I struggled to stand up. The couch enveloped me. He smiled a charming smile.
No, no, he said, don’t get up.
His English was cultivated, flawless. No Spanish accent. I didn’t know why I’d expected one. They’d come here young, I reminded myself. Been here at least a decade.
He walked over, extended a hand. His grip was firm and dry.
He seemed less like his brother every moment.
He sat in the matching armchair across the room. He looked absurdly far away. Like I’d have to shout for him to hear me.
There was some idle chatter. I complimented the decor. Asked about the paintings on the walls.
I understand you had something to do with the White Swallow, I said.
Raul smiled.
Yes. We helped out a bit.
We?
Ramon and I.
Really? Is this a sideline of yours?
We’re trying to turn it into a real business, actually. Father’s been very supportive.
Is that a fact? How would you make a profit with this business, if you don’t mind my asking?
His smile grew broader.
People love to talk about themselves. Raul was no exception.
We have some skills. Some people are willing to pay handsomely for them. Up to now we’ve been giving out free advice. To people we like. Our friends. But we decided it was time to make a profit from it.
Great. I’m a big fan of free enterprise. What kind of advice?
Club advice. How to run a club. How to make a place popular with the right people.
Oh, I get it. Yes. That could be quite lucrative, I imagine.
We’re hoping so.
That’s really interesting, I ruminated. Can you give me an example of the advice you plan to sell?
Well, said Raul with a wry smile, the whole idea is to charge for the advice. If I start giving it out free, it defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
Sure, sure. I understand. But I’m not in the club business. I don’t even know anybody in the club business. And anyway I promise it won’t leave this room. I’m just curious, that’s all.
Okay. But you’ve got to solemnly promise.
Sure. I’m a way solemn guy.
He grimaced slightly. But gave in anyway.
I’m sure you’ve noticed, he said, that most bars, particularly highend bars, try to hire pretty women as waitresses?
Not a detail that’s escaped my notice.
The idea being that men will want to come to the bar, stay in the bar, to ogle the pretty women.
He said it ‘oogle.’ I hate that. The damn word is ‘ogle.’
Sure, I said, makes sense.
Yes it does. But something else makes more sense.
Okay. Enlighten me.
You hire pretty men.
Ah. Um. I’m not sure I get the point.
The point is this: You scour the gyms, the modeling agencies, the actors’ studios. You hire a bunch of slim but muscular young men. You dress them in tight clothes. What happens?
You just opened a gay bar?
No, what happens is that the
women
come to ogle the
men
. And once the
women
start coming, the
men
follow, to try to pick up the women. Much more satisfying than ogling waitresses. The waitresses are unobtainable, for the most part, and busy anyway. They don’t have time for seduction. But if a man knows that a bar will be full of good-looking young women, women self-selected for their interest in good-looking men, the good-looking men will flock to the place. And that will bring in yet more available women. And the cycle continues.
I paused to think that through. Jesus, the guy had something there.
You’re a fucking genius, I said.
Raul smiled. Didn’t deny it. No false humility in this one.
Well, listen, I said, I’d love to hear more, but I guess I should do my job.
Which is?
I’m trying to gather information.
About Jules?
Jules, Larry Silver, whatever.
Larry who?
Larry Silver. The dead guy.
The dead guy, he said with a wry smile. Yes. I’ve never heard his name before.
You don’t read the papers?
No, actually.
He turned to the girl in the maid costume. She’d been waiting demurely in the corner of the room.
Diane, he said. Club soda, please.
He was almost deferential to her.
I had to admit he had some charm.
Maybe he could lend some to his brother.
Well, I said. Perhaps you could tell me something about Jules.
I wish I could. But I don’t know much. When we were adopted, he was a bit upset. I guess you can understand that. We didn’t understand at all, of course. We were so young. It was such a different world. To us, the whole thing was a dream. We had no capacity to understand a sad, neglected boy.
I see. That’s understandable. But later?
Later he was gone. He lived in the house for a while. But he was never there. And when he was there, we never saw him. He didn’t want to see us. Or his father. He wanted to be far away.
You never got to know him at all?
Not really. It’s too bad. It’s kind of sad, he said.
If he didn’t mean it, he was a hell of an actor.
I was leaning to the latter theory.
Have you made any effort to reconcile? I asked. To help him?
He sipped his club soda.
Sure, he said. We invite him to family events. We send him presents on his birthday. But whatever we did, to him it always seemed, well, insulting. I always thought that if we pressed things any further it would only make him hate us all the more.
Us?
Ramon, me, Father.
I see.
I waited for more. I waited to see if he’d fill the silence. As so many had before him. But he was good. He was very good. The seconds ticked by. The indulgent smile never left his face.
I looked straight in his eyes. They betrayed nothing.
Another Scotch? he asked at last.
So, you haven’t talked to him lately?
Who? he asked, with a slightly puzzled frown.
Jules.
No.
Has he been in contact with his father?
Not that I know of.
Raul’s smile grew ever so faintly tense at the edges.
The man was thinking.
What about Ramon?
Ramon?
Is Jules in contact with him?
Raul gave out a slightly exasperated sigh.
I can’t speak for Ramon. But I would be awfully surprised.
I see.
I gave the silence another chance to work.
It didn’t.
Another Scotch? he asked again.
While his repertoire was highly polished, it was somewhat limited.
No thanks, I said. I’ve got to get going.
Too bad, he said with a small frown.
The perfect host.
I struggled out of the couch. I felt faintly foolish. I shook his hand. I thanked him for his time. He pressed the elevator button for me. With his left hand.
I took the elevator down. I nodded at the doorman. I hailed a cab.
Looks like I confirmed my theory, I said to myself.
That something might be going on.
And I don’t know what it is.
WE COULDN’T HAVE A FUNERAL
. We didn’t have a body. God knew how long the ghouls were going to keep her. Keep taking little bits of her for tests. And anyway I had to draw the line somewhere. I wasn’t going to call a funeral home. I wanted nothing to do with that. Kelly would have to settle for a memorial service.
I didn’t want a service, either. But my reasons were selfish. I didn’t want to go through it. I didn’t want to hear a hundred different ways how sorry everybody was.
I hated going to funerals. I never knew what to say. I couldn’t bring myself to speak by rote. ‘I’m so sorry. He was a beautiful person. He lived a full life.’ But the alternatives were just as dire. Tell the truth? ‘Hardly knew the guy, actually. I hear he was an arrogant sonofabitch.’ ‘Just here to put in an appearance, folks. Hoping to curry favor with some potential client I heard would be here.’
No, not really feasible.
Think up some original and striking way to say the obvious? Couldn’t do it. Beyond my ability.
So I usually found myself shaking hands and saying nothing. Putting on an empathetic face. Feeling inadequate and out of place.
And truth be told, I simply didn’t want to make anyone else go through that.
But Kelly told me otherwise.
Not everybody’s a grouch like you, she said. They like a service. It makes them feel good. They come, they see old friends. They remember. It’s important to people. There’s a reason everybody does it, Daddy. Get over yourself.
Well, of course she was right. And I certainly wasn’t going to argue the point. I wasn’t going to tell my angel child she couldn’t mourn her mother’s death in any way she chose.
So a service there was. Complete with pomp and ceremony and a reception afterwards that set me back a cool five grand.
I could have made a speech. A eulogy. But there wasn’t a chance that I could pull it off. So I kept it simple. Recited the twenty-third psalm. That was it. Nothing else.
It was perceived as eloquent. A beautifully minimalist gesture. I didn’t hasten to correct the perception.
Some AA acquaintance of Melissa’s buttonholed me afterwards. I’d never seen him in my life. He was dressed in denim coveralls. Paint-splattered. An artist of some type, I surmised. Or a housepainter. He came up to me. Shook my hand. It gave me the creeps. All those AA folks were past masters at the art of being your lifelong buddy the first time they met you.
That was the best version of the twenty-third I’ve ever heard, he said.
I resisted it. But it made me feel good. Him saying that. Apparently I’d done something right.
Jerry, he said his name was. He introduced me to a cabal of other AA folks. They were all my new best friends. Lucia, small and fat and bubbly. Ron, a tall cadaverous man with missing teeth and an enormous hand that almost swallowed mine. A brace of mismatched lesbians in threadbare suits and ties, Janice and Phoebe. The whole crowd of them would not have looked out of place on a Bowery street corner, back when the Bowery was the Bowery. Or filing out of a seedy church basement after Meeting, desperately pulling out the cigarettes they’d been forbidden to smoke inside.
I was surrounded by them. I felt like an alien among aliens.
Melissa was a special person, said Lucia.
Here we go, I thought. Cliché time.
Her jokes, Lucia said, were so subtle.
Jokes? Melissa? I didn’t think I’d seen her laugh at a joke in a decade. Let alone tell one. And this coming from a tiny round woman in a polyester flower-print dress.
There was something going on here, and I didn’t know what it was.
I’d call them Mel-isms, said Jerry.
The whole group laughed knowingly.
She had a unique perspective, said Jerry.
She sure did, said Lucia.
I never met anybody so sardonic, said Ron, his big smile displaying the black gaps in his mouth.
Janice and Phoebe nodded.
And her cakes, said Janice.
They were the best, said Ron.
Everybody was excited when she’d come to a meeting, said Phoebe’s small voice.
There’d be cake, said Jerry.
The best, said Janice.
Mmmmm, they all said, laughing.
Cakes? Melissa had never baked anything in her life.
I looked about me. Five absurd faces. Five bodies of bizarrely varying sizes and shapes. Five portraits from the Gallery of Freaks. Talking of Melissa as if they’d known her from childhood.
I wondered if I’d stumbled into someone else’s memorial service.
You were a very lucky man, to have shared her life for a while, said Ron, putting an arm on my shoulder.
They all nodded in agreement.
I’m surprised to see you don’t weigh three hundred pounds, said Janice.
All that cake! exclaimed Lucia with glee.
General laughter.
Oh God, I thought. I’m dreaming. I’ve been transported into a David Lynch movie.
She’ll be in my thoughts forever, said Janice in a tearful growl. Every day.
Mine too, squeaked Phoebe.
More head-nodding.
I needed to be alone. I mouthed a few platitudes. I turned to look for a quiet corner in which to brood.
And there was Jake.
With tears in his eyes.
Red blotches on his face, his neck.
He was almost prostrate with apparent grief.
He threw his arms around me. Buried his head in my shoulder.
I’m so, so sorry, he sobbed.
I extracted myself.
Thank you, I said, a puzzled frown on my face.
I don’t know what to say, he said, removing a tissue from his pocket and wiping his eyes.
He had a stoned look.
It’s all right, I said. It’s all right.
Reassuring a guy at my wife’s memorial service. A guy who had met her once, for ten minutes.
I wanted to run away. Never look back.
I was much relieved to see Steiglitz. Glass of wine in hand. Earnestly chatting with Kelly.
For all I hated the pompous overachiever, I could count on him not to surprise me.
Dr. Steiglitz, I said. So good of you to come.
He turned to me. The hand he proffered was shaking.
Oh God, he said, I’m sorry, Rick. I wish I could have done more.
He said it with a catch in his throat. It seemed grotesquely out of place.
I looked at Kelly. There was no enlightenment to be had there. She was playing the poised hostess, though her eyes were rimmed with red. She smiled at me. A rueful smile. Sad and beautiful.
I wanted to take her aside. To have just one moment, her to me. One moment of unfeigned grief and memory.
This outpouring of emotion for my cold and enigmatic wife, the one I had believed had not a friend in the world, was more than disconcerting. Could I really have been so wrong? So terribly, so profoundly wrong? How could the woman that I knew have kindled all these strong emotions in so varied a throng, without me having the slightest clue?
I was dizzy with it.
I needed a drink.
Fortunately, the bar was steps away.
I got myself a double. Two. I carried them to the bathroom. I locked the door. I sat on the toilet. I downed the first Scotch in two large gulps. I nursed the second. I might need to stay awhile.