“How old is Herb, anyway?”
“Let’s just say he’s past the company’s mandatory retirement age. But of course if you own the joint, I guess you can change the rules any way you want.”
“They’ve certainly changed the rules when it comes to Lenny Liebling. What’s his secret, d’you suppose?”
In a lowered voice: “I’ve heard he’s Herb Rothman’s gay lover.”
“Herb? Gay? With all his women?”
“Beards, darling, nothing but beards. To protect the family’s reputation.”
“So it’s Herb and—Lenny.”
“Shhh, darling! He’s standing right over there.…”
Wearing his bemused, supercilious smile, Lenny moved away from this pair.
In the corner of the terrace, he spotted young Joel Rothman in conversation with the young woman in dark glasses and the glossy helmet of short, jet-black hair, who had just identified herself as “a visitor from England.” Joel was the only other blood Rothman at the party. Joel was Alexandra Rothman’s son, soon to be eighteen and fresh out of Exeter. Though his horn-rimmed glasses gave him a slightly owlish look, he was a good-looking boy—tall and slim, with thick blond, slightly windblown hair.
“I know all about you from your grandfather,” Lenny heard the young woman say. “I know you’re the apple of his eye. Some day, you’re going to take over the whole Rothman empire.”
Joel ran his index finger around the inside of the collar of his white shirt. “I wish people wouldn’t call it an empire,” he said. “It’s just a family business like any other.”
“Your grandfather says you have the makings of a fine journalist.”
“He just means I have certain pet peeves about the way the English language is used nowadays. I wrote my senior paper on this at school.”
“Oh? Tell me about that.”
“For instance, just the other day in the New York Times, Paul Goldberger, in his architecture column, wrote, ‘This building is quite different than other buildings this architect has designed.’ Doesn’t Goldberger—doesn’t anybody editing the Times—know that it should be ‘different from’? And it annoys me to read, also in the Times, that the Helmsleys live in ‘a twenty-one-room estate.’ Don’t they know that estates have acres, not rooms? And if you listen to the radio, you’ll hear all kinds of mistakes. ‘Babysitting her grandchild,’ instead of with, or for. A chaise longue called a chaise lounge. A bedroom suite called a bedroom suit. ‘Upon graduating high school,’ instead of being graduated from. The other day I heard an announcer say that some society woman had eloped with her male masseuse. A masseuse is female, of course. More and more I hear people saying they feel nauseous, when they mean nauseated. I also hate it when I hear people say, ‘My sterling,’ or ‘real gold,’ or that somebody has ‘his very own private plane.’ And, over and over again, if you listen to radio giveaway shows, you’ll hear the announcer say, ‘Congradulations!’ I could go on and on about this, but I’m probably boring you stiff, aren’t I?”
“No! It’s fascinating—and true!”
Joel Rothman blushed easily, and he was blushing now. “Anyway, that’s what I wrote my senior paper on.”
“Fascinating.”
Joel smiled. He had a nice smile, and his teeth were white and even. “I heard a good one the other day. Two women were talking in Bloomingdale’s, and I heard one woman say, ‘Well, the way prices are anymore, and for no more than you’re going to use it, why buy it?’”
“Which should have been—?”
“‘The way prices are nowadays, and for as little as you’re going to use it.’ And I’ve almost given up on ‘hopefully,’ as when the weatherman says, ‘Hopefully, it won’t rain over the weekend.’”
She laughed—a light, merry, almost tinkly laugh. “Hopefully, you got an A on your paper,” she said.
“I did—gratefully.”
Now they were both laughing.
“Actually, I put my paper together from things I’d already put down in my journal,” Joel said. “So it wasn’t a lot of work.”
“Ah. You keep a journal?”
“Oh, yes. I write in it whenever I have a little bit of private time—which isn’t often these days.”
“It seems unusual to me for a chap your age to keep a journal. I should think a lad your age would spend his private time thinking of ways to conquer the fair sex—handsome fellow like you. Do you plan to be a writer?”
Joel’s blush deepened. “Well, I come from a publishing family,” he said.
“Oh, yes indeed, I know. And a very distinguished one it is. In fact, I feel a bit out of place here,” she said.
“Out of place? Why?”
“All these famous people. I’m just a nobody. In fact, I wasn’t even invited, and I really didn’t want to come. But your grandfather insisted on bringing me.”
“You’re not a nobody,” he said. “Nobody’s a nobody.”
Lenny turned to the man standing next to him and, with a raised eyebrow and a slight nod in the younger couple’s direction, mouthed the words, “Does she have a name?”
“Name’s Fiona Fenton,” the man whispered. “Lady Fiona Fenton. Friend of Herb’s. From London.”
“I see.”
“Is this chap a friend of yours?” Lenny heard her ask, indicating the big stocky man in the brown suit who stood just behind Joel, and Lenny cocked his ear to hear how Joel would handle this particular question.
Joel gestured with his thumb over his right shoulder. “That’s just Otto,” he said, blushing even more deeply.
The woman named Fiona Fenton extended her right hand in Otto’s direction, but Otto did not return the gesture and simply stared impassively into space. Otto’s job was not to socialize with the party guests. Otto’s job was to keep his hands free at all times, for use on the beeper that was clipped to his belt or, if the need arose, for the service revolver that was strapped in a harness across his chest, and bulged under the buttoned jacket of his brown suit.
“I have a bodyguard,” Lenny heard Joel mumble. “That’s why I have no privacy.” Lenny turned away now, and moved on to other conversations.
Joel and his mother had had words about Otto just that morning, before Alex left for the office. Four years earlier, Herbert Rothman had received a crudely written note in the mail demanding ten million dollars in return for the life of the youngest male Rothman heir. Normally such a note, and such a demand, would not be taken seriously. Men in Herbert Rothman’s position received such threats fairly routinely, and routinely turned them over to the FBI and forgot about them. But, it turned out, one of the grandsons of Henry Ford II had been similarly threatened and, from England, Buckingham Palace had reported the same threat to Prince William, the heir to the throne, demanding the same sum translated into British pounds. The FBI had decided to take the case very seriously, that an international kidnap or extortion ring was at work, and Interpol was brought into the case. Herbert Rothman was advised to hire someone for Joel’s protection, and Otto Forsthoefel, a former Pinkerton man, was chosen for the job.
That morning, at the breakfast table, Alex had said to Joel, “Well, Buster, have you decided what you want for a birthday present?” Ever since he was a baby, Alex and Steven had called him Buster, and how that got started she no longer remembered.
“Yes,” he answered darkly.
“Let me guess,” she said, squeezing the last polyp of her grapefruit into her spoon. “A Porsche? A Mercedes? A BMW?”
“I want to get rid of effing Otto. That’s all I want, Mom.”
She frowned and put down her grapefruit spoon.
“Mom, do you know what it’s been effing like with effing Otto following me around all the time? Do you have any idea? Do you know what it’s been like at school? Do you know they kicked me off the effing soccer team? I was a quarterback, but in our big game with Andover a guy illegally body-checked me, and I ended up on my ass. Effing Otto ran out on the field and made them stop the game! A
nd we were winning, for Chrissake! Do you know that I wanted to go out for hockey this winter, but I couldn’t because effing Otto doesn’t know how to effing skate? Do you know how the guys at school tease me about effing Otto? Do you know what the girls call me? ‘The Boy in the Bubble!’ Dammit, Mom, nobody’s going to kidnap me, nobody’s going to murder me. Nobody’s even tried. If you ask me, Mom, those effing letters were nothing but an effing hoax to begin with, until the effing FBI got into the act. But I’ll tell you this, Mom. I’m not going to effing Harvard with effing Otto following me around, and that’s effing final!”
“Enough of this effing business, Buster,” she said. “Is that the way they teach you to talk at Exeter?”
“Dammit, Mom, have you heard a single effing word I’ve said?”
She bit her lip. “But I do worry about you,” she said. “You’re the only real family I have left. You’re really the man of the house here. You’re—”
“Dammit, Mom, if I’m the man of the house, why do I have to have an effing bodyguard?”
“But what if something should—?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Mom. Look, I’m going to be eighteen years old. I’m old enough to drive. I’m going to be old enough to vote. If there’s a war, and they have an effing draft, I’ll be old enough to be effing drafted, for Chrissakes. What’re you going to do? Send me off to the army with effing Otto on my tail?”
“But there isn’t any war, and there isn’t any draft.”
“But what I’m saying is that I’m going to be an effing legal adult!”
“You’re right, of course,” she said. “But don’t forget that Otto was your grandfather’s idea, not mine.”
“Dammit, Mom, do we have to do everything Gramps says? Does Gramps own us, or something?”
“Of course not. Nobody owns anybody.”
“But this much is final. If I have to go to Harvard with effing Otto on my tail, I—just—won’t—go!”
“What do you mean you just won’t go? You’ve been accepted and—”
He tossed his mane of blond hair. “How can I not go? Easy! When I get to Harvard, I won’t do any of the work. I’ll see to it that I flunk every test! By the end of the first semester, I’ll have flunked out of Harvard. What do you think of that?”
She laughed her throaty laugh. “Buster, you’re turning into a true Rothman,” she said. “You’re as manipulative as the rest of them. Okay, it’s a deal. Otto goes. And I agree with you—this Otto business has gotten ridiculous. I’ll speak to Herb first chance I get.”
“And do me another favor,” he said.
“Sure. What’s that?”
“Quit calling me Buster.”
She looked at him. “All right,” she said quietly. “All right, Joel.” And then, “Hey, we’re still pals, aren’t we?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.
But of course Alex had not yet had a chance to speak to Herb about the Otto matter, and so, tonight, Otto was still on the job.
Now Mona Potter had approached Joel on the terrace—the same Mona Potter who had once expected to be named Mode’s editor, and who now wrote a syndicated column called “The Fashion Scene” for the Daily News. Famously nearsighted, Mona peered closely at Fiona Fenton’s face and, realizing that this was someone she did not recognize, and that this therefore was a person of no consequence whatever, she ignored her and turned to Joel with her steno pad and pencil. “Your mother says you’re a genius,” she said.
“Well, that’s nice,” he said pleasantly.
“Okay, so say something genius for my column. Gimme a genius quote. You’re the heir apparent. Wanna say something heir apparent?”
“Hmm—ah—”
“Your mother says you got an original mind. Say something original.”
“I think she means I like word games,” he said.
“Yeah? Like what?” Her pencil was poised over her steno pad.
“Can you think of a nine-letter word that has only one vowel?”
“No. What?”
“Strengths,” Joel said. “I’ve only been able to discover one other word like it in the English language.”
“Huh. What’s that?”
“It’s a proper name, so maybe it doesn’t count. But it’s still a word.”
“Huh!”
“I’ll give you a hint. It used to be the name of a chain of restaurants in New York.”
“Huh!”
“Schrafft’s,” he said.
“Aw, you’re pulling my leg,” Mona said, and moved away from him in search of more quotable grist for her journalistic mill.
“Dear me, what a perfectly dreadful woman,” the young Englishwoman said to him.
The orchestra was playing “You’re the Top,” changing the lyric slightly to suit the occasion:
You’re the top,
You’re the Park Pavilion,
You’re the top,
Now you’ve hit five million …
And one or two couples were actually dancing, which was becoming a rare thing to see at a New York party these days, where there were too many important business matters, and people, to talk about. Lenny strolled among the party players, those fashionable savages, listening to their voices rising against the music, fueled by cocktails and champagne.
“She photographs okay if you shoot her in profile. Shoot her from any other angle, and she looks like Noriega in drag.”
“Speaking of horrors, there’s Molly Zumwalt. She must be on furlough from Silver Hill.”
“Molly Zumwalt has a certain sense of style, but no taste. You know what I mean. Blue Rigaud candles.”
“Her husband had a penile implant. Then he had a vasectomy. What’s he want, anyway …?”
Was it always this awful? Lenny sometimes asked himself. Was there always such cruelty, such venom, so much anger and envy and greed? “The East Side Razor Blades” was what Lenny called these women, who were for the most part thin and for the most part streaked blondes. At a certain age, in New York, every woman became a streaked blonde. He had christened them the Razor Blades, furthermore, long before Tom Wolfe called them X-rays in that book. His was a more apt description, Lenny thought. An X-ray was transparent, black-and-white, and flat. But a Razor Blade could cut, and nick, and slash, and kill. There were male Razor Blades too, of course, equally dangerous, and never satisfied until there was blood all over the floor.
And the answer to his question was no, it had not always been like this. When Lenny first came to New York in the early thirties, it had been quite a different place. The city had been vital, and pulsing, and fun, and everyone went everywhere. Those had been hard times, of course, but they were getting better, and everyone was simply glad to be alive and in the city together, helping things get better. Then had come the war years, and those had been the best of all. Having made sure that he was ineligible for the draft—that quite absurd incident back in Onward took care of that—Lenny had flung himself, yes flung, into the joy of those years when everyone was rooting together for the city, the country, the world.
There were real stores in the city then, not glitzy show-biz emporiums like Bloomingdale’s, but real stores like Best’s and DePinna, which everyone knew was better than Brooks Brothers, and Altman’s, which always had the best of everything, including that wonderful bakery shop, and Bergdorf’s, before Andrew Goodman sold it to a chain. And W&J Sloane—you never needed to hire an interior decorator in those days. Sloane’s told you how to furnish your rooms, and you could be certain they were right.
And then there were the hotels and restaurants and nightclubs they all went to—the Marguery, with its extraordinary garden courtyard, the Ambassador, the old Ritz-Carlton, the Savoy-Plaza, and the pre-Trump Plaza when it really was the Plaza. No more. Those places were all, all gone. They had danced at places like Larue—those tiny blue sparkling, starlike lights in the ceiling—and the Monte Carlo and the Copa, and at the Persian Room they had listened to Hildegar
de—the “Incomparable Hildegarde”—in her long white gloves sing “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” and for her last number she always came out carrying a bunch of long-stemmed red roses in her arms as she would a baby. And they drank at places like the Stork Club and the old El Morocco with its zebra-striped banquettes and silver palm trees, and, oh, how innocent and free they had all been then! Lenny could remember ordering his very first martini—well under age, of course, but so sophisticated—and saying to the waiter, “Very dry, please—no water at all,” and the laughter that order had provoked among his friends who all had names like Gloria and Bobo and Tommy and Dickie. When they were poor, they ate at the Automat or Childs, and when they were feeling a little richer they ate at Longchamps, or took tea at a wonderful little bonbonnerie on Fifth Avenue called Rosemarie de Paris, with its heavenly chocolate-peppermint smell, where waitresses in black uniforms with starched white lace caps and aprons passed the French pastry trays. It was here he learned that the only time it was polite to point was when it was at French pastry, and that it was considered rude and gluttonish to point at more than two, though Lenny could have eaten the entire tray because he was often hungry then, even though he smoked expensive Murad cigarettes. Nobody had any money then, and yet they went to all these places. There was a spirit of tomorrow-we-may-die during those war years, and so everyone wanted restlessly to live and love to the fullest, to the hilt, and relish life while it lasted. At the glamorous Cotillion Room, the cover charge was one dollar, considered steep, but if you tipped the captain another dollar he gave you a ringside table, which was worth it. And at the Stork Club drinks were fifty cents, unless you knew Sherm Billingsley, in which case they were often free. After a night at the Stork, you grabbed for Walter Winchell’s column to see if your name was in it, and it sometimes was. The Ritz-Carlton was the most expensive hotel in town—seven dollars a night for a room! No wonder they went everywhere, and Lenny could remember many a rollicking, squandered night at the Ritz, and waking up at dawn, luxuriously hung over. Or, for the night, they might all go downtown for jazz at Eddie Condon’s, or uptown because, in those days, you really could go to Harlem in ermine and pearls. And there was one little club up there, Lenny remembered, the Tic-Toe Club, where the most beautiful black boys danced naked on the stage. And, at the end of the night, you might all take the subway down to the Staten Island Ferry—over and back for a nickel—and watch the sun rise over Brooklyn Heights, and as the sun’s first rays caught the windowpanes of the houses on Brooklyn Heights, there was such a sense of harmony and lyricism, modulated chords of domesticity and care and love, as windows opened and white curtains fluttered out. Gone, all gone, le temps perdu. But there was kindness then, and civility, and gentleness, and people you hardly knew would lend you a dollar for your cabfare home, long ago when the world was young and green and full of promises and hope.
The Rothman Scandal Page 5