Final Option

thousand dinner parties, has no notion of how to converse with someone who is not wearing a tuxedo. So we sit among the silver and the Spode, struggling to fill in the gaps between appetizer and dessert.
    Through the soup Mother brought us up to date on her latest decorating project—a complete overhaul of the living room, music room, and solarium.
    “I know it will shock people,” she confided, “but I’ve decided to try a new decorator. Mimi Ashford is so done. One of her rooms is like a shirt with ‘Chanel’ on the front. I can tell right away when I walk into a room if Mimi’s had a hand in it. There are certain signatures, things that she does in every room the same way, like those elaborate swags and tails for draperies we have in the music room now. Besides, she’s terribly strict. While we were having lunch together I said that I thought it would be wonderful if we could have someplace in the living room to put a drink down. Mimi just looked me in the eye and said: ‘No coffee tables, period.’ That’s why I’m trying a new decorator—Gordon something or other. Binnie Wadsworth swears by him, and at least he doesn’t seem so bossy. Besides, he should find his schedule a lot freer after today. I know he was set to redo the ballroom at the Hexters’. I can’t believe that Pamela will be going ahead with that now.”
    “Have you heard the news?” asked my father, turning to Stephen. “It seems someone’s gone and shot Bart Hexter. Killed him dead at the end of his driveway.”
    “Miriam called me this afternoon and told me the news,” replied Mother. “It seems one of her maids has a sister who works for the Hexters—you know, these foreign servants are all related. I think it’s scandalous how bold these thieves are becoming. Miriam is talking about getting an electric fence and calling one of those companies that rents attack dogs.”
    “I don’t think he was shot by a burglar,” I said.
    “What makes you say that?” demanded Mother. “Miriam has it from Sissy Linder that there’s been a ring of thieves positively casing this neighborhood for weeks.”
    “He was a client of mine. I was at his house this morning right after he was shot.”
    Stephen, who’d heard all about it in the car on the wav to my parents, listened politely to my recitation of the day's events.
    “He finally cheated the wrong person,” pronounced my father when I’d finished, his face flushed with gin.
    “Nonsense,” replied my mother. “People who in vest in futures expect to be cheated.”
    “Not cheated, Mother,” I protested, ever loyal to my client. “People who speculate are prepared to lose money. They know it is a risky investment.”
    “He was a no-good Irishman who finally got what was coming to him,” declared my father.
    “What was he like?” Stephen asked.
    “Not quite our sort,” interjected Mother knowingly. “Flashy. Pamela did her best with him, but everything Bart did had to be the biggest and the most expensive. It really was tiresome. People put up with him of course, for her sake, but he’d never been accepted in the normal way.”
    “And were they happy together?” I inquired. “Happy?” echoed Mother as if the word was not familiar to her. “Who can say whether a marriage is happy? They certainly made a great show of affection. But Bart had a terrible temper, too, and I know they fought sometimes. They were at a party at the club Saturday night, and I know they had some sort of argument—at least Gladys and Elmer Cranshaw had to give Pamela a ride home. But I think in general everyone agrees that they got along.”
    “And it was a lucky thing,” piped in my father. “Pamela was always a peculiar girl. Odd. I’m sure no one thought she’d ever marry. Bart might have not been a sahib, but he did a lot to bring her out of herself. The Mandersons have always been strange. Her father, Sterling, was a bully and a prig.”
    “No matter what anybody thought of Bart, I’m sure this is a terrible thing for Pamela,” said Mother. “How embarrassing. I can’t imagine anything more vulgar than being shot.”
     
    * * *
     
    I arrived home to find my roommate lying on the living room floor. Dressed in her habitual scrubs of surgical green, she had clamped headphones over her ears The cord that connected them to the stereo snaked across the floor.
    “Bad day?” I shouted.
    Claudia opened her eyes, got up wearily, and turned down the volume. She was a tiny woman,