Monkey Suits

by Jim Provenzano

  “How do you know? Did you stick your finger in it?” She glared at Lee.

  A surge of hate flushed up through him.

  “I remember when they wore gloves,” she said to no one in particular. Sweat rose on Lee’s brow. The tray alone weighed about ten pounds, the soup-filled pumpkin another twenty. His tendonitis, made worse from his latest attempt at the gym, almost made him drop the entire pumpkin, which was already lolling about precariously on the tray.

  “I don’t know if I want any. Ed-gah, how is that stuff?” The woman whined across the table to her husband, who was deeply engaged in a chat with a woman seated near him. Lee glanced at Philipe, who was leaning his ear close to Neil Pynchon. One wrong move and he’d be out of work for a week.

  “Ed-gah!” The spindly woman fluttered her hand. Her fingernails were like claws. A drop of sweat fell from Lee’s forehead onto the tablecloth and sank into the fabric.

  “Ma’am, why don’t you just try some for yourself?” he soothed, retaining a twinge of distaste for the lady unable to make so much as a cuisine decision without the assistance of her husband. The ladle hung over the pumpkin, precariously close to the woman’s head.

  “Does it have cream in it?” She queried. Lee’s shoulder muscles began to spasm.

  “It’s a cream soup, ma’am,” he replied.

  “Oh well, I don’t want any.” She waved him off. He stood, sighing relief. The pumpkin rolled again. A dollop of soup roiled up the side of the gourd and onto the faux-leaf garnish. Lee did what he always did in such situations. He merely went on to the next guest and gestured to his A waiter, who swiftly preceded him with a toast tray. He then imagined the matron naked, constipated and sitting on the john with no toilet paper in sight. The rest of the evening was a breeze until Philipe took him aside, murmuring, “I would like to see you a moment, after you finish wiss dessert.”

  After the waiters had successfully served coffee and dessert, balls of frozen fruit sorbet and fresh raspberries, Philipe sat at his now-quiet private table in a darker corner of the museum. Lenny had eaten, his plate still at the table, a plastic jug of Diet Pepsi beside it, as well as an expensive oversized book on Edward Hopper which he’d bought in the museum shop. Despite his irritating demeanor, Lenny had a taste for art.

  Philipe sat down to his freshly poured club soda and orange juice with a splash of vodka. He always ate and had a nice sit, going over the papers before leaving. He didn’t need to stay for breakdown anymore. The boys were quite well trained. Besides, it was a Tuesday and not a big affair. He would have to remember to call the co-chair and ensure that his next day’s thank you bouquet had a little teddy bear in a leather harness attached. Ten years before, he’d met the co-chair of the museum board of trustees at the Ramrod, on his back in a sling. He took comfort in long-term contacts. They were always so dependable.

  Philipe sipped his drink and scanned the list of the night’s waiters, making tiny check marks next to the names of those who had been caught munching or had arrived late.

  Fearing what he thought would be some sort of quiet dismissal, Lee felt nervous as he stood a few yards from Philipe’s table. Would he be fired tonight? Stripped of his bow tie? Detuxed? What humiliation awaited him? The back hall was relatively quiet, and for a moment, Lee stood waiting for an ounce of bravery. He watched Philipe take a small silver case, half the size of a cigarette box, from his inside breast pocket. He dutifully withdrew and swallowed three pills.

  To Lee they merely looked like vitamins, but as he approached, he realized they must have been AIDS drugs. Lee made a motion, Philipe turned, startled, quickly put the pill box away and invited Lee to sit.

  “Now, Mistah Wyndam, let us see.” Philipe became immediately officious and scanned his checklist.

  “You have been late several times, and I have noticed a few discrepancies in your work.”

  “I’m sorry about that, I mean to ...”

  “Tut, tut.” A single finger gesture silenced him. “You don’t like ziss work, do you?”

  “Well, it is a bit difficult sometimes.”

  “Yes, but just remember that it is only work, yes? It is difficult. Ze people can be so fussy. You don’ know how fussy. I have advize for you if you want to keep working for us. Set your call a half hour earlier than ze call we give you. Yes? It makes you show up on time.”

  “It’s the trains, sir–”

  “Also, ze people. Zey seem to frighten you.”

  “Well, I’m just so worried about doing something wrong.”

  “Just pretend you’re serving your grandparents. Over and over again, your grandparents. Yes? You try it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now be gone,” he said, the single wave of his hand jolting Lee up to standing.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  As he walked away, greatly relieved and surprised, Lee reached for his service napkin. Although his fear now seemed silly, he’d broken out in a light sweat.

  As the last guests departed, the swift deconstruction of the elegant tables began. Plastic tubs and ice tins were hauled from table to table, becoming blood-colored like a Guyana Koolaid mix. Candles were snuffed out and silverware tossed into trays with a tinny clatter. Glasses were dropped into plastic racks and stacked to the side like small skyscrapers. Tablecloths were ripped away and stuffed into garbage bags for laundering the next day by unseen crews of Chinese women whose efforts reaped less than four dollars an hour. In the rest rooms, a few waiters took silent pleasure in pissing on the piles of unused ice cubes that were poured into the men’s room toilets.

  While Lenny barked orders to the waiters taking down the three dozen round wooden tables, others crawled or crouched on the carpet, picking up tiny bits of crud where his roaring vacuum cleaner failed. His cigarette smoke trailed around the dining room, now bare and ugly in the fluorescent light.

  The majority of waiters were herded to the back stairwell where they lined up in a sort of bucket brigade, passing the wooden rental chairs down hand over hand while half a dozen others raced to pull worn plastic and nylon coverings over the seats. Neil Pynchon and two other captains (who made ten dollars more per hour than the waiters) gave orders with a polite primness. They did not assist.

  Out on the street at the freight entrance, the chairs were passed up to the Latino workers (who made half as much as the waiters). They stacked them jigsaw-like in the darkness of their truck. A security guard in a sagging blue uniform, (who made ten more dollars per hour than the waiters), smoked a cigarette while his walkie-talkie crackled. Painted on the side of the truck and grinning down joyfully at the exhausted workers was the rental company’s logo, a huge cartoon pink elephant.

  Colored animals of another sort, wallpaper of Warhol cows adorned the walls of the MOMA cafeteria, the dark cool space where four overstuffed coat racks sagged from the weight of gym bags, overnight bags, and coats. Men stripped off white shirts and black pants. Others sat in chairs, waiting for friends to finish dressing while they stuffed bits of pilfered food, bottles of wine and flower arrangements into their bags.

  “Heading home?” Kevin asked Lee.

  “Yup. You?”

  “Yeah. I’m a tired puppy.”

  “You don’t look tired.” Lee surveyed Kevin’s chest before a sweatshirt covered it.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “In your pants?”

  “Now, now. I only sleep with politically-informed bodies.”

  Lee had yet to attend one of the meetings Kevin had mentioned. What Kevin didn’t tell him was that he only slept with men who, like him, were HIV positive.

  “I can’t even find the time to get my clothes washed,” Lee sighed.

  “I often think about getting out of the city,” Kevin said.

  “This job ... ”

  “Getting to you?”

  “I dunno. I’ve lost track of anything else, any other skill.” They walked down to the exit together. He posed a question to his latest personal ido
l. “If you could do anything, stay in New York, or leave, but you couldn’t be rich, what would you do?”

  “Something else,” Kevin said.

  “What?”

  “Anything. Go barn-building in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Ride a Harley to Malibu. Ride horseback naked by the ocean.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Kevin asked.

  “I’m not like the people we serve. I’m trapped.”

  “No. You can change anything in your life. You’re not the only one. They’re trapped, too.” He nodded up through the window to the looming townhouses. “They just have bigger cages.”

  Lee flicked on a light and dropped his bag on the floor. He tossed the Daily News that he’d picked up on the train into the kitchen trashcan. More exultant articles praising the election of George Bush filled the pages, as if it were inevitable, as if the whole country were still standing on its feet, waving flags. They had read his lips and held up chubby babies ready for kissing, their consent slowly covering the map like a glacier of cement.

  He walked back and forth in his small apartment a while, tired but too anxious to sleep. He thought of setting another elegant late night dinner of nicoise en croute pour un, but passed the point where his table technique cheered him enough to mask a tuna sandwich with a doily.

  He craved green olives, wanted to suck the briny juice from their pimentoed centers. He’d spent Thanksgiving serving dinner to an Upper East Side party of sixteen, who were giddy over the election results.

  Although he’d been fed a meal of turkey, handmade cranberry sauce, and all the holiday foods, he’d longed secretly for the middle class version; cranberry juice from a can, creamed vegetables heated lovingly from plastic pouches by his mother, and her specialty, green olives and cream cheese spread over celery sticks, the annual appetizer served amid the rumble of a football game on the TV. Although his stomach was full as he sat on a stool in the millionaire’s stark white kitchen with his coworkers, he’d felt a hunger for those olives, the taste of home.

  11 Beyond the section of the Metropolitan Museum, the wing of Renaissance chambers, each a complete replica of ornate dressing rooms, salons and bedrooms, became a makeshift dressing room. Several waiters, tired of being boxed into cramped spaces for changing without so much as a chair to sit on while they tied their shoelaces, had slipped through the partitions and into the bedroom exhibit. Delicate high canopy beds lay grandly gathering dust behind glass fences. Despite the red cords prohibiting it, one waiter rested on a Louis XIV chair to change his socks.

  Marcos nodded to the exhibit as he pulled off his sweater. “Bet those sheets haven’t seen any action in a while.”

  Another waiter, Russell, dropped his pants, revealing a pair of boxer shorts emblazoned with racing cars. He leered at Marcos. “Ya wanna give mine a ride?”

  “Ooh, don’t tempt me, baby.”

  “We should give out awards,” remarked Brian. Stripped down to his white shirt, underwear and black socks, he tugged playfully at Russell’s shorts. “Best underwear, best legs.”

  “Sexiest colored underwear,” Ed boasted, as he pulled his pants off to reveal bright red briefs.

  “Best bulge,” added Dennis, an actor.

  “Best packaging,” Marcos corrected.

  “I like women in men’s shorts,” offered Ritchie, as he pulled up his suspenders.

  “That’s because it makes them look like men,” Brian glared coyly at Ritchie.

  “Naw, it’s just a fashion thing, “ Ritchie defended.

  “I like boxers,” Ed said as he sat on the floor changing his socks. He watched a silent and lanky fellow revealing a baggy pair of clean white Calvin Klein shorts. They glanced at each other approvingly.

  Brian continued. “They’re so retro, so Best Friend’s Dad.”

  “The game the whole family can play,” Dennis said. He stood very close to Ed as he buttoned his short with his pants off.

  “Yes, boxers,” Brian declared, watching Ed receive the guy’s flirtations. He considered sharing him with Ed. A threesome seemed just the thing to spice up their less than thrilling sex life. But Ed, who had partaken of such wanton lust in his college days, had moved beyond such antics. “They let things hang free and easy.”

  “Free and easy?” Marcos chirped. “Sounds like a douche.”

  “Douche?” Brian replied, his remark echoing absurdly through the museum hall. “You should know, you douche queen, from cleanin’ out that hole o’ yours!”

  “You bitch!” Marcos jumped after him, nearly slipping bare-socked on the marble floor. The two set off down the corridor. He caught up with Brian, grabbing him about the waist. They nearly toppled into two other waiters, Carl and George, who were both dancers and also half-dressed.

  Ed watched their antics, particularly his boyfriend. He had tried to sit Brian down before leaving, but he was once again in a rush, ironing a soiled shirt, digging for a pair of black socks. Ed had wanted to talk, discuss where their relationship was going. Brian was good at avoiding such soul-baring conversations, choosing instead to simply make love or shrug it off. Talking seriously on the train was impossible.

  To Ed, Brian’s perpetual bad boy attitude seemed a warning. Ed wanted to help, to change Brian, to assist him in maturing so the two could grow into the next phase of their love. He’d read the books on gay couples. They were supposed to be shifting to the next phase after limerence. He’d consulted with a few spiritual books, but most seemed to offer advice that had no bearing on the clumsy reality of being a boyfriend. Soon Brian would come around. He’d realize what love meant, that it was something to be grown and nurtured. It wasn’t just about sex.

  Marcos clutched Ed. “Come, dear. Let us dance.” They whirled about in a comic waltz.

  “No, no. Like this.” George cut in, taking Marcos in his arms.

  He set a tempo and turned about while Ed giggled and took arms with the other young man who’d flirted. His tux pants on but the fly open, he snapped his suspenders on over his bare chest. “Shall we?” He bowed to Ed, who giggled and took him in his arms.

  The quartet whirled delicately about the hall. Ritchie began humming a Strauss waltz.

  While the rest watched, amused by the display, the men danced in circles a few minutes more, their white shirts open and flowing. Occasionally their socked feet slipped, but they held on, smiling at the absurd joyous moment, as if the ghosts of the Renaissance royalty, whose formally pilfered furniture sat stiffly by, looked on in charmed amusement.

  Down the hall, a hundred yards away on the small dance floor in the rotunda of the Met, a few elderly couples made a semblance of a modest samba. They held each other close, not really dancing, but simply clinging to each other while the band’s music echoed through the front hall. It was rare that music was played at Met parties, but the hosts, Bernard and Cornelia Berngratt, were determined to break with the usual decorum.

  “It’s so declassé,” Trish Fuller grinned at Madame Caroline Bucha, a Belgian heiress, “but amusing.”

  The ladies glanced at the few couples shuffling lightly before the band. Trish Fuller’s last remark satisfied Madame Bucha, whose tastes consistently evolved around those who spoke first. She agreed. “So often we don’t get a chance to do a leetle samba.” She took another sip of her drink, careful not to actually finish it. Gulping down a drink to its end was inappropriate. Merely discard and get another. She held her half empty glass to a passing waiter, who, despite the fact that his tray was for canapés, took it.

  “Cornelia always likes to be a bit forward with her parties,” Trish said.

  “It’s nice to be a bit different,” the heiress agreed. “Dahling, you told me at luncheon last week that you were wearing the Chanel.”

  Madame Bucha glanced adoringly at Trish’s Bruno de la Selle gown, a simple black and cream creation which sold for $15,000. But since Trish mentioned how she was determined to wear it at the more photogenic parties, Bruno, a dear old friend s
ince the early Lincoln Center days, agreed to give it to her at half off. Trish fondled her egg-shaped purse, a glittering cluster of beads, attempting to control herself from lighting another cigarette.

  “I changed my mind,” Trish said casually. “Especially when my secretary found out that Bruno was on the guest list.”

  “A wise move, dear.”

  “Thank you. You look radiant. Did I tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  Trish changed the topic. “So, I do hope you can be on the committee for my benefit in June.”

  “Oh, yes of course, the one for the playground?”

  “No, the AIDS benefit. It’ll be here at the Met.”

  Madame Bucha’s face froze a moment. She hesitated. “I think we’re off to Ibiza by mid-June. Do call me though, I’ll check my calendar.”

  “Certainly, dear.” Trish forced a wan smile. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I must check on Winnie. He just cornered the senator and I mustn’t let him drone on.”

  “Ta,” Madame patted her hand lightly on Trish’s arm.

  “Ta.” They drew apart and were quickly greeted by other poised and proper guests.

  We’ll have to cross her off the list, Trish Fuller thought. Just say the word and they run.

  12 The East 73rd Street office and kitchen of Fabulous Food was originally a town house built by a second cousin of the Vanderman empire. The family of Eugene Bolt, who wisely married into the clan, enjoyed two generations of life in the house until the crash of 1929. They left the city and lived in Europe, where they made millions in the black market as Nazi sympathizers. Meanwhile they rented the Manhattan town house to less wealthy friends of the family, who lived in it until 1972, when the Bolt relatives all but died off or moved to other town houses.

  Fenton Gill, a restaurant manager recently in business with Philipe Berget, a noted Belgian chef, offered to buy the space to house their growing catering company. The building was secured with a loan from a German investor, who was also a business partner with the Bolt family and a huge fan of Berget’s recipes. Gill and Berget bought the place.