“This is what your life is going to be like from now on,” I said. “This is what success looks like. The absence of money will never again interfere with your happiness.”
Giselle beamed at me the most extraordinary smile ever uttered by woman. I considered it for as long as it lasted, tucked it away in the archives of my soul, and raised my glass of port to hers. We clinked.
“May our love live forever,” I said.
“Forever,” said Giselle.
“And if it doesn’t, the hell with it.”
“The hell with it,” said Giselle.
“There’s Ava Gardner over there,” I said, pointing to a woman in close conversation with a man whose back was to us.
“Really?” asked Giselle.
“Indubitably,” I said, but then I looked again and corrected myself. “No, it’s not her. I was mistaken. It’s Alfred Hitchcock.”
Giselle’s laughter shattered chandeliers throughout the Palm Court.
I stood next to the yellow roses, staring out of a window of our suite at Fifth Avenue below. The fading light of this most significant day (such frequent confrontations with significance were a delight) was troublesome to my eyes, but I could see a roofless motorcar stop at the carriage entrance to the hotel, saw Henry James step down from it, adjust his soft hat, then extend his hand to Edith Wharton, the pair bound for dinner in the hotel’s Fifth Avenue Café. Teddy Roosevelt struck a pose for photographers on the hotel steps, his first visit to the city since shooting his fifth elephant, and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller waded barefoot in the Plaza’s fountain to raise money for widows and orphans spawned by the oil cartel. As I stared across the avenue at the Sherry Netherland, I saw Ernest Hemingway in the window of an upper floor, his arm around Marlene Dietrich. The great writer and great actress waved to me. I waved back.
At the sound of a door opening I turned to see Giselle, wrapped in the silk robe and negligee I’d bought her when she learned we were staying the night at the hotel. I poured the Montrachet and handed her the glass, then poured my own. Never had a married man been luckier than I at this moment. By virtue of the power vested in me I now pronounce you husband and traitor, traitor and wife. God must have loved betrayals, he made so many of them.
“I think you are probably at this moment,” I said, “the most fucksome woman on this planet.”
“What an exciting word,” Giselle said.
I opened her robe and peeled it away from her shoulders. The perfection in the placement of a mole on her right breast all but moved me to tears. She stood before me in her nightgown, beige, the color of pleasure, and as I kissed her I eased her backward onto the sofa, and knelt beside her. I put my hands on the outside of her thighs and slid her nightgown upward. She raised her hips, an erotic elevation to ease my task, and revealed the bloom of a single yellow rose, rising in all its beauty from the depths of her secret garden.
“Are there thorns on this rose?” I asked.
“I eliminated them,” Giselle said.
“You are the most resourceful woman on this planet.”
“Am I?”
“You are. Did Quinn ever tell you you were resourceful?”
“Never. Say the word.”
“Resourceful?”
“The other word.”
“Ah, you mean fucksome.”
“Yes. I like that word. Don’t get any thorns in your mouth.”
“I thought you said there were no thorns.”
“I don’t think I missed any.”
“Did Quinn ever have to worry about thorns?”
“Never. Shhhhh.”
Silence prevailed.
“Aaaahhhh.”
“Was that the first?”
“Yes.”
Silence prevailed again.
“Aaaahhhh.”
“Was that the second?”
“Yes.”
Silence prevailed yet again.
“Aaaahhhh. Aaaahhhh.”
“Third and fourth?”
“Yes. Say the word.”
“Fourth?”
“No. Fucksome. Say fucksome.”
“I’d rather you say it.”
“Does your stripper say it for you?”
“Never.”
“Is your stripper fucksome?”
“Somewhat.”
“Do you tell her she’s somewhat fucksome?”
“Never.”
“Why are you still wearing your suit?”
“It’s my new glen plaid. I thought you liked it.”
“I do, but you never wear a suit when you make love.”
“This is the new Orson. Natty to a fault.”
“I want to go onto the bed.”
“A sensational idea. Then we can do something else.”
“Exactly. Are you going to keep your glen plaid on?”
“Yes, it makes me feel fuckish.”
“Another word.”
“Do you like it?”
“Somewhat. I think I prefer fucksome.”
“They have different meanings.”
“Does your stripper make you feel fuckish?”
“Somewhat.”
“Have you told her?”
“Never. What does Quinn say that you make him feel?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“I think I’ll take my suit off.”
“I prefer it that way. It makes me feel fucksome.”
“You mean fuckish.”
“I prefer fucksome.”
“Language isn’t a matter of preference.”
“Mine is.”
Silence prevailed again.
“Is this better?”
“Much better. And a better view.”
“How would you describe the view?”
“Classic in shape.”
“Classic. Now that’s something.”
“And larger than most.”
“Larger than most. That’s really something, coming from you.”
“It also looks extremely useful.”
“You are a very fucksome woman, Giselle.”
“Fucksome is as fucksome does,” Giselle said.
Four
Giselle and I walked along 57th Street and down Broadway, a change of scenery, a move into the murderous light of eschatological love and sudden death. I had convinced her after five hours of lovemaking that the walking was necessary to rejuvenate our bodies for the next encounter. Master the hiatus, I said, and you will regain the season. I did not tell her where I was taking her. I told her the story of Meriwether Macbeth, protagonist of the memoir I was putting together from a chaotic lifetime of journals, notes, stories, poetry, letters, my task being to create the quotient of one man’s verbal life.
“He lived with a woman who called herself Jezebel Jones, a name she adopted after meeting Meriwether,” I said. “She was a slut of major calibration, but quite bright and extremely willful; and together she and Meriwether cut a minor public swath through Greenwich Village for the better part of a decade. She was known for bringing home strangers and creating yet another ménage for Meriwether, who had grown bored with Jezebel’s solitary charms. She turned up one night with a hunchback who called himself Lon because his hump was said to look very like the hump Lon Chaney wore in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Jezebel found the deformed Lon enormously appealing. But it turned out Lon was a virgin, a neuter, who had never craved the sexual life, was content to move through his days without expending sperm on other citizens. Jezebel tried to change this by teaching the game to Lon and his lollipop. She enlisted Meriwether’s aid when Lon visited their apartment, and Meriwether, through deviousness, bound Lon’s hands with twine, then tied Lon’s legs to the bedposts as Jezebel, having unsuited the hunchback, aroused him to spire-like loftiness, and mounted him. Released from bondage, Lon fled into the night, returned the next day with his Doberman, and sicked the dog on Jezebel and Meriwether. As the dog bit repeatedly into various parts of Jezebel, Meriwether took refuge behind the sofa, his face buried in his arms. Lon moved the sofa and, with the hammer he had brought with him, crushed Meriwether’s head with a dozen blows. Jezebel survived and provided enough detail of the attack to put Lon into the asylum for life, and Meriwether moved on to a posthumous realm that had eluded him all his life: fame.”