Finally he bought the phone machine to defend himself. He’d call Fred back in the afternoon, after finishing his own work, and surely then he’d be able to avoid hurting Fred and therefore … But then, the very first time Fred called, he had picked up anyway! Meanwhile, Sam Wasserman was bitching more and more about Fred, his hostility surfacing at the game with increasing frequency, and just three days ago Sam had phoned and said that he was feeling fluish and might not come. “But you don’t need me anyway,” Sam had added pointedly, “you’ve got fuzzy Freddy.” The point was clear. After all, nobody cancels events three days off on the chance that he might be coming down with the flu. So Karl had conceived of the plan that he would buy the phone machine, call Fred and tell him an old friend who used to play in the game (this was an excuse he had used successfully in the past) was in town and he didn’t have room for Fred, and then turn the machine on all the rest of the week, so as not to have to listen to Fred’s plaintive questions and … But then he had picked up! The very first time!
And now here was the moment, here was the time to laboriously tell Fred that this old friend was coming to town, stammering throughout because he knew it sounded utterly fake, totally dishonest.
“Hello, Karl!” Fred said, laughing nervously. “Are you there?”
“Sorry. Listen, I don’t think there’ll—”
“What? You’re not having the game?”
“No, but my old friend is—”
“Oh? Which old friend is this?” Fred said with open disbelief.
Karl opened his mouth to continue the lie, but there was no engine to power the words. They were stuck in his throat, a sailboat resting on still waters, with no wind to blow them to their destination. “Nobody,” Karl said angrily.
“What?” Fred said, startled. Instantly his voice was small, scared by the possibilities of confrontation.
Karl noticed. It made him angrier. Why does Fred needle and probe and insist, if he’s unwilling to hear the truth? If he’s so vulnerable, Karl thought, why does he act so tough?
“The others don’t like you,” Karl said, wanting to wound Fred, but discovering, right in the middle of the thrust, that he didn’t relish the actual moment of stabbing Fred. “They say if I keep inviting you, they won’t come. I don’t want to lose the whole game because of you.”
There was silence from Fred. A total oblivion that almost convinced Karl Fred had been cut off and his excursion into truth had been wasted. Then he heard Fred clear his throat.
“Look. I’ve tried to—” Karl began to stammer, but Fred interrupted.
“I understand. No problem. I gotta go.”
Fred hung up.
He stared at the phone. He had known, really, known all along. But still he had tried to tell himself it was coming from within him, his own poor sense of himself, his perpetual nervousness that he wouldn’t be liked. The black receiver resting in its cradle, still and silent, possessing no identity but its own, reflected a small distorted image of his face peering anxiously into the black impenetrable world. “Let me in,” it seemed to say, “or I’ll die.”
David Bergman’s dinner party was about to begin. He had finished setting the table with his brother’s hand-me-down china. It was black Wedgwood, chosen to match the black Formica kitchen, and therefore left behind, since his brother’s taste had moved on, evolving backward from high-tech to Victorian wall sconces and floral patterns.
However, David had to admit that the dense-colored but delicate plates, boldly blotting the white Formica dining table, did indeed, as his brother would say, “make a statement.” And David wanted to impress, to seem as adult as possible tonight. It had taken two months to find a night that Chico and Rounder (nobody called him Groucho, possibly because he was such an outsider: a restraint which ultimately added to the sense that he would forever continue to be one) were both free to come. The other guests, who had suddenly become problematic, were Tony Winters and his wife, Betty. A few days ago Betty had told Patty that Tony and she might not be able to come because Tony’s father was coming in from Los Angeles on his way to London and wanted to see them for dinner. Patty had, with shameless charm, begged Betty not to cancel, complaining that she would be drowned in a flood of Newstime gossip. Betty called back, after checking with Tony. His father wasn’t arriving until ten o’clock, and he planned to meet them at eleven, so they could attend, as long as it was understood they would have to leave early.
David resented this arrangement. He had met Tony and Betty on only one other occasion besides the dinner nearly a year before at Fred’s—the night he had first met Patty. A few months later they had gone to a startlingly fancy brunch at Tony’s and Betty’s. That event, with its nakedly business-oriented guest list, the professionally tended bar, the rented coat racks, the fancy dishware, and the elaborate menu, convinced David it was appropriate for someone his age to invite his bosses to dinner. David, secretly, was irritated that Patty would never dream of entertaining on that scale (David didn’t consider the possibility that Tony might have made the arrangements), thus forcing him to settle for an uncatered, relatively intimate dinner. At Tony’s party he had counted at least thirty people in show business, all of whom, David assumed, were important contacts for Tony, relationships Tony needed to succeed. David wouldn’t have minded having Rounder and Chico over, along with the other Marx Brothers and the important editors he knew from Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and so on, to make the point to the Marx Brothers that David was the sort of person whom they needed to woo, if they wanted to hang on to him.
At first David had been put off by the prospect of including Tony and Betty at his dinner. Although David thought Tony was an impressive figure, he knew that Rounder and Chico were so neglectful of culture they wouldn’t care about Tony until he had six Broadway hits. However, when David learned Tony would have to leave early, he worried whether it would seem like a slight to Rounder and Chico, as if David couldn’t hold the attention of even minor playwrights. Who the fuck cares? David told himself as he laid down the last spoon. I hope to become Nation senior editor, not edit the culture pages.
Tony and Betty arrived first, half an hour early, bringing an expensive bottle of wine and expressing disarming apologies. “God, I’m sorry about this!” Tony exclaimed while shaking David’s hand. “I know it must seem strange. But I haven’t seen my father in almost two years. Last two times I was in LA, I didn’t give him proper notice and ended up missing him entirely.”
Betty meanwhile studied Patty. Patty had on a demure long dress, covering alluring parts of her body that were usually exposed. Her hair, which only three months ago had been permed, was now straight and gathered up in a bun, suggesting the fifties-movies cliché of a blond bombshell hiding in librarian’s clothes. “You look cute,” Betty said to Patty, her voice lacking conviction because her mind was absorbed by the shock that Patty had not merely unbaited her hook, but had thrown out the rod and reel as well.
Patty wheeled around, her dress billowing at the knees. “This is my taken look,” she said.
Tony and Betty laughed, pleased by her admission. David looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“This says: I have a boyfriend.”
David didn’t join the others in their smiles. “You’re not doing that for my benefit, are you?”
“Of course I am!” Patty said, a little sharply, as if hurt.
“You don’t have to.”
“Come on, David, you hated my single-girl wardrobe. Said I looked like a trollop.”
David flushed, his cheeks flooding with blood. “You did,” he said in a cruel tone, to cover his embarrassment at being exposed as a prude.
“Well,” Tony said breezily, “that’s just like Betty. After I picked her up on Forty-second Street, it took weeks to get her to throw out her hot pants.”
David and Patty laughed, glad to have an exit from their tense exchange. Betty didn’t. She said, “Ha, ha.”
An alarm
bell rang in the kitchen and Patty almost jumped. “My roast!” she said, hurrying into the kitchen.
Betty followed her, saying, “Can I help?”
“What would you like to drink?” David asked Tony.
“Nothing. I’m meeting my father later, so … On the other hand, he’s so self-absorbed he wouldn’t notice I was drunk unless I threw up on his lap.”
David laughed. “Is that a yes?”
“Yeah. Give me a Scotch.”
Tony followed David over to an exposed bar on a built-in shelf unit. “How’s Hollywood?” David asked.
“Hot, I guess.”
“I meant your script.”
“Almost finished with, uh, a rough draft for Bill Garth to look at.”
“And if he likes it, they make your movie?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Tony said. “I can’t get a straight answer out of anybody as to how a movie gets made.”
“Doesn’t your mother know? Or your father?”
“Maybe I’ll ask my father tonight. Mom? She’s in TV land. When she worked in movies, it was the tail end of the old studio system. Everything was different then.”
In the kitchen, Patty fussed over her roast, her high cheeks flushing from the oven’s heat. “Where are you meeting Tony’s Dad for dinner?”
“Elaine’s.”
“Whoa!” Patty said, standing up. A strand of hair had fallen across her face and she blew it back.
“I can’t get over this picture of you,” Betty said. “You look like Doris Day in Pillow Talk.”
“Don’t you love me this way?” Patty said. Her tone, slightly arch, but insistent, left Betty in doubt whether it was sarcasm or self-satisfaction.
“Are you happy?”
“Oh yeah.” Patty said. “And you?”
“I’m going to be thirty-three in a month,” Betty said.
Patty ignored Betty’s mournful tone. She often complained about age. “You look twenty-two,” she answered, glancing in her direction, noting Betty’s bobbed red curls and pert (surgical, Patty assumed) nose.
“I’m talking biological clock, not vanity,” Betty answered.
This got Patty’s attention off the roast. “Are you trying?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
Betty looked disgusted. “What do you think? ‘I’m not ready, dear.’ ”
“Men,” Patty agreed. “For machos, they’re awfully chicken.”
Betty laughed. “Yeah. So, if you’re happy, how come I never see you?”
“It’s not my fault! You and Tony are always busy. Having dinner with Robert Redford—”
“Oh, come on—”
“It’s true! You’ve become too fancy to see me! Look where you’re going to dinner tonight—Elaine’s!”
Patty’s accusation was burlesqued, so Betty couldn’t answer it solemnly. Betty felt the charge was unfair. Patty herself, as was typical of her behavior in the past, had withdrawn from Betty as soon as her relationship with David had become serious, and then, once Patty felt the fish was landed and her life had become dull. Betty started getting phone calls, invitations to lunch, requests for dinner. It was true, however, that a tendency of Tony’s, a desire to socialize only with successful show-business people, had become more pronounced since his deal to write a movie for Bill Garth.
“And you, meanwhile,” Betty said, deciding to return Patty’s passing shot with a similar stroke, “entertain only editors in chief.”
Tony appeared, a drink in his hand. “Break it up, girls. The big cheeses are coming.”
Patty imitated a pouting child. “She started it.”
“Oh, she always does,” Tony said. “She’s famous for brawling.”
Patty laughed. Betty looked at her husband. He stepped back. Betty’s pale eyes, usually placid and reserved, seemed dark with anger. “I don’t think these endless jokes about my losing control are funny. If you think the idea that I could ever make a scene is so hilarious, maybe I’ll start making them, and then we’ll see how happy you are.”
“Hello!” David called out. “Where is everybody?”
There were other, lower voices, accompanying his.
“Oh God, they’re here,” Patty said with open despair and nervousness.
“I’m sorry,” Tony said to his wife in an abject tone. “I guess I’m on edge about seeing my father.”
“Well, don’t take it out on me.” Betty said, and walked past him, out toward David and his guests.
At the same moment, having left his company behind in the living area, David was heading in and he and Betty collided, bumping heads. David’s glasses fell off with a loud clatter.
“Oh Jesus!” Patty exclaimed.
“Careful!” David said, looking owlish, squinting pathetically at the floor. “Don’t step on them!” he cried desperately to the others while his own foot moved forward and made a sickening crunching sound as it landed on his spectacles.
“Oh my God,” Betty said, staring down. David removed his foot as if it had landed on a hot coal.
“You have another pair, right?” Tony asked, his tone implying that he suspected the answer was no.
David didn’t speak. He knelt down, picking up the shattered lenses tenderly, his face made grief-stricken by the bewildered expression of his denuded and abandoned eyes. The others stood by motionless: sympathetic sentinels at this funeral.
“David,” Patty asked gently. “Do you have another pair?”
He didn’t look up. “No,” he said. “These are my spares. I didn’t get the others fixed.” Now he peered at Patty like she was a ghostly figure. “Thought about it this week. Was going to. But I didn’t.”
For a moment they silently contemplated the tragic nature of this oversight. “How blind are you?” Tony said at last.
David stood. He put the glasses down on a counter. “I’ll be able to find the food on my plate,” he said bravely. “Come,” he said, “let me introduce you.” And he walked toward the living area ahead of them, his feet moving tentatively, an expert on a tightrope, his eyes desperately focused on finding each safe step, while his body pretended grace and ease.
Rounder and his wife were at the other end of the loft, standing side by side looking at the complex of elegant shelving David’s brother had built around the industrial elevator shaft. Rounder’s wife, Cathy, was tall, almost six feet, and blond, with the same big-boned, ruddy-cheeked heartiness as Rounder. Indeed, she was a beautiful female version of him. She had recently given birth to their second child, but she had also, making her seem even more awesome to Betty and Patty, gotten her doctorate in economics. Columbia University, as well as NYU, had offered her positions of some kind (details were unknown) when her husband was made editor in chief and they had had to move from Atlanta, forcing her to give up her teaching job. But, in a remarkably unchic gesture, she declined the offers, saying that she wanted to devote her time to her children, especially while her husband would be absorbed in getting a feel for Newstime.
Chico was slumped on one of David’s huge couches, staring at the enormous abstract painting (it was six feet long and four feet high) of a sharply defined bright yellow semicircle. He regarded it suspiciously, as if he suspected it of picking his pocket, or, at least, of impertinence. His wife, Louise, looked half his size, though she was really only a foot smaller, with a shock of short black frizzy hair and a thin eager body, always alert, back straight, eyes forward, like a hungry little bird. She, too, had a successful career in journalism, holding the number-two features-editor job at Town magazine. Louise sat on the edge of the couch, also regarding the abstract painting, but with a lively look, almost as if it were talking to her wittily.
While David introduced Chico and Louise, Rounder and Cathy moved from the shelving toward the living area. The moment greetings were done with, Cathy said to David, “Your brother designed all this?”
“And built it,” David said. He squinted at her briefly. “He got this place while he was trying
to make it as a designer. He’d get some money together and then finish a section. Go back to work. And so on.”
“It’s beautiful,” Cathy said. She looked at Rounder. “We should talk to him about our new place.”
“If we stay,” Rounder said.
This led to a tedious discussion of New York real estate. David mostly listened. He felt silenced by his blindness. A headache came on rather quickly because of the strain of squinting at each speaker. Realizing this, David stopped looking and merely absorbed the voices: Rounder, self-absorbed, wading in with attitudes toward New York neighborhoods that he obviously only dimly understood; his wife, nervously joshing about “dangerous” areas like a smalltown girl; Chico, pretending he didn’t care at all about the status, elegance, or comfort of his apartment (David knew that, in fact, Chico had crippled himself with a huge mortgage in order to live on Central Park West just a few years ago); Betty, dogmatically saying that only Beekman Place and Sutton Place were truly acceptable, safe, and civilized areas, an attitude that only a rich girl like Betty could afford, but which she expressed rather as if it were a matter of taste, not money; Tony, elaborately explaining to Rounder the history of various reclaimed neighborhoods, such as SoHo, Chelsea, the Upper West Side, the Village (Tony’s observations were obvious, the stuff of Town magazine pieces and yet Tony said them as if they were brilliant, and Rounder actually listened as if he thought so too); meanwhile, Louise, the features editor of Town, smiled cheerfully at everyone but said nothing. And Patty? She told a horribly embarrassing story about being thrown out of her apartment because of all the crazy men she had been dating, and kidding that what made her relationship with David terribly important was that it rescued her from the New York roach-go-round of closet-size apartments at exorbitant rents.
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