Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

Glitter-confetti and streamers fly. A dozen waiters in white aprons to the floor shoot champagne corks. A WELCOME HOME, SARAH banner hangs from Palestrina's ceiling.

  The cream of New York has gathered to fete Madelaine Wegeman's daughter: Wegemans and Prawls, Metalouses and Coopertons, van Voortens, even a seldom-seen Zerouche. Solly Palestrina, the dimpled owner, dressed in a white dinner jacket and his trademark paisley bow tie, glides from banquette to banquette, pressing the flesh, running his hand flirtatiously over the restructured jawlines of the old dames.

  Madelaine wears a riding habit and silk topper. Like most people who plan surprise parties, she finds the delicious moment over all too quickly. She wants to relive it in slow motion.

  "How did Agnes get you in here?" she asks Sarah.

  "She said she had to pee."

  "I really did have to," says Agnes.

  Mother and daughter go off together. Agnes eats a plate of shrimp and crabmeat. There is a welcoming tumult for the Great Man. He is in a wheelchair. He has put on a bit of weight but is still pallid. Perched on his shoulder is a small monkey. The monkey is black except for a cowl of white fur.

  Sarah throws herself onto her father's neck. She kisses him wildly.

  "Sorry I'm late, Poppet," he says.

  "That's okay, Daddy."

  "I wouldn't say so," he says. "From where I sit, it seems heartless and uncaring and almost the definition of being a bad parent. But I couldn't help it."

  "Daddy, you're sick."

  "That must be it. You're right, Poppet."

  Bob Syker pushes the wheelchair. "How about something to drink, Ron?"

  Wegeman holds his daughter's hand. "I won't have you fetching drinks for me, Bobby boy. We have a trained professional to handle that." He takes what looks like a flashlight out of his pocket. He turns it on, and the monkey, with a joyous screech, clambers down off the Great Man and follows the beam of red laser light to the bar, where there is a Pina Colada waiting. The monkey brings the drink back to his master.

  "A paraplegic's lot is not a happy one," the Great Man observes. "These little manservants are the only upside to spinal trauma."

  Wegeman gives the monkey the pineapple garnish from his drink.

  "What's his name?" asks Sarah.

  "I have the reputation of keeping my employees in a state of uncertainly and confusion," says Wegeman. "I've named him Duck."

  Agnes meets Syker at the buffet.

  "You're a jack of all trades," she tells him. "I don't know where you'll turn up next."

  "Pushing him around is the most enjoyable thing I do," says Syker. "I spent the morning in a suit with a bunch of bankers and underwriters. We were trying to fix the Coney Island subways. Now there's a stumper. Isn't it amazing that a man could dedicate his whole like to bank accounts? And they keep inventing new ones for me to think about."

  Madelaine and Sarah make the rounds of the guests. Agnes feels sorry for Sarah. She seems uncomfortable. The party is ostensibly for her, but few of the guests are under fifty years old. Where are her friends? The only guest even remotely connected to her is Luke Metalous, a wispy young thing with blond hair hanging down one side of his face—a post-modern Veronica Lake. He drinks too much and insults people.

  "When she got to Miss Clavelle's, all she thought about was her clothing," Agnes overhears him telling a small crowd. "She had so many sweaters she had to list them all in a notebook. It was the sort of impossible task of cataloguing medievals so loved to embark on—complete bestiaries in thirty volumes, that sort of thing."

  The Great Man finishes his drink. He gives Duck his empty glass. The monkey scampers back and raps the glass repeatedly on the bar, silencing the gathering.

  "Nobody likes a rich man who arrives empty-handed," says Wegeman.

  Syker hands Sarah a gift box.

  "For my little gadfly," says the Great Man.

  He has given her a beautifully preserved 19th century automation, obviously worth a fortune. Sarah puts it down carefully and winds it up. Two figures, a portly king on his throne and a jester in motley, begin to move. The jester's hands slice the air. Clearly, he is telling a story. The king laughs. You can hear the movement of the ratchet mechanism as his belly shakes. Suddenly, the king's mouth snaps shut. His eyebrows slant downward. The jester presses on, unaware that his cracking wise has hit too close to home. From a sheath beside the throne the king whips out a sword and beheads his comical employee.

  "One routine too many about New York and L.A.," the Great Man speculates. "What do you think, Poppet?"

  "Daddy, I love it," she says, resetting the fool's hinged head. "But you knew I would."

  Madelaine watches all this from the side. She is pleased for her daughter, naturally, but reserved. She comes to life only when a uniformed security guard appears with a leather case that is obviously meant for her. She preens and twinkles.

  "I don't need a present," she tells her husband. "I have the greatest gift of all."

  "You're really too kind," says the Great Man. "Happy Valentine's Day—a bit late, but what's the difference? I never could stand those faggoty little cupids. I mean, when you actually think about a little baby with wings, it's enough to turn your stomach."

  Under the watchful eye of the security guard, Madelaine opens her gift.

  "Oh, Weege!"

  The Great Man gloats. "Not bad for a bullshit Hallmark holiday, hah?"

  The crowd murmurs its approval.

  "Now that's a nice thing," says Solly Palestrina. Agnes knows from Barbara that he is not easily impressed.

  "Come over here, Travertine," says Wegeman. "You're very tasteful and genteel, as only someone without nickel one can be. You think it's too much?"

  "By definition, it's too much," says Agnes. "But it is nice."

  What it is a Faberge egg. Syker reads the provenance from a card: crafted by Kenrik Wigstrom and known as the Progress Egg, it was presented by Tsar Nicholas II to his wife, Alexandra Fedorovna, in 1907.

  It may be the most beautiful thing Agnes has ever seen. The gold egg is enameled oyster-white, and encircled at the top and bottom with gold swags and diamond pendants. The swags frame oval miniatures of the Russian royal family. The egg is mounted above a gold and platinum replica of the railroad station in St. Petersburg, and when a tiny catch is released, a miniature of the Imperial Train leaves the station and moves down the track, scattering two peasants building a haystack.

  The Progress Egg.

  Madelaine wonders what room it would look best in.

  Almost as an afterthought, the Great Man tosses (literally tosses) another bauble to his daughter: a miniature Faberge egg of solid pearl, roughly the size of a malted milk ball.

  Agnes has a drink. Ron and Madelaine think of themselves, no doubt, as a latter-day Nicholas and Alexandra, and they might be right. Maybe they have inherited the royal tradition. Agnes studies the portraits on Madelaine's new bauble. The Romanoffs were probably no bargain either. Nicky, in his manicured beard, looks like a television executive; Alexandra looks like a highly-strung shrew. There is something smug about the whole bunch of them. The set of portraits reminds Agnes of a Christmas card—HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE ROMANOFFS. The only thing missing is a picture of their big old friendly Russian Wolfhound.

  Sarah complains that she can't eat any of the food. Solly takes her into the kitchen, removes his paisley bow tie and cummerbund, and personally sautés a plateful of vegetables for her.

  "Well, Travertine, I'm trying to make nice," says the Great Man. "It's the new me."

  "Seems a lot like the old you."

  "I'm over my depression," he says earnestly.

  "What's going to happen to St. Basil's?" she asks him.

  "They can keep their church."

  "Do you promise there won't be any midnight raids with the wrecking ball?"

  "I promise."

  Agnes is satisfied. "That's a good start."

  "All I want is to be loved," says Wegeman, feeding his monkey a maraschi
no cherry. "You love me, don't you, Duck?"

  Agnes is aware of another presence: a short but powerfully built man with a head of lank blond curls and a sparse Fu Manchu moustache. He seems familiar. She remembers him from that night at the police station. He was the most strident of the reporters.

  Wegeman knows him. "Tortellini."

  "Tollivetti, boss," the reporter corrects him.

  "How did you get in here?" Madelaine demands. She cranes her beautifully elongated neck in search of the maitre d'.

  Tollivetti shrugs. "I walked in."

  "I have two men posted outside," says Wegeman.

  "I gave them Letterman tickets. How come you're not in Washington, boss?"

  "Because it's cold," says Wegeman. "Because I've seen the Lincoln Memorial. Because you wait and wait for a sightseeing tram and then three come at once. Why would I be in Washington?"

  "The mayor's there."

  "The mayor's a shithead."

  "He took the Metroliner down with the Rollicking Rev."

  The Rolling Rev is what the newspapers call the Reverend Lenten Gunn of the First Congregation of Neptune Avenue. The Reverend's style is flamboyant and media sharp; when he's not disguised as a homeless person to expose racism on the police force he's fastened with a bicycle chain to City Hall. He is a vocal opponent of the Palace of Versailles.

  After the groundbreaking for the hotel, Wegeman went for a meeting with the Rev at his church, which was once Keith's Thibodeux, one of the great cavernous vaudeville houses. No formal meeting actually took place. The Rollicking Rev instead used the occasion to demonstrate his power to the Great Man. Every seat in the church was filled, and as Reverend Gunn stood at the podium—the very same podium at which Eddyson and Ebert had first performed the "Drunken Valedictorian" sketch some 75 years earlier, Ebert in a mortarboard and Eddyson playing "Pomp and Circumstance" on a kazoo—it was obvious that the Reverend had what amounted to an army of 5000 congregants at his disposal. The Rev led the assemblage in chants and litanies and invocations; he dropped them to his knees; he made them hug and kiss those seated nearby; with a wave of his finger he commanded everyone to remove one article of clothing as a symbol of selfsacrifice and throw it onto the stage, and while the Reverend's corps of former emergency-room nurses hurried up and down the aisles of the loge and the balconies, tending to the moaning and the keening, the ecstatic and the glossolalic, shoes and shirts and hats and scarves rained down upon him like manna from the skies. Someone nearly put his eye out with the heel of a spectator pump.

  The faithful bore Reverend Gunn on their shoulders down Surf Avenue. Wegeman sat on the hood of his limo and chewed the ice from a Coke as the procession passed.

  "Don't it make your heart sing, Mr. Wegeman?" the Rev called out to him. From his breast pocket he took out a handkerchief about the size of a tablecloth and mopped the slickness from his brow. "When we move as one, there is no devil we cannot cast out. Tell me, sir—what did you think of our little prayer service?"

  "Very impressive," said the Great Man, "if you're impressed by a fucking game of Simon Says."

  Tollivetti tells Wegeman that the mayor and the Rev are in Washington for a meeting with Madelaine's cousin, Senator Kerry McKibbin.

  "I had no idea," says the Great Man. "We don't speak."

  "You are familiar with the McKibbin Tax Package."

  "Frankie Guilder's legacy," says Wegeman.

  Back when Madelaine was wearing Mary Quant dresses, Kerry McKibbin was being groomed for the Presidency, but then there was that unpleasant business at the cottage at Kennebunkport. The morning after a birthday party for the senator, a newsboy, Frankie Guilder, was found knifed to death in a gardening shed. The killing appeared to be ritualistic. Swastikas had been carved into the soles of his feet. Three mummified scorpions were found beside the body. Demonic symbols had been painted on the shed's walls, as well as the phrase DO THE FREDDIE. There were disturbing questions. Why did eyewitnesses say that from 9:30 p.m. until one in the morning the cottage appeared to be lit entirely by candles? "What else do you do when the lights have blown?" said the Senator, producing the dead fuses. "Damned electric hibachi." Why did those same witnesses claim to have heard what sounded like Gregorian chanting coming from the house. "Gregorian chanting!" exclaimed the senator. "No, no—just a bunch of drunken Yalies murdering 'The Whiffenpoof Song.'" The local authorities bungled the case. The county coroner's wagon was in the shop that day, and so in awe of the McKibbin political machine were the Kennebunkport police that no fuss was raised when the senator's press secretary brought little Frankie's body down to the morgue himself. "I was headed into town for hamburger buns anyway," he said, friendly as all get out. Many suspected a cover-up, and Kerry McKibbin never won the nomination. Insiders say that he has finally accepted the fact that he will never barbecue in the Rose Garden. He is a conspicuous supporter of legislation that is high-toned and moralistic, curbs on the nastier sorts of pleasure. His vice bill would impose new taxes on such businesses as liquor stores and casinos and even video outlets that rent pornographic tapes; the revenue from these taxes would be poured back into the community to compensate for the "toll" taken by the presence of such morally questionable enterprises. A rider to the McKibbin bill would impose a salary structure on businesses "involving the dispensing for profit of intoxicating beverages, the dissemination of 'adult' humor and entertainment, and the legal operation of games of chance....Compliance shall be mandatory for establishments employing thirty or more workers, including employees not directly involved in 'adult' entertainment, liquor dispensing, games of chance, etc. including but not limited to chambermaids, maintenance workers, front desk personnel, bellhops, etc...."

  Talk of the McKibbin tax package angers the Great Man. "It's like we're playing Charades, and we're not allowed to say 'Palace of Versailles.'"

  Tollivetti enjoys Wegeman's discomfort. "You'll be paying through the nose, pal. What's more full of vice than a casino? You'll have to pay your cigarette girls a hundred thousand a year to work in such a corrupt atmosphere."

  "The fucking mayor," says Wegeman. "He begged me to build that hotel and now he wants to take it all away. It's not fucking fair. How could he do this to a helpless cripple? That man would put Tiny Tim in the Martinique."

  "It's socialism," says Madelaine. "It's communism."

  "It's unconstitutional, and it stinks," says Wegeman.

  "I'll have to speak with Kerry," says Madelaine.

  Wegeman shakes his head sadly. "Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. In the most corrupt state, the most laws." He allows his mot to sink in then looks directly at Agnes. "Not bad, eh, Travertine? Terence said that. Not Terence the guy who cleans my pools, but the real Terence. The smart Terence."

  Agnes picks up her check from Bob Syker. She gets her coat. She wants to say good-bye to Sarah, but can't find her.

  Agnes leaves Palestrina. Sarah is outside, sitting on a stoop.

  "My mother just won't stop," she says. "She got all bent out of shape because I wouldn't talk to Harvey van Voorten."

  "Who's that?"

  "He's an old asshole. He publishes porn. Just the sort of person I'd invite to my party. But of course, the party's not for me. It's for my mother. Disgusting, the whole thing. You know Solly abused Thalia, don't you?"

  Agnes is shocked. "It didn't say that in People."

  "People doesn't know everything. Where are you going? Can I come with you?"

  "I'm going home," says Agnes.

  "Can I come with you?"

  "Why would you want to?"

  "I don't want to go back to Wegeman Tower."

  Great title for a country song, thinks Agnes. "Okay, whatever you like."

  "Thanks."

  "Should we let your parents know where—"

  "I'll take care of it."

  They walk toward the subway.

  "I live in kind of a rough neighborhood," Agnes cautions her. "I don't think I'd bring anything like a Faberge egg on the
train."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sarah makes herself at home at Agnes's.

  The women sit together in the harsh light of Agnes's living room. There are no shades or sconces above the couch—there are, in fact, lampshades and globes missing all over the apartment. So happy is Agnes with her apartment, with her river views and twelve-foot ceilings, that she tends to neglect those sorts of decorating niceties.

  "I'm really happy," says Sarah. "I love just thinking about the film I want to make. It's such a relief not to worry about school or men or any other bullshit. Right now, I need to be single."

  "Good for you. You're young and you're rich. Me, I'm just lonely," says Agnes.

  "I could introduce you to somebody rich," says Sarah. "It might serve you right."