“Excuse me, madam, does Gerald Vidilowski live there, please? I understand Mr. Vidilowski holds The Brotherly Love Award for Penmanship. I can use a man like that in my work.”
“Mr. Vidilowski wrote a beautiful hand, but he’s dead,” the woman sobbed.
I called the residence of Miriam Spidota. “Excuse me, ma’am, are you the Miriam Spidota who won the 1946 Brotherly Love Award for Penmanship?”
“Yes, that’s right,” the woman said brightly.
“Do you still wield the pen, ma’am?”
“How do you mean, ‘wield the pen’?”
“I’ll be direct, Miss Spidota. Are you now employed in addressing envelopes?”
“Is this Harry? Harry, is this a rib? Harry?”
“Please, Miss Spidota. I’m very serious.”
“Gee,” she said. “I thought you were that pimp, Harry. You a salesman? One of the boys give you my number?”
The third on the list was Davis. He told me nervously that he worked for Affairs, Inc. I arranged to meet him, and that was that. Keys to the City.
Davis called back at six. The Gibbenjoy affair sounds disappointing. Ray Pilchard will be there, of the Pilchard Hotel chain. Leroy Buff-Miner of the pharmaceutical house. Gabrielle Gal — I’ve heard some of her phony recordings of Greek songs. Still, she’s very popular in café society. Dr. Morton Perlmutter, an archeologist. A Mr. and Mrs. Nelton Fayespringer of Pittsburgh. She’s one of the Carnegies, Davis says, and he’s one of the few Pennsylvania industrialists without his own town named after him. All in all, there were about three dozen names, some of which I didn’t recognize at all. I’ll go, of course, because it’s the opening of the season, but it looks pretty grim.
Nate’s call yesterday morning caught me just as I was going out for breakfast. He couldn’t talk over the phone, he said — God, how it annoys me when people call to tell you they can’t talk over the phone — but something big was coming up in New York and I had better get into town immediately. I’ve noticed that I’m an extremely impatient person — invariably, for example, I flush the toilet before I have finished urinating — and during the hour and a half train ride from Philly to NY I could do nothing but wonder what Nate could have meant. Probably it was nothing but another party. Nate gives parties violently, and sometimes I have met middlingly important people at them. I say important rather than great because I have noticed that the great don’t often go to parties— unless, of course, they are the guests of honor. At any rate, I’ve become disenchanted with parties (two years ago I could never have imagined myself saying this), though I never refuse an invitation. It always seems to me that the next one might change my life.
Nate wasn’t in his place when I went up there, but it was already four o’clock when the train got to Penn Station and the traffic was so heavy that the bus didn’t get up to Forty-seventh Street until almost five. I asked Perry whether Nate would be coming back.
“That is to speculate,” Perry said coldly. Perry is one of my enemies. He doesn’t approve of Nate’s careless attachments to outsiders. He calls them “befriendships.”
Perry is a very popular mâitre d’ in New York, though I have never understood the reason. His dignity and aloofness seem spurious to me. I feel that they’re simply tools of the trade with him, ones he uses a little squeamishly, as a professional locksmith might use dynamite. I like to picture him at home in front of the TV with his shoes off and a beer from Nate’s kitchen in his hand. There are softer, sloppier Perrys inside him, I know. Even at that, talking to Perry, I always get the peculiarly grateful, slightly vicious feeling of “There but for you go I.”
“I’ll get him at the apartment. Thanks, Perry.”
“Messieur Nate will have guests,” Perry warned.
I looked at this mâitre d’hôtel, at this head waiter who got his name in the columns and was the constant bête noir of a government tax man who worried about his tips.
“Perry,” I said affably, “you may lead them to the tables, but I, I sit down with them.”
“May I show Messieur to a table?” Perry said viciously, knowing that without Nate there to tear up my check I could not afford even the cheapest item on Nate’s menu.
“I dined on the train, Perry,” I said easily. Much as I loathe myself for it, Perry is always able to force me into transparently absurd positions. As a professional mâitre d’, Perry despises moochers. He once told me that I ate above my station. It is outrageous to Perry that I should even be allowed inside Nate’s. It is, he thinks, like a panhandler coming to the front door of Buckingham Palace. I can see his point, of course, but that sort of demeaning introspection leads nowhere. As well for me to feel guilt because I cannot pay my checks as for a cripple to feel it because he cannot run races. We have our handicaps, the cripple and I, and a gentleman does not look too closely into them. If Perry objects that I do not meet my obligations, I can counter that there are certain obligations which I must simply be allowed to write off in order to get on with my life.
“If I should happen to miss Mr. Lace,” I told Perry, “please tell him that I’m in town and that I’ll get in touch with him later.”
I had a hot dog and an orange drink at a Nedick’s on Sixth Avenue, and walked with my valise over to a special entrance I know at the Radio City Garage which all the advertising executives and TV and radio and publishing people use when they go down to get their cars. I was a little late, but I did see Henry Luce drive off to Connecticut, and just when I was ready to leave I happened to spot Doris Day about to get into a cab. She had some packages, and I rushed up to the side of the taxi and opened the door for her.
“Good day, Miss Day,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you, Miss Day,” I said. “Your voice is a gift from God. Cherish it always.”
“Thank you,” she said, a little nervously.
I was waiting for the traffic to break. As I say, I am an impatient man. I cannot stand to sit stalled in a bus when I have somewhere to go — or even when I don’t have somewhere to go. Frequently I will get out and walk, though I know I lose time this way. This habit is one of my small fictions for preserving the illusion that I am in complete control of my life. I could have gone down to Nate’s on the subway, of course, but I will not travel underground. Finally at about six-fifteen I walked over and caught a Fifth Avenue bus going downtown.
Nate lives in the Village, in the Mews. The houses in the Mews are not very large, but Nate keeps a butler and a full-time maid. (Nate is a bachelor, as will be, I suspect, all my friends. I am not the sort of person wives would normally abide. Perhaps that’s another reason Perry— who after all is a kind of housekeeper — finds me so distasteful.) I banged on Nate’s door and the butler opened it.
“Is Mr. Lace in, Simmons?”
Unlike Perry, Simmons shows no open hostility toward me. I am not sure, however, that I fully approve of his tolerance. It too, after all, is simply a tool of his trade. I like all people to meet me unprofessionally.
“He is not, sir. I don’t know what Mr. Lace’s arrangements are this evening. He did seem to be expecting you, though, Mr. Boswell, and instructed me to invite you to stay until his return.”
Nate doesn’t keep a cook. There’s never any food in his house; everything is brought from the restaurant. “That’s very kind, Simmons,” I said. “I’m a little tired though, after my trip. I think I’ll just go up to my hotel and lie down. Mr. Lace can reach me there.”