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Authors: Joe Keenan

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Old Man Trouble,

I don't mind him.

You won't find him

Hangin' round my front or back door.

Oooooooooooooooooooooh!

 

Whenever I listen to this recording I feel certain that Merman must have known Gilbert, and that her confidence in the assertion was based on her knowledge that, so long as Gilbert was in town, Old Man Trouble would be far too busy at his place to give her own real estate so much as a thought.

That's not to say Gilbert is just unlucky. Oh, he is, but it goes beyond that. Gilbert manages always to be Old Man T's sorriest victim and, at the same time, his most indispensable collaborator. Fate and fate alone may place the banana peel in his path, but it is Gilbert who will every time make certain that at the moment of rendezvous he's carrying a tray laden with Baccarat crystal which he has, in order to impress a date, borrowed without the permission or knowledge of its owner, and which he'd been hoping to return in secret.

A lot of people are very fond of Gilbert because of just this. They tend to view his various outrages with, if not approval, a sort of bemused, tongue-clicking indulgence. This is because they've never suffered any of the consequences.

I'm not one of these people.

 

"Philip! I'm so glad I caught you! Claire told me you'd be here."

"Remind me to thank her," I said icily. My spirits were high and my curiosity boiling, but I was determined not to broach the topic of wedding bells until I'd given him a certain amount of grief. Our last encounter had been among our more memorably disastrous, and, while he was willing, as always, to pretend nothing unpleasant had occurred,
he was not the one who'd spent three nights replastering his walls.

"It's been ages!" he exclaimed, hugging me.

"Twenty-six days and I still wake up screaming."

He drew back and gazed at me with that disappointed stare one gives to those of whom one had expected better.

"You're still thinking about that?"

"Yes."

"That was weeks ago! I can't see why anyone would want to live in the past."

"I can't see why anyone would want to live in
mine."

"Anyway," he said, brightening, "you can't stay mad at me for long! I have news, Philip! Wonderful news! Now, I know this will come as a shock to you but-"

"You're getting married."

There's nothing quite like the face of a person who's just had his big scoop airily dismissed as yesterday's news. The combination of surprise and pique is one I never tire of, and Gilbert's face was at this moment a masterpiece of the genre.

"You've already
heard?
God, don't tell me you were speaking to Jimmy Loftus?"

"No. He told Holly. Holly told me."

"Holly!" moaned Gilbert. "Shit! Now whoever I tell they're going to say, 'Yes, I know, Holly told me!' "

Annoying, of course, but he brought it on himself. As he well knew, telling Jimmy is the next best thing to telling Holly, which is the next best thing to leasing the billboard over the Winter Garden.

"Ah, well," he sighed philosophically, "let 'em gossip! I don't care. I don't care about anything but her. I'm in love, Philip. For the first time! Deep genuine love."

"Good for you."

"I had no idea what it felt like."

"I dare say."

"I must admit, I thought you'd be a little more surprised."

"I might be if I believed it for a minute."

"Philip!" he cried, injured. "I mean it! I'm really in love with this girl. I want to marry her. I want to have children, buy a house ..."

He continued in this vein for some time but I wasn't having any. "Gilley," I said, "I don't know what your angle is, but if you don't
have one, then . . ." I stopped. I didn't know what, then. He'd never not had one.

He stared at me a moment then switched gears, opting for the low, measured tone used to convey sincerity in commercials for pain relievers.

"I hoped you'd be glad for me. I don't suppose I should blame you if you're incapable of feeling anything but skeptical contempt for your best friend's happiness. We all have our limitations. But nothing you say can-"

"All right! I'm sorry. Congratulations." I was by no means sold on any of it, but I could see there was no use pressing him for the truth just yet.

"So, who's the girl?"

"With your attitude I'm surprised you even want to know."

"Of course I want to know, you jerk!" I exploded. "I'm dying of curiosity." It didn't take two seconds for me to realize this was not a prudent admission to have made.

"You know, Philly, I just realized how thirsty I am. Maybe we can find someplace nice to sit and have a drink and I'll tell you all about her."

I had, as usual, just enough money to keep me alive for exactly half the period for which it would have to suffice. Gilbert's financial status could always be guessed, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

"Do you have
anything?"

"Sorry. Not on me."

"We could stop at your cash machine."

"We could," he agreed, "but it would only be a social call."

I turned and began walking west.

"One drink, Gilbert, I swear, that's all this is worth to me."

 

An hour later found us shivering under the stars at the Riviera Cafe in Sheridan Square. It was mid-October, but a fair number of Village bistro owners were still keeping their outdoor stations open in an effort to cash in on the die-hard alfresco crowd, people who, like Gilbert, find pneumonia a small price to pay for Maximum Visibility Dining. Our waiter was setting down the bill, along with the third round, and Gilbert was explaining, in uncalled-for detail, the reasons behind his conversion to heterosexuality.

"Women," he said, "are different. They're not the same as men. Women are . . . nourishing. No, hold on, that's not the word. They're
nurturing.
That's it. Women nurture you, Philip. Not like men. Men are selfish. They're always undermining you, resenting your success, bitching at you for wearing their sweaters." The waiter caught my eye, shook his head in quiet sympathy and withdrew.

Gilbert lit a cigarette and stared dreamily toward Seventh Avenue. "She's a remarkable girl."

"So I've heard. What I haven't heard is her
name.''
1

"I'm leading up to it. You know what's wonderful about women?"

"Yes! I do! I've heard nothing else for the last goddamned hour and I'm really getting sick of it!"

He smiled in what he imagined to be a winning manner. "Maybe I have gone on a little. It's just that I know how cynical you can be, and I want you to know how sincerely 1 feel about all this."

"Well, mission accomplished, okay? Now for Christ's sake, who is she?"

He finished the scotch in one gulp and, grinning from ear to ear, dropped the bombshell.

"Moira Finch."

I slumped back in my chair, overwhelmed by the sheer grisliness of the concept. If my eyes have ever in my life actually goggled, that was the moment.

"That
cunt?"

He stiffened and regarded me with a steely eye. "Philip," he said slowly, "I'm going to forgive you for that."

"Well, I'm not forgiving you for
thisl"
I said, waving our twenty-dollar check in his face. "Do you expect me to believe for one instant you really intend to
marry
that crazy bitch?"

"You can believe what you like, but if you call her even one more name I'm asking you to step outside."

"We are outside, you asshole! What are you trying to pull on me?"

He lowered his voice. We were back in the aspirin commercial.

"I realize you've never been very fond of Moira-"

"I've
never been fond-!"

"But you don't know her the way I do. You've only met her a handful of times."

"That was enough! She's the most mercenary, cold-blooded bundle of affectations ever to-"

"I repeat, Philip, you don't know her."

"Maybe I don't, Gilbert, but most of what I've heard about her has come straight from you. I thought you hated her guts!"

He frowned and shifted his weight in the chair.

"I'll admit there was a time before I'd come to really understand Moira when I did, occasionally, find her outward manner to be ... mildly abrasive. I may, at that time, have said things about her I now regret having said."

"You said she had a face that could poison a reservoir."

"That would be one, yes."

"You said when she sucks an ice cube it doesn't melt, it gets bigger."

"Honestly, Philip! Why do you have to dredge up things it pains me to remember! I don't care what I said before. Moira Finch is a wonderful girl and I love her deeply! You just have to believe me."

"No, I don't! I just spent twenty bucks I couldn't afford to get the truth out of you, and you're not leaving till I get it."

I glared implacably.

"Oh, all right," he sighed at length. "But it goes no further."

"It won't."

"I mean it. If word gets around, the whole thing's as good as ruined."

"Okay."

"You swear you won't tell? Anyone? Not even Claire?"

"With what you've got on me?"

He smiled, the notion filling him with security. "Yes, there is that, I guess. Whichever one you mean. I'm sorry I lied. I had to, really."

"I'm sure."

"No, really. I'll be talking about this to scads of people. I need all the rehearsal I can get. Was I convincing?"

"Up to a point."

"Moira, huh? I suppose I should have picked someone else, but I really couldn't have. Under the circumstances."

"I'm not sure I'm following this," I said, growing uneasy, for he was wearing the same smug little grin he always wears when he fancies he's thought up something monstrously clever.

"You admit you're not in love with Moira?"

"God, no! I mean, I'm fond of her, really!"

"Seriously?"

"Yes! I've spent a lot of time with her lately and she's not half as
bad as we make her out to be. Well, maybe half, but not a bit more. She's actually a lot of fun once you get to know her."

"But why on earth are you going around telling people you're getting
married?"

"Because we are."

And he meant it. I could tell because the grin had blossomed into a smirk. Whatever he was up to, he thought it was just brilliant.

He giggled wickedly at my confusion and said, "Well, go ahead-
askl"

"Why?"

"I'll tell you, but it's kind of involved and I'm getting a little chilly out here. Maybe we could go someplace warm and-"

"I'm not buying you another drink! I'm poor this month, really poor, and I don't-"

"Oh all right! I'll buy you one."

"I thought you didn't have any money!"

"Well, I don't have much."

The waiter arrived to collect and Gilbert, murmuring something about cigarettes, dashed off to find a machine. The waiter glanced after him and received what must have been the most unmistakable cruise of his life.

"Is he for real?"

"You don't know the half of it," I said, glumly forking over the cash. "He's getting
married."

"I pity the poor girl."

I had to laugh at the notion of anyone pitying Moira. Then, noting the waiter's befuddled look, I explained.

"You don't
know
her-believe me, Moira can take care of herself."

He nodded, still puzzled, and began to move off. Then, turning abruptly, he asked,
"Moira?
Moira
Finch?"

"That's the one!" I said, surprised.

"He's
marrying
that crazy bitch?"

He wandered off to the register shaking his head in disbelief. I added a dollar to the tip.

 

 

Two

 

"T
he beauty of it is that all it needs to work is for people to
think
we're in love. They may think we're insane, but that's all right. So long as they believe we mean it. Sincerity, Philip. If we can feign that, we're in the clear. Which is where you come in."

"Hold it right there ..."

We were facing each other at a window table at the Jaded Palate, a recent addition to the Columbus Avenue cavalcade of chic, fun, short-lived eateries. Gilbert and I are both Upper West Siders and we'd agreed on the advisability of reaching home turf before the hour grew too late, or the number of our functioning brain cells too few. Anyone who's ever sat on an uptown express with a besotted Gilbert and heard him loudly whisper "What angelic boys!" in reference to the three Hispanic street-gang members seated opposite him will appreciate the wisdom of this decision.

"Just because you're letting me in on this, don't think for a minute I'm getting involved."

"I haven't even told you what it is yet!"

"Okay," I sighed. "What's the angle?"

"Well . . . three weeks ago," he began, "I went to a wedding. My stepfather's fat niece, Steffie. Have I told you much about my stepfather's family?"

"Just that they're Italian and there are a lot of them."

"Scads, Philip, scads! When they throw a reunion they have to rent Rhode Island. They're all very close and very Old World, if you know what I mean-big fat widows dressed in black, plaster saints all over the place. So, anyway, when I got the invite which said me and guest, I knew right off my guest should not be a 'special friend.'

That's why I took Moira. And don't roll your eyes at me-I'd already called every woman I know and one subdued transsexual."

"I'd have canceled before going with Moira."

"Well, I couldn't. I
had
to go. And I had to go with a woman. See, like it or not, I'm in a position these days where I simply have to make a good impression on Tony."

He was referring to Tony Cellini, a very rich businessman his mother had married two years ago following the demise of her second husband, the late Edward Harcourt.

"Ever since Mom married Tony he's
completely
controlled the purse strings. He gives her a fat monthly allowance, but she goes through it in no time and never has a thing to give me when I'm hard up, which is always. So I may go begging to her, but he's the one she has to get it from. That's why I have to stay on his good side. And it helps a lot if every now and then I show up accompanied by something presentable with breasts."

"He has no idea you're gay?"

"God forbid! I'd never see a dime! Fortunately he's thick as a phone book about these things and so is Mom. Every time I see him he draws me aside and says, 'Gilberto, you dog, you gettin' enough these days?' And I have to leer and say, 'More than I can handle, Tony! They're wearin' me out!' It's disgusting!"

"Then why do you do it?"

"Because if I don't he doesn't slip me the fifty. Anyway, I needed a lot more than fifty this time. I owed money to everyone, I'd just lost my job at Bloomingdale's-"

"You lost your job?"

"Oh, right, I haven't seen you. Yup, s'all over! My career as a floorwalker has ended."

"But you were only there a month. What happened?"

"Oh, this little misunderstanding," he said, fluttering his fingers to connote inconsequence. "I mean, there's no way I could have known it was
her
scarf she was putting in her purse. And besides, when you see a woman who looks like Jackie Onassis, you don't assume it
is
Jackie Onassis. You say, 'Oh, there's a woman who looks kind of like Jackie Onassis. And she's stealing a scarf.' At any rate, Moira and I showed up at the wedding right on time, but it turned out things were all delayed-please lift your head off the table, it's distracting-things were delayed an hour because they were waiting for this old geezer. His name is Freddy Bombelli and he's eighty-six and sort of the patriarch, but they have to jump-start his kidneys and he's going to be late. So to keep everyone happy they opened the bar up. I thought, 'Perfect! Here's my chance to ply Mom with liquor until she agrees to go work on old Tony for me.' "

He paused a moment and sighed.

"I was
so
confident, Philly. You have to understand-the two of them
love
weddings. They eat like pigs, drink like fish and dance till they drop. If there was ever an ideal time to hit them up, this was it. So I looked for Mom, and there she was outside in a deck chair next to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin-conveniently located for poolside worship-and she was knocking back the daiquiris, so I went right to work. She was in a
wonderful
mood, and I was so eloquent! It was going perfectly! Then she did something incredibly stupid and ruined it all!"

This last was not hard to believe. I had only met his mother, Madeline ("Maddie") Selwyn Harcourt Cellini, a dozen or so times over the years since Gilbert and I graduated from high school, and not at all since her marriage to Tony. But, despite the infrequency of our friendship, I feel a great deal of affection for her, mixed with a dollop of envy, for she's a woman who has always managed to prosper and thrive while remaining serenely out of touch with reality. Reality, if determined to contact her, would search long and in vain for a forwarding address.

"What did she do?"

"Well, just as I'm about to warn her to wait till Tony's half in the bag before asking him, she suddenly stands up and starts waving her arms like a traffic cop. I turn around and there's Tony stomping toward us, and by the look on his face he's just passed a stone or something."

"Bad timing?"

"The worst! He hadn't had
one
drink, hadn't danced
one
hully-gully and hadn't even laid eyes on Moira (which, if I was going to make my pitch now, meant I'd brought the dumb bitch for nothing!), and to top it all off he's worried sick about this Freddy Bombelli character. Apparently everyone's nuts about the old guy, but he's just had some major operation and still insists on coming to the wedding. Everyone's afraid he's going to keel over
in
the reception line. So
that was the kind of mood he was in when Mom staggered to her feet and said, 'Tony honey, would you believe it-Gilbert's broke
again?
Some chance I had!"

"You didn't get the money?"

"No," he said and glumly downed his margarita in one gulp. "What I got was a lecture complete with a biography of the whole Cellini clan! Daddy getting off the boat with four cents and a dream. Working hard, building a business, yadda, yadda, yadda! And, of course, by not giving me the money he was doing me a
favor
because how would I ever learn resourcefulness and sacrifice-fucking sacrifice!-if he pulled me out every time I was in the hole? And by this point there were half a dozen fat old widows-they looked like bison!-standing there cheering for Tony and Italy and their hardworking dead husbands, and when he finished they applauded! Oh, Philip, it was
awfull"

He shuddered once more at the memory and, signaling the waitress for another round, plunged in again.

"I was crushed, Philip, totally crushed, and all I wanted was to find someplace to be by myself and lick my wounds. So I wandered into the kitchen, and there was Moira, clutching that enormous bag of hers, hunting for Saran Wrap. Apparently she didn't want the caviar she'd stolen to get the cheese she'd stolen all fishy. Well, she was about the last person I felt like being with but I
had
invited her and I was stuck with her for the whole day, so I at least had to be civil. So we started talking and I wound up telling her all about it. And, you know, she was really nice. She empathized. She said that
her
mother has so much money she sculpts with it, but she never gives Moira a dime. I suppose she must figure Moira would only lose it on one of her brilliant investments. She always does."

That's a funny thing about Moira. In the field of personal relations she's known far and wide as Manhattan's foremost tactician. She gets what or who she wants, by whatever means she deems necessary, and she's not fussy about the body count. Her business dealings, however, are another matter. Give her a dollar and she will immediately rush off and invest it in some nascent enterprise which then declares bankruptcy within the week, if not the hour. My friend Claire once referred to her stock portfolio as the Misfortune 500.

"S'anyway," he continued, "what with our stingy parents and the fact that she's as broke as I am these days-she really lost a bundle
on that designer pasta-we started to feel a certain, y'know, camaraderie. Anyway, we decided to rejoin the party, but we took a wrong turn somewhere and wound up in this ballroom that hadn't been opened to the guests yet. The door wasn't locked so we just traipsed right in ...
and there they werel"

He paused and a rapt beatific expression illuminated his face.

"There they were," he repeated with hushed reverence, "all spread out on two enormous tables."

"The caterers?"

"The
gifts,
Philip! You've never seen so many gifts in one place! Dozens and dozens of gorgeous white and silver boxes! Big ones with VCRs and microwave ovens! Little ones with diamond cufflinks and Cartier watches! And not just boxes, Philip-envelopes, too! A great tall stack of them, and you just knew the stingiest contained at least a hundred dollars! What a sight it was, Philip! What a breathtaking sight!"

"Oh,
Gilbert,"
I moaned, burying my face in my hands, for the awful truth was at last apparent. "You can't really intend to marry Moira Finch just for the
giftsl"

He regarded me with a puzzled look.

"You make it sound like a bad idea."

"It
is,
Gilbert! It's the worst one you've ever had!"

"It isn't!"

"Gilbert-"

"No, really," he said with childlike earnestness. "We've thought this through. We've looked at it from every angle and I tell you it is golden!"

"Do you mean to say the two of you just strolled in there, took one look at the loot and started right in proposing to each other?"

"Of course not. Don't make us sound impetuous. The idea may have occurred to both of us then, but we didn't bring it up for another three, four hours at least. Still," he added with a fiendish grin, "you could tell our minds were on the same track because we both went into action the minute the caterer kicked us out."

"Went into action?"

"Oh, you know, dancing together, holding hands. Letting people think we were an item. And that was only half the campaign!"

"What was the other half?" I asked, not certain I wanted to know.

"Heavy ingratiating!" He giggled at the memory. "Oh, Philly, you
should have seen me go after those people's hearts! I was shameless! You've heard of the legendary Selwyn charm?"

I had, I conceded, adding that I'd also heard of Bigfoot and the lost kingdom of Atlantis.

"I was magnificent! I danced with aunts and grand aunts and hideous cousins no one else would dance with! I laughed at jokes, I sang Italian songs! I let every fucking widow there tell me her husband's life story, and cried in the same places they did. I told fat Cousin Steffie time and again how beautiful she was, which wasn't easy to do with a straight face--dressed in a wedding gown she looks like nothing so much as an Alp.

"By the time we left I was the favorite relation by marriage of every Cellini, Bombelli, Fabrizio and-who are the other ones?-every Sartucci in the place. They were all begging me not to be such a stranger, to visit more often, and you can bet your ass that's just what I'm going to do! You can say what you like about this scheme, Philip. I'm telling you, it can't miss!"

I scrutinized his face which was positively radiant with greed. He was dead serious.

"Look, how many people have you told you're getting married?"

"Lemmesee-there's Moira, naturally, and Jimmy today-"

"Good, then it's not too late to-"

"Oh, and Mom, of course."

"You told your
motherl"

"You bet! There's no going back, Phil. She's full of plans already. I'd break her heart."

"You're insane! You're going to go through a charade of this size just for some gifts?"

"You didn't see them! You weren't there when they opened those beautiful boxes!"

"You mean they opened the gifts? Right there at the wedding?"

"Sure. It's the big event of the day."

He explained that this was a family tradition started many years ago by some shrewd Cellini bride who deduced that if her guests knew in advance that all gifts would be held up to the merciless glare of communal scrutiny she wouldn't see quite so much cheap stemware as her elder sister had. Naturally, all Cellini brides to this day have refused to break with so sacred a tradition, for the competitiveness it inspires is all to the bride's advantage. It had certainly been all to
Steffie's, to judge from the catalogue of items Gilbert feverishly recited.

"Projection TVs, they got. Two of them! Stock certificates and crystal! Silverware, heirloom jewelry, cases of Dom Perignon! A race horse, Philip! Uncle Chick gave them a fucking race horse! They cleaned up!" He admitted to feeling mildly embarrassed when they opened his gift, ten pounds of designer pasta, but insisted that most considered it very chic, and Steffie was nothing less than thrilled.

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