The Bonfire of the Vanities (45 page)

“You don’t say!”

“Yes!”
Hack hack hack hack hack hack hack
. “I never told you this, Judy!” She reached out and hooked one arm inside Judy’s and the other inside Sherman’s and pulled the two of them toward her, as if they were the two dearest chums she had ever had. “There was this dreadful man named Derderian who was suing Leon. Kept trying to at
tach
things. Pure harassment. So one weekend we were out on Santa Catalina Island at Angie Civelli’s.” She dropped the name of the famous comedian without so much as a syncopation. “And we’re having dinner, and Leon starts talking about all the trouble he’s having with this man Derderian, and Angie says—believe me, he was
absolutely
serious—he says, ‘You want me to take care of it?’ ” With this, Inez Bavardage pushed her nose to one side with her forefinger to indicate the Bent-Nose Crowd. “Well, I mean I’d
heard
about Angie and The Boys, but I didn’t believe it—but he was
serious!” Hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack
. She pulled Sherman yet closer and put her eyes right in his face. “When Leon got back to New York, he went to see your father, and he told him what Angie had said, and then he said to your father, ‘Maybe that’s the simplest way to take care of it.’ I’ll never forget what your father said. He said, ‘No, Mr. Bavardage, you let
me
take care of it. It won’t be simple, it won’t be fast, and it’ll cost you a
lot
of money. But my bill you can pay. The other—no one is rich enough to pay them. They’ll keep collecting until the day you die.’ ”

Inez Bavardage remained close to Sherman’s face and gave him a look of bottomless profundity. He felt obliged to say something.

“Well…which did your husband do?”

“What your father said, of course. When he spoke—people jumped!” A
hack-hack-hack-hacking
peeeealllll of laughter.

“And what about the bill?” asked Judy, as if delighted to be in on this story about Sherman’s incomparable father.

“It was sensational! It was astonishing, that bill!”
Hack hack hack hack hack
. Vesuvius, Krakatoa, and Mauna Loa erupted with laughter, and Sherman felt himself swept up in the explosion, in spite of himself. It was irresistible—Gene Lopwitz loves you!—your incomparable father!—your aristocratic lineage!—what euphoria you arouse in my bony breast!

He knew it was irrational, but he felt warm, aglow, high, in Seventh Heaven. He eased the revolver of his Resentment back into his waistband and told his Snobbery to go lie down by the hearth. Really a very charming woman! Who would have thought it, after all the things one hears about the Bavardages! A social X-ray, to be sure, but one can’t very well hold that against her! Really very warm—and quite amusing!

Like most men, Sherman was innocent of the routine salutatory techniques of the fashionable hostesses. For at least forty-five seconds every guest was the closest, dearest, jolliest, most wittily conspiratorial friend a girl ever had. Every male guest she touched on the arm (any other part of the body presented problems) and applied a little heartfelt pressure. Every guest, male or female, she looked at with a radar lock upon the eyes, as if captivated (by the brilliance, the wit, the beauty, and the incomparable memories).

The butler returned with the drinks for Judy and Sherman, Sherman took a long deep draught of the gin-and-tonic, and the gin hit bottom, and the sweet juniper rose, and he relaxed and let the happy buzz of the hive surge into his head.

Hack hack hack hack hack hack hack
went Inez Bavardage.

Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw
went Bobby Shaflett.

Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah
went Judy.

Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh
went Sherman.

The hive buzzed and buzzed.

In no time Inez Bavardage had steered him and Judy over to the bouquet where the Golden Hillbilly held forth. Nods, hellos, handshakes, under the aegis of Sherman’s new best friend, Inez. Before he quite realized what had happened, Inez had steered Judy out of the entry gallery, into some inner salon, and Sherman was left with the celebrated Appalachian fat boy, two men, and an X-ray. He looked at each of them, starting with Shaflett. None returned his gaze. The two men and the woman stared, rapt, at the huge pale head of the tenor as he recounted a story of something that had happened on an airplane:

“—so I’m settin’up’eh waitin’ fuh Barb’ra—she’s supposed to be ridin’ back to New York with me?” He had a way of ending a declarative sentence with a question that reminded Sherman of Maria…Maria…and the huge Hasidic Jew! The great blond ball of fat before him was like that huge sow from the real-estate company—if that was where he was from. A cold tremor…They were out there circling, circling…“And I’m in my seat—I got the one by the window? And from back’eh, here come ’is
un
believable,
out
rageous black man.” The way he hit the
un
and the
out
and fluttered his hands in the air made Sherman wonder if this hillbilly giant was, in fact, a homosexual. “He’s wearin’ this’eh ermine overcoat?—down to here?—and ’is’eh matchin’ ermine fedora?—and he’s got more rings’n Barb’ra’s got, and he’s got three re
tain
ers with ’im?—right outta
Shaft
?”

The giant bubbled on, and the two men and the woman kept their eyes on his huge round face and their grins fixed; and the giant, for his part, looked only at them, never at Sherman. As the seconds rolled by, he grew increasingly aware that all four of them were acting as if he didn’t exist. A giant fairy with a hillbilly accent, thought Sherman, and they were hanging on his every word. Sherman took three deep gulps of his gin-and-tonic.

The story seemed to revolve about the fact that the regal black man, who had sat down next to Shaflett on the airplane, was the cruiser-weight champion of the world, Sam (Assassin Sam) Assinore. Shaflett found the term “cruiser weight” vastly amusing
—haw haw haw haw haw haw haw—
and the two men went into excited screams of laughter. Sherman labeled them homosexual, too. Assassin Sam hadn’t known who Shaflett was, and Shaflett hadn’t known who Assassin Sam was. The point of the entire story seemed to be that the only two people in the first-class section of the airliner who hadn’t known who both these celebrities were…were Shaflett and Assinore themselves!
Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw—hee hee hee hee hee hee hee—
and
—aha!—
a conversational nugget about Assassin Sam Assinore popped into Sherman’s brain. Oscar Suder
—Oscar Suder!—
he winced at the memory but pressed on—Oscar Suder was part of a syndicate of Midwestern investors who backed Assinore and controlled his finances. A nugget! A conversational nugget! A means of entry into this party cluster!

As soon as the laughter had receded, Sherman said to Bobby Shaflett, “Did you know that Assinore’s contract, and his ermine coat, for all I know, is owned by a syndicate of businessmen in Ohio, mostly from Cleveland and Columbus?”

The Golden Hillbilly looked at him as if he were a panhandler. “Hmmmmmmmm,” he said. It was the
hmmmmmmmm
that says, “I understand, but I couldn’t care less,” whereupon he turned back to the other three and said, “So I asked him if he’d sign my menu. You know, they give you this menu?—and—”

That was all for Sherman McCoy. He pulled the revolver of Resentment back out of his waistband. He wheeled away from the cluster and turned his back on them. Not one of them noticed. The hive raged in his head.

Now what would he do? All at once he was alone in this noisy hive with no place to roost. Alone! He became acutely aware that the entire party was now composed of these bouquets and that not to be in one of them was to be an abject, incompetent social failure. He looked this way and that. Who was that, right there? A tall, handsome, smug-looking man…admiring faces looking up at his…Ah!…It registered…an author…His name was Nunnally Voyd…a novelist…he’d seen him on a television talk show…snide, acerbic…Look at the way those fools doted on him…Didn’t dare try that bouquet…Would be a repeat of the Golden Hillbilly, no doubt…Over there, someone he knew…No! Another famous face…the ballet dancer…Boris Korolev…Another circle of adoring faces…glistening with rapture…The idiots! Human specks! What is this business of groveling before dancers, novelists, and gigantic fairy opera singers? They’re nothing but court jesters, nothing but light entertainment for…the Masters of the Universe, those who push the levers that move the world…and yet these idiots worship them as if they were pipelines to the godhead…They didn’t even want to know who he was…and wouldn’t even be capable of understanding, even if they had…

He found himself standing by another cluster…Well, at least no one famous in this one, no smirking court jester…A fat, reddish man was talking, in a heavy British accent: “He was lying in the road, you see, with a broken leg…”
The delicate skinny boy! Henry Lamb! He was talking about the story in the newspaper! But wait a minute—a broken leg—
“…and he kept saying, ‘How very boring, how very boring.’ ” No, he was talking about some Englishman.
Nothing to do with me…
The others in the cluster were laughing…a woman, about fifty, with pink powder all over her face…How grotesque…Wait!…He knew that face. The sculptor’s daughter, now a stage designer. He couldn’t remember her name…But then he did…Barbara Cornagglia…He moved on…Alone!…Despite all, despite the fact that
they
were circling—the police!—he felt the pressure of social failure…What could he do to make it appear as if he
meant
to be by himself, as if he were moving through the hive alone by choice? The hive buzzed and buzzed.

Near the doorway through which Judy and Inez Bavardage had disappeared was an antique console bearing a pair of miniature Chinese easels. Upon each easel was a burgundy velvet disk the size of a pie, and in slits in the velvet, little pockets, were stuck name cards. They were models of the seating arrangement for dinner, so that each guest would know who his dinner partners were going to be. It struck Sherman, the leonine Yale man, as another piece of vulgarity. Nevertheless, he looked. It was a way of appearing occupied, as if he were alone for no other reason than to study the seating arrangement.

There were evidently two tables. Presently he saw a card with
Mr. McCoy
on it. He would be sitting next to, let’s see, a Mrs. Rawthrote, whoever she might be, and a Mrs. Ruskin.
Ruskin!
His heart bolted. It couldn’t be—not Maria!

But of course it could be. This was precisely the sort of event to which she and her rich but somewhat shadowy husband would be invited. He downed the rest of his gin-and-tonic and hurried through the doorway into the other room. Maria! Had to talk to her!—but also had to keep Judy away from her!
Don’t need that on top of everything else!

He was now in the apartment’s living room, or salon, since it was obviously meant for entertaining. It was enormous, but it appeared to be
…stuffed…
with sofas, cushions, fat chairs, and hassocks, all of them braided, tasseled, banded, bordered and
…stuffed…
Even the walls; the walls were covered in some sort of padded fabric with stripes of red, purple, and rose. The windows overlooking Fifth Avenue were curtained in deep folds of the same material, which was pulled back to reveal its rose lining and a trim of striped rope braid. There was not so much as a hint of the twentieth century in the decor, not even in the lighting. A few table lamps with rosy shades provided all the light, so that the terrain of this gloriously stuffed little planet was thrown into deep shadows and mellow highlights.

The hive buzzed with the sheer ecstasy of being in this mellow rosy stuffed orbit.
Hack hack hack hack hack hack
, the horse laugh of Inez Bavardage rose somewhere. So many bouquets of people…grinning faces…boiling teeth…A butler appeared and asked him if he wanted a drink. He ordered another gin-and-tonic. He stood there. His eyes jumped around the deep stuffed shadows.

Maria
.

She was standing by one of the two corner windows. Bare shoulders…a red sheath…She caught his eye and smiled. Just that, a smile. He answered with the smallest smile imaginable. Where was Judy?

In Maria’s cluster was a woman he didn’t recognize, a man he didn’t recognize, and a bald-headed man he knew from somewhere, another of the
…famous faces
this zoo specialized in…a writer of some sort, a Brit…He couldn’t think of his name. Com
plete
ly bald; not a hair on his long thin head; gaunt; a skull.

Sherman panned the room, desperately searching for Judy. Well, what difference would it make if Judy did meet someone in this room named Maria? It wasn’t that unusual a name. But would Maria be discreet? She was no genius, and she had a mischievous streak—and he was supposed to sit next to her!

He could feel his heart kicking up in his chest. Christ! Was it possible that Inez Bavardage knew about the two of them and put them together on purpose?
Wait a minute! That’s very paranoid!
She’d never risk having an ugly scene. Still—

Judy
.

There she was, standing over near the fireplace, laughing so hard
her new party laugh—wants to be an Inez Bavardage—
laughing so hard her hair was bouncing. She was making a new sound,
hock hock hock hock hock hock hock
. Not yet Inez Bavardage’s
hack hack hack hack
, just an intermediary
hock hock hock hock
. She was listening to a barrel-chested old man with receding gray hair and no neck. The third member of the bouquet, a woman, elegant, slim, and fortyish, was not nearly so amused. She stood like a marble angel. Sherman made his way through the hive, past the knees of some people sitting down on a huge round Oriental hassock, toward the fireplace. He had to push his way through a dense flotilla of puffed gowns and boiling faces…