The Bonfire of the Vanities (46 page)

Judy’s face was a mask of mirth. She was so enthralled by the conversation of the barrel-chested man she didn’t notice Sherman at first.
Then
she saw him. Startled! But of course!—it was a sign of social failure for one spouse to be reduced to joining another in a conversational cluster.
But so what! Keep her away from Maria!
That was the main thing. Judy didn’t look at him. Once again she beamed her grinning rapture at the old man.

“—so last week,” he was saying, “my wife comes back from Italy and informs me we have a summer place on ‘Como.’ ‘Como,’ she says. It’s this Lake Como. So all right! We’ll have a summer place on ‘Como.’ It’s better than Hammamet. That was two summers ago.” He had a rough voice, a brushed-up New York street voice. He was holding a glass of soda water and looking back and forth, from Judy to the marble angel, as he told his story, getting vast effusions of approval from Judy and the occasional wriggle of the upper lip when he looked directly into the angel’s face. A wriggle; it could have been the beginning of a polite smile. “At least I know where ‘Como’ is. I never hearda Hammamet. My wife’s gone gaga about Italy. Italian paintings, Italian clothes, and now ‘Como.’ ”

Judy went off into another automatic-weapon burst of laughter,
Hock hock hock hock hock hock
, as if the way the old man pronounced “Como,” in mockery of his wife’s love of things Italian, was the funniest thing in the world
—Maria
. It came over him,
just like that
. It was Maria he was talking about. This old man was her husband, Arthur Ruskin. Had he mentioned her by name yet, or had he been talking only about “my wife”?

The other woman, marble angel, just stood there. The old man suddenly reached toward her left ear and took her earring between his thumb and forefinger. Appalled, the woman stiffened. She would have jerked her head away, but her ear was now between the thumb and forefinger of this ancient and appalling ursine creature.

“Very nice,” said Arthur Ruskin, still holding on to the earring. “Nadina D., right?” Nadina Dulocci was a highly mentionable jewelry designer.

“I believe so!” said the woman in a timorous, European voice. Hurriedly she brought her hands to her ears and unfastened both earrings and handed them to him, most emphatically, as if to say, “There, take them. But be so kind as not to rip my ears off my head.”

Unconcerned, Ruskin took them in his hairy paws and inspected them further. “Nadina D., all right. Very nice. Where’d you get ’em?”

“They were a gift.” Cold as marble. He returned them to her, and she quickly put them in her purse.

“Very nice, very nice. My wife—”

Suppose he said “Maria”!
Sherman broke in. “Judy!” To the others: “Excuse me.” To Judy: “I was wondering—”

Judy instantly transformed her startled expression into one of radiance. No wife in all of history had ever been more charmed to see her husband arrive at a conversational bouquet.

“Sherman! Have you met Madame Prudhomme?”

Sherman extended his Yale chin and put on an expression of the most proper Knickerbocker charm to greet the shaken Frenchwoman. “Howja do?”

“And Arthur Ruskin,” said Judy. Sherman shook the hairy mitt firmly.

Arthur Ruskin was not a young seventy-one. He had big ears with thick rinds and wire hairs sprouting out. There were curdled wattles under his big jaws. He stood erectly, rocking back on his heels, which brought out his chest and his ponderous gut. His heft was properly swathed in a navy suit, white shirt, and navy tie.

“Forgive me,” said Sherman. To Judy, with a charming smile: “Come over here a moment.” To Ruskin and the Frenchwoman he flashed a smile of apology and moved off a few feet, Judy in tow. Madame Prudhomme’s face fell. She had looked to his arrival in the bouquet as a salvation from Ruskin.

Judy, with a fireproof smile still on her face: “What is it?”

Sherman, a smiling mask of Yale Chin charm: “I want you to…uh…to come meet Baron Hochswald.”

“Who?”

“Baron Hochswald. You know, the German—one of the Hochwalds.”

Judy, the smile still locked on: “But why?”

“We rode up in the elevator with him.”

This obviously made no sense to Judy at all. Urgently: “Well, where is he?” Urgently, because it was bad enough to be caught in a large conversational cluster with your husband. To form a minimal cluster with him, just the two of you—

Sherman, looking around: “Well, he was here just a minute ago.”

Judy, the smile gone: “Sherman, what on earth are you doing? What are you talking about, ‘Baron Hochswald’?”

Just then the butler arrived with Sherman’s gin-and-tonic. He took a big swallow and looked around some more. He felt dizzy. Everywhere…social X-rays in puffed dresses shimmering in the burnt-apricot glow of the little table lamps…

“Well—you two! What are
you
trying to cook up!”
Hack hack hack hack hack hack hack
. Inez Bavardage took them both by their arms. For a moment, before she could get her fireproof grin back onto her face, Judy looked stricken. Not only had she ended up in a minimal cluster with her husband, but New York’s reigning hostess, this month’s ring-mistress of the century, had spotted them and felt compelled to make this ambulance run to save them from social ignominy.

“Sherman was—”

“I was looking for you! I want you to meet Ronald Vine. He’s doing over the Vice President’s house, in Washington.”

Inez Bavardage towed them through the hive of grins and gowns and inserted them in a bouquet dominated by a tall, slender, handsome, youngish man, the aforesaid Ronald Vine. Mr. Vine was saying, “…jabots, jabots, jabots. I’m afraid the Vice President’s wife has discovered jabots.” A weary roll of the eyes. The others in the bouquet, two women and a bald man, laughed and laughed. Judy could barely summon up even a smile…Crushed…Had to be rescued from social death by the hostess…

Such sad irony! Sherman hated himself. He hated himself for all the catastrophes she didn’t yet know about.

The Bavardages’ dining room walls had been painted with so many coats of burnt-apricot lacquer, fourteen in all, they had the glassy brilliance of a pond reflecting a campfire at night. The room was a triumph of nocturnal reflections, one of many such victories by Ronald Vine, whose forte was the creation of glitter without the use of mirrors. Mirror Indigestion was now regarded as one of the gross sins of the 1970s. So in the early 1980s, from Park Avenue to Fifth, from Sixty-second Street to Ninety-sixth, there had arisen the hideous cracking sound of acres of hellishly expensive plate-glass mirror being pried off the walls of the great apartments. No, in the Bavardages’ dining room one’s eyes fluttered in a cosmos of glints, twinkles, sparkles, highlights, sheens, shimmering pools, and fiery glows that had been achieved in subtler ways, by using lacquer, glazed tiles in a narrow band just under the ceiling cornices, gilded English Regency furniture, silver candelabra, crystal bowls, School of Tiffany vases, and sculpted silverware that was so heavy the knives weighed on your fingers like saber handles.

The two dozen diners were seated at a pair of round Regency tables. The banquet table, the sort of Sheraton landing field that could seat twenty-four if you inserted all the leaves, had disappeared from the smarter dining rooms. One shouldn’t be so formal, so grand. Two small tables were much better. So what if these two small tables were surrounded and bedecked by a buildup of
objets
, fabrics, and
bibelots
so lush it would have made the Sun King blink? Hostesses such as Inez Bavardage prided themselves on their gift for the informal and the intimate.

To underscore the informality of the occasion there had been placed, in the middle of each table, deep within the forest of crystal and silver, a basket woven from hardened vines in a highly rustic Appalachian Handicrafts manner. Wrapped around the vines, on the outside of the basket, was a profusion of wildflowers. In the center of the basket were massed three or four dozen poppies. This
faux-naïf
centerpiece was the trademark of Huck Thigg, the young florist, who would present the Bavardages with a bill for $3,300 for this one dinner party.

Sherman stared at the plaited vines. They looked like something dropped by Gretel or little Heidi of Switzerland at a feast of Lucullus. He sighed. All…too much. Maria was sitting next to him, on his right, chattering away at the cadaverous Englishman, whatever his name was, who was on her right. Judy was at the other table—but had a clear view of him and Maria. He had to talk to Maria about the interrogation by the two detectives—but how could he do it with Judy looking right at them? He’d do it with an innocuous party grin on his face. That was it! He’d grin through the whole discussion! She’d never know the difference…Or would she?…Arthur Ruskin was at Judy’s table…But thank God, he was four seats away from her…wouldn’t be chatting with her…Judy was sitting between Baron Hochswald and some rather pompous-looking youngish man…Inez Bavardage was two seats away from Judy, and Bobby Shaflett was on Inez’s right. Judy was grinning an enormous social grin at the pompous man
…Hock hock hock hock hock hock hock hock hock hock!
Clear above the buzz of the hive he could hear her laughing her new laugh…Inez was talking to Bobby Shaflett but also to the grinning social X-ray seated to the Golden Hillbilly’s right and to Nunnally Voyd, who was to the right of the X-ray.
Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw
, sang the Towheaded Tenor
…Hack hack hack hack hack hack
, sang Inez Bavardage
…Hock hock hock hock hock hock hock hock hock
, bawled his own wife…

Leon Bavardage sat four chairs to Sherman’s right, beyond Maria, the cadaverous Englishman, and the woman with the pink powder on her face, Barbara Cornagglia. In contrast to Inez Bavardage, Leon had all the animation of a raindrop. He had a placid, passive, lineless face, wavy blondish hair, which was receding, a long delicate nose, and very pale, almost livid skin. Instead of a 300-watt social grin, he had a shy, demure smile, which he was just now bestowing upon Miss Cornagglia.

Belatedly it occurred to Sherman that he should be talking to the woman on his left. Rawthrote, Mrs. Rawthrote; who in the name of God was she? What could he say to her? He turned to his left
—and she was waiting
. She was staring straight at him, her laser eyes no more than eighteen inches from his face. A real X-ray with a huge mane of blond hair and a look of such intensity he thought at first that she must
know
something…He opened his mouth…he smiled…he ransacked his brain for something to say…he did the best he could…He said to her, “Would you do me a great favor? What is the name of the gentleman to my right, the
thin
gentleman? His face is so familiar, but I can’t think of his name for the life of me.”

Mrs. Rawthrote leaned still closer, until their faces were barely eight inches apart. She was so close she seemed to have three eyes. “Aubrey Buffing,” she said. Her eyes kept burning into his.

“Aubrey Buffing,” said Sherman lamely. It was really a question.

“The poet,” said Mrs. Rawthrote. “He’s on the short list for the Nobel Prize. His father was the Duke of Bray.” Her tone said, “How on earth could you not know that?”

“Of course,” said Sherman, feeling that in addition to his other sins he was also a philistine. “The poet.”

“How do you think he looks?” She had eyes like a cobra’s. Her face remained right in his. He wanted to pull back but couldn’t. He felt paralyzed.

“Looks?” he asked.

“Lord Buffing,” she said. “The state of his health.”

“I—can’t really say. I don’t know him.”

“He’s being treated at Vanderbilt Hospital. He has AIDS.” She pulled back a few inches, the better to see how this zinger hit Sherman.

“That’s terrible!” said Sherman. “How do you know that?”

“I know his best boyfriend.” She closed her eyes and then opened them, as if to say: “I know such things, but don’t ask too many questions.” Then she said, “This is
entre nous.” But I’ve never met you before!
“Don’t tell Leon or Inez,” she continued. “He’s their house guest—has been for the past two and a half weeks. Never invite an Englishman for a weekend. You can’t get them out.” She said this without smiling, as if it was the most serious advice she had ever offered free of charge. She continued her myopic study of Sherman’s face.

In order to break eye contact, Sherman took a quick glance at the gaunt Englishman, Lord Buffing the Short-List Poet.

“Don’t worry,” said Mrs. Rawthrote. “You can’t get it at the table. If you could, we’d all have it by now. Half the waiters in New York are gay. You show me a happy homosexual, I’ll show you a gay corpse.” She repeated this
mot farouche
in the same rat-tat-tat voice as everything else, without a trace of a smile.

Just then a good-looking young waiter, Latin in appearance, began serving the first course, which looked like an Easter egg under a heavy white sauce on a plateau of red caviar resting on a bed of Bibb lettuce.

“Not these,” said Mrs. Rawthrote, right in front of the young man. “They work full-time for Inez and Leon. Mexicans, from New Orleans. They live in their place in the country and drive in to serve dinner parties.” Then, without any preamble, she said, “What do you do, Mr. McCoy?”

Sherman was taken aback. He was speechless. He was as flabbergasted as he had been when Campbell asked the same question. A nonentity, a thirty-five-year-old X-ray, and yet
…I want to impress her!
The possible answers came thundering through his mind
…I’m a senior member of the bond division at Pierce & Pierce…
No…makes it sound as if he’s a replaceable part in a bureaucracy and proud to be one
…I’m the number one producer…
No…sounds like something a vacuum-cleaner salesman would say
…There’s a group of us who make the major decisions…
No…not accurate and an utterly gauche observation
…I made $980,000 selling bonds last year…
That was the true heart of the matter, but there was no way to impart such information without appearing foolish
…I’m—a Master of the Universe!…
Dream on!—and besides, there’s no way to utter it!…So he said, “Oh, I try to sell a few bonds for Pierce & Pierce.” He smiled ever so slightly, hoping the modesty of the statement would be taken as a sign of confidence to burn, thanks to tremendous and spectacular achievements on Wall Street.