When I went to claim my limo, Shelley’s pleasure, the doorman explained that Mrs. Katz had told the driver to go home. “In that case,” I said, my shirt stained with Beaujolais, Fiona Darling’s parting shot, “I’m going to need a taxi.”
“Where are you going, sir?”
“The Beverly Wilshire.”
The doorman summoned a blond, muscle-bound car jockey. “Clint will drive you there for twenty-five bucks,” said the doorman, “gratuity not included.”
Clint eased somebody else’s Rolls-Royce out of the parking lot and deposited me at the Beverly Wilshire in style. Agitated, grieving, I made right for Fernando’s Hideaway, settling into a bar stool and ordering a Courvoisier XO, which was foolish of me, as I had already had more than enough to drink and could no longer handle cognac late at night.
“And what happened to you, you bad boy?” asked the young woman seated next to me, indicating my shirt.
An attractive redhead she was, endearingly freckled, her smile saucy, and her tight jersey scooped low. She also wore an ankle-length skirt, a slit riding high up one side. “May I offer you a drink?” I asked.
“I’ll have a glass of French champagne.”
Petula (Pet for short, but not for long, she said) and I began to exchange banalities, even my most feeble wisecracks rewarded with a gentle squeeze of my knee. I signalled the bartender for another round.
“Lookee,” she said, “if we’re going to go on like interfacing together, you know, and why not, it’s a free country, why don’t we grab that little table in the corner, you know, before somebody else like beats us to it?”
Sucking in my stomach, I accepted her hand and trailed after her to the table, shlepping her inordinately heavy handbag, my delight enhanced because it seemed to me, in my sodden state, that other men in the room, younger men who had dismissed me as past it, the prerogative of the callow, were now regarding me with envy. Then it began to ring. Her handbag, for Christ’s sake. Startled, I thrust it at her. She dug into it and pulled out a cellular phone. “Yeah. Uh huh. No, like I’m with somebody. Tell them like I said howdy and he’ll adore Brenda,” she said, replacing the phone.
Two middle-aged men, both wearing Los Angeles Kings sweaters and blue jeans, huddled at the next table. “Is it true,” asked the one sporting number 99, whispering the name of a studio, “that the sale to the Japs is going through?”
“Just between you and I, I’ve seen the paperwork,” said his companion. “All that remains to be done is to cross the ‘t’s’ and slant the ‘i’s.’ ”
“Don’t tell me,” said Petula, stroking my knee, “you’re a producer. Not that I’m like looking for work, you know, so don’t worry. Like, guess my age.”
“Twenty-eight.”
“You kidder, you. Like I’m thirty-four, you know, my body clock going tickety-tick-tock even as we eyeball each other here. And let me look at you. Like I’d say you were, like, fifty-four years old, you know. Am I right?”
Unwilling to dip into my breast pocket for my compromising reading glasses, I pretended to study the wine list, a total blur, and ordered a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a Courvoisier XO.
“You’re positively evil,” she said, nudging me.
The brisket and latkes got to me, still sitting there, a stone, and I was hard-pressed to contain what I feared would be a resounding fart. Then, happily, she had to go to “the little girl’s room,” enabling me to let rip a sneaker, sighing with relief, but looking absolutely innocent when the man downwind, a table to my right, glowered at me, his wife ostentatiously fanning herself with her menu.
Petula, sashaying back my way, was stopped briefly by the young man with an earring seated alone at a table. I didn’t care for the look of him. “What did he want?” I asked.
“Speaking frankly,” she said, shooting me her Weltschmerz look, “what do all men want?”
As we worked through the champagne, mine laced with cognac, I dipped into my grab-bag of self-serving anecdotes and began to shamelessly drop names. But she had never heard of Christopher Plummer or Jean Beliveau; and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whom I had been introduced to once, lit the wrong fire.
“Oh, you like tell him for me that I just love Doonesbury.” Suppressing a yawn, she added, “Like why don’t we drink up now and go to your room? But you do understand, you know, like I’m a professional escort, don’t you?”
“Ah.”
“Don’t look so glum, baby,” she said, even as she unclicked the clasp of her immense handbag and allowed me a peek at her credit-card machine. “My agency accepts all credit cards, except for American Express.”
“As a matter of interest, what do you charge?”
“It’s not a charge, it’s like an honorarium, and that depends on the menu, you know, and the time factor involved.” Then she reached into her handbag again and retrieved a card, encased in plastic, that testified that she was AIDS-free.
“Petula, this has been a very long day for me. Why don’t we just finish our drinks and say good night here. No harm done.”
“Well, thanks for wasting my time, gramps,” she said, sweeping up her glass and heading right for the table where her pimp with the earring sat alone. I signed the bill and rose unsteadily, doubting that I managed to look dignified as I tottered out of the bar. Back in my room, I was too angry with Miriam to sleep. Look at me now, I thought, flirting mindlessly with a hooker at my age, all because you abandoned me. I got into bed with Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, the book I always travel with because I want them to find it at my bedside should I expire during the night, and I read: “I’m afraid, however, that by associating with Savage, who was habituated to the dissipation and licentiousness of the town, Johnson, though his good principles remained steady, did not entirely preserve that conduct, for which, in days of greater simplicity, he was remarked by his friend Mr. Hector; but was imperceptibly led into some indulgences which occasioned much distress to his virtuous mind.” Then the print began to leap on the page, and I had to set the book aside.
I could now compound my humiliation, but find a modicum of relief, I thought, by flicking on whatever adult movie was available on TV, but I decided against it. Instead, my heart pounding, I called upon good old reliable Mrs. Ogilvy in my mind’s eye. Mrs. Ogilvy, who had come to us from Kent, where her father owned a draper’s shop, or what we colonials, corrupted by Americanisms, as she put it, called a dry-goods store. Once more I blundered into her bedroom, surprising her, catching her in a posture to die for: Mrs. Ogilvy, stalwart of the St. James United Church choir, in panties and garter belt, bending forward, pensive, to trap her breasts and fasten her bra. No, no. Too soon for that. I willed my personal soft-core memory video into fast-track reverse, starting with my arrival at her apartment that morning.
The luscious Mrs. Ogilvy, who took our French and literature classes, often reading aloud to us from John O’London’s Weekly, was all of twenty-nine, impossibly inaccessible, I thought. Then there was that Saturday she had recruited me to help paint her one-bedroom apartment. “Providing you prove to be a good worker,” she said, “I’ll treat you to dinner. En français, s’il vous plaît?”
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ogilvy.”
“Worker?”
“Ouvrier.”
“Très bien.”
We started in the tiny kitchen, and that morning, excruciating beyond belief, we inevitably bumped into each other several times in that provocatively constricted space. Twice the backs of my hands accidentally brushed against her breasts, and I feared they would catch fire. Then she climbed the ladder, taking her turn at the ceiling. Wow. “Help me down now, dear,” she said.
Losing her balance, she tumbled briefly into my arms. “Whoops,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said, steadying her.
“Sorry isn’t frightfully flattering,” she said, ruffling my hair.
At noon we sat down to eat fish paste smeared on white bread, seated on stools at the kitchen counter. She al
so opened a can of tomatoes, plopping one on my plate, and taking another for herself. “Let’s not be idle while we sit here. Exams are due in a fortnight, don’t you know? Now I want you to tell me the proper name for what Americans, as well as you people in this copycat dominion, call a baby carriage.”
“A perambulator.”
“Good lad. And the King’s English for the wee bird known as a chickadee here?”
“I don’t know.”
“A tit.”
“Aw, come on,” I said, just about choking on my fish paste.
“Oh yes, we do call them tits, but I know what you’re thinking, you naughty boy. Now the origin of the word ‘alibi,’ please.”
“Latin.”
“Well done.”
That’s when she noticed the white paint smudge on her skirt. She got up, dipped a rag in turpentine, and raised her skirt, flattening it over a stool to rub the stain. Pleated brown it was, the skirt.54 I can see it now. I thought my thudding heart would burst right out of my chest and fly through the window. Then, rotating her hips, she wriggled her skirt back into place. “Oh dear. Now I’m damp in unmentionable places. I’d better change. Excuse me, dear,” she said, brushing past me, the feathery touch of her breasts surely leaving a permanent burn on my back, as she disappeared into her bedroom.
I lit a cigarette, smoked it, and she still wasn’t back. I needed to pee desperately, but would have to pass through her bedroom to reach the toilet. The kitchen sink, I thought. No. What if she came in and discovered me at it? Unable to bear it any longer, I drifted into the living room and saw that her bedroom door was ajar. The hell with it, I thought, such was my agony. I stepped into the bedroom, and there she stood in her panties and garter belt, bending forward, pensive, to fasten her bra. “I’m so sorry,” I said, flushing. “I had no idea …”
“What does it matter?”
“It’s just that I had to go to the toilet.”
“Well, do go ahead then,” she said, her voice surprisingly harsh.
When I emerged, dizzy with desire, she was already dressed. She flicked on the radio and somebody sang “Mr. Five by Five.”55
That’s when I finally summoned up the courage to reach out for her, sliding my hands under her sweater to unhook her bra. She didn’t resist. Instead, both delighting and terrifying me, she kicked off her shoes. “I don’t know what’s come over me,” she said. Then she wiggled out of her skirt and I yanked at her panties.
“You’re so impatient. Such an eager puppy. Attendez un instant. Now tell me what a gentleman is never in … ?”
Fuck fuck fuck.
“Don’t you remember?” she asked, sending her tongue darting into my ear. “A gentleman is never in …”
“A hurry,” I shot back triumphantly.
“Bang on. Now give me your hand. There! Like that! Oh yes, s’il vous plaît!”
Which is exactly when, alone in my hotel room, my dentures soaking in a glass on my bedside table, I reached down to grab myself. At my decrepit age, the only answer is usually self-service. Certainly it would ease me into sleep at last, but it wasn’t to be the case. No sir. For at that moment, in my mind’s eye, Mrs. Ogilvy slapped my hand away. “And just what do you think you’re doing? Insidious street urchin. Presumptuous jewboy. You get right back into your smelly clothes, which I’m sure you bought wholesale, and get out of here.”
“What have I done wrong this time?”
“Dirty old man. Did you mistake me for a common tart who can be picked up in a bar? What if Miriam had walked in right then and seen what had become of you in your dotage? Or one of your grandchildren? Dégoûtant is what you are. Méchant. Tonight you will memorize Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and recite it for me in class first thing Monday morning.”
“It was Keats.”
“Stuff and nonsense.”
Miriam came to me in my dreams, armed with one of her charge sheets. “You’d like to think you were being kind to Hymie, standing up for his rights, but I know you so well. Too well.”
“Please, Miriam.”
“The truth is you fed him all that food and drink because you never forgave him for not telling you that it was Boogie’s original story. You were being vengeful as always.”
“No.”
“You never forgave anybody anything.”
“And you,” I hollered, wakening. “And you?”
I rose early, as I am wont to do no matter what time I fall asleep, suffering from the previous night’s sins: head throbbing, eyes scratchy, sinuses blocked, throat raw, lungs hot, limbs underwater heavy. I made the usual resolutions, showered, slipped my mint-fresh chompers into place, if only to restore the shape of my collapsible jaw before shaving, and then dialled room service, using that foolproof technique for having a hotel breakfast brought up in a hurry. Something I had learned from Duddy Kravitz.
“Good morning, Mr. Panofsky.”
“What’s so good about it? I ordered breakfast three-quarters of an hour ago and you gave me your word I would have it within twenty minutes.”
“Who took your order, sir?”
“How in the hell would I remember who took my order, but it was for a freshly squeezed orange juice, poached eggs, rye toast, prunes, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.”
A pause, then she said, “I can’t find a record of your order, sir.”
“I’ll bet you’re all illegal immigrants down there.”
“Give me ten minutes.”
“Just see I don’t have to call down again for a third time.”
Twelve minutes later my breakfast order was there, the waiter offering profuse apologies for the delay. I knocked back my orange juice with my garlic, blood pressure, cholesterol, anti-inflammatory, enjoy-a-good-daily-dump, and Vitamin-C pills, and then checked out my stocks in the Journal. Merck was up a point and a half, Schlumberger was holding steady, American Home Products had slipped a notch, Royal Dutch had gained two points, and the rest were idling. The New York Times obit page yielded neither friend nor foe. Then the phone rang. It was that smarmy BBC-TV producer, who collected blank receipts from taxi drivers and probably pocketed all the mini–jam jars at his hotel breakfast table. Calling from the lobby. Christ, I had forgotten all about him. “I thought you said ten-thirty,” I said.
“No, eight-thirty, actually.”
I had run into him a couple of days earlier in the Polo Lounge, where he told me he was making a documentary about the Hollywood blacklist. In a mood to bullshit, I had bragged about all the blacklisted types I had met through Hymie in London in 1961, and I agreed to be interviewed in the hope that Mike might see it. No, because I liked the idea of being asked to pontificate.
Seated under the hot lights, squinting, simulating deep thought, I said, “Senator McCarthy was an unprincipled drunk. A clown. True enough, but now that the witch-hunt is long past, I do believe he can be seen, with hindsight, as the most perspicacious and influential film critic ever. Never mind Agee.” Then, remembering to pause for effect, I dropped my sandbag. “He certainly cleaned out the stables, as it were.”
“I dare say,” said the Beeb’s presenter, “I’ve never heard it put quite like that before.”
Seemingly groping for words, obviously troubled, I hesitated before I ventured, “My problem is I had considerable respect for The Hollywood Ten as people, but not as writers of even the second rank. That driven bunch invested so much integrity in their foolish, guilt-ridden politics that they had none left for their work. Tell me, did Franz Kafka need a swimming-pool?”
That won me a tight little laugh.
“I don’t like saying it, but for the BBC, veritas. The truth is, much as I detested Evelyn Waugh’s politics, I would happily take one of his novels to bed rather than watch a rerun of one of their sentimental, knee-jerk liberal films on late-night TV.”
Gabble, gabble, gabble. Then, pausing to light my first Montecristo of the day, pulling on it, removing my reading glasses, I looked directly into the c
amera, and said, “Let me leave you with a couple of pertinent lines from W. B. Yeats. ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.’ So it was, I fear, in those days.”
My shtick done, the grateful producer thanked me for my original thoughts. “Super stuff,” he said.
10
The phone rang, which startled me, because nobody knew I had driven out to the cottage the day before. It was Kate, of course. “How did you know I was here?” I asked.
“Intuition. A hunch. But when we talked Wednesday night you didn’t say a thing about going away. Then I phoned Solange and she also had no idea where you were. The doorman —”
“Kate, I’m sorry.”
“— had to let her into your apartment. I was going crazy with worry here.”
“I should have phoned. You’re right.”
“You shouldn’t be moping around there anyway. It’s no good for you.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, darling.”
“There’s nothing for you in Montreal any more. Michael’s in London. Saul’s in New York. It’s not like you’re King Lear and none of your children will have you. You could move in with us tomorrow. I’d take care of you.”
“I’m afraid I’m too set in my ways to answer to anybody. Even you, Kate. Besides, my friends are still here. However, I promise to come for a visit soon. Maybe next weekend.”
But then I would be obliged to sit through one of Gavin’s endless perorations on the need for income-tax reform. He would tell me the plot of the last movie he had seen. Following Kate’s instructions he would take me to a game at Maple Leaf Gardens, simulating enthusiasm.