They came to the Gordon Residence, an awesome Regency building in Huddlestone Mews. They rang. A butler in full evening dress answered the door. They showed the invitations. The butler's glance and lifted eyebrow showed that they were carrying second-class invitations of the sort given to importunate art poseurs on 17-day all-expense economy flights, rather than the engraved first-class invitations given to Picasso, Jackie Onassis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Norman Mailer, Charles Goren, and other movers and shakers of the world.
The butler said, "Oh, yes…." Two words that spoke black volumes. His face twitched, he looked like a man who has received an unexpected visit from Tamerlane and a regiment of his Golden Horde.
"The miniatures," Cordle reminded him.
"Yes, of course…. But I am afraid, sir, that no one is allowed into the Gordon Residence without a coat and necktie."
It was an oppressive August day. Cordle was wearing a sport shirt. He said, "Did I hear you correctly? Coat and necktie?"
The butler said, "That is the rule, sir."
Mavis asked, "Couldn't you make an exception this once?"
The butler shook his head. "We really must stick by the rules, miss. Otherwise…." He left the fear of vulgarity unsaid, but it hung in the air like a chrome-plated fart.
"Of course," Cordle said, pleasantly. "Otherwise. So it's a coat and tie, is it? I think we can arrange that."
Mavis put a hand on his arm and said, "Howard, let's go. We can come back some other time."
"Nonsense, my dear. If I may borrow your coat…."
He lifted the white raincoat from her shoulders and put it on, ripping a seam. "There we go, mate!" he said briskly to the butler. "That should do it, n'cest-ce pas?"
"I think not," the butler said, in a voice bleak enough to wither artichokes. "In any event, there is the matter of the necktie."
Cordle had been waiting for that. He whipped out his sweaty handkerchief and knotted it around his neck.
"Suiting you?" he leered, in an imitation of Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto, which only he appreciated.
"Howard! Let's go!"
Cordle waited, smiling steadily at the butler, who was sweating for the first time in living memory.
"I'm afraid, sir, that that is not —"
"Not what?"
"Not precisely what was meant by coat and tie."
"Are you trying to tell me," Cordle said in a loud, unpleasant voice, "that you are an arbiter of men's clothing as well as a door opener?"
"Of course not! But this impromptu attire —"
"What has 'impromptu' got to do with it? Are people supposed to prepare three days in advance just to pass your inspection?"
"You are wearing a woman's waterproof and a soiled handkerchief," the butler stated stiffly. "I think there is no more to say."
He began to close the door. Cordle said, "You do that, sweetheart, and I'll have you up for slander and defamation of character. Those are serious charges over here, buddy, and I've got witnesses."
Aside from Mavis, Cordle had collected a small, diffident but interested crowd.
"This is becoming entirely too ridiculous," the butler said, temporizing, the door half closed.
"You'll find a stretch at Wormwood Scrubs even more ridiculous," Cordle told him. "I intend to persecute — I mean prosecute."
"Howard!" cried Mavis.
He shook off her hand and fixed the butler with a piercing glance. He said, "I am Mexican, though perhaps my excellent grasp of the English has deceived you. In my country, a man would cut his own throat before letting such an insult pass unavenged. A woman's coat, you say? Hombre, when I wear a coat, it becomes a man's coat. Or do you imply that I am a maricón, a — how do you say it? — homosexual?"
The crowd — becoming less modest — growled approval. Nobody except a lord loves a butler.
"I meant no such implication," the butler said weakly.
"Then it is a man's coat?"
"Just as you wish, sir."
"Unsatisfactory! The innuendo still exists. I go now to find an officer of the law."
"Wait, let's not be hasty," the butler said. His face was bloodless and his hands were shaking. "Your coat is a man's coat, sir."
"And what about my necktie?"
The butler made a final attempt at stopping Zapata and his blood-crazed peons.
"Well, sir, a handkerchief is demonstrably —"
"What I wear around my neck," Cordle said coldly, "becomes what it is intended to be. If I wore a piece of figured silk around my throat, would you call it ladies' underwear? Linen is a suitable material for a tie, verdad? Function defines terminology, don't you agree? If I ride to work on a cow, no one says that I am mounted on a steak. Or do you detect a flaw in my argument?"
"I'm afraid that I don't fully understand it…."
"Then how can you presume to stand in judgment over it?"
The crowd, which had been growing restless, now murmured approval.
"Sir," cried the wretched butler, "I beg of you…."
"Otherwise," Cordle said with satisfaction, "I have a coat, a necktie, and an invitation. Perhaps you would be good enough to show us the Byzantine miniatures?"
The butler opened wide the door to Pancho Villa and his tattered hordes. The last bastion of civilization had been captured in less than an hour. Wolves howled along the banks of the Thames, Morelos' barefoot army stabled its horses in the British Museum, and Europe's long night had begun.
Cordle and Mavis viewed the collection in silence. They didn't exchange a word until they were alone and strolling through Regent's Park.
"Look, Mavis," Cordle began.
"No, you look," she said. "You were horrible! You were unbelievable! You were — I can't find a word rotten enough for what you were! I never dreamed that you were one of those sadistic bastards who get their kicks out of humiliating people!"
"But, Mavis, you heard what he said to me, you heard the way —"
"He was a stupid, bigoted old man," Mavis said. "I thought you were not."
"But he said —"
"It doesn't matter. The fact is, you were enjoying yourself!"
"Well, yes, maybe you're right," Cordle said. "Look, I can explain."
"Not to me, you can't. Ever. Please stay away from me, Howard. Permanently. I mean that."
The future mother of his two children began to walk away, out of his life. Cordle hurried after her.
"Mavis!"
"I'll call a cop, Howard, so help me, I will! Just leave me alone!"
"Mavis, I love you!"
She must have heard him, but she kept on walking. She was a sweet and beautiful girl and definitely, unchangeably, an onion.
Cordle was never able to explain to Mavis about The Stew and about the necessity for experiencing behavior before condemning it. Moments of mystical illumination are seldom explicable. He was able to make her believe that he had undergone a brief psychotic episode, unique and unprecedented and — with her — never to be repeated.
They are married now, have one girl and one boy, live in a split-level house in Plainfield, New Jersey, and are quite content. Cordle is visibly pushed around by Fuller Brush men, fund solicitors, headwaiters and other imposing figures of authority. But there is a difference.
Cordle makes a point of taking regularly scheduled, solitary vacations. Last year, he made a small name for himself in Honolulu. This year, he is going to Buenos Aires.