LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue

       Friday, January 3, 1969 from

       7:30 P.M. until 11:30 P.M.

      Breath surrounding him in puffed clouds, John Hall put one not-quite-steady finger on the door buzzer and pushed. The opening chords of Beethoven’s fifth symphony answered, an unexpected shock; the last thing he had associated in his mind’s eye with this unknown father and family was kitsch. Then the door was opening, a tiny little maid was divesting him of coat and gloves, and dancing at her heels came a young and beautiful woman, pushing the maid aside to attack him with outflung arms, lush lips puckered in a kiss.

      “Dearest, darlingest John!” she cried, the lips squashed against his cheek because he had turned his head. “I am your stepmother, Davina.” She seized his right arm. “Come and meet us, please. Is Connecticut cold after Oregon?” she cooed.

      He didn’t answer, too overwhelmed by the greeting, the young woman’s almost feverish chatter (his stepmother? But she was years younger than he was!)—and the noticeably foreign accent she owned. Davina … Yes, of course his father had spoken of her on the phone during their several conversations, but he hadn’t anticipated a bimbo, and that was how she presented. A brunette bimbo, clad in the height of fashion: a tie-dyed chiffon pantsuit in all shades of red, very dark hair loose down her back, a flawless ivory skin, full and pouting red lips, vividly blue eyes.

      “It was my idea to introduce you to the family at Max’s birthday party,” she was saying, in no hurry to commence the introductions. A very few people were scattered around an ugly, hideously modern room. “Sixty!” she went gushing on in well structured English, “Isn’t that wonderful? The father of a newborn son, and the father of a long lost son! I couldn’t bear for you and Max to meet in a less significant way than tonight, everybody looking their best.”

      “So this black tie is your idea?” he asked, just a trifle ungraciously.

      His displeasure didn’t impinge; she laughed, her rather ropelike hair swinging as she tossed her head complacently. “Of course, John dearest. I adore men in black tie, and it gives us women an excuse to dress up.”

      At least her prattle—there was more of it—had enabled him to assimilate those present, even come to some conclusions. Three tall, robustly built men stood together, and were very obviously related; John could say with certainty that they were his father, his uncle and his first cousin: Max, Val and Ivan Tunbull. Their broad Slavic faces were set in lines speaking of undoubted success, their well opened yellowish eyes held confidence and competence, and their thick, waving thatches of brassy hair said that baldness did not run in the family. The Tunbull family … His family, whom he wouldn’t have known before tonight had they chanced to encounter each other at a different black tie dinner party …

      A briskly professional looking man of about forty was standing with them, his very pregnant wife of around his own age beaming up at him fatuously: not a bimbo!

      Where were Jim and Millie Hunter? They’d said they would be here! Surely no one could be later than he? It had taken almost an hour for him to get up the courage to ring that bell, striding up and down, smoking cigarettes, shrinking back into the shadows when the professional guy and his pregnant wife came across the street, engaged in what sounded like married

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