A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

had given him her phone number at the hospital. John’s mother, most likely, if anyone … well, she, Angie, wasn’t going to say anything about Valentine Kaiser to John just yet. It wouldn’t hurt just to wait until she’d seen what Uncle Matthew’s apartment really looked like.

      She was in the museum, in front of an Andy Warhol, wondering if there might be some deep meaning that she was missing, when her fiancé caught up with her. John was twenty-seven, four or five years older than Angie. They’d met several months ago, at a party, a fundraising kind of thing really, given by some of John’s friends. Angie had been present as an administrator, attractive and knowledgeable, if somewhat junior, of St. Thomas More’s, the hospital which stood to collect most of the raised funds.

      John was a little under six feet, half a foot taller than Angie, strong-jawed, and sturdy, as befitted a former amateur wrestler who’d once made it to the state finals. His light brown hair, cut fairly short, still retained a tendency to curl.

      They kissed. The embrace was a bit on the casual side, appropriate for a couple who’d already been sharing an apartment and a bedroom for a month. He asked her: “How was your day?”

      “Interesting, so far.” She didn’t tell the most interesting part, not yet, but mentioned a couple of incidents having to do with her job. “I’m looking forward to the evening.”

      John grunted something. It was not precisely an agreement.

      Twice, as they walked back toward the looming tower that housed Maule’s condominium, it was on the tip of Angie’s tongue to tell her fiancé about her encounter with Valentine Kaiser. But each time she bit the impulse back. Later, of course, she’d tell him—and tell Uncle Matthew, too, most likely. Most likely the three of them would have a good laugh about it. That is, they would provided that Uncle Matthew didn’t turn out really to be the kind to put up photographs of—but of course he wouldn’t. No one who Johnny felt so close to could turn out to be like that. And in any case, Angie wanted to handle the matter of Valentine Kaiser herself, not simply turn him over to the menfolk.

      “So,” she said instead. “Uncle Matthew is taking us out to dinner?”

      “Yeah.” John, walking beside her, sounded preoccupied, almost as if he might be developing belated doubts about the evening’s plan. “He’s not actually my uncle, you know,” he added, almost absently.

      “Yes, I know that.” Angie felt vaguely troubled. “Because you’ve told me about half a dozen times over the past month.”

      “I have?”

      “Yes. Every time you say he’s not really your uncle, and then you get stuck, as if you don’t know how to continue. So what is it about Uncle Matthew? Obviously he’s important to you, if you’re bringing me to meet him.”

      “Well, he is,” said John, and then appeared to get stuck again.

      “Do you want to invite, him to our wedding?” It was the first time she’d raised the point.

      “I do,” he said at once, then waffled. “But there’s some question…”

      “Yes, there seems to be. He’s some old friend of your father’s?”

      “Well. Actually, no, he isn’t. Dad’s met him, but he doesn’t even … he’s an old friend of the family.” John seemed pleased at having found that way to express it. “He was a good friend of my grandmother, who died during that episode when I was kidnapped. When I was sixteen.”

      So then, thought Angie, we are making progress. Non-Uncle Matthew must be quite elderly. She was growing increasingly curious about, and anxious to meet, this man who was not quite an uncle, who had known John’s family for many years, but whom nobody in John’s family liked to talk to her about, even when it was certain that she and John were getting married.

      Matthew Maule. And now, not for the first time, she had the feeling that somewhere, before ever meeting John, she had heard that name, or read it … that could easily have happened, she supposed, in the case of a man of wealth and power, no matter how reclusive he tried to be.

      The building in which the mystery lived admitted Angie and John somewhat awkwardly at street level. Feet thumping on a temporary wooden sidewalk, they skirted the barricades of a construction area before arriving in a small retail mall of shops. Next came a busy lobby. Presently the two of them were alone in one of the express elevators, beginning a long ascent.

      John suddenly raised his hands, drawing her attention to them. On the night they had first met, Angie—feeling then, at the discovery, more than pity, a vague thrill of mystery and romance—had realized that both of John’s little fingers were missing. His hands had only three fingers and a thumb apiece, almost as if they might belong to some character in an animated cartoon, where economy in the number of digits to be drawn was of some importance. But it was obvious as soon as you looked closely at John’s hands that he hadn’t been born that way; dots of old scar tissue, the tidy residue of surgical repair following some much cruder damage, marked each knuckle where a finger should have been.

      “I’ve already told you something about how I lost the fingers,” John said, with the air of someone about to take a plunge.

      “About how you were kidnapped when you were sixteen. Yes, that must have been so horrible. My poor darling! I was too young then to pay much attention to stories in the news.” And since they were alone, Angie reached for his hands, one after the other, and impulsively kissed the scarred knuckles.

      John murmured something that was almost a groan. Further exchanges of affection followed, until the young man with an air of urgency disengaged himself. They were passing the sixtieth floor now, and going up faster, feeling the change of pressure in their ears. There was not much time left to talk in privacy.

      John said: