by Sally Mandel
“Where’s Elvis?” I whispered.
“Any minute,” David said. “Ready?”
It was only four o’clock and I knew this thing was slated to go through dinner. A stiff breeze blew our words away from the crowd so I was safe looking up at him with a big fake smile to say, “Why don’t we just tell them we’re sleeping together and they can all relax?” He laughed, put his hand on that place he liked on my spine, and guided me into the lion’s den.
It started out a little rough. I stuck to David like we were glued, but he kept getting drawn into conversations in alien tongues. It seemed like every other woman was an incredibly sexy European film star who said stuff like, “Ah, Dah-veed, kum zhe sooey err-rerz duh too vwahr,” etcetera, etcetera. The lipstick smears kept working their way closer and closer to his mouth. Then when David would respond in English, they’d look at me, all fake apologetic, and do some of those little shrugs I could never master no matter how many times I practiced in front of the mirror. Anyway, it got tired real quick and so did I.
Next thing, we got talking with a novelist whose brain was so excellent they should use him to figure out why drivers who dangle their arms out their windows are such road hazards. Also very old people in big white American-made cars. But the guy just assumed I had read all the classics (not), and kept saying things like, “But then, Thomas Mann’s use of music symbolism is so patently echoed by Saul Bellow…”
I’m making it up, but the bottom line was, I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. At Juilliard, I read Catcher in the Rye, which I liked because I thought Holden Caulfield was a pisser and also because it was short. Everything else, I got the Cliff’s Notes and shoveled my way through the exams. David tried to help me out with the guy, but he was drilling me for oil. All he got, however, was mud, as in highly intelligent responses like “huh?” and “wha?”
Naturally, I felt just a tad out of my depth. But then I got a big surprise. On the way back from my third escape to the bathroom, which was the kind of place you’d like to move into with your extended family, I saw Sal Peroni talking to a middle-aged man with a beard and a white hat. At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Like, what was that lowlife who snagged my virtue on the backseat of his LeBaron doing at this blast? Not that he was a lowlife for doing it, because I was certainly dying to get laid. It’s just that it was my first time, and he wasn’t exactly sensitive about it. But at this point, I would have been happy to see my friendly neighborhood tire slasher. At least I could understand what the hell he was saying.
I went and tugged on Sal’s jacket. He turned around and I could see he was totally pleased. He’d put on a little weight and had lost some hair, but he still looked good in a faintly sleazoid way. He gave me a big squeeze, which was comforting. Enough already with those bony handshakes and nonkisses.
“Bess! Man,” he said, giving me the old up-and-down. “You are one gorgeous sight. Congratulations.”
I glanced at the older guy who was looking at me with lizard eyeballs. They were pretty much all you could see on account of the hat and the thick white beard.
“Oh, sorry,” Sal said. “August Nardigger, this is Bess Stallone.”
Since Nardigger didn’t extend a hand, I did the nod-and-smile. It didn’t register with me right away, I was so busy being knocked out to see Sal.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked Sal. Then I remembered myself and said to Nardigger, “We went to school together.”
“Among other things,” Sal said. So he hadn’t forgotten the backseat. “I produce movies now,” he went on. Porn, I figured. “I’m bending this gentleman’s ear about soundtracks. I want a classical composer for the film I’m working on.”
I was almost speechless. Almost. “Sal, you’re shitting me.” Then, with a nod at Nardigger again, “Sorry.” But Nardigger’s expression never seemed to change one way or the other. He just went on looking disgusted, like he’d taken a bite out of a big fat garden slug.
“No classical composer worth a damn is going to write a soundtrack,” Nardigger said. It sounded like that slug was now stuck halfway up his nose.
“Didn’t Aaron Copland…?” I began.
“Aaron Copland was a whore,” Nardigger said.
My eyes must have gone a little buggy.
“The pathetic aspect of it was, he didn’t even know it,” Nardigger went on. Sweat was making dark splotches in his beard. I figured it was the hat, which wasn’t doing such a great job of keeping that head of steam bottled up. He was obviously a composer himself, and couldn’t stand how successful Copland had been.
“You’re getting pretty worked up there,” I said. “Why don’t you take off your hat and catch some of this soothing sea breeze?”
Sal gave me a warning elbow as Nardigger barked at me, “I never take off the hat. I’m famous for the hat.”
“Maybe so,” I said, “but for me, you just got famous for bad manners.”
As Nardigger stalked off, it dawned on me, Nardigger. August Nardigger of The Listener fame. “Oops,” I said to Sal.
“The man is ordinarily known to love celebrities.”
“You mean he’s a star fucker,” I said.
“Precisely stated. What say we Eye-talians go for a little stroll on the beach.”
Sal was half dragging me down toward the water. I looked around for David. I knew I was supposed to be mingling, but so far it had been like cozying up to a convention of porcupines. We walked along a path to the dunes, slid down onto the beach, and left our shoes in the sand. Then we set off in the direction of Rocky Beach.
“How long you think it’d take us to get to Hard Eddie’s?” I asked him. Eddie’s was a beach joint where they served fried seafood and beer. I sure could have used a brew about then. And I’d just been feeling so grateful to get out of the old neighborhood. As I mentioned, it had been a confusing day.
“You still think about the old times, a famous star like you?” Sal asked.
“First of all, I’m only a junior star and it’s probably only temporary, especially when Nardigger writes his next piece. He didn’t like the crack about the hat.”
“I always knew you’d make it.”
“Oh, bullshit, Sal. You must be a natural in Hollywood, slinging it like that.”
“I used to listen to you play. You’d sneak into the auditorium sometimes.”
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. “I never saw you.”
“Well, it wasn’t cool to like classical music, so I hid. Besides, I was scared I’d spook you.”
I watched the waves wash over our tracks and leave foot-shaped pools in the packed sand. “All right, Sal. Since we seem to be holding confession here …” I just stared at him. I figured he owed it to me to get there first. He turned away and looked out into the Atlantic.
“Okay, I’m not proud of the way I behaved. But I was just a stupid kid.”
“I thought you were a nice guy who I could trust.”
“We’re talking fifteen years old. They never said they were going to show up. You think it was a bunch of laughs for me, having those guys drooling in the window when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing?”
I whacked him hard, but it had been a long time coming. “Screwing when you’re fifteen is glory for the guy, so don’t hand me your sob story. I was looking to lose it, all right, but I wanted romance. I thought you liked me a lot. I thought you were sensitive. All those poems you wrote in English class. They made me cry sometimes. I don’t know how I figured it was going to be so romantic in the back of a Chrysler; but I gotta tell you, Sal, I took a lot of grief for that night. I was tough, but I wasn’t that tough.”
The whole thing had been so dopey, with me drinking Chianti out of a bottle and Sal trying to figure out how to get us both undressed with no room to maneuver. He hadn’t been in me for more than two seconds before the clowns showed up at the window, giggling their asses off, but I was technically no lon
ger a virgin. I slung the empty wine bottle at Vinnie Basilio and nailed him on the back of the head. Lucky for me he had a skull like concrete or I could’ve wound up in the slammer for homicide.
“I liked you a lot. I thought you were the sexiest, most amazing girl I’d ever seen. After that night, I knew there was no chance you’d ever see me again, so I got my punishment, too.”
“Sometimes I think I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to get it right.” I regret saying that. First of all, it didn’t freak me out the way it would any halfway normal teenage girl. I kept thinking it was funny, me and Sal with our bare asses, not knowing what the hell we were doing, and those goofy boys looking for a thrill. I figured, Now I’ve got him, I might as well rub it in. But the truth was, we were all dumb kids, even the ones who came for the show. Some of those guys were perfectly decent and we all do stupid stuff, especially if there’s booze involved, which for me was usually the case in those days.
Sal was looking like a dog I’d just whacked on the nose with a newspaper. “Come on,” I said, pulling him toward the surf. It’s hard for me to be near water without getting into it. I rolled my pants up to the knees and started wading back toward the party. Sal stuck to the water’s edge where he wouldn’t mess up the crease in his perfect white pants.
“Okay, Sal,” I told him. “I figure we both showed up here so we could put this one to rest. Shall we call it ancient history?”
“Absolutely.” We slapped each other five. “So does this mean you’ll go out with me?” he asked.
I laughed, pretending I thought he was joking. He got the point and didn’t push me on it.
By the time we got back within view of the QE2, the sun was setting and David was standing on the dunes with a face like Darth Vader on a bad day.
“Uh oh,” I said. My new linen pants were still rolled up to my thighs and they were soaking wet anyhow.
“More than just business, you and Montagnier?” Sal asked.
I didn’t answer. If People magazine wasn’t allowed to know, I didn’t see why I should tell Sal. We found our shoes and climbed the dunes.
“David, this is Sal Peroni, a buddy of mine from home.”
They shook hands, but David’s eyes barely brushed Sal. He was concentrating on me. And my pant suit. I would have looked better if I’d jumped all the way in.
“There are a lot of people who want to meet you,” David said. Then to Sal, “I’m sure you understand.” David was so pissed his hair was frying at the roots. Sal backed off in a hurry with a catch-you-later wave.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Sal and I had some catching up to do. Plus I got tangled up with our pal Nardigger.”
“August Nardigger’s here?”
“The very same.” I wrung some of the water out of my pants and slipped my sandy feet into my shoes. “You can’t miss him. He’s got a white hat implanted in his scalp.”
“He’s a snob and a hypocrite.” The news about Nardigger didn’t much elevate David’s mood, but at least it got him off my case. I watched the muscles in his jaw clench. That trick always impressed me. Watch the close-ups of Gregory Peck’s face in The Guns of Navarone. The trouble was, I got the feeling that David was putting Nardigger in the same category with those bad Nazis who were trying to sink our boys. I took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Aw, leave it, David. The guy’s a jerk and a loser.”
David shook his hand free. It felt more violent than a slap from Dutch, I guess because David’s touch had always been so tender.
“He wrote unforgivable things in that column,” David said, and off he went to fight for my honor except I knew he was also still furious at me for taking a leave of absence with Sal. What this did was strand me at the edge of the patio to face the peanut gallery that had been enjoying the little drama between David and me. I gave them a cheery smile and went to fetch myself a vodka tonic.
“More,” I kept telling the bartender, until we had a nice ratio of half a gallon of Absolut to one teaspoon of tonic. I gulped down most of it, then plunged into the crowd to do my duty.
I talked to a woman who kept tossing her hair like she was having spasms and whose six-year-old son was a musical genius. It turns out there’s a prodigy in almost every family in America. I would be so fortunate to participate in the exciting discovery of another Mozart. Obviously, I have to decline these offers, but in this particular case, I was touched by the mother’s wish to support her kid without pressuring him. I knew the drill, and advised her where to go for help. I gave her the standard advice, and at the same time kept picking up pieces of a conversation going on behind my back. Two women, one with a penetrating voice. She was trying to keep it low, but her end of the discussion wafted straight into my left ear:
“They say she’s moved in with him …”
“August says she’s nothing much, but he’s such a …”
“She plays like a dream, but Mary, have you talked to her? I think she’s some kind of idiot savant …”
Then the other woman must have realized who was standing within earshot. There was a sudden silence, and they moved away in a hurry. I started laughing, which confused Wolfgang’s mom. I showed her my empty glass and excused myself to head for the bar. On my way, I got snagged by Charlie Rose.
Now, Charlie Rose is on television late at night and the only people who see him have brains that are too busy thinking deep thoughts to let them sleep. The rest of us, if we’re awake on account of drinking too much coffee, are watching the talk shows, the porn channel, or prehistoric reruns of Star Trek. I only got into Charlie Rose because David watches him religiously, and I’d gotten hooked on him. So when I saw him at that party, he seemed like someone I knew. He must have been a little surprised when I kissed his cheek with a big, “Charlie! I’m glad to see you! Bess Stallone.”
“You’re quite the sensation,” he said. His face was handsome in a droopy way, like he’d been a large friendly bloodhound in a former life.
“Anybody new can be a sensation,” I said. “The trick is to hang in there for the long haul.”
“Is it true that you don’t get anywhere playing Chopin anymore?”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“Another concert pianist.”
“Well, it’s true. The public doesn’t like contemporary stuff much, but the critics do, or pretend they do. Let me ask you a question. What’s an idiot savant?”
“Somebody who’s mentally deficient but has a spectacular talent,” Charlie said. “Why do you ask?”
“I just heard somebody call me one.”
“Here, at this party?”
“Yeah. They didn’t know I was listening.” Charlie looked pretty fascinated. “Are you one?”
“I might be,” I said. It seemed like a pretty fair description to me, but I’d have to do more research.
Charlie smiled. “I think you should come see me on my show.”
“If I can bring my partner.”
“I don’t want David to monopolize the conversation.”
“I’ll talk if you ask me about cars. I know a lot about cars.”
“My people will call Mr. Balaboo on Monday morning.”
We smiled at each other and shook hands.
I set off to find David so I could brag that we were practically booked on The Charlie Rose Show. I thought it might help him forgive me, but he was going nose to nose with Nardigger over by the swimming pool—except in this case, it was nose to hat brim.
“The trouble is, most of the time, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” David said. “You should go back to writing about art.”
“You simply have an aversion to the truth,” Nardigger said. I shoved through the guests to take David’s arm, but he didn’t notice.
“I find it impossible to understand how you could remain impervious to my partner’s musical sensitivity,” David said. “It’s the quality that drew me to her in the first place.” I co
uld hear the tremor in his voice. I’d never heard it before and it made me nervous.
Nardigger just raised his champagne glass with the smug smile of a school bully who’s gotten a rise out of his latest victim, all the more satisfying because there was an audience.
“Come on, David,” I said. “Let’s take a stroll on the beach.”
“Not until we hear an apology from this gentleman.”
There was a growing circle of people surrounding us now. I could see the hostess’s face two rows back, her mouth as round as a Cheerio, except there wasn’t anything cheery about it. Her party was going right down the hopper.
“First of all, you’re not gonna get an apology,” I said. “Mister Nardigger is having too much fun. And second, he’s not a gentleman. I’m asking you as a favor to me, David. Let’s boogie.”
I could feel the tension in his arm, like he was ready to let fly at Nardigger. I was having the same problem, actually, only what I was dying to do was flick off that hat. I figured he had a bald head with a big dent in it where some poor musician had clobbered him, or maybe a huge unsightly wen. I only know what a wen is because my grandmother’s friend had one on her chin and it was truly heinous. Anyway, before either of us could lose our self-control, David turned and sailed through the crowd. I tripped along behind with my wet pants clinging to my legs. I was aware of flashbulbs going off.
