The first time I met Cass he explained to me that his real name was Cassius. I think he thought that would add a little prestige in the eyes of someone who was involved in the theater festival.
“That’s a very serious name,” I said. “It’s such a tragic character. Were your parents actors? Did they expect you to go on to great things in the theater?”
I stopped there. I was fooling around, but perhaps they had. And the fact that Cass was an English handyman in the French countryside may very well have disappointed his family.
“No, not at all,” he said. “My father was a plumber. My mom fancies that she knows something about the arts, and she wanted to give me some kind of upmarket name. I guess I was lucky I escaped being named Othello. My full name is Cassius Brewster. People call me Cass.”
“Lawrence Olivier named his child Tarquin. A villain’s name from Shakespeare. Imagine doing that and thinking your child was going to grow up and not hate you,” I said.
Cass said, “Maybe he wanted him to grow up and be like everyone else. A lot of people hated Lawrence Olivier.”
“Marilyn Monroe did,” I said. “I just read a book about the making of the movie she did with Lawrence Olivier. He hated her for always being late on the set, and she hated him for not realizing she couldn’t do otherwise.”
“He also hated her because no one looked at anyone else once she hit camera,” Cass said.
“You’re an unusual person to run across in France,” I said.
“Oh, we handymen have our moments,” Cass said.
We were at a garden party being given by the local Dutch family in Cornichons. Evidently it was an annual affair at their big red brick house in the countryside. They were an unusual bunch. Three sisters and a brother who had come to the French fields and rivers to give their animals a better life. People spoke of their arrival in Cornichons with vans full of horses, sheep, goats, dogs, and cats. I don’t believe they brought any cows. Cows get a bad rap. Because people eat them, I guess. They want to think they are just a bunch of steaks wandering about giving milk.
Just the night before I had had a conversation with one of the student actresses who was a vegetarian. Her name was Judy, of course. I don’t want to wander too far away from the subject here, but have you noticed that vegetarians are never reluctant to accept an invitation to an expensive restaurant? And then drive the headwaiter crazy because they only want green beans? And there aren’t any. And their veggies cost about fifty dollars. But that’s just one thing that’s annoying about vegetarians. If I were a vegetarian, I’d try to see if I could keep it to myself. It would involve eating a lot of pasta in restaurants, but I think you could never let anyone know if you were astute.
So I asked Judy if she would be willing to get along without milk and milk products if we did away with beef eating. She hadn’t thought about that. “Well,” she said, “we could just have them for milk. And let them die in the pasture in their own sweet time.”
I said, “I don’t think the farmers would go for that.”
Judy then explained that she didn’t eat eggs because she didn’t want to eat chickens in their embryo form. I then explained that very few eggs had embryos in them. She obviously thought this was unnecessary information. And that I was a paid killer.
My last thought on cows. I wish they had developed them for riding purposes instead of horses. Maybe not so fast but much more comfortable. Particularly if you sit sideways. They never run. In fact, Lord Byron said that women and cows should never run. I guess it’s all those tits swinging. There’s something very unsexy about lady athletes, don’t you think? But I ramble on. Back to the Dutch, and then back to Cass.
On the lawn in front of the red brick house which looks a lot like Holland, about forty people were standing with drinks in their hands. This is pretty much the international community of Cornichons in the summer, plus the cast of characters from the theater festival, plus the local hangers-on. Whenever you have a theater festival, people hope to get laid. Maybe Cass is among them.
The Dutch horses were observing us, hanging their heads over a fence on the far edge of the lawn. The Dutch sheep are no longer in evidence, but the Dutch dogs are everywhere, romping in large black and blond ways about the lawn. There are a lot of them, with a sprinkling of English spaniels among them. The sisters are attractive women who speak about a million languages, and their brother I can see peering from the attic window. A bit like a Charles Addams’s cartoon in the New Yorker. And among all these women with their high heels sinking into the pelouse and men in wrinkled linen jackets is Cass, whom I noticed was babbling away in French with a small girl who works at the Abbey as a secretary.
Cass is sort of attractive in an American footballer kind of way. He’s tall enough that I don’t have to lean forward and down to speak to him. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt without the compulsory linen jacket and seemed pretty well put together, although I wouldn’t call his waistline narrow. And he was wearing loafers and no socks. I wonder where he got that from? I thought they were only still doing that in Palm Beach. I noticed his tan stopped where his shirtsleeves began, and that was a plus.
I was mulling his remark about handymen and their moments and wondering what his moments might include when Francine, one of the Dutch sisters, came and led him away. She said, “I want you to meet the Lindermans. They’ve just bought a gentilhommiere near Blois, and I think they could use your help.”
I spotted Nina and Graham and headed their way. Graham was certainly the best-looking man at the party. They were both in pale blue which made their blue eyes stand out like a border of flowers. “You were talking to Cass,” Nina said.
“I was,” I said. “His real name is Cassius.”
“Cassius Brewster,” Nina said. “I wonder if that’s true.”
“He said his mother had pretensions to culture,” I said. “He actually verged on being witty. Do you think he’s going to be my new best friend?”
“Not if about twenty women around these parts have anything to do with it,” Graham said. “He’s infamous. British. Speaks perfect French for some reason. Has a renovation business. Starts renovations on someone’s château, has an affair with the lady of the house, she then wants to leave her boring old hubby, and Cass disappears. Leaving the house half-finished. There are about six of them standing about like that near Cornichons.”
“Well, as long as the tide of foreigners keeps coming this way, Cass’s going to get laid a lot,” I said.
“My mother used to say of some men, ‘Whatever he’s got, it doesn’t show,’” Nina said.
“Did she ever say that of me?” Graham asked.
“No. What you’ve got both shows and doesn’t show,” Nina said. I was beginning to find all of this very interesting. It certainly made me want to see some private parts around these parts.
“I hope Mother comes for a visit,” Nina said. “She could give us her opinion on Cass.”
“And me,” I said.
“Oh, what you’ve got is very evident, my dear,” Nina said. “You’re gunning for the most beautiful boy in the Loire Valley Award this season. I’ve been getting calls inquiring about you. You’re going to be besieged with party invitations after this little exercise. It can get very hectic here. Dinners and luncheons and the Sheep Festival is about to come up, and then your shows. You are going to be a very busy boy trying to get your lines memorized and rehearsals out of the way.”
“Could we make that ‘beautiful man award.’ I am twenty-five. And speaking of rehearsals, where’s Toca?”
Nina said, “He’s really shy. He probably hates these big evenings where you have to talk to dozens of people.”
“I would never have described him as shy,” I said. Nina gave me a quizzical look.
As I was heading toward our hostesses to say thank-you and good-bye, someone said in my ear, “I’d really like to fuck you.” I turned and Cass was standing with his back turned, talking to someone immediately behind me. Hmmmmmm, I thought. Could be, couldn’t be. The plot thickens. Then Nina, Graham, and I left.