The Bonfire of the Vanities (44 page)

“Oh?”

He described the interrogation, wanting it to sound menacing
—I must go see Freddy Button!
—but avoiding his own feelings of inadequacy and fear and guilt.

“So I called Freddy, but he wasn’t in, although they’re expecting him. So I’m going over to his apartment and leave him this note”—he pressed the breast of his jacket, as if there were a letter in the inside pocket—“and if he’s back when I get there, I’ll talk to him. So I’d better go.”

Judy just looked at him for a moment. “Sherman, that makes no sense whatsoever.” She spoke almost warmly, with a little smile, the way you talk to someone who needs to be coaxed back from the edge of the roof. “They’re not going to put you in jail because you have half a license number. I saw something in the
Times
about it this morning. Apparently there are 2,500 Mercedeses with license plates that begin with R. I was joking with Kate di Ducci at lunch. We had lunch at La Boue d’Argent. What on earth are you worried about? You certainly weren’t out driving that night in the Bronx, whenever it was.”

Now!…Tell her!…
Get rid of this horrible weight once and for all! Come clean! With something approaching elation he scaled the last few feet of the great wall of deceit he had erected between himself and his family, and—

“Well…I know I wasn’t. But they acted as if they didn’t believe me.”

—and immediately fell back.

“I’m sure you’re imagining things, Sherman. That’s probably just the way they
are
. For goodness’ sake. If you want to talk to Freddy, you’ll have plenty of time to talk to him in the morning.”

“No! Really! I’ve got to go over there.”

“And have a long talk, if necessary.”

“Well, yes, if necessary.”

She smiled in a way he didn’t like. Then she shook her head. She was still smiling. “Sherman, we accepted this invitation five weeks ago. We’re due there in an hour and a half. And I’m going. And
you’re
going. If you want to leave the Bavardages’ number for Freddy to call you, that’s fine. I’m sure Inez and Leon won’t mind. But we’re going.”

She continued to smile warmly…at the jumper on the roof
…and that’s that
.

The calmness…the smile…the would-be warmth…Her face got the point across more firmly than any explanation she could have ever come up with. Words might have given him openings to wriggle through. This look offered no openings at all. Dinner at Inez and Leon Bavardages’ was as important to Judy as the Giscard had been to him. The Bavardages were this year’s host and hostess of the century, the most busily and noisily arrived of the
arrivistes
. Leon Bavardage was a New Orleans chicory salesman who had gone on to make a fortune in real estate. His wife, Inez, perhaps really was a member of an old Louisiana family, the Belairs. To Sherman (the Knickerbocker) they were ridiculous.

Judy smiled—and she had never been more serious in her life.

But he had to talk to Maria!

He jumped up. “All right, we’re going—but I’ve got to run over to Freddy’s! I won’t be long!”

“Sherman!”

“I promise you! I’ll be right back!”

He all but ran across the dark green marble of the entry gallery. He halfway expected her to run after him and yank him back inside from the elevator vestibule.

Downstairs, Eddie, the doorman, said, “Evening, Mr. McCoy,” and stared at him with a look that seemed to say, “And why did the cops come to see you?”

“Hello, Eddie,” he said without pausing to look at him. He began walking up Park Avenue.

Once he reached the corner, he rushed to the fateful telephone booth.

Carefully, carefully, he dialed Maria’s number. First at the hideaway. No answer. Then he called the apartment on Fifth. A Spanish voice said Mrs. Ruskin couldn’t come to the telephone.
Damn!
Should he say it’s urgent? Should he leave his name? But the old man, her husband, Arthur, might very well be there. He said he would call back.

Had to kill some time to make it plausible that he went to Freddy Button’s building and dropped off a note and came back. He walked over to Madison Avenue…the Whitney Museum…the Carlyle Hotel…Three men came out of the door that led to the Café Carlyle. They were about his age. They were talking and laughing, with their heads thrown back, blissfully boiled…All three carried attaché cases, and two of them wore dark suits, white shirts, and pale yellow ties with small print patterns. These pale yellow ties had become the insignia of the worker bees of the business world…What the hell did they have to laugh and crow about, other than the alcoholic buzz in their brains, the poor deluded—

He was experiencing the resentment of those who discover that, despite their own grave condition, the world goes on about its business, heartless, without even so much as a long face.

When he returned to the apartment, Judy was upstairs in their bedroom suite.

“Well—see? Didn’t take so long,” he said. He sounded as if he expected a star, for keeping his word.

Several possible comments had time to run through her head. What she in fact said, finally, was: “We have less than an hour, Sherman. Now, do me a favor. Please wear the navy suit you got last year, the
deep
navy. Midnight blue, I think it is. And a solid tie, not one of those prints. That navy crepe de chine. Or a shepherd’s check is all right. You always look nice in those.”

A shepherd’s check is all right…
He was overcome by despair and guilt.
They
were out there, circling, and he hadn’t had the courage to tell her. She thought she could still afford the incalculable luxury of worrying about the correct necktie.

Sherman and Judy arrived at the Bavardages’ building on Fifth Avenue in a black Buick sedan, with a white-haired driver, hired for the evening from Mayfair Town Car, Inc. They lived only six blocks from the Bavardages, but walking was out of the question. For a start, there was Judy’s dress. It was bare-shouldered but had short puffed sleeves the size of Chinese lampshades covering the upper arms. It had a fitted waist but was puffed up in the skirt to a shape that reminded Sherman of an aerial balloon. The invitation to dinner at the Bavardages’ prescribed “informal” dress. But this season, as
tout le monde
knew, women dressed far more extravagantly for informal dinners in fashionable apartments than for formal dances in grand ballrooms. In any event, it was impossible for Judy to walk down the street in this dress. A five-mile-an-hour head wind would have stopped her cold.

But there was a yet more compelling reason for the hired car and driver. It would be perfectly
okay
for the two of them to arrive for dinner at a Good Building (the going term) on Fifth Avenue by taxi, and it would cost less than three dollars. But what would they do
after
the party? How could they walk out of the Bavardages’ building and have all the world,
tout le monde
, see them standing out in the street, the McCoys, that game couple, their hands up in the air, bravely, desperately, pathetically trying to hail a taxi? The doormen would be no help because they would be tied up ushering
tout le monde
to their limousines. So he had hired this car and this driver, this white-haired driver, who would drive them six blocks, wait three and a half or four hours, then drive them six blocks and depart. Including a 15 percent tip and the sales tax, the cost would be $197.20 or $246.50, depending on whether they were charged for four or five hours in all.

Hemorrhaging money!
Did he even have a job left! Churning fear…Lopwitz…Surely, Lopwitz wouldn’t
sack
him…because of three miserable days
…and $6 million, you ninny!…
Must start cutting back…tomorrow…Tonight, of course, it was imperative to have a car and driver.

To make matters worse, the driver couldn’t pull up to the sidewalk near the entrance, because so many limousines were in the way. He had to double-park. Sherman and Judy had to thread their way between the limousines…Envy…envy…From the license plates Sherman could tell that these limousines were not hired. They were
owned
by those whose sleek hides were hauled here in them. A chauffeur, a good one willing to work long hours and late hours, cost $36,000 a year, minimum; garage space, maintenance, insurance, would cost another $14,000 at least; a total of $50,000, none of it deductible.
I make a million dollars a year—and yet I can’t afford that!

He reached the sidewalk.
Whuh?
Just to the left, in the gloaming, a figure
—a photographer—
right over there—

Sheer terror!

My picture in the paper!

The other boy, the big one, the brute, sees him and goes to the police!

The police!
The two detectives! The fat one! The one with the lopsided face! McCoy—goes to parties at the Bavardages’, does he! Now they truly smell blood!

Horrified, he stares at the photographer—

—and discovers that it’s only a young man walking a dog. He has stopped near the canopy that leads up to the entrance…Not even looking at Sherman…staring at a couple who are nearing the door…an old man in a dark suit and a young woman, a blonde, in a short dress.

Calm down, for God’s sake! Don’t be crazy! Don’t be paranoid!

But a smirking, insulting voice says:
You got something you wanna get off your chest?

Now Sherman and Judy were under the canopy, only three or four steps behind the old man and the blonde, heading for the entrance. A doorman in a starched white dickie pushed it open. He wore white cotton gloves. The blonde entered first. The old man, who was not much taller than she was, looked sleepy and somber. His thinning gray hair was combed straight back. He had a big nose and heavy eyelids, like a movie Indian.
Wait a minute—I know him…
No, he had
seen
him somewhere…But where?
…Bango!…
In a picture, of course…It was Baron Hochswald, the German financier.

This was all Sherman needed, on this night of all nights…After the catastrophes of the past three days, in this perilous low point of his career on Wall Street, to run into this man, whose success was so complete, so permanent, whose wealth was so vast and unassailable—to have to set eyes upon this immovably secure and ancient German—

Perhaps the baron merely
lived
in this building…Please, God, don’t let him be going to the same dinner party—

In that very moment he heard the baron say to the doorman in a heavy European accent: “Bavardage.” The doorman’s white glove gestured toward the rear of the lobby.

Sherman despaired. He despaired of this evening and of this life. Why hadn’t he gone to Knoxville six months ago? A little Georgian house, a leaf-blowing machine, a badminton net in the backyard for Campbell…But no! He had to tag along behind this walnut-eyed German, heading for the home of some overbearingly vulgar people named Bavardage, a glorified traveling salesman and his wife.

Sherman said to the doorman, “The Bavar
dages
’, please.” He hit the accented syllable hard, so that no one would think he had paid the slightest attention to the fact that the noble one, Baron Hochswald, had said the same thing. The baron, the blonde, Judy, and Sherman headed for the elevator. The elevator was paneled in old mahogany. It glowed. The grain was showy but rich and mellow. As he entered, Sherman overheard Baron Hochswald saying the name
Bavardage
to the operator. So Sherman repeated it, as before, “The Bavar
dages
’ ”—lest the baron himself get the impression that he, Sherman, was cognizant of his existence.

Now all four of them knew they were going to the same dinner party, and they had to make a decision. Did you do the decent, congenial, neighborly, and quite American thing—the sort of thing that would have been done without hesitation on an elevator in a similar building on Beacon Hill or Rittenhouse Square—or in a building in New York, for that matter, if the party were being given by someone of good blood and good bone, such as Rawlie or Pollard (in the present company, Pollard suddenly seemed quite okay, quite a commendable old Knickerbocker)—did you do the good-spirited thing and smile and introduce yourselves to one another…or did you do the vulgar snobbish thing and stand there and pretend you were unaware of your common destination and stare stiffly at the back of the elevator operator’s neck while this mahogany cab rose up its shaft?

Sherman cut an exploratory glance at Hochswald and the blonde. Her dress was a black sheath that ended several inches above her knees and hugged her luscious thighs and the lubricious declivity of her lower abdomen and rose up to a ruff at the top that resembled flower petals. Christ, she was sexy! Her creamy white shoulders and the tops of her breasts swelled up as if she was dying to shed the sheath and run naked through the begonias…Her blond hair was swept back to reveal a pair of enormous ruby earrings…No more than twenty-five years old…A tasty morsel! A panting animal!…The old bastard had taken what he wanted, hadn’t he!…Hochswald wore a black serge suit, a white shirt with a spread collar, and a black silk necktie with a large, almost rakish knot…all of it fashioned
just so…
Sherman was glad Judy had pressured him into wearing the navy suit and navy tie…Nevertheless, the baron’s ensemble seemed terribly smart by comparison.

Now he caught the old German flicking his eyes up and down Judy and himself. Their glances engaged for the briefest of instants. Then both stared once more at the piping on the back of the collar of the elevator operator.

So they ascended, an elevator operator and four social mutes, toward some upper floor. The answer was: You did the vulgar snobbish thing.

The elevator stopped, and the four mutes walked out into the Bavardages’ elevator vestibule. It was lit by clusters of tiny silk lampshades on either side of a mirror with a gilded frame. There was an open doorway…a rich and rosy glow…the sound of a hive of excited voices…

They went through the doorway, into the apartment’s entry gallery. Such voices! Such delight! Such laughter! Sherman faced catastrophe in his career, catastrophe in his marriage—and the police were circling—and yet the hive—the hive!—the hive!—the sonic waves of the hive made his very innards vibrate. Faces full of grinning, glistening, boiling teeth! How fabulous and fortunate we are, we few, to be in these upper rooms together with our radiant and incarnadine glows!

The entry gallery was smaller than Sherman’s, but whereas his (decorated by his wife, the interior designer) was grand and solemn, this one was dazzling, effervescent. The walls were covered in a brilliant Chinese-red silk, and the silk was framed by narrow gilded moldings, and the moldings were framed by a broad burnt-umber upholsterer’s webbing, and the webbing was framed by more gilded moldings, and the light of a row of brass sconces made the gilt gleam, and the glow of the gilt and the Chinese-red silk made all the grinning faces and lustrous gowns yet more glorious.

He surveyed the crowd and immediately sensed a pattern
…presque vu! presque vu!
almost seen!…and yet he couldn’t have put it into words. That would have been beyond him. All the men and women in this hall were arranged in clusters, conversational bouquets, so to speak. There were no solitary figures, no strays. All faces were white. (Black faces might show up, occasionally, at fashionable charity dinners but not in fashionable private homes.) There were no men under thirty-five and precious few under forty. The women came in two varieties. First, there were women in their late thirties and in their forties and older (women “of a certain age”), all of them skin and bones (starved to near perfection). To compensate for the concupiscence missing from their juiceless ribs and atrophied backsides, they turned to the dress designers. This season no puffs, flounces, pleats, ruffles, bibs, bows, battings, scallops, laces, darts, or shirrs on the bias were too extreme. They were the social X-rays, to use the phrase that had bubbled up into Sherman’s own brain. Second, there were the so-called Lemon Tarts. These were women in their twenties or early thirties, mostly blondes (the Lemon in the Tarts), who were the second, third, and fourth wives or live-in girlfriends of men over forty or fifty or sixty (or seventy), the sort of women men refer to, quite without thinking, as
girls
. This season the Tart was able to flaunt the natural advantages of youth by showing her legs from well above the knee and emphasizing her round bottom (something no X-ray had). What was entirely missing from
chez
Bavardage was that manner of women who is neither very young nor very old, who has laid in a lining of subcutaneous fat, who glows with plumpness and a rosy face that speaks, without a word, of home and hearth and hot food ready at six and stories read aloud at night and conversations while seated on the edge of the bed, just before the Sandman comes. In short, no one ever invited…Mother.

Sherman’s attention was drawn to a bouquet of ecstatic boiling faces in the immediate foreground. Two men and an impeccably emaciated woman were grinning upon a huge young man with pale blond hair and a cowlick at the top of his forehead
…Met him somewhere…but who is he?…Bango!…
Another face from the press…The Golden Hillbilly, the Towheaded Tenor…That was what they called him…His name was Bobby Shaflett. He was the new featured tenor of the Metropolitan Opera, a grossly fat creature who had somehow emerged from the upland hollows of the Appalachians. You could hardly read a magazine or a newspaper without seeing his picture. As Sherman watched, the young man’s mouth opened wide.
Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw
, he broke out into a huge barnyard laugh, and the grinning faces around him became even more radiant, more transported, than before.

Sherman lifted his Yale chin, squared his shoulders, straightened his back, raised himself to his full height, and assumed the Presence, the presence of an older, finer New York, the New York of his father, the Lion of Dunning Sponget.

A butler materialized and asked Judy and Sherman what they wanted to drink. Judy asked for “sparkling water.” (To say “Perrier” or any other brand name had become too trite.) Sherman had intended to drink nothing. He had intended to be aloof from everything about these people, these Bavardages, starting with their liquor. But the hive had closed in, and the cowlicked towhead of the Golden Hillbilly boomed away.

“A gin-and-tonic,” said Sherman McCoy from the eminence of his chin.

A blazing bony little woman popped out from amid all the clusters in the entry gallery and came toward them. She was an X-ray with a teased blond pageboy bob and many tiny grinning teeth. Her emaciated body was inserted into a black-and-red dress with ferocious puffed shoulders, a very narrow waist, and a long skirt. Her face was wide and round—but without an ounce of flesh on it. Her neck was much more drawn than Judy’s. Her clavicle stuck out so far Sherman had the feeling he could reach out and pick up the two big bones. He could see lamplight through her rib cage.

“Dear Judy!”

“Inez!” said Judy, and the two of them kissed or, rather, swung their cheeks past one another, first on this side, then on that side, in a European fashion that Sherman, now the son of that staunch Knickerbocker, that Old Family patriarch, that Low Church Episcopal scourge of the fleshpots, John Campbell McCoy, found pretentious and vulgar.

“Inez! I don’t think you’ve met Sherman!” She forced her voice into an exclamation, in order to be heard above the hive, “Sherman, this is Inez Bavardage!”

“Howja do,” said the Lion’s scion.

“I certainly
feel
like I know you!” said the woman, looking him squarely in the eye and flashing her tiny teeth and thrusting her hand toward him. Overwhelmed, he took it. “You should hear Gene Lopwitz go on about you!” Lopwitz! When? Sherman found himself clutching at this rope of hope. (Perhaps he had built up so many points in the past, the Giscard debacle would not finish him!) “And I know your father, too. Scared to death of him!” With this the woman gripped Sherman’s forearm and fastened her eyes onto his and broke into an extraordinary laugh, a hacking laugh, not
hah hah hah
but
hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack
, a laugh of such heartiness and paroxysmal rapture that Sherman found himself grinning foolishly and saying: