"You'll rue this," said Robert, walking back with some uncertainty of step to his desk, his eyes still slits.
Bruce lifted the box rather tenderly, even with the greeny pallor of his rage still out and his features straining for composure.
"I'll have it valued and send you a check—"
"Damn you!" With snarl-shaped lips the older brother lunged again, this time their bodies meeting and swaying for clutch.
"Bruce!"
The use of his given name, the curdled quality to her voice, had their way. There was a moment of blank staring between the two men, of Bruce placing the box gently on the desk and walking out without slamming the door, and Robert sinking down into the swivel chair, trying to bring the oblique pull of his lips back to straight.
"Get out," he said, without looking at her.
She did, tiptoeing and fighting down the sense of sickness.
And thus, out of a bauble of silver and lapis lazuli, was reared a tower of silence between these brothers as high as fifteen years is long. Large affairs for their joint unraveling lay ahead, dramatic in their magnitude. The Union Square Family Theater was very presently to become first a tawdry, then a discarded link in the glittering chain of playhouses that was to gird the country.
Toward this end R.J. and Bruce Visigoth steered, with an impeccable oneness of purpose, the destinies of an enterprise audacious in its concept and ultimately to be spectacular in its fulfillment.