Chapter 20 The Knox
The Knox
Early February
Last night at the society’s annual masquerade ball, I was delightfully occupied: People ate caviar by the spoonful at my cocktail tables and consumed copious amounts of alcohol from my well-stocked bars.
They reclined on luxurious chesterfield couches and distributed illicit substances in my corridors.
They shook hands on deals over the finest Cuban cigars and single malt whiskeys—deals they planned to keep and deals they most certainly intended to break.
And they did this in the way that Knox members do best: sinful but with the utmost decorum, irrational while philosophical, reckless yet buttoned-up.
It was rather splendid, a proper Knox party that met with my approval.
Today I’ll be achy; today my floors will creak when people walk on them.
My rugs will be embedded with dirt, my walls and mirrors smudged with fingerprints.
My surfaces will be appallingly sticky, and there will be a fine ash all around.
I’ll sag under the weight of discarded porcelain cocktail plates, glass tumblers and champagne glasses, empty liquor bottles.
I’ll have a faint malodorous scent that will grow more offensive as the hours tick by, until they tie up the trash bags and remove them from me.
But it’s of minimal consequence; I don’t really concern myself with such matters. Rose will tidy me up, make me as good as new. She always does.
That woman, Vivian, was at the ball; Peter seems quite smitten.
I observed her for a time. She’s familiar in a way I can’t put my foundation on.
Peter and I were not the only ones intrigued by Vivian.
Many others were as well: proper Michael and a jeweler named Xavier, who carries a respectable enough old-fashioned pocket watch.
I’ve previously noticed him on occasion.
And Rose. Rose was watching Vivian, and I suspect she doesn’t care for her.
It strikes me that there are some very interesting things to come. For instance, Graham has not the slightest inkling of the wheeling and dealing Oliver’s doing behind (my) closed doors.
Graham will be most displeased when he learns of his son’s plans.
But Oliver is simply trying to restore the Knox to its former glory. Godspeed, dear boy.