The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  Kramer stretched that moment out for as long as the bounds of logic and minimal decency would allow and then just a little bit longer. None of them, not the two immaculate Wasp lawyers from Wall Street and not the beautiful young widow with her new millions, dared make a peep.

  Then he said softly, paternally, “All right. Now let’s see what that means.”

  When Sherman entered Killian’s office, Killian said, “Ayyyyyy, whaddaya whaddaya? What’s the long face for? You won’t mind coming all the way down here when I tell you why. Dja think I brought you down here to show you this?”

  He tossed The City Light over to the edge of the desk. FINANCIER’S WIDOW…Sherman barely glanced at it. It had already come humming and sizzling into the arcade.

  “He was right there in the room at Burns’s. This Peter Fallow. I never saw him.”

  “It don’t matter,” said Killian, who was in a jolly mood. “This is old news. We awready knew this. Am I right? I brought you down here for the news.”

  The truth was, Sherman didn’t mind these trips down to Reade Street at all. Sitting in the apartment…waiting for the next telephoned threat…The very grandeur of the apartment mocked what he had now been reduced to. He sat there and waited for the next blow. Doing anything was preferable. Riding in a car to Reade Street, moving horizontally without resistance—swell! Terrific!

  Sherman sat down, and Killian said, “I didn’t want to even mention this over the telephone, but I got a very interesting telephone call. The jackpot, in fact.”

  Sherman just looked at him.

  “Maria Ruskin,” said Killian.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “That I wouldn’t kid you about.”

  “Maria called you?”

  “‘Mistuh Killyun, muh nim is Muhreeuh Ruskin. Uhm a frin uvuh client uh yuhs, Mistuh Shuhmun McCoy.’ Does that sound like the correct party?”

  “My God! What did she say? What did she want?”

  “She wants to see you.”

  “I’ll be damned…”

  “She wants to see you this afternoon at four-thirty. She said you’d know where.”

  “I’ll…be…damned…You know, she told me yesterday, at Burns’s, she was going to call me. But I didn’t believe that for a second. Did she say why?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask her. I didn’t want to say one word that might make her change her mind. All I said was, I was sure you’d be there. And I’m sure you will be, bro.”

  “Didn’t I tell you she’d call me?”

  “You did? You just said you didn’t believe she would.”

  “I know. Yesterday I didn’t, because she’s been avoiding me. But didn’t I say she wasn’t the cautious type? She’s a gambler. She’s not the type to play it safe. She likes to mix it up, and her game is—well, it’s men. Your game is the law, mine is investments, hers is men.”

  Killian started chuckling, more at the change in Sherman’s spirits than anything else. “Okay,” he said, “terrific. Let’s you and her play. Let’s get started. I had another reason for bringing you down here instead of me coming up to your place. We got to get you wired.”

  He pressed a button and said into the intercom: “Nina? Tell Ed Quigley to come in here.”

  At precisely 4:30, with his heart pumping away at a good clip, Sherman pressed the bell marked “4B Boll.” She must have been waiting by the intercom box—the intercom itself no longer worked—because right away he could hear a buzz in the door and the heavy click-click-click of the electric lock opening, and he entered the town house. The smell was instantly familiar, the dead air, the filthy carpet on the stairs. There was the same old lugubrious paint and battered doorways and the dismal light—familiar and at the same time new and dreadful, as if he had never taken the trouble to notice what was really here. The wonderful bohemian spell of the place was broken. He now had the misfortune to gaze at an erotic dream with the eyes of a realist. How could he ever have found it enchanting?

  The creak of the stairs reminded him of things he wanted to forget. He could still see the dachshund hauling his fat tube up the risers…“You’re a wet little piece a salami, Muhshull”…And he had been sweating…Sweating, he had made three trips up this decrepit staircase carrying Maria’s luggage…And now he carried the heaviest burden of all. I’m wired. He could feel the tape deck in the small of his back the microphone over his sternum; he could feel, or he imagined he felt, the grip of the tape that held the wire to his body. Each of these artful, stealthy, miniaturized elements seemed to grow with each step he took. His skin magnified them, like a tongue feeling a broken tooth. Surely they were obvious! How much of it showed on his face? How much deceit? How much dishonor?

  He sighed and discovered he was already sweating and panting, from the climb or from adrenaline or from funk. The heat of his body made the tape prickly—or was it his imagination?

  By the time he reached the door, that sad painted door, he was breathing hard. He paused, sighed again, then rapped on the door with the signal they had always used, tap tappa tap tap—tap tap.

  The door opened slowly, but there was no one there. Then—

  “Boo!” Her head popped out from behind the door, and she was grinning at him. “Scare yuh?”

  “Not really,” said Sherman. “Lately I’ve been scared by experts.”

  She laughed, and it seemed to be a genuine laugh. “You, too? We’re a pair, aren’t we, Sherman?” With that she held out her arms to him, the way you would for a welcoming embrace.

  Sherman stared at her, astonished, confused, paralyzed. The calculations running through his mind faster than he could deal with them. There she was, in a black silk dress, her widow’s weeds, fitted closely at the waist, so that her gorgeous body welled out above and below. Her eyes were large and brilliant. Her dark hair was perfection itself, with a luxurious sheen. Her coyly curved lips, which had always driven him crazy, were full and parted and smiling. But it added up to nothing but a certain arrangement of clothes and flesh and hair. There was a slight furze of dark hair on her forearms. He should slip between those arms and embrace her, if that’s what she wanted! It was a delicate moment! He needed her on his side, in his confidence, for however long it took to get certain matters of fact into the microphone over his sternum and onto the tape in the small of his back! A delicate moment—and a dreadful dilemma! Suppose he embraced her—and she felt the microphone—or ran her hands down his back! He had never considered such a thing, not for a moment. (Who would even want to embrace a man who was wired?) Nevertheless—do something!

  So, he moved toward her, thrusting his shoulders forward and humping his back, so that she couldn’t possibly flatten herself against his chest. Thus they embraced, a voluptuous supple young thing and a mysterious cripple.

  Quickly he disengaged, trying to smile, and she looked at him, as if to see if he was all right.

  “You’re right, Maria. We are a pair, we’re on the front page.” He smiled philosophically. (So let’s get down to cases!) Nervously he looked about the room. “Come on,” she said, “sit down.” She gestured toward the oak pedestal table. “I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?”

  Fine; let’s sit down and talk. “Any scotch?”

  She went into the kitchen, and he looked down at his chest to make sure the microphone didn’t show. He tried to run over the questions in his mind. He wondered if the tape was still running.

  Presently she returned with his drink and one for herself, a clear drink, gin or vodka. She sat down in the other bentwood chair and crossed her legs, her glistening legs, and smiled.

  She raised her glass as if in a toast. He did the same.

  “So here we are, Sherman, the couple all New York is talking about. There’s a lotta people’d like to hear this conversation.”

  Sherman’s heart jumped. He was dying to peek downward to see if his microphone was showing. Was she insinuating something? He studied her face. He couldn’t make out a thing.

  “Ye
s, here we are,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I thought you’d decided to vanish on me. I haven’t had a very pleasant time since you left.”

  “Sherman, I swear to you I didn’t know anything about it until I got back.”

  “But you didn’t even tell me you were going.”

  “I know, but that had nothing to do with you, Sherman. I was—I was half crazy.”

  “What did it have to do with?” He tilted his head and smiled, to show he wasn’t bitter.

  “With Arthur.”

  “Ah. With Arthur.”

  “Yes, with Arthur. You think I had a very free-and-easy arrangement with Arthur, and in a way I did, but I also had to live with him, and nothing was really free with Arthur. He took it out one way or the other. I told you how he’d started swearing at me.”

  “You mentioned it.”

  “Calling me a whore and a bitch, right in front of the servants or anybody else, if he felt like it. Such resentment, Sherman! Arthur wanted a young wife, and then he turned around and hated me because I was young and he was an old man. He wanted exciting people around, because he thought with all his money, he deserved exciting people, and then he turned around and he hated them and he hated me, because they were my friends or else they were more interested in me than they were in him. The only people interested in Arthur were those old yids, like Ray Radosz. I hope you saw what a fool he made of himself at the funeral. Then he came in the back there and started trying to hug me. I thought he was gonna pull my dress off me. Did you see that? You were so excited! I kept trying to tell you to calm down! I never saw you like that. And that big-nosed bastard from The City Light, that horrible hypocritical Brit, was standing right behind you. He heard you!”

  “I know I was excited,” he said. “I thought you were ducking me. I was afraid it was the last chance I was going to have to talk to you.”

  “I wasn’t ducking you, Sherman. I’m trying to explain. The only person I was ducking was Arthur. I just left, I just—I didn’t think. I just left. I went to Como, but I knew he could find me there. So I went to visit Isabel di Nodino. She has a place in the mountains, in a little town outside of Como. It’s like a castle in a book. It was wonderful. No telephone calls. I didn’t even see a newspaper.”

  All alone, except for Filippo Chirazzi. But that didn’t matter, either. As calmly as he could, he said, “It’s nice that you could get away, Maria. But you knew I was worried. You knew about the piece in the newspaper, because I showed it to you.” He couldn’t get the agitation out of his voice. “The night that big maniac was here—I know you remember that.”

  “Come on, Sherman. You’re getting all worked up again.”

  “Have you ever been arrested?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Well, I have. That was one of the things I did while you were away. I…” He stopped, suddenly realizing he was doing something very foolish. To get her frightened about the prospects of being arrested was the last thing he needed to do right now. So he shrugged and smiled and said, “Well, it’s an experience,” as if to say, “But not as bad as you might think.”

  “But I’ve been threatened with it,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A man from the Bronx District Attorney’s Office came Ground to see me today, with two detectives.”

  This hit Sherman like a jolt. “He did?”

  “A pompous little bastard. He thought he was being so tough. He kept throwing his head back and doing something weird with his neck, like this, and looking at me through these little slits for eyes. What a creep.”

  “What did you tell him?” Very nervous now.

  “Nothing. He was too busy telling me what he could do to me.”

  “What do you mean?” A riff of panic.

  “He told me about this witness he has. He was so pompous and official about it. He wouldn’t even say who it was, but it was obviously that other kid, the big one. I can’t tell you what a jerk this man was.”

  “Was his name Kramer?”

  “Yeah. That was it.”

  “He was the same one who was in court when I was arraigned.”

  “He made it real simple, Sherman. He said if I would testify against you and corroborate the other witness, he’d give me immunity. If I didn’t, then I’d be treated as an accomplice, and they’d charge me with these…felonies. I can’t even remember what they were.”

  “But surely—”

  “He even gave me these Xeroxes of stories in the newspapers. He practically drew me a map. These were the correct stories, and these were the ones you concocted. I’m supposed to agree with the correct stories. If I say what actually happened, I go to prison.”

  “But surely you told him what actually happened!”

  “I didn’t tell him anything. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  He was sitting on the edge of the chair. “But, Maria, certain things are so clear-cut about this thing, and they don’t even know them yet. They’ve only heard lies from this kid who was trying to rob us! For example, it didn’t happen on a street, it happened on a ramp, right? And we stopped because the road was blocked, before we even saw anybody. Right? Isn’t that right?” He realized his voice had risen.

  A warm, sad smile, the sort of smile you give people who are in pain, came over Maria’s face, and she stood up and put her hands on her hips and said, “Sherman, Sherman, Sherman, what are we gonna do with you?”

  She slewed her right foot out in a certain way she had and let it pivot for a moment on the heel of her black high-heeled shoe. She gave him a look with her big brown eyes and held out her hands toward him, palms up.

  “Come here, Sherman.”

  “Maria—this is important!”

  “I know it is. Just come here.”

  Christ! She wanted to embrace him again! Well—embrace her, you idiot! It’s a sign she wants to be on your side! Embrace her within an inch of your life! Yes!—but how? I’m wired up! A cartridge of shame on my chest! A bomb of dishonor in the small of my back! What’ll she want to do next? Flop on the bed? What then? Well—good God, man! The look on her face says, “I’m yours!” She’s your ticket out! Don’t blow this chance! Do something! Act!

  So he rose from the chair. He lurched toward the best of both worlds. He got into a crouch, so that her chest wouldn’t touch his, so the small of his back would be beyond the reach of her hands. He embraced her like an old man leaning over a fence to touch a flagpole. This brought his head down low. His chin was practically on her clavicle.

  “Sherman,” she said, “what’s wrong? What’s wrong with your back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re all hunched over.”

  “I’m sorry.” He turned sideways, with his arms still around her shoulders. He tried to embrace her sideways.

  “Sherman!” She stepped back for a moment. “You’re all bent sideways. What’s the matter? You don’t want me to touch you?”

  “No! No…I guess I’m just tense. You don’t know what I’ve been through.” He decided to improve on that. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, how much I’ve needed you.”

  She studied him, then gave him the warmest, wettest, most labial look imaginable. “Well,” she said, “here I am.”

  She stepped toward him. He was in for it now. No more crouching, you dolt! No more sidewinding! He’d have to take a chance! Maybe the microphone was down deep enough so that she wouldn’t feel it, especially if he kissed her—kissed her feverishly! Her arms would be around his neck. So long as she kept them there, she’d never get to the small of his back. They were just inches apart. He slipped his arms under hers, in order to force hers up around his neck. He embraced her around her shoulder blades, to keep them forced up high. Awkward, but it would have to do.

  “Oh, Maria.” This kind of passionate moan wasn’t typical of him, but it would have to do also.

  He kissed her. He closed his eyes in the interest of sincerity and concentrated on bracing
his arms up high on her torso. He was conscious of flesh slightly caked with lipstick and warm saliva and the smell of her breath, which bore the recycled vegetable smell of gin.

  Wait a minute. What the hell was she doing? She was sliding her arms down outside of his arms, down toward his hips! He raised his elbows and tensed the muscles of his upper arms to try to force her arms away from his body without making an obvious point of it. Too late! She had her hands on his hips, trying to press his hips against hers. But her arms weren’t long enough! Suppose her hands then edged up to the small of his back. He jutted his tail out. If her fingers lost contact with his hips, maybe she’d give up. Her fingers—where were they? For a moment he felt nothing. Then—something on his waist, on the side. Shit! Confuse her—that was his only chance. Her lips remained pressed against his. She squirmed rhythmically and passionately amid the high vegetable funk. He squirmed back and jiggled his hips a bit, to throw her off. Her fingers—he’d lost them again. Every nerve fiber was on red alert, seeking to detect their presence. All at once her lips stopped squirming. Their lips were still together, but the motor had cut out. She disengaged her mouth and pulled her head back a few inches, so that he saw three eyes swimming in front of his face. But her arms were still around him. He didn’t like the way those three eyes swam.

  “Sherman…What’s this on your back?”

  “My back?” He tried to move, but she stayed with him. Her arms were still around him.

  “There’s a lump, a piece a metal or something—this thing, on your back.”

  Now he could feel the pressure of her hand. It was right on top of the tape deck! He tried a little turn this way and a little turn that way, but she still had her hand on it. He tried a real shimmy. No use! Now she had a grip on it!

  “Sherman, what is this?”

  “I don’t know. My belt—my belt buckle—I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have a belt buckle in the back!”

  Now she pulled loose from him in front, but she still had her hand on the deck.

  “Maria! What the hell!”