Hey, man, when I stepped into that endroit of ultimate chic while the fragrance matched the background like music and a design on display seemed almost as much a part of nature as the flower arrangement and here’s this stone fox of a Parisian high-fashion designer looking like she’s one of her own models. Man, not just waiting for me to pop by for a brief arrival chat but also ready to turn me right around and head for a cozy, nearby bistro because it’s lunchtime.
He then went on to say that by that time it was as if he had never ever heard of a private investigator or ever even seen the ones he grew up going to see in the movies. Then he also went on to tell me that even as I had disappeared into the arcade that it hit him. He was not going to hire a private investigator because he was not going to let this incredible prospect of a relationship that would fulfill so many of his adolescent and undergraduate fantasies get away whether she stayed on that movie production or not.
We’re talking infatuation here, my man, he said. That’s why it’s taking me this long to call up and report. I was in bad shape when I called you that morning and I’m glad I did, but afterward I was so embarrassed because I must have sounded so unhip. But then I finally said what the hell, my man has got to meet this trillie. He’s got to see for himself what made Old Mice hit the panic button like that.
Man, every time I think about how I must have sounded to you. All ready to plunge into class B movie international intrigue because a goddamn Hollywood studio that’s running a routine background check on a classy Paris fashion designer who is already established in New York and who has no special interest in working on flicks in the first goddamn place.
Look pal, he said, the more I thought about that, the more embarrassed I became until this morning, when I finally said, Goddamn, here I go again. And that’s when I said, What the hell is all this? I’ve gotta call him. That’s my man and all I did after not seeing him for that long was to lay that on him. So here’s Old Mice, pal. What can I tell you?
That’s when I said, Ah, come on, Mice. You’re the professional musician, not me. I’m just the schoolboy. You’re not only an arranger, you also love to jam, catching as catch can. And when you hit a goddamn clinker, which everybody, including the Bossman Himself, does from time to time, you don’t stop playing. You riff right on beyond it.
Hey, yes, he said, and I visualized him looking down at the keyboard because I already assumed that he was calling from the phone he kept on the piano, when you’re rehearsing you can stop and hack at it until you make it something you feel you can live with, but when you’re out there with a mike and footlights on, it’s the real thing and the metronome is still clicking and clocking you. You’ve got to get with it.
And besides, I said, don’t nobody know anything about this but you and me, man. The main person has no idea what you put yourself through. So come on, man.
And he said, Hey, fellow, you said it, man. That’s exactly what this is all about. So look, the main reason I’m finally making this call is to get us back to what I thought my other trip to New York was going to be about. I’ve got to get the four of us together. Man, you’ve got to meet this lady, and my stock-in-trade with her will go up when she meets you. As for your fine people, as Joe States calls her, tell her how sorry I am that I got too tangled up to meet her on my last trip to town. But don’t tell her why, as of course you wouldn’t anyway. See you soon, fellow, real soon. As soon as I can get this recording studio backlog out of the way of that movie thing. So expect me, fellow. Any minute.
XX
Guess who? Eric Threadcraft said as soon as he heard my voice answering the phone. And when I said, Maestro, what say, Mice? You back in town, Mice? He said, Just checked back in across Fifth from old you know who southbound. Haven’t even unpacked yet. First item being your earliest availability for that too-long-overdue foursome for lunch or preferably dinner and music. Music afterward, that is. And then I said, Hey, sounds absolutely top-notch to me, Mice, and I myself happen to be fairly flexible this week, but I can’t speak for the family. So call me back for the official estimate of the situation—say, round about midnight. Which he did and when he gave the date, time, and place he said, Celeste chose the restaurant and you and I will decide whose group to check out afterward.
Hey, man, he said then. This is great, fellow, just great. Not only am I finally going to meet Miss-All-Them-Fine-People rolled into one that old Papa Joe has made me so curious about. And not only are you going to see what the goddamn French hit Old Mice with right out there in the world’s most over populated briar patch of starlets trying to become movie queens. And man, you yourself are just going to enhance the idiomatic authenticity of Old Mice’s musicianship. Man, you know how the French are about the natural history of this stuff. Remember what I told you about taking her over to West L.A. that first night? Elementary, as your Sherlockian roommate used to say, elementary.
We saw them as soon as we came into the four-star midtown French restaurant that mild midspring Friday night. We were not quite ten minutes early, but they were already there waiting for us near the short line to the coat-check counter, and when he saw us coming he waved, and as we joined them he said, So here at long last is her fantastic self in person. And this is Celeste, also in person. But also a part of Old Mice’s world of fantasy even so.
And I said, Who else, maestro, who else but, my man? Man, my confidence in your piano vamping applies to these matters, too.
From the very first time he mentioned her, he had been so busy telling me how he felt about her that he had never got around to describing any of her physical features at all, not even the color of her eyes and hair. But she looked just about like I expected her to look. Because she looked more like French women look in French movies and paintings and as you visualize them when you read about them in French novels than like pictures in the fashion magazines.
We checked our New York early-spring wraps and as we fell in behind the two of them following the maître d’ leading us to our table, I was thinking that I also assumed that the way her eyes and lips moved as she spoke English with a throaty British-tinged Parisian accent would have a very similar effect on his U.S.A. schoolboy sensibility as it would have on mine.
So I nudged him and whispered, Hey, man, the way she gasps oui! is worth the whole price of the goddamn admission. To which he said, What can I tell you, fellow, what can I tell you?
He put his arm around my shoulder then and said, Look, I’m well aware that this thing of mine is only a matter of months, but even as ongoing as the excitement of the newness of it all, at this very moment I still have the feeling that this pas de quatre is long overdue. Which probably just goes to show what I’ve been putting myself through these last months.
Then when we were seated and Celeste had suggested choices from the menu, he turned to Eunice again and then turned to me and said, Incurable schoolboy as I myself also am I must point out a little academic detail that you and old Papa Joe left out: Nefertiti, fellow, Queen Nefertiti, sans the Egyptian headgear, of course.
Sans Egyptian headgear, to be sure, I said. And then I said, Because as my old roommate, who cut out before Miss You-Know-Who arrived, but who was the one who was reading the volume on art history in which I first saw a color photo of that famous bust, said, Who knows but the head beneath that ever so regal crown or whatever it is may be as hairless as a cue ball. So I concede the teacake tan skin, quibble the neck as artistic license, but no deal if Nefertiti’s hair is not Creole or Latino frizzly.
And he said, Deal, fellow. I never would have guessed central Alabama if you hadn’t already told me out in Hollywood when you first mentioned her. I would have guessed she was the one from Mobile and the Gulf Coast area and you were the one from central Alabama. But then your flesh-and-blood parents are from central Alabama, aren’t they? See, I remember you telling me about that, too. But anyway, fellow, old Papa Joe got it right. She is fine people. Extra-fine people. Extra-superfine people.
He turne
d to get her attention then, but I didn’t hear what he said because that was when Celeste asked me if a teacake was an American madeleine. And I said not really because it was really a very plain, not very sweet soft cookie, whereas a madeleine was very sweet like a down-home muffin and was baked in a muffin pan. You could bake teacakes on a cookie sheet, but since they were made from rolled dough like biscuits, a bread pan was better, but teacakes were not as spongy as biscuits.
When I paused I could follow what Eric was asking Eunice about campus life in central Alabama, but before he turned to me, our waiters arrived with our orders, and we all turned to Celeste, and Eric said having her as hostess was absolutely the next best thing to being in the region of France where each recipe came from.
When Eric asked me to tell Celeste about my trip to the Côte d’Azur and Paris and I mentioned Marquis de Chaumienne, she said she knew who he was but she had not become aware of his special interest in American music until she returned to Paris after her first trip to New York.
I was here on business, she said, an ambitious young upstart that I already was, I had spent all of my time in midtown on Fifth and Madison Avenues and down in the garment district. And at night there were the midtown restaurants, including this one. And also the Broadway and Times Square movie houses, which I’m afraid I had very little time for. But when I came back to Paris and said no when asked if I had been taken up to Harlem to hear American music not to mention dancing at its best and in unmatched variety, I was made to feel that I was deficient in an indispensable dimension of the spirit of the times. They were shocked. It was almost as if a supposedly sophisticated English-man had come to Paris and remained oblivious to what Montmartre, Montparnasse, and St. Germain des Près were all about!
Or so I felt, at any rate, she went on to say. And that was what led her to find out that the Hot Club of France was neither just another Parisian fad or cult, but included truly cosmopolitan people like the Marquis de Chaumienne, who regarded many of the jazz musicians they heard on recordings and in person, on tours that included Paris and other European capitals, as representative contemporary artists who transcended the context of popular show business entertainment that they most often worked in.
I’ve never met the marquis, she said, but I’m told that in addition to recordings, he also collects other American artifacts, especially of ranch life and the western frontier, which I’m told also includes paintings and bronzes by Frederic Remington.
To which I said I had also been told included a very special interest in quarter horse racing and rodeos, sporting events that required skills basic to cattle-herding. The quarter horse was a sporting version of the sprint-oriented, ever-so-maneuverable cow pony. And the rodeo also included such cowpuncher skills as roping, throwing, and binding calves for branding, as well as demonstrating the cowpuncher’s ability to hang on to a wildly bucking untamed horse, the first step in taming his own mount.
I told her that it was said that there had been a time when he came over for the quarter horse racing season every year, but that he also had no special interest in western music beyond its use in Hollywood movies about cowboys—nonsinging cowboys. And Eric pointed out that back during the days of silent films, cowboy movies used to be called horse operas, because the incidental music played along with them in the theaters on an organ consisted of excerpts of classical compositions by European composers.
That was, I also told her, what I had heard about when he came over for the Thoroughbred races, his trips to the Kentucky Derby also included visits to hear music in New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago. And when Eric said, And New York was his home base for the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, right? I said, So I’ve been told, but I’ve also been told that there was a time when he used to spend the night before or after the Preakness in Baltimore because it was the hometown of so many eastern ragtime piano players, especially Eubie Blake and also Joe Turner, who was to spend a number of years touring in Europe, settling in Paris from time to time.
That was when Eric Threadcraft said what he said about his trips to Paris, so I didn’t say anything else about the Marquis de Chaumienne and he went on to say what he said about not having had a chance to see Paris and France with Celeste yet, because she had not gone back since the two of them had met, which, after all, had been a matter of several weeks rather than months.
When the waiter cleared the table and left with our orders for desserts, I asked how their production assignments were coming along, and Celeste said that her designs had been approved and were in production and that she was not needed in Hollywood until time for the fittings for the actual filming.
And Eric said, Man, as you were out there long enough and close enough to that operation to know, you’re not through with a film score and the final cutting operation until after the previews or even after the official opening—while they’re holding up distribution. But as of now, I’m feeling pretty good about how things are coming along so far, and at least nobody is squawking yet.
The cab ride downtown to the nightclub took less than fifteen minutes, and we arrived in time to get seated and to order our after-dinner liqueurs and brandies before the second set began. And it began on time. The group was a five-piece combo led by a piano player and included a drummer, a bass player, trumpet, and tenor saxophone. None of them were famous, but all of them had played and recorded with well-known leaders. Eric was more familiar with all of them than I was. He was also more up-to-date on the latest musical fads and trends—that was an indispensable part of his job as a recording studio technician and conductor.
That was also why I had deferred to his choice of an after-dinner music spot without suggesting any alternative. And he had said, Hey, no big deal. Something OK, but won’t get in the way. It’s just a thing I have about coming back to New York, however briefly. You know me, fellow, missing out on this music in New York would be like not even getting a glimpse of the plage on a trip to the Côte d’Azur.
And that was also when he went on to say, Like I said, fellow, this pas de quatre has its own sound track. Man, I must confess: if the Bossman and old Papa Joe and that gang were here tonight, it would be too much, if you know what I mean. Later for nights like that. Too much for how I feel as of now. You know what I mean.
XXI
I didn’t hear very much of what Celeste and Eunice talked to each other about in the restaurant and between numbers at the nightclub that evening. But the last thing Eunice said when the cab let us out at our address before heading up to midtown was that she would call and confirm before Tuesday afternoon.
And Celeste said, D’accord, merveilleux.
And Eric and I slapped palms.
And the cab pulled off, and as Eunice and I headed across the sidewalk to our entrance, she said she had promised Celeste that she would let her know which day next week would be most convenient for the two of them to meet for lunch and for a visit to the boutique.
They spent most of that next Friday afternoon together. And it was when Eunice told me what she told that night at dinnertime that I found out what I found out about what her impression of him was when they were introduced to each other at that producer’s party in Beverly Hills on her first trip to Hollywood.
Of all the artists and technicians involved in the production being initiated, the ones she had been most curious about were the composer and conductor of the incidental music score. She had already read the script and had already seen sketches and models for the settings. But she had no idea of what the incidental music would be like. The production was not a Hollywood musical, but she was hoping that the score would not be what she thought of as standard American drawing room comedy music featuring a light or semiclassical string orchestra playing the all-too-conventional pipe organ–derived urban soap opera variation of the old Wild West horse opera music.
She knew very well that designing a chic wardrobe for an American sitcom was not to be confused with designing costumes for an opera or ballet. Costumes co
uld be obviously unrealistic, downright symbolic, or even outrageous. Sitcom wardrobes were perhaps not only au courant but perhaps most often dernier cri—indeed, as dernier cri as the current fashion magazines. Certainly that was what this script called for. So what she had been hoping was that her haute couture designs would be obviously consistent with, if not altogether emblematic of, the contemporary American spirit as it was expressed in the music and the dance movements that she had become so fascinated by.
So when she and Eric Threadcraft were introduced to each other and he turned out to be a young American professional recording studio arranger and conductor of jazz-based popular music, she was pleased because she felt that he would be responsive to her conception of how her wardrobe designs and his score would go together.
Not only was he sympathetic, his immediate response was to invite her to come along as he made the rounds, dropping in on several of his after-hours spots, beginning in West Los Angeles and including a cruise along Central Avenue, depending on who was where. After all, in addition to the headliners in the glittering addresses along Sunset Strip, there was always a wider choice of first-rate professionals from every section of the country playing somewhere in or around Los Angeles just about every night, and he kept tabs on most of the best.
That was when I told Eunice what I told her about what he told me when he called from the Plaza that first time, and I met him at the Algonquin that morning. I said that was not the first time he had mentioned Celeste Delauny, it was also the first time he had ever mentioned anything about any date he had ever had with anybody, not only in Hollywood but anywhere else. I said I knew he was single and that my impresson was that he had never been married but had not mentioned having any special girlfriend even when I would say what I would say about Miss You-Know-Who from time to time when he and I made the rounds we used to make to nightspots from time to time. My impression on those occasions was that his interest was not social but musical, not with getting a date, but getting an invitation to sit in on piano during a jam session.
The Magic Keys Page 15
