The Class (34 page)

"My God, Jason," she replied, "don't you realize what the Atlantic Ocean spared you in your childhood? I grew up in the shadow of the Nazis. I saw them take our neighbors

away. My family even hid a Jewish girl during the whole war."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Eva Goudsmit. We grew up like sisters. Her parents owned a china factory and were-so they thought- pillars of the Dutch community. But that didn't impress the soldiers who took them off."

"What happened to them?" Jason asked quietly.

"The same thing that happened to millions of Jews all over Europe. After the war, Eva searched and searched. She went to all kinds of agencies, but they could find nothing. All they traced was a distant cousin living in Palestine. So when she finished school she went off to join him. We still keep in touch. In fact, every few summers I go and visit her kibbutz in the Galilee."

That conversation and several others like it in the weeks they spent together crystallized in Jason's mind a firm desire to learn about his heritage. And ironically, he owed this resolution not to another Jew but to a Christian Dutch girl of whom he was growing fonder each day.

He had wanted to drive her all the way back to Amsterdam

and take the plane from there. But they both fell so in love with Venice that they lingered till it was nearly time for Jason to report for duty. -

Their parting at the airport disconcerted him. After they'd kissed and embraced dozens of times, Jason swore fervently

that he would write her at least once a week.

Please don't feel you have to say these things, Jason. It's been very lovely and I'll always think of you with

affection. But we d both be very silly to think that we'll sit pining for each other for two years." -

"Speak for yourself, Fanny," he protested. "I mean, if you felt as strongly for me as I do for you-"

"Jason, you're the nicest man I've ever met. And I ye never felt as close to anyone. Why don't we just see what happens-as long as we have no false illusions."

"Have you read the Odyssey, Fanny?"

"Yes, of course. The couple were separated for twenty years."

"So what's twenty-four months compared to that?"

"The Odyssey, my love, is a fairy tale."

"Okay, my cynical little Dutch girl," Jason replied, affecting a John Wayne posture to impress her, "you just promise to answer every letter I write and we'll see what happens."

"I promise."

They embraced a final time. He walked off toward his

flight. As he reached the door of the plane he looked at the observation gate and saw her standing there.

Even at that distance he could see tears streaming down her cheeks.

D

anny Rossi woke up slightly confused at finding himself in a strange, if lavish, hotel room. Because of his packed concert schedule he was used to changing

bedrooms as often as pajamas. But he had always been sure of exactly where he was. What country. What city. What orchestra. What hotel.

As he tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind, he

perceived five glittering gold statuettes on the dresser just beyond the bed. Then it slowly began to come back to him.

Last night had been the annual Grammy Awards ceremony, honoring the best achievements in the record industry. It had been held at a festive gala in the grand ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. He had flown in just in time to register at the Beverly Wilshire, change into a tux, and hurry down to the limo where two PR toadies were

waiting to escort him to the ceremony.

Danny's victory as best classical soloist was not unexpected.

After all, the awards are as much for playing the media as playing an instrument. And he had become a master of both. While it was arguable that his interpretation of the complete Beethoven piano concerti was the best thing put on disk during the previous twelve months, it was indisputable

that his publicity campaign was nonpareil.

But what had created the stir last evening was the fact that he had won a second Grammy for best solo jazz album. This was - the culmination of a pleasant little irony that had begun the night of his debut with the New York

Philharmonic, when he had improvised all those show tunes at the party.

The gentleman who had requested an audience did indeed contact him the following day. He turned out to be Edward Kaiser, president of Columbia Records, and he was absolutely

certain that there was a vast "crossover audience" that would lap up Danny's musical trifles like cotton candy.

At first Rossi on Broadway had a slow but steady sale

based mainly on Danny's gradually growing popularity. But his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show launched him higher than astronaut John Glenn. It accelerated sales from three

thousand to seventy-five thousand "units" per week. The Sullivan broadcast also came at an especially

fortuitous time. For the evening it was aired, the Grammy ballots were in the mail to the voters. Earlier, smart money would have picked Count Basie as a surefire winner. But after Ed's monoton-al but hyperbolic introduction ("America's great new musical genius"), it was a totally different ball game. Thus it was that Danny wrote another page of musical

history-winning Grammies in both the classical and jazz categories in a single day. Indeed, as Count Basie himself was overheard to remark, he was "a lucky little pécker." Who knows how many units per week they'd be selling after this! -

As Danny put the mosaic of his mind into place, he still

could not account for the presence of all the gold statuettes glittering there in dawn's early light. -

Where the hell had the others come from?

But that, of course, might be explained once the mystery of why he was in this strange hotel room had been solved. He heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. Someone was performing morning ablutions. He had clearly shared the room and-from the look of it-the bed with

someone the night before. Why was his normally razor-sharp memory in such a haze? -

Just then the crystal tones of a female voice sang out,

"Good morning, honey." -

And making an impeccably coiffed and diaphanously clad entrance from the bathroom, triple Grammy Award winner Carla Atkins appeared.

"Hey, Carla," Danny enthused, "you certainly were a hit last night."

"You weren't too bad yourself, baby," she cooed, creeping under the covers next to him.

"I take it you're not talking about the Grammies?" Danny asked with a smile.

"Hell," Carla laughed in her lower register, "those little statues aren't any good in bed. I think the two of us deserve a special award, don't you?"

"I'm glad you think so," Danny answered candidly. "I just wish I could remember more about my evening with America's greatest vocalist. Did we drink anything?"

"Oh, a little bubbly downstairs. Then when we got up here

I broke open a few amies,"

"Amies?"

"Yeah, honey. Amyl nitrite. You know, those little pills with the invigorating smell. Don't tell me that was your first time?" - -

"It was," Danny confessed. "Why can't I remember if I

enjoyed it or not?"

"Because, baby, you were higher than a rocket ship. I had to stuff you with downers or you would have danced on the ceiling. Are you interested in some breakfast?"

"Yeah, now that you mention it," Danny replied. "What about five or six eggs and bacon and toast-?"

Carla Atkins smiled. "I get the picture," she said and

picked up the phone to room service and ordered breakfast for

"a quintet." -

"Quintet?" Danny asked after she had hung up. "Yeah,

baby-those little fellahs over there." And she pointed at the five Grammies shining in a row.

The stewardess offered him champagne.

"No, thank you," Danny said politely. -"But, Mr. Rossi, you should be celebrating your victories,"

the flight attendant said, smiling invitingly. She was very pretty. "Well, call me if you change your mind-and congratulations."

After lingering for yet another awkward second in the

hopes that Danny would ask for her phone number, she went reluctantly off to attend to some of the other stars who were also flying that afternoon in the first-class cabin from Los Angeles to New York.

But Danny was deep in thought. He was racking his brain to reconstruct what had occurred after he had walked into Carla Atkins's hotel room.

Little by little it was coming back to him. First, the

thrill of being with the undisputed star of the evening. Then the thrill of being intimate with her. And then the sensation of those pills she had brought out.

Yes, he remembered he had felt a kind of wild exhilaration. His heart beat faster merely in retrospect.

They had certainly made him feel . . . vigorous. But then the stuff she used to bring him "down" had really fogged his brain.

And he had forgotten to ask her what they were.

ANDREW ELIOT'S DIARY

December 20, 1960

I'm getting married tomorrow. It should be very interesting.

Newall's stuck in Hawaii with the navy and can't make it.

But otherwise all my buddies will be there- including Ted and

Sara Lambros, and even that nutcase, George Keller. - - -

- Kind of because I admire him so, I've asked Jason

Gilbert to be my best man. He agreed, but refused to wear his marine uniform, even though it would add flash to the occasion. -

Our church ceremony will be followed by a cham

pagne reception at the Beacon Hill Club. After which we'll fly to Barbados for our honeymoon, and then return to New York, where I'll be starting as a trainee with Downs, Winship, Investment Bankers.

I'm sure it will be a joyous experience-especially if I

can figure out how this all happened to me so quickly.

From one standpoint, I could say it was parental pressure. Although in our family that doesn't exist. My father merely suggests things.

When I was mustered from the navy last summer in time to join everybody up in Maine, he casually remarked that he supposed I'd be getting married one of these days.

To which I dutifully replied that I supposed so. And that sort of concluded the conversation, except for his

observation that, "After all, a man shouldn't wait until he's over the hill."

Seeing as there were no more decks to swab or naval

reports to file, I was, to tell the truth, at - a loss for things to do. Also, spending so much time at sea had only sharpened my desire to get more involved with the female sex. And I suppose marriage is as invOlved as you can get.

Up until this year I had the romantic notion that getting married had something to do with love. But then, of course, having been isolated-first by Harvard and then by the vast ocean-I had no real idea what life was all about.

Matter of fact, love is one of the few subjects on which

my father had such strong feelings that he actually expressed them in a four-letter word. We were out fishing on the lake a few days later and I mentioned how touched I had been at Ted and Sara's wedding. And how they were my ideal of what a loving couple should be.

Dad looked at me with eyebrow raised and said, "Andrew, don't you know love is ... bosh?"

1 can't pretend that I didn't hear stronger language in

the navy-, but never from my father's lips. He then patiently explained that when he was a boy the best marriages were not made in heaven, but over lunch at the club. Pity that sort of thing was going out of style.

For example, his classmate, Lyman Pierce, chairman of

Boston Metropolitan, had "an absolutely smashing daughter," to whom, in the good old days, he would have arranged a splendid betrothal for me.

I allowed that I was in no way averse to meeting smashing women and would be glad to call this lady up as long as it was on a friendly basis-and without obligation.

To which my father replied that I wouldn't regret it. And