33

With the invitations to the Renthals’ ball in the mail, addressed by Mrs. Renthal’s calligrapher, and supervised by Mrs. Renthal’s social secretary, it quickly became the most highly anticipated party in New York in years. Ezzie Fenwick, who had taken upon himself the role of champion of Ruby Renthal, told certain people that he would be able to secure invitations for them, implying, not quite honestly, that he advised Ruby on her list. Those who had not been invited, and thought they should have been, planned earlier than usual migrations to their houses in Newport and Southampton, their ranches in Wyoming, their cottages on the coast of Maine, or elsewhere.

There was no one quite so distressed by his exclusion from the Renthals’ list as Constantine de Rham, recovered now, nearly, from his gunshot wound, which he continued to insist was self-inflicted. In his own mind he felt the shooting had added a tragic melancholy to his persona, coming as it did so few years after the death of his wife Consuelo. He imagined, walking daily to his lunch table at Clarence’s, first on a walker and then on a cane, usually led by Yvonne Lupescu, that people said of him, “Poor man. What a lot he has suffered.”

When Elias Renthal was still married to his second wife, Gladyce, Constantine de Rham had made his house on Sutton Place available to Elias as a location for his assignations with Ruby Nolte. Had his affair with the airline stewardess been public knowledge, Elias would have had a more difficult and costly divorce from Gladyce than he already had. Constantine had been handsomely rewarded for his services, but he still felt entitled to an invitation and silently sulked every time he read something in the newspapers about the forthcoming party, even though his somewhat sullied reputation and his affair with Yvonne Lupescu had made further contact with the high-rising Renthals an impossibility.

But for a chance meeting in the fitting rooms of Sills, Lord Biedermeier’s tailor, between Elias Renthal, who now ordered suits twenty at a time for each season, and Constantine de Rham, who, because of his extreme weight loss due to the bullet that had briefly lodged itself in his stomach, was having his own summer suits taken in by several inches, the matter might have gone unnoticed, for Constantine would never have shared with anyone, least of all Yvonne Lupescu, his extreme hurt at the social slight by the Renthals.

That day at Sills, only the lateness of Elias, due to a business emergency, caused the overlap of appointments between the one-time friends. Mr. Sills was a stickler for promptness among his fashionable clientele, but he dared not reprimand Elias Renthal for his tardiness, for who else these days, except Arabs, he once pointed out to Lord Biedermeier, ordered suits twenty at a time on a seasonal basis.

As Elias Renthal’s time was limited, and Constantine de Rham’s time hung heavily on his hands, Mr. Sills silently signaled to Sal, the fitter, to move from Mr. de Rham’s mirrored cubicle to Mr. Renthal’s, so that the busy tycoon could be dealt with instantly. De Rham, who had taken his snubs from people he once dined with on a nightly basis, was in no mood to take a snub from a fitter with pins in his mouth and moved outside his cubicle in order to complain loudly to Mr. Sills. It was then he saw Elias Renthal in his cubicle, with a large cigar in one hand, remove his trousers and put on the first of the twenty pairs he was to have fitted, beginning with the satin striped trousers that would have to be ready in time for the ball.

“What a handsome pair of legs you have, Elias,” said Constantine, joking, with a recurrence of the Continental charm that had once worked magic for him.

“For heaven’s sake, Constantine,” said Elias, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“The same thing you’re doing here,” said Constantine. “On a somewhat lesser scale.”

Elias chuckled. He quite enjoyed references to his extravagances. He put his cigar in his mouth and puffed on it, ignoring the NO SMOKING IN THE DRESSING ROOM sign posted on the wall.

Constantine, following suit, took a cigarette from a leather case he removed from his jacket pocket. “Do you have a match?” he asked.

“Leather? In town?” asked Elias, touching Constantine’s case, pretending astonishment. “What would Ezzie Fenwick say about that?”

They both chuckled. Elias reached into his suit pocket and handed a dark blue packet of matches to Constantine. It was not lost on Constantine that in discreet green letters were the words The Butterfield.

“Swell places you’re going to these days, Elias,” said Constantine. “Whose guest were you?”

“I’m a member,” said Elias. “I want the break lower on those trousers, right above where the pump will be,” he said to Sal on the floor, pinning the cuff.

“You’re a member of the Butterfield?” asked Constantine.

“Why, yes.”

“I thought they didn’t take, uh—”

“You thought wrong.”

“Consuelo once asked Herkie Saybrook to put me up for the Butterfield.”

“What happened?”

“Herkie said you had to be born in New York.”

“That’s right.”

“But you weren’t born in New York either.”

“I’m going to need this suit, with the tail coat, for next week, Sal,” said Elias, cutting Constantine short. “Very important. You better get me Mr. Sills, so there’s no misunderstanding about anything. The other stuff I don’t care about until I leave for Europe on the sixteenth.”

“I was wondering if there’s been some mistake, Elias,” said Constantine.

“Mistake? About what?”

“You know how social secretaries sometimes get things mixed up.”

“Get what mixed up?” asked Elias. Like the deal maker he was, he gave no indication that he knew exactly what Constantine de Rham was hinting at, and he was determined to make de Rham spell out the words before he refused him.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Your ball for the Earl and Countess of Castoria.”

“What about my ball?”

“I haven’t been invited.”

“A lot of people haven’t been invited. There’s just so many people the ballroom can hold. Ezzie Fenwick tells me Mrs. Astor could only have four hundred people to her ball because that’s all her ballroom could hold.”

“You’re having four hundred, I hear,” insisted Constantine.

“That’s as many as my ballroom can hold, too.”

“I see,” said Constantine.

“How are we doing here?” asked Mr. Sills, as he walked into the fitting room. The air was blue with cigar and cigarette smoke, and he waved his hand to clear it.

“We’re doing fine, but I’m running late,” said Elias, wanting to get away from Constantine. “How about if you send Sal here up to the house about six, and we can finish the other ten suits up there.”

The small room was now very crowded, with Elias, who was large and stout, and Constantine, who was large and slender, Mr. Sills, and Sal, who was still kneeling on the floor, pinning a cuff. Constantine, insufficiently bathed, as usual, increased the foulness of the air. He leaned against the back wall and caught Elias’s eye in the mirror. Elias met his stare.

“Do you remember when you were fucking Miss Ruby Nolte in my house on Sutton Place, Elias?” he asked. “When you had no other place to go because your wife, Gladyce, was suspicious of you?”

Sal, the fitter, coughed in astonishment, and the pins in his mouth were spat out on the floor.

“Such language, gentlemen,” said Mr. Sills, attempting to make a joke, but he realized that he had walked in at an inappropriate time. He signaled to Sal, and the two of them left the fitting room.

Elias, who understood when to give in on a business negotiation, merely answered, “I’ll see that you get sent a card, de Rham.”

“That’s very kind, Elias,” said Constantine, reverting to his charming self.

“But one thing.”

“Yes, Elias.”

“This invite is for you solo, not you and Mrs. Lupescu.”

“Oh?”

“That’s right.”

“That will make things quite awkward for me.”

“As we used to say in Cleveland, tough shit.”

“But Yvonne will be so disappointed.”

“No way that Ruby will let Yvonne into this party, after what she did at the Altemus wedding.”

“The Altemus wedding?”

“She crashed the Altemus wedding. You must have known that.”

Constantine looked at Elias. He had not known that Yvonne had crashed Justine Altemus’s wedding.

“Not only crashed it. Caught the bride’s bouquet,” said Elias, imitating Yvonne with a derisive gesture.

Constantine blushed at his mistress’s gall. Elias’s derision of Yvonne was hurtful to Constantine, not for the pain that her exclusion from the ball would cause her, but for the aspersion that it cast on him that he should be allied with such a woman, who would crash a society wedding.

“Oh, yes,” went on Elias. “Yvonne is not in good stead with Lil Altemus. Or Janet Van Degan. And they’re both coming to the ball. So it’s you alone, or not at all.”

“Perhaps, Elias, rather than mail me an invitation to Sutton Place, you would leave it for me at your office with your secretary. That way no one will see it but me.”

“Any way you wish,” said Elias. Elias had dressed by now and was back in his business suit and ready to go. “Now let me tell you something, you foreign piece of shit,” he said. Gone from his voice was any semblance of charm or bonhomie. “It was your dead wife’s house I was using, not your house, and you, pimp that you are, were well paid for the use of your dead wife’s house. So don’t strong arm me again ever.” He put his finger right in Constantine’s face. “What I know about you could send you to jail.”

Weak still from his wound, Constantine de Rham sank into a chair, his face white from Elias’s attack.

“See you at the ball, Constantine,” said Elias. “Oh, one more thing. Try to remember to take a bath that night, and use a little spray in those moist armpits of yours.”

If Elias hoped, by insulting him, to dissuade Constantine from attending the ball, he was to be disappointed. Constantine, the very next morning, appeared at Elias’s office and picked up his invitation, on which Ruby Renthal’s calligrapher had written the word Alone at the top of the engraved ecru card to indicate, in case the point had not been made sufficiently clear in the fitting room at Mr. Sills’s, that Yvonne Lupescu was not included.

It was on ladies’ day at the Butterfield that Ruby Renthal was introduced for the first time to Ned Manchester, the estranged husband of her great friend, Loelia Manchester.

“Mrs. Renthal, may I present Mr. Manchester,” said Laurance Van Degan, making the introduction.

Ned Manchester, whom Ruby had heard so much about, from Loelia and others, was not at all the way she had imagined that he would be. As fair-haired as Mickie was dark, as pink-complexioned as Mickie was olive, as lapis-lazuli-eyed as Mickie was black, as tall, as slender, but with the appearance of a life of sport and exercise rather than rigorous dieting, it was hard for her to imagine that Loelia could have fallen in love with two such different men.

“I know your children,” said Ruby.

“I’ve heard,” Ned answered, smiling at her. “They enjoyed visiting you in the country.”

“That son of yours is the best-looking young man I’ve ever seen in my life, and Charlotte is to die she’s so pretty,” said Ruby.

“Thank you,” Ned replied, smiling proudly over his children. Ruby Renthal, whom he had heard used to be a stewardess, was not at all how he expected her to be. In some ways she reminded him of Loelia, at least in the way she talked. “You may know my children, Mrs. Renthal, but I know your house. I used to go to Merry Hill when I was a child. The Grenvilles’ son was a friend of mine when we were little.”

“I think you probably wouldn’t recognize the house,” Ruby said.

“That’s what I hear. Do you still have the indoor tennis court?”

“Oh, yes. Elias plays every day when we’re in the country.”

“That’s where I learned how to play tennis, on that court.”

“You must come and see the house.”

“I’d like that, sometime.”

“And play tennis. Elias is always looking for a fourth.”

It was not a thing Ruby would ever mention to a soul, not even to Elias, but she wondered why her great friend Loelia would find Mickie Minardos more attractive than Ned Manchester. She loved all those people she met every night at dinner, like Ezzie Fenwick and Jamesey Crocus. There was no one more amusing in the city to sit next to at dinner. And the way Mickie Minardos could dance! She was forever telling him that he made her feel like Ginger to his Fred, but when it came to marriage, give her men every time, like Elias. And Ned. Even if they did have two left feet when it came to dancing.