“Larry and I don’t have sex,” Rocky says. “We hold each other and have cosmic sex, do you know what I mean?”
Cat nods. Her desk is piled with papers: notes, to-do lists, people to call back, letters to type. Nothing cosmic in her days, no sex her in her nights; just loneliness and cartoons. Her Legends strips have been taking shape on the drawing board, as she scrapes her soul for material every night after dinner... just as she had planned when she took this job, but with a higher personal price than she had imagined. When she doesn’t have energy for interior excavation, she sharpens her pencil on Max & Min in which she gleefully dissects Celebrityville. She has learned that humor is wrought of anger and frustration. Crappy trade-off, but artistically effective.
“Nothing can touch that kind of love,” Rocky says.
Cat’s fingers whiz across the keyboard. She has work to do and speeds up her typing, but Rocky doesn’t take the hint.
“Do you know that Andrea Dworkin says intercourse is an act of violence against women?”
Cat stops typing, faces her boss, and asks, “Do you agree?” Personally, she finds the sentiment too stark. She thinks that love cuts just as deeply between the sexes as hatred.
Rocky gets that glazed pop-eyed look — space traveling again. “Larry has guaranteed me multiple orgasms without penetration.”
“Well, if it works for you...” Luckily the phone rings, cutting Cat off just as the clichés really begin to flow. Her hand lurches for the receiver, lifts it, hits the bleeping red button. “Rocky Love’s office,” she answers in her best melodious greeting.
“Is she there?” That voice; Cat recognizes it immediately.
Holding her hand over the mouthpiece, she whispers, “It’s your brother again.”
Rocky hurries to take the call in her bedroom. Moments later, her laughter fills the hall.
“Where are you?”
“Somewhere. Here.”
“You’re in New York, aren’t you?”
“That’s not why I called.”
“Why didn’t you leave a number when you called me before?”
“Why are you asking me so many questions?”
“Because I miss you. I want to see you. Please don’t hang up. Nathan, you’re an uncle, did you know that?”
“Leslie and Lisa, a matched set, Uncle Nathan Uncle Nathan! And little Norman, Dokta Little Norman he thinks that’s so funny he doesn’t know what I mean but he will one day one day he will.”
“Yes, you know Robby’s kids, of course.”
“What does that mean, of course?”
“Nothing.”
“You been talking to him? Smart sister, so smart.”
“No, I haven’t. His kids are older, that’s what I meant. Nathan, what about Parker, my son?”
“What about him?”
“Aren’t you interested in meeting him? He looks just like me.”
“Maybe, maybe.”
“Would you like to come over for dinner?”
Silence.
“Or I could go to you.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“I’ll visit you where you live.”
“I just want to talk.”
“All right, let’s talk. Was there something special?”
“No.”
“Nathan, don’t disappear again, let’s stay together —”
“Rock Rock Rock.”
“I love you, Nathan. I’ve always loved you.”
“I can’t.”
“Do you need money?”
More silence.
“Tell me where you are. I’ll come to you.”
“No!”
“Why did you call me?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you.”
“Give me your number so I can call you, too.”
“I have to go.”
“Nathan, promise to call me again. Promise.”
Click. Silence. And the sharpest coil of loneliness she has ever felt.
She throws off her caftan, gets in the shower and prepares for her lunch date with Larry, chanting ROCKY LOVE ROCKY LOVE ROCKY LOVE in the powerbase of her silent mind. Her name empowers her and she begins to feel better. What is this hold Nathan has on her? She must take control; she has to forget. She hopes her date with Larry will help.
An hour later, a traffic jam on Fifth Avenue forces her out of her taxi into the hot afternoon. She walks along 57th Street in her black leather miniskirt and jacket, black fishnets and ankle boots, her bronzy hair wild at her shoulders. A long strand of pearls swings at her strategically revealed cleavage. She lifts her chin and does not even flinch when a nasty beggar approaches her. ROCKY LOVE ROCKY LOVE ROCKY LOVE. They are ghosts, these people, soulless ghosts sent to haunt her. She believes she has been blessed, gifted, protected by the Great Goddess, deliberately coddled, chosen. The poor, as she thinks of them, the huddled hungry masses have been likewise deliberately forgotten, and it is neither her fault nor her responsibility to raise them from the near-dead.
She feels sexy in her fishnets and stabs at the pavement with her sharp high heels. Onward. The revolving door of the Russian Tea Room receives her, and she enters the royal red and golden room like a movie queen: chin up, chest forward, proud.
The maitre d’, a small neat man, flashes a stock smile when he sees her. He checks the reservation book. “Yes,” he says briskly. “Please follow me.”
Her heart beats rapidly as he leads her farther from the central area to a small table against the wall.
The bastard. Why has he shunted her off to the side? ROCKY LOVE. Doesn’t he know who she is? She waves to a movie director and star seated toward the middle of the room. He raises his chin, acknowledging her. Nearby is a table of five, and Rocky recognizes a journalist who wrote an early rave for her radio show, the Mad Wife. He doesn’t see her. She adjusts her chair, uncrosses and recrosses her legs.
Larry is late. She hates this. She is hungry and would like to eat a roll, but it will ruin her lipstick. She smiles at a gossip columnist, seated smack dab in the middle of the room at a round table, with the wife of a financier and an interior decorator who is a multimillionaire.
“Get up,” Larry says. He’s standing next to the table in a navy double-breasted suit with shiny brass buttons. His red tie dances with white polka dots.
“You look like the fourth of July, darling,” she says.
“We’re being seated over there.” He points to a small square table near the gossip columnist.
“No,” she whispers. “The bitch will print it.”
“She’ll print this, too. Come on.”
Rocky rises and follows Larry to the other table, center stage. People nod, wave, smile. Rocky does her best celebrity swagger. Just wait until they read my memoirs, it’ll show them who I am, someone to reckon with. ROCKY LOVE. She can hardly be patient enough to....
“Sit,” Larry says. He snaps his fingers by her face. “Rocky, have a seat.”
Lunch doesn’t help, after all, so when he invites her back to his apartment she immediately agrees. How could she feel self-affirmed after that scene with the maitre d’ and all those people watching her? Maybe this time Larry will be able to have an erection. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. She’ll take whatever he can give her, even if it’s just a good laugh. Anything to snap her out of this funk.
He lives in a two-bedroom penthouse decorated in bachelor shades of eggplant and maroon. Puckered leather couches and polished walnut tables give the living room a cozy winter feel, even in summer. In his bedroom, a round bed sits beneath a ceiling mirror — high hopes. A large window overlooks the East River which today sparkles under a potent noon sun.
They undress without speaking, as is their habit.
Larry sits naked on the bed, crosslegged and stomachy like a balding hairy-chested Buddha. Rocky wears a black lace bodysuit with a split crotch (which she carried with her in her purse, just in case) and dares him to use it though she knows he won’t. Can’t. She’s had him in her mouth for a full minute and still he’s limp and small.
He pushes her away and she tumbles to her side.
“I want to tell you a story,” he says, “about my childhood. Did you know I was once a child?”
“It’s hard to believe,” she says. She’d rather hear a story, anyway, than coax him fruitlessly.
“I tell you this in all confidence,” he says. “I’m going to write about it some day. It’s been on my mind a lot lately. I want to share it with you, as a friend.”
“You know you have my confidence.”
Staring at himself in the ceiling mirror, he beings. “When I was fifteen, I saw my mother one day in her room, alone. My father had a mistress, and we all knew. Mommy was a young woman, thirty-five, and Pop hadn’t slept in their bed for a year. I went to ask her a question about my homework one night after dinner. Her bedroom door was closed, but not locked, and I pushed it open without knocking. Mommy was lying on the bed with her housedress on — it was pale blue, with buttons up the front, almost like a uniform — and she was still wearing her flowered apron. She was crying. I stood there and she cried and looked right at me but she didn’t say anything. She just kept looking at me. Then she nodded. When she nodded, it meant yes, come in. Her pain excited me. I had an erection. At the time, I thought she sensed my excitement and was inviting me in to....” He stops talking, stares up into his own eyes. “I actually believed my mother wanted me. That’s when I knew I wanted her.”
“You’re making this up,” Rocky says.
Larry shakes his head. “No, it’s true. This is my deepest secret and you should be honored I’m telling you.”
“I am. Go on.”
“Ever since then, in my fantasies, the woman I fuck is my mother.”
“Larry! You’re shocking me and I thought I was shock-proof! What happened to her?”
“She died a year later, on the street. Her appendix burst and she didn’t tell anyone about the pain. It was morning. She went out to sweep the sidewalk in front of our house, and dropped. I have always been convinced my fantasies killed her. I have been unable to have... normal sexual relations... ever since.”
Rocky strokes his limp, hairless hand, which is as fragile and soft as a child’s. She joins him in staring at the mirror — staring at herself — appalled, excited, memorizing each detail of his story. So, Larry has fantasized about incest. (She has actually experienced it.) What a fool he is, she thinks, sharing his dark secret with a woman he continually fails to satisfy. Is this how he deepens intimacy in a relationship he can’t actually consummate? She feels a spasm of jealousy, wondering if he has told this story to other women. The thought makes her grow wet between her legs.
She shifts her gaze to his mirror-eyes. “What did your father do after your mother died?”
“He married his shiksa mistress. And then he cheated on her, too.”
They laugh together, buckling into a hug.
It’s so nice and quiet when Rocky is gone, a state of solitary independence Cat has begun to appreciate more and more. She feels comfortable, almost serene, in her air-conditioned bubble suspended over the hot city streets. She can see the oily shivering heat in the air, hovering over the treetops, whose deep summer green has turned the park into an oasis. She’s getting better at not letting Rocky’s angst spill into her. Like this morning, when the long-lost brother called. As Rocky’s bellowing laughter turned into shrieks of frustration, Cat remained concealed in her office, half listening, half working, not caring either way. When Rocky streaked past her in a black leather skirt suit, Cat didn’t warn her how hot it was outside, knowing that an implication that the outfit was anything but perfect would be followed by a storm of insecurity.
At lunchtime, it’s too hot to go out. Cat decides that with Rocky gone it could be relaxing to take a break in the cool indoors. She goes to the kitchen, makes herself a sandwich, pours a glass of orange juice and sets herself up at the oval table with the newspaper. Annie joins her with a glass of iced tea.
After a few minutes, just as Cat is reading the last headline on the front page, Annie whispers, “I seen bruises on her, on the backs of her legs.”
“Rocky?”
Annie nods. She wears the grim expression Cat knows is reserved for the most serious topics.
“Does she bruise easily?”
“Well, I never seen bruises like this before.”
“I don’t understand.”
Annie stands, tugs down her yellow sweater. She has a dare look on her face. “When’s she comin’ home?”
“About four-thirty, for Serena. They have a healing session.” Cat lets a grin pull across her face.
“Come on, lemme show you somethin’.”
Cat follows Annie through the living room and down the hall to Rocky’s bedroom. “I don’t know what to make of this,” Annie says, opening the bedroom door. “It scares me, I’ll tell you that.” Annie goes to Rocky’s dresser, and from a tiny lacquered box extracts a key. She bends down and unlocks the padlock on the old trunk on the floor. Dark and heavy, with bands of rusted metal, it looks like something retrieved from a sunken ship. Annie heaves open the top. It is filled with menacing things: black silk, red garters, leather straps, whips, handcuffs.
Cat stares into the chest, stunned. “What is all this?”
Annie’s pale blue eyes are wide and bright. “Honey, you tell me.”
“She wrote some notes for a lecture on women and masochism, and there was something in there about the extremes of love and sado-masochism, but I never thought —”
“She’s been thinkin’ about it? Then she’s been livin’ it.” Annie nods her head once, decisively, punctuating her statement.
“But who with?” Cat says. “It couldn’t be Larry.”
“You work for her long enough, you’ll believe anything.” Annie lowers the heavy lid and the two women retreat to the dining room. They sit at the table and eat Lorna Doone cookies in silence.
Finally Cat returns to her office, feeling lethargic and confused, and plunks herself down at her desk. She doesn’t know how to understand this new information about Rocky. Cat knew her boss was neurotic, compulsive and narcissistic as well as smart, brave and spaced-out. She is full of contradictions and paradoxes: a feminist who loves lingerie and spike heels, a mother who loves her child yet neglects him, a controlling boss who leaves you alone to work, a woman who craves love from men yet distrusts them, who has the means to be independent yet believes she needs a man to survive. Now this: feather boas and leather straps and steel shackles and heavy chains and spiked cuffs and fringed whips. It terrifies Cat to think that Rocky might actually play with these accessories of pain.
Cat cannot focus on her work; her mind has turned to violence.
And she wonders: is Rocky’s violence as cosmic as her love? Is it just as much an abstraction, a wish, a hope, a delusion? For a moment she thinks that if Rocky loses hold, she, Cat, will lose her job before she has finished paying her debts, and then she’ll be back at square one, alone and broke. Then the absurdity of that thought takes her to the next: that she who has so little will be fine no matter what, while Rocky who has so much may not.
Cat feels a headache coming on.
She wishes she could forget what she saw, unlearn what she now knows, chalk it up to a celebrity run amok — nothing a good publicist couldn’t solve. But she can’t. It’s too late. And why won’t anyone just tell the truth about what’s hidden in our trunks, proverbial and otherwise? Why can’t she?
She realizes she has a decision to make: whether or not to call John and tell him about her new discovery. It would certainly spice up the book. It’s tempting, but she’s already told him too much, and once the fun of that dinner wore off she began to feel a little dirty. Maybe it’s not too late to redeem her dignity and go back to being neutral. She decides to sleep on it and see what tomorrow brings.
The next morning, Cat arrives at her office to find Rocky standing at the desk, speaking French and laughing into the office phone. When she hangs up, she announces, “Yves is coming! We need to make some plans.”
Cat takes a pad and a pen and follows Rocky down the hall, her infamous hungry has-been hips swaying beneath her caftan. When she swings open her study door, Cat is surprised by a big poster that wasn’t on the wall yesterday: Rocky Love’s smiling face, many years younger, above the bright red legend The MAD WIFE talks... and listens. The poster-face, enlarged and up-close, looks young, on the verge of laughter. The sprightliness of her poster-smile is a striking contrast to the complexity of her expressions now. Cat sits down across from Rocky, who is crosslegged and bloated on the velvet couch, and holds her pen above her pad — speechless, silent, ready.
“I’ll need an appointment with Lisa Long for this afternoon, cut and henna. If she can’t fit me in today, then Monday. Book a room for Yves at the Paramount Hotel from Tuesday to Friday. No one should know he’s coming. Larry cannot know about this. Do you understand?”
Cat nods.
“Tell no one.”
“Okay.”
“Nothing excites me more than the thought of getting fucked by Yves.”
Cat almost notes that, too, but catches herself.
“Last item: call Larry and tell him I love him. Just to throw him off the scent.”
Cat pretends to jot down that instruction, but instead doodles an angry gnome with a polka-dot scalp, a limp penis, and a whip. She hugs her pad against her chest to hide the drawing and asks, “Is that all?”
But Rocky has already tuned her out, so she returns to her office to get started.
“So sweet,” Yves coos in Rocky’s ear, alone in the elevator at the Paramount Hotel. She runs a hand down his belly and whispers, “Let’s stay in and order room service, no?”
“Ah, you awe eencwedible. But please to see New Yochk.”
“Tomorrow night,” she says, stroking the crotch of his pants, feeling him grow and harden. Not-so-smart but always good-to-go, just as she thought when she first spotted him at that cocktail party in Paris. Married, but who cares? He is reliably great in bed, or bath, or boat, or elevator, or anywhere. As she changes his mind about going out to dinner tonight, his lips part, revealing long teeth and a middle gap. He blushes to his hairline.
His hotel room is large, clean and comfortable. They order champagne, gravlocks, caviar, sour cream, pumpernickel bread and tartes au pommes, which they eat in the Jacuzzi. Rocky leans back, submerged to her nipples, her large breasts splayed against her ribs and magnified under water. She knows her breasts fascinate Yves; their size has always captured the attention of men. His body is covered with frizzes of curly gray-brown hair that skim the surface of the water as he stretches out beside her. Except for his round belly, his body is pleasantly taut.
Dinner waits on a tray next to the tub. He leans over the edge, prepares a slice of bread and gravlocks and sprays it with juice from a wedge of lemon. She devours it in two big bites. He laughs, then crams a spoonful of caviar into his mouth. They become abandoned, shoving food at each other, half of which drops into the tub. Tiny black curds of caviar bob on the churning water. Capers sink. Sour cream dissipates, turning the water milky white.
In the morning, Yves keeps the appointment that justified, to his wife, this visit to New York. Rocky walks up Madison Avenue in the dazzling blue-skied warmth, stopping to gaze in store windows without really looking. She marvels at how good Yves makes her feel. There is a bounce in her step today and she feels almost young again. It’s been too long since the glory days of her youth.
Standing in front of a shoe store, staring at her reflection in the glass, a familiar voice comes from behind.
“Hello there!” Connie’s reflection, carrying a large shopping bag, comes into focus beside her own.
“Darling!” Rocky turns around and kisses her friend. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I’ve just been so busy.”
“Aren’t we all? I’ve been out running errands. Isn’t this a gorgeous day?”
“Yves is here.”
“Yves from Paris? Last summer Yves?”
Rocky smiles hugely. “That man sure knows how to —”
Connie shushes her. “Rocky, we’re in public.”
“I wish I could roll Yves and Larry into one man. With Yves’s cock and Larry’s brain, he’d be the perfect lover.”
They walk slowly uptown, as Connie says, “I saw Larry, by the way. Rick took me to an AIDS research fundraiser at the Waldorf, and Larry was there. He has a great stand-up routine.”
“He did it for me once, naked,” Rocky says. “Was he with someone?”
“I don’t know, we only spoke for a minute. He said he’d invited you.”
“I told him I was busy wining and dining a producer from L.A.” She laughs. Connie shakes her head, and Rocky retaliates for what she regards as the innate judgment in that, with: “How is Rick’s wife?”
“It’s not the same,” Connie says. “They have been married for years, they have children, and I understand why he doesn’t want to walk out on her. What’s your incentive for stringing poor Larry along? Why not just let him move on?”
“Poor Larry? Have you ever known an impotent pervert —”
“Shhh. He’s my friend.”
“Larry ain’t no saint,” Rocky says, bouncing along. “I adore him, but let’s face it, he can’t get it up and I’m horny.”
“Please,” Connie whispers.
Rocky shouts: “Horny!”
Connie freezes, her face flushes, then she breaks into a spontaneous smile. Rocky believes her friend vicariously enjoys her raunchy pronouncements. Everyone does; it’s what turned Rochelle Libbon into Rocky Love and made her a star. She winds her arm through Connie’s and pulls her along. “I’m taking you to lunch,” she says, “and giving you every filthy detail about last night and tonight.”
“Tonight? How could you know about that?”
“Hopes and dreams.”
Cat sits in her cool-conditioned office in the sky, wishing it were lunchtime already — she’s dying to go out and walk — but Rocky has left her a heap of typing. More raw material for the memoirs. As her fingers play the keyboard, a sensation of recognition pings through her mind. Rocky has sketched an affair with a gnome-like cosmic asexual man, a famous playwright, whose Oedipal fantasies make it impossible to consummate a relationship with a woman. It is obviously Larry Drumm.
After a while, Rocky buzzes the intercom to issue a few directives, ending with, “Did you type my pages?
“I’m almost finished... but Rocky,” Cat blurts out, “is it true about Larry? It seems kind of risky to ask John to put that in your book.” As soon as she’s said it, she wishes she hadn’t. What was the point? Obviously it’s a bad idea for Rocky to spill Larry’s beans in her memoir.
“Fax John those pages right away,” Rocky tells her. “And messenger a copy to Connie. She has excellent judgment.”
Meaning that Cat’s own judgment is flawed. Well, if Rocky wants to publicize Larry’s private angst — with or without Connie’s or anyone else’s approval — then let her. She’ll only hang herself in the end.
An hour later, Cat has finished the typing, faxed the pages, made the copy, called the messenger, typed two letters, made one phone call and answered four.
Rocky appears in the doorway. “Da da! How do I look?”
Cat swivels around in her chair. Rocky is wearing a black silk jumpsuit with a spangled silver belt and black lace-up boots with spike heels. She looks bloated, her skin is ashen and there are dark swaths beneath her eyes.
“Terrific,” Cat says, and spins back to face the computer.
“You made the reservation?”
“Yup — Humbert’s at seven o’clock.”
“Do I look sexy?”
“Yes.”
Rocky heads for the kitchen. She thinks Cat’s acting sulky and doesn’t want her own vibes messed up before she meets Yves later for dinner. She finds Annie in the process of unloading groceries.
“What is Parker having tonight?” Rocky asks.
“Spaghetti.”
“Again?”
“That’s all he’ll eat.”
Rocky stares at the older woman. She feels her face go heavy, the feeling that comes just before she spaces out, or travels out-of-body, or whatever it is that happens that gives her that blank, lost sensation like white sound filling her, numbing her mind. She doesn’t like the feeling but it’s too strong to resist. She tries to conjure up the rod, joining her to earth, to reality, to bolster herself, bring herself back. Annie looks like she’s in a dream: her face all crunched and worried, staring.
“Honey, you okay?” Annie asks.
Rocky feels her head nod slowly.
“Hungry? Have a piece of this nice French bread.” She slides the loaf out of its long paper bag, breaks off a piece and hands it to Rocky. “Here, honey, eat.”
Rocky feels her hand take the bread and lift it to her lips. She hears herself say, “Thanks.” She feels her jaw moving and tastes the doughy bread in her mouth.
The ringing phone jolts her back. After a moment, the intercom buzzes and Cat announces, “Rocky, you there? It’s Larry.”
She takes the call at the kitchen wall phone. “Hello. I’m wonderful. How’s the sexiest man alive? Oh, darling, I’m booked tonight, one of those dreary cocktail parties for Stan the producer man. Yes, lunch tomorrow, one o’clock. I love you, darling.”
She hangs up and sighs. “Isn’t he wonderful?”
Annie nods.
Rocky presses the intercom to Cat’s office and says, “Make a reservation for lunch tomorrow for one o’clock at The Russian Tea Room, two people. Cat? Hello, Cat?”
Suddenly Cat is standing next to her in the kitchen doorway, having appeared out of nowhere. It gives Rocky the creeps the way that girl seems to see right through you. “Oh! I just buzzed you and asked —”
“I heard,” Cat says. “I’ll take care of it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be everywhere all at once the way you are sometimes. Do you know you can be too efficient?”
“Sorry, Rocky.”
“And stop being sorry all the time.” Rocky pushes past. “It’s annoying.”
Cat follows Rocky through the living room, where she puts on her fur coat — even though it’s eighty degrees out — and slings her purse over her shoulder. She catches Cat’s eye in the mirror and orders, “After you make the lunch reservation, call Larry to confirm, pronto. Got it?”
Cat nods in affirmation, holding a stubborn silence. Rocky has never been quite so plainly mean to her. She should quit this job, is what she should do. But if she can stick it out just a little longer, she’ll have her debts paid off along with a solid year of experience to put on a resume without much else on it. Unfortunately, aspiring cartoonist doesn’t cut it in a job interview. And Cat has to eat.
She returns to her office and makes the lunch reservation. Then she calls Larry, for whom she suddenly feels a new camaraderie, as if he has passed over from the other side, Rocky’s side, to her own — the side of the bilked.
“Hi, Mr. Drumm, this is Cat Gold from Rocky Love’s office.”
“Cat, I think at this point you can call me Larry.”
“Thanks. So, Rocky asked me to make a reservation for lunch tomorrow, one p.m. at The Russian Tea Room. It’s all done and I just wanted to confirm that with you.” “Tomorrow, lunch, one o’clock, check.” “The reservation’s in her name,” Cat adds. “Of course it is. Is the madame still in?” “She just left.” “Off to see the producer —”
“Yves,” Cat says. “That’s right. Humbert’s at seven o’clock.” As soon as she says it — impulsive payback for Rocky’s sharp words just before — she feels the satisfying release of a steam pot freed of its lid.
“You mean Stan.”
“Right. Stan. My mistake.”
“Who is Yves?” Larry asks in a tone that sounds rhetorical. “Isn’t he....”
His voice trails off, and Cat lets the silence speak. She imagines that Rocky has told him all about her sexual exploits with her married lover last summer in France. Why not? She told everyone else.
“Well, that’s it... Larry. Goodnight.”
“’Night. Thanks.”
Next, she calls John. He answers on the fourth ring, “Yes, I’m here!”
“It’s Cat. What’s wrong?”
“I was on the can. Why does that always happen?”
“You could have let your machine pick up.”
“Most people hang up if you don’t answer after three rings. I’m a shut-in lately, nothing but work, and I need every call.”
“How’s the book going?”
“Great. I contacted the people on the list you faxed over and most of them were willing to talk, I mean really talk. I was amazed. Thanks.”
“How about another interview?”
“Lemme grab a pen. Okay, ready, who?”
“Me, right now, tonight.”
“You sound charged-up.”
“I am.”
“Fantastic. Where should I meet you?”
They make plans to meet at seven-thirty at a bar in the Village. Although she has not completely abandoned her sense of moral dilemma, or made up her mind to tell him everything she knows, she feel an urge to talk. And she knows that John will be an eager listener for whatever she decides to tell him.
In the back of Humbert’s, in a dimly lit corner, Rocky and Yves sit with their knees interlocked beneath a round table. A small candle between them sends shadows flickering across their faces. Yves has consumed two vodkas-on-ice and some wine. Rocky has also had some wine, which she knows will cost her dearly in guilt and self-reproach. They are waiting for the appetizers, and then will decide on dinner.
She fiddles with a breadstick, picking off each tiny seed with the tips of her long nails. She’s thinking of his wife — Princess Paulette is what Rocky calls the woman — and smirks to restrain a bubble of laughter. Yves sees the humor flash across her face, and smiles. Such a sexy smile. His black shirt is buttoned to the neck, and he wears no tie. The black shirt with the white suit is charming, though admittedly she’d rather just have him naked, in bed. This dinner out is for him.
He says, “You ‘ave such funny.”
Her eyes blink rapidly. “What, darling?”
He reaches across the table and gently strokes her neck. His fingers travel slowly down, to the top of her breasts, and then he withdraws them. “You,” he says, “you are a woman of such good amusement.”
He is trying to be charming. She laughs. And wonders: How can such a sexy man be so dumb?
Halfway through their pumpkin soup, Rocky notices a small man in a black coat and hat sitting at a table near theirs. He has long gray curls falling down the sides of his face and thick round glasses. He looks like a man in disguise, as if he is supposed to be a Hasidic Jew, but somehow, well, isn’t. Rocky can see that he has pancake makeup on his face, and a long fake putty-nose and witch’s chin. She decides he is either crazy or putting on an act. There is nightly entertainment at Humbert’s, a singer or a comedian. Yves twists around to follow Rocky’s gaze.
“Ah hah,” Yves says. “What beezar.”
The man spins around and looks at them. From behind the coke-bottle glasses, his small brown eyes fix on Rocky. Something in the way he stares seizes her attention. She looks at his hands: they are small, finely boned, hairless.
They are Larry’s hands.
She drops her spoon in her soup plate, and says, “Let’s go.”
“But we ‘ave not to eat,” Yves says.
“Now.” She stands.
Larry gets up and waddles over in a ridiculous clownlike walk, stopping in front of their table. Yves laughs. Rocky stands there, frozen.
Larry starts to shake. The top of his hat pops up and out springs a red paper flower. Someone claps. He does not smile. He takes a step closer to Rocky, and she says, “Now, wait a minute,” and Yves grins like a child at the circus.
Larry quickly taps his bulbous black shoe until smoke pours from the toe.
People are watching.
Rocky says, “Stop it. You are being stupid and cruel.”
Larry smiles. He is wearing big white fake teeth. Yves howls with laughter. Rocky turns bright red. She is about to leave when Larry opens his black coat and
voila out springs a giant rubber penis attached to his groin over his black slacks. He jerks his hips forward and white liquid squirts out. Diners gasp.
Rocky shouts, “You sick motherfucker!” She grabs her purse from her chair and runs out, with Yves stumbling behind her in confusion.
Rocky and Connie sit at the oval table in front of a plate of crustless sandwiches and a pot of chamomile tea prepared by Annie, who busies herself in the kitchen and keeps an open ear.
Connie’s voice is pinched with tension. “Darling, you can’t use something so personal to Larry in your memoirs.”
“Why not?”
“It’s wrong.”
“It’s interesting, and it’s true.”
“But it’s part of his life story, not yours. These are your memoirs.”
“He told me about it.”
“You’re violating his trust. It isn’t worth it. And it doesn’t add anything to your story.”
“He humiliated me in public,” Rocky says. “I don’t owe him anything.”
“But Rocky, that happened after you wrote this. This came first. I just don’t understand.”
“We shared confidences. This is creative license. He would understand that.”
“Not this; he would not understand this. This goes way beyond creative license. If I wrote a script based on, well, based on this, you don’t think Larry would come after me? It’s so obviously him. And anyway, I’d never do it. He’s my friend.”
Rocky’s voice rises. “You’ve always been jealous of my success.”
“Oh, please, this isn’t one of your shows.”
“What did you say?”
“Rocky, I promise I am not jealous of you. The only reason I brought this up, about what you’re saying about Larry, is to protect you. It’s libelous.”
“You told him about Yves.”
“Oh, please —”
“You had to ruin it for me.”
“I did not tell Larry!”
“Liar!”
“I did not tell Larry anything.”
“Get out of my house!”
“Gladly.”
Cat hovers in her office and listens as the front door slams shut. She feels a kind of thrill. She never anticipated that Connie would bear the brunt of her petty mischief. Had she known it, she would not have slipped the information about Yves to Larry. Or would she? She wonders how much damage she can do without being accountable. And then it strikes her, fleetingly but with impact, that she is becoming as nimble at deceit as Rocky. She is learning from a master. She smiles, standing there alone in her office, just smiles and shakes her head — giddily safe within the eye of a brewing storm.