Monkey Suits (29 page)

He had to find a way out of it all. What was supposed to be an easy way to make money had long since prevented him from moving on, from jumping into his life, or what he thought it should be.

He walked around the apartment, weak-kneed, methodically picking up any stray objects that belonged to Cal; a pair of socks, a magazine, a few cassettes. He dropped the cluster neatly into the kitchen trashcan and crawled to his futon for a long dreamless night of sleep.

“The ancient Greeks, in their infinite wisdom, knew just what precipitated a butler’s revenge. They called it hubris: the impious disregard of the limits governing men’s actions in an orderly universe. This is the sin to which the great and gifted are most susceptible. It is not only the turning of tables against the rich by the poor, it is also the punishment of arrogance by the gods, and the gods always get their revenge in the end.”

– Taki,
The Butler’s Revenge

“If injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil. But if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”

– Henry David Thoreau,
Civil Disobedience

“It’s what happens when your choices

Are narrowed to fashion or violence.

Adjustments, you make adjustments.”

– The Waitresses, “Jimmy Tomorrow”

(c. Future Fossil Music; BMI)

29
“They are going to throw AIDS-infected blood on you.”

Trish Fuller wasn’t sure how to react. She had never been forced to respond to such a statement. She’d held the hands of terminally ill patients, had sat through her own father’s painful death of prostate cancer, and had attended countless funerals. The closest event she could relate to this threat was the day she saw a woman lying on the sidewalk near Lincoln Center. Having been hit by a passing bus, her blood seeped from her coat to the sidewalk. Trish had become queasy and rushed off.

But this was something completely different. Margaret took the first call, from a frantic Dina Carmichael. She’d said that a friend of hers had a friend who had an employee who said that some radical gay group was planning a demonstration tonight where they were going to crash the Met’s doors down and spill vats of AIDS-infected blood on all the party guests. More calls came in, rumor after rumor. Guests began to call with one excuse after another, sending their checks of course, but bowing out of showing up.

Despite her unflagging spirit, Trish wondered how to cope with this. Never before had such a thing happened, not even in the sixties when Black militants descended on Manhattan during the civil rights protests. Above all, she wondered why.

Of course, it must have been Winston. In a terrible case of bad timing, Winston had written a rather unpleasant editorial in the May issue of his magazine. She tried to forget about the whole thing and nearly succeeded, until Margaret came to work early to show her the item on ‘Page Six:’

“It seems the gay rights group
Act Up
is planning to act up at
Trish Fuller
’s AIDS benefit tonight at the Met. Protestors are peeved that Hizzoner, the
Mayor,
has replaced author
Drew Van Sully
, who passed away yesterday, as keynote speaker. Act Uppers are also up in arms about Trish’s hubby
Winston
for making remarks about “stern measures to control the disease-carrying behavior of promiscuous homosexuals and drug addicts” in his magazine,
The American Republic
. Mrs. Fuller may have a hard time filling seats at her soirée, despite assurances by a Police Commissioner’s spokesman to keep protestors out of the partygoers’ path. Talk about a headache!”

After thrice reading the article over breakfast, Trish left a message at Winston’s office to call home the moment he arrived. She’d have a lot of phone calls to make.

To find a moment of relaxation before the daunting task ahead, she escaped to the back closet of her Fifth Avenue town house and opened their back-of-the-closet wall safe to extract her anniversary emerald necklace and matching earrings, which she planned to wear to the benefit.

Made in the 1960s by a little-known jeweler who later created designs for Tiffany, Winston had bought them for their tenth wedding anniversary, and as a lavish token for their subsequent vacation to Egypt.

A lovely conversation about that trip with author Drew Van Sully at a party almost a year before had led to her friendship with the author. The idea for the benefit grew from his astonishing tales of health problems.

Trish held the necklace up, amused by its deep green sparkles and the angular gold setting that nearly approached kitsch. They might be a touch over the top, but she was the hostess, and they were in theme with her guest of honor’s book.

But doing the party as set along the Nile River had been dismissed months before. To her, theme parties were definitely outré. She moved the box aside, when her nearby scrapbooks drew her interest.

The hairstyles, the gowns, all charted the shifting trends through time. How could they all have thought such dresses and fashions attractive? Absurd. Her scrapbooks spanned the decades of galas and opening nights, all the way back to her debutante ball at the Rye Country Club. How long before the current photos and clippings would look so silly?

At least this year she was
au courant.
Trish Fuller knew how to throw a party. Her face may have been ravaged by time, fatigue and a few thousand too many cigarettes, but what she lacked in beauty she made up for in taste, influence and jewelry.

Winston was responsible for the influence and jewelry. The advance sales of his next book, detailing his Washington years, paid for their Hamptons summer home renovations (one-hundred-sixty thousand dollars) and every five years, an afternoon at Cartier (a discreet five thousand). With a few hundred thousand somewhere in between from her own inheritance, Trish decided to make the initial arrangements for her benefit at the Met, her favorite for a gala event. Not only was it simply the grandest of museums, it was also only ten blocks away from her home.

The thousand dollar a plate tickets had already been paid for by most all the guests. The money was set to go into a non-profit fund and then sent to St. Paul’s Hospital, where Trish had frequently posed for photos with bedridden children in the AIDS ward. From the Upper East Side point of view, it seemed like just the right cause. Despite the presidential silence until Rock’s demise, Trish had become a champion for the cause, pushing aside the bitter jokes and fear. She’d had too many decorators and artist friends die. It was she who had made it a
cause celebre,
and she who first did it in style. All the more reason to wonder why on earth this group of AIDS people would want to ruin her party.

Several luminaries were to attend. Broadway and film stars, Washington dignitaries, Jackie, Oscar, Calvin and Kelly, Gloria, the Tischs, the Steinbergs, the Petries, Blaine, Judy. Everyone on the A list would be there. That is, everyone who wasn’t afraid to come.

By noon, Trish met in her study with her assistant Margaret, and Ellen Colbert, the Associate Director of the St. Paul’s AIDS Foundation. Both younger women wore bright business dresses with bows around their necks, looking slightly gift-wrapped. Trish wore a comfortable Donna Karan. Her new Bruno de la Selle hung on a hook in her nearby changing room, having been delivered only an hour earlier after a last minute fitting. Trish paced while the two younger women pored over the oversized photocopy of the table settings. They brooded and fretted like generals planning a major war campaign.

“No, no, Maggie. We can’t put the Miltons at the same table as the Renaldis!” Trish smashed her cigarette into a nearby ashtray and continued pacing. “Maurice Renaldi just bought out all of Gregory Tenblum’s controlling interest in the Bindel Corporation, and the Miltons are on the board.” Thank goodness Winston kept her up on the stock market.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Ellen said while attempting a wan smile to Margaret, who was recalculating the revised number of guests.

“Well, put them across the table, but don’t sit them next to each others’ wives, for God’s sake.”

“Okay.” Ellen erased four names and rewrote them for the third time.

“What’s the body count?” Trish asked. Margaret understood, but flinched at the term. Over two dozen guests had cancelled since the article hit the papers and the subsequent gossip hit the phone lines. Calvin and Kelly: out. Jackie: out. Bruno and his ... friend Gordon Bechamel: wavering.

“One hundred-sixty-four, unless the Mayor is bringing ...”

“Oh God, that’s at least nine tables out,” Trish sighed. “Get Philipe at Fabulous. Tell him to tell the florist and the rentals. I don’t want a single empty chair in that place tonight. And if that drag queen Bruno doesn’t show his ugly mug, I’ll never wear so much as a shoe string of his again in public!”

30
Naturally, only A waiters were chosen.
The blondest and most handsome, with a token smattering of women and minorities, were culled from Fabulous’ select computer files. Alex Tilson had stayed overtime at the office many nights securing the best and most well-behaved waiters for the event. Trish Fuller was one of the company’s best clients, and, after all, this was a benefit for AIDS.

After receiving Margaret’s call for Philipe, who had called saying he’d arrive late, Alex rechecked his list. With the reductions, there’d be about ten extra workers. Maybe he could reapportion them as C waiters and not charge Trish Fuller. Alex rarely cancelled on waiters. They made a point of at least doing them that courtesy. Besides, a few hundred dollars didn’t make too much of a difference for a party costing over $300,000.

Alex dialed an inside line to the kitchen two flights below him.

“Craig, kitchen,” a curt voice said.

“This is Alex upstairs.”

“What now? Did they bomb the Met yet?”

“Very funny. Listen, we’re gonna have to cut two dozen more for the Fuller party.”

“What am I supposed to do with all the extra?”

“Add it to that wedding on Saturday.”

“I think not, dear. They’re having veal. We do not serve orso with veal.”

“Well, just save it. Give it to God’s Love We Deliver. I don’t know. You’re the chef. I gotta make more calls.”

“I hate you, Alex,” Kevin half-sang.

“Thank you, Craig.” After hanging up, he surveyed his checklist. The rookies would get the early set-up. They always worked harder. He made a note on a Post-it to remind Philipe about the six people arriving late. Kevin Rook, Carissa Morgan, Lee Wyndam and who else? He tried not to forget the rumor someone had stuck in his ear.

Surely, they couldn’t be part of the protest that was planned. Kevin did that kind of thing, but Carissa? Maybe. Lee? Never. The rest of them he didn’t know. He did know that if it came down that he knew, he’d be walking a razor-thin line at Fabulous Food.

He dialed down to reception. “Jill, has Philipe come in yet?”

“No, I haven’t seen him.”

“Thank you.”

Might as well get started on table assignments. While flipping through an initial printout, Alex scanned the files of waiters booked for the night. The proper number of A’s, B’s and C’s, hopefully. He began to pair them up, delicately arranging them by skill, seniority, and looks. The ethnics should be sprinkled. The seniors should get the head tables. The unknowns doled out to the perimeter. Extra captains. All of them would be watched.

31
Over a month had passed before Lee saw Calvin again, strangely
enough,
in
an empty swimming pool.