“Do you mind if we have for a moment a serious discussion.”
“No ma’am, fire ahead.”
“When I was a little girl someone said to me, you can afford, can’t you, to be of a high moral character. And those others whom you may find throughout your life who are not of high moral character, you may avoid and dispose of.”
“Ma’am forgive me, but I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about having my privacy invaded. It’s being deemed entertaining to others to describe me as ‘the richest woman in America.’”
“Ma’am, I’ve never said a thing to anybody about your money or about you ever having any.”
“Well, you have a friend who did. And said such a thing to my bankers.”
“Ma’am, maybe it was your bankers who said such a thing. And if my friend did, he meant no harm in such a coloration.”
“Meaning no harm does not stop the unwelcome attentions of all the lowlife in America.”
“Well ma’am, there’s no need to worry that it will be repeated, for he’s in prison.”
“What.”
“Sony, I meant to say he’s gone west to Chicago.”
The phone line went dead. Cut off at a point when you try to say a word and another word jumps in too soon. Dru will be thinking my friend Max will be consulting with his coconspirators behind bars and is already plotting to embezzle or kidnap her. All I needed now was just one more blow. And I got it. Of rejection. As I then in desperation immediately telephoned back to Sutton Place and Gilbert answered the phone.
“May I please speak to Mrs. Triumphington.”
“Who’s calling, please.”
“Alfonso Stephen O’Kelly’O.”
“I’m afraid Mrs. Triumphington is not available.”
“I’ve just been talking to her.”
“I’m afraid madam has just left for Montana.”
After some prompting and knowing I already had it, Gilbert gave me the number out in Montana. Where if it were to be believed she had gone, I would ring her. But maybe she had really departed there. But with some other guy. Fucking someone else. She did say once, although I pretended not to be one of them, that she liked to have guys available on tap for fucking and just gobble them up. Listen a little to their bullshit and take them on and take them off one after the other. Now on top of it all, a dreadful premonition suddenly seizing me over Max’s arrest and incarceration in alimony jail. And I immediately rang to plan to visit him. A voice coming on the phone saying they had terrible information that he had hung himself and his remains were being shipped by train back to Chicago. My fists clenched in a sudden raging anger at the female species. And remembering what Max had said as we lay back on our couches in the hot room of his club.
“How modern can life get, pal. Here we try to keep it a little old-fashioned. Except to come dine and have a cocktail, that’s the real wonderful thing about this club, no women. And one should have only conducted one’s associations with them on wise Muslim principles. Purdah and all that. Because boy, they have recently sure done me down.”
As I felt this numbing news from the “alimony club,” as Max now called it, spread to all parts of my body, I had nearly dropped the phone. But the report of hanging was immediately followed by laughter and Max’s voice.
“Old pal, I’ve executed a power of attorney, and deed of sale for a dollar, and all the other things you can do with a flourish of the pen. Go get my ole Bentley quick, soon as you can, out of the garage. I’ve given them your name and they’ve got the key. Be a sport and park at fifteen o’clock as near as you can get to Freeman Square. If I don’t show up by quarter past fifteen o’clock, you beat it with the Bentley. It’s yours, pal, ole buddy. I glow with joy when I think of what I’m going to do. Pure joy. Anyway, no matter what happens, wait for me to be in touch again. This is your lifelong friend, best man at your wedding, signing off.”
I couldn’t figure out what Max was up to, but I wanted to do him any kindness or favor he might ask. And one thing was for sure. Ole Max aboard ship in the navy was one of the greatest fixers and connivers of all time. I found I was already fully insured and got the Bentley, but trying to figure out how to drive it out of the garage, I almost crashed a couple of times. And when I finally did figure out how to drive it, I found it a nightmare trying to park it. Waited half an hour near where the traffic passed to enter the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson and Max did not show up. Then after a search, I found a friendly garage a couple of blocks away to park the leviathan. The enthusiastic owner of the garage rubbed a spot of soot off a fender.
“Hey, we could charge admission to come look at this car.”
Two days later, a telegram was waiting for me back at Pell Street, stating that further news of Max could be had from a funeral home. I chuckled at Max’s magnificent ability to create such an elaborate hoax and fakery. I phoned the funeral directors and then was asked to identify myself. And a chill began to creep through me at the sound of this matter-of-fact but solemn voice announcing that Max’s body was being shipped that night and put onto the train at Penn Station at about 9:30, and the train leaving at ten minutes past ten, destination Chicago, from platform eleven. I waited as the voice finished to repeat who I was and waited again to hear some denouement of the charade. But when I phoned the alimony jail to talk to Max, I was told no information was available from the Civil Jail of the City of New York except to his next of kin upon identification. There was one thing now that was seeming more and more certain. That this was no fakery. No hoax. Max was dead.
I changed my clothes, got out the ole Bentley, and traveled up to Riverdale. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but it seemed the most important thing I would ever do in my life. As the throbbing leviathan pulled into the drive of this my childhood home, the curtains at the side of the house opened and there were smiles on everyone’s faces as I parked and my old dog, who sang out of tune to my piano playing, tail wagging, barked and friendly snapped at the tires. There was one thing for certain that I was finding out fast. It was not who you were in America, but what car you were seen driving in. Even dogs noticed. And mine was adding to his appreciation by lifting a leg and peeing on a wheel. The general admiration for the Bentley at least stifled my gloom and sadness while I feigned to be matter-of-fact and drove my favorite sister around a few local potholed streets, beeping the horn a couple of times passing in front of those houses where I knew the inhabitants flew the American flag and had hated me while growing up.