The Coslings decided to give their first large-scale party on Bastille Day, the fourteenth of July, a decision reached by what had become known as the Committee of Four now that Hilliard and his girl were gone. It developed into a party to celebrate Toni’s first film engagement. The day before (the thirteenth, henceforth his lucky day) he heard from his agent that the contract had finally been drawn up and awaited only Toni’s signature.

  “You’re very proud of him, aren’t you, dearest?” Helene said when Robbie went rushing down to the main house with the news before Toni had finished his breakfast.

  “God, yes. Aren’t you?” He and his mother had always been demonstrative but he realized that he’d drawn back from her in the last few months while he’d been finding more passionate embraces. He threw his arms around her and hugged her and remembered the comfort he’d always found in her bosom.

  “Of course,” she said with brief uncertain laughter. She was startled by the change she felt in his body. A rich eroticism seemed to emanate from his pores. The way he held her (even her!) crackled with sensual electricity. He had undergone some profound emotional experience that had altered him completely. It wasn’t difficult to guess its source. She put her hands on his chest to assure herself that this was the child who had been with her always. “It’s a big day for all of us but you’re his special friend. You’re probably even more pleased for him than he is for himself.”

  “Maybe. He doesn’t take himself very seriously. That’s one of the amazing things about him.” He wondered if she knew that he was in love. They had always been so close that it wouldn’t surprise him. He’d like her to know if she didn’t have to know that sex was involved in it. Love flooded him and overflowed to include the world. He hugged her again and kissed her. “You see what it means? He can quit at the end of the month. He’ll be with us for the rest of the summer without having to go off every evening.”

  “I think he may still want to go off in the evening, dearest,” Helene said with an indulgent little smile.

  “Oh sure. That.” Robbie laughed. “But not every evening.”

  His skin had a lovely texture. She stroked his chest lightly and in spite of herself the image recurred of him lying naked with Toni in bed. What a beautiful sight it would be. She must stop thinking about it. He was radiantly happy. She didn’t want to know more. She slipped out of his unnerving embrace. “You must tell him that the party is now officially for him.”

  “That’s sweet. He’ll be pleased.” He moved to her side and put an arm around her waist as she started across the terrace. She was carrying a pair of garden shears. Toni was right; it was good to touch and hold people, to feel close to them and show that you loved them. “Isn’t it funny? We’re going to have a movie star in the family.”

  “It’s very exciting, dearest. I must say, your father can still astonish me. Who else would have picked out a son in a bar?”

  “Do you think he really is my brother?”

  “Of course not, but it’s an intriguing idea. I keep thinking what fun it would’ve been for you if we’d found him sooner. Do you remember how we used to choose the flowers for our funny little house? Felix will be furious with me but I’m going to gather a bouquet.”

  “Okay. I’ll go tell Toni about the party.”

  That evening, he helped Toni go through his cosmetic routine of tinting and curling his hair, shaving his armpits, trimming his pubic hair. “There,” Toni said when they were finished. “That’s the last time I’ll do that. I may be looking a bit shaggy by the end of the month but the hell with it.”

  The simple marble pedestal Robbie had designed had arrived a few days earlier and the statue was mounted on it, presiding serenely over the steps down to the cove. Stuart had hired a boat for the party and had it filled with fireworks. When the glittering company had assembled, when a flood of drink and an avalanche of Boldoni’s inspired culinary creations had been consumed, a spectacular pyrotechnical display took place at the mouth of the cove, accompanied by gasps and cheers. Stuart was afraid that he might’ve overdone it—anything that followed risked being an anticlimax—but the big hit of the evening was a surprise even to him.

  People swarmed over the terraces and down around the beach house. Stuart was about to say something to the heir apparent when the clear tinkling notes of a mechanical piano came from the direction of the house, bearing a message of absurd heartbreaking gaiety. After a frozen moment, Stuart muttered some excuse to His Highness and strode toward the house. Near the elaborate buffet stood a screen which Stuart had supposed served some function in connection with the meal. From behind it, the music swelled. He hurried over to it and peered behind. There was the old piano, Boldoni leaning on the crank in his chef’s cap and long white apron. Tears burned in back of Stuart’s eyes and his throat tightened.

  “I bought it back while you were away,” Boldoni explained. “I remembered you used to like it.” Stuart put out his hand and squeezed his well-fleshed shoulder.

  “Old friend,” he said, not looking at him. His eyes were fixed on ghosts, on Helene, tense and racked with love for him; on Odette, all laughter and innocent sensuality; on wide-eyed funny little Robbie, just turning into a person. He retained the smell and feel of those evenings under the moon on the dusty vine-covered terrace with the scrubbed boisterous men from the quai and their hearty women—so many memories came tumbling out of the battered clattering old box. Was it only eight years ago? Stuart looked at Boldoni with a wistful smile.

  “It was a wonderful idea. I’m glad we’ve got it,” he said.

  To the guests, ignorant of the piano’s origin, it was a bit of deliberate originality.

  “How too divinely clever,” exclaimed some and, “Isn’t it mad,” said others. Everybody began to dance. The small band Stuart had hired proved superfluous. Everybody clamored for more of the spirited old tunes churned out by the piano.

  People danced, people swam, people continued to eat and drink. Helene was courted by a dozen men and thought it the best party she had ever been to. She found the strains of the mechanical piano infinitely more charming in this gorgeous setting than among the noisy crowd at Boldoni’s. The party didn’t even begin to break up until dawn. By then, the fireworks had been forgotten but the piano went clattering gaily on.

  It was a world of parties, yachting parties, beach parties, cocktail parties, dinner parties. If there’d been any theater, there doubtless would have been after-theater parties. They were dancing on the edge of a volcano. A cliché, but Stuart felt it strongly. There were scare headlines every other day but people discussed Hitler’s troop movements as if they were moves in a chess game, interesting but of no consequence to everyday living. After Czechoslovakia and Austria, would Poland be next? The “inevitable” war was taking so long to get started that he understood the tendency to dance. His memory of the other war, his war, was that it had burst upon the world like a bolt from the blue. Everybody was suddenly fighting for survival. Now, there had been so much time to prepare that it seemed reasonable to believe that all the necessary precautions had been taken. France had its impregnable Maginot Line. England had the Channel. The States didn’t even enter into it. Hitler might want a war but how was he going to fight it? That was the general consensus of opinion. Stuart, who had come only slowly to believe in war’s inevitability, now felt its imminence in his bones. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. He had an uneasy conviction that the evil embodied in Hitler, if unchecked, would end by being more devastating than any war. It wasn’t a popular view. There were plenty of pro-Nazis around. The volcano.

  The Coslings were invited everywhere but as they settled in they became more selective. Robbie and Toni ruled out lunch parties, the latter because lunch came too soon after his late breakfast. Stuart and Helene were acquiring a small circle of real friends, including Jane Cumberleigh, the admiral’s fourth wife, and Hilda and Alex, the Middle European princelings, but Stuart still had a sense of living through an interlude in his life, much as he had during the cruise. He told himself regularly that he must cut down on his drinking but it didn’t seem particularly important. They would while away the summer, but then what? It was difficult to come to grips with the future with the threat of war hanging over them. The Committee of Four spoke often of Paris and it was more or less understood that they would have a reunion there during Robbie’s Christmas holiday and look around for an apartment.

  Stuart observed, with amused detachment, that Helene was enjoying the attentions of attractive men more than she ever had in the past. There were plenty of attractive women who acted as if they wouldn’t mind some attention from him but he felt no inclination for flirtations. Was that side of life permanently closed for him? He thought so. The years of devotion to hard work had killed his taste for sexual distractions. He was much more interested in the part he could play in Robbie and Toni’s futures. Toni was a major addition to their life. Stuart was well pleased with himself on that score.

  In many subtle ways, Helene made a point of treating Toni and Robbie as a couple. The more she watched them, the more she preferred that Toni absorb the shock of Robbie’s nascent sexuality than some silly susceptible girl.

  Robbie became quickly aware that Helene arranged their days so that he and Toni would always be together. It bound him to her more powerfully than anything in the past. She knew, or suspected, and was offering him her blessing. He showered her with endearments as generously as Toni did him.

  Robbie had no trouble denying himself an eleventh man. Whatever went on on the port didn’t penetrate the world they frequented. It was redolent of sex but only of the most conventional sort. Affairs vied with troop movements as a favored topic of conversation. Only Mrs. Rawls provided a touch of the perverse. She always had attractive young men staying with her.

  “You’re a very cruel boy,” she accused Robbie one evening with a flirtatious tilt of her head. “Don’t you know you’re breaking all my poor friends hearts? They think I keep you away from them.”

  “But, Mrs. Rawls—”

  “Now, now. Won’t you even give an old lady some small pleasure and call me Flip?”

  He smiled in an attempt at his worldly manner but he still dreaded anybody making assumptions about him. “I’d like to call you Flip but you mustn’t embarrass me. I may not be as sophisticated as I should be but I don’t like what you said about your friends.”

  “Good heavens. I’m sorry. I’m the soul of discretion. I find it so natural for attractive boys to be attracted to each other that it never occurred to me I’d offend you.”

  He avoided her young friends although there were a few he stole second and third glances at and whose eyes promised uninhibited sex. He belonged to Toni. Their lovemaking might never amount to much but it was more precious to him than he would’ve believed possible. They belonged to each other, despite Toni’s girls.

  The month was drawing to a close when a note arrived from Carl von Eschenstadt announcing his imminent arrival. He was traveling by boat to Marseilles and would be here in a matter of days. Helene read it while she was having breakfast in bed and tossed it over to Stuart.

  “Good,” he said as he glanced through it. “Those guest rooms are growing cobwebs.”

  When he had withdrawn to the bathroom, she rose and carried the note to her dressing table where she sat and read its impersonal phrases again. She tucked it behind some bottles and smiled at herself in the mirror. He would have to outdo himself to hold his own now, she thought.

  Robbie heard the news with intense excitement and a touch of apprehension. He had done his best to follow Carl’s advice. He had fallen in love with a boy roughly his age. It wasn’t his fault if Toni hadn’t fallen in love with him. Would Carl think he was silly to pin all his hopes and dreams on a boy who liked girls?

  He remembered the almost hypnotic power Carl exercised over him, but perhaps that had been because they had met so early in his discovery of himself. He’d been awfully young two months ago. Even so, despite his total dedication to Toni, he knew it would require an enormous effort of will to refuse if Carl wanted him. Need he refuse? Carl wouldn’t be the eleventh man. He had been the eighth, to be exact. Toni was trying to prove that he wouldn’t go on wanting new boys. Maybe he wouldn’t. He hadn’t for a month. Looking speculatively at Flip Rawls’ friends wasn’t the same as wanting them. At least he would be able to talk about everything with Carl.

  Toni’s engagement at the Tour Engloutie had only four more days to go. Robbie begged to be allowed to come see his performance but Toni was adamant. He didn’t want Robbie to see him in that atmosphere. He warned him that he would be out a lot until his final appearance. Mado de Mornay was staying over for it and then was off for Italy. She had plans for their last few days.

  His hair was beginning to grow out into its natural color but it wasn’t different enough to look odd. It had coppery rather than golden tones but was still very blond. Robbie loved watching the transformation; it made him feel that he was getting to know more of the real Toni. He had so little hair under his arms that Robbie wondered why he’d bothered to shave it. As for the pubic part, it was turning into a lovely froth of blond curls.

  On one of the evenings Toni was engaged with Mado, the Coslings had been invited to dinner by a poet famous primarily for his friendship with Picasso. Picasso was there. Robbie was speechless with awe. When he was introduced to the great man, somebody said something about his being a painter, too. Robbie wanted to drop through the floor.

  “No, no,” the master said with robust laughter. “He’s too beautiful to do anything. He must just sit and let us all eat him up with our eyes.” His own black bullet eyes looked as if they could shoot him dead.

  Robbie remained so overwhelmed by the commanding presence that it wasn’t until dinner was half over that he became fully aware that he had acquired a dark admirer. The evening was an informal affair with a buffet meal and tables set up in a garden where the guests could eat it. Robbie had somehow become part of a quartet made up of two young women and a trim, handsome man in his thirties, Latin in type and slightly reminiscent of his childhood hero Valentino, although Robbie had gathered that he was an American called Jeff. His eyes were dark and seductive. Without paying much attention, Robbie let his own eyes grow flirtatious as the glances he intercepted became more explicit and provocative. A knee pressed against his under the table finally captured his full attention and told him how far the flirtation had gone.

  Alert at last, with a burgeoning erection, he saw that Jeff was the most exquisitely groomed man he’d ever seen and made him think of silly words he’d never used like “suave” and “svelte.” His shapely hands had gleaming manicured nails and every hair of his dark head looked as if it had received individual attention. His brows were perfectly shaped arches and his lips were red and lush. Something about him seemed to offer rare and exotic sexual thrills. Robbie suddenly felt cheated by the lack of development in his sex life.

  He exerted insinuating pressure with his own knee and promptly reprimanded himself and broke the contact. Their eyes met briefly and Robbie immediately re-established it, which committed him more deeply. He forced himself to think of Toni, getting a grip on himself and making a definite break by moving his chair back from the table. He launched into a rather forced discussion of Picasso with the woman on his left, remembering that Jeff had introduced him to his wife. She was here. He was married. What did Jeff hope to accomplish by making a pass at him?

  Robbie was ashamed for having responded but it helped him rally his virtue. What would Toni think of him if he knew what he’d been doing? He’d probably leave. In a few days, he wouldn’t even have his work to keep him here. That was the end of it. He wasn’t going to betray everything that was most precious to him.

  As soon as the meal was finished, he broke away from his group and mingled with the other guests. Whenever he saw Jeff getting close, he drifted on. In order to avoid the risk of further contact, when it was time to leave, he slipped away with his parents without saying goodnight to him.

  He had felt the surrender in himself and had barely avoided disaster. Nobody had ever made him feel needed, hot even Edward. He had recognized something in Jeff that forced him to confront his need to be needed. Safely back in his house, he subdued the hunger that had been stirred in him by imagining Toni everywhere, naked and godlike. He had his return to look forward to. By tomorrow, he would have forgotten Jeff.

  At lunch the next day, Stuart told his family that he’d had a call from their host of the night before. “Paul wants to bring Picasso and his crowd over some time this afternoon. Actually, I suggested it last night to that American associate of his, Jeff Benjamin, but he thought Mr. P. was going to Antibes today.”

  “Jeff Benjamin?” Robbie asked with a small shiver of guilt.

  “Yes. Weren’t you sitting with him at dinner last night? He has something to do with the master’s American interests. His wife’s attractive but she got rather pissed. Wouldn’t it be sort of exciting to let Picasso see your work?”

  “My God. No,” Robbie cried. “I’d die. There’s nothing finished anyway.”

  Toni took his hand and pressed it encouragingly. “Don’t be silly. He’s a painter. He can see what you’re doing whether it’s finished or not. You’ve got to get used to showing. Why not start at the top with Picasso as your first public?”

  “Will you be there to catch me if I faint?” They all laughed.

  “Not if he isn’t here before four. I’d hate to miss him but I have a date.”

  Robbie tried to go back to work after lunch but he was too nervous to concentrate. He lined up the three canvases he’d been working on. One of them was almost finished, the other two in varying stages of progress. He supposed Toni was right. A painter might not like them but he could see what Robbie was driving at and how he was going about it. A good hour’s work was probably all that was needed for the nearly finished one but he didn’t dare touch it for fear of making a false move. He had too much on his mind. Would Jeff be part of the “crowd”?