The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub Read Free Book Online

Road.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I want to see something,” he said. Evidently he did not intend to tell her what it was.
    “This might come as a surprise to you, but I thought your father was attacking me.”
    “Nothing he said was personal. You’re the one who was personal.”
    Nora silently cataloged the ways in which she had felt attacked by Alden Chancel and selected the safest. “He loves talking about my age. Alden always thought I was too old for you.”
    “He never said anything about your age.”
    “He said I was the oldest person at the table.”
    “For God’s sake, Nora, he was being playful. And right then, he was giving you a compliment, if you didn’t notice. In fact, he complimented you about a hundred times.”
    “He was flirting with me, and I hate it. He uses it as a way to put people down.”
    “That’s crazy. People in his generation all give out these heavy-handed compliments. They think it’s like offering a woman a bouquet of flowers.”
    “I know,” Nora said, “but that’s what’s crazy.”
    Davey shook his head. Nora leaned back in the seat and watched the splendid houses go by. Alden had been right about one thing: in front of every estate stood a metal plaque bearing the name of a security company. Many promised an ARMED RESPONSE.
    He gave her a brief, flat glare. “One more thing. I shouldn’t have to say this to you, but apparently I do.”
    She waited.
    “What my mother does up in her studio is her business. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Nora.” Another angry glare. “Just in case you didn’t get what Dad was telling you. Pretty damn tactfully, too, I thought.”
    More dismayed than she wished to appear, Nora inhaled and slowly released her breath as she worked out a response. “First of all, Davey, I wasn’t interfering with her. She was happy to see me, and I enjoyed being with her.” In Davey’s answering glance she saw that he wanted to believe this. “In fact, it was like being with a completely different person than who she was at lunch. She was having a good time. She was funny.”
    “Okay, that’s nice. But I really don’t want you to wind up making her feel worse than she already does.”
    For a moment, Nora looked at him without speaking. “You don’t think she does any work up there, do you? Neither does your father. Both of you think she’s been faking it for years, and you go along because you want to protect her, or something like that.”
    “Or something like that.” Some of his earlier bitterness put an edge on his voice. “Ever hear the expression ‘Don’t rock the boat’?” He glanced over at her with an unhappy mockery in his eyes. “You believe she goes up there to work? Is that what you’re saying?”
    “I think she’s writing
something
, yes.”
    He groaned. “I’m sure that’s nice for both of you.”
    “Wouldn’t you like your mother and me to be, maybe not friends, but more like friends than we are now?”
    “She never had friends.” Davey thought for a second. “I suppose she was friends, as close to it as she could get, with the Cup Bearer. Then she quit, and that was that. I was devastated. I didn’t think she’d ever leave. I probably thought Helen Day was my real mother. The other one certainly didn’t spend much time with me.”
    “I wish you could have seen the way she was with me. Sort of . . . lighthearted.”
    “Sort of drunk,” Davey said. “Surprise, surprise.” He sighed, so sadly that Nora wanted to put her arms around him. “For which, of course, she has a very good reason.”
    Alden,
Nora thought, but Davey would never blame the great publisher for his mother’s condition. She tilted her head and quizzed him with her eyes.
    “The other one. The one before me, the one who died. It’s obvious.”
    “Oh, yes.” Nora nodded, suddenly seeing Davey, as she had a hundred times, seated in the living room under a lamp from Michaelman’s with
Night Journey
in his hands, staring