by Sally Mandel
When we got back to New York, the first thing David did was call Mr. Balaboo to get him to buy a computer, to be delivered immediately. Now, David was about as talented at computers as I was at floral arrangement. He knew there was something called the Internet. Beyond that, you were barking up the wrong brain.
I was trying to figure out what clothes to take to London. From what I understood, the temperature on any given day ranged somewhere between 20 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I slung another fold-up umbrella into my suitcase and said, “Are you getting electronic on me?”
“Everybody ought to have a computer,” he said. “Take both of those sweaters.”
“Won’t it be like asking a guppy to fly the space shuttle?”
He rolled his eyes at me and made like he was swimming. But within an hour, we had a fabulous laptop with a modem and a printer, the whole works. Forget everybody ought to have a computer. Everybody ought to have a Mr. Balaboo.
I remember that David laughed that day. My cell phone went off and I reached down my V neck, pulled out the phone, and answered it. As soon as I hung up, David said, “Where exactly do you keep that phone?”
“Between my tits, sometimes if I’m in a rush,” I said. “It’s like with egg cartons and paper towels.” He was looking more and more confused. “You know, in your grocery bags, the eggs between the towels, so the eggs don’t get broken?”
For some reason, David found that extremely funny. Maybe I remember his laugh because they got pretty rare after that. It turned out that what he had in mind was for me to search the Internet and track down every review August Nardigger ever wrote. I told him I thought he’d wasted his money, that Nardigger’s old reviews wouldn’t be on the Web, that there might be some in The Listener archives. But he wasn’t kidding around. Once I had the thing installed at a desk in the bedroom, he pulled up a chair and started ordering me around the World Wide Web. David was right, actually. There were a number of reviews that went back a few years, and they were all nasty. It was the same old stuff, basically—David was a pretty boy who cashed in on his good looks and could never be taken seriously as a pianist. With each item, David became more and more agitated until he started hopping up after each one and pacing around the room.
“Didn’t I tell you Nardigger wants to destroy me?” he asked. He kept grabbing clothes from the pile on the bed and putting them down again. I could tell he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. “See if you can find the one he wrote about the Berlin concert in September ’ninety-one.”
“No, this is stupid,” I said. “You’re getting your Jockeys in a twist over nothing.”
He wagged a finger at me. “Know your enemy, Bess.”
I laughed. I mean, I really thought he was joking. Nardigger; that twit, with who-knows-what unsightly avocado-size wart hiding under his hat. The enemy?
David glared at me for a few seconds, a white-faced furious look that made me feel like I’d just been hit with a blast of polar air. It gave me goose bumps.
“I’m going out,” he said.
“Phil’s coming in an hour to take us to the airport,” I said.
He didn’t answer, just swept past me. I heard the door slam. There was the odor of lemons, so strong that I checked to see if we had left a slice or peel lying around the bedroom somewhere.
David was only gone for twenty minutes or so. He came straight into the bedroom, handed me a bunch of baby roses, and told me he was sorry.
“I was a horse’s asshole,” he said. “Forgive me.”
Well, who can hold a grudge after such a graceful apology? I let him kiss me and then I asked him if he smelled lemons.
“Do you, Bess? You smell lemons here?” The way his face looked, it was like I’d mentioned some deadly gas leak that was going to wipe us out any second.
“Lemons, not cyanide,” I said.
He wrapped his arms around me. “I’ll never hurt you again,” he said. “I promise.”
A lot of commotion over a new laptop, I was thinking, and maybe tension over this trip together. It’s one thing to fly to Utica, New York, and something else to cross the Atlantic. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that the lemon aroma was coming from David’s skin, and that when I smelled it, we were not going to have the kind of day you can stamp on your calendar with a big fat smiley face.
This being my first trip abroad, in fact my first trip out of the northeast except for the one vacation at the trailer park in Orlando, I was counting on some pep talk, some encouragement, some shared excitement. But all the way over to London on the plane, David studied the handbook that came with his computer. He didn’t seem pissed anymore, but I actually counted the words he said to me and they came to a grand total of twelve. That’s “Do you want to get out?” times two.
So about London. It’s a joke how it’s just like in the movies—double-decker buses, flowers hanging off the outsides of buildings, and cops with those helmets made for cone-heads. I guess the thing that surprised me most was the way the Brits put their kids on leashes just like their dogs. Not that we had much time for sight-seeing. About two seconds after we got to our hotel, there was a call asking us to perform in Rome in three days.
We stayed in Claridge’s, the kind of place where you get arrested if they catch you with a hole in your socks. It was hushed in there, too, which only made me want to yell something rowdy about the queen, another thing that could get you arrested. We got this suite that had a bedroom, a living room with a fireplace, a bathroom where you needed a map to find the sink, and a wraparound terrace. Everything in there was plaid—the furniture, the carpet, the walls, the curtains, the bedspread, even the picture frames. A wee bit overboard, in my opinion, except I liked that they had a bar stocked with single-malt scotch—in keeping with the theme, I guess. I’d never tried the stuff before, and it turns out to be right up there with Bud as my beverage of choice. Another thing about the bathroom, the showerhead in there was as big around as a dinner plate, and I’m not exaggerating. You felt like you were in a rain forest, not to mention you needed a ladder to climb into the tub. There were also all these mysterious buttons next to the light switch that were for summoning servants, just in case you needed an emergency housemaid to iron your knickers.
The concert was at the Royal Festival Hall. With a name like that, you’d be thinking gold leaf and statues, but it was just an ugly concrete building. I figured the British audience would be too well bred to scream their brains out, but I was wrong. They went wacko and we had to play five encores. Afterward, there was a party at some lord’s house.
“What do I call the hostess?” I asked David.
“Lady Barton,” he said.
“I might giggle.”
“Fine. You giggle,” he said, and then gave me a huge fifteen-second kiss. I felt as though he was gradually thawing out after that frozen look he’d given me over the Nardigger business. Maybe it helped being a few thousand miles away.
“Are you nervous to be meeting all these lords and ladies?” he asked.
“Nah, only curious.”
“You were uncomfortable at the Hamptons thing. What’s the difference?”
“I won’t ever be again,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I realized, Okay, maybe that person speaks better English than I do, and she’s gorgeous and brilliant, but I think to myself, Yeah, but can she play Prokofiev’s Third?”
He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers one by one. “Don’t you think it’s odd, Bess, that our backgrounds couldn’t be more different and yet we’re on equal feet? I feel we’re twins.”
“Shit, I hope not!” I didn’t correct him on the equal feet, which I liked a lot better than equal footing.
“Twin souls,” he said.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Our souls occupy the same psychic peapod.”
We pulled up in front of this place that I thought was Buckingham Palace but which only turned out to b
e the city residence of Lord and Lady Barton. Their main domicile was in Something-on-Rye, which I assumed was not a slice of Pepperidge Farm. I took the elbow of my twin pea and we had ourselves a perfectly charmed-I’m-sure time with the royal types, although it wasn’t exactly happy hour at Hard Eddie’s.
That night, we were a little the worse for wear from all that curtseying and bowing, so we went straight to our roomy plaid bed without any fooling around. That first night in what I called the Braveheart Suite, we pretty much collapsed.
That is, until three in the morning when all that booze kicked in and I had to pee desperately. I was still half-drunk and jet-lagged besides, so I kind of stumbled around in the dark looking for the light. The button didn’t seem to work, but I managed to find the john. I flushed, and headed back out to grope my way to the bedroom and what I found instead was the starched chest of a very tall man. He must have been wearing black because he was totally invisible. I, on the other hand, was bare-assed naked. I yelped. A voice rose up out of the black figure, and I must say, it didn’t seem the least bit perturbed. This is what it said:
“Madame, you rang?”
I swear. Oh my God, it was the fucking butler! Instead of the light switch, I must have pressed the button that said “Valet.” And they don’t even lock the doors, because as everyone knows, a butler is beyond theft and so discreet that no matter what he finds when he opens that door, he’ll never tell even if they torture him.
Well, obviously, I started laughing and couldn’t stop. And apologizing and snorting and making who the hell knows what kind of rude American noises. What he said, as he let himself out, was, “Not to worry, madame.” If you timed him, I’m sure it took at least five seconds to say those four words, not like me, where even my longest sentences average about half a sneeze. Then of course I went in and bounced on David and made him wake up so I could tell him what happened.
The London papers were pretty kind to me. I figured they wouldn’t approve since there’s supposed to be such a rigid class system over there. Lady Stallone I’m not, but maybe it doesn’t count if you’re from the colonies. Anyhow, I got very respectful reviews, even from the superbrainy types. David wasn’t so lucky. Not that they slammed him or anything, but there were references to his lacking energy and dragging the tempo. The Times even suggested he needed to brush up his technique. I felt a little queasy from jet lag and couldn’t sleep, so I got to the papers first. I wondered if I could get away with stuffing them into the trash, but obviously that was pointless. I waited in dread for David to wake up and watched him read the reviews over his espresso and scones, watched his shoulders droop, watched his fist clench and loosen. He looked up at me with eyes that seemed to belong to somebody else.
“It’s Nardigger,” he said. “He’s gotten to them.”
“What? No, David. No, that wouldn’t happen.”
“You’re naive, Bess. In this business, they’re all in league with one another.”
I went over and draped myself around his neck. “It’s just a little phase. Please don’t worry so much.”
“What do you mean, a phase? Do you notice a decline in my performance?”
“No, no, I mean the critics. You’ve just hit a bumpy patch with them. Not even bumpy, just the tiniest little blip. Look, David, Raven says great things about you. Wouldn’t any pianist be ecstatic to get this review from such a respected critic?” I grabbed Raven’s review and pointed at the good parts. “David Montagnier’s customary perfect taste and fine ear for dynamics. What’s wrong with that?”
“Keep reading.”
I didn’t have to. I remembered.
Despite his many virtues, Montagnier still struggles with consistency in the fluid passages, a tendency perhaps most noticeable in the Saint-Saens. But it’s a minor irritant in an otherwise sensitive and stirring performance.
“He said it was minor,” I murmured. I heard how lame I sounded.
“Do you think I’m inconsistent, Bess?”
“Absolutely not. That’s bullshit.”
“I don’t believe you.” He buried his face in his hands. “Maybe Nardigger’s right. I’m losing it.”
“David, don’t say that. Don’t do that to yourself.” I made him push his chair back so I could sit on his lap. I hugged him and kissed his face. He let me maul him for a minute, and then he gave me a pathetic smile that was supposed to fool me.
“I think I’ll go over to the hall and practice for a while.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” he said, gently removing me from his lap. “You don’t need to work on your consistency.”
I let him go and then I shredded the reviews into confetti and dumped them in the plaid wastebasket.
When David came back, he announced that we were going to take a break from making love. That was the way he said it, like screwing was a chore you look forward to interrupting.
I had been having a perfectly fabulous time watching ballroom dancing on English television. My stomach still didn’t feel so hot, so I had my tea and biscuits beside me on a silver tray that weighed as much as me. “Any chance we can talk about this?” I said.
But David had already gone into the bedroom to start packing for Rome. “It’s interfering with my concentration,” he called out.
“Well, fuck me,” I said to myself, only maybe it was more like a wish. When I thought it over, I realized we hadn’t made love since the night of lights on the lake. I decided that given David’s state of mind over the reviews, I wasn’t going to give him any grief right then. But no way was I going to let him get away with it for long.
The funny thing was, David suddenly seemed more relaxed than he had in days. He held my hand on the plane to Rome, and gave me a nudge so I’d look at the old lady across the aisle. She was wearing earphones and bopping around in her seat like it was all she could do to keep from getting up to dance. Mostly the people you get in first class look pretty boring, all those financial types on business trips. But this old bird was wearing running shoes and jeans and had done a great job making herself up. I mean, really skillful with the foundation and eye shadow. Anyway, David found her fascinating, too, and he kept whispering theories about who she was. It made me happy to see him so cheerful, especially since I realized now, maybe with the perspective of distance, that he’d been acting weird ever since the Hamptons party. That look on his face when he was standing on the dunes, the dark strange expression that was so not the David I knew. It was like he’d lost his sense of humor. So I curled into him and enjoyed the comfort of having him back.
Well, maybe it was because I’m Italian, but I went wild over Rome. What a town, even though it was hotter than hell and smelled like you had your nose stuck up an exhaust pipe. I loved the washed-out, beaten-up earth-tone colors of the buildings, the chaos in the streets, the shouting, the laughing, the music in the language, the sexy clothes on both men and women. And you cannot, I repeat, cannot, get anything bad to eat there. We even stumbled on this place the locals called the Dirty Man, where they made these incredibly delicious sandwiches called panini. It’s a madhouse in there. In fact, you can hardly fight your way in because of all the motorbikes parked outside in the narrow street. I don’t want to know how it got its name, and furthermore, I don’t care. But there are dozens of places like that.
The first day, we had a good time exploring, and as I said, David was relaxed and affectionate. Hiking over to the Vatican from our hotel, he gave me a long and really interesting lecture about how neuroleptic research shows that playing the piano is the most complex activity the human brain can undertake. Obviously, I needed a fair amount of tutoring before I could get that concept into my neuroleptic head, but it fascinated me to think about the process of making music as a kind of science. For me, it had been, Okay, you stick your fingers on the keyboard and then you tell them what to do. What’s complex about that? So I was pretty gripped. It made me feel a little smarter.
; That was nice, more like the first weeks of our relationship, and the Vatican was ridiculous. We climbed all the way up into the dome of St. Peter’s. A far cry from St. Agnes’ in Rocky Beach, where during mass they had to put the communion stuff on Mrs. Monaghan’s card table. Our statues that were supposed to pass for saints looked like the sculptor hung out in the police station and used a lineup of local car thieves for inspiration. So Michelangelo was quite the step up.
The second night we played in the Sala di Concerti. It’s funny, you’d think that Rome would be a big musical center, but it really isn’t. David said he’d arranged the gig so I could see the city and get a little break, but the important Italian event was scheduled for Milan.
We were in Rome for almost ten days. I should have been bummed that we weren’t making love, but the thing was I still didn’t feel so hot so I didn’t even mind. I kept expecting my stomach to settle down, but I was always queasy. David made me eat, and actually, that did make me feel better for a little while. Plus walking around once I could get myself to put one foot in front of the other. David enjoyed showing me the sights. He’d spent a lot of time in Rome with his mother when he was a child, and it was a happy place for him. He hired a car, and let me tell you, you people who think it’s nuts driving in Manhattan? A day in Rome, on foot or behind the wheel, is a day inside a video game, either the one called “Get the Driver” or the other called “Get the Pedestrian.” And everybody yells. I really got into the spirit of the thing. Whenever anybody tried real hard to run me over, which was every other block or so, I’d start waving my arms around and yelling fake Italian at the top of my lungs. It was exhilarating and besides, it made David laugh, which was rare during those days.
