Like People in History (29 page)

I had to admit, Calvin had me gasping. "Who conducted? God?"

"Close. De Sabata!"

"May a human person hear this recording?"

"If said human person promises to recommend it."

"Nice try, Dalmatia. I'd have to hear it first."

"You honky twat!"

"Watch your sass, Miss Ritchie! We're not in Oakland anymore."

"Okay, you can hear it." Calvin paused. "And what, if I may be so bold as to ask, was your choice?"

"Donizetti's
Emilia di Liverpool."

"All I know of
Emilia
is the cavatina and rondo Sutherland sings."

"Sang!" I clarified. "She couldn't negotiate that cavatina today if her vocal chords were wearing ice skates."

"True enough, girl! Her coloratura is a shadow of its former glory."

"I was thinking of Caballé doing it."

"She's no slender child," Calvin said. "Never was. Odd that you should mention Monsterfat Cowbelly. Herself sang the title role of
Agnes
in Rome a few years ago. Muti conducted. Bruno Prevedi, Antonietta Stella, Sesto Bruscantini. Don't know who else was there."

"How do you know all this, Dorothy?" I asked.

"One has sources," Calvin replied enigmatically.

The Japanese women were buying the bibelots. Good idea. Monika half turned and saw me and began to blush as she always did whenever the amount of money involved was too high for her down-to-earth Wisconsin Methodist morals. On the other side of me—on the far balcony, in the record department—Justin was standing talking to three male foreigners—Swedes or Norwegians, given their clothing, especially the blocky sandals and socks they wore with pale-colored jackets. He was playing what sounded like a two-piano piece by Mendelssohn I'd never heard before, so I caught his attention and sketched a question mark in the air. He held up an album cover: Rimsky-Korsakov! Imagine!

"There is a score for
Emilia
," I said, having looked it up. "But the only recording I know of is duets sung by Delia de Martis and Aureliano Pertile in the early thirties on the Italian Victor label and a baritone
scena
by Apollo Granforte. Execrable sound and a ten-second dropout. A Preiser LP."

"I'll ask around for more of it. If the girls here at
Opera Queen
don't know of a full recording, it don't exist."

"Thanks, Cal." I finished marking and threw over the last two catalogs. My meeting with my boss was due in ten minutes. God only knew how long that would drag on, Pierluigi pontificating about his expansion plans.

"If, however,
Emilia
is chosen," Calvin said, snickering, "the scenery must show the 'mountains of Liverpool' in the background, exactly the way the tenor aria puts it. So, meet you at Toad Hall as usual?" Cal asked, mentioning our favorite hangout on Castro Street, the up-and-coming gay area in town.

"Don't know when I'll be able to get out of here tonight."

"You work too hard. Or is it lust for
die Grossmägtige Italiener?"

"Pierluigi? Grow up! Marian A! It's all I can do to keep from barfing in his presence."

"Are you quite certain? One cannot help but note," Cal said, "that since this particular woman of color has known you, you have not had a single' boyfriend—indeed not a man beyond a one-night stand:—in what is close to a full year! Which, for a lad considered not unattractive by many, and indeed hot by several—although admittedly demented— numbers, must be considered, at the least, vee-strange."

"While you have at least two boyfriends at any given time. I know, I know. Lots of men and little taste. Let's drop the subject, okay?"

"Okay. But I'll be at your favorite pool table," he tempted, knowing how much I enjoyed beating him at the game.

"I'll try to make it by seven. Oh, and Cal,
Agnes
sounds like an absolute winner. They'll love it!"

"Except where can one find two coloraturas with mezzo ranges?"

"Surely you jest! Of course you might have to search a bit for a second coloratura bass. Come on, honey! It would
fun
to cast! Miss Thing at the Opera would make all sorts of enemies over it."

"It would be fab, if they chose it," Calvin said, cheered again.

"See you at Toad Hall." I hung up on that high note.

And moaned.

Walking through the mezzanine-level art gallery of the store at least ten minutes early and coming at me across twenty-five feet of open air was my boss, Pierluigi Cigna. Flanking him was the smarmy art dealer Vincent Faunce and my cousin Alistair. The three looked as though they'd just hatched some plan, which meant I'd spend most of my meeting with Cigna having to explain exactly why and how it was absurd.

Yes, Alistair. I'd forgiven him for the Selective Service madness. Forgiven him, and moved to his elected city, where he'd returned himself early in '71 in an attempt to save his real estate business from his unscrupulous ex-lover. That had taken several years and many lawyers and lots of money, with this result: Alistair retained full partnership in the company, but what was left of the assets had been judicially frozen while the company completed its most recent project. Until the suit was settled, it could be thawed only long enough to pay off all creditors. Of course it wasn't that simple; I could go into more detail. Lord knew Alistair had, and sometimes still did whenever some new legal crinkle occurred. I'm just giving the basics he laid down when he applied for the art gallery job.

Actually, Pozzuoli's had been open almost a year by then; the bookstore, that is, with all the foreign language departments, the magazine section, the record department. All that remained was that lovely blank undecorated space upstairs which led up to the administrative offices. I'd arrived by then. I'd been hired in Manhattan and boosted quickly up the ladder at the main Pozzuoli's—around the corner from the Plaza and the Sherry—and when the Genoan Goose
(cigna
actually means "swan," but...) offered me the position of store manager of what was the largest and newest and most glam... So I moved to San Francisco last November, knowing absolutely no one in town but Alistair, whom I'd barely spoken to in years, and I sailed into this new shop in the middle of this incredible hotel lobby and I did what anyone with any sense and a still unspent building budget would do: I decorated.

Decorated like mad whatever was left to do in the store—the marble floors and ceilings were rose-red from Albania!—and when I was done there, on a somewhat smaller budget, I restored and decorated the bright, handsome, elderly four-room apartment I'd taken on Fell Street in the Haight (I know! I know!) within sight of the Panhandle, where the grass had sprung back from where it had been trampled into die greensward, the lawns were now occupied by neckers and occasional sunbathers and more frequently dog walkers, and the whole was completely bereft of flower children, although every once in a while a visiting drug dealer might be discovered standing on a curb looking around, stoned, evidently A Little Late and wondering Where Everyone Was (down in Laguna, in Venice, Key West, or Maui).

In the near year I'd been here, I'd learned to like the town a bit, learned to hate the psychotic changes in the weather a lot (forty degree drops in temperature in ten minutes is not fun, ever!). I'd hired and fired at the store until I had a staff more or less useful if hardly to my wishes. I'd publicized the place with author appearance parties, evidently a new idea here, although the venerable City Lights Bookstore over on Broadway still managed to throw together a reading every half decade for Allen Ginsberg or Paul Bowles, flown in special from Morocco.

Pozzuoli's own parties were more formal, more expensive, and infinitely more superficial. The books we feted were "written" by interior designers and flower columnists, by celebrity bridge players and experts on Calabrian majolica and Cretan faience. After much consultation, I'd fixed on a list and invited what was considered the city's "Arty Social Set." I stretched this group considerably with fakers, nouveaus, and snobs, stirred well with a handful of presentable gays, added a dash of media types, and guess what? It worked!

In ten years in New York, in twenty years in Rome, and in a half century in Florence, a Pozzuoli shop had never been discovered in the black. The shop had merely been a display for the company's huge publishing empire (mags, books, and newspapers); profit had seemed rather beside the point. Thus, everyone was vaguely astonished when my shop made money. Triplets of Italian men in expensive gray suits would suddenly arrive, badly jet lagged, at our offices and would remain upstairs with our accounts for two days before leaving suddenly, still shaking their heads. Usually, the Genoa Goose managed to get word of them and would himself fly in—or up from La Jolla, where he was hunting out a new spot for a store—and accompany them back as far as the Atlantic. Which was fine with me since my Italian was Paleozoic in vintage and the Italians' English virtually nonexistent.

It was after their penultimate visit that Cigna had okayed opening the art gallery. As the Manhattan shop did, it was to contain lithos, etchings, and drawings, most of them already framed and hung on the walls, along with some unframed ones in sets by the handful of chic contemporary artists like Dubuffet, Dali, and Hockney. Everything would be numbered, but only an occasional special set would be placed in the coffinlike glass display cases for sets smaller than ten. We sold no statuary or paintings, or anything famous, or old, or as expensive as the Fauves, certainly nothing controversial—the kind of thing a middle-level exec would get his wife for their anniversary: not a Major Investment.

Alistair had been at the "book" signing party where I'd made the formal announcement that the art gallery would be open by the next party. Afterward, he'd taken me to dinner in his neighborhood—Pacific Heights at Broadway—and pumped me so completely about the art gallery I'd finally said, "You sound as though you want the job."

"Want it? I'd kill for it!"

"You're kidding! Alistair Dodge work for a living?"

It wasn't the nicest thing to say. But his response was perfect.

"I'm not desperate, you understand.... The tax concept 'operating expenses' is a wide umbrella and covers a multitude of sins. But I have to admit, I have been burned by this past partnership and have given serious thought to other areas, other lines of interest."

"You'd be trained by the Bitch of Bari."

"I met Giuseppina," Alistair said. "She can't be that bad."

"If anyone can bring out her latent humanity, you surely can."

"As it turns out, I know a deal about contemporary art. Had to learn quickly when my stuff began going out to be sold."

"Poor Alistair!" I commiserated. "Why don't I buy dinner?"

"Make Pozzuoli pay. You worked overtime tonight."

"I work overtime every night."

"How can you have a life?"

"This
is my life."

"How ghastly! What about..."—Alistair looked around—"boys?"

"I occasionally go to the tubs! The Ritch Street Baths," I clarified.

"Oh!"

"And an occasional bar. A few interesting ones opened south of Market."

"You mean... Aren't leather bars dangerous?" Alistair asked.

"Don't be silly! I used to go to Kellers and the Eagle in New York all the time. These places are no different."

"Really? Near Hamburger Mary's off Folsom Street? We drove past one last month and..."

"It's not what you think, Alistair."

"I. blame myself for ruining you," he overdramatized.

"Grow up, gir—" I caught myself. "Grow up, Alistair. It's not all pain and stuff. It's mostly attitude and costume."

"You have a lovely apartment, a good job: you should have a lover."

"I don't want a lover."

"Surely you don't want to hang around street
corners
at three in the morning wearing dead cow and waiting for someone sleazy to come by and... do whatever you do?" He trailed off aimlessly.

"Why not? I used to do it down by the trucks in the Village."

But the way in which he was asking, his very manner of insisting, made me suddenly think, oh I know it was ridiculous, almost unforgivably absurd, but still... Could Alistair possibly be coming on to me? No! Impossible! Wait, it was possible! Stranger than strange, but possible. He was young and attractive. I was young and attractive. He was hardly a "sister," as Calvin had instantly become, despite the circumstance in which Cal and

I had met. And yes, there was enough distance and tension between Alistair and me to... I don't blush often. I blushed then.

"What
do
you do when you're picked up off street corners in Folsom?" he suddenly asked.

"Alistair!" I protested and blushed even more.

"It must be something... you're ashamed of."

"Drop! The! Sub! Ject!"

"Or is it some intensely recalled memory?"

"I'm getting up and leaving now, Alistair."

"It's dropped! Dropped!" he assured me.

We sat there a few minutes while my color faded, and I stuffed all thoughts of sex with Alistair deep into the file marked "To be looked at again—maybe never!"

"It's all my fault anyway," he suddenly said. "Well, it is! I'm the one who brought you out, and I'm the one who screwed it all up. Well, not I, exactly, but because of who it was who... I mean if it were virtually anyone on earth but..."

He couldn't bring himself to name Julian Gwynne, who, like Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and the astonishing Janis Joplin, hadn't managed to get into the new decade along with the rest of us. To his credit, my first boyfriend and first ex-boyfriend had at least been a bit original in his passing. He'd OD'd in transatlantic flight. Only when the cleaning attendants had broken down the jet's john door had he been found, beatifically smiling, an emptied needle trembling in a ravaged vein of each arm, with a third hypo shivering empty in his neck, barely an inch from his carotid pulse.

I'd read about his death in the papers. But I'd not gotten details until Gwynne's loyal chauffeur "retired" back to New Jersey months later thoughtfully called to tell me. Naturally, I'd not thought to phone Alistair for details. He'd returned to California by then anyway and was deep in his own woes.