People Like Us (11 page)

Lord Biedermeier surveyed the lunch crowd from his favorite table at Clarence’s with a proprietary air. It was he, he was fond of telling all his friends and acquaintances, who had come up with the name for the popular
restaurant, when Chick Jacoby was searching for a name that would have an English flavor. “Call it Clarence House,” Lord Biedermeier had proposed, with the speed that he was able to give authors better tides for their books than they had been able to think up themselves. Lord Biedermeier was a great admirer of the Queen Mother, to whom he owed the knighthood that had preceded his title, and had been in the past a frequent visitor at her London residence known as Clarence House. Like all things concerned with Lord Biedermeier, snobbery played a great part. When Clarence House became fondly referred to as Clarence’s, by the people who were regularly seated there by the very fussy Chick Jacoby, Lord Biedermeier, who lunched there most days when he was in New York, was delighted.

He waved his hand in greeting to Charlie Dashwood as Charlie passed his table to join Teddy Vermont and wondered what it was the two men were meeting about. Curiosity, both business and social, always consumed Lord Biedermeier, even about people he scarcely knew. Staring, he removed his pince-nez and, with his thumb and forefinger, massaged the reddened bridge of his nose before returning to a photocopy of an article from the front page of that morning’s
New York Times
business section about the imminent collapse of Oswald Slingerland’s hotel empire.

He pushed back the cuffs of his custom-made dark gray pin-stripe suit and custom-made Turnbull and Asser shirt and looked at the time on his Cartier watch. It was usually he who kept his guests waiting, but he did not want to risk arriving after Elias Renthal, who did not feel comfortable at Clarence’s, and came ten minutes before the appointed time. As Rochelle Prud’homme passed his table he rose and kissed her hand.

“Such a nice party that was, Rochelle,” he said to her.

“Your flowers were lovely, Lucien,” said Rochelle.

“Who are you joining?” asked Lord Biedermeier.

“My sales staff. I’m bringing out a new line of
liquid vitamins, made from the live cells of sheep embryos,” she said.

“My word,” said Lord Biedermeier.

“Longer life, Lucien,” said Rochelle.

“I’m serious about doing your autobiography,” said Lord Biedermeier. “Ah, here is Mr. Renthal.” He eyed Elias Renthal’s pale blue gabardine suit critically. “Do you know each other? Rochelle Prud’homme. Elias Renthal.”

“Hello, Eli,” said Rochelle.

“Hello, Roxy,” said Elias.

“Rochelle,” she corrected him, meeting his eye, about her name.

“Elias,” he corrected her, about his.

“Ta, Lucien,” said Rochelle, moving off to her table. The unfriendly exchange between Rochelle Prud’homme and Elias Renthal was not lost on Lord Biedermeier.

“Old friends, I take it,” he said, commenting on the scene he had just witnessed.

“Old acquaintances would be a better description,” said Elias.

“Business fallout?” asked Lord Biedermeier.

“A corporate raid on Prud’homme Hairdryers. One of my few failures,” said Elias, smiling. “A tough cookie, Roxy Persky, for such a tiny little lady.”

“It’s all this sort of thing, your takeovers, that I think the public will find so fascinating, Elias. Rags to riches is irresistible stuff for your American audiences. What you have done is the American dream,” said Lucien Biedermeier. He halted the conversation while he ordered the wine and the main course, asking Elias to defer to his culinary decisions because the chef, a Hungarian he had known in Budapest who later worked at the Ritz Hotel in London, knew how best to make a dish that was prepared especially for him every time he called ahead.

“Have you ever written?” Lord Biedermeier asked.
“Just checks for Ruby,” replied Elias, laughing, as if he had made a
bon mot
.

Lord Biedermeier smiled appreciatively and then said, “No, seriously.”

“I don’t have time to do all the things I’m doing,” said Elias. “How the hell am I ever to get the time to write my autobiography, Lord Biedermeier?”

“It’s Lucien, Elias,” said Biedermeier. “You won’t have to write a word of your autobiography. I’ll make all the arrangements. All that you’ll have to do is give two hours a week to the writer I’ll hire for you. You just tell him or her your stories, and all the writing will be done for you. It’s that simple.”

“As soon as I get back from London, I’ll meet the writer,” said Elias. He was beginning to warm to the idea of an autobiography.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Just a few days. We’ll be staying at the Claridge’s Hotel.”

“No, no, no,” said Lord Biedermeier. “Simply say Claridge’s. Not
the
Claridge’s. Nor Claridge’s Hotel either. Oh, dear me, no. Just say Claridge’s.”

“What difference does it make?” asked Elias.

“These are the little signals by which people like us recognize each other,” said Lord Biedermeier.

“Do you think I’ll ever learn all these ins and outs?”

“Oh, certainly, Elias. Certainly.”

“I had this idea, Lucien,” said Elias, taking out a comb from his pocket and combing his hair as he talked.

“No, no, no, you mustn’t do that, Elias,” said Lucien.

“Do what?”

“Comb your hair at Clarence’s, I mean, it’s just not done.”

“God, you sound like Ruby. She’s always telling me I don’t do things the right way. Except make money, of course. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.
The profits from this book. There will be profits, I assume,” said Elias.

“That is always the hope in publishing, Elias, and there is a great interest in tycoon biographies at the moment, especially self-made tycoons. We have every reason at Biedermeier and Lothian to think that there will be a major audience for the story of Elias Renthal, especially since your recent marriage. All that running around you did after your last divorce might not have gone over in middle America, especially for a man your age, but now, with Ruby, you will start to build a place for yourself here in New York. How is the divine Ruby?”

With all his heart Elias Renthal wished he hadn’t once told Lord Biedermeier, in a moment of fraternal camaraderie aboard the Concorde from London to New York, that Ruby could take, as he put it at the time, both his nuts in her mouth at the same time. And with all his heart he wished he hadn’t added, “And I got big nuts,” when he shared that confidence with Lord Biedermeier. He hadn’t known at that point that he was going to marry Ruby Nolte. He knew it was what was on Lord Biedermeier’s mind everytime Lord Biedermeier saw Ruby. He wondered if Lord Biedermeier had told other people what he had said, because he knew he would have told if Lord Biedermeier had said the same thing to him about some girl he was involved with.

“What Ruby and I thought was that I would donate the profits from the book and the paperback sale to the homeless of New York, or to the families of victims of violent crime, or something we think up, as a sort of public-relations pitch.”

“What a good idea, Elias. There’s that young police officer who was paralyzed by the drug dealer. You could give him something. The public eats up that sort of thing.”

“Oh, shit,” said Elias.

“What?” asked Lord Biedermeier.

“I dropped some of this goulash you ordered on my new suit.”

“Quite dashing haberdashery you are wearing,” said Lord Biedermeier.

“Don’t you like my new suit?” asked Elias.

“Pale blue gabardine was never one of my favorites.”

“Oh.”

“But I prefer it by far to the rust-colored gabardine you had on at the office yesterday.”

“I’m all wrong. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I think with your growing position in the city, you should give more thought to your clothes. Dark grays. Dark blues. And the subtlest pin stripes. You must let me take you to my tailor,” said Lord Biedermeier. “While we’re on the subject, what manicurist do you use?”

“Blanchette, at my office,” said Elias.

“You must tell Blanchette at your office to buff your nails. That glossy polish is frightfully common.”

Elias, bewildered, stared at his fingers. He wondered if he would ever learn all that he was supposed to learn.

“I don’t get it,” said Elias, looking over at the entrance of the restaurant, where Chick Jacoby was turning away some customers whose look did not appeal to him.

“What don’t you get, Elias?” asked Lord Biedermeier.

“This place. Clarence’s. Why do people fight to come here?”

“It’s cheap. That is Chick Jacoby’s secret.”

“That’s what I don’t get.”

“My dear Elias. It’s something you will learn. There is nothing the rich enjoy more than a bargain, especially a bargain that is reserved exclusively for them.”

“Why can’t Ruby learn that? She only likes it if it costs the most.”

“Oh, look who’s coming in,” said Lord Biedermeier, whose eyes were riveted on the door where Chick Jacoby was welcoming some arriving guests, with flourishes, to signal their importance.

“The man with Jamesey Crocus is Dimitri Minardos. Some people call him Mickie Minardos.”

“Who the hell is Dimitri Minardos, for Christ’s sake? Ruby knows who all these people are, but I never do,” said Elias, buttering a roll.

“He designs shoes.”

“Shoes? That’s a big deal? Shoes?” asked Elias, unimpressed.

“Dimitri Minardos is the name on every lip this week,” said Lord Biedermeier.

“What did Dimitri Minardos do?”

“The fascinating Loelia Manchester has fallen madly in love with him, and be assured that Ruby knows who Loelia Manchester is.”

“Damn, I wish Ruby was here,” said Elias.

Ruby at that time was occupied with Cora Mandell on the redecoration of the vast apartment that she and Elias had recently purchased from Matilda Clarke, who, even before the death of Sweetzer Clarke, had not been able to afford to live there any longer.

“Those drapes must have been pretty in their day,” said Ruby, “but I bet they haven’t been changed since the nineteen fifties.”

“Those curtains were hung in nineteen fifty-eight,” said Cora Mandell.

“How do you know?” asked Ruby.

“I did this room in nineteen fifty-eight for Sweetzer Clarke’s mother, before Sweetzer and Matilda were married.”

“I’m glad I said the drapes were pretty,” said Ruby.

“I had those curtains made up from some antique damask that Sweetzer’s mother found in the Fortuny factory in Venice,” said Cora.

Each time Ruby said the word
drapes
, Cora Mandell repeated the word
curtains
in the following sentence, as a way of letting her know that
drapes
was a word that was simply not used, an offense even to her ear, without actually correcting the newly rich woman who wanted
so much for Cora Mandell to decorate her apartment. By the third time, the point had been made, and Ruby Renthal never used the word
drapes
again.

“The price, of course, is quite different for a window treatment today than it was in nineteen fifty-eight,” said Cora.

Ruby Renthal seemed indifferent to cost, but Cora Mandell pursued the topic nonetheless, so that there would be no misunderstandings later.

“You have to figure on not less than seven thousand dollars a window for curtains. That, of course, includes the fringe,” said Cora.

Ruby did not react adversely.

“It’s how long it takes, not how much it costs, that I am interested in,” answered Ruby.

“How many windows are there?”

“Ninety, perhaps, on the three floors, but I shouldn’t think the curtains in the servants’ rooms need be anything more than something pretty on a rod,” said Ruby.

“Exactly,” said Cora.

“We have a new painting, a Monet, with water lilies, and I was thinking that the walls of this room should be the same color pink as the inside of the water lilies in the painting,” said Ruby. “Pink happens to be my favorite color.”

“Persimmon, I think, would be a prettier color than pink. In lacquer, nineteen or twenty coats of lacquer,” said Cora.

“Sounds nice,” said Ruby.

“Is there furniture you would like me to see, Mrs. Renthal?” asked Cora.

“We have to get everything new,” answered Ruby.

“For all three floors? My word,” said Cora. “Do you mean there is nothing to re-cover?”

“We’re starting from scratch,” said Ruby, “but I want everything first rate.”

“I see. There is an auction coming up in London in a few weeks.”

“I love auctions,” said Ruby.

“The Orromeo family has come on hard times and are selling their priceless collection of furniture.”

“My word,” said Ruby, using the phrase Cora Mandell had just used.

“There is a pair of eighteenth-century console tables, with inlaid rams’ heads, which are too beautiful for words. They would be marvelous right there, on either side of the fireplace, with the Monet over the fireplace,” said Cora. It wasn’t often, even with the opulence of the decade, and the abundance of the new rich, that she was given carte blanche to start from scratch in an apartment of forty-one rooms. She realized she would have, finally, enough of a nest egg to retire.

“We can fly over in my husband’s jet,” said Ruby.

“My word, how grand,” said Cora.

“We’re going to get along great, Mrs. Mandell,” said Ruby.

“Yes, Mrs. Renthal,” said Cora.

Lil Altemus sat in the back of her car next to her daughter and stared out at Central Park, while she organized her plans for the day in her head. “Tap on the glass, will you, Justine, and tell Joe to take me straight down to the Van Degan Building first.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Justine. She removed her glove and tapped on the glass with her ring. “Joe, Mother wants you to stop first at the Van Degan Building.”

“Okay, Miss Justine,” said Joe, closing the glass between them again.

“Is that your engagement ring?” asked Lil.

“Isn’t it perfect?” Justine replied, defensively.

“Let me see it,” said Lil.

Justine held out her hand to her mother.

Lil picked up Justine’s hand and peered at her daughter’s engagement ring without comment. She opened her bag, took out her reading spectacles, put them on, and picked up Justine’s hand again. “That’s not even a ruby,” said Lil. “I thought you said he was
going to give you a ruby. That’s a garnet, for God’s sake. He gave you a garnet with a lot of poky little diamonds around it. Now, don’t pretend to me you think that’s a big deal, because it’s not. One thing I can’t stand, it’s a cheapskate. Either you tell Mr. Slatkin, or I tell him, that this just won’t do. A man who earns four hundred thousand dollars a year can do better than a garnet.”