The Bonfire of the Vanities (12 page)

Maria parked across the street from the town house and her fourth-floor hideaway. Sherman got out and immediately scrutinized the right rear fender. To his great relief—no dent; no sign of anything, at least not here in the dark. Since Maria had told her husband she wouldn’t be returning from Italy until the next day, she wanted to take the luggage up to the little apartment, too. Three times Sherman climbed up the creaking staircase, in the miserable gloaming of the Landlord’s Halos, hauling up the luggage.

Maria took off her royal-blue jacket with the Paris shoulders and put it on the bed. Sherman took off his jacket. It was badly ripped in the back, in the side seams. Huntsman, Savile Row, London. Cost a goddamned fortune. He threw it on the bed. His shirt was wringing wet. Maria kicked off her shoes and sat down in one of the bentwood chairs by the oak pedestal table and put one elbow on the table and let her head keel over against her forearm. The old table sagged in its sad way. Then she straightened up and looked at Sherman.

“I want a drink,” she said. “You want one?”

“Yeah. You want me to fix them?”

“Unh-hunh. I want a lot of vodka and a little orange juice and some ice. The vodka’s up in the cabinet.”

He went in the mean little kitchen and turned on the light. A cockroach was sitting on the rim of a dirty frying pan on the stove. Well, the hell with it. He made Maria her vodka-and-orange juice and then poured himself an Old Fashioned glass full of scotch and put in some ice and a little water. He sat in one of the bentwood chairs across the table from her. He found that he wanted the drink very badly. He longed for each ice-cold burning jolt in his stomach. The car fishtailed.
Thok
. The tall delicate one wasn’t standing there any longer.

Maria had already drunk half the big tumbler he had brought her. She closed her eyes and threw her head back and then looked at Sherman and smiled in a tired fashion. “I swear,” she said, “I thought that was gonna be…it.”

“Well, what do we do now?” said Sherman.

“What do you mean?”

“I guess we oughta—I guess we oughta report it to the police.”

“That’s what you said. Okay. Tell me what for.”

“Well, they tried to rob us—and I think maybe you—I think it’s possible you hit one of them.”

She just looked at him.

“It was when you really gunned it, and we skidded.”

“Well, you wanna know something? I hope I did. But if I did, I sure didn’t hit him very hard. I just barely heard something.”

“It was just a little
thok
. And then he wasn’t standing there anymore.”

Maria shrugged her shoulders.

“Well—I’m just thinking out loud,” said Sherman. “I think we ought to report it. That way we protect ourselves.”

Maria expelled air through her lips, the way you do when you’re at your wit’s end, and looked away.

“Well, just suppose the guy is hurt.”

She looked at him and laughed softly. “Frankly, I couldn’t care less.”

“But just suppose—”

“Look, we got outta there. How we did it doesn’t matter.”

“But suppose—”

“Suppose
bullshit
, Sherman. Where you gonna go to
tell the police?
What are you gonna say?”

“I don’t know. I’ll just tell them what happened.”

“Sherman, I’m gonna tell
you
what happened. I’m from South Carolina, and I’m gonna tell you in plain English. Two niggers tried to kill us, and we got away. Two niggers tried to kill us in the jungle, and we got outta the jungle, and we’re still breathing, and that’s that.”

“Yeah, but suppose—”

“
You
suppose! Suppose you go to the police. What are you gonna say? What are you gonna say we were doing in the Bronx? You say you’re just gonna tell them what happened. Well, you tell
me
, Sherman. What happened?”

So that was what she was actually saying. Do you tell the police that Mrs. Arthur Ruskin of Fifth Avenue and Mr. Sherman McCoy of Park Avenue happened to be having a nocturnal
tête-à-tête
when they missed the Manhattan off-ramp from the Triborough Bridge and got into a little scrape in the Bronx? He ran that through his mind. Well, he could just tell Judy—no, there was no way he could
just tell Judy
about a little ride with a woman named Maria. But if they—if Maria had hit the boy, then it was better to grit his teeth and just tell what happened. Which was what? Well…two boys had tried to rob them. They blocked the roadway. They approached him. They said…A little shock went through his solar plexus.
Yo! You need some help?
That was all the big one had said. He hadn’t produced a weapon. Neither of them had made a threatening gesture until after he had thrown the tire. Could it be—now, wait a minute. That’s crazy. What else were they doing out on a ramp to an expressway beside a blockade, in the dark—except to—Maria would back up his interpretation
—interpretation!—
a frisky wild animal—all of a sudden he realized that he barely knew her.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. Let’s think about it. I’m only thinking out loud.”

“I don’t have to think about it, Sherman. Some things I understand better than you do. Not many things, but some things. They’d love to get their hands on you and me.”

“Who would?”

“The police. And what good would it do, anyway? They’ll never catch those boys.”

“What do you mean, get their hands on us?”

“Please, forget the police.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You, for a start. You’re a socialite.”

“I am
not
a socialite.” Masters of the Universe existed on a plateau far above socialites.

“Oh no? Your apartment was in
Architectural Digest
. Your picture’s been in W. Your father was—is—well, whatever he is. You know.”

“My
wife
put the apartment in the magazine!”

“Well, you can explain that to the police, Sherman. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the distinction.”

Sherman was speechless. It was a hateful thought.

“And they won’t half mind getting holda me, either, as far as that goes. I’m just a little girl from South Carolina, but my husband has a hundred million dollars and an apartment on Fifth Avenue.”

“All right, I’m just trying to figure out the sequence, the things that might come up, that’s all. What if you did hit the boy—what if he’s injured?”

“Did you see him get hit?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t hit anybody. I hope to God I did, but as far as I’m concerned, and as far as you’re concerned, I didn’t hit anybody. Okay?”

“Well, I guess you’re right. I didn’t see anything. But I heard something, and I felt something.”

“Sherman, it all happened so fast, you don’t know
what
happened, and neither do I. Those boys aren’t going to the police. You can be goddamned sure a that. And if you go to the police, they won’t find them, either. They’ll just have a good time with your story—and you don’t know what happened, do you?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“I guess you don’t, either. If the question ever comes up, all that happened was, two boys blocked the road and tried to rob us, and we got away from them. Period. That’s all we know.”

“And why didn’t we report it?”

“Because it was pointless. We weren’t hurt, and we figured they’d never find those boys, anyway. And you know something, Sherman?”

“What?”

“That happens to be the whole truth. You can imagine anything you want, but that happens to be all you know and all I know.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I don’t know, I’d just feel better if—”

“You don’t have to feel better, Sherman. I was the one who was driving. If I hit the sonofabitch, then it was me who hit him—and I’m saying I didn’t hit anybody, and I’m not reporting anything to the police. So just don’t you worry about it.”

“I’m not
worrying
about it, it’s just that—”

“Good.”

Sherman hesitated. Well, that was true, wasn’t it?
She
was driving. It was his car, but
she
took it upon herself to drive it, and if the question ever came up, whatever happened was her responsibility.
She
was driving…and so if there was anything to report, that was her responsibility, too. Naturally, he would stick by her…but already a great weight was sliding off his back.

“You’re right, Maria. It was like something in the jungle.” He nodded several times, to indicate that the truth had finally dawned on him.

Maria said, “We coulda been killed, right there, just as easy as not.”

“You know something, Maria? We fought.”

“Fought?”

“We were in the goddamned jungle…and we were attacked…and we fought our way out.” Now he sounded as if the dawn were breaking wider and wider. “Christ, I don’t know when the last time was I was in a fight, an actual fight. Maybe I was twelve, thirteen. You know something, babe? You were great. You were fantastic. You really were. When I saw you behind the wheel—I didn’t even know if you could drive the car!” He was elated.
She
was driving. “But you drove the hell out of it! You were great!” Oh, the dawn had broken. The world glowed with its radiance.

“I don’t even remember what I did,” said Maria. “It was just a—a—everything happened at once. The worst part was getting over into the seat. I don’t know why they put that gearshift thing in the middle there. I caught my skirt on it.”

“When I saw you there, I couldn’t believe it! If you hadn’t done that”—he shook his head—“we’d’ve never made it.”

Now that they were into the exultation of the war story, Sherman couldn’t resist giving himself an opening for a little praise.

Maria said, “Well, I just did it on—I don’t know—instinct.” Typical of her; she didn’t notice the opening.

“Yeah,” said Sherman, “well, it was a damned good instinct. I kind of had my hands full at that point!” An opening big enough for a truck.

This one even she noticed. “Oh, Sherman—I know you did. When you threw that wheel, that tire, at that boy—oh, God, I thought—I just about—you beat them both, Sherman! You beat them both!”

I beat them both
. Never had there been such music in the ears of the Master of the Universe. Play on! Never stop!

“I couldn’t figure out what was happening!” said Sherman. Now he was smiling with excitement and not even trying to hold back the smile. “I threw the tire, and all of a sudden it was coming back in my face!”

“That was because he put up his hands to block it, and it bounced off, and—”

They plunged into the thick adrenal details of the adventure.

Their voices rose, and their spirits rose, and they laughed, supposedly over the bizarre details of the battle but actually with sheer joy, spontaneous exultation over
the miracle
. Together they had faced the worst nightmare of New York, and they had triumphed.

Maria sat up straight and began looking at Sherman with her eyes extra wide and her lips parted in the suggestion of a smile. He had a delicious premonition. Without a word she stood up and took off her blouse. She wore nothing underneath it. He stared at her breasts, which were glorious. The fair white flesh was gorged with concupiscence and glistening with perspiration. She walked over to him and stood between his legs as he sat in the chair and began untying his tie. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her so hard she lost her balance. They rolled down onto the rug. What a happy, awkward time they had wriggling out of their clothes!

Now they were stretched out on the floor, on the rug, which was filthy, amid the dust balls, and who cared about the dirt and the dust balls? They were both hot and wet with perspiration, and who cared about that, either? It was better that way. They had been through the wall of fire together. They had fought in the jungle together, hadn’t they? They were lying side by side, and their bodies were still hot from the fray. Sherman kissed her on the lips, and they lay like that for a long time, just kissing, with their bodies pressed together. Then he ran his fingers over her back and the perfect curve of her hip and the perfect curve of her thigh and the perfect inside of her thigh—and never before such excitement! The rush ran straight from his fingertips to his groin and then throughout his nervous system to a billion explosive synaptic cells. He wanted to
have
this woman literally, to enclose her in his very hide, to subsume this hot fair white body of hers, in the prime of youth’s sweet rude firm animal health, and make it his forever. Perfect love! Pure bliss! Priapus, king and master! Master of the Universe! King of the Jungle!

Sherman kept both his cars, the Mercedes and a big Mercury station wagon, in an underground garage two blocks from his apartment house. At the bottom of the ramp he stopped, as always, beside the wooden cashier’s hut. A chubby little man in a short-sleeved sport shirt and baggy gray twill pants came out the door. It was the one he disliked, Dan, the redheaded one. He got out of the car and quickly rolled up his jacket, hoping the little attendant wouldn’t see it was torn.

“Hey, Sherm! Howya doin’?”

That was what Sherman truly detested. It was bad enough that this man insisted on calling him by his first name. But to shorten it to
Sherm
, which no one had ever called him—that was escalating presumptuousness into obnoxiousness. Sherman could think of nothing he had ever said, no gesture he had ever made, that had given him the invitation or even the opening to become familiar. Gratuitous familiarity was not the sort of thing you were supposed to mind these days, but Sherman minded it. It was a form of aggression.
You think I am your inferior, you Wall Street Wasp with the Yale chin, but I will show you
. Many times he had tried to think of some polite but cold and cutting response to these hearty pseudo-friendly greetings, and he had come up with nothing.

“Sherm, howawya?” Dan was right beside him. He wouldn’t let up.

“Fine,” Mr. McCoy said frostily…but also lamely. One of the unwritten rules of status conduct is that when an inferior greets you with a how-are-you, you do not answer the question. Sherman turned to walk away.