The Road Narrows As You Go (41 page)

It was six o'clock. Still three and a half more hours. Back out in the street, she ordered a hotdog from a vendor and watched people enter and exit Central Park.

Behind the treeline, a wall of stone and brick buildings visible through a haze of icy fog. She took in the whole vista. After a while it was dizzying, the grandeur.

She took a brisk walk through a few acres of the park and came out having settled the hotdog, so she went to see the Frick Collection and spent the next two hours in its rooms sketching more visitors. It was near impossible to focus on the people, though, when every room was so full of priceless antiquities. It was like a No Manors of rare Oriental porcelains, one-of-a-kind Fragonards, Rembrandt's masterpieces, Goya's cruellest portraits, and the seductresses of Whistler, Renoir, and Ingres. Here, in the middle of New York, beside Central Park and the grand hotels and museums, were palatial rooms filled with the world's rarities. Objects of unfathomable value, protected by security guards in double-breasted black suits. The guards didn't show any interest in what they guarded, or in their own dapperness. Again she sketched them. That was part of the job, to watch the visitors, not the art. But at least one of these guards might have gone to the museums as a child and dreamed of one day keeping fine art from harm's way.

If Wendy were an artist, she might pitch Justine Witlaw a show of oversized portraits of the art museums' security guards, twice or three times human scale. But she was a cartoonist and must be contented with two- or three-inch boxes.

*

Snow—she hadn't seen snow in years—fell over the Upper East Side's streets outside the window to the sound of the white and black keys of a grand piano plucking out a ragtime rhythm, a hand jumping up and down the neck of a standup bass, and the neurotic sound of a clarinet. Jazz flew into her ears from the side of the stage at Bemelmans she couldn't see from her leather bucket seat in a booth the size of Venus's halfshell. The glass pools of ice turned the sidewalks outside into mirrors, black as the top of the jazzband's grand piano reflecting the red and green holiday lights strung up along every awning. Outside, billboards and sandwich boards. Inside, a playful watercolour mural by the eponymous French artist ran across all the walls of Bemelmans Bar where she met Frank for dinner, promptly at nine thirty. Frank was already there when the stork of a hostess dropped Wendy at the table, and once she'd sat down he kissed her deeply and publicly.

Ravishing, Frank said of her dress.

It's a Nolan Miller, she said, this fuchsia thing with the sea-green batwing shoulder pads, gold satin appliqué patterning across the chest, and a bosom-enhancing collar. How's my hair? I didn't have much time.

Wendy, your hair's the sexiest. Black Friday's not for another four days so let's just sit back, drink expensive French wine, listen to celebrity ragtime, and deliberately try to enjoy ourselves.

His hand dropped two felt boxes on the table with the deftness of a magician. One was a pale silver, the other a dark navy blue. He told her to open the pale silver box first.

Inside the pale silver she found an elegant slender Rolex with a shimmering wristband so thin it looked spun from a thread of unbreakable spider silk, dotted with dewdrop diamonds, and a timepiece that showcased a single eye-shaped blue-tinged diamond at twelve o'clock. On the reverse of the watch was the engraving
With love, FF 11/84
.

She kissed him. It's so beautiful. I never wore a watch before. But this is one I always will, it's so sexy. Should I open the second box?

You should, but it's for me.

Wendy laughed. You bought yourself a gift?

Inside was another Rolex. His and hers Rolexes. His had a chunky wristband made from silver and gold bricks that interlocked in a nonrepeating mosaic pattern. On the reverse she read
Let time stop for me when with Wendy
.

You know that I love you, he said. Of that I am certain.

Once an awareness of their surroundings returned to their conscious vision, Frank handed Wendy a leather portfolio. He said, there's some mouth-watering hors d'oeuvres.

Her eyes tried to focus on the menu. As she scanned each page her concentration fell between the words. She went up, up, and down, down the pages trying to make sense of the options: Green Turtle Consommé au Xeres, Essence of Fowl, Boiled Ox Tongue, Roast Stuffed Capon in Giblet Sauce, Fried Scrapple, Calves Head Piquante, Rumaki of Chicken Livers, Hearts of Celery … Eventually she realized something was on her mind.

I guess there's nothing else we can do, right? They either come back on their own, or they don't.

He shook his head side to side and tapped her new Rolex, said, We're all on borrowed time.

Bemelmans was on the main floor of the Carlyle Hotel, a mountain of elegantly carved limestone. And the almost carbonated Royal Sterling caviar Frank had her try did go well with the gin-gin mule she ordered. Whenever Wendy put her head back on the leather-upholstered seat to rest her mind a little, she saw a lovely dog with shaggy ears and a long snout painted on the wall next to her head with a fine-tipped brush in the inimitable style of Ludwig Bemelmans, creator of the
Madeline
books. The mural wrapped along the wall behind them and the other guests, and featured a park scene with rabbits at lunch and ballerinas dancing, teams of dogs, ducks and geese, not to mention the famous blue nuns and girls in yellow hats.

These murals are so beautiful, Wendy said with a burp. He draws the same animals as me with so much less
anxiety
. His lines are singing and dancing when my lines are crawling on their bellies. Can I have my own bar named after me, Frank?

Ashbubbles? Sounds great. Will you do a mural?

Oh yes, I would love to paint a mural, she said.

Back in the twenties, Hexen Diamond Mistral had financed the construction of this hotel.

You're so stupidly powerful, she said. You can do anything. Do you want to be president someday?

I'd much rather be me.

Power is your cartoon, she said.

And cartoons are your empire.

Frank, my feet are sore and I'm drunk. Take me home to the hotel and bathe me.

Not yet, said Frank. Let's stay a bit longer. I ordered you another drink. I might get something to eat. I'm hungry.

All I ate today was a hotdog.

You like it here in New York?

New York is a giant underwater cave. It's Atlantis. Under a spell. The fish-people hurry in schools down the streets, eat, and spawn. I keep waiting to come up for air but never do.

What about Central Park? Isn't it something?

Yes, it's beautifully manicured. It looks like a picture postcard from every angle. Where I'm from, there's wilderness—dangerous, imperilling wilderness. There's no hungry bears or cougars in Central Park.

Maybe we shouldn't go back to San Francisco, he suggested.

Yes, let's not. Let's stay in that bed in the penthouse forever.

The setlist scattered frisky versions of standard Christmas fare jazzed up alongside dance classics up to and including Cole Porter. The rickety band on stage knew every ragtime number ever pressed onto a shellac
plate through the twenties and forties, and even though the middle-aged musicians did not look like the real thing, they ripped into hot jazz with a scrambling-eggs tempo. The tunes stirred the room into motion, whole tables leaped to their feet and multiple couples of upscale tourists shimmied out onto the hardwood dancefloor to cut loose. The house lights dropped and spotlights formed. Small neons and candles in coloured glass jars lit the various corners and tables. Wendy saw not a single candy cane or Santa Claus or other holiday trinket in Bemelmans that wasn't classed up and posh.

On the crash of a cymbal she spilled some of her drink.

Frank slid the Rolex onto her wrist and clasped his hand around hers and launched her onto the dancefloor.

27

She wanted in on his secret kink. What really got him cranked up? What turned him on? Tell. Tell all. What was that special thing his body needed? Some men did not know for themselves and she had to seek out that kink. Frank showed her his.

Once the two of them were naked and on or near the bed he slipped off his new Rolex and asked her to take off hers and take them and wrap them around his erection. That was his kink. He wanted her to keep the two Rolexes there dangling from his prick as she went down on him. Then came the idea of penetrating her while he wore the Rolexes, so that's how he fucked her the rest of the night.

It was two or three in the morning and she lay naked and awake in the king-size bed on top of the sheets staring at the moon's pitted face through a window. Watching her. She imagined Buck about to land his spacepod on its inhospitable surface. Beside her, Frank yawned and scratched under his chin where beads of sweat had hardened into salt.

Are you tired? she asked when his eyes opened.

He checked his Rolex, back on his wrist. I'll sleep for another hour. On average, all I need is two or three to function.

What if you could
not
function?

A lot of money in the American economy is riding on my ability to function.

A lot of
what
is riding on your ability?

Money. Loans. Investments. Debt obligations. Multimillion-dollar portfolios are at stake.

How much?

Hundreds of millions. Possibly billions are at stake.

Would the entire world economy collapse?

Possibly.

Wow, really? The entire world? The whole globe collapses?

Could.

Because I fucked you
all night
?

She pulled off his watch, swung his and her Rolexes in the air, and caught them one after the other in her mouth.

What was it about the Rolexes that turned him on? The extravagance, the beauty, the way they made his prick look like a prince? The sound of them ticking against his balls? Who cares, it was a kink.

She concluded that Frank would never take off the hairpiece, but especially during sex—the hairpiece's ultimate mission might in fact be for sex,
this exact sex
, and then secondly for his impression on others at work, and who knows what else.

Frank was long gone by the time she awoke, around noon, on his side of the mattress.

She got the gist of what kept him so busy. Frank was financing Shepherd Media's cascading series of leveraged buyouts for a dizzying amount of copyright ownerships, and a simultaneously escalating sequence of highpriced corporate takeovers. Shepherd Media's bid to buy outright the full
rights and ownership to practically every classic American film produced before Robert Kennedy's assassination was still confidential, Frank said. Nobody can know. One day it dawned on the big Hollywood studios that they spent millions every year just to store their old, falling-apart film reels in giant warehouses and a lot of their titles were literally turning to dust under the poor conditions. When Piper heard this he immediately went around to all the executives to make a bid. He wanted to own them, all the films, and the copyrights to them, so he could rerun them on his TV stations at no additional cost, and then also license old movies to other TV stations he didn't own to add profit, sell permissions for repertory film screenings, and make subdeals to turn the whole catalogue into VHS tapes and LaserDiscs and so on.

After a light breakfast she ordered up from room service of black coffee, boiled eggs, and bagels with a side of salted cottage cheese and sliced bananas, she decided to suck it up and tell Gabby Scavalda she was in New York.

Wendy, there's letters pouring in from every city in the country about that last strip with your raccoon, Gabby said the moment she heard her voice on the other end of the line. You're pissing off the liberals. That's bad. Liberals stop at nothing. Do you know what you're doing?

I'm in New York.

I thought you got in tomorrow? Come down to the office and let me fete you. If I could strut you around the office for
one
hour. I know the sight of you would gnaw at everyone around here's petty little Ivy League egos for weeks and weeks.
Strays
is Shepherd Media Syndicate's most lucrative strip, Wendy. No other strip's got your popularity. I mean, come on, who has ever heard of
One Night at a Time
, about a family of vampires? Yeesh.

People love those crazy vampires, Gabby.

Okay. It's a success. But.

I just want to sight-see, you know, go shopping, find myself in
unexpected places. Be inspired by museums and galleries, sculptures and pictures, people-watching.

Let's meet for dinner tonight. I know the perfect place. You're going to love it.

After they made plans the phone rang and Frank purred in her ear, Do you miss me?

You love the
phone
, she said.

I do, he said. But I love you more.

She asked him how many phones were at his desk and he said, A thousand and one.

Staying right on museum mile of Fifth Avenue had its virtues. One was that after she got some doodling done she had the rest of the afternoon to see the many collections of priceless works of art right next door to her hotel. Along this glamorous and timeless stretch of the Upper East Side, every other building contained priceless works of art and time-worn relics from antiquity. The sidewalk was festooned with holiday frippery. Every lightpost was trimmed with wreaths, and strung all along the fences and in the trees were colourful blinking lights.

Another season without a
Strays
Christmas special. Thirteen minutes in four years. Another nine minutes to go. Now she noticed a poster on the side of a newspaper box of Buck, Hägar the Horrible, and Snoopy. Now she noticed her characters in the window displays of some Park Avenue toy shops. Now she noticed herself noticing. It was strange to be famous, she decided, if that's what this was. In a cartoonist's case, famous was the blend of a personal, private dream with the real world. The proliferation of one's daydreams among the general populace.