The Stark Truth

by Peter Israel

  Of course there was another answer besides the business one, and for a moment, lying on her silk sheets, I thought she was about to tell me. Instead her expression lightened and, lips curling in a sly smile, she said:

  “All that’s going to change now, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, we’ll be going to the same party, for one thing.”

  “What party?”

  “Your friend, Wanda Russell. The Safari party. We’ve already started work on it.”

  “For Wanda?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But how did that happen?”

  “Easy. Word gets around. She came to us. It just so happens we’re the best in the party business nowadays.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It came up in such a hurry, there wasn’t time,” she said, tracing her fingernail along my flank again. “Besides, I thought you might object.”

  “Object? Why would I object?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, giggling softly as, finding my cock, she began to tease it alive. “It’s mixing business with pleasure. And for you to be seen, in public, with your secret woman …?”

  It was already too late for me to object, too late to pull back or do anything other than what she had in mind, insistently. And it was only afterward that—quintessential Kitten—I realized she’d still managed not to answer my question.

  12

  Take a Park Avenue apartment, even one as considerable as Wanda Russell’s, and try transforming it into an Out of Africa encampment. No mean feat. Yet Kitty had managed it, in November, with thatch and tenting in the party rooms, bamboo and peacock feathers, camp chairs and wicker, a staff, male and female, togged out in khaki shorts and shirts, with sandals on their feet and topis on their heads. The music was Olatungi style, complete with bird calls and jungle night sounds against a muffled drumbeat, and the drinks and food were served on bamboo trays, in gourds and calabashes. The overall effect definitely “said” safari, and when you stopped to think about it, the throngs of guests in their costumes didn’t look any more out of place on Park Avenue than they would have on the plains of Kenya.

  I went with a certain amused anticipation, for I’d never been to a Kitty Goldmark production, and when I stepped off the elevator into Wanda’s transformed entrance hall, to the distant tom-toms, Wanda herself met me, resplendent (I can think of no other word) in a floor-length gown of figured African silk, her blue hair coiffed high in a beehive effect and her arms outstretched.

  “Ah, welcome, dear Tommy!” she called out, separating herself from some other guests. “Welcome to your party, darling!” She pulled me to her in a massive embrace, whispering, “Because it is your party, nasty boy, even though you wouldn’t let it be.” Then she took me by the arm and in her normal voice said, “Come on, I want you to meet everybody—and one person in particular.”

  I complimented her on her outfit and on the decor.

  “Kitty Goldmark,” she said. “She’s absolutely superb. Do you know her?”

  “We’ve met,” I said.

  “She’s the only one to go to these days. Very much in demand. I was lucky to get her.”

  And so, I remember thinking, was I.

  I knew Kitty had been there almost the whole day, supervising operations, but I failed to spot her as Wanda patrolled me through the rooms, pausing to chat, pausing to introduce me. I knew, or knew of, many of the guests. They represented, one might say, the tout New York, at least the tout New York of a certain moneyed kind. The men, playing it safe, wore mainly British Colonial, but most of the women had gone Evening Safari, or tried to. To behold them, you’d never have supposed that it was New York and late autumn, unless, that is, you spotted their furs on the coat racks in Wanda’s vast pantry, which had been stripped for the purpose. As indeed her whole apartment seemed to have been stripped. Where had everything gone?

  “Kitty Goldmark’s solution, darling,” Wanda explained. “The vans came yesterday, they had it cleared out by noon today. It’s all parked somewhere in Long Island, New Jersey, wherever they do such things. They’re supposed to bring it all back tomorrow, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll keep it this way awhile, what do you think? Oh, there she is! Come on, Tommy, tell me you’re not surprised!”

  I failed, though, to recognize the tall, stylish woman who, turning from a group under a thatch bar, now strode toward me, smiling, hand outstretched. I’d like to say it was because I’d been looking for Kitty, but it could also have been an old anxiety actually come to pass: that someday I’d fail to recognize women I’d once slept with.

  “I told you, Wanda,” the woman said, gazing at me with a glint of amusement at my embarrassment. “I told you he wouldn’t remember me.”

  “Oh, you’re terrible, Tommy!” our hostess boomed. “You really are! Terrible! And I understand the two of you once spent a remarkable weekend together!”

  “Not true,” I said, recovering. Her voice had tipped me off. “Cabo San Lucas, how could I forget? How are you, Martine?”

  In my defense, the remarkable weekend had taken place some years before. Also, the last time I’d seen Martine Brady, she’d been wearing no more than a tank top and shorts, and her hair had come halfway down her back. Now the hair was cropped short across the cheekbones, a little darker than before, I thought. Wide brown eyes, long lashes. The same lanky model’s figure: broad-shouldered, small-breasted, narrow in the hips. She wore a low-cut, bright red waistcoat, double-breasted with brass buttons, and a cream-colored evening skirt which followed the lines of her legs almost to her ankles. But it was the voice I remembered, low-pitched, cool, with a timbre when she laughed that prickled the nape of my neck.

  “Oh, I’m fine, Tommy, but I haven’t been fishing in ages. How about you?”

  I laughed at the private joke, and Wanda, mission accomplished, drifted off into the throng.

  The joke brought the rest of it back to me. I’d been in Los Angeles on business, and we’d met there by design. We’d flown down to the bottommost tip of Baja California to a fledgling resort called Cabo San Lucas, with a dirt landing strip, a couple of new hotels, and where the main attraction was supposedly the best big-game fishing within striking distance of the West Coast. All weekend, we’d talked about going fishing; except for meals, though, we’d barely left the hotel room.

  I remembered how it ended, too. Martine had been fairly recently divorced. When, on the flight back to Los Angeles, I’d admitted that I was still married, if not very happily so, her carefree mood had shifted suddenly to ice. She’d said something to the effect that she didn’t have time for men who couldn’t make up their mind what they wanted or where they belonged, and the minute we landed at LAX we’d gone our separate ways.

  Normally I’d have been intrigued to run into her again. But these weren’t normal times, and even as we talked I found myself craning my neck in search of Kitty.

  I asked Martine if she still had the sombrero I’d bought her, a woven-straw affair, which, I recalled, had looked marvelous on her. With a smile, she told me she’d chucked it the minute she’d left me.

  “But I wouldn’t do that today,” she said, laughing.

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I’m more practical. A little older, a little wiser. Maybe a little more cynical, too.”

  “How cynical?”

  “Well, let me catch you up in a hurry. I’ve been married again, divorced again. In fact—surprise, surprise—he’s here tonight. Small world. Thatch said he ran into him somewhere, brought him along. You know Thatch, don’t you? He said he didn’t think I’d mind. Well, I do mind, but it’s too late for that, isn’t it? You probably know him, anyway. Thorny? Bobby Thorne, the investment banker?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “We’re still on speaking terms, more or less, but I wouldn’t have come if I’d known. Except that I wanted to see you again. I understand you’ve made Wanda a ton of money?”
/>   “Well,” I said, “a pretty small ton.”

  “Oh? That’s not the way I heard it, Tommy. Anyway, I could use some help in that department myself. You see, I’ve become a woman of, as they say, independent means. Thanks to Thorny. The truth is, I hit him pretty hard.”

  We’d been walking slowly through the party, balancing drinks as we talked, or rather as she talked and I scanned the crowd. She still had, I noticed, that blithe, even offhand way of talking about things most people considered private. Such as divorce settlements. And she was, I thought, very definitely under sixty.

  “He even looks like a son of a bitch, doesn’t he?” Martine said, pointing out her ex-husband, a tall, good-looking fellow in a double-breasted navy blue suit, standing with a group of men. Square jaw, ruddy complexion, and a streak, or shock, of white running diagonally across his otherwise black hair. “The streak, by the way, is natural. He’s had it since his twenties, though he likes to say I gave it to him. Makes him devastatingly handsome, don’t you think? Come on, Tommy, let me introduce you. I’ll have some fun with him.”

  Martine linked her arm through mine as we approached the group. Thatcher was among them; the others I didn’t know. Thatcher wore bush garb, complete with multipocketed khaki shorts.

  “Well, here comes the hero of the day,” Thatcher called out when he saw me. “Come here, Tommy. Meet Bob Thorne, the only other man at the party who made a killing on Safari. No pun intended.”

  Thorne and I shook hands.

  “Hardly a killing,” he said, laughing. “Nothing like what Thatch says you pulled off.”

  “Thatch is given to exaggeration,” I answered.

  Our eyes met briefly. Thorne was a big man, a little taller than I, with large hands and a firm grip. I imagined him thinking: How did you find out about Safari? Then Martine came between us, gave Thorne a quick kiss on the cheek, and, holding his arm and turning to the others, said:

  “Hi, I’m Martine Brady. I used to be married to this one, can you imagine? I’m glad to hear he’s doing so well because a piece of it’s mine. Hello again, Thatch”—breaking from Thorne to kiss Thatcher. “Gee, Thatch, I didn’t tell you before, but you look positively fetching in those shorts. Banana Republic?”

  I saw them all hesitate at her first remark—was it supposed to be a joke?—to be saved by her second. Thatcher, it seemed, was a fair butt, and the men broke into laughter. Then Thorne and I stood briefly side by side while Martine played the group, at once outrageous and teasing, which combination had the simultaneous effect of throwing them off balance and titillating them.

  “Well, Thorny,” she said, turning back toward her ex-husband, hands now at her hips, “are you ready to kiss and make up yet?”

  No answer from Thorne. Perhaps he knew her too well.

  Martine cocked her head provocatively, as though measuring him.

  “Poor Thorny,” she said. “I hear she’s already ditched you for somebody else.”

  “That’ll be enough of that,” Thorne said abruptly.

  “Enough of what?” she retorted. Her voice flared suddenly, as though she intended the whole party to hear. “Enough of what, I ask you? The son of a bitch leaves me for Kitty Goldmark, everybody knows that, and then she dumps him, too. What’s the matter, Thorny, was she too smart for you? Or didn’t she like it when you—”

  Stunned, I didn’t even see Thorne step forward until it had already happened. He slapped Martine hard across the cheek. I heard it. I was aware of her recoiling, face white, mouth open. Somebody—Thatcher, I think—stepped between them, blocking Martine, who stormed behind him.

  “That’ll cost you, Bobby! That’s public humiliation, and everybody saw it!”

  Everybody, meanwhile, tried to move away at once. Thorne himself turned on his heels, while Martine let Thatcher lead her away.

  I stood in the eye of the storm, immobilized, my confusion compounded by the fact that Kitty had apparently seen it all. I’d just caught sight of her when Thorne let fly. She was talking to somebody in the next room, but her eyes were on me, Thorne, Martine, her mouth ajar.

  Small world indeed. And I stood there like a fool, the proverbial stuck pig, with that awful flushed sense that the tout New York was watching to see if I squealed.

  But of course nobody was watching me. Why should they have been? Nobody knew about me. Nobody was allowed to know about me.

  Whereas: The son of a bitch leaves me for Kitty Goldmark, everybody knows that …

  Was that why Kitty wanted us secret? Because of Thorne?

  And how many others of us, Thornies and Tommies, was she playing at the same time? How many of us were out there, buying and selling Safari for her?

  I went after her, but she’d disappeared from the cluster in the next room. Angry and hurt, I circled the party, ducking past people and palms, to end up in the kitchen, where I ran into Wanda Russell, herself awhirl in the midst of traffic.

  “Ah, there you are, dear boy”—reaching out her arms. “I’ve hardly seen—But you look pale, Tommy, is something wrong? Can I get you something?”

  “I’m all right. Have you seen—?”

  “That dreadful Thorne person. Did you hear what he did? He slugged Martine right in public! Punched her out! At my party!”

  “I was there too, Wanda. But—”

  “I told her she should sue, that everybody would testify. Just wait till I get my hands on—”

  “Have you seen Kitty Goldmark?”

  “… that nephew of mine. He—What did you say?”

  “Have you seen Kitty? Kitty Goldmark?”

  “Well, yes. She just left.”

  “She left?”

  “That’s right, just now. Poor thing, who can blame her? She was exhausted, utterly. Nobody has any idea what it takes to do an evening like this. And now it’s absolutely ruined.”

  “I’m sorry, Wanda,” I said. “I’m not feeling well myself. I …”

  But she wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t let me leave. Instead she steered me back through the swinging kitchen doors and into the party, chattering about Martine now, poor Martine, bad luck in husbands, still quite a catch, stunning woman, and it wasn’t until she caught sight of Thatcher, and relinquishing me, started to berate him for having brought Thorne, that I managed my own unceremonious escape.

  I remember standing in the dark outside Wanda’s building, where the limousines waited in long, double-parked formations for the guests to emerge. I turned down a few cruising taxis. I was stone sober, and though there was a chill in the November night, I sweated inside and, pulling off my tie, opened my shirt collar, my jacket, my overcoat to the air. In truth I dreaded a new confrontation with Kitty, but I saw no way to avoid one.

  Unless Martine Brady had invented it?

  The son of a bitch leaves me for Kitty Goldmark …

  But why would she have?

  I walked south slowly to Fifty-ninth Street, then west toward Kitty’s. Past the GM building, the Plaza, twin symbols of the once richest city in the world, and along the narrow strip of luxury bordering the south edge of the park. There was another New York we all knew about now, where people slept in cartons, on sidewalk heat grates, in subways and train stations, always with their hands out and badgering us for money. More of them clearly than us, and making your way among them was like walking a gauntlet. Who knows why I thought of them that particular night? They were little enough in evidence on Central Park South. Was it perhaps some awareness that my new connection to luxury could suddenly become tenuous and that, having severed with the firm, I now needed Kitty a lot more than she needed me?

  When I reached her building, I went straight upstairs, for by now I was well known to her doormen and had a key of my own. The apartment, though, was empty. It looked neat, even unlived in, except for the bedroom. Some signs of disarray there: probably she’d come home just before the party to change. I lingered among the familiar objects: the silken bed and brocaded comforter, the spindly-legged chairs and ta
ble near the window where we sometimes ate breakfast, the antique dressing table with the lovely curved mirror. The Boucher prints on the walls in their gilded frames. Then I retreated to the living room and gazed out the windows over the darkened expanse of the park, where little rows of light marking the roadways meandered into the northern dimness. I poured myself a drink but left it standing.

  At some point I punched out my own home number. After three rings, my answering machine, another recent improvement, came on. Knowing she wouldn’t pick up even if she was there, I started talking through my own recorded message:

  “Kitty? Are you there? It’s me. Please pick up if you’re there.”

  Nobody picked up.

  I thought of going home anyway, dismal though the prospect was. Instead I fell asleep on the couch facing Kitty’s empty fireplace.

  It was after two when I awoke to the sound of a key in the front door. I sat up, momentarily disoriented, then stood stiffly. Through the mirror above her mantelpiece, I saw Kitty standing at the other side of the room.

  I glanced at my watch.

  “Gee,” I said, “I’m surprised to see you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, I heard you were exhausted. When I didn’t find you here, I thought you’d gone to sleep someplace else.”

  “If that’s meant to be funny, Tommy, I’m too tired for jokes.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be funny. Not at all.”

  “Then please say what you mean.”

  “Just what I said. It’s past two in the morning. I heard you left the party exhausted. I’d like to know where you’ve been between then and now.”

  She’d been holding on to her purse, with her coat slung over her shoulders. Now she dropped both on a chair.

  “I think maybe you’d better go home, Tommy,” she said quietly.

  “Go home? Now there’s a good answer.”

  She said nothing. Head down, lips tight, she crossed the living room toward the back hall. Then, turning to me: