Very Old Bones (21 page)

The very idea of selfless munificence in the service of the architectural imagination was surely a pinnacle in the history of man’s capacity to aspire. And aspire I did, assuming the
poetry of all this grandeur into my eyes, my ears, my sense of smell, the poetry of man the master builder, the poetry of man who climbed to the skies with his own hands, the poetry of Babel
refined into godly and humanistic opportunity and respect and mortar and stone and endeavor and joy and love and money and thickness and breadth and luxury and power and piety and wonder and French
cuisine and the American novel and jazz music and (oh yes, Meriwether, oh yes) the naked titties of ten thousand women. Oh the immensity of it all!

I taxied back to the apartment where Giselle and I were staying and, from the desk where our host kept his financial records, expropriated two checkbooks, two dozen of the host’s business
cards, several letters that would verify my identity if the business cards and the checkbooks did not, assorted press credentials from the U.S., West Germany, the Soviet Union, Brazil, and an Arab
nation whose name I did not immediately recognize, all identifying the owner as a writer for
Life
magazine. I folded these items into one of the host’s several empty breast-pocket
wallets, dialed the number at
Life
Giselle had given me, and left a message for her: “Meet me at either the Palm Court or the Oak Bar of the Plaza Hotel, the greatest hotel in America,
when you are free,” and I then set out in further quest of poetry and verve.

The first thing I did was register and establish my credit with the Plaza’s front desk, then equip myself with ready cash. I engaged a corner suite that looked out on
Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and the Grand Army Plaza, and then I descended to Fifth Avenue and on to Saks, where I bought three new shirts and ties, pocket handkerchiefs, shoes, belt, socks, and
the gray glen plaid suit I’d seen in the window; but I would accept it all, I told the clerk, only if alterations were done within the hour (cost not an obstacle) and delivered to my suite at
the Plaza, which they were.

I bought two pounds of Barricini chocolates for Giselle, and back at the suite ordered two dozen yellow roses from the hotel florist and four bottles of her favorite French wines from room
service. I went back downstairs and explored the lobby, found the Palm Court too crowded, sought out an empty corner of the Oak Bar, and ordered my first drink in five and a half months, a Scotch
on the rocks with water on the side. I sipped it with care, waiting for my system to feel the first alcoholic rush of the new year, and wondering if Dr. Tannen’s prophecy would be correct:
that, should I ever again drink alcohol, the flood controls of my brain would let the madness cascade back into my life.

I affirmed my disbelief in this diagnosis with another sip of whiskey, and only then did I look about me at this walnut-dark, wood-paneled male saloon, with its murals out of the storied past of
the Plaza—a horse and carriage in a snowstorm in front of the old hotel, water spilling out of the fountain’s dish while a full moon is all but covered by clouds. By the light from the
room’s wall sconces and copper windows this country’s Presidents, giants of capital, movie stars, and great writers had drunk for half a century. I recognized no one. I took another sip
and knew the ease that drink had always provided me, a flow of juices that wakened dormant spirits and improbable values. The first sips alone did this. Consider, then, the potential of an entire
bottle.

For months I had not seen anybody through the auroral brilliance that those summoned juices could generate. My life had been repetitive ritual: rise from narrow bed, dress in sordid clothing,
eat meagerly and without relish, go out into the world to edit a book you loathe, confront what you now knew to be an unpublishable novel of your own making, come home in darkness to reinhabit your
father’s bohemian gloom, and write your daily letter to Giselle.

I knew the danger of imposing too much trivia on my letters and so, one by one, I outlined the lives of my putative relatives to her, also wrote her short essays on the values assorted poets and
writers imparted to the world, even if they never published a word. The task, of itself, I wrote her, was holy, the only task atheists could pursue that was buoyed by the divine afflatus. As for
myself, the afflatus was flatulent.

I realized with each new sip of Scotch that Dr. Tannen was wrong. I had, since Germany, accepted the doctor’s rules and entertained no temptation to suck on a whiskey bottle. But here
again came that most wondrous potion into my life, already sending enriched phlogiston into my internal organs, upthrusting my spirit to an equivalency with Presidents, giants of capital, movie
stars, and great writers, and providing me with all this not through fraudulence, bravado, delusion, or hallucination. None of that was on the table. This was real. I saw the future unrolling
itself before me, knew phlogiston, fraudulence, badness, chocolates, yellow roses, and new neckties when I saw them, Mr. Plaza.

I ordered another Scotch.

A man of about forty years sat at the next table and placed his folded
New York Times
on an adjacent chair. I could read one headline: U.S.-South Korea Units Lash Foe; Jet Bombers Cut
Routes Far North. The owner of the newspaper ordered a martini and I asked him, “Could I borrow your
Times
for a quick look?”

The man shrugged and nodded and I looked through the paper: Senate will confirm Chip Bohlen as ambassador to Moscow despite McCarthy attack. Alfred Hitchcock melodrama,
I Confess
, is
panned by reviewer. Twenty-three killed, thirty wounded in Korea, says Defense Department.
Salome
, with Rita Hayworth, Stewart Granger, and Charles Laughton, opens at the Rivoli
Wednesday.

It all served to incite informational depression in me, especially the opening of
Salome.
We all know what Salome does to John the Baptist, don’t we, moviegoers? I folded the
newspaper and returned it to my neighbor.

“The news is awful,” I said.

“You mean out of Korea?” said the man, who had a look about him that Orson seemed to recognize.

“Everywhere. Even Alfred Hitchcock isn’t safe.”

“Who’s Alfred Hitchcock?”

“He’s a Senator. A Roman Senator. He looks like Charles Laughton.”

“Oh.”

“He’s married to Rita Hayworth. You know her?”

“The name has a ring.”

“I agree,” I said. “Reeeeee-ta. A ring if there ever was one.”

“I
beat
Korea,” the man said.

I now realized that this man looked very like Archie Bell, the warrant officer I had served with at Frankfurt. It wasn’t Archie, of course, but there was something about the mouth; and the
eyes were similar. But the face, the hair—nothing like Archie.

“They sent me to Korea,” Archie said, “and they thought they were givin’ me tough duty. You know what I did? I beat the shit out of my knee with an entrenchin’ tool
and got a medical discharge. They thought I caught shrapnel. Got the pension, all the musterin’-out stuff, and right away I invested it in Jeeps. Willys, you know the company?”

“The name has a ring,” I said. “Will-yyyyyys.”

“Today Kaiser-Frazer bought Willys for sixty-two mill. You know what that means?”

“Not a clue.”

“That’s major-league auto-making. My broker says I could double my money.”

“Smart,” I said. “Very smart. I had a pretty good afternoon too. I started out with a hundred, and it’s ten times that now, maybe more.”

“Hey, buddy, this is a good day for the race.”

“The human race?”

“Nooooooo. The race race. We’re beatin’ the niggers.”

“I noticed. They don’t have any in here. But then again Lincoln used to drink here,” I said.

“Izzat right?”

“Every President since Thomas Jefferson drank here.”

“Izzat right? I didn’t think the place was that old.”

“Who’s your broker?”

“Heh, heh. You think I’m gonna tell you?”

“You know who my broker is?”

“Enhhh.”

“Thomas Jefferson.”

“A two-dollar bill.”

“My card, friend,” I said, handing him the business card of the
Life
editor. “Call me anytime. Let’s have lunch and plan some investments.”

“Watch out for falling rocks,” the man said.

“Here?”

“Everywhere,” he said, and he smiled a smile that I recognized from the poker games in Frankfurt. This was the Captain, invested with Archie Bell’s smile. I left the Oak Bar
without looking back, knowing my past was not far behind. I took the elevator to the suite, put on my new clothes, opened a bottle of Le Montrachet to let it breathe, then descended to the Palm
Court to meet the most beautiful, most sensual, most photographic, most photogenic wife in the history of the world.

“You look
merveilleux
,” Giselle said, stroking the waves of my hair, feeling the silk of my pocket handkerchief between her thumb and forefinger. I had been
sitting alone in the Palm Court, sipping whiskey, listening to the violin and piano playing Gershwin’s “Summertime,” when the livin’ is easy, a perfect theme for this day.
The song wafted over the potted palms, over the heads of the thinning, mid-afternoon crowd.

“I never expected this,” Giselle said.

“I decided to reward myself,” I said.

“Reward? What happened?”

“My editor loves my book. I asked him for an instant advance and got it.”

“Oh, Orse, that’s beautiful.” She leaned over and kissed me, pulled away, then kissed me again.

“And what about
your
day?” I asked.

“They hired me. I go to work whenever I want. Tomorrow if I want. I told them I wanted to go to Korea and cover the war.”

“I knew it would happen. Why
wouldn’t
they hire you?”

“I thought they wanted more experience.”

“They buy talent, not experience. Everybody buys talent.”

“Isn’t it nice we’re both so talented?”

“It’s absolutely indescribable,” I said.

“I always knew you were going to be famous,” she said. “My wonder boy. I knew it. That’s one of the reasons I married you.”

“
Merveilleuse
,” I said.

“I was so surprised when you said to meet you here,” Giselle said. “I thought we’d meet in some terrible Irish café.”

“There are no Irish cafés, my love.”

“I’m so happy,” she said. “Order me something.”

“Port. You love port in the afternoon.”

“And Le Montrachet,” she said.

“I know.”

She looked at the wine list, found half a dozen port wines listed, their prices ranging from one dollar to eighteen dollars. She ordered the four-dollar item, and the waiter smiled.

“You know,” said the waiter, “this is the wine Clark Gable ordered when he proposed to Carole Lombard. Right at that table over there.” He pointed to an empty table.

“It’s fated,” said Giselle.

“You two seem to be very much in love,” the waiter said. I looked up at him and saw a Valentino lookalike, a perfect waiter for the occasion.

“What’s more,” the waiter added, “the first day this hotel opened, a Prussian count proposed to his American bride in this room. So you see, this is where happy marriages
begin.”

“What a waiter!” I said. “I’m putting you in my will. What’s your name?”

“Rudolph Valentino,” the waiter said.

“I thought so,” I said. “Bring us the port. Two.”

Giselle kissed me again. “My wonder boy,” she said.

The light in the Palm Court was pale beige, my favorite color on Giselle. I looked at the display of desserts the Palm Court offered: raspberries and strawberries, supremely ripe and out of
season, bananas, grapes, peaches, plums, pineapples, and fruit I could not call by name. This was the center of the fruitful universe. All things that happened within its confines were destined to
change the world. Values would tumble. The rain of money and glory would fall on all significant consumers. There was no end to the sweetness of existence that was possible if you ordered a bowl of
raspberries in the Palm Court.

“This is what your life is going to be like from now on,” I said. “This is what success looks like. The absence of money will never again interfere with your
happiness.”

Giselle beamed at me the most extraordinary smile ever uttered by woman. I considered it for as long as it lasted, tucked it away in the archives of my soul, and raised my glass of port to hers.
We clinked.

“May our love live forever,” I said.

“Forever,” said Giselle.

“And if it doesn’t, the hell with it.”

“The hell with it,” said Giselle.

“There’s Ava Gardner over there,” I said, pointing to a woman in close conversation with a man whose back was to us.

“Really?” asked Giselle.

“Indubitably,” I said, but then I looked again and corrected myself. “No, it’s not her. I was mistaken. It’s Alfred Hitchcock.”

Giselle’s laughter shattered chandeliers throughout the Palm Court.

I stood next to the yellow roses, staring out of a window of our suite at Fifth Avenue below. The fading light of this most significant day (such frequent confrontations with
significance were a delight) was troublesome to my eyes, but I could see a roofless motorcar stop at the carriage entrance to the hotel, saw Henry James step down from it, adjust his soft hat, then
extend his hand to Edith Wharton, the pair bound for dinner in the hotel’s Fifth Avenue Café. Teddy Roosevelt struck a pose for photographers on the hotel steps, his first visit to the
city since shooting his fifth elephant, and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller waded barefoot in the Plaza’s fountain to raise money for widows and orphans spawned by the oil cartel. As I stared across
the avenue at the Sherry Netherland, I saw Ernest Hemingway in the window of an upper floor, his arm around Marlene Dietrich. The great writer and great actress waved to me. I waved back.

At the sound of a door opening I turned to see Giselle, wrapped in the silk robe and negligee I’d bought her when she learned we were staying the night at the hotel. I poured the
Montrachet and handed her the glass, then poured my own. Never had a married man been luckier than I at this moment. By virtue of the power vested in me I now pronounce you husband and traitor,
traitor and wife. God must have loved betrayals, he made so many of them.