Lies and Weddings(26)
“Does she?” Thomas said distractedly.
“Yes, she does. Exactly like Maggie in Days of Being Wild. How I remember the premiere like it was yesterday. Weren’t you with us? The whole gang was there—Gabby, Edwin, Henry—” Rosina stopped midsentence, as if she realized she’d just said something inappropriate.
“I wasn’t there. I was still in England then,” Thomas replied flatly.
“Yes, of course you were,” Rosina said, a strange look suddenly crossing her face as she stared intently at Eden. Eden wasn’t sure what to make of Rosina’s strange behavior, but she smiled graciously anyway as Thomas prodded her to keep moving down the receiving line.
“What was that all about?” Eden asked her father as soon as they were out of earshot.
“Rosina’s just being Rosina,” Thomas said. “She’s always…how would you put it…a bit out to lunch?”
“I always forget that you were friends back in your Hong Kong days.”
“She wasn’t really my friend…she hung around with people I knew.”
Father and daughter proceeded up the steps of the ice palace and came upon a banquet hall with three immensely long tables carved entirely out of ice, the frozen blocks filled with flowers and hauntingly lit so that the petals seemed suspended in space. Above the tables hovered six enormous crystal chandeliers lit with hundreds of candles, and the open archways at the far end of the palace perfectly framed the stupendous views. The sun had just dipped below the clouds, rendering the sky a deep violet that shimmered through the crystalline walls of the palace.
“We’re so high up that you can see the curve of the horizon!” Eden exclaimed, glancing at her father and noticing that he suddenly appeared a bit pale. “Dad! Are you all right?” she said in alarm.
“Fine, fine. I think it’s the sudden change in altitude, that’s all,” Thomas replied.
“Well, let’s go find you your seat,” Eden said, quickly leading him to his table. The seating was comprised of long ice benches, thankfully covered with faux-fur throws, and Thomas sat down gratefully. The centerpiece on his table was a replica of Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse sculpture carved out of ice.
“Oh look! This sculpture must have been carved by Rufus’s friend Kiana,” Eden remarked.
“Marvelous,” Thomas said. “Now, don’t you worry one minute about me. I feel much better already.”
“Are you sure?” Eden looked at him worriedly.
“Absolutely. Go find your seat and enjoy your dinner.”
“I’ll come check on you in a bit,” Eden said.
Thomas breathed a sigh of relief as soon as Eden had left. Truth be told, it was not the altitude that had gotten to him, but the encounter with Rosina. Seeing her always jogged painful memories in his head that he tried so hard to keep buried. An elderly British lady took the seat next to him and peered at his place card dismissively. “Dr. Thomas Tong. What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m an oncologist,” Thomas answered, steeling himself all over again.
“Ah. My husband is the gynecologist to the queen,” the lady sniffed.
* * *
?
As Eden sat admiring the ice-sculpture centerpiece of Louise Bourgeois’s Maman, someone slipped into the chair next to her. She turned to see Freddy Farman-Farmihian grinning at her.
“You again! Do I need to go find a face shield?” Freddy joked.
“Depending on what’s for dinner, it might be wise,” Eden replied, thinking it was going to be a very long night with Freddy as her dinner partner. “I’m sorry again for what happened on your boat.”
“Don’t even think about it. I hope you were comfortable in your room at the Four Seasons.”
“It’s not my room.”
“Of course it is! I booked it for you—thought you’d like to have the suite adjoining Bea’s.”
“You got me the room?” Eden said in surprise. “You really needn’t have—”
“It was my pleasure.”
“That’s much too generous of you. I already have a place to stay in Puako.”
“No, no, no. You getting sick was all my fault. Not everyone can handle being on Babyshark.”
“No, your boat was fine. Incredible, actually. I’m just a bad sailor.”
“Well, the room is paid for through the week whether you choose to stay there or not.”
Just as Eden was about to continue protesting, the sound of heraldic trumpets echoed through the great hall. A dozen trumpeters dressed in full regalia entered, and then from both ends of the hall, hundreds of Nordic men in traditional folk costumes and ice skates glided around an ice track along the outer perimeter of the space, each bearing silver trays laden with glasses. The crowd clapped merrily in approval.
“You think they hired every model in Scandinavia for this gig?” Freddy quipped.
“Sure looks like it,” Eden said as one of the floppy-haired waiters skated up and placed a tall fluted glass filled with a frothy dark liquid in front of her. She took a sip of the warm, rich broth and realized it was the first course—wild foraged mushroom cappuccino with white truffle froth.
“What do you think of all this? I heard this ice palace alone cost five million dollars to build.”