Going Down For The Count

by David Stukas

  “Pee-pee?” I queried, then decided it was better to let Michael’s choice of words go unchallenged.

  “Yes, pee-pee. You’re too trusting of people. I don’t trust any of my boyfriends any farther than I can toss them.”

  “I suppose you have a detective on retainer to follow them?” I surmised.

  “Oh, God, no. It isn’t the money. It’s just that I don’t keep any of my boyfriends long enough to get suspicious of them. Tell you what,” Michael said, switching gears, “let me try something.”

  Before I could stop him, Michael whipped out his cellular phone and dialed.

  “Yes, there is a Count Siegfreid von Schmidt lunching there at a table with a friend. Near the flower arrangement on the green pedestal. How do I know where the green pedestal is? I guessed. He’s wearing a tasty little dark blue short-sleeved shirt from Hugo Boss with gray worsted wool slacks and square-toed shoes in black from Gucci, the ones with the buckles from last year’s collection. Now, could you call the count to the phone and tell him to hold the line? I handle his finances in Germany and I’m doing a ... ah ... currency conversion, and we need him to hold the line while we do the calculations. We’re wiring him a million dollars, and he wants to know how many Bismarks that converts to.”

  “Deutsche marks,” I quietly corrected Michael.

  “Sorry,” he said into the phone. “It’s a deutsche-mark-to-dollars kind of thing. You will call him to the phone? Good! Just in case I’m not on the phone when he answers, could you please tell him to hold? You will? Danke, fräulein,” Michael said, winking to me and giving me a thumbs-up signal, acting like he just fleeced some sultan out of a million dollars in diamonds with a single phone call.

  I didn’t like the sound of this. “Michael, what are you doing?”

  “You’ll see. Don’t worry. He won’t suspect a thing.”

  And with that, he got up and took a circuitous route through the restaurant, walked up to the count’s table, and started talking to the count’s lunching partner. I expected the worst.

  Since Michael was immensely wealthy, he didn’t just dish out attitude like other rich people. He shoveled. The rest of the population on this planet was here as a mere annoyance to Michael, wearing the trendy clothes he wore and consequently threw out when he saw commoners wearing them, making it difficult to get into trendy clubs without forcefully pushing, and constantly harping about the pollution caused by his family’s pharmaceutical concern. When he walked around his apartment wearing a T-shirt that proudly proclaimed “It’s all about me,” he wasn’t kidding.

  Michael talked with the man at the count’s table for a minute or two, then waved good-bye and left the restaurant. Moments later, our waiter came by with a note from Michael asking me to pay the bill and meet him outside the cafe.

  I did as requested, fearing Michael was going to unload a dump truck of dirt on my romantic dreams and internationally famous life. As I walked up to Michael, I thought, Oh well, it was a fun ride while it lasted.

  “You’re not going to believe this. The guy says he’s Uli, an art dealer from Germany, but he works through some gallery on Mercer Street in Soho.”

  I was elated, but flabbergasted. “Michael, did you ever stop to think for a second that he might really be an art dealer? After all, Siegfreid told me he was interested in picking up a few paintings.”

  “Robert, that is the first art dealer I’ve ever seen who wears a suit and looks like that. Or sounds like that! The guy had a ridiculous German accent.”

  “Michael, I forgot you’re an expert when it comes to art dealers. Your last dealer tried to sell you an impressionist painting you later found out was done by a cat.”

  Michael rolled his eyes and let out a loud sigh. “OK, so I make one mistake and I never hear the end of it.”

  “One mistake? What about that guy who sold you those oversized canvasses that were painted by that artist who filled his butt with paint and then sprayed it? Ugh! Frederick Gombe. Some artist!”

  “Well, Mr. Picasso, for your information, the artist soon died from toxic poisoning and his paintings skyrocketed in value. I made a killing on them.”

  I saw it was pointless to argue with Michael, so I relented to his constant prodding. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll ask the count who it was when I have dinner with him tonight.”

  “Fine. If you want it that way,” Michael said, carefully placing a thought bomb into my head and setting the timer.

  As we walked to the curb to hail a cab, I began to wonder who the mystery man was. More importantly, I wondered whether I would have the courage to ask the count. You know, to be confrontational. As a Catholic-raised Midwestern boy brought up in a lily-white suburb, the answer to that question was painfully clear: nah.

  I ditched Michael and lugged the dozens of bags of clothing, shoes, jackets, and accessories up to my shitty little apartment, aching to try everything on. So I did. Even though I harbored grave doubts about my ability to carry off the clothes I bought, I actually put them all on the floor and rolled naked in them.

  When I regained my senses (or, more accurately, felt guilty about my lavish purchases), I called the count in order to meet him for dinner.

  He suggested the Union Square Cafe, which was my favorite restaurant in the world. The food was not only fantastic all the time, but cellular phones were not allowed on the premises. This policy seemed to eliminate the technology junkies and Wall Street types, adding up to a restaurant that was civilized, quiet, and full of people who were appreciative of the food.

  As I sat across the table from my soon-to-be husband, the thought kept running through my brain: had he been lunching with another lover?

  “Well, Siegfreid, how was your day?” I asked like a ’50s housewife greeting her husband at the door to their modern-a-go-go cliffside house in Malibu dressed in Capri pants and a bare midriff blouse tied just below ample bosoms and holding a tray of martinis. (Don’t ask me where that thought came from.)

  “I paid a few visits on some old friends and went to Soho to check out the art scene. I saw a few interesting paintings by the late Frederick Gombe. They’re a series entitled Painted By An Asshole. ”

  “I’ve heard all about them. I would have thought Blow It Out Your Asshole would have been a better title. Just be careful if you buy any of them, Siegfreid, and wear rubber gloves before hanging them in your living room. So ... you didn’t do anything else today . . .” I said, like an interrogator trying to extract an confession out of a recalcitrant soldier with a barrage of pretty-pleases. “I mean, when you were hungry. I get so famished at lunch! I just have to eat. I imagine you do, too!”

  The count looked like he was seriously doubting his command of the English language. He then proceeded, “Well, yes, I did have lunch.”

  I couldn’t let him get away since I’d come this far. “So nothing out of the ordinary for lunch?”

  “Now that you mention it, Robert, it was quite extraordinary,” he reported.

  My eyes lit up with anticipation.

  “I had sautéed fiddlehead ferns for lunch. They were quite extraordinary. Oh, and a delicious wine from the Napa Valley.”

  “So that was it, just a plain ordinary lunch?” I asked, making a last-ditch effort to extract some kind of clue out of my cagey count.

  “Yes. Why?” He looked at me strangely (duh!), making me feel guilty about mistrusting him and forcing me to abandon my line of questioning.

  “Just wondering.” Damn. I still didn’t know where he had gone to lunch! I was reconsidering whether to just come out and ask where he had gone when he interrupted my plan.

  “So, Robert, should we go out tonight and celebrate?”

  “That would be wonderful! It would really take my mind off things.”

  So out we went. We had dinner at Casa Maraca, a fabulous restaurant where we saw a dozen movie stars and the bill came to over three hundred-eighty dollars. I felt like one of Michael’s dates: I never even made an attempt to pu
ll out my wallet.

  Then it was off to the T Bar in Chelsea for drinks, then dancing at the ultra-hot Club Alta. I never had so much fun in all my life.

  When the count finally let me off in front of my building at five A.M., it struck me how long it had been since I had stayed out so late. Years! And I actually let go of myself and just had fun. (Going out with Michael wasn’t always the fun you would think; he often abandoned me for a hot date or treated me like a Tibetan sherpa, asking me to carry this or fetch that.)

  As I approached my building in a fog of love, I failed to see the pile of dog doo left on the sidewalk and stepped right in it. But at that moment, something amazing happened. Instead of taking the offending footwear upstairs and scrubbing it clean while cursing copiously and loudly, I merely stepped out of my shoes and left four hundred fifty dollars of Gucci leather right there on the sidewalk—be—cause I could afford to. Yes, folks, in the blink of an eye, I was now on a par with Michael Stark.

  5

  The Third Wives Club

  That night, I had the weirdest dream.

  I was walking through a huge palace. I came to an enormous set of doors and opened them. In the midst of the room was an elaborately carved bed with someone sleeping in it, the covers pulled up over their head.

  When I pulled back the covers, the count was underneath, dressed like a Catholic cardinal. He shrieked at me and rose up out of the bed like a vampire and chased me with a huge crucifix. I ran and ran, but couldn’t lose the irate count.

  Eventually, I ran into a huge ballroom, and standing there in the middle of it was Russell Crowe dressed as a gladiator. Russell covered me with his brawny, muscular arm for protection and threw a spear at the count, causing the count to disappear in a puff of smoke. Russell and I then made passionate love.

  I woke up just as Russell asked me to come to Rome with him to be his queen. I got up, opened a file cabinet, and pulled out a folder marked “health insurance.” I immediately checked my deductible for psychiatric coverage, stared in horror at the co-pays, then decided calling Monette would be cheaper.

  “Monette, I need your help.”

  “Now, why should I help you? I do believe you were the one who hired that drag queen to come to my office and deliver the three-foot-long dildo in a kid’s red wagon two days ago.”

  “Me? You’re accusing me?” I protested innocently.

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Robert. You were getting me back for having filled all those inflatable sex dolls with helium and tying them to the fire escape outside your apartment window. Not to mention the ones in the hall near your mailboxes, all of them addressed to your apartment and labeled ‘rush delivery.’ ”

  “So did Anna Rexia drag the wagon all the way down the hall to your office?”

  “For all to see, Robert. I mean, people came running out of their offices. I liked the cute red ribbon tied around the dildo. Nice touch.”

  “God is in the details, Monette. Every time I think I’ve pulled the ultimate practical joke on you, you top mine. Escalation is inevitable. You know I can’t let a challenge go unanswered.”

  “You’d better watch out. I’m planning my next joke on you with a man from the CIA who goes by the name of The Hyena. So what help did you need?”

  “Just someone to talk to. I had the weirdest nightmare last night and it’s bothering me.”

  “This isn’t the one where your blind date comes to the door and you open it and you see Regis Philbin standing there with a bunch of carnations in his hand?”

  “No, Monette. I haven’t had that one since I stopped taking Prozac. Yesterday, Michael and I were having lunch at Cafe Vicuña and we spotted Siegfreid having lunch with another man.”

  “And?” Monette trailed off, wondering what the problem was with that.

  “Well, he seemed to be talking like he didn’t want to be overheard.”

  “And?”

  “Like he was hiding something, Monette. I asked him about how his day was and he didn’t mention lunch with his friend.”

  “And?”

  “Monette, if you don’t stop saying and and start feeding into my groundless paranoia, I’m going to start thinking you’ve got something against me.”

  “OK, Robert. Here’s my guess. It’s probably really far-fetched. Maybe he was lunching with a friend—an art dealer or someone—and he was throwing some big figures around and he didn’t want those figures to be overheard. No, he didn’t want to be vulgar, so he leaned in close to his friend so people didn’t have to hear them discussing money.”

  “That’s too logical, Monette. There’s no conspiracy in your explanation.”

  “Fine, Robert. What really happened was he was meeting with a man named the Mongoose, a shadowy figure left from the collapse of the former Soviet Union, but now posing as a part-time annuity salesman. The waiter was actually an accomplice who was passing off the secret formula that makes Hello Kitty items so irresistibly adorable. The secret was hidden in a salmon filet, which the count ate and would later regurgitate, using vomiting techniques learned from New York supermodels. What’s really happening is that the count is planning to flood the market with cheap Hello Kitty backpacks, thus plunging the circuit party accessories market into chaos. Plus, the count also knows your retina is identical to the president’s and he’s waiting to extract your eye some evening with a tablespoon, then fly it to Washington, D.C., so he can hold it up to a retina scanner and get his hands on the nation’s most closely guarded secret: how Kim Basinger still manages to get decent movie roles.”

  “Monette, you’re completely diabolical. And you’re a cunt.”

  “Thank you, on both counts. Now, stop letting your mind run away with you. Relax, for Goddess sake! You get so tight assed sometimes you could pick up a chair with your sphincter.”

  “Michael said the same thing to me lately, but not exactly in those terms. Your way sounds prettier . . . kind of.”

  “You know what I mean, Robert. I know this all seems too much out of a fairy tale to be believable. But so far, so good. And if it doesn’t work out, you can always come back to New York and get a job the next day. I mean, the lousy jobs you’ve worked at are a dime a dozen.”

  “Wow, Monette! Thanks for making it all seem so hopeful and my life so meaningful!” I said, my voice dripping with mock glee. “Do you teach self-esteem-building classes on weekends?”

  “Robert, was there a point to this phone call?”

  “Well, just to tell you about the dream . . . and that I’m worried about whether the count is cheating on me with that art dealer.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” Monette pleaded into the phone. “What do I have to do to get you to put your insecure mind at rest?”

  “Help me do a little snooping around on Siegfreid’s art dealer in Soho.”

  “Only if you promise me that if I help, you’ll drop this whole art-dealer matter and find something else to obsess about.”

  “I promise, Monette,” I replied, knowing Monette’s assistance wouldn’t put an end to this matter. The count could bring Uli to me naked and prove he was a eunuch, and I still wouldn’t believe Siegfreid.

  “When do you want me to help you check out this Uli guy?”

  “How about tonight after work?” I asked.

  “Fine. I’ll meet you at the corner of Mercer and Spring at five-thirty.”

  “Sounds great. I’ll be wearing a trench coat with a red carnation on my right lapel.”

  “Until later,” Monette said, about to hang up.

  “Wait, Monette! There’s one more thing: I also called to invite you to a bon voyage party a friend of Siegfreid’s is throwing to celebrate our betrothal. Tomorrow night.”

  “Did you have any part in arranging this party?” Monette asked hesitantly.

  “No, I didn’t choose anything.”

  “Not even the music?”

  “No.”

  “The food?”

  “No, not even the food. I don’t know
anything about the party except that it’s supposed to be kind of quiet,” I said.

  “When does it start?” Monette asked eagerly.

  Later that day, I met Monette in Soho and we methodically went from gallery to gallery, asking if they worked with a dealer by the name of Uli. After hitting every gallery on Mercer Street, we found none had anyone on their staff named Uli. Worse, no one had even heard of him in the New York art scene.

  As you can imagine, when Monette and I went to a bar afterward, I said nothing.

  Monette, who knew me better than anyone I know, opened me like a book and began to read. “Let me guess. You think Siegfreid is a lying, two-timing megaslut who would have nonconsensual sex with a comatose, blind paraplegic just moments after having his way with an entire troop of Boy Scouts.”

  “Well, sort of,” I conceded.

  Monette continued. “Robert, just because Uli’s story doesn’t check out doesn’t mean he’s not who he says he is. Maybe Michael got his name wrong or mixed up the name of the street. You know Michael doesn’t pay much attention to anything unless it directly affects him.”

  “I want to believe you, but I’ve tried and convicted Siegfreid in the court of my paranoia and he’s as guilty as sin.”

  “I have a novel idea, Robert. Why don’t you just ask Siegfreid about Uli?”

  “C’mon, Monette! You’re asking me to be mature about this whole matter? What do you take me for? I’d rather come up with cataclysmic and implausible scenarios that undermine my already slippery grip on reality.”

  “Suit yourself, Robert. Just give Siegfreid the benefit of the doubt for now. Unless you ask the count about Uli, you’re going to drive yourself crazy . . . and I’m afraid that little foursome has teed off already.”

  “Thank you for your vote of confidence, Monette. OK, OK, I’ll ask the count before we go to the party tomorrow night. How’s that?”

  “Fine,” Monette replied. “There’s just one more thing.”