There was no one quite so distressed by his exclusion from the Renthals’ list as Constantine de Rham, recovered now, nearly, from his gunshot wound, which he continued to insist was self-inflicted. In his own mind he felt the shooting had added a tragic melancholy to his persona, coming as it did so few years after the death of his wife Consuelo. He imagined, walking daily to his lunch table at Clarence’s, first on a walker and then on a cane, usually led by Yvonne Lupescu, that people said of him, “Poor man. What a lot he has suffered.”
When Elias Renthal was still married to his second wife, Gladyce, Constantine de Rham had made his house on Sutton Place available to Elias as a location for his assignations with Ruby Nolte. Had his affair with the airline stewardess been public knowledge, Elias would have had a more difficult and costly divorce from Gladyce than he already had. Constantine had been handsomely rewarded for his services, but he still felt entitled to an invitation and silently sulked every time he read something in the newspapers about the forthcoming party, even though his somewhat sullied reputation and his affair with Yvonne Lupescu had made further contact with the high-rising Renthals an impossibility.
But for a chance meeting in the fitting rooms of Sills, Lord Biedermeier’s tailor, between Elias Renthal, who now ordered suits twenty at a time for each season, and Constantine de Rham, who, because of his extreme weight loss due to the bullet that had briefly lodged itself in his stomach, was having his own summer suits taken in by several inches, the matter might have gone unnoticed, for Constantine would never have shared with anyone, least of all Yvonne Lupescu, his extreme hurt at the social slight by the Renthals.
That day at Sills, only the lateness of Elias, due to a business emergency, caused the overlap of appointments between the one-time friends. Mr. Sills was a stickler for promptness among his fashionable clientele, but he dared not reprimand Elias Renthal for his tardiness, for who else these days, except Arabs, he once pointed out to Lord Biedermeier, ordered suits twenty at a time on a seasonal basis.
As Elias Renthal’s time was limited, and Constantine de Rham’s time hung heavily on his hands, Mr. Sills silently signaled to Sal, the fitter, to move from Mr. de Rham’s mirrored cubicle to Mr. Renthal’s, so that the busy tycoon could be dealt with instantly. De Rham, who had taken his snubs from people he once dined with on a nightly basis, was in no mood to take a snub from a fitter with pins in his mouth and moved outside his cubicle in order to complain loudly to Mr. Sills. It was then he saw Elias Renthal in his cubicle, with a large cigar in one hand, remove his trousers and put on the first of the twenty pairs he was to have fitted, beginning with the satin striped trousers that would have to be ready in time for the ball.
“What a handsome pair of legs you have, Elias,” said Constantine, joking, with a recurrence of the Continental charm that had once worked magic for him.
“For heaven’s sake, Constantine,” said Elias, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“The same thing you’re doing here,” said Constantine. “On a somewhat lesser scale.”
Elias chuckled. He quite enjoyed references to his extravagances. He put his cigar in his mouth and puffed on it, ignoring the NO SMOKING IN THE DRESSING ROOM sign posted on the wall.
Constantine, following suit, took a cigarette from a leather case he removed from his jacket pocket. “Do you have a match?” he asked.
“Leather? In town?” asked Elias, touching Constantine’s case, pretending astonishment. “What would Ezzie Fenwick say about that?”
They both chuckled. Elias reached into his suit pocket and handed a dark blue packet of matches to Constantine. It was not lost on Constantine that in discreet green letters were the words The Butterfield.
“Swell places you’re going to these days, Elias,” said Constantine. “Whose guest were you?”
“I’m a member,” said Elias. “I want the break lower on those trousers, right above where the pump will be,” he said to Sal on the floor, pinning the cuff.
“You’re a member of the Butterfield?” asked Constantine.
“Why, yes.”
“I thought they didn’t take, uh—”
“You thought wrong.”
“Consuelo once asked Herkie Saybrook to put me up for the Butterfield.”
“What happened?”
“Herkie said you had to be born in New York.”
“That’s right.”
“But you weren’t born in New York either.”
“I’m going to need this suit, with the tail coat, for next week, Sal,” said Elias, cutting Constantine short. “Very important. You better get me Mr. Sills, so there’s no misunderstanding about anything. The other stuff I don’t care about until I leave for Europe on the sixteenth.”
“I was wondering if there’s been some mistake, Elias,” said Constantine.
“Mistake? About what?”
“You know how social secretaries sometimes get things mixed up.”
“Get what mixed up?” asked Elias. Like the deal maker he was, he gave no indication that he knew exactly what Constantine de Rham was hinting at, and he was determined to make de Rham spell out the words before he refused him.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Your ball for the Earl and Countess of Castoria.”
“What about my ball?”
“I haven’t been invited.”
“A lot of people haven’t been invited. There’s just so many people the ballroom can hold. Ezzie Fenwick tells me Mrs. Astor could only have four hundred people to her ball because that’s all her ballroom could hold.”
“You’re having four hundred, I hear,” insisted Constantine.
“That’s as many as my ballroom can hold, too.”
“I see,” said Constantine.
“How are we doing here?” asked Mr. Sills, as he walked into the fitting room. The air was blue with cigar and cigarette smoke, and he waved his hand to clear it.
“We’re doing fine, but I’m running late,” said Elias, wanting to get away from Constantine. “How about if you send Sal here up to the house about six, and we can finish the other ten suits up there.”
The small room was now very crowded, with Elias, who was large and stout, and Constantine, who was large and slender, Mr. Sills, and Sal, who was still kneeling on the floor, pinning a cuff. Constantine, insufficiently bathed, as usual, increased the foulness of the air. He leaned against the back wall and caught Elias’s eye in the mirror. Elias met his stare.
“Do you remember when you were fucking Miss Ruby Nolte in my house on Sutton Place, Elias?” he asked. “When you had no other place to go because your wife, Gladyce, was suspicious of you?”
Sal, the fitter, coughed in astonishment, and the pins in his mouth were spat out on the floor.
“Such language, gentlemen,” said Mr. Sills, attempting to make a joke, but he realized that he had walked in at an inappropriate time. He signaled to Sal, and the two of them left the fitting room.
Elias, who understood when to give in on a business negotiation, merely answered, “I’ll see that you get sent a card, de Rham.”
“That’s very kind, Elias,” said Constantine, reverting to his charming self.
“But one thing.”
“Yes, Elias.”
“This invite is for you solo, not you and Mrs. Lupescu.”
“Oh?”
“That’s right.”
“That will make things quite awkward for me.”
“As we used to say in Cleveland, tough shit.”
“But Yvonne will be so disappointed.”
“No way that Ruby will let Yvonne into this party, after what she did at the Altemus wedding.”
“The Altemus wedding?”
“She crashed the Altemus wedding. You must have known that.”
Constantine looked at Elias. He had not known that Yvonne had crashed Justine Altemus’s wedding.
“Not only crashed it. Caught t
he bride’s bouquet,” said Elias, imitating Yvonne with a derisive gesture.
Constantine blushed at his mistress’s gall. Elias’s derision of Yvonne was hurtful to Constantine, not for the pain that her exclusion from the ball would cause her, but for the aspersion that it cast on him that he should be allied with such a woman, who would crash a society wedding.
“Oh, yes,” went on Elias. “Yvonne is not in good stead with Lil Altemus. Or Janet Van Degan. And they’re both coming to the ball. So it’s you alone, or not at all.”
“Perhaps, Elias, rather than mail me an invitation to Sutton Place, you would leave it for me at your office with your secretary. That way no one will see it but me.”
“Any way you wish,” said Elias. Elias had dressed by now and was back in his business suit and ready to go. “Now let me tell you something, you foreign piece of shit,” he said. Gone from his voice was any semblance of charm or bonhomie. “It was your dead wife’s house I was using, not your house, and you, pimp that you are, were well paid for the use of your dead wife’s house. So don’t strong arm me again ever.” He put his finger right in Constantine’s face. “What I know about you could send you to jail.”
Weak still from his wound, Constantine de Rham sank into a chair, his face white from Elias’s attack.
“See you at the ball, Constantine,” said Elias. “Oh, one more thing. Try to remember to take a bath that night, and use a little spray in those moist armpits of yours.”
If Elias hoped, by insulting him, to dissuade Constantine from attending the ball, he was to be disappointed. Constantine, the very next morning, appeared at Elias’s office and picked up his invitation, on which Ruby Renthal’s calligrapher had written the word Alone at the top of the engraved ecru card to indicate, in case the point had not been made sufficiently clear in the fitting room at Mr. Sills’s, that Yvonne Lupescu was not included.
It was on ladies’ day at the Butterfield that Ruby Renthal was introduced for the first time to Ned Manchester, the estranged husband of her great friend, Loelia Manchester.
“Mrs. Renthal, may I present Mr. Manchester,” said Laurance Van Degan, making the introduction.
Ned Manchester, whom Ruby had heard so much about, from Loelia and others, was not at all the way she had imagined that he would be. As fair-haired as Mickie was dark, as pink-complexioned as Mickie was olive, as lapis-lazuli-eyed as Mickie was black, as tall, as slender, but with the appearance of a life of sport and exercise rather than rigorous dieting, it was hard for her to imagine that Loelia could have fallen in love with two such different men.
“I know your children,” said Ruby.
“I’ve heard,” Ned answered, smiling at her. “They enjoyed visiting you in the country.”
“That son of yours is the best-looking young man I’ve ever seen in my life, and Charlotte is to die she’s so pretty,” said Ruby.
“Thank you,” Ned replied, smiling proudly over his children. Ruby Renthal, whom he had heard used to be a stewardess, was not at all how he expected her to be. In some ways she reminded him of Loelia, at least in the way she talked. “You may know my children, Mrs. Renthal, but I know your house. I used to go to Merry Hill when I was a child. The Grenvilles’ son was a friend of mine when we were little.”
“I think you probably wouldn’t recognize the house,” Ruby said.
“That’s what I hear. Do you still have the indoor tennis court?”
“Oh, yes. Elias plays every day when we’re in the country.”
“That’s where I learned how to play tennis, on that court.”
“You must come and see the house.”
“I’d like that, sometime.”
“And play tennis. Elias is always looking for a fourth.”
It was not a thing Ruby would ever mention to a soul, not even to Elias, but she wondered why her great friend Loelia would find Mickie Minardos more attractive than Ned Manchester. She loved all those people she met every night at dinner, like Ezzie Fenwick and Jamesey Crocus. There was no one more amusing in the city to sit next to at dinner. And the way Mickie Minardos could dance! She was forever telling him that he made her feel like Ginger to his Fred, but when it came to marriage, give her men every time, like Elias. And Ned. Even if they did have two left feet when it came to dancing.
34
Gus, late, was stopped on the way out his door by the telephone.
“Feliciano here,” said the voice on the other end when he answered.
“Oh, yes,” said Gus.
“You were out here in L.A., I understand, and you didn’t call.”
“I was out on personal business,” said Gus.
“To see a lady called Marguerite who runs a bar in Studio City,” said Feliciano.
Gus paused. “Oh, yes, I did stop in there,” said Gus.
“Not smart, Gus,” said Feliciano.
“It was to warn her.”
“That’s not your job, Gus. That’s only calling attention to yourself. When whatever happens is going to happen, I don’t want you or your name to be involved in any way.”
“Yes,” replied Gus. He wondered if Mr. Feliciano knew about the gun he had left at the gun shop.
“Marguerite called me. You gave her my card evidently. She thought you were a nut,” said Feliciano.
“Listen, I have to go,” said Gus.
“It’s Sunday morning. Where do you have to go on Sunday morning?”
“Mass,” replied Gus.
Gus Bailey, a long lapsed Catholic, had lately, and quietly, returned to his faith. He himself could not understand his revived attachment to God, but attachment it was, even though he sometimes experienced comfort from imagining Lefty Flint dead.
He was surprised that Sunday to see Loelia Manchester sitting several rows ahead of him. She prayed with the intensity of a nonregular attendant at church, one who was there for solace and answers on a particular matter of distress rather than a commitment to religious ritual. Once, when Gus looked over at her, he saw her raise a handkerchief to her eyes and brush away what must have been a tear.
Only leaving, on the church steps outside, did she look and catch sight of him. Her eyes, which had appeared melancholy, sparkled back to attention, as if they had been caught out in an impropriety, and her face assumed the look he had often seen on her when she arrived at parties or when she smiled at photographers at the opera.
“Hellohoware?” she said.
“Good morning,” Gus replied.
“Sweet, wasn’t he, that little altar boy with the red hair and the Adidas sneakers under his cassock? Couldn’t wait, absolutely couldn’t wait, could he, to get to the park to play baseball? So sweet.” Piety abandoned, she had reverted to her society-woman character.
“I didn’t know you were a Catholic,” said Gus.
“I’m not,” she said. “I was out walking, and I heard the music, and I wandered in.”
“They have good music at St. James’s too,” said Gus.
“True, but I know everyone there, and I didn’t think I’d know anyone here. I only go to church when I have troubles.”
“I take it you have troubles,” said Gus.
Loelia looked at Gus, as if she wanted to say something and then decided against it. “I can’t bear all that peace-be-with-you business and shaking hands with all these strange people you’ve never seen before,” she said instead. “I just kept my head bowed, praying like mad all through that part. Is that awful?”
“I’m sure the Pope won’t hear about it,” said Gus. They both laughed. She opened her bag and took out a gold cigarette case, from which she removed a cigarette.
“I don’t have a match,” said Gus.
“I do,” she said, lighting her cigarette with a lighter. She inhaled deeply. “My mother used to say that no lady ever smoked a cigarette on the street. So much for early training, Mr. Bailey.”
“Gus,” he answered.
“Is it true that you had my husband to dinner in your apartment?”
<
br /> “No, it’s not true. I’ve never had anyone to dinner in my apartment. I don’t know how to cook.”
“But he came to your apartment.”
“He came to my apartment for a drink.”
“How did that come about?”
“It was the night I saw you and Mickie at Maisie Verdurin’s.”
“I know.”
“A friend of mine brought him by for a drink.”
“Was the friend of yours who brought my husband by for a drink Matilda Clarke?”
“Yes.”
“She seems to have a thing for the men in my family. She once had an affair with my father, when her husband was in one of those alcohol places in Minnesota he was always being sent to.”
Gus made no reply.
“After you left for Maisie Verdurin’s party, did Matilda and my husband stay on in your apartment?”
“This is a conversation I don’t think I want to be in,” said Gus.
“I’m sorry. Of course you don’t.”
“Which way are you walking?”
“Up.”
“I’m walking down.”
“Gus. My friends all seem to know you, but I don’t. I don’t suppose I could talk you into coming to have tea with me one day this week. I live at the Rhinelander.”
“Sure.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
Entering the suite in the Rhinelander Hotel that had been Loelia Manchester’s home since she moved out of the apartment she shared with Ned Manchester and their children, Gus was aware of rooms that had been transformed, even for a transitory period, to the specific requirements of a woman long used to beauty and luxury. Loelia was standing, her back to him, as if looking out the window. As Gus walked farther into the room, she, without turning to greet him, raised her hand, which held a cigarette, to halt him. On the stereo Beethoven was playing; the Leonore Overture from Fidelio; Loelia remained transfixed until its grand conclusion. Then her back, so straight, collapsed. “Please forgive me, Gus. I cannot resist Fidelio when I hear it, especially the Leonore Overture.”
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