Life Among Giants

by Bill Roorbach

  Meanwhile, Etienne’s confidence had fled. He was anxious, lots of hand wringing, quick to tears, quick to embarrassment and guilt over his dependency on me and over the Health Spot crash, which had really roughed him up, catastrophes looming everywhere he looked. RuAngela was the positive one at our house, spent large portions of every afternoon on her face and clothing, plucking hairs from here and there, working on her wigs, getting ready for the night’s adventures, even if only a walk outside.

  “Am I beautiful?” she asked me once.

  I knew what she meant—beautiful to a heterosexual man. I just said, “Yes, yes, my God, are you kidding?” And there was truth in that—she turned men’s heads all right, that body of hers, always the high-high heels on a person already tall, narrow pretty calves, bubble-butt (padded, but still). And her skin was beautiful indeed, her cleavage smooth and brown as a 74 percent cacao mousse, hormonally induced breasts lovely to contemplate, never a bra, confusing appeal. I didn’t tell her the next thing, that her manly jaw, her heavy five-o’clock shadow, her deep voice, the knowledge of the existence of fully functional male equipment tucked down in there somewhere definitely got in my way, sexually speaking. I mean, she peed standing next to me in the backyard like any old dude. She didn’t talk about sex-change operations, either. She was already what she was and wanted to be. Which among other things was a good friend to me.

  The letter from Lionel and Carter’s legal team when it finally came threw me into a funk, but not RuAngela: she immediately began a campaign of guilt and shame, playing momma. Supposedly the independent audit had shown Restaurant Floridiana operating at a deficit for the entire five years of its existence, pure fuckery. My buyout share—which was to have been the startup cash for Firfisle—was zero. I wasn’t one to sue, not over a lost cause like that. RuAngela wrote a letter of protest for me to sign, and then she dressed me down. Self-respect, that was the word. She got Lionel on the phone, carried on so dramatically that a settlement offer arrived the next day by FedEx, and later a check, mid five figures, exact recoup of my investment.

  Which is how the Firfisle Express got through Christmas and New Year’s (1989, the year the Berlin Wall would fall), even past Valentine’s day. We had a month of menus planned and tested, suppliers lined up, knives honed. RuAngela began interviewing wait staff and kitchen people. We just needed our building. So, Ru wrote another letter to Chase, the bank that held the old Trompetta property, and lowered our offer: $35,500. I felt the whole thing slipping through our fingers, felt the stupidity of having got stuck on one building.

  “You watch,” RuAngela said.

  I RAN INTO Miss Butterman at the town library, where I was checking out a new pile of world cookbooks. She looked no different than she’d looked in history class, same wry look in her eye, same wig of short hair. “Have you recovered?” she said warmly.

  I shook my head even saying “Yes,” managed a rueful smile.

  “No, you can’t,” she said, more cheerfully than not. And then she caught me up on a number of my classmates, a lot of corporate jobs among them, a lot of births and marriages and divorces and deaths, smallest details. She complimented me on some specific touchdowns from my Miami career.

  “Oh, and Linsey’s been ill,” she said to finish. And then, confidentially: “His stepmother writes me. Sylphide, you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, making it sound as if I were as privy to the star’s secrets as she, though I’d only read it in the papers: “A heart attack.”

  “David, I think our fine-feathered friend would like a note from you. He’s in New York there on Sutton Place. He can’t do the world travel any more. But they keep such good people around him. And he’s able to go to his school still. He has a girlfriend.”

  Home, I wrote the note, all right, just a few sentences for someone to read to him. I had an absurd stack of old Dolphins promo shots—me smiling in my shoulder pads—clipped the note to one, sent it off. Of course I had the thought that Sylphide might see it, might cast her green gaze upon my face and feel a flood of warmth and appreciation, a woman just rising from divorce.

  I SCRAMBLED UP from a power nap when the phone rang one March afternoon, raced to answer, only slowly waking. Formal voice on the other end, much static. It took me several sentences to realize that it was not the Trompetta’s people but good old Desmond, Sylphide’s very butler, phoning me from Chile, where the dancer and her company were in the midst of a two-week engagement. Gradually, I deciphered that Linsey’s health had taken a bad turn, no warning at all. His heart, of course. Dr. Chun and two of Linsey’s trainers had taken him to Doctors Hospital, not far from Sutton Place. But the bad news was that he was probably not going to make it.

  “He loved your photo,” Desmond said. “He’s been sleeping with it under his pillow. He’s rather ruined it.”

  The sadness welled up in me as Desmond went on: the dancer needed a favor. Sylphide’s foundation jet had been grounded due to sudden political trouble in Chile. There were very few commercial flights going anywhere, and it might take days, though Conrad Pant, her manager, was trying to arrange a military helicopter to get them to Buenos Aires. Could I get into the city? Be by Linsey’s side? Just in case? “We’d rather he didn’t die alone,” Desmond said.

  “Put her on?” I said.

  “She can’t,” said Desmond. “Not just now.”

  “Enough discretion,” I said.

  “She’s not taking it well, sir. She’s not taking it well at all. Devastated, sir. Please, please go to him. Sutton Place at your disposal, of course.” Desmond in tears!

  At Doctors Hospital my name was already on the limited visitors list, and I was shown into a private room on a high floor of that very nice facility. Linsey lay there with his eyes open. He saw me, knew me, reached up for me, held on to me as I went to kiss him. And I held on to him, careful of all the tubes in his nose and mouth and chest. He smelled of pee as in the old days, every muscle flaccid. A monitor beeped. The TV was loud. I turned it off with the remote at Linsey’s hand. The little stinker had no idea what was happening to him. He seemed very weary but quizzical as ever.

  “Mommy,” he managed.

  “She’s coming,” I told him.

  The night was very long. A nurse rolled in a big gray kidney-dialysis recliner, slipped me a blanket, and fitfully I slept. In the morning someone brought a tray of food, but there was no reason for it: Linsey couldn’t eat with all that gear in his face.

  “Fat bottom,” I said, one of his hits from history class, a reference to Miss Butterman.

  Barest smile, and he closed his eyes, struggling to breathe.

  “He’s going,” said the stoical nurse who answered my buzz.

  But it was two more hours, then three, his breathing slower and then slower yet. Late in the afternoon, Linsey Stryker-Stewart opened his eyes one more time.

  “Hey, Wizard,” he said clearly.

  WE MOURNERS BARELY fit into the huge High Side ballroom, Queen Anne chairs and wooden rental chairs arranged as if for a major recital. I sat between Etienne and RuAngela, and they held my two hands, crossed. Miss Butterman gave the eulogy, quavering tones, great charm, claimed that our Linsey was the best student she’d had in all her years of teaching, never late, no backtalk, the most cheerful person she’d ever met. Then she listed some of his insults, to laughter. Linsey’s girlfriend, Toot, a middle-aged classmate of his at their special school, got up and said, “Linsey is very nice to everyone. Very quiet in the night. I like him. Well, good-bye.”

  Sylphide sat in the front row, plain gray dress, Desmond stiff at her side. Georges Whiteside was far from her at the big Falcone concert piano and played several Dabney songs with great feeling, the melodies that, mixed and tumbled, Linsey had continually hummed, what Kate had once called his theme song. When it was my turn I thanked everyone for coming, said something about how Linsey and I had gone to high school together, and that I loved him. I added that Kate had loved him, too, and that she wished sh
e could attend, though the second part was not true. Or, at any rate, she wouldn’t come to the phone when I’d called to tell Jack.

  Sylphide didn’t speak publicly, but greeted people in the receiving line warmly, clearly exhausted—they’d barely got in the night before. There’d been no chance to visit with her. I’d never clearly seen her as the boy’s mother, not at all, but for nearly twenty years she’d been all he had, when you thought about it, all he’d ever known. (According to that week’s People magazine—which RuAngela bought, knowing I would secretly treasure it—his actual mother was one of the Rattner family’s neighbors back in Newscastle, perhaps a drug connection for the rotten Rattner boys, Dabney and Brady, a known addict, according to the article, much Dabney’s senior. She and Dabney had married when he was sixteen and she was pregnant, which was done in those days in that place. They led a drunken existence, pregnancy no obstacle. And then she left after the baby was born, never to be heard from again.)

  We all ate petit fours and drank champagne, as Sylphide told us they’d always done on Linsey’s birthdays.

  Dr. Chun, old stalwart, had stayed outside with the Bentley. I brought him a couple of the little cakes and a cup of coffee, had to pull open his door to hand the stuff to him. He was a good one to yank himself together instantly, but I could see he’d been crying. He said something unintelligible, then tried the word again, a mouthful for a guy who’d grown up in Beijing: “Sorrow.”

  Late there was only Miss Butterman’s old Ford Fiesta in the High Side driveway—she’d gotten a little potted and found a ride home with Emily’s old friend Dwight Leonard, whom she’d flunked in Medieval History. In the High Side, only Sylphide and her staff. She and I sat on the great stone steps in the grand foyer as Desmond and two young women cleared the parlor, precise teamwork, no talk among them. They’d all loved Linsey, despite what he’d put them through.

  “Linsey was a good boy,” said Sylphide.

  The Calder mobile floated very lightly above us, faint wind from the movement of our bodies. I saw she’d had her hair done, cut square to her shoulders, a little overcombed, little black hat pinned on top. The staff finished up their chores, filed upstairs to their rooms, palpably pleased to be home in the countryside. The foyer grew dark. Sylphide was at my side, fragrant with jasmine. Maybe it was all the black and gray that made her seem smaller than I remembered. Her arms were very pale.

  She said, “I am feeling so irresponsible.”

  My heart welled. I said, “You didn’t know he’d take a turn. You didn’t know there’d be a coup d’état or whatever it was going on down there.”

  At length she said, “So, about you. Who were your friends tonight?”

  Explaining Etienne and RuAngela led to the whole story: end of football, move back home, Kate so deeply troubled, the idea of the restaurant, my lowball bid on Trompetta’s. I thanked her for the name: Restaurant Firfisle.

  She liked that very much. “Firfisle,” she repeated.

  “Tenke,” I replied too tenderly—she’d only been saying the name of a potential business.

  The mobile slowly rotated, seemed to hover, turned back on itself. Upstairs someone had won the card game, muted hilarity. The dark in the foyer deepened. Perhaps outside some clouds were moving in.

  “Time for you to row home,” she said gently.

  I tried to recall if I’d seen her weep before, realized she’d always only been a tower of strength, all her troubles notwithstanding. At first it was just a little sniffling, but then she really collapsed into it. I touched her shoulder, and as the tears came harder, pulled her into my arms, choking sobs like a little kid’s, the feeling the world would never be right again. I pulled her up into my lap, just like that, nothing to it, and rocked her, rocked her, what seemed like hours.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, the Realtor called. Our revised offer on the Trompetta’s property had been accepted—$35,500, whoa. The bank wanted to close immediately, two-week-maximum grace period. RuAngela thought April Fool’s day auspicious, and so we scheduled our meeting. And quickly then there was no going back: we owned the Trompetta’s building. The three of us spent a whole day there, walked the seawall, poked around the decaying premises, pictured the place full and hopping. Shifting tides, it was Etienne who exuded all the confidence now—his general anxiety had lifted with the one bit of luck. My own excitement was tempered by an equal measure of fear, but my fear was tempered by what could only be called delusions of grandeur: we’d have a great restaurant up and running in record time, one of the best restaurants in the history of the world, pronto.

  RuAngela had long since calculated startup costs. Rather than tap my full savings, I went to Dwight Leonard, who was now an officer at Westport Trust (WE KNOW YOU!), and on scant collateral and little evidence of worth was granted a large loan, 8 percent interest, a bargain at the time. Quickly, we pulled all the contractors we could find on board, promised them bonuses in exchange for speed.

  We could open without the parking lot paved, we could open without a sign, we could open without a liquor license, if necessary. But we couldn’t open without a kitchen, without at least a skeleton staff, and not without that fire system. So merrily (shades of Nicholas Hochmeyer), I dipped into my savings, made a loan to Firfisle-the-restaurant from Firfisle-the-man, a legal technicality that would protect me personally from the bankruptcy I had started to see coming.

  END OF SEPTEMBER, 1989, and I was in the gorgeous kitchen shaping up at Restaurant Firfisle, helping the new fire-suppression contractor run the pipe for the foam system, getting to be a damn good plumber. RuAngela was likewise out in the dining room painting, always in a dress, our Ru-Ru, though she hadn’t shaved for some weeks, her rally beard, as she called it—oh, the delicious weirdness of her! One of the cement guys working on the foundation could say, “Nice dress, buddy,” to RuAngela, and she’d just bat her eyes.

  E.T. engaged every single human being we crossed paths with, fed anyone who was there at lunchtime, anyone who worked late, offered a Sunday brunch to anyone who put in the extra day, nearly always vegetarian (100 percent converts among those who worked day after day, carnivores shrugging and asking for more). RuAngela, and E.T., the ultimate asset. Even out and about the two of them made friends very easily—everyone wants an exotic acquaintance.

  And Etienne and RuAngela took care of me, held me to a day off each week, during which I hardly knew what to do, just stopped cold, thinking of the restaurant every minute, practically mooning. So I wasn’t thrilled by our big plan to take time off before we opened. A week for them to get back down to Mobile and collect belongings, a subsequent week for me to do what?

  “Stay at a B and B,” RuAngela kept saying.

  Groan.

  And E.T. would exhort: “Go find an island, lie on the beach!”

  Anyway, I was in the kitchen pulling down on a huge wrench, tensioning the last leg of the fire system while the contractor put the last foam-head in place inside the cooking hood. E.T. was sautéing something while working the phone, interviewing local growers and foragers. The pipe turned slowly, the foam-head coming squeak-squeak into position. A bowed gentleman in a blue suit came into my peripheral vision, inspector no doubt. The contractor ignored him, so I did too. And the man watched as we completed the work.

  But it was Dr. Chun! Ho! Stiffest hug in the history of the world! Pat-pat on the frail shoulders. All business, eyes averted, he handed me one of Sylphide’s big envelopes, the gold piping, the jasmine scent. The fire-suppression contractor looked at me sidewise: still a lot of work to be done, Prince Charming.

  But it was my shop.

  Dr. Chun was impatient—Knicks home game, early start. “Just a minute,” I said, and found a scrap of lumber the size of a note card, why not? I drew a frilly border around its edges with a red grease pencil, drew a heart, then wrote in the center, nice block letters: ECLIPSE? Sylphide had always liked men who acted like men. Dr. Chun took my wooden epistle from me with only the trace of a grin, and
that was our good-bye.

  In the walk-in I opened Sylphide’s envelope. Maybe she’d meet me in Japan, Turkmenistan, Madagascar, Antarctica; I’d heard the beaches were spectacular. I’d be philosophical about the loss of the restaurant. She’d be philosophical about Percy Haverstock and his bad habits. We’d find our way into our new love gradually. But in the envelope, not so much as a note. Just a tidal flush of disappointment in the form of an outsize check for an outsize amount: $100,000. It was made out by machine to Firfisle Restaurant Corp., written on an account called Tenke Thorvald Foundation for the Arts, signed with impressive formality by the director of the foundation, one Conrad Pant. I had the impulse to rip it into a 100,000 pieces. Along with the check was nothing more rousing than a form letter:

  This check represents a one-time grant from the Tenke Thorvald Foundation for Fine Arts. Your organization has attracted our notice as deserving of support due to the quality of your artistic vision. Funds are unrestricted and may be used as you desire, starting immediately. Please make no effort to contact the foundation or Ms. Thorvald—your continued excellent work is all the thanks we need.

  LATER THAT WEEK, in the insane flurry of finishing up, Jack called. Kate wasn’t doing well, and he was worn out, needed a few hours to himself, errands to do, the boat to put up, and she in such a state that he was afraid to leave her alone. I’d never heard him so baldly desperate, poor guy: “Just don’t entertain any of her delusions, okay? You’ve got to promise me. None of this business about Barbara and Nicholas and Dabney and Danbury, please. Promise me that. I know you’re susceptible too. She’ll push it on you, believe me. It’s all she ever talks about. Do something physical. She likes to take a walk. It quiets her spirit. But she won’t walk with me, and won’t go without me.”

  I took the next afternoon off, drove up there. Jack answered the door the way I’d first seen him, wet and wrapped in a towel, might have been forty again, though of course he was close to sixty by then. “We’ve made up,” he said simply. He looked pretty relaxed, not what I expected. Shortly he was back, dressed for his errands in pressed jeans and flannels, worn Topsider shoes. “Kate’ll be down. She’s still in the shower. Just, please, I know it’s not your fault and I know it’s not easy, but please don’t entertain or encourage any of that crap. Talk about cooking. Have her help you make lunch. We shopped just this morning. I shopped, I mean. She sat in the car. But we’ve fixed it. Crested another hill. Sorry no wine in there. Talk about those friends of yours. Anything but you-know-what.”