“How much does that cost?”
“That’s the real beauty of it. About $3,500. Thousands of dollars cheaper than a Beta camera. They call this a prosumer model because it straddles the professional and amateur markets.”
Roswell writes down some notes in his spiral book. “Where do you buy it from?”
“I picked it up from B & H.”
“What’s that?”
Jared smiles. “B & H? A New York institution. It should have its own documentary—picture a hundred ultraorthodox Jews in waist-length nineteenth-century black coats selling state-of-the-art electronics.”
“Cool. What kind of light is that?” Roswell continues to write down every item of equipment Jared says in his notebook. Maybe he is interested in what we do, after all.
“Heather, do I have time to make a quick phone call?”
Roswell shirking set-up responsibilities? Shocker. Our interviewee, Rina O’Riley, is not here yet. I’m never comfortable being a ballbreaker. “A quick one, Roswell. On and off.”
“Gotcha!” Roswell presses a stored number in his cell phone. “Listen, Dad, you have a pen? Great, for my Albert Maysles film, I’m going to need these things at home. You can get them ordered from this kosher camera store—”
“He’s seventeen,” I explain to Jared. “Our intern.”
“Gotcha, dude,” Jared says.
After Roswell is finished placing his order with his father, he takes a whiff of the immediate vicinity. “You guys smell that stink?”
“No,” I say.
Roswell wrinkles his nose. “It’s like the fucking ocean around here.”
Jared stiffens, and smells his open jacket. “Is this it? We did a calamari shoot Wednesday. I thought I got the squid smell out.”
“Yo, you didn’t,” Roswell says with another nose wrinkle.
Jared’s face is grave. “That awful?”
Now that it’s been brought to my attention; it is rather pongy in the immediate vicinity. “It’s not that bad,” I assure him as the stench vines up my nostrils and my fingers fiddle with the button on my blouse. “But maybe you should keep the jacket in the corner if you’re going to be self-conscious about it.”
“Burn it, dude,” Roswell says.
Turning to Roswell, I say, “I see Vondra coming in with Rina O’Riley. Could you go over and see if there’s anything Vondra needs you to do?”
When Roswell walks far enough away, I whisper, “He’s also passive-aggressive. But we don’t have the heart to let him go. He won’t graduate if we let him go. No other suckers will sign him up.”
Jared nods. As he unpacks his microphones, Vondra escorts Rina O’Riley to our little area. Rina is an attractive woman in her seventies who still clings to the pink head-band and girlie Izod Lacoste clothes of a preppie youth. Around her neck is a huge white orthopedic neck brace. Is she keeping that thing on when she goes on camera?
“This is Heather,” Vondra says. “She’s my business partner and she’ll be doing the questioning today.”
“Nice to meet you,” says Rina. “Gorgeous sweater. Brings out your gorgeous blue eyes.”
“Thank you.”
“Greenblotz Blue,” Jared says, straight-faced.
“Anything special I need to know?”
“Just remember to rephrase my questions. It’s easier for editing. If I say, ‘What’s your name?’ you should say, ‘My name is Rina’ rather than ‘Rina.’ You’ve probably done this before.”
“Oh yes. I’ve been selling sex since before Dr. Ruth. I did David Susskind at least eight times, and Dinah! about a half-dozen times and Johnny twice. “
“Great. We’ll have to look into those archival appearances for our documentary. Especially The Tonight Show.”
“If they have it at NBC, could you dub me a copy? The first time I was on with the animal expert from Mutual of Omaha and I remember Johnny made me hold the world’s tiniest mouse.”
Roswell is big-eyed. “How small is it?”
“About one inch,” Rina informs him. “Its heart beats at some ridiculous beats per minute and they often die of heart attacks. At first we thought it was having a heart attack in Johnny’s hand, but then we realized it was taking a mouse poop.”
Roswell breaks up laughing but Rina laughs harder, with her stomach as well as her mouth. She’s a delight and happily I realize she’s going to add to our documentary tremendously, neck brace or not.
“Rina, this is Jared, our cameraman.”
“Howdy,” Jared says. “Do you mind if I creep up your sweater with the mic?”
“Not at all. I might enjoy it.”
“What’s with the brace?” I ask Vondra quietly as Jared and Rina make small talk.
“I asked her on the way in,” Vondra says. “The right muscles on her neck disintegrated after radiation therapy. She beat the cancer. She says she can take the brace off for the shoot.”
Despite the early hour, we find ourselves at the middle of a loud and inquisitive horseshoe-shaped throng of museum guests. “What are you filming?” asks the boldest, a heavily made-up middle-aged peroxide blonde wearing a sweatshirt appliquéd with a pig being lifted up by balloons.
“A segment of a documentary.”
“On what?”
“On sexual partners.”
“Oh, you should put me in. I’ve been married to everyone. I never give up on the institution of marriage. I’m the world’s number-one optimist.”
“Heather, can I get a white-balance read?” Jared interrupts the optimist.
“Roswell!” I call out gratefully. “Come and get the white poster board off the floor.” Roswell’s chatting to one of the younger members of the crowd, a pretty teen with long curly black hair, urchin eyes and high-in-the-sky breasts that would make a middle-aged woman weep. “Jared has to check the colors on his camera. Can you hold this in front of him?”
The buxom girl looks at Roswell admiringly as he stands with the poster board. “Okay, we’re cool,” Jared says to Roswell.
“Are you ready, Rina?” I ask.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Then let’s warm up with your basics, please tell me who you are.”
“My name is Rina O’Riley. I guess I could be considered one of the Grand Ladies of Sex. With my husband, Frank O’Riley, I coined the term Elastic Marriage back in the 1960s. It was the end of the era when men could socialize after work and their wives slaved over the washing and cleaning like dray horses. Women wanted more, and enlightened men wanted more. We needed a new name for the options available to modern families. We publicly advocated that as long as there are two consenting adults and there is complete communication between them, anything goes. This sounds like common sense now, but in 1960 it was considered scandalous.”
“Did you get hate mail?”
A diminutive Mexican man enters the wing on what first appears to be a tractor but is in fact a museum floor buffer, one that produces a waxy stink and a noise as loud as a John Sousa march.
“Stop the camera, please,” I say to Jared.
Vondra rushes to the scene, has a few words with the driver, and he tractors off.
“Where were we?” I say.
“Hate mail,” Jared says from the camera.
“Yes,” Rina says. “Did we get hate mail? We had hate mail in which we were called everything under the sun. Heretics. Devil worshipers. We even had death threats, particularly after one television appearance where my husband said that, as anthropologists, we felt exploration was the way nature intended us to be.” Rina glances at a caveman and his wife in the museum diorama, and I motion to Jared to focus in on her eyes taking in the scene.
“So everybody should have as many possible partners as they want?”
“Do I feel everyone should have as many partners as they want? I feel it should be a consenting decision. Perhaps the husband wants to be monogamous and the wife wants to explore, that would be fine, as long as they know what is going on.”
&
nbsp; “Does that happen too often?”
“It doesn’t usually happen that way, of course,” Rina says after a silent smile. “Usually it’s the other way around.”
Vondra scribbles me a question to ask. “What about sexually transmitted diseases?” I read off her note.
“I’m not advocating a secretive liaison—”
“I’m sorry, could you repeat the question for editing purposes?”
“Oh dear, I was being so good. Okay—ready?”
“Ready,” I say.
“You may ask but what about sexually transmitted diseases? I say, you can’t go about an Elastic Marriage in a willy-nilly way. Lying and mistrust breed like kudzu. There would be a lot less victims of AIDS if husbands and wives talked openly and took protective measures together. If you want to explore the perimeters of marriage, do be brainy about it. Elastic Marriage does not mean do as you please. It means do as we please.”
“Why bother being married at all?”
“Why bother being married at all?” Rina dutifully repeats. “So many reasons. Primarily, because we want to be. In my experience, individuals who love each other want to publicly celebrate their union. For some people, there is safety in marriage—psychological constancy, but also life insurance, benefits. Look how hard it was for same-sex partners to get benefits after the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks. Heterosexual couples take the rights of marriage for granted.”
“Did you have an Elastic Marriage?”
“Did I have an Elastic Marriage? Let’s just say that whatever the agreement we had, we also agreed to keep it private. That’s what worked for us.”
After I wrap up with the remaining questions, Rina excuses herself to the “powder room.” Roswell returns to his doting high-breasted fan, and Jared packs up his audio equipment.
“You’re a terrific interviewer,” Jared says. “She was relaxed around you, even when you pushed her with some of the hard questions.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Excellent!” Vondra says.
“Great segment,” Jared agrees as he reaches for a runaway roll of black gaffer tape.
“He’s adorable!” Vondra mouths when Jared’s several feet away.
“I know!” I mouth back.
She tugs at an imaginary beard and makes a frown. I mime a shaving gesture.
“I haven’t been to this museum in years—” Jared picks up with me and Vondra.
He’s cut off by Roswell who asks, “So can I help anymore, Squid?”
“No, but I have to know—did you get your friend’s number?”
“You bet,” Roswell says.
Vondra and I laugh as Jared gives him an older-brother high five.
“She’s a little weird though. Her favorite color is brown.”
“Brown?” Jared says sympathetically as he zips up his knapsack. “Brown is fecal.”
“But she has nice boobs,” Vondra says.
“Amazing boobs,” I say.
“So maybe you shouldn’t worry if she likes brown,” Jared says.
“Tell me,” Roswell says to all of us after a testosterone-addled snigger. “What’s a good western to rent? My dad said I could get ten movies in a row at Blockbuster for passing French.”
“Not my genre,” Vondra says.
“Nor mine,” I say.
Vondra breaks me away from the guys to discuss Rina.
“Do you mind if I listen to them talk?” I ask.
“You’re right, this should be good.”
“Start with the spaghetti westerns,” Jared advises.
“Why are they called spaghetti westerns?” Roswell asks.
“First of all it has to be Italian. And the leading director of the genre was Sergio Leone. Fistful of Dollars is my favorite.”
“Oh, that’s a spaghetti film? That was a fucking cool film. I saw that at my friend Abdullah’s house. I bought a poster of Clint Eastwood after I saw it. My mom accused me of being gay, having a thing for Clint. Then she made me chuck my old Pee-Wee Herman doll just because Pee-Wee masturbated once in public. She’s normally cool. Must have been on the rag that week.”
I can tell Vondra is as entertained as I am. I smile at her. Is Roswell’s uncensored idiocy growing on us?
“I bet you’re thinking, you had a Pee-Wee Herman doll? How queer. But, dude, I loved that doll. It was my childhood being thrown out, you know?”
I can clearly hear Jared’s voice even with his back to me. “No. I was thinking it would be worth a mint now. I never got over the loss of my Hong Kong Phooey lunch box. My mother made me give it to charity.”
“Who the hell is Hong Kong Phooey, dude?”
“Only the best Saturday-morning cartoon, dude. By day he is Penrod Pooch, a janitor in a police station. But when a crime comes to his attention, he jumps into a file cabinet, which turns into the Phooeymobile. He becomes Hong Kong Phooey, a superhero dog who thinks he saves the day with these very cool karate chops. It’s actually his sidekick cat who saves the day, without Phooey knowing about it.”
“Sounds a little lame.”
“And a guy with a squeaky voice and a bow tie isn’t?”
Roswell chuckles. “Yo, man, you’re cool.” How about that? A new friend. Vondra beckons Roswell over to help her mark the digital tape. “Excuse me, Squid,” Roswell says.
I reach inside my own knapsack for my clipboard and pen to check off everything we need to take back to the office. My pen has run out of ink, and Jared sees me scratch the paper to no avail. He lifts his left jeans cuff and fishes for a pen stuck in the elastic of his sock. He hands it to me as he says, “Do they still have the giant blue whale suspended over that enormous room?”
“Thanks. And yes, in the Hall of Ocean Life. Where you and Steve were denied access. They just renovated the whole hall but kept the whale. I was just there for the Moth, this adults-only storytelling night.”
“I heard about that. Steve was raving on about the Moth. It’s a monthly thing, right? And it moves from venue to venue?”
“Yep. The one I went to was stories by documentary makers. It was packed because HBO underwrites the nonfiction film one every year for the Margaret Mead festival. They lined up some pretty impressive names to tell stories, people like Michael Moore and Albert Maysles.”
“Wow,” he says. After a small silence that goes on a beat too long, Jared says, “What’s the next Moth theme? I’ve been missing out.”
“Actually, I got an e-mail about it yesterday. It said the next theme is Family Matters. Usually they have celebrity guests, but it’s an open call this time, like a poetry slam. They’re giving people five minutes to tell a good family story.”
“Then you should do it. You have a great voice, and such funny family stories—”
“Do you want to look at the whale?” I say quickly.
“Sure,” he says quizzically.
“Vondra,” I call out, “can you tell Rina I thank her and I’ll call her tomorrow?”
She gives me a knowing smile.
The Hall of Ocean Life is possibly the most sexual room in the world. Especially in its renovated form, everything in the room suggests one big submerged orgasm, from the sleek blue lighting to the enormous video screens featuring whales spouting water.
Jared stares above him to the room’s focal point, a ninety-four-foot blue whale that inspires awe in everyone from two-year-old kids to jaded science professors.
Jared shakes his head at the sight of it. “Ever think how lucky we are to be alive? You could have been born a blue whale. Imagine having the consciousness of a blue whale. The poor semi-extinct bastards.”
“What would I think about?” I ask.
“Plankton?”
I laugh.
“So we never finished our conversation before,” Jared says. “When is the Moth Family Matters night?”
“Next Sunday at the Nyorican Poets Café on Third Street. Or is it Fourth Street?”
He brushes me on the shoulder. “H
ey, do you want to go?”
I read Steve’s signals wrong during the matzo shoot—he was about getting ahead in the industry, whatever it took. But how off can I be now? Jared’s blushing, I’m sure of it.
“Thanks for asking. I wish I could, but I’m flying to Amsterdam. I won’t be back until early Sunday morning.”
“Are you going for a film shoot?” he says with enough disappointment to flatter me.
“No, a personal trip. I’m visiting an old family friend who has a house there.”
“Well, I guess I’ll see you at the seder.”
“Yes,” I say somewhat dolefully.
“Great shopping in Amsterdam,” he says. “My ex-girlfriend was a big shopper.”
I snort sarcastically in my head. Put her in the ring with the Greenblotz women, let’s see how she fares.
“Amsterdam was one big mall to her. Sarah said there’s a fun toothbrush store there.”
“So I’m told.”
“So, which family members are coming to the seder?”
“Oh, the usual hodgepodge.” Um, maybe my mailman and an Egyptian diplomat.
“Did Steve tell you that the publicist for the Food Channel has already lined up a profile on your family in the Wednesday Food section and the Arts and Leisure section? And that’s just New York. Apparently the Los Angeles Times is biting too.”
“Yeah? Wow.” I hope I’ve mastered my immediate terror. This seder is really happening.
When Jared’s cell phone rings with the same default tone half of New York City has, several tourists in the room check their pockets to see if their phone is the one going off. “Excuse me.” Jared seeks out an open space in the lobby outside the Hall of Ocean Life.
The New York Times! How are we going to pull the wool over the Times? I imagine it’s harder to do in the post–Jayson Blair era.
“That was Steve,” Jared says on his return. “We have another shoot at Aquavit in about half an hour. Steve’s not big on advance notice.”
“Yes, I know. He called me up and asked me to meet him for dinner for that same night last week.”
“To discuss the seder idea he had? I hope that’s all he discussed though. Steve’s a bit, well, Steve.”
The Matzo Ball Heiress Page 13