Blue Heaven (26 page)

Why zis urge to explore

Where no woman's gone before?

What's within us that ze microscope can't see?

Why do I care?

Ah, Pierre,

Why am I meeeee?

. . .
interest had waned considerably.

Interest soon perked up, however, for no sooner had Nancy finished the ballad, to polite applause, than the duchess swaggered over to the keys and said, "Dear boy, you play like an angel! Do you know 'To Keep My Love Alive'?"

Marlowe did, and he accompanied the duchess in a flawlessly timed performance of the Rodgers and Hart classic.

The reception was enthusiastic and cries of "Encore!" filled the room. The duchess bowed grandly and obliged her public with a few more selections, including "Makin' Whoopee." She finished the set with "My Blue Heaven" and, after singing it through once, called upon Gilbert and Moira to help her out with a reprise. They tried to wriggle out but the bibulous throng would not hear of it and they finally joined her in front of the baby grand. Their faces frozen in hideous mirth, they stumbled dissonantly through that hymn to young
love and the joys of marriage. The duchess stood between them, an arm around each of their shoulders, singing boisterously as she prodded and pulled them through hastily improvised choreography like some deranged transvestite puppeteer.

The crowd ate it up. Not just the duchess, but Gilbert and Moira, too. Had ever young love seemed so giddy, so sweet and carefree? Even Holly, who was not very fond of Moria lately, remarked what an adorable picture they made.

"You must let Geoff take some photos!"

"Geoff?" I asked.

"Over there," he said, pointing to a handsome redhead. "Met him a few days ago at a dinner party. Marvelous photographer. Isn't he yummy?"

I replied politely and inquired if it looked serious.

"Well, nothing's happened yet-he's one of those old-fashioned types. Y'know, into
courtship."

Geoff sauntered over and Holly introduced me saying I was Gilbert's best man. Then he gamboled off to congratulate the duchess, leaving Geoff and me alone. We chatted a bit about photography. He kept smiling flirtatiously and I kept wondering why it is that when you're alone and horny you have no luck at all, and the minute you're attached to someone the world beats a path to your futon. He finally asked if I'd like to have dinner sometime and I said, or rather stammered, that I was involved.

"Nice guy?"

"Yes."

"Good. You deserve it."

I excused myself and sought out Gilbert to discuss strategy. I found him in the kitchen giving Mummy hell.

"Jesus Christ, Winnie, will you cut it the fuck out!"

"Gilbert, I'll thank you not to employ-"

"Stuff
it,
you demented queen," whispered Gilbert. "What do you think you're doing? Making lunch dates and dinner dates and-"

"My social life is my own concern, you impudent child!"

"Listen, toots," I said, "that stuff you're on is going to wear off in an hour or two. You're going to wake up tomorrow with a vicious hangover and a full engagement book! Do you realize what you gonna have to
do?"

"Buy clothes," said Winnie, and he flounced majestically out of the room.

And so it went for the rest of that cursed evening. The duchess held court like the grandest of dames, and not a soul present failed to be charmed by her, or at least intrigued by the way in which all manner of opposing traits collided within her. She was refined, yet amusingly vulgar; ladylike, but earthy; imperious, solicitous, vain, self-denigrating, waspish and affectionate all at once. We gave up all efforts to steal her thunder, feeling that such attempts would only goad her on to new heights of flamboyance.

By eleven-thirty or so, when the party had shrunk to about half its size, she was holding a little group of us spellbound with the details of her riding accident. Freddy and Serge were listening, as were Tony and Maddie, Moira, Claire, Gilbert, Holly, Geoff, Chick and Rosa.

"I shall never forget how I felt hugging that damned horse's neck as the crazed beast stormed about the fair, knocking over displays and trampling that child to death! 'Stop her!' I cried to my husband, buy Nigel was never very good in a crisis. He goes to pieces. Like Moria. Finally I was hurled into a ditch! I remember lying there thinking, 'Oh dear, I shall never dance again!' I adore dancing. We must all go very soon!"

"What about now?" said Maddie.

"Now!" said Gilbert.

"Well, no time like the present, is there? The Gardenia Club's open till two! Whaddaya say, Gwen?"

"What a simply splendid idea. We'll all go dancing! My treat!"

"Mummeee!" said Moira, but her feeble protests about mending bones were silenced by Mummy who rose and robustly executed a buck and wing to the delighted applause of all.

Tony, Chick and the others all agreed that dancing sounded like a delightful way to cap the evening off.

"But, please, dear lady," protested Freddy, "you must let
me
be your host tonight. You are
our
guest!"

"You dear generous man! Of course you can pay! I was rather counting on it!"

"Mummy," said Moira, "we still have guests, and they're not all
dressed for the Gardenia Club. Why don't you bring Gilbert and I'll stay here and-"

"No, honey, I'm happy to stay! I'm bushed! You go! Have a
great
time!"

"Aren't you sweet!"

Claire and I also begged off, claiming early morning appointments. Within moments their little group departed, giggling in anticipation of the terpsichorean joys that lay ahead. Claire, exhausted, told us she'd call first thing in the morning for a damage report and staggered off home.

That left me and Gilbert, Holly, Marlowe and spouse, Nancy and date, Ugo and Betty, and another three or four pals of Gilbert's and Moira's. Holly was sulking because somewhere in the flurry of recent departures his Geoff had slipped away without even saying good-bye, a sure indicator that the prognosis for romance was gloomy. We consoled him, insisting that Geoff was a bore and a floozy to boot.

Gilbert and I conferred briefly in the kitchen and decided there was no sense waiting up for Mummy, and no sense either in sitting around fretting over what fresh horrors Winslow's performance would spawn. Tomorrow would be soon enough to sift through the wreckage. Tonight we would drive it from our minds, get plastered and enjoy the company of friends and the absence of Moira.

For the next hour or so we played charades and sang around the piano. Ugo Sartucci, who had found himself stunningly ill-equipped to mime
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,
pulled out a fat joint, feeling that this would go a long way toward equalizing the odds.

Marijuana is not usually my dish; it makes me forget jokes and eat whole chickens without bothering to sit down or close the refrigerator door. But on this particular night I wanted all the oblivion I could get and so smoked my share of the joint, which, Ugo assured us, was of a quality available only to the most well-connected. The party broke up not long after that, owing, I suppose, to the sudden inability of all those present to remember any consonants.

Gilbert and I waved them good-bye and stumbled off to bed.

Pot is, of course, renowned for its powerful stimulative effect on the libido, and Gilbert and I were by no means immune to this side effect. No sooner had we extinguished the lights than we fell upon each other, tearing at clothes in a way guaranteed to distress not only
the Moral Majority but ourselves the next day, for neither of us can sew buttons. Our recreations, however, did not last very long. About five minutes after we began it, our little love feast was interrupted. By a flashbulb.

Geoff, who had not left at all, burst out of Gilbert's closet and, after blinding us with the first flash, flicked the overhead on and began snapping away, getting, at the very least, one recognizable shot of us before we could disentangle ourselves from one of those positions that don't seem especially complicated till you try to get out of them in a hurry. By the time we'd gotten off the bed he'd raced from the room closing the door behind him.

We chased him as far as the apartment door, further than which we were not, in all modesty, able to venture. He decided not to wait for the elevator but instead took the stairs. As he entered the stairwell he turned and flashed a triumphant sneer, and in that terrible instant I knew just where I'd seen him before.

The reason I hadn't recognized him was that the last time I'd seen the face it had been camouflaged. But there was no doubt now that that same face, under a beard, had been hovering next to Gunther Von Steigle's as he'd beseeched his last departing patron not to believe the vicious lies of the bald woman who'd stormed into his salon.

"Gilbert," I said, closing the door. "Do you know who that
was?"

"No," said Gilbert, stoned out of his mind.

"He works with Gunther!"

"Oh!" said Gilbert, sliding down the wall and plopping bare-ass onto the floor of the foyer.

"Remine me again. Who's Gunser?"

Twenty-three

I
t was not a cheerful group that assembled the next morning at God's Country. Gilbert, Claire, Winslow, Moira and I stood in the rubble of the party looking like a tableau vivant based on
Guernica.

"You crazy faggots!" sobbed Moira. "You'll pay for this, you hear me! You'll pay for all the suffering you've caused me!"

"Moira," said Claire, "you got us all into this to begin with and you're no longer in a position to threaten anyone. So unless you have something constructive to say, please keep your venomous mouth shut."

"You're fat, Claire," yelled Moira. "You're fat and you write shitty music and nobody likes you!"

Our discourse continued in this lofty vein for some time, everyone getting their licks in. That is, everyone but Winslow who just sat with his head on the dining table, suffering as a man only can when he's enduring a coke, Ecstasy and champagne hangover while contemplating two months of social engagements with the Mafia, all of which he must attend in a dress.

"Winnie," said Claire, "you mustn't be so upset. You can always get out of these appointments. We can say you're sick, that you've had a relapse."

"Naaaah! Naaahahahahahaha!" he replied.

"No," said Moira, "we
cannot
say he's sick! He fixed
that
but good!"

"How? What happened?"

Moira explained biliously that Freddy, concerned by Moira's constant references to Mummy's frail health, had asked the duchess if
she had a good doctor in this country. No, she'd replied, and Freddy had eagerly offered the services of his own team of skilled resusci-tators, which services Mummy had gratefully accepted. Any relapse would cause these noble healers to descend and they would return to Freddy with a striking diagnosis.

"That was smart!" snapped Gilbert.

"Smart!"
said Moira. "I don't want to hear
SMART
from either one of you, you dumb sex-crazed fruits!"

"Oh, fuck off, Moira! That creep was here all night and you didn't guess what he was up to any more than we did!"

"What I don't understand," said Claire, "is how he knew enough even to
try
to catch you in flagrante. I mean, if
we
didn't know you two were having yourselves a romance, how did he?"

I turned a pretty shade of vermilion and told them of that day in the Ramble when, transported with joy over Gilbert's return to literature, I'd kissed him in full view of Gunther.

Claire and Moira stared in appalled disbelief.

"And you didn't
tell
us!"

"It didn't seem important at the time. We had the duchess to get ready, and I forgot all about it."

"Good Lord! Couldn't you two control yourselves until after the wedding?"

"Claire," I said indignantly, "I'm sure you're terribly above such things, but I have to go where my heart leads me."

" 'Heart' seems hardly the organ in question. You two fools have had all of ten years to find each other. Why you had to put it off until Gilbert had promised Freddy the Pooch never to sleep with a man is more than I can begin to comprehend!"

"Please, don't be mad, Claire!"

"Mad?
I am livid. Correct that, I
am fucking
livid! I have a good mind to walk out of here right now and never speak to any of you again!"

I had never heard Claire say "fucking" in my life, so I was deeply relieved when the phone rang before she could make good on her threat to abandon us. I didn't stay relieved for long, though.

"Hello?" said Gilbert, flicking the speaker on.

The sinister tones of Gunther Von Steigle filled the room.

"Mr. Selwyn?"

"Gunther! I was hoping to hear from you-you scamp!" he added in a pathetic attempt to put the whole thing on a lighter footing.

"I wished to thank you and Mr. Cavanaugh for posing for Geoffrey. I have the results before me." "Do you!"

"Yes. You're most photogenic!"

"Hah, hah! I have to hand it to you! That was some practical joke! I mean, you've got style. No, there's a better word. Panache! Yes, Gunther, you've got panache!" "You thought it a good joke?" "The best!"

"Then wait, Mr. Selwyn. It gets better." Click.

Moira erupted at length, assuring us that if this proof of our romance reached Freddy and forced the cancellation of the wedding, she would personally request he send two deaf assassins so we couldn't talk our way out of it. The rest of us nervously asserted there was little danger of this happening; Gunther didn't even know Freddy, much less the details of his chat with Gilbert regarding homosexual didoes. The real danger was in Gunther giving the pictures to Holly, in which case Freddy would hear about them when Holly bought commercial time during "60 Minutes."

In the midst of these cheery conjectures, the doorbell rang and Gilbert, after massaging the bruise he received when Winslow knocked him over running to the bedroom, answered it. Standing there was a scrawny delivery man from FTD.

"Hi. The Duchess of Dorchester live here?" "She's resting just now." "Swell. So you sign it."

Gilbert signed and took possession of a flower box the size of a steamer trunk. Tipping the fellow two quarters and a subway token, he closed the door and brought the box to the dining room. Inside were three dozen long-stemmed roses and a note which read: