People Like Us (51 page)

41

At the end of summer, the Elias Renthals returned to New York. Ever since details of Elias’s corrupt stock-trading practices were revealed to his stunned colleagues in the financial world, as well as to the public at large, Renthal, a man once celebrated for his financial acumen, was now reviled by many as a symbol of Wall Street greed. Those who had not been invited to the Renthals’ ball now let it be known that they had declined the invitation, as if they had advance knowledge of the financier’s dubious behavior and chose, for ethical reasons, to absent themselves from what was now referred to as a vulgar spectacle. No one had a word to say in Elias Renthal’s favor, or a doubt of his guilt.

At the museum there was a collective sigh of relief that the board of directors had stuck to its guns and not
made Elias a member, even after his pledge of many millions of dollars for the construction of a new wing, and persuasive arguments on his behalf by some of its most conservative members like Laurance Van Degan and Addison Cheney. At the time an alternate proposal had been forwarded, before the financial scandal, of course, that Ruby Renthal join the board instead of Elias, as her elegance was thought to be more acceptable to the membership than the still-rough-around-the-edges Elias. That plan, too, had now been dropped.

To see Elias Renthal, however, in the weeks following his return, was not to see a crushed man. His business routines were followed the same as before, and, as was his practice, he continued to arrive at his office as early as six o’clock in the morning. He pored over financial publications, annual reports, and trade digests as avidly as ever, looking for investment ideas for his analysts to check out for him. His manner, which could be abrasive with subordinates who were not as quick as he in understanding market practices, remained as abrasive as ever. All of this was carried on with a sort of nonchalant attitude that belied the fact that investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission were packing his files in cartons at the same time.

Nor was there any lessening of attentiveness in his manner of dress. He continued to order his suits, twenty at a time, from Mr. Sills, and his shirts and shoes from his shirtmaker and shoemaker in London, as if to show that all was right with his world, although there were those who wondered if he would not be in prison, in Allenwood, where his kind of felons were sent, by the time his suits and shirts and shoes, all of which took time, would be delivered to him.

It was not until after the taping incident, on a legally wired pay telephone in the office of the United States Attorney, that anyone made the connection between Byron Macumber’s suicide the previous month
and Elias Renthal. While Elias was still sailing the Mediterranean, an arrangement had been made between his lawyers and the office of the Attorney General to cooperate with their ongoing investigation by furnishing them with the names of his confreres in malfeasance.

When Elias walked into the Butterfield for the first time after his return from Europe, he did not notice that the usually affable Jasper, at the desk in the front hall where members signed in their guests, did not return his greeting. Walking up the curved marble stairway, which he had planned to copy for the new stairway at Merry Hill, he passed Sims Lord descending at the same time. At the moment of passing, Sims Lord gave no indication that he realized another person was within inches of him on the stairway. In the bar, where nearly every table was occupied with groups of two, three, and four, a pleasant buzz of conversation filled the air as members, recently returned from summer holidays, were happily greeting each other anew and ordering drinks and lunch from the excellent kitchen, which boasted of serving the best food of any club in the city. But, on the entrance of Elias Renthal into the lovely paneled room, a silence rose that was almost audible as each person looked up at the stout man standing in the doorway. There were many in the room whom he knew, from the club, from business, and from society. He had dined with many of them at their houses, both in town and in the country, and many he had entertained himself, some as recently as at his famous ball at the end of the spring season. No one rose to speak to him, and he was aware that he must bear their cold looks and silence without seeming to notice them.

He walked to an empty table, waving with a nonchalant air to Herkie Saybrook and young Laurance Van Degan, who were playing backgammon a few tables
away, but neither raised his eyes from their game to return the wave. After sitting for several minutes, he rang the bell on his table for service, although Doddsie, who was usually so prompt in taking orders for drinks, was standing at the bar in quiet conversation with the bartender.

“An old-fashioned, please, Doddsie, easy on the bitters, but ample on the fruit,” Elias said in a hearty voice. “And gimme one of your menus at the same time. I suppose you’ve got the chicken hash today.”

“Every day,” replied Doddsie. He was not rude. Nor was he friendly. Elias noticed the change in attitude.

“I’ll have the chicken hash,” he said, ordering, as if he were in a restaurant.

“If you would write it on the pad,” said Doddsie. He did not add sir, and the omission was not lost on Elias.

“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” He picked up the pad and small pencil and wrote his order, although he could feel the beginning of anger. If he were in a hotel, he thought to himself, and treated in this manner, he would buy the hotel, and fire Doddsie, and, now that he thought of it, fire Jasper at the entrance desk downstairs as well. With Sims Lord, he could understand. They had had a business difference, although Sims Lord’s version of the hostile takeover of his company by Elias Renthal was described by him in stronger terms than a business difference. He looked over at Herkie Saybrook and young Laurance Van Degan, still intent on their game of backgammon, and wondered if they had seen him or not.

He rose, old-fashioned glass in hand, and walked over to their table. When neither looked up, he stood next to young Laurance’s side and watched the game for a bit.

“Hello, Laurance. Hello, Herkie,” he said, when the game ended and Herkie was tallying the score.

“Mr. Renthal,” Herkie and young Laurance said simultaneously.

“Mr. Renthal, indeed,” said Elias, in an expansive manner, as if the young men were being formal with a respected elder. “You haven’t forgotten, have you? It’s Elias.”

“We haven’t forgotten, Mr. Renthal,” said young Laurance. So saying, he banged on the bell on his table and called out, “Doddsie, I wonder if you could bring me the book with the rules of the club.” While waiting, he continued to shake and roll his dice. When Doddsie arrived with the rule book, bound in blue, with green lettering, young Laurance said, in a voice heard throughout the room, “Will you look up and show me the page where it says that the Butterfield accepts members who wire themselves and entrap unsuspecting cohorts in order to lessen their prison sentences?”

Elias flushed scarlet.

Then young Laurance and Herkie rose and walked to the door leading to the dining room. “Are you ready for us, Doddsie?” Herkie asked.

“Indeed we are, Mr. Saybrook. Mr. Van Degan,” answered Doddsie, back to his usual form. “There by the window.”

Elias looked around the room and saw that the other members were staring over at the snub he had just received. When he caught their eye, they, in turn, held his for a moment and then looked away, except for Collier Stinchfield, of Weldon & Stinchfield, the old and respected law firm where Byron Macumber had been a junior partner. “Either that man leaves this club immediately, or I leave, and, if I leave, I will leave permanently,” said Collier Stinchfield, his high aristocratic voice filling the room.

Elias placed his old-fashioned glass on the table where Herkie and young Laurance had been playing backgammon and walked toward the door where he had come in. By the entrance, he reached into a silver bowl and took out a handful of the Butterfield match books and stuffed them in his pocket. Walking down the
marble stairway, he passed Laurance Van Degan coming up to have lunch with his son and Herkie Saybrook. Each met the other’s eye, but neither spoke. In the downstairs hallway, Jasper did not look up as Elias Renthal walked by his desk and pretended not to hear the loud fart emitted by Elias at the front door as he walked out onto Fifth Avenue.

Instead of going back to his office, he decided to walk up Fifth Avenue to his apartment, have lunch there, and rest for an hour or so. On the marble-top table in the front hall, where the butler left the mail, he noticed an envelope from the Butterfield. Opening it, he saw that it was a letter from Laurance Van Degan, the president of the Butterfield, signed and dated two days before, requesting his resignation.

He needed Ruby. He needed to talk to her. He was tired of keeping up the front he had been keeping up for the last several months. He was hurt. He was ashamed. He needed solace. He went up the stairs. The door of her bedroom was closed. He tapped on it. It was his lovemaking tap, a light drumming of the fingertips against the panel of the door.

“No,” replied Ruby from inside, recognizing the signal. “Leave me alone, Elias.”

RENTHAL SINGS
! said the headline in one tabloid paper,
ELIAS
(
DON’T-CALL-ME-ELI
)
RENTHAL PLEADS GUILTY TO ONE COUNT
! said another. Variations on this theme were echoed in every newspaper and magazine in the land.

“I always said, but no one ever listens to me,” said Lil Altemus, dining at Clarence’s in a family group, “that people like that are to be avoided at all costs.”

“Oh, shut up, Lil,” said Laurance Van Degan, who had himself been the recipient of numerous advance stock tips from Elias Renthal and lived in fear that his name would be brought into the investigation.

“Laurance!” said Lil, hurt, looking to her sister-in-law Janet for solace.

“We’ve all got trashy friends,” said Janet, mediating
between brother and sister, “but we should choose our trashy friends with more care.”

“Oh, Ruby’s not trashy,” said Cora Mandell, quietly.

Ruby made no attempt to contact any of her friends. She remained mostly in her room reading or talking with her maid, Candelaria. She gave up Bobo as her hairdresser, not wanting to be the subject of gossip that Bobo could pass on to his other clients who knew her, and found another hairdresser, as yet undiscovered by the fashionable world, who came to her apartment. Lorenza no longer came to do the flowers two days a week, because there were no more guests and the doors to most of the rooms in the large apartment remained closed. At night Ruby went downstairs to dine with Elias, but she no longer shared a bedroom with him.

“It’s Mr. Renthal’s snoring,” Ruby said to Candelaria in explanation of Elias’s move to another bedroom. “I can’t sleep with his snoring.” But Candelaria understood what was happening.

One evening, early still, she crossed over to the park side of Fifth Avenue and sat on the bench opposite her own apartment, where each night she watched a bag lady make her home. She looked up at her own home and could see the soft pink light cast by the lamps on her persimmon damask curtains and walls. Above, the leaves of the trees on her terrace blew in the twilight wind. She thought of herself in the days of her grandeur, when the whole city, or at least that part of the city that interested her, came out to dance in her ballroom. It was several minutes before she realized that she had begun to think in the past tense.

“
Señora?
”

Ruby looked. Standing there was Candelaria.

Ruby had always wanted Candelaria to call her madam, the way Loelia Manchester’s maid called her madam, instead of
señora
, but she had never had the
nerve to tell that to Candelaria. Now she was glad she never had, for what did it matter? What did any of it matter now?

“Yes, Candelaria?” she said.

“
Hace mucho frío, señora
,” said Candelaria.

“You know I can’t understand you when you don’t speak English,” said Ruby, who had learned to speak French but not Spanish.

“It’s getting cold,
señora
. I brought you a shawl.”

“You are sweet, Candelaria. Sit down.”

“No, no,
gracias
.”

“There’s a woman who always sleeps here on this bench. I see her every night.”

“
Si
.”

“You know which one I mean?”

“
Si
.”

“Later, when it’s dark, I want you to bring her this,” she said. She opened her bag and took out some money.

“Too much,
señora
,” said Candelaria, looking at the two twenty-dollar bills Ruby handed her.

“No, it’s not, imagine what she must think looking up every night at where we live.”

A jogger returning home from his run in the park walked rapidly by them. His face was pink from exercise, his hair wet, and his track clothes dripping. Had not Candelaria risen to leave at that same moment and collided with him, he might have gone on his way, not noticing Ruby Renthal, nor Ruby Renthal noticing him.