Jeremy Thrane (18 page)

“Come right along,” I said, as excited and alarmed again as I’d been when Felicia mentioned rehab, the way I always felt at any unexpected turn of events. Gary tapped Phil on the arm and motioned to me and then to Ted; Phil gave a brisk nod and disengaged himself from his chatty little bird. We waited until the bartender and I had negotiated the transference of two brimming glasses, and then we made our way together over to the spot of floor occupied by Ted and Felicia.

“Felicia,” I said, I hoped suavely but feared uneasily, “you remember Phil, of course, and Gary, né Carstairs. Ted, this is Gary O’Nan. Gary writes the gossip column for
Downtown
.”

Felicia’s eyes widened at me and she shook her head slightly, a quick, emphatic interrogation that meant “What the fuck are you doing?” I
gave a quick little hapless shrug that said back, “What could I do? He followed me,” and raised my glass slightly to her. With a half-smile I couldn’t read, she took a sip of her drink.

“Of course,” Ted was saying. “Hello, Phil. Gary O’Nan, I recognize the name, good to meet you.”

“How flattering,” said Gary. “I’m an enormous fan of your work.
In the Outback
is one of your best.”

“That’s not what Jeremy told me,” said Ted without looking at me. “He thinks I was terrible in it.”

“You’re kidding,” said Gary with a laugh, turning to me. I blinked at him. “Well, friends can be hard on each other.”

Was it my imagination, or did he emphasize the word “friends”? I decided it wasn’t my imagination. Phil had uncapped his lens and trained it on the four of us, focusing smoothly.

“This martini is perfect,” I said, licking my lips. “No one ever talks about the role of the olive in the martini. A martini is only as good as its olives.”

Flash went Phil’s camera with a click and a mechanical whir.

“Really,” said Gary.

“Vodka all by itself has no character. It’s inherently bland, it needs that pungent peasanty taste to complete it. The sex, the earth, the dirt, the guts.”

“What about the vermouth?” Gary asked blandly.

“No vermouth,” I said. “It’s the postmodern martini. The martini without the bullshit.”

Felicia laughed, her hand steadying my elbow. Phil’s camera exploded again.

“Actually,” I went on, looking straight at Ted, “it reminds me of the fairy tale where the Cordelia prototype tells her father, the Lear prototype, ‘I love you like meat loves salt.’ Not understanding, he banishes her. He finds himself at her dinner table years later, only he of course doesn’t recognize her. She knows him, though, and deliberately serves him meat without salt. One taste, and he realizes his tragic and horrific mistake. ‘I did her wrong,’ he says.”

“I think I remember that story,” said Felicia.

“I’ve never heard that story,” said Ted.

“Sure you have,” I said, still looking him straight in the eye. “It’s a classic fairy tale.”

“I never went in much for fairy tales,” he said, looking stonefaced back at me.

“If it were me,” I said conversationally, “I would say, ‘I love you like vodka loves olives.’ ”

“I always wondered,” said Felicia, “why Cordelia didn’t just say it straight out instead. ‘Daddy, I adore you with all my heart,’ or something like that. Why did she have to be so cryptic about it? Why didn’t she defend herself when he kicked her out? Smile, everyone, he’s taking another one.”

We all flashed our teeth at Phil, who hit the trigger and shot us.

“That’s a good point, Felicia,” Gary said with a sneaky grin. “Although there wouldn’t be much of a story then.”

“But really,” said Felicia, “if you have something to say, why not just come right out with it? I disagree that there wouldn’t be a story. There’s plenty of drama in straightforwardness. I’m tired of all these suppressed emotions.”

“I think innuendo has its place,” said Gary.

Ted’s face was as impassive as mine. I felt as if we were playing a high-stakes game of poker and I’d just raised the bet much higher than he’d expected me to, but he was determined not to flinch or lose his cool.

“And years after I was banished,” I went on, “one day when he came to dinner at my house without knowing who I was, I’d serve him an empty martini, and realizing his tragic and horrific mistake, he would fall into my arms.”

“But why the twist?” said Felicia, sticking her index finger into her martini and pushing the scrap of lemon peel around the glass. It looked like a tiny yellow fish being pursued by a thin pink shark. “We never drink them with twists.”

“Well, tonight it seemed appropriate,” I said.

“The twist in the tale,” Gary said with a glint in his eye. “I’m a Gibson man myself.”

“What’s the anemic little pale crunch of a pearl onion,” I said
scornfully, half drunk on adrenaline, “compared to the pithy, salty, meaty olive, the way it rolls around at the bottom of the glass and permeates the whole drink?”

“
Au contraire
, the onion provides both the oily sheen and the underlying bite. No need to sneak in a twist if you want a little tang. A Gibson is the perfect drink.”

I was starting to warm to this Gary O’Nan. “Which garnish camp are you in, Ted?” I asked. “Whose team are you on here, the olives or the onions?”

“I try not to drink at all these days,” Ted said. His face looked tight and pale, as if it had been rubbed with ice.

“Well, let’s see. The other night you were drinking gin martinis with olives, no twist. My friend Max, on the other hand, is a Gibson boy, but he’ll do olives if you blow in his ear.”

Felicia snorted. “He’ll do anything if you blow in his ear.”

“Not if
you
do,” I said with liquid homo insinuation.

“I’d better go check on Bret,” said Ted abruptly, looking at his watch.

“Of course,” said Gary, “your daughter. She’s so cute, I’ve seen so many pictures of you all together. You really are the most gorgeous little family. Is it true, the rumor that you and Miss Fleece are in the process of adopting a son?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen anything about it yet in the gossip columns.” This had clearly been intended as a jocular parting line, but it came out sounding almost hostile.

“Well,” said Gary warmly, not missing a beat as he offered his hand to Ted, who shook it. “I’d be delighted to mention it if you two need some encouragement. It was a great honor meeting you, Mr. Masterson, I’ve been hoping to meet you for years.”

Ted acknowledged all this effusion with a semi-gracious inclination of his head, then pushed his way through the crowd, as far away from me as he could get. Phil bustled in his wake, looking like a determined basset hound.

“Apropos of what I overheard at Benito’s the other day,” said Gary swiftly in a low voice. “Just say yes or no: You two were an item, and he just dumped you. Am I right?”

I stared at him, unable to stop the horrified delight I felt from spreading across my face. “I have no idea what you’re getting at,” I said. “And it has nothing to do with his live-in quote-unquote gardener, no matter what he claims.”

“Yoshi,” Felicia said, grinning foxily.

All three of us spontaneously laughed out loud.

“Okay,” Gary said excitedly. “Let me just think aloud for a moment, then, since no one else is saying anything. How does this sound? ‘WHICH in-the-closet, very married male A-list action-flick hero, recently attending his movie-star wife’s premiere in New York with their five-year-old daughter in tow, dumped his live-in boyfriend of—’ How long were you two together?”

Felicia and I looked at each other.

“Jeremy, how long have we known each other?”

“God, what’s it been now, ten years since Ted introduced us?”

“ ‘—ten years, whom he dropped for his live-in Japanese gardener, all of which is unbeknownst to his superstar wife?’ ”

“Why not just give everyone’s real names?” Felicia said. “Why all the secrecy?”

“Now now,” said Gary. “I believe I’m the gossip columnist here. Blind items can be even more scandalous than names in bold type, depending on the story. Well! Our discussion of cocktails has made me thirsty. I’m going to go get myself another Gibson.”

I felt giddy and freaked out and violently famished. “Is there anything to eat at this party?”

“There were a couple boys in vests with trays earlier,” said Felicia, waving good-bye, “but I can’t see where they went.”

“Let the rumor mills begin their terrible swift turning,” said Gary.

“Felicia!” I hissed at her when he’d gone, and clutched her arm. “What made you back me up?”

“Did I mention I’m going into rehab tomorrow? Well, that was the new me, backing you up.”

“Oh, my God, Ted is going to—”

“I’ve had it up to here with precious fake Ted and his precious fake wife and his precious fake daughter and that whole deal. Frankly, he
makes me sick, and he treated you wrong and that makes me sick too. Giselle will survive, she’s indestructible, she’s made out of kryptonite. You’re the one I love, Jeremy, and don’t you forget it.”

I felt a surprised, warm, goofy urge to laugh hysterically. “You’re so full of it.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here. Let’s go to a dive bar.”

I glanced at her. “Does rehab include drinking? Please say no.”

“I don’t have a
drinking
problem,” she said.

“Thank God. I was starting to worry.”

“I’m just tired of wasting time,” she said. “I’m turning forty in three years, and meanwhile all the other girls my age are getting famous for peeing on quilts and misspelling words in blood on maxi pads and hanging it up in galleries. I can’t sit by and let this happen. It’s time to throw my hat in the ring. I have a plan.”

We claimed our coats, went out to the street, and walked along in silence in our premiere finery.

Gripped by a sudden surge of giddy fear, I stopped and stared at her. “Felicia,” I said, “what just happened back there?”

“It’s not entirely clear. Listen, are you still hungry, or do you just want to drink?”

“I won’t be able to eat for days.”

We went into a bar called McGee’s, bought a couple of vodkas on the rocks from the baggy-faced leprechaun of a bartender, and took them over to an empty booth. I had a terrible feeling at the base of my skull that as long as I was with Felicia I was safe, but the moment I was alone again I’d writhe with horror like a slug doused with salt. What demon had possessed me back there? Whatever it had been, it was gone now, and in its place was a cold hollow demon-shaped space gradually collapsing in on itself.

Felicia said in an annoyed tone, “Gary O’Nan was blowing smoke up your ass with that poofter rumor about my grandfather, you know. Granddad was faithful to Gran all their fifty years together.”

“How did you know he told me that?”

“He would,” she said darkly. “Do you think he’s gay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s southern. I can never tell with southern
men, just like black and Italian men. But he has that sadass, as you pointed out. Gay men try not to let that happen.”

She brightened. “Really?”

I stared at her. “Are you
interested
in him?”

“I can’t date a gossip columnist. And anyway, I’m sure he’s gay.”

“He probably is.”

The bar was quiet, ecclesiastical. Inside the jukebox, brightly lit behind glass, was an open book with enormous stiff pages. Pink neon lights chased themselves through tubes around the jukebox’s shoulders, reflecting diffusely on the wooden tabletops of the booths. The benches we sat on were as hard as pews and shaped like them, and coasters littered the tables like enormous wafers; the whole place had the same odd mixture of tackiness, grandeur, and supplication as a church, with framed photos of wrestlers and baseball stars like saints’ heads on the walls, icons and relics—pennants, moose heads, neon beer-signs—above the bar, and the bartender himself, benevolent and all-knowing, dispensing succor and absolution. A vase of fake pink tulips sat by the cash register. Smoke rose slowly, incenselike, from an ashtray on the bar.

I swiveled my head around and looked at Felicia. “Did you and Ted ever sleep together?”

“No way.”

“Come on, Felicia. You can tell me now.”

“You know we didn’t,” she said, “that was our deal.”

“I don’t know what I believe about him anymore.”

“Believe me,” said Felicia. “About everything. Admit it, I was right about him all along.”

I pressed my cold, wet, sturdy little glass against my eyelids, first one, then the other. My face was on fire; underneath this conversation, the knowledge of what I’d just done was building inside me, bubbling and heating up.

“I just exposed Ted,” I said.

“Well, of course you did, darling. And it’s about time.”

“What did I say, exactly?”

“You said: ‘I love you like martinis love olives,’ ” she said sardonically. “Now, what kind of a line is that?”

“I was delirious.”

“That’s what happens when you try to be something you’re not. Not you, Ted.” She looked hard at me. “Now we’re going to change the subject. I want to talk about what I’m going to do in rehab with all those addicts and drunks saying ‘I admit that I do not have the power to resist temptation,’ or whatever the hell the first step is. What’s the first step? See, I don’t even know that much, and here I think I’m going to learn all twelve.”

I looked at Felicia, squinting a little, trying to imagine her sitting on a plastic orange molded chair knee to knee with people in an institutional room. She was already starting to slip away. Her face was pale in the light from the small round lamps overhead. She had delicate smudges of purple pigment under her eyes. Her hair, which tonight she wore loose and straight around her shoulders, looked colorless in the washed-out light, and her skin was as flat and white as a Japanese dancer’s. In her expression was the inward, deliberate stalwartness that I associated with the faces of very old people, the determination to go ahead with what was necessary and not crumble or complain. What choice did she have, really, if she wanted to go ahead at all? I was relieved that she was quitting, of course, but nevertheless it struck me as a kind of defeat.

PART TWO