The Pact Read Online Free

noble trait, however undeserving its object might be. But Peter’s words still didn’t explain why Richard had asked him in the first place. Was Richard that bereft of close friends? It was entirely possible, I guessed; I was all too aware that to know Richard well was to despise him.
    Richard’s tedious colleague stood to give the next toast, and Peter turned his head to listen. This provided me with an excellent opportunity to observe his profile, the strong set of his jaw, and the handful of prematurely gray hairs at his temple. I pretended to listen to the toast, laughing at the appropriate moments, but mostly I was busy looking at Peter’s left hand, loosely gripping his champagne glass, and thinking about how nice his left earlobe was. I caught myself unconsciously leaning toward it, the better to give it a gentle nibble. “Behave yourself,” I admonished my wayward id.
    The toasts went on, as they usually do, interminably. It turned out that I’d had no need to fear the audience’s level of sobriety. A number of drunken but earnest souls, some of whom barely knew either the bride or the groom, stood to bless Richard and Emma’s union. Finally, the last well-meaning speaker had slurred his way through a wandering speech and sunk back into his seat. I saw Emma’s mother give the bandleader a discreet but urgent hand signal. Her sense of etiquette was extraordinarily well developed, and the endless toasting and clinking of glasses was probably like a form of torture to her. She hated public displays of emotion and frivolous sentimentality more than anyone I’d ever met; if I found the toasts tiresome, she probably found them excruciating.
    Peter turned toward me as the band began to play. “Care to dance?” he asked.
    “I’d love to,” I answered, quickly, before my brain could thoroughly analyze the situation and pass down a judgment that would forbid physical contact of any sort. He helped me up from my chair and took my hand in his. His palm was pleasantly warm and dry. From the corner of my eye, I saw Jane and Luisa exchange a bemused look.
    Peter led me onto the dance floor and swung me smoothly into a fox-trot. I silently thanked my parents for those nights as a child when my mother had played our old battered piano while my father twirled me around the living room, my bare feet resting atop his polished shoes as he taught me the elements of ballroom dance that he’d learned long ago in Moscow.
    I was so appreciative of how well Peter led and so busy refereeing the battle raging between disparate internal constituents that I almost forgot to pay attention to anything he was saying.
    “—how talented she is,” I heard him say. “I mean, I’d heard her name, but I’ve never really followed the art scene. And somehow I never pictured Richard with an artist. I was in New York on business a few months ago, and I stopped into the gallery to see her show. I had no idea—I mean, I didn’t know what to expect, really, but I was incredibly impressed. I would have been interested in buying a couple of pieces if everything hadn’t already been sold. Although, I doubt I would have been able to afford anything. The prices all seemed to have an extra zero or two on them.” He was talking about Emma’s most recent exhibition, I realized, which had opened at the prestigious Gagosian Gallery in May and met with unqualified critical praise.
    “Everything was spoken for by the end of the opening,” I told him proudly. “And the reviews were great, too. As soon as I can get a day off, I’m going to have to dredge up all of my old notebooks and letters to see if Emma doodled in any of the margins. I could make a killing on eBay and retire. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.” He laughed.
    “What do you do now that you don’t get days off and you want to retire so badly?”
    “Ugh,” I replied. “Do you really want to know?” For some reason, finding out about my profession was usually enough to send