With Friends Like These... (7 page)

“Did you haff ze crab things?” she asked. Rhoda pursed her mouth. “So-so,” she said. “I’ve had better.”

Didn’t they once call people like that the Smart Set?

Our table’s designated celebrity turned out to be none other than my mother’s idol, pretend-doc Sazarac, Shep McCoy himself. He stood to my right and extended his hand directly in front of my face to my mother, at my left. “Bea,” he said. “How lovely to share a table with you. And this, I take it, is the glorious daughter you talked about?”

I didn’t know with whom to be angrier—my mother for the daughter-peddling, or McCoy, who behaved as if I, glorious or not, were autistic, paralyzed, or comatose. I considered biting his wrist as it passed by my face.

“And would she mind, do you think, if I were her dinner companion?” It wasn’t asked as a question, even of my mother. It was meant as humor, as ridiculously funny, for who wouldn’t want the Real McCoy as her tablemate? He seated himself to my right. “Lovely,” he said. “And what do you call yourself?”

“I have actually never had cause to call my own self,” I said. “I’m always already there, you see.” My mother kicked me under the table.

Shepard McCoy blinked several times. When he spoke again, he detoured around me, to my mother. “You know,” he said—I had become a backdrop he leaned across—“I was once in a play based on this exact situation.”

“You mean a self-important older man—” My mother nicked my anklebone this time, but Shepard hadn’t heard me. He was a performer, not a listener, and sound waves operated in only one direction. Besides, I really hadn’t said it all that loudly.

“A group of people assemble at a wedding, so that’s a little different, but not that much, right? And we’re with this table of people who didn’t know each other before they sat down.” He patted my shoulder, then squeezed it. A fleeting gesture. Innocuous, perhaps, and definitely meaningless, but I moved as far to the left as I could without falling off my chair or into my mother’s lap.

“And what happened?” my mother asked after just enough of a bump of time to let me know I should have asked the question, made the effort. Old not-with-my-daughter-unless-you’re-marrying-her Mama hadn’t noticed the business with the shoulder, or she had written it off as theatrical and therefore excusable.

Shep McCoy shook his silver-topped head. “Alas, it closed after five nights, you know, although my performance was favorably singled out by the Times. ‘Captures every nuance’ they said.”

Somebody should tell the man real people do not say alas.

“I meant what happened to the characters in the play,” my mother said mildly.

Shepard looked blank. “You mean the other characters?”

My mother nodded encouragement. “And yours, too, of course.”

“Actually, nothing much. We talked back and forth. Things like ‘and how are you related to the groom?’ Or, perhaps, ‘how are you related to the bride?’ I’m a little rusty about it by now, you know. I’ve played so many roles. But I think it turned out everybody was connected in their past. Oh, yes, and somebody died at the table. Not my character, of course. I don’t do corpses. But the death—heart attack, as I recall—stirred matters up—”

I was surprised that play had lasted a full five performances.

“Well,” my mother said overbrightly, “and how is everyone here related to the groom? To Lyle, of course, I mean.”

She addressed her words to the table at large, extending her arms like an orchestra conductor to include everyone, make them work together in concert. By now all the chairs were filled. Our group consisted of two young women in black New York regalia—“Film students,” my mother whispered; an older woman with great cheekbones above high-necked silk ruffles; a young, tall, and rather goofy-looking fellow who, I believe, was a lighting technician with eyes only for his wife, an equally tall woman who could have been attractive if she weren’t so coy and simpering. On one side of the loving couple was Lyle’s somber second wife, Sybil, and completing the group, on their other side, the good-looking former bad guy, Richard Quinn. I sighed. There, but for the luck of seating, had gone a much more intriguing dinner companion than Shep. Quinn was still a little old for me—a lot old for me, actually—but then so was his lookalike, Clint Eastwood, and I’d have ogled him, too.

“I’ll go first,” the older woman said in a thin, high voice. “My name is Priscilla Lemoyes and I was Lyle’s high school teacher. English and drama, and I’m just so proud of him! I always favored the late bloomers. Never seemed particularly interested in much, but I always knew there was something special about him. ‘I believe in you, Lyle Zacharias,’ I always said. ‘Reach for the stars.’ So I wasn’t surprised his senior year when he wrote the hit of the school. And years later, when he polished up that high school skit and it became Ace of Hearts, he sent me a ticket to opening night. He never forgot me.”

I wondered if I’d live long enough to be told I’d played a significant role in a student’s destiny. My pupils are not only late, but seriously detained bloomers. Century plants, perhaps.

Thinking about them reminded me of their promless condition. Poor kids. Booking the hotel had been the one high school assignment they’d handled with efficiency. I wondered if they already knew that their site was a charcoal memory.

Shepard McCoy was staring at me with moony-stupid eyes. At least he now kept his hands to himself, so he was more embarrassing than annoying. I looked away, down, at my watch. I was ready to call it a night and get on with my life, but it was only eight-fifteen. One dinner and at least two hours to go.

My mother eyed me. She’d tried to instill better manners than I was showing. In honor of her, I produced table talk. “You must know the Wileys, then, as well,” I said to the sweet old schoolteacher. “Janine and…” I couldn’t remember her husband’s first name.

“There was a boy named Wiley,” Priscilla Lemoyes said. “Jerry? No—Terry. Quiet. Never had Lyle’s sparkle, but a nice enough boy.”

“I was in the TV series that spun off
Ace
of Hearts, you know,” Shepard McCoy said with a half cough/half laugh meant to convey modesty while he nonetheless tooted his horn. “Played Wilfred, a rather oafish fellow, remember him?” He laughed again, hail fellow well met. “Casting against type, of course. Challenging. Critics loved me, but TV is devastating.” He lifted my hand and placed it on his, as if he were about to propose marriage. I repossessed my hand.

“That’s where I met Lyle,” he continued. “Nobody else could have convinced me to stay in the medium. I’m a stage actor, you know. I always say, my hair was black until I met Lyle Zacharias. People magazine played up that remark, you know.”

Every time he said you know, my fillings ached. He assumed that the minutiae of his life was part of the core of common culture—and God help us all, was it? I gave him my blankest expression, a face I hoped said, “I have zero knowledge of your career and who did you say you were again?” but his ego was made of kryptonite. If only we could divide and redistribute it, there’d be no more talk about our kids not having self-esteem, and there’d still be plenty left over for McCoy himself.

“Are you all waiting for me?” Sybil Zacharias said abruptly. “Is it my turn now? I, for one, am related to the groom only through past mistakes. Reed opted to accept his father’s invitation, and he can’t drive yet, so I’m here as his chauffeur and…guardian, that’s all.” She swigged at her drink.

Priscilla Lemoyes looked at her with the expression of revulsion that must have greeted that other party poop, the witch at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Sybil continued, “Lyle’s sole justification for existence is Reed. And, having spawned, I wish he’d be like a salmon and die.”

The ruffled ex-schoolteacher gasped. “This is his party!” she hissed. “We’re his guests!”

“You’re horrified, aren’t you?” Sybil said to the table at large. “I’m not following the rules, being polite, playing his game. Instead, I’m being honest. Much more so than a lot of others I could name in this room or at this table.”

Richard Quinn stared at Sybil intently, with just a glint of his bad-guy persona showing through. The lighting expert whispered to his wife. Lyle’s former teacher took a series of deep breaths. Shepard McCoy, apparently oblivious to nuance or even a club over the head—if it wasn’t his head—turned around to sign an autograph for someone who identified herself as a longtime admirer.

“My turn now? Well, I’m a real fan of Mr. Zacharias,” one of the two girls in black said with breathy urgency. “I know him through film school, but I’ve also been his critter consultant, and let me tell you, you get to know a man’s soul in my line of work.”

Dare I ask? I dared.

“I help people achieve greater intimacy with their animal companions,” she answered, eyes wide open and desperately sincere.

Please, I thought, don’t let this turn out to be X-rated.

“I have this gift.” She lowered her eyes, modestly. “I communicate telepathically with animals. I’ve been teaching Mr. Zacharias how to do it, too, and his relationship with Pompom is much fuller and stronger now. Really incredible.”

Sybil Zacharias ordered another drink and gave the girl a look that would have withered anyone less spiritually evolved.

“And I also think Mr. Zacharias is marvelous,” her companion said. “I’m just crazy for him. He came to our film class about a year ago and he was so funny, and smart, and quick. He told us we’re the future—and God, can you believe he included us tonight? We both just want to grow up and be him!” Her psychic buddy nodded. Presumably, so did Pompom, telepathically, somewhere.

“Wait till you are him,” Sybil grumbled. “Wait till you’re competition.” She sipped at her freshened drink then spoke, pronouncing each word carefully: “Everybody gets excited about Lyle at first. But it’s a short honeymoon. Lyle’s a man with no old friends.”

“Nonsense! Look around this room!” Priscilla huffed. “I myself am an old friend!”

Sybil shrugged. “I won’t comment on the room at large. But as for you, with all due apologies, you were never in the game, never an equal, just one of his cheerleaders, so you were never in his way and never a threat.”

Nobody else was rude enough to point out that perhaps her status as the ex-wife, plainer and two decades older than her replacement, made her less than an objective observer.

Even my mother seemed stymied by the prospect of navigating back to the easy currents of table talk. We might have sunk into permanent silence had not smattered applause provided diversion. Priscilla Lemoyes was the first at our table to catch on. She pushed back her chair and stood and cheered as the birthday boy and his little woman entered the room. Somebody with a squeaky voice started “Happy Birthday to You.” Lyle’s face reddened above the beard as he said, “No, no, please,” until the squeaky voice stopped and our host and hostess settled at the small table where Hattie and Reed were already seated.

Step-grandmother, stepson, stepmother, stepwife. The prefix-rich new nuclear family.

The second his father was seated, Reed turned to Hattie, spoke briefly and urgently, and then switched chairs with her so that he was no longer next to Tiffany. Of course, as he must have realized, there was no real escape at a small round table for four. He had to be beside or across from her. He compensated by angling his chair so that he only half faced the table, then turned and very blatantly gave the thumbs-up signal in our direction.

Sybil could barely contain her smirk.

Back at the small center table, Lyle reached over and took the thumbs-up hand and spoke to his son in a low voice. After that, Reed resumed his vegetative state and sat with the roaring impassivity only an adolescent can truly master.

Sybil looked satisfied. Through her child, she’d scored a pathetic and mean-spirited triumph. I wondered how much more she planned to spoil Lyle’s party.

The lighting man said it was his turn to explain under what circumstances he’d met Lyle, although his tedious account of how, as an apprentice, he’d worked on a short-lived nature series, seemed to have nothing to do with anyone in the room. His wife nodded and simpered. The interminable tale droned on until our first course was delivered with panache by a white-gloved waiter. It was a welcome diversion and a beautiful still life—red, purple, and bronze lettuces; tiny shrimp; and large pearls of caviar.

With some prompting—from my mother, of course—Richard Quinn took his turn at the how-I’m-connected-to-this-party game. “Like Lyle said, we met in college.” And that was that. He speared a shrimp and chewed it.

“Way back in college!” My mother was on automatic make-nice, overcompensating for the engineer’s boring monologue, Sybil Zacharias’s hostility, and her own daughter’s lack of social graces.

And the truth is, her sledgehammer hostessing worked. Richard Quinn begrudged us a few more syllables. “Partners afterward, too, for a while. I was his producer.”

“My goodness! Here I’ve been going on, thinking that Lyle produced Ace of Hearts,” the former teacher said. “I’m so sorry! What’s your name again?”

Quinn shook his head. “Split before he wrote Ace. Went back to acting for a while.”

He was stingy with words, reluctantly and minimally answering, never truly conversing. And thus ended my shortest and most feeble infatuation since third grade. If there’s one thing no woman needs, it’s another silent male from whom to beg and wheedle the daily minimum syllable requirement.

“He travels fastest who travels alone,” Sybil said. “The Zacharias credo.”

I tried to figure out what that meant, or, more precisely, what Sybil meant.

“I did a show with you, you know,” Shepard McCoy told Quinn. “Movie of the Week. Something about a haunting. Science, faith, that sort of thing. My first doctor role.” He smiled, enjoying memories of himself, having forgotten his point and the need to connect his anecdote with the man toward whom he’d directed it.

“Do you remember that show?” I asked Richard Quinn.

He shook his head. He was not a dinner party sort of man. Had he come for Tiffany’s sake? He certainly didn’t seem to be having a good time. “Don’t act anymore,” he said after too long a pause.