Life Among Giants (14 page)

“
Th
at one little kiss?”

“Two of them, now,” she said. “Don't be making fun of me.” She cleared her high dresser off, perched upon it with a simple hop, her head almost touching the ceiling. Her hair came past her shoulders, seemed a little dirty. I'd never seen it out. She could easily be a classmate, maybe someone who didn't know about shampoo. She said, “You don't believe me.”

“Well, no. What about Dabney? What about Georges?”

“I never developed. I am dancing all the time. All the time. Dancing is the only reality, the only thing I do. Others kiss me,
ja.
Th
ey kiss me all the time.
Th
at is not what I am saying. I am saying that
I
kissed
you.
”
Th
e blush on her neck and clavicle had fallen back into her neckline. She raised a leg, impossibly placed her foot flat on the dresser beside her, matter of factly hugging her knee to her cheek—that's how long her legs were, proportionally speaking. I loved the way her thigh fit into her hip, the way the crease worked, the sight of her underpants. She caught me looking again, just kept going: “Dabney, he was a miner's kid, and then he was a miner himself. Love was about battling and getting an upper hand. A man worked very hard all day and then he drank and when he wanted some cunt he pulled off your pants. Sorry, is that not a nice word? Okay, cunt. I won't say it. You worship your woman, you build a shrine,
ja
? You are using all your strength carrying the beloved up there and after a time you are being exhausted and so you leave her up there, you never come back to claim her.
Th
at was Dabney and Sylphide. Do you know how we met?”

Everyone knew how they met: rhetorical question.

“He saw a photo in the
Times
of London. I am not even nineteen. He pulled on a few ropes and sat in the front row at my Royal Ballet debut. I did not know him. I did not know to be star-struck. After the performance, there he is in my dressing room. Everyone rushing in to touch him like I'm not there.”

“And you just ignored him!”

“I have heard that rumor, too. But not true. If everyone wanted him, I would have him. And this part you have not heard, because it has not been told: we are having dinner at his hotel, and then up to his room, no resistance from me. But in his bed I am surprised by what he seems to intend. I have been sheltered, Lizard. I am perfectly pleased to be touched, kissed, naked in his hands, fucked if he wants, all of it, it's not like I do not know what it all is, but I cannot begin to comply. I mean physically.
Th
ere is a medical word for it, but I forget it. I closed up tight! He is knocking away, and pushing and prodding, but you know, he cannot even get started. I am crying. I cry and cry not to make him happy. I am not understanding. It is funny,
ja
? You smile? I thought he would hate me, but he did not care. He is liking my innocence. He finds some way around it, gets his satisfaction. We married the next week. I was grateful to him. But grateful is not love, I have come to learn.”

I picked up the huge phone, put it on my lap, picked Conrad's list of theaters out of my shirt pocket, gazed at the names and numbers almost longingly.

Sylphide said, “Kate doesn't brag of him?”

Suddenly we had landed on my sister. Was that why I was there? I felt protective: “Far from it. Total secrecy. I just found out like, last
week.
”

“I was finding out the night he died.
Th
ose little tennis skirts of hers,
oik
! You know his song ‘Love Fifteen.'
Th
at is how old, she! And then two years more it went on! He is writing this for her! And she's the one being furious with me!” Sylphide turned her head just so, cocked her shoulders so, crossed her ankles, put herself forward in some ineffable way, the sexual body no longer on display, a dancer in its place.

“
Th
at was the only time he try with me.
Th
at one night in that beautiful hotel. He had all the girls in the world. I was the one he couldn't. And before Dabney there was only Vasily Bustonovich Bustonov, my
impresario.
I was twelve,
ja?
I knew nothing. I loved him very much, so far as I knew. He is taking me from my home with the blessing of my parents . . . .”

“
Th
ey were farmers in Boda. An island.”

“
Th
ey were not farmers.
Th
at error, over and over again endlessly. But it was an island, and quite severe, two hours of daylight in winter. My father was being a grain broker.” She told the proper story, not like what I'd heard: her mother had grown up in a house of drunkards, had known the dancer's father from childhood, was not a mail-order bride.
Th
e mother had, in fact, been a dancer in her youth, had run off and lived in Russia, well into her thirties. Bustonov had been the mother's mentor, and was her correspondent in Sylphide's youth, likely a lover, but certainly not Sylphide's actual father, per rumor.

“And Bustonov brought you to the Kirov School for training. In Moscow, which was still in a shambles from the war. You met Vlad Markusak there. He defected years later in Boston in order to dance with you again.”

“I see you have been making a study of me. But low marks: it is all being much more complicated than you want to believe!”

“And you got in trouble in Moscow, trying to protect your friends. Or Bustonov tried to keep you from your friends and you rebelled. But whatever, he took you to Bournonville's company in Denmark. He had a diplomatic passport. You took the name Sylphide.”

“Well, and you are ready for the exam, I see. Yes, to Denmark. But Bournonville? He died in 1864 or something like this. He only started the company I was in: Danish Royal Ballet. Very proper, classical ballet. Vasily very proud of me, very protective. I was given to understand that he was my lover.”

“Given to understand?”

“He is saying we are lovers, and so I believe him,
ja?
But in fact we did not make love. Our only intimacy was conversation, very good talk. I was calling him Uncle in public, lived with him in Copenhagen. We are not sleeping in the same room, not even that. His sexual needs are nothing to me, only a few kisses on my forehead when I am lying down to bed. He draw my baths, he help me dress; I have no sense of shame in my body, none at all. He likes me to do my barre exercises in his bedroom while he does something or other under the quilts. I never inquire about it, never understand it in any explicit way till Dabney explains. I just mistook it all for love. And what else did I need?”

Dance.

Dance provided all the physical expression she needed, every bit of it across the entire range from plain exercise to the sexual, as she understood it then. And I wasn't to misunderstand her: Bustonov was quite fascinating. She would have said she loved him. “He kiss me on the mouth only once, a lot of warm spittle, how I was seeing it, a disgusting event.” She was my age by then, having already had five years with the man, who had turned sixty, and just the one kiss. Which was itself part of a very nasty scene. He'd grown jealous of Tenke's dance partners. He had demanded that she quit. He wept and begged and raged and made promises. “I left him forever the next morning. A boat to Newcastle, a train to London, all the money he was having in his purse.

“
Th
en Dabney.
Th
en Georges. And that is all. So thank you for my first kiss. I love you for my first kiss.”

I looked this way, she looked that, and the dressing room was just a hot stillness, one minute, two minutes, three. I couldn't think of a thing to say, wasn't at all sure what she was implying, didn't believe she was only confiding. Also, had she just said she loved me? She made no motion to get off her dresser. I stayed put on her desk, the heavy phone in my lap. Was I supposed to make a move?

“Make your telephone calls,” she said after a long wait. She slipped off her perch and onto her famous feet, the frock rising up in the process to show her naked thighs, her tiny underpants complete, her bellybutton then, which I was almost surprised to see she owned. She straightened the garment, wrapped herself in a silken robe, crossed in front of me unhappily, jasmine zephyr, pushed at the bottom of yet another innocuous wall panel, which opened to reveal her boudoir—the very room I'd seen her and Georges in, the very bed, the very windows back behind it, a tree fort somewhere out there.

I
MADE CALLS
till after six, left a lot of messages at the theaters on Conrad's list, got busy signals, felt deflated, depressed even, finally a receptionist who was indifferent till I said I worked for Sylphide. Her boss would call in the morning! She called me Mr. Hochmeyer, then, let her voice grow breathy,
whoa.
Th
en more busy signals and long-ringing phones and perfunctory answering services. Restless I stood and paced with my neck bent under the low ceiling, paced up and down all the rows of dry-cleaned clothes and costumes, whole deep shelves of accessories: wings, halos, hats, tails, feathers, scarves, wristlets, anklets, silver corsets, golden girdles, leather thongs, pants and panties and pantaloons, jewelry fake and jewelry real, all full of meaning, no doubt. I'd have to skip school in the morning. I'd skip school and come straight back to the High Side, where a man like myself was needed.

I thought to leave a note for my dancer, for it seemed with kisses she had given herself to me. Flowery phrases crossed my mind but there was no pencil anywhere, no pen, not a typewriter. At Sylphide's dresser I touched her bra-thing, thought of how she'd undressed right there in front of me, that boundless physical aplomb. Which was married, I suddenly saw, to her surprising sexual insecurity. I brought the slight garment to my face: jasmine, sweat, warm cotton. On impulse I stuffed it into my pants pocket. In its place on the dresser I left her the pretty, speckled stone. Definitely the shape of a heart.
Th
at would have to do for a note.

Downstairs the High Side was entirely empty, dark and silent, not even Desmond to be found, not so much as a chambermaid coughing in the wings. Abandoned, I left my list of calls and phone messages on the butler's little dais for Conrad, let myself out, made my way down the lawns and to the pond, rowed home from my first day of work, dazzled, confused, exhilarated, spent, but supremely ready for whatever crazy thing was going to come next.

PART TWO

Firfisle

7

Eighteen-some years later, trading on a fairly undistinguished Miami Dolphins career and hometown fame, I opened a bistro back north in Westport. I'd returned from Miami to the family home, which against Kate's better instincts we had never sold but rented. And as it happened the place had come empty just at my most aimless moment in the desultory years after my retirement from the NFL.

(But more about all that later.)

On a particular morning in the autumn of 1994, Restaurant Firfisle's fifth year (yes, I named the place Firfisle, and yes, I was still stuck on the dancer), our mushroom man brought in a prodigious selection of fresh forest mushrooms: porcini, king oyster, yellow and blue chanterelles, all these great textures and shades. With the night's menu still in question, our famous and colorful chef, Etienne LaRoque, simply commanded me to make mushroom sausages—an item I'd never made and never heard of—offering nothing but a quick idea of how I might proceed. From his head to my work station: sauté both coarse and fine-chopped mixed wild mushrooms and tiny wedges of green cherry tomato from our garden in olive oil and butter, equal-equal, add finely rubbed sage, add garden basil and more than you'd think of our fiery
Th
ai chilies, plenty of salt, a little onion, a little shallot, a handful or two per pot of milled rice as a binder. Then press the mixture into cold glass bowls and cure all afternoon in the walk-in, stuff just before service into the handsome, somewhat elastic soy skins our impulsive chef had found someplace.

He grilled only one to test, just an hour before the first orders came in, skin of the balls, as he would put it, his confidence in his own mastery not misplaced: gorgeous sausages, fat and firm, speckled and textural, juicy, jazzy, subtlest mushroom flavors.
He'd made
green-tomato fries for the side, fresh pasta for the base, a silky leek cream to finish: beautiful.

I recall the invention of that dish vividly, not because of the muscular mushroom textures of the sausage, and not because of the compliments all night (regulars sticking their heads in the kitchen to enthuse, wait staff beaming), not even because it became a seasonal bestseller that no one in any other kitchen anywhere could imitate, but because it's what Mr. Perdhomme ordered when he came in.

Yes, that Mr. Perdhomme. My father's boss.

I'd seen the name on the reservations list, which as any evening got going I liked to check for friends, regulars, celebrities, critics. I brooded—Perdhomme!—grew grumpy, stalked the stations of the kitchen giving orders. But probably there were lots of people with that name. Why should this Perdhomme be mine? I checked the book again. Whoever it was had requested our one best table, a nice, square four-top in the biggest of the beachside windows, dinner timed for an autumn sunset: inside information.

I peeped out of the kitchen at 5:50, peeped at 5:55, peeped at 6:00. His guest and he arrived just after that, it seemed, because when I peeped out again at 6:05 they were there, definitely they, two devils who'd figured large in my imagination for over twenty years, my father's old boss, all right, same old air of command, in his early seventies perhaps, erect and polished. And accompanied by the man my father in surprise had called Kaiser—really he, indisputably he, the very Kaiser, my parents' killer, a perfectly nice-looking man in a very expensive suit.

My heart pumped scattered thoughts through my head; I felt the strain on every vein and artery along the way. Because here was proof, no more allegations—Kaiser and Mr. P. were connected. But their appearance together at my restaurant wasn't a mistake, and it wasn't a confession, either. Instead, it seemed a calculated threat:
We know where to find you.
Dolus Investments had been in the news—they were tangled in the savings and loan scandals, congressional and criminal probes in progress. Perhaps they feared old crimes coming to light, old witnesses.

Whatever, they got the best treatment they had ever gotten or would ever get at a restaurant. I told the staff that Kaiser was a critic, the old guy maybe his boyfriend—they did seem a couple—and as the evening progressed everyone paid subtle, graceful attention. Back in the kitchen, I personally plated their orders, personally arranged the brilliant green-tomato fries, personally lined the mushroom sausages side-by-side-by-side, personally drizzled the leek cream, a gorgeous dish.

In the end, the Kaiser guy paid in cash. Later, the staff would complain about his cheapness—shouldn't reviewers tip like anyone else? Mr. Perdhomme was an ungodly long time in the bathroom. I took the opportunity to slip out to the parking lot, quickly found Olulenu (chief of valet, was the joke, Darfur refugee, was the truth, a state department placement in Bridgeport, big machete scar from his forehead to his chin, slightly walleyed from the injury). I slipped him what was in my pocket, four twenties, no amount too high, said, “Follow the Jaguar. All night if needed. Tell me where they go.”

“Yes,” he said.

I watched then from the kitchen window, a long wait. But finally Mr. Perdhomme fell into the low-slung car. Kaiser closed his door, looking like any rich guy's younger friend. Maybe just a coincidence, I told myself, two old dudes checking out a hot restaurant on their way back from a leaf-peeping trip, no idea at all how close they'd come to me.

Olulenu followed them out of the lot in his girlfriend's sputtering Rabbit.

Not even an hour, and he was back. I dropped the plate I was working on, intercepted him, too anxious to act as I'd planned, like it was all a lark. He stared up at me with the one eye first, then the other, his face shining black, a person who did not ask questions, a person who just did his job.

“
Th
ey drove northwards,” he said. “Bloody slow. And north again up on the Weston Road, there. Took them a left on one eerie old road. And then, sir, a right. Stone towers, sir. A duppie castle, sir! I hastened back.”

“
Th
e High Side,” I said.

“Fuckery,”
said Olulenu, offering a handshake in which he skillfully passed me back my eighty dollars.