“Are you involved with anyone, Gus?” asked Nestor.
“No.”
“I’m not being snoopy, you know.”
“I know.”
“It’s just that you never talk about yourself.”
“I talked nonstop all through dinner.”
“You talked nonstop all through dinner about all those people you write articles about.”
Gus’s friends, like Edwina and Nestor Calder, teased Gus because he went out to dinner every night. Some nights he went out with writers, like the Calders. Some nights he went out with movie people he knew from his Hollywood days. Some nights he went out with people in society, who called him up after they read the articles he wrote, or had their social secretaries call him up “Mrs. Harcourt wondered if you could dine on Wednesday the twenty-first, black tie,” they would say, in voices every bit as grand as those of the people for whom they telephoned. Mostly he listened to what his dinner partners had to say, for he was an excellent listener, giving them his full attention, whether they were witty or dull, intriguing or boring. It seemed to make no difference to him.
“What do you see in all those people you’re always having dinner with?” asked Nestor.
“I like to listen to them talk,” answered Gus.
“When does that guy get out of prison?” asked Nestor, changing the subject and lowering his voice.
Gus didn’t have to say, “What guy?”
“Two years from now,” he answered, quietly, wanting to withdraw from the direction the conversation was taking. There was a part of Gus’s life that he did not discuss with the people with whom he spent his time, even a friend like Nestor Calder, who spanned both his old life and his new life.
Nestor whistled. “So soon, huh?”
“So soon.”
“What was his name?”
Gus hesitated, as he always hesitated when the name came up. “Lefty Flint,” he answered.
“Does it worry you?” asked Nestor.
“Yes,” said Gus. “It worries Peach too.”
“The nerve of that Edwina Calder,” Maisie Verdurin said indignantly in the taxi on the way home. “She said she didn’t like her seat at my last party, for the Vice President and his wife. Can you imagine?”
Gus, who liked Edwina Calder, didn’t reply, but Maisie didn’t expect a reply.
“She said that I never seat her at what she called one of the good tables, but that I always seated Nestor at one of the good tables. So I said to her, ‘After all, Edwina, Nestor is a first-rate writer, and people want to talk to him.’ ”
“But Edwina is so beautiful,” said Gus.
“Beautiful girls are not what my dinners are about,” Maisie answered haughtily. “My dinners are about conversation. I think it’s a waste of time at one of my dinners when a man flirts with a pretty girl, like Bernie Slatkin does for instance, when there are such marvelous things being said at every table. It’s called missing the point of the evening.”
Maisie always spoke possessively about her dinner parties, as creative output, in the way that a poet might speak about “my poems,” or an author might speak about “my novels,” and woe to anyone who displeased Maisie, for banishment from her list was the consequence. After each of her evenings, she dissected her guest list: who had pulled his weight in conversation, who hadn’t, whom she had given too good a seat to, whom she had not given a good enough seat to, and who would never be invited back, no matter what.
One of the things about escorting Maisie Verdurin anywhere, Gus discovered, was that the end of the evening came at exactly the point where she was delivered back to the canopy in front of her apartment building and into the safekeeping of her doorman. There were no invitations upstairs for a nightcap, and all the things that implied. It was not even necessary to follow her out of the taxi to her doorstep. With her sables wrapped tightly around her, she dashed for her own door with only an over-the-shoulder reminder of her next dinner.
“You’re coming to me on the twenty-fourth, remember.”
“Okay.”
“You didn’t write a thank-you note after my last dinner,” she added.
“I sent you flowers instead,” said Gus. “I felt I was beginning to repeat myself with my notes.”
“Don’t send me flowers,” said Maisie. “I never go into my living room except on the nights I have parties. Just send me a note. I save them all and put them in a scrapbook.”
* * *
Since Gus Bailey had moved to New York from Los Angeles and begun writing articles about famous people for a fashionable magazine, Maisie Verdurin, who had an eye for new people, had begun inviting him to her dinners and, through Maisie’s dinners, he met other people who began inviting him to their dinners, and soon he was what is known as on-the-circuit in that group of New Yorkers who went out to dinners every night.
However, as Gus’s literary reputation was not commensurate with that of Nestor Calder’s, for instance, who was year after year on the best-seller lists, he was more often than not assigned to a table in Maisie’s library, which was generally conceded to be a less desirable location for seating than her adjoining drawing and dining rooms. When confronted, Maisie stoutly denied that this was so, but the less celebrated wives, husbands, lovers, and escorts of the celebrated were usually placed there, seated beneath a Tissot or a Bombois, while their mates of the evening dined in the drawing or dining room beneath a Monet or a Manet.
“I’m on my best behavior tonight,” said Edwina Calder to Gus, kissing him on both cheeks, when he walked into Maisie’s drawing room for the cocktail hour. “I’m in Dutch with our hostess, have you heard? She’ll probably seat me in the kitchen tonight.”
Gus laughed. “Where’s Nestor?”
“He’s out in Hollywood,” said Edwina.
“He told me he was going to write the mini-series of Judas Was a Redhead,” said Gus.
“He went to see Peach,” said Edwina.
“Peach never tells me anything.”
“What are you writing about now, Gus?”
“Oh, some gigolo who got all the money off a rich old lady,” replied Gus, shrugging, dismissing the story as not important. “And then I’m going to do a story on a society walker who got murdered after taking a rich lady home from a party.”
“I liked your article on Faye Converse,” said Edwina. “She was always my favorite movie star growing up. Do you think she’s really off the sauce for good?”
Rochelle Prud’homme, who made her fortune in hairdryers and was sponsored in her social rise by Matilda Clarke, advanced into the room in tiny little running steps, her left hand beneath her pearls, clutching a panel of her couturier dress. Known in New York as the Petite Dynamo, Rochelle stood barely five feet tall, and was known to be one of the best bridge players in the city, a passion she indulged in when she wasn’t running her industrial empire or going to parties. She waved little waves to acquaintances, held her cheek to be kissed by friends, and smiled perfectly for the flashing strobe light of a reporter doing a feature story for a new magazine on the world of Maisie Verdurin. “Otherwise, you know, I never have reporters at my parties,” said Maisie to each guest, “except Dolly, of course, but Dolly is a friend.” Dolly De Longpre, beloved by all, never missed one of Maisie Verdurin’s dinners, no matter what, and filled whole columns with Maisie’s guest lists, who was there and what they wore and all the sparkling things they said at Maisie’s tables, even though Maisie was not, by her own admission, in society at all, at least in the sense of old family and old money.
“Biarritz was a disaster,” Rochelle said to Maisie. “Rain, rain, rain, and the worst people you ever saw. Not a soul one knew.”
“Ain’t she grand? Listen to her. Nestor swears her real name was Roxy Persky, and she was three classes ahead of him at Erasmus High,” said Edwina Calder to Gus.
“Whose real name?” asked Gus.
“Rochelle Prud’homme.”
But Gus Bailey’s attention had been dr
awn to someone else entering Maisie’s drawing room. He heard Rochelle Prud’homme conclude to Maisie, “You’re coming to me on Thursday the nineteenth. I’ll send you a pour mémoire. Princess Murat is coming to town.” Pour mémoire was French for reminder, and Rochelle had taken up French, along with bridge, with a passion.
“Oh, I’ll remember,” said Maisie.
It was the appearance in the room of the tall and bearded Constantine de Rham that occupied Gus’s attention. De Rham made a gesture of kissing Maisie’s hand by raising it toward his lips and then dropping it. Maisie dressed for her parties with expensive care, and de Rham, who noticed such things, complimented her on the handsomeness of her pearl-encrusted bodice. Maisie, more used to business tycoons than French aristocrats, was charmed by his courtly manners. Whether entering a party, or a restaurant, or a theater, there was always someone present who whispered to someone else, “There’s Constantine de Rham.” In years past, when playboys were still in fashion, his escapades and exploits had filled the international gossip columns, but a fatal car crash outside of Paris a half dozen years earlier had ended his days as a romantic figure; his beautiful young companion, the daughter of a French duke, had gone through his car’s windshield when he was speeding home in the early hours of the morning from a ball at a country estate. It was a part of his story and always took precedence over the other dramatic circumstance of his life, the death of his wife, the immensely rich Consuelo Harcourt de Rham, Adele Harcourt’s daughter, who had died falling down the marble stairway of their house on Sutton Place, after returning home from a party she had not wanted to attend.
“There’s Constantine de Rham,” said Edwina.
“I know all about Constantine de Rham,” replied Gus.
At Constantine de Rham’s side was a young woman dressed far too elaborately for a Maisie Verdurin dinner in a revealing gown of gold lamé, with diamonds in great quantity on her wrists, ears, neck, and bosom. Her blond hair was combed straight back and coiled silkily in a bun at the nape of her neck, giving her the look of the wife of a South American dictator.
Maisie’s drawing room was now filled with guests. Waiters carried trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and passage from one side of the room to the other, which seemed to be Constantine de Rham’s intention, necessitated a circuitous routing. Followed by his young companion, he edged his way sideways between Maisie’s white brocade sofa and the coffee table in front of it, murmuring charming apologies to Dolly De Longpre and a quartet of seated guests, like a person taking a seat in a theater after the curtain has gone up.
Dolly De Longpre, glamorous and voluptuous, dimpled and pink-skinned, barely acknowledged Constantine de Rham and went on with her own conversation. “Seating can make or break a party,” she said. “And Maisie Verdurin has a genius for seating. She agonizes over her placement.”
A painting by Monet of water lilies had been hung over Maisie’s fireplace only that afternoon, in anticipation of the arrival of the immensely rich art collector Elias Renthal, whom no one in New York yet knew, except Constantine de Rham, who had brought him to Maisie to start his collection. Reaching his goal, Constantine de Rham held his black-rimmed spectacles like a lorgnette and leaned toward the pink in the center of a water lily, as if it possessed scent. “Ah, ravishing,” he pronounced admiringly to Maisie about the painting, and she smiled modestly about her acquisition.
“Isn’t the pink marvelous?” asked Maisie.
“Like the inside of a seashell,” agreed de Rham.
“It’s the pink that has so intrigued Elias Renthal’s new wife, you know. If he decides to buy it, it’s to be the color of the walls in the drawing room of the Renthals’ new apartment that they just bought from Matilda Clarke.”
Constantine smiled a superior smile, including Maisie in on this joint superiority, over people like the Elias Renthals of the world, who looked on art as an extension of interior decoration. “What an impressive group you have gathered, Maisie,” he said, looking around the room.
“Your friends the Renthals have still not appeared, and I don’t intend to wait for them when the butler announces dinner,” she replied, taking his arm and leading him around the crowded room to introduce him, knowing that, as hostess, paths would be cleared. Maisie always gave a thumbnail sketch of each guest’s accomplishments when she introduced him or her. “You’ll be at my table, Constantine, between me and Rochelle Prud’homme. You know Rochelle, don’t you? Prud’homme Products? Cordless hairdryers? Home permanents? One of America’s most outstanding women. Plays such good bridge. And I’m counting on you to draw Elias Renthal into the conversation. He’s hopeless at parties, I understand.”
They walked past a group of laughing men whom Maisie always called “my bachelors,” although they were the same group of bachelors who sat nightly on gilded chairs in the dining rooms of Lil Altemus, or Loelia Manchester, or Matilda Clarke, when she was still giving parties, or any of the other hostesses of the city, balancing out tables where widows or divorced ladies of quality sat. There was owlish-looking Jamesey Crocus, who knew more about eighteenth-century French furniture than anyone in New York, people said, and always pushed his round black-rimmed spectacles up on his nose with his forefinger as he talked excitedly about collectors and collecting, his favorite topic of conversation. And Nevel, just Nevel, which was Leven spelled backwards, who designed dresses for most of the ladies in society, and always counted how many ladies in the room were wearing his elegant gowns. And Freddy Winslow, about whom people said such terrible things, who bought and sold estate jewelry. And Count Motulsky, whose mother was one of the de Brown sisters from San Francisco, who taught French to Rochelle Prud’homme and sold porcelain at Sackville’s.
“I always expect the lights to dim when Constantine de Rham walks into a room,” said Gus.
“He doesn’t seem like Maisie’s kind of guest,” said Edwina.
“Who’s the Evita Perón look-alike trailing behind de Rham?” asked Gus.
“That is Mrs. Lupescu, or Baroness Lupescu, as she sometimes calls herself, but it’s a bogus title. Constantine de Rham calls her Yvonne,” replied Edwina.
“Are they lovers?”
“So it would seem.”
“She’s showing a lot of tit for a Maisie Verdurin party,” said Gus.
“I don’t know where to look first, at her tits or her diamonds,” answered Edwina.
“Why doesn’t anyone speak to her?”
“She has what’s called a dicey reputation.”
“Ah, the plot thickens.”
“May I present Constantine de Rham,” said Maisie, when she got to where Gus Bailey and Edwina Calder were standing.
De Rham held out his hand to be shaken, but Gus did not take it. Instead, he nodded at the tall man but still did not take his hand. De Rham, overlooking the slight, turned away, as Maisie led him on to the next group.
Gus wondered that Maisie, so obsessed with people who “do things,” could treat in such a special manner a man who had done absolutely nothing with his life, except marry an heiress who had died before she even came into her inheritance. After her daughter’s death, Adele Harcourt cut her son-in-law in public, and thereafter he was no longer invited to the sort of parties he had been used to attending. He continued to live in the house he had inherited from Consuelo, and there were rumors he sometimes used it for nefarious purposes to make ends meet.
Maisie’s efficient secretary marshaled the guests to their various tables. “Senator Marx, you’re over there, next to Justine Altemus, in the short blue strapless dress, beneath the little Renoir. You know, don’t you, Justine Altemus is Laurence Van Degan’s niece?” And, “Oh, Mr. Fenwick, you’re next to Mrs. Renthal, who doesn’t know a soul, but her husband is the richest man in Cleveland, and Maisie’s counting on you to make her feel at home, if she ever shows up, that is.”
It was just at this point that Elias Renthal and his young wife, Ruby, entered Maisie’s apartment, flustered by their lateness.
Elias was stout and not tall, with broad hands and broad chest, suggesting physical strength, and his presence was such that people turned to look at him. His glance, which was described as terrifying by the people who worked for him, was open and expectant in Maisie’s drawing room, where he was unsure of himself. Social life was as yet an unknown quantity for him, but he had been told that casual talk at New York dinner parties could be an important source of business information for him. His third wife, Ruby, years younger, with whom he was besotted, was pretty but not smartly dressed in a gown of bright blue sequins, and her hair was arranged in an unbecoming fashion.
Except for Constantine de Rham, to whom Elias nodded, and Rochelle Prud’homme, the Renthals seemed to know no one in Maisie’s rooms, although all the businessmen present, like Emil Jorst and the Zobel brothers, knew who the very rich Elias Renthal from Cleveland was. His purchase of the ailing conglomerate known as Miranda Industries for six billion dollars, using relatively little of his own money, and then liquidating it, had netted him a profit of three billion dollars in only sixteen months, a widely heralded transaction that was thought to be the most lucrative leveraged buyout ever, making the heretofore unknown Elias Renthal a financial celebrity.
“I’d almost given up on you,” said Maisie, rushing to greet the latecomers. If the Renthals had not been the possible purchasers of the Monet water lilies, asking price six million, but negotiable, Maisie, who insisted on promptness in her guests, would certainly have been less charming.
“I’m sorry we’re so late,” said Elias. Loyalty to his new wife forbade him telling Maisie that Ruby had changed her dress and hairstyle three times in the previous hour. “I don’t think you’ve met my wife. Ruby, this is Maisie Verdurin.”
“I’m so pleased,” said Maisie. “The painting is over there, and I’m mad to have you look at it. Constantine de Rham raved about it. But the waiters are about to serve.”
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