People Like Us (7 page)

“On TV, that one.”

“What’s so strange about that?”

“He’d fuck an umbrella,” said Violet.

Herkie Saybrook blushed.

“Sorry, Herkie. I should have said it in French.”

* * *

Voices became reserved at the mention of Hubie Altemus’s name, but his mother, Lil Altemus, doted on him completely and knew, simply knew, that the new art gallery in SoHo that she had financed for him, against the advice of her brother, Laurance Van Degan, who handled her money for her, was exactly the place for Hubie to be. All that Van Degan pressure at the bank, being one of the family and all, was what caused the problems there, she was sure.

“I know there’s something wrong, Hubie,” said Lil, replacing her cup and saucer on the tea table that her butler had set up in her library. She took a moment, before the unpleasant scene that she knew was at hand, to admire the tangerine-colored border of her Nymphenburg tea set. “I can just tell by the way you’re standing there that there’s something wrong. I can always tell.”

“Let up, will you?” said Hubie. Hubie was not as tall as Justine, his sister, but the aristocratic Altemus forehead and the aquiline Van Degan nose made him unmistakably her brother. There was, however, an unsureness of self about Hubie that showed in his eyes and facial expressions. His Altemus father, and his Van Degan grandfather, uncle, and cousin had all gone to St. Swithin’s and Harvard, but Hubie had been asked to leave St. Swithin’s, under embarrassing circumstances, and then went to several other schools of lesser stature. He was kicked out of Harvard in his first year for cheating in a Spanish examination and called before his Uncle Laurance, who was the head of the family. “Cheating in
Spanish?
The language of maids,” Uncle Laurance had said contemptuously, as if it would have been a lesser offense to have cheated in economics or trigonometry.

“Just tell me one thing, Hubie,” said Lil.

“What?”

“Is it murder?”

“Good God, no. How could you ask me that, Mother?”

“Drugs, then?”

No.

“You haven’t embezzled, or stolen, or anything like that?”

“Of course not.”

“I just wanted to get rid of all the serious things first. So, you see, whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter. You’re not overdrawn again, Hubie? Oh, please don’t tell me that.”

“I’m not overdrawn.”

“Don’t make me play guessing games, for God’s sake, Hubie.”

Hubie breathed in deeply. “Lewd conduct,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“What it sounds like.”

“Well, explain it to me.”

“I was caught—” He stopped, unable to finish his sentence. He turned away from his mother before he finished his confession. “I was caught, doing it, in Central Park, with a man.”

For a moment Lil was tempted to say, “Doing what?” for innocence was her trademark in the family, but she knew what he meant, and she knew, too, that her son would answer her question with the sort of words she could not bear to have repeated in her presence. Instead she said, quietly, “I don’t want to hear.” Her copy of
Vogue
slipped from her lap and fell to the floor. She turned her forlorn face toward the fireplace. Hubie, scarlet now, looked down on his mother as she stared at the fire. Her King Charles spaniels, Bosie and Oscar, awakened by the sound of the magazine hitting the carpet, jumped on the side of Lil’s chaise, trying to get her attention. Without looking at them, she reached over to a damask-draped end table and took two cookies from a plate and threw them in the air for the dogs to leap at. Hubie watched for a minute and then turned and moved quickly toward the door of his mother’s room. “Isn’t this what happened at St. Swithin’s?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And in Newport that summer with the lifeguard?”

“Yes.”

“You promised me when Uncle Laurance got you into Simsbury that it wouldn’t happen again.”

“It did. At Simsbury, and at college too.” Hubie opened the door.

“Don’t go, Hubie,” said Lil. “Look, we’ll figure this out. Come over here. Sit down. Uncle Laurance will know how to get this fixed without any publicity, or fine, or anything. You’ll have to go and see Uncle Laurance, Hubie.”

“I can’t.”

“It will be just as important to Uncle Laurance as it is to you, Hubie, that this thing is handled with dispatch.”

“I can’t go to see him, Mother. I can’t. He hates me. He makes me feel like I’m nothing. He’s always comparing me to young Laurance. I can’t go to see him. I’d rather go to jail,” said Hubie, whose body was twisted in anguish. For a minute Lil was afraid Hubie was going to start to cry.

“Don’t cry, Hubie. Please don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying, Mother.”

“I’ll go to see him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If you knew, simply knew, how I hate to have to go to see your Uncle Laurance.”

“I’m really sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I’ll tell you what. After this is all over, you and I will go away for a little vacation together. We could go to Venice, and stay at the Gritti, and swim at the Cipriani, and have lunch at Harry’s. It’ll be divine. Alessandro will be there, in that heavenly old palace of his, and I tell you, Hubie, you have never seen ceilings like the Tiepolo ceilings in Alessandro’s palace. To die. It’ll be such fun. You’ll see. By the time we get back all this will be over. We can count on Uncle Laurance to straighten all this out.”

* * *

In Justine’s mind, marriage was the logical sequel to love.

“Didn’t you ever hear of an affair?” asked Bernie, for whom marriage held no allure.

“Isn’t that what we’re having?” asked Justine.

“I was never one to believe that every romance had to end up in marriage,” said Bernie.

“But this isn’t just any old romance, my darling. Can’t you tell? Can’t you feel it? This is incredible, what we have.”

Justine was fastidious about herself, not only in her neatness of grooming, but in the care of her body, which always carried the expensive scents of deodorants, and bath oils, and powder, and perfume. After they had made love several times, Bernie asked Justine not to mute her natural woman’s scents with sprays and atomizers. He told her a woman’s scent was like her fingerprints, hers alone, and it aroused him to know her as she really was.

Bernie rubbed his finger up and down Justine’s rib cage. Too thin, she wished her ribs did not protrude so much, but she was proud of her breasts, not too big, not too small, just right, perfectly formed. She watched Bernie lean down to kiss them. She liked to watch the total absorption of his eyes on her nipples, and the look of desire on his face.

“I’m glad your nipples are pink,” he said. “I like pink nipples better than beige.” As his hand traveled down her body to between her legs, he brushed his face back and forth over her breasts, moaning with pleasure, and then his lips began the slow descent downward to where his moist fingers were preparing for his tongue’s reception.

“Oh, Bernie,” whispered Justine, her hands now in his hair. She had never known there could be such bliss as Bernie Slatkin had brought into her life. She did not know it was possible to love the way she loved him.

“My Aunt Hester asked me if you were pretty,” he said, without lifting his head from his carnal task.

“What did you tell her?” Justine asked.

“I said you were as tall as me.”

“That wasn’t an answer to her question.”

“I said you were refined looking.”

Justine, enthralled with her lover’s lovemaking, replied, “Did you tell her I’m going to marry her nephew?”

5

You could pick out Constantine de Rham from a block away when he walked up or down Madison Avenue. His enormous head with its black beard and hooded eyes had a kind of reptilian magnificence. He was taller by far than most people and walked with such great strides that strollers on the avenue stepped aside as he passed and turned to stare after him at his aristocratic swagger. In fall and spring he wore his topcoat over his shoulders like a cape.

He had that day, in what was for him a rare burst of generosity, given a dollar to a beggar on the street, and, then, not ten minutes later, returning the same way, was offended and irritated that the same beggar held up his hand for more, having already forgotten him, rather than rewarding him with a smile of recognition and gratitude that he felt his previous contribution to the fellow’s welfare deserved.

Augustus Bailey and Constantine de Rham sighted each other from a block away and passed each other without speaking, each aware of the other and each aware that the other was aware of him. An unpleasant feeling stirred within Gus Bailey, as he turned to peer into the window of the Wilton House Bookshop, pretending to concentrate on the display of copies of Nestor
Calder’s latest novel,
Judas Was a Redhead
, until Constantine de Rham had passed. Sometimes Gus felt prescient, and he felt in that moment of passage that he was sometime going to have to play a scene, as he used to call it in Hollywood, with Constantine de Rham. Concentrating on Nestor Calder’s book, Gus did not see Elias Renthal pass behind him and enter a coffee shop, carrying a briefcase.

Inside the bookshop he could see Matilda Clarke, looking at the latest books with Arthur Harburg, the proprietor. He walked in.

“I’m sick, sick, sick to death of reading about the Mitfords,” said Matilda.

“There’s
Judas Was a Redhead
,” suggested Arthur.

“I’ve read that. I even went to Nestor Calder’s publication party at Clarence’s.”

“Have you read
Inspired by Iago?
”

“Heavens, no!”

“It’s not what you think. It opens in a trailer park.”

“Right away you’ve lost me. A little trailer park goes a long way with me.”

“What do you like?” asked Arthur Harburg, patiently. He was used to dealing with his spoiled clients.

“I like a book with short chapters,” said Matilda. “I love to be able to say. ‘I just want to finish this chapter,’ and do it. Such a feeling of accomplishment. What have you got with short chapters, about rich people?”

“There’s always Trollope,” said Gus, breaking in. “He writes short chapters.”

“Gus Bailey,” said Matilda, with a laugh. “Trollope indeed. You missed such a good weekend in the country.”

“Sorry about that.”

“How was your mystery weekend in the other direction?”

“Oh, okay.”

“This man leads a mystery life, Arthur.”

In Gus’s bathroom, Matilda went through his medicine chest. It interested her to know what men kept in
their medicine chests. To her surprise, behind the boxes of his English soap and talcum powder, she found a package of Ramses, a prelubricated prophylactic, according to the copy on the box. She had not thought of Gus Bailey in terms of sexual pursuits. There was always that wife somewhere in his past whose photographs were in his apartment, and the tragedy people talked about, whatever it was. Opening the package of three, she saw that two were missing and was consumed with curiosity to know the kind of women who came to his apartment. She placed the remaining prophylactic in her evening bag and returned to Gus’s living room.

There was classical music on the stereo, and Gus was settled into the chintz-covered chair that was obviously his regular chair, leafing through a copy of
Judas Was a Redhead
. For the first time she noticed him in a different way and wondered what he was like as a lover.

“Did you find everything?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, not taking her eyes off him. With both hands she patted the back of her hair. Nearing fifty, she still wore her hair in the same pageboy style that she had worn as a debutante of eighteen. “Find your style and stick with it,” she was often quoted as saying when the fashion pages of the papers were still quoting her, before Sweetzer died.

“Drink?” Gus asked, sensing a change in the atmosphere. He rose.

“I’ll have a whiskey, with a splash of water,” she said. She looked around the sitting room. “Well, how nice this is, your little apartment. It’s so chic.”

“Hardly chic,” said Gus.

“Well, cozy. I meant this run-down look you have. It’s so English-second-son sort of thing.”

Gus laughed. In the kitchen he made her a scotch with a splash of water. Gus was precise in all things. He refilled the ice tray, put it back in the freezer, and sponged the wet off the kitchen counter before returning to his sitting room.

“It’s my first drink since New Year’s Eve,” she said, taking it from him. “Spirits, that is. Only wine since then, but I don’t count wine. What are you having?”

“Oh, bottled water, I suppose. I keep a variety to choose from.”

“Bottled water? That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t drink?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“No.”

“Did you ever?”

“Yes, but I stopped.”

“Why?”

“I just did.”

“By yourself, or with help?”

“With help.”

“Oh, so you’re a drunk!” she chortled, feeling better about herself.

“No more. Cured in Minnesota,” said Gus, smiling. He returned to his chair. “There are several options for the evening,” he said. “I called Chick Jacoby, and we can get a table at Clarence’s. Or we can go around the corner and see the new Woody Allen movie. Or we can go to the Marty Leskys’ who are having a party with a lot of movie stars.”