The Poser

by Jacob Rubin

  Soon Mama, Max, Lucy, and I were crammed into the hired car, motoring to Marguerite Harris’s town house, ten blocks away. Lucy sat between Mama and me, the whole time petting my thigh, this with Mama sitting right next to her, transforming the streets out the window, with her very gaze, into a kind of poster for longing.

  Max swiveled around noisily in his seat. “Proud of your man over there?”

  Mama smiled absently.

  “Proud as a peacooock,” Lucy said, inching her hand up my thigh. I smiled, removed it.

  The driver stopped at Mandel Street in front of Marguerite Harris’s four-story town house bookended by pear trees in full bloom. Figures could be seen milling on the roof like the building’s hair, their voices echoing down to us, glib and jocular. That throb and chatter emanated, too, from the building, a sound that stings any passerby with a prick of loneliness and any invitee with dread.

  Max, at the head of our group, employed the heart-shaped (not the heart traded on Valentine’s Day, but an actual organ-shaped device) brass knocker to the impressive door. Lucy, in the shadows, pecked at me. “Not right now,” I whispered, and smiled, which she took as countermand to all I asked. Max knocked again. “Hello!” he greeted the loud impassive house. “You’d think there’d be a buzzer,” he muttered, and just as he was arching his head to call up to one of the figures on the roof, the door swung open, and there stood before us a seventy-year-old man in a chiffon wedding dress.

  “So difficult to hear this bloody knocker,” he said. “Why the Whore doesn’t install a proper buzzer, I’ll never know.”

  Marguerite Harris, it should be said, was known among her friends as the Virgin Whore because even at the age of fifty-five (or thereabouts, no one knew her exact age) she had not yet parted with her virginity. Her lack of desire for sex did not originate in any deep-seated belief, religious or philosophical. Aesthetically and from the absolute depths of her, she found the act uninteresting, failing to be “fresh,” the sole criterion for her attention. Years before, she had hosted an infamous orgy to see what “this sex thing was all about.” As rumor had it, Marguerite invited to her town house some friendly, hirsute professionals along with famous artists, renting, for the experimental purposes of the evening, a haul of trapeze equipment from the Big Tent Circus as well as several live farm animals. A wardrobe was wheeled in filled with such diverse costumes as nuns’ habits, adult diapers, judge’s robes, lederhosen, overalls, and several fake long gray beards (fitted for both the male and female face); having covered her chaise longue and ivory bookcases with plastic tarps, and catered the event with genitalia-shaped cuisine from all over the world, Marguerite then sat with her secretary on adjacent wooden chairs as the seventy or so guests delved into busy, crowded intercourse. By most accounts, the heiress lasted twenty minutes, the whole time yawning and sighing, and soon repaired to the downstairs study in order to appreciate an eighteenth-century washbasin.

  There passed between us a silence to confirm our greeter had been wearing a bridal gown. Max motioned for Mama to pass and then followed her through the open door. Lucy pulled me aside. “Let’s find a bathroom and fuck.”

  “Lucy, I don’t think it’s—”

  She grabbed my arm.

  With alacrity, with a smirking sense of conspiracy, she separated us from Mama and Max. Down a hallway lined with caterers; through a sitting room where a string quartet played, the musicians—we saw as we passed through—wearing wolf masks; up the staircase, along which a series of black-and-white photographs showed in a flip-book sequence a black woman pushing out the corona of her newborn, who, at the top of the stairs, proved to be Caucasian; past a pear-shaped man in a silk waistcoat bounding after an escaped gerbil; past a woman with a hat made of plastic fruit kissing a woman with the same succulent hat. Around another hall Lucy led me to an unoccupied bathroom where we—as she ordered—fucked.

  After, she sabotaged the reconstruction of my tux. “Kiss me,” she said. “Kiiiiss me.”

  “I need to find my mother.”

  “Giovanni loooves his mama.”

  “But she’s leaving tomorrow,” I said, making my way to the door.

  It didn’t take me long to find Mama and Max, standing in conversation with Bernard below the famous portrait of Marguerite’s grandfather, the oilman D. W. T. Harris, the one on posters and the covers of hardback books: Harris in top hat and tie, about to scowl. His eyes are gray and humorless, his face as delicate as a horse jockey’s. In the painting he has perfected the imperious glare of one who’s amassed huge sums of money precisely to commission such portraits and have them hang over the living.

  As I soon gathered, the three had been discussing Mama’s recent trial, a conversation not particularly welcome, it seemed, given Mama’s shaking head and galled eyes. They were so exercised, in fact, neither she nor Bernard seemed to notice my entrance, my presence acknowledged only by Max, who inhaled deeply while enlarging his eyes as if to express some ongoing, delicate situation. After some listening, I understood that they were discussing the letter Unheim’s lawyer, Le Fleuer, had produced, the one supposedly sent from Sandra to ask after Unheim.

  “I’m merely asking if you can be sure the letter was falsified,” Bernard said. He looked oddly playful as if debating for sport the ending of a forgettable movie.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Not at all,” he said, sipping from his tumbler of whiskey.

  “Her whole life Sandra railed against him, she couldn’t stand him,” Mama said.

  “But isn’t it possible that she sent this one letter?” Bernard asked. “That she had one single moment of doubt? You must concede that’s possible, no?”

  “Really, you have some nerve, you know that. I worked with the woman my whole life. You think you know her better than me?”

  “No, not at all. I’m merely saying, it’s possible the woman had moments of doubt, of kind feeling for her nephew. That’s all.” The more upset Mama became (setting her hand on her hip, shaking her head), the more lighthearted Bernard seemed (smiling like a baffled innocent failing to understand why others have taken offense). That same smile was rising on my lips, too, an expression thwarted only by the concerted effort of several facial muscles. Well, you have been pitying yourself quite a bit, Mama, I almost blurted out. After all, I was busy doing only what you’ve wanted me to. It was happening again: Bernard’s attitude finding me.

  “You’ve got some nerve making light of such a matter,” Mama said.

  “Oh, I would never! No! Never!” He reached across and held her shoulder with his left hand. “Just debating the merits of the case, which don’t seem entirely clear to me, that’s all.” Then he turned to me as if signaling for help in ushering out a pesky caller. And only then did I realize that I had never once in all our correspondence mentioned to Mama the near-drugged sensation my imitations of Bernard induced. “Quite a spirited woman,” said Bernard. “Absolutely delightful.”

  Mama shook her head.

  “I know you must curse this Unheim for keeping you away from Giovanni. But I can assure you, not to worry! He’s in good hands now.” The now seemed to be added intentionally. “If you’ll excuse me.” With a semi-ironic bow, Bernard turned and made his way to the den. Some sort of atonal music was playing there.

  Mama watched him leave. “Be careful with that man.”

  “That man,” said Max, “is singlehandedly responsible for every good fucking hallelujah that’s happened to us.” Seeing Mama unassuaged, he added, “Not the warmest soul in the world, I agree, but harmless, truly.”

  “Truly,” I said, mainly because I knew I should talk and wanted to keep it short. As if dredged up by Bernard, a slew of ghastly thoughts were rising to mind. (Oh, were you really so, so wronged? Just behave, please. Just be grateful and smile, please. You’re here strictly as my guest, understand? I could have you banned. Behave accordingly. Jesse
Unheim had a point—you’re always meddling in people’s business.) I breathed deep.

  “Might we escape to the roof?” Max suggested. “I hear the hors d’oeuvres are a revelation.”

  • • •

  In the mild evening air, the roof’s garden terrace reeked of tulips and honeysuckle. At that four-story height, the City took on the inviting quiet of a village, and I felt like myself again. Illuminated windows were but yellow patches in the quilt of redbrick. I kept making quick trips to the bar for champagne. Mama, too.

  Next to it Marguerite Harris, our host, was holding forth to a group of wary men in suits. I introduced Mama.

  “Thanks so much for having us,” Mama said.

  “Thanks so much for having him,” Marguerite said, vigorously kissing Mama on both cheeks. “Meet my darlings,” she said of the suited men. They were, she explained, homeless, or had been before her intervention. Their cardboard pleas for food or money, scratched with messages like TIRED & HUNGRY or SIK NEED MONY, she had begun to sell at auction.

  “You’re an artist then?” Mama asked one of them.

  The man shrugged and pointed to Marguerite. “I make signs. She sells it like it’s art.”

  “So edible,” said Marguerite.

  “What kind of signs?” I asked.

  “Aren’t that many types: Go, Stop, Food. Mine was Food.”

  “Do you find this place strange?” I asked.

  “No stranger than anywhere else. I hate places.”

  “Cut them up with a cookie cutter and eat them,” said Marguerite.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Places are terrible.”

  “I’m never right,” he corrected me.

  Marguerite placed a hand over her heart. “My darlings.”

  A grave caterer kept appearing with a platter of champagne flutes. Another trailed him to collect the drained glasses. As soon as the first departed, the second appeared, followed again by the first, in an efficient and unending mechanism of inebriation. As if on a ride, Mama and I accepted and returned these flutes and soon found ourselves quite drunk in a corner of the roof. “I hate places,” I said, “I’m never right.” I had been imitating the homeless man we’d talked to, relishing that flat baritone.

  “Shh!” Mama giggled. “You’re screaming!”

  I was having trouble not swaying. “None are the right place,” I continued. “You’re my only place, Mama.”

  “My Giovanni.”

  “I’ll miss my Mama!” I said, imitating something, I’m not sure what. The words like hot soup in my mouth.

  “You have your Lucy,” she said. “That’s good.”

  “But I still can’t do her!” I stomped my foot. Heedling—that’s who.

  “It’s the head, I’m telling you.” She said, “The tilt of her head.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Like I haven’t tried it.”

  “Let’s see.”

  I shucked off my shoulders. I took a deep breath. “Giovaaaanni,” I said, “you’re so creeeeepy.” I was going around in a circle by the roof’s ledge in that gait of hers, a kind of sped-up lumbering. “Are you kidding me?” I said. “Our show was teeeerrible.” I was tilting my head too much. “Geoff keeps fucking up.”

  “Almost,” Mama said. “Walk a little slower.”

  I slowed down, sped up. I threw my head back. I cackled. I ranged around the roof, lying on my side, hands folded under my head, breathing that slow, deep-sleep breath.

  “No, no,” Mama said. “Stand up.”

  Marguerite and the man in the wedding dress had gathered near us like spectators drawn to a foreign ritual.

  “Try the head again,” Mama said.

  I heard my neck crack. “But it iiiiiiiisn’t right, Mama,” I said. “Giovaaaaanni.”

  “Tilt it more.”

  I was groaning.

  “No, no, no,” Mama said. “The head!”

  But I was grunting and moaning. “Oh, Giovanni, oh, oh, yeah!” I was grinding the air with my pelvis. “Oh, Giovanni, oh!”

  I could hear Marguerite cackling.

  “Giovaaaaanni, you’re gonna, you’re gonna . . .”

  Mama blanched. But I couldn’t stop.

  “. . . you’re gonna maaaaake me cum!”

  There was silence. The man in the wedding dress spoke first. “Bravo, really. Quite something.” “How little one needs to understand in order to adore!” Marguerite added. Then I turned and saw Lucy. A tear hung in her eye. I tried to say her name but could only say: “Giovaaaanni!”

  I had never seen her cry before, her eyes like blurred pits. “Lucy—” Now that I landed on her name, I could only say it. “Lucy!” But she ran away, and after a frozen moment I chased after her. As I wheeled on to the head of the stairs, a herd of those homeless men was coming up it, thick as the crowds in midtown. “Excuse me,” I said. “Please!” I tried to push through, but there were too many men, so many. A familiar voice came crying out behind me: “You must understand. He’s just sympathetic, sympathetic to the bone. . . .”

  NINE

  What I remember of that tour are the phone booths: on street corners, in hotel lobbies and gas stations, those phone booths, which across the country have graffiti keyed into their doors and smell like human palms. The country lay before us like a nude in an oil painting, and I didn’t once sneak a peek, burying myself in those booths as into a vertical tomb.

  Soon after Marguerite’s party word had trickled from Lucy to Bernard, from Bernard to Max, from Max to me, that Lucy had quit the tour. “She doesn’t want to see him” is the message I received. It seemed absurd that so many people could fit between us. I did all the things: sent flowers and cards, waited outside her apartment, called and called again. I couldn’t know if I was doing it correctly, if I was picking the right cards, sending the right flowers, saying the right things.

  Mama rang to comfort me. I saw her to the train the day after Marguerite’s party in a state of mute despair. “She’ll call you,” she said on the phone a few days later. “Tomorrow you’ll hear from her, I guarantee it, Giovanni, or the day after. And if you don’t, well—what you did on the roof—she has to know that’s who you are.”

  I said, “Yes.”

  The tour was clammy hands competing to shake mine. The vegetable smell of certain stages. Everywhere we went I saw her silhouette: patterns of shade on a suburban lawn, the stars above the desert.

  We held a press conference in the lobby of the Bellwether Hotel in Lake City, the crown of the Midwest where we were scheduled for four sold-out nights at the Northern Juke. We sat before a conference table topped with a floral arrangement of microphones. The cameras whirred and cranked. The journalists hovered over their chairs instead of sitting in them.

  “How’d you learn to do it?”

  “Same way I learned to walk.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Who knows?”

  Chuckles.

  “What do you think about when you’re doing it?”

  “A choice combination of everything and nothing.”

  Guffaws.

  “What do you think accounts for the popularity of your act?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve never trusted popularity and don’t plan to now, just because I’m enjoying some.”

  Applause.

  The quotation marks swaddled me. It was all something I could say, something I could mean, but the reporters jotted it down as news. One fingered a stray lock, another smirked to himself. I could see them right then hatching their phrases, cherry-picking their quotes to concoct the mystique of Giovanni the Celebrity for their readers, men and women who would happen upon these pieces while waiting for their toaster to spit out their bread or while buckling along on the elevated train, readers who would wonder about this Bernini and so buy a ticket for the tour date nearest them, readers who
might, at first, hover by the back of the amphitheater before edging forward to volunteer themselves, readers who would enter the spotlight with circumspection and leave it with merriment—the merriment of having been verified—and all of us, in that way, collaborating in a lie.

  Touch. This is what Max prescribed. “Distract yourself, boy. Goddamnit, that’s what life is—food, money, sex. Sex and money, Giovanni!” He escorted the faux-coy to the beaded leather booths where we always somehow were.

  The sheer pulchritude—I couldn’t stomach it. Those buxom brunettes, those doe-eyed blondes, all armed with rehearsed insights and sweet rebukes for the traveling entertainer. “You’re like a sculptor,” said a redhead with a waist as wide as my hand. “And we’re all your marble.” “I’m all right,” I said, “I’m okay, thank you,” and disappeared to claw at Lucy through the phone.

  Once—once!—I caught her at the end of the line. I stood in a telephone booth in the lobby of a hotel out west, decorated in melons and pinks. It rang for a long time. Finally I heard, “Heeello?”

  “Lucy?!”

  There was a pause.

  “I didn’t meeean to pick up. I’m going.”

  “Please.”

  “Whaaaat?”

  “Oh, please, oh, please.” I said, “I love you.”

  There was the phone-crackle.

  “Ugh, I know,” she said and hung up.

  • • •

  Those two words—I know—buoyed me the last days of the tour. As did that sound she’d made: ugh, that grunt of disgust, so nakedly expressed it could only be meant for family. Those two words and that ugh—preserved in my brain exactly as Lucy had said them (through the crackling of the line, in a tone of exhausted, motherly forbearance)—steadied my quivering gut, and I returned to the Communiqué that first Sunday I was back.

  I caught the last two songs of her set. To watch her sway in that spotlight before a crowd of men in the afternoon dark was to know the blackness of desire. I downed two shots at the bar, waiting until she exited through the wing before opening the side door. I stumbled backstage as through thick undergrowth, tripping, retracing my steps, getting lost again, until I arrived at a small metal table, a replacement for the glass one I’d tripped over months before. Pawing the wall, I located the handle of the door and, with a pause and a wild beating heart, swung it open.