The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  Adam had also begun drinking heavily. The boys noticed this when they saw how rapidly their liquor supplies in the apartment were dwindling. Soon it was necessary to hide the liquor, but one cannot really hide liquor from an alcoholic determined to find it. Secretly, the boys began to suspect that they had created a monster. And yet, at that point, they had already made a public commitment to Adam’s success, and it seemed too humiliating to admit failure.

  Meanwhile, he lived in their guest bedroom, and of course many people assumed that there was a sexual relationship there. But there really wasn’t—not, at least, in any significant way, though it was clear that both Charlie and Lenny were devoted to Adam—hoping against desperate hope that something would change. As for Adam himself, he swung, as they say, both ways. Did that make him a bisexual? Lenny and Charlie simply knew that Adam Amado was a young man who was accustomed to taking sex wherever, and whenever, and with whomever, he found it.

  There was more erratic behavior. He showed up late, or else failed to show up at all, for casting calls that Lenny had arranged for him. He showed up drunk on a nationally televised talk show, whose host Lenny had begged to use Adam as a guest. He urinated in the office fireplace of an important producer who had just offered him a part in an off-Broadway play. And there was more, much more, and much worse. And yet the boys persisted with their dream, their vision.…

  Pity the Pygmalion who produces a flawed Galatea!

  It was Mona Potter, of all people, who finally blew the whistle on Adam Amado. In a 1969 column reporting on a fashionable East Side party, Mona wrote:

  The evening’s festivities were somewhat marred by a certain Manhattan freeloader who calls himself an actor, but who acts best as a drunken deadbeat, who circulated among the guests telling them he was the next Rock Hudson. Yuk!

  Even though it was a blind item, with Adam’s name not mentioned, everybody knew who Mona was talking about.

  Overnight, Adam Amado became a social pariah—to everyone, that is, except Lenny and Charlie, who remained loyal to him. Why? Well, for one thing, there was certainly nothing boring about those Adam Years, as they often referred to that period of their lives. In fact, the boys sometimes missed the excitement of that time, when no one knew what awful thing might happen next. They had become like two scientists, committed to finding the cure for some obscure, incurable disease through all disaster. They kept hoping that somehow, somewhere along the way, it would appear—the magic formula—and all their labors would be vindicated. But they also knew that their friends were laughing at them behind their backs and calling them damned fools. It was Marlene Dietrich who provided them with a rationale that enabled them to hold their heads high in face of all the ridicule.

  Dear Marlene. Lenny often thought that if she had not possessed the beauty to become a great film star she would have entered the nursing profession. Marlene was drawn to sick people like carborundum to a magnet. She actively sought out the ill and the neurasthenic, and she thrilled at the prospect of treating the dying. She was a walking medicine cabinet. Her voluminous handbag was always filled with pills and potions, herbal remedies and exotic lixiviums and panaceas from around the world. She carried cures for everything from whooping cough to gonorrhea.

  “Dis is a very sick boy,” she had told Lenny and Charlie. “He needs your help. De Almighty has given you dis meesion, to care for dis sick boy. Ees a sacred meesion. Ees what God has put you on dis earth to do, Charles and Lenny. You are like Albert Schweitzer in Africa! You are like Father Damion among the lepers! You are saints, Charles and Lenny. Both of you! Saints!”

  Thus canonized by Marlene, Saint Lenny and Saint Charlie lifted their cross to their shoulders once more and carried on their God-appointed mission with renewed diligence and self-esteem.

  And, basically, they loved Adam, and he could be amusing enough company, particularly when he wasn’t drinking.

  Unfortunately, the drinking periods far outnumbered the nondrinking ones.

  But, thanks to dear Marlene, Lenny and Charlie were able to translate their continued tolerance of, and loyalty to, Adam Amado as a kind of advertisement to the world at large of their own grit and superior character. They would never, thanks to Marlene, be accused of being rats deserting the sinking U.S.S. Adam, the way the rest of New York was doing.

  Of course, a certain amount of ego gratification was involved here. Sympathy was not an altogether bad commodity to elicit from your peers, and weren’t the greatest tragic heroes in literature always those who suffered longest and with the least complaining? Lenny had even thought of having dear Marlene’s words embroidered on a sampler.

  For four more long, tortuous years the pair supported him. They had never known Adam’s real age—he claimed not to know himself—but, in this period, he did not age well. Still, they continued to pay him an allowance, and loaned him extra money whenever they could. They took him out to dinner, and tried to keep him sober. They tried to soothe him during his drunken, hallucinatory rages. They held his head when he vomited in their toilet, and they nursed his hangovers. They tried to referee his increasingly violent battles with a series of increasingly inappropriate lovers. They put him into, and took him out of, a series of substance-abuse centers. When he was thrown in jail, they bailed him out. They gave him useful tips in dealing with the law: “If a squad car is chasing you, run the wrong way down a one-way street.” When his driver’s license was taken away, they served as his chauffeurs. Even when it turned out that he was stealing money from them, they forgave him. Right up until the time of his horrible and unnecessary death—his death on a mission they most certainly would have tried to stop, had they known he was going to undertake it—they defended him. Of course, the circumstances of his death, ugly as they were, turned out to have a not-unpleasant side benefit, as they would later discover. “Hold on to these papers for me,” he had said, mysteriously, the last day Lenny saw Adam alive. “In case something should happen to me.” And he handed Lenny a long, sealed manila envelope.

  Then, what he had apparently feared might happen to him happened.

  Still, Lenny and Charlie had continued to defend Adam Amado, and his memory, to this very day. Looking back, the Adam Years had been the best years of their lives.

  Hence, The Shrine. Across the length of the Spanish refectory table were displayed mementos of their fallen idol—the pair of aviator-type sunglasses that he often wore, his silver-plated crucifix on a slender chain, his billfold that he had not carried with him on that fatal day, and what appeared to be his high-school class ring, though its date and legend had been rubbed away. Here too were the monogrammed gold Tiffany cuff links that Lenny had given him one Christmas and which, because of the embossed “A.A.” monogram, he had been unable to pawn. Here, in a scrapbook, were collected all the little notes that Adam ever left for Lenny and Charlie, even notes of little consequence such as “Be back in 1 hr.—A,” which meant he had gone out to cruise the bars, and laundry lists, and all the IOUs. Also displayed were posters, handbills, and programs from Adam’s most memorable performance, as Claudio in a short-lived off-Broadway production of Measure for Measure, and copies of the generally positive reviews (“Newcomer Adam Amato [sic] breathes a little life into a thankless role”—The Village Voice.) There was the sword he carried as Claudio, and there was the muffler Claudio wore in the last scene, when he was presented to his sister, Isabella. Oddly, there were no photographs displayed of Adam. They were too painful to look at, Lenny said. Photographs existed, of course, many of them—including an extraordinary series of Adam in the nude—but they were hidden away, and no one, since Adam’s death, had seen them except Lenny and Charlie.

  Perhaps the most extraordinary objects standing on the long table, and propped up against the wall, were a pair of stained-glass windows, which might have come from some church in rural England, and which Adam, inscrutably, left them in his will. That will, along with other bits and pieces of paper, was found in the long manila envelope, as we
ll as the storage receipt for the windows from a Brooklyn warehouse. It had cost Lenny and Charlie three hundred and fifty dollars in unpaid storage fees to retrieve the windows. But how had someone such as Adam, who appeared to have no home or family, come by a pair of stained-glass windows? It was another of the riddles and mysteries about their lost friend that Lenny and Charlie would never unravel.

  Now, nibbling on a stuffed olive and staring into his wineglass, Charlie Boxer said, a little wistfully, “Gus and Maggie Van Zuylen are having their big beach party in Southampton tomorrow night.”

  “I know, dovey, but we weren’t invited.”

  “If we had a place in the Hamptons, we would have been.”

  “But we don’t have a place in the Hamptons, dovey.”

  It was becoming a familiar plaint of Charlie’s, particularly when summer began to roll around: What they really needed was a weekend place in the Hamptons.

  “If we did have a place in the Hamptons, dovey,” Lenny said, “what would happen to our Sunday-night salons here? We’d be spending Sunday evenings fighting the traffic home on the expressway. Incidentally, Betty Bacall said she might pop by this Sunday. It’s always fun to see Betty.”

  “If we had a place in the Hamptons, we could have our salons out there on Saturday nights.”

  Lenny shook his head. “No, dovey. Saturday nights are cocktail-party nights in the Hamptons. Saturday nights in the Hamptons are strictly reserved for serious drinking, and the accompanying nonsense-talk, to be followed by a drunken roll in the hay. If you ask me, weekends in the Hamptons are becoming a cliché—like that Razor Blade Maggie Van Zuylen.”

  “Everybody else has a place in the Hamptons,” Charlie said. “Everybody but us.”

  Lenny was finding Charlie’s whining tone somewhat annoying. “And how would you expect us to pay for a place in the Hamptons?” he asked testily. “You can’t even rent a decent place out there for less than fifty thousand, Memorial Day through Labor Day.”

  It was the only thing they ever argued about. Money—or the insufficiency of it—was the only source of friction between them. Charlie still sometimes spoke of “my inheritance.” But that was spent long ago, much of it on the creation of Adam Amado. When Charlie was angry, he sometimes reminded Lenny of this, since Adam had been Lenny’s original idea. If it weren’t for Lenny, Charlie seemed to imply, he would still be rich, which was nonsense, because if Charlie hadn’t spent his money on Adam he would have frittered it away on something else. Now, neither one of them was rich. They lived—well enough, to be sure—on what Lenny managed to bring in. But they were always just a little bit in debt.

  “Of course I don’t suppose it would ever occur to you to work,” Lenny said with an edge to his voice. “Some people work for a living, dovey. I’ve just spent a particularly exhausting week at the office, and you talk about getting a place in the Hamptons.”

  “Work? I’ve got a full-time job just keeping house for you—Mary,” Charlie said.

  “And speaking of keeping house, those picture frames on the piano could do with some polishing—Mary.”

  “I’ve put through three loads of wash today—most of it yours, Mary!”

  This could be dangerous, when they started calling each other Mary, and Lenny mentally groped for a change of subject. With a slight frisson, he thought: Was it possible that Charlie was becoming bored with him after all these years? He hardly ever talked with Charlie about what went on at the office. The fascinating office intrigues did not fascinate Charlie. They bored him. Having never worked in an office, Charlie didn’t even understand them. Office politics were terra incognita to Charlie. Lenny could not discuss the Fiona threat with Charlie. He wouldn’t grasp its significance. The news that Alex Rothman was under a state of siege would bore him. He could not tell Charlie about Aunt Lily’s secret stock-cooking scheme. Charlie wouldn’t understand it and, besides, when more than two people were in on it, a secret wasn’t a secret any longer. And Charlie was a notorious blabbermouth. He couldn’t even tell Charlie about his plans for the Isfahan, exciting though they were, or about what he planned to do next with two signed Boulle commodes.

  Charlie was looking very pained and pouty now. And, suddenly in a mollifying mood, Lenny decided to drop just a little cheerful hint. “Actually, I’m working on something right now that may turn out to be a nice little thing for us,” he said.

  “Oh?” Charlie sat forward, looking interested. “What is it? Money?”

  Lenny smiled a prim, sphinxlike smile. “Never you mind, dovey,” he said. “But let me just say that if all goes well you might just get your precious house in the Hamptons. And you might get it sooner than you think. Just leave everything to dear old Lenny, dovey dear.”

  At that very moment, not many blocks away, Joel Rothman was walking up Madison Avenue toward the Westbury, a spring in his step, his feet in their Paul Stuart loafers barely seeming to touch the pavement, on an adrenaline high. He was free! Mom had been as good as her word, and Otto was gone! Gone forever! There had been quite a scene, and Frank, the elevator man, had told him all about it. It had taken three security men from the building to subdue Otto and carry him out, kicking and screaming and cursing all the way, and brandishing his expired police officer’s badge in their faces. Joel laughed at the picture of it, and wished he could have seen it. “Germans,” Frank said. “I was in the war, and I killed my share of ’em. They’re all alike, them Germans. Krauts, we used to call ’em.”

  As he strode up Madison, he paused to appraise his reflection in a shop window. Not bad! He had spent the afternoon shopping. At Stuart’s, he had bought a new light blue shirt with a rolled collar, a blue-and-green regimental striped tie, and a pair of color-coordinated blue-and-green-striped socks. She was the kind of girl who noticed these things, and he was wearing them now. He had been especially careful in his selection of underwear. He was also wearing his new double-breasted blue blazer and gray doeskin slacks from Sills of Cambridge. She had teased him about his “specs,” as she called them, and so tonight he was wearing his contact lenses. He had also found time for a haircut at Jerry of Bergdorf’s. Tonight was their first real date.

  She had sounded overjoyed with the idea when he called her earlier in the day. “Pop by my place around seven,” she said. “We’ll have a bit of bubbly.”

  “Then I’m taking you out to dinner,” he said.

  “Oh, super!” she said.

  He glanced at his watch, and forced himself to slow his pace. It was quarter of seven, and he didn’t want to be a minute too early or a minute too late. He had timetabled the evening very carefully in his head.

  Seven o’clock, arrival.

  Seven to seven twenty for the bit of bubbly.

  Then he was allowing about an hour for serious fucking, on those blue satin sheets!

  Then, allowing for time for them to shower and dress, he had made dinner reservations for half past nine, at Le Cirque. Le Cirque seemed like the perfect place to take a woman like Fiona for dinner. It was where the women in Mona Potter’s column always seemed to eat, when it wasn’t Mortimer’s, and Le Cirque was so much grander than Mort’s. And more expensive, of course, but that didn’t matter. As a graduation present, his grandfather had given him his very own American Express Gold Card, with a five thousand credit balance. Tonight it would be put to use for the first time. Membership had its privileges.

  And after dinner? Well, that would doubtless take care of itself. She might, or she might not, feel ready for a little more action, and after a dinner at Le Cirque she certainly might.

  At the corner of 69th Street, Joel stepped into a drugstore and bought a packet of condoms. The night before he had been unprepared. A purchase like this was so much easier now than when you were a kid, and had to wait until no grown-ups were within earshot, and then had to whisper to the druggist to tell him what you wanted, and half the time he pretended not to hear you, to make you speak up louder so the whole damned store could hear, and then you had
to hope that the druggist wouldn’t roll his eyes (when all you wanted them for, for Chrissake, was to figure out how to put one on—the instructions were a little vague). Now they were all out on the counter, all makes and varieties, and all you had to do was make your selection and take it to the register. Like buying a pack of Life Savers. No, it was not even like that. Condoms had become the status symbol of the ’90s. Buying them was more like strolling into Cartier’s and picking out a gold tank watch, Joel thought.

  At the checkout counter was a sample bottle of some new men’s cologne. He spritzed some into the palm of his hand and rubbed it into his cheeks. Ah, yes, he was ready now! He gave the cute checkout girl a big wink. She knew!

  That purchase made—thinking of that white-white face and those tiny, firm, pointy breasts—he continued up Madison Avenue. Yes, this was the real thing now. This wasn’t going to be like the time with the whore in Concord, the one Otto had got for him—a forty-dollar whore with garlic breath. That had been disgusting, actually—watching her pull off her sweaty pink slip to expose the stretch marks on her fat thighs, and hearing Otto the Hun pumping away on another one in the next little cubicle … and then, when it was over, watching her lick her thumb as she counted out the bills. It was damned lucky, in fact, that that experience hadn’t turned him off sex altogether. He had heard of that happening—one disgusting experience like that one with a stretchmarked whore in a water bed with semen-stained sheets could easily turn a guy off sex altogether. But thank God that hadn’t happened, though it could have, disgusting as the whole thing was.

  In the next block, he made one last stop, at a florist’s shop, where he picked up a dozen long-stemmed red roses. He checked his watch again. Two minutes of seven, and he pushed his way through the revolving doors of the Westbury, his roses in one hand and his condoms in the lefthand pocket of his Sills navy blazer. He made his way straight to the elevators. “Don’t have them announce you. Just come straight up,” she had said. He pushed the button for the eighteenth floor.