“At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll ask again. Why is Carmela crying?”
“I ruined her birthday party.”
“It’s true,” said Carmela. “He ruined it. We’re dead as doornails in this town. We could stay here for the rest of our lives and nobody would send so much as a pot of ranunculus to our room.”
“Ranunculus is the oldest cultivated flower in the world.”
“Rooney, you are a master of the timed digression. I have a heavy date at two and don’t have time for these horticultural interludes. Why did you ruin her birthday party?”
“Because I hate her birthday.”
“Lord, everybody hates her birthday. What I’m interested in, since I attended this fête, is what exactly caused this ruination?”
“I will see you both in hell for this,” said Carmela, taking another Bloody from the all-knowing Argentinian. “I’ll ask God to make your bones hurt at an early age.”
“My bones hurt now,” I said. “And it’s so dark.”
“At least He doesn’t hate my birthday.”
“He doesn’t have to go to it,” said Margot. “Now come on kiddies, the meter is running.” She slid a fresh drink into my hand with the deft skill of those who nurse the difficult and the ill.
“I insulted everybody,” I said.
“You didn’t insult me.”
“You had gone off to go slam dancing with the truckstop diva. It was after all of that. It started when I told Vilmos Zsigmond that he didn’t know the first thing about depth of field. Not to mention Laszlo Kovacs, the master, who was standing nearby. I told them I would send them all a copy of the American Cinematographer Manual. I used a specific gesture, a gesture it now nauseates me to remember, to indicate the difference between near and far. Then I broke several things.”
“Every word is true,” said Carmela. “He hates my birthday.”
“This sounds so much better than a roomful of women in flannel shirts banging into one another,” said Margot. “I’m sorry I left. Rooney, why did you do this disgusting stuff?”
“Because she threw my present on the floor. And then she laughed. And then everybody laughed. Laughed at me.”
“Well, it was a scummy present. A paperback book? In Beverly Hills?”
“It was a very good paperback book. It contained one line that summed up Carmela in her entirety: ‘Let’s take the river road down to the casino. It takes longer, but nothing ever happens before ten anyway.’ Michael Arlen Jr.’s mother said that as she lay dying.”
“I even wrote it in the front of the book, so she wouldn’t have to read the whole thing. She could just read the inscription and the ‘Love, Rooney’ part and know how I felt. And she didn’t even take the time to read it. She just threw the book on the floor, and then everybody laughed, and I suddenly hated it. I hated this room full of people who were nearly intelligent, marginally famous, nearly beautiful, who would do nothing but have a good guffaw if they saw me reading Ezra Pound by the pool at the Beverly Wilshire.”
“He has read Ezra Pound by every goddamned pool in the world. He does it to prove that he’s better than anybody else, people who don’t know or care who Ezra Pound
was.”
“How did it all end?”
“Badly, as you can imagine. We may have had it pointed out to us that it was time to go home. I don’t know. It was quite late when we left, and it was all very, very ugly.”
“This doesn’t sound at all in your line of behavior.”
“I have never knowingly insulted anybody in my life. When I say my prayers at night, the list of people who come after ‘. . . and God bless’ is endless. I think of every person I have ever loved every day and I hold them dear in my heart at every moment. Last night I would have hit them with tennis rackets. I would have beaten Carmela with switches all the way down Rexford Drive.”
“And today?”
“I am filled with profound regret and remorse.”
“I don’t do guilt,” said Margot. “It’ll blow over by cocktail time. Nobody was injured or died?”
“I don’t think so. No official body count was taken.”
“Then everything’s okeydokey. Call Delia and say you’re sorry and that’s an end to it. I’m leaving you now, so don’t panic if your hand feels empty. I’m just sitting here trying to remember what color your eyes are.”
“They’re pink. Like a rabbit’s.”
“They’re blue,” said Carmela. “Blue as sapphires. Well, cheap sapphires.”
“Rooney, I have one thing to say to you. It’s a long life. Sometimes, parties last longer than a single lifetime. You better be careful. You have the gene in you. My father had it, God rest him. My brothers have it. You have it, too.”
“What gene?”
“You know as well as I do.” She patted my leg. “Now, off. And she doesn’t work in a truck stop. She details cars. She’s an auto gloss engineer. Bye for now.”
She moved off, her espadrilles squeaking on the pool deck. The gene. In me. I knew exactly what she meant.
I turned to Carmela, who had covered her face with her yellow towel. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Don’t tell me. Tell Delia and Buzzy, if they’ll answer the phone.”
I went in to telephone. I watched Steve McQueen stub out a cigarette before going in to be pounded and kneaded by the Finn. He probably smoked during his massage. He was that cool.
Later on, two years later, I had engraved cards made at Tiffany that said:
Mr. _________ deeply regrets
His behavior of last evening
And begs your indulgence.
But that was later, when the incidents became both more frequent and more outlandish. Egregious might be the word I’m after. Incidents of mortification became more and more frequent, fueled by money, by a general malaise, a hatred of almost everything and everybody, even the people I loved the best.
I used to say, “I have to . . .” all the time. Not just, “I have to go to California next week,” but, “I have to go to the Callaways for dinner.”
Life had become such a burden. Everything irritated me, and nothing so much as myself. Chacun à son dégoût.
Buzzy answered on the second ring, as though he had been waiting for my call. He was completely alert. His head didn’t throb. His house was spotless, the cleaning people having shown up within two hours after the cocaine was all gone and the guests had left.
He didn’t smoke. He didn’t drink or do drugs. Said he’d tried them once in college and didn’t like them, so he never did them again. Tried them once. I said to him, “You think it was easy for us? We had to work at this, you know.” He was a doctor, so he knew things. He had given me my last physical and his only advice when it was all over was, “Change lanes.”
“Buzzy. Did anybody die last night?”
“The final count is not in, but it appears the night passed without casualties.”
“Any collateral damage?”
“You know that rug in the hall? The one that was made two hundred years ago in Persia?”
“Pretty thing. I like it.”
“Liked.”
“Gone? Just like that?”
“Well, not exactly just like that. You set fire to it, testing the flammability of Poire Wilhem.”
“I set fire to your rug.”
“Besides telling Laszlo he was an amateur, you had time for other sports.”
“Can it be repaired?”
“I wouldn’t know. Maybe the people at the landfill could tell you.”
“I feel terrible.”
“You’re a piece of shit, did anybody ever tell you that?”
“All the time, Buzzy. All the time. You know why? It’s the truth. Let me buy you dinner.”
“Why don’t you buy me a rug?”
“How big?”
“Three feet eight inches by eight feet six inches. Musso’s?”
“Eight o’clock.”
I spent the
afternoon at Aga John’s, on Melrose, where I found a Tabriz, silk, an astonishing six hundred knots per square inch. It was the only one they had that was the right size, so I got it and had it delivered. $42,000. Delivery another $300.
Dinner was delightful. The rug was never mentioned, and we all went home and slept like babies.
Carmela and I caught the noon flight from LAX and arrived at midnight, went home, made love in a mad rush before the sleeping pills kicked in, and I bounced out of bed at six, to meet Bart the trainer.
The weekend had cost a total of $50,000, rug included.
I made the money back by lunchtime. I bit the bullet and bought Carmela a diamond and ruby bracelet at Cartier for $78,000 plus tax. A steel plant in Des Moines went bankrupt, but at least my marriage was temporarily intact.
As I said, in those days we were vampires. Charming, glittering vampires.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Origin of the Species
I had meant to be an artist. It didn’t much matter what kind of artist, it was just that there was something inside of me that needed to be expressed, some beautiful and true thing that would explain everything, about me, about the world I was making for myself, about my love for my family and my fellows, and I couldn’t find the words or way to get it out, to make it sensible. It was a simple thing. I knew that. Like, “I love you,” but that wasn’t it. It was deeper than love. It was something primal and true and old, yet still fresh as the first slash of alizarin crimson on a newly gessoed canvas. It was near, always near, but always just out of reach. All I had was the requiem for the thing that needed to be said.
I had a recurring nightmare all through my childhood. In the dream, which came to me almost every night, I had something terribly wrong with me, some incurable and painful ailment, but when I opened my mouth, in the dream, to describe the ailment or to cry for help, no words came out. I was mute to my own pain, unable to explain it or make it go away. I would wake up, covered in sweat, gasping for air, making guttural animal sounds in my throat. Sweat would film my face, and I would sit up in my bed and wait for first light, mute and ill and terrified.
After I graduated from college, I went to Europe for two years, on an extremely prestigious fellowship my parents could never remember the name of. Two years abroad, in England, France, Italy, and Greece. In London, I took figure drawing classes day after day. I took acting classes at night. On Wednesdays, I went to an old Polish crone who pounded the floor with her cane and begged me to play Chopin the way the Master would have wanted. Every Wednesday, I could not, and I could feel her disappointment turning into irritation.
One Wednesday, she whacked my knuckles so hard with her cane that she broke one of my fingers, and, at that moment, I knew that the Master and I would never be friends, so, so long Madame Lutevya, and I moved, splinted, to Florence to be closer to the great painters I aspired to be one of.
It was a joke, spending my mornings at the Uffizi, my afternoons banging away at one canvas after another. Views of the Arno at sunset. Street scenes of Florence. Gypsy children, begging. The kind of paintings you might see for sale on the Ponte Vecchio, but not as good. I had, in my head, images of such beauty and truth and, on my easel, one mess after another. I finally ripped the canvases from the stretchers and threw every one in the coal-burning stove that heated my freezing apartment. I never painted or played the piano again. I couldn’t play “Chopsticks” now, if you paid me a million dollars.
My voice stayed mute, the words I meant to say frozen in my throat and in my heart, unknown even to me.
I finally, in a flash, decided that, if I couldn’t be eloquent, could never be any more than mediocre, I could at least be rich. So, the return to the States and Wharton and the poker game and my entry into the fray, and, within months, I was unrecognizable, even to myself.
I was vicious, venal, self-absorbed, and totally lacking in feeling. Mea culpa. And I couldn’t put my finger on how this had happened, and I couldn’t shake the guilt that accompanied it.
I went to church on Sundays, the only one of my friends to do so, and, every Sunday morning, in my high-gloss shoes and my Armani suit, kneeling in my pew on the side of the church, always alone, always far enough from my nearest neighbor that I couldn’t be touched or engaged, the tears welled up in my eyes as I sat among the righteous and the chosen, knowing that I was forever shut out from their companionship. I would pray that I would somehow find my way out of this gilded hell I was living in, that I was creating day by day, every day more and more incarcerated in a life I never meant to happen.
But The Street was the ultimate seduction, the beautiful woman who slid into bed with you, naked and perfumed and ravenous. Like the woman, The Street crawled under your skin, and never let you go until it had what it wanted, which was everything you had of a heart and a soul, and no amount of church-going was going to stop that tidal wave of mutual greed. Because I, to my shame, I wanted what The Street offered, the ultimate clusterfuck, the big prize, the endless orgasm.
It’s useless to say I didn’t know any better. My skin crawled every day, and my nights were haunted by booze and raucous chicaneries, but there was never enough booze or drugs for me to forget that I was being unfaithful to the man I had meant to be, the man I had hoped to become.
Some nights, the elusive thing that so needed to be said was like a fishbone caught in my throat, and I took a Valium and a Scotch until the feeling passed. I would be forever mute.
It’s almost never done in the Episcopal Church, but I went to confession. It took place in the priest’s office. He put on his stole, we prayed for a while, and then he asked me what my sin was that I had come to confess.
“Despair,” I said. “I have put money before kindness or conscience, and it’s eating me alive.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a trader downtown. I’m not a good person, not anymore. I have done illegal things. Immoral. That’s not even what bothers me. What bothers me is the person it’s made me, the person I am. I don’t belong in your congregation.”
“Despair is the one sin that removes you from God’s love.”
“I’m afraid all the time.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. Everything. Nothing. My face in the mirror.” I could feel the sweat dripping down the back of my neck. I felt sick with vulnerability. Not a feeling I was used to, and not one I liked.
“You must find hope in your heart.”
“What heart?”
“You have to look for it.” He smiled. “It’s there. Trust me.”
“I’ve become everything I despise. Where would I look for hope?”
“God does not abandon you. Ever. You abandon God, and you must look for him. In the eyes of the poor. In the lost, the less fortunate. Even in the eyes of people who are happy, content with their lot.”
He put his hands on my head, a feeling I have loved since childhood, and prayed over me for a long time. He said, reading from the sweet old Book of Common Prayer, “ ‘O Lord, we beseech thee, mercifully hear our prayers, and spare all those who confess their sins unto thee; that they, whose consciences by sin are accused, by thy merciful pardon may be absolved; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
“ ‘O most mighty God, and merciful Father, who hast compassion upon all men, and who wouldest not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his sin, and be saved; Mercifully forgive us our trespasses; receive and comfort us, who are grieved and wearied with the burden of our sins. Thy property is always to have mercy; to thee only it appertaineth to forgive sins. Spare us therefore, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed; enter not into judgment with thy servants; but so turn thine anger from us, who meekly acknowledge our transgressions, and truly repent us of our faults, and so make haste to help us in this world, that we may ever live with thee in the world to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’ ”
And then this: “ ‘The Lord bless us, and keep us. The Lord make h
is face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us. The Lord lift up his countenance upon us, and give us peace, both now and evermore. Amen.’ ”
The priest took his soft hands from my head, and sat back down again.
“Your penance is very simple, and yet you will find it hard. Pay attention. Pay attention to the beauty of God’s world around you. Pay attention to the striving life in every eye. Your salvation is not in yourself. It’s in other people, and the glory of the world. Pay. Attention. You’ve slumbered too long.”
I waited, tears in my eyes. “That’s all,” he said. “Go now, back into the world, into your life. Never forget this moment.”
On the way out, I stuffed all the cash I had into the poor box, hundreds, and, for the whole rest of the day, I felt better, as though I belonged in the human race again.
It didn’t last. Does it ever? You pay attention, but the mind wanders.
Salvation is not an easy thing, when the sex is so available, and the lines are chopped out on the table, and you know in your heart that whatever happens, you are lost beyond any penance, any redemption.
My fault, you say? Say what you will. I no longer care. I have done my penance. I have paid attention. Believe me, I have paid.
CHAPTER NINE
The Wages of Sin
The truth is, we all hated every single thing we had to do to make the ridiculous amounts of money we made. Stupid money, Fanelli called it. Selling long. Selling short. Betting on the come. Advising people to put all their money into a stock we knew would bounce high like a basketball and then plummet like a sinker on the end of a baited line. As long as The Firm made money on the bounce.
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