by David Stukas
“Of course he is. How many German counts have you run into during your lifetime? I’ve had sex with a lot of guys in Europe, and I still haven’t run into one German count,” Michael said proudly. “Well, there was one head in Europe who was pretty well crowned.”
“I don’t want to know about it. So are you sure about the count, Michael?”
“Absolutely.”
“No doubts?”
“None whatsoever.”
“So what am I supposed to do? He’s going to call me tomorrow and will want to take me out.”
“Just screen the calls on your answering machine and don’t pick up the phone. Ignore him. You didn’t give him your address, did you?”
“No.”
“Good. I’m having a thing with a cop right now. Give me the count’s phone number and I can have the sergeant do a check on him,” Michael instructed, reaching over the table for me to hand him Siegfreid’s business card.
“Your fuck buddy is a police sergeant?”
“No, he’s a lieutenant. But he’s known as The Sergeant.”
“Michael, this guy doesn’t have sex with you in uniform, does he?”
“Of course he does! Even better than a man out of uniform is a man in one. So give me the card and I’ll have Sarge do a background check on him.”
I reached out to hand the count’s card to Michael. Then it struck me. I had just been slapped in the face and I almost didn’t realize it. I pictured myself turning into the buffoon in one of those early Warner Brothers cartoons where the intellectually challenged character gets tricked and turns momentarily into a human-sized sucker. If that wasn’t enough, the word sucker appeared across the character to further drum in the fact someone had been taken advantage of.
“Oh, no, you don’t, you horndog,” I said, snatching the count’s business card back. “You tried to trick me into giving you his business card and I almost fell for it! You were going to get his phone number, call him up, and try to steal him away from me! You rotten little treacherous, backstabbing...” I said, trying to find the proper expletive to describe Michael.
“Robert, I can explain!” Michael tried to get in, but I was too darned mad.
“Slut! You common little slut!”
“That does it! Yes, I was going to steal him away from you, a man who once saved my life, but I am not going to sit here and have you call me common!” He stood up so abruptly his chair flew across the room and slammed into another patron’s chair. No apologies were offered.
“I’m sorry I called you a common little slut. Actually, you’re a trailer-trash slut!” I said loudly—perhaps a bit too loudly for a fashionable restaurant (Michael never ate in anything but).
“I’m leaving. You and your fucking Count Gorgeous can go off to fucking Romania and live happily every after!”
“Germany! He’s from Germany! See, you don’t even care where he’s from! Go on, before I call McDonald’s and tell them you’ve served more men than they have!” I shouted, realizing I was in a fashionable restaurant. Or, to be exact, was in a certain fashionable restaurant for the last time.
Michael stormed out of the place, leaving me sitting there with two thoughts on my mind once I calmed down. One, I was wondering if there was a magazine on bestiality and how many subscriptions I would send to Michael. And two, how, as an underpaid advertising copywriter, I was going to pay the one-hundred sixty-five dollars and thirty-seven-cents bill.
The next day, I woke up trying to justify my anger. Being a guilt-ridden Catholic (is there any other kind?), I made excuses for feeling the way I did. But no ifs, ands, or buts about it, Michael had confessed he was trying to steal the count for himself. And it wasn’t the first time he had done so, either.
“Can you believe the gall of that vacuous, self-absorbed slag?” I blurted into the phone to Monette, my best friend in the world. In light of Michael’s traitorous behavior, Monette had risen to the top of my list from the number-two position. Michael had previously been number one only because he let me use his house on Fire Island and invited me to his frequent cocktail parties populated by his buff-and-bluff friends.
“You don’t need to come to me for confirmation, Robert. Michael has only one thing on his mind, and that’s Michael. Er, and sex. OK, two things on his mind.”
“So you think I should see this count guy?”
“No, Robert, I think you should bypass a possible real-life German count who sounds like the only sane gay man left on earth and go out on the streets and drag home another pathetic loser like the kind that are running loose in this city.”
“No, but do you think he’s for real?” I asked.
“Who cares?” Monette advised. “He seems genuinely interested in you. And you said he looks wealthy. What’s not to like?”
“But what if he tries to stab me?”
“Look, Robert, if you don’t date him, I will. And I’m a lesbian. A serious lesbian. What’s wrong with you? You walk around desperate enough to take just about anything on two legs, the man of your dreams walks into your life, wants to sweep you off your feet—and you can’t decide whether to go out with him! He’s handsome, polished, and he’s so good that Michael is frantically trying to get his hands on him. That should tell you how good you’ve got it. What have you got to lose?”
“My head, maybe.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Go out with him, see where it leads, and call me back and give me all the details.”
“OK, but if I don’t come back, his phone number is ...”
Monette knew me all too well. “Stop catastrophizing, Robert. He’s not going to kill you, the slightly irregular-shaped vitamin you swallowed this morning was not a cyanide tablet put in your cupboard by an Iraqi terrorist, and a meteorite is not going to fall out of the sky and hit you while you’re walking down 86th Street. My goddess, you have the most overactive imagination. You should become a writer and put your feverish brain to better use.”
“OK, you’ve talked me into it. I’ll go out with him. And I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”
“Not too early on Sunday. I’m going to a relationship workshop.”
“But, Monette, you don’t have relationships,” I protested.
“Yeah, but I want to be ready when one stumbles along. Dr. Lydia Katz is giving this workshop.”
“Not the Lydia Katz?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, why?”
“You’re going to a workshop held by a lesbian who just got into a well-publicized slugfest with her girlfriend at a local restaurant?”
“I think this demonstrates that all couples could use a little counseling now and then,” Monette said defensively.
“I think that it demonstrates Lydia ought to pick on someone her own size. The story in the local gay rags all said the girlfriend was over six-and-a-half feet tall. Lydia looked like a piece of hamburger when her girlfriend was through with her. She should have thought about that before she threw the first punch.”
“Well, have a good time and call me!” Monette finished.
I hung up the phone, and before I had time to think about my impending date, my impending date called.
“Hello, this is Robert Willsop.”
“Count von Schmidt here. Good morning, Robert, and how are you today? Did you have a nice dinner with your friend Michael?”
“It was OK.”
“Just OK?”
“Oh, it was very nice,” I said evasively, not wanting the count to know pleasantries would no longer be exchanged with Michael from now on—just gunfire.
“Marvelous! So,” he said, with an authoritative abruptness that seemed so characteristically German. I found it very decisive and sexy. “How would you like to meet me for breakfast, er, brunch—is that the word?”
“I would love to. Yes, brunch would be nice.”
“Excellent. Instead of attending the book lecture like we planned, I was wondering if you would accompany me to the Museum of Moder
n Art. There is an exhibit on the works of Kurt Schwitters. I collect his works.”
A man who had real art! I was in love! The closest I came to collecting art was buying posters of Monet’s overhyped water lilies. It was hard to imagine—a man who collected the works of internationally famous artists was interested in me!
I pictured myself on his private Gulfstream V jet, flying from international capital to international capital. Villas in Italy, schlosses (is that the plural for schloss?) in his native land, chalets in the Alps. Auctions in London! I could see myself holding up my own little auction paddle, driving up the stakes for a priceless thirteenth-century Italian lute into the stratosphere.
“Oh, honey,” I would say to the count in hushed tones, “don’t you think it would look good over the sofa in our palace in Berlin?”
There would be gasps in the crowd as I held my ground against a sheik who was determined to have the lute at any price. Eventually, the sheik would relent at sixteen million American dollars, knowing his oil fortunes couldn’t match those of the von Schmidts (of which I was legally now one—I had my name changed from Willsop to that of the count’s after our marriage in Holland).
“Robert? Are you there?” the count asked.
“Oh ... why, yes! I guess my mind wandered off. Forgive me, Count! Could you repeat what you just said?”
“First, breakfast, then museum.”
“Sounds terrific.”
“There is this restaurant that interests me. F/E/2, I think it is called.”
I didn’t have the nerve to tell the count he probably wouldn’t get in. It was the hip restaurant of the moment. They reportedly even had Nanina Fabrique, the stellar super-supermodel, waiting at the bar for over an hour and five minutes last week. This was no mean feat, since her temper tantrums were legendary and expensive. Her last destructive stay at the Four Seasons had cost her in excess of seventy-six thousand dollars, a fact she merely shrugged off and earned back in a mere five minutes posing next to a bottle of overpriced perfume.
“I would like very much to see this place while I am in America. Can you be there in one hour?”
I can be there in five minutes, I thought, but decided I needed the time to accomplish a very important mission. “One hour is fine. I will see you there.”
As soon as I hung up the phone, I ran to my computer and turned it on. Within minutes, I was on the Internet searching the web for anything on Count Siegfreid von Schmidt. And lo and behold, there he was. I couldn’t read everything, since some websites were in German, but there were pictures galore. Here in a ponytail, there with his head shaved, different clothes, and always the dark glasses. There was no doubt about it—I had a real live German count in love with me.
I turned off the computer and sat there staring at the darkened screen. This just couldn’t be happening to me. It was too surreal. I felt like I was on the verge of my life taking off in the direction it was supposed to be heading. I wasn’t meant to drudge for an advertising agency all my life, or live in a crummy studio apartment. I was intelligent and fairly knowledgeable of what was going on in New York. Why did so many empty-headed, worthless people live in the lap of luxury when clearly it was I who deserved to? Maybe it was my time to be rewarded for sticking to my guns and not sleeping my way to the top.
I put on my best pair of jeans, a dark polo shirt, and slipped on some moccasins without socks—my I’m-metropolitan-but-I-don’ t-have-to-show-it outfit. It was the best I could do on my limited budget.
I arrived at the restaurant, but the count was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the throng begging to be admitted, but no count. Maybe he’d rethought the matter and decided to stand me up. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I’d waited for ten minutes when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the count’s.
“There you are, dear Robert. I have been waiting at the table for you. I thought you would come looking for me. Come, come,” he said, taking me by the hand and guiding me past the imperious maitre d’. I took one last look at the poor suckers who would probably still he sitting at the bar when we finished our brunch.
Once we were seated, I quickly glanced around at all the almost-famous faces. Plus the wanna-bes. The count was charming, as always.
The count decided to start things rolling. “So tell me about yourself, Robert,” he said, staring into my face. His tan, chiseled face and the beautiful blond hair that topped his six-foot frame gave him a sophisticated, athletic look that suggested he spent winters skiing in the Alps, spring soaking up the sun in the piazza San Marco in Venice, and the rest of the year traveling from one fabulous location to another.
“Well, I . . .” I tried to say, but was interrupted by a very elegant-looking couple who came up to our table and introduced themselves.
“Count von Schmidt? It’s Evelyn and Jim. Evelyn and Jim Brussard. We met you in the Hamptons two summers ago. At the opening for Joseph Deetherwill, the artist.”
“Oh, yes! It is a pleasure to meet you again,” the count said genuinely.
“If you’re going to be in town for a while, we’d love to have you stop by for drinks sometime. Here’s our card. We’re still on Fifth,” she reported, as if it were normal to live in some of the priciest real estate in the world.
“I don’t know if my schedule will permit it, but if I have time, I will call you,” the count replied, shaking their hands with the utmost grace.
The one thing I noticed through all this was that Evelyn and Jim didn’t even acknowledge me. Not one bit. It wasn’t that they didn’t know me, it was that I wasn’t a VIP or even a PYT (pretty young thing). It was me, my attire, my very presence. It just didn’t say, “I’m extremely important and a linchpin of world culture and fashionable society.” Instead, my demeanor shouted, “Born and raised in Michigan but escaped to New York—yet still from the Midwest, if you know what I mean.”
It began to strike me that my slippery grasp of all things hip and with-it could be a problem in our relationship. The count and I came from very different worlds, and it showed in a lot of ways. And not just clothing. I had no idea how much fuel it took to fill a private Lear jet, when bluepoint oysters were in season, or whether riding sidesaddle was proper in Luxembourg.
When Binky and Biff left, the count spoke up.
“I have no idea who those people are. You see, I travel so much and meet so many people, I have to be selective who it is I remember,” he said, tapping his forehead. “I cannot remember them all, or I would be insane. These people, they all know me, but I cannot always return the recognition.”
“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” I added.
“There must be no more of that kind of talk, Robert. You are my equal. All my life people are looking up to me because of my money or my social rank. I do not want to be aloof, distant. I want someone to love me, not my title. And that is why you are here with me. You believe in love. In its power. This is what I want from a man.”
I was about to let the count know just how right he was when I noticed a man sitting at a nearby table reading a newspaper. In the middle of the paper were two small holes that the reader was obviously peering through to spy on us.
“Uh, Count, do you get followed a lot?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“By the paparazzi?”
“I get my picture taken, but I am not Princess Caroline.”
“Thank God! The last thing I need is another date with hairy arms and chronic man problems.”
“Oh, Robert, you are so funny, too!”
“Thank you, Count, but we can get into that later. Back to the business at hand. Is there any other reason someone might be following you?” I said, gesturing discreetly toward the man behind the paper.
“I see. Well, we must get to the bottom of this,” he said. He got up, walked over, and stood at the man’s shoulder. “Ah, Michael. Why don’t you come and join us?”
Michael put the paper down and looked up as if he were completely sur
prised that the count and I were there.
“What a surprise seeing you here, Count! And Robert, too!” Michael said with faux innocence.
I was about ready to order a drink, then throw it in Michael’s face, but I realized it would take too long. After all, the service at F/E/2 was not only imperious, but agonizingly slow. I didn’t bother to get up. Michael could hear me fine from where I sat.
“Ten thousand restaurants in New York, and I suppose it was pure coincidence you decided to come to F/E/2 for brunch the same morning we did?”
“You know how I’m drawn to trendy restaurants with bad food and lousy service,” Michael justified to me and several nearby tables.
“Michael, you came here to spy on me and the count. Last night, you wanted to steal him away. Now you’re following us. What’s next? Will you be bugging my underwear?” I asked.
“No point in that. Not much happens in there.”
“Well, having bugs in underwear is something you know a lot about. That’s what the bulk of your dates leave you with.”
“I haven’t had lice in over a year, and you know that!” Michael said defensively.
The count, seeing that tempers were about to boil over, tried to intervene.
“No, Count, you don’t have to smooth things over between Robert and me. I know when I’m not wanted.” Michael stood up to go. As he began walking away, the tablecloth must have gotten caught in his belt buckle, because the entire contents of his table went right along with Michael. Well, only so far as to come crashing down on the floor in a hail of plates, glasses, and silverware. The noise seemed to shock even these egocentric diehards who never recognized anything happening in the world unless it was Their world. Michael, head held high, walked out of F/E/2—tablecloth and all—into the street.
When Michael was out of sight, the count looked at me, waiting for me to say something. So I did.
“I’m so sorry about Michael. I know you can’t afford to get tangled in scenes like that in public.”
The count—er, Siegfreid—smiled at me, then reached across the table and took my hand in his. “I think it is very charming.”
