Charley was standing there quiet and pale. “Let’s go, Mom,” he whispered.

  “Yes. Yes. Sorry to disturb your morning.” They turned to leave. “Wait! Don’t go!” Ruth Goodfellow had jumped up from her chair. Calista had the dreadful feeling that she was going to offer her a tissue or piece of hard candy, something from the neat little arsenal that efficient secretaries kept in their top drawers for messy situations. She was clutching her glasses in her right hand. They must have been heavy because they had left shiny red marks on either side of her nose and under her eyes where the bottom rims had rested. Her face was quite close to Calista’s. “Archie’s in Nevada at Rosestone.”

  “So Arch is at Rosestone!” The voice came from behind them. “Oh, Dr. Carlisle!”

  “So that’s where the old boy is.” Calista thought she heard Miss Goodfellow say “shit,” but she wasn’t sure.

  “Dr. Carlisle, I’d like you to meet Mrs. Jacobs.”

  “Mrs. Jacobs, wife of Thomas Jacobs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my dear!” He took her hand. “What a tragedy.”

  “Yes.” Calista spoke hurriedly. “This is my son, Charley.” “Hello, Charley. Pleased to meet both of you.” He turned to Calista again. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Calista said. “I really came to see Dr. Baldwin.”

  “I can imagine how difficult this must all be for you now with Peter Gardiner’s death.”

  “Yes, it’s very confusing.”

  “Of course it is.” He patted her elbow gently.

  Ruth Goodfellow had glaciated within the space of a minute and was now sitting behind her desk rolling a piece of paper into her typewriter. “The least I can do is take you and young Charley here to lunch at the Castle.”

  “The Castle?” Charley echoed.

  “Yes, the original building of the Smithsonian across the mall. It’s still early and if we go now, we’ll beat the crowd. Don’t you think so, Ruth?”

  “Undoubtedly.” She did not look up from her typewriter.

  “Well, then come along and, if you like, we can take a quick turn through some of the exhibitions.”

  They spun quickly through the World of Mammals Hall and then Carlisle insisted on what he called a condensed tour of the Pacific Cultures Hall. Apparently this had been his own focus for the last fifty years.

  Calista walked through the entrance of the Castle into a foyer where multicolored columns painted to look like marble did their duty under vaulted ceilings. Had Thomas Jefferson and Walt Disney collaborated, this would have been the result, Calista thought as she and Charley followed Dr. Carlisle into another hall. This space had been pilastered to the hilt and had a ceiling painted to look like the midnight sky complete with tiny gold stars. The salad bar in the dining room was somewhat anticlimactic after the architectural wonders that had preceded. There was soup and great hot platters of fried chicken and several different kinds of cheesy looking casseroles. Tables were set up in a deep bay. In the center was one large oval table set for at least twenty people.

  “Who’s that for?” Calista asked, nodding toward the empty table after Carlisle ordered her a beer and himself a martini straight up.

  “The Woodrow Wilson Fellows.”

  “Oh.” It had not struck her till this moment that light conversation might prove difficult. Now she marveled at her alacrity in accepting the invitation from this man she’d never laid eyes on until a half-hour ago. He was old, dry, and thin to a fault, in the way that very rich women like to appear, but it didn’t seem healthy in old men. Calista guessed that he was at least seventy-five. He had that parched elegance of the Duke of Windsor. His voice was soft and his eyes had at one time most likely been blue, but were now a watery gray. Calista was frantically trying to conjure up topics of conversation. As desperate as she was to find out about Tom’s death, she was not enough of a fool to sit down and talk murder with an almost total stranger. She might be able to use the occasion to find out more about Baldwin. Just as the thought crossed her mind Carlisle picked up his martini, which the waiter had just set down.

  “Well, my dear, here’s to you and young Charley and to Archie and whatever he’s doing out in the desert.” He took a sip. “My God, that was a surprise. Had no idea that Arch had gone out there. He must have hightailed it as soon as he got word of Gardiner’s death. Well, I’m sure he wanted to secure the site. I think Peter was the only one there at the time.”

  “Yes. Well, I really don’t know.”

  “This must be awfully hard for you, my dear.”

  “Yes, it . . .” She was worried she might have to say something as to why she had chosen this particular time to visit Baldwin, which in turn would suggest her suspicions, but Carlisle interrupted.

  “Of course, just between you and me, I think Arch himself has fretted over this whole project for the past two years.”

  This was not going to be as hard as Calista had thought. The old guy loved to talk. He did skitter about a bit, but if she kept listening, she was fairly sure he would keep talking.

  “Really?” she said attentively.

  “Oh yes. I can speak honestly with you. From my own experience, I know that it is very difficult when you’ve labored for years in a field, built up what you might call the ‘backbone of inquiry’ and then you see one of these young whippersnappers come along and start to crack new ground. Well, after all, you’ve really done the groundwork. So let’s give credit where credit is due. That’s what I kept telling Arch. If Archie Baldwin had not dug Two Horn Cave, nobody would even know what the devil to look for out there. To begin with, he articulated for everyone the classic stratigraphy, the cultural sequencing that they are all using now. He broke down the story of the Desert West into, how should I say, digestible pieces. So now, enter young whippersnapper number one in the form of Peter Gardiner. He finds some fairly nonspecific, nondiagnostic stuff, bifacial blades, lanceolate fragments that could, forgive the pun, point to a pre-projectile-point culture.”

  “A Paleo-Indian culture?”

  “Right, Madame.” Carlisle nodded and clamped his eyes shut in affirmation.

  “Of course, first he had to get back to a Clovis point, which he did. Now, as I said before,” he lowered his voice a bit, “I think this galled Archie. But it happens!” Dr. Carlisle raised his hands in a what-can-you-do-about-it gesture. “Happened to me in the South Pacific. Spent years out there.”

  What exactly Carlisle had been doing out there in the South Pacific remained doubtful to Calista, nor was it clarified during cocktails at his Georgetown home that evening. Shortly after Calista and Charley had returned to the hotel the phone had rung in their room. It was Carlisle. His wife was so jealous when she had found out about his lunch with the “renowned” children’s book illustrator that she insisted Calista and Charley come for drinks. She had just popped down to the local bookstore to buy out their inventory of all the Jacobs books she had not already given to the grandchildren. Would Calista come, pen in hand, to autograph the books? On the way to their P Street residence, Calista had the cab driver swing by a McDonald’s so Charley could be fortified during what she anticipated to be a long goyische-style cocktail hour. From her experience, this meant lots of booze and little food, a small basket of chips, perhaps, and a willow- ware bowl with an onion soup dip.

  “Welcome to our home, Mrs. Jacobs. Bill and I are originally from Boston so it is a special treat when Bostonians come to visit. We love home folks.” Winnie Carlisle loomed like a big lavender ultra-suede tent in the small but exquisite foyer. How could such a big lady be named Winnie, Calista wondered.

  During the introductory remarks, Calista managed to take in a few details, such as two elegant marine paintings of clipper ships. She was later to be informed that one, the William E. Carlisle, had been lost after a twenty-year career in the China trade. Even before being apprised of this little piece of information, Calista’s instincts warned that perhaps it was better that she not dwell on the fact that she was hardly a native Bostonian and that her maiden name was Cohen. Not that she thought Winnie was exactly anti-Semitic. It was more the case of her being perhaps Semitically awkward. Calista had the impression that she was probably the first Jew they had ever had in their home. Jacobs was one of those names that could go either way, and they most likely had not thought of her as being any religion. There was a propensity amongst people to think of children’s illustrators as belonging to some small genderless coterie of humans who were without politics, sexual preferences, faith, or anything else that linked them to the harsher world of grown-ups. Why destroy Winnie’s notions?

  Calista had been quick to size up Bill and Winnie. It all came together as Winnie stood by a magnificent lacquered sewing table which Calista had commented on. The lid was opened and revealed a gilded scene of the harbor at Macao gleaming against black lacquer. From its myriad of compartments she was withdrawing some of the ivory work tools—a spool holder, a thimble, a darning egg. All were exquisitely handcrafted by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese carvers and bought up in shiploads by Americans crazy for chinoiserie. The best pieces were snapped up by a few East Coast families. Calista was certain that Winnie, looming large and lavender beside the sewing table, had arrived in such a family by marriage rather than birth.

  “Some people,” Winnie spoke in the cultivated nasal tones supposed to suggest elaborate genealogies and old money, “use these as bars. Can you imagine!”

  “No, no!” Calista said quickly in rote agreement. She knew she was right about Winnie. Not a Cabot, nor a Lodge, Low, or Salton- stall, but a parson’s daughter most likely. A slightly arranged marriage toward the end of an era when such things were done. Bill Carlisle had probably been a bachelor too long and his family had gently nudged him toward this union with the estimable Miss Winifred Nearly There. After all, who’s left by the time you’re forty? Winnie was at least ten years younger. That was obvious.

  “It’s a desecration.” Winnie was talking about the sewing table.

  “Yes, yes, certainly.” Why did people like this absolutely unnerve Calista so? It was the combination of the setting and the people. She lived in mortal agony of doing something untoward like farting, or saying fuck—a total failure of the cerebral cortex and a takeover by the limbic system. Or what would happen if she suddenly had aphasia and could only speak Yiddish? She’d have two dead senior citizens on her hands, that’s what she’d have.

  Charley was carrying on admirably.

  “Isn’t this a hoot?” Winnie had just expanded the swift used for winding yarn into balls and was spinning it around. The latticework of diamonds now blurred.

  “Yes. That’s very interesting,” Charley said.

  The spinning was making Calista slightly dizzy. She looked up. Directly over the fireplace was a portrait of an elegant Chinese man.

  “Houqua,” Bill Carlisle said. “Venerated Cantonese merchant. Managed to amass a fortune of over twenty million dollars. He was known as the most incorruptible of traders, absolutely impeccable in his dealings.”

  But whatever had been Bill Carlisle’s dealings as a cultural anthropologist in the South Pacific became blurred. During the extended bachelorhood there were long periods spent in Fiji, Palau, and assorted atolls where navigation techniques, migratory routes, Polynesian legends and art, and various aspects of the culture were explored. There were even trips back with Winnie after they were married. “The kids loved the Tuamotus,” Bill said.

  “I myself,” Winnie offered, “was ga-ga over Raratonga.”

  Ga-ga over Raratonga, Calista thought. You could live one hundred and fifty years and never hear a phrase like that. What peculiar confluences of events and circumstances had brought her to be sitting in this living room and hearing this particular combination of words? There were people who went through entire lifetimes never even hearing or saying the word Raratonga, let alone in conjunction with that reliquary adjective “ga-ga.” Somehow Calista felt that Bill had not been a real force in the field, even before it “happened” to him. Who had scooped him, Janet Mead? She had the feeling that Bill’s research while at Harvard may have enjoyed a matching grant from the old family coffers which had been filled by the China trade, largely opium no doubt.

  “Before you get to work, Mrs. Jacobs,” Winnie said, nodding toward the stack of books on the coffee table.

  “Oh, just call me Calista, please.”

  “All right, Calista, what can we offer you to drink? Bill and I are having martinis, if that interests you?”

  Martinis had never interested Calista. She felt like a beer, but thought twice about asking for that.

  “Rum and soda,” she said with sudden inspiration. It seemed somehow the appropriate choice. She could float off on a little rum cloud and pretend she was in Macao instead of P Street and that her name was Cabot Lodge Crowninshield instead of Calista Cohen Jacobs, and that she was the merchant owner of the bark Purity Wasp and having tea with Houqua instead of Winnie Nearly There Carlisle.

  She decided that she definitely had the hots for Houqua. They brought her rum and soda and Charley’s coke. As Calista autographed the books for the grandchildren, making swift, spare sketches above her signature and answering questions about being an illustrator, the little rum cloud started to work. Houqua was really attractive. She wondered if he was only impeccable in business. How peccable was he? In short, how long was his pecker? What a waste, all this wit in silence. “No, I used pen and ink and a little pencil here.” Her mind flew. She was the daughter of the merchant owner of the Purity Wasp. She was Chastity Cabot Lodge Crowninshield and she had been invited to the bed of the venerable Houqua. They smoked a little dope, had a little tea, looked at a few dirty pictures from the Kama Sutra to introduce some new positions. Hold it! Would the Kama Sutra have made it to China? The Chinese probably had their own book.

  “No, see, in this book I had to do color separations.” Calista explained the process of color separating onto acetate sheets to Bill, and thought about the venerable Houqua leading Chastity through the basics as illustrated in the Cantonese Book to Enlightened Pleasure, a Guide to Contemplative Fucking (or, How to Handle Your Wong in the Hong). It had been used by the Chinese for millenniums. There was, of course, the Poppy Seed Position followed by the Open Lotus.

  “Have you met Archibald Baldwin yet, my dear?” Winnie said as Calista was signing the last book.

  “No, I wish I could.”

  “He’s a hard man to catch up with,” Bill Carlisle said. “Always moving.”

  “That’s why he’s never married I guess,” Winnie added. “Lord knows women have tried.”

  “Oh, he’s never married?” Calista said.

  “Well actually he was married once to a little . . .” Winnie paused and Calista had a dreadful feeling that she was going to say “Jewish girl.” But she didn’t. “. . . to a little Canadian girl.” She might just as well have said a little wetback.

  “It didn’t last long,” Bill added. “It wasn’t any good. I think she left him for someone else.”

  “He’s still quite attractive,” Winnie said.

  “A bit droll, though,” Bill offered.

  After sitting in this room for forty-five minutes with Bill and Winnie and having fantasies about screwing a nineteenth-century

  Cantonese merchant, who knew what droll was anymore, Calista thought.

  “Droll, Bill? How do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know. That whole Dartmouth thing—machismo-schol- ar-in-the-canoe routine.”

  “Dartmouth!” It was the nearest a woman like Winnie ever came to screaming. She might have spotted a mouse in her pantry. “Arch Baldwin went to Dartmouth!”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you mean, of course! He came from Louisburg Square. His parents lived right around the corner from your family.”

  “So?” Bill said.

  “Well, why in heaven’s name didn’t he go to Harvard?”

  “Well, I don’t know, my dear. You would have to ask him. He did for his graduate work, but as an undergraduate he went to Dartmouth. And I daresay he’s a Dartmouth man through and through.” “But the Baldwins . . .” She turned to Calista. “We knew them over the years. Why, his father and Bill’s brother were in the Tavern Club together and I think Mother Carlisle and his grandmother were in the Vincent Club at the same time. I can’t believe he didn’t go to Harvard as an undergraduate. How bizarre!”

  If you want something bizarre, Winnie, Calista thought, try the Open Lotus position.

  There was some more talk about Baldwin—his eminence in the field, his almost fanatical passion for the Desert West, which they attributed in part to lack of family life. Calista of course thought that was a crock. Being passionate about one’s profession and having a family life were not mutually exclusive, only for second-rate minds. They stood in the foyer saying their good-byes.

  “You know,” Bill Carlisle said, “I have never enjoyed the stature in my field that Arch has in his. He is truly a great, a brilliant mind, and coupled with this unbelievable passion and energy, he has left a mark on his field that few of us could ever dream of. One might envy him, does envy him. But it is sad in a way too, and I have to confess that I made the most insensitive remark to him a year or so ago which I’ve always regretted and felt terrible about.”

  “Oh now Bill, I’m sure it was nothing.” Winnie patted his arm. “No. It was something given the context. It was when young Gardiner was steaming away out there at Rosestone. I said something about how Gardiner would certainly get a textbook out of it.”