Free The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle

than paint) and the furniture, rustic and homemade, was of bent hickory, similarly painted black. There was a stand-up piano against one wall (also black), several bookcases full of records, and a gramophone. Lamps were placed about the room, softening the corners, and a fire burned in the open hearth. There was no sign of other guests.
    â€œMrs. Kinsey, I have to tell you I’m so sorry to have been, well, late—I’m not normally—but, I, uh, had some trouble finding the place, and I, uh—”
    â€œNonsense,” she said. “We don’t stand on ceremony here, John—we’ll eat when we’re hungry, so don’t you worry yourself. And please, call me Clara. Or better yet, Mac.” Her voice was breathy and hesitant, each syllable pulling back from the next with a gentle adhesion, as if words were like candy, like taffy, lingering reluctantly on her lips. She was forty-one years old, the mother of three, and no beauty, but she was fascinating, utterly, and from that moment forward she had me in her thrall.
    We were standing in the middle of the room on what appeared to be a homemade rug. I must have been studying it unconsciously because Mac (her nickname, an abbreviation of her maiden name, McMillen, just as Prok was the short version of Professor K.) remarked, “Lovely, isn’t it? My husband’s handiwork.”
    I said something inane in reply, along the lines that he was a very talented man.
    Mac let out a little laugh. I wondered where the children were, where the other guests were, and at the same time secretly prayed there would be none. “But listen to me—I haven’t asked if you would like something to drink?”
    I would. I wanted a bourbon, a good stiff one, to bring back the feelingin my fingers and toes and unfasten my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Oh,” I said, “I don’t know. Anything. Water maybe?”
    At that moment, as if on cue (but that’s a cliché: he was there all along, observing from the hallway, I’m sure of it), Prok appeared with an enameled tray in his hand, and on it a selection of liqueurs and three miniature long-stemmed glasses.
    â€œMilk,” he cried, “glad you could make it, and welcome, welcome.” He set the tray down on a low black table in front of the hearth and motioned for me to take a seat. “I see you’ve already met Mac, and what’s this—a cheese?—ah, splendid. Perhaps Mac would do the honors, and some crackers, please, dear, crackers would be nice. And now,” turning back to me, “you’ll have a glass of spirits?”
    I accepted one of the little glasses—about a thimbleful—while Prok expatiated on the properties of the various liqueurs on the tray, remarking how a colleague traveling in Italy had brought him back this one and how that one had come highly recommended by Professor Simmonds of the History Department, and I really didn’t have to say much in response. I sipped at the drink—it smelled powerfully of some herb I couldn’t quite place and had the consistency and cloying sweetness of molasses—all the while realizing that my initial surmise was correct: Professor Kinsey didn’t know the first thing about drinking. We were talking about the marriage course—my impressions of it—when Mac slipped back into the room with another tray, this one featuring my Stilton in the center of an array of saltine crackers.
    â€œJust dissecting the marriage course,” he said, giving her a look I couldn’t fathom, and it occurred to me then that he must have taken her sex history as well—she must have been among the first—and the thought of that, of the husband quizzing the wife, gave me a strange rush of feeling. He was a master of the interview, as I knew from experience and would have reemphasized for me again and again as the years went by, and there was no dodging him—he