by Stuart Woods
“Sort of. I amuse myself with it sometimes.”
They were brought menus and studied them carefully.
“What would you like?” he asked.
“I’ll have the eggs Benedict,” she replied.
“Good idea. So will I.”
They ordered, and Peter sat back in his seat and looked at her. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you when you weren’t in profile,” he said.
“And what is your opinion?” she asked, archly.
“Very high,” he said. “I have a high opinion.”
“That was just the right thing to say,” she said, blushing a little.
They seemed stuck for words for a moment, so Peter said, “Excuse me, I have to go to the men’s room.”
And he did.
40
Kelli Keane sat at the bar at the Brasserie and toyed with her lunch. She had spotted Peter Barrington the moment he entered the restaurant, and he had made it obvious that he was waiting for someone. Kelli was delighted with the coincidence that she and Peter had chosen the same restaurant. She had been working too hard at this, she thought, and she deserved a break.
When the girl arrived Kelli saw how Peter hurried to meet her. This was obviously a first date, and he had probably met the girl at school. She was a pretty thing and fashionably dressed for a high school girl. This was the first time Kelli had had an opportunity to stare unblinkingly at Peter and take his measure. He seemed exceptionally mature for an eighteen-year-old, and she knew a lot about the subspecies, having started to date eighteen-year-olds when she was thirteen, and having lost her virginity to the second one, at thirteen and a half. She had had an abortion at sixteen, as the result of carelessness with yet another eighteen-year-old, and she had turned her attention then to twenty-one-year-olds, who seemed to have a greater appreciation of the pitfalls of the menstrual cycle.
Peter did not have the native slovenliness of the current crop of eighteen-year-olds, nor did he seem to need the appearance of stubble or a patchy beard to build his confidence. She was willing to bet that his room was very neatly kept.
The headwaiter drifted by and Kelli snagged him. “Hey, Geoffrey,” she said.
“Kelli, how you doing? You want a table?”
“No, I’m fine at the bar. Tell you what I do want, though: see those two kids over there in the booth?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a hundred in it if you can find out the girl’s name and where she lives.”
“Would you like to pay now or later?” he asked.
“Payment is on delivery,” she said.
Bruce ambled over to where the young couple sat. “Good day, folks,” he said. “Is this your first visit to the Brasserie?”
Both shook their heads.
“Well, we’re very happy to have you as regulars. I’m Bruce, your mâitre d’.” He offered his hand to the boy, who shook it and replied, “Peter Barrington.”
He turned to the girl. “And you?”
“Hattie Patrick,” she replied, shaking his hand.
“I’m very pleased to meet you both. Do you live in the neighborhood?”
“I’m at Sixty-third and Park,” the girl said, “and Peter lives in Turtle Bay.”
“Great. I hope we’ll see both of you often.” He strolled away, spoke to a couple of other diners for cover, then went back to the bar.
“Hattie Patrick,” he said, “Sixty-third and Park.”
Kelli slipped him the hundred. “Bruce, you’re a dear, and very clever, too.”
He was nice,” Hattie said to Peter.
“Yes, he was. Maybe we’ll become regulars, like he said.”
“Are you a regular anywhere else?” she asked.
“Only at the Knickerbocker cafeteria,” Peter replied. “My dad hangs out at Elaine’s.”
“I’ve never been. Will you take me sometime?”
“Sure, I’d love to take you. We could ask my friend Ben along, but he’s headed back to Choate Monday.”
“Who are your friends at school?” Hattie asked.
“Just you. I haven’t been there long enough to make other friends.”
“I’m confused about something,” she said.
“What?”
“You did say you graduated from your last school in December.”
“That’s right.”
“How did that happen?”
“Well, I took a lot of courses and got ahead of the curriculum.”
“While shooting a movie at the same time?”
“Yeah, we only worked a couple of hours a day on the movie.”
“Are you just taking film courses at Knickerbocker?”
“I’m taking college-level French and American history, too.”
“Are you going to college in the fall?”
“Ben and I have both applied to the Yale School of Drama.”
“You want to be an actor?”
“I want to learn about acting. They have a directing program, too, and Ben wants to produce, and they have a program for that, even an MBA. When we get out of school we want to be partners in the making of films.”
“That sounds very ambitious,” she said. “I wish I had that kind of inner direction. I seem to just wander along, doing whatever seems like a good idea at the time.”
“Studying musical composition seems to be a very directed choice,” Peter said.
“I suppose so. That was a delicious lunch.”
“Mine, too. Shall we go to my house?”
“Sure.”
Peter paid the check, and they walked over to Turtle Bay. He let them into the house and hung up their coats, then they went into the living room where the old Steinway grand was.
Hattie sat down and riffed through a few chords. “Have you decided what the titles are going to be like yet?” she asked.
“I have a lot of shots of the school campus and the James River. I thought I might string together some of them under the titles.”
“Good, that’s what I was thinking,” she said. She began to play. “I thought I would begin with a slow passage, sort of pastoral in nature, like this.” She played a few measures. “Then I’ll establish a simple theme that will return at various points in the film.” She played the theme, then another minute or two of music, then stopped. “This is where it says, ‘Directed by Peter Barrington,’” she said. “Then the music stops for a while. I think the score should be kind of spare. I hated it in a lot of old movies when the music was there all the time. I don’t think a film needs music all the way through; it should be saved for when it’s needed to augment the film, maybe heighten the drama. Listen to this: it’s when the two boys are actually mixing the poison that they’re going to give to the master.” She played a spikier, more staccato passage.
“That’s perfect,” Peter said, in awe of what he was hearing. “I’d be happy for the whole score to be just your piano.”
“There are a few places where we could add a cello and a flute,” she said, “and I’d like a double bass in the more dramatic passages. There are kids at school who could play those parts.”
“Whatever you say. Play me the theme again.”
She began the passage, and Peter was swept into it. He closed his eyes and listened.
41
Stone was in his office when, from upstairs, he heard the sound of the piano. It sounded very nice, he thought, and he was glad he had it tuned twice a year. After a while the music stopped, and Stone thought that, in light of his conversation with Arrington, he should find out why. He got up and went upstairs.
“Good afternoon,” he said, startling the teenagers.
“Hello, Dad,” Peter said. “I’d like you to meet Hattie Patrick, my friend from school.”
Stone shook her hand. “Hello, Hattie. I liked what you were playing a minute ago.”
“I hope we didn’t disturb you,” she said.
“Not at all.”
“That was some of the music Hattie has written for the score of my movie, Da
d,” Peter said.
“Wonderful. Peter, if you have a moment, there’s something I’d like to show you. Hattie, you can come along, too.”
He led them to the elevator and they rose to the top floor. Stone switched on a hallway light, then they walked into a sunny room at the rear of the house, overlooking the gardens. “Peter, I think you need more space for the things your mother is sending from Virginia, and I thought you might like these two rooms. The bedroom is over there,” he said, pointing.
“This is nice,” Peter said. “Hattie, do you like it?”
“Very much,” she replied. “You could make it beautiful.”
“You’ll need some bookcases, and maybe a built-in desk for your computer station,” Stone said, pointing.
“I can design those,” Peter said, “and we can get someone to build them.”
“I know a good cabinetmaker,” Stone said. “He used to work for your grandfather. Make some drawings, and we’ll get him in for a look.”
“Okay. Let me look around some more, then Hattie and I are going to watch my film together and make some notes for the score,” Peter said.
“Good,” Stone said. “I’ll be right next door.” He hoped Peter got the message.
Stone left them there and went down to the master suite, where he opened the Times and started on the Saturday crossword, always the toughest of the week.
Kelli Keane got home to her little apartment on Third Avenue in the Seventies and immediately went to her computer. She opened a program that searched apartment buildings for the names of tenants or co-op owners, typed in Park Avenue and Sixty-third Street and the name Hattie Patrick. In a matter of seconds she had a hit at 576 Park, a prewar co-op building, and Hattie’s name appeared along with those of her parents, Sean and Margaret. She thought the name Sean Patrick sounded familiar, so she Googled him and got the Patrick Group, a hedge fund that, according to their website, managed more than fifty billion dollars. Wow! Kelli thought.
For good measure she Googled Hattie and got more than she had expected. The girl was a star music student at Knickerbocker who had played piano recitals and earned good reviews at some of the city’s better venues. She had been the piano soloist a year before in a performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F, with the New York Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Wow! again.
Just on the off chance, she Googled Peter Barrington and got zip. She tried Peter Calder and got zip, too. It was as if the kid had recently arrived from another planet.
Peter and Hattie sat on pillows on the floor at the foot of his bed and watched his film come to an end. Hattie now had a full set of notes.
“I know what I want to write now,” she said to Peter. “What I’d like to do is to record a rough track on film to make sure I’ve got the cues right, then I’ll write some additional parts for cello, bass, and flute, and when I have the piano part perfectly recorded, we’ll dub in the other instruments.”
“That sounds perfect,” Peter said. “How did you get so good at this so young?”
“The same way you got good at filmmaking,” she said. “I studied, then practiced all the time and played with other musicians whenever I could.”
“That’s not exactly how I got to be a filmmaker,” Peter said. “I just went to the movies a lot, then made a movie. What are you going to do after graduation?”
“I’ve been accepted at Juilliard,” she said, “to study composition. I’m not really interested in a career as a concert artist; I want more freedom than that.” She reached into her handbag and handed Peter a disc. “Here’s a present for you.”
Peter looked at the label. “Rhapsody in Blue? It’s one of my favorites. So is Concerto in F. Can I put it on now?”
“No, it will just embarrass me,” Hattie said. “Listen to it when you’re alone.”
“All right.”
Stone knocked at the open door and came in. “Everything go well with the film?”
“Yes, Dad,” Peter said. “Hattie’s got what she needs now to write the whole score. And she gave me this.” He handed Stone the disc.
Stone read the label. “Carnegie Hall!” he said. “That’s very impressive.”
Hattie turned pink.
“She embarrasses easily,” Peter said. “She won’t even let me listen to it while’s she’s here.”
“I’ve heard it before,” Hattie said, getting to her feet. “And now I think I have to get home and walk the dog. I take him to Central Park about this time every day, and he’ll be expecting me.”
“I’ll walk you down and get you a cab,” Peter said.
The two went downstairs and got their coats.
Peter was back in ten minutes, and he came into the master suite.
“You want to listen to Hattie’s recording?”
“Sure,” Stone said. “Put it in the player over there.” He pointed. He tossed Peter the remote for the other side of the electric bed. “Get comfortable,” he said. Peter inserted the disc.
The music started, and Stone turned up the volume to concert level.
The two pieces finished, and they were both silent for a moment.
“That was breathtaking,” Stone said after a moment.
“It sure was.”
“Did you know she was that good before today?”
“I heard her improvise some stuff in a recital hall at school, but I’m astonished.”
“Is she going to pursue a concert career?”
“No, but she’s going to study composition at Juilliard this fall. She says she doesn’t want a career as a concert artist.”
“I don’t blame her,” Stone said. “That’s quite a girl, Peter. Hang on to her, if you can.”
“I wonder if Yale has a music school,” Peter said.
42
Stone was in bed the following morning with the Sunday
Times when Peter came into the room. “Good morning,
Dad,” he said.
“Good morning, Peter. Did you sleep well?”
Peter looked a little sheepish. “Not all that well.”
“Ah,” Stone said, “thinking about Hattie?”
“Well, yes.”
“Tell you what: Ben is off to Choate tomorrow morning; why don’t you and I and Ben and Dino have dinner at Elaine’s, and you can ask Hattie to join us.”
“Terrific!” Peter said. “She’s never been to Elaine’s, and she wants to go.” He ran out of the room, then quickly returned. “I know that she usually has dinner with her parents on Sunday nights. May I ask them to join us, too?”
“Of course,” Stone said. “Let me know how many to book for.”
Peter ran out and returned in ten minutes. “Everybody’s aboard. There’ll be seven of us. I wish Mom were here.”
“So do I.” As if on cue, the phone rang. “Hello?”
“Hey, there,” Arrington said.
“Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker; Peter’s here, too.” He pressed the button and Peter came and sat on the edge of the bed.
“How’s the house coming along?” Stone asked.
“Beautifully,” she replied, “if I do say so. I did a brilliant job of packing at the old house, and everything is going right into place. We’re hanging pictures tomorrow.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Stone said. “Peter has a new friend.”
“Yes, I do,” Peter said, then launched into a monologue about Hattie and how brilliant she was.
“Whew!” Arrington said when he finally paused. “That’s the longest I ever heard anybody talk without taking a breath!”
“She’s quite a girl,” Stone said.
“Well, Peter, why don’t you ask her down for our housewarming? It’s next Saturday night. You can ask her folks’ permission at dinner tonight, and tell them they’re invited, too.”
“That would be wonderful, Mom,” Peter said.
“Come down on Friday, so we’ll have all of Saturday and Sunday together,” Arrington said. “You can fly back on Monday m
orning. Will the school let you do that?”
“I pretty much make my own schedule,” Peter said.
“Stone, you’d better take Peter to get a new tux. His old one isn’t going to fit. And don’t forget to get some riding clothes for yourself. I’ll have the perfect horse for you.”
“I’ll do that.”
“I can’t wait for you to see the house. It’s going to look like it’s always been here and we’ve always lived here. Architectural Digest is coming on Friday to photograph the place.”
“Who’s doing your PR?” Stone asked.
“I am. Paige Rense, the editor, is an old friend.”
“Are they going to photograph us?” Stone asked.
“No, just the house.”
“When will the piece run?”
“I don’t know; not for some time, I expect. They have a long lead time.”
“Well, I suppose everything will be more settled by then.”
“Mom,” Peter said, “I’ve got a new room upstairs.” He told her about his plans for his suite.
“That sounds perfect for you, Peter. May I speak to Stone alone for a moment?”
“Sure. Good-bye, Mom. I’ll see you on Friday.” He padded back to his own room.
“Is he gone?” Arrington asked.
“Yes, we’re alone.” Stone picked up the phone. “What’s up?”
“There’s something I have to tell you about,” she said.
“All right.”
“Tim Rutledge will be around this weekend for the photo shoot and for the housewarming, of course. He’s from an old family in the county, and everyone here will know him.”
“Okay,” Stone said. “I don’t have a problem with that, as long as he behaves himself.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want any scenes at the party.”
“It’s not a problem for me,” Stone said.
“Well, it’s a problem for him. I’m afraid he didn’t take the news of our marriage very well, and you may not find him exactly friendly.”
“That’s all right. I don’t need to be friends with him.”
