Chapter 28

“It may have been a fitting metaphor for their marriage. As Cyrus Junior escorted his mother from her vigil-in-vain, another son, Hugo, awaited the rescuing Carpathia and Cyrus Senior’s surviving mistress, whom he whisked to the countryside, where she and her illegitimate Van Doozie baby were never heard of again—illegitimacy being such a thing in those days.

“You’re shivering. Are you cold? It’s this damn air conditioning. Spring has barely sprung but already Her Highness—my wife, Catherine—insists on keeping the temperature set on Arctic.”

Mort got up from his favorite bottle-green leather chair and adjusted the thermostat, pretending to shoot it when it refused to budge, which made Quinn laugh.

“Catherine: When I met her she was Kate, sometimes Katie—a rebel with a cause and without a pause. But everything ends, including the sixties, and yesterday’s radical is today’s conservative. Catherine, as she is once more known, is more Van Doozie than thou, if you get my drift.”