“Oh, mais NON!”
“What’d he say? Come again?”
“Non, c’est rien,” soothed Madame. “He was very untactless.”
“I got a stink feelin’ he called me cheatin’!”
“It’s a misunderstooding,” pleaded Madame.
“Guy’s gonna get clocked!”
“You put your feet in the plates,” Madame informed him. “She is offensed.”
“I’m approximately gonna lace the fucker!”
Celebrado gave him a menacing look.
“Fellow’s a pratt,” murmured Battersby, unfortunately.
For the German Ambassador, unable to brook any more of this, turned on him. “Yah, unt you, mein herr, are za ambassador uff a banana republic. Zo. Mitout even bananas, you motherfucker,” he tossed off, turning away.
There was a room-wide gasp.
“I can’t believe my hears!”
Her Majesty’s Envoy drew himself up and murmured phlegmily, “I have nevah, in fact, ahehum-ummed my mothah.” A shorter man, he positively looked down at his adversary. “And may I say how sorry I am that anyone evah ahehum-ummed yours.”
Murmurs of approval. The music picked up and the Derby Day roar rose again. Touché, the German Ambassador clicked his heels and bowed stiffly to the British Ambassador, and then to Recky, who was no longer looking, and then, too far down to stalk altogether off, worked his way through the now oblivious crowd to put something on red.
“The betting window is open,” I announced.
Carrying her beetle wincingly and at arm’s length Madame joined the other jockeys at the starting gate and they got down. “Ee put me in a state, I can tell you!”
“Who gives a fiddler’s.”
Bibi gave me a wide-eyed glance over what we’d started. She was the kind of woman who, when she looked over her shoulder, touched it with her chin.
I winked at her. Later, baby.
“On your marks,” I said. “Get set: GO!”
Easy, really.
The bugs zigzagged off with the broads behind them, Bibi’s buns racing each other under black silk.
“Is that our money?” said Alberta.
It was Alberta.
She clung to the arm of a tall guy, unhandsome if you ask me but with a tailored look about his face. Late fifties, pale silk tie and an air about him of what they dig in Washington. Power.
There was a short bald fat man with them, had a big wart on the side of his nose. This latter detached himself and came and squatted by me for a view of the tushes. “Vant voman,” he confided, grinning and gravel-voiced. “Vant go mit voman.”
Unable to keep myself from recoiling I said, “What is he, Russian?”
“I hope so, darling.” She turned to the tall guy. “This is my protégé, Mr. Wallace. Darling, this is Mr. Stolkov, the Russian Ambassador.”
“Hi,” I said.
“And that’s Mr. Blotskie.”
“Hi, Mr. Blotskie.”
“How are doink?”
“You talk funny.”
“Oily little prick, isn’t he,” said Stolkov. He gave us a things-have-been-officially-vulgar-since-the-revolution look.
“You seem to have considerable talent as a capitalist, Mr. Wallace.”
Harvard. Even the accent was tailored.
“I guess it’s bad,” I said.
“Wordy can do anything he puts his mind to. What there is of it.” Her eyes followed Bibi’s animated rump and came back to me. What have you been doing? they said.
Killing time till you got through with Basil Rathbone, mine said.
“I walked right into Mr. Stolkov’s office and told him about our problem,” she explained. “He’s been very helpful.”
“I wonder, am I the victim of your haute-bourgeois charm or do you really find me fascinating?” He was too smooth to trust.
She cuddled his arm reassuringly.
Bibi and Recky were in the home stretch and the din was deafening. It crescendoed and Bibi leapt into the air. She jogged back to me with her bug and knelt beside me holding my arm. “I won!” she said.
I paid winners and glanced at Alberta. She’s just a kid, my look said.
I can see that, hers said. “Men are such whoopers,” she told Stolkov. “Riding, surfing. Betting. All this preoccupation with metaphor.”
“I keep myself in shape,” he said, not looking at her.
Bibi wouldn’t let go of my arm.
“How did you get here,” Alberta asked me.
“Just followed my nose.”
“Well it’s certainly getting easier to see. Take it easy on the champagne.”
“This wine is made from tablets,” said Stolkov.
She caressed his bicep. “Oh, don’t say that! Let’s have another winkie!” She held onto his arm as he reached for the glasses, and gave me an ain’t-I-cute look.
Recky came back holding her bug face-on at eye level. “Will you quit pickin’ your ass?”
“Oh!” cried Madame at my immodest pile. “Such a nice money now for charity!”
“Well we’ll certainly consider it,” said Alberta.
“But what else can we do?” protested Madame.
“Well I think that’s rather a casual attitude! We took the risks!”
“I don’t invite you to a partie to win your income!” This was a delicate point. She hadn’t invited us at all.
“Yah, all zis luftverschmutzung over my money,” said the German Ambassador.
“Fellow’s as thick as boards!” said Battersby.
“Germany has lost again,” explained Stoklov.
“Thick as two short planks!”
“Yah, and if you vould not haff had ze Americans you vould haff lost Moscow!”
“And if you hadn’t been so greedy for England and Africa you would have won Moscow,” said Stolkov.
The German Ambassador defied restraining whispers and stalked off. “Bah! I cannot stand there and smell him!”
This left a certain gap, into which Madame stepped and related a parable. “When Chanel, who was of course the mistress of the Duke of So and So, was on his boat, he takes aboard also another wonderful woman for a time, and Chanel was leaning with her elbows on the railing ready to leave and the Duke, to be forgiven, slips a marvelous emerald on her finger and she took it off to see and drops it into the sea, to not have any bad remembers. I hagree completely.”
“Well you’re not holding us up without a gun,” said Alberta.
“And your sister!” said Madame, growing determined.
Now, when dealing with one or more angry women it is my policy to cross my legs and back up. Moreover, the question of the pee had begun to raise itself. In the course of every debauch one sooner or later arrives at the point of the pee and its attendant problems. Where? How soon? Before whom?
I now therefore ducked out and stole away in search. I could have slipped out into the garden I guess but it bordered on the Park, the Creek, and I didn’t want to stumble around and step on a water mocasin or something. You live in India for a while you think about these things.
There were no servants in the hall, no plants or ashtrays big enough to quite do, so when I found some stairs I had little choice but to dart on up. At the top was a gallery overlooking the Park and for a moment I leaned there inhaling the quiet. The crickets, the frogs.
Two men were talking below just out of the light. One of them was globular. Stiff-and-harassed-looking, toes pointed too far out. Blotskie.
“You don’t want it?” said the other. Celebrado.
You could hear the change in their pockets.
“I am afraid to touch it!”
“Don’t talk de garbage, this got nothing to do with my contry.”
“Is dangerous?”
“Is de President by de balls, man! Is better than Watergate, man! Take the fucking thing, man!”
Blotskie stood there with it.
“Ciao, baby.” Celebrado went back inside and I tiptoed off the ba
lcony and poked around till I found the necessary house.
When I went downstairs Madame had retired from the field. The avid betters were keeping the races going and Alberta was banker.
Stolkov looked on with amusement. “Nothing to it, is there?”
I squatted beside her and watched. “Your guy’s got it,” I told her.
She gave me a skeptical glance for impugning his health but when she looked back at me there was a James Bond gleam in her eye.
14.
“I thought Madame Lucerne was especially gracious tonight,” said Stolkov, more or less to make trouble.
We were driving back to his place in Georgetown. He kept a little place in Georgetown. No doubt he was a member at the Corinthian Yacht Club, I didn’t ask.
He and Alberta and Battersby were in the rear seat. Bibi and I sat across from them facing backwards. Blotskie was up front with the chauffeur.
“Put on a good squash,” allowed Battersby. “A right royal piss-up!”
“Something—airy about her charm,” said Stolkov. “Something—fragile, don’t you think?” He blinked at Alberta.
“Yes but that face-lift is so garish. It looks like a stocking mask.”
For her part Madame had not been sorry to see us go. “Thanks the God!” she had smiled.
Stolkov had been carrying the money. There was nothing to put it all in.
Alberta tried to butter over the crack. “I am sorry we fell out.”
“It’s not grave,” said Madame. “Next time I hire someone.”
Bibi held onto me like a new toy, there was just no way to disengage. Her husband was around somewhere but they must have had an understanding or something. The larger diplomatic implications no longer seemed to distract her, I guess it was the champagne, and she walked me out behind the others with a sensitive-enough-to-be-embarassed-by-her-fantasies-but-daring-enough-to-live-them-anyway look.
Of course we were leaving before the ranking guest but everything was out of control. I shrugged at Recky as we passed. If there was a good thing about our departure it was slipping her hold with a reasonably straight face. Alberta was there, what could I do? Of course I was with Bibi and Alberta was with Stolkov but I trusted the real arrangement came through.
It was all pretty tacky.
In the car Bibi swayed on the turns.
“I hope it’s not one of those heavy sort of mugging sort of raping neighborhoods,” said Battersby.
“We’ll be perfectly safe. I don’t like to entertain at the Embassy. We bought it years ago and it turns out to be on the highest ground in Washington. Perfect for training our surveillance devices anywhere we choose. They desperately want us out of there but we have our democratic rights. All they can do is counter-surveil. The place hums like a dynamo.”
A corner threw Bibi onto my chest. She gripped my shoulders and faced me and tried to focus. “Am I your schnuggles?”
“We hardly know each other,” I reminded her.
“Oh,” she laughed, “you’ve already filled in the pieces of puzzle that are sky. It won’t take you long to get the rest.” She gave me a smouldering look and collapsed on my lap.
The others watched with their legs crossed.
“She’s beuatifully made,” observed Stolkov.
“She has a nice haircut,” said Alberta. And to me, “How slippery of you.”
“Hey,” I said, “this is work!”
“Shouldn’t think it’ll be my problem,” said Battersby.
“Niki, be a sweetypoops and don’t stare at my things all the time.”
“I am sorry. Don’t they like it?”
“Honestly, this is all between you and my what’s-its.”
“A triangle,” said Battersby.
They laughed.
When we got there Blotskie ran back and opened the door. I was for leaving Bibi in the car but the others said it wouldn’t be polite so Blotskie carried her in and went back for the money.
“There isn’t much in the way of furniture,” said Stolkov turning a light on. He crossed the room and posed by the fireplace. “I so prefer luxury to comfort.”
He gave Blotskie a look and the latter ran out to do something.
Alberta put her wrap down and tucked herself up on the sofa. “Remind me that’s there, will you? I don’t suppose you will.”
Blotskie came back with a tray and passed around shot glasses of peppered vodka. “And one for little mother,” he grinned, leaving one beside Bibi. She was curled up asleep in a soft chair.
Stolkov and Blotskie knocked theirs back. The rest of us sipped.
“Have a little more love potion,” said Stolkov, pouring for Alberta.
“Be careful with that stuff,” said Battersby, “it’s slow suicide.”
“Who’s in a hurry? Mr. Magician?”
I held out my glass.
“To the Revolution,” said Battersby.
Stolkov laughed. “A man goes to buy a car in Moscow, have you heard this? He test-drives a Lada and tells the salesman he wants it. When can I take delivery? he asks. The salesman checks his schedule. Exactly one year from today, he says. One year! says the man. Morning or afternoon? The salesman says what difference does it make? It won’t be for a year! And the man says, I’ve got the plumber coming in the morning.”
“Ha!” said Battersby.
Blotskie smiled uncomfortably.
I sipped Bibi’s drink and sat on the arm of her chair.
“Price of social justice, what?”
“In the perfectly classless society,” said Stolkov, “there would be no choice but to rush into the street and machinegun everyone within range. As they do here.”
“You don’t imagine this is a classless society,” said Battersby.
“I don’t see evidence of much class,” said Stolkov. He sat down beside Alberta. “With some obvious exceptions.”
She had slipped off a shoe. “You have a pretty foot,” he said. “Is the other one like that?”
She fought back a smile.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“Oh, darling, don’t make me feel guilty.”
“What does one do for a woman like this?” he asked me. “Hurl oneself from a high place? How does one show one’s feeling?”
“You should learn to dress,” I suggested. “Those shoes are all right if you’re being buried but you don’t want to wear them standing up.” I smiled at Alberta.
She simpered at him in a way she thought I didn’t see.
“Gyorgy,” he said, “bring it.”
Blotskie went out.
Bibi woke up slightly. She was folded up in her chair and now wiggled onto her back with her knees up . Her shins, blonde brackets. A totem yoni.
Alberta was watching me.
There are other women, my look said.
Yes and I’m sure you can transfer your grovelling obsession to any frowsy little housewife who lifts her skirt for you. I’ve been proceeding on the assumption that this fairy tale is a possibility while you reel around like some Hell’s Angel of the heart! her look said. It was a hard look.
I felt bad, if you want to know. I lowered my eyes and sipped vodka.
Blotskie came in and gave something to Stolkov. “Look what I’ve got!” he said holding it up. The cassette.
With a little band-leader flourish he snapped it into a Sony and turned it on. “Shall we play it?”
“Oh, God, Word, I can’t! I, I can’t, I don’t have it, it’s not inside me. Word, please, I can’t! They’re all making me! They won’t let me and they’re making me, I—Oh, God. I can’t be President! It can’t be me who’s President, Word, what’ll happen? Oh God, I’m afraid!”
He turned it off.
“Good heavens!” said Battersby. “Who’s that?”
“Certainly opened up to you, didn’t he,” said Stolkov.
“Was that the President?”
“It didn’t take you long,” Alberta told Stolkov, admiringly. Submissively.
&nbs
p; “It just came to me! Somebody”—he looked around slyly—“can’t afford to be associated with making it public.”
“Public!” said Battersby.
“This would ruin whoever it came from.”
“If the citizenry twig to this!” said Battersby.
“Yes. What would happen?”
“Gi-normous bloody scandal, I should think. Put the President down the plug-hole!”
“Not to mention us,” said Alberta.
“Discredit would be general,” he agreed. “Foreign policy, the market, the dismantling of our armaments—”
“Makes my stomach squidgey.”
“Trouble is, we’d have to find some way to dissociate ourselves. Whoever had it passed to us has covered his tracks. I’d like to know the deal they made to keep that secret. Now we’ve got it.”
“Like billy-o, I should think.”
“I have the feeling I’m being exploited, don’t you, Mr. Wallace? I am what we used to call a capitalist tool!”
My hand went to my mouth in horror.
“Well, maybe it’s not so bad. I have an idea. You seem to be a gambling man, Mr. Wallace.”
“Do I? It’s not really my main score.”
“Perhaps this will interest you. Suppose we cut cards for the tape.”
Blotskie placed an end table between us and shuffled a deck.
“You mean against tonight’s take?” The bills were stacked on the floor.
Stolkov laughed at me. Blotskie laughed at me.
“Ah, you Americans. You are convinced that the movement of money is the action of God in the world. No, Mr. Wallace, I may be impatient with my own country’s former system but I do not wish to embrace yours. No, I had something more tangible in mind. Mrs. Haines, actually. A night with Mrs. Haines.”
There was a high-pressure silence.
Alberta blinked to herself. “Well I think that’s a little flip! What kind of whore do you think I am?”
“The kind,” he said, turning to look her full in the face, “who enjoys it. Please don’t be offended. Whore is such a capitalist concept. I don’t want to buy you, I want to win you.”
“In former Soviet socialism everything shared!” said Blotskie, grinning at each of us. Then he shut up.
“Yes, Marx was very specific about women,” said Battersby.
The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy Page 17
