The Prince and the Pretender, page 21
Eric sensed their unease and felt miserably isolated from his old friends. But some of the Casa Maria’s regular customers who were in the room smiled and waved; a few even stopped at Eric’s table to shake his hand and, being true Villagers, said things like, “When are you coming back to work?” Eric immediately felt better and ordered a far larger dinner than he or his guests could possibly consume.
“Waitering,” Mrs. Lindenhurst observed, “is a very honorable profession. Certainly it’s more thought of in Europe, where they have raised it to the status of an art, than here. I get the impression that you were very good at it, Eric, and your customers obviously miss you.”
“Their loss is our gain,” Tom quipped.
“I was good,” the usually modest Eric admitted, “and if things had turned out differently I was going to open my own place.” He looked directly at Tom as he spoke.
“Really?” His grandmother seemed very interested. “Our ancestors, Eric, were in commerce.”
“Shipbuilding in New England two hundred years ago is a little different than the restaurant business,” Tom reflected.
“I agree, Thomas,” Mrs. Lindenhurst quickly answered. “With the restaurant business one is always assured of eating a good meal every night.”
Eric grinned at his friend. “More pasta, Tommy?”
And so the long, hot days of a New York summer began and for Eric Hall and his grandmother they were spent in idle tranquility, doing what they wanted, when they wanted to do it and paying scant attention to the world about them. It reminded Eric of life with Uncle Alexis and Aunt Marie except that now he was free to come and go at his leisure — but with Tom working all day, he had no place to go and nothing to do when he got there. Eric was learning that obscurity and great celebrity have a great deal in common.
Many of Eric’s old friends called, some out of genuine concern but most out of curiosity, and a few of them even came to the house on Ninety-second Street to visit with him Eric handled them exactly as he had handled his peculiar situation to date: “I am not the person you used to know, but I am very happy to make your acquaintance.”
They respected this not only because it made sense but even more because the rich have a great deal of respect for the super-rich.
The new Eric had no interest in cultivating these people. Indeed, he had no interest, as he had told his grandmother, in becoming “the Eric they used to know.” Because fate, over which he had never had a firm grasp, had endowed him with Eric Hall’s face he had become Eric in body, but he would be damned if he would become Eric in spirit. “As the Bard said,” he told Tom, “what’s in a name?”
“A hundred million bucks, that’s what.”
“You’re full of crap, Bradshaw. You care as much about the money as I do. What do you do with the money I’ve been giving you?”
“Adding it to Aunt Marie’s nest egg. You want an accounting?”
“Spend it, dammit.”
“On what?”
“What about those Gucci loafers you were always mooning over?”
“I bought a pair and they hurt my feet. I have very peasant feet, Nicky.”
“Eric, blockhead. Eric.”
“I liked you better when you were a waiter,” Tom lamented.
“And I liked you better when you were a swimming instructor at the West Side Y.”
Gradually, Tom became a more and more familiar sight at the Lindenhurst mansion. Mrs. Lindenhurst liked him and, exercising her own particular charm, soon had Tom relating to her the story of his life. “You’re a very courageous young man, Thomas, and I think the Ambassador would have liked you.” She looked at his portrait as she uttered his title. “I also think your grandmother should be proud of you.”
Tom shook his head. “I was an embarrassment to her.”
Mrs. Lindenhurst nodded sympathetically. “I know the type. My lord, I’ve known all the types there are to know. I remember a very royal lady was so upset by her son’s homosexuality that she pretended not to know what the word meant, let alone that such romances have existed since Eve did in Adam…and the whole human race, come to think of it.” Tom and Eric sat enraptured, like two little boys at the knee of a great teacher.
“Well,” she continued, “one evening at a dinner party in Buckingham Palace the talk turned to gossip and someone mentioned that a certain general and his aide-de-camp were extremely close, so to speak. ‘But,’ another stated, ‘we all know the general is homosexual.’
“Well, this great lady raised her head and said, ‘Is that so? The King of Spain has the same thing but the doctors are now able to control the bleeding.”
Her audience roared their appreciation. Tom, clapping his hands, cried, “It’s not true. I don’t believe it.”
“Oh, but it is true, Thomas. It is indeed true.”
Tom and Eric went to the films or the theater at least three times a week and Tom was soon spending his weekends at Eric’s home. A gossip columnist finally picked this up and mentioned that “Eric Hall was in the constant company of his discoverer.”
“How does she know you found me?” Eric questioned. “It was never mentioned publicly.”
Tom rubbed the palms of his hands together. “The lady is a great friend of Amy Culver. Can you add two and two? And please note that my name was not mentioned which makes me certain Amy the Sweet got a call from the scribe who, in twenty-five words or less, told Amy that she had seen us about and asked Ms. Culver if she might know who I was.”
“And Amy,” Eric continued, “said she would tell her if she promised not to mention your name, only mine.”
“Give the man a cigar. Good old Amy, with her for a press agent I wouldn’t get an obit if I paid for it.”
“Stupid,” Eric said, tossing the paper aside.
“Stupid, yes, but not funny. You can expect a call from Southampton.”
“What?”
“Dicky now knows that you and I are an item, as they say in gossip-land, and the little weasel must be adjusting and readjusting his eyeglasses, pulling what few hairs he has left out of the top of his head and driving his wife up a fucking wall. I repeat, you’re going to get a call from Southampton.”
Eric got a call from Southampton. Dicky pleaded with him to come out for a few weeks. One week? A lousy weekend? Well, then Dicky would come into the city. He had some business to attend to anyway. “Lunch and squash, Eric, I don’t want you getting rusty on me.”
Eric was not in the least bit rusty. In fact he had improved a great deal since his first match with Dicky and rather enjoyed his afternoon with Tom’s nemesis. The new Eric felt at ease with Dicky. He had heard so much about the man from Tom that he now felt as if he had indeed known Dicky all his life. And Dicky, always solicitous of his beloved friend, was now even more so. Like the first time they had been alone together Dicky was once again nervous, at a loss for a topic of conversation, and appeared to be relieved when Eric took the initiative along these lines.
It was all perfectly understandable but Eric still wondered what the true relationship had been between Dicky and the former Eric Hall. Was it an intimate one and was Dicky now wondering if his friend remembered, would rather forget, wanted to resume…?
“Have you seen anything of Tom?” Dicky finally asked.
“Now and then. A movie, things like that.”
“You never cared much for him,” Dicky suddenly exploded. It was obviously what he wanted to tell Eric since their first reunion. “He’s not one of us, Eric.”
“Who are us?”
“You know what I mean.”
Eric shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“Do you remember that Tom Bradshaw is a bastard. I mean a real one. He used to brag about it.”
Eric smiled. “No, I didn’t remember but Tom told Nana and me all about it.”
Dicky was shocked. “Your grandmother?”
“Yes.” Eric leaned across the table as if betraying a confidence to his lunch partner. “It seems I have a few ancestors who were born on the wrong side of the bed, as she so quaintly put it.”
It was just possible that Dicky Culver would close the season in Southampton without a hair left on his head.
Tom had scheduled his vacation for the last two weeks in August and that time was rapidly approaching. “You could take the rest of your life off,” Eric told him.
“I intend to do just that, but not right now. How the hell would it look? You return from the dead and I grow rich. We’ve been very lucky so far, but let’s not push it.”
“I think you’re developing a guilt complex about being a kept man.”
“Wait, and I’ll prove how wrong you are. Can you get away for a couple of weeks?”
“Not to the Hamptons, I can’t. According to Dicky if I sat on the beach or in any pub I would see my life pass before me.”
“I know,” Tom said, “and I have no intention of sharing you on my vacation. I was thinking about the Jersey shore. I once went to one of those small towns on the ocean where the only celebrities they know are the local volunteer firemen. Can you swing it?”
Eric discussed it with his grandmother. She was a little hurt, hid the fact and said he certainly deserved a vacation and should go wherever he wanted. “I also wanted to talk to you about the future,” Eric continued the conversation.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Well, I’m very happy here, you know that but I would like to get a place of my own.”
She nodded slowly. “I can understand that. You’re not a little boy any more and if our lives had taken a more normal course you would have left home a long time ago.” There were tears in her eyes as she spoke but she held herself rigidly erect and smiled her pleasant smile.
“Not far, Nana,” he quickly added. “I would never want to be too far from you. Someplace in the Seventies or Eighties…only a few blocks from here, but my own place. Do you understand?”
Her face brightened. “Of course I understand, my dear. A man, especially a single one, needs room to breathe and can’t be expected to spend his days and nights with an old lady.”
“You are not an old lady and I’m happiest when I’m with you.”
She waved away the compliment. “Nonsense. I’ll tell Russell to —”
“No, Nana, please…no. I want to find my own place and rent it and furnish it. This means a great deal to me.”
Now the tears which again appeared in her eyes expressed joy and not sorrow. “I’m so proud of you, Eric. You could so easily fall back on all our money but you insist on doing for yourself. You know the joy that comes from personal achievement. Just like your grandfather, Eric, you are just like your namesake.”
“Now don’t start pushing me out. I intend to be right here for Christmas and then, after the first of the year, I’ll start looking around.”
“I want to have a real old-fashion Christmas, Eric…and we’ll have a party. The grandest party New York has seen since your mother’s debut.”
20
From the moment they boarded the bus they were Tom and Nicky…a junior bank executive and a former waiter on a two-week hiatus. Nicky’s sparkling blue eyes and Tom’s boyish good looks charmed everyone on the bus. Tall and slim…both clad in jeans that fit to perfection and knitted shirts that had seen better days, they presented a picture of the great American dream on the move.
“What would they think,” Tom whispered, “if they knew we had just pulled off the biggest heist in recorded history?”
This struck Nicky as very funny. “We did do that, didn’t we? Has anyone ever done it before?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. How does it make you feel?”
“Sexy.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No…look…” Nicky pointed toward his lap.
“Christ, it’s standing straight up.”
This was to set the tone for their two weeks on the Jersey shore. Tom had rented a garage apartment behind a very impressive house just one block from the ocean. One bedroom, a small kitchen and even a postage-stamp view of the Atlantic. Their landlords in the manor house, as it was immediately labeled, were a craggy old man and his very nervous wife. “I’m so glad your friend is not a woman, Mr. Bradshaw. Some of our neighbors have had trouble with…well, cohabitating, if you know what I mean.”
Once inside the apartment they squared away the few changes of clothing they had brought with them and Tom asked, “Do you want to go for a swim?”
“After…right now I want to cohabitate.” This became another label that was to remain with them for their two weeks in the sun.
“Are ‘we’ up again?”
Nicky shook his head. “‘We’ never went down.”
In three days they were tan, more handsome than ever, and the talk of the beach. They spent their days swimming and basking, then home for a quick shower and out for a simple dinner before going back to the tiny apartment to sip wine or beer, talk and cohabitate. They lay naked on one of the twin beds, a cool breeze coming through the wide open window, the sound of the surf just audible and a bottle of beer precariously balanced on each firm, flat belly. “The first one who spills it is a shit,” Nicky announced.
“I’m going to laugh.”
“Better not…you’ll drown your little friend.”
“Remember the night you poured champagne ?”
“Your birthday…did you like that?”
“I like you without embellishment better.”
“Better than Moet?”
“Much better.”
“That’s the nicest compliment I’ve ever had.”
“Give Dicky a chance…he’s just warming up to the new you.”
“You know, Tom, I sort of like Dicky.”
Tom drowned his little friend.
§ § § §
One day at the beach two girls who had been staring at them for days finally got up the courage to approach them. “Are you Eric Hall?” one of them asked.
“Yes, I am.”
The girl giggled. “No, you’re not.”
“But he is,” Tom said.
“I told you he wasn’t,” the other girl said, pulling her friend away.
“But I am.”
Giggling and embarrassed the two young things fled.
“Cute, but nuts,” Nicky observed.
“No,” Tom answered, “just human. If you had said you weren’t Eric Hall they would have believed you were. That’s how we got away with it Nicky. I never said you were Eric.”
“And neither did I. Everyone told me I was.”
One evening they walked the boardwalk, watching the young lovers strolling hand in hand and avoiding the fact that in a few days their idyll would be over. They stopped to look at the ocean, lit only by the moon and a starry sky. The air was clear and almost chilly. They were surrounded by people but very much alone. “If I never have anything else in my life, I’ve had this,” Nicky said.
“That’s the nicest compliment anyone’s ever paid me,” Tom answered.
Their hands touched for one brief moment, but because of its clandestine brevity it was more thrilling than any overt display of emotion.
“What’s going to happen to us, Tommy?”
“I don’t know. I thought the Lindenhurst money and the Lindenhurst name could make me legitimate. Why did you do it, Nicky?”
“Because I thought it would make you happy.”
“I want Nicky Three back.”
“It’s too late. It’s not just us anymore…it’s her, too. I love her, Tommy, I love her as if she truly were my grandmother and I won’t let her lose Eric a second time.”
“I burned my ass and now I’m going to have to sit on the blister.”
“A hundred million bucks makes a nice cushion, Thomas.”
“Then let’s make it work, Nicky. Let’s sit on that cushion and turn it into a magic carpet. Come on, smile. We’ve done our homework, passed the exam with flying colors and now we’re going to have some fun.”
“I must be crazy.”
“Why?”
“Because I believe you.”
21
Eric Hall’s friends were drifting back into the city from their summer retreats and the town was once again revving up for its annual spurt of energy. The year was winding down and New York would tick off its remaining days in a manner similar to a rocket launch countdown. Target date: December 31.
Feeling he had had enough time to acclimate himself to his return to life, as the press had described it, old friends, casual acquaintances and perfect strangers invited Eric Hall to everything from theater openings to intimate dinners for two. With Tom’s help he separated the genuine from the phony, responded to the cream of the crop, and soon found himself living the life Nicky Three had thought only existed in novels and films. The people he had vowed not to cultivate he now found not only likable but interesting and diverting company. It was amazing how few of them referred to “the old days”; they treated Eric not so much as a new friend but as the friend of an old friend.
They had all reached that time in life when the door was finally closed on prep school and college and opening on a future which involved careers and the starting of families. The new Eric had arrived just in time to join in their march forward. However, when talking to or dancing with one of the many pretty girls or the wives of his new friends Eric couldn’t help but wonder if he had slept with any of them. It was an interesting, and not unexciting, bit of speculation.
He also looked over their husbands and entertained the same thought, though in this form it was even more interesting.
When he started meeting people who had never known Eric Hall he considered this to be the best aspect of his new life. It became an unwritten rule that Tom Bradshaw be invited to all these functions and in short time Tom began to feel like one of the us.
