The Arriviste. James Wallenstein
of coats on the bed was higher than the boy himself. He draped mine over a bedpost and put my gloves and astrakhan on a shelf beside it. “I’ll need a chit for that coat.”
“A chit? What’s that?”
“Be on guard,” I said as I left him. “Could be some second-story men in this crowd.”
“Second what? You are strange.”
His reply followed me down the hall and at the top of the staircase—which lacked the grandeur that its wind suggested—gave me pause before my descent.
The crowd at the base of the stairs surged and I bumped a woman whose hair was wrapped in a tall bun. It was a tower, a Babylonian ziggurat. Her earrings were long too, like inverted lampposts, and made the bun seem even taller. She grabbed my wrist and said, “See my eyebrows—would you describe them as melodramatic?”
“The line, she means,” a man standing closer to her than he had to explained.
Her eyebrows were ordinary, nothing exceptional about them. Besides, with a hairdo like hers who would notice the eyebrows? “Come on,” she said, “be honest.”
“I don’t find them melodramatic,” I said. “Not at all. Dramatic but not melodramatic. They have the perfect amount of drama.”
I tried to head toward the bar, but everyone was standing toe to toe, women lifting themselves toward men’s ears, men bending toward women’s, pendants and neckties swinging. I made progress following an hors d’oeuvres server, her tray a horizontal shield before which the guests had to yield.
Someone grabbed me from behind. I turned and a walleyed woman said, “You’re not Stan!” in the accent—part Bronx, part Northumberland—for which people ridicule our island.
“And neither are you.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I saw Mina there next to you, and I thought you were Stan.” She nudged me to the side and leaned toward Mina. “Where’s Stan? I thought he was Stan.”
“He’s too tall to be Stan.”
She turned me around. “No, Stan’s about the same height.”
“As him?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Oh, come on—maybe when he’s erect.” Mina howled and mussed my hair.
“Are you done with me?” I asked.
A server offering mushroom canapés thrust her tray forward. The mushrooms rocked on their doilies and the guests parted before them. I saw my chance and followed in her wake. Though she didn’t lead me all the way to the bar, she got me close enough to push my way in. Nobody seemed to take it amiss, and when I’d gotten a drink I was pushed aside in turn.
I found myself face-to-face with a man wiping what appeared to be pâté from the deep, crumb-collecting corners of his mouth with a balled-up napkin. “I’m reading the most fascinating book,” he told me after he’d gotten every last crumb out. “It’s called The Greeks of the Middle Ages.”
“I’ve read that one too,” I said.
His eyes lit up—nothing to do with me, I realized. Something behind me had provoked his glimmer—somebody, that is. “Peeka-boo,” he exclaimed past me, then, lower, “Hello, lovelies.”
Another tray was passing behind me. He reached over my shoulder for what was on it, a morsel of gravlax napped in dill, as I discovered from the sauce he dripped on my sport jacket. “Sorry,” he said grudgingly, as though he’d been acting out of duty and had had no choice in the matter. “Will ya grab a napkin off that tray for me?” he asked after bolting the hors d’oeuvre. He balled that one up too and had at the spot on my jacket. “As good as new,” he said after a few dabs. “Better.”
I craned my neck to check the damage.
“New’s not all it’s cracked up ta be,” he added. He inspected the napkin he’d dabbed at me with. “When an item’s new, it’s anybody’s.”
“Or nobody’s.”
“Well, exactly. So you agree.” He clapped my shoulder. “That little spot, invisible to the naked eye, is like your signature.”
“Yours, you mean.”
“It was an accident, for Pete’s sake. So much for que sera, sera. Whaddya want me ta do about it?” He took out his wallet and flourished a few twenties at me. “Is this what you’re after?”
“Put that away.”
“Oh, so now it’s c’est la vie, eh? A little indelicacy always works wonders with your type.”
“My type?”
“Lighten up, pal. Just pulling your leg.” His laughter revealed a spanakopita remnant between his teeth. “To the victor goes the spoils,” I thought I heard him say. He offered me his hand.
“Excuse me?”
“Hector Spolz,” he said. “Pleased to meetch’.”
I gave him my name and said “Likewise.” He had a dealclosing sort of handshake.
A man appeared beside him. “You know Buddy a long time?” he asked me. He had hound-dog eyes and a mouth set in a frown that seemed to extend to his bow tie. A bushy mustache might have given him a hint of dapperness, but when he sipped his drink it collected froth at the corners and deepened the frown. “I’m Izzy, by the way.”
I introduced myself and said, “I met him only recently.”
“I hardly know him. Not that I haven’t seen him around. Anyhow, with a name like Bud it’s easy to feel like you know him, if you know what I mean. Hector knows him.”
“Sure I know him,” Hector said. “An advanced case of the fidgets.”
They started in on Bud. I might have left them to themselves if I’d had anywhere to go. I wasn’t so annoyed with my neighbor that I liked the idea of listening to a sourpuss and a sad sack dissect him. But I mustn’t have been wholly averse to it—I stayed put. Now that I’d made it to the bar, moving didn’t seem worth the trouble. Trays of strong pink cocktails were passing our way.
“The man can’t sit still,” Hector said. “He’s got a new scheme every couple of years. You can’t build a business so quick.”
“Not a real business,” said Izzy.
“To tell you the truth, with those suits of his . . . What is it they go for, two hundred?”
“Two-fifty. Two-fifty, easy.” The idea of the figures animated Izzy. He punctuated his utterance with karate chops, and grew pensive. “That’s what quality costs these days.”
“Quality nowadays? Don’t talk to me about quality. It’s only a slogan.” This may have been one of Hector’s own slogans—his mind was elsewhere, if his eyes were the vanguard.
I turned and saw what he did: the woman who’d come in the Beetle while I was talking to Bud in the driveway. One thing I hadn’t seen out there was her smile. It was like a schooner riding high on the water.
We helped ourselves to more cocktails.
“Are these pink squirrels?” I asked, holding up my glass.
“What’s surprising,” Hector resumed, “is that I’d always thought of him as a bit of a . . . a bit of a . . .”
“A Harry Horseshit?” An impish type with a cauliflower ear and pastel florets printed on his shirt turned around to supply the phrase, and turned back.
“Thank you, Garson,” Hector said over his shoulder. “A Harry Horseshit. But a place like this takes real money.”
“It’s a nice house,” Izzy added, “a nice town. Cornwallis decamped