“Oscar Wilde is something of a hero of mine,” Monteray was saying. “He’s better than anyone, dead or alive, at blending the sharpest wit with the most tender sentiment. And somehow he’s never cloying. The Portrait of Dorian Gray is just fabulous. I’m a little like him, wouldn’t you say?”

“Like Wilde?”

“Like Dorian Gray.”

Genevieve, at the top of the staircase, turned to look at him. “What do you mean?” But then she had to catch her breath.

“What’s wrong?” Monteray asked.

“Look!”

A skeleton was strung from the ceiling. A skeleton dressed in a yellow raincoat with a contraceptive dangling from its mouth.

Monteray chuckled. “Oh, that. Don’t you think it’s funny?”

“It’s horrible.” She made to run back down the stairs, but he was blocking her way.

“He died in Paris. Wilde, I mean. At the Hôtel d’Alsace on the Rue des Beaux-Arts. You know what his last words were? ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has got to go.’ Apparently the wallpaper won.”

“I’m going.” Genevieve tried to push past him, but still he blocked her.

“Did you like my little death-head sketch?” He was speaking in a whisper now. “Did you keep it? I do hope so.”

“You said it was a joke!”

“It was a gift, sweetheart. Especially for you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know.”

With an effort, Genevieve shoved him aside. But as she reached the foot of the stairs, Lulu came catapulting out of another room on the ground floor and seized her by the hands. She’d lost her turban, and her feet were bare.

“Chérie, you have to see this!”

“Lulu, where have you been? We have to go.”

But Lulu was dragging her through the double doors.

At the center of the turquoise, tiled floor was a vast sunken tub with four naked people in it—two women and two men. One of those men was Norman Betterson. A further naked couple was sitting at the edge. They were dangling their feet and drinking cocktails, and yet another nude pair was in a fierce clinch over in a corner, partially concealed behind the fronds of a tropical plant.

“Come on, Vivi!” Lulu was pulling down the straps of her dress.

“Whose house is this?” Genevieve was trying not to look into the room.

“What?” Lulu struggled with a fastening.

“I said, whose house is this?”

“An American woman with a funny name,” said Lulu. “Who cares, anyway?”

“Don’t be scared of the skeleton.” The voice from the stairs. “She’s just a little girl. I got her from a medical supply house.”

“Come on!” laughed Lulu. “What are you waiting for?”

( twenty-two )