The Heat of the Sun (10 page)

Seldom had I been so glad to see Aunt Toolie.

She looked exhausted. She had not removed her none-too-clean mink, and her cheeks were as bright as the hair piled beneath her cloche. Quickly, she gave us each a pecking kiss (‘School
reunion? How charming!’), fingered Trouble’s lapels (‘A man of taste, I see’), and landed in the seat alongside me (‘No, no, couldn’t eat a
thing
. But you
boys carry on’), before nudging me, glancing sidelong at my plate (‘Darling, if you’re just going to
leave
that...’) and snapping imperious fingers for a waiter
(‘Ketchup! Where’s the ketchup?’).

I said, ‘I thought you were meeting Miss Day.’

‘She left a message,’ Aunt Toolie replied, shoving a knife into the ketchup bottle. ‘Expects me to find her at the Captain’s Log – that dive! Oh, but such a day!
This morning I had Maisie and Daisy threatening to break up their act – why, why can’t those girls see they belong together? I put my foot through the kitchen floor. Then all afternoon
there was Copley Wedger – you know Wedger’s, the department store? Rich as Croesus, that fellow, absolutely
top drawer
,’ she added, for the benefit of our table companions,
‘and he was stomping about in a rage – though not in the kitchen, thank God. I said, “
Darling, Agnes loves you
.” Now there’s hope over expectation, for a start.
“
A girl likes to play hard to get, that’s all
.” Did he listen? He was incoherent, though admittedly a bottle and a half of bourbon had something to do with that.’

‘Agnes Day’s a Catholic schoolgirl,’ I explained to Le Vol. ‘Well, lapsed. Quite a lot, actually.’

‘You’ll help me find her?’ Pleadingly, Aunt Toolie gripped my hand. ‘If ever a girl was running after the wrong crowd, it’s Agnes. It’s time I brought my
moral influence to bear.’

‘Le Vol and I—’ I began, but Le Vol, to my surprise, waved aside my objections, polished off the last of his eggs, wiped his mouth, and declared that of course we must find
this remarkable young woman.

Rising, I held out a hand to Trouble. ‘See you tomorrow?’

‘Sharpless! Don’t you think I’m coming too?’ He sprang up, and something in his manner alarmed me. He was too excited, too eager.

I tried to apologize to Le Vol as we picked our way through the crowd.

Aunt Toolie grabbed me in the doorway.

‘Darling,’ she muttered, ‘I expect you to be on form tonight. Agnes has a new flame, I’m convinced of it. We’ve got to put a stop to it. Copley mustn’t know.
There he is, all six floors of luxury departments and a doddering paterfamilias possibly drawing his last breath
even as we speak
, and that wretched girl gallivants after any piece of
lowlife that gives her the time of day!’

‘And this from the Queen of Bohemia?’ I said, incredulous.

‘What do I care about Bohemia? I care about love.’

Aunt Toolie had no time to say more. Gathered in the street, our little party linked arms at Trouble’s insistence and scuffed off through the snow. Others on the sidewalk had to move out
of our way as we snaked merrily around a fire hydrant, then out into the street between automobiles.

That was the beginning of an odyssey that lasted until after midnight. Trouble took charge. At the Captain’s Log he bounded up to the door, rapping confidently; inside, he greeted the
barman with a hail-fellow-well-met air and turned to us, beaming, to ask what we wanted.

The place was packed. I craned my neck through the gloom. In one corner, jammed on a narrow podium, a college-boy band – slickers in white ducks – blared out ‘Riverboat
Shuffle’. Couples stomped in time; others huddled in booths; many embraced; the air was dark and smoky. Uneasily, I inspected the nautical decor: the nets that hung from the ceiling, the
snaking hawsers, the ships’ helms, the foxed engravings of Cunard liners. Aunt Toolie, shouting in my ear, said that Agnes could not be here yet; Trouble balanced four elaborate cocktails on his way back from
the bar, whipped them past obstructing shoulders, and deposited them into our hands. Dutifully I tried to talk to my aunt about Agnes, but before I could get far she was hugging a party of flapper
girls she knew from God-knows-where: uptown tourists in spangly gowns. For a time Trouble expatiated to me on the subject of my aunt (‘Why can’t she be
my
aunt? She’s
wasted on you’), before skittering off, leaving Le Vol to launch into fresh rhapsodies about Wyoming until Trouble returned, dragged Aunt Toolie back into our clench, and declared that the
lady (he had it on the best authority) had left earlier, bound for the Plaza.

Through gathering snow we hauled ourselves towards Sixth, where a cab, flagged by Trouble, swept us uptown.

‘The Plaza?’ I said to Aunt Toolie. ‘The new fellow can’t be quite the lowlife you thought.’

At the Plaza I feared the doormen would turn us back, but all that came were acknowledging nods for Trouble, who made his way around the Palm Court with the efficiency of a minesweeper before
informing us, in a bemused voice, that the young lady and the gentleman had finished their meal and taken themselves off to a certain coloured establishment.

Of the club in Harlem I remember little, only jostling elbows and shiny dark faces whirling in a raucous subterranean haze; then we were in the night again, piling into a flivver driven by one
of Trouble’s pals, our destination a roadhouse on the city limits, where the young lady and the gentleman had, apparently, said they were headed. Blearily, I thought we should let Miss Day
be. What were we doing, chasing this silly girl? We were on a fairground ride, whirling faster and faster. Speed was all that mattered; the speed was too much, but we couldn’t stop. All we
could do was go round and round.

The roadhouse was a dive more disreputable than the last, but Trouble, after abandoning us with a party of pinstriped gangsters, informed us after an hour or so that we’d made a little
mistake. The lady and the gentleman were in Manhattan after all, at a party on the Upper East Side.

‘What? You’re crazy! You’re as bad as you were at Blaze!’ Le Vol, enraged, flung himself at Trouble, but I calmed him, saying that we were all overwrought. Trouble
brushed aside the incident (‘Hot-tempered, aren’t they, the redheads?’) and the next thing I knew we were standing on the highway, hitching our way back into Manhattan.

Trouble picked up a ride for us soon enough.

When it ended, we stood before a vast, imposing apartment building that soared above Park Avenue. We crossed a marble lobby; we rode in an elevator – a universe of its own, bright as
summer, all mirrors and gold and engraved floral curlicues – ascending dreamily as if towards the heavens. Gates opened, disgorging us into a glittering panorama. An orchestra sounded; there
was the plash of a fountain; laughter rippled, civilized, urbane.

Bedazzled, we wandered through this palace of mahogany and gold, one magnificent chamber opening into another, miles above the darkened city. Oil paintings, sumptuous portrayals of Christian and
classical themes (a Titian? – a Rubens? – a Raphael?), flared gorgeously from each panelled wall; ceilings, pendulous with chandeliers, seethed with gilt and mouldings thirty feet
above; drawn-back curtains of red velvet framed in what looked like proscenium arches the spangled geometry of the city at night.

Dominating a central chamber was a broad imperial staircase of marble and gold, sweeping up towards mysterious higher reaches of the penthouse. The place might have been a Renaissance palazzo,
spirited to the heights of a Manhattan skyscraper. When Le Vol asked me what prince this palazzo might belong to, I could only shake my head. Trouble exclaimed delightedly. I asked Aunt Toolie if
we could still be in the same city of Wobblewood and ‘Eggs’ and the Captain’s Log, but her attention remained fixed on the object of our odyssey.

That object came upon us like a vision, as if, in the culmination of a quest, we had penetrated to the heart of the world. In the middle of Manhattan was a penthouse; in the middle of the
penthouse was a dance floor; and in the middle of the dance floor, on slick parquet, a creature of jewels and silver, too radiant to be real, circled in the arms of a darkly handsome man.

Aunt Toolie gasped: ‘Agnes... Copley!’

Trouble turned and laughed at us. He sounded crazy.

‘I knew! I knew all along! They told me at the Captain’s Log! I’ve led you all on a wild goose chase!’

Champagne floated by, borne on sparkling salvers; Trouble – ready, it seemed, for fresh pleasures – slipped into the party; Le Vol, a shabby scarecrow, moved as if to pursue him,
perhaps to strike him down, but guests in tuxedoes, furs, and spangly gowns milled too thickly to let him pass. Aunt Toolie, beside me, choked back a sob, thinking, no doubt, of those six floors of
luxury shopping; I put an arm around her, said, ‘All’s well that ends well!’ and she rested her head against my shoulder, watching in wonderment as her protégée
circled in the arms of Copley Wedger. We could forgive Trouble’s joke. ‘Sometimes, darling,’ Aunt Toolie said, ‘the world is a well-ordered place.’

I agreed. The evening was over: the curtain, at that point, should have fallen on the comedy.

But more was to come.

Le Vol fought his way back to the elevators. Alarmed, I called his name and struggled after him. Oh, but I was drunk, drunk! Pain throbbed in my damaged leg, but I flung myself into his way,
cutting off his path, just before he could slip through the elevator door.

‘Come back to Wobblewood. I’m sorry about tonight.’

‘Me too. I told you about Wyoming and you weren’t even listening.’

‘I was.’ I had heard some of it.

‘And I thought you could come with me! We could be a team: Le Vol, the man who does the pictures; Sharpless, the man who does the words. Why not? You want to be a writer.’

‘I
am
a writer,’ I said, too loudly.

Le Vol laughed. ‘You have to write
about
something, Sharpless. What have you written, since we left school?’

‘I’m working on a sonnet sequence.’

‘Sonnets? Didn’t anybody tell you this is 1927?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said. I would have added that several editors were eager to print my work, but at that moment my attention was diverted by passers-by: a band
of Orientals, three in a row, dressed identically in funereal suits. Something about them intrigued me, and I realized I had seen them, or others like them, before: already, through the shimmery
haze of this party, I had seen them many times, arms upraised with trays, backs bent to bow, heads nodding solemnly to others of their kind. They were servants: a private army of sleek, slender
young men with gleaming oiled hair and sallow, mask-like faces. The prince of this palazzo, it appeared, was a man of distinctive tastes.

When I turned back to Le Vol, he was gone.

And where might I find Trouble? It was useless. Bodies pressed hotly against me from all directions. An Oriental appeared at my side, proffering a champagne glass. I glugged from it
gratefully.

Hours later, or perhaps only minutes, I found myself in a plush armchair, gazing at the dance floor. The lights had dimmed; the orchestra, behind music stands like monogrammed shields, played
one of the hits of those years in a languorously slow arrangement.
Who... stole my heart away? Who... makes me dream all day?
Stars blurred in my eyes: from the champagne, from the
chandeliers, from the lovely gowns. Brilliantine, diamonds, and blue driftings of smoke flared and died away in the elegant gloom. Gentlemanly hands, banded at the wrists in cuffs crisp as paper,
smoothed the naked backs of girls with shingled hair. Dreamy solemn faces turned in my direction, then turned away. Like a spectre, my spirit moved between the dancers.

Far off I thought I saw Aunt Toolie towering over a portly, bald gentleman as she circled in his arms. Hardly handsome, but undoubtedly top drawer. Good old Aunt Toolie! I would always love
her.

The band slipped seamlessly into another slow number.

I thought about Le Vol. Naturally, I rejected his view of my life. But Greenwich Village was closing on me like a trap. Many a college crony had made his way to Paris and sent back ecstatic
reports about life on the Left Bank. Why languish in America, this puritanical backwater where money was all that mattered, where progress was measured in automobiles rolling off assembly lines,
and alcohol was illegal? ‘The business of America is business,’ said President Coolidge, but it was no business of mine. I asked myself if I had ever really been American: I was an
observer of Americans, that was all, tethered to their gravity but not of their world. Life beckoned – and where was life but Paris? In Paris, my talents would mature. I would master the
contemporary idiom. I would strike out on radical paths. I would sail away, gripping the railings of a Cunard liner, as the Statue of Liberty, and all its false promises, filled less and less of
the sky.

Even then, I knew I would never go.

From close by came a flurry of voices. Behind a potted palm a young man-about-town with copious coppery hair thrust aloft a glass and clashed it against those of his companions. Their
conversation, or rather his, was all gossip, and gossip about only the best people. Had they heard, cried the young man, that a certain heiress had whitewashed the wainscoting in her Connecticut
country house and replaced the priceless colonial furniture with pieces
très moderne
, made from glass and steel? And what of a certain young gentleman? Oh, it was too much! A subway
bathroom! His disgrace was complete. But Miss Something-or-Other! Could she really be holed up at the Waldorf-Astoria, after that dreadful business with...? They must investigate! They must stake
out the place!

The coppery hair, curled tortuously, shimmered and flashed.

‘And then,’ he declared, ‘there’s Yamadori.’

‘Yama-what?’ said a girl, and giggled.

‘My dear, I’m speaking of our host. What, you didn’t know we had one? Surely you didn’t assume this prestigious event, this lavish offering of hospitality of which we are
all partaking so fulsomely, simply sprang into being by magic? Did you suspect that no presiding intelligence had conjured it into life? Why, Yamadori’s a legend, a mystery – an
enigma
, that’s the word! A prince of Japan. See his servants with their yellow, blank faces, gliding here and there! Decorative, aren’t they? But where’s their master? They
say he hasn’t lived in Japan for years. Tangier, Cairo, Monte Carlo... he’s an international playboy. Everywhere he plants himself, his soirées are endless. Now this palazzo!
Shipped from Venice, every brick and tile, and rebuilt in the sky! How long he’ll be in New York nobody knows, but one thing’s for certain: he’ll have this town at his
feet.’