Like People in History (38 page)

Naturally, the fly button on my tux trousers flew off the first time 1 went to use it and had to be sewed back on. After wresting with it as though I were Laocoön, I gave up altogether on the cummerbund. I looked at myself in the small employee-john mirror and thought: You're not half bad-looking, you know, kid. Aging well. Matt might go for you after all. The fooo-ooool! Obviously I was becoming completely unhinged by all the pressure.

I was still laughing to (or at?) myself as I ascended into the main floor of the shop. People were still coming in, being greeted by Andre, who'd been joined by the marginally more human Holly, who directed the guests up the second set of stairs to the gallery.

"Someone was here looking for you," Andre said.

"Oh?" I looked at Holly, who averted her gaze. "Who was it?"

Andre did that elaborate Gallic shrug that involves every bone in the upper body. Holly was inspecting the wooden dowel on the staircase with the intensity of an archaeologist with a shard.

I went up to the record department—Vivaldi's Two Mandolin Concerto was playing: Heaven!—where people unknown to me held flutes of bubbly and chatted. Then I headed around the corner and up two steps into the art gallery.

"Therrre you arrre, finallllllly!" The Genoan Goose had staked out his position and all too loudly announced my arrival, which, given the circumstances, I'd hoped to keep a bit quieter.

I was surprised to see he was in a good mood. He held a glass but wasn't drinking. He was talking to various people with more garrulity than usual. "Someone was looking for you beforrrre, Meees-ter Sannns-arrrc!"

No doubt. Even the most cursory glance showed me the crowd did look awfully grand. The party seemed pretty damn spiffy altogether.

"Mr. Sansarc?" a voice behind me asked. "Roger?"

I turned, about to flee, about to deny my name, about to— The man looked familiar. Past middle-age, a bit portly, curly hair framing his puffy face—it was... it was...

"Budd Cherkin! We've only met once before. Associated Publishing."

Calvin's boss. Here was my chance to—

"Cal's leaving will be a loss to the magazine," Cherkin said, his pert features turned into solemnity: had he been reading my mind? "But I'd like to move
Opera Quarterly
into a new direction, and this seems like the perfect time to do so. Especially since we'll need a new editor in chief. I understand you have substantial writing and editorial experience."

Me?

"Not really. I worked for a book publisher back in New York. But that was history books. Textbooks."

"Three years. And only a year here and one can see how well you've managed to do with it. Here's my game plan, Roger. I want to expand the magazine. Make it a monthly. Cut it down from book length to about sixty, seventy pages. Flatten it out and make it a newsstand size. Photos. News. Illustrations. Glossy cover. Trenchant articles on the state of opera in the country, hell, in the world! I'm prepared to recapitalize it considerably. And I'm prepared to pay you thirty-five a year to start. What do you say?"

I could see my hand reaching out to hold onto something solid. Instead, Cherkin grabbed it.

"Great!" he said, interpreting my grasping for a handshake. "We'll discuss details tomorrow. Give me a call and set up a meeting."

"Wait? I..."

He'd already turned around and begun to speak to some crony.

"Smmmille, Mees-ster Sannns-arrrcc! It's a success. Everyone who counts in San Francisco is here. Go. Go socializze!" Pierluigi pushed me into the crowd.

I landed between two women in their sixties with nearly identical hairdos. I smiled with the least falseness I could muster, then skittered away. Wait! Wasn't that Doriot?

"You're exactly who I'm looking for," she said.

"Where's Alistair?" I asked.

"I was going to ask you the same thing. He vanished the minute I got here."

"I'm going to strangle him."

"What's wrong with him?" she asked.

"If anyone should know, it's you. He's been impossible lately. He's acting like a complete jerk."

"Why?" Her baby blues were very big and very azure tonight.

"Why? Because of you! I never dreamed I'd be saying this about Alistair, but it seems that he's heartbroken."

The baby blues grew larger; the eyelashes fluttered dangerously fast.

"Heartbroken over you, Doriot. Because he can't marry you."

"Marry me?" she gasped.

"Of course! Something awful went down between Alistair and your parents over it and—"

"He asked my parents for my hand in marriage?"

"And they turned him down. Now he's a complete lunatic."

"Of course they'd turn him down! They'd turn down God if He asked. But I didn't think he was that serious."

"He's made my life impossible here."

"Roger," she put a hand on my tux'ed arm. "You've known Alistair for years and years. Since you were little boys. What's he like? I mean really like? This is important."

I knew I was supposed to lie to her for Alistair's sake, and... I couldn't bring myself to do it.

"He's usually honest. And he's always smart. And he doesn't pull arms off babies, but he can be a real shit! He's arrogant and demanding and self-serving but seldom violent. Cross him and you're dead. But those he loves he protects and cares for like a lion with her cubs."

She half snorted. "That's pretty much what I figured. Thanks!"

"Then what your parents think isn't important?"

"I've
got to live with Alistair. They don't. Thanks again." She turned to leave.

"Try the stockroom," I suggested. "Two down on the elevator. Or the coffee shop outside," pointing, "one level down."

I watched her thread her way through the crowd, toward the elevator. Almost there, she stopped and spoke to a middle-aged couple who I immediately guessed from the woman's out-of-date-by-a-few-years gown and his well-worn tux must be Doriot's skillionaire parents. She turned them toward me, so we all glanced at one another. Even from this distance, I could tell that Doriot had won the genetic lottery, getting her mother's eyes, her father's cheeks, her mother's lips, her father's hair—i.e., all their best features. We all smiled politely. Alistair's future in-laws. I dawdled up to them, pushed the elevator button again for Doriot, and shook their hands.

"We know nothing about art," Doriot's mother said in a voice with a slight wobble to it, as though she'd been singing Wagner all day. "Thad's uncle collected whatever we have around. That was when you had to go to Europe to get it."

"And it didn't cost an arm and a leg," Doriot's father put in.

I pictured Renoirs, Matisses, and the odd William Merritt Chase wrapped in heavy gilt frames, hung virtually out of view, high upon dark walls.

"Your uncle's taste must skip a generation," I said to him. "Your daughter has a terrific eye. Really professional."

"Like insanity," her father said. "That skips a generation too, although we've never openly acknowledged it in our family."

"Or tone deafness," I softened it. I decided I liked these people's modesty and irony.

"Thank God we're not tone-deaf," his wife quickly said. "In fact, we support the symphony and the opera."

"Sometimes I think we support them single-handedly," her husband added. "But then, we go a lot too. So I guess we get our money's worth."

I wondered whether to tell them I'd just been offered a job with the local opera magazine. One of them must read it. I was just formulating how to say it when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Justin from the record department.

"Someone's looking for you."

Uh-oh! I glanced around, not recognizing anyone who looked familiar, or too obviously like a process server, quickly excused myself from the Spearingtons, and moved in the direction opposite where Justin said I had someone waiting, still checking around myself for trouble.

And right into Calvin's arms.

Who said, "You missed him!"

"Missed who?" I asked, blushing out of guilt that I'd even considered thinking about taking the job he'd just quit.

"Your hunk of white boy. He was here and now..." Calvin grabbed my arm and pulled me away. "You'll never guess what?" He was no longer down in the mouth. He was wearing a mischievous grin. "Greg Herkimer is leaving."

Who? What?

"Greg Herkimer? Miss Thing at the Opera's assistant!" Calvin explained. "He's leaving next month. And... well... I've been offered the job."

I'd been sipping. I nearly choked. "When?"

"Ten minutes ago. Miss Thing found out I'd quit the rag and hired me on the spot."

We held each other by the shoulders and screamed silently into each other's face with joy.

"Now I can tell you!" I said. "Your boss offered me your job. Of course, I'm not taking it."

Calvin gasped. "Take it! I'd have been stilettoed and dropped into a canal if I'd allowed him to cheapen and tart it up. But he's right. It's totally moribund and it really needs a thorough overhauling. You'll do wonders for it."

"Calvin, I couldn't!"

"You will. But just think of it, Gilda," he whispered fiercely into my ear. "I'll be helping choose the programs for the next... five... fuck... ing... years!"

"And we'll have a bona fide reason to talk to each other on the phone all day," I said.

Once again, we screamed silently at each other.

"Meees-ter Sannnsss-arccc!" The Genoan Goose loomed behind Calvin, who looked at Pierluigi, made funny eyes at me, and scooted away.

"I'd hoped, Mees-ter Sannns-arcc, that you would socialize with our guests in the manner of store manager a little more."

"I'm doing what I can." "Hmmm! I suppose that includes insulting Mr. Faunce on a regular basis."

"Faunce," I said, "is a total scumbag!"

"No. No. I'm afraid this is not the right attitude," the Goose said.

"I'd better go socialize." I began to move away. And felt grabbed at the shoulder. The Goose's large, square face pushed close to mine. He was not smiling. He was, however, pushing me into a corner, out of sight of the crowd.

"I had hoped, Mees-ter Sanns-arrcc, that we wouldn't have to have this conversation."

I looked not at him, but at his hand grasping the tux's fabric.

"When I make far-reaching decisions for the store, I expect my staff to implement them. One such decision I made was about Mr. Faunce. Ever since, I've heard nothing but complaints about his mistreatment at your hands."

"Faunce is a liar, a thief, a cheat, and probably beats his wife too!"

"What Mr. Faunce may happen to be is none of your concern. I expect you to work with him with complete respect and regard."

"I won't. My own self-respect won't allow it."

He looked surprised at that. So surprised he pulled back momentarily.

I pulled out of his grip and put some distance between us.

He stared at me, calculating. In a less threatening tone of voice, he went on. "All very good, but as long as you are working here..."

"Then I suppose I shouldn't be working here. I quit!"

"I expect you to follow my orders," he went on, not even hearing me.

So I repeated myself.

He threw his head back and assumed full stature. "Oh, come now, Mees-ter Sannnnss-arcccc!"

But having said it, I now felt strangely elated.

"In fact, having quit, I think I'll go home now. I'm tired and I'm bored!"

He blocked my way.

"You can't quit."

"Thank Faunce for me," I said, and slid under Cigna's arm and out into the gallery and the crowd, feeling slightly light-headed. Now, where was everyone?

"Excuse me. You the store manager?"

I looked at the guy: dark suit; about thirty-four; heavyset. He had "Process Server" written all over him.

"I don't work here anymore. Maybe you'd like to see that fellow. The tall one over there." I pushed him in the direction of my ex-boss.

Budd Cherkin passed by, introduced me to his wife, and said, "We'll throw a party like this when we launch the new magazine."

"Budd, I—"

"Thirty-eight's my last offer," he said.

"I'll call you in the morning."

He and his wife introduced themselves to people who before this evening had never dreamed a person could be named Cherkin—or Cherkinovich, for that matter.

"You did it!"

Alistair, suddenly, was all over me.

"I knew you'd come through. And to think, all these years, how stinting I've been in praising you."

I put a hand over his mouth. I'd seen Alistair in a great many moods. Never quite so elated as this. I guess it was contagious.

"I did nothing but tell the truth," I said. "Now, go be happy."

He hugged me. Alistair actually hugged me in front of hundreds of people, including his future in-laws and the city's most important socialites.

"I'll never forget you doing this for me," he said.

I watched as he found Doriot and hand in hand they moved more deeply into the crowd. I wondered, naturally, how and when reality would reassert itself. Then I wondered if maybe it wouldn't. Hell, we all had our destinies. Look at Cal's changing jobs so fast tonight, or for that matter, my own changing jobs so unexpectedly tonight. Perhaps Alistair was right: his gay life had been the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps he could get back on that track he'd fallen off sometime after
l'affaire Dario,
and go on to be conventional and straight and rich and Republican and—

"Roger. Someone's looking for you."

Holly was saying it this time.

"He found me." I pointed to where Pierluigi was staring down at the subpoena just handed to him.

"Not him. Some dreamy big guy in a naval uniform."

Matt!

"Where?"

"I left him downstairs about ten minutes ago. Make that fifteen. He said he wanted to look at books."

I charged down the steps onto the main floor of the store, now dimmed yet not yet completely dark, lighted on one side by the bright streetlamps outside and on the other side by the general illumination of the hotel lobby.

Even more eerie was how quiet it was down here, how chatter and music and laughter and the clink of glasses from the art gallery party above filtered down, trying to but still unable to utterly fill the space.