by Nan
J leaned forward as the waiter put her double margarita on the table. She took a sip immediately and then raised her glass. “I think it’s time we toasted the women of Belgium who make all that wonderful lace.”
Bumps shook her head and raised her Riesling. “Oh, God. I feel so guilty. I’ve never even thought about those wonderful women. What would we do without them? J darling, you are a saint. The Bernadette of Southampton.”
“Well, I suppose we could have those little blue circle things. The first condo. Halston lived here. Original site of the Stork Club. Certainly there’s enough to commemorate.”
“Oh, J darling, would you espouse my cause? One nod from you and I’m virtually assured an entire season of fund-raisers on my very own.” Bumps put a hand to her bumps. “Think of it. Dorothy Kilgallen’s house. Gloria and Leopold. Gloria and Sidney. Gloria and Wyatt. Nelson and Happy.” She began to giggle. “And then Un-Happy.”
“Who’s unhappy?” Libby asked, sitting down.
“Holy Hermès!” Bumps glanced around quickly, hoping someone would notice that Libby was sitting next to her. “Libby darling, you know those little round blue things . . .”
Libby caught Cal’s eye. Those little round blue things of his were watching her. She turned away. “What are you guys up to?”
Bumps was all excited. “Those little round blue things that tell you who lived and who died . . .”
Libby pointed to her heart. “Libby Dennis once lived here.”
Bumps’s face lit up. “Did anyone famous die here?”
“Mrs. Pagano.” Libby emptied the water from J’s goblet into the wine bucket. She poured herself some Riesling and raised the glass.
“Who?”
“To my darling, Mrs. Pagano,” Libby said, breaking her own first commandment about not drinking on the job. “Once upon a time, before Perrier or glasnost, this used to be a restaurant called Pagano’s Villa Capri.”
“Oh, God!” Bumps gasped. “You mean this was once an ethnic restaurant?”
J rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind her. She thinks Côte Basque is an ethnic restaurant.”
“I worked double shifts at the Villa Capri when I was first pregnant with Steven. After I couldn’t hide it any longer, Mrs. Pagano let me work as cashier, then expediter, then steward. She gave me a job and a place to stay.”
J held up her hand. “If this is another landmark story, I need a refill.”
“Everything was going wonderfully. The Paganos were like grandparents to Steven and me. Until Mrs. Pagano died.”
Bumps took a sip of wine. “This is better than Upstairs, Downstairs.”
“The Villa Capri closed. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Mr. Pagano wanted to sell.”
“And you bought it for a song,” Bumps said, leaning forward. “Oh, God! I just love real estate stories with happy endings. Wait until Ivana and Donald hear this!”
Libby was lost in thought. “I got the staff together. We all chipped in to buy what we needed to make Mr. Pagano’s favorite meal. Then I invited him to dinner. I didn’t tell him it was going to be at his own restaurant.”
J took a deep breath. She was getting edgy. “Is this going to be touching?”
Libby sipped the wine. “The dining room looked just as it had the night before Mrs. Pagano died. All the waiters and bus-boys were at their stations. Mr. Pagano’s eyes filled with tears.”
“That’s enough for me,” J said, signaling Maxie for another round.
“And as always, there was a single white rose at Mrs. Pagano’s table.”
Bumps picked up her menu. “Come to think of it, I’m starving.”
Rikki Lee could not believe her ears. “Cal said no? Just like that, Johnny? He said no?”
Janos nodded. He flipped the pages in High Life, staring at her nude photos. He couldn’t understand it. Janos banged his fist on the magazine.
Rikki leaned close and whispered, “Maybe he’s a faygeleh.”
Janos looked up. “Now that’s using your tuchis!”
“Which is my tuchis again, Johnny?”
He tapped his temple with one finger.
“Johnny, how much money do we have in The Last Cowboy?”
“Nothing! Nobody wanted the script. It’s been hanging around for years. Barry gave me a seven-day exclusive.”
“For how much?”
“For nothing! He should be paying me.” Janos banged his fist on the table. “Nobody, but nobody, would want that turkey!”
“When is the week up?”
Janos looked at his watch. “It’s up.”
“So who cares? We didn’t lose any money.”
“That’s not the point! It’s not the money.” Janos watched as Cal sat down at Junior’s table. “It’s the deal. I lost the deal!”
“What are you going to do, Johnny?”
“I’m going to get back into the game.” Janos motioned Stu the waiter to his table.
Rikki leaned close and kissed his ear excitedly. “Get him, Johnny. I want you to get him.”
“Yes, sir?” Stu asked.
Janos pointed across the room at Mary Borden. “Who is she having lunch with?”
Stu leaned over and spoke quietly. “Abner Waxman. A big deal editor. I see him here with a lot of agents.”
“What are they talking about?”
“Some book about Germans.”
Then Janos pointed to Cal and Junior. “What is the name of the manuscript on that table?”
Stu winked. He took a pitcher of ice water from the service station and walked briskly to Junior’s table. Without a word, he refilled the glasses and came back to Janos. “You’re not going to believe this! It’s the same book. Before Dawn.”
“I want to know what they’re saying.”
“Hold on. For that I better find Maxie. It’s his table.”
As Stu hurried away, Rikki bent her fork. “Is this going to take long, Johnny? You said you were going to screw him. How long is it going to take?”
“I don’t like that tone in your voice.”
Rikki poked him angrily. “I don’t like being made a fool of.”
“What are you talking about? He wasn’t trying to make a fool out of you. You’re not worth a fart in the breeze as far as he’s concerned. He was trying to make a fool out of me! You, you’re nothing. Nobody gives a shit about you!”
Rikki leaned forward and looked into his eyes. “Johnny,” she whispered cautiously, “you’re not just saying that to make me feel good, are you?”
“You dumb broad. You think I really give a damn how you feel?”
Rikki smiled. She nuzzled against his shoulder. “Oh, Johnny. You always know just the right thing to say.”
Cal knew that Libby was watching him. She kept looking over as though he were on a train and she were on the platform. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t going anywhere. He had torn up his ticket. But it was too big a ticket to tear up for nothing but pride. Cal couldn’t tell Libby about it until he had another deal. He turned to Junior. “So. How’s your lunch life?”
“You know, before Senior took over the studio, when the other kids asked me what my father did for a living, I used to tell them he did lunch. My poor mother couldn’t afford anything but red caviar because the son of a bitch spent every penny we had on lunch. He even got his mail at the Polo Lounge.”
Cal began to laugh. “My poor mother couldn’t afford mayonnaise.”
“Jesus. What the hell were you? Puerto Rican?”
“I had an aunt who was very rich. She always had Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Heinz ketchup on the dining room table. And she only sent Hallmark cards.”
Junior smiled. “It’s funny what you remember.”
“The things you wanted and couldn’t have.”
“Nobody remembers the things you got.” Junior laughed. “Except for the clap I got from our Mexican maid when I was fifteen.”
“You were fucking around at fifteen?”
“Are you kiddi
ng? By fifteen, I was an old man already. The life span of a Hollywood brat is different from the rest of the world. We were all little King Tuts, groomed to inherit the dynasty, intermarry, and take our percentages of the gross into the afterlife.” Junior glanced over at the empty table reserved for his father. “The son of a bitch still does lunch. What the hell. At his age, what other pleasure lasts for an hour?”
Cal smiled, wishing Junior would get to the point. He hated reminiscing with people he hardly knew. But, according to The Official Rules of Lunch, you sat down as strangers, became best friends over drinks, lovers over the entrée, and made the deal before dessert.
Junior was still becoming a best friend. “You must have been very young when you married Libby.”
Cal was a dry forest waiting for a match. “My family couldn’t afford a Mexican maid.” The moment he said it, Cal hated himself. After giving up six million dollars to prove his love for Libby, how could he have said something that stupid? The only way to regain his self-respect was to strip himself bare. “We were both virgins on our wedding night.”
“Come on.”
“I was twenty.”
“I don’t believe it! Cal Dennis a virgin at twenty? And you still made something of yourself? That’s incredible!”
“We were in the chorus of Camelot. It didn’t seem that life could get very much better. We were married at the Actor’s Church after the matinee. That night, still in costume, we hopped into a cab. The farthest the driver would take us was the George Washington Bridge. We walked across and spent our wedding night at the Riviera Motel in Fort Lee, New Jersey.” Cal couldn’t resist looking over at Libby, hoping she would glance up at him and read his mind. “She was a Lady-in-Waiting. I was a Knight of the Round Table.” He smiled, thinking Libby was still as beautiful as she was then. If only she would turn around, he knew she’d see that in his eyes. “I gave the guy at the desk a couple of bucks and he got us a bottle of Lancers and a bag of M&M’s. Our wedding dinner. We had this really crummy room, but it had a color television set. It was the first time we had ever seen color television.” Cal forced himself to look directly into Junior’s eyes. “We never made love on our wedding night. We were too afraid. We watched TV until we fell asleep. We woke up in the morning still in costume, the test pattern flickering. We started to laugh. The wedding night was over. We were safe. We couldn’t ruin it. So we ripped off our clothes and fucked our brains out.” Cal had never told anyone the story.
“I have a book,” Junior said. “Good Germans versus Bad Germans. It was made for you.”
According to Libby’s inner clock, she had been sitting at the table with Birnbaum, Anders, and Horton for two or three thousand years. It had to be at least that long for Libby to have worked her way through a second glass of wine.
She knew that Birnbaum was staring at her and she was afraid to look at him. As afraid as she was to glance across the room at Cal. There was no telling what either of them were thinking. God knows what was in their eyes, let alone their heads. Best not to look. Best not to ask. She pretended to be studying the seating chart while Horton and Anders babbled on.
“While the President is in the southeast corner . . .”
“Service staff will enter and exit along the west aisle . . .”
“Only the code group will access the men’s room . . .”
“What west aisle?” Libby asked as she filled her glass. “There was no west aisle at the Villa Capri,” she said, stopping all conversation.
“I beg your pardon?” Anders said.
“After Mrs. Pagano died, I reopened this place. You should have seen me. No wonder I wear pink all the time. Every night I put on a black dress just like Mrs. Pagano wore. And every night, after we closed, I ate dinner with Mr. Pagano. Just as she had.” Libby began to laugh. “I was a twenty-two-year-old Sicilian widow.” Suddenly she realized they were all staring at her. Unsmiling. “All right.” Libby leaned across the table and looked straight into Birnbaum’s eyes. “Enough is enough!” she shouted. “I want the truth! Meat or fish?”
Ashanti followed Steven down the aisle as though the milliondollar cover girl was a small child on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Her eyes were barely half open, her hair was a flurry of tangles, and the necklace she should have been wearing was clutched in her hand. She had rushed from bed into a waiting limo. She was terrified of missing lunch.
As Ashanti approached, Hots and Loren got up. But she stood frozen in the aisle. She stared at the bread plate filled with crumbs and the water glass stained with lipstick. Ashanti’s voice was husky from lack of sleep. She growled, “Who’s been sitting in my chair?”
“Wanda Fogelman,” Hots said. “She’s in the ladies, washing some cherry relish off her blouse.”
Ashanti sat down next to Loren. “And what brings you to a room without a bed?” He took her hand, immediately checking her pulse. She smiled at Steven. “He’s been my M.D. for years. Miltown and Dexamil.”
As soon as Steven left, Loren pressed the skin under Ashanti’s eyes and then pushed aside her hair to look at her cheeks and ears. “I just want to check the fascia.” He shook his head. “You people are like hothouse flowers. One sleepless night and you fall apart.”
Ashanti grabbed hold of Hots. “Darling, how fast can you draw up a prenuptial agreement?”
“For who?”
“For Dagwood and Blondie! I told you! For me and Bill!”
Loren shrugged his shoulders. “Pulse is all right. Somewhere between dead and alive.” He got up. “I better see what happened to Wanda.”
Hots waited for Loren to leave. “Let me tell you something. You don’t love Bill.”
Ashanti rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I just want your basic pre-nup, not a palm reading.”
“How basic?”
“Basic Black, darling. Utter simplicity.” Ashanti took a bite of Loren’s leftover sandwich. “I’m going to be the grand finale in his spring collection. I walk out wearing a wedding dress and I want a priest waiting at the end of the runway. Applause. Applause. I do. I do. And it’s done. Happily ever after. When we split up, I get the farm in Connecticut, a limo until the day I die, and you figure out how much I need to grow old gracefully without having to make an exercise tape.”
“What if Stephanie wants the farm?”
“Fuck her. I’m giving her half the business and the apartment in Paris. What more does she want? Hotsy Totsy darling, I have been standing on my head all night encouraging Mr. Wonderful’s spermatozoa to fertilize what must be, by now, my thousand-year-old egg.”
“Did he ask you to marry him?”
“Of course he didn’t ask me to marry him! How could he ask me to marry him until he knows what I want when we split up?”
“You expect me to believe you love Bill Perry?”
“I want to get married. I don’t care to who. I want to make a public commitment to heterosexuality.”
“Why the hell would you do a stupid thing like that?” he asked. “It’s like registering at Fortunoff’s.”
Ashanti dug her fingernails into Hots’s arm and gasped. Her eyes widened and then narrowed as she stared across the room.
“What is it?” Hots asked.
“It’s the Ghost of Lunch Past.” She couldn’t take her eyes from the couple Steven was seating. It was Moina and Fay. Arm in arm. Laughing.
* * *
“A grasshopper?” Victor the bartender looked up at Stu. “Are you kidding?”
Stu raised his eyebrows. “Two yet. For Fay Fox and the Bride of Frankenstein.”
Norm had been waiting at the bar. “Jack Daniel’s straight?” he reminded Victor. “Stoli rocks?”
“What the hell goes into a grasshopper?” Victor asked, reaching for the green crème de menthe.
“A boy grasshopper,” Stu said, putting napkins on his tray.
“Why don’t you just give me my JD and Stoli?” Norm asked.
Victor reached for the white crème de
cacao. “You see Liza?” he asked. “Isn’t she something?”
It didn’t do Norm any good to complain. Because Stu tipped out ten percent to the bar, he got quicker service. Bigger drinks. His customers got the third round free. All of which resulted in bigger tips from which he paid his bar dues.
Moina held tight to Fay’s hand. “I bet you don’t remember the first time we had these.”
Fay picked up her drink. “Newport.”
“That sleazy little bar.”
Fay smiled. “You were in a white sailor suit. You had your hair cut real short. And you were wearin’ those Montecatini pearls I always wanted.” Fay’s recollection was keen. It should have been. That scene opened her biography of Moina.
Moina nodded. “I was on every cover that season. Vogue had Avedon do me in black and white. Very smart of them. No one could do faces like Avedon. That tinny Victrola of his going for hours. Garland and Astaire was all he would play.” She waved her hand. “They wanted Eisenstaedt. But he was an ambulance chaser. Too serious for my face. He had no respect for contempt.”
“I have missed you, darlin’,” Fay said, raising her glass.
“Nothing like you’re going to miss me.”
“I can’t drink to that,” Fay said.
“Stop fussing. I shall leave you my Montecatini pearls.”
“You’d be fine if you just had the goddamn operation. I know it.”
Moina put a finger to Fay’s lips. “Promise me something.”
Fay’s eyes filled with tears. “Bitch.”
Moina held tight to Fay’s hand. “Promise not to look at me when I’m dead.”
“Sweetie, you’re already dead.”
Moina started to laugh. “Well, then it didn’t hurt a bit.” She leaned close to Fay. “How would you feel if I wanted to kiss you right now?”