Authors: Joe Keenan
Blue Heaven (8 page)
"Are you kidding? One of those beaded jobs that twenty illegal aliens go blind sewing? They cost thousands."
"Oh. Well, just tell Vulpina you refuse to accept it as a gift and let her charge you the same."
"Philip, you heard the duchess say what she thinks of Pina's designs. Do you think for one minute she'd agree to fork out thousands for one of her monstrosities? We need Galanos or Bill Blass or some-one."
"Ah."
"Well, that settles it. Vulpina's out. I don't care how sticky it is for Moira. If she thinks I'm going to sacrifice thousands of dollars to avoid offending that little wombat she's got another thing coming."
"Never mind Pina. The thing we should be worrying about is how to keep the Cellinis from finding out that story about the duchess being poor is a complete crock."
"Hmm. You're right. We won't get anything at
all
if that happens. Any ideas?"
"No."
We mulled the matter in silence.
"Well," I said at length, "the main thing is to keep the two groups separate. The less they communicate the less chance of anyone letting something slip."
"What if something
does
slip?"
"Well, it can't! That's the whole problem."
Silence again descended.
"What if we tell Mom and Tony the duchess is just mortified about being poor? You know, very emotional. Breaks down into hysterical sobs if anyone mentions it."
"I don't know how much good that will do. Your folks are paying for a wedding she ought to be paying for, and they'll think she
knows
they're paying for it. How are they going to feel if she's not even grateful?"
"She's too embarrassed to say anything. Wait-even better! We say she's a bit crackers, too! She has all these delusions of wealth and grandness. 'The poor pathetic old dear. Please,
do
be tactful.' We'll rig it so everyone's walking around on eggshells so scared of saying the wrong thing they don't say anything at all! It's absolutely perfect!"
He giggled and, carried away with a spurious sense of achievement, hugged me madly while stamping his feet on the ground. I was not quite as convinced of the brilliance of this approach and began mentally cataloging things that could go wrong with it. But this train of thought was soon derailed when, embarrassed by the hug, I looked
around to see if anyone could see us. And there, sitting on the next bench, was a worst-case scenario.
The man rose and, crossing to our bench, stood directly in front of us. Gilbert, sensing his approach, turned and squinted up. The face was hard to see, silhouetted as it was against the late November sun, but when he spoke there was no mistaking the voice.
"Mr. Selwyn," it cooed murderously. "How I've been hoping I'd run into you again."
Gilbert has, in the course of his exploits, stepped on an assortment of toes, acruing, in the process, an assortment of enemies and ill-wishers. While there does not, so far as I know, exist anything like a Society for the Suppression and Eventual Elimination of Gilbert Selwyn, I'd bet that anyone wishing to start such an organization would have little difficulty recruiting members or soliciting funds for badly needed research.
But of all Gilbert's enemies there wasn't one who viewed him with anything approaching the pure, nearly operatic hatred felt by the man who stood before us now. His name was Gunther Von Steigle.
"Gunther," cried Gilbert cheerfully. "Long time no see! Gosh, this is a little embarrassing isn't it? A little touchy? Ha ha! Well, what can I say! L'amour, l'amour! Sit down, Gunny. How've you been? No hard feelings, I hope?"
Eight
A
s
a great admirer of strong, fast-paced story-telling, I'm entirely in sympathy with those of you who feel that there's no more irksome literary device than the flashback. Whenever I come across a bit of it lurking unsuspected in the middle of some otherwise gripping account it gives me that same ambushed feeling you get when you turn the page of a library book and find the margin caked with some dried murky substance, the origin of which you don't care to contemplate.
So, with this in mind, I'll try to briefly convey to you the facts regarding Gilbert, Gunther Von Steigle and the poet Paris Goldfarb.
Gilbert and I first laid eyes on Paris Goldfarb at Holly Batterman's second annual thirty-ninth birthday party last June. Gilbert stared at him across the room for about five seconds then turned to me and solemnly announced that he'd found the man with whom he wished to grow old. This didn't surprise me. Gilly has always been a sucker for a pretty face and Paris had cheekbones that would heal the sick. Gilbert ran to Holly (if anyone's gonna know, right?) and asked for the complete poop. Holly informed him the boy was named Paris Ulysses Goldfarb, was twenty-six, came from Summit, New Jersey, lived on St. Marks Place, worked at an antique store on Madison in the seventies and was the most colossal bore in the solar system. For reasons no one could fathom, his great beauty had not prevented him from developing a morbid streak wider than the River Styx. When he wasn't discoursing on vivisection or the Tyranny of Time he was quoting great chunks of morose poetry from his own heavily remaindered collection,
Echoes of Nothing.
And if that wasn't enough to
deter Gilbert, he had a lover possessed of an equally bleak disposition.
The lover, Gunther Von Steigle, was an actor of strikingly limited range who owned a hairdressing salon on Lexington Avenue. Holly pointed him out. It was easy to see why he might have had difficulty finding varied roles. He had that handsome monster look-thick wavy hair, piercing blue eyes, and a hawklike nose all set, unfortunately, just above a jaw so heavily pocked and cratered you thought if you looked closely enough you'd see tiny astronauts planting flags on it.
"Listen to your auntie," concluded Holly. "I know he's cuter than a baby duck but he's not worth the trouble!"
Gilbert disagreed with this assessment. He wanted Paris desperately and was sure that any darkness in his temperament was due to his being yoked to a moody, pockmarked Svengali of a lover. And so Gilbert made up his mind to "save Paris from Gunther."
His first step was to remove Gunther from the picture. Here luck was on Gilbert's side, for an old flame of his, a producer, was just putting together a summer tour of
Arsenic and Old Lace.
Gilbert informed him that the perfect actor to play the Boris Karloff role was in town and eminently available. The producer contacted Gunther's agent and Gunther, who hadn't worked since January when he'd appeared in ELT's
Oklahoma!
as Jud, gratefully accepted the job.
Not long after Gunther's departure Paris began receiving phone calls from a variety of Gilbert's friends. The calls went pretty much like this:
QUEER YOUNG MAN:
Hi, is this 555-9026?
PARIS:
Yes.
Q.Y.M.: Well, hi, Gunther. You probably don't remember me.
We met two weeks ago. You said you liked my tan line?
PARIS:
(icily)
Who is this, please?
Q.Y.M
.:
Oops!
Sony! Wrong number!
(Giggle. Click.)
A week after the calls began Gilbert saw Paris again at a little soiree arranged by Holly. At this party Gilbert presented himself as a serious-natured young man wild passionate interests in antique furniture and rotten poetry. A week after that he began spending his nights on St. Marks Place.
Things proceeded smoothly till late July when Gunther, faced with an unexpected hiatus, decided to pay his melancholy baby a surprise
visit. He popped in at eleven on a Sunday night and when the smoke had cleared Paris was ensconced in Gilbert's apartment (for the lease on St. Marks was in hubby's name) and Gunther was back on tour playing his lines with a heightened sense of menace. Two weeks later Gilbert, arriving at the conclusion that he could never be really happy with a boy who composed morbid free verse at breakfast, showed Paris the door.
The rift between Paris and Gunther was never patched up. The now homeless poet decided New York was too frivolous a place for one of his exquisitely somber nature, and he left town in search of grayer pastures. Neither Gilbert nor I had seen either of them again. Until now.
"No hard feelings, I hope? I mean, all's fair in love and war, right?"
"I think you know what my feelings toward you are, Mr. Selwyn."
"Still smarting, huh? Well, don't fret, you'll get over him. I certainly did! Oh, I'm sorry, you haven't met my friend. Philip Cavanaugh, this is Gunny Von Steigle."
"A pleasure!" I said, cheerfully extending my hand.
He ignored it and returned his grim stare to Gilbert.
"Holland tells me you're getting married. To a Miss Finch?"
"Yes. Wonderful girl. You must meet her some time."
"She doesn't care that you are a homosexual?"
"Ah!" trilled Gilbert, "but I'm not! I went through a phase . . . experimentation, you know. You hear so much about it in this town and my curiosity got the better of me but, no, it wasn't
right.
Not for me anyway. I've got nothing against you people, mind you-ask Philip. But I'm very happy with my dear Moira."
"I don't believe you."
"Believe what you like," yawned Gilbert. "It's of no concern to me."
"Just as, I'm sure, it's of no concern to you that this girl's mother happens to be a wealthy woman. A duchess, so Holland tells me."
"What are you saying? That I'm some sort of-
fortune hunter?"
asked Gilbert, smiling at the ridiculousness of the suggestion.
"Of course you'll deny it. But you don't fool me, Mr. Selwyn."
Gilbert sighed to indicate that while this may all have been amusing at the outset it was rapidly becoming tiresome. I didn't view it as lightly. Gunther's bearing, calling to mind as it did that of a guest
Nazi on "Hogan's Heroes," was pretty silly but I could see the malice behind it was genuine.
Gilbert, though, perceived no such threat or he would not have remarked: "You know, Paris told me you had all the charm of boiled meat but I didn't realize he was attempting to be kind."
I hoped Gunther would reply in the same snippy vein. Some good old-fashioned bitchiness would have been a welcome relief from his exterminating Druid routine. But he just stared at us and, taking a Swiss army knife from his pocket, began to clean his fingernails.
"Paris," he said at length, "loved me very deeply. If he said such things it had to have been because someone poisoned his mind against me. Who do you suppose could have done that?"
"Hard to say. New York is full of discerning critics."
"When we fought he told me about phone calls he received. Calls from men who claimed they'd tricked with me. But in the year I spent with Paris I was not unfaithful once. How do you explain those calls?"
"I don't have to explain anything, you Nazi trollop! Come on, Philip!" Gilbert said, rising. "I think we've heard enough nonsense for one day!"
"Nonsense, is it, Mr. Selwyn? You steal from me the one man I have ever cared about, you strip away his innocence and trust, and then you discard him the moment you find some rich pig woman who wants to buy your pretty simpering face."
"Hold on there, asshole!" said Gilbert in a manly voice. "You're talking about the woman I love!" Then it must have occurred to him he was talking about Moira because he burst into uncontrollable high-pitched giggles.
"It's all a great joke to you, isn't it?"
"It's not!" said Gilbert, clutching his sides.
"The pain you inflict, the lives you destroy-"
"Oh, shut up!" snapped Gilbert, his giggle fit over. "You just don't want to admit your big romance fizzled because your boyfriend was sick to death of you long before he ever met me."
"I loathe you."
"Yadda, yadda, yadda. Let's go, Philip."
"I'd like to fix that pretty face of yours. I'd like to take this knife and write his name across your cheeks."
"And they'd still look better than yours, volcano puss!"
"Gilbert, the museum's gonna close soon."
"What? Philip, you're not
intimidated
by this creep, are you?"
"No--but he's not threatening me."
"Don't be so certain of that. I'm sure whatever Mr. Selwyn did he was not without accomplices. You're his best friend, so I assume-"
"Don't assume anything! I don't know what he did and I didn't help him do it. So just leave me out of this."
"You seem nervous, Mr. Cavanaugh. Perhaps because-"
"Gil-bert!" I bellowed and began walking away.
"I'm coming, okay?"
He followed a few steps then turned back to Gunther and in a wicked impression of his accent said, "Undjoo, you wotten kwout herr-dwessah! You keep your dee-stunz or I vill be forz to do sumtink I vill wee-gwet!"
Gunther smiled for the first time. A sharp rigor mortis grin that made my flesh creep.
"But Mr. Selwyn, you've already done so
much
you'll regret."
The smile clicked shut and, turning sharply away, he strode off across the Great Lawn.
I wasted no time in confiding to Gilbert my concern over this new menace. I felt it unwise to underestimate either the sincerity of his desire for vengeance or his ability to act on it. As such, he should be either avoided or mollified-calling attention to his complexion was not the way to do this.
Gilbert blithely dismissed these concerns. He said Paris had told him plenty about Gunther and among the things he'd confided was that Gunther was all bark and no bite, a "paper tiger." I replied that I'd seen his fangs at close range and they hadn't looked like origami to me.
I dropped Gilbert off at God's Country and as I walked home up Broadway I noticed the Thalia was playing
The Godfather,
parts I and II. I nearly whimpered with fear, certain that this was God's way of letting me know I was a greedy shmuck destined to perish for his sins in a Mafia bloodbath. Silly of me, I know, but during periods of great anxiety, which is to say always, I'm highly sensitive to signs and omens. I can interpret virtually anything that crosses my field of vision as proof from heaven that all my darkest fears will come true, only sooner than I thought they would.
Passing the newsstand at Ninety-sixth Street I noted the headline on the
Post
which read TWO SLAIN IN MIDTOWN BLOODBATH and my panic grew. Never mind that my chances of seeing a similar
Post
headline on any day of the year were about three in five; this one was for me and me alone. 1 walked the rest of the way with my eyes cast downward lest I catch sight of another headline reading GREEDY GAY
LYRICIST FOUND DISMEMBERED IN POORLY DECORATED APARTMENT.
On reaching home and finding the light switch near the door not working again, I all but collapsed with fear at the thought of crossing the darkened room to reach the lamp on the other side. I accomplished the task, however, without encountering a fat Sicilian clutching a yard of piano wire and, slumping into my comfy chair, I breathed heavily for a bit and began to ponder the increasing complexities of the situation. What were the possible rewards? The possible dangers? I thought long and hard and could reach only one conclusion: if I stayed in the syndicate we'd run up against the Mafia and I'd be viciously murdered for my complicity, and if I bowed out Gilbert and Moira would pull it off and make tons of money and I wouldn't see a dime.
As I sat there paralyzed with indecision my phone rang. I answered and heard the soothing voice of Claire Simmons.
"When, please, are you going to join the twentieth century and get an answering machine? I've been calling for days and you don't even know because I can't leave a message."
"Sorry. You want to leave me messages, buy me a machine."
"Greedyguts. Where have you been hiding yourself?"
"I've been spending time with Gilbert and Moira."
"How lucky for you. What's new with them?"
To which I heard myself reply: "Oh, they've got this insane scheme to swindle their families and I'm sort of helping them with it. I'm either going to make a lot of money or get killed by the Mafia. Can you come over?"