The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  Then she picked up the next layout.

  Upstairs, in Suite 3000, Herbert Joseph Rothman was trying to reach Lenny Liebling.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rothman, but Mr. Liebling is out of town this week,” Lenny’s secretary, who was new that week, was saying.

  “Where the hell is he?”

  “I believe he is at our printing plant in Paramus, New Jersey, Mr. Rothman,” Lenny’s secretary said.

  “The printing plant? What the hell’s he doing there?”

  “Mr. Liebling is our special projects editor,” the secretary said. “I expect he is there working on a special project.”

  “Well, get in touch with him and tell him I want to see him.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rothman, but Mr. Liebling left instructions that he was not to be disturbed.”

  “Now listen, you,” he said. “You get ahold of Mr. Liebling, and tell him that Herbert J. Rothman wants to see him—right away!”

  “I’ll do what I can, Mr. Rothman,” she said.

  “Damn right you will!”

  She did not add that, at the Rothmans’ main printing plant in Paramus, which covered two hundred acres and employed twenty-five hundred people in twenty-six separate departments, she had no idea how to locate Lenny Liebling, whose presence there was unknown to all but one other Rothman employee.

  “Joel, darling!” she cried, throwing her arms around him and suffusing him in the odor of her gardenia perfume. “It’s so marvelous to see you, and I can just tell by the expression on your face that you’re the bearer of good news for me.”

  He looked briefly confused. “I am?”

  “You’ve spoken to your mother. She’s called off her lawyers.”

  “Actually, I haven’t done that yet,” he said.

  She moved away from him. “Then you’ve not kept your promise,” she said.

  “I’m going to do it, Fiona, but Mom’s been awfully busy, and—”

  “Yes, I daresay,” she said in a chilly voice. “Busy plotting to get me shipped back to England, without a job, with no money—with nothing. And if I get shipped back to England, you know what that means. That’s the end of you and me.”

  “I’m going to speak to her, Fiona. I really am.”

  “All I ask is that she call off her bloody lawyers. And let me try to explain my side of things. And end this bloody mess.”

  “I will. I promise you.”

  “Promise? You already promised once. You know what happens if you break a promise twice.”

  “No. What?”

  “You’ll see,” she said darkly. Then, turning to him brightly again, she said, “But if that’s a real promise, then I have a very special little treat for you tonight. Just for my darling Joel.”

  “Is it—?”

  “You’ll see,” she said again with a wink. “But first let’s get out of these silly clothes.” She took him by the hand and led him toward her bedroom, and he could feel his erection swelling against the front of his doeskin pants. “I’ve missed you, Joel,” she said.

  “And … I … you …,” he muttered.

  He sat naked on the edge of her bed, his swollen cock pulsating between his legs, while she removed her bra and panties. “I deliberately didn’t offer you a drink,” she said. “Because I think that’s what made you sick the last time. The whiskey, plus the amyl nitrate. But this—this is going to make you feel quite different. Quite—heavenly, I promise you.”

  From her top dresser drawer, she removed a small round silver box and unscrewed the lid. Inside was a white powder.

  “What is it?”

  “Cocaine. I call it snow. It’s very good, very pure. A chum of mine sent it to me from Bolivia. Have you not tried it, Joel?”

  “No,” he said, feeling ashamed.

  “Well, you should. It will make you feel just dreamy. And don’t worry. It’s not the least bit dangerous, and, contrary to what they say, it’s not the least bit habit-forming. Now here’s the way we do it for the first time.…”

  She dipped her forefinger into the powder, and then placed her finger in her vagina, rubbing it around. “Now it’s your turn,” she said, and with the same moist fingertip she spread more of the powder around the swollen head of his cock. “Feel it?” she said. “A tiny tingle?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Now we’re each going to take just a tiny sniff. Not a big snort, mind you—just a tiny sniff. Later, you’re going to want a little more, but you just want a tiny sniff to start.” She lifted her finger to one nostril, inhaled briefly, then offered the fingertip to him. He inhaled and, in a moment, he felt a swimming feeling in his head, behind his eyeballs, and his vision blurred. Then he sneezed.

  “Now, silly, you’ve sneezed it all out,” she said. “Try one more time. Just a sniff.”

  She offered him her fingertip once more, and he sniffed the powder again. “I love you, Fiona,” he said in a sleepy voice.

  “That’s more like it,” she said. “Now first I’m going to sit on you. Then I’m going to sit on your face.”

  But he was looking with dismay at the limp cock that now lay across his leg.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked sharply.

  “I don’t know … I’m sorry,” he said groggily.

  “What’s wrong? It’s supposed to make a man feel randy.”

  “I don’t know … I just … maybe I just can’t …”

  “Oh, for mercy’s sake!” she said, jumping to her feet. “You didn’t sniff enough to turn on a canary.”

  “What’s wrong with me, Fiona?” he asked miserably. “I really love you, but—”

  “God knows what’s wrong with you!” She was pacing up and down the room, a small, pale exclamation point of a woman in a helmet of dark hair. “All I know is that a girl expects more than that from a man—a real man, anyway.”

  “Please, Fiona. I’m sorry. Maybe I just can’t handle—”

  She pulled on a dark blue robe, and turned on her heel to face him. “Yes. Maybe you just can’t handle a woman. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you. It’s what I suspected all along. You’re an urning.”

  “An earning?”

  “Urning. U-R-N-I-N-G,” she spelled it out for him.

  “What does that—?”

  “You’re supposed to be such a little expert in English,” she snapped. “Go home and look it up in your dictionary. Now you can just put on your clothes and get out of here. I happen to have a dinner date tonight with a man. A real man.”

  “Please, Fiona—”

  “Your father was one too, you know!”

  “Was what?”

  “An urning!” She spat out the word.

  From Joel Rothman’s journal:

  6/27/90

  6:00 P.M.

  “Urning: a male homosexual.”

  —Webster’s Third

  That’s what Fiona called me.

  An invert, a homo, a queer, a faggot, a fruit, a flit, a fairy, a pansy, a nance, a queen, a catamite … Like Lenny Liebling.

  I feel like killing myself.

  But I just can’t seem to handle the drugs she gives me. They make me lose my hard-on. But she’s right, most men, most real men, can handle a little coke. Why can’t I? From everything I’ve read about the stuff, the high from coke is supposed to be really nice. A lot of guys at Exeter tried it, and really liked it. I probably could have tried it myself, plenty of times, if it hadn’t been for old Otto. Damn Otto! At least I’d have known what to expect. What was the matter with me, then? I really wanted to try it with her tonight, but what the hell happened? Was I scared? Yes, maybe a little—I wanted so hard (!) to please her. Christ, I’m crazy about her, but now I’ll probably never see her again, unless—unless I can get Mom to call off her lawyers, or whatever the hell it is that Fiona is talking about. But how do I get Mom to call off her lawyers? I don’t even know what this whole thing is all about. And what the hell is going on here, anyway? Is Fiona just letting me f--- her and stuffing
coke up my nose because she wants me to help her get something out of my mother? If so, F. is nothing but a cunt—“koont,” Otto would say—and the cunt is barking up the wrong tree! Let’s find out more about this whole situation, now that I’m home for the summer.…

  Mom’s not home yet. Working late at the office, Coleman says. My dinner on a tray. Then jacked off, thinking of how it could have been tonight with Fiona. If I hadn’t f--- ed up. Or am I just crazy-f---ed-up myself?

  Or am I an urning? God, what an awful word! Fiona says my father was an urning, too. But I don’t remember anything about my father. What was he like? Mom doesn’t talk about him much. Lenny Liebling would know, but would he tell me?

  From today’s N.Y. Times: “Analysts say Keith Lindner takes a different view of things than his father. For one thing, Chiquita has a more conservative balance sheet than other Lindner properties.” Two misuses of “than”—instead of “from that of”—in two successive sentences!

  From the entrance hall, he heard the front door to the apartment open, then close. That would be his mother coming home. Quickly, Joel closed his journal. Then, standing on his desk chair, he reached up and slid aside a square of acoustical tile from his bedroom ceiling, the third tile from the west wall, the sixth tile from the south. It was acoustical tile his mother had insisted be installed when, as a kid, he had briefly taken up the drums. He had discovered this one loose tile and, in the airspace behind it, he stored his journals, in blue-bound notebooks, safe from all prying eyes. He slipped his current journal behind the loose tile, replaced the tile carefully, and hopped down from the chair.

  His mother tapped on the door. “Are you decent, darling?”

  “Come in!”

  She kissed him on both cheeks, then held him at arm’s length. “Darling, you smell of gardenia!” she said. “Is that your new after-shave? I don’t think I much like it.” Then she sat on the corner of his bed, and he thought he had never seen her looking prettier. “Joel,” she said, “you’ve seemed so moody lately, so gloomy and down in the dumps. Is something troubling you? Is it a new girlfriend? Can we talk about it? Is there anything I can do?”

  “You can call off your bloody lawyers.”

  There. He had done it. He had kept his promise.

  “Hm? Oh, you mean Henry Coker? I didn’t know you knew about any of that. It’s just a little contract dispute I’m having with your grandfather, and in a situation like this it’s usually better to let a lawyer handle it. I don’t want you to worry your handsome head about any of that. I want to talk about you, Buster. Why do you seem so down in the dumps? I’ll bet it’s a girl.”

  “Goddammit, Mother, I told you not to call me Buster!” he shouted.

  She just looked at him. Then she said, “I’m sorry. It just slipped out. But please tell me what’s the matter.”

  “It’s none of your effing business!”

  31

  In the summer of 1971, Ho and Lily Rothman had thrown a famous party. The occasion was Mode’s one hundredth birthday.

  There was a certain amount of hucksterism involved in this, of course. The first monthly issue of Mode had not appeared until November 1874, and so the magazine was at least three years shy of the century mark. On the other hand, Ho Rothman had learned that a small fashion quarterly called A La Mode had made a brief appearance in 1871. A La Mode had folded after two issues, but a few members of its disbanded staff had got together and been able to assemble, three years later, what became Mode. Thus Ho Rothman was able to rationalize that the “idea” for Mode had actually been born in 1871. Besides, he said, “Nobody counts.”

  Ho’s original idea had been to produce a hundredth anniversary issue of the magazine. He was no doubt remembering the success of the yearly anniversary sales at Bamberger’s, and his plan was to offer advertisers even deeper discounts than usual if they would buy space in the centennial issue.

  The idea for the party, however, had been Alex’s. She and Steven had at that point been married for four years, and she had been working with him closely at the magazine to try to produce the precious black ink that Steven’s grandfather wanted to see on the magazine’s balance sheet. The margin between red ink and black ink had narrowed considerably, but Mode was still failing to show a profit. And Alex’s ideas for the anniversary party had grown out of an earlier idea—which was that the magazine run a monthly feature devoted to travel.

  As usual, Ho Rothman had initially opposed the notion. “Travel?” he roared, pounding his fist on his desk. “We is a fashion magazine. What is travel to do with fashion?”

  “Fashionable people travel, Ho,” she said. “They need different fashions for different climates in different parts of the world.”

  “We is not foreigners. We is Americans!”

  “And a monthly travel feature would help us attract travel advertisers—the airlines, automobile companies, hotels and resorts, luggage manufacturers—”

  “No! Is not the point. Point is, fashionable people travel. Is why we need travel department, like I keep telling you.”

  “And instead of a hundredth birthday issue—or perhaps in addition to a hundredth birthday issue—what about a wonderful hundredth anniversary party? In Paris. Paris is still the fashion capital of the world.”

  “No! No French! No Froggies. Froggies said okay to Hitler in the war.”

  “But just think of the French advertisers we might be able to attract. We’d invite not only the heads of all the couture houses. We’d invite the heads of Air France, of Citroën, Peugeot—the French fabric makers, the perfumers, the milliners, the lacemakers, the wine and brandy makers. And don’t forget, France was our main ally in the American Revolution. Lafayette—”

  “The French is saints!” he said. “If not for French, we’d still pay taxes to King George. Which is why I say have this party in Paris. Is only place for it.”

  It was the only way to deal with him, and planning the hundredth birthday gala became Alex’s principal project from that point on.

  The party was held in June, in a huge red, white, and blue–striped tent set up in the gardens of the Palais de Chaillot, facing the Seine, and, inside the tent, forty tall ficus trees were decorated with eighty thousand twinkle lights. There were three orchestras, eight bars, and a thousand guests dined on baby lamb chops, Scotch salmon with Iranian caviar, fresh quail eggs, tiny ortolan and fraises du bois in crème fraiche, while consuming nearly a hundred cases of Dom Perignon champagne. Costumed mimes cavorted among the guests, gypsy fortune tellers circulated, reading palms. There were tableaux vivants and “living statues”—muscular young men clad only in dance belts and covered from head to toe in bronze, silver, and gold body paint, frozen in classic poses.

  Naturally, all the Rothmans flew over for it—Steven and Alex, Ho and Lily, Herb and Pegeen and Herb’s brother Arthur, his wife, Doris, and their two teenage daughters, Muffie and Nikki, and Lenny Liebling, who had by then firmly established himself as a member of the Rothman entourage—on the Rothman plane, and all the Paris couturiers sent their top models to provide a continuous fashion show all evening long. The designers themselves were there, of course—Yves Saint-Laurent in a black-sequined dinner jacket—along with the requisite number of Rothschilds, the Comte de Paris, and the international fashion press. Josephine Baker, in a tribute to Piaf, sang “La vie en rose,” “Je ne regrette rien,” and a winsome rendition of “Happy Birthday, chère Mode.” Elsa Schiaparelli came out of retirement to make a dramatic entrance. And President and Mme. Georges Pompidou made a special appearance, and led a toast to “La grande dame de la couture américaine.” Through it all, a beaming Ho Rothman circulated, taking all the credit. “Eight hundred bucks a guest,” he told everybody. “So? What’s a million dollars?”

  Then it was midnight, and time for the giant birthday cake to be rolled in. The twinkle lights were dimmed, and Ho Rothman stepped to the microphone to say his welcoming words. “Our American fashion magazine could not exist today without th
e brilliant talents of the great couturiers of France,” he said. With his Russian accent, he sounded almost like a Frenchman. Of course there were some who said that Steven Rothman, as Mode’s editor-in-chief, should have acted as master of ceremonies here, and that Alex Rothman’s contributions should at least have been acknowledged. But that was not Ho’s way.

  Then, as the tall tapers on the cake were lighted one by one, Ho counted out the years of the magazine’s life. “One … two … three … four …” as the twinkle lights were dimmed almost imperceptibly with each newly lighted candle. Presently, the twinkle lights in the ficus trees were extinguished altogether, and the only illumination in the tent came from the lighted candles on the great cake.

  “Ninety-seven … ninety-eight … ninety-nine,” Ho intoned.

  But at that point it was noted that every candle on the cake had been lighted, and there was some uneasy whispering, and nervous laughter, among the guests sitting closest to the cake. That was Lenny Liebling’s cue to stand up and say, “Oops! It looks as though you’re one candle short, Ho!”

  “Wait!” Ho replied. “At-tendez!” And he held up his hand, pointing skyward.

  With that, the whole south-facing flank of the red, white, and blue tent flew open, and a single giant floodlight sprang upward from the top of the Eiffel Tower, directly across the river.

  “One hundred!” cried Ho triumphantly, as the huge floodlight soared upward hundreds of feet and caught the clouds of the night sky.

  The effect was breathtaking and, for a moment, the guests were speechless. Then the tent broke out with cheering, and everyone rose as the three orchestras launched into, first, the “Marseillaise,” and then “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Ho’s hand went to his breast.

  “Thank you, Paris,” Ho said, stepping down when the music ended. “Merci, Paris!”

  That last touch had been Ho’s own idea, and it even took Alex Rothman by complete surprise. It had taken some doing to accomplish it. Ho had originally wanted fireworks—a giant Roman candle blazing upward from the top of the tower—but the city fathers of Paris had vetoed that idea as too much of a fire hazard to the rooftops of surrounding buildings. In fact, the final approval of the special floodlight had not come through until six o’clock that evening, and no doubt certain palms had had to be greased.