Iris said. “That’s what Julian called it when I got him to come. For dad’s sake, not that he cares.” The last minute, the eleventh hour. Bea had booked a midnight flight. In her odious room two floors above, her bags were packed and ready. “He thinks you’re going to crucify him,” Iris said. “Fatten him up for the slaughter, serve his head on a platter.” Her ears had reddened; she was emptying glass after glass — it was soon evident that the three convivial bottles Bea had ordered wouldn’t suffice. Julian, his mind on his meat, went on feeding as if he had been famished for months. The boy was a carnivore, the boy had an appetite! And beside him Lili, half screened by the heavy curtain that secluded this corner of the dining parlor and overhung the heaped-up bowls and bubbling sauces and tubs of dumplings and trays of tarts sent parading around them. Fragrances of what was yet to come flowed in from the kitchen. Bea had been extravagant! But a fiasco, all of it. A futility from beginning to end.
