Talk Stories

by Jamaica Kincaid

  —September 8, 1980

  New

  At a luncheon, at the Regency Hotel, in honor of Cyd Charisse, the dancer and actress, because her legs were the first pair of legs to be elected to the newly established publicity abstraction called the Hall of Fame for Famous Legs, two women said these things to each other:

  FIRST WOMAN: Men don’t know how to talk to each other. Men will go out and they will play a game of tennis and they will have a drink, but they don’t know how to touch. They don’t know how to get into their emotions.

  SECOND WOMAN: Yes.

  FIRST WOMAN: I feel sorry for men. I look at them and they look so helpless, and I think, God!

  SECOND WOMAN: Yes.

  FIRST WOMAN: I think things are changing little by little, though. I think among a few men there is beginning to be some loosening up.

  SECOND WOMAN: Yes.

  FIRST WOMAN: I was talking to the designer Emanuel Ungaro the other day, and I asked him, because he is a Frenchman, who of the men he knew in America today he would say represented this new kind of attitude in American men. I mean men who are beginning to seem more open about themselves, about the problems men have getting through in the world, about how they really deal with their feelings. And you know what he said? He said that the only man he could think of was Alan Alda. And you know what? I had to agree with him.

  SECOND WOMAN: Yes.

  FIRST WOMAN: Alan Alda is a very interesting man. Did you know he was named Man of the Year? I have heard him talk on television shows about his life. He is very sensitive to the needs of women—especially women in a marriage situation. You know, he is the star of a TV show and he has to work in Hollywood, but he makes sure that every weekend he gets home to New Jersey and sees his wife and his children, and he and his wife talk to each other every day. And I don’t know if you know that he is a very good-looking man. But that’s it—he doesn’t let his good looks go to his head. He’s still regular, he still wants to go home to his wife, he still wants to see his children. I think that will be part of being the new type of man we’ll be seeing. I think that men will know that they are good-looking and they will just go beyond it, you know—not try to use it like some kind of weapon. Then they can get into other areas, other things.

  SECOND WOMAN: Yes.

  FIRST WOMAN: Are you married?

  SECOND WOMAN: Yes.

  FIRST WOMAN: Then you know what I am talking about?

  SECOND WOMAN: No.

  —October 6, 1980

  Great

  Merv Griffin, that great bon-vivant television-talk-show host extraordinaire, has written his autobiography, and to celebrate its publication Richard E. Snyder, the president of Simon & Schuster (and the publisher of Merv’s book) threw a party for Merv Griffin in his penthouse suite at the St. Moritz Hotel. Almost everything about this party was great: the food (platters of cold cuts, cheese, pâté, bowls of black olives, three different kinds of bread) was great, and there was lots of it; the flowers were great, and they were all over the place and they were real; the chess set that was there just in case anyone wanted to play a game of chess was great, and it had a real marble board; Bobby Short, the great saloon singer and pianist, was there, and he looked great; Edwin Newman, that St. George of the English language, was there, and a lot of people were willing to swear that his presence alone was great; Christopher Reeve, the star of Superman, was there, and many of the people at the party looked at him as if they thought he was great; Gloria Swanson, the great former Hollywood beauty and actress, was there, and she was wondering out loud if her new book—her autobiography—started too slow to grab the reader’s attention, but a woman who had just said to her, “Miss Swanson, you don’t remember me. Barbara Walters brought me up to your apartment the other day,” now said, “Oh, but I think your book is so wonderful, so great”; Barbara Howar, the well-known Washington social person and writer, was there, and she is extremely great; a woman was there who was talking about that great best-seller about that titan of society and fashion Gloria Vanderbilt, and she was saying to a man whose greatness wasn’t obvious but couldn’t be doubted, “Everything is great. The book is being used at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth for the sense of history”; Dan Green, the head of one of Simon & Schuster’s great divisions, was there, and he was talking to Dominique Lapierre, the co-author of a fictional book about New York City being held hostage by terrorists who have an atom bomb—which is an idea so great that most people can hardly get through the day for worrying about it; Joni Evans, head of her own book-publishing division under the Simon & Schuster imprint and the wife of Richard E. Snyder, was there, and she is such a great human being that she kept trying to get a reporter to take home some of the food that the great guests hadn’t consumed; and, of course, Merv Griffin was there, and he shook hands with the guests and smiled at them, and when he smiled his teeth looked white and gleaming and great.

  Years ago, on The Merv Griffin Show, the actor Forrest Tucker, who was a guest on the show that day, turned to the actor Mickey Rooney, who was also a guest on the show that day, to tell him what a great actor he was. He said, “They can put you up there with anybody. I don’t care. You’re greater than any of them. You’re greater than Gielgud.”

  —October 20, 1980

  Romance

  Harlequin Books, the publishers of Harlequin Romances, recently gave a luncheon for two hundred women readers of Harlequin Romances in the large dining room of a large hotel in New Jersey. The women, each of whom looked freshly coiffed, sat at tables in the middle of which were large bowls of yellow and gold chrysanthemums. The women seemed very excited. Ahead of them: a chat by the director of consumer relations for Harlequin, a chat by a vice-president of Harlequin, a chat by a new writer of Harlequin Romances, a “bridal” bouquet to be tossed into the roomful of women by the vice-president, the cutting of a cake baked in the shape of an open book.

  “I watch the Phil Donahue show when I can,” said Grace to her friend Dolly. “But mostly I like to read.”

  “I like to read, too,” said Dolly. “TV is too explicit.”

  “I like to read, too,” said Maralyn, a friend of Dolly’s but not such a good friend of Grace’s. “But I don’t like things to be explicit. I like an innocent girl.”

  “I like an innocent girl, too,” said Gertrude, a very good friend of Maralyn’s, though she hardly knew Grace or Dolly. “But I don’t like a Barbara Cartland type of girl. They are way to the right.”

  “I send my children out the door,” said Nora, the best friend of Gertrude and a very good friend of Maralyn’s. “I do my housework, then I make myself a sandwich and curl up with one of my romances.”

  “A lot of men object to women reading this kind of book when they are alone,” said Joanne, a good friend of none of the women sitting at the table with her. “But I say it’s better than getting into mischief.”

  “According to a poll taken among you women,” said the director of consumer relations, standing on a dais and speaking to the room at large with the help of a microphone, “the most romantic man in America is Robert Redford. The second most romantic man is ‘My Husband.’”

  “Hi,” said the vice-president, standing on a dais and speaking to the room at large with the help of a microphone.

  “Hi,” said the new writer of Harlequin Romances. “They say writing is a lonely business, but I don’t feel so lonely now. This is so nice! I have not been to a party like this before, and after years of being chained to the typewriter it is nice to get out and meet some real-life readers.”

  “hat was delightful,”said the vice-president to the new writer. Then, turning to the women, he said,”The first person to ask a question from each table gets the centerpiece from her table.”

  “Why are the men in Harlequin Romances always six feet tall and virile and in their forties and the women small and thin and seventeen?” asked a woman seated at a table in the back of the room.

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha,” laughed the vice-presi
dent.

  “How do you get the authors to write only a certain number of pages?” asked another woman.

  “Sometimes the type is larger, sometimes the type is smaller,” said the vice-president. “We don’t like to cut out an author’s beautiful words.”

  Then everybody sat down and ate a lunch of salad, baked chicken, potato puffs, and baked broccoli with bread crumbs. The food wasn’t very good, but nobody said so.

  —November 3, 1980

  Novel

  Oriana Fallaci, the internationally famous Italian journalist and interviewer of the high, mighty, and unbelievably important, has written and had published a novel, and to publicize it she asked eighteen people, some of whom she didn’t know at all personally but all of whom she knew worked for newspapers or magazines or television, to lunch at “21.” Oriana Fallaci’s novel, titled A Man, is about a hero of the Greek resistance who uncovers evidence of great corruption and all-around wrongdoing in powerful circles in Greek politics but is killed before he can expose the wicked people. In real life, Oriana Fallaci said to her guests, she was in love with a hero of the Greek resistance who uncovered evidence of great corruption and all-around wrongdoing in powerful circles in Greek politics but was killed before he could expose the wicked people.

  At the lunch, Oriana Fallaci, who is petite and pretty, sat with all her guests at an oblong dining table. A few times, she said “you Americans” in a way that many Western Europeans like to say “you Americans”—a way that many Americans find annoying. She also said, “What is fiction?” and “People ask me if this or that incident in the book was true, and I say, ‘It’s all true,’ though, of course, the truth is always longer.” She said, “I love politics. There are some people who don’t resist alcohol, some people who don’t resist drugs. I don’t resist politics,” and “My father laughed a lot. Once, I said to him, ‘Father, how come you always laugh and never cry?’ and he said, ‘It’s the same thing,’” and “You don’t steel yourself against life as I did for three years to write a book; you write it and face the task of writing it,” and “Alekos said to me, ‘I will die and you will love me forever and you’ll write a book about me,’” and “Anything can be said about me but not that I don’t write good Italian. I am Florentine, God damn it.”

  A guest said to her, “Oriana, journalism is something you are in temporary retreat from.”

  Another guest said, “You must find Ronald Reagan interesting.”

  —December 8, 1980

  Cat Story

  Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

  I’ve been to London to look at the Queen.

  Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there?

  I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

  Morris, who is a cat and is (so to speak) the star of a cat-food advertising campaign, has edited (so to speak again) a book about cats and how to take care of them. Morris, who is an orange tabby cat, and his trainer, a man with a severe crew-cut, came to the city the other day to promote the book, so they invited people to come to Sardi’s and ask questions and take pictures. Morris was placed on a table at one end of the room for all to see, and he licked his paws, rested his chin on his paws, half closed his eyes, moved one of his ears, moved both of his ears, lay down on his stomach, flicked his tail, and jumped off the table and tried to run away a few times.

  “Is he drugged?” asked a woman, who later said that she is very concerned about the treatment of cats in public life, is against cat shows, has five cats, and takes her cats to a cat dentist regularly.

  “No,” said someone connected with Morris and his trainer. “People always ask that. But Morris doesn’t have to be drugged. He’s a real professional.”

  “But isn’t Morris dead?” asked another woman.

  “Well, yes, but that was the other Morris,” answered the connection. “It’s like a dynasty. Morris is dead. Long live Morris. This Morris was found in a cat shelter. He was a stray. This is the Morris that is now used in all the ads. But there are three more in reserve, in case he should suddenly drop dead.”

  A grown man in a Kool-Aid-orange-and-white cat suit walked by. On his stomach, written in black letters, were the words “Personal Ambassador to Morris the Cat.”

  “He looks highly flammable,” said a man.

  “It’s rough,” said a woman.

  Morris left the room, presumably to eat a meal of fish, fish by-products, water, crab, shrimp, animal fat, wheat flour, dried yeast, dried whey, iron oxide, vitamin E, A, and niacin supplements, thiamin mononitrate, ethylenediamine dihydroiodide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin supplement, vitamin D3 supplement, and pyridoxine hydrochloride, which make up the contents of a six-and-a-half-ounce can of the brand of cat food that Morris represents.

  —December 15, 1980

  The Exercise

  PART ONE: It was noon, it was in the Terrace Room of the Plaza Hotel, there was Chris Evert Lloyd, the world-class women’s tennis champion, there were some executives of an Italian sportswear company who had just flown in from Italy, there were lots of sports reporters from the electronic and print media, there was food (a buffet of beef bourguignonne, seafood crêpes, shrimps, rice, cold stringbeans, asparagus in prosciutto, and various French-related desserts), there were some tables, round, with white tablecloths, and on these tables there were some half-dead yellow mums.

  “Chris,” a man said.

  “Hi,” Chris said.

  “I am sure these questions will be rather redundant to you,” said a newswoman. “But I am going to ask them anyway.”

  “Will this five-year-exclusive contract interfere with your career?” a man asked.

  “I am not doing much,” Chris answered.

  “Do you foresee gradual retirement?” a man asked.

  “I envision a family one day,” Chris answered.

  “What were the factors involved in this decision for your career?” a man asked.

  “How do you feel about Tracy Austin?” a woman asked.

  “It’s an Italian company,” Chris said. “I think those Italians really know what they are doing. I really have a good feel for things.”

  A large, middle-aged, overweight man who had lost most of the hair on his head but had a nice bushy mustache played with the ends of his mustache as he asked the bartender for a Bloody Mary. Then, turning to his friends, four men who looked more or less like him, he said, “I think Oakland will beat the Giants.” Then he reached into a bowl that was filled with salted nuts and, taking a handful, put them all into his mouth at once.

  A man—a man not referred to above—went up to a lectern and said a few words about welcome, sportswear, a sportswear company, and Chris Evert Lloyd, in Italian-accented English. Another man—a man also not referred to above—then joined him and said more words about welcome, a sportswear company, and Chris Evert Lloyd, in Italian, and the other man translated what he said into Italian-accented English.

  Chris Evert Lloyd then joined the two men at the lectern. One of them gave her a dozen red roses. “I am really excited about wearing Ellesse clothes, because they are really beautiful,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the line. They’re No. 1 in Europe, and I hope they’ll be No. 1 in the U.S. It’s the best. It deserves to be the best.”

  PART Two: After reading the above, can you tell (a) that Chris Evert Lloyd, the world-class women’s tennis champion, has just endorsed a line of sportswear manufactured by an Italian sportswear manufacturer? (b) how Chris Evert Lloyd feels about Tracy Austin? (c) whether most Italians speak English with an Italian accent or don’t speak English at all? (d) if, according to United States government statistics, the large, middle-aged, overweight man will have a health problem soon? (e) if Chris Evert Lloyd can have visions? (f) what Chris Evert Lloyd means when she says, “I have a really good feel for things”? (g) if Chris Evert Lloyd trusts only Italian sportswear manufacturers, and not the average Italian walking down a street in Milan?

  Would you have liked Chris E
vert Lloyd more or less if she had been a geophysicist, a water tower, or an elephant hunted mercilessly for its valuable ivory tusks?