"Name," he commands.
And I'm thinking: Of all the fucking names, why this one? "Um, Schrawtz" – oh god – "Mr. and Mrs. Schrawtz." My face, I'm sure, is ashen and I say the name mechanically, but the maître d' is too busy to not buy it and I don't even bother to face Jean, who I'm sure is totally bewildered by my behavior as we're led to the Schrawtzes' table, which I'm sure probably sucks though I'm relieved anyway.
Menus already lie on the table but I'm so nervous the words and even the prices look like hieroglyphics and I'm completely at a loss. A waiter takes our drink order – the same one who couldn't locate the ice – and I find myself saying things, without listening to Jean, like "Protecting the ozone layer is a really cool idea" and telling knock-knock jokes. I smile, fixing it on my face, in another country, and it takes no time at all – minutes, really, the waiter doesn't even get a chance to tell us about the specials – for me to notice the tall, handsome couple by the podium conferring with the maître d', and after sighing very deeply, light-headed, stammering, I mention to Jean, "Something bad is happening."
She looks up from the menu and puts down the iceless drink
she's been sipping. "Why? What's wrong?"
The maître d' is glaring over at us, at me, from across the room as he leads the couple toward our table. If the couple had been short, dumpy, excessively Jewish, I could've kept this table, even without the aid of a fifty, but this couple looks like they've just strolled out of a Ralph Lauren ad, and though Jean and I do too (and so does the rest of the whole goddamn restaurant), the man is wearing a tuxedo and the girl – a totally fuckable babe – is covered with jewels. This is reality, and as my loathsome brother Sean would say, I have to deal with it. The maître d' now stands at the table, hands clasped behind his balk, unamused, and after a long pause asks, "Mr. and Mrs… Schrawtz?"
"Yes?" I play it cool.
He just stares. This is accompanied by an abnormal silence. His ponytail, gray and oily, hangs like some kind of malignancy below his collar.
"You know," I finally say, somewhat suavely, "I happen to know the chef."
He continues staring. So, no doubt, does the couple behind him.
After another long pause, for no real reason, I ask, "Is he… in Aspen?"
This is getting nowhere. I sigh and turn to Jean, who looks completely mystified. "Let's go, okay?" She nods dumbly. Humiliated, I take Jean's hand and we get up – she slower than I – brushing past the maître d' and the couple, and make our way back through the crowded restaurant and then we're outside and I'm utterly devastated and murmuring robotically to myself "I should have known better I should have known better I should," but Jean skips down the street laughing, pulling me along, and when I finally notice her unexpected mirth, between giggles she lets out "That was so funny" and then, squeezing my clenched fist, she lets me know "Your sense of humor is so spontaneous." Shaken, walking stiffly by her side, ignoring her, I ask myself "Where… to… now?" and in seconds come up with an answer – Arcadia, toward which I find myself guiding us.
After someone who I think is Hamilton Conway mistakes me for someone named Ted Owen and asks if I can get him into Petty's tonight – I tell him, "I'll see what I can do," then turn what's left of my attention to Jean, who sits across from me in the near-empty dining room of Arcadia – after he leaves, only five of the restaurant's tables have people at them. I've ordered a J&B on the rocks. Jean's sipping a glass of white wine and talking about how what she really wants to do is "get into merchant banking" and I'm thinking: Dare to dream. Someone else, Frederick Dibble, stops by and congratulates me on the Larson account and then has the nerve to say, "Talk to you later; Saul." But I'm in a daze, millions of miles away, and Jean doesn't notice; she's talking about a new novel she's been reading by some young author – its cover, I've seen, slathered with neon; its subject, lofty suffering. Accidentally I think she's talking about something else and I find myself saying, without really looking over at her, "You need a tough skin to survive in this city." She flushes, seems embarrassed and takes another sip of the wine, which is a nice sauvignon blanc.
"You seem distant," she says.
"What?" I ask, blinking.
"I said you seem distant," she says.
"No," I sigh. "I'm still my same kooky self."
"That's good." She smiles – am I dreaming this? – relieved.
"So listen," I say, trying to focus in on her, "what do you really want to do with your life?" Then, remembering how she was droning on about a career in merchant banking, I add, "Just briefly, you know, summarize." Then I add, "And don't tell me you enjoy working with children, okay?"
"Well, I'd like to travel," she says. "And maybe go back to school, but I really don't know…" She pauses thoughtfully and announces, sincerely, "I'm at a point in my life where there seems to be a lot of possibilities, but I'm so… I don't know… unsure."
"I think it's also important for people to realize their limitations." Then, out of the blue I ask, "Do you have a boyfriend?"
She smiles shyly, blushes, and then says, "No. Not really."
"Interesting," I murmur. I've opened my menu and I'm studying tonight's prix fixe dinner.
"Are you seeing anyone?" she ventures timidly. "I mean, seriously?"
I decide on the pilot fish with tulips and cinnamon, evading the question by sighing, "I just want to have a meaningful relationship with someone special," and before she's allowed to respond I ask her what she's going to order.
"I think the mahi-mahi," she says and then, squinting at the menu, "with ginger."
"I'm having the pilot fish," I say. "I'm developing a taste for them. For… pilot fish," I say, nodding.
Later, after a mediocre dinner, a bottle of expensive California cabernet sauvignon and a crime brûlée that we share, I order a glass of fifty-dollar port and Jean sips a decaffeinated espresso and when she asks where the restaurant got its name, I tell her, and I don't make anything ridiculous up – though I'm tempted, just to see if she'd believe it anyway. Sitting across from Jean right now in the darkness of Arcadia, it's very easy to believe that she would swallow any kind of misinformation I push her way – the crush she has on me rendering her powerless – and I find this lack of defense oddly unerotic. I could even explain my pro-apartheid stance and have her find reasons why she too should share them and invest large sums of money in racist corporations tha-
"Arcadia was an ancient region in Peloponnesus, Greece; which was founded in 370 Bs.C., and it was completely surrounded by mountains. Its chief city was… Megalopolis, which was also the center of political activity and the capital of the Arcadian confederacy…" I take a sip of the port, which is thick, strong, expensive. "It was destroyed during the Greek war of independence…" I pause again. "Pan was worshiped originally in Arcadia. Do you know who Pan was?"
Never taking her eyes off me, she nods.
"His revels were very similar to those of Bacchus," I tell her. "He frolicked with nymphs at night but he also liked to… frighten travelers during the day… Hence the word pan-ic." Blah blah blah. I'm amused that I've retained this knowledge and I look up from the port I've been staring thoughtfully into and smile at her. She's silent for a long time, confused, unsure of how to respond, but eventually she looks deeply into my eyes and says, haltingly, leaning across the table, "That's… so… interesting," which is all that comes out of her mouth, is all she has to say.
Eleven thirty-four. We stand on the sidewalk in front of Jean's apartment on the Upper East Side. Her doorman eyes us warily and fills me with a nameless dread, his gaze piercing me from the lobby. A curtain of stars, miles of them, are scattered, glowing, across the sky and their multitude humbles me, which I have a hard time tolerating. She shrugs and nods after I say something about forms of anxiety. It's as if her mind is having a hard time communicating with her mouth, as if she is searching for a rational analysis of who I am, which is, of course, an impossibility: there… is… no… key.