Being petit bourgeois, I try as hard as anybody else to keep up with the Joneses. The man against whose achievements I measure my own is not Jones, however, but Saul Halpingshtorm.
Jones became so angry about my efforts to keep up with him that he moved to New Jersey a few years ago to enjoy his superiority in solitude. “If you want somebody to keep up with, try keeping up with Saul Halpingshtorm and leave me alone” were his parting words.
Halpingshtorm, unlike the testy Jones, enjoyed having somebody try to keep up with him. One evening I came home wearing the lean and costly tweeds of the Ivy League, which I had bought that day because Saul Halpingshtorm wore the lean and costly look of the Ivy League. The children wept.
“What have you done with your green double-breasted suit with white pinstripes, Daddy?” they cried.
That was the suit whose purpose was to keep up with Jones. “Daddy is not keeping up with Jones anymore,” I told the tykes. “From now on Daddy is keeping up with Saul Halpingshtorm.”
I went to Halpingshtorm’s for dinner that evening. He was not wearing his lean, costly, Ivy League tweeds. He was dressed for the Gregory Peck role of white hunter in The Macomber Affair, though he seemed to have forgotten the elephant gun. Later, somebody told me this was a safari jacket.
The other guests arrived in similar dress. When dinner was ended, Saul hinted that it would be considerate of me to leave early so everybody could talk about my being so pathetically out of fashion.
It was always that way in haberdashery. When I showed up at Saul Halpingshtorm’s wearing a gold necklace because Saul had started wearing gold necklaces, Saul was wearing an ascot. When I bought black Swiss ballet slippers because Saul had started wearing black Swiss ballet slippers, Saul started wearing jogging shoes.
Upon learning that Saul Halpingshtorm dined nightly at Mama Pepita’s, I went to Mama Pepita’s. “What time does Mr. Halpingshtorm come in?” I asked. “Mr. Halpingshtorm quit coming in after last night,” Mama Pepita said. “From now on he dines only at Elaine’s.”
The next night I went to Elaine’s. Elaine gave me a table in the next block. Saul Halpingshtorm, who had the best table in the house, sent me a Mailgram requesting me not to drop by his table, as he did not want to be seen talking to someone who vacationed in Baltimore.
That summer, having learned that Saul vacationed at the seashore, I rented a cottage in Asbury Park. That fall he asked, “Why didn’t I see you in Nantucket this summer?”
The next summer, I rented a house in Nantucket and invited Saul to come play pinochle, but he said he was busy. Later, somebody told me Saul Halpingshtorm, who had bought a house in Nantucket, didn’t visit with people who merely rented.
The following summer I came into a fortune, thanks to a typographical error in a Rockefeller will, and bought a home in Nantucket before the lawyers could bring action. In the fall, I asked Saul Halpingshtorm why I hadn’t seen him in Nantucket that summer. “I only take winter vacations now,” he said.
I was not utterly enslaved to Saul Halpingshtorm. There were moments of rebellion, moments when I said, “To hell with keeping up with Halpingshtorm.” I would show my independence by refusing to read the books he had read, to see the movies he had seen, to buy the clothes he had bought, to adopt the ideas he had consumed.
This seemed to sadden him. He would speak to me like a father, urging me not to quit trying. Once, because Saul Halpingshtorm never wore a hat, I bought a hat and wore it to his house. I have never seen him so depressed. When I left, he spoke to me with gentle kindness. “Don’t wear that hat,” he said. “It makes you look like you have a pointed head.”
I realized that he needed me, that of all his great circle of friends, I was the only one who could never keep up with him. I threw away the hat. Constant humiliation is a small price to pay for friendship.
In mid-April he phoned to announce that he was taking a spring vacation at St. Bart’s. He knew very well that I had never heard of St. Bart’s and did not know that St. Bart’s was the only place to vacation that spring, and that by the time I could get reservations there St. Bart’s would be overrun with McDonald’s hamburger stands. Nevertheless, to please him I said, “I’m going to get to St. Bart’s myself as soon as it’s completely out of fashion.”
After hanging up I stood in front of the mirror. My head definitely came to a point.