, and I wanted to see if you’re okay…yeah…yeah, sure, I understand…”

  There was a long pause. Hiroshi sighed. He suddenly felt relieved she was all right.

  “Yes, quite,” he heard Rodney say. “An idiot. I think so, too. A complete idiot. Absolutely. A total, complete and utter…no question.”

  It went on that way for quite some time, until Rodney managed to wrap up the call. When he came back into the kitchen, a dark cloud seemed to be hanging over him. Without a word he went to the stove, put the pan back on the hot plate, and added spices and tomato to the oil. He began to stir like crazy.

  “Okay,” said Hiroshi. “So she didn’t take it quite as calmly as I thought. Maybe I just got that idea because it was so early in the morning. Dorothy’s not so great at getting up early, especially not on Sundays.”

  Rodney carried on stirring. He was clearly furious. “You really are completely crazy, you know that?” he suddenly burst out. “You don’t just hang a girl like Dorothy out to dry! On a whim when you’re half-drunk.”

  “It wasn’t a whim. It was fate.”

  “You’re talking crap.”

  “It wouldn’t have been honest to carry on the relationship. Simple as that. There was no alternative.”

  “Now you’re talking like an inscrutable Japanese.”

  “And you’re talking like a hot-blooded Chicano.”

  Rodney slammed the lid onto the pan, turned the heat down, and clattered around, putting the deep-frozen tortillas into the oven. Hiroshi kept quiet. His job was to make strong coffee, and that was already taken care of.

  Rodney had vanished with the girl with the tousled hair at some point the night before. Rodney claimed he had gone looking for Hiroshi but hadn’t found him, which would have been strange, since he and Charlotte had simply sat on the back terrace and talked until finally someone came to throw them out. Then they had gone to her place to talk some more. In the end, Hiroshi had taken a taxi home, and Rodney had gotten a lift back with the tousled-haired girl, which meant his own car was still at Harvard.

  Rodney, skeptical as always, said she had kissed him good-bye. Rodney was strange about women. He had an enviable gift for talking to them and winning them over, but he was very, very careful with his feelings. Any woman who wanted to go to bed with him straightaway had ruled herself right out. But they were planning to go on another date. Last night’s girl obviously still had a chance.

  “Dorothy really loved you,” Rodney grumbled, breaking the silence. “She would have done anything for you. Anything, man!”

  “I know,” Hiroshi said. “But I didn’t love her. I just didn’t know it. Until today.”

  “So who is she, this woman you were meant for?”

  Hiroshi cleared his throat. “Her name’s Charlotte Malroux—”

  “Say what?” Rodney broke in, astonished.

  “Charlotte Malroux,” Hiroshi repeated. “She’s French. Her father is an ambassador, and—”

  “Tell me it ain’t true!” Rodney collapsed onto the nearest kitchen chair. The look on his face spoke of new heights of surprise and bewilderment, even after everything else he’d heard this morning.

  “Why?” Hiroshi asked, perplexed. “Do you know her?”

  Rodney squeezed his eyes tight and rubbed his temples. “Oh boy oh boy oh boy! You’re even crazier than I thought.” He looked up and laughed mirthlessly. “Okay, to be absolutely honest I have no idea how to put this, but have you ever, at any point between last night and this morning, actually given any thought to what your chances might be? Listen, we’re talking about Charlotte Malroux here. She’s widely recognized to be the hottest ticket Harvard has seen this decade. We’re talking about a woman who scores an easy twelve on the scale of one to ten. Charlotte Malroux could be a supermodel without even opening her makeup box. I mean, have you even considered how many men in Boston have the hots for her? All of them, I would say. And that’s a conservative estimate.”

  Hiroshi blinked in astonishment. He hadn’t even noticed. Okay, yes, she looked good, but as good as all that? Well, it had been at night, and it was dark.

  “On top of which,” Rodney went on ruthlessly, “Charlotte Malroux, as everyone but you seems to know, is dating a certain James Michael Bennett III, who, as the name may tell you, is from the very upper crust of Boston society. Do you know the name Bennett Industries? Well, yes, he’s the heir. And as if it weren’t enough that he’s stinking rich, he also looks like a Greek god and is a hotshot at half a dozen different sports. Among other things, he’s quarterback for the Harvard football team, he’s won the Harvard golf cup several times over, he rides for the polo team, and I don’t know what else.” Rodney heaved a deep sigh. “I’m really sorry to have to say this, but even with all the luck in the world, I don’t see how you can compete.”

  “I don’t think in those terms,” Hiroshi declared.

  “But those are the terms women think in.”

  “Not all of them, I hope.”

  Rodney groaned with despair. “You’re a dreamer.”

  Hiroshi nodded. “I am indeed. And? All great things begin with a dream. That’s the way it’s always been.”

  “Kiddo, the woman’s got herself a billionaire-to-be for a boyfriend. Maybe a senator-to-be, governor-to-be, could be even a president. And don’t you go thinking he’s not as good in the sack as mere mortals like us. From what I hear, he’s had a lot of practice. Do you think any woman in the world is going to kiss a chance like that good-bye just because she ran into an old flame from her grade-school days?” He shook his head. “No, I gotta tell you you’re going to regret what you did to Dorothy.”

  Hiroshi had been listening with growing resentment. He felt the old rage from his childhood building inside him again as though it had never gone away—his rage at the way the world was.

  He snarled, “Ever since I was a kid, people have been telling me I’ll regret this or that, that I’ll see where it gets me. I’m telling you, I’m fed up with hearing it.”

  “Let’s eat,” Rodney said amicably. “What’s with the coffee?”

  After she woke up, Charlotte lay in bed for a while staring at the ceiling, waiting to be sure she could tell dreaming from waking. Seeing Hiroshi again had not been a dream after all. It hadn’t been a dream that they had spent the whole night talking, sometimes even in Japanese, a language she hadn’t spoken for half a lifetime. She ran her fingers through her hair. It felt tangled and matted. She had taken a quick shower before she went to bed this morning, but she hadn’t dried her hair, not completely; she had been too worn-out.

  For a moment she wondered where James was. Then she remembered he had said he’d be visiting his parents today. He hadn’t wanted to come to the party last night, claiming that “one of us might get jealous.” He had made other plans, and she had instead gone with a couple of her girlfriends but lost sight of them over the course of the evening. Strange to think that if it had happened any other way, she and Hiroshi would never have run into each other. Strange to think, too, that they had both been living in Boston for years and never crossed paths. But strangest of all was how they had recognized one another straightaway even though they had been children back in Tokyo.

  Charlotte rolled over in bed and looked at the three dolls lined up on the shelf by her headboard. Hiroshi had been touched when she told him she still had that doll he had fished out of the rubbish and repaired. Valérie. It wasn’t here in the States with her, though; these three were from an artists’ market in South Boston. Valérie was safely back in Paris in her parents’ apartment, where her parents in fact never lived. Her father had recently gotten the Moscow posting he’d long been hoping for and was e
ven trying to learn Russian, to the astonishment and embarrassment of all around him.

  Maman had confessed only a couple of years earlier that she had never sent the letters Charlotte had written to Hiroshi after the sudden move to Argentina—long letters in careful English in which she had made an extra effort with her handwriting. Her mother had wanted Charlotte to forget “that boy.”

  And she had been so disappointed when he had never answered!

  After her mother’s confession, Charlotte had made one more attempt. But by then Hiroshi’s mother was no longer working at the embassy in Tokyo, and there had been no way to find her new address. So her final attempt had run aground, and then she really had forgotten Hiroshi. At least, so she had thought.

  She would never have believed they still had so much to say to each other. In fact, she realized, that was what had made it such a very strange encounter. All right, enough pondering. She threw off the covers, jumped out of bed, wriggled out of her pajamas, and got into the shower. After a long, hot shower, she snuggled back into bed in her robe and called Brenda, her best friend. She always told her everything.

  Brenda just laughed. “It looks as though you’re collecting everyone you’ve ever met in your life here at Harvard,” she commented.

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “So it seems.” She and Brenda Gilliam had first met in Delhi but then lost touch. When Charlotte had been awarded a spot at Harvard, they had reconnected, since by strange coincidence Brenda’s father happened to teach at the medical school. Perhaps there were fewer random coincidences in life than people thought.

  She found herself looking at a framed photo on the shelf of her and James at a garden party. For the first time she wondered why she had put it there. “The question is, what am I going to do about Hiroshi?”

  “That’s not hard,” Brenda said cheerily. “You two just pick up where you left off. That’s what we did, after all, when you turned up here.”

  “But what if that doesn’t work?”

  “Then you know that it’s over and done with.” Brenda was breathtakingly practical about such matters. She could have written for the problem pages. “If you can’t think of anything else to do, bring him along next Saturday. I can never have too many strong men around when I’m moving house.”

  Charlotte realized she was holding the receiver much more tightly than she needed to be. She relaxed her grip and took a deep breath. Every time Brenda’s move came up, she couldn’t shake the feeling it had something to do with her.

  The obligatory first year in a freshman dorm in Old Yard had been a nightmare for Charlotte. She didn’t doubt for a moment that living together with others built team spirit or that it was good for developing her study skills, exchanging ideas, and making friends for life. It was just she didn’t find that part easy. When she didn’t have a moment to herself—and in a shared room, no one had a moment to themselves—she felt on edge, defenseless, vulnerable, not in the least bit prepared to make friendships for life. Even if Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones had been Harvard roommates. So in her second year she had sought out her own apartment in the city. Ever since then she had lived in Somerville, about two miles from Harvard. She paid significantly more in rent there, but if she ever managed to unpack the last of her boxes and buy some good furniture, she might really feel at home. She enjoyed more peace and quiet there than she ever had in Holworthy Hall. As for friends for life—apart from Brenda, and maybe Hiroshi as well—perhaps she just didn’t make friendships the same way everyone else did.

  “Well, to tell the truth, Hiroshi is kind of scrawny,” Charlotte said.

  “Bring him along all the same.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She tried to imagine how James and Hiroshi might react to one another. James was always a little condescending about Brenda—mostly he called her “the plump girl,” which was definitely an exaggeration—but he had promised he would come and help. Or almost promised. She could never be quite sure what he would do; James had a marked tendency toward spontaneous decisions.

  Well, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the two of them to meet. “If he calls me, I’ll ask him,” she promised.

  “He’ll call for sure, won’t he?” asked Brenda.

  “All right then: when he calls.”

  Of course he was going to call. After last night, Charlotte told herself, she would have to work hard to make sure Hiroshi didn’t fall in love with her.

  Waking up was a painful business, and for the first few moments James Michael Bennett didn’t know where he was. Then he saw he was in his own bed, which came as something of a relief. Not that he didn’t enjoy those times when he woke up somewhere else entirely, next to a woman whose name he didn’t know…that could be one almighty turn-on. Far out. An adventure. But it had to be the right day for that kind of thing, and today was not that day.

  It had something to do with last night. Gradually, he remembered most of what had happened. How he had come home in the early hours of the morning when the night sky was just beginning to pale, the skyline starting to show through the dark blue haze. He hadn’t felt too good—in fact, he had felt terrible—and driving his car had probably been one hell of a risk. Those damn drinks they served at Epsilon Omega! Maybe he should find out what on earth they put in them. He’d run into someone in the front hall. Ah yes, George. The butler had helped him upstairs and brought him some kind of tablets with a glass of water. James couldn’t actually remember whether he’d taken the things, but if he had they hadn’t helped much.

  He finally managed to get up and stagger into the shower, after which his head was almost clear. Clear enough at least to be able to think about whether he wanted breakfast—or whatever you might call it at this time of day. What time was it, anyway? Half past one already. Well, great. Breakfast, or a couple of lengths in the pool first, or maybe a jog in the park? No, he’d start with breakfast. He dropped his towel and walked stark-naked through his bedroom, a large room flooded with sunlight at this hour. George had put out fresh clothing and also Saturday’s mail on a silver tray, just the way he liked it. Look at that: a big fat letter from England. He picked that up first and checked the sender’s address. It was indeed from the genealogist in London, a heraldic expert whom he had hired a while ago to research the Bennett family tree. He tore the envelope open.

  He glanced through the letter that came with the report. Thick, creamy paper with an imposing crest, embossed gilt lettering, but also the words “with regret” and the news he had been unable to find any link to the nobility of Great Britain. There were indeed some branches he had not been able to document thoroughly, despite all his efforts, the expert wrote, but in his professional opinion they were unlikely to yield any promising results. The last line of the letter requested that James pay the itemized expenses at his earliest convenience.

  James flipped through the pages of the report. Lists of names, lines of descent, collateral and cadet branches. It was no different from all the other expert reports so far—a bunch of ancestors who turned out to have been coopers, sextons, tavern keepers, sailors, and shoemakers. No dukes, no earls, no viscounts—not even a baronet. He yanked open a desk drawer and shoved the pages inside. The London researcher had been recommended to him as the very best in his field, but he was obviously no better at his job than all the rest of them.

  He got dressed and went down to the kitchen. Madeleine was there; in fact, it looked like she had been waiting for him. She asked what he wanted for breakfast.

  “Ham and scrambled eggs, and a cheese sandwich.”

  James fished Saturday’s newspaper out of the magazine rack; he hadn’t had time to read the sports pages yesterday. “Make the coffee as strong as you can. And orange juice, a whole jugful.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bennett,” Madeleine answered. “Right away.” Madeleine was from Louisiana, and one of her best qualities was she still knew how servants sh
ould behave. It was a shame she was due to retire soon; it would be no easy matter to find a suitable replacement.

  She brought in the big glass jug full of fresh-pressed orange juice, and James gulped down the first glass while reading the latest baseball stats. He still had a pounding headache. When at last the coffee appeared on the table, he became aware of the hustle and bustle in the house.

  “What’s going on today?” he asked as Madeleine put the ham and eggs in front of him.

  She cocked her head. “Perihelion meeting. Mercury, on Wednesday.”

  “Oh yeah.” James massaged his temples. “That, too.”

  The Perihelions were a group of his father’s friends who had a thing for astronomy. At some point they had come up with the wacky idea of having Sunday meetings when a planetary perihelion was due—except for the perihelion of Earth. And what was a perihelion? If he remembered right, it was the point in a planet’s orbit when it was closest to the sun. James wasn’t totally sure about this, but whatever it was, the rule was that everyone had to work out for themselves when it was due. There were no invitations or announcements, and any member who got his calculations wrong had to pay a fixed fine into the “Lost in Space” box, or sing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” to the assembled group.

  The whole thing was objectionable for several reasons. The first problem was the perihelion rule was pretty crazy in itself—sometimes they wouldn’t see one another for ages, and then they would be meeting one Sunday after another for weeks on end. As far as James understood any of it, Mercury set the pace, since it had a perihelion every eighty-seven days. Other planets didn’t matter at all; Uranus, for instance, wasn’t due for perihelion until March 2050.

  The second problem was his dad was horribly democratic when it came to his friends. James Michael Bennett regarded any random roommate or teammate from Harvard as a lifelong friend, regardless of whether they had made a success of themselves or failed at everything they tried. At these meetings filthy rich lawyers found themselves sitting next to long-haired librarians, successful entrepreneurs rubbed shoulders with blue-collar workers, famous authors alongside spaced-out hippies. Dad welcomed winners and losers alike and loved to behave as though everybody were equal. He even had an expensive facsimile of the Declaration of Independence hanging in his office—“All men are created equal” blah blah blah—and as if that wasn’t enough, he also liked having friends of all colors. White, black, yellow—it was all the same to him. Dad had friends who were Mexican, Russian, and Jewish, and if James Michael Bennett III ever breathed a word against any of this, he received a lecture about cosmopolitan values, global citizenship, and the Enlightenment.