The Bonfire of the Vanities (3 page)

Christ! Almost got away! He grabs the leash just in time. He’s sweating. His head is soaked with rain. His heart is pounding. He sticks one arm through the loop in the leash. The dog keeps struggling. The leash is wrapped around Sherman’s legs again. He picks up the telephone and cradles it between his shoulder and his ear and fishes around in his pocket for a quarter and drops it in the slot and dials.

Three rings, and a woman’s voice: “Hello?”

But it was not Maria’s voice. He figured it must be her friend Germaine, the one she sublet the apartment from. So he said: “May I speak to Maria, please?”

The woman said: “Sherman? Is that you?”

Christ! It’s Judy! He’s dialed his own apartment! He’s aghast—paralyzed!

“Sherman?”

He hangs up. Oh Jesus. What can he do? He’ll bluff it out. When she asks him, he’ll say he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. After all, he said only five or six words. How can she be sure?

But it was no use. She’d be sure, all right. Besides, he was no good at bluffing. She’d see right through him. Still, what else could he do?

He stood there in the rain, in the dark, by the telephone. The water had worked its way down inside his shirt collar. He was breathing heavily. He was trying to figure out how bad it was going to be. What would she do? What would she say? How angry would she be? This time she’d have something she could really work on. She deserved her scene if she wanted it. He had been truly stupid. How could he have done such a thing? He berated himself. He was no longer angry at Judy at all. Could he bluff it out, or had he really done it now? Had he really hurt her?

All at once Sherman was aware of a figure approaching him on the sidewalk, in the wet black shadows of the town houses and the trees. Even from fifty feet away, in the darkness, he could tell. It was that deep worry that lives in the base of the skull of every resident of Park Avenue south of Ninety-sixth Street—a black youth, tall, rangy, wearing white sneakers. Now he was forty feet away, thirty-five. Sherman stared at him. Well, let him come! I’m not budging! It’s my territory! I’m not giving way for any street punks!

The black youth suddenly made a ninety-degree turn and cut straight across the street to the sidewalk on the other side. The feeble yellow of a sodium-vapor streetlight reflected for an instant on his face as he checked Sherman out.

He had crossed over! What a stroke of luck!

Not once did it dawn on Sherman McCoy that what the boy had seen was a thirty-eight-year-old white man, soaking wet, dressed in some sort of military-looking raincoat full of straps and buckles, holding a violently lurching animal in his arms, staring, bug-eyed, and talking to himself.

Sherman stood by the telephone, breathing rapidly, almost panting. What was he to do now? He felt so defeated, he might as well go back home. But if he went back immediately, it would be pretty obvious, wouldn’t it? He hadn’t gone out to walk the dog but to make a telephone call. Besides, whatever Judy was going to say, he wasn’t ready for it. He needed to think. He needed advice. He needed to get this intractable beast out of the rain.

So he dug out another quarter and summoned up Maria’s number into his brain. He concentrated on it. He nailed it down. Then he dialed it with a plodding deliberation, as if he were using this particular invention, the telephone, for the first time.

“Hello?”

“Maria?”

“Yes?”

Taking no chances: “It’s me.”

“Sherman?” It came out Shuhhh-mun. Sherman was reassured. That was Maria, all right. She had the variety of Southern accent in which half the vowels are pronounced like
u
’s and the other half like short
i
’s. Birds were
buds
, pens were
pins
, bombs were
bums
, and envelopes were
invilups
.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ll be right over. I’m at a telephone booth. I’m only a couple of blocks away.”

There was a pause, which he took to mean she was irritated. Finally: “Where on earth have you been?” Where un uth have you bin?

Sherman laughed morosely. “Look, I’ll be right over.”

The staircase of the town house sagged and groaned as Sherman walked up. On each floor a single bare 22-watt circular fluorescent tube, known as the Landlord’s Halo, radiated a feeble tubercular-blue glow upon the walls, which were Rental Unit Green. Sherman passed apartment doors with innumerable locks, one above the other in drunken columns. There were anti-pliers covers over the locks and anti-jimmy irons over the jambs and anti-push-in screens over the door panels.

In blithe moments, when King Priapus reigned, with no crises in his domain, Sherman made this climb up to Maria’s with a romantic relish. How bohemian! How
…real
this place was! How absolutely
right
for these moments when the Master of the Universe stripped away the long-faced proprieties of Park Avenue and Wall Street and let his rogue hormones out for a romp! Maria’s one room, with its closet for a kitchen and another closet for a bathroom, this so-called apartment of hers, fourth floor rear, which she sublet from her friend Germaine—well, it was perfect. Germaine was something else again. Sherman had met her twice. She was built like a fire hydrant. She had a ferocious hedge of hair on her upper lip, practically a mustache. Sherman was convinced she was a lesbian. But so what? It was all real! Squalid! New York! A rush of fire in the loins!

But tonight Priapus did not rule. Tonight the grimness of the old brownstone weighed on the Master of the Universe.

Only the dachshund was happy. He was hauling his belly up the stairs at a merry clip. It was warm and dry in here, and familiar.

When Sherman reached Maria’s door, he was surprised to find himself out of breath. He was perspiring. His body was positively abloom beneath the riding mac, his checked shirt, and his T-shirt.

Before he could knock on the door, it opened about a foot, and there she was. She didn’t open it any farther. She stood there, looking Sherman up and down, as if she were angry. Her eyes gleamed above those remarkable high cheekbones of hers. Her bobbed hair was like a black hood. Her lips were drawn up into an O. All at once she broke into a smile and began chuckling with little sniffs through her nose.

“Well, come on,” said Sherman, “let me in! Wait’ll I tell you what happened.”

Now Maria pushed the door all the way open, but instead of ushering him inside, she leaned up against the doorjamb and crossed her legs and folded her arms underneath her breasts and kept staring at him and chuckling. She was wearing high-heeled pumps with a black-and-white checkerboard pattern worked into the leather. Sherman knew little about shoe designs, but it registered on him that this one was of the moment. She wore a tailored white gabardine skirt, very short, a good four inches above the knees, revealing her legs, which to Sherman’s eyes were like a dancer’s, and emphasizing her tiny waist. She wore a white silk blouse, open down to the top of her breasts. The light in the tiny entryway was such that it threw her entire ensemble into high relief: her dark hair, those cheekbones, the fine features of her face, the swollen curve of her lips, her creamy blouse, those creamy flan breasts, her shimmering shanks, so insouciantly crossed.

“Sherman…” Shuhhh-mun. “You know what? You’re cute. You’re just like my little brother.”

The Master of the Universe was mildly annoyed, but he walked on in, passing her and saying: “Oh boy. Wait’ll I tell you what happened.”

Without altering her pose in the doorway, Maria looked down at the dog, who was sniffing at the carpet. “Hello, Marshall!” Muhshull. “You’re a wet little piece a salami, Marshall.”

“Wait’ll I tell you—”

Maria started to laugh and then shut the door. “Sherman…you look like somebody just
…balled you up
”—she balled up an imaginary piece of paper—“and threw you down.”

“That’s what I feel like. Let me tell you what happened.”

“Just like my little brother. Every day he came home from school, and his belly button was showing.”

Sherman looked down. It was true. His checked shirt was pulled out of his pants, and his belly button was showing. He shoved the shirt back in, but he didn’t take off the riding mac. He couldn’t settle in here. He couldn’t stay too long. He didn’t know quite how to get that across to Maria.

“Every day my little brother got in a fight at school…”

Sherman stopped listening. He was tired of Maria’s little brother, not so much because the thrust of it was that he, Sherman, was childish, but because she insisted on going on about it. At first glance, Maria had never struck Sherman as anybody’s idea of a Southern girl. She looked Italian or Greek. But she talked like a Southern girl. The chatter just poured out. She was still talking when Sherman said:

“You know, I just called you from a telephone booth. You want to know what happened?”

Maria turned her back and walked out into the middle of the apartment, then wheeled about and struck a pose, with her head cocked to one side and her hands on her hips and one high-heeled foot slewed out in a carefree manner and her shoulders thrown back and her back slightly arched, pushing her breasts forward, and she said:

“Do you see anything new?”

What the hell was she talking about? Sherman wasn’t in a mood for anything new. But he looked her over dutifully. Did she have a new hairdo? A new piece of jewelry? Christ, her husband loaded her with so much jewelry, who could keep track? No, it must be something in the room. His eyes jumped around. It had probably been built as a child’s bedroom a hundred years ago. There was a little bay with three leaded casement windows and a window seat all the way around. He surveyed the furniture…the same old three bentwood chairs, the same old ungainly oak pedestal table, the same old mattress-and-box-spring set with a corduroy cover and three or four paisley cushions strewn on top in an attempt to make it look like a divan. The whole place shrieked: Make Do. In any event, it hadn’t changed.

Sherman shook his head.

“You really don’t?” Maria motioned with her head in the direction of the bed.

Sherman now noticed, over the bed, a small painting with a simple frame of blond wood. He took a couple of steps closer. It was a picture of a nude man, seen from the rear, outlined in crude black brushstrokes, the way an eight-year-old might do it, assuming an eight-year-old had a notion to paint a nude man. The man appeared to be taking a shower, or at least there was what looked like a nozzle over his head, and some slapdash black lines were coming out of the nozzle. He seemed to be taking a shower in fuel oil. The man’s flesh was tan with sickly lavender-pink smears on it, as if he were a burn case. What a piece of garbage…It was sick…But it gave off the sanctified odor of serious art, and so Sherman hesitated to be candid.

“Where’d you get that?”

“You like it? You know his work?”

“Whose work?”

“Filippo Chirazzi.”

“No, I don’t know his work.”

She was smiling. “There was a whole article about him, in the
Times
.”

Not wanting to play the Wall Street philistine, Sherman resumed his study of this masterpiece.

“Well, it has a certain…how can I say it?…directness.” He fought the urge to be ironic. “Where did you get it?”

“Filippo gave it to me.” Very cheery.

“That was generous.”

“Arthur’s
bought
four of his paintings, great big ones.”

“But he didn’t give it to Arthur, he gave it to you.”

“I wanted one for myself. The big ones are Arthur’s. Besides, Arthur wouldn’t know Filippo from…from I don’t know what, if I hadn’t told him.”

“Ah.”

“You don’t like it, do you.”

“I
like
it. To tell you the truth, I’m rattled. I just did something so goddamned stupid.”

Maria gave up her pose and sat down on the edge of the bed, the would-be divan, as if to say, “Okay, I’m ready to listen.” She crossed her legs. Her skirt was now halfway up her thighs. Even though those legs, those exquisite shanks and flanks of hers, were beside the point right now, Sherman couldn’t keep his eyes off them. Her stockings made them shiny. They glistened. Every time she moved, the highlights shimmered.

Sherman remained standing. He didn’t have much time, as he was about to explain.

“I took Marshall out for a walk.” Marshall was now stretched out on the rug. “And it’s raining. And he starts giving me a very hard time.”

When he got to the part about the telephone call itself, he became highly agitated even in the description of it. He noticed that Maria was containing her concern, if any, quite successfully, but he couldn’t calm down. He plunged on into the emotional heart of the matter, the things he felt immediately after he hung up—and Maria cut him off with a shrug and a little flick in the air with the back of her hand.

“Oh, that’s nothing, Sherman.” That’s nuthun, Shuhmun.

He stared at her.

“All you did was make a telephone call. I don’t know why you just didn’t say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I was calling my friend Maria Ruskin.’ That’s what I woulda done. I never bother lying to Arthur. I don’t tell him every little thing, but I don’t lie to him.”

Could he possibly have used such a brazen strategy? He ran it through his mind. “Uhmmmmmmmm.” It ended up as a groan. “I don’t know how I can go out at 9:30 at night and say I’m walking the dog and then call up and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m really out here calling Maria Ruskin.’ ”

“You know the difference between you and me, Sherman? You feel sorry for your wife, and I don’t feel sorry for Arthur. Arthur’s gonna be seventy-two in August. He knew I had my own friends when he married me, and he knew he didn’t like them, and he had his own friends, and he knew I didn’t like
them
. I can’t stand them. All those old Yids…Don’t look at me as if I’ve said something awful! That’s the way Arthur talks. ‘The
Yiddim
.’ And the
goyim
, and I’m a
shiksa
. I never heard of all that stuff before I met Arthur. I’m the one who happens to be married to a Jew, not you, and I’ve had to swallow enough of this Jewish business over the past five years to be able to use a little of it if I feel like it.”