Yellow Mesquite (39 page)

The address turned out to be a town house just off Union Square. The usual cast of characters were present: artists, actors, poets, composers—men with beards and long hair, both men and women in jeans and army fatigues with sneakers and tie-dyed shirts. Of the women who were dressing up rather than down several wore the new miniskirts that were coming into vogue—suede and corduroy and velvet. He wondered if he himself was just another wannabe.

He put away his coat and moved through the crowd, nodding to a few people he recognized. He found a table stocked with food and drink, put the bouquet down, made himself a Jack straight up and took a sliver of cheese on a cracker.

Interesting art decorated the walls; several unusual sculptures made of bound saplings and vines suggested a kind of primitive native-village feel. Loud rock played from somewhere in back.

He spied Charmin talking to a man who stood out for his business suit and tie. Charmin was thin, her face blessed with a model’s bone structure. A sometime actress and Warhol porn star, her real name was Sarah Jane Brown or some such, but supposedly Warhol had renamed her after a roll of paper towels—she claimed it was a roll of toilet paper. She wore a man’s Italian undershirt, nipples showing through like toggle switches, and a black miniskirt that hung on her hips and showed off good legs. She stood in a swaying S-curve, chin lowered, looking up at the suit with a half-smile from under arched brows.

Harley had met her only briefly and was surprised that she had remembered him at all, let alone invited him to this New Year’s Eve party. He was even more surprised when she spotted him and excused herself from the suit and came forward, head tilted, the smile bent up one side of her pixie face, hair falling down over one brow, like Lauren Bacall.

“I need a drink,” she said. “These parties, they drive me up the wall.”
 

He took her hand, kissed her on each cheek. “Nice place.”

She dipped her chin, smiled a conspiratorial smile, dropped a cube of ice in a plastic cup. “It isn’t mine, you know. I’m house sitting for a friend. He’s going to die when he finds out I had this party.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“What’s really going to piss him off is when he finds out he paid for it.” She tossed her hair, an impish smile. “Aren’t I awful?”
 

He grinned. “We’ll take up a collection to get you out of jail.”

“That capitalist bastard, he owes me more than I could ever spend in a lifetime.”

“Here,” he said, picking up the bouquet. “For you.”

“Oh…thank you.” She took the flowers, looking around for something to put them in. “No one ever brings me flowers. It’s so quaint.”
 

“Yeah. Right. Every man in town’s knocking your door down with flowers.”

“Every man in town? There
aren’t
any men in town.” She cut her eyes each way and leaned toward him in a conspiratorial manner. “Faggots. All faggots. Not a good fuck in the whole lot.” She gave him her mischievous look from under peaked eyebrows.

He managed a smile in turn.

“Make yourself another drink,” she said. “I’m already bombed myself. Haven’t had any sleep in three days. Oh, I hear your wife left?”

He paused. “Where did you hear that?”

She smiled obliquely. “It’s a small community.”

He finished off his drink.

“I’ve got to get back to that obnoxious pig you saw me with. He’s a Hollywood producer, you know, wants to make me a star, the son of a bitch. What he
really
wants is to fuck my brains out.”

“Um.”

“Catch you later.” She laid the flowers on the counter and sauntered back through the crowd.

So, people were gossiping about him, him, a person of no consequence. Of course, people were still associating him with Frankie. He topped off his drink.
 

He wandered among the crowd, through a babble of noise. A woman smiled suggestively; a couple of boys dipped their shoulders in passing. He took a seat on a sofa between a baby grand piano and a woman with a cloud of blond hair anchored to her head with a red headband. On her other side sat a young Negro woman who looked like an African princess. Dazzling.
 

The blonde turned to him. “You like the music?” Her eyes were hard, disturbed.

The African princess leaned out to look at him. She had big soft almond eyes and glossy tangerine lips. Her hair was done up on top in a pile of ringlets. She wore black pants and a lime-green blouse with balloon sleeves. A jangle of necklaces, gold and silver, glittered down the front. Exotic.

“This music? I don’t mind it,” he said.

“Those are the Kinks, man. They’re playing ‘Tired of Waiting for You.’”
 

He strained to hear over the party noise. It sounded as if they were going at the guitars with claw-hammers.

“They’re all right,” he said.

“Far out, man.”

The princess smiled nicely.

“Know how they get that sound?” asked the blonde, her mouth a hairline curl of red.

“How?”

“Knitting needles, man. Fucking knitting needles. Got them stuck in the amplifiers.”

“Knitting needles?”

“I ain’t shittin’ you, man.” The blonde screwed her slit eyes down on him.

He shrugged. “Hey, I believe it.”

“I was just telling Crystal here about my friend Sandy. Have you met Crystal?”

He leaned out to make eye contact. “Crystal. Hi. I’m Harley.” He tried to match her smile.

“Harley? Hey, dig it, man. Named after a fucking motorcycle. I’m Lady Jane. Well, like I was saying, man, it was a weird scene, y’know? I mean, he’s big, and shit, lookit me. Broke my fucking nose. I mean, I’m a model, I can’t go around with a broken nose. Shit, when I look back on it now I don’t, y’know, dig it, but I’d been through some pretty heavy shit at the time, y’know? I mean, like, I was dealing then, and you run into every kinda crazy dickhead in the world, dealing. I mean, shit, that son of a bitch finally turned into a junkie hisself. Me? Fuck, I never thought that little of myself.”

The princess nodded, agreeing yes and no with whatever Lady Jane said.

“Broke my nose at this party. See, I got this lesbian friend, Sandy. She’s an artist. Shit, you’d like her work, y’know? I mean, she has this sculpture the cockroaches live in.”

The princess smiled her demure tangerine smile.

“Well, me’n Sandy, we got it on, y’know? When I told Bill, he was fucking pissed. Broke my nose. I mean, like, I thought we had an honest relationship, y’know? Besides, it was none of his fucking business.”
 

The urge Harley had felt to be with people dissolved; all he wanted was to be back in his clean, spacious loft with his paintings, the smell of turpentine and oil paint, the soul-soothing notes of Mozart, gentle in the silence.
 

He stood up from the sofa. “Excuse me.” He turned to leave, then stopped in his tracks. His mind scrambled. It took a moment to fully comprehend that he was staring, face-to-face at Frankie, her eyes considerably larger at the moment than he remembered.

“Man,” the blonde was saying,” I oughta go back and cut that son of a bitch’s balls off.”

“Frankie…” he mumbled.

“My god,” she said softly, her voice barely audible amid the party noise.

“What a surprise…” He hardly knew what he was saying.

Frankie stared in turn, her glistening lips parted in astonishment. She collected herself, drew a breath, nodded aside at Lady Jane on the sofa. “This…Sherylynne…your wife?”

He laughed out loud. “Hardly. Sherylynne went back to Texas.”

“Fucking asshole,” Lady Jane was grumbling to the princess.
 

Frankie’s eyes searched his. “For a visit?”

“For good.”

“Oh… I’m sorry…” But the hesitation, the slight shift in her expression said otherwise. “Are you…with someone?” She glanced aside at the Lady Jane person again.

“In fact, I was just leaving.”

Frankie’s hair was done up as he remembered, little coils springing down at her temples. She wore a holiday-red blouse of some shimmering material over black velvet slacks. Her nails and makeup were perfect—that elegant sheen he recalled so vividly.

“How about you?” he asked. “How’ve you been?”

She smiled, a little forlorn. “Ups and downs, the same as everyone.” Then, hesitant: “I’m single now, too.”

“You mean…?”

She let go a long, pent-up breath. “I need another drink.”

“I could use one myself.”

“Asshole wouldn’t give me any breathing room,” Lady Jane was saying to the princess.

“And you, are you here with someone?” Harley asked as they made their way to the island bar.
 

“Yes,” she said.

“Is it serious?”
 

“Not too.” Frankie dropped a cube of ice in her glass with the tongs and swirled her drink with the tip of her finger.
 

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Right now.”

“You mean…just leave him?”

“Let’s do it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“The hell you can’t. Come on.”

“Hey,” she said softly. “Take it easy.”
 

He was surprised by his own aggressive eagerness. He reminded himself that other than that last memorable kiss one year ago, there had never been anything between them but friendship, and that was likely because of their mutual friendship with Mavis.

“Yeah. Right,” he said. “Sorry.”

She smiled, observing him over the rim of her drink. “I like your shirt.”

“My—”

“And the bolo.”

He grinned, embarrassed, thankful he wasn’t wearing a Stetson. “I think I’m a cowboy. Don’t tell me any different.”

The music changed. The Kinks, or whoever, scratched off. Someone turned a TV on, and everyone started whistling and shouting. The room as a whole began to count down in unison to the music of Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians broadcasting from the Waldorf Astoria, yelling in chorus: “Nine…eight…seven…” A man, who looked like the Marlboro Man in a dark blazer and an open-collared shirt, appeared alongside Frankie and took her in his arms. She withdrew a little, eyes darting aside at Harley. “…three…two…one!” Then everybody whooped and yelled. Champagne corks popped, and everyone was kissing—Lady Jane kissing the African princess—everyone shouting and whistling. Harley stood alone, awkward in the melee, trying not to react as the Marlboro Man kissed Frankie. She drew back a little, smiled politely and regained her composure.
 

“Harley,” she said over the noise, flushed, “This is Baxter.” Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians were playing and everyone was singing, “Should old acquaintance be forgot…” The man, Baxter, smiled at Harley, obviously recognizing that the dynamics had changed as he extended his hand.
 

“Nice to meet you,” Harley said, feeling the outsider on every hand. The man was, as Harley would have expected, intelligent looking, a hint of gray at the temples, tastefully dressed, much like Mr. Mussette—one of the privileged set. Harley struggled with a brief flicker of inferiority, of jealously.
 

“Harley and I go way back,” Frankie said, neither encouraging nor discouraging Baxter’s hand on the small of her back.

“I was just leaving,” Harley said.

“Oh. It was nice seeing you again,” Frankie said, holding forth her hand.
 

Harley took it briefly. “Good to see you, yes.” He glanced at Baxter. “Nice meeting you.” Harley turned then, went to get his coat, making his way toward the entrance, leaving the music, the smell of marijuana and his damaged ego behind.

Beyond the fact that in one single moment he had been overcome with revulsion for the Lady Jane person, and in the next demented with joy over Frankie, and in turn crushed by the presence of the Baxter guy, it registered somewhere in the subterranean reaches of his mind that in those same few moments his bank account had undergone a similar transformation—from ten thousand to a whopping twenty-two
.

Chapter 42

Misplaced Mail

A
T 5:00 A.M
.
Harley was wide awake. In fact, he wasn’t sure whether he had slept at all, his mind in a turmoil the entire night. Frankie. Frankie divorced. Frankie. Frankie with the guy Baxter. Frankie. Frankie who did appear glad to see him. Frankie. Frankie who had refused to leave with him. Frankie…Frankie…Frankie…

He made coffee, sat in a director’s chair in the artificial light of the studio and tried to put his mind in order, tried to take some solace in the paintings. But he was wired. He told himself that if nothing else, Frankie got his mind off of Sherylynne. But did that mean he was shallow? That one woman served just as well as another? He told himself that his attachment to Sherylynne was stronger because of Leah. But his love for Leah had noting to do with Sherylynne. Or did it? He’d shared intimacies with Sherylynne that seemed improbable with Frankie. Or were they?

Frankie called a few minutes before eight. “Sorry to call so early, but I wanted to catch you before you got off to work or somewhere.”

He experienced a surge of relief, struggled to maintain control. “No one works today.”

“Oh, New Year’s. Yes. Yes, of course. It was so good to see you again.”

“You too. Sorry if I was a little, uh, aggressive.”

“I felt a bit, what, awkward? You know, with Baxter in tow.”

“I guess we were both surprised.”

“Harley, you did say that Sherylynne went back to Texas?”

“We’re divorced. Yes.”

A moment of silence. “And you, are you okay?”

“I’m well. And yourself, how’re you doing?”

“Even under the best of circumstances, these things can be devastating.”

“You and Cecil?”

“Well, we never had a real marriage anyway.”

“Nevertheless…”

“Could I interest you in dinner tonight?”

“What about that guy Baxter?”

He recognized her laugh as forced. “Baxter’s one of the trustees at the Whitney.”

“Is it serious with you two?”

“I respect his intellect, but there’s nothing beyond that. We’re not involved, romantically. Regardless, it would have been unconscionable to leave him like that.”