Fatal Reaction

already cranked it up to high gear. Not only could I hear her in the kitchen chewing out one of the caterers for some imagined oversight, but the door to my father’s study was firmly shut. Father, of course, never actually studied anything in his life, but this was the one room in the house where he was permitted to smoke cigars and watch what he wanted on TV. From beyond the closed door of this sanctuary I could hear that he had already turned the volume up to drown out the shouting.
    By the time Stephen arrived all was serene. The house was filled with the eloquent calm that is so famous for always following the storm. One of the maids had tearfully given notice, and the catering manager, mistaking me for one of the staff, had confided that the way you could tell God had a sense of humor was by whom he had given money to. As usual my mother was completely unrepentant. In her mind, her outbursts were not just par for the course, but the price you had to pay to make a party perfect.
    While she would never admit to it, Mother loves to show off her house. It is, after all, a tribute to her taste, not to mention my father’s pocketbook. The rooms are grand but beautifully proportioned. Precious objects draw the eye. Some of the antiques have been passed down through generations of Prescotts and Millhollands, while others were specially chosen for a particular spot on shopping trips to France and England. There were just enough China trade heirlooms, masses of blue-and-white porcelain, and old paintings of sailing ships to demonstrate our Yankee lineage. The fresh flowers had been flown in the day before from Hawaii and sumptuously arranged.
    Stephen arrived looking like the god of Armani, perfect from the bottom of his hand-sewn Italian shoes to the top of his freshly barbered head. Mother beamed at him as she offered her cheek to be kissed. It struck me, watching from the top of the stairs, that the two of them looked like they belonged together. I, on the other hand, looked like a refugee from a fire sale at Chanel. My mother, who invariably had her dressmaker remove the trademark buttons from her Chanel jackets because she thought them tacky (and besides, anybody who mattered would recognize the designer without having to resort to anything so crass as checking the buttons....), had insisted that I be outfitted in head-to-toe Chanel, buttons and all, in order to impress the Japanese. For herself, she had chosen an elegant Issey Miyake dress in deference to our foreign visitors.
    Needless to say, our Azor guests were as oblivious to all of this as I was to particle physics. They started trickling in, in dribs and drabs, unfashionably early and in obvious awe at where they found themselves. In addition to the ZK-501 scientists, Stephen had invited the members of Azor’s scientific advisory board. The SAB scientists advised the company in their area of expertise, but more important lent the weight of their credentials to the upstart company. It was interesting to watch my mother size them up, dismissing with a brief lowering of her lids a Nobel prizewinner because he was wearing polyester pants.
    The five limousines bearing our Japanese guests pulled into the circular drive at the stroke of seven. Mother, who had entertained three presidents and several foreign heads of state under her roof, afforded them the same treatment. Cocktails were served in the northeast parlor, a heartbreakingly pretty room with enormous mullioned windows that looked out over the lake. In the distance, the lights of the city seemed to glimmer expressly for our pleasure.
    This was really my first chance to observe Chairman Takisawa, and I confess my eyes followed him with the concentration of an assassin. If the negotiation with Takisawa could be likened to a high-stakes game of chess, then old man Takisawa was my opponent and whatever impressions I could glean from him before the games began had the potential for being enormously valuable.
    That he would prove a daunting adversary I had no doubt. That afternoon I’d finally had a chance to read through the sheaf of articles Cheryl had dug up about him. More than one alluded to the fact that as a young man he’d spent much of World War II interrogating American prisoners of war. Several authors in the business press also pointed out that while Takisawa was fluent in English, he often feigned ignorance of the language in order to maneuver for advantage.
    Like most of his countrymen he was