The Book of Other People (23 page)

‘You’re forty-eight, you’re not old.’

And then there is silence.

 

‘Which plane is it? He keeps trading them in. I never know which one is ours.’

‘She calls it trading them in - he calls it fractional ownership,’ one of the women whispers.

‘G4, Falcon, Citation, Hawker, Learjet - remember when they were all “Learjets”? Remember when the word “Learjet” used to mean something?’

‘Who is that bald man in the wheelchair? He looks familiar - do I know him from somewhere?’

‘Is it Philip Johnson?’

‘Philip Johnson died two years ago.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s so sad.’

‘Is that Yul Brynner?’

‘It’s someone with cancer.’

‘What’s he doing here?’

‘He’s getting an Angel Flight back to where he lives,’ one of the ground crew says. ‘People donate flights - for those who are basically too sick to travel.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I could ever do that - I couldn’t have a sick person on the plane - I mean, what about the germs?’

‘I don’t normally think of cancer as contagious.’

‘You never know.’ She runs her hand through her hair - which she gels in the morning with Purell - prophylactically.

 

The group divides; Sally Stubenstock, the society sister of Cindy, and her ‘friend’ Tasha, the yoga instructor, go on their own plane. ‘We want alone time,’ Tasha says.

‘She wants to downward dog me at 10,000 feet,’ Sally says.

‘It’s gross,’ someone whispers.

‘What do you care - they’re not asking you to do it.’

‘Women kiss better than men - it’s a fact.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Because one night Wallis (the weird woman who has a man’s last name for her first name) Wallingford planted one right on me.’

‘Was she drunk?’

‘I don’t think so. It felt very good.’

‘Better than a man?’

She nods. ‘Softer, more thoughtful.’

Cindy Stubenstock puts her fingers in her ears and hums loudly and sings, ‘This is something I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know-oh-o.’

The conversation stops. They climb aboard. The pilot pulls the door closed and locks it. The women take their seats and then take other seats. They move around the cabin until they are comfortable. They put all their fur coats together on one seat.

‘Where are you staying? The Raleigh, the Delano, the Biltmore?’

‘I’m staying at Pinkie and Paulie’s.’

‘Really?’ Cindy asks.

Her friend nods.

‘I’ve never stayed at someone’s house,’ Cindy Stubenstock confesses. ‘How do you do it? When you get there - what do you do - how do you check in?’

‘It’s like going for dinner or cocktails - you knock on the door and hopefully someone answers.’

‘Does someone take your bag? Do you tip them? And what if you can’t sleep - what if you need to get up and walk around? Do you have your own bathroom - I can’t stay anywhere without my own bathroom even with my husband. If you pee, do you flush? What if someone hears you? It just seems so stressful.’

‘When you were growing up, did you ever go on a sleepover?’

‘Just once - I got homesick and my father came and got me - it seemed like the middle of the night but my parents always used to tease me - it was really only about 11 pm.’

‘When I go to someone’s house - I bring a clean sheet,’ another woman chimes in.

‘And remake the bed?’

‘No, I wrap myself in it - do you know how infrequently most blankets are laundered - including hotel blankets - think of the hundreds of people who have used the same blanket.’

 

‘What’s for dinner tonight?’ someone asks.

‘A big corned-beef sandwich. That’s what I go to Miami for - Wolfie’s. I get sick every time - but I can’t resist. It reminds me of my grandparents - and of my childhood.’

‘I thought you were a vegetarian?’

‘I am.’

‘By the way, whatever happened with that Brice Marden painting you were trying to buy?’

‘It’s still pending - we haven’t completed our interview.’

‘Some of the galleries now have a vetting process - there is a company that will interview potential buyers, about everything from their assets, hobbies and intentions for their collections - and once that’s done - they schedule a home visit.’

‘Exactly, we still need the home visit, but CeeCee has been so busy with the re-do that she won’t let anyone from the gallery into the house.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘We’re going from day to night - swapping all the black paintings for white, we sold the Motherwells and the Stills and now she’s bringing in Ryman, Richter and a Whiteread bookcase.’

‘Sounds great - very relaxing - no color at all.’

‘I heard you bought a Renoir in London.’

‘We had a good year. I like it so much I want to fuck it.’

‘When we got our Rothko - we had sex on the floor in front of it.’

‘Those were the days . . .’

‘And when we got the Pollock.’

‘Well, you got that really big one.’

‘Fairly big.’

‘The room is so large that it’s all relative.’

‘Do you remember that time we were all on that art tour and they let us touch a few things - Stanley stroked the
Birth of Venus
and got excited?’

‘Stanley, the seeing-eye horse - or Stanley your husband?’

‘Stanley, the human. He was mortified.’

‘I thought it was cute.’

‘Where is Stanley this weekend?’

‘Stan, the man, is playing golf and Stanley the seeing-eye horse is having his teeth cleaned this weekend and so the society gave me a stick.’ She holds up a white cane. ‘Like this is going to do me any good. I’ve got a docent meeting me for the fair - a young curator.’

‘God, I remember when Stanley, the horse, tried to mount the stuffed pony that your parents sent your son . . .’

‘We were all there - the Hanukah party.’

‘It plagued my son - the sight of Stanley trying to “hop” the pony. He said hop - instead of hump - it was soo sweet.’

‘There are people who are into that - stuffed animals. “Plushies” they call them.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Sex parties!’

‘And they invite stuffed animals?’

‘Speaking of animal behaviour - are we preparing for takeoff yet?’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stubenstock,’ the pilot says. ‘There’s military aircraft in the area - and the airspace has been closed down.’

‘Oh now, is the President coming to town again? Thank God we’re leaving - he always blocks traffic.’

‘We’re third in line for takeoff as soon as the air opens.’

 

‘We usually fly on Larry’s plane, he redecorates it for every flight. Different art work depending on where we’re going. Something for LA, something for Basel, something for Venice.’

‘That’s because he’s trying to sell you something.’

‘No, I don’t think so. We always ask, and he tells us that whatever it is we want - it’s not for sale.’

‘That’s how he does it - that’s how he gets you.’

 

‘Did you hear about Sarah and Steve’s Warhol worries?’

‘No, what?’

‘Turns out their Warhols aren’t Warhols - they’re knockoffs like cheap Louis Vuittons on Canal Street.’

‘But they have Polaroids of Andy signing the pictures. Andy and Steve standing together while Andy signed them.’

‘Apparently he would sign anything, but that didn’t mean that he made it.’

‘They were banking on those pictures - literally.’

‘Well, you know what they say - you should never be dependent on your art collection to do anything for you that you can’t do for yourself.’

‘Are you invited to the VIP party?’

‘The VIP parties aren’t the good parties - there are no invites for the real parties, you just have to know where they are.’

‘I told Susie that I would go to the dinner but only as long as I didn’t have to sit next to an artist - I never know what to say to them.’

‘I always ask them if they’re starving - and they never get it,’ Cindy says. ‘I’ve noticed that most of the younger artists are carnivores. Remember when artists only ate things like sprouts and bags of “greens” that they carried with them? Now they all eat meat - it’s all post-Damien.’

‘Like how?’

‘Don’t you remember - Damien Hirst’s first big piece was really very small . . . It was a piece of steak that his father had choken on. Young Damien gave his father the Heimlich maneuver and the steak came flying out of his mouth and he could breathe again. Damien saved the piece of steak and put it in a jar of formaldehyde that he got from the school and called it
I Saved My Father’s Life - Now What Will Become of Us
.’

‘I never heard that story.’

Cindy Stubenstock shrugs. ‘It’s famous. I think the piece is in the Saatchi collection in London.’

Long had the poets pointed to the steep green hills around the village, noting in prose and song that with their irrational curves, their ridges rising and falling just so, the low mountains resembled the shapes of sleeping men and women. Most practical people thought the poets were pushing it a bit too far, poets being poets, but then something new happened one morning, just after most of the humans, about five or so hundred in that village at that time, were finishing their breakfast and dressing their children.

The land shook. Homes, all of them built with stone and barley, trembled and soon collapsed. Animals stampeded, birds dropped from the sky, and in the midst of the chaos, the first giant emerged. The soft green rolls of the hillside gave way to a pale shoulder, an arm of twisted muscle, a waist, a hip. In minutes the hill had become a man, a colossal man everywhere striped with dirt and grass, rubbing his eyes. He sat up, his legs akimbo before him, and he began chuck-ling. He wiped the grass from his bald head and his shoulders, swept the dirt from his stomach, and, while he did so, he laughed softly, nodding to himself as if something long mysterious was finally clear.

His name was Soren.

Soon after, a mile or so away, the ground rattled again. The villagers looked south and saw another hillside rise. It was a range that the poet Eythor had called The Woman, and all the humans who watched the giant emerge from it thought, Too bad Eythor is dead, he would have loved to see this. This hill became a woman, as tall as Soren, and she rose from the earth covered in oil and soot, hair long and wild. Like Soren, she was greatly amused and only somewhat surprised by her awakening. She wiped her eyes clean and picked stones from between her aristocratic toes.

This was Magdelena.

By the time Theo, the last giant, arose from the hill closest to the human settlements, his arrival caused little notice. He was shorter than the other two giants, with a ruddy complexion and wide-set eyes. While Soren and Magdelena were tall, of noble and sinewy form, Theo had long arms but short legs, a flat face and narrow shoulders. But no one noticed the differences between them, at least not on that day. Already four people were dead, crushed under falling debris. There were tears, prayers, wails of men and women. Already the landscape had been broken, recast. Already the sky was brown with dust, and it was into this day, full of misery and regret and rebirth, that Theo awakened.

 

In those first days, Theo could only sit, dazed from thousands of years of sleep, and watch Magdelena. Yes, Magdelena. At first she was nothing much to see. Her hair gray with ash, her body covered in mica and sandstone, she barely looked female. But then, after some hours sitting, blinking and grinning, she rose and walked to the ocean, dove from the chalky cliffs into the surf below, and emerged a woman. A woman of many enticements.

Theo was not the only one who noticed. The tinies below seemed endlessly fascinated by her. Groups of young men gathered on the mountain called Toto-Hesker, at the level of her chest, and watched her wash herself in the waterfall; they were willing to watch her do anything. Most important to them was that a 200-foot woman had 35-foot breasts, ten-foot-tall lips, legs eighty feet high.

Where had she come from? Theo wondered. She was not awake the last time he was conscious. Or perhaps she had been. He knew that his memory was not good. His memory of this land bore little resemblance to what lay around him now. Hadn’t it been colder before? Had there not been a glacier between those peaks? He had no great faith in his memory, and yet he was almost certain that this region had changed. The villagers called it Northland now, and the name seemed apt enough. They were not far from the top of the earth, and during the summer, the days stretched elliptically, morning meeting morning. That much had not changed.

But certain variations were beyond debate. When he last roamed this land, there had not been the tiny people - built like himself but so very small. They had almost certainly appeared in the intervening epochs. Once they knew that the giants meant them no harm, as he lay down to sleep and his ears were close to earth, they asked Theo about other nearby mountains, foothills. Are they all like you? Will they awaken? Theo tried to reassure them, but he could not lie. He didn’t know who was a mountain and who was not a mountain. So much was unfamiliar to him. There had not been so many deer, so many moose and bears. He remembered being very hungry when he last walked these hills; he had been forced to eat trees, turtles, whales. Now there was plenty of delicious food, easily caught. Soren and Magdelena could eat whole forests of animals at any meal, carelessly tossing the bones on rooftops. Theo could get by on a few deer, maybe a few dozen rabbits, eating everything whole, leaving no mess. Afterward he would enjoy a long drink from the white-cold runoff of the snow-capped peak to the west.