Revoltingly Young (16 page)

The Normandie’s interior is done up very swankily in Art Deco style, though Veeva pointed out if you look closely, the “rare woods” were mostly just tarted up sheetrock. We ate dinner in the immense Main Salon, which according to a blurb on the menu had been one of the largest and grandest rooms ever afloat. In the Las Vegas version, all of the replica Lalique chandeliers sway back and forth in unison, so you do sort of feel like you’re at sea. The simulation of motion is so effective, Nick says some diners have been known to turn green and toss their cookies. Not to worry, the waiters carry concealed barf bags.

Midway through our meal the chandeliers began to sway wildly, and the captain came on the P.A. system to apologize for the “rough seas.” For the next ten minutes all the waiters staggered about like they could barely keep their footing. Rather silly, but fun.

Our table was right next to this vast three-story high bas-relief sculpture of “Normandy peasant life.” I guess in the old days some of those Normandy peasant gals were running around as topless as Las Vegas showgirls. The sculptor Alfred Janniot did his original in carved red marble highlighted with gold gilding, but even Veeva had to concede the Vegas plaster replica was rather well done. Everything was first rate (including my steak), but we could have skipped the waiter’s annoying French accent, which was as fake as Carlyle’s afro.

If we Twisps weren’t so competitive, I’d have to say my brother was the greatest juggler I’ve ever seen. None of the usual clichés for him, like swinging away on flaming torches or chainsaws with their motors running. He tosses four crystal glasses in the air, then four eggs, and sets each glass down with an unbroken egg now resting inside it–one of which he cracks open to prove it was real. Or he juggles six lit candles, then steps forward so they fall behind him. Yet when he then moves aside, the candles have all disappeared. Or he launches a set of golf clubs high above him, then grabs each club as it descends and smacks a series of balls lined up on tees. Good thing the balls are plastic since he hits them straight at the audience. All the while he keeps up an amusing banter with his assistant, a scantily clad babe named Henrietta, whom we met backstage after the show. I thought her well-spangled assets were real, but Veeva assured me that like everything else in Vegas they were crowd-pleasing simulations. Still, she’s another attractive local dame that Nick could marry instead of running after some chick 8,000 miles away–and both of them on the rebound to boot.

AUGUST

MONDAY, August 1 – Middle of the night sometime. No sleep on the menu with Veeva on the prowl. She said we had to tackle Nick’s computer before he got back from work. It booted fine with no password required. Lots and lots of files, but Veeva suggested we search for any containing the name Sheeni in the text. Easy and quick with Nick’s stallion of a processor. It found only one file though, an e-mail message earlier this year from Trent Preston.

“
Trent Preston the actor?” asked Veeva.

“
Probably. My brother hobnobs with all the greats.”

Here is the text of the message:

“
Hi, Nick. Back in Paris after a few days in Barcelona, one of our favorite cities. I saw Sheeni for lunch yesterday. They were here on wine business. She sends her regards. She was looking extraordinarily beautiful. Not to be sexist, but I think these may be her peak years. She’s well, but her spirits seemed a little down. I think she may be feeling discouraged that her career has not progressed as well as she would have liked. Of course, she dotes on her children, though she would never admit it. Frankly, I’m surprised that she turned out to be such a devoted mother. She is taking them all over the city on her usual missions of cultural enrichment. I’ve accepted a challenging role in a Franco-German-Norwegian production, so must get back to the darn script. Many pages to learn, since I like to go into rehearsals well prepared. We leave for Oslo on Friday. Sorry, no possibility of getting back to the States until perhaps the fall. Violet has an idea for a new routine for you. She will be calling you one of these days. She sends her love. Talk to you soon.

Trent”

“
Damn, that’s not very enlightening,” said Veeva. “Well, perhaps Nick didn’t use my aunt’s name in his diaries. He might have used a pet name.”

“
Like what?”

“
I don’t know. Like Snookums or Twinkle Toes.”

“
I could call Uma that. She polishes her toenails and sprinkles them with glitter. It’s amazing.”

“
Enough about that small town hick, Noel. Jesus!”

“
Uma is not a hick. She’s lived most of her life in Mississippi.”

“
One of our great cosmopolitan centers. OK, search for Saunders instead.”

That effort turned up two e-mails from Connie Saunders, both complaining in the bitterest terms about her difficult daughter. Veeva read them with interest, then snarled, “Yeah, well you ain’t seen nothing yet, lady. OK, what other words would you find in the diary of a teenage boy? Search for wanking.”

“
You’re the boss,” I sighed.

All the standard terms for self-abuse turned up nothing. Nick’s elusive diary was not on that computer. It might have been on his laptop, but that machine, we discovered, required a password to access.

“
Fuck and double fuck,” said Veeva. “Well, we’ll just have to give this house a thorough search. Leave no stone unturned!”

We finished in Nick’s bedroom just as we heard his BMW pull into the driveway. No diary, but we now knew a great deal about my brother’s personal tastes in underwear, ties, cufflinks, cologne, condoms, bedside reading material (mostly
Amusement Business
and
Billboard
magazines), sex lubes, shampoo, men’s cosmetics, and shaving apparatus (why does one guy need six electric razors?). And why does he have one white anklet sock matted in a silver frame above his dresser? Oh, and he also takes Rogaine to battle the dreaded Twispian curse of scalp-baring baldness. I’d never heard of the stuff, but Veeva says they sell it by the trainload in L.A.

She kissed me in the hallway, said we’d do the rest of the house tomorrow, and scampered off toward her bedroom. It’s 2:08, blog readers. Time for this dude to turn in. Oh, one last note: today is my brother’s 30
^th
birthday. The guy’s youth is now behind him.

1:15 p.m. Another scorching day. Veeva says Las Vegas is the waiting room to Hell in more ways than one. She roused me from bed at the ungodly hour of 8:30. Didn’t even knock. Just barged in and surprised me with my usual morning boner. I was embarrassed, but she says having younger brothers has destroyed any fascination she might have had for the ups and downs of male anatomy. She dragged me out of bed to finish searching the house before Nick woke up. Only the FBI could have given the place a more thorough going-over. No luck at all. I was beginning to think the Journals of Nick Twisp were all a myth.

Nick finally hauled his birthday carcass out of bed, and Veeva volunteered to take us all out to breakfast. No sign of Ada. We went to a local place, which turned out not to take American Express, so my brother ended up paying again. I felt bad because we hadn’t even bothered to scrounge up a present for him. I felt worse when he asked us if we were looking for anything in particular in his house or just snooping around. Damn, and I thought we’d been pretty careful to return everything just as we found it.

Veeva smiled and turned on the charm. “We’re looking for your diary, Uncle Nick. We want to know all about your eventful past with my aunt Sheeni.”

“
Did she send you to find it? Is that what she’s worried about?”

The guy seemed more than a little paranoid, even if he was turning 30, losing his hair, and breaking up with his girlfriend.

“
No way, Uncle Nick. My aunt’s never said boo about your diary. We’re just curious.”

“
Well, if she asks, you can tell her I’ve copied my journal files onto two CDs. One is in my safe deposit drawer in my bank; the other is in the safe of my attorney. Those are the only two copies and there they will stay until my death.”

Jesus, his diary must be even spicier and more incriminating than we had supposed. I wonder how hard it is to break into a lawyer’s safe?

“
You’re being awfully secretive about your past, Uncle Nick,” Veeva scolded.

“
Well, Sheeni also kept a journal during our time together,” he replied, still not smiling. “If you’re so interested, why don’t you bug her to read her account?”

“
Thanks for the information,” smiled Veeva. “We’ll do just that!”

On the way back, Veeva made us stop in a shopping center to buy a cake and candles for our host. She says supermarket bakery cakes are inedible, but we bought one anyway. I wanted chocolate, she preferred carrot, so we went with the latter. I paid this time, as not even I could make my brother buy his own birthday cake. We also got him one of those shiny metallic birthday balloons on a stick. Very festive. I sure hope my 30
^th
birthday is cheerier than his was turning out to be.

5:36 p.m. Kind of a boring afternoon, until Ada arrived with the moving van. Veeva said it wasn’t a surprise that all the passable furnishings got carted off by her. Personally, I think it was a little cruel of Ada to move out on her ex-boyfriend’s birthday–even if he was two-timing her with some Czech bimbo. Nick holed up in his office and worked on his computer while the movers were here. After they left, Veeva and I went swimming in Nick’s pool, but it really was too hot to stay outside even in the shade. Winnemucca may suck, but it rarely gets this absurdly hot.

Nick just phoned out for pizza. We’re going to have an early dinner, blow out the candles, then my brother is meeting some friends to “get very drunk.” Nope, we’re not invited, though he said we were free to watch anything on TV from his DVD collection. Perhaps we can find something R-rated starring that sexy beast Brandon De Wilde.

11:47 p.m. A momentous night. We never did get around to watching a movie. Instead Veeva wanted to talk about my brother. We spun a couple of his Frank Sinatra platters (to use the terminology of the era), and I scarfed down two more pieces of birthday cake. Interestingly, although we bought the cake that Veeva preferred, she didn’t actually deign to eat any. Veeva nibbled a celery stick and commented that Nick being such a Frank Sinatra fan proved that he was a romantic at heart.

“
Sounds pretty square to me,” I replied. “Are you sure this record is playing at the correct speed?”

“
Relax, Noel, it’s a slow tempo ballad. You know in his day Frank was considered very cool and hip–a real trendsetter.”

“
When was that? 1812?”

“
Just shut up and listen. OK, I’ve worked out a possible scenario. Nick and Sheeni fall in love, they have sex but the condom breaks or slips off or something. No birth control method is absolutely reliable. So they decide to run away to France, which Sheeni loved even back then. Of course, they have no money, but they hear about this rich lawyer in Ukiah. Nick robs him, but the gun goes off and the lawyer gets perforated. Now they really have to beat it, so they catch the next plane to France.”

“
I guess that makes sense, Veeva. So what happens next? Why did they break up?”

“
Well, you notice how hostile Nick is when he talks about Sheeni? Your brother is still very bitter. They must have had a fight and maybe she ditched him. It could be that Nick didn’t want her to get the abortion.”

“
I don’t know, my brother doesn’t seem very big on kids.”

“
That’s true, and my aunt loves my little cousins to bits. Perhaps it was Nick who was championing the abortion.”

“
Yeah, according to my mother, he wasn’t too thrilled to hear she was going to have me. He wanted her to get rid of me too.”

Yup, if Nick had any clout, I’d have been a bit of ectoplasm in the vacuum at Planned Parenthood. A close call for me.

“
That’s only natural, Noel. Siblings are very competitive. I might be a much nicer person today if my brothers hadn’t come along.”

“
I think you’re pretty nice.”

“
Then kiss me, dummy. Why do you suppose we’re listening to this music?”

So we kissed a long time while Frank crooned away about love and loneliness and longing and despair. Somewhat inconvenient for making out, though, because you have to get up every 20 minutes to flip the record over. And by then some of us were impaired by throbbing erections. Still, I suppose it was an improvement over the days when you had to stop every three minutes to wind the Victrola and change the needle.

On the third album Veeva dropped her bombshell.

“
I think now is the time,” she announced. “We should do it.”

My heart stopped beating for a nearly a minute.

“
You think we should?” I said at last. “I hear it’s not so good when two virgins go at it.”

“
Don’t be ridiculous, Noel. It’s
always
good for the guy. It’s usually unpleasant for the girl, but fortunately for you I’m a realist and have zero expectations. Now go upstairs and grab a couple of your brother’s condoms.”

“
Should I get the lube too?”

“
I hardly think that will be necessary. But get a couple of bath towels. We don’t want to mess up his ugly sofa.”