by April Smith
“Dyke jock,” said someone in the crowd.
Harvey Weissman’s house is a remodeled ranch with eastern pretensions; white clapboard, pine trees, pots of chrysanthemums on flagstone steps leading to a shiny green door held open by a young male server in a white jacket to the clear notes of chamber music being played on an amazing sound system, and the buttery perfume of puff pastry on the rise.
“This way, ma’am.”
The server gestures formally down a hall illuminated by picture lights over gilt frames. Inside the frames are oil paintings of ladies with parasols Cassidy believes she has seen before, leading to a kind of crossroads from which she can view a succession of living rooms decorated in high English style, a profusion of wing chairs and sofas in scarlets, gold, evergreen, cream, like a bouquet of winter peonies, fires blazing in three or four separate hearths. The amazing sound system turns out to be a live string quartet wearing black tie and playing Haydn.
Another server brings champagne on a round silver tray, handing Cassidy not a paper napkin but a cotton square bordered with lace. She walks through the rooms looking for Joe Galinis. Ninety-eight percent of the women are wearing black. The men are dressed in piercingly conservative business attire. Cassidy notes she is the only one with bare shoulders, the only woman wearing a nude spandex slip dress with an espresso-brown lace overlay. And nobody else seems to have gone in for a French twist, either.
Joe is nowhere. Cassidy accepts another glass of champagne.
She takes up a corner position, trying to distract herself by observing the number of oversized insect pins made of rhinestones, and how many of the older women sport identical doe eyes and the same diminutive cheerleader nose. The server comes through with a tray of tiny cherry tomatoes, centers roto-rootered out, rosettes of cream cheese piped in. As the minutes tick away, cucumber slices with dollops of salmon mousse appear, and skewers of Thai chicken. Her feet are swelling inside the high heels like the pastry around the mushrooms en croûte.
Softly as a pair of snowflakes, an elderly couple has drifted beside Cassidy, she wearing a black knit suit with gold braiding, he a white shirt, striped tie and brown jacket, oversized glasses big as a diving mask. They introduce themselves as Mr. and Mrs. George Ellis. Cassidy fingers the lace napkin, wondering how she is going to get through this.
“We’ve just come back from Turkey,” Mrs. Ellis announces in a quiet, underpowered voice. The effort of speaking seems to rock her back on her heels. She is willowy, with the body grace of another era, when girls were taught correct posture and how to set a champagne flute on a mahogany table (fold your cotton square into a triangle and place the glass on top).
“It’s tiring,” Mrs. Ellis says, “all that packing and unpacking.”
Cassidy pictures leather trunks and brocade carpet bags.
“When did you get here?” she asks.
“Just this afternoon.”
“This afternoon! You must be jet-lagged! How do you even know where you are?” Cassidy exclaims, regretting an unconscious reference to the lady’s swimming pearly eyes.
“We’ve just come down this afternoon from Santa Barbara,” Mrs. Ellis explains steadfastly. Then, “Who are you with?”
Oh God, thinks Cassidy, she’s looking at my thighs.
“Joe Galinis, but he’s not here yet.”
Mr. and Mrs. Ellis exchange a questioning look.
“The developer,” recalls Mr. Ellis.
“Oh, yes.”
“Unusual young man,” he goes on. “Bright. Greek.”
Cassidy: “I didn’t know he was Greek.”
“His dad was first generation. I remember him from the California Club. The Greeks work hard. You have to admire a self-made man.”
Mr. Ellis aims his diving mask glasses more precisely at Cassidy. She can see double reflections of herself, exaggerated as cartoons.
“Have you met Harvey?”
“Not yet.”
Mrs. Ellis, rocking back: “Harvey is a rare bird.”
Mr. Ellis: “It is rare when you get good food, a lovely setting, a good cause and good company. Harvey makes it look easy, but it’s not. I’m impressed by people who know what they’re doing. My father was an inventor, maybe that’s where I get it from. I’m an inventor, too.”
“Really,” says Cassidy. “What’s the next big invention? The next big thing?”
Mr. Ellis: “Well, forget the electric car.”
The Ellises turn out to be an attraction and Cassidy finds herself introduced to two other couples, including the lady in the vanilla suit, “a big supporter of the Music Center,” whose dorky husband, she says right off, hates musicals.
“He used to direct television, now he directs me.”
“In what way?”
“The way men do.”
“I’ve never even heard of a woman baseball scout,” comments the other man.
“Edith Houghton. Scouted for the Phillies in 1946. My dog is named after her.”
“Well, I’m an Ivy Leaguer, I went to Harvard, which doesn’t mean a damn thing in the aerospace industry—”
He laughs, CEO of the largest employer in Southern California, paisley handkerchief peeking out of a double-breasted suit, not a care in the world. (“I’m interested in making airplanes and exotic weapons,” he had said.)
“Nevertheless, I was a Harvard man, on the football team, and when I went to school, athletes were scholar athletes. We don’t have scholar athletes today. Now Joe Galinis is an interesting guy—”
“He’s going to be an interesting dead guy,” says Cassidy, “if he doesn’t show up soon.”
“Joe has a lot on his plate.”
“Probably hung up at the mayor’s.”
“The mayor’s what?”
“The thing at the Bistro.”
“—Did you know Joe played soccer?” the CEO goes on. “That’s how he went to Stanford.”
“On a scholarship?”
The CEO nods.
“Not possible,” counters the vanilla suit. “We’re talking San Marino banking money.”
“I thought he was from the Midwest.”
“I like Joe,” Mr. Ellis remarks suddenly, and instantly everyone agrees.
“Charming man.”
“Staunch promoter of downtown.”
“Well for heaven’s sake, he got the public money flowing.”
Cassidy, curious, “How?”
“He was able to manipulate the pieces. To get a direct cash subsidy from the city to build roads and streets and utilities.”
“Once he was able to deliver the hotel, it was a done deal.”
“Everybody wanted a convention center hotel but it wasn’t economically justifiable. Joe took the risk.”
“He is not risk-averse.”
“Oh, no.”
“He’s done quite well in foreign countries, as I understand.”
“Well, this hotel will become a gold mine, if they turn downtown LA into an entertainment zone.”
Cassidy: “What does that mean?”
Red wine suddenly jumps across the vanilla suit, huge streaks of it like blood-red comets.
“Soda water,” advises the CEO’s wife.
“No,” says Mr. Ellis. “That’s a common mistake. Take it right to the cleaners.”
The husband: “Couldn’t you be drinking white?”
The server appears with napkins.
“What’s an ‘entertainment zone’?” pursues Cassidy. “You mean like theaters? Don’t we have enough theaters downtown?”
“No, dear,” says the CEO’s wife (she’s the one with the tortoiseshell headband). “It means a restricted area that would be created especially for legalized gambling.”
“Legalized gambling? In downtown Los Angeles?”
“The bulk of the money would go to the schools.”
“That’s what they say.”
“It would not altogether be a bad thing,” smiles the CEO, “to own that hotel.”
The evening has reached a ravenous peak, the sense of security and belonging escalating to a giddy high, whatever notes still missing from the raucous conversation filled in by the string quartet’s slightly hysterical “Night and Day.” People are shouldering each other good-naturedly on the way to the buffet, no longer afraid to make eye contact or share a generous smile, at the same time scoping out those going by with oversized white plates jammed with corn soufflé, haricots verts, pasta salad, relishes, rolls, salmon fillet and turkey and roast beef carved by a chef at a copper warming tray. Despite the extravagant display of plenty, there seems to be an undercurrent of anxiety: will there be enough for me?
Cassidy peels off from the flow and finds herself in a tiny sewing room done all in red chintz. Although a fire whips in a brass grate, the air is cool and undisturbed and the poufy love seat inviting. She slips off her heels for a moment, rubbing her feet on a needlepoint rug set over a peg-and-groove floor, gazing at a collection of folk art on the coffee table. There are Navajo pots and African masks, a llama made of woven reeds, polished stones in an obsidian bowl, and a spirit bottle, like the one that was thrown into her car, only this one is dotted with red sequins.
She stands up so quickly her knees jam the table and she stumbles over the rug.
“Whoa there.”
A man lunges across the room to steady her arm, a big man with flying tufts of white hair.
“Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
She is stuffing her feet back inside the shoes, which have shrunk two sizes. “That thing just freaked me out.”
“Which?”
“That.” She points to the razor blades hanging off the bottle, splayed on the table like a rusty skirt.
“I imagine that’s what it’s designed to do.”
“Where do you think he got it?”
“Who?”
“Harvey Weissman, it’s his house, right?”
“Actually the house belongs to First Fidelity, but don’t tell anyone. I’m Harvey.” He extends a soft damp hand.
“Oh, I’m sorry—”
“Not a bit of it.”
Harvey Weissman is his own being, you can tell. He looks more like a rich successful artist than an attorney, a hulking man in a wide-lapel English suit that flaunts a shocking-blue iridescent shirt and yellow tie.
“It’s an artifact from the Caribbean. A client of mine does a lot of business down there.”
“That wouldn’t be Joe?”
“As a matter of fact, it would be Joe.” He appraises her. “And you must be the goddess.”
He brings his face toward Cassidy’s (a face like a puppet’s, deep creases between the bulbous nose and round protruding cheeks, eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses squinched into a smile by all that pressure) and kisses her cheek.
“Your other half called from the car. Late as usual. As you know, he can be a royal pain in the ass.”
“I don’t really know him at all.”
“Well, I’ve been Joe’s lawyer for twenty-two years. We have a long and mostly profitable history.” Harvey winks. “Joe is older than me but he dyes his hair.”
He takes her arm and guides her into the hall, where the woman in the vanilla suit is emerging from the powder room, giving no sign of ever having spoken to Cassidy. The stains look worse, watery streaks of magenta.
Cassidy murmurs, “I am so glad I didn’t spill that wine.”
“You don’t have to worry about this crowd. They don’t come to these things if they don’t know how to take care of themselves. See how they all home in on George Ellis?”
The Ellises are seated on a couch, plates upon the dinner napkins delicately spread across their laps. Like giving a good dinner party, Mr. Ellis is saying, it is also not an easy thing to write a good poem: “Poetry is like a differential equation. It has a lot of information packed into it,” he decides, while others stand or squat around them, trying to fist wineglasses and silverware, one man cross-legged on the floor at their feet.
“Why?”
“Well, the Ellis Foundation, as you know, is the largest contributor to the arts in the west. Old, old California oil money. Once, over lunch, I convinced George to give a building to CalArts. He was prepared to make a contribution.” Harvey chuckles. “He ended up donating a building.”
“You must be good at what you do.”
Harvey waves dismissively.
“It’s a great party, Harvey, but I’m leaving. If you see Joe, tell him to call me.”
“You’re miffed. Is it love or sex? You can tell me. Attorney-client privilege.”
“It has to do with something in the Dominican.”
Harvey scuffles behind her with a stoop-shouldered gait down the hallway with the paintings.
“Joe told me all about you.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you were a fabulous original.”
Cassidy pauses, giving Harvey the opportunity to tip his glass toward the paintings in private toast. He has a way of cocking his head so one eye peers out with a mischievous gleam, hinting at a shared knowledge, an exotic landscape of sexual secrets. Cassidy holds the look, acknowledging she’s been there.
“So how was the weather?” he asks suggestively.
“Fine, except for the hurricane.”
“I heard it rained.”
“It did, but it didn’t matter. I signed my ballplayer.”
“So all in all, happy memories?”
“Do you want to see my scrapbook?”
Harvey laughs.
“Joe will fire me if I let you slip away. Love your updo. Now come on,” herding her back toward the party, “this is the big time. You know about that, hanging out in the major leagues. These are all high-stakes players.”
“Is Joe a player?”
“One tough competitor. Learned in the street.”
“Takes no prisoners?”
“It isn’t so much that, it’s pride.”
“What, exactly, is his game?”
“This is the downtown community, and what we’re doing here, besides raising money for the Museum of Contemporary Art, is insisting that in the year 2020, when the population of Los Angeles has increased forty-five percent—that’s the size of three Chicagos—completely Asian and Hispanic, and the sprawl goes all the way out to Palm Springs, downtown—site of the original pueblo, don’t forget—will be the geographical, cultural and economic center of it all. And we’re gonna own it. There’s the artist, he’s the bait.”
A tanned, amiable fellow wearing a denim shirt.
“Do you believe that man is in his seventies? South Beach boys, keep you young. That’s his agent.”
Bronze shaved head.
“There’s a famous author. You’ve read her books.”
Big-bosomed, big hair, professional makeup job, gripping the crystal handle of a handbag with a hangdog look.
“Pissy, because nobody’s paying attention to her. Well”—he takes Cassidy’s arm—“we want her money, so—”
“Don’t—”
“I’m going to show you how to work a room. Joe is a master at this. Now, touching is important—”
Harvey drags Cassidy toward the unhappy author.
“—Get your hand on the shoulder. But with women, actually, waists are better because it’s less likely that you’ll come in contact with real flesh. You give a friendship hug. Every woman, no matter how independent, likes a hug, but it’s subtle. The hand goes around the waist—”
“Don’t make me do this—” Cassidy pulls on Harvey’s forearm, soft as a pillow.
“—and there’s a little squeeze, a friendship squeeze. And it’s—‘How ARE you doing? I haven’t seen you since—’ ”
“Harvey, no. I’m embarrassed.”
“You’re upset about Joe.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“He’ll be here. He’s bringing his daughter, did I say? Nora. Have you met Nora?”
“We met in the casino at
the Gran Caribe.”
“A free spirit. Sometimes too free. She did a stint at Treetops, I got her in. The two of them will make an entrance, you watch. Hungry?”
“No, thanks.”
“You’re not hungry, you think Joe’s a cad, but you’re sticking around. And you still won’t tell me what it’s all about?”
“Harvey, have you had much experience with extortion?”
Harvey’s eyes stop smiling.
“I did once. Yes. I can tell you the advice I usually give: Never pay. Never pay an extortionist.”
“You big adorable thing!”
Cassidy had seen her coming out of the corner of her eye, a young attractive person who had made herself conspicuous by not wearing the regulation black dress, not smiling, not paying attention, giving off nothing but a superior detachment that must have taken all her concentration to affect.
“Hi, Nora.” But she is pointedly ignored, so Cassidy, fed up with nonchalance, gives Joe’s daughter one good slug on the upper arm, good enough to feel bone.
“Hey!” Nora cries out, forced to stop and also to pretend it doesn’t hurt, “Cassidy!” then she has to kiss the she-jock because she’s already kissed Harvey. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault, my baby-sitter conked, we’ve been running late all night.”
“An entrance, I told you,” Harvey says. “Look at this,” making Nora twirl so Cassidy can get the full benefit of her loose black wavy hair, the beautiful fringed shawl she holds over a black beaded camisole, the long animal-print skirt of georgette and silk slit up the thigh. She’s tiny, but toned. Probably Pilates. Her chest is piled with necklaces of amber, silver, shell and stone. “Terrific.”
“How are you?” Nora asks.
“Good. Working.”
“You look good.” She fingers her beads.
“Where’s papa?” asks Harvey.
“Somewhere. Working the room.”
“Told you,” says Harvey. To Nora: “What are you drinking?”
“Perrier with lime.”
