by Art Bourgeau
So Carl became boy friend, girl friend, confidant, supplicant, savior, sinner, and she cherished him like a favorite doll from her childhood.
Glancing around the room she saw several people she knew, including the blonde hostess of a TV talk show who nodded for Missy to join her. Her attention, however, was fixed on finding Carl's table, and when she did she was furious.
Four were seated around the table: Lagniappe's owner Justin Fortier, blond, smooth-shaven and still deeply tanned from a summer on his boat, next to him a man she did not recognize, then Carl, and next to him a woman who was obviously with Carl. Carl could be so tacky with his flirtations. No taste at all. A discreet little fling was one thing, but she would not have him bringing one of them here and embarrassing her.
Most times she was more tolerant. It even amused her to see him involved in one of these flirtations, knowing his secret: he had almost no self-control—a fact he felt ashamed of, but one that pleased her no end. She used this knowledge to replace conventional, prosaic coitus with blitzkreig-like encounters in hallways, bathrooms, kitchens, taxis—anywhere but bedrooms. She liked to keep him on the edge, usually with her hand, occasionally with her mouth, until he would whimper and even beg like a child. Something she was certain his little pieces were incapable of provoking.
But tonight she was in no need to indulge him. Tonight she was still reeling from her father's death, and she needed a role reversal, needed Carl to be the strong one for a change and look after her.
Justin was the first to see her and stood to greet her with a flirtatious smile. The unknown man next to him also stood, and for a moment Missy's eyes were drawn to him. He was a shade under six feet, darkly handsome with a neatly trimmed beard and the lean body of a runner. He was wearing a double-breasted suit of Italian cut, a white shirt with collar pin, and a red-and-gold club tie. No question, he reeked of poise, but there was something about him that made him seem considerably more than a pretty male in a pretentious whiskey ad. There was something very . . . physical . . . in the way he looked at her that both unsettled and attracted her. Like her father . . .
Carl was on his feet, too, and for a moment she compared him with the stranger. Both were dark and slim, had beards, but there it ended. There was something obviously soft, pliant in
Carl—none of that in this new man.
She kissed Carl lightly on the lips, Justin on the cheek, and shook hands with the stranger who was introduced as Felix Ducroit, a friend of Justin's from New Orleans.
A waiter brought her a chair, and only then did she acknowledge the presence of the other woman across from her. She was in her mid-thirties, with reddish-blonde hair of that in-between length that meant she was letting it grow out. Her skin was soft and delicate, the kind that begged floppy hats and cool shade, but the tracery of wrinkles around her eyes indicated a careless disregard of its delicacy. Her eyes were clear and deep blue, but underneath were dark shadows that made her look tired and drawn.
Carl introduced them. "Laura Ramsey, this is Missy Wakefield," and Missy was irritated even more. By introducing Missy to the other woman, rather than vice versa, he made it seem as if Missy were the intruder, and not, as of course it was, the other way around.
Missy smiled through cocaine-clenched teeth and managed a perfunctory "Hello."
"Would you like a-" Carl started, but before he could say "drink," Violet, a pretty waitress with a gentle look and flowing hair of a sixties flower child, appeared at her shoulder with a Stolichnaya and soda.
It gave her a small sense of satisfaction when Violet leaned over to say, "We missed you, but your tan looks great. Did you have a good time?"
"Yes, but it's good to be back."
"Where were you?" she heard Laura Ramsey say.
Missy let the question hang for a moment while she settled back and lit a cigarette. lf there was one thing a lifetime of breeding and manners had taught her, it was how to keep everyone waiting.
Finally she said, "St. Martin."
"Did you stay on the French side or the Dutch?"
"The French. The Dutch is too much like a bad weekend in Atlantic City."
"It's a great island. I managed to get there two years ago for a few days. How long were you there?"
"Only a week this time, unfortunately."
"What she means, Laura, is that the reason she was there was unfortunate," Carl said. "Missy's father just died, and she was at their family place down there recovering from the shock . . ."
In fact, she hadn't intended to mention her father's death, at least not in front of two strangers, and she resented the way Carl seemed to be, deliberately, asserting himself by stepping on her toes.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Were you close?" Laura asked, the sympathy in her voice sounding sincere but too near pity for Missy's comfort.
"Yes," she said flatly and then hurried to change the subject.
"Now, folks, bring me up to date on what's been going on around here."
"To be honest," said Justin, "when you arrived we were talking about the South Philly runaways."
"The what?" said Missy.
"I guess you haven't seen the papers," Justin went on. "Yesterday one of them, I forgot which, had an article about it. It seems that teenage girls have been disappearing without a trace from South Philly. Almost a dozen of them . . ."
Carl put in, "it wasn't that many, more like a half-dozen—"
"Half a dozen, a dozen," said Justin. "People are beginning to take some notice."
"Well, South Philly seems like a good place to disappear from," said Missy with an edge in her voice. This wasn't what she wanted to talk about now.
"They ran pictures of the girls, and they were all quite pretty, so young and fresh—"
"And Justin has been trying to get me to admit I know something about it," said Carl, smiling nervously.
Missy smiled back. You'd better be nervous, she thought. Making me sit here like this with another woman at the same table, right here in front of everyone. . . Still looking directly at Carl, she said to Justin,
"If it has anything to do with teenage girls in white panties, Carl could just be your man . . . Sorry, darling," she said and leaned over to give him a proprietary peck. "Just joking."
Carl clearly didn't appreciate the joke.
"It's supposed to be a classic fetish," said Justin, sounding unaccustomably pontifical.
"Thank you, Dr. Freud," said Missy, still looking at Carl and enjoying the way he looked away from her. "But surely South Philly strays aren't why you're all gathered here tonight," she said, this time shifting her attention to Laura, Carl's new one. Laura said nothing.
There was a silence at the table as attention shifted to Carl. Finally he said, "We're having a . . . little celebration—"
"What are we celebrating?" Missy asked, as if any birthday cake within sight would surely conceal a ticking bomb.
Again silence, and then in a voice, for him, remarkably cold and strong, Carl said, "We're celebrating my moving to New York."
The shock of that, combined with the cocaine, gave her a heart palpitation so strong that it felt as though someone had jabbed her in the chest with a thumb. For a moment the shapes and colors in the room seemed to shift out of sync, and her skin broke out in droplets of sweat.
She took a drag on her cigarette to calm herself and tried to ignore the trickle of sweat between her breasts.
"I think I must have come in on the middle of this movie. Now tell me again, slowly. You're doing what?"
"I'm moving to New York, Missy . . . Laura has been helping me to set up a show there—"
"And just how has Laura been doing that?"
"Laura works for a paper here. She was on assignment up in SoHo and met the gallery owner. She was good enough to mention me. He'd heard of me and agreed to look at my work. I guess he liked the idea I was from Denver . . . a rustic American from the hinterlands . . ."
"Which paper?" said Missy, zeroing in on the heart of the mat
ter.
"The Globe," Laura told her.
"How did you two meet? In a museum, I just bet."
"Yes, as a matter of fact, we met at the Philadelphia Art Museum when they were having that exhibition of Texas art and culture. I was covering it for the paper."
Turning back to Carl, Missy said, "I believe that was last year . . ."
When she got nothing from him, she turned back to Laura.
"Then you're the art critic for the Globe?"—knowing full well that she wasn't, since she already knew the Globe's art critic.
"No, I do features—"
"But you just happened to be in New York on assignment where you met a gallery owner who just happened to be interested in Carl's work—"
"There's a bit more to it than that, but I guess that's pretty much it."
The damn woman was too cool, and she, Missy realized, had been losing hers. "Well, Carl, you said he looked at your work and liked it. What does that mean? Is he going to give you your own show or just take a couple of canvases on consignment and maybe never pay you?"
"I thought you understood, Miss, he's giving me my own show, and it's a good gallery so I know he's not going to cheat me—at least not any more than any other gallery owner cheats."
Missy squashed out her cigarette and immediately reached for another. Anything to keep her mouth busy, to keep her from turning geek and leaping across the table to bite the head off that meddling bitch.
As she fumbled for a light she heard a calm voice say, "May I?"
For a moment the words didn't register. Then, turning slightly, she found herself looking into the eyes of the newcomer, Felix Ducroit. Now the resemblance to her late father seemed stronger, and it first startled her, then quieted her. She put the cigarette between her lips and he lit it with a silver Dunhill lighter.
Forcing a more cheerful note, she said, "I think it's good about the show." With the possible "I" she tried to reassert herself. "We've thought a lot about getting a New York show. I'm really happy about it, but I don't understand this business about moving there."
"It's not immediate. The show's not until spring so I won't be going for about a month . . ."
"But, darling, I don't understand why you need to go at all. Here you've got friends, an established career, a good life, a nice loft. Why don't you do the show but stay here?"
"Missy, I can't. This is my chance to move up. I've done all I can here. If I want to make a bigger name for myself I have to go to New York. It's the same for actors. If you want to be in the theater, it's New York. Movies, it's Hollywood. For an artist, no question, you have to go to New York."
"Thank you for the lecture. I'm not exactly a stranger in the art business-"
"Then please don't act like one. I wish for once you'd think of somebody besides yourself and be happy for me."
"Like Miss Laura here?"
"I think it's time for a bottle of celebratory champagne," Justin cut in, ever the diplomatic mein host.
Missy ignored him. "I still don't see why it's necessary to move there so soon for a spring show. Couldn't you wait and move there, say, in March?" She knew she was pushing it, losing control but couldn't stop herself—and she hated this fucking Laura for being responsible . . .
"The gallery owner," Carl said, now trying to calm matters, "wants me there through the holidays, for parties and so forth. It's a bore but he says if I'm a no-show there will be no show."
Nicely put, he thought.
"I think some champagne would be just right," said Laura enjoying the byplay even though it did make her uneasy. Actually there was nothing between her and Carl, not the way Missy Wakefield thought. But it was up to Carl to enlighten her.
“So you're just going to pick up and run out on your friends like you've done with everything else in your life."
"Whoa, time out. You're understandably upset, Missy, but enough is enough," said Justin, raising both hands. He hated scenes in his establishment, bad for business.
Missy looked at him. "You're right, Justin, enough is enough," and she picked up her purse and headed for the ladies room. Moving away from the table, she thought she had never felt more alone and betrayed. Goddamn them all.
She slammed the door of the ladies room behind her. She needed some privacy to regain her composure, but instead found Lois Fortier, Justin's wife, a striking redhead in a simple, black Halston. She was standing at the sink touching up her makeup and didn't glance in Missy's direction at the sound of the door; she let the mirror do the work for her.
"From- the look on your face I'd say you've heard the news," said Lois not unkindly.
Missy locked the door and walked toward the sink. "What news?"
"About Carl moving to New York?"
"Oh, that," she said as she fumbled in her purse. "Yes, I've heard about it and I think it's very exciting. This is the break we've been waiting for all along."
Lois turned and looked at her.
Missy took out her compact, opened it, and laid it on the edge of the sink.
"Of course, there's nothing I want more than to see Carl become the biggest and most famous artist in the world—"
. . .And move in with Laura, Lois thought but didn't say as she smoothed her dress over her hips and leaned forward to make sure there was no lipstick on her teeth.
"Look, dear, I know the way men are. There's no use fighting it. You just can't trust them. Soon as you turn your back they're trying to replace you with a younger model. I keep waiting for Justin to trade me in. Of course, if I ever find out he has I'll throttle him . .
While Lois was chatting on, trying to make Missy feel better, Missy took a small packet about the size of a stick of chewing gum out of her purse and was carefully pouring some white powder from it onto the mirror of her compact. When she heard the words "younger model" she felt no special comfort, even though this Laura could be ten years older than she was. In Carl's case the older woman seemed an attraction—though a pretty damn sudden one, considering his obsession with teeny-teens in white panties . . .
"That's not the way it is at all," Missy said. "She's just a friend from the paper who's trying to help out." Which, ironically, happened to be the case.
Lois nodded, not wanting, like some others, to rub it in, but not convinced either.
Missy, needing relief, not an argument, lowered her tone and smiled. "Want some?" she said as she took the cover off a matchbook and began to divide the white powder into lines on the compact's mirror.
"Maybe just a line," said Lois.
"Like I said, this is what we've both been working for, and we're both happy as can be. Oh, I'll miss him, sure, but New York's just a train ride away so we'll see a lot of each other and I'll get to meet a whole new group of people in New York," she said, rolling a twenty dollar bill into a tube and handing it to Lois, smiling until she felt her face would crack. Crack . . . not for her, for the peasants . . .
"I must say, Missy, you're taking this a lot better than I would," Lois said. "When you took Carl Laredo under your wing he was a hick. Without you, he'd still be a pig's ear."
Even in her anger Missy knew this was not strictly true. When they met, Carl had just come back from living in France and knew more about food, art and wine than anyone she'd ever known. Including herself.
Lois, who had bent down to the powder on the compact's mirror, looked at the rolled-up twenty and straightened up.
"Don't you have anything larger than this? I never like to snort with anything as small as a twenty. You can never tell whose nose it's been up."
Missy threw back her head and laughed a loud, genuine laugh. "Lois, did anyone ever tell you that you can be a cunt?"
"Only Justin, and that was in the heat of passion," she said with a demure smile. "And speaking of passion, or an approximation thereof, I saw Felix at Carl's table. What do you think of him?"
"He's . . . nice-looking but I didn't pay much attention . . ."
"Oh, well, I just thought you might have notice
d him. He's an old friend of Justin's from New Orleans. Made a fortune developing real estate. I believe that's what he's doing here, some big project or other. Of course there's more to it . . . his ex-wife lives here and Justin thinks he wants to get back together with her."
Missy had no comment, finished her cocaine and put her compact back in her purse.
Lois, though, wasn't finished on the subject of Mr. Felix. "You probably know her . . . Susan Ducroit? She lives in the Locust Towers on Fifteenth Street and owns the Pine Street Charcuterie."
Missy nodded abruptly, picked up her purse, took a glance in the mirror to be sure her makeup was fresh and no telltale powder was clinging to her nostrils, and started for the door . . .An uneasy silence settled over the table, and she knew immediately they had been talking about her.
Once she was seated Carl leaned toward her. "You okay?"
Not looking at Laura, she said, "Of course I'm okay. Aren't I always, darling?"
Laura was looking at Carl. "It's getting late, Carl. Don't you think we should go back to your loft to make sure the caterer is finished? The crowd from the Spectrum should be arriving any time now."
"What crowd from the Spectrum——?" Missy could have bitten her tongue. It was the damn cocaine loosening it.
"The rock group Fraternization is playing there tonight," Carl said uneasily. "They're coming over after the show for a little get-together . . . Why don't you and Felix here come around—"
She and Felix? What a nervy thing to do. Well, she wasn't someone to be laid off on a stranger . . . even one that strangely moved her . . . like a three-eyed cousin. Not after all she'd done for him. Lois was right—he was a hick, all the acquired French culture notwithstanding.
Truth to tell, below her anger she had never felt more vulnerable in her whole life than at this moment. Mostly she was the strong one, in charge, and the one time she needed someone, humiliation was what she got. Men ....