Don't Make a Scene

by Valerie Block

  “I'd forgotten I was sitting with your mother.”

  “I mean it, Paul. Next time, you're not invited.”

  “Promise?”

  It went on like this all weekend, and during the flight back to LaGuardia and the cab ride to the apartment. It was still going on at dinner on Monday night, which was when Javier called, asking to talk; Chris invited him over with some relief. It had to be something important. On the other hand, at eighteen, what wasn't important?

  “Excellent,” Paul had said, tossing aside a magazine. “Anything has to be more interesting than being scolded by Letitia Baldridge.”

  Javier arrived almost immediately, radiating energy and joy. There followed a long, meandering chat at the kitchen table about life, love, Cuban military school, teenagers versus real women and the karate maneuver Javier had used on his father at the cinema.

  “Vladimir flat on his back on Diane's coffee table! I'm so sorry I missed that,” Paul said. “Show me how you do it.”

  “Don't tell him I tell you,” Javier warned.

  “Paul would never use a confidence against someone,” Chris said, looking directly at Paul. “Paul doesn't gossip. Does he?”

  Paul ignored this. “Promise you'll teach me. Not now: I'm swimming in beer.”

  “I promise to teach you, but you have to promise never to use it.”

  “Never use it? What's the point, then?”

  Javier began explaining the principle behind martial arts, but cut himself off.

  “Oh, fuck karate! Let's talk about Diane!” he said, and fell into an extended swoon. Diane, she knew so much. Her hilarious stories, her way of looking at people. Her light blue eyes and straight black lashes. The way she corrected his English without making him feel stupid. He could talk to her about anything. The girls in Cuba— these young ladies had some of the funniest names Chris had ever heard—were nothing compared to Diane. They were dogs compared to Diane. “She says her hair was so long before. Did you see it?”

  “It was hard not to see it, down to there,” Paul said, pointing at the floor. “I don't think you missed anything.”

  “So, what do you think you'll do, Javier? You think you'll stay?”

  “Oh yes, I will stay.”

  Paul made a toast. “To Javier, who will stay!”

  They touched bottles.

  “And to Diane,” Javier insisted.

  They toasted Diane.

  “And a toast to your father,” Chris said. “My great partner, a man of many talents, who is learning much more from you than I bet he ever thought he would.”

  Javier had exited, fueled on optimism, beer and teenage hormones, on his way back to his Real Woman. Chris wished he felt about Paul the way Javier felt about Diane. Had he ever felt that way about Paul? Was such a thing possible at this late date?

  As if aware of the trend of his thoughts, Paul asked, “Do you remember being that young and in love?”

  Perhaps such a thing was inappropriate for this stage of life. “Every day, I feel that young and in love.”

  Paul burst out laughing. “Bullshit.”

  “I didn't even think about it, but do you think it was okay to give him beer?”

  “If he's old enough to handle Diane Kurasik, he's old enough for beer.”

  “You have a point.” Chris cleared the table.

  “Vladimir gives him rum. I know this from Diane.”

  “Thank God she has an apartment now.”

  “Can you imagine?” Paul said, washing the beer bottles out in the sink.

  “Diane and Javier is a very different picture than Diane and Vladimir.”

  “Indeed. This is getting more complicated than a Mexican soap opera.”

  “I'm glad for her,” Chris said, opening the recycling bin.

  “And I thought she was ready to marry the next shlub Dorothy Vail pulled out of her handkerchief drawer,” Paul said as he was leaving to take the recycling out to the incinerator room. “You never know what people will do.”

  The restaurant was getting loud.

  “I saw this coming from a mile away,” Chris told Vladimir.

  “Really?” Vladimir said, running his hand across his unshaven face.

  “It's not a terrible thing,” Chris said. “An awkward situation, sure. But I don't think either of them is treating this lightly. And Javier is clearly happy and learning. This is an appropriate stage for him, if an unusual choice.”

  “You think she loves him?”

  “Of course she does,” Paul insisted. “And it's not hard to see why.”

  Vladimir flashed him a look, and Paul raised an unrepentant shoulder.

  “It can only end in tragedy,” Vladimir said, leaning back.

  “Probably, but so what?” Chris said.

  “That's what Diane says.” Vladimir socked back his drink. “Why do I always order rum? I don't even like rum.” He called the waiter over. “Give me something else. A beer. Please.”

  They looked at him.

  “My life has always been a mess. This is just another chapter of an old, messy story. Let's leave it at that.”

  When Vladimir left, the specter of their ongoing disagreement washed back into the space he'd just vacated.

  Paul raised an eyebrow, waiting for Chris to begin.

  Chris didn't want to renew hostilities. The argument had soured what had actually been a very big victory for him, on Saturday afternoon, when Nick and Kelly arrived with the kids.

  “Here's your uncle Chris!” his brother shouted. “And this must be Paul.”

  “Nice to meet you, Paul,” said Kelly, bright and peppery and enthusiastic. As always, she was well made-up and nicely dressed— the perfect corporate wife. “Kids, let's meet Paul.”

  The kids stood at attention to shake hands.

  “What do we call you?” asked Brittany, now eight, petite and blond like her mother.

  “Paul,” said Paul.

  “Just Paul?” she said suspiciously.

  “You don't like Paul? You can call me Uncle Paul, or Mr. Zaz-low. You pick.”

  “Mr. Zazlow!” shouted Neil, the five-year-old, punching Paul in the knee.

  “Neil, apologize to Uncle Paul,” said Kelly.

  The child opened his mouth to show some food he was keeping for display purposes.

  “He's a monster,” she said. “Hey, kids, let's check out this gorgeous house! Maybe Uncle Paul would like to give us a tour?”

  “And I thought this was a day off. Silly me,” Paul said, and took them inside.

  “How's life?” Chris asked his brother. “What's new?”

  “Life is great,” Nick said, sitting on the porch steps. “You're the news around here.”

  Chris sat down next to his brother. This might have been their first time meeting Paul, but Nick and Kelly always asked after him. Chris had spoken to them about moving in with his friend Paul, Paul switching agencies, Paul's aunt's funeral, etc. But the specific role Paul played in his life was never, not once, discussed. Well, Chris hadn't brought it up. Kelly was too polite to ask directly, and Nick Wiley would probably rather submit to corporal punishment than discuss such a thing.

  “I hear this is an up-and-coming neighborhood,” Nick said, alluding perhaps to the gay real estate vanguard that cleaned up shady city neighborhoods and made them chic and safe for white professionals. “You were smart to buy here.”

  “We like it. Or, anyway, I like it.”

  “Paul doesn't?”

  “Paul doesn't understand the South.”

  Nick nodded slowly. Paul was Jewish, too—Chris often forgot about this in New York. He had really tested the outer limits, hadn't he?

  “And he hates to fly,” Chris went on. “I mean, hates it.”

  He heard shrieking and laughing, and supposed Paul was entertaining the children and Kelly. They began chatting about people: who'd gotten married, who'd gotten sick, who'd died, who'd moved away. Kelly returned to the porch and sprawled in a natural way on the love seat. C
rayons and paper appeared, and the children sat down at the table and began to draw. Paul arrived with a tray and poured iced tea into glasses.

  “So I hear you hate to fly, Paul,” Nick said.

  “The idea that I have to go through the whole ordeal again on Monday makes me physically ill. I don't even want to think about it.”

  “I took a class this year to get over the fear of flying,” Nick said.

  “I didn't know that,” Chris said. “You're afraid to fly?”

  “Ever since that terrible winter—when was that? Five years ago?” Kelly said. “When he had to fly every week to Miami. It got so bad that year, we had to drive to Chicago.”

  “What did you do in the class?” Paul asked.

  “Mainly relaxation exercises. Guided visual imagery and things to distract us from catastrophic thinking and nausea. Ultimately, we took a plane to Charlotte, for the day.”

  Paul closed his eyes and leaned back on the love seat with two fingers over each eye. “You took a completely unnecessary flight?”

  “Two completely unnecessary flights. There, and back.”

  “Vey iz mir.”

  “To get over it.”

  “And did you?”

  “Not really!”

  Chris looked around: a relaxed Saturday afternoon on a swept porch with iced tea and family beneath a swiftly turning ceiling fan. Perhaps the whole Atlanta project hadn't been about escaping the noise of New York, or even the potential of big public works. Perhaps it had just been about getting Paul, Nick, Kelly and the kids in one space.

  Chris finished his gin and tonic and looked at his partner of three years. On further reflection, Paul's behavior had been no different on the porch than it would have been in a lobby or an elevator, the equivalent locale where neighbors crossed paths in New York. If Chris didn't approve of Paul, what was he doing with him, in either location?

  In his favor, Paul was confident, unpretentious and unedited. Paul would say absolutely anything to anybody—not always a positive thing, but hilarious on occasion. Paul was never embarrassed, nor was he different around different people; Chris appreciated this. Paul was always ready to take on tasks around the house and even in the office; he was a font of Manhattan business information in general, and an expert in real estate law and arcane local history. Paul was categorically gorgeous, and not as vain about it as he might have been. He was a news junkie, a snappy dresser and, like clockwork, he sneezed three times after every meal.

  Still: Paul could be nasty, judgmental and loud. Paul brushed his teeth and shaved in the shower while listening to news radio. He was rarely as amusing as he thought he was. He routinely imitated Chris's facial expressions and verbal tics, which was annoying. Still, Chris liked having him around.

  If Paul promised to control the constant stream of critical commentary, Chris was prepared to have him back on the porch. The problem that day had been Chris's own lack of preparation. If he'd put a newspaper on the porch—even a local real estate circular— Paul wouldn't have lifted his head all afternoon. Who said he had to choose between a man and a house?

  The day of the gala, Storm's face burst into bright salmon-colored welts, an allergic reaction to whatever she'd eaten for lunch. Cindy's replacement, Angela, took her to the Emergency Room at St. Vincent's in a cab. Floyd cut his thumb opening a carton of soda and Diane bandaged it using the new first-aid kit, begging him to be careful. The cat was back: one of the new chairs was ripped. Her heart stopped for a moment when Floyd arrived to announce that he couldn't locate the print of one of the films, The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa, 1960). Everything stopped for twenty minutes while they tore apart the office and projection room until they found it. From a wheelchair, Bobby Wald supervised the final installations, including the handicapped-access ramp, which he would be using for the near future. Lipsky's ex-wife turned up wanting a ticket to the party, demanding fifteen minutes of diplomacy.

  A series of sirens shrieked through the air at about two o'clock.

  A kitchen fire across the street had spread to the first floor of a brownstone, and the street was closed to traffic. Diane tried to call the equipment rental company to alert them. There was no dial tone.

  “Floyd, could I use your cellphone?”

  “It never works in here. Go around the corner—it usually works there.”

  Diane took a walk. Seventh Avenue South was also blocked off by squad cars. In fact, the entire intersection was closed to traffic. Ambulances, fire department vehicles, squad cars, phone company trucks and assorted personnel had converged on Barrow Street in a scene reminiscent of Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975).

  “It's a hostage situation,” said a woman standing nearby.

  “What? How many hostages?”

  “He doesn't have people,” said a man in a jumpsuit who held a walkie-talkie. “The guy has taken equipment hostage. He's shut down service for eight square blocks.”

  “Two silos of phone equipment in the basement?” she asked, and was ushered center stage.

  “I think this is Sid Bernstein,” Diane told a man who seemed to be in charge. “He's been trying to get rid of that equipment for forty years, so this is not a surprise.”

  He held out a bullhorn for her to take.

  “Can't we just call him?”

  He looked at her as if she were a stupid child. “He's shut down everybody's phone service, including his own. You know his cellphone number?”

  “I doubt he has a cellphone.”

  He gestured to the bullhorn. “So you're on.”

  “Hey, Sid, it's Diane Kurasik.”

  There was a crashing as if some garbage cans had been displaced. He stood in the narrow space between the building and the sidewalk, almost completely concealed by a thick gray wall. All she could see was the top of his head down to his eyes, and the kitchen knife in his clenched fist.

  “They want full access to these monsters? Tell them to take them away! Then they can have access anytime!”

  She turned to the phone company representative. “Will you do that?”

  “Apparently the wiring is antiquated and complicated,” said the representative from the phone company. “It's easier not to move them.”

  “Clearly. But I can't believe you wouldn't just move them into his basement.”

  “He lives in the basement.”

  “A different part of the basement.”

  “I can't negotiate with a maniac with a knife.”

  “Sid, you have to give up the knife,” she called. “You lose the moral high ground when you threaten people with knives.”

  “Without the knife, nobody listens.”

  “Okay, we're listening now. Drop the knife on the other side of the wall.”

  Nothing happened.

  Sidney Lumet said that if a film is cut at the same tempo throughout, it feels hours longer than it really is. “It is the change in tempo we feel, not the tempo itself,” he wrote in Making Movies.

  “Will you come to the gala tonight?” Diane called.

  “Depends on how my afternoon goes.”

  “When can we use the phones, already?” a loud, annoyed female voice in the crowd piped up. “My sister's in the hospital, and I can't get through. Stop chatting and knock that guy's door down!”

  “Do I have to take hostages to get on the Bedford Street Board?” Sid called.

  “Not such a great idea, Sid. But you know I always take your suggestions.”

  “You didn't play North by Northwest.”

  “It's an inferior film.”

  “YOU’RE WRONG, DIANE!”

  “Where's the SWAT team?” called the woman with the sick sister, in a voice strong enough to blister paint off the side of a boat.

  “I'll let them in on two conditions,” Sid called. “They remove these things by the end of the day, and you do a complete Cary Grant retrospective.”

  “Cary Grant!” The cop threw his hands up in disgust. “What the hell is this guy playing with? People
have lives, businesses to run.”

  She could schedule Cary Grant right after the Errol Morris festival in the spring. “Sid!” she called. “Drop the knife on the other side of the wall, and you'll get your retrospective! Give the phone company access and they'll start moving the silos!”

  “I also want an apology.”

  “Oh, come on!” said the aggrieved woman.

  As Cary Grant well knew, the distance between the movies and real life was often a torment. One day when he was ten, Archibald Alexander Leach came home from school to find his mother gone; his father told him she was away “having a rest.” In fact, his father had committed the woman to an insane asylum, and he never provided his son with further information. Archie ran away from home at thirteen to join an acrobatic troop on the English vaudeville circuit. He didn't see his mother for twenty years, by which time he'd become the international screen sensation Cary Grant, a handsome, debonair star living in terror that his public mask would slip.

  Uncomfortable with people socially, a thorn in the side of most directors, nitpicky about sets, costumes, and scripts, Cary Grant felt unappreciated by the studio and angry that he was never nominated for an Oscar. He spent evenings morosely leafing through his scrap-books, brooding about all the movies he should have made. He married five times, and reportedly beat at least two of his wives, sometimes inviting the servants to watch. He usually ate dinner— both with and without company—in bed, in front of the TV, in black tie. He named his terrier Archibald Leach. In the early 1960s, plagued by insomnia and depression, he relived childhood traumas by means of weekly injections of LSD under psychiatric supervision. “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant,” he once said. “Even I want to be Cary Grant.”

  When Diane returned to the theater, the caterers were setting up a bar in the lobby and there was still no dial tone. She spent the rest of the afternoon making and receiving phone calls on Floyd's cellphone from the café around the corner, running back to the theater to see what had been done. At five fifty-five, she closed the door of the projection booth, wiped her face and armpits with antibacterial towels, slipped into a green party dress from her sister's collection, checked her growing, but still too short, hair in the sliding glass window, and returned to the scene, hoping to close the door on a day that had been one long continuous interruption.