The Ayatollah's Money

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 14 – Meeting of Minds

  The next morning on the way downstairs to the breakfast room Laleh wondered if there would be a bottle of wine on the table. That hadn’t happened yet, but she wouldn’t put it past the Junes. She said, “Good morning.”

  Roger got up from his chair, went behind Laleh’s chair, and pulled it out for her. The guys in her family, and the guys her brothers had brought around hoping she would marry one of them; they never had pulled her chair out for her. Never once in all her years. Roger did this mostly out of Charleston style gentility, but there was an element of selfishness in it, that being the lovely view. Gwen was aware both of the gesture of gentility and the self-serving element but she never was jealous. She didn’t have to be.

  To be honest, Laleh was a little disappointed there wasn’t a bottle on the table. Didn’t really matter what kind; maybe something light from the Loire, maybe something a little sweet from Vouvray or the Mosel; maybe even, and she really was getting sick here, a bottle of bubbly. Laleh didn’t know about alcoholism. If she did, she might worry a little; might think in terms of warning signs. But she didn’t know about it, so she didn’t worry. She felt a little disappointed, but not too much, because she knew the Junes would remedy this oversight at lunch.

  One of Gwen’s ploys when she couldn’t figure out something was to put Roger on it. She would watch and listen how Roger attacked the problem, and that would lead her to the correct solution. It wasn’t that she would do the opposite of him, or would learn from his botching of the situation. It was just an odd synergy they had, working the same problem from slightly different angles. She didn’t know how she would find out what Laleh meant about not having a home, since she refused to ask her directly, so she figured she’d let Roger dink around the subject for a while.

  After ordering breakfast, Roger said to Laleh, “Do you have a dog? We just talked with the person taking care of ours while we’re away, and he said the dog misses us. The dog is smart, but I’m not sure how he expressed that to our house sitter.”

  “No, though I love them,” Laleh said. I didn’t have a good place for a dog, not enough room and not enough time.”

  “We’re semi-retired, so we have time to play with ours, take him for walks. And we owe him, cause one time recently he saved us from some trouble.”

  Gwen didn’t think it was right to tell Laleh about the home invasion by the armed Russian woman, which Roger was on the brink of doing, the dork. As usual, though, he had provided her with the opening she needed. She said, “We live in an old house in an old neighborhood, with a backyard enclosed by brick walls, so the dog has a good place to be outside, and we have good places to walk him nearby.” She ate a little yogurt with fruit, then said, “I know what you mean by thinking people should have a good place for a dog if they’re going to have one. Too bad you couldn’t have one if you like them so much.”

  “I had an apartment in the city. Lots of crazy traffic, not a lot of parks, and I worked a lot, so not good for a dog. Not even good for a cat.”

  Both Gwen and Roger noted the past tense of the apartment thing. Roger said, “So are things different now? Maybe have a dog in the future?”

  Laleh said, “Things definitely are different for me now. I don’t live there anymore.” She didn’t elaborate, but the Junes didn’t get the feeling she deliberately was being reticent. More like she didn’t know herself.

  Gwen said, “Sometimes changes are good. We’ve been on an extended vacation for the last few months. Before that we worked on an opera in Charleston. We were the producers, and it was seven days a week for us for months, no breaks. We like the change to being free from that pressure, doing a little traveling, hanging out at home.” She hoped Laleh would take the bait and open up. Which she did.

  “I’m not sure they’d let me have a dog here. I don’t know a lot about English hotels. Or any kind of hotels, for that matter. Would they?”

  Roger looked at his wife, then said, “You live here? At The Savoy?” She nodded. “And this is the first time you’ve stayed here?”

  She nodded again, and said, “My first time in England. My first time in Europe, for that matter.”

  They were getting closer to cracking her mystery, without entering the realm of conversational purgatory, the interrogative. First looking askance at her husband, and then winking at Laleh, Gwen said, “If you paid them enough here, they’d let you keep a gorilla in your room.”

  Laleh got a kick out of being around the Junes gentle banter, which became more amusing the more wine they drank. She said, “I’ve never been to America either. I guess it’s a lot different from here?”

  “It’s different and the same. America’s a big place, and people are different in different parts of the country. We have it all there.”

  “Iran has different parts to it too, with different types of people. I’m from the city, and people out in the country are very different. Very religious. People in Tehran are religious too, most of them, but not quite as nuts. Well, some are nuts, I have to admit that, which is why I left. I didn’t like it much there anymore.” She ate some kippers and eggs, which she had gotten fond of after Roger had recommended them as something very English. “That’s why I’m here. I’m looking for a new place to live, and London seemed like a good place to start looking. Then I met you, and that’s been a big distraction from my looking. Drinking wine every day is lots of fun, but not conducive to thinking seriously about one’s future life.

  Roger piped up with, “We know people whose lives consist of drinking wine every day. That’s what they do. We could introduce you.”

  Gwen picked a croissant out of the basket and threw it at him, which he fielded nicely. “Don’t listen to him. That’s what he would like to do, become a complete lush, but I won’t let him. When we get back to Charleston we’re going to have to dry out for a while.”

  He said, “We are?”

  Intuitively, Gwen made a decision of the kind that Roger loved her for. She said, “We’ve liked being around you for the last week. We’re not sure what it is, but there’s something, ah, special about you; something intriguing.” Roger knew one of the things about her he was intrigued with, not that he ever would experience it other than vicariously, but that still was a lot. “Would you like to visit America? Would you like to come to Charleston with us? Stay at our house for a while? With us and the dog?”

  Laleh blinked, looking first at Gwen and then at Roger. Her fork, delicately loaded with a piece of the herring and a piece of scrambled egg, was positioned half way between her plate and her mouth. It had stopped there when Gwen asked her these questions, the first personal ones in the week they had known each other. Roger bet himself she would put the fork down on her plate, while Gwen bet herself she would continue the movement of the food towards her mouth. Telepathically they wagered the winner would buy dinner that night at whatever outrageously expensive restaurant they went to.

  After three seconds of immobility, Laleh lowered her fork to her plate, which pleased Roger immensely, and motioned the waiter over to the table. She ordered a bottle of Mumms, which didn’t shock the waiter as much as you might think, The Savoy serving a diverse clientele that included a lot of rich rock bands. When the wine was in the glasses, and some of the effervescence had dissipated, the way Roger had taught her, Laleh raised her glass in a toast, and said, “What’s the dog’s name? I’ll need to know that.”