The Bonfire of the Vanities (31 page)

“No, I don’t actually build them, sweetheart. I handle the bonds, and the bonds are what make it possible—”

“You
help
build them?”

“Well, in a way.”

“Which ones?”

“Which
ones
?”

“You said roads and hospitals.”

“Well, not any one specifically.”

“The road to Maine?”

Now both his father and mother were giggling the infuriating giggle of people who are trying their best not to laugh right in your face.

“No, not the—”

“I think you’re in over your head, Sherman!” said his mother.
Head
came close to soaring into a whoop.

“Not the road to Maine,” said Sherman, ignoring the comment. “Let me try to put it another way.”

Judy broke in. “Let me try.”

“Well…all right.”

“Darling,” said Judy, “Daddy doesn’t build roads or hospitals, and he doesn’t help build them, but he does handle the
bonds
for the people who raise the money.”

“Bonds?”

“Yes. Just imagine that a bond is a slice of cake, and you didn’t bake the cake, but every time you hand somebody a slice of the cake a tiny little bit comes off, like a little crumb, and you can keep that.”

Judy was smiling, and so was Campbell, who seemed to realize that this was a joke, a kind of fairy tale based on what her daddy did.

“Little crumbs?” she said encouragingly.

“Yes,” said Judy. “Or you have to imagine little crumbs, but a
lot
of little crumbs. If you pass around enough slices of cake, then pretty soon you have enough crumbs to make a
gigantic
cake.”

“For real life?” asked Campbell.

“No, not for real life. You just have to imagine that.” Judy looked to Sherman’s father and mother for approval of this witty description of the bond business. They smiled, but uncertainly.

“I’m not sure you’re making it any clearer for Campbell,” said Sherman. “My goodness
…crumbs
.” He smiled to show he knew this was only lunch-table banter. In fact…he was used to Judy’s supercilious attitude toward Wall Street, but he was not happy about
…crumbs
.

“I don’t think it’s such a bad metaphor,” said Judy, also smiling. Then she turned to his father. “Let me give you an actual example, John, and you be the judge.”

John
. Even though there was something…off…about
crumbs
, this was the first real indication that things might be going over the edge.
John
. His father and mother had encouraged Judy to call them John and Celeste, but it made her uncomfortable. So she avoided calling them anything. This casual, confident
John
was not like her. Even his father appeared a bit on guard.

Judy launched into a description of his Giscard scheme. Then she said to his father, “Pierce & Pierce doesn’t issue them for the French government and doesn’t buy them from the French government but from whoever’s already bought them from the French government. So Pierce & Pierce’s transactions have nothing to do with anything France hopes to build or develop or…achieve. It’s all been done long before Pierce & Pierce enters the picture. So they’re just sort of…slices of cake. Golden cake. And Pierce & Pierce collects millions of marvelous”—she shrugged—“golden crumbs.”

“You can call them crumbs if you want,” said Sherman, trying not to sound testy, and failing.

“Well, that’s the best I can do,” Judy said brightly. Then to his father and mother: “Investment banking is an unusual field. I don’t know if there
is
any way you can explain it to anyone under twenty. Or perhaps under
thirty
.”

Sherman now noticed that Campbell was standing by with a distressed look on her face. “Campbell,” he said, “you know what? I think Mommy wants me to change professions.” He grinned, as if this were one of the funniest discussions in years.

“Not at all,” said Judy, laughing. “I’m not complaining about your golden crumbs!”

Crumbs
—enough!
He could feel his anger rising. But he kept on smiling. “Perhaps I ought to try decorating. Excuse me, interior designing.”

“I don’t think you’re cut out for it.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It must be fun getting pouffe curtains and polished chintz for—who were those people?—those Italians you did that apartment for?—the di Duccis?”

“I don’t know that it’s fun particularly.”

“Well, then it’s
creative
. Right?”

“Well…at least you’re able to point to something you’ve
done
, something tangible, something clear-cut—”

“For the di Duccis.”

“Even if it’s for people who are shallow and vain, it’s something
real
, something describable, something contributing to simple human satisfaction, no matter how meretricious and temporary, something you can at least explain to your children. I mean, at Pierce & Pierce, what on earth do you tell
each other
you do every day?”

All at once, a wail. Campbell. Tears were coming down her face. Sherman put his arms around her, but her body was rigid.

“It’s all right, sweetie!”

Judy got up and came over and put her arms around her, too. “Oh, Campbell, Campbell, Campbell, sweetie pie! Daddy and I were only teasing each other.”

Pollard Browning was looking their way. So was Rawlie. Faces at tables all around, staring at the wounded child.

Because they were both trying to embrace Campbell, Sherman found his face close to Judy’s. He wanted to strangle her. He glanced at his parents. They were aghast.

His father stood up. “I’m going to get a martini,” he said. “You’re all too up-to-date for me.”

Saturday! In SoHo! After a wait of less than twenty minutes, Larry Kramer and his wife, Rhoda, and Greg Rosenwald and his live-in girlfriend, Mary Lou Love-Greg, and Herman Rappaport and his wife, Susan, now occupied a window table at the Haiphong Harbor restaurant. Outside, on West Broadway, it was such a clear sparkling late-spring day that not even the grime of SoHo could obscure it. Not even Kramer’s envy of Greg Rosenwald could obscure it. He and Greg and Herman had been classmates at New York University. They had worked on the Student Activities Board together. Herman was now an editor, one among many, at Putnam, the publishing house, and it was largely thanks to him that Rhoda had gotten her job at Waverly Place Books. Kramer was an assistant district attorney, one among 245, in the Bronx. But Greg, Greg with his Downtown clothes on and the lovely Mary Lou Blonde at his side, was a writer for
The Village Voice
. So far Greg was the only star that had risen from their little group of campus hotshots. That had been apparent from the moment they sat down. Any time the others had a comment to make, they looked at Greg when they made it.

Herman was looking at Greg when he said, “Have you been in this place Dean and DeLuca? Have you checked out the prices? Smoked…Scottish…salmon…thirty-three dollars a pound? Susan and I were just in there.”

Greg smiled knowingly. “That’s for the Short Hills Seville set.”

“The Short Hills Seville set?” asked Rhoda. My wife, the perfect foil. Not only that, she had the kind of grin on her face that you put on when you just
know
you’re going to get a witty reply.

“Yeah,” said Greg, “take a look out there.” Take a look oudeh. His accent was as atrocious as Rhoda’s. “Every other car”—evvy udda kah—“is a Cadillac Seville with Jersey license plates. And take a look at what they
wear
.” Take a lookad whuddeh
weh
. Not only did he have an atrocious accent, he had the 300-watt animation of David Brenner, the comedian. “They roll out of these six-bedroom Georgians in Short Hills with their bomber jackets and blue jeans, and they get in their Cadillac Sevilles and they drive to SoHo every Saturday.”

Evvy Saddy. But Rhoda and Herman and Susan beamed and chuckled in appreciation. They thought this was rich stuff. Only Mary Lou Blonde Headlights looked less than swept away by this priceless urbanity. Kramer decided that if he got a word in edgewise, he would direct it toward her.

Greg was off on a disquisition on all the bourgeois elements who were now attracted to the artists’ quarter. Why didn’t he start with himself? Look at him. A wavy red beard as big as the King of Hearts’s hiding his receding chin…a blackish-green tweed jacket with enormous shoulders and lapels with notches down around his ribs…a black T-shirt with the logo of the Pus Casserole, the band, across the chest…black pegged pants…the Greasy Black look that was so…so Post-Punk, so Downtown, so…of the moment…And in fact he was a nice little Jewish boy from Riverdale, which was the Short Hills of the New York City limits, and his parents had a nice big Colonial house, or Tudor, or whatever it was…A middle-class twerp…a writer for
The Village Voice
, a know-it-all, possessor of Mary Lou Downy Shanks…Greg had started living with Mary Lou when she enrolled in the Investigative Journalism seminar he was teaching at N.Y.U. two years ago. She had a fantastic body,
outstanding
breasts, and classic Wasp looks. She stood out on the N.Y.U. campus like somebody from another planet. Kramer called her Mary Lou Love-Greg, which was a way of saying she had given up her actual identity to live with Greg. She bothered them. She bothered Kramer most of all. He found her dense, distant—intensely desirable. She reminded him of the girl with brown lipstick. And for this he envied Greg most of all. He had taken this gorgeous creature and possessed her, without assuming any obligations, without getting stuck in an ant colony on the West Side, without having an English nanny sitting on his neck, without having a wife he had to watch turning into her
shtetl
mama…Kramer cut a look at Rhoda and her beaming puffy face and immediately felt guilty. He
loved
his new son, he was
bound
to Rhoda, forever, in a sacred way…and yet
…This is New York! And I’m young
!

Greg’s words flowed past him. His eyes wandered. For a moment they met Mary Lou’s. She held them.
Could it be—
But he couldn’t look at her forever. He looked out the window at the people walking along West Broadway. Most were young or youngish—so smartly turned out!—so Downtown!—sparkling, even in Greasy Black, on a perfect Saturday in late spring.

Then and there, sitting at a table in the Haiphong Harbor, Kramer vowed that he would be
part of it
. The girl with brown lipstick—

—had held his eyes, and he had held hers, when the verdict came. He had won. He had carried the jury and sunk Herbert, who would get a sentence of three to six, at the very least, since he already had a felony conviction on his record. He had been tough, fearless, shrewd—and he had won. He had won
her
. When the foreman, a black man named Forester, had announced the verdict, he had looked into her eyes and she had looked into his, and they had stayed that way for what seemed like a very long time. There was no question about it.

Kramer tried to catch Mary Lou’s eyes again but missed. Rhoda was looking at the menu. He heard her ask Susan Rappaport, “Jeet foya came down heh?” Which meant, “Did you eat before you came down here?”

Susan said, “No, ju?” No, did you?

“No, I couldn’t waida get oudada house. I won’t be able a do’is again for sixteen years.”

“Do what?”

“Oh, just go to SoHo because I feel like going to SoHo. Go anywhere. The baby nurse is leaving on Wednesday.”

“Whyn’t you get somebody else?”

“Are you kidding? You wanna know how much we’re paying her?”

“How much?”

“Five hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. My mother’s been paying for it, for four weeks.”

Thanks a lot. Go ahead. Tell all these yentas your husband can’t even afford the goddamned baby nurse. He noticed that Susan’s eyes left Rhoda’s face and looked up. On the sidewalk, just on the other side of the plate glass, stood a young man trying to peer in. If it hadn’t been for the quarter inch of plate glass, he would have been leaning right across their table. He kept peering, peering, peering, until the tip of his nose was almost pressed against the glass. Now all six of them were looking at the fellow, but he apparently couldn’t see them. He had a lean, lineless, fair young face and soft curly light brown hair. In his open-neck shirt, with the collar of his navy warm-up jacket turned up, he looked like a young aviator from long ago.

Mary Lou Caress turned toward Susan with a mischievous look on her face. “I think we ought to ask him if he’s had lunch.”

“Ummmmm,” said Susan, who, like Rhoda, had already laid on her first subcutaneous layer of Matron.

“He looks hungry to me,” said Mary Lou.

“Looks retarded to me,” said Greg. Greg was scarcely a foot away from the young man, and the contrast between Greg’s unhealthy Greasy Black Downtown hip weasel appearance and the young man’s rosy good looks was overwhelming. Kramer wondered if the others noticed. Mary Lou must have noticed. This red-bearded Riverdale twerp didn’t deserve her.

Kramer caught her eye again for a moment, but she watched the young man, who, baffled by the reflections, now turned away from the window and began walking up West Broadway. On the back of his jacket was embroidered a golden thunderbolt and, above it, the words
RADARTRONIC SECURITY
.

“Radartronic Security,” said Greg in a way that indicated what a cipher, a nullity, was this character Mary Lou had decided to go gaga over.

“You can be sure he doesn’t work for any security company,” said Kramer. He was determined to capture Mary Lou’s attention.

“Why not?” said Greg.

“Because I happen to know who does. I see them every day. I wouldn’t hire a security guard in this city if my life depended on it—especially if my life depended on it. They’re all predicate violent felons.”

“They’re what?” asked Mary Lou.

“Predicate violent felons. They already have at least one conviction for a felony involving violence against a person.”

“Oh, come on,” said Herman. “That can’t be true.” He had their attention now. He was playing his one strong suit, Macho Insider from the Bronx.