Jeremy picked his teeth with one of the hand-carved rare-wood toothpicks that sat in tiny reliquaries before each man. Perry popped an urchin in his mouth that elicited a primitive sense-memory of ocean. He’d suffered a lot of epicurean bores in his day, with their gustatory boasts and simpleminded metaphors; now he was one of them.
“There’s a European auction house called Habsburg you should know about, if you really want to go crazy.”
“Oh, he’s that already!” said Jeremy, eyes closed in ecstasy of octopus aftermath. “He’s totally gone.”
Berto pulled a Sotheby’s catalogue from his valise and flipped to a dog-eared page at the back. Lana Turner stood next to a thuggish-looking man on her wedding day, nineteen forty-eight. “That’s this guy Topping. There were two brothers, right? They inherited about a hundred and forty million.” On the center of the next page was a plain-looking wristwatch with a black band. “One of the earliest perpetuals — Topping was the first real owner, bought it from Schulz—and it’s a minute repeater and a one-button chronograph — that’s in the crown—and it’s got a moon phase. We’re talking nineteen thirty!”
Perry took a closer look. “It says ‘tonneau’—”
“Shape of the case. Like a barrel, see? It was made by this guy Schulz, who worked for Cartier.”
“Schulz made the ébauche?” Perry asked.
Jeremy winked. “I told you he was gone.”
“You’re learning! No,” he said, pointing to the text. “See? It says the movement wasn’t signed. Probably Piguet; they did a lot of the early complicated Pateks. This one sold for five hundred fifty thousand — and remember, we’re talking nineteen eighty-nine. But that’s an unusual piece.”
Dessert was a drift of shaved green ice adorned by a Fuji-esque snowcap of crushed kiwi. The bill came to twelve hundred and thirty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents, without tip. The two men offered credit cards, but Jeremy refused.
“That’s okay,” said the benefactor. “My treat. Next time, buy me a watch. Hey, Berto,” he joked. “Can you get a used Breguet for what we paid for lunch?”
“You could pay the tax on a Breguet — maybe.”
Perry got the elbow as Jeremy nodded toward the dealer. “Would you buy a used Breguet from this man? Oh!” His face lit up. “Know what I heard? I heard there was a black American Express card.”
“Yeah, Farrakhan has one,” said Berto.
“I’m serious. Perry, have you heard of that? It’s supposed to be for people like Bronfman and Gates. You can, like, buy buildings with the damn thing.”
“Or minute repeaters,” said Perry.
When they left, Jeremy gave the chef his card and made him promise to call at first fugu.
That night at the Century Plaza, Perry clutched his side and collapsed during the silent auction at a Luminaires fund-raiser for the Doheny Eye Institute. Jersey wanted to call an ambulance, but he stubbornly said the limo would do. The doctors were concerned the bowel had been perforated; they needed to go in and take a look.
“They might have at least let you keep on your tux,” Jersey said as they wheeled her husband to surgery.
“Listen,” Perry said groggily from the gurney. “I want my liver donated to the right restaurant — five-star.”
“What?” She smiled, wiping tears away with the back of a hand. “What is it, darling?”
“I want—”
“Tell me what you want…”
“—none of this Mickey Mouse Mickey Mantle rejection shit. And make sure it’s in season—says so on my driver’s license. Promise?”
“You’re a crazy man, but I promise. And I love you.”
She kissed him twice and he rolled away.
Severin Welch
Out of the ICU, thank God. Two days in that sonsabitchin place. They fished a catheter through his groin and cleared a blockage in a valve, that’s how they did it now. Instead of a triple bypass they snaked in like plumbers through a pipe. Lavinia was there in all her weepy, slobby, hard-bitten splendor, like some kind of Kathy Bates. Frankenbates. She kept asking what was he doing in the middle of the street. Where was he going, what had possessed him? The old man thought it best not to answer. She’d have to move to Beachwood, she said — told anyone who’d listen — because her father couldn’t be left alone. But she would need help, who could help? She’d call her ex, that fuck, he wouldn’t lift a finger for anyone. Who, then? All his neighbors were so fucking old. Total care! Get real—that’s what they were talking about — and who paid? Medicare? Medicaid? I’ll tell you who: nobody! Nobody paid for total care, total care was for the rich! For English and Canadians, and the Swiss! But maybe the Motion Picture Hospital — Daddy, what were you doing, you could have been hit by a hundred cars! She railed against her rotten ex and Jabba the whore and the whole fucked up shitty planet.
“I’d like to have my radio, Lavinia.” She knew what he meant. “I’d like you to get it from the house.”
“They won’t let you have that here,” she said.
“Everyone has a radio.”
“Not that kind. You’ll be home soon anyway.”
“I see. You’re preparing my schedule? You’re a doctor now?”
“That’s right — so you better listen.” She reached into a gold Godiva tin for a marron glacé. “This is such a beautiful hospital. The paintings! On every floor. It’s like a museum.”
“Why don’t you move in, if you love it so much? You could give tours.”
Three in the morning. The nurse gave him Dalmane, but he couldn’t sleep. Lavinia refused to bring the scanner but he made her retrieve the script — its dirty pages gathered by paramedics from oil-stained macadam and, along with bruised Uniden, sealed in a Hefty bag — the very original draft of Dead Souls, put through anemic paces by Dee Bruchner so long ago. Pressed like a linty yellow flower within was the clipping from The New York Times:
Charles G. Bluhdorn, who built a small Michigan auto-parts company into Gulf and Western Industries, the multibillion-dollar conglomerate, died yesterday while flying home to New York from a business trip in the Dominican Republic. He was fifty-six years old and lived in Manhattan.
Jerry Sherman, an assistant vice-president and director of public relations for G.&W., said Mr. Bluhdorn, the company’s founder, chairman and chief executive, was aboard a corporate plane when he died. Mr. Sherman said the cause of death was a heart attack.
Severin sat by the window, touching the cool security glass with a bunged-up finger. The nail still had a fissure, all the way from Brooklyn, ‘thirty-one — looked like a miniature ice floe — when his best friend, Joey Dobrowicz, smashed it with a rock (by mistake, Joey said). Did he holler. He stared out the thick pane, trying to conjure faces, but the slate was gray, the drizzle dull. It was raining the night his Diantha died, in this very wing.
He went to the chair and sat down, winded by memory. There was something terrifying about chairs in hospital rooms, especially at night. An immense longing came upon him, and Severin revisited the time they first met…the Automat—For Me and My Gal—nineteen forty-two, the year Mr. Bluhdorn immigrated to America from Vienna. Severin was a Western Union messenger by day (extreme myopia would exempt him from the service), tyro novelist by night. Sometimes they threw him a few dollars to create a radio ad, but what he really wanted was to be an Author — do an All Quiet on the Western Front, or something in the Steinbeck vein — then hire out for the movies. When Diantha got pregnant, they took a bus to Hollywood.