People Like Us (50 page)

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Gus.

“True. Left them in a bag of books from the Wilton
House Book Shop. Juanito told me that. Juanito flushed them down the toilet.”

“Jesus,” said Gus. “Lil and Laurance still pretend Hubie didn’t die of AIDS, and they expect you to believe them.”

“The Van Degans are a tough bunch,” said Bernie.

“They’re all tough, those people,” replied Gus.

“The Bradleys’ cook jumped out a window on the day of my wedding, right around the corner from the Colony Club, and the Bradleys still came to the reception. Yvonne Lupescu shot Constantine de Rham in the stomach that day and crashed my wedding reception and caught Justine’s bouquet.” Bernie made a gesture that indicated madness.

“A workman fell out of a cherry picker raising a weeping willow tree up to the Renthals’ apartment on the day of their ball, and the ball went on like nothing happened, after Elias paid off the workman’s family,” said Gus, carrying on Bernie’s theme. “Ormonde Van Degan died at the ball, and they stashed his body on a pool table so as not to spoil the First Lady’s entrance.”

“There’s a strong indifference to death around that group,” said Bernie.

“There’s a strong indifference to death everywhere, Bernie,” said Gus.

“What’s your story, Gus? There’s more to you than this quiet guy whom everybody talks to. Some people say there’s a mystery about you.”

“There’s no mystery about me, Bernie. It’s just that no one ever asks me about me, and I don’t volunteer.”

“I’m asking you now.”

“A creep came along and killed my daughter.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t go around broadcasting it, but it’s why I moved here. To sit out the three years of the creep’s sentence.”

“And then what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go back to where I came from.”

“And do what?”

“I’m going to kill the guy who killed my daughter.”

“Come on.”

“I am.”

Bernie looked at Gus, and Gus met his stare.

“I’m going to make me another one of these,” said Bernie, holding up his whiskey glass.

“I’m going to call out his name. I’m going to say, ‘Hey, Lefty,’ ” said Gus. “I want him to be looking at me at the moment. I want him to know it was me who did it.”

Bernie, in the door of the kitchen, stared at Gus, not knowing whether or not he was being serious. “And then what’ll happen?”

“Prison, I suppose.”

“Prison?”

“Maybe that’s when I’ll have the time to write that book Ezzie Fenwick tells people I’m going to write,” said Gus.

Bernie walked over to where Gus was sitting. “Gus,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t really mean any of this, do you?”

Gus looked at Bernie for a minute and then smiled. “No, of course not,” he said.

40

Poor Hubie, people always said about Hubie Altemus, in remembrance, but his memory was already fading.

On several occasions Juanito Perez had tried to contact Lil after Hubie’s funeral, once by telephone, on the butler’s day off, when Lourdes had answered the telephone and hissed into the receiver in a torrent of Spanish that Juanito was not to call back at la Señora Altemus’s house
ever
, or she, Lourdes, would tell her
brother Duarte in Puerto Rico that his son was a
puto
. After that, Juanito wrote Lil on two occasions, but each time his letter to her was returned by Lil’s lawyers, unopened.

“Isn’t it marvelous the way Lil has handled the whole thing,” people like Ezzie Fenwick and Matilda Clarke and Cora Mandell said about Lil Altemus, whenever anyone spoke about Hubie’s death. They were referring to what her close friends called Lil’s bravery in the face of tragedy. However, in the bosom of her family, those closest to Lil, like her daughter, Justine, her sister-in-law, Janet, her stepmother, Dodo, and her maid, Lourdes, knew that her grief, if grief it was, had taken on another form, an abiding hatred for Juanito Perez, whom she blamed for her son’s death.

Sometimes in the night Lil would awaken from her sleep and remember family possessions she had given Hubie, that she hadn’t thought about for years, that were now in the possession of Juanito Perez, and each time she would feel an anger so intense against Juanito that she began to have heart palpitations. She became obsessed over the set of twelve Charles X chairs from the house in Newport, that she had never cared for, that Aunt Minnie Willoughby had given Hubert and her when they were married, and that Lil had taken out of storage and given Hubie when he set up his own establishment. It mattered to her more than anything in the world that those twelve chairs be returned to the family, as though honor was at stake, although Justine didn’t want them, and Lil had no room for them, even if she had cared for them.

Lil had not forgotten, although she had never mentioned it, that her stepmother Dodo had offered Juanito a seat in her pew at Hubie’s funeral, nor that Juanito had asked about Dodo when she met him in the hospital at Hubie’s bedside, so she asked Dodo to go to handle the task of retrieving the twelve Charles X chairs from the despicable Mr. Perez. Dodo, who had been
left independently rich by Ormonde, no longer did the family’s bidding, as she had done for years when she was a poor relation, and flatly refused the commission. “I wouldn’t
dream
of doing such a thing,” Dodo said, in one of her increasing shows of independence.

When her mother asked Justine to undertake the task she refused. Then she added that she would have nothing to do with such an unappealing task even if she were not pregnant. Lourdes, Lil’s maid who listened to everything that went on in the family, had never told Mrs. Altemus that Juanito Perez was the son of her brother Duarte in Puerto Rico. She was glad she had not confessed to the relationship, as she knew that she would have been assigned the unpleasant task of getting back the chairs.

It was Ezzie Fenwick, whom Lil had taken into her confidence, over lunch at Clarence’s, who suggested that the perfect person to arrange for the return of the chairs was Jamesey Crocus. As everyone knew, Jamesey Crocus was thought to know more about fine furniture than any man in New York and had lately served as private curator to Elias and Ruby Renthal during their period of acquisition. Jamesey, on his part, liked nothing better than to be sent on furniture forays for families like the Van Degans and the Altemuses, which always resulted in increased intimacies with the grand families and invitations to even their small dinner parties.

Jamesey Crocus, getting out of the cab in SoHo, looked in each direction before entering Juanito Perez’s building, in the manner he often adopted late at night when, after he had returned a fashionable dowager to her uptown address, he entered a low haunt in a different part of town that he did not wish to be spotted going into, for fear of lascivious stories being circulated about him. Buzzed in by an intercom, he walked up three flights of stairs after a sign on the self-service elevator informed him it was out of commission. Juanito was
standing in the open door of the loft that had once belonged to Hubie Altemus. Instantly, Jamesey, who had known Juanito before Hubie knew him, was struck by the change in his appearance. Although he was dressed casually, he was wearing a tweed jacket of excellent cut that Jamesey recognized as having been one of Hubie Altemus’s and a blue shirt with a button-down collar open at the neck, in the manner that Hubie had always dressed. Jamesey looked at Juanito the way he had once looked at Ruby Renthal’s console tables. Having money had eliminated from Juanito’s face an expression that suggested furtiveness of character, a consequence of his extreme underprivilege, and replaced it with a look that brought out his good qualities. Only a cigarette hanging insolently from the corner of his mouth made him resemble the Juanito he had once known. For an instant they stared at each other.

“Very bad for you, smoking,” said Jamesey, as a greeting.

“Don’t see her for two years, and the first thing she says is, ‘Very bad for you, smoking,’ ” replied Juanito, as if he were repeating this story to an audience. “Come in, Janie.”

More than anything in the world, Jamesey Crocus, who moved in the finest circles, hated to be called Janie, but he said nothing. Inside, he looked around. The loft was, like Hubie, a combination of a life he left behind, but not completely, and a life he aspired to, but into which he never quite fit. A fire, going low, took the chill off the large room.

“How charming this is, Juanito,” said Jamesey.

“I’ve kept everything just the same way Hubie had it,” said Juanito.

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Jamesey, who took this statement with a grain of salt. He had known Juanito to be promiscuous and notoriously unfaithful and doubted the sincerity of his maintenance of Hubie’s home as a shrine. Jamesey expected Juanito to offer him a drink,
so that time could be spent in friendly conversation before getting down to the purpose of the visit.

But Juanito did not offer him a drink. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Janie?” he asked.

“Mrs. Altemus, Lil, asked me if I would talk to you about some chairs that were left to you, a set of Charles the Tenth chairs,” said Jamesey.

Juanito had not forgotten that his letters to Lil Altemus had been returned by her lawyers, unopened, a snub that still riled him. “Those, you mean?” he asked, pointing over to the dining-room area. Around the table were eight of the chairs. Two more were in a group of furniture by the fireplace. One was at a desk. The twelfth was by a telephone table.

Jamesey peered ecstatically through his owlish spectacles at the magnificent chairs. Clasping his hands before his stomach, he breathed heavily in the manner that he always breathed when he looked upon a rare and beautiful object. “Oh, my dear, how perfectly gorgeous,” he whispered, breaking his own rule never to allow a possible seller to think that his wares were too valuable. “Charles the Tenth,” he said, in his instructor’s voice, as if he were giving a lecture on furniture at the museum, “was the younger brother of Louis the Sixteenth, who, as you know, was beheaded during the Revolution. During his reign—”

“Whatever it is you’re up to, Janie, it’s not in my favor. That much I know,” said Juanito, interrupting a history lesson in which he had no interest.

“Don’t call me Janie,” said Jamesey, through clenched teeth.

“Too familiar? Is that it? Am I overstepping? Excuse me, Miss Crocus. Is that better?”

Jamesey decided to let it pass. The possibility of an association with the Altemus—Van Degan clans was too attractive for him to risk spoiling it by becoming irritated with a man he still considered to be no more than a hustler. “You see, Juanito,” he said, in a friendly tone, “the chairs belonged to Aunt Minnie Willoughby,
and she gave them to Lil, and Lil gave them to Hubie, but Aunt Minnie always wanted them to stay in the family, as heirlooms.”

“Aunt Minnie Willoughby,” said Juanito, in an exaggerated pose of pensiveness. “Wasn’t she the dyke?”

“Oh, no, no, that was Aunt Grace Gardiner,” said Jamesey.

“I never could get Hubie’s family straight.”

Jamesey, who understood the genealogy of all the best families in New York, said, “Aunt Minnie Willoughby was on the Altemus side, and Aunt Grace Gardiner, who indeed was a dyke, now that I come to think of it, was on the Van Degan side.”

“I really don’t give a shit,” said Juanito. “Now, what are you here for?”

“Mrs. Altemus wondered—”

“You can call her Lil,” said Juanito.

“Lil, of course. Lil wondered if you would give the chairs back to the family.”

“Have you told Lil that you’re the one who introduced me to Hubie?”

Jamesey paused. “No, no, I haven’t.”

“I wonder if she’d still send you as her emissary if she was aware of that fact.”

“I’m sure that if money was the issue, Mrs. Altemus would buy the chairs back from you,” said Jamesey, evading the turn the conversation was taking.

“You forget, Janie. I got more money than I could ever spend.”

“It’s quite chilly in here,” said Jamesey.

“Hard to heat these big lofts in these old buildings. That’s why I keep a fire going. Let me build up the fire,” he said. Juanito walked over to the fireplace. “Remember the time you paid me by check, and it bounced?”

“I made that check good,” said Jamesey, indignantly.

“Only after I threatened to black your eye on your way to Adele Harcourt’s book club,” said Juanito. “Shit, I’m all out of firewood.” He picked up one of the
Charles X chairs, turned it over, and broke off one of the legs.

“Juanito!” screamed Jamesey, as Juanito fed the chair leg into the fire and then broke off another leg.

“What’s the matter? There’s eleven left,” he said.

“Those chairs are priceless. Were priceless, I mean.”

“Now you tell Lil for me, when you report that you failed in your mission, that if she had bothered to speak civilly to me in the hospital when Hubie was dying, or if she had offered me a seat in the church at Hubie’s funeral, or if she’d asked me back to the house after the funeral with all the other mourners, or if her fucking lawyers hadn’t returned my letters to her unopened, in which I offered to return these family heirlooms which I inherited, I would have given them back to her, but now I won’t. Get lost, Jamesey, and stay lost.”