“You are surrounded, I see,” she said, “by your usual herbaceous aura.”
“Now what do you mean by that?” He put his nose right up to hers.
“Oh, I don’t know. That’s just what comes to mind. Herb as in tart and herbaceous as in perennial. You know, woodsy. Tied to the earth. Both at once. And here we go again.”
He snapped his fingers. “There! I knew I adored you! You always say exactly what you mean, whether people will understand you or not. And, by the way, they most often don’t, you know.”
“But you always do.”
“Ha. I always have to ask.”
“And you always say what will cut to the quick.”
“Why is that, do you suppose?”
“Because that’s what people expect of you. I think you feel that you’d be letting them down if you didn’t draw blood at least once in every conversation.”
He grinned wickedly. He lit his entrancing Pall Mall. “You don’t seem intimidated.”
“Because I’m busy being jealous of you, lighting up your cigarette.”
He didn’t, as anyone else would, offer her one and he did it, or didn’t do it, to be cruel. Fortunately, this turned out to be the kindest thing, because the moment passed, the alarm stopped ringing, and by the time he was on to his third puff, the appeal wore off. It was always the chumminess, the camaraderie of the incineration that got her going. After one or two puffs it became apparent that the smoker’s teeth were indeed due for a scraping, his breath dependent upon the equally stale breath of the conversant, and the cigarette itself a shackle rather than an adornment. Claire manifested the freedom she experienced by giving her spine a good, sturdy stretch. Jupiter inspected her from behind his undulating blue veil of smoke. “So the life of housewife suits you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“A bit thicker around the middle, I see. You’re not, um—”
“No, you worthless bag of bones, I am not.”
“Ah. Good. Because motherhood, though blessed, does tend to use up one’s creative energies, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do. That’s the point.”
“Oh, please don’t take offense. You are the most splendid woman here, if you want my opinion. I don’t go for the scrawny type.”
“Jupiter, you don’t go for any type in the female category.”
“True, but you don’t have to jump off the bridge to know you’ll be dead. And as Irwin Shaw said, after a woman passes thirty, she is forced to make the choice between face and fanny. And present company, he was glad to see, had successfully vied for the face.”
“I think it was Somerset Maugham said it first.”
“There. You see? You just can’t keep a good line down. I might add that you are the best-dressed woman here. Oh, you know, they’ve all clearly been to Paris, but you, my dear, have obviously lived there.”
“Thank you.” Claire smoothed her starry lap with pleasure. “Only why do I get the feeling I’m being fattened for the kill?”
“Because you must be that way yourself. If you want something, you no doubt first pave your way with compliments. It truly does take one to know one, you know.”
Justly mollified, Claire admitted to herself the succession of elaborate meals she’d concocted for Johnny before making any sizable request. “Touché,” she said and laughed.
“That’s better. Shall we sit down?”
“Thank you.”
“It’s for me. I’ve just been through a bout with phlebitis and I can’t stand for very long.”
“Uh oh.”
“No, I’m fine. I can walk all day long. As a matter of fact it’s the best thing for me. I just can’t stand.”
They settled into the comfy sofa and looked about, like any old couple getting ready to watch the tube at night. Both held captive by the visual, they made a happy pair, dishing all present, making each other laugh.
“So what’s all this about a play?” he asked.
“Haven’t you spoken with Carmela?”
“Carmela. She knows the best way to get my interest up is to remain tight-lipped. She pretends it’s all top secret.”
“It’s worked, hasn’t it? You’re here.”
“I’m here because of you. As you well know.”
Claire started to cry. She did not sob, but great, glycerine-like globes fell down her cheeks in a rush. It was his being nice that did it. She was doing fine, on her guard to his barbs, and she just wasn’t prepared for kindness.
“If you don’t stop this instant,” Jupiter said, squashing his cigarette out in the stately crystal aschenbecker, “I shall get up and walk out and I shall never bother with you again. I promise.”
Claire laughed. She blew her nose with the white linen handkerchief he offered with a backward hand. It trembled, his hand. So opposed he was to any form of intrusive intimacy, despite all this tough talk.
“I’ll be good,” she said finally, meekly.
“Oh, look. Jumbo shrimp. I wonder who Stefan is trying to impress? It can’t be me. He knows me. Just throw a little lumpfish caviar into a jelly dish and I’m his. It must be that appalling huddle of Boise, Idahoan, businessmen.”
Claire closed her eyes. Little Dharma. Andrew. Portia. A racehorse. Her own fat stomach. It was all too much.
“Claire. Perhaps you ought to go back to work.”
“I thought I was working. I’ve never worked so hard in all my life, really. The laundry is the part I can’t quite figure out. The more you do, the more there is. You ought to see my laundry room. I always thought if I would have a laundry room it would be all blue and white and with towels neatly folded on a papered shelf and the smell of clean lavender would waft from hanging ribboned bunches. Like the rooms I used to shoot. My laundry room has towels dragging around the cement floor in damp trails, and the basket overflows and has never been empty, so I bought an enormous one to hold it all and now that’s overflowing as well. There is a scum in my fabric-softener compartment and the whole place reeks of moist, soiled sock of man.”
“Tomorrow you shall regret having told me all this.”
“May I tell you something else? I think my neighbor might have killed his wife and gotten away with it.”
Jupiter snatched a shrimp from a passing tray and popped it into his mouth. “Needs horseradish,” he said.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Well, yes. I’m just waiting for you to tell me how.”
“I don’t know how.”
“If you don’t know how, you can’t do anything about it and if you can’t do anything about it, you might as well shut up and not talk about it. Slander, you know.”
“You’re a fine one to mention slander as an encumbrance to revelation.”
“Encumbrance to revelation! Honestly, Claire. People just don’t talk that way anymore. If,” he muttered, “they ever did.”
“So swell. So I should forget about it. That’s what you’re saying?”
“What I’m saying is this. There are toxic dumps appearing all over Queens, all over the city, all over the state, and they will lead to the deaths of many more people inevitably than one cozy little unprovable murder. You might put your energies into catching those hooligans, the people responsible for that stuff. It would certainly do more good.”
“And I’m telling you that a man might have gotten away with killing his wife. It happens. Autopsy experts have a lot to do, too, you know. They can slip up. Well, they can. What? You don’t think real evil exists? That there are people out there planning devious atrocities, I mean knowingly being evil? And getting away with it?”
“I think there are some really sick people out there, sure.”
“Yes, but I mean evil.”
“I think you spent too many years in Catholic schools. And I am advising you not to talk about it to anyone else. For now. Are you with me?”
“I’m always with you, you old fox.”
“Then why don’t you come work in my office?
She She needs a good staff photographer.”
For several terrific moments, Claire imagined herself arriving in the city each morning, dressed however she pleased, drinking Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee out of endless paper cups, shooting fashion layouts at the Cloisters and Broadway stars for the columns up at the Carlyle at night, chatting over after-midnight suppers at Elaine’s with lonely-for-their-therapists, bright TV people in from the coast for three days at a clip. She saw herself standing at the pay phone by the door, stuffing quarters into it, trying to reach her son. “Mommy?” he would say, rubbing sleepy eyes. “Mommy who?”
“I’ll have to give it a few more years, Jupiter Dodd. But thanks for the offer. You are so very good to me.”
“What is it exactly that you want to do? Shoot weddings on weekends? Because that is what it will come to. Police families are notoriously poor. They all buy houses in washed-up neighborhoods because those are the only mortgages they can afford. And even those drive them slowly to the poorhouse. Oh, I’ve seen these police families at Christmas fundraiser parties at the precinct. All the children dressed carefully in brand-new polyester outfits. The women done up in last year’s clearance from Penney’s and the men, oh, the men, the cops themselves, waiting stolidly for Santa in their prerequisite walrus moustaches. So depressing.”
“Why, you lowlife piece of shit! Those are the families of the guys that risk and give their lives for the sake of good. But I suppose you are too fancy a person to care about real stuff like that. Like plain old on-sale, bargain-basement, polyester decency. Your sphere is style, not content, isn’t it? There’s no black and white revolving around your system, is there? It’s all an up-to-the-minute, hundred-percent-cotton shade of bloody gray.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch this!” she said, thrusting an obscene arm into the air the way Johnny would do. She tingled with emotion. This was the end of Jupiter Dodd, but she didn’t care. She just didn’t care anymore. She was sick to death of an entire phony-liberal population who supported the rights of the slimiest criminal and allowed their law enforcers to be scorned and spat upon. It stank. Her breath went in and out, in and out. Slowly she came back to where she was, heard the music, saw the people at the party around her, felt Jupiter Dodd still sitting there.
“Well, why don’t you leave?”
“Because if I get up, I’ve got to find someone else to talk to and I shall get bored. Also, my feet hurt and I am quite comfortable. I only wonder what could have happened to your formerly perfectly good sense of humor.”
“Still perfectly good. Just more highly evolved than resorting to taking easy digs at the good guys.”
Jupiter didn’t say anything. Someone had put on an Aaron Neville tape while the deejay had his break. Claire was tired. She was tired of being defensive. She relaxed. They accepted bright new glasses of wine and sipped them appreciatively. The party had changed gears and was now at a carnal peak. “What would you shoot,” Jupiter finally asked, “if you had all the money in the world?”
“I’d shoot the grand old houses of Richmond Hill,” Claire replied without hesitation, surprising herself.
“So good. So shoot them. If that’s what you want to do, that’s what you’ll do best. I’ll pay you. We’ll run them in She She. Before you know it, we’ll have the gay community buying up the local real estate. Can’t you just see it? They’d be holding open-air concerts on Sunday at the bandshell.” Jupiter threw back his head and howled with laughter at the idea, his idea. The power, really, was what tickled his funny bone. Oh, it did him good to come to Queens.
“Johnny bought a racehorse,” Claire said then.
“Johnny, as in your husband Johnny?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t I just get finished sitting through a fervent speech for the oppressed, honest cop?”
“I’m sure he didn’t use his salary.”
“Ha. Certainly not.”
“There wouldn’t be enough of it for that. That goes for the bills. He’s got this fancy-car renovating thing going on the side.”
“And when does he sleep?”
“On the job, probably. He’s hardly ever home.”
“He’s having an affair.”
“No. No, I don’t think so. I mean, one never knows. But I think we’re all right in that department. It’s the only department we do do well in.”
“Hmm. Yes. You can tell you like each other.”
“I think he won big at the track and went in on it with someone else.”
“Yes, but still. How could—”
“I think he bought it up at Saratoga. He went up last week with some of his shady friends. They have this race, the first race, where first-time owners can buy horses. A claiming race. Someone probably ran one, snuck one in, just to see how she would do, and Johnny picked her up.”
“Why, that’s wonderful!”
“What’s wonderful? He didn’t pay the bills off yet this month. He’s never done that before.”
“Well, that’s to his credit. Claire. You know how it is with race horses. There’s always some new expense. Shoes. Bridles. Vets. Trainers.”
“Jesus.”
“Yes indeed. Look, Claire. If you’re that upset, why don’t you put your foot down?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to take away his dream and have him tell me for the rest of our lives what he might have had if I’d let him see it through. I want it to come from him.”
“He’ll probably lose the first time out, and that will be the end of it.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the horse’s name?”
Claire noticed Jupiter’s bright-eyed interest. There really was something about a racehorse. Perhaps she ought to loosen up, enjoy the fun that was to be had here. Johnny wasn’t stupid. “I don’t know. Johnny hasn’t even told me about it. He’s kept it from me. Which is why I’m upset, if you want to know the truth.”
“Ah.”
“And that bit about putting my foot down. That foot hasn’t got a leg to stand on. I mean, what am I going to do, leave him? I’ve just moved into my dream house. He knows I’m not going anywhere. He knows I’d never break up the family over a … a pet.”
“Well, let me know, when you find out.” He adjusted his tie. “I have been known to place a bet. Now and then. On a good hot tip.”
“Jupiter Dodd?”
“Yes, Claire Breslinsky?”
“I’ll start shooting houses in the morning.”
“There’s a good girl. Uh oh. Looks like Stefan and Carmela are headed our way.”
Claire looked over Jupiter’s shoulder and indeed beheld the strangely amiable approaching duo. They were linked arm in arm, for one thing, and they both wore charming, pleasant smiles, things they did not normally bother with for someone as uninfluential as Claire.
“Hello,” they said, the hostess and the host full steam, one handsome couple. They gushed over Jupiter for a good long while. Freddy poked his head in for a moment and Claire noticed Jupiter sucking in the proverbial gut, standing just that much straighter. Freddy wanted to know, “Look here, what have they done with the Pernod,” and off he went then without so much as a nod or a how-do-you-do. Jupiter returned to his more characteristic slouch, and Carmela began to praise Claire to Jupiter—unnecessarily, thought Claire, since it was she who had found Jupiter first, at an art exhibition Stefan had brought her to, and it was Jupiter who had found work for Claire shooting a series of women’s sculptures when she’d first returned to New York, then handled a critically successful show of her work in Soho. But facts had never stopped Carmela; most of the time people forgot the correct order of events anyway, if you let them, if you went about it right.
Stefan made sure they both had lots to eat. He could be very solicitous when he felt like it, and he felt like it now, arranging elaborate platesful before them, salmon bits and crab and even herring in cream on posh crackers and then they were gone, job done, the perfect dignified and vanished couple.<
br />
“I was at the filming of one of those talk shows, the other day,” Jupiter said. “Remember Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney?”
“Sure.”
“Well, they were on and boy were they funny. Still. After all these years. They were telling a lot of Polish jokes. You know. The way they will, and all of a sudden, out of the audience, stands this very irate gentleman. ‘I am the Polish ambassador,’ he announces, ‘and I take great offense at what is being said here today.’ Well. You could have heard a pin drop. Paul Winchell stood up and he apologized. You could tell he felt awful. He must have apologized ten times. The ambassador stood there listening to him and then he said, ‘It’s not you who offended me. It’s the little fellow there beside you.’”
Claire and Jupiter laughed like a couple of Irish longshoremen, then wheezed, in fine spirits, to reflection. Really, it was hard not to poke fun at Stefan, there was something so stuffy about him.
“Wonder what they want?” said Jupiter.
“Whatever it is, it must have to come from both of us. My sister apparently thinks you’ll do anything I ask you. I really feel, for the first time, as though I’ve got her over a barrel. Not a pleasant thought, although I’m sure she suspects I’ve spent my entire life trying to put her there.”
“Freud would have a party.”
“Yes.”
“Shall we dance?”
“What, me?”
“Why not?”
“All right.”
Up they stood, he bowed, she curtsied, and off they went, happy as pie in each other’s light arms. It was not an everyday thing to discover someone with whom you could dance well. Even one’s husband or lover does not often match terpsichoreally. You remember high school dances and the unlikely partner with whom you found yourself agitating successfully. In a normal circumstance, one wouldn’t be caught dead with that person. But there one was, one song after the happy next, unable to stop being Ginger to his Fred, Tina to his Ike, Margot to his Rudolf, childishly delighted and unaccustomedly light upon one’s feet. So it was with Claire Breslinsky and Jupiter Dodd. They dipped. They swayed. They did not break at the end of each song, but stood together bright-eyed, shoulders straight, alert for the disc jockey’s next selection. He was, they were quite sure, now playing just for them. They switched, at one point, to drinking Absolut and fresh limes, entitling them to quite a bit of ambitious hootchy-kootchy ’midst the malagueña. No one was paying them any attention, or so they believed, and so they persisted cheerfully into the long bright night.
Foxglove Page 11
