Hot Properties (23 page)

Betty meanwhile studied Patty. Patty had on a demure long dress, covering alluring parts of her body that were usually exposed. Her hair, which only three months ago had been permed, was now straight and gathered up in a bun, suggesting the fifties-movies cliché of a blond bombshell hiding in librarian’s clothes. “You look cute,” Betty said to Patty, her voice lacking conviction because her mind was absorbed by the shock that Patty had not merely unbaited her hook, but had thrown out the rod and reel as well.

Patty wheeled around, her dress billowing at the knees. “This is my taken look,” she said.

Tony and Betty laughed, pleased by her admission. David looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“This says: I have a boyfriend.”

David didn’t join the others in their smiles. “You’re not doing that for my benefit, are you?”

“Of course I am!” Patty said, a little sharply, as if hurt.

“You don’t have to.”

“Come on, David, you hated my single-girl wardrobe. Said I looked like a trollop.”

David flushed, his cheeks flooding with blood. “You did,” he said in a cruel tone, to cover his embarrassment at being exposed as a prude.

“Well,” Tony said breezily, “that’s just like Betty. After I picked her up on Forty-second Street, it took weeks to get her to throw out her hot pants.”

David and Patty laughed, glad to have an exit from their tense exchange. Betty didn’t. She said, “Ha, ha.”

An alarm bell rang in the kitchen and Patty almost jumped. “My roast!” she said, hurrying into the kitchen.

Betty followed her, saying, “Can I help?”

“What would you like to drink?” David asked Tony.

“Nothing. I’m meeting my father later, so … On the other hand, he’s so self-absorbed he wouldn’t notice I was drunk unless I threw up on his lap.”

David laughed. “Is that a yes?”

“Yeah. Give me a Scotch.”

Tony followed David over to an exposed bar on a built-in shelf unit. “How’s Hollywood?” David asked.

“Hot, I guess.”

“I meant your script.”

“Almost finished with, uh, a rough draft for Bill Garth to look at.”

“And if he likes it, they make your movie?”

“Who the fuck knows?” Tony said. “I can’t get a straight answer out of anybody as to how a movie gets made.”

“Doesn’t your mother know? Or your father?”

“Maybe I’ll ask my father tonight. Mom? She’s in TV land. When she worked in movies, it was the tail end of the old studio system. Everything was different then.”

In the kitchen, Patty fussed over her roast, her high cheeks flushing from the oven’s heat. “Where are you meeting Tony’s Dad for dinner?”

“Elaine’s.”

“Whoa!” Patty said, standing up. A strand of hair had fallen across her face and she blew it back.

“I can’t get over this picture of you,” Betty said. “You look like Doris Day in
Pillow Talk.”

“Don’t you love me this way?” Patty said. Her tone, slightly arch, but insistent, left Betty in doubt whether it was sarcasm or self-satisfaction.

“Are you happy?”

“Oh yeah.” Patty said. “And you?”

“I’m going to be thirty-three in a month,” Betty said.

Patty ignored Betty’s mournful tone. She often complained about age. “You look twenty-two,” she answered, glancing in her direction, noting Betty’s bobbed red curls and pert (surgical, Patty assumed) nose.

“I’m talking biological clock, not vanity,” Betty answered.

This got Patty’s attention off the roast. “Are you trying?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

Betty looked disgusted. “What do you think? ‘I’m not ready, dear.’ ”

“Men,” Patty agreed. “For machos, they’re awfully chicken.”

Betty laughed. “Yeah. So, if you’re happy, how come I never see you?”

“It’s not my fault! You and Tony are always busy. Having dinner with Robert Redford—”

“Oh, come on—”

“It’s true! You’ve become too fancy to see me! Look where you’re going to dinner tonight—Elaine’s!”

Patty’s accusation was burlesqued, so Betty couldn’t answer it solemnly. Betty felt the charge was unfair. Patty herself, as was typical of her behavior in the past, had withdrawn from Betty as soon as her relationship with David had become serious, and then, once Patty felt the fish was landed and her life had become dull. Betty started getting phone calls, invitations to lunch, requests for dinner. It was true, however, that a tendency of Tony’s, a desire to socialize only with successful show-business people, had become more pronounced since his deal to write a movie for Bill Garth.

“And you, meanwhile,” Betty said, deciding to return Patty’s passing shot with a similar stroke, “entertain only editors in chief.”

Tony appeared, a drink in his hand. “Break it up, girls. The big cheeses are coming.”

Patty imitated a pouting child. “She started it.”

“Oh, she always does,” Tony said. “She’s famous for brawling.”

Patty laughed. Betty looked at her husband. He stepped back. Betty’s pale eyes, usually placid and reserved, seemed dark with anger. “I don’t think these endless jokes about my losing control are funny. If you think the idea that I could ever make a scene is so hilarious, maybe I’ll start making them, and then we’ll see how happy you are.”

“Hello!” David called out. “Where is everybody?”

There were other, lower voices, accompanying his.

“Oh God, they’re here,” Patty said with open despair and nervousness.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said to his wife in an abject tone. “I guess I’m on edge about seeing my father.”

“Well, don’t take it out on me.” Betty said, and walked past him, out toward David and his guests.

At the same moment, having left his company behind in the living area, David was heading in and he and Betty collided, bumping heads. David’s glasses fell off with a loud clatter.

“Oh Jesus!” Patty exclaimed.

“Careful!” David said, looking owlish, squinting pathetically at the floor. “Don’t step on them!” he cried desperately to the others while his own foot moved forward and made a sickening crunching sound as it landed on his spectacles.

“Oh my God,” Betty said, staring down. David removed his foot as if it had landed on a hot coal.

“You have another pair, right?” Tony asked, his tone implying that he suspected the answer was no.

David didn’t speak. He knelt down, picking up the shattered lenses tenderly, his face made grief-stricken by the bewildered expression of his denuded and abandoned eyes. The others stood by motionless: sympathetic sentinels at this funeral.

“David,” Patty asked gently. “Do you have another pair?”

He didn’t look up. “No,” he said. “These are my spares. I didn’t get the others fixed.” Now he peered at Patty like she was a ghostly figure. “Thought about it this week. Was going to. But I didn’t.”

For a moment they silently contemplated the tragic nature of this oversight. “How blind are you?” Tony said at last.

David stood. He put the glasses down on a counter. “I’ll be able to find the food on my plate,” he said bravely. “Come,” he said, “let me introduce you.” And he walked toward the living area ahead of them, his feet moving tentatively, an expert on a tightrope, his eyes desperately focused on finding each safe step, while his body pretended grace and ease.

Rounder and his wife were at the other end of the loft, standing side by side looking at the complex of elegant shelving David’s brother had built around the industrial elevator shaft. Rounder’s wife, Cathy, was tall, almost six feet, and blond, with the same big-boned, ruddy-cheeked heartiness as Rounder. Indeed, she was a beautiful female version of him. She had recently given birth to their second child, but she had also, making her seem even more awesome to Betty and Patty, gotten her doctorate in economics. Columbia University, as well as NYU, had offered her positions of some kind (details were unknown) when her husband was made editor in chief and they had had to move from Atlanta, forcing her to give up her teaching job. But, in a remarkably unchic gesture, she declined the offers, saying that she wanted to devote her time to her children, especially while her husband would be absorbed in getting a feel for
Newstime.

Chico was slumped on one of David’s huge couches, staring at the enormous abstract painting (it was six feet long and four feet high) of a sharply defined bright yellow semicircle. He regarded it suspiciously, as if he suspected it of picking his pocket, or, at least, of impertinence. His wife, Louise, looked half his size, though she was really only a foot smaller, with a shock of short black frizzy hair and a thin eager body, always alert, back straight, eyes forward, like a hungry little bird. She, too, had a successful career in journalism, holding the number-two features-editor job at
Town
magazine. Louise sat on the edge of the couch, also regarding the abstract painting, but with a lively look, almost as if it were talking to her wittily.

While David introduced Chico and Louise, Rounder and Cathy moved from the shelving toward the living area. The moment greetings were done with, Cathy said to David, “Your brother designed all this?”

“And built it,” David said. He squinted at her briefly. “He got this place while he was trying to make it as a designer. He’d get some money together and then finish a section. Go back to work. And so on.”

“It’s beautiful,” Cathy said. She looked at Rounder. “We should talk to him about our new place.”

“If we stay,” Rounder said.

This led to a tedious discussion of New York real estate. David mostly listened. He felt silenced by his blindness. A headache came on rather quickly because of the strain of squinting at each speaker. Realizing this, David stopped looking and merely absorbed the voices: Rounder, self-absorbed, wading in with attitudes toward New York neighborhoods that he obviously only dimly understood; his wife, nervously joshing about “dangerous” areas like a smalltown girl; Chico, pretending he didn’t care at all about the status, elegance, or comfort of his apartment (David knew that, in fact, Chico had crippled himself with a huge mortgage in order to live on Central Park West just a few years ago); Betty, dogmatically saying that only Beekman Place and Sutton Place were truly acceptable, safe, and civilized areas, an attitude that only a rich girl like Betty could afford, but which she expressed rather as if it were a matter of taste, not money; Tony, elaborately explaining to Rounder the history of various reclaimed neighborhoods, such as SoHo, Chelsea, the Upper West Side, the Village (Tony’s observations were obvious, the stuff of
Town
magazine pieces and yet Tony said them as if they were brilliant, and Rounder actually listened as if he thought so too); meanwhile, Louise, the features editor of
Town,
smiled cheerfully at everyone but said nothing. And Patty? She told a horribly embarrassing story about being thrown out of her apartment because of all the crazy men she had been dating, and kidding that what made her relationship with David terribly important was that it rescued her from the New York roach-go-round of closet-size apartments at exorbitant rents.

Listening, hearing only the tones, David loathed them. Their self-satisfaction, their absorption in trivialities, disguised by an ironic self-satire which sounded hollow and insincere, was revealed by the sounds of their voices, abstracted from leavening smiles and gestures. And he loathed himself, because he knew he was so much like them. The loft, with its classy hypermodern design, had impressed Rounder and Chico, adding a layer of sophistication to their image of David. And he had said nothing to contradict their reaction, didn’t admit that he would never have volunteered to live that way. That if it weren’t his brother’s handiwork, he would have ripped it all out.

Patty served dinner, forgiving David for the carrying to and fro, the clearing, and so on, because of his blinded state. Tony dominated the dinner conversation. They asked endless questions when he dropped the fact that his mother was Maureen Winters. The hopelessly star-struck fascination of the Marx Brothers with show business never ceased to amaze and disgust David. Here were people who had dined with presidents and kings, oohing and aahing over stories of foolishly extravagant Hollywood: listening to Tony describe meetings with Bill Garth as though he were allowing them a peek at the lighter side of God.

And then, pathetically, Rounder tried to match Tony’s stories, telling of his encounters with stars. Rounder’s tales were of formal dinners, charity banquets, secondhand information from stories his reporters had filed. In short, they were boring. At least Tony’s stories were alive with absurd details, from the point of view of someone who knew these people when they were relaxed and off-guard.

David was sipping his coffee and squinting through his pounding headache while Rounder fumbled through a pointless anecdote about a charity banquet with Norman Lear as master of ceremonies when he put his coffee cup down and Patty did a double take and then burst out laughing.

Rounder stopped talking.

David stared at Patty, wondering if she’d lost her mind.

One by one the others looked at David. And laughed.

David quickly looked down at his shirt, expecting to find that he had spilled coffee all over it. But there was nothing there.

“Want a little sugar in your coffee. David?” Rounder said, and triggered another round of amusement.

David followed their eyes to his plate. He had shoved his chair back a foot and had to lean forward to see what they saw.

He had placed his coffee cup squarely on top of his German chocolate cake. The white china cup was sinking into the cake, a gentle coffee-fall washing over the tilted rim and making his dessert into a muddy mess.

He watched them laugh while Patty explained that David had broken his glasses. She described the scene in the kitchen vividly and the sight gag of the coffee cup was a perfect illustrated page. Their laughter increased.

The whole idea of the evening was in jeopardy. David had wanted to present himself, his life, as evidence of being adult, serious, responsible. He bore the burden, as well as the glamour, of being the youngest senior editor in
Newstime’s
history. To make himself a Marx Brother, he thought, required that he seem mature. David stared at them coldly. Faced with the collapse of his plan, he felt fatalistic. He had been a fool, anyway, to arrange the evening, he thought to himself. He deserved this exhibition. To try to make it through socializing—it was disgusting and merited humiliation and failure.