Champagne for One

He snorted. "Act with women? You? Ha! With your thousand triumphs! Advice from me? Archie, that is upside down!"

"Thanks for the plug, but these women are special." With a fingertip I wiped up a speck of anchovy butter that had dropped on the table and licked it off. "Here’s the problem. This Mrs Robilotti’s first husband was Albert Grantham, who spent the last ten years of his life doing things with part of the three or four hundred million dollars he had inherited-things to improve the world, including the people in it. I assume you will admit that a girl who has a baby but no husband needs improving."

Fritz pursed his lips. "First I would have to see the girl and the baby. They might be charming."

"It’s not a question of charm, or at least it wasn’t with Grantham. His dealing with the problem of unmarried mothers wasn’t one of his really big operations, but he took a personal interest in it. He would rarely let his name be attached to any of his projects, but he did with that one. The place he built for it up in Dutchess County was called Grantham House and still is. What’s that you’re putting in?"

"Marjoram. I’m trying it."

"Don’t tell him and see if he spots it. When the improved mothers were graduated from Grantham House they were financed until they got jobs or husbands, and even then they were not forgotten. One way of keeping in touch was started by Grantham himself a few years before he died. Each year on his birthday he had his wife invite four of them to dinner at his home on Fifth Avenue, and also invite, for their dinner partners, four young men. Since his death, five years ago, his wife has kept it up. She says she owes it to his memory-though she is now married to a specimen named Robert Robilotti who has never been in the improving business. Today is Grantham’s birthday, and that’s where I’m going for dinner. I am one of the four young men."

"No!" Fritz said.

"Why no?"

"You, Archie?"

"Why not me?"

"It will ruin everything. They will all be back at Grantham House in less than a year."