Barney's Version (35 page)

And now we were both drunk, but, fortunately, our compromising plates had been cleared by the time Fiona Darling swept into the dining room, Shelley trailing after her like a spoor, the two of them working the tables, raining blessings on those who were still A-list, while those not entitled to call-backs were dismissed with a nod. Finally they got to us. Stubby Fiona Darling, bejewelled, shrink-wrapped into a chiffon evening gown that bulged in the wrong places, her black velvet cape secured by a diamond-studded clasp. Shelley wore a tux, one of those purple ruffled shirts that always reminded me of a washboard, a string tie with a Navajo pendant, and hand-tooled cowboy boots, proof against snakebite when he risked crossing Rodeo Drive. “I'll bet you two old rascals had plenty to talk about,” said Fiona Darling, crinkling her cute, surgically sculpted nose, and impressing a scarlet lipstick stain on Hymie's all-but-bald pate. “I hear you guys had some lifestyle when you were in Gay Paree together in the old days.”

“Why in the hell didn't Shelley warn me that he couldn't speak?”

“Now now. That's not nice. You sure are lacking in empathicity. Hymie is just difficult to understand at times. Isn't that so, Gramps?” The rest is confusion, but I do remember that the waiter took Fiona Darling aside, and then she turned on me: “Did you let him drink hard liquor and eat red meat with wine?”

Hymie, his eyes popping, struggled to be heard. “Fluga pshit.”

“He's incontinent,” said Fiona Darling. “Would you like to be the one to clean up after him at three o'clock in the morning?”

“Don't tell me you do it?”

“It just happens to be Miss O'Hara's night off tonight.” I remember Hymie reversing his wheelchair back from the table, stopping, then propelling himself at a shrieking Fiona Darling, Shelley pulling her out of harm's way in time. Or maybe that didn't happen and it's just a case of my tinkering with memory, fine-tuning
reality. Next I think a frustrated Hymie, who had always abhorred squealers, rode off in pursuit of the waiter, intent on ramming him, but attempting too sharp a turn at speed and colliding with a woman at another table. But possibly I only wish that had happened. Dining out on a story, I tend to put a spin on it. To come clean, I'm a natural-born burnisher. But, then, what's a writer, even a first-timer like me?

In any event, I recall angry words were exchanged. An increasingly screechy Fiona Darling called me an irresponsible drunk. Then I inquired, icy polite, if her breasts were her own or had been artificially enhanced, as to my expert eye they appeared to be of unequal thrust and density. This prompted Shelley to threaten to punch me out. Responding to that challenge, I coughed out my dentures and slid them into a jacket pocket before raising my fists. Fiona Darling rolled her heavily made-up eyes heavenwards. “Oh, isn't he disgusting,” she said. “Let's get out of here.” And she wheeled Hymie out of the dining room, even as he continued to jabber incoherently.

When I went to claim my limo, Shelley's pleasure, the doorman explained that Mrs. Katz had told the driver to go home. “In that case,” I said, my shirt stained with Beaujolais, Fiona Darling's parting shot, “I'm going to need a taxi.”

“Where are you going, sir?”

“The Beverly Wilshire.”

The doorman summoned a blond, muscle-bound car jockey. “Clint will drive you there for twenty-five bucks,” said the doorman, “gratuity not included.”

Clint eased somebody else's Rolls-Royce out of the parking lot and deposited me at the Beverly Wilshire in style. Agitated, grieving, I made right for Fernando's Hideaway, settling into a bar stool and ordering a Courvoisier
XO
, which was foolish of me, as I had already had more than enough to drink and could no longer handle cognac late at night.

“And what happened to you, you bad boy?” asked the young woman seated next to me, indicating my shirt.

An attractive redhead she was, endearingly freckled, her smile saucy, and her tight jersey scooped low. She also wore an ankle-length skirt, a slit riding high up one side. “May I offer you a drink?” I asked.

“I'll have a glass of French champagne.”

Petula (Pet for short, but not for long, she said) and I began to exchange banalities, even my most feeble wisecracks rewarded with a gentle squeeze of my knee. I signalled the bartender for another round.

“Lookee,” she said, “if we're going to go on like interfacing together, you know, and why not, it's a free country, why don't we grab that little table in the corner, you know, before somebody else like beats us to it?”

Sucking in my stomach, I accepted her hand and trailed after her to the table,
shlepping
her inordinately heavy handbag, my delight enhanced because it seemed to me, in my sodden state, that other men in the room, younger men who had dismissed me as past it, the prerogative of the callow, were now regarding me with envy. Then it began to ring.
Her handbag, for Christ's sake
. Startled, I thrust it at her. She dug into it and pulled out a cellular phone. “Yeah. Uh huh. No, like I'm with somebody. Tell them like I said howdy and he'll adore Brenda,” she said, replacing the phone.

Two middle-aged men, both wearing Los Angeles Kings sweaters and blue jeans, huddled at the next table. “Is it true,” asked the one sporting number 99, whispering the name of a studio, “that the sale to the Japs is going through?”

“Just between you and I, I've seen the paperwork,” said his companion. “All that remains to be done is to cross the ‘t's' and slant the ‘i's.' ”

“Don't tell me,” said Petula, stroking my knee, “you're a producer. Not that I'm like looking for work, you know, so don't worry. Like, guess my age.”

“Twenty-eight.”

“You kidder, you. Like I'm thirty-four, you know, my body clock going tickety-tick-tock even as we eyeball each other here. And let me look at you. Like I'd say you were, like, fifty-four years old, you know. Am I right?”

Unwilling to dip into my breast pocket for my compromising reading glasses, I pretended to study the wine list, a total blur, and ordered a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a Courvoisier
XO
.

“You're positively evil,” she said, nudging me.

The brisket and latkes got to me, still sitting there, a stone, and I was hard-pressed to contain what I feared would be a resounding fart. Then, happily, she had to go to “the little girl's room,” enabling me to let rip a sneaker, sighing with relief, but looking absolutely innocent when the man downwind, a table to my right, glowered at me, his wife ostentatiously fanning herself with her menu.

Petula, sashaying back my way, was stopped briefly by the young man with an earring seated alone at a table. I didn't care for the look of him. “What did he want?” I asked.

“Speaking frankly,” she said, shooting me her
Weltschmerz
look, “what do all men want?”

As we worked through the champagne, mine laced with cognac, I dipped into my grab-bag of self-serving anecdotes and began to shamelessly drop names. But she had never heard of Christopher Plummer or Jean Beliveau; and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whom I had been introduced to once, lit the wrong fire.

“Oh, you like tell him for me that I just love
Doonesbury
.” Suppressing a yawn, she added, “Like why don't we drink up now and go to your room? But you do understand, you know, like I'm a professional escort, don't you?”

“Ah.”

“Don't look so glum, baby,” she said, even as she unclicked the clasp of her immense handbag and allowed me a peek at her credit-card machine. “My agency accepts all credit cards, except for American Express.”

“As a matter of interest, what do you charge?”

“It's not a charge, it's like an honorarium, and that depends on the menu, you know, and the time factor involved.” Then she reached into her handbag again and retrieved a card, encased in plastic, that testified that she was
AIDS
-free.

“Petula, this has been a very long day for me. Why don't we just finish our drinks and say good night here. No harm done.”

“Well, thanks for wasting my time, gramps,” she said, sweeping up her glass and heading right for the table where her pimp with the earring sat alone. I signed the bill and rose unsteadily, doubting that I
managed to look dignified as I tottered out of the bar. Back in my room, I was too angry with Miriam to sleep. Look at me now, I thought, flirting mindlessly with a hooker at my age, all because you abandoned me. I got into bed with Boswell's
The Life of Samuel Johnson
, the book I always travel with because I want them to find it at my bedside should I expire during the night, and I read: “I'm afraid, however, that by associating with Savage, who was habituated to the dissipation and licentiousness of the town, Johnson, though his good principles remained steady, did not entirely preserve that conduct, for which, in days of greater simplicity, he was remarked by his friend Mr. Hector; but was imperceptibly led into some indulgences which occasioned much distress to his virtuous mind.” Then the print began to leap on the page, and I had to set the book aside.

I could now compound my humiliation, but find a modicum of relief, I thought, by flicking on whatever adult movie was available on
TV
, but I decided against it. Instead, my heart pounding, I called upon good old reliable Mrs. Ogilvy in my mind's eye. Mrs. Ogilvy, who had come to us from Kent, where her father owned a draper's shop, or what we colonials, corrupted by Americanisms, as she put it, called a dry-goods store. Once more I blundered into her bedroom, surprising her, catching her in a posture to die for: Mrs. Ogilvy, stalwart of the St. James United Church choir, in panties and garter belt, bending forward, pensive, to trap her breasts and fasten her bra. No, no. Too soon for that. I willed my personal soft-core memory video into fast-track reverse, starting with my arrival at her apartment that morning.

The luscious Mrs. Ogilvy, who took our French and literature classes, often reading aloud to us from
John O'London's Weekly
, was all of twenty-nine, impossibly inaccessible, I thought. Then there was that Saturday she had recruited me to help paint her one-bedroom apartment. “Providing you prove to be a good worker,” she said, “I'll treat you to dinner.
En français, s'il vous plaît?
”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ogilvy.”

“Worker?”

“
Ouvrier
.”

“
Très bien
.”

We started in the tiny kitchen, and that morning, excruciating beyond belief, we inevitably bumped into each other several times in that provocatively constricted space. Twice the backs of my hands accidentally brushed against her breasts, and I feared they would catch fire. Then she climbed the ladder, taking her turn at the ceiling. Wow. “Help me down now, dear,” she said.

Losing her balance, she tumbled briefly into my arms. “Whoops,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said, steadying her.

“Sorry isn't frightfully flattering,” she said, ruffling my hair.

At noon we sat down to eat fish paste smeared on white bread, seated on stools at the kitchen counter. She also opened a can of tomatoes, plopping one on my plate, and taking another for herself. “Let's not be idle while we sit here. Exams are due in a fortnight, don't you know? Now I want you to tell me the proper name for what Americans, as well as you people in this copycat dominion, call a baby carriage.”

“A perambulator.”

“Good lad. And the King's English for the wee bird known as a chickadee here?”

“I don't know.”

“A tit.”

“Aw, come on,” I said, just about choking on my fish paste.

“Oh yes, we do call them tits, but I know what you're thinking, you naughty boy. Now the origin of the word ‘alibi,' please.”

“Latin.”

“Well done.”

That's when she noticed the white paint smudge on her skirt. She got up, dipped a rag in turpentine, and raised her skirt, flattening it over a stool to rub the stain. Pleated brown it was, the skirt.
⁵⁴
I can see it now. I thought my thudding heart would burst right out of my chest and fly through the window. Then, rotating her hips, she wriggled her skirt back into place. “Oh dear. Now I'm damp in unmentionable places. I'd better change. Excuse me, dear,” she said, brushing past
me, the feathery touch of her breasts surely leaving a permanent burn on my back, as she disappeared into her bedroom.

I lit a cigarette, smoked it, and she still wasn't back. I needed to pee desperately, but would have to pass through her bedroom to reach the toilet. The kitchen sink, I thought. No. What if she came in and discovered me at it? Unable to bear it any longer, I drifted into the living room and saw that her bedroom door was ajar. The hell with it, I thought, such was my agony. I stepped into the bedroom, and there she stood in her panties and garter belt, bending forward, pensive, to fasten her bra. “I'm so sorry,” I said, flushing. “I had no idea …”

“What does it matter?”

“It's just that I had to go to the toilet.”

“Well, do go ahead then,” she said, her voice surprisingly harsh.

When I emerged, dizzy with desire, she was already dressed. She flicked on the radio and somebody sang “Mr. Five by Five.”
⁵⁵

That's when I finally summoned up the courage to reach out for her, sliding my hands under her sweater to unhook her bra. She didn't resist. Instead, both delighting and terrifying me, she kicked off her shoes. “I don't know what's come over me,” she said. Then she wiggled out of her skirt and I yanked at her panties.

“You're so impatient. Such an eager puppy.
Attendez un instant
. Now tell me what a gentleman is never in … ?”

Fuck fuck fuck.