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

“I’ve been putting off trying to explain something. About Uncle Matthew.”

      “Really? Don’t tell me! He’s not really your uncle?” Angelina, wide-eyed, was nodding as if in an exaggerated effort to give encouragement.

      “You’re not making it any easier.”

      “All right, I’m sorry, darling.” She felt contrite. There must be some genuine difficulty. “Start again. Could it be—something about the way he decorates his apartment, maybe?”

      “Decorates his apartment?” John was looking at her vacantly. “I don’t have any idea what that means. I’ve never been up here before.”

      “Oh. I’m sorry. Never mind, go on.”

      John drew a deep breath. “Well, as I was trying to say, one thing you don’t know yet, Angie, is that if it weren’t for this man you’re going to meet, the rest of me would doubtless be in about the same shape as my two missing fingers.” He raised his hands again, wriggling the eight digits he still possessed. “I mean I wouldn’t be here now.”

      This was unexpected news; but it did sound vaguely as if it might connect with the image of the eccentric philanthropist. Angie said: “No, you didn’t tell me anything like that.”

      “Now that I’ve told you, forget I’ve told you. I mean, it stays within the family, okay?”

      “You mean within the small segment of the family in front of whom it’s safe to mention Uncle Matthew’s name.”

      “Ah … yeah.”

      She gazed at him hopefully. “Okay. But surely there’s nothing shameful about his having somehow saved your life. Why should it be a secret?”

      “Nothing shameful. No. Just don’t mention this man to my father, okay? Judy is okay to talk to, and Kate and Joe.” John leaned back against the elevator wall with his arms folded. The numbers on the floor indicator over the door kept creeping higher.

      Suddenly John had a new idea. “By the way, if he doesn’t want to eat or drink anything at dinner tonight, don’t pester him about it, okay? Often he’s on a—special diet”

      “Sure.” She paused. “John, are you under the impression that you’ve explained anything to me? Because I think I’m still right in there with your father. I mean, as fitting into the category of those who don’t understand at all.”

      John stared past her, obviously nervous and trying to think. At last he said: “Maybe it’ll be better if you meet him first.”

      “Maybe it will Meet him and see his apartment.”

      “Sure,” John agreed, looking puzzled, obviously wondering why she kept mentioning the apartment. And now Angie and the man she loved seemed to be on the verge of quarreling.

      Angie liked John’s two older sisters, Judy and Kate, though she had seen very little of Judy. And she liked Kate’s husband, Joe, who used to be a Chicago cop, before he married into the Southerland money, and even for some time afterward. Was there perhaps a trend in the family to marry people who didn’t have nearly as much money as they had?

      They had passed the eightieth floor and now were slowing to a stop. The door opened. Angie, disembarking from the elevator, caught a glimpse out of a window at the end of a corridor, looking down now on most of the smog and muck of the city’s atmosphere, with a startling panorama of Lake Michigan, shoreless as an ocean. She supposed that from up here on a very clear day the Michigan shore, fifty miles away, would be visible.

      John found the door number he was looking for, and pressed the button, then without waiting for a response knocked lightly. His left hand came over and took hold of Angie’s right, as they stood together in front of the viewer centered in the upper panel.

      Fully thirty seconds had passed, and Angelina was about to wonder aloud whether they should ring again, when the door opened.

      Whatever tentative, imaginative image of Uncle Matthew Angie had been beginning to form went glimmering. Surely a friend of John’s late grandmother ought to be older than this. The man in the doorway was no more than forty at the outside. Lean, a few inches taller than John, putting him a shade over six feet. Straight black hair cut rather short, a chiseled face, high cheekbones, arresting eyes that at once fastened on her expectantly. Even as he opened the door he was still shrugging his solid shoulders into a gray-brown sportcoat.

      “Good evening,” he said in a low voice, still looking directly at Angie. There was a suggestion of some European accent in his voice, of formality in his manner despite relatively casual dress.

      “Good evening,” said John, and paused perceptibly, perhaps to swallow. “Uncle Matthew. This is Angelina. We’re going to be married.”

      “Ah. Ah!” Uncle Matthew must have been expecting them, but still gave an impression of genuine surprise. No matter, he was pleased. “Come in, come in! And such a beautiful young woman. Congratulations are certainly in order!”

      As soon as she had stepped across his threshold, he reached for both her hands. A moment later she was being embraced and kissed on both cheeks. John and Uncle Matthew were pumping each other’s hands. And then she and the two men had all burst into a pleasant babble of phatic utterance, even as Uncle Matthew, with a city-dweller’s routine caution, made sure that the door was closed and bolted behind his guests.

      “Angelina, John, you must each have a drink to celebrate. But no, later perhaps, dinner reservations have been made on the ninety-fifth floor, and it would be good to be prompt.”

      There wasn’t much time to look around the apartment, But, for the time being, enough. Angie noted with relief that of naked women, exploitive photographs, pornographic paintings, there was no sign, not at least from her vantage point near the entrance.

      In fact, at first look, what she could see of the entry and the living room struck her as almost disappointingly ordinary, except for the unusual number of bookshelves, and a crossed pair of wooden spears, or harpoons, serving as wall decorations. She could heartily approve of bookshelves.

      The furniture was unobtrusive, generally modern, with the