The Cosmopolitans (24 page)

Bette witnessed and was amazed by this prescient moment in her own life. She watched with wonderment as Hortense responded with such a deep well of feeling to something so patently false. It was incredible. The vanity of it. Oh, these false people who respond to falsity. The absolutely rotting excrement of their selfishness. How it showed them to be undeserving of respect. That engaged relationship to artifice.

In her three decades of simply going to work, doing her job, caring for Earl, listening, reading, making dinner, looking out the window—the simplicity and truth of that life—Bette had never even had a glimpse that this other kind of existence could be so pervasive.

“Oh no,” Bette shook her head.

“What's wrong?”

“I was just realizing that Earl . . . well, Earl . . .” Bette sighed. “He is a man of such great gifts. It would be unimaginable to ask him to make a television commercial,
like he was a charlatan on the medicine circuit hawking snake tonic to unsuspecting housewives. It's not dignified.”

“A TV COMMERCIAL?” Hortense was apoplectic. Her eyes glowed like blood diamonds. “For me? Oh, Bette. This is wonderful!” Her face exploded with hubris. Bette could see Hortense lapping up the milk. This was the greatest moment in Hortense's life, and the moment did not even really exist. How appropriate.

“Yes, of course,” Bette said sympathetically. “I can see why
you
are excited.”

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh, thank you, Cousin Bette. I will be on television. Television.” And she skipped around the room like a little girl learning “Skip to My Lou.” “Everyone will see me!”

“Yes,” Bette said sadly. “Everyone will see you playing a queen.”

“A QUEEN!”

“And everyone will see Earl playing a cannibal.”

“Oh.” Hortense's face fell in the tragedy of recognition. “He is not going to want to do that.”

“I know,” Bette said, thrilled to be reassured that Earl still had his standards. Then imitating Valerie's tactic of sealing the deal with silence, Bette waited. She waited for her young charge to take up the task.

“Maybe I can convince him.”

Hortense was a greedy little pig, just as Bette had expected her to be.

“Do you think you can?”

“I will have to.” Hortense squared her shoulders to the adult responsibility of getting someone else to work against their own best interests so that she could
advance. But she was steadfast about it. Noble. As though helping Earl defile himself was an example of good citizenship. “I will have to convince him. We need the money, there is no escaping that. And he's not getting anywhere on his own.”

“But if you try to convince him and he still won't . . .” Bette pulled on the guise of anticipatory sadness for Hortense's potential defeat.

“. . . Then I won't get the part either?”

Bette stared into the panic and nodded.

“Well, then. I'll just have to make him,” Hortense resolved. “That's all there is to it. I will persuade him tonight.”

There was something fascinating about working with a subject both intelligent and malleable. Hortense was quick, but she had no values. Her mind raced ahead, and so Bette could lead her toward particular conclusions. Hortense advanced two steps at a time, but Bette could now handle up to three. This particular chapter of the Plan would be more complex than the previous ones, but no matter. Now that her evenings were free, Bette had the time. It was a matter of commitment, and this, after all, was the most important task of Bette's life. Her devotion was boundless. Hopefully when this was all over and Earl stopped punishing her for the pain in his life, the two of them could apply some of these methods to getting him the production that he craved, of a play he was suited to perform. Why not? Anything seemed possible. They could do it together.

“
Good girl,”
Bette borrowed from Valerie, spoken half to Hortense and half to herself. “When Earl sees
what you really stand for and how much those values mean to you, then he will come to understand the real you, and only then, my darling Hortense, the truth, as has been said,
will out
.”

“I'm going to be on TV.” Hortense floated out of the apartment.

Once she was safely gone, Bette turned the lock in the door. She did not want to be disturbed. Solemnly, she stepped to the window, drawn by its magic. This time, however, she was not there to watch the movie of other people's world. No, cravingly, she pulled down the window shade and reviewed her notes.

              
4.
  
Offer
her
this job
.

Bette took out her black pen. The thick one she had bought at Woolworth's expressly for this purpose. Brandishing the marker like the sword of Excalibur, Bette made the long awaited mark of progress.

CHECK!

Chapter 24

A
lphonso Lazio came back, after hours, to pick up the bottle of wine he'd purchased for his in-laws' anniversary. He'd made it all the way to the Third Avenue Bridge before remembering the gift was still sitting on his desk back on Gansevoort Street. But he could not show up empty handed. Not since the bad business with his cousin Stevie's house renovations. Everyone was calling Alphonso a “cheapskate,” and he couldn't stand to have them think of him that way. So, he drove the forty minutes back downtown and rushed into the office to get the bottle. That's when he walked in on one of the black guys giving another black guy a blow job. Down on his knees, of all things.

“What the fuck?”

The young one, on the receiving end, looked up from his pleasure with an expression of terror, pulled out, zipped up his pants, and ran. But the old guy, who turned out to be that actor fruit, he just sat there on the floor like he couldn't care less. Like he didn't have a
thing on his mind except a mouthful of dick. Like nothing could faze him, that guy. If you asked Alphonso, and no one did because whatever made him fire those men was something he did not want to discuss with his brothers, he would have said that the old guy wanted to get caught. That he'd almost had a smile on his face, and it wasn't from the BJ. Like he was happy to be out on his ass.

Walking home, Earl knew he was in trouble. More than usual, but he felt numb.
Money, whatever
. Something would come up. Maybe now he could move to Harlem like he'd always wanted to, didn't have the excuse that he could walk to the job. But as he wandered through those familiar streets of Greenwich Village, Earl also started thinking that something was changing around there. It had to do with his own attitude during the audition. How he didn't even have to think it over before blowing it up, and then Frank's advice to take it easy and be a professional. Was Frank right? Perhaps. Earl had to care a lot to keep ruining everything, didn't he? Was this investment just habitual, or did everything still really matter
oh so much
? Maybe nothing mattered, and he should just obey other people's orders and let it all disappear into air, his wishes. Maybe. The other thing that had hung around in his consciousness since that day was the brief conversation with Anne Meara. When she mouthed “blacklist,” like everyone did, and then somehow they both realized it might be on its way out. If Burgess Meredith was directing again. Blacklist, bye-bye? Maybe soon. A new era. What would it be? Now Earl was fired, and he was throwing acting roles out the window. He had
a
girlfriend
and was still on his knees. Everything was new now. It was all mixed up. That's the sign of change. Confusion. Stagnancy isn't confusing. Change is. Maybe something real was just about to happen.

Earl turned down Cornelia Street and saw an old dancer he knew named Joe painting a storefront, like he was opening a shop or something. 31 Cornelia.

“Hey, Joey.”

“Earl. Long time.”

“What's happening?”

“Well, you know, I retired from dancing.”

Earl didn't know but wasn't surprised. Joe was too fat to make it as a dancer.

“I didn't know. So what's happening here?”

Joe was an Italian queen, a fag. Dark eyes, dark hair, eternally paunchy. Nice boyfriend named Jon who was an electrician or something.

“Opening a café. Or a theater. Or who knows. Caffe Cino. Two
f
s, the Italian way. Look, we're decorating. Fairy lights, mobiles, glitter dust, and Chinese lanterns. We're gonna put on shows, if I can ever pay off enough cops to get the right license. Come over, hang out.”

“You got some good parts for black actors?” A challenge. Earl's mood.

“Just bring whatever you want to do. If your astrological sign lines up, you can put on a show.”

Earl looked at Joe. It all made sense, somehow. It was in fact obvious—wasn't it? Some kind of fag theater where the guys could just do what they wanted to do. Some more guys who had come to the same conclusion.
Don't give a fuck
because they have nothing to lose. “Sure,” he said. “I'll come by.”

But as soon as he walked away, it seemed ridiculous. Joe Cino couldn't pull off anything. The place would close before it opened. But Earl would check it out, but . . . maybe. He didn't know what to think.
Leon, Leon, Leon
. He'd never see that boy again. That boy would run home and hide under the bed and get on the next bus to Tennessee, and that was that. Gone.

Earl dreaded going home and explaining all this to Hortense. And then he didn't care. He switched back and forth between hope and anxiety, fear, indifference, and boredom at his catalog of dilemmas. He passed a phone booth and weirdly had the thought to phone Bette and then quickly brushed it off. Then he turned down Eighth Street, looking at the junkies in Nedick's and the new beatnik shops slowly encroaching on the old Chinese restaurant: one from column A and one from column B. He passed the Eighth Street Bookshop, and there in the window was the same paperback that Frank had been reading.
Giovanni's Room
by James Baldwin, who everyone knew was a queen. Earl had three dollars in his pocket. He was broke. The book was ninety-five cents. He went in, purchased it, and then sat down for a couple of hours of slow twenty-five-cent beers at the Pony Stable Inn, surrounded by noisy bulldaggers and some quiet fags. Better there than to go to Julius's where the straight couples were oblivious.
How the hell could straight people be so selfish all the time? How come they never, ever, ever see what's going down?

Earl opened the book and started to read, and didn't get up to stagger home until he had read the whole damn thing.

Well
, Earl thought, crawling back to Tenth Street,
now
that
was interesting. Unique
, he could honestly say. Every now and again, he'd remember a passage and open the book up under the streetlight of whatever corner he was on, trying to find the right page.

Like when the dirty, old, queer Frenchman, Jacques, wants to be a kind of wisdom figure for closeted, ashamed David . . . There it was, the passage Earl remembered:

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.

That's where Earl had once lived, but he wasn't there anymore. The book was describing something he knew very well but had left behind. There was just a blank there now. The era of fantasy had run ragged over his will, soul, and desire for so long, and yet, he had to admit, it had dissipated and—poof!—seemed to be gone. He'd humiliated Bette and Hortense. Now he felt better. He felt deader. Better or deader? Hmmm. Sure, Leon got his dick hard, his heart pumping and all of that. He loved Leon. He did. But there was a sadness that was bigger than all of it really. So, what was that sadness going to give him? What was he going to get out of it? Something was going to give, to give in. The world was going to give in or else he was on his way down further. Down so much further. How much further was there left for anyone to fall?

You want to be
clean
. You think you came here covered with soap—and you do not want to
stink
, not even for five minutes, in the meantime. . . . You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to
kill
him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are
immoral
. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look,
look
what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is
this
what you should do to love?

Nope, that's not me
. He knew. It wasn't gonna be that easy.

Chapter 25

I
t was a short number of long days until the party Bette would give, the denouement of the Plan. But with the newly acquired discipline of her commitment, she imagined, planned, and carried out a perfect evening. Not only had she never thrown a party before, the truth was that she had hardly ever been to any. That is to say, invited to a gathering in a person's home for fun, where they provide everything needed and all one is expected to do is enjoy. It would be going too far to say that she
liked
parties, as a result of this one. But they certainly were demystified greatly in her imagination.

Bette had never bought so many groceries before, and there was no way to get them all home. Fortunately, the young night clerk from the Albert had gotten to work early with nothing to do and had kindly carried the bundles into her apartment.

“I got five rejection letters so far,” he sighed, needing to confess his failures to every person on the path.

Each time the manuscript came back he had to retype the torn or coffee-stained pages, place it in a fresh envelope with a fresh return enclosed, and pray on the way to the post office. Sometimes its pages would be barely ruffled, and Sam's heart would break.
How could they know if they won't take a look?
He had no idea of how any of this really worked. Don't they want the best book, or was it all whim?

“What's the title?” Bette asked, unpacking her bags and calculating all the tasks before her, assured that they would be completed if she would just do and do and do.

“‘The Cosmopolitans,'” Sam said, proudly. He enjoyed his title. “I wanted it to sound like a Henry James novel but with an ironic twist. What does it mean to be truly sophisticated in the ways of city life in the modern age? In 1958 it's not society etiquette and the grand tour of Europe, that's for sure. It's a savvy of a very different sort. More barroom than drawing room. More subway than carriage. It's the mix, not the separation, that makes someone
cosmopolitan
. In my view.”

“I like Henry James,” Bette said absentmindedly, and then realized she had not been listening to the boy, and felt badly because he was discussing his dream after all. “Here,” she said, trying to make amends. “Do you want this copy of
Giovanni's Room
? I've been carrying it around for weeks and will never have time to read it.” She rummaged in her purse and handed over the paperback. “Oh, I'm sorry, I've scribbled all over it.”

“That's okay,” he said, mildly interested, jamming the paperback into his jacket pocket, between the
four pens he always carried and that tiny notebook filled with observations. “I'll take a look when I get a chance.” And he went back across the street to start immediately on a brand new novel, about a girl this time, who meets a young hotel night clerk who holds the keys to her dreams.

Bette began slicing, placing, cleaning, organizing, and doing all the labor of welcoming others. The agenda for this party was a complex one and orderly snacks and drinks would help bring events along to their desired climax. Of course, there is the old adage that one can't control other people. But on the other hand, other people seem endlessly able to control
one
. That's the game, isn't it? Becoming
them
. And the rub. Without intention, their blows are unavoidable while one's own gestures seem to evaporate before given a chance to land. Yet, here Bette was determined to have an impact, and
then
what? In that switch lay the power play. If her plan were to fully succeed, how would it feel to watch others be forced to react to her? Fun for its own sake? Yes, to a degree. Satisfying beyond measure? Absolutely. She could feel huge burdens fall away. With Earl she had never prepared her actions or speech. She was a sap. With this crew, however, our lady was stocked to the gills with the newfound insight of selection. She knew that through awareness came preparation, so all surprises and disappointments created opportunities. To react. For the first time in her life, our Cousin Bette was ready to take the reigns no matter what.

There had never been so many people in apartment 2E. She felt a simple pleasure in that fact alone. It
was informative to discover how many could fit comfortably. That actually there was quite a bit of space between the bedroom, kitchen, dining area, and living room. It had felt small, like a cage or a trap, when she sat in there alone, but with others gathered about, it was fine. More than adequate. The distraction of activity was enjoyable, but it was second to the enormous pleasure of watching her play come to life. Just as she'd carefully imagined. And now she had a title for it: “The Cosmopolitans.”

Bette took her place on the sofa. She leaned over gracefully and whispered to Crevelle, the way they had before, regularly, when they were girls. Before Frederick lied. Now, because of how Bette was reacting to Earl's cruelty, taking control, she had created the opportunity to return to that very same moment, with the same cousin. She had given herself the chance to
relive
, literally, the delicious feeling of nostalgia. She had forgotten that this alliance ever existed, but once reenacted, it felt natural. It brought back the long-repressed knowledge that her entire life had, in fact, occurred. That she and Crevelle had been friends. Even though it was a conscious deployment now, it was still easy to conspire, gossip, have inside jokes. Bette pantomimed the “natural” intimacies of family. They really could and should have been hers all along, she knew that finally.

Valerie quickly made herself at home, as though apartments like Bette's were her natural habitat. She made no comment about the television in the middle of the living room, now serving as a banquet, covered with a tablecloth and bottles. Valerie easily glided over
to the Victrola and flipped through Bette's records, looking for music that fit her mood. There were some that surprised her as being rather fashionable sounds of previous eras. Good music of the past. She realized Bette had known something at some point, about the world she lived in. That in her own weird way, old Bette had at some point been cool.

Hector got busy mixing the third round of martinis. He used a recipe that his father-in-law relied on religiously back in Connecticut, where mixing martinis was a competitive sport. The catalyst for all of life's most important moments. Hector had finally found a practical use for that television set. It was now the bar, a far more effective social role than any Bette could have come up with. She'd found it useful as a drying rack for hand-washed clothes, but beyond that it sat inert, like a piece of sculpture in the middle of her life.

When Crevelle leaned in even closer, Bette smelled her perfume. It was the same scent as the flowers in the fields outside Ashtabula. The freshly succulent, a smell not to be found in New York City except in the Flower Market just after sunrise. Bette remembered it. And then she was uncomfortable, recalling how lovely those fields could be. How soft. The sun roasting her back. A deep longing stabbed her. But she had prepared for that, so now she had the fortitude to wait it out. So what, after all, if she had a bad feeling? That went with the territory when one had larger goals.

“This is my third evening with Hector since I've returned to New York,” Crevelle cooed. “My head has turned.”

Bette saw how flushed her cousin was. She seemed
drunk with a new kind of freedom, the illusion of expansion of emotion and experience. That was the treasure that the city had always promised. Bette twinkled. Another newcomer to the power of that dream. How ironic.

“Turned and turned,” Crevelle giggled. “You and I have made no progress with Hortense, and yet everything in life feels changed.”

“Do you like him?” Bette touched her lips to her cousin's ear.

“He loves me.”

“How do you know?” She had practiced this too. She focused on each moment with the intensity of a plunging gorge at the base of a shattering waterfall. Finding the right intonation to convey that the details of how beloved Crevelle found herself to be were the most important acts of life.

“He treats me like I am making his future possible,” she sighed, amazed.

Crevelle said this in a Midwestern elocution-class sort of way. She was still locked into the buttery, second-rate Victorian manners of the ancient, derivative culture clinging to the bourgeoisie of the central states.

“He treats me,” Crevelle slurped, “like I am bringing him closer to the things he needs the most. He sees me as something more than just myself. In Hector's eyes, I am . . . almost . . . a symbol. Yes, he sees me as a symbol of everything he's ever really wanted. The electricity between us is . . . palpable.”

That was the same word Hortense had used.
Palpable
.

Bette looked over at Hector. His eyes were on Valerie.
Yes, little Hector was finally able to feel passion. It made Bette feel almost warmly toward him. Almost somewhat protective. Both Valerie and Hector were stimulated by Crevelle's influx of cash. They felt more attractive as a result. Hector had propelled this lust toward making Valerie jealous. And so, all of his desire for Valerie was, as Freud would say,
projected
onto Crevelle, the
thing
that could get him what he had to have. He had turned Crevelle into an item, a stapler or a button. Something he needed in order to get something else.
Bravo
, Bette thought. It was amazing what marketing could do when applied to daily life.

“Do you love him?” Bette whispered seductively.

“Bette!” Crevelle blushed. “I am a married woman.”

“But,” Bette fed her hypocrisy. “Doooo you?”

“Oh,” she fluttered. “Bette, I am losing my head. I've never felt so valuable before. So powerful. And just for being me. Me! What am I going to do?”

Bette knew, as she watched her cousin be led down the path to ruin, that there was nothing so informative as seeing people be misled. She had never sought out the falsity of the world before because she had never had to fight falsity. She had been protected. Bette had simply stayed in her honest apartment, done her fair job, and loved her true friend. Now, Earl's turn had thrust her into the world of the terrible others, and there were so many of them. And they were so awful. On one level it was fascinating, the quantity. But suddenly, for one moment, she was overcome by something between nostalgia and clarity, and missed her own life so deeply. As she looked around the party, she took in the full range of her loss. The loss of Earl
was the loss of herself. Were she not facing such enormous stakes, she would rather have collapsed into bed and burst into tears. She missed him so much. She was sadder than sad. And here, at this moment, she learned the harsh truth about parties. If the person you love is shunning you, no party will bring joy. One doesn't undo the other, after all. And this knowledge was a surprise. Where was he? Where
was
he?

“Follow your heart, Cousin,” she told Crevelle, without betraying a tinge of interior truth. “This is New York. It's a long, long way from Ashtabula, Ohio. You can be yourself here. Or somebody else.”

“Yes,” Crevelle smiled with the poison of permission. “I can be somebody else.”

Hector arrived with the martinis on a tray.

Valerie chose a fairly recent Mel Tormé album and put it on the turntable.

Hector held out his hand in invitation.

“
I've got the world on a string,”
sang Mel.

Crevelle looked at Bette and then stood to take Hector's hand.

As they danced, he surreptitiously turned toward Valerie to gather emotion and then back to Crevelle to deposit it.

Bette sat, lonely on the couch, surprised and pleased to have her sadness interrupted by a visit.

“Can I join you?” Valerie plopped down beside her with an energetic bounce.

It didn't take long for Bette to scan from Valerie's friendly, teasing eyes to the familiar piece of paper she held in one hand. Realizing what it was, Bette twitched with fear, as though shouted out by a ghoul.

“I found this under your window shade,” Valerie said. She was still smiling, as if she had instead said, “Lovely party.” Valerie held Bette's very ornate plan in the clutch of her painted fingertips.

Bette now automatically learned from every move Valerie Korie had ever made.
So, that's how they do it
, Bette thought through her terror.
Smile no matter what
.

“I see,” Bette said calmly. Then she smiled.

“Yes, our Rococo campaign is about to launch.”

“Yes,” Bette grinned.

“The stakes are very high.”

“Everything depends on it,” Bette said.
Agree
, she remembered.
Agree
.

“I admire how much you care,” Valerie said softly. She was very friendly. “About the company.”

“Thank you.”

“In fact, I admire how much you care about your work. And about the future of television. This checklist of yours is very commendable. It's efficient, systematic, and modern. You are a great employee.”

Compliment
, Bette noted.
Always compliment
.

“Thank you so much, Valerie. There is something so very exciting about working this way. I've learned a lot from you about thinking ahead and then implementing it. It's so energetic. And personal. It's fun. To care about what comes next.”

“We all have personal motives,” Valerie said, driving the train.

“I'm glad. What are
your
motives?”

“Ha-haa!” Valerie laughed even though nothing was funny.

Laugh
, Bette noted.

Valerie smiled at nothing, looking gorgeous, then sensuously surveyed the room as though decoding and processing everything in her view. She turned back to Bette, bright red lips pursed, and then relaxed into an expression of pure honesty. This was the pose of how one speaks to the only person one has ever truly relied on. The only sure person in one's life. The only person who is real. The only person who matters.