McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (29 page)

 
          
 
"You're well informed up to a
point," I said. "The one in
Boston
changed hands last year. I bought it. It's
in my car."

 
          
 
Ponsonby, who looked somewhat like a frog,
also looked like he'd just swallowed one. A person he didn't like had just
informed him that he had missed out on one of the rarest truncheons in the
world—a truncheon he had probably been plotting to get since 1946.

 
          
 
"Am I to understand that you have bought
the Eberstadt truncheon?" he said. "That in itself is an outrage. Who
are you?"

 
          
 
"Just a scout," I said.

 
          
 
The fact that, in defiance of all
appropriateness, the Eberstadt truncheon had come to me rather than
him,
had left him too dazed for speech.

 
          
 
"But I knew Woodrow Eberstadt," he
said, almost plaintively. "We went to the same school. I knew his wife,
Lou Lou. I sent Lou Lou flowers once. I think it was when Woodrow died. They
knew of my interest in the truncheon.
Lou Lou knew, I'm sure.
It is very distressing. She might have given it to me. I'm sure I sent her
flowers once."

 
          
 
In fact, Mrs. Eberstadt had told the antique
dealer she sold the truncheon to that she would have it carved into toothpicks
rather than sell it to Ponsonby, since he had pestered her and her husband
about it for thirty years.

 
          
 
"Regrettably, Lou Lou had a will of her
own," Ponsonby said, with a sigh. "There was talk when she married
Woodrow. No one was in favor of the match, as I recall. I always felt Woodrow
lacked judgment, an opinion that has now been borne out."

 
          
 
Before my eyes, Ponsonby's spirits began to
droop. The thought of his old schoolmate's lack of judgment weighed on him
visibly.

 
          
 
"I'm afraid this means the end of Western
civilization as we know it," he said, turning away.

 
          
 
For no good reason, unexpectedly, I began to
get my
Harbor
City
feeling. What was I doing in a room full of
blue suits and Empire furniture with
Harbor
City
slightly less than a continent away?

 
          
 
While I was mentally calculating the most
satisfying route across
America
, Felix, the buffalo dog, reappeared. He
stood about ten feet away, looking at me through his hair.

 
          
 
At that point the little butler who should
have been a blackjack dealer in Elko came and called us in to dinner.

 
          
 
As I was walking into the dining room a small
and somewhat sinister maid presented me with a seating chart. Evidently I was
supposed to take a little sticker of some sort, which would legitimize my seat,
but before I could do this Lilah Landry walked down the hall and walked up,
took my arm, and walked right on into the dining room with me. She wore a
dramatic black dress and was in very high color. "You're by
me.
" she said. "And if you aren't
we'll just switch the place cards and pretend the help made a mistake."

 
          
 
That sounded like serious mischief, to me.
Cindy had been at pains to explain that the reason Oblivia prevailed, season
after season, as the hostess with the mostess, was because of the brilliance of
her seatings. According to Cindy, her seatings were masterpieces, in which age
and beauty, brains and egos, pomp and pomposity were blended as delicately as
flavors in a sauce.

 
          
 
As it turned out, I was seated between Lilah
and Oblivia anyway—Lilah didn't even have to change the place cards.

 
          
 
As I was arranging my napkin I had a chance to
look around me, and it struck me that Lilah, Cindy, and Cunny Cotswinkle all
shared one remarkable attribute, which was the ability to arrive at a dinner
party looking like they had just arisen from the happiest of fucks. Somehow
they got their blood up for the occasion.

 
          
 
With Lilah glowing on one side of me it was
hard for me to be properly attentive to my hostess, who did not glow and gave
no evidence that she even had any blood.

 
          
 
"So worried about you," she said to
Lilah, who had evidently arrived just in time to sweep into the dining room.
"Not like you to be so tardy."

 
          
 
"Shoot, I wasn't late," Lilah said.
"I didn't even miss the soup."

 
          
 
At that very moment servants were slipping
soup bowls in front of us. The bowls contained a thin green film, evidently a
minute serving of soup of some kind.

 
          
 
George Psalmanazar, who was seated just across
from me, was quick to note the minuteness of the amount. He got one good
spoonful, but had to scrape the bowl to get even a half spoonful by way of a
second bite.

 
          
 
"What is this supposed to mean?" he
asked, glaring at Oblivia.
"Cuisine minceur?
Cuisine infinitesimal if you ask me.

 
          
 
George had turned quite red in the face, as if
he had just received a personal insult. He grabbed his knife and fork and
stared at the door to the kitchen, as if he expected to see a huge beefsteak
arrive at any minute.

 
          
 
Oblivia Brown was not impressed by his color.
She sipped a drop or two of her soup before replying.
Various
of our tablemates were trying to figure out how to get a spoonful of soup
without indecorously tipping their bowls.

 
          
 
"So testy," Oblivia said, looking at
George.

 
          
 
"Well, goddamn, Oblivia," George
said. "People have to eat."

 
          
 
"But you are the champion of the
Third World
, George," Oblivia said. "You do
write constantly about world hunger. So much starvation to worry about, one is
not sure where it may break out next."

 
          
 
"It's going to break out in fuckin’
Georgetown
if this is all we get to eat," George
said.

 
          
 
"So sorry," Oblivia said. "But
it was your principle that guided me, of course. Not every day I get a man of
the people at my table. The rest of us tend to get complacent. I feel sure we
would be quite capable of stuffing ourselves with wasteful delicacies if we
didn't have you to uplift us. We might sit here eating like pigs while five
million Cambodians starve. That was the figure, wasn't it? You quoted it just
this morning."

 
          
 
"Listen, Oblivia, cut it out,"
George said. "Nobody is impressed with your sarcasm."

 
          
 
"Well, I was," Lilah said.

 
          
 
"Excuse me, Lilah, but you're not exactly
the hardest sell in town," George said. "A complete sentence
impresses you."

 
          
 
George did not seem to be a favorite of the
ladies. Both Lilah and Cunny Cotswinkle were watching him alertly, their heads
cocked slightly to one side. I got the sense that they were lying in wait for
their victim.

 
          
 
"Are you calling me dumb?" Lilah said,
after a moment.

 
          
 
"Well, if I get nasty, blame it on
Oblivia," George said. "She knows better than to starve me."

 
          
 
"A man of the
people?"
Cunny said, catching Oblivia's phrase as if it had been a
high lob that had hung in the air all this time. "Which people?"

 
          
 
"Any people except you rich snobs,"
George said.

 
          
 
"So foul, when he's like this,"
Oblivia said.

 
          
 
The maids slipped in like cats and removed the
soup bowls. A set of slightly taller maids, who may well have been bred for
that very purpose, came in and began to fill the wine glasses. As soon as one
sloshed a little wine in George's glass he picked it up, swirled the wine
around with a deft little flick of his wrist, smelled it, and shook his head in
resignation.

 
          
 
"You and your
California
wines," he said, giving Oblivia a look
of disgust. "It's a comment on
Washington
."

 
          
 
"So particular," Oblivia said.
"But then you live in the Adams-Morgan.
So lucky.
I believe they have real life over in the Adams-Morgan."

 
          
 
"It's not the Adams-Morgan," George
said. "I hate people who call it the Adams-Morgan. It's just
Adams-Morgan."

 
          
 
"Oh," Lilah said. "It's like
Albany
, in
London
. If you say the
Albany
people know you don't belong there."

 
          
 
"George knows so much about wine,"
Oblivia said to Cunny.

 
          
 
"Oh, vino," Cunny said absently, as
if nothing could be more boring than a man who knew a lot about wine.

 
          
 
"That's right," Lilah said.
"How many bottles you got now, George?"

 
          
 
"None of your business," George
said.

 
          
 
"Not nice to hoard, George," Oblivia
said.

 
          
 
"I've heard you have six thousand
bottles," Lilah said.

 
          
 
"That's strange," George said.
"I've heard you've had six thousand boyfriends. I wonder how these rumors
start."

 
          
 
"Newspapers," Cunny said. "All
the terrible things are invented by newspapers. Look at vat they say about me.
Dese affairs I have with the President. Whose business is dat?"

 
          
 
The table digested that in silence for a
moment. At least it was something to digest. So far the tall maids with the
wine had not been followed by any short maids with food.

 
          
 
"But George is a famous columnist,"
Lilah said. "He writes for hundreds of newspapers himself."

 
          
 
"Now, now," George said. "Only
146,
and most of them hate every word I write. They don't
want the truth, in this country."

 
          
 
"Who are you to talk?" Lilah said.
"You won't even 'fess up to owning six thousand bottles of wine."

 
          
 
"So trenchant," Oblivia said.
"He could sell his wine and buy rice for the Cambodians."

 
          
 
George sighed. "Remarks like that appall
me," he said. "What they reveal is that you have understood nothing
about the geopolitical realities."

 
          
 
At that point the maids poured in, carrying
our entrees. These consisted of the breasts of some very small bird, floating
in a lemony sauce.

 
          
 
Disregarding etiquette entirely, George
stabbed his bird with a fork, picked it up whole, and ate it in about two
bites, while the ladies watched in their alert but patient way.

 
          
 
"Down in
Georgia
we cut our food," Lilah said, cutting
herself off a delicate slice.

 
          
 
George scarcely looked up. "Down in
Georgia
everything is so overcooked it must be like
cutting cinders," he said.

 
          
 
"It didn't stop you from eating like a
pig when you were there," Lilah said.

 
          
 
"My body is like a little motor,"
George said. "It must have fuel, even if the fuel is overcooked. Besides,
eating overcooked food is better than talking to your relatives. Your relatives
are a bunch of redneck facists."

 
          
 
"So critical," Oblivia said.
"Hard to travel with."

 
          
 
"Going to
Georgia
is not traveling," George said.
"Anyway, your relatives are no better.
A bunch of wimpy
snobs.
They seem to think the Garden of Eden was just west of
Philadelphia
."

 
          
 
My
Harbor
City
feeling was getting stronger. Also, I would
have liked a hamburger. If the women at the table wanted to tear George apart,
that was fine with me. I was trying to remember if I had read any of his
columns. If they appeared in 146 newspapers it would have been hard to miss
them, but somehow I seemed to have missed them.

 
          
 
"I don't suppose anyone here has read 'my
Monday column, have they?" George asked, letting his eyes do a slow pan
around the table.

 
          
 
"So hard to tell them apart,"
Oblivia said.

 
          
 
"Anyway, why do we have to?" Lilah
asked. "We all know what you think. We all oughta be in jail, that's what
you think, just because we're fun-lovin' Americans."

 
          
 
"Fun-loving
Americans?"
George said. "Do you mean that seriously? Do you
think of yourself as a fun-loving American?"