After Claude (10 page)

If you had heard the piercing screams emitted by that madwoman, and the running, and the knives flashing, you’d think she’d never before seen a naked man. Fair is fair, Lloyd was exceptionally endowed. So much so, you’d expect his endowment to tip over his little brown body. But even a blind person could have seen that he was the frightened party. He scooped up his clothes and was out of the window, and gone in one dazzling leap. Jesse Owens could have taken lessons from him. I tried, but discovered, and I offer my experience gratis to potential suicides, that it takes considerable practice to hurtle out of a window. If that is your preferred method, start training immediately by tying a rope between two ordinary kitchen chairs.

I rushed to the door, but Miss Psycho seemed to be everywhere, blocking all exits. All the warnings about fat people being light on their feet came home to roost. Enough. Why bother with excruciating details? What should have been Rhoda-Reginas deliverance deteriorated into a farce, a drawing-room comedy, amusing only if your idea of theater is a public hanging. The fracas must have sounded like a swinging party, because two officers eventually showed up. One was black and the other white, which radicals will no doubt be gratified to hear, but both equally indolent. They shuffled around the apartment, pretending to take notes, as Rhoda-Regina performed her dervish dance, complete with war whoops and lunges at me.

“Arrest her, stop her,” I shouted, as my squirrel greatcoat went sailing out the window.

“Name of occupant.” The white one roused himself from his stupor, his ball-point pen poised over his notebook, his face concentrated and serious as that of a child tracing the alphabet.

“Lizzie Borden, what difference does it make?” I screamed. “That’s my genuine fur coat!”

“You two live here together?”

I sensed the direction of his filthy criminal mind. “No,” I protested. “Certainly not. I’m just here to help her.”

“Did she call you? Did she mention if she’d taken anything?”

Sex and drugs, it was obviously all they knew, so I decided then and there not to fight City Hall.

“God knows what she took. Your guess is as good as mine. If you saw the characters who crawl in and out of this place …” But my desperate attempt to enlist their sympathy in Rhoda-Regina’s plight was literally choked short by the destructive cow herself. Fingers heavy as stone landed on my neck, and Rhoda-Regina squeezed with all her demented might. Only then did the cops relinquish their journalistic ambitions and go to work.

“She’s on a bad trip,” one of them finally summed up the situation.

They threw a striped bedspread over Rhoda-Regina’s squirming body and pulled her off me. I followed them out to the squad car. Huddled at the curb, looking frightened and forlorn, was my faithful coat. I quickly rescued it, ignoring my other treasures, scattered about like the charred remains of a plane crash. I was too depressed and shocked by my ordeal to care about my possessions, each one a unique souvenir of my travels.

None of the drooling jackals hanging around the fringes of the scene cared to plunder while the police showed so much interest in me. I volunteered Rhoda-Regina’s name, but when they invited me to accompany them to Bellevue, I declined, pointing significantly at my worldly goods.

They got into the car and slammed the door. The black cop winked at me. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.” I swear I wanted to elope with him, but leave it to the destructive so-called helpless types like R.-R. to end up snug and warm in firm masculine custody. She was lying in the back of the car, content and motionless under her striped shroud. I felt a twinge of envy as they whisked her away, leaving me to a growing circle of fans. My knees were shaking, so I sat on the bottom step of the cold, wet stoop. The groupies moved in, fascinated but too shy to request my autograph.

“Is anything the matter? Can I help you?” Those were the first words addressed to me by the French rat who at that point in my career was simply the foreign face on the top floor. If not for his French accent, which had such civilized connotations, I would never have rewarded him with a small smile. It pains me to reflect how those two exploiters benefited from my upheaval. Claude, in ways too obvious to list, and Rhoda-Regina, by achieving her goal, which was to get me out and Sidney in. Yes, in one Machiavellian stroke she accomplished it all. Her scheme became crystal clear to me when she reappeared in Sidney’s protective embrace.

When will some enterprising reporter from
The Village Voice
stop bragging about his sex life for one second to investigate the ins and outs of Bellevue’s observation racket? Just why are the crazies promptly released? Do the doctors perhaps share in a weekly pool, a lottery, based on the number of murders their discharges will commit? At any rate, Rhoda-Regina returned to her ground-floor apartment and took her menacing post behind the bamboo blind, watching with murder in her heart for the one false move that would land me in her homicidal clutches. Small wonder my relationship with Claude faltered. How could I concentrate on his bloodsucking demands when three floors below my
bête noire
waited?

I
DIDN’T
have to consult my astrologer to know that I was having one of those days better spent in a closet. My morning with Claude was sufficient evidence that my stars were in collision, but on top of that, to suffer through Maxine’s invasion and then to find myself reminiscing about Rhoda-Regina’s ingratitude, while ahead of me loomed a dinner with Charles and his latest party girl, felt more like the end of the world than a mere personal tragedy.

How can I describe a human being as malicious and irrelevant as Charles? He was that most superficial of all specimens, a French play-boy. His life was devoted to the pursuit of amusement, a dedication made somewhat difficult by a lack of interest in anything that couldn’t be injected or swallowed in tablet form. As heir to a French pharmaceutical fortune, he was spending his life swallowing the profits and, of course, courting amusement.

“Amuse me,” he would dare you, vacant-eyed, stuffed to the gills with drugs. I would find myself babbling about the population explosion or the impending California earthquake. “Boring,” he would roar triumphantly. “You’re boring me!” At the moment, he was alleviating his boredom by parading battalions of bunnies, starlets, gymnasts, debutantes, and go-go dancers for Claude’s inspection, in the hopes that my boy friend would latch on to one of his protégées and crate me off to the Bronx Zoo.

What is the proper attire in which to dine with your enemies? I dug through my wardrobe, piled high on the bentwood rocker, in search of an appropriate answer. My heart began to beat out this refrain about having nothing to wear. I opted for the mismatched effect, currently so fashionable yet ideally suited to my unconventional looks. At the bottom of the bentwood body count, I rescued a long, cotton, tie-dyed skirt that can go absolutely anywhere. I chose to complement it with, of all inspirations, a sheer green Mexican overblouse. The color combination created a meeting of nature, and not just your everybody placid meeting but nature in convulsion.

I had barely four hours in which to transform myself from a hausfrau to an exotic creature of the night, but I hadn’t had a convalescent mother for nothing. We had our shortcuts. I slipped into my fineries, got under the shower, and in one fastidious burst of energy shampooed my hair and clothes. I hung my costume over the shower rod to drip dry. Next, just in case the dinner party traveled to our living room, I cleared out all the crud. By then, it was time to work on my face.

As I mentioned, I don’t have what you would call conventional good looks. However, with a translucent makeup base smoothed over my pale skin, my large expressive eyes outlined in kohl, and my dark shag framing my exotic cheekbones, you’d wonder what Egyptian tomb had been pilfered.

I was ready by six o’clock and stood in front of the mirror wondering if what I saw corresponded to my intentions. The tom-toming of my heart introduced a few doubts. To assure my composure, I prescribed one of Claude’s dynamite French tranquilizers. I put the others in my shoulder bag, just to be on the safe side. Rather than risk an international incident, I banked the air conditioner and finally crept noiselessly down the sweltering staircase, carrying my thong sandals, particularly anxious to spare Rhoda-Regina the anguish of seeing me so resplendent.

The humidity in the street must have been
a
thousand, and I staggered to Sheridan Square in search of a taxi. I was lucky to stop the first cab I hailed, because not being Maxine, I was not thrilled at the attention I was receiving.

I told the cab driver where to take me and leaned back, well served by the tranquilizers. Relaxation was not part of the ride. Oh, no, the driver had other plans. This one was your Uncle Bernie, who should have been the president of Yale, but as a victim of the quota system found himself hacking. He longed to share his worldliness with me.

“I bet a lot of people have told you, you look like Anne Bancroft,” he said, gazing into his crystal ball.

“Why? Has she been complaining to you lately?”

We drove in silence, but only till we were caught in crosstown traffic. He then presumed to share his military expertise with me. “Oy, the crime, the terrible crime of genocide we’re committing. It’s splitting the country in two, like Germany was split in two for what they did to the Jews.”

I sensed an unwelcome note of familiarity. “Listen, Bernie,” I informed him, “I happen not to be Jewish and therefore have no objections to the Vietnamese war or any other war, past or present.”

After that I was able to smoke my cigarette in peace.

I tipped him in a fashion that would erase the smallest suspicion of my being Jewish, and head held high, I entered the restaurant.

Charles and his date were standing at the crowded bar. There was no sign of my boy friend.

“Where’s Claude?” I asked, going up to them, searching Charles’s junkie eyes to see if he had received the good news yet.

“He just called. He’ll be a bit late.” Charles shook my hand.

“Did a swell assassination turn up?”

“Ah, Harriet.” He laughed. “Always so deliriously amusing and always so beautiful.”

Yes, I thought, the rat has told him about the old heave-ho.

I couldn’t help but notice an icy blonde lady clinging to his elbow. She had what is called a golden helmet of hair, sleek and neat, curving along the line of her slender jaw. She was dressed in a gleaming white, silk-jersey halter and yards of pleated white silk pants that managed to cling to her slim hips and legs. Charles, the faggot, was also immaculate in a white linen mod suit and white boots. I stood there beside the white medical team, feeling like a collision victim who has been rushed into the emergency unit.

“Harriet, I’d like you to meet Baba,” Charles proudly announced, his glazed eyes pretending to be focused.

“What was that name?” I addressed myself to him, because as yet there was no shred of evidence that she wasn’t a deaf-mute.

“Baba,” she supplied, in my favorite flat, nasal, hick twang.

“Baba?”

“My real name is Barbara.” Icy blue eyes fringed with dark blue lashes. “But when I was born, my baby brother couldn’t pronounce it and the name Baba just stuck.” Her teeth were as brilliantly white as her uniform.

God, I demanded, what are you doing to me? Stop this torture, you Miserable Creep. Since Claude hadn’t arrived, I could delay my charm tactics for a few minutes.

“If you don’t mind, I can manage Barbara,” I assured her. It was like taking candy from a hooded cobra.

“Charles,” she whimpered, pronouncing the “ch” like the first two letters in Sheldon, “don’t they have our table yet?”

“I’ll find out,” he said, snapping to attention. What a marvelous whip these little white marsh-mallows crack.

“I hate to stand at bars, don’t you?” she confided in me, elaborately unaware of the men ogling her.

“Not if I have a drink.” Everyone got very alarmed and active about taking my order, and I was obliged to keep them waiting while choices raced through my brain.

“Why don’t you have what we’re having?” Charles suggested, which seemed an easy way out. I was soon handed an ice-cold martini. It was just what I needed; in fact, it tasted like bitter but welcome medicine. I was balancing my second martini when Claude came sashaying into the bar.

He acknowledged me like I was the crawling green slime and held on to Baba’s hand with a pause that said now his entire slob life would take on significance. I could tell that she was attracted to him. The way I could tell was that she completely ignored me and Charles and pleaded with shyly enamored eyes for Claude to rip off her clothes and throw her on the floor. Charles’s pimp face beamed approval.

A waiter, inconspicuous in a bright-red cutaway, led us to our table, dropped cement napkins into our laps, and handed us gigantic menus designed for a race of glandular freaks. Rather than stand on my chair in order to open the unmanageable billboard, I turned to Charles and said, “Well, Charles, what do you suggest we send back tonight?”

Charles, the unamused, who could barely digest a cup of warm water, was renowned for the number of dishes he found inedible. Claude glared at me, and then he and Baba vanished behind their menus, doing God knows what. I held up my empty martini glass to one of the cadets hovering around our table.

“I think you’ve had enough, Harriet.”

“Enough what?” I demanded, and then to Baba, who was a study of brilliant white confusion, “My boy friend is so impossible. He watches me like a hawk. Claude, darling,” I winked at him, “why don’t you order four dozen oysters?”

My martini arrived, and I paid no further attention to the usual French crisis about what was fit to eat.

“Oh, dear,” Baba mourned, “everything looks so delicious, and I simply must lose weight.”

“Where?” Claude protested, as though someone had accused him of spitting on the marble floor.

“Everywhere,” she directed him, just in case he had overlooked one inch of her perfection. “I have to stay below a certain weight to keep flying.”