The Dinner Party by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

excellent wine cellar, both here and in Washington. Now he said to Dolly, “Well, Miss Dolly, you better run the menu through for me again.”
    Dolly knew that he knew exactly what would be served for dinner, and that this was a sort of apology on her part for ordering him away from a pleasant ride to the airport and into the pantry to polish the silver and do other odds and ends, like extending the table and finding flowers in the garden that might be cut. She didn’t mind. “Quenelle of sole, broiled lamb leg, salad, and lemon mousse. In the library, we’ll have assorted nuts, cheese sticks and olives with the drinks.”
    MacKenzie thought about it for a moment. “We have a nice white wine. It’s very dry, but light and nice, maybe the best white wine there is. Pavillon Blanc nineteen seventy-eight. It’s a Château—Margaux, I think?”
    Dolly, now as always, was impressed. Mac had been reading books on wine for years, and anticipating that she would question him today, he had already worked out the selections. Dolly nodded.
    â€œFor the quenelle,” he said. “I’d use the same wine in the library.”
    â€œBut not for the lamb?”
    â€œI thought maybe some variety. I was looking for a rosé, but we don’t have more than three bottles of any rosé and it wouldn’t hurt to have something a little heavier with the meat, because most people think it’s beef anyway, the way we do it. We got almost a full case of the Lafite-Rothschild red Bordeaux, nineteen sixty-four, and it’s something we been saving for something real special, if this is that special?”
    Dolly grinned and the two blacks began to giggle. “I don’t know,” Dolly said. “They run the country, but I don’t know whether that makes them special. What do you think, Ellen?”
    â€œNow don’t go asking me what I think because trouble comes out of that. What I think is that Mac could get himself one of them jobs in a fancy restaurant when you retire us as a—what do you call it?”
    â€œNo retirement,” Dolly said.
    â€œSommelier,” MacKenzie said. “You like that suggestion of the Rothschild?”
    â€œAbsolutely. Now, you know, Mac, I want you to do the carving and the wine. Have Nellie serve, but you rehearse her about which is her left hand and which is her right, and you pour the wine. Now do you think we should have something with the dessert?”
    â€œJust the mousse?”
    â€œWe have cigarette cookies,” Ellen said. “Nice and light. I made them yesterday.”
    â€œI forgot about that,” Dolly nodded. “Absolutely. Then we should have champagne. Do we have anything special?”
    â€œWe got a case of Cordon Bleu, and we got four bottles, I think, of Dom Perignon, same year as the Margaux, seventy-eight, and really high class.”
    â€œGood. Put them in the fridge and then get the boards in the table. I’ll set it with Ellen just as soon as we can. You know about lunch,” she said to Ellen, “put out cold cuts and a salad niçoise and bread and relish and that sort of thing. We can’t bother with more than that.”
    â€œI’ll hardboil some eggs.”
    â€œWonderful, wonderful.” Dolly sighed and leaned back in her chair and reflected on the curious ritual they were going through. Making a dinner party. Elizabeth had once said to her, “Dinner parties are ridiculous. You go through this endless fuss and bother, and this and that must be just right, with this wine and that sauce, and Mother dear, it’s absolutely silly, and it’s such a real, heavy class thing.” But Elizabeth was wrong. It was a ritual, Dolly agreed, but not silly—indeed one of the very oldest rituals that had come down unchanged from the misty beginnings of civilization; and right now, sitting in her marvelous twentieth-century kitchen with its eight-burner