A Certain Age (34 page)

It was painfully boring, particularly so, as his self-involved monologue had no point or interesting anecdotes. One was required to stand attentively while his spittle spumed toward his audience. He always launched into long sagas. He no longer knew who all the movie stars were, for example, because in the Indonesian countryside he lived without the latest films and no TV. She—everyone—was supposed to be impressed, she supposed.

And there on the other side of the room was that actor, the one who had had one hit movie ten years ago. She had slept with him, once—but who hadn't, before and during his marriage to a much older heiress? How come there hadn't been any mention in the press of his mini face-lift and chin implant! Nor of the fact that he had been going to Harlem for years to buy his heroin. Whenever she saw him all he could talk about was his forthcoming movies, which somehow never materialized, and that all of his suits were tailor-made in London. She could only pray these were not the same people who had been invited to dinner.

"Florence! Florence, how are you?" It was Hypatia Bradstreet, built like a canister, barreling her way toward her.

"Hypatia! Hi! How've you been?"

"Oh, I'm great! I'm just going to India—I've been invited to stay in a palace in Kerala and make some prints. Do you know I have four shows coming up as soon as I get back? One in San Francisco, one—"

She continued her monologue even as they were joined by Fritz Czykwicz. "Hi, Florence, hi, Hypatia. How are you? You going to the dinner later? I don't know if I should go or not—I'm an deadline to finish my script. It's going into production in January. We've just lined up someone incredibly famous to play the lead. I can't say who it is yet."

The three were joined by Ned Halstead-Heath. "I have the

worst jet lag!" he said. "I just got back from Peru. I was in Lima, on assignment to write about the lesbian countess who murdered her Indian lover. First-class trip, all the way! You wouldn't believe how people live down there. I was staying with some friends—an incredible place—it was unbelievable. I was shot at on two separate occasions—"

She was going to scream. There wasn't a single person who could talk about anything besides themselves. Each one had to show how important he or she was. Why? Would that make her like them any better? Their need for attention was desperate, consuming, it was a disease. It wasn't considered rude to approach anyone in the room and begin to launch into a speech about one's present or future success. Nor was it considered rude for the other person to launch into his or her monologue in response. But it was a sickness of some sort, a late-twentieth-century cancer.

Then she saw Derek Richardson. "Oh, I have to go speak to Derek." He had bright red hair, such an Irish, pixie face, at once dissipated and dissolute. Avoiding Alonso Butts and the movie actor, she ran over to him. "Derek! How are you?" He hesitated. "Florence Collins," she reminded him.

"Of course, don't be ridiculous." He nuzzled the air by her ear. "You're looking gorgeous, as usual. Did you lose weight?"

"Oh, I wish! So, Derek, when's the new restaurant opening? I thought of some names for it—"

He caressed her back, sliding his hand to her rear end. She was flattered and purred next to him. "What new restaurant?" he said.

"Don't tease me like that! The one opening in the fall. The one you let me buy one-third of a share in."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"I don't understand. Who did you buy a share from?"

"It was a third of a share. John de Jongh set it up."

"Oh." There was a pause. "I'll just have a chat with him, then, shall I, and see if there's just something I've forgotten."

"I ... I gave him the last of my money, Derek," she said

plaintively. "I was so thrilled, you see, when he said I could get involved."

"Don't worry about it. I'll speak with him, and give you a call later on. I'm sure it'll work out." He began to back away rapidly.

"Wait, don't you want my number? I'm not listed."

"No, that's okay, I've got it, I'm sure, or I can get it." Two big white hands with nails painted grape-black suddenly covered his eyes, and he turned. "Oh, here you are! Have you met . . ." Derek looked at Florence blankly.

"Florence."

"Florence, this is my fiancée—"

She could have sworn he said the girl's name was Derma. She appeared to be no more than thirteen, maybe sixteen at the most, at least six feet tall, with albino hair; absolutely stunning, no doubt a model, chewing pink gum, young enough to be Derek's daughter. He slapped Derma's fanny, swathed in tight, iridescent turquoise pants, and they departed.

A certain grayness swept over her. She supposed she had hoped or thought, unconsciously, that flirting with Derek—whom once she would have thought beneath her, a restaurateur—might lead somewhere.

Max was standing at her shoulder. "Sorry I'm so late," he said, not looking sorry at all. He was sparkling. He gave the appearance—though perhaps it was merely an aura or illusion—of having just stepped out of the shower, on a day in which he had taken at least three or four showers. His face was scrubbed, his khaki pants were crisp and pressed, even his cotton polo shirt, dark blue, seemed as if it had—improbably—been ironed. The city was inhabited by a million of his cloned replicates, every one of them five feet nine inches tall, smelling faintly of aftershave and talc, not a hair out of place, with earnest, boyish expressions and eyes that cruised the room.

"I don't understand any of this," she said.

"The paintings? I like them." She looked quickly at the paintings for the first time. They seemed ... so badly painted, so amateurish, such soulless imitations of Chinese brushstroke cal-

ligraphy, densely black lines, almost oily in appearance, on matte chalkboard-colored backgrounds. They were assumed to be the height of elegant sophistication. Maybe they were. If she ever got rich, really rich, she would put one over her living room couch. "No, I'm not talking about the paintings. I just saw Derek Richardson. I had invested in his latest restaurant—he was supposed to open one this fall? And now he just said he doesn't know anything about it."

"Kiss that money good-bye, sweetheart. Where have you been? Everybody who invested in his last place lost everything. People put in seventy-five thousand, the restaurant was a huge success, nobody got a dime out of it, not even their original investment."

"But ... but how?"

"Creative bookkeeping. Come on, let's go. If I have to talk to Alonso Butts and hear about his inner spiritual life in Bali, I'll scream."

8

As they left the
building a woman—a street person, a derelict, whatever, dressed in layer after layer of filthy rags—approached them nervously, looking over her shoulder like a hunted mink or weasel. " 'Scuse me! 'Scuse me!" She spoke aggressively for someone who looked so jittery and frightened. "I wonder if you could help me out. Do you have five dollars?"

"It's just like the decline of the Roman Empire," Max said delightedly, ignoring the request as he stepped into the street to find them a taxi. Suddenly an odd memory came back to her. As a

child she had been sent out into the garden to kill snails and slugs that were eating the plants. At first it had disgusted her, pouring grains of salt onto the flabby bodies and watching them writhe and curl in death. But then after a while she had gotten used to it, and even stopped using the salt in order to make their deaths more personal by stabbing them with the tip of a knife. No matter how many she slaughtered, after the infrequent rains they came out of hiding by the millions. Once in the middle of the night she had awakened to find one on her face: it must have gotten stuck or crawled onto her earlier in the day and gradually made its climb toward her moist mouth and eyes, leaving behind a trail of slime.

The woman was blocking her path, pleading with her. "Please, miss."

She was about to step past when she saw something in the woman's eyes—what it was she wasn't certain. Fumbling in her bag, she averted her gaze. She was going to give the homeless woman a dollar, but paused. Fifty cents was enough. "Here." She handed the woman the coins.

"Fifty cents!" the woman said. "What's that gonna do me? You got your
Vogue
magazine, that's five dollars; your cup of cappuccino, that's a buck seventy-five—"

Florence could hear Max giggling from the street as a taxi came to a halt.

"Okay, okay," said the woman, "Got a cigarette?" Florence shook her head. "How about a match?" There was a hole in the woman, a hole that could never be filled, no different from her own empty space. She threw the woman a bill without checking the denomination.

"Hurry up, would you?" Max was holding open the door to the cab. "What were you doing all that time? She was awful. You shouldn't give those people anything. They'll only spend it on drugs." He leaned forward to speak to the driver. "Leonard Street, please." He gave Florence a nudge, gesturing toward the front; the driver seemed to be wearing full Indian wedding regalia, an elaborate pink turban and a bejeweled jacket.

"Believe me, if I was on the street, the first thing I'd do is buy

drugs or a bottle of vodka." She was surprised to hear herself sounding so defensive. "He who asks shall receive. I think anybody who is so low they have to beg should be given money."

"Oh, so it's St. Florence, now. Florence Nightingale. Is somebody feeling a little guilty? You can tell your Maxi. I can keep a secret."

"I'm very nervous . . . I'll tell you what I really want, Max. I want to smoke some crack." There, she had said it.

"Are you kidding?"

"No. Do you have any?"

"No . . . but I know where I can get us some, if you really want."

"Oh—so you've smoked it too."

"It's not that big of a deal. I can't say I've ever actually gone out of my way to acquire any before. I usually just smoked it if I was out in a club or something, and somebody gave me a pipe. My recreational drug of choice is actually heroin—not to shoot it, of course, just to snort it."

She nodded gratefully. So perhaps it wasn't all that big a deal. Max had a good job, he traveled; drugs in Manhattan were just another form of entertainment like going to a good restaurant. It was only the ones who couldn't handle it, the weak ones, who ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous or NA.

"No wonder you gave that woman a quarter. You didn't want to bump into her buying crack at the same time as you."

"I only smoked it once, Max."

"That's what they all say. Driver," he called, "Ninth Avenue and Eighteenth Street, please." They continued in silence. "Just here!" he said, and began to get out. He addressed the driver. "Hang on. Keep the meter running. I just have to run in and get something; it'll only take a minute."

She sat staring at the dirty-red door he had entered. In the front seat the driver squirmed impatiently. He had a radio or intercom of some sort, from which, from time to time, a harsh static spilled and the sounds of a man screaming in what must have been Urdu.

A few minutes later Max returned. "Here you go." He handed her a vial. "Now just remember, you owe Max one."

"You—you got it so quickly. That was amazing!" She threw her arms around him.

"It's only a twenty-dollar vial, for God's sake. Where's your dignity, girl?"

She untangled herself. "Where did you go to get it anyway?"

"That's my little secret. See how I can keep a secret? Now, spill the beans."

"Maybe."

"Maybe after you've smoked? Driver, could you take us to Eleventh Avenue?"

"What are we doing there?"

"We can smoke."

"I don't have a pipe."

"I got you one. Don't say I don't look after you, even though it seems to me a certain someone was on the phone screaming at me earlier in the summer."

On Eleventh Avenue they got out and began to walk, hoping to find an empty alley or side street. Costumed prostitutes—trashy vinyl miniskirts, low-cut gold-spangled tops, fishnet stockings— tried to flag down trucks and passing cars; one approached them and suggested she could entertain Max. "Sorry, honey, I don't go that way."

"Don't worry about it," the prostitute said. "It's no problem. Underneath all this, I'm a real boy. My name's Pinnochia. Every time I get a compliment, my dick gets bigger." He laughed shrilly. His sad eyes were encased in clouds of mascara. "Wait a minute!"

Pinnochia was prettier than any picture in a magazine. He probably would have resembled a top model if he hadn't been so overdressed and heavily made up. Once, the garb of a prostitute had been separate from that of other women. Florence tried to explain this to Max. "I remember, one Halloween, I was invited to a party, and I had just broken up with some guy, so I was hell-bent on revenge. I wanted to look my sexiest—I put on a really short skirt, and heels—and I met this man. I wasn't really interested in

him, but we were talking. A few weeks later I saw him at something else—he came over to me and said, 'I remember you, you were the one dressed up as a prostitute on Halloween!' But I hadn't been dressed up as a prostitute—I was just trying to look attractive."