A Certain Age (35 page)

She glanced over at Max to see his response. He wasn't listening. He had cultivated the New York skill of tuning out completely the moment anyone began a story longer than two sentences, unless each sentence was about him.

A pair of beautiful naked legs protruded from the open door of the driver's side of a parked car. The legs were so long they extended to the sidewalk, the feet in purple patent leather with heels so high their wearer must have been as uncomfortable as if he or she had bound feet, pre-Republic Chinese style. "It's either a prostitute who's been decapitated from the waist up," said Max, "or he's busy giving someone a blow job. Come on, this is a good place." He pointed to a sheltered alcove behind some Dumpsters. The area reeked of stale urine, a male ammonia smell worse than the stench of a bunch of cats.

She waited. Max filled the pipe; he waved it under her nose, trying to tantalize, then lit it and hogged it all to himself. "Oh, Max, come on!" she pleaded. "You don't even like that stuff."

"Maybe you should ask me more nicely."

"Come on, please." She got on her knees, trying to be sarcastic and funny, but somehow, she realized too late, it didn't come across that way.

He glared at her with contempt and glazed eyes before refilling the pipe and handing it to her. "God, Florence, how pathetic. You're disgusting."

She didn't care. At least maybe she would have some relief from her screaming cells, whining insensibly like hungry babies. She took his lighter and eagerly touched the flame to the rocks in the bowl. This time the crack was a big disappointment. Nothing really seemed to happen. The babies stopped crying, but remained disgruntled, as if they suspected their bottle of milk had been watered down. It was like looking forward to a beautiful piece of

chocolate cake from the bakery, a slice that looked rich and dark, only to find it tasted like cardboard.

There were no cabs on Eleventh Avenue and they had to walk for ages, heading east, and then south, before any came along. By the time they got to TriBeCa, they were late.

A servant had been hired to open the front door. The Grunlops apparently owned the entire building. She was about to enter a door on the right when the servant stopped her. "The party's on the fourth floor," he said. "Take the elevator."

"That's Mike's studio," Max said, referring to the door she had attempted to go through. "The basement is the pottery workshop and kiln; Peony's studio and darkroom are on the second floor; I forget what's on the third floor—kitchen and kids' rooms, I think. Fourth floor, living room; fifth floor, bedroom; then the roof garden." They got in the elevator, industrial-sized, which opened onto a huge loft space, at least three thousand square feet. If every floor was the same size, that meant they had more than fifteen thousand feet of living space. Her apartment was around seven hundred and fifty square feet.

The space was meant to be simple—Zen-like in its austerity—but standing just outside the fourth-floor elevator door, she could see it was one of those places where every carefully selected item might as well have carried a price tag. There was a chandelier of steel-and-glass tubes that she knew sold for around twenty thousand dollars. A huge Japanese chest along the wall, of some extraordinarily richly hued wood—seventeenth century?—might have cost the same.

Over by the window was the prow of a canoe, New Guinea, possibly Asmat. She wouldn't have been surprised if it was worth a hundred thousand dollars, though she didn't know all that much about Oceanic and tribal art. There were brilliant pre-Columbian textiles on the walls, the colors and patterns as simple and modern as Mondrian's, used to wrap corpses and perfectly preserved by the moisture-free desert sand. A hundred years ago the home of a successful artist would have been stuffed to overflowing with heavy Victorian furniture and Oriental-style velvet drapes. A hun-

dred years from now, no doubt, this loft would be as laughable, as clichéd, as the home of Rodin or some Hudson River School painter. "Come on," said Max irritatedly, tugging her arm.

She stiffened as they entered the room. "Max, what's that

music?"

He paused for only a moment. "Callas . . .
Gianni Schicci."

She misunderstood. "Oh, from the Gianni Versace ad?"

"Very funny. Puccini."

She cringed with embarrassment. She could only pray Max had really thought she was trying to be amusing or he would never let her forget her dumbness. Now she wished she had taken a couple of music history courses in college; just to have some background. She had never really liked music all that much, except whatever was current, to keep her in the mood of the times or the day. The more factual information a person acquired—being able to identify names, really, was all that was needed—the less likelihood there would be of making an error. The biggest mistake of all in this city was displaying ignorance. She remembered the time someone had referred to a Gillows table, discovered in an antiques store in Alexandria and purchased for very little money. This had happened ages ago—she was far less sophisticated then—and had asked aloud what a Gillows table was. She never forgot the look of disbelief on the other person's face. She realized immediately how her worth had been diminished.

The space was crowded, too crowded to really have a look around and see how it had been decorated. Obviously this was no small sit-down dinner for forty—they had invited hundreds.

"Where's the bar?" Max said.

"I don't know. This place is so crowded! I thought you said—"

"I know! He told me it was going to be a small dinner. I never would have bothered coming if I thought it was going to be a mob scene."

"Who invited you anyway?"

"Mike's assistant."

So it wasn't even an exclusive event, then, if the artist's assistant had been permitted to invite his own friends. They pushed

their way through to the bar. Mike was standing in the center of a group who were all telling him it was his best show ever. "Hi, Mike," said Max. "Congratulations." She hated the way he got so coy and girly whenever he addressed someone rich or famous. "Where's Peony?" Mike gestured across the room. A Chinese woman in a purple brocade robe was surrounded by a crowd of her own. She wore her hair in pigtails, but her face was as crumpled and cold as that of the Dowager Empress.

"Everybody knows the only reason Peony has a career as a photographer is because she's married to a famous painter," Max said. Florence didn't think they were even out of earshot of Mike, but Max was oblivious. "Her pictures—have you ever actually seen them?—are the worst. Technicolor pictures of dying animals and mangy dogs. Anybody who hires her for a job just happens to receive a little sketch or drawing from Mike, as a gift. Some gift! They can turn around and sell it for twenty or thirty grand. Still, I suppose her work is no worse than old what's-his-name, who takes pictures of his dachshunds dressed up in little outfits."

"Yeah, well, it must be nice to be married to such a rich, famous artist and have a career, even if it's for the wrong reasons."

"I know, but Mike's had one girlfriend after the next and Peony is pathologically jealous. I think the only reason he doesn't divorce her is because he's afraid of her. Look at her! Can you imagine her in bed, with those fingernails? How can she even take photographs?"

She asked the bartender for a vodka and cranberry juice, and Max got a bottle of beer, in keeping with his boyish appearance. She looked over her shoulder. There had to be somebody cute in the room, or at least recognizable as a heterosexual. "Ursula, this is Florence. Florence, this is Ingo Crandall, Ursula and Ingo Crandall." She turned back to shake hands. This couple was very attractive. They resembled two tall, skinny twins, not so much androgynous as neuter. They had huge alien eyes and the exact same haircut, chopped off and boyish—her figure was as slim and boyish as his. "Are you guys back from Albania already?" Max said. "How was it?"

"Marvelous," said Ursula. "We're thinking of taking a place there next summer."

"We stayed in Victor's castle," said Ingo. "You know Victor, don't you, Max? He's heir to the throne? Remarkably, the government made full restitution of his property, although of course the castle is basically a ruined shell."

"I didn't know Albania still had a throne," Florence said. "I thought . . . isn't it Communist?" Ingo and Ursula stared at her with the calculated expressions of praying mantises examining possible prey before—with dismissive nod—they disappeared into the crowd.

"He's quite a bad cabaret singer," Max explained. "But he travels around the world playing in fancy places like the Carlyle because of his snotty, fake Noël Coward act."

"But they're married?"

"Yeah. He has his boyfriends and she has her girlfriends—but they only sleep with people who have a title. Right now she's going out with Princess Magda of Yugoslavia and he's been with Baron Leonid of Prussia for two years."

"You know everything about everybody."

Max pointed to a glum woman who might have been attractive except for her morose expression. "That one went to Tibet—Nepal—someplace like that, for two years on some kind of Peace Corps teaching thing, and she got
worms.
" He suddenly raised his voice to a bellow and shouted at an equally surly-looking man halfway across the room. "Henry, what kind of worms did Missy get when she was in Nepal?"

"Tibet!" Henry corrected him, shouting back. "Tapeworms!"

"Tapeworms, thank you. So Henry went over on a visit to see her, and they were about to have sex, but then he looked down— you know, down
there
—and he saw a little white thing sticking out. So he bent down for a closer look—it was the head of a worm that had popped out and was staring at him."

"It had eyes?" Florence said.

"I don't know if it had eyes or what—you want me to ask him?"

"That's okay."

"But I distinctly remember him telling me that it had a little mouth, and, well, naturally he couldn't help but scream. So Missy goes, 'What's the problem?' And she looked down, saw the head of the tapeworm and started to pull it out. Apparently it happened all the time."

"But didn't it break?"

"What?" Max asked.

"The tapeworm. Aren't they about six feet long or something?"

"I don't know." Max yelled across the crowd again. "Henry, when Missy pulled the tapeworm out of her vagina, did it break, or what?" He turned to Florence. "Do you think that was very wrong of me?"

"What?"

"To say the word 'vagina' so loud? Was I awful?"

9

They waited on line
for food—risotto with cremini mushrooms, peas, and prosciutto, scented with rosemary. Bowls of Parmesan cheese, slices of Italian bread and a large green salad were help-yourself. There weren't enough seats for so many people; though a few tables covered in white cloths had been set up around the room, they were already occupied. There had to be at least a hundred people, if not more. It wasn't so simple to balance a plate, tableware and a drink while standing up. They ended up deciding to go and sit on the floor in the stairwell. Almost immediately

another couple, also searching for somewhere to sit, joined them on the nearest step. "Hi, Clifford," Max said coyly. Florence concluded that Clifford was either rich, famous or a prospective love interest for Max.

"Hi, Max. This is my girlfriend, Rosemary."

Rosemary was English. Florence had had enough experiences with English women to not even attempt to chat with her. Usually the English men were nice; but the women could or would only be friends with other English women; they somehow managed to behave as if Americans—at least women—didn't smell very nice.

Clifford was American, though he lived in England. "What do you do, Clifford?" Florence said.

"I'm a novelist."

"You must have heard of Clifford, Florence!" Max said, interrupting his conversation with Rosemary.

"How could she have heard of me? My first novel hasn't even come out in this country yet."

"What's it about?"

He sighed wearily, as if he had already had to answer this question a million times. She was sorry she'd asked. "It's about being made to work as a child-porn star by my parents when I was seven."

"It's—it's a novel?"

He shrugged, obviously thinking of something else. "I've pretty much decided, no interviews. I think a real writer shouldn't be out there doing self-promotion."

"What's the name of your book?"

"It's called
The Voyeur of Nothing.
"

"And when will it be out? I'll look for it."

He hedged. "My agent is deciding which offer to accept, in this country. In England it was published six years ago. It was just sold to television. Pretty big budget too: a BBC production. I'm working on the sequel, about how I rescued an Aleut child-prostitute. It was very dangerous—I was practically harpooned, twice. And paralleling this story is a multigenerational history of New Jersey, dating back to the Ice Age and continuing through to the

time I was sent to boarding school. I'm already up to page eleven hundred."

"Oh. So how do you know Mike and Peony?"

"Through Rosemary. Rosemary's a photographer's rep. She's Peony's agent in England. You know the problem with English women?"