Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (7 page)

This year, at the New Year’s Day party, I was ready and waiting for Philip, for only a few days before I had begun to consolidate my final adultery list. Philip was the first (and thus far the only) name in my Definite Lovers column, and I wanted to convey that information. Indirectly. Adorably. Unmistakably.

Actually, Philip made it quite easy for me, having arrived at Nora’s party both unmarried and alone, and more than willing to be led to the quiet of Nora’s den for what I called (this is the indirect part) “our annual chat.” I brought along a platter of Nora’s miniature spinach crepes (elegant and attractive when served with a dollop of sour cream and red caviar), and soon Philip and I were playfully popping crepes (this is the adorable part) into each other’s eagerly open mouth. When some of the sour cream dribbled onto Philip’s finely sculpted lower lip, he reached for a napkin. I shook my head and gently pulled it away. “No, no,” I said, “let me,” and then I flicked out my tongue and (this is the unmistakable part) slowly and thoroughly licked his lower lip clean.

I figured that after about ten years of chaste New Year’s Day flirting, my I’m-available message might
take even faze-proof Philip by surprise. I decided to give him a little assistance in processing it.

“You’re quite a remarkable fellow, Philip Eastlake,” I said archly (though arch is not my strong suit), giving his lip a “there—you’re all cleaned up” tap. “You know, I watched your program on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. And the one on Lebanon. And that program you did on Oriental art. And that program on the fantasy life of children. And—what can I say?—I’m absolutely staggered.”

“I hope that means,” Philip said archly (he’s fabulous at arch), “that my humble efforts met with your approval.”

“Yes, they did,” I told him, lying only a little. “I was . . . well, I always knew you were brilliant, but—but the sensitivity, Philip. The originality. The . . . the wisdom.”

What I was doing to Philip was, I’ll readily admit, the verbal equivalent of licking his lower lip. Some might find it excessive. Philip did not. In fact, if I had to bet, I’d bet that my words were turning him on even more than my tongue had. The message in his eyes—those brooding, expressive, deep-set eyes—read, “Don’t stop now.”

I didn’t. “And I was especially touched,” I said, “by your insights into religion and the environment, when you said . . . Do you remember that part?”

Did he remember. Philip can quote himself extensively and accurately on any subject he has ever addressed in his twenty-three years as host of “Everything Under the Sun.” He can also quote Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, and Emily Dickinson—but not nearly as movingly.

“I said that there were many of us who, while having
no belief in a personal God, nonetheless believed in holiness.” He smoothed the neck of his green velours shirt, just in case he was being televised, and kept rolling. “Believed in the holiness of our mountains and rivers and oceans, in the holiness of all creatures great and small, in the holiness of . . .”

I have often wondered where Philip, who is a graduate Of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, acquired his classy accent, but there it is. William Buckley should only speak that well. Philip’s voice is so modulated, so mellifluous, so mesmerizing, that even when he’s full of shit he sounds profound. But, in fact, if we exclude how he talks when he’s engaging in what he believes to be sexual banter, he really isn’t full of shit that often.
(Time
or
Newsweek
once called his “lively and wide-ranging intellect one of our national treasures” and added, “Eat your heart out, Bill Moyers.”) Well, I don’t know about national treasure, but he sure is a whole lot sexier than Moyers, and he is—in a kind of fatiguing way—supersmart. Actually, I tend to think of him as the ultimate Bar Mitzvah boy, who first tasted glory at Temple Beth Shalom, and whose eagerness to learn and digest and explicate virtually everything under the sun derives from his wish to keep hearing the awestruck whispers that filled the temple when he was thirteen: “Oy, is that a genius or is that a genius!”

Philip had finished with the environment and was now regaling me with brilliant lines from his program on the fantasy life of children. While he spoke, I indulged in my own fantasy. Without going into details, I’ll simply say that it involved the use of crepes, sour
cream, and caviar in locations and combinations that hadn’t been mentioned in the original recipe.

Just as my fantasy was becoming seriously weird, Jake stuck his head into the den doorway. “I’d like to get out of here in a couple of minutes, Bren. You want to start saying your goodbyes?”

It was time to reel in Philip. “I’ve really loved being with you,” I told him, adding, with a little catch in my voice, “It’s going to be a long time until next New Year’s Day.”

“Where is it written,” asked Philip, who was gratifyingly eager to be reeled in, “that we have to wait until next New Year’s Day? Can’t we get together for lunch?”

“I’d love that,” I answered, tossing him what I hoped was a sluttish smile.

And then I panicked.

I didn’t want him thinking I was cheap. I didn’t want him talking about me in bars. I wanted him to respect me the next morning. Everything my mother had ever said to me about sex in the days when she still believed she could keep me a virgin suddenly came surging into my consciousness.

“Listen, Philip,” I told him, “I’m having lunch with you, I’m definitely having lunch with you. But you need to know that I usually don’t—that it really isn’t my habit to commit . . . lunch. In fact—and you can believe this or not, as you choose; I won’t try to persuade you—I have never ever before committed lunch.”

I could feel my face heating up (my God, was I blushing?) but I kept on talking, faster and faster and faster.

“Not that I’m trying to turn this into something
significant between us—certainly not. My eyes are wide open. I’m seeing it for exactly what it is. I am, for heaven’s sake, a consenting adult. But you need to know that having lunch is a very very big step for me and . . .”

Philip hadn’t heard a word I said. He was too busy flipping through the pages of his pocket calendar, looking for an opening in his schedule. “Hmmm,” he said. “Zurich next week, London the week after, Paris after that, and then L.A. Looks like my next several shows are on location. But wait. Wait just a minute. Excellent. What about March eighteenth, twelve noon, the Hay-Adams?”

Two months and seventeen days from now? I felt berth profoundly relieved (because I wouldn’t have to
do it
right away) and also profoundly offended (because he didn’t insist on
doing it
right away). My panic, however, was definitely gone. I recalled the words of the great William Shakespeare, who once observed, “The readiness is all.” With plenty of time to get used to the thought of adultery, I figured that, come March 18, I’d be ready.

I searched through my purse, tracked down my little date book, and (in my first gesture of adulterous deception) entered my appointment with Philip in code: P.E.H.A.B.C.

The P.E. was Philip Eastlake, formerly Epstein.

The H.A. was our meeting place, the Hay-Adams.

And because, as I tell my readers, the profoundly passionate need not preclude the practical, the B.C. was a reminder to Buy Condoms.

•  •  •

Months later, on a steamy August day, there I was at a far-from-my-neighborhood drugstore, purchasing a pack
of condoms again. Except this time they were not for Philip and me, or for Mr. Monti and me, or for Louis and me. This time they were for Josephine and Wally.

One of these days I ought to do a column on purchasing condoms. I mean, there is so little guidance in this area. Do we want ribbed? Do we want lubricated? Do we want the old standbys—Ramses or Trojans—or is it better to opt for the newer brands? Do we want to flatter our partner by buying the extra-large or—if he’s not extra-large—will the damn thing fall off? Even my best Mend, Carolyn, who has had a quite remarkable number of lovers (considering that she has also been married four times), is not that informed about condoms, though she strongly recommends that you look the salesman straight in the eye when purchasing them.

Anyway, it had been six days since Wally had taken off for Rehoboth Beach, where he’d been holing up, planning and tanning. Today, however, was the big day he was coming back to the city. Today was the day he intended, with a little help from me, to rescue (or maybe kidnap) Josephine. He would then, having won her trust again, take her back to the soothing shores of Rehoboth, where he had already (what can I tell you? he’s a
remarkable
young man) lined up a vacationing shrink to give the poor girl some decent psychotherapy.

Actually, Josephine had started seeing a therapist early in June. She should have started early in second grade, which was when, she once told me, she began to hyperventilate and sleepwalk and vomit every morning before school. But it seems that Mr. Monti treated any hint that his youngest child had emotional difficulties as a vicious personal attack on his fathering. “She’s a
growing girl,” he’d say, whenever she started gasping, fox breath or throwing up. “She’ll grow out of it.”

And so she did, replacing her childhood symptoms with several inconvenient obsessive rituals and an awesome collection of allergies. and phobias (including, along with the standard ones, a fear of contracting botulism from canned foods that had been improperly sealed). When Josephine’s allergist strongly recommended psychotherapy, Mr. Monti found her another allergist. When Josephine’s Aunt Minnie strongly recommended psychotherapy, Mr. Monti quit talking to Aunt Minnie. And when I, in a moment intimate enough to tempt me to try a constructive intervention, also recommended psychotherapy, Mr. Monti almost put on his trousers. “If my daughter’s got problems,” he finally said, in a very unloverly voice, “let her tell
me
about them. Why should I pay good money to some jerk who’s going to teach her to hate her father?”

•  •  •

But then, in April and May, as the conflict between her father and Wally intensified, so did Josephine’s rituals and rashes. In addition to which she lost—and she was a skinny girl to begin with—seventeen pounds. Just as the doctors were talking about putting Josephine in the hospital, Mr. Monti tuned in to a local talk show. And there was Dr. Phony (excuse me, Foley), a genuine certified psychotherapist, assailing the “disconnectedness of our perniciously individualistic society” and denouncing the current focus on independence and separation as “a psychoanalytic plot against family life.” His message—that all neuroses stemmed from a failure to respect parental authority—spoke directly to Mr. Monti’s condition. And when Mr. Monti learned that
Dr. Foley had a private practice in Washington, his joy was complete. Herr, at last, was the therapist for Josephine. Here was the man who’d be able to restore his daughter’s psychological health, while also restoring her to her father’s arms.

Three days a week, from 2
P.M.
until 2:50
P.M.,
Josephine had therapy with Dr. Foley, driven into the District and back by one of Mr. Monti’s overpaid flunkies. The flunky would go for a snack at the diner on upper Connecticut Avenue, just a few blocks from where Josephine got shrunk, and my job—on that August day—was to intercept her before she started her session and somehow talk her into seeing Wally.

“Mrs. Kovner, hi, what are you doing here?” Josephine nervously asked me, as I came hurrying over to her in the lobby.

I had given my Josephine tactics a considerable amount of thought and had opted for the Grand Emotion approach. “Wally needs you,” I said to her, gripping her thin arm. “Please—he’s waiting around the corner. Please come with me.”

Can I be frank with you? If I’d had my choice, I would not have been trying to coax Josephine into coming with me to see Wally. She was not the kind of girl I wanted for him. It’s true that she was good. She was kind. She was loving. She was probably even intelligent. And she was—in her wispy, wraithlike way—quite beautiful, But when I thought of what I’d consider the ideal woman for Wally, I thought “feisty.” I thought “zesty.” I thought “competent” and “savvy.” I thought “fun.” I didn’t think of someone who suffered from fear of botulism, had a tormented attachment to her father, and
might, in my view (despite my deep commitment to growth and change), be a permanent basket case.

Don’t imagine I didn’t wonder why Wally had chosen to fall for a permanent basket case. Don’t imagine I didn’t have a few theories. But also don’t imagine I would ever refuse, if Wally asked for my help, to help him to achieve his heart’s desire, who was—at the moment—chewing on a cuticle and shaking her curly head in a slo-mo “no.”

“I can’t,” she wailed. “I can’t see Wally right now. Tell him I’m really sorry, but I can’t.”

The elevator arrived and Josephine, showing more backbone than I would have predicted, got in and pressed the button for the third floor. I was right behind her. I waited a moment and then I asked, as we rode up to Dr. Foley, “Maybe you at least could tell me why.”

The door opened at 3 and an ancient woman hobbled on just as Josephine was about to answer. Josephine clamped her lips together and rode, without saying a word, back down to the lobby. The door opened, the woman left, the door closed, Josephine pushed the third-floor button and said, as we headed upward, “Because I promised my father and Dr. Foley.”

“Promised them you wouldn’t hear Wally’s side of it?” I asked, as the elevator once again stopped at 3.

A man and a woman, quarreling in low hissing tones, entered and pushed the lobby button. The four of us, them still hissing, rode down together. When they were gone and the car was again ascending, Josephine sighed and looked at me with moist eyes. “Mrs. Kovner,” she said imploringly, “I promised.”

This time, when the elevator arrived at the third floor, Josephine was instantly out the door. “It’s funny,” I said to her T-shirted back, my finger pressed on Door Open,
“but one of the things I never dreamed you were capable of doing was deliberately inflicting emotional pain.”