City of War by Neil Russell

was, I hated Strathmoor. There was always some servant ratting you out for something. I hated school even more. Some stiff-collared headmaster whacking you with a stick if your homework was late or if you farted during morning prayers. I went into full-scale rebellion. Did you know you can herd Arabian horses with a Bentley?”
    “You didn’t.”
    “Oh, I did. But I wasn’t stupid enough to use my father’s car. I swiped a neighbor’s. Took three tractors to pull that baby out of the mud.”
    Kim was laughing again, and I joined her. It was a good memory. “Right after that, they shipped me to the States.”
    “Eastern, private and very fancy.”
    “Nope, my father decided to try something different. Discipline. The Army and Navy Academy.”
    “Yikes.”
    “And then some,” I joked. “But you know, it didn’t take me long to get with the program. I took a page from David Copperfield and became the hero of my own life—or at least the architect. And besides, I might have been marching, but I was doing it on the California coast. It wasn’t Clarissima, but it wasn’t cold, rainy England either.”
    “I think you turned out great.”
    “Tall, anyway.”
    “So where’s the accent? If I had your upbringing, I’d be working overtime to talk like Audrey Hepburn.”
    “Right, and my classmates wouldn’t have kicked my ass three times a day. That was the first thing I got rid of. But I can slide back into it when I need to.”
    “At my house, while I was packing, I thought I heard you speaking Russian to those women.”
    “I’m lucky, I’ve got an ear for languages, but I’ve never been able to get that one really down. I think it’s the moroseness I’m missing. I told them you were a big movie star and wanted them to have a generous tip. It was my deal with Melvin for getting them out there so fast.”
    “How generous was I?”
    “Let’s just say there’s caviar with the borscht tonight.”
    “I’m running up quite a tab.”
    “I’ll take it out in trade.”
    She smiled over her glass. “Not so fast, you’ve got a story to finish.”
    I took a sip of wine. I’d come this far, so I plowed ahead. “By the time I was a senior in high school, James and Amarante’s marriage was coming apart. Her dream had been to become an entertainer, not the lady of Strathmoor Hall. She was indulged and spoiled, but hopelessly trapped. So she got a friend—vodka.
    “And then one day, she told my father she was moving to Los Angeles. She’d found somebody new—a record producer—who, surprise, was going to make her a star. And besides, she said, she’d be closer to her son, which looked nice on the label but didn’t play out so well in practice. And that was that.”
    “Storybook romance, dime novel ending,” said Kim.
    “The good news was that my father took a renewed interest in me. He was satisfied I was becoming a gentleman, but he also wanted to make sure I became a man. So on school breaks, he took me on the road and showed me the intricacies of life—the ones that don’t come in a book.
    “I played poker against men three times my age in London clubs, baccarat against sheikhs in Cairo and roulette against the house in Monte Carlo. I sat through tough business negotiations, then held up the bar with him while he celebrated or stewed. My father was also big, which is a magnet for the occasional drunken loudmouth, so more than once, we bareknuckled our way out of a place. Gave the place a ‘Black and Black,’ we called it. It was an extraordinary life, and I loved it—and him.”
    “So what happened to Amarante and the record producer?”
    “Their relationship was shorter than the flight over. So were most of the dozen that followed. Then she seemed to get her bearings and married a mining magnate named Charlie Fear. But once again, she’d bet wrong. The only thing I can say about him is that they got the name right. He was an abusive prick, but Amarante never got the chance to divorce