O Body Swayed to Music
V
Acquaint it with the Flame
They ordered, she a salad, he, a huge steak, large enough to drape off the side of his plate. His instruction to the waitress, “Gently acquaint it with the flame. The beef business, advertising, demands I eat nothing else in public.”
Inanities. She’d never have guessed this restaurant, which prided itself on tiny portions artfully presented, would have such an enormous cut of beef in their kitchen. It wasn’t on the menu.
He’d said what he was going to say. They’d eat because he was hungry, and she’d never see him again, and she’d leave unsatisfied, never knowing who he was or really why. She didn’t buy his story for a second.
She couldn’t directly ask. If none of the usual business directories listed him, it was because he preferred it that way. Her research showed only that he’d recently purchased large swathes of empty land in the western mountains of the state. It wasn’t nearly as unusual as anyone might imagine that many of the extraordinarily wealthy didn’t appear well off. Any professional fund raiser could tell you that. Often those with the outward displays of wealth — the cars, the homes, the clothes — lived deeply in debt, and their very lifestyle of acquisitiveness precluded the possibility of ever attaining…
