The Cosmopolitans (26 page)

“Crevelle,” he said with confidence. “What is true does not matter. What matters is who decides. I decide what is true.” Then he stepped out into the hall before anyone could dilute his defining last word.

Crevelle glanced in Bette's direction. “I hate you,” she said. Then she stole a look at Hector, turned, and followed her mate.

When the door closed behind Crevelle, the rest of
the room lingered in silence. Bette had forgotten the others were there. So rarely was anyone else there, it was a new fact, hard to assimilate. But once she faced it, she felt no shame before them. She did not respect Hector, and so what he saw did not matter. And she knew that Valerie had seen and done much worse in her day, she wouldn't care about anything except for what she, herself, could get out of it.

The only person who mattered was Earl. Bette wished she could see his face. She wished that she could talk to him about what had just happened. Even if he were to marry Hortense, falsely, she still wanted to see him. Bette could be flexible. Earl telling the truth was perhaps not the most important thing. It was more important that she see her friend. That the shunning stop. Bette realized that she would accept any terms if the shunning would stop. She would be their bridesmaid and clean their house if she could talk to Earl and he would be kind. That bitter, terrible, daily, undeserved shunning. If only they could talk.

“Bette,” Hector carefully approached her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“I have never seen you like this,” he said with some awe.

“Bette has always been like this.” Valerie was calmly smiling, unwrapping the pack of Luckies she had discovered in the kitchen drawer. Slamming them against the back of her hand and leaning into Hector for a light. Which, despite his shock, he automatically provided. Some things can never be unlearned, and the symptoms of class are fiercely on the list.

Ahh, Valerie's smile. So sincere and effective. She looked Bette in the eye, invoking their secret sisterhood of the modest transformed. “Tell Crevelle the truth,” Valerie said. Then she pointed her finger like it was a pen, and made a mark in the air. “Check.”

Everyone stood very still.

Suddenly, Valerie puckered. “The check!”

“What about it?” Bette droned, her mind everywhere else.

“Has Crevelle's final check to the company cleared?”

“Yes,” Bette chanted dully. “It cleared.”

“Good.” Valerie was back to normal. “Good girl.”

“Good girl,” Bette repeated.

Bette wanted to go to the window. To sit in her chair and look out upon the world, but somehow she could not. She could not move.

“Bette, I wonder what is next on your list.” Valerie exhaled, flicking the ash into Crevelle's half-filled cocktail, so expertly chilled it was still sweating.

“Oh God,” Hector held his stomach, ready to expel three martinis.

“Are you all right, Hector?” Valerie brought her most feminine concern to his immediate care. “Let me take you outside for some air.”

Chapter 27

T
he apartment was empty now.

Again.

Chairs and cheese askew, Bette teetered in her corner and then prowled her silent cave. In each crevice she revisited a memory. A fawn, she daintily approached the spot on the floor where Hector and Crevelle had danced. Humming to herself, Bette put out her arms to an invisible partner and twirled. Here, by the record rack, Valerie the leopard chose Mel Tormé over Glenn Miller. She wanted to be of her own time and not remind anyone of anything that had come before. This is where the lion Frederick had faced her, bared his teeth, and sprung. Over here, one step to the left, is where he lied about her again.

Bette's pain was so inside her, swimming. The language of this pain burst out through her throat in tiny fragments. A word here. A word spilled out. A phrase exploded. It turned within and any observer would have found it unintelligible. It was only emotionally
articulate. Anyway, there were no observers and there would not be any observers. She made more sounds, a joining together of shriek, plead, mumble, the break of heart and thought.

“Earl.” That was a word that she spoke.

I forgive you
. She felt that.

“I forgive you,” she said out loud. It was blurted, uncontainable. She had forgiven Frederick, she had to forgive Earl.

I see your face before me. And the love that I have for you takes over. I am not angry, my dearest friend. I just want this cut-off to end. End it. End it. End
.

“This cruelty,” she said. “What is in it for you?”

Don't be afraid
, she thought.
I know who you are, and I accept you. I accept you. I know you. You are the one doing this to me. My Earl
.

“This lie.”

Because you
.

“You can't breathe.”

And you are pushing your pain, punishing me for your pain. Me for your pain. Me for your pain. Me. Me
.

“That's why,” she said.

That's why
, she felt.

That's why
, she knew.
Why you hide behind your locked door. One look at me and who you are, your truth, will emerge. I know you. So, you have to eliminate me
.

“Destroy me.”

“Liar.”

There was a knock at the door.

This will end
.

“Your shunning . . .”
This
.

This will end. This will end. This will end. This will end. This will kill us
.

“Both.”

Another knock at the door.

“This will kill us both.”

Finally, she heard the knock, and Bette, believing that her prayers were being answered, jumped up and ran to the door. She flung it open.

“Earl?”

It was Valerie. She was dripping wet. Only then did Bette realize that days and nights had passed. She had not left the house while the world went on. And that it was now raining outside. That there was an outside. And, there, it rained.

Valerie was wearing a fashionable raincoat. Bette remembered seeing it on Audrey Hepburn in one of those magazines. She had a gay umbrella, lovely rain boots, an endearing hat. Her outfit did a lot of work for her.

“I was down here in the Village,” she chirped. “And lost track of the time. Isn't that uncharacteristic?” Valerie took off her hat. “It's rather foolish, really. Not like me. It was too late. And I thought . . .” She unbuttoned her coat. “I thought I'd be in the way of the producers at this point. And I remembered that you were the . . . nearest television. Can we watch it together?” She took off her boots. “Our commercial?”

Robotically, Bette walked Valerie to the center of the room, freezing in front of the television set, still holding an open jar of olives and an empty martini shaker. Each woman stood to a side of it, flanking their mascot. Valerie reached over, stretched out her arm,
and for the first time since its arrival, the television set was actually turned on.

At first the image was imperceptible. And this confused Bette. But then, after a bit of warm-up time, a thin gray line started to form at the center of the tube. Once that came to be, the sound began to crackle. Finally, a live drama popped up and emerged into focus.

“Here we go,” Valerie said, as though the car she was driving was about to plummet off the bridge and she had accepted it. The destruction. The miracle. Whatever was to come next.

On the television set, there was an actress. Her line was: “But, Daddy. I love him.”

This was followed by organ music, as her image disappeared into the commercial break.

In its place came Hortense. Bette's own Hortense! She was sitting on a gray throne wearing a great crown.
Why do they call it black and white
, Bette wondered,
when really everything about it is gray
? This gray, Bette realized, was their commercial.

“Off with their heads,” Hortense said, with a put-on British accent, sounding like Edna May Oliver at age twenty-two. She waved her hand as if serving in a round of tennis.
This was supposed to be queenly
, Bette thought. It was a sporty and contemporary gesture. Perhaps she was going for the modern aristocrat.

“Oh, Vincent!” she squealed. “Bring me my cocoa!”

Then Earl walked in front of the camera. He was dressed like a butler, and he carried a tray with one cup of cocoa.

Bette gasped. “
No ooga-booga cannibals,”
he had said. “
No butlers, no shufflers.”
But none of that mattered
now, did it? The only person who had heard him say those things was Bette. And she no longer existed. Without witnesses, he was free. Free to play a butler. Apparently nothing that anyone says matters. It's just the release of breath. This was the most awful thing she had ever seen in her life.

Hortense reached for the cup and took a sip.

“Mmmmm,” Hortense crooned. The chocolate was so wonderful that just one sip made her instantly kinder, and she lost her angry facial expression. “Oh,” she shrugged, reconsidering the condemned. “Let them go home.”

A man's voice boomed from nowhere. Although he could not be seen, one felt that he was telling the truth. That he really knew. A white man.

“RO-CO-CO,” he said. “IT SOOTHES THE SAVAGE BEAST.”

Earl stood at attention. He wore white gloves. Hortense smiled and drank her cocoa. The message was subtle. Hortense, the queen, was the beast. Earl's servitude, merely suggestive. Valerie must be some kind of liberal, after all. Organ music resumed and then the screen was replaced, once again, with the actual program featuring that plaintive first actress.

“Daddy?”

Valerie turned off the set.

Again, there was that aftereffect, where the picture reduced to a thin line and the static reduced to silence until the whole screen went dark.

“That's what everybody wants,” Bette said.

Valerie nodded. “A good cup of cocoa.”

“No. To be seen.”

“Do you have any?”

But Bette only had tea. She put on the kettle. “It is such a petty want and so powerful. It drains the heart out of a person.”

“Cocoa?”

“No, to be seen.” Bette set out two cups on their saucers and placed them on top of the television set. “Those actors,” she clucked, nesting a small bowl of sugar snugly between the antennae. “They don't care how foolish, how demeaning. They just want to be seen.”

“They want to earn a living.”

“Yes, but . . .” No, actually, Bette knew that money was not the only thing that needed to be in place for a man to dress up as a butler with no lines. That this was reliant on other factors. A loss of will, a diminished imagination about what one's life could be. Sustained battle. An emotional abandon. Nothing less.

“
But
what?” Valerie asked. She was being very curious.

“Just that once a person of great quality tastes that kind of diminishment,” Bette gestured toward the TV screen. “Once they really know how grotesque it is. Once they live it . . .”

“Then they want more.”

“Oh no,” Bette stopped her. “Then they realize . . .”

“Realize?”

“Then they realize that this is soul killing, this kind of deceit. That to give and receive love is more important than how much one is seen.”

Valerie put her hand for the second time on Bette's shoulder. “No one ever
realizes
something like that. Only in the movies.”

“I realize it,” Bette said.

Valerie picked out two cubes of sugar and placed them, with anticipation, into her empty cup. “Bette, you never wanted to be seen. You have a different kind of thirst for power.”

“I want my friend,” Bette said. “I want to eat dinner with him.” Bette's voice quivered and her eyes welled up. She was humiliated. This was the first time she had told any human being, except for Earl, what was in her heart. She felt disloyal. Her secrets belonged only to the two of them. “After this commercial,” she said, regaining control. “He will want his dignity back. He will want to return to the truth.”

“That actor?” Valerie removed her hand. “You think that this great success will leave him repulsed? You are wrong, Bette. Other actors will be jealous, someone will recognize him on the street. He'll be able to say he was on TV. He'll have a story for life.”

“But, a butler?”

“Look,” Valerie was fed up now. She wanted to move on to other topics. “Success replaces truth. Don't you know that?”

“No.”

“Well, it does. There is a joy in working the system that starts to replace daily life.”

“Not for me,” Bette said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You know,” Valerie stared at her, like she was a car for sale and either a bargain or a lemon. “You could be a great mind in television. You, Bette, are a very, very smart woman. Too smart to be a secretary.”

“It's fine.”

“Well, no,” Valerie blinked. She had this strange, new expression on her face. It was one of regretful false pity. “I guess not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Bette. . .”

“Yes?”

Valerie seemed uncomfortable. How could that be possible? What on earth could ever make her feel ill at ease?

“Hector is the president of the company. I cannot . . . He feels that you have your own agenda. Your own ideas. He feels that you have your own interpretation—ways of understanding things. You seem to be driven . . . by feelings. That's the word,
driven
. And that's the problem. Your feelings. They're intense. There is an intensity about you that is unusual. It makes him uncomfortable. He doesn't have the courage to tell you, so I'm doing it myself. He doesn't like it.”

The teakettle whistle blew.

“I'm fired.”

“Yes, you're fired. I'm sorry.”

“Would you like some tea?” Bette asked.

“All right,” Valerie answered, as a sign of mercy. She would drink a cup of tea with this old bag and then move on.

Bette lifted the Swee-Touch-Nee box and her eye caught the packaging.
Flow through tea bag
. She picked one out, swung it by the label. “I guess we should share one.”

“All right.”

Bette stood, trampled, with the two teacups of hot water before her. Methodically, she dunked the singular
tea bag, first in one cup and then in the other. Then the other. Then the other. Then the other. Then the other.

“We realize,” Valerie lulled, “that you own one-quarter of the company. And we are prepared to buy out your shares. Which are not worth much. But are starting to be worth something. It should tide you over for a year.”

“I own half the company,” Bette said.

“No, dear.” Valerie's tone both softened and hardened to express her simultaneous authority and generosity. “Hector's father left you one-fourth.”

“My cousin.”

Valerie did not have time for this. “I'm sure,” she said, as condescendingly as she could be without it actually becoming provable. “I'm sure that your cousin will be more than happy to sell us her shares, and I can't see any chance of her giving them to you.”

“She doesn't own them,” Bette said. She finished the tea-making procedure and wrapped the well-used bag around a spoon. “I do.”

“How is that possible?”

“It was my money,” Bette explained, squeezing the last burst of flavor out of the bag. “My money produced the television commercial. My money, from my account where my cousin deposited ten thousand dollars for the care of her daughter.”

Valerie was as startled as a driver caught on the train tracks at precisely the wrong moment. “But the checks were in her name.”

“No, they were in my name. I keep the books. Remember?”

Bette handed her guest the cup of tea. Valerie took it, obediently. And Bette knew that that was a good sign.

“So,” Valerie rapidly integrated her new reality. “You own half the company.”

“And you and Hector each own one-fourth.”

Before her, Bette could see that Valerie was a better actor than Hortense or even Earl. On her own, Valerie stood for nothing. She had no values, and she had nothing worth fighting for except her own empty status. But Valerie's immense gift, ultimately, was that ability to be persuasive on any terms. Inside, she was a moral void. Hortense and Earl had at least miniscule selves. Despite a pervasive lack of conscience, something existed inside each of them that could not be eclipsed. But for Valerie that was not the case. She could fully inhabit any role.

“Well then,” Valerie smiled. Entirely recovered and fully adjusted. She sipped her tea. “There is not much cash there. Only potential.”

“Then I guess I'm not fired.”

“No, I guess not.”

“I guess I own the company.” Bette smiled.

“I guess so.”

“You see much,” Bette said. “But not all.”