"Friends of George's are welcome in this house," he said. "And George's friends are generally worth knowing. He collects people the way the rest of us collect—" a gesture took in the portraits "—ancestors."
"We're honored by the invitation," Isaiah said.
"Nonsense, the honor is procedural. Eleanor insists on a full house." His smile included Naomi precisely as much as courtesy required and not a degree more. Then he asked the question. Isaiah had heard it all his life, in boardrooms and at weddings and once, memorably, in a Senate hearing room, and it was always the same instrument, tuned by the asker's certainty that the world was a filing cabinet and every man in it had a drawer. "And what do you do, Mr. Coleman?"
"I work with machines," Isaiah said.
A pause of exactly the length that politeness allowed for something more specific to arrive. Nothing arrived. Reginald nodded — slowly, with the serene satisfaction of a man whose filing has been confirmed — and the nod said: harmless. The nod said: a tradesman of some sort, doing well enough to own a suit, a guest as a favor to George, a kindness of the house. "Machines," Reginald repeated, pleasantly. "The world runs on them, I'm told. My grandfather built engines, you know. Pemberton engines powered half the mills in New England." He turned the conversation, as a captain turns a wheel, one-handed, without effort. "You must let Chad show you the old engine house while you're here. We keep a '98 vertical on display. Restored. Beautiful thing."
"I'd like that," Isaiah said. "Very much."
"Eleanor's ringing us in to dinner shortly." Reginald was already half-turned toward a congressman. "Enjoy the house, Mr. Coleman."
"I intend to," Isaiah said.
Naomi waited until they were clear. "'I work with machines.'"
"It's true. I do work with machines. I work with them extensively. I—"
"You own the machines. You own the buildings the machines are in."
"Also true. Also not what he asked." He took two fresh glasses from a passing tray and set the empties down with the precision of a man who had once, for one summer at nineteen, been the person carrying the tray. "He asked what I do. I told him. He heard what he needed to hear. That's not my doing, Naomi. That's his furniture. A man arranges his mind the way he arranges his drawing room, and then he's surprised when he can't get a piano through the door."
"He filed you."
"He filed me under a letter he likes. Leave him his alphabet."
Chad found them at the bar, or rather Chad happened at the bar and they were in the weather of it.
He was thirty-eight and had the ruined handsomeness of a man who had been a beautiful boy and had spent twenty years spending it. The Pemberton crest of hair, but worn as if he'd run a hand through it in a moving car; the Pemberton jaw, upholstered now in the early padding of good living; a dinner jacket worn with the deliberate carelessness that costs more than care. He was three drinks into the evening and operating at the volume of a man who believes, in his marrow, that he is the most entertaining person in any room he has decided to be in, and he had a circle — four, five men, a woman in red — who were laughing in the rhythm people laugh in when the check for the evening's amusement is being picked up by somebody's son.
"—no, listen, listen, because this is the part nobody believes," Chad was saying. "We bought the whole resort. The whole thing. Golf course, marina, a lighthouse that doesn't light anything, it's decorative, the lighthouse is a mood. And my father's face when the numbers came in—" He broke off, registering Isaiah, registering new audience, the performer's instinct firing before the host's. "Well. Hello. New faces. Pemberton House collects new faces, it's Mother's policy, keeps the old ones honest. Chad Pemberton." He offered a hand like a man offering a drink he expected to be refused for form's sake and then drunk.
"Isaiah Coleman. My wife, Naomi."
"Naomi." Chad bowed to her with a flourish that was genuinely charming, which was the trouble with Chad, and turned back to Isaiah with the air of a man resuming a hand of cards. "Coleman. Coleman. Do I know the name from somewhere? Should I? George's friends, somebody said. George collects bankers and strays." He grinned to take any sting out and put a different sting in. "Which are you?"
"I'm in manufacturing," Isaiah said.
"Manufacturing!" Chad announced it to the circle like a winning bid. "A maker. We have a maker, ladies and gentlemen. Nobody makes anything anymore, everybody's in — what — synergies. Platforms. My sister's in platforms. A man who makes things. What do you make, Coleman? And don't be modest, modesty is just bragging with the sound off."