Maggie Darling

by James Howard Kunstler

  The car, owned by Odeon Records, came five minutes early. It was an immense vintage Bentley that had once belonged to the contralto Olga Kathura, with a bar and a compact-disc player (nothing so vulgar as a television) in the passenger compartment and only one disc in evidence, Frederick Swann’s latest, titled The Bitter Wine of Loneliness. The driver wore a snappy mauve and green uniform that looked as though it had once been used on a Star Trek episode. The bar included a mini-refrigerator that contained three bottles of Louis Roderer Cristal and one of Swedish vodka. Maggie’s sense of thrift would not allow her to crack one of the champagne bottles, so she poured herself two fingers of vodka in a pony glass and listened to Swann’s plaintive tunes all the way down the parkway.

  3

  Tortured by Menials

  The employees of the Royalton Hotel dressed in a uniform of black slacks and plain black shirts buttoned at the throat, male and female alike. Maggie couldn’t help imagining that the hotel had been taken over by the Vietcong. The decor featured darkly lacquered surfaces everywhere, furnished incongruously with chairs and sofas draped in baggy white slipcovers that looked as though they’d been borrowed from the porch of a beach house. It was all so arch, so determined to make a memorable style statement, that Maggie felt the distinct urge to bake sugar cookies and distribute them around the lobby as an antidote.

  “Mr. Swann’s suite?” she inquired discreetly at the desk.

  “We don’t have a Mr. Swann registered here,” the desk clerk said with a straight face, as though greatly impressed with his own ability to keep secrets.

  Maggie’s sharp annoyance rather surprised her. “Oh, come on, I know he’s here.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Not according to the register.”

  She wanted to break something, specifically the invitingly slender neck of the young man behind the counter. Just then she recalled that day at the Four Seasons and the note passed by Swann—some name he was registered under, some figure from English history. She racked her brain.

  “Do you have a Mr. Cromwell here?”

  “No.”

  “A Mr. Carlyle?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Newton?”

  “No Newton.”

  She was about to inform the little maggot that Mr. Earl Wise of Odeon Records could probably straighten out the problem in a digital nanosecond—and reduce the maggot to a mere unemployment statistic—when a name popped into her head. “Have you a Humphrey Davy here?”

  “A Sir Humphrey Davy. Yes. Suite 1004. Go right up. He’s expecting you.” The clerk smiled oleaginously and returned to his computer keyboard.

  Swann was waiting down the hallway when the elevator discharged Maggie onto the tenth floor. Seeing him, lithe, golden, barefoot, and altogether luminous in a pair of artfully distressed blue jeans and a blousy white silk shirt, the annoyance at once drained out of her and she trembled slightly.

  “I hope you like garlic,” he said.

  4

  Spellbound

  “My father was posted to Singapore when I was nine years old,” Swann declaimed some minutes later, brandishing chopsticks from which dangled a morsel of some khaki-and-carmine-colored flesh that Maggie could not quite identify. The suite contained a well-equipped kitchen, done in the hotel’s signature dark lacquered cabinetry and brushed chrome. “He was chargé d’affaires,” Swann continued. “Our life there was an idyll out of E. M. Forster. More servants than one knew what to do with. Lots of lovely insects for a boy to play with. The Goliath beetles were my favorites, so large—about as big as a baby’s shoe—that you could paint numbers on their shells in nail polish and race them about the courtyard. No need for batteries, either. More champagne?”

  “Thank you.”

  Here Swann dropped the morsel of mystery meat into a long-handled wok where it sputtered and danced. Maggie observed intently, as she did in any kitchen not her own. He seemed comfortable with the procedure.

  “Mind if I ask? What is that stuff?”

  “’Tis an Asiatic conch, the cornet of Melaka. Sweet as milk-fed veal. I have it flown to me when I am recording, for it is reputed to be not only a creative tonic but an aphrodisiac. The whole operation sets me back a mere two hundred pounds—air freight, dry ice, the lot— which, I daresay, is little more than one casually drops at any decent bistro in this town—am I right?”

  “I suppose—”

  “Lest you think me extravagant.”

  Swann emptied a steel utility bowl of conch into the wok and began stir-frying.

  “Where did you learn to cook?” Maggie asked.

  “’Twas my parents’ misfortune to be present at the royal cricket grounds on Boxing Day 1983, the afternoon that a band of Malay unionists ran amok in the grandstand. Among other atrocities, they lobbed a hand grenade into the governor-general’s box. Mother was mortally wounded and—” Swann dabbed his sleeve at the corner of an eye “—died the following morning at hospital without regaining consciousness. Father was merely crippled, made a quadriplegic.”

  “How horrible.”

  Swann emptied a saucer of little chopped things into the wok. A steamy cloud redolent of lemon and jasmine blossoms wafted to the ceiling. Soon, he was ladling chunks of conch and its aromatic broth over rice-filled black ceramic bowls, which he carried to a small round table naped in wine-colored linen and set with a kind of modernistic silver service that looked more like miniature weapons of war than eating utensils. A single dark-petaled tulip stood there in a tubular chrome vase.

  “Father and I returned to London,” Swann continued at the table. “He’d lost everything, you see, for all we’d had as a family, really, were foreign office perquisites—our quarters in the embassy compound, cars, servants, the whole bloody kit. And all that remained was his civil service disability pension. So, there we were, just the two of us in a cramped basement flat in Fournier Street round the corner from the Spitalfields Market. ’Twas there I learned to cook and keep house, for father was quite helpless. I did not even attend school, since we could not afford a day nurse, and the only alternative would’ve been the soldiers’ home, of which father had a morbid terror. So I stayed home with him all but a few hours of the day, feeding him, changing him, sponging him off.”

  “It sounds like the sheerest hell for a boy of—how old were you?”

  “Twelve when Mum died. More champagne?”

  “Thank you. By the way, this is delicious. You have a deft hand with the lemongrass. It can overpower a dish.”

  “I don’t believe in conquering the senses by main force. Where was I?”

  “Home with Dad.”

  “Ah, yes. I scrimped and saved and bought my first guitar, a twelve-string Hafenstoller. Father loathed the telly. I diverted him with little ditties I’d make up about characters in the neighborhood—the butcher’s boy and Mrs. Cutglass, the landlady. The truth is, my own little life was nearly as circumscribed as Father’s. The few hours I had to myself each week I spent skulking about the Guildhall Library, copying galliards and pavanes out of ancient quartos. More conch?”

  “Thank you. How long did this go on? This … way of life?”

  “It ended mercifully one week before my sixteenth birthday. Father, you see, had lost an eye, a kidney, his gall bladder, a portion of the liver, and half a lung in the grenade attack, in addition to the spinal injury, and one morning I threw open the curtains to discover that he had become an angel overnight. Within two weeks I’d joined my first band, Petrolbombs, as lead vocalist, and never looked back.”

  Maggie would not recall the ensuing events quite so clearly the next day, for one glass of champagne chased the next, and after devouring some heavenly confection made out of chocolate, puff pastry, brandied pears, and crème anglaise, she found herself smoking hashish out of a little bone pipe. This led to a sequence of amatory tableaux that came back to her only in hallucinatory fragments afterward: Swann bending to kiss her throat; her breasts heaving beneath the cashmere; his hand deftly poppin
g the brassiere clasp between them, liberating them; her hands fumbling to unbutton his shirt; the crucifix of curly blond hair running from nipple to nipple across his chest and down his slender abdomen; her skirt dropping to the floor with an audible thud, and his long-fingered hands cupping her “little wet bottom,” as he called it; his blue jeans coming away as though they had been made of crepe paper, and the surprisingly sudden appearance—since he did not wear underpants—of his enormous rampant organ, which compared to Kenneth’s member the way a Genoa salami compares to a Coney Island red hot. And then in bed Swann was seemingly indefatigable, flipping her this way and that, rotating her to all compass points in a duet of penetration that went on, with a few breathless intervals, until pinkish gray light glowed in a slit between the draperies. Then she fell unconscious.

  “I adore you Mrs. Darling,” were the words that roused her later that morning. Though a hangover gripped her like the thought of a death in the family, she surrendered again to Swann’s repeated amorous incursions, until it felt as though her brain had somehow taken up residence in that tractless region beneath her belly and all of life was reduced to a watery adventure down some yawing rapids of pleasure.

  “In Singapore I had a nurse named Mrs. Gray,” Swann murmured in the aftermath.

  “Were you in love with her?”

  “I have a distinct memory of her washing my willy in the bath, with rather more vigor than the task called for.”

  “In America we call that child abuse.”

  “I don’t think I was harmed by it. Poor thing. It might have been all the fun she ever had.”

  Just then, Maggie’s headache reasserted itself, like a large gong banging in a tiny room. Swann announced that he was late for the recording studio. He induced Maggie into the luxurious shower, where he massaged her temples under a stream of hot water, then had her one more time in a position the yoga masters call “two storks spearing carp,” and shortly they were in the Odeon Records limousine plying down Ninth Avenue with a steaming thermos of espresso and a basket of warm almond croissants.

  Swann hopped out at Fifty-first Street, saying, “I want to see you in Connecticut, Mrs. Darling, at your hearthside, very, very soon.”

  And Maggie, feeling stupefied with fatigue and infatuation, replied, “Yes. Certainly. Supper sometime. Soon. I cook too, you know …” Then he was gone and the rest of the trip north up the parkways and highways and little back roads dissolved into a blur of amazement.

  5

  Reflection

  She slept again until afternoon, letting Nina, Lindy, and the crew handle a board members’ luncheon for Medithrax Industries of Norwalk (makers of Zip-Flex, a medical adhesive designed to replace surgical sutures) and canceling a photo session with Reggie Chang for the new book, which Harold Hamish had deftly retitled Keeping House. When she awoke, she seemed to levitate about the rooms on a magnetic cushion of sexual energy. Every thought turned to Swann. Bake a lemon ginger tea cake— would Swann have eaten such things back in England? Polish a silver cinnamon-sugar shaker recently acquired at a Ridgefield junk shop—it rather looked like Swann’s uncircumcised willy, only smaller. Send away to the gourmet seed company for their special slow-bolt cilantro—how winning that Swann had cooked her supper, and such a good one, too!

  Every now and then, Kenneth entered her thoughts, the way a refrain in a minor key enters an otherwise sprightly concerto. But it was clear to Maggie that she had exited the arid wilderness of their marriage and entered a thrilling new mysterious lush frontier. She could accept the refrain in a minor key as a signifier of memory and experience, even relishing its piquancy as a counterpoint to the major key of Swann-Swann-Swann that suddenly resounded through her senses. It was midafternoon, the day after that amazing night at the Royalton, when Maggie arranged a dinner party at Kettle Hill Farm to present the astounding fact of her liaison to select members of the world at large. She was finished grieving for the marriage whose actual moment of death she had failed to recognize.

  6

  The Guest List

  “Christy Chauvin! Are you out of your mind?” Lindy cried as she mulled over the guest list for an Intimate Supper for Eight in the Winter Garden, padding up and down the carpet of Maggie’s redecorated bedroom—all the lingering scents and traces of Kenneth eradicated with a new rag-rolled paint job (Creamsicle with a coolish sea foam trim), and all new bedclothes and window dressings. Cynthia Wise, wife of Earl, maestro of Odeon Records, had recommended Christy Chauvin, a supermodel, as a supper guest. Ms. Chauvin had been writing a pop culture column for Slate.com since September. It was rumored that she actually composed it herself. “Not only is she drop-dead gorgeous but a goddamned intellectual. You’re asking for trouble, Maggie,” Lindy said.

  “Does it occur to you that this might be a little test?”

  Lindy appeared to weigh the idea a moment. “Maggie, let me explain something about the real world to you, okay? Human beings are opportunistic. Men are like dogs and women are … not much better. Place temptation in their path and they will behave badly. This is not hypothesis. This is fact. One does not go around testing this proposition.”

  “I’ve invited her.”

  “She goes out with that schmuck actor, what’s-his-face.”

  “Arlie Hodge. She dumped him last week.”

  “Great. She’ll be all over your Swann like a cheap suit.”

  “I can’t wait to find out. Besides, an intimate supper needs a little frisson. I like the way a great beauty puts people on edge. They eat more.”

  “Groovy,” Lindy said. “I’ve gained ten pounds since I arrived.”

  “All muscle,” Maggie said. “Those workouts are paying off. You look fabulous.”

  “So who’s on this list for me?” Lindy said. “Hmmm. Obviously not Earl Wise. Reggie Chang?”

  “Reggie’s there for … solidity. He’s the cornstarch in the blancmange. He’s normal. A flat-out nice person.”

  “Meaning, not my type. Too nice, too normal.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “No, it’s true. I require … an extravaganza of a man. So this Lawrence Hayward must be my ticket. Seems as though I know the name from CNN. Corporate big shot? Help me out here, Maggie.”

  “Wall Street. One of the five richest men in America. Multiple billions. Divorced three years. Lonely.”

  “Somehow I don’t get a snapshot here.”

  “Think of a rodent.”

  “Oh, lovely. And what does that make me? A wedge of Emmentaler.”

  “I just thought it might be interesting for you.” Maggie giggled girlishly. “The guy has been calling me three times a week lately. He’s in Milan—where can he get something to eat? He’s in London, hungry. He’s in São Paulo. It’s as though I’ve become his personal international dining-out adviser.”

  “Well, obviously he sees that Kenneth is out of the picture. He spies an opportunity.”

  “No, I think it’s something else. I think this sorry little creature is peering out of the shell where he has spent a dreary, if lucrative, life. He glimpses sight, sound, and wonderful, wonderful tastes beyond the gray boundaries of his gray world. He’s reaching out toward sensation. I find it strangely moving. Anyway, you don’t have to … make yourself available to him.”

  “Multiple billions. Jesus. It gives me the shivers.”

  7

  Bon Appétit

  She’d planned cocktails for seven-thirty in the library by the fireside. Reggie Chang arrived ten minutes early and shot a roll of Maggie in the kitchen with a white chef’s tunic on over her black, long-sleeved, waterwashed crepe de chine dress (off-the-rack, Bendel) and in the conservatory with the table set for eight among the tree ferns, orchids, and blazing votives. The photos were intended for Maggie’s planned volume Easy Feasts. It was a bit of a sham since there would be no hint in the book of Nina and an assistant who were really preparing the meal or of the Yale anthropology major (female, in a tux) who was engaged to s
erve for the evening. Maggie understood that her readers expected a degree of fantasy in her books, though—if anyone could be Maggie Darling, then there would be no need for Maggie.

  Christy Chauvin turned up at 7:35, virtually on time, a fact that rather impressed Maggie, who was prepared to dislike the brainy model despite her own rationale for inviting her. Reggie, too, was pleasantly surprised that Christy allowed him to shoot half a roll of her, since she was customarily paid $5,000 an hour for regular work. But in a Southern voice only slightly evocative of magnolia and perspiration, Christy said, “Why don’t we just keep the agency out of this.”

  The Wises arrived at quarter to eight with excuses about trouble on the Merritt Parkway and Lawrence Hayward minutes behind them with no explanation for his tardiness and the whole world of Wall Street seemingly on his shoulders. Hayward looked fleshier than he had at Christmastime, and as the Yalie began passing little tidbits of smoked trout mousse in puff pastry on a silver tray around the room he perked up noticeably—at the tidbits, not the Yalie, though she was a fine-boned example of her type. Swann, to Maggie’s mounting panic and embarrassment, did not show up until ten after eight—more rumors of trouble on the Merritt Parkway; some kind of shooting incident, police cars all over, more he couldn’t say—but the force of his physical radiance and effortless charm sent the other personalities into vectors of interaction. He soon had the library abuzz as though twice the number of people were in the room, and at quarter to nine the company removed to the conservatory for supper.

  They began with lobster and blue corn tamales on pools of chilpotle cream. More champagne went around (a Bollinger Grand Annee, no great shakes, but decent). The table was round, like a clock. Maggie sat at six o’clock with Swann to her left at seven and Lawrence Hayward to her right at five. Christy Chauvin was deployed at noon, that is, directly opposite Maggie so that Maggie could observe her body language vis-à-vis Swann. Lindy occupied the place at Hayward’s right, say three o’clock, next to Earl Wise at one, with Cynthia Wise and Reggie Chang at about nine and ten respectively. Maggie always made the point in her books that male and female dinner guests ought to be seated alternately.