The Arriviste, page 4
I headed straight for Bud’s house, too angry to care that I was betraying my excuse for declining. I wasn’t going to be held captive while his guests used my lawn as their parking lot.
A pair of headlight beams hit a fire hydrant and an elm trunk before jumping a gap in the rhododendrons and blazing up the Youngers’ driveway. The light couldn’t travel far, though. The driveway was full. Guests milled around, wondering what to do with their cars.
“Norman!” a woman exclaimed to her husband. “It’s Nate and Nikki, for Pete’s sake.”
“Nancy!” exclaimed the other woman, Nikki presumably. They kissed, and their perfumes mingled with the scent of holly. I knew these people, knew their kind. Like creatures to the Ark, they had come in twos, north on the Meadowbrook, east across the Whitestone, or west down the Turnpike through Jericho. They had come in big sedans with heavy doors and heaters that heated faster than those in their houses and hooked exhaust pipes whose intoxicating benzene and oxide billows resembled their own exhalations misting into the frosty dark.
They had come in twos, but they wouldn’t stay in twos. They’d circulate individually and collide fortuitously, seeking each other out only when something could not wait to be told. One would otherwise know that they were a pair only because that was how they were known: not as Nate or Nikki or Norman or Nancy but as Norman and Nikki and Nate and Nancy. To compensate for their awkwardness, the men would be glib and the women would let the men’s glibness pass for wit. Everyone would kiss and squeeze and mock everyone else and feel proprietary about everyone else’s children. Even though they weren’t kids anymore themselves, the old college excitement would have survived their transformation. I knew them, all right.
A man in a beaver hat and cavalryman’s coat hurried up the driveway and jumped into the last in the line of cars. There’s the dunce who blocked me in, I thought, and started toward him. Before I reached him, he’d backed the car away.
“Guess he’s the valet,” said Nikki.
“Could be a thief,” Nate replied. “Let’s see whether he comes back.”
“Every time Nate gives his car to a valet, he panics as the guy drives off,” Nancy said. “If that guy went to the trouble of coming here and dressing up to steal a car, he wouldn’t choose our Pontiac.”
“It’s a Bonneville,” Nate protested.
The valet returned. “So much for that,” said Nancy.
The valet gave Norman his keys and left his hand extended for a tip, but the gesture betrayed him. Norman lifted the beaver hat off the valet’s head. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” his wife exclaimed and planted a kiss on Bud’s cheek.
“Buddy boy!” Nate cried.
I waited while Bud finished greeting his guests and sent them up the flagstone path to the house. The sounds of their glee trailed behind.
“Bud,” I said sharply.
“Who’s that?” he said. “It’s Neil! You’re here after all! How are you, fella? Don’t tell me you canceled your trip especially to come.”
“I’m afraid not. It was canceled for other reasons. But there’s been some kind of misunderstanding here. My driveway’s blocked. There are cars on my lawn.”
“Space got short. I remembered that you were gone and thought I’d make use of your frontage.”
“Well, that’s one thing, but the driveway—”
“I couldn’t very well block you in when you were out of town, could I?”
“Do I look like I’m out of town?”
“I wouldn’t say that, no. I’d say you’re here and, with a blocked driveway, won’t be going anywhere soon. Join the party!”
Another car pulled up, a Volkswagen. Its suspension was loose, and the beams from its headlamps bounced like spotlights following an acrobat. “I can leave it here?” the driver asked.
“I’ll take care of it,” Bud said, opening the door for her. She fiddled with a few things before getting out, and I took the opportunity to press my case.
“I’m really very busy,” I told him. “I was just running out for some cigarettes. I’ve got to get back to it.”
“Cigarettes? Help yourself—we’ve probably got one for every match in the place. I’ll tell you what. Go inside, have a drink and a smoke.” He lowered his voice. “There are women in there practically crying for a man like you. For that matter, here’s one you can cry for.”
The driver got out of her car before I could refuse. Bud introduced himself and me. She looked young in the torchlight, even for this crowd. She was willowy, with long wavy hair and earrings dangling like fobs on chains. “I’m here to meet Lee,” she said with a hint of Spanish in her pronunciation.
“Lucky man,” Bud said as she started up the path. “Lee,” he said to me, “it doesn’t ring a bell. She must be at the wrong party. Go on in. Maybe you can be Lee.”
“Not tonight. I’ve got to get some cigarettes and go back to work. Now if you’ll move those cars at the head of my driveway.”
“Think I know whose car is whose? Go on in and help yourself to all the smokes you can carry. You’ll be back at your desk in no time. It’ll be a perfect break for you.”
What could I do, threaten to have the cars towed? I went ahead, up the path and through the door, where a clamor of voices overwhelmed the sound of wind and rustle behind me.
One of the Younger boys came to take my overcoat. He was freckle-faced, with a mouthful of braces and a cowlick.
“Thanks,” I told him, “ but I think I’ll hold on to it.”
“What do you wanna walk around in your coat for? You’ll boil!”
“I’m only coming in for a few minutes.”
“A few minutes. Then why’d you come at all?” He tugged at my sleeve. “Listen,” he continued, “I’m supposed to take everyone’s coat.”
“Well, you’re not taking mine.” I tried to make him let go but he held on. Our tug-of-war continued. Heads turned.
The apple really hadn’t fallen far from the tree; he too was stubborn. “I see—you want it for yourself. If I give it to you, how will I know you won’t make off with it?”
“Make off with it? But I’ve already got a jacket. It’s a Mighty Mac. Wanna see it?”
“Not right now. Maybe some other—”
“—and I’ve got a bike and a go-cart and we’ve got two television sets. How many have you got?”
“One.”
“Only one? That’s too bad. At my friend’s house they have three. What kind is it?”
He was leading me through the house, to an upstairs bedroom where he kept the overcoats. He might have been taking me on a European grand tour, to judge from the decor: French tulle upholstery, Dutch muslin curtains, Flemish oils, German piano, Viennese wind-up clock, Scandinavian fur rug, Venetian cut-glass lamps, Roman cassone, Turkish runners—all from as far east as Third Avenue. But then, I wondered, where was England? England’s bounty had been excluded. I mulled that over till it struck me that there was something of England in the house. From England the Youngers had borrowed their name.
The pile of coats on the bed was higher than the boy himself. He draped mine over a bedpost and put my gloves and astrakhan on a shelf beside it. “I’ll need a chit for that coat.”
“A chit? What’s that?”
“Be on guard,” I said as I left him. “Could be some second-story men in this crowd.”
“Second what? You are strange.”
His reply followed me down the hall and at the top of the staircase—which lacked the grandeur that its wind suggested—gave me pause before my descent.
The crowd at the base of the stairs surged and I bumped a woman whose hair was wrapped in a tall bun. It was a tower, a Babylonian ziggurat. Her earrings were long too, like inverted lampposts, and made the bun seem even taller. She grabbed my wrist and said, “See my eyebrows—would you describe them as melodramatic?”
“The line, she means,” a man standing closer to her than he had to explained.
Her eyebrows were ordinary, nothing exceptional about them. Besides, with a hairdo like hers who would notice the eyebrows? “Come on,” she said, “be honest.”
“I don’t find them melodramatic,” I said. “Not at all. Dramatic but not melodramatic. They have the perfect amount of drama.”
I tried to head toward the bar, but everyone was standing toe to toe, women lifting themselves toward men’s ears, men bending toward women’s, pendants and neckties swinging. I made progress following an hors d’oeuvres server, her tray a horizontal shield before which the guests had to yield.
Someone grabbed me from behind. I turned and a walleyed woman said, “You’re not Stan!” in the accent—part Bronx, part Northumberland—for which people ridicule our island.
“And neither are you.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I saw Mina there next to you, and I thought you were Stan.” She nudged me to the side and leaned toward Mina. “Where’s Stan? I thought he was Stan.”
“He’s too tall to be Stan.”
She turned me around. “No, Stan’s about the same height.”
“As him?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Oh, come on—maybe when he’s erect.” Mina howled and mussed my hair.
“Are you done with me?” I asked.
A server offering mushroom canapés thrust her tray forward. The mushrooms rocked on their doilies and the guests parted before them. I saw my chance and followed in her wake. Though she didn’t lead me all the way to the bar, she got me close enough to push my way in. Nobody seemed to take it amiss, and when I’d gotten a drink I was pushed aside in turn.
I found myself face-to-face with a man wiping what appeared to be pâté from the deep, crumb-collecting corners of his mouth with a balled-up napkin. “I’m reading the most fascinating book,” he told me after he’d gotten every last crumb out. “It’s called The Greeks of the Middle Ages.”
“I’ve read that one too,” I said.
His eyes lit up—nothing to do with me, I realized. Something behind me had provoked his glimmer—somebody, that is. “Peeka-boo,” he exclaimed past me, then, lower, “Hello, lovelies.”
Another tray was passing behind me. He reached over my shoulder for what was on it, a morsel of gravlax napped in dill, as I discovered from the sauce he dripped on my sport jacket. “Sorry,” he said grudgingly, as though he’d been acting out of duty and had had no choice in the matter. “Will ya grab a napkin off that tray for me?” he asked after bolting the hors d’oeuvre. He balled that one up too and had at the spot on my jacket. “As good as new,” he said after a few dabs. “Better.”
I craned my neck to check the damage.
“New’s not all it’s cracked up ta be,” he added. He inspected the napkin he’d dabbed at me with. “When an item’s new, it’s anybody’s.”
“Or nobody’s.”
“Well, exactly. So you agree.” He clapped my shoulder. “That little spot, invisible to the naked eye, is like your signature.”
“Yours, you mean.”
“It was an accident, for Pete’s sake. So much for que sera, sera. Whaddya want me ta do about it?” He took out his wallet and flourished a few twenties at me. “Is this what you’re after?”
“Put that away.”
“Oh, so now it’s c’est la vie, eh? A little indelicacy always works wonders with your type.”
“My type?”
“Lighten up, pal. Just pulling your leg.” His laughter revealed a spanakopita remnant between his teeth. “To the victor goes the spoils,” I thought I heard him say. He offered me his hand.
“Excuse me?”
“Hector Spolz,” he said. “Pleased to meetch’.”
I gave him my name and said “Likewise.” He had a dealclosing sort of handshake.
A man appeared beside him. “You know Buddy a long time?” he asked me. He had hound-dog eyes and a mouth set in a frown that seemed to extend to his bow tie. A bushy mustache might have given him a hint of dapperness, but when he sipped his drink it collected froth at the corners and deepened the frown. “I’m Izzy, by the way.”
I introduced myself and said, “I met him only recently.”
“I hardly know him. Not that I haven’t seen him around. Anyhow, with a name like Bud it’s easy to feel like you know him, if you know what I mean. Hector knows him.”
“Sure I know him,” Hector said. “An advanced case of the fidgets.”
They started in on Bud. I might have left them to themselves if I’d had anywhere to go. I wasn’t so annoyed with my neighbor that I liked the idea of listening to a sourpuss and a sad sack dissect him. But I mustn’t have been wholly averse to it—I stayed put. Now that I’d made it to the bar, moving didn’t seem worth the trouble. Trays of strong pink cocktails were passing our way.
“The man can’t sit still,” Hector said. “He’s got a new scheme every couple of years. You can’t build a business so quick.”
“Not a real business,” said Izzy.
“To tell you the truth, with those suits of his . . . What is it they go for, two hundred?”
“Two-fifty. Two-fifty, easy.” The idea of the figures animated Izzy. He punctuated his utterance with karate chops, and grew pensive. “That’s what quality costs these days.”
“Quality nowadays? Don’t talk to me about quality. It’s only a slogan.” This may have been one of Hector’s own slogans—his mind was elsewhere, if his eyes were the vanguard.
I turned and saw what he did: the woman who’d come in the Beetle while I was talking to Bud in the driveway. One thing I hadn’t seen out there was her smile. It was like a schooner riding high on the water.
We helped ourselves to more cocktails.
“Are these pink squirrels?” I asked, holding up my glass.
“What’s surprising,” Hector resumed, “is that I’d always thought of him as a bit of a . . . a bit of a . . .”
“A Harry Horseshit?” An impish type with a cauliflower ear and pastel florets printed on his shirt turned around to supply the phrase, and turned back.
“Thank you, Garson,” Hector said over his shoulder. “A Harry Horseshit. But a place like this takes real money.”
“It’s a nice house,” Izzy added, “a nice town. Cornwallis decamped here, you know. There’s a plaque on the village green.”
“Decamped? What does that mean? Am I supposed to be impressed? The man camped everywhere.”
“It speaks to the age of the place. The village is old, is what’s impressive.”
“My grandma’s old too. Does she impress me?”
“Washington was here too,” Izzy interjected. “He came to secure the harbor.”
“George Washington, now there was a Harry Horseshit, first class. Couldn’t even keep his wig on his head. He was tall, was what he had going for him. That’s why they gave him his command.”
“What’s that, melba toast? Grab me a piece, will you?”
“How did they keep their wigs on their heads? I mean, if the wind came up while they were in battle?”
The group behind Hector disbanded, and Garson slipped into our midst. “Well, something must’ve worked out for him,” he said.
“I’d say so. You don’t become the father of the country—”
“For Bud, he means,” said Izzy.
“I’m always telling him to develop property. You know what they say about land,” Hector said. “But he just shrugs. A sure thing is beneath him. It has to be some new twist or he isn’t interested.”
“I heard that he made out so well selling lawn furniture on commission that he took home more than his boss. When they tried to give him a haircut, he quit.”
“It wasn’t lawn furniture, it was lawn sprinklers.”
“Sprinklers?” Garson twirled, adding sound effects in imitation of a revolving sprinkler. “You’d have to sell a lot of them to—”
“It was pie in the sky.”
“Then where does he get it?”
“My guess,” said Hector, “is, it comes from her side.”
“The old story. He marries his way onto third base and acts like he hit a triple.”
“Now let’s not get carried away—I wouldn’t exactly call this third base. I’d still rather be where I am. Did I tell you we’re—” As if on its own, Hector’s hand grabbed a miniature quiche from a passing tray and stuffed it into his mouth before he’d finished his sentence. He chewed frantically, eyes bulging. “I’m always burning my goddamned tongue,” he gasped.
We waited dumbly, Garson, Izzy, and I, watching him ingest his quiche, till a laugh, really a series of laughs knocking in bursts like a motor that refuses to turn over, made us turn around. Bud’s back was to us, and the heaving of his shoulders hazed the sheen of his gabardine jacket. When his laughter had subsided to the point that the pauses between laughs were longer than the laughs themselves, he must have sensed a vacuum behind him.
“You’ve been introduced?” he asked, turning from me to Hector and Garson and brushing back a Lionel-Barrymoreish curl.
“The way he was glowering at me,” Hector said, “I wasn’t sure about giving him my name. I drip a little sauce on his tweed, and he’s ready to twist my nuts off.” He brandished a plastic-cutlass toothpick. “Good thing I’m armed.”
“Don’t take it personally. I used to think he was glowering at me too, till I realized it’s his regular look!” Bud thumped me on the back.
“We haven’t met,” Garson said.
Bud hesitated, then said, “Neil Fox, Garson uh . . . Garson . . . ?”
“When your first name’s Garson, you don’t need a last name,” Hector said.
I started to sidle away but Bud grabbed me. “Enjoying yourself, Neil? I did tell you that this was a party, didn’t I?”
“I have been enjoying myself, but, you know, it’s time for me to be on my way. I told you I had work to do.”
