“Hi ya, Stephen kiddo. Glad to have you aboard. If that’s what they say in the navy.”
“Gee, how you doing Dru.”
“I’m doing much better, thank you, upon seeing you. This is the fifth time we’ve driven around the block and through the park and nearly ending up in Harlem. But heavens, you do look pale as a ghost.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll forgive that ‘ma’am’ just this hundredth time more. What’s wrong.”
“Well, I’m a little better for seeing you, Mrs. Wilmington.”
“Well, I’ll take you at your pleasant word. And do forgive my little precautionary disguise. I’m afraid necessary. Which is, as you may have noticed, the vehicle we ride in. If I do not have a particular person always scrutinizing my movements, then I have those whom I don’t know about. At least when the former is around, which happily he isn’t at the moment, I can ignore those snoopers I don’t know about. And I’ve had the very wildest idea. Remember when you played Rachmaninoff. Well I thought that we could make a pilgrimage to Valhalla and visit his grave. Then perhaps later we could have dinner. Is that all right.”
“Gee ma’am. I mean Dru. That would be nice.”
“I can see we’re going to have to be tolerant. Perhaps very tolerant. I think, in fact, I might quite like it if you do call me ma’am. But I would prefer if it didn’t make me feel a little staid and stuffy and perhaps just even a little bit illicit, considering our relative positions.”
Dru speaking into a small microphone. Chauffeur nodding his head as we travel west on Central Park South. Slow down. Stop for a red light at Columbus Circle. Spacious enough for this open-air forum dotted with a few speakers attended with even fewer listeners. One on a soapbox wielding his fist to an empty street. Another patrolling with a sandwich board.
DOWN WITH
WRONGDOING
UP WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS
SAYS THE TRUE
AND ONLY ZORRO
Nearby, a shoving and pushing fight in progress. An old lady beating the protagonists with her umbrella. Nobody looking like they are going to change the world in this little oasis of discontentment. The gray stone ancient hotel there. And a warehouse. And we speed through the traffic to the elevated highway along this great noble river of the Hudson. Dru smiling, pointing through the thick glass of the windows.
“Up there atop that building, a newspaper magnet lived. Had an apartment with a swimming pool in it. He built himself a palace in California with a much bigger pool.”
Under the soaring silver sweep of the George Washington Bridge, the highway weaving its route along the shore of this solemnly deep river. Staring out the window and holding this hand giving a reassuring squeeze that I was told growing up, transmitted a message of true love to come. Listening to this voice as it tells me more. That beyond all this solid rock is Fort Tryon Park. The Cloisters. Lawns, terraces, and where they have the most secret of wonderful rock gardens. The remains of a Romanesque twelfth-century church. And dissolved over this voice telling me of these rocky cliff sides, the prostrate girl, her leather coat spread each side of her like the broken wings of a bird. Her face turned aside, twisted upon her neck. A hole blown through her skull. The blood on her hair. White specks of her brain. As if now strewn dotted across the beautiful passing wooded green contours of countryside.
“Stephen, you’re awfully silent. I won’t of course pry, but you must tell me if something is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong, ma’am, and you sure do know New York.”
“Well of course one shouldn’t speak of it as being anything important but one’s family have over the years done various things in various parts of the city which I suppose, out of curiosity, one would sometimes investigate, making it familiar.”
Farther north, the highway curving past the hillsides with their strange distant amalgam of buildings, each isolated like the beginnings of abandoned empires. Then just as Dru knows what she does about the island of Manhattan, all growing familiar as places where I walked and knew were passing by. Where my best friend had a trapping line in the swamp in the valley of the Saw Mill River. Catching muskrats to sell to the Hudson Bay Company. And right in this, the area of a borough insisting to be known euphemistically as Riverdale but in reality the Bronx. That word, just like Brooklyn, conjuring up boorish accents and behavior. That makes one in unambiguous affirmation want to brag about where one comes from. As we pass another hillside. Over which the ghosts of childhood hover. Race through my memories. Of what happened beyond in those suburban streets. The artfully chastising, if not horrendous things we did to the neighbors. Especially at night, and most of whom were highly deserving real grumpy bastards with similar wives. Point now upward and toward houses in the trees.
“Dru, that’s where I grew up.”
“And someday it will be immortalized.”
Words such as Dru’s were glowingly pleasant to hear. Even as untrue and impossible as my humility made me feel them to be. But at least such sentiments could get you through another couple of hours of life believing there was reason to live. And not die brain destructed, facedown in a bus station. As go by now the little conurbations from Heather Dell to Hartsdale. My soul quieted a little from the turmoil of the spirit and my accumulated restless nights, I nodded off to sleep. Dreaming I was a salesman in a jewelery store and just having failed to make a sale, I woke. My head resting on Dru’s shoulder, her fur rug up over my knees and the limousine parked on a cemetery road. A chill in the air as I got out to follow Dru in her flat walking shoes. And just like the dead girl’s, her wonderful legs. Her calf muscles flexing in front of me to where we stood in front of the Russian cross on Sergey Rachmaninoff’s grave. Standing there in silent reverence on the grass, paying our respects. And I could hear the fervent poetic eloquence and intensity and the melodious sweeps of the strings in his Symphony No. 2 in E Minor. Then walking and wandering not that far away, there was the final resting place of a baseball player. The same one Max said he emulated.
“Stephen, didn’t that baseball player hit a lot of home runs.”
“Yes he certainly did, ma’am.”
“I suppose more people know who he is than know of Rachmaninoff.”
“Yes ma’am. But he hit forty-nine home runs in a single season. And had a batting average of three seventy-nine over his best ten years. And he lived in my neighborhood, Riverdale. I guess you might say he was a hero, knocking balls instead of musical notes, out into the ether. Folks called him Lou.”
“Ah, at last you’re talking a little. Stephen, you don’t mind if I comment that you’ve been so quiet, as I know you usually are, but then even quieter than that.”
“Well ma’am, it is a rewarding feeling to stand like this out here in the fresh good air of the countryside and to find these two gentlemen, both outstanding in their professions and achieving so much in their lives, now both resting here in peace.”
“You’re staring at that stone there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What are you thinking about.”
“Epitaphs.”
“Such as.”
“Men are slow to gain their wisdom and faster to become fools.”
“You know Stephen, sometimes when you say something, I feel I am meeting you for the first time. Do you believe in God.”
“Well ma’am, I guess there’s got to be somebody like that somewhere. A guy comes into Horn and Hardart on Fifty-seventh Street saying he is. Do you believe in God.”
“Having been self-sufficient unto myself I have never felt I had any need of a God but often wonder if with no one to turn to in terrible trouble, I would become religious. But you do, don’t you, in so loving your music, have a religion. But recently you have you know, rather made me feel that one has been listening to Tchaikovsky’s Sérénade Mélancolique. Ah, that at last has put a smile on your face. You see, I am boning up on my musicology. Tchaikovsky, he did didn’t he, write so much.”
“He d
id ma’am, and by the way, Tchaikovsky’s Sérénade Mélancolique does have some very forcefully exuberant passages.”
“Well, I suppose my accumulating musical knowledge is bound to leave me occasionally feeling like I’m plunging over Niagara Falls in a barrel, hoping my ignorance is not to be revealed with the barrel breaking up in the turmoil of water below.”
“I should be glad, ma’am, to save you from drowning and swim with you to shore.”
“And if I were like a bottle full of fizz with the stopper jammed in, would you pull it out.”
“I should be most glad to, ma’am.”
“Come on. We’re going back to New York.”
Her smile radiating from her face as one eye winked and the other stayed brightly sparkling under her wonderful eyebrows, as if they sheltered the gleam that came glowing warm out of this woman’s soul. As her hand grabs mine and leads me now out of glumness down this little grassy incline. To the long black shining sleekness of this limousine. The door clunking closed with its heavy thud. As we go bulletproof back to the silvery towering skyscrapers. People say they like New York because there are people there. And here we sit side by side, at opposite economic poles of the universe, our minds married by the faintly heard music of all these wheels humming along on the highway. Everywhere and everyone in New York, it seems, are grabbing and stabbing at immortality. Scratching names in cement as we did as kids on the street-corner sidewalks. Carve John, Jerry, Joe in brass. Or Alan, Dick, Ken, or Tommy drawn on a wall. It could last a day, week, or a whole month before, worn by footsteps, washed by rain, or faded by sunshine, another name or a new building comes to wipe it away. But ole Dru’s name, out of the sunshine, away from the rain, is writ in brass on a pew in the cloistered elegance of St. Bartholomew’s Church. Which still adorns there so peacefully on Park Avenue. Attesting to religion, wealth, and power. And permitting pure beauty and sentiment to pervade the spirit. The pocked-marked-faced girl who tried not to ridicule her fat-bellied clients said once to me to always tell everyone how great and wonderful they are, in case they ever get that way. And then you’d be telling the truth. And better late than never.
The massively heavy limousine with its clunking doors pulled up again at the Yiddish Theatre. Under the lights of the marquee, we step out. Dru handing the chauffeur an envelope. And judging by his friendly voice, it could contain a lot of money and he could be a hick hayseed in search of his fortune and blown in from the West. Or maybe one of the more pleasantly pastoral people you’d find up a gulch in West Virginia, where rougher cousins might, if you trespassed on their land, or looked at them sideways, stick a shotgun up your ass and blow your bowels out.
“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Wilmington.”
Diamond bracelets sliding back on Dru’s wrist as she waved down a taxi. To take me speeding along Central Park South. And this part of town makes me wonder how is old Max, who could always make one quietly chuckle at his dilemmas and the meticulous ways in which he oriented his life. And to recall his description, for which I must write a musical score to dramatize marching a naked football player out of his Houston house and down the elegant rich suburban public street and to which the national anthem of Texas can be sung.
Son of a bitch
I’m going to make you pay
The eyes of Texas are upon you
All the live long day.
As now we turn into the winding roadway north through the park. Evening light descends through the tree branches and over the stone outcroppings. Dru lowers a window. A faint roar of a lion comes out of the zoo. A horse and rider cantering along a bridle path. And into this sylvan peace at night come marauders who will stalk the honest citizen who now hurries heading for peaceful safety outside the park. While we go uptown on Fifth and crosstown on Eighty-sixth Street.
“Stephen, you must know Yorkville. Plenty of Germans, beer, plenty bratwurst, plenty sauerkraut.”
“Yes ma’am. Plenty Czechs, plenty Slovaks, and plenty Hungarians.”
Near the East River and the peace and quiet of another park, taxi stops. A large town house behind tall railings. Gray stone facings. Gargoyles. A gleaming black anonymous door. The shaming embarrassment of waiting for Dru to pay. Whose terror is to spend a dollar. Tips the driver. Might have given him a quarter. And I haven’t got much more than that left in the world. Watch her legs. Which go curvaciously every year to Colorado or even to Europe to ski down some Swiss mountain. With the wonderful sure movements of her finely boned hands takes a key from her purse and unlocks the heavy barred gate. Her easy steps up to the door. Another key opens it into a spacious black-and-white marble-tiled entrance hall, across which we could waltz together. Stone busts on plinths and in niches. Commemorating guys bound to be big-time but not one single composer or face familiar enough that I can recognize. As I follow this lady up this sweep of curving staircase. Who speaks back over her shoulder.
“Stephen, when you fell asleep in the car on the way to Valhalla, I wanted to wake you up to see the quite beautiful sweeping massiveness of the Kensico Dam but you were so deeply, somnambulantly talking in your slumber.”
“Was I.”
“And I did think I had better not interrupt you. That’s how considerate I can be.”
“What was I saying.”
“Of what little I could understand, nothing incriminating. You were saying, ‘Wrong, wrong. Wrong information is being given out at Princeton.’”
“Was I saying that.”
“Yes you were. Not something the college authorities would like said.”
“Well, I think it could refer to a bus timetable.”
“Ah, but at last some color seems to be coming back into your face. You were so pale. And I know everything is going to be all right with your work. And also your whole future.”
“I hope so. So many would wish me ill and would stand in my way and let me down. Things seem to insist to happen that seem to hinder me in my aspirations and effort to achieve my goal which is to create and conduct.”
“Dearest—I may, mayn’t I, call you that. Especially as you can’t seem to always remember to call me Dru. It’s all these old fogies sitting on their laurels and coasting on their reputations who should perhaps with the kindliness of time be swept away into the luxury of their retirement homes, there to comfortably await their secure niches in the history books.”
“And give ciphers like me a chance.”
“How can you say that when your work is so beautiful. At least I think so.”
“And ma’am, I am entirely charmed that you do.”
“You do you know, sometimes sound as if you’re not entirely from the Bronx. And appropos of your exerting a certain Gallic savoir faire, would you be open to an invitation if I were to ask you to come with me racing. October, that wonderful month in Paris where the chestnuts are dropping from the trees in the Jardin des Tuileries and also the time the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is at Longchamp, where I have a dear mare running.”
“Do I, ma’am, take my not sounding as not being from the Bronx as a compliment or possibly a mild rebuke.”
“Take it merely as an observation my dearest. From someone whose thoughts are entirely in your interest.”
“I shall, Mrs. Wilmington.”
“Touché. We do, don’t we, dig for ourselves entrenchments of deviousness out of which extrication becomes difficult, if not ultimately impossible. But that is reserved for others. With you, I never feel that I am in tainted company in which future betrayal portends and when you sense someone is lying to you.”
“And I should be delighted to head to Paris. And we might together while there pop into the church of St. Sulpice and if lucky, hear Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass.”
“Done, my dear.”
On the staircase landing, gilded bronze jardinieres. Reminders of one’s lace-curtain origins of an onyx sort, when one enjoyed in childhood to push these over to marvel with pleasure as they smashed upon a tiled sunroom floor. My refined Irish paren
ts’ efforts to maintain elegance in the face of their progeny, who treated all such things as junk. And this residence festooned with riches. Past which Dru leads me by the hand along a corridor. Crystal chandeliers everywhere. Furniture shapes unseen under white sheets. Where a key hangs hidden on the back of a chair and opens up a door. Dru turning the gilt handle, diamonds aglimmer on her wrist. While I don’t have a thing to wear to Longchamp. And follow into this darkened shadowy chamber this woman who can go anywhere in the world and do what she wants. Dru striking a match. The flame illuminating a golden coronet atop a massive canopy bed.
“This candle to burn while we make love.”
“Holy cow, Dru. Holy cow.”
“Next, dear boy, you’ll be saying gee jiminy winikers, or is it winkus or something vaguely akin.”
“This is all so sumptuously beautiful that it’s made me become what I believe is usually referred to as being nervous.”
“Well, this is my closest girlfriend’s house. Or rather, ‘cottage in the city,’ as she calls it, which at the moment is entirely empty. In any event, servants do play havoc with the privacy of one’s life. And I hope that you’re not going to suddenly go shy on me.”
“No ma’am. I’m trying to stay as brave as possible. But we could be committing adultery.”
“I assume you’re kidding.”
“Yes I am, ma’am.”
“I see we’re quite firmly back to ‘ma’am’ again. And you’re behaving like a virgin. But of course adultery and worse is exactly the kind of illicit sin we are, or rather at least I am, committing.”
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