A Sudden Light: A Novel by Garth Stein

Author:Garth Stein [Stein, Garth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2014-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

– 26 –

DICKIE DANCES

Before dinner that evening, Serena was charged up. She was on fire. She put my father and me to work washing the fancy china from the formal dining room, where we would be dining. After that, my father and I were set to polishing the silver. She had Grandpa Samuel sweeping the porch and washing windows with vinegar and newspaper.

Serena, for her part, baked and cooked and chopped and whisked—her mixing bowl clasped tightly to her breadbasket and her wrist snapping around so quickly it was only a blur. She paused to take her relaxation breaths frequently, a quasi plié with her fingers arching at the ends of her gracefully bowed arms as she inhaled and then bent over to stretch. I was impressed with her flexibility, but then, one would assume maximum flexibility from a seductress of her caliber, I guessed. We were having fresh bread and homemade aioli, orange and fennel salad, an olive spread thing, and a dish of thinly sliced raw beef, which was called carpaccio. She’d found the recipe in a copy of Bon Appétit, I deduced from the frequently consulted magazine lying on the counter. I’d never eaten raw beef, but Serena assured me I would love it; it was a summery dish, she said.

All of this commotion was because Richard, a.k.a. Dickie, was coming to dinner.

Dickie was Serena’s alleged boyfriend. I thought of him as “alleged” because he had yet to make an appearance at Riddell House, and how close can you be to your boyfriend if he never stops by the house? I quizzed Serena about him, but she was less than forthcoming with details. I knew that Dickie was in real estate, and that Serena supposedly worked with him but not for him, but I didn’t know how they met or how long they’d been dating. I gleaned, through a process of deduction in which I factored nonresponses, as well as likely falsified answers and plausibly correct answers, that Dickie was responsible for the telephone-directory-size blue binder my father had been toting around since we’d arrived. Proposal for the Development of . . .

Which meant Dickie was part of the deal, which was good, because Dickie would help facilitate the reunion of my parents, insofar as exploiting the land for profit would result in everybody being happy again. But it was also bad, because the deal ran contrary to the desires of a ghost who seemed to have singled me out for direct communication and implementation of a different agenda. And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to carry on a conversation with a ghost, especially if the ghost was telling me to do something that would dash my father’s plans and, no doubt, snuff out any hope I had of getting my parents back together. So it was with a certain measured caution that I anticipated meeting Dickie. Because I really wasn’t sure how Dickie would take to the latest development in the Proposal for the Development of .

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