Bright Lights, Big City (10 page)

“You mean the guys with the black hats and funky sideburns?” Tad says.

“Believe me,” Bernie says, “it ain’t like they can’t afford a haircut. So what do you think of the Yankees this year?”

“Looking good for a pennant,” Tad says.

You bail out at the next red light, claiming car sickness. You are halfway up the block when Bernie calls out—“Hey, you! Don’t forget. Dog Chow.”

O COUTURE!

Your interest in clothing doesn’t normally take you beyond Brooks Brothers and J. Press—and at the moment there seems to be a little credit trouble at both establishments. But this morning you are waiting to enter the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, where a fashion designer is showing his fall line. You copped an invitation from your friend at
Vogue
. He owes you for the time he took your Austin Healey out to Westchester and plowed it into a ten-point buck. You know people who have been hunting for twenty years and have never seen ten points on one deer. The car ended up in a junkyard outside of Pleasantville. You don’t know what happened to the deer, and it’s hard to say what happened to the insurance money except that it was gone in two weeks.

At the door, a tall woman with silver hair scrutinizes your invitation. On either side of the door, two large black men in turbans stand with their arms folded across their chests. They are supposed to be Nubian slaves or something. Only an Italian fashion designer could get away with this. The woman seems to be an ethnic group unto herself. She has no eyebrows or eyelashes and her hairline is extremely high, not far from the top of her skull. Was she in an accident, or is she just chic? She is staring at your homemade bandage, which this season is gray and spotted.

“Mister …”

“Allagash,” you say, pulling yourself up into military posture. It’s the first name that comes to mind. You’re not about to use your own.

“From
Vogue?
” she says.

“Since last week.”

She nods and returns your invitation. She narrows her eyes and wrinkles her nose as if to say she will feed you to the giant Nubians if you’re lying.

You spot the bar and it appears to be open. The veteran department-store buyers are huddled in the vicinity, clutching glasses. They look like they would rather be in Florida. It could be a mistake to start in at the bar right away; indeed, by any reasonable standard of conduct it is a mistake to be here at all, using someone else’s name, with a vague notion of disrupting the proceedings.

You excuse your way up to the bar and order vodka. “With ice,” you say, when the bartender asks how you want it. “And one for my date,” you add.

With your two drinks in your hands, you move away from the bar and strike a determined pose in the middle of the crowd, looking around the room with furrowed brow as if you were searching for your very good friend The Revlon Girl. You don’t want to be too conspicuous. There is a slim chance that one of Amanda’s friends will recognize you and sic the giant Nubians on you before you have had a chance to do whatever it is you are here to do. This, you realize, is how the terrorist feels as he waits in the crowd with the bomb in his briefcase, believing that everyone can look through a window in his head and see murder on his mind. Your knees are shaky. You drink one of your two drinks. Alas, you would not make a very good terrorist. Then you remember seeing a briefcase standing beside the bar and a small flash of cognition, coincident with the first tingle of alcohol, flickers in your brain.

You walk back to the bar. The briefcase is still there. The owner appears to be the balding man with the Bain de Soleil complexion talking to two Oriental girls. His back is turned to the briefcase. You lean against the bar on your elbows, looking bored.

“Can I get you something?” the bartender inquires. He frowns when you say no, and you think there is a trace of suspicion in the way he looks you over before turning away.

“I don’t know how to sail the damn thing,” the balding man says. “I pay some Greeks to do that.” The girls consult, putting their heads together, and then they laugh. Apparently they took a vote. He is telling them about islands when you slip away with the briefcase.
Pas de
sweat.

You take a seat on the near side of the runway, in the middle of a middle row, thinking that once the show gets underway you want to be as inaccessible as possible. You stash the briefcase under the seat and cover it with your jacket. Your plan is beginning to congeal.

An eddy in the crowd ripples out from the door, a sense of waters being parted. Flashbulbs ignite. Finally you see the cause of the excitement: a face that brings to mind a line of cosmetics, a Cola and recent shocking revelations in supermarket tabloids. It’s the famous actress/model on a busman’s holiday. She’s wearing faded jeans, a sweatshirt and a yachting cap, as if to say: “I can look terrific with both hands tied behind my back.” You know for a fact, or at least you have it on good authority from Amanda, who once did location work with her, that she is a martyr to the search for the perfect nose. She has had no less than seven reconstructive operations and she’s still not happy. She refuses to be photographed in profile. You can think of better ways to traumatize the nasal cartilage. From this distance, the nose looks unexceptional and the rest strikes you as bland. You judge her to be about five-five, not tall enough for runway work. She’s got too much chest for couture.

Amanda is, or was, a perfect eight: hips thirty-four, waist twenty-three, bust thirty-three. You also know her shoe, glove and ring sizes. Clara would be proud. You have all the numbers. Factoring in the cheekbones, which a photographer once described as “neo-classical,” they add up to a hundred and fifty dollars an hour.

People are taking their seats. A woman in a pink gown comes out onto the runway, apparently the mistress of ceremonies. She smiles and nods, mouthing little greetings, and walks out to the lectern at the runway’s edge. Your hands are beginning to shake and you decide on a booster shot. You buck the flow of the crowd and race for the bar. People are looking at you and you are afraid they know your every thought. You brace yourself with the fact that you looked at Amanda every day for almost three years and you don’t have the ghost of a clue what was going on in her mind. She showed all the vital signs and made all the right noises. She said she loved you.

The lights are dimmed, and the woman in pink begins to explain the reason we are here today. She says something about a Revolution in Taste. This fashion designer has the same name as a famous Renaissance painter, and she thinks it is not too much to compare the impact of his work in couture with that of the Old Master in painting. Meanwhile, the bartender tells you that the bar is closed until after the show, but he makes an exception for you and your ten-dollar bill. He is about your age. You want to tell him about Amanda. Instead you say, “Lots of jewelry in this crowd. I don’t see much in the way of security.”

He looks at you. “They’re around,” he says with conviction. You tell yourself, nice move. You thought that your phrasing cleverly disguised your real interest in the security question, but now he has you pegged for a jewel thief, which in his eyes may be even worse than a sexually abandoned husband. If only your hands would stop shaking. He is looking you over; it is obvious he doesn’t like what he sees. He is going to call the Pinkertons, or the giant Nubians, at any minute. They will beat the soles of your feet until you admit everything. Amanda will watch your inglorious exit and think, So this is what he has come to.

“My girlfriend was just a little worried about her necklace,” you say to the bartender. “Maybe I should bring her a drink, too, while I’m up.”

He doles a few fingers into another glass. “Skip the ice,” you say. His look is frosty. “Her husband wouldn’t be too thrilled if she came home without her necklace.” You wink. “He thinks she’s playing bridge.” Why are you saying these things?

You look back over your shoulder as you head for your seat. The bartender is signaling someone. You slide past all the knees, apologizing and spilling. The pink lady is talking about Bold New Looks. The first model comes out as you take your seat. She is black and tall as a Zulu. The pink lady describes her outfit, emphasizing the ruffles and their importance to the new elegance.

Amanda is the third model out. At least you think it’s Amanda. With the makeup and the pulled-back hair, you can’t be absolutely certain. The walk is stylized, but you think you recognize Amanda’s signature sway and rhythm. She takes her spin on the runway and then she’s gone. You didn’t have time to think. You can’t decide if it was really her. You remember your friends used to say they had seen her in the
Times
magazine or somewhere when it was actually another model. Sometimes they brought you pictures they had clipped and you would think it was funny—the pictures looked nothing like Amanda. But since she left, you have had the same trouble identifying her face. You have gone back through her portfolio and tried to make a composite that matches the image in your memory. The photos all look slightly different. Her agent said she could do any look—temptress, businesswoman, girl next door. A designer who used her all the time said she had plastic features. You begin to suspect that all of your firm beliefs about Amanda were no more substantial than the images she bodied forth under the klieg lights. You saw what she was selling then; you saw what you wanted to see.

You clutch the edge of your seat and wait for her next appearance. You have your plan worked out, more or less. You will confront her when she comes out again. If they try to stop you, you will tell them the briefcase is full of high explosives, that you will blow the place into orbit if anybody comes near you. The Zulu comes out again in a new outfit. Then another model. The next one should be Amanda, but it’s a brunette. You panic. She has seen you. She won’t come out again. But the next model is Amanda, or the woman you think is Amanda. As she advances down the runway, you stand up. The pink lady is enthusing about pleats. You want to shout Amanda’s name, but your voice is gone. People are beginning to look at you. A small clicking sound is coming from your throat. Finally you hear your voice: “A-man-da!”

She keeps walking. She walks to the end of the runway and pirouettes in a way that flares the skirt of her dress. She walks down one arm of the T, turns and walks down the other. When she is almost directly in front of you, she turns and looks at you. It is a look that could carry either hatred or indifference. You want to ask for an explanation. She turns away and retraces her steps down the runway as if nothing had happened. Whoever she is, she is a professional. Whoever she is, you don’t know her.

The pink lady is asking you to please sit down. People are turning in their seats to look at you. They are saying
Sit down!
and
What does he want?
A photographer up front snaps your picture just in case you turn out to be news. You imagine the
Post’s
caption:
SEXUALLY ABANDONED HUBBY GOES BERSERK
. Two large men in suits are hurrying down the aisles. The wires hanging from their ears probably connect earplugs with small transmitter-receivers. But it is more interesting to consider the possibility that the men could be robots. How do you know that the terrified-looking woman sitting next to you is actually feeling what you would call terror? If you were to step on her foot she would cry out, but how do you know she would
feel
what you call pain? You could observe one of these robots for years and never know. You could even be married to one.

The robot men are coming down the row of seats to get you, one from either side. You applaud this clever and efficient maneuver. Someone has turned up the music on the sound system, perhaps to cover the noise of your apprehension. You do not resist as one of the men with a wire hanging out of his ear takes your arm and says “Let’s go.” You follow him down the row of seats and apologize to the people whose knees you are bumping. Once he gets you into the main aisle, he grips your arm uncompromisingly.

The two robots escort you out through the lobby. You are temporarily engulfed by a band of Japanese tourists following a guide with a pink flag and ideographic lapel badge. Your escorts are talking into microphones attached to their sleeves. “Agitator apprehended. Proceeding to lobby.” Before shoving you out the door, one of the men leans down and says, “We don’t want to see you here again.”

It is a blue, sunny day—much too sunny for you, thanks. Fortunately, for once you have not forgotten your Ray-Bans. The lunchtime crowd churns Park Avenue. You expect people to gaze at you, horror-stricken, yet nobody pays any attention. On the corner a fat man in a Yankees cap is selling pretzels from a pushcart. A woman in a fur coat holds her right arm erect, hoping to conjure a taxi. A bus roars past. Cautiously, as if you were entering a swimming pool for the first time in years, you ease yourself into the ranks of pedestrians.

“Things happen, people change,” is what Amanda said. For her that covered it. You wanted an explanation, an ending that would assign blame and dish up justice. You considered violence and you considered reconciliation. But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.

LINGUINE AND SYMPATHY

After dark you return to the scene of your former crimes to gather up loose odds and ends. Since the magazine went to press this morning, you can assume everyone will have gone home. You feel strange walking into the building, an infidel penetrating the temple. Your hangover from the Waldorf doesn’t help.

As you come out of the elevator on twenty-nine, the first person you see is the Ghost. The elevator doors close behind you.

He stands in the middle of the reception area, head tilted to one side like a robin listening for worms, and says hello.

You feel compelled to turn around and run. Your mere presence seems shameful, especially after last night. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to speak. It’s as if he’s deaf and you’re dumb.

“Evening,” you say in a weird, flickering voice.

He nods his head. “I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving us,” he says. “If ever you need a good reference …”

“Thank you. Thanks very much.”

“Goodbye.” He turns and rolls off toward Collating. More than anything yet, this strange encounter makes you feel the sadness of leaving.

You check the mirror at the corner of the hall. Clara’s door is closed and dark, as is the door which leads to the secret chambers of the Druid. There’s a light on in Fact. You proceed cautiously.

Megan is at her desk. She looks up when you come in, goes back to her reading.

“Remember me?”

“I remember something about a lunch date.” She keeps her eyes on her desk.

“Oh, no. I’m sorry.”

She looks up. “You’re always sorry.”

“There was this thing I had to do.”

“A sweet young thing?”

“An old thing gone sour.”

“I have feelings, too, you know.”

“Damn it, I’m sorry.”

“I know you’ve had a lot on your mind lately,” Megan says.

“How about dinner?”

“One more meal with you could be the death of me.” She’s smiling now.

“Just let me pack up my things here. Won’t take a minute.”

Once you open the drawers of your desk you realize it could take all night. There is a vast quantity of flotsam: files, notebooks, personal and business correspondence, galleys and proofs, review books, matchbooks, loose sheets with names and phone numbers, notes to yourself, first drafts of stories, sketches and poems. Here, for instance, is the first draft of “Birds of Manhattan.” Also the “U.S. Government Abstract of Statistics on Agriculture, 1981,” indispensable in researching the three-part article on the death of the family farm, and on the back of which you have written the name Laura Bowman and a telephone number. Who is Laura Bowman? You could dial the number and ask for her, ask her where she fits into your past. Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues.

In the top drawer you discover two empty rectangular packets. Actually, one of them is not quite empty; inside the black paper is a fine dusting of white. You scrape it onto the desk with a credit card, using the edge of the card to rake up two clean lines. You look over at Megan. She’s reading. You could quietly hoover the lines and she’d never know the difference. You extract a bill from your wallet and roll it into a tight cylinder between thumb and forefinger. One apiece isn’t going to do much for either of you. On the other hand, two won’t do much for you, either; one will make you want another, and another will only intitiate a chain reaction of desperate longings. Is this self-knowledge? In any case, you want to do something nice for Megan. For her it might be a treat, something out of the ordinary.

“Meg. Come over here a minute.” Now you are committed.

You hold out the bill. She raises her eyebrows.

“This will make you forget you didn’t eat lunch.”

“What is it?”

“The powder that made Bolivia famous.”

She lifts the bill tentatively to her nose and bends over the desk.

“Do the other one, too,” you say when she offers you the bill.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure.” You just wish she would hurry up and finish it off.

Meg twists her nose like a rabbit and sniffles. “Thanks.”

You shovel the contents of the top drawer onto the desk and wonder how, exactly, to deal with all this paper. Some of it may be significant. Most of it is junk. How do you tell the difference?

“We had some trouble here this morning,” Megan says. She sits down on the edge of your desk. You resist the urge to jump out of the chair and run down the hall with your jacket pulled over your head.
No comment
. All day you have been stifling the memory of your drunken-commando raid on Clara’s office. You want to explain to Megan that it was a joke, you were drunk, it was Tad’s idea. It wasn’t really you, just a clownish alter ego over whom you have no control. You don’t do things like that. You’re not that kind of guy at all. If Alex were seriously hurt, though, Meg probably would have said so already. You keep your eyes fixed on a pamphlet entitled “Manual of Factual Verification.”

“What do you mean, trouble?”

“Well, when Rittenhouse came in this morning he found Alex Hardy passed out on the floor of Clara’s office.”

You find it difficult to talk. “Really? Is he all right?”

“I don’t imagine he feels terrific. He’ll be fine once his blood detoxifies. He’s taking the cure up at McLean’s. Famous Drinking Writers’ Club.”

“Didn’t he hurt himself when he fell?”

“That’s the strange thing. There was no sign of injury, but there was blood on the floor of Clara’s office. And on the walls, too. Very peculiar.”

“Did he say anything? I mean, about what happened?”

“Nothing coherent. He said something about being attacked by pygmies.”

“They didn’t call the, uh, police, did they?”

“Why would they?”

“Just wondering. Sounds to me like a weird deal all around.” You start to relax. Alex is okay and the visions of cops at your door are fading.

“Another odd thing,” Megan says. “There was a mink in the mailroom.”

“A
mink?
”

“It was hiding in a mail bag full of rejected manuscripts. When the mail guy hoisted the bag this morning it started biting him. They had to call the ASPCA.”

“Really strange.” Poor Fred, you think.

“How are you coming?” she says, pointing at the desk.

“I think this calls for drastic measures.” You stand up and collect all the wastebaskets in the room, lining them up beside the desk. You take a book from the desk and hand it to Megan. “Could you give this to Alex for me? Tell him it’s one of the Young Turks.” She takes the book. You pull open the drawers one by one and dump the contents, entire, into the steel buckets.

“That’s done. Let’s eat.”

In the cab, you ask Megan where she wants to eat. “How about my place?”

“You’re going to cook?”

“You sound suspicious.”

“It just seems like a radical idea.”

“If you’d rather go out …”

“No. That sounds great.”

You get out at Bleecker Street. Megan takes your hand and leads you into a delicatessen. She holds up a box for your approval. “Linguine,” she says. You nod. “I’m going to teach you how to purchase and make a meal.” In the next aisle she introduces you to two cans of clams. Ordinarily, she says, she would use fresh clams and fresh pasta, but she doesn’t want to scare you on your first lesson.

From the deli you walk toward Sixth. Megan is telling you about the difference between fresh and dried pasta. Each step takes you closer to the old apartment on Cornelia Street, where you first lived with Amanda in New York. This was your neighborhood. These shops were your shops. You possessed these streets as securely as if you held title. Now the vista is skewed slightly, someone has tilted the ground a few degrees, and everything is the same and not the same.

You pass Ottomanelli’s Meats, where the corpses of small animals hang in the window: unskinned rabbits, hairless fetal pigs, plucked fowl with yellow feet. No ferrets. Amanda was always grossed out by this display. Already she was aspiring to the Upper East Side, where the butchers dress their wares in paper replicas of designer outfits.

At the corner of Jones and Bleecker a Chinese restaurant has replaced the bar whose lesbian patrons kept you awake so many summer nights when, too hot to sleep, you lay together with the windows open. Just before you moved out of the neighborhood a delegation of illiberal youths from New Jersey went into the bar with baseball bats after one of their number had been thrown out. The lesbians had pool cues. Casualties ran heavy on both sides and the bar was closed by order of the department of something or other.

Farther along, the obese gypsy Madame Katrinka beckons you to enter her storefront parlor with red velvet couch to have your fortune told. What would she have told you a year ago?

“Best bread in the city,” Megan says, pointing to Zito’s Bakery. The bell over the door rings as you enter. The fragrance of the interior reminds you of mornings on Cornelia when you woke to the smell of bread from the bakery ovens, Amanda sleeping beside you. It seems a lifetime ago, but you can see her sleeping. You just can’t remember what you talked about.

“White or wheat,” Megan asks.

“I don’t know. White, I guess.”

“You don’t know what’s good for you.”

“All right, wheat. Wheat’s better.”

From the bakery you proceed to the vegetable stand. Why are all the vegetables in the city sold by Koreans? Boxes of tumescent produce glisten under the green awning. You wonder if they color-coordinate the displays according to secret Oriental principles of mind control. Maybe they know that the juxtaposition of red tomatoes and yellow squash will produce in the consumer an irresistible urge to buy a bag of expensive oranges. Megan buys fresh basil, garlic, romaine lettuce and tomatoes. “Now
there’s
a tomato,” she says, holding a large red vegetable up for your inspection. Or is it a fruit?

Megan lives in a big fifties building on Charlton and Sixth. Two large cats, a Siamese and a calico, are waiting at the door. She introduces them as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Rose and Guildy for short, explaining that her first off-off Broadway role was Gertrude in a rock-and-roll version of
Hamlet
.

“I didn’t know you were an actress.”

“My first love. But I got tired of waitressing.”

The apartment is a studio, not large, but furnished to give the impression of distinct areas. Against one wall is a double bed with patchwork quilt. In the center of the room a floral couch, and matching chairs are grouped in front of the largest window. At the other end of the room a rolltop desk is sheltered behind a row of bookcases. The tidiness of this arrangement is qualified by strident outbursts of plant life.

The cats stroke themselves on Megan’s ankles while she hangs her shawl in a closet by the door. “How about a glass of wine?” she says.

“Sure. Thanks.”

The cats follow her into the kitchen. You read the bookshelves. In the examination of personal libraries is an entire hermeneutics of character analysis. Megan has functional blond maple shelves with a little bit of everything in them. The shelves themselves are just untidy enough to suggest actual use and just neat enough to indicate respect for the equipment. The books are organized according to broad categories: a shelf of poetry, a cluster of oversized art books, a long row of
livre de poche
French novels, music and opera books, scores of thin Samuel French drama scripts, and half a shelf of memoirs of life at the magazine. The latter is an entire genre. You pull out Franklin Woolcraft’s chatty volume,
Man about Town;
the flyleaf is signed: “To Meg, who keeps me honest, with Love.” Putting the book back, you catch sight of a spine that reads
Exercise for Better Sex
.

Megan returns with two glasses of red wine. “Give me a minute to change,” she says. “Then I’m going to teach you how to make the world’s easiest meal.”

Megan goes over to the freestanding wardrobe beside the bed. Where is she going to change? Just how casual are we here? As she digs through the wardrobe, you can’t help noticing that she has a terrific ass. You have worked with her for almost two years without noticing her ass. How old is she anyway? She removes something from a hanger and tells you she’ll be right back. She goes into the bathroom. The Siamese massages its head on your shin.
Exercise for Better Sex
.

Megan comes out wearing a maroon silk shirt with puffed sleeves which is not open to immediate interpretation. One less button buttoned might mean
sexy
, but what you see suggests
casually dressy
.

“Sit down,” Megan says, gesturing toward the couch.

You both sit. “I like your place,” you say.

“It’s small, but I can’t afford to move.”

You hope the conversation improves. A few minutes ago you were colleagues headed out for a bite to eat. Now you are a man and a woman alone in a room with a bed.

One of the photographs on the end table beside the couch is a large glossy of a younger-looking Megan onstage with two men.

“That was my last play.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
in Bridgeport, Connecticut.”

You pick up another picture, a boy with a fishing rod holding a trout, cabin and woods in the background.

“Old boyfriend?”

Meg shakes her head. She slides across the couch and takes the picture, studying it earnestly. “My son,” she says.

“
Son?
”

Megan nods, looking at the picture. “This was taken a couple of years ago. He’s thirteen now. I haven’t seen him in almost a year, but he’s coming for a visit as soon as school lets out.”

You don’t want to appear too inquisitive. This sounds like a dangerous subject. You haven’t heard about a son before. Suddenly Megan seems much less scrutable than you had imagined.

She reaches across your chest to put the picture back on the end table. You can feel her breath on your cheek.

“He lives with his father in northern Michigan. It’s a good place for a boy to grow up. They do boy things—hunting and fishing. His father’s a logger. When I met him he was an aspiring playwright who couldn’t get his plays produced. It was hard. We were broke and it seemed like everyone else had money. And I wasn’t the greatest wife in the world. Jack—that’s my ex-husband—didn’t want his son growing up in the city. I didn’t want to leave. Of course I didn’t want my son to leave either, but when the decision was made I was in Bellevue stupefied with Librium. Obviously in no position to fight for custody.”