Carriage Trade (55 page)

“Bonham? Moe here. Listen, old buddy, when're you gonna stop draggin' your heels and come on board with what you promised? … You know what I'm talkin' about. Don't give me the dumb act, sonny boy, I want what you promised, and I want it now! … No, I can't wait a few more days.… I don't care what other side deal you're workin' on, things have reached the serious level.… Look what I done for you already, sonny boy. What more do you want? I got you promised an employment contract for five mil, where you won't even have to come into the office. That should be enough for you and your Jap boyfriend to retire in style, that, plus what you've already managed to stash away over the last twenty years, thanks to me.… No, I can't wait till Friday. I can't wait till tomorrow.
I want it now.…

“Listen, you bastard, I'm not the threatening type. I never threaten people, which is the secret of my success. But if I was to threaten you, well, what about what happened to the Tarkington kid's trust fund? What if the kid found out what happened to the half a mil that was supposed to be his when he was twenty-one? You'd be in some pretty hot water, it seems like to me. Think about these items, pal; there's some others, too numerous to mention. So get your ass on the stick, Bonham! … You say I'm bluffing?
You'll find out!”

He slams down the phone and immediately punches in another call.

“Eddie? Moe here.… Nah, I don't need any more credit card numbers right now, I got enough to last me at least another month. Those corporate account numbers are the best. They're good for at least a coupla months.… Yeah, that was good work you done for me on them, so for that I got a special reward for you. For this I'll pay you sixty bucks an hour—how's that?

“Eddie, I want you to put a tail on Honeychile.… Yeah, you heard me right. My wife, Honeychile. I wanna know every move she makes, and every move she makes I wanna know about it as soon as she makes it by you reporting it back to me. Understand? Okay, I'll go sixty-five.… Let's see, we'll coordinate our watches. It's now nine-forty-five
A
.
M
. Your meter has just started running, buddy.”

He puts down the phone and smiles. But when he looks down, he sees that the front of his shirt is drenched with sweat, though the day is not a warm one.

28

Diana Smith (interview taped 10/19/91)

What can I say to you? He wanted to marry me, but his wife wouldn't give him a divorce. At least not without all sorts of nasty publicity. That broke his heart. That's what he died of, a broken heart. That's really all I have to say to you.

You're going to have to ask me some specific questions. I'm a private person. I can't just run off at the mouth about Si Tarkington and myself. It's too painful. Ask me some specifics, and I'll try to answer you. Except dates. I'm terrible on dates. Si used to tease me. And numbers. I've heard that some people have what amounts to dyslexia where numbers are concerned. If that's so, I'm one of them.

What do I think of Connie Tarkington? You really want to know what I think of her? Consuelo Tarkington is a bitch. How's that for a straight answer? When it comes to bitches, she wrote the book. She's also a liar. She's a patho—what's the word? That's it, a pathological liar. You can't believe a word she says. Take it from me.

I mean, what can you say for a woman who's only interested in clothes? She's not interested in her family. She has no interest in Miranda, who's really a mixed-up kid, always falling in love with the wrong kinds of men, and who could really have used some mothering when she was growing up. She has no interest in her stepson, whom she hardly ever sees. She had no interest in Si, either in his career or in him as a man. She has no interest in sex. Which was why Si—well, he was a normal, healthy male, after all, with the usual male appetites—always had to go looking for that elsewhere. If you ask me, she encouraged his extramarital affairs, because that meant he left her alone! The only thing she ever cared about was whether he had enough money to pay her bills. You should have seen her bills. He showed them to me once; it was a stack yea high! Just from
one month
. How could a woman spend so much on clothes? Especially since most of the designers who sold to Si gave her clothes for enormous discounts, and anything she wanted from Tony Delfino's salon she got for free.

No, I didn't know her before she married him. Before she broke up his first marriage—which was perfectly happy before she came along—before she got him to walk out on his first wife and little child. But I've heard stories. Someone told me that before she married Si, she went around asking everybody, “Are you coming to my fundraiser?” Meaning the wedding. That's all she ever cared about. His money.

Nobody really likes Connie. She's a cold fish. I think she's got ice water running in her veins. No wonder she's a sexual refrigerator. That's what Si used to call her. I thought that was a pretty good description of Miss Consuelo Banning and her
Social Register
airs.

Oh, and here's another thing. This is important, and I almost forgot it. His mother. Did you know that Connie made Si sweep his very own mother under the rug? How about that? When Si started to get famous, and Connie started getting on the Best-Dressed List, she decided that Si's poor old mother wasn't good enough for the
image
she wanted for herself and Si and the store. She made him go around telling everyone he was an orphan. That both his parents had died years ago.

Well, his father may have been dead, but his mother sure as hell wasn't, and as far as I know she still isn't, though she must be well up in her nineties by now. But Connie forced Si to keep his mother in purdah, as he put it. She forced him to keep his mother like a damn prisoner because she didn't think his mother was socially good enough. Because his mother talked funny and liked to wear an apron around the house.

How did I find out about her? Quite by accident. I live in Morningside Heights, and there's a Gristede's at the corner of West End and Cathedral that I shop at. Two or three years ago, it was a Sunday and I'd gone out to get some things, and as I was walking home I suddenly saw Si standing on the stoop of a shabby old brownstone, with a briefcase, ringing a doorbell. I was so surprised to see him there that I ran up the steps. “Si!” I said. “What are you doing here?” He didn't look at all pleased to see me, I must say.

“Delivering something to a client,” he said.

“In
this
neighborhood?” I said.

With that, this little fat old lady came to the door. “Right on time,” she said.

He opened his briefcase, took out an envelope, and handed it to her. “Here's your envelope—Mother,” he said.

“Mother?” she said. She gave me the once-over. “And who's this, your daughter?”

He was looking very uncomfortable. “Mother, this is Diana Smith,” he said. “Diana Smith, I'd like you to meet my mother. Miss Smith just happened to be passing by.”

She winked at him then. “Well, whoever she is she's a cute little trick,” she said.

“Miss Smith may end up being my next wife,
Mother,”
he said. There was a little note of warning in his voice.

“Whatever you say,” she said. “But first you've got to get rid of the wife you've got, don't you?” And she winked at him again, as though they had a little private secret between them. “But you know how to get rid of women, don't you—sonny?”

He looked at his watch. “I've got to run now,” he said.

“Sure,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Miss Smith. Nice to see you, sonny.” She tucked the envelope inside the front of her dress and closed the door.

Well, she may have thought she was making some sort of private joke, but he sure didn't think so. In fact, he was mad as hell. I was very sensitive to his mood changes. As we walked down the steps, I asked him, “What was that all about? I didn't know you had a mother!”

That was when he told me that his mother was a secret, that Connie didn't want anyone to know about her, and that even though his mother was often a royal pain in the ass he still took care of her and paid her rent. “I want you to promise not to mention this to anyone,” he said.

“Of course not,” I said. “Still, I think it's awfully sweet of you to take care of her like this.”

“And she's getting senile,” he said.

“What did she mean about getting rid of women?”

“My first wife was a woman you simply could not reason with,” he said. He never liked to talk about his first wife, Alice.

He must have come up there by cab, because now he was looking up and down the street for a taxi. “I'd offer to walk you home with your groceries,” he said, “But—”

“It's just a box of detergent and a carton of cigarettes,” I said. “I can manage.”

“I wish you wouldn't smoke,” he said. Then he spotted a cab and raised his briefcase. “See you tomorrow at the store,” he said, and waved goodbye.

We didn't kiss goodbye, as we usually did. Too public, I suppose, and besides his mother was probably watching us both from a window.

I never told another living soul about his mother, and I never mentioned it again because I knew how painful the whole situation was for him—what that bitch Connie had made him do. I'm only telling you now because—well, now that Si is … gone, it doesn't matter, does it? And I think it says a lot about his character. He really owed a lot to his mother, you know. Oh, yes. She helped him get his start. His father was some kind of blue-collar worker, but his mother worked too, and she saved every dollar and every dime to help her only son get started in business. He told me that. And he never forgot his indebtedness to her, no matter how much of a pain in the ass she became later. Of course Connie forgot Si's mother long ago.

Now that he's gone, who'll take care of the little old lady, I wonder? Will Connie? Will Miss Icebox ever be caught dead on West End Avenue? Anyone who believes that will please stand on his head, as my own mother used to say. Will Miranda? I don't know if Miranda even knows she's got a living grandmother. I don't count on her for much of anything.

I'm sure Si's mother is still alive, because Si would have told me if she died, since I once actually met her. Every time I pass that shabby old brownstone on West End Avenue I wonder what's to become of her. I'd offer to help her myself, but I don't have any money. Right now, I don't even have a job.…

What's my beef with Miranda? Oh, nothing, I guess, except for the way she's always acted as though she owned the place—which I guess she does now, anyway. The day I left, for instance, she just borrowed a big diamond ring from my department without saying a word to anybody! What kind of a way is that to run a store? Well, of course by then it wasn't my department anymore, so there wasn't anything I could really say or do about it, except to think, What nerve! She'd never have got away with that sort of thing when her father was alive. Well, from what I read in the papers, Continental is about to buy the store, so she'll be out of a job. Like me. They'll all be out of their jobs, Tommy Bonham included. From the talk I hear on the street the store isn't in such great financial shape, and if that's the case the fault will be Tommy Bonham's. Si gave Tommy too much authority over the past few years, if you ask me. I tried to warn Si about that. I think he was finally beginning to listen to me when—well, when what happened happened.

Now I hear Tommy Bonham is making a big play for Miranda. After her money, I suppose, or so my pals at the store tell me.…

Why are you giving me that funny look? Don't tell me you have a thing for Miss Miranda Tarkington! All I can say is watch out. She's had a bad track record with men. Emotionally insecure, I think. Like her mother. The one Tommy should be making a play for is her mother. She's closer to his age.

Oh-oh. You've just asked me for a date. I'm terrible on dates. But let's see. It must have been in the spring of eighty-five when I first went to work for Tarkington's. Delafield & Du Bois's lease had run out, and Si didn't want to renew it. He wanted to start his own jewelry department. I answered an ad.

I'd had several other jobs before, and I'd just been fired from my last one—as secretary for a building contractor. But before that I'd worked as a saleswoman at Carrier, I'd taken a course in gemology and got an A in it, and I really knew my stones. I put all this in my résumé and crossed my fingers. Would it be enough to qualify me for a job as jewelry buyer for a store like Tarkington's? I had no idea, but the pay was more than anything I'd earned before, and so I thought what the hell.

My first interview was with Tommy Bonham. I certainly thought he was a handsome hunk, but that interview was really weird. He hardly asked me any questions at all. Instead, he said to me things like, “Let me see you sit down in that chair. Now stand up. Now walk across the room. Now turn and walk the other way. Now reach out and touch that picture frame and straighten it slightly. Now pick up this pencil. Now pick up this telephone as though you were taking a call. Now let me see your best smile. Now repeat after me, Papa … potatoes … poultry … prunes … and prisms.” It was like I was auditioning for a part in a high school play. Then he asked me for a sample of my handwriting. He was an amateur graphologist, he said. That really scared me. I knew I'd be dealing with a lot of expensive jewelry, and he probably wanted to analyze my handwriting to see if I was honest or not.

Anyway, I left that interview feeling I hadn't done very well. And I thought, Oh, well, I still have four more months of unemployment coming, so I went back to the Help Wanted ads.

Then, a week later, I got a call from Bonham's office. They wanted me to come back for a second interview.