A forcible blast of frigid wind sweeps them through the door where Albie parts a heavy red curtain, a buffer against the cold. On the other side of the curtain, Bunny looks around slowly, and like a puppet come to life, deliberately, as if the only way to take in this room is through the sum of its parts.
That the Red Monkey has managed to retain its cachet long after its Asian-fusion expiration date can be credited, in large part, to the fact that—thank you Susan Sontag—camp is forever, and the Red Monkey is up to its monkey neck in Hollywood Regency chinoiserie: glossy black wallpaper flocked eponymously with red velveteen monkeys in a variety of monkey poses, red silk lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and Art Deco wall sconces lit with brothel-red bulbs. Mirrors are framed in faux bamboo. Call it camp or call it a tribute to French colonialism aiming to evoke an air of romance for a time and place, which maybe had a certain glamour to it if you had no objection to oppression, subjugation, forced labor and the depletion of natural resources, which included people as well as rubber trees.
The young woman who checks their coats is wearing a formfitting áo dài that is the same shade of poppy red as her lipstick, her nail polish and the red silk flower pinned behind her ear. Her hair is done up in a French twist. Bunny knows that her red silk tunic is called an áo dài because in high school she had to write a paper for geography class on Asia, and Bunny wrote about the various traditional costumes, for which she got a C, along with the teacher’s explanation for the poor grade: Frivolous. Mild criticism, all criticisms considered.
Albie takes the coat-check chip, red on one side, black on the other, and slips it into his jacket pocket. Scanning the room, he sees Julian at the bar waving to them. Julian is aiming for nonchalance, but if you knew Julian, you’d know he’s slightly hysterical because Bunny and Albie are late.
“We couldn’t get a cab,” Albie apologizes. “We walked,” he says.
“No problem.” Julian claps him on the back, and Trudy fingers the sleeve of Bunny’s dress. “Vintage?” she asks. Trudy is wearing an austere black dress. She’s got a closet full of these black dresses, and each one costs more than a car. Elliot is wearing his usual shaved head and black-frame eyeglasses. As a couple, Trudy and Elliot have got that whole Berlin minimalist thing down pat, although their daughter, who is seven, refuses to wear anything that isn’t lavender, which they find ironic and amusing. At first glance, it looks as if Lydia shopped for her outfit in a laundry basket: a gray sweater buttoned incorrectly rendering it asymmetrical, a teal-blue tulip skirt, lemon colored tights that sag and pink ballet flats. The overall effect is of a middle-aged woman dressed like the kind of goofy twelve-year-old girl who gets overly excited about origami. But look carefully, because every four weeks she drops four hundred and fifty dollars to get her hair cut to look as if she never gets a haircut, and the sagging yellow tights and pink flats were featured in last month’s Vogue. Her steel-frame eyeglasses, which you might reasonably assume came free with a group insurance plan, are Prada.
Now that they’ve finished sizing each other up, they make their way to the podium at the entrance to the dining room, where the hostess, also wearing a formfitting poppy-red áo dài, tells them their table is being cleared, it’ll just be a moment, and where Julian instructs them to take note of the floor. Glass tiles set contiguously; thick glass tiles, scratch resistant and artificially lit, cover a nearly wall-to-wall pool where red, black and gold ornamental fish swim below and around lily pads. As if it might not be recognized for what it is, Julian says, “It’s a koi pond. Isn’t that too much?”
“Yes,” Bunny says. “It is. It’s too much.”
Lydia informs them that the smaller fish are the males. “The male koi are smaller and their tails are more elaborate,” she explains, “to attract the females.”
“Actually, those are goldfish,” Albie corrects her. “The smaller ones are goldfish. Shubunkin fantails,” he says.
“Really?” Lydia’s eyes go wide as if she were a child, and Albie has just plucked a quarter from her ear.
“They can grow up to a foot long, but they’re still goldfish.”
Bunny never could figure out how Albie does that, how he can correct ignorance and stupidity without giving offense.
Their table is ready, and the three couples follow the hostess as she leads them through the dining room. Her formfitting poppy-red áo dài shimmers like the fantail of a shubunkin goldfish.