Rogue

On Friday night, when Charles appeared to pick her up, everything worked like a Swiss clock. The house was deserted. Zelda was off. Daphne was spending the night with friends, as was Sam, having recovered from the flu, and Jack was at a party at a friend's before a bar mitzvah the next night. Maxine had bought scotch, vodka, gin, champagne, and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. She was ready for him. She was wearing a short black dress, her hair in a neat bun, diamond earrings, and a string of pearls, and the house was silent.

When she let him in on the dot of seven, Charles entered with the look of a man heading across a minefield. He looked around, listened to the deafening silence, and stared at her in amazement.

“What did you do with your kids?” he asked nervously, and she smiled at him.

“I put them up for adoption, and fired the nanny. I was sad to let them go, but you have to have priorities in life. I didn't want to spoil another evening. They went very quickly.” He laughed and followed her into the kitchen, where she poured him a scotch and soda at his request, and carried a silver bowl of nuts into the living room. The silence was almost eerie. “I'm really sorry about Tuesday, Charles.” It had been a scene right out of a movie. Or real life. A little too much so.

“It was kind of like hazing when I was in college.” Getting put in the trunk of a car with alcohol poisoning might have been easier and more fun, but he was willing to give it another shot. There was a lot about Maxine that he liked. She was a serious, intelligent woman with a booming career in the medical field, highly respected, and she was beautiful as well. It was a combination that was tough to beat. The only thing about her that unnerved him somewhat were her kids. He just wasn't used to that, and didn't feel a need for children in his life. But they were part of the package with her. And this time, at least, she had gotten them out of the way, and they would be able to enjoy an adult evening, which was what he preferred.

La Grenouille had very kindly given him another reservation for eight o'clock that night, and hadn't held Tuesday's last-minute cancellation against him. He went there often and was a good client. Maxine and Charles left her apartment at a quarter to eight, and reached the restaurant precisely on time, and were given an excellent table. The evening had been perfect so far, he observed, but the night was young. Nothing would have startled him now, after the introduction he'd had to her life three days before. For a minute there, he had been tempted to run. But now he was glad he hadn't. He liked Maxine a lot, and she was great to talk to.

For the first half of dinner, over scallops, soft shell crab, followed by pheasant and Chateaubriand, they discussed their work, and current medical issues that were pertinent to both of them. He liked her ideas, and was impressed by her accomplishments. And they were just starting on their soufflés when he mentioned Blake.

“I'm surprised your children aren't more critical of him, since you say he's such a no-show with them and is never around.” He realized that that was a real testimonial to her, since she could easily have turned them against him, and most women would, given how little he helped her.

“He's basically a nice man,” she said simply. “Wonderful, in fact. And they see that. He's just not very attentive.”

“He sounds very selfish, and incredibly self-indulgent,” Charles observed, and Maxine conceded that he wasn't wrong.

“It would be hard not to be,” Maxine said quietly, “given what happened with his success. Very few people could resist that and keep a level head. He has a lot of toys, and he likes to have fun. All the time, in fact. Blake doesn't do anything that's not fun, or high risk. That's just his style, it always was. The other path he could have chosen was to pour his money into philanthropy. And he does a fair amount of that, but he's not involved in charity in any hands-on kind of way. Basically, he figures that life is short, he's been lucky, and he wants to have a good time. He was adopted, and I think in a funny way, even though he had nice adoptive parents who loved him, he's always been insecure about life, and about himself. He wants to grab everything he can, before someone takes it away from him, or he loses it. That's a tough pathology to fight. The constant fear of abandonment and loss, so he grabs everything with both hands, and loses in the end anyway. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“He must be very sorry he lost you,” Charles said cautiously.