by Stephen King
I’m not sure how much all this bears on what happened, but I know it has some bearing, because I was pretty sure something was wrong with the maître d’ almost as soon as I saw him, and as soon as he spoke to me, I knew.
He was tall, maybe forty-five, slim (in his tux, at least; in ordinary clothes he probably would have looked skinny), mustached. He had a leather-bound menu in one hand. He looked like battalions of maître d’s in battalions of fancy New York restaurants, in other words. Except for his bow-tie, which was askew, and something on his shirt that was a splotch just above the place where his jacket buttoned. It looked like either gravy or a glob of some dark jelly. Also, several strands of his hair stuck up defiantly in back, making me think of Alfalfa in the old Little Rascals one-reelers. That almost made me burst out laughing—I was very nervous, remember—and I had to bite my lips to keep it in.
“Yes, sir?” he asked as I approached the desk. It came out sounding like Yais sair? All maître d’s in New York City have accents, but it is never one you can positively identify. A girl I dated in the mideighties, one who did have a sense of humor (along with a fairly large drug habit, unfortunately), told me once that they all grew up on the same little island and hence all spoke the same language.
“What language is it?” I asked her.
“Snooti,” she said, and I cracked up.
This thought came back to me as I looked past the desk to the woman I’d seen while outside—I was now almost positive it was Diane—and I had to bite the insides of my lips again. As a result, Humboldt’s name came out of me sounding like a half-smothered sneeze.
The maître d’s high, pale brow contracted in a frown. His eyes bored into mine. I had taken them for brown as I approached the desk, but now they looked black.
“Pardon, sir?” he asked. It came out sounding like Pahdun, sair and looking like Fuck you, Jack. His long fingers, as pale as his brow—concert pianist’s fingers, they looked like—tapped nervously on the cover of the menu. The tassel sticking out of it like some sort of halfassed bookmark swung back and forth.
“Humboldt,” I said. “Party of three.” I found I couldn’t take my eyes off his bow-tie, so crooked that the left side of it was almost brushing the shelf under his chin, and that blob on his snowy-white dress shirt. Now that I was closer, it didn’t look like either gravy or jelly; it looked like partially dried blood.
He was looking down at his reservations book, the rogue tuft at the back of his head waving back and forth over the rest of his slickeddown hair. I could see his scalp through the grooves his comb had laid down, and a speckle of dandruff on the shoulders of his tux. It occurred to me that a good headwaiter might have fired an underling put together in such sloppy fashion.
“Ah, yes, monsieur.” (Ah yais, messoo.) He had found the name. “Your party is—” He was starting to look up. He stopped abruptly, and his eyes sharpened even more, if that was possible, as he looked past me and down. “You cannot bring that dog in here,” he said sharply. “How many times have I told you you can’t bring that dog in here!”
He didn’t quite shout, but spoke so loudly that several of the diners closest to his pulpit-like desk stopped eating and looked around curiously.
I looked around myself. He had been so emphatic I expected to see somebody’s dog, but there was no one behind me and most certainly no dog. It occurred to me then, I don’t know why, that he was talking about my umbrella, that perhaps on the Island of the Maître D’s, dog was a slang term for umbrella, especially when carried by a patron on a day when rain did not seem likely.
I looked back at the maître d’ and saw that he had already started away from his desk, holding my menu in his hands. He must have sensed that I wasn’t following, because he looked back over his shoulder, eyebrows slightly raised. There was nothing on his face now but polite enquiry—Are you coming, messoo?—and I came. I knew something was wrong with him, but I came. I could not take the time or effort to try to decide what might be wrong with the maître d’ of a restaurant where I had never been before today and where I would probably never be again; I had Humboldt and Diane to deal with, I had to do it without smoking, and the maître d’ of the Gotham Café would have to take care of his own problems, dog included.
Diane turned around and at first I saw nothing in her face and in her eyes but a kind of frozen politeness. Then, just below it, I saw anger, or thought I did. We’d done a lot of arguing during our last three or four months together, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing the sort of concealed anger I sensed in her now, anger that was meant to be hidden by the makeup and the new dress (blue, no speckles, no slit up the side) and the new hairdo. The heavyset man she was with was saying something, and she reached out and touched his arm. As he turned toward me, beginning to get to his feet, I saw something else in her face. She was afraid of me as well as angry with me. And although she hadn’t said a single word, I was already furious at her. Everything on her face and in her eyes was negative; she might as well have been wearing a CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE sign on her forehead. I thought I deserved better.
“Monsieur,” the maître d’ said, pulling out the chair to Diane’s left. I barely heard him, and certainly any thought of his eccentric behavior and crooked bow-tie had left my head. I think that even the subject of tobacco had briefly vacated my head for the first time since I’d quit smoking. I could only consider the careful composure of her face and marvel at how I could be angry with her and still want her so much it made me ache to look at her. Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but it certainly freshens the eye.
I also found time to wonder if I had really seen all I’d surmised. Anger? Yes, that was possible, even likely. If she hadn’t been angry with me to at least some degree, she never would have left in the first place, I supposed. But afraid? Why in God’s name would Diane be afraid of me? I’d never laid a single finger on her. Yes, I suppose I had raised my voice during some of our arguments, but so had she.
“Enjoy your lunch, monsieur,” the maître d’ said from some other universe—the one where service people usually stay, only poking their heads into ours when we call them, either because we need something or to complain.
“Mr. Davis, I’m Bill Humboldt,” Diane’s companion said. He held out a large hand that looked reddish and chapped. I shook it briefly. The rest of him was as big as his hand, and his broad face wore the sort of flush habitual drinkers often get after the first one of the day. I put him in his mid-forties, about ten years away from the time when his sagging cheeks would turn into jowls.
“Pleasure,” I said, not thinking about what I was saying any more than I was thinking about the maître d’ with the blob on his shirt, only wanting to get the hand-shaking part over so I could turn back to the pretty blonde with the rose-and-cream complexion, the pale pink lips, and the trim, slim figure. The woman who had, not so long ago, liked to whisper “Do me do me do me” in my ear while she held onto my ass like a saddle with two pommels.
“Where is Mr. Ring?” Humboldt asked, looking around (a bit theatrically, I thought).
“Mr. Ring is on his way to Long Island. His mother fell downstairs and broke her hip.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Humboldt said. He picked up the half-finished martini in front of him on the table and drained it until the olive with the toothpick in it rested against his lips. He spat it back, then set the glass down and looked at me. “And I bet I can guess what he told you.”
I heard this but paid no attention. For the time being, Humboldt was no more important than minor static on a radio program you really want to hear. I looked at Diane instead. It was marvellous, really, how she looked smarter and prettier than previous. As if she had learned things—yes, even after only two weeks of separation, and while living with Ernie and Dee Dee Coslaw in Pound Ridge—that I could never know.
“How are you, Steve?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said. Then, “Not so fine, actually. I’ve missed you.”
Onl
y watchful silence from the lady greeted this. Those big bluegreen eyes looking at me, no more. Certainly no return serve, no I’ve missed you, too.
“And I quit smoking. That’s also played hell with my peace of mind.”
“Did you, finally? Good for you.”
I felt another flash of anger, this time a really ugly one, at her politely dismissive tone. As if I might not be telling the truth, but it didn’t really matter if I was. She’d carped at me about the cigarettes every day for two years, it seemed—how they were going to give me cancer, how they were going to give her cancer, how she wouldn’t even consider getting pregnant until I stopped, so I could just save any breath I might have been planning to waste on that subject—and now all at once it didn’t matter anymore, because I didn’t matter anymore.
“We have a little business to transact,” Humboldt said. “If you don’t mind, that is.”
There was one of those big, boxy lawyer suitcases on the floor beside him. He picked it up with a grunt and set it on the chair where my lawyer would have been if his mother hadn’t broken her hip. Humboldt began unsnapping the clasps, but I quit paying attention at that point. The fact was, I did mind. It wasn’t a matter of caution, either; it was a matter of priorities. I felt an instant’s gratitude that Ring had been called away. It had certainly clarified the issues.
I looked at Diane and said, “I want to try again. Can we reconcile? Is there any chance of that?”
The look of absolute horror on her face crashed hopes I hadn’t even known I’d been holding onto. Instead of answering, she looked past me at Humboldt.
“You said we didn’t have to talk about this!” Her voice was trembling, accusatory. “You said you wouldn’t even let it come up!”
Humboldt looked a little flustered. He shrugged and glanced briefly down at his empty martini glass before looking back up at Diane. I think he was wishing he’d ordered a double. “I didn’t know Mr. Davis would be attending this meeting without his lawyer. You should have called me, Mr. Davis. Since you did not, I feel it necessary to inform you that Diane did not greenlight this meeting with any thoughts of reconciliation in mind. Her decision to seek a divorce is final.”
He glanced at her briefly, seeking confirmation, and got it. She was nodding emphatically. Her cheeks were considerably brighter than they had been when I sat down, and it was not the sort of flush I associate with embarrassment. “You bet it is,” she said, and I saw that furious look on her face again.
“Diane, why?” I hated the plaintive note I heard in my voice, a sound almost like a sheep’s bleat, but there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it. “Why?”
“Oh Jesus,” she said. “Are you telling me you really don’t know?”
“Yes—”
Her cheeks were brighter than ever, the flush now rising almost to her temples. “No, probably you don’t. Isn’t that typical.” She picked up her water and spilled the top two inches on the tablecloth because her hand was trembling. I flashed back at once—I mean kapow—to the day she’d left, remembering how I’d knocked the glass of orange juice onto the floor and how I’d cautioned myself not to try picking up the broken pieces of glass until my hands had settled down, and how I’d gone ahead anyway and cut myself for my pains.
“Stop it, this is counterproductive,” Humboldt said. He sounded like a playground monitor trying to prevent a scuffle before it gets started, but his eyes were sweeping the rear part of the room, looking for our waiter, or any waiter whose eye he could catch. He was a lot less interested in us, at that particular moment, than he was in obtaining what the British like to call “the other half.”
“I just want to know—” I began.
“What you want to know doesn’t have anything to do with why we’re here,” Humboldt said, and for a moment he sounded as sharp and alert as he probably had been when he first strode out of law school with his diploma in his hand.
“Yes, right, finally,” Diane said. She spoke in a brittle, urgent voice. “Finally it’s not about what you want, what you need.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I’m willing to listen,” I said. “We could try counselling, I’m not against it if maybe—”
She raised her hands to shoulder-level, palms out. “Oh God, Mr. Macho’s gone New Age,” she said, then dropped her hands back into her lap. “After all the days you rode off into the sunset, tall in the saddle. Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
“Stop it,” Humboldt told her. He looked from his client to his client’s soon-to-be ex-husband (it was going to happen, all right; even the slight unreality that comes with not-smoking couldn’t conceal that self-evident truth from me by that point). “One more word from either of you and I’m going to declare this luncheon at an end.” He gave us a small smile, one so obviously manufactured that I found it perversely endearing. “And we haven’t even heard the specials yet.”
That—the first mention of food since I’d joined them—was just before the bad things started to happen, and I remember smelling salmon from one of the nearby tables. In the two weeks since I’d quit smoking, my sense of smell had become incredibly sharp, but I do not count that as much of a blessing, especially when it comes to salmon. I used to like it, but now I can’t abide the smell of it, let alone the taste. To me it smells of pain and fear and blood and death.
“He started it,” Diane said sulkily.
You started it, you were the one who walked out, I thought, but I kept it to myself. Humboldt clearly meant what he said; he would take Diane by the hand and walk her out of the restaurant if we started that schoolyard no-I-didn’t, yes-you-did shit. Not even the prospect of another drink would hold him here.
“Okay,” I said mildly … and I had to work hard to achieve that mild tone, believe me. “I started it. What’s next?” I knew, of course; papers, papers, papers. And probably the only satisfaction I was going to get out of this sorry situation was telling them that I wasn’t going to sign any, or even look at any, on the advice of my lawyer. I glanced at Diane again, but she was looking down at her empty plate and her hair hid her face. I felt a strong urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her inside her new blue dress like a pebble inside of a gourd. Do you think you’re in this alone? I would shout at her. Do you think you’re in this alone? Well, the Marlboro Man has got news for you, sweetheart—you’re a stubborn, self-indulgent little bi—
“Mr. Davis?” Humboldt asked politely.
I looked around at him.
“There you are,” he said. “I thought we’d lost you again.”
“Not at all,” I said.
“Good. Lovely.”
He had several sheafs of paper in his hands. They were held together by those paperclips that come in different colors—red, blue, yellow, purple. They went well with the Impressionist drawings on the walls of the Gotham Café. It occurred to me that I had come abysmally unprepared for this meeting, and not just because my lawyer was on the twelve-thirty-three to Babylon, either. Diane had her new dress; Humboldt had his Brinks truck of a briefcase, plus documents held together by color-coded paperclips; all I had was a new umbrella on a sunny day. I looked down at where it lay beside my chair (it had never crossed my mind to check it) and saw there was still a price-tag dangling from the handle. All at once I felt like Minnie Pearl.
The room smelled wonderful, as most restaurants do since they banned smoking in them—of flowers and wine and fresh coffee and chocolate and pastry—but what I smelled most clearly was salmon. I remember thinking that it smelled very good, and that I would probably order some. I also remember thinking that if I could eat at a meeting like this, I could probably eat anywhere.
“I have here a number of forms which will allow both you and Ms. Davis to remain financially mobile while assuring that neither of you will have unfair access to the funds you’ve both worked so hard to accumulate,” Humboldt said. “I also have preliminary court notifications which need to be signed by you, and forms that will allow us to put your
bonds and T-bills in an escrow account until your current situation is settled by the court.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn’t going to sign anything, and if that meant the meeting was over so be it, but I didn’t get out so much as a single word. Before I could, I was interrupted by the maître d’. He was screaming as well as talking, and I’ve tried to indicate that, but a bunch of e’s strung together can’t really convey the quality of that sound. It was as if he had a bellyful of steam and a teakettle whistle caught in his throat.
“That dog … Eeeeeee! … I told you time and again about that dog … Eeeeeee! … All that time I can’t sleep … Eeeeee! … She says cut your face, that cunt … Eeeeeee! … How you tease me! … Eeeeeee! … And now you bring that dog in here … Eeeeeee!”
The room fell silent at once, of course, diners looking up in astonishment from their meals or their conversations as the thin, pale, black-clad figure came stalking across the room with its face outthrust and its long, storklike legs scissoring. The maître d’s bow-tie had turned a full ninety degrees from its normal position, so it now looked like the hands of a clock indicating the hour of six. His hands were clasped behind his back as he walked, and bent forward slightly from the waist as he was, he made me think of a drawing in my sixthgrade literature book, an illustration of Washington Irving’s unfortunate schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane.
It was me he was looking at, me he was approaching. I stared at him, feeling almost hypnotized—it was like one of those dreams where you discover that you haven’t studied for the exam you’re supposed to take or that you’re attending a White House dinner in your honor with no clothes on—and I might have stayed that way if Humboldt hadn’t moved.