People Like Us

by Dominick Dunne

  Lord Biedermeier removed his pince-nez and, with his thumb and forefinger, massaged the reddened bridge of his nose, all the time staring at the tropical fish in the aquarium that Elias Renthal had recently installed in the morning room of his new house.

  “Are you shaking your head at those tropical fish, Lucien?” asked Loelia Manchester, looking up from her needlepoint.

  “My first wife was Venezuelan. Do you remember her, Loelia?” Lord Biedermeier asked.

  “Mother knew her,” answered Loelia.

  “Concepción de la Madrid she was called,” continued Lord Biedermeier.

  “Marvelous skin, I remember,” said Loelia.

  “Yes, she had beautiful skin, and her flesh was not quite firm. Just the way I like it.”

  “Really, Lucien! That’s a conversation for the men’s breakfast. Not here.”

  “The Latins, you know, are superstitious. Concepción always said that fish in bowls were bad luck.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Loelia, staring at the fish tank. “I never heard that.”

  “Oh, yes, true,” agreed Ezzie Fenwick, from his deep chair, laying aside a Vogue. “Fish in bowls are meant to be bad luck.”

  “Almost as bad luck as peacocks,” chimed in Winston Bergerac, from his easel, where he was repainting Flash’s prick.

  Later, after tea, the sun came out. Ruby came into the room. “Outside, everyone. There’s a rainbow.”

  For Ruby the beauty of the locale was secondary to the beauty that she created for the locale. The rainbow was less beautiful to her than the Edwardian gazebo she had built where she took her guests to watch the rainbow.

  Lord Biedermeier, who was stout, said, “To the pool, finally. You really must not miss the opportunity to see me in a bathing suit.” Everyone laughed.

  “And you must see the new peacocks that Elias has bought for the place,” said Ruby. “Too beautiful for words.”

  Entering the room that had been set aside as his weekend office, Elias closed the door behind him. At the console where his computers were placed, in a modified version of the switchboard with a hundred direct telephone lines to brokers and traders that he had in his Fifth Avenue offices, sat Maxwell Luby, dressed in lime-green country clothes of a different variety from the country clothes of the houseguests sitting in the smaller of the two dining rooms.

  “Oh, Max, sorry if I have ruined your Sunday by asking you out here,” said Elias. “There’s a favor I’d like you to do me in the morning. I’m not going to be able to get back to town until after noon tomorrow. There’s a new horse I have to see in the morning, and this simply has to be done at ten fifteen, no earlier, no later.”

  “What is it, Elias?” asked Max, used now to strange requests.

  “Do you know the coffee shop called the Magnolia on Madison Avenue and Sixty-second Street?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s there. Just in from the corner. East side of the street. You’ve walked by it a hundred times without noticing.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’d like you to go in there at exactly ten fifteen tomorrow morning. There will be a young man sitting at the counter on the second stool from the end. About thirty-two years old. Ivy League look. Dark hair, crew cut, just the beginning of going bald. He’ll be wearing a gray flannel suit, blue shirt, dark red tie.”

  Max, used to such assignments, nodded.

  “He will be reading the Times. On the empty stool next to him will be an old copy of Forbes, the one with the picture of me on the cover. You say to him, ‘Do you mind if I move your Forbes?’ That’s all. No more. When he says, ‘Excuse me, I’ll move it,’ you sit down next to him and order a cup of coffee.”

  “That’s it?” asked Max, with a question in his voice to indicate there was an element missing.

  “That’s it,” answered Elias. “Oh, yes, one more thing. You’ll be carrying this briefcase. All you have to do when you sit down is leave the briefcase next to his leg. When he gets up, he’ll take it with him. Okay?”

  “Okay, Elias,” said Max, lifting the briefcase and testing it for weight. “Why ten fifteen exact?”

  “After the breakfast crowd. Before the lunch crowd. There’ll be an empty stool.”

  “This is not Guy Howard again, is it?”

  “No, no, not Guy,” said Elias, shaking his head with displeasure at the name of Guy Howard. “He’s called Byron Macumber, but no names are necessary.” He looked for a moment at Max Luby’s lime-green country clothes in the manner that Lord Biedermeier had once looked at Elias’s clothes, although Elias had now forgotten that he had ever worn similar lime-green country clothes. “I’d ask you to stay, Max, but Ruby’s got a house party going.”

  Max knew he didn’t fit. “No problem, Elias. I’ve gotta get back to Pelham Manor anyway.”

  Later, in his car, when he stopped for gas, Max opened the briefcase. Beneath the newspapers on the top, there were, as he knew there were going to be, packets and packets of hundred-dollar bills for Byron Macumber.

  “Isn’t this nice, Hubie? Dinner on trays, just the two of us, in front of the fire? Oh, the deliciousness of an evening at home,” said Lil Altemus, clapping her hands. “I get so tired of going out, out, out, all the time. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was when you said you wanted to spend an evening alone together.”

  “There’s something I wanted to tell you, Mother,” said Hubie.

  “I bet you didn’t know your old mother could rustle up such a good meal, did you? I couldn’t ask Gertie and Parker to stay on, after all those people all day long. And Lourdes is hopeless on days like Easter. Has been hopeless the whole of Holy Week! Church, church, church, she can’t get enough church. On her knees every minute.”

  “Mother.”

  “Look at the doggies, Hubie? Aren’t they precious? Worn out. Simply worn out. Those children ran them ragged all afternoon. Do you know that Bosie’s going to be twelve?”

  “Mother.”

  “The baby’s adorable, isn’t she? Hubie?”

  “What?”

  “The baby. Little Janet. Don’t you think she’s adorable?”

  “Cute. Farts a lot. But cute.”

  “Hubie, you know how I hate words like that. What did you think of the newlyweds?”

  “Which set?”

  “Dodo and your grandfather.”

  “Good for Dodo is what I say,” said Hubie.

  “Oh, Hubie, you always say exactly the opposite of what you should say. Dodo’s turned out to be just a little gold digger, and after all this family has done for her.”

  “You didn’t want to change Grandfather’s diapers, Mother.”

  “That’s not the point. That’s what nurses are for.”

  “Better he marries Dodo than Miss Toomey, Mother.”

  “Oh, Hubie, you are the limit. She’s getting everything, you know. Laurance has seen Father’s new will. All the paintings, all the furniture, all the bibelots on the tables even, all Mother’s silver and china. Everything.” There was such sadness in Lil’s voice that Hubie turned to look at her.

  “Mother, it would be hard in court for anyone to feel sorry for you, you know,” said Hubie.

  “What do you mean? Some of those things aren’t even Van Degan things. Some are from Aunt Grace Gardiner’s side of the family,” insisted Lil.

  “Mother,” said Hubie, holding out his hands in exasperation. “There’s not a spare inch in this huge apartment that is not crammed with valuable objects. What more do you need?”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” Lil said, rising and going over to the television set.

  “Now, listen, Mother, we have to talk,” said Hubie.

  “Do you want to watch ‘Sixty Minutes’ or just talk? Diane Sawyer is interviewing the First Lady.”

  “Just talk.”

  “Good. Try some of this fig mousse. It’s Gertie’s specialty. I don’t know how she manages to make it so light. Something about the egg whites, I think. I watc
hed her once.”

  “You can see that I’m not well, can’t you, Mother?” Hubie raised the level of his voice.

  “The figs have to be very ripe,” Lil continued. “And white figs only. That’s very important.”

  “I have AIDS, Mother.”

  “It’s just your color, darling. Your color’s not good. And you need to fatten up a bit. You eat like a sparrow, you know. What you need is some good food and some good mountain air.” Lil broke two cookies and threw them up in the air for Bosie and Oscar to catch. “There you are, you naughty doggies. I knew what you were waiting for. Yes, I did. Look at them, Hubie.”

  “I’ve got lymphoma, Mother. That means three or four months, the doctor said. Maybe no months,” said Hubie, so quietly that he thought perhaps she had not heard him.

  “I thought you and I might take a little trip to the mountains. They say Saint Moritz out of season is too beautiful for words, and so healthy. But when? That is the problem. There’s that damn ball of the Renthals’ that Laurance insists I not miss, and the Todesco wedding, and the final gala for the ballet where I’m the chairperson. After that, we’ll go.”

  “By September I might very well have been dead for several weeks,” said Hubie.

  Lil had started to breathe heavily. “Oh, please, Hubie. This sort of talk is so morbid. I don’t know how you could do this to your family.”

  “Thank you for your support, Mother.”

  “Does anyone know?” asked Lil.

  “Juanito knows.”

  “Oh, I don’t care about Juanito, for God’s sake. I mean, does anyone we know or anyone in the family know?”

  “Justine, only.”

  “Before me, you told Justine?”

  “She guessed.”

  Lil put her hand to her heart and held it there, as if she were attempting to calm herself from considering the consequences of what her son had just told her.

  “Paris!” she screamed.

  “What?”

  “Paris. That’s where you should go. The Duchess, Wallis, Windsor, you know, my mother’s great friend, she and the Duke used to stay with Mother and Father in Palm Beach every winter.”

  “I’m telling you I’m going to die, and you’re talking to me about the fucking Duchess of Windsor?”

  “No, no, there is a point to all this. She left all her money to the Pasteur Institute, and they do all those marvelous things for that particular disease. I’ll send you to Paris.”

  “Do you want to get rid of me, is that it, Mother? So your friends don’t have to know that your son is gay and has AIDS. That’s why you want to send me to Paris, isn’t it? Well, I’m not going to go to Paris.” He got up from his chair, kicked the tray table with his foot, and the tray went flying to the floor. Bosie and Oscar began barking and tearing at the uneaten food on the plates. Hubie watched the manic scene for a moment and then started for the door.

  “Please, please, Hubie, don’t go,” cried Lil. “Please don’t leave me now. Please. I’ve heard all about that disease from Bobo, you know, my hairdresser Bobo. His salon has been decimated. Alfonso, Peregrine, Jose, they’re all gone, and all those dancers in the musicals, and in the ballet, and, oh, my dear, in fashion, you wouldn’t believe the numbers. Nevel told me. But I didn’t think people like us got it, Hubie. I didn’t. I didn’t.”

  Even through her sobs, Lil could hear the door close and knew Hubie had gone. For a long time she sat in her chair without moving. When the telephone rang, she did not answer it. Then, slowly, she rose and carried her tray out to the butler’s pantry and left it on the counter. Then she returned to the library and picked up Hubie’s tray off the floor where he had kicked it, replaced the plates and glass on it and carried it back to the butler’s pantry where she placed it on the counter next to her own. She turned off the lights and started to leave the pantry. Suddenly, she turned on the lights again and went back to the counter.

  She picked up her mother’s apple-green-bordered Meissen dinner plate that Hubie had used and looked at it, in a porcelain farewell. Then she dropped the plate on the pantry floor and watched it smash into irretrievable disrepair. Then she dropped the wine glass that her son had used and watched it smash. She picked up a fork and spoon off his tray, looked for an instant at the Montmorency pattern with her maiden monogram LVD engraved on the handles, and dropped them down the trash chute.

  By the telephone on the counter was a pad and pencil where Gertie kept her notes. “Order Malvern water,” it said, and under that, “Israeli melons.” Under these reminders, Lil wrote:

  “Gertie: Please forgive the ghastly mess I’ve made. I tripped. P.S. The fig mousse was yummy!”

  30

  Laurance Van Degan rarely lunched in the fashionable restaurants of the city. Unlike his sister, Lil Altemus, who lunched out almost every day, and usually at Clarence’s, Laurance preferred lunch in the private dining room of his offices in the Van Degan Building, or, on special occasions, at the Butterfield, where he felt almost as at home as he felt in his own home. The Butterfield on Fifth Avenue in the Sixties was the least known and most exclusive of the men’s clubs in New York. Unlike the Knickerbocker Club, the Racquet Club, or the Union Club, the Butterfield was never called the Butterfield Club, simply the Butterfield, and membership was by invitation, never by application. Laurance had been invited to join by his father, Ormonde, the year after he graduated from Harvard, and Laurance had invited his son, young Laurance, on his graduation from Harvard.

  The entrance to the Butterfield was sedate and identified only by a small brass plaque, so long embedded in the red brick of the building as to be virtually unnoticeable. Within, the austerity gave way to more noble trappings: red carpets, paneled walls, crystal chandeliers, and what many considered to be the most graceful marble stairway in New York, winding elegantly upward for four stories. Large undraped windows looked out on Fifth Avenue and the park opposite, and in two tufted green leather chairs in front of one of these windows sat Laurance Van Degan and his luncheon guest, Elias Renthal.

  “Another martini?” asked Laurance.

  “No, no, Laurance,” said Elias, raising his hand in mild protest. “I make it a point never to have more than one drink at lunch.”

  “A man after my own heart,” said Laurance, who then signaled to old Doddsie, the waiter, who had been at the Butterfield as long as Laurance had been a member, to bring the menus. It had amused Laurance earlier in the day when Elias had suggested lunching at the Butterfield, saying he would like to see the famous staircase that Ruby had heard about from Jamesey Crocus since he and Ruby were planning to rip out the staircase at Merry Hill and build a new one there.

  Old friends of Laurance’s like Addison Cheney, Charlie Dashwood, and Sims Lord had nodded greetings when he and Elias had entered the bar shortly before one, but none made any effort to join them, and Laurance understood, as their behavior was consistent with what his own would have been under similar circumstances. Laurance watched Elias survey the scene.

  “I think it might be a good idea for you to buy a couple of thousand shares of Sims Lord’s company, Laurance,” said Elias, as his eyes rested on Sims Lord. “It’s a little high now, sixty-eight, and it’ll take a dip in a couple of weeks down to about forty-two, but then it will begin to make a climb up, up, up, and go right through the roof. It’s good to get in early and ride with the dip so as not to attract any undue attention, if you get what I mean.”

  “Sims Lord’s company?” asked Laurance. He could feel himself beginning to redden. Laurance and Sims Lord had been in the same class at St. Swithin’s and at Harvard and had been ushers in each other’s weddings. Sims Lord was one of his oldest friends, and for years Ormonde Van Degan had sat on the board of Lord and Co. In the last year Elias Renthal’s tips preceding his corporate raids had enriched Laurance Van Degan by millions. It was not that Laurance Van Degan, or any of the Van Degans, needed more money than they already had, but Laurance had found that the Van Degan Foundation, which
benefited museums, opera companies, ballet companies, several hospitals, and other causes, equally worthy, was hard pressed to address the problem of the homeless of the city, and he had taken to supplementing the income of the foundation, for philanthropic purposes only.

  “We don’t talk business here at the Butterfield,” cautioned Laurance Van Degan. “House rule.”

  “Got you,” answered Elias. “Have any women members in the club?”

  “No, no, goodness, no,” answered Laurance. “And we won’t have any, I assure you, despite those women’s libbers always protesting at the Century. Twice a year we have ladies’ nights here, and that’s it.”

  “Nice chairs,” said Elias, patting the arms of the green leather club chair. “I like a chair you can sink yourself into. English Regency, these chairs, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are,” said Laurance, impressed. “You’re becoming quite the authority on furniture.”

  “I’m spending enough dough on furniture, thanks to the very expensive advice Ruby’s curator, Mr. Jamesey Crocus, is giving Ruby, so I figure I should get to know something about it.”

  “I hear your country house is charming. Loelia Manchester told Janet.”

  “Ruby and I want you to come out some weekend real soon.”

  “Delightful.”

  “It’s English looking, like the Butterfield here. I said to Ruby, ‘You got all the Louis the Terrible French furniture in New York. Let’s have a little comfort in the country.’ ”

  Laurance smiled appreciatively at Elias’s little joke. “I know your house well. Billy Grenville was a few classes ahead of me at St. Swithin’s.”