it is myself I now despise, not Mara.

She simply recognized what I desired.

Her uncle owned a house up in the Berkshires,

not just a summer house, a country manor,

three stories high with attics, basement, turrets,

surrounded by great lawns and sunken gardens,

hundreds of wooded acres whispering wealth.

We came up for a few days in late autumn,

driving through bare woods under a gray sky,

the landscape still, no birds, barely a breeze,

hushed as the hour after heavy snowfall.

The house had been vacated since September.

I had imagined it as dark and gothic,

cloaked in shadow like something out of Lovecraft,

but the decor was opulently cozy,

a proper refuge for a Robber Baron,

stuffed with objets to certify his status,

though slightly shabby from a century’s use.

The art was grand, authentic, second rate.

Florentine bronzes, Belgian tapestries,

carved stonework pried from bankrupt Tudor manors,

and landscapes by the minor Barbizons.

Nothing quite fit together. I suspect

sumptuous excess was the desired effect,

a joyful shout to celebrate success—

good taste be damned—let’s just indulge ourselves

and revel like a child who greets his playmates

by emptying his toy chest on the floor.

What fun is wealth if no one notices?

Mara seemed to think so. What did I know?

I’d never seen the rich up close before.

While Mara showered, I explored the cellars,

searching a maze of mildewed storage rooms

until I found a faux medieval door,

flanked by a pair of somber wooden saints.

You should have seen the wine her uncle owned—

six vaulted rooms stocked with the great estates,

bin after bin of legendary names,

Château Margaux, Latour, Lafite-Rothschild,

a prodigal accumulation formed

on such a scale he could have entertained

Napoleon and half his Grande Armée.

I chose two bottles of pre-war Petrus

That probably cost as much as my month’s rent.

Clutching their dusty necks, I closed the door,

And told the saints, “I could get used to this.”

They didn’t condescend to give an answer.

That night we drank in the high paneled library,

a great inferno blazing in the fireplace.

Naked Diana stood in tapestry

above us on the wall. Below her, Mara,

stylishly overdressed, refilled our glasses.

Resplendently the room reminded us

that beauty always bears a heavy price.

White tiger skins lay stretched across the floor.

Martyred Sebastian twisted on a pedestal.

Even the dusty books were bound in leather.

Mara loved having me as audience.

She sat there, half illumined by the fire

and half in shadow, spinning out long stories.

They were as fine as anything in books.

No, they were better because they were true.

She was a connoisseur of Schadenfreude

and was especially wicked in describing

her former lovers—imitating them,

cataloguing their signature stupidities,

and relishing their subsequent misfortunes.

(I’m surely in her repertory now.)

At first I was embarrassed by her candor.