People Like Us

It was half after one, as Ezzie Fenwick always called it, in his rococo manner of speaking, on the Tuesday noon following Black Monday, and the midday social frenzy at Clarence’s was at its peak, with every table filled to capacity, as if a financial catastrophe had not taken place. The bar, where those who couldn’t get tables waited patiently until after the personal friends of Chick Jacoby, who owned Clarence’s and ruled Clarence’s with an iron hand, lunched and lingered over decaffeinated espresso for as long as they wanted, no matter how many people were waiting for tables, was three deep. Black Monday. Black Monday. Black Monday. It was the topic of conversation everywhere that noon.

Ezzie Fenwick was securely seated in the window table, the very smart restaurant’s very best table, except on the rare occasions when the First Lady came to lunch, or the King of Spain, and the Secret Service advised Chick Jacoby that the window table was far too visible from the street, in times like this, with mad people about, and insisted on moving them into the unfashionable second room, where Ezzie Fenwick would never be caught dead sitting.

The previous day the stock market had fallen five hundred and eight points, and there was panic in the city, especially among the speculators and the nouveau riche. There was also a smug satisfaction, only covertly expressed, that the new billionaires of New York, whom no one had ever heard of six or seven years ago, and who now seemed to control the financial, charitable, and social life of the city, were publicly hurting. Herkie Saybrook reported to Justine Altemus that one of the
Zobel brothers, of Zobel Brothers, had been seen weeping uncontrollably at his desk over his enormous losses, ha ha ha, and might have to apply for a federal bail-out. Sims Lord reported that Milton Sofiar, whose personal fortune had been depleted by between three hundred and five hundred million dollars in a single day, had attempted suicide, although not seriously, and had been admitted to Harcourt Pavilion at Manhattan Hospital under an assumed name. The joke of the day was that the only winner on Wall Street the day before was Elias Renthal, who was in prison and barred from trading on the stock market forever, ha ha ha.

Ezzie Fenwick, who knew everything about everyone, was, as always, surrounded by adoring ladies in the very latest of fashion who laughed and laughed each noon at his witty accounts of what had happened the night before at whatever party he had attended. Ezzie reported to Lil Altemus, who was born a Van Degan, and Matilda Clarke, who was the widow of Sweetzer Clarke, and old Cora Mandell, who was society’s favorite decorator, that he had dined the night before at the billionaire Bulbenkians, and that Reza Bulbenkian gave an ultimatum to his new wife, Yvonne, that her spending spree simply had to stop. Yvonne Bulbenkian, he explained to Lil Altemus, who sometimes pretended she didn’t know who people were, when she knew perfectly well who they were, used to be Yvonne Lupescu, when she was the constant companion of Constantine de Rham.

Reza Bulbenkian, who was the richest of all the New People, as the Old Guard called them, now that Elias Renthal was in prison, was smarting already from the bad publicity engendered by Yvonne’s allowing their new limestone mansion on Park Avenue to be photographed by the
Times Sunday Magazine
in the same issue that featured a cover story on the homeless of New York. He begged Yvonne, even before the officers of his company begged him to beg her, to desist from her extravagant spending habits. How could he, he
reasoned with her, fire a thousand of his employees, in an economic cutback, when Dolly De Longpre, the society columnist, was reporting in her column that Yvonne had spent a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars for a lynx coat and was planning to fly to Paris, on the company jet, for a private view of the new Lacroix collection, not to mention her noisy bidding at the auction of the Van Gogh irises, which had raised eyebrows, even before the crash.

“She’s so frightfully common,” said Matilda Clarke.

“The stories I could tell you about her,” said Ezzie, his hand to his heart.

“Oh, tell, tell,” said old Cora Mandell, who knew that Ezzie only needed to be urged a bit.

“Laurance knew all this was going to happen,” said Lil Altemus, getting back to the crash, because it did not interest her to discuss people like the Bulbenkians. “Laurance has been saying for some time that the market was at an unsustainably high level.” Lil Altemus quoted her brother, Laurance Van Degan, more than any other person in her life. She spoke with the ease of someone whose fortune had remained intact throughout the recent financial panic. “Laurance got out of the market a week ago, and, of course, I did too, and so did Justine.”

Although they all liked to say that they had gotten out of the market in time, or that their losses were only on paper, as if they didn’t matter, Rochelle Prud’homme, of Prud’homme Products, makers of cordless hairdryers, pulled Chick Jacoby aside to tell him that she was canceling her dinner dance for one hundred and forty people that she had booked the restaurant for several weeks earlier, and Chick Jacoby, who had already ordered fourteen pink moiré tablecloths and a hundred and forty pink moiré table napkins cut and hemmed by the seamstress around the corner, looked crestfallen. Jamesey Crocus, the specialist in fine French furniture, arrived at Clarence’s for lunch with the distressing news that the auction of fine French furniture that morning
at Sackville’s had been a major bust, with most of the ormolu-encrusted pieces not meeting their reserve prices. And Maisie Verdurin, the art dealer, looked particularly peaked behind her smile, although she had as yet told no one that two of her most important clients had reneged that morning on Post-Impressionist pictures that they had agreed to buy.

On the very rare occasions that Ezzie Fenwick removed the dark glasses he invariably wore, you could see that he had one peculiar eye, rather like a poached egg in appearance, that looked off in a different direction entirely from his other eye, and it made you believe him when he said, as he often did, in his nasal voice that all his friends could imitate, “I never miss a trick. When I’m walking on Fifth Avenue, I can tell you what’s happening on Madison and Park.” So none of them was surprised when Ezzie interrupted Lil Altemus, who thought she had his full attention with all her inside information about the crash, to say, “My dears, you will not
believe
who just walked into this restaurant.”

No one appreciated social drama the way Ezzie Fenwick did, and he was beside himself with joy when the reclusive Ruby Renthal, so long out of sight, and the just-released-from-prison Augustus Bailey walked into Clarence’s at that moment, without a reservation. Ezzie’s companions, and everyone else in the front part of Clarence’s, where all the good people, as Ezzie called them, sat, turned to look at the curious duet who stood quietly just inside the door waiting for Chick Jacoby to hurry forward to greet them, albeit with furrowed brow. Chick Jacoby spent the latter part of each morning seating his luncheon tables with the artistic precision of a stage director, as aware as Ezzie of the ever-changing marital, financial, and social statuses of his regular customers, and last-minute changes, such as this one now, upset his sense of divine order. But it was, after all, Ruby Renthal who was upsetting the divine order, and the businessman behind the perfectionist in him knew that Dolly De Longpre would surely print that the
unusual couple had lunched at Clarence’s in her column the next morning if he seated them prominently and then got to the telephone in time to beat Dolly’s deadline.

“For heaven’s sake,” said Chick, who could scowl and smile at the same time, pushing his round-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose with his long forefinger.

“I’m a country lady these days, Chick,” said Ruby. She spoke in the deep throaty voice that people used to remark on in the days when she was the most discussed woman in New York.

“She looks beautiful,” said Cora Mandell, who had decorated the Renthals’ famous apartment.

“Good-looking suit she has on,” said Matilda Clarke.

Lot Altemus did not look at her. She could neither forget nor forgive that Elias Renthal’s despicable financial manipulations had sullied the name of her brother, Laurance Van Degan, causing him to have to resign as the president of the Butterfield, which broke his heart, and she was sure caused the slight stroke that had moved his mouth to the side of his face.