He walked to an empty table, waving with a nonchalant air to Herkie Saybrook and young Laurance Van Degan, who were playing backgammon a few tables away, but neither raised his eyes from their game to return the wave. After sitting for several minutes, he rang the bell on his table for service, although Doddsie, who was usually so prompt in taking orders for drinks, was standing at the bar in quiet conversation with the bartender.
“An old-fashioned, please, Doddsie, easy on the bitters, but ample on the fruit,” Elias said in a hearty voice. “And gimme one of your menus at the same time. I suppose you’ve got the chicken hash today.”
“Every day,” replied Doddsie. He was not rude. Nor was he friendly. Elias noticed the change in attitude.
“I’ll have the chicken hash,” he said, ordering, as if he were in a restaurant.
“If you would write it on the pad,” said Doddsie. He did not add sir, and the omission was not lost on Elias.
“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” He picked up the pad and small pencil and wrote his order, although he could feel the beginning of anger. If he were in a hotel, he thought to himself, and treated in this manner, he would buy the hotel, and fire Doddsie, and, now that he thought of it, fire Jasper at the entrance desk downstairs as well. With Sims Lord, he could understand. They had had a business difference, although Sims Lord’s version of the hostile takeover of his company by Elias Renthal was described by him in stronger terms than a business difference. He looked over at Herkie Saybrook and young Laurance Van Degan, still intent on their game of backgammon, and wondered if they had seen him or not.
He rose, old-fashioned glass in hand, and walked over to their table. When neither looked up, he stood next to young Laurance’s side and watched the game for a bit.
“Hello, Laurance. Hello, Herkie,” he said, when the game ended and Herkie was tallying the score.
“Mr. Renthal,” Herkie and young Laurance said simultaneously.
“Mr. Renthal, indeed,” said Elias, in an expansive manner, as if the young men were being formal with a respected elder. “You haven’t forgotten, have you? It’s Elias.”
“We haven’t forgotten, Mr. Renthal,” said young Laurance. So saying, he banged on the bell on his table and called out, “Doddsie, I wonder if you could bring me the book with the rules of the club.” While waiting, he continued to shake and roll his dice. When Doddsie arrived with the rule book, bound in blue, with green lettering, young Laurance said, in a voice heard throughout the room, “Will you look up and show me the page where it says that the Butterfield accepts members who wire themselves and entrap unsuspecting cohorts in order to lessen their prison sentences?”
Elias flushed scarlet.
Then young Laurance and Herkie rose and walked to the door leading to the dining room. “Are you ready for us, Doddsie?” Herkie asked.
“Indeed we are, Mr. Saybrook. Mr. Van Degan,” answered Doddsie, back to his usual form. “There by the window.”
Elias looked around the room and saw that the other members were staring over at the snub he had just received. When he caught their eye, they, in turn, held his for a moment and then looked away, except for Collier Stinchfield, of Weldon & Stinchfield, the old and respected law firm where Byron Macumber had been a junior partner. “Either that man leaves this club immediately, or I leave, and, if I leave, I will leave permanently,” said Collier Stinchfield, his high aristocratic voice filling the room.
Elias placed his old-fashioned glass on the table where Herkie and young Laurance had been playing backgammon and walked toward the door where he had come in. By the entrance, he reached into a silver bowl and took out a handful of the Butterfield match books and stuffed them in his pocket. Walking down the marble stairway, he passed Laurance Van Degan coming up to have lunch with his son and Herkie Saybrook. Each met the other’s eye, but neither spoke. In the downstairs hallway, Jasper did not look up as Elias Renthal walked by his desk and pretended not to hear the loud fart emitted by Elias at the front door as he walked out onto Fifth Avenue.
Instead of going back to his office, he decided to walk up Fifth Avenue to his apartment, have lunch there, and rest for an hour or so. On the marble-top table in the front hall, where the butler left the mail, he noticed an envelope from the Butterfield. Opening it, he saw that it was a letter from Laurance Van Degan, the president of the Butterfield, signed and dated two days before, requesting his resignation.
He needed Ruby. He needed to talk to her. He was tired of keeping up the front he had been keeping up for the last several months. He was hurt. He was ashamed. He needed solace. He went up the stairs. The door of her bedroom was closed. He tapped on it. It was his lovemaking tap, a light drumming of the fingertips against the panel of the door.
“No,” replied Ruby from inside, recognizing the signal. “Leave me alone, Elias.”
RENTHAL SINGS! said the headline in one tabloid paper, ELIAS (DON’T-CALL-ME-ELI) RENTHAL PLEADS GUILTY TO ONE COUNT! said another. Variations on this theme were echoed in every newspaper and magazine in the land.
“I always said, but no one ever listens to me,” said Lil Altemus, dining at Clarence’s in a family group, “that people like that are to be avoided at all costs.”
“Oh, shut up, Lil,” said Laurance Van Degan, who had himself been the recipient of numerous advance stock tips from Elias Renthal and lived in fear that his name would be brought into the investigation.
“Laurance!” said Lil, hurt, looking to her sister-in-law Janet for solace.
“We’ve all got trashy friends,” said Janet, mediating between brother and sister, “but we should choose our trashy friends with more care.”
“Oh, Ruby’s not trashy,” said Cora Mandell, quietly.
Ruby made no attempt to contact any of her friends. She remained mostly in her room reading or talking with her maid, Candelaria. She gave up Bobo as her hairdresser, not wanting to be the subject of gossip that Bobo could pass on to his other clients who knew her, and found another hairdresser, as yet undiscovered by the fashionable world, who came to her apartment. Lorenza no longer came to do the flowers two days a week, because there were no more guests and the doors to most of the rooms in the large apartment remained closed. At night Ruby went downstairs to dine with Elias, but she no longer shared a bedroom with him.
“It’s Mr. Renthal’s snoring,” Ruby said to Candelaria in explanation of Elias’s move to another bedroom. “I can’t sleep with his snoring.” But Candelaria understood what was happening.
One evening, early still, she crossed over to the park side of Fifth Avenue and sat on the bench opposite her own apartment, where each night she watched a bag lady make her home. She looked up at her own home and could see the soft pink light cast by the lamps on her persimmon damask curtains and walls. Above, the leaves of the trees on her terrace blew in the twilight wind. She thought of herself in the days of her grandeur, when the whole city, or at least that part of the city that interested her, came out to dance in her ballroom. It was several minutes before she realized that she had begun to think in the past tense.
“Señora?”
Ruby looked. Standing there was Candelaria.
Ruby had always wanted Candelaria to call her madam, the way Loelia Manchester’s maid called her madam, instead of señora, but she had never had the nerve to tell that to Candelaria. Now she was glad she never had, for what did it matter? What did any of it matter now?
“Yes, Candelaria?” she said.
“Hace mucho frío, señora,” said Candelaria.
“You know I can’t understand you when you don’t speak English,” said Ruby, who had learned to speak French but not Spanish.
“It’s getting cold, señora. I brought you a shawl.”
“You are sweet, Candelaria. Sit down.”
“No, no, gracias.”
“There’s a woman who always sleeps here on this bench. I see her every night.”
“Si.”
“You know which one I mean?”
> “Si.”
“Later, when it’s dark, I want you to bring her this,” she said. She opened her bag and took out some money.
“Too much, señora,” said Candelaria, looking at the two twenty-dollar bills Ruby handed her.
“No, it’s not, imagine what she must think looking up every night at where we live.”
A jogger returning home from his run in the park walked rapidly by them. His face was pink from exercise, his hair wet, and his track clothes dripping. Had not Candelaria risen to leave at that same moment and collided with him, he might have gone on his way, not noticing Ruby Renthal, nor Ruby Renthal noticing him.
“I am sorry, señor,” said Candelaria.
“No, no, it’s my fault,” he said, although it wasn’t.
“Are you all right, Candelaria?” asked Ruby.
“Si, si, señora. Okay.”
“Why, Mrs. Renthal, hello. We met at the Butterfield, on ladies’ night. I’m Ned Manchester.”
“Hello,” said Ruby. “Of course. How are you?”
“Pardon my sweaty appearance.”
“You look very fit and healthy to me.”
“Do you often sit out here?”
“No. Never. I just had an urge to sit here and look up at my own house.”
“Does it meet with your approval?”
“Too big, I’ve decided.”
“Even the Clarkes used to get lost in that apartment, and they had the two boys,” said Ned.
“I always wanted to have a child,” said Ruby.
“And?”
“I guess it wasn’t in the cards, even though I’m the mama type. When you’re the third wife, the husbands already have their quota. How are your children?”
“They’re well. Bozzie’s going away to school. Charlotte says she wants to be an actress,” said Ned.
“Oh, that should go over big with Grandmother Somerset,” said Ruby, and they both laughed. Their eyes met. Ned liked the sound of Ruby’s husky, fashionable voice. “You have a beautiful voice,” he said.
“People say I sound like Loelia,” Ruby answered. She spoke the name of his wife, for Loelia was still his wife, in a natural way, and he welcomed the openness of it, as everyone else he knew had gone to great lengths in the past year not to mention Loelia’s name in front of him.
“You do,” he said.
“When I first got to know Loelia, I used to imitate everything about her. Then it became natural. I’m what’s called self-created.” She laughed at herself and Ned joined in.
“Your looks are your own,” he said.
“Had a little help there, too, my friend,” she replied. “Oh, good heavens, the time,” she said, looking at her watch. “I must go. Elias will be home.”
“How is Mr. Renthal?”
“Let’s just say he’s been better,” said Ruby. “We’re in trouble. You’ve probably heard. I guess everyone’s probably heard.”
Ned nodded. “How have people been?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone. I haven’t called anyone.”
“If you ever need anyone to talk to, I come by this way every night,” he said.
“Thanks,” she answered. She rose, shook hands good-bye, and left.
42
Time was winding down for Gus Bailey. At some point along the way he stopped writing thank-you notes to his hostesses for the dinners he attended. Then he began declining invitations, first to one of Maisie Verdurin’s dinners, and then to one at Violet Bastedo’s, and then to Lil Altemus’s. He had started to say, “I’ll be away then,” or, “I’m busy that night.”
“They won’t invite you anymore,” said Matilda Clarke.
“I don’t care,” said Gus.
“Don’t care?”
“I’ve seen enough.”
Later, Matilda remembered that.
Bernie Slatkin ran into Gus Bailey at a restaurant in the Village and later told Brenda Primrose that he seemed distracted, as if his mind was on something other than what they were discussing.
Nestor and Edwina Calder came back from Hollywood, after shooting the mini-series of Judas Was a Redhead. Edwina and Nestor considered Gus one of their good friends, but, on the several times they called to invite him to dinner, he did not return their calls. People said Gus Bailey was spending more and more time by himself.
One night his telephone rang.
“Mr. Bailey?”
“Who is it?”
“You’ll never remember me.”
“Try.”
“My name is Inez Peretti. We met once at—”
“At Ceil Somerset’s. You’re Ceil Somerset’s psychic. Of course I remember you. Once I was going to call you, but I couldn’t find the place card on which I wrote down your telephone number. I must have sent my dinner jacket to the cleaners, and they threw it out.”
For a moment there was a silence.
“You’re not surprised then to hear from me?” Inez asked.
“I’m not,” said Gus.
“I got your number from Ceil.”
“Fine.”
“I feel like I’m always cautioning you.”
“Yes.”
“Last time I said you were going somewhere, and you said yes, you were going to Mary Finch’s dance for Justine Altemus, and I said you were going somewhere before that, and not to go. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go?”
“Yes.”
“I feel that you are planning to do something.”
“Yes.”
“I feel revenge is in your heart.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to warn you.”
“Thank you, Inez.”
43
“Do you have any kind of religious affiliation?” asked Henry Caldwell, Elias Renthal’s lawyer.
“Why?” replied Elias.
“I thought we might get you registered in some sort of theological school between now and the sentencing. We can get it planted in the papers. All that stuff really goes down with the judges,” said Henry.
“Christ, I haven’t been to church since God-knows-when, except for a Catholic wake I went to out in Queens a while back with the Sorrowful Mysteries, but that don’t count as church. Besides, it wouldn’t look good starting up religion now at this late date,” said Elias.
“But there has to be something of that nature you can do, Elias. Like good works.”
Elias was impressed with the idea. “Good works, right. How about if I work with the homeless? That’s the big deal these days. Dish out soup or cut up carrots a couple of hours each day over at St. Bart’s? And it’s right near the office.”
“Terrific,” said the lawyer. “Mavis Jones will run that in her column for sure.”
Deals had been arrived at, behind-the-scenes deals. For his cooperation in exposing other miscreants in the financial community with whom he had engaged in exchanging privileged information for personal gain, and paying a fine of $150 million, and divesting himself of his stock portfolio, Elias Renthal had had to plead guilty to only one criminal count, a single charge of stock fraud.
“I realize I’ve committed a very serious crime,” said Elias Renthal, outside the courtroom, when the reporters asked him to make a statement. His lawyer tapped him on the arm to indicate that he had said enough, but Elias Renthal, even in adversity, was not one to be told when he had said enough. “I hope that by accepting responsibility for what I have done, I can make up for the anguish that I have caused my friends, my colleagues, and, most of all, my wife.”
Looking at Elias, Ruby was unable to see his eyes. The lights of the television cameras reflected in the convex lenses of his gold-framed glasses and threw back the rays in iridescent circles. Elias had aged perceptibly in recent months. A blankness in his eyes and a permanent furrowing in his brows, and possibly his soul, bespoke shattered dreams and lost illusions.
“Poor Mrs. Renthal,” said Bozzie Manchester, watching the evening news
with his father. Ned looked over at his son and felt great affection for him, Yes, Ned thought, poor Mrs. Renthal.
It was impossible for any observer not to notice the change in Ruby Renthal’s status, but Ruby was, everyone said, a model of rectitude, standing by Elias’s side on the several times he had to appear in court before his sentencing, in a silent but supportive stance, dressed simply but expensively, her hair pulled back, her eyes not hidden by dark glasses. She never failed to hold her head up for all to see, assuming an attitude that could not be misconstrued as arrogant, which it was not, nor overly friendly, as if she were courting the press, which she did not.
The press had grown fond of her, and respectful. Even when they called her Ruby, which they did when they wanted to get her attention to pose for pictures or to ask her questions, they called her Ruby with affection, although she never answered any questions, nor ever stopped to pose. On her fingers she wore no more than her gold wedding ring. On her wrist she wore no more than her gold Cartier watch with the roman numerals that had once belonged to the Duchess of Windsor, but no one knew that except Ruby.
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