Like People in History

by Felice Picano

I stood there fuming until I was noticed. The gallery is not a small room; even so, I'm certain the waves of fury emanating off me finally became too much for the three of them. They turned and looked, and I crooked a finger at Faunce. He continued talking to the tourists, until finally he or they or all of them lost their concentration, and he shambled over to me. His "bohemian" jacket looked as though it hadn't been to a dry cleaners in a decade.

  "Where's Alistair?" I asked in a soft-toned voice,

  "Having lunch with Wunderlich's rep. She got into town yest—"

  "Tonia?"—Alistair's assistant.

  "At my place going over some things with my wife. She was there when Wunderlich's rep called and—"

  "Pozzuoli store employees are not your personal servants. Not Tonia, not Justin. Not any of them."

  "It was just a minute. I needed help with this folder of aqua—"

  "You're a liar in addition to perpetrating fraud! I worked the records twenty minutes!"

  "It was just this once."

  "Not just once. Every day it's something. If you ever—I mean ever— take one of my employees away from their post for any reason, I will ensure that you never set foot in the shop again. Is that clear?"

  "It was only—"

  "Furthermore, you do not work here. You are merely a supplier. Please leave the gallery now. I'll help these people, until the gallery staff returns from doing your little errands."

  "But you know nothing of—"

  "As much, I'm certain, as you do."

  "But—"

  "There's nothing I'd like better than to throw you off this balcony. You're trespassing. Don't give me the opportunity I'm itching for."

  Before he could say another word, I walked past him to the" couple and introduced myself as the store manager. The couple was, as I'd guessed, Midwestern, and they were pleased and a little flattered to meet me. Since I'd kept my voice quiet while talking to the creep, they had no idea I'd just kicked him out and threatened his life.

  "We just have to tell you," she gushed. "This is the most beautiful store! We've got nothing even close to it back home in Davenport, Iowa. Do we, Vern? And the people," looking at Faunce, who'd remained where I left him, "are the nicest...!"

  "Thank you, ma'am. How long have you been collectors?" I asked.

  One hour before the party was to begin, Holly came up to me on the balcony. She was acting strange. If I hadn't known she was psychically incapable of it, I'd even have said she was acting sheepish.

  "Yes?" I rearranged the sales accounts protectively in front of me.

  I was distracted. I'd just gotten a phone call from Matt, who'd been about to board a plane down in San Diego to fly up to San Francisco, and who continued to refuse to answer any question I happened to throw his way—and they were considerable in number and complexity. He was planning to arrive at the party, and so I would either have some immediate answers or—more likely—have to wait hours more, until we were finally alone again, to find out what had happened down there. Distracted, and more than a bit pissed off.

  "I'm about to go change for the party," Holly declared.

  "Have you notified WKUV-FM and the State Department?"

  She ignored that. "I thought I should tell you. I can't find Alistair."

  So? "Isn't he in the gallery?"

  "Tonia hasn't seen him all afternoon."

  "You wouldn't happen to know the reason for his disappearance?" I asked, sensing somehow she did.

  "Well... I did hear him and Doriot arguing this morning."

  I knew that women—even seemingly heardess women like Holly— loved this sort of shit even more than seemingly heardess queers like myself.

  "Yessssss?"

  "He stalked off. She threw something at him."

  I slammed shut the accounts containing last month's sales broken down into sixteen different categories—now insufficient protection.

  I didn't know how to tell her how absurd I found any heterosexual lovers' quarrel involving my cousin. "He'll be back in time for the party."

  "Well, see, here's the thing..." Holly was sounding curiously ambivalent. "Maybe he shouldn't... I sort of did... something!"

  "Clarify please. 'Something' on the order of—what exactly, Holly? Canceling the canapés? Or wiring the store with plastique to go off at the height of the party?"

  "Somewhere in between." Holly was definitely looking sheepish now. "You know how upset I was about Faunce and all. Well, one of my friends came into the gallery and bought one of his fake Vuillards." I began to intuit what was next. I clutched the account books. "Of course I told her it was a fake, and she and I went down to the local precinct and she swore out charges. Fraud!" '"I see we might be hearing from WKUV-FM." "I thought, well, I thought they'd just go after Faunce. But it turns out there's more than one subpoena. As art gallery director, Alistair will be served one. And...," here her voice got very small, "so will the store manager..."

  She was telling all this to me, the store manager. "I was just trying to stop Faunce."

  "I know, Holly, and thanks for die warning. I'll remember it when people begin calling asking job references for you." "You're firing me?" She had the crust to be upset. "Not I. And I won't tell either. But Italians tend to be a little hotheaded, not to say vengeful. Or weren't you aware? Once it comes out who filed the complaint, Signor Cigna certainly will—"

  The phone rang, interrupting me—the devil himself! Pierluigi had just arrived from New York and was at his suite at the Drake. I spoke a few minutes, then covered over the receiver to say, "Find Alistair for me. Now!"

  Alistair was found in the coffee shop one level down from the hotel's main lobby, but he would not be budged.

  When I arrived, he was drowning his sorrow in weak coffee and gooey pineapple pie.

  "If you don't come back to the art gallery with me, I'll murder you on the spot," I said. This was language Alistair understood. "I don't care how many witnesses there are."

  "If you insist," he said dispiritedly.

  That having been easier than I'd feared, I went on to warn him about the subpoena: he was not to admit to his name—not the easiest thing to do in a party of this sort, when one is meeting new people, I had to admit, but still... This news didn't seem to in any way alter his already Tenebraen gloom.

  "Come on, Alistair, I can't believe you're moping over some... skirt!" I deliberately used the obsolescent slang to get a rise out of him.

  "I asked Doriot to marry me," he said.

  "You are sick sick sick!"

  "She refused."

  "Thankfully you both don't have rocks in your head."

  "I've never wanted anything more in my life, Rog."

  "Maybe after the exhibit's open, you should take a vacation. You know? Laguna Beach, Fire Island, P-Town. Maybe a tour of all three. With Key West thrown in for—"

  "I never get anything I want, Rog."

  I couldn't believe he was sulking over this.

  "You'll meet some cute boys. Take lots of recreational drags. Go shopping. Try drag—you know, high heels and makeup..."

  He gripped my arm hard. "I've never gotten anything I've ever wanted, Rog. Never!"

  He'd talked himself into this. How could I talk him out of it?

  "You've always gotten exactly what you wanted, Alistair. What about Dario? What about Judy? What about...?."

  "I mean really wanted! I really want this, Rog!"

  I'd just noticed that Dario and Doriot sounded very much alike. Could that have anything to do with...?

  "What do you want? Are you that in love with Doriot? Or is it, pardon me for being so vulgar but others will ask the same, her family? Her connections? Her social set? Her money?"

  "I love everything about her! You know how I am, Rog. I don't separate it out."

  Sure.

  "But she doesn't love you?"

  "Madly! Wildly! It's just... well, she's only twenty-two. Her family did expect something different for... her first marriage."

 
I could hear them saying that to Alistair: exactly that, in that feebly disappointed tone of voice rich parents use with suitors they don't want hanging around.

  "Look, Alistair. Doriot is lovely. And the lifestyle she presents is a charming one, but... perhaps this isn't quite for you. Have you thought of that possibility?"

  "I really care for her. Maybe not the way most guys care for their girls, but... it's not that. Oh, Rog, I'm so tired of always being on the outside looking in. Of being deprived of all the good things in life!"

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Alistair deprived? Alistair?

  Suddenly there was an idea all too apparent on his face.

  "Rog, what if...? They see me as being rootless. Parents divorced. Mom remarried twice. Me living alone so long. I never thought of it before, but you're my family."

  Uh-oh! I began backing off the stool.

  "I've known you forever."

  "Hardly for—"

  "Years! You'll speak for me. Tell them what I'm really like."

  He was kidding, of course.

  "They'll be here tonight. At the show. Say you will, Rog? I know that coming from you, it'll make all the difference in the world."

  "I'm not so sure."

  "I am! Really! You're so... stable, so settled. Please, Rog. Say you'll meet them? Say you'll talk to them?"

  He all but went down on his hands and knees in front of what passed for the six-thirty "tea crowd" at the Hotel Coffee and Cake Shop.

  "Would I abase myself like this if I weren't desperate?" Alistair asked. "Would I?"

  I had to admit he had a point. The Alistair Dodge I knew wouldn't dream of begging me for anything. Of course he'd asked for the art gallery job, but in his usual manner: as though doing me and Pozzuoli a favor.

  So I had no choice but to say I'd talk to Doriot's folks, bootless as I thought it would all turn out.

  "What about... after?" I asked. "If you do marry. The gallery? Faunce?"

  "I'll quit," Alistair said. "We've already talked about opening upour own gallery when we get back from the honeymoon. Without Faunce."

  We were how ascending in the teardrop elevator to the mezzanine, one level above the immense open lobby, giving direct entry to the art gallery. People were already gathering at the substantial Pozzuoli lobby entry: we could see black suits and evening gowns with wraps dominating. It was going to be quite an affair! Was that Pierluigi? I'd been with Alistair twenty minutes. It seemed like forever.

  "You'd better go through here and get changed," I instructed. I'd barely waved him in through the mezzanine-level door, when I heard my name called and looked down to see Calvin amid the Opera crowd. All of them were there, doubtless fresh from their meeting in some chic executive suite at the hotel: Calvin's boss, his wife, the rest of the staff, then the administration of the S.F. Opera itself, including its most recent, most junior conductor, present with his wife and his boyfriend... But it hadn't been Calvin who'd called. It had been Miss Thing at the Opera himself!

  I waved back. "Doors'll be open in a sec," I said.

  Inside, I gestured wildly down to Andre who, while all dressed up, was standing around counting flies. After getting my message past the considerable obstruction that his mind constituted, I watched Andre open up, the guests enter, the party begin.

  I swept down the front staircase, just in time to snatch Calvin away from the others.

  "You look fabulous in that tux," I said. He did. "You really ought to dress up more, Cal. I mean it."

  He looked at me and his lips quivered. Uh-oh. This was not going to be a Fiordiligi and Dorabella talk but instead a Norma and Adalgisa" one. Then I understood why he was shattered. The meeting had just ended. They must have turned down Agnes von Hohenstaufen.

  "The word 'asshole,'" I began, "was created expecially to describe that person!"

  Calvin's lips continued to quiver. His face contorted with passion.

  "'Flaming asshole'!" I corrected, and hugged his substantial and expensively clad body to mine. "Holly should have wired this place with plastique! Kill about a hundred assholes at once!"

  After a minute, Calvin pulled away. He'd regained control. "They chose...." He'd regained control only with some effort. "They chose a twentieth-century opera by some Czech no one's ever heard of."

  "Janáček?" I asked and immediately regretted it. "I was reading something and—"

  "Jenůfa." Calvin could barely pronounce the tide and ignored my oral betrayal. "It's neo-realism. And you were right! Rysanek has agreed to return and sing it."

  "No? Damn!"

  "I quit the magazine," Calvin said. Suddenly he resembled Verrett on the cover of her recording of Orfeo: noble, determined, tragic.

  "You what?"

  "Cherkin accepted my resignation."

  "The bastard! How could he?"

  "He'd been looking forward to exactly this. I see now, he engineered the whole thing!" Calvin went on. If an Afro-American could do Callas in those moments after she's killed Scarpia and she spits out the words "And before him all Rome trembled!" Calvin was La Divina now, filled with fire and spite: "An utter conspiracy! Fool that I was, I gave him the very opportunity he wanted."

  I was so enthralled I kept waiting for the ensuing cabaletta.

  "Mees-ter Sannsss-arrrrcc!" The near basso tones of the Genoan Goose could be heard coming closer. "When-ev-er you are rea-dy! Your clo-thinggg!"

  "Momentino!" I warbled in reply. But Pierluigi would not be waved off. "Cal, we're going to have to discuss this in exhaustive detail later."

  Vincent Faunce and his wife chose that moment to enter the shop arm in arm, and I was filled with homicidal thoughts, until I recalled that he would have his comeuppance by the end of the evening. Now all I had to do was figure out who was the process server. And change my clothes. And talk Doriot's parents into allowing their darling daughter to marry my crazed homosexual second cousin. And straighten out Calvin's career. And avoid getting a subpoena myself. And... anything else? Matt! Who knew what with Matt. Convince him to trust me and love me and stay with me forever.

  Light stuff.

  "Now, go up and join the party, Calvin. And when Matt arrives, grab him. Okay? And Cal, remain calm! Nothing is final except death. And even that's up for grabs. Remember. And... I really do love you in that tux," I said as I pushed him into the throng and myself fled down to the men's room.

  Naturally, the fly button on my tux trousers flew off the first time 1 went to use it and had to be sewed back on. After wresting with it as though I were Laocoön, I gave up altogether on the cummerbund. I looked at myself in the small employee-john mirror and thought: You're not half bad-looking, you know, kid. Aging well. Matt might go for you after all. The fooo-ooool! Obviously I was becoming completely unhinged by all the pressure.

  I was still laughing to (or at?) myself as I ascended into the main floor of the shop. People were still coming in, being greeted by Andre, who'd been joined by the marginally more human Holly, who directed the guests up the second set of stairs to the gallery.

  "Someone was here looking for you," Andre said.

  "Oh?" I looked at Holly, who averted her gaze. "Who was it?"

  Andre did that elaborate Gallic shrug that involves every bone in the upper body. Holly was inspecting the wooden dowel on the staircase with the intensity of an archaeologist with a shard.

  I went up to the record department—Vivaldi's Two Mandolin Concerto was playing: Heaven!—where people unknown to me held flutes of bubbly and chatted. Then I headed around the corner and up two steps into the art gallery.

  "Therrre you arrre, finallllllly!" The Genoan Goose had staked out his position and all too loudly announced my arrival, which, given the circumstances, I'd hoped to keep a bit quieter.

  I was surprised to see he was in a good mood. He held a glass but wasn't drinking. He was talking to various people with more garrulity than usual. "Someone was looking for you beforrrre, Meees-ter Sannns-arrrc!"

  No doubt. Even th
e most cursory glance showed me the crowd did look awfully grand. The party seemed pretty damn spiffy altogether.

  "Mr. Sansarc?" a voice behind me asked. "Roger?"

  I turned, about to flee, about to deny my name, about to— The man looked familiar. Past middle-age, a bit portly, curly hair framing his puffy face—it was... it was...

  "Budd Cherkin! We've only met once before. Associated Publishing."

  Calvin's boss. Here was my chance to—

  "Cal's leaving will be a loss to the magazine," Cherkin said, his pert features turned into solemnity: had he been reading my mind? "But I'd like to move Opera Quarterly into a new direction, and this seems like the perfect time to do so. Especially since we'll need a new editor in chief. I understand you have substantial writing and editorial experience."

  Me?

  "Not really. I worked for a book publisher back in New York. But that was history books. Textbooks."

  "Three years. And only a year here and one can see how well you've managed to do with it. Here's my game plan, Roger. I want to expand the magazine. Make it a monthly. Cut it down from book length to about sixty, seventy pages. Flatten it out and make it a newsstand size. Photos. News. Illustrations. Glossy cover. Trenchant articles on the state of opera in the country, hell, in the world! I'm prepared to recapitalize it considerably. And I'm prepared to pay you thirty-five a year to start. What do you say?"

  I could see my hand reaching out to hold onto something solid. Instead, Cherkin grabbed it.

  "Great!" he said, interpreting my grasping for a handshake. "We'll discuss details tomorrow. Give me a call and set up a meeting."

  "Wait? I..."

  He'd already turned around and begun to speak to some crony.

  "Smmmille, Mees-ster Sannns-arrrcc! It's a success. Everyone who counts in San Francisco is here. Go. Go socializze!" Pierluigi pushed me into the crowd.

  I landed between two women in their sixties with nearly identical hairdos. I smiled with the least falseness I could muster, then skittered away. Wait! Wasn't that Doriot?

  "You're exactly who I'm looking for," she said.

  "Where's Alistair?" I asked.

  "I was going to ask you the same thing. He vanished the minute I got here."