table, but looked up uncomfortably when Darby stepped in.
Just then Linda entered the room through a swinging door between the kitchen and dining room. Anorexic in size but energetic and aglow in a pleated green dress of silk, she squeezed her small frame between the chairs and breakfront to hug him. With her brown eyes and cheerful lips, willowy face and short black hair, she drank in his features with overt excitement. “Darby! How wonderful! Garnett’s told us all about it.” She kissed his cheek. In turn, he embraced her about the waist. Still on her tiptoes, she straightened his shirt collar, where it poked up under his maroon sweater. “It is such a right thing to do. Even Jon Paul concurs. Oh, Darby!” she kissed him on his mouth, her eyes radiant with a shameless blush.
“And yourself! Lovely as always! And how is our chef?”
“Unchanged. He’ll be out in a while. Look, we’ve set a plate for you, at the head of the table no less.”
“I believe that’s the opposite end,” Garnett muttered, suppressing a cough. “But tonight, who cares?”
Darby scooted the chair back and took a seat. As tall as Garnett, but with a decidedly muscular frame, a head of white-and-pepper hair, tanned face, and bronzed hands, his appearance easily belied his vocation as an academician. “Well!” he greeted each with a polite nod. “I apologize I’m not in jacket. I’m Darby Peterson. Please don’t believe a word Nelson says.”
“Darby’s our Renaissance man. Our Plato in residence,” Nelson mumbled in his weak voice. “Dr. Peterson’s the retired head of the philosophy department at Oglesbee University, or at least he’s been willing to risk an extended leave, just for us. He’s a PhD from Princeton and as world-traveled as Job’s Satan, if I may add. And, at one point, a Catholic priest,” he feigned a smile.
“Please! That was long ago, and only for two years,” winced Darby, unfolding his napkin as he looked up at Linda. Linda’s lips brushed pleasantly past his left ear. Artfully, she set his pear salad of greens and cottage cheese in front of him.
“Were you a priest?” the young girl asked. “And a professor, too? I’ve never met a professor before. I applied to Charleston’s Ashley-Cooper College, but my writing skills weren’t up to par, or so they said.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but, sad to say, I am a professor, or was. As well as a priest. But that was long ago!” He glanced up at Linda, so fair in the table’s light.
“What happened?” asked the male opposite her. “I thought once a priest always a priest.” The man was just then lifting a glass of white wine to his lips. A shiny drop of condensation slipped down its stem and dripped onto his salad plate. He grasped the stem with his napkin and hunched slightly forward. His tight grey eyes never blinked as he stared at Darby. His narrow and somewhat elongated nose twitched at the tip. He fidgeted with his glass as he awaited Peterson’s reply.
Darby could feel his chest tighten. He wished Garnett hadn’t introduced him so. He hated labels. They changed you into an object instead of a person. “When I was younger, I tended to be reticent, more of an idealist than a people person—even as a priest. But that was thirty-five years ago. It ended when I surrendered my celibacy and married, just before my PhD. What about yourself?”
“Oh! An art dealer of sorts, and dabbler in this and that, you might say.”
“Nonetheless, the best!” Nelson confirmed.
“If I may ask, what’s this reference to Job’s Satan?” the man beside the girl interjected. There was an air of casual challenge about his voice, if not a rigidity concealed behind a visage of uncertainty. Darby could sense it in his eyes, coupled with an undisclosed fear of something that needed to be shared, but which he, obviously, couldn’t. Slender to gaunt, the man brushed a strand of his black hair past his right ear and focused exclusively on Darby. He couldn’t be more than twenty-nine, guessed Darby. He sat with his left leg crossed over his right and rested his chin in his right hand. “I’d like to know,” a slight leer played about the edges of his mouth. “The Catholic Church has always intrigued me with its love for secrecy and whatever else it’s up to.”
“Like what?” Darby reacted. “Pedophilia? Is that what you’re hinting?”
The man’s face filled with embarrassment.
“Hah!” the woman with earrings smiled. “He got you on that one! Dr. Peterson—my husband,” she iterated. “Mr. Martin, no less.”
“Sorry, sir! I apologize,” the man sought to regain what dignity he could. “You go for the jugular, don’t you?”
“Only when I have, too,” Peterson smiled. “Forget it! As for Job’s Satan, he was part of Yahweh’s court in the Bible. Let’s say he operated on the margin of God’s domain, a sort of spoiler. In the Book of Job, he travels to and fro about the earth, giving Yahweh grief whenever he can.”
“Not a bad definition,” smiled the coat-and-tie man, still tweaking his wine glass’s stem. “Incidentally, I’m Tunstan Hughes. And specifically, I’m an art fraud investigator.”
“Now you know why Peterson’s here,” Garnett coughed. “He was thrice recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award and has authored many books. He’s what we’ve needed for years.”
“I have a question,” Martin’s wife stated. “I’m Celeste, Celeste Martin,” she nodded toward her husband. Still smiling, her short black hair rendered her boyish in appearance, but her eyes sparkled with seductive playfulness as she stared at Darby’s lips. “I’ve always wanted to know the meaning of ‘pluperfect.’ I know that sounds stupid, if not silly, but the word seems so important,” she stared at his brow and face.
“Not much to explain, Mrs. Martin. It’s from the Latin. Means ‘more than perfect.’ It’s a combination of the past tense and the perfect, sometimes called the ‘past perfect.’ Example: ‘I had thought you might ask a question I had heard before.’ I know that’s lame, but that’s it!” Darby could tell that his answer was hardly what Mrs. Martin wanted. No doubt she had hoped for a more intriguing definition.
“I prefer it in expressions,” Hughes scowled. “Like, ‘that artist is a pluperfect ass.’ Or, ‘that woman in Manet’s Bar at the Folie-Bergère represents the pluperfect essence of Parisian life in the 1880s.’”
“Like our pluperfect dreams,” Darby stated.
“Dreams! All I have are nightmares!” the young girl announced. “My name’s Stephanie, Stephanie Gay,” she extended her hand to Darby. “Have you really had pluperfect dreams? Mine are nightmares. I wake up running away from voices, terrifying faces and old houses with ceilings falling in.”
“Mine are quite normal, I guess,” he released the girl’s hand. “But you needn’t be afraid of your dreams, or even your nightmares. According to Jung, dreams are our best friends. They never lie. They bring us compensation at a level too deep for words, and in shapes that emerge strange and unintelligible,” he feigned with a smile. “Perhaps we can talk about it sometime, if you’d like?”
“I’d love that!”
“Well, let’s plan on it. Maybe tomorrow.”
“I must say, I am quite interested in all this banter,” the art investigator remarked. “What was your dissertation on, anyway? Jung? The subconscious? Some modern theory of the self?”
