Chapter 19I realized the young man in the corner was a footman. I had a hazy memory, being with my mother when I was young, a few years before she died, taken in to say goodnight to a group dining at a Villa in Italy where we had spent the summer. There had been servants, finely manicured men in black and white who did not speak and who wore white gloves. I had wanted to touch their gloved fingers. To put them into my mouth. I’d forgotten that.
Wolfe, it seemed, believed in the protocol of formal dining. It was not at all what I expected. Tad wore black leather. I wore a Thom Browne suit. Wolfe was in a tuxedo. There was a fashion magazine editor named Eva. She wore a huge draping fur collar and matching fur cuffs over a silk dress. Tad’s leather ensemble, dark and tasteful, drew little a
