And then the crowd surged past us, like we were two stones in the middle of a mighty river. The band stopped playing. Jimmy climbed four of the steps, hopped onto one of the great granite blocks that rose on either side of the stairway, and turned around. Magically the foyer quieted. Jimmy gave his speech.
I had heard it all before.
I was at the bar, waiting on a Sea Breeze for me and a beer for Beth, when I heard a familiar voice behind me. “You’re missing the speech, Vic.” I turned around. Chuckie Lamb was grinning at me with those fish lips, his scraggly hair brushing the shoulders of a rather ragged tuxedo.
“It’s the same old crap,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” said Chuckie. “I wrote it. Bourbon,” he barked at the bartender and then turned back to me. “You got yourself a nice gig here, Vic, lawyering for Chester. Big bucks, invitations to the nicest parties, a chance to wear a rented tux.”
“Yes, it is nice,” I said.
“Who’d you blow for all this? Prescott?”
“Did we go to school together, Chuckie?” I asked him. “Did I beat you up at recess or something and you still hold the grudge, is that it? Because otherwise I don’t understand why you despise me so.”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those jellyfish who just want to be liked.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Not everyone. But you want to know why, Vic? All right. Because my instinct tells me you’d sell your mother for a hundred bucks. Is my instinct right?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, turning back to the bar to pick up my drinks. “But then you don’t know my mother. In any event, what’s any of it to you? I don’t see your name on an indictment.”
“Yeah, well, I got lucky.” He reached over my shoulder for his drink. “And so did you. But I’m naturally lucky. Are you naturally lucky, Vic?” He raised the bourbon up as if he were toasting me and then swallowed half the drink in one swallow. “You better hope so.”
I blinked twice as I watched him go.
I handed Beth her beer and together we wandered through the open galleries. It was a treat to have the museum to ourselves, and even though there were plenty of people, that it was a private party made it feel like we had the museum to ourselves. We were drifting in the museum’s Impressionist gallery, paintings by Renoir, Degas, paintings by Mary Cassatt, who had been born in Pennsylvania but had been clever enough to leave. Then we passed from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Shadowy figures from Jasper Johns, a collage in flames by Rauschenberg. I paused at a stark painting of a grand and empty courtyard, slashing shadows, a bare statue, repetitive arches, and in the background just the top of a train belching smoke into the empty air. There was a terrifying emptiness about the painting, a palpable sense of loss.
“Giorgio de Chirico,” said Beth, reading from the little plaque on the wall.
“It should be called ‘My Life,’” I said.
“Now what do you know about de Chirico’s life?” asked Beth.
“Who’s talking about de Chirico?”
“Well, look who’s over there,” said Beth.
I turned to see a tall thin woman in silk pants, leaning back, hips thrust forward like a model’s. She was strikingly beautiful, blue eyes, straight narrow nose. Her black hair swept out with the unnatural wings of a television anchorwoman. She was with a tall, gray-haired man who looked perfectly natural in his expensive tuxedo and who was not her husband. I knew that because I knew her husband, I hated her husband terribly, and never before had I seen the gray-haired man who now put his arm over her shoulders and brushed the top of her head with his lips.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said softly.
“Don’t you think we should say hello?”
“Let’s go. Please.”
“Oh, Lauren,” said Beth in a high-pitched call, loud enough for the woman to hear. She turned, and her eyes brightened into a smile. With her adulterous friend in tow she came to us, leading with her hips, walking across the room as if it were a runway at a Paris opening. She reached out her arm to me, wrist cocked down. Two thick gold bracelets, stamped with runes and encrusted with diamonds, slid bangling down on her thin forearm. “Why, Victor,” said Lauren Amber Guthrie, wife of my ex-partner Guthrie. “I’m surprised to see you here. You don’t usually come to these sorts of affairs.”
“Hello, Lauren,” I said.
“Beth dear,” said Lauren in her soft breathy voice. “What a cute little dress.”
“You know, Lauren,” said Beth, “I’ve been looking but I haven’t seen Guthrie here tonight.”
“I don’t think he’s coming,” said Lauren. “I’m here with Rodolpho. Rodolpho dear, meet two dear friends, Victor and Elizabeth.”
“Charmed,” said the gray-haired man in a voice twisted by a strong Italian accent. “I justa love this…” He gestured to all the paintings, struggled to find the right word, and then shrugged. “This,” he said.
“Don’t give up on the tapes,” said Beth. “They take time.”
“Rodolpho is in silk,” said Lauren. “He comes from Como.”
“Como, Texas?” asked Beth.
“Italia. I’m from Italia.”
“She knows, dear,” said Lauren. “She is just being funny.”
“Ah, yes. Now I see.” He laughed deeply and falsely.
“Where’s Guthrie tonight, Lauren?” I asked.
“I really don’t know.”
“Don’t you think you should know where your husband is?”
“Unwatched husbands sometimes stray,” said Beth.
“How would you know, dear?” said Lauren.
“Husband?” said Rodolpho.
“He’s hardly ever violent,” I said. “Except when he becomes jealous.”
“Husband? Do I know about this husband?”
“I could use another champagne, Rodolpho,” said Lauren. “Be a dear?”
“Of course. But we musta talk about this husband, yes?”
“Tonight, yes. Now hurry,” she said, her breathy voice turning breathless. “I’m so very thirsty.”
We watched Rodolpho as he walked with mincing European steps out of the gallery on his way to the bar.
“I met him at a reception at the Italian consulate,” said Lauren. “You’d be surprised how many Italians are in Philadelphia, it’s like a glorious, sophisticated subculture in the midst of the Philistines.”
“That you have made it your mission to entertain,” said Beth.
“Be nice, dear, and I’ll introduce you to it.”
“Don’t you think you should be more discreet in your infidelity?” I asked.
“I have been, Victor. I’ve been the soul of discretion. But things have changed.”
“You’ll introduce me?” asked Beth.
Lauren looked Beth up and down, examining her closely. I expected her to stick a finger in Beth’s mouth to check her teeth. “There’s a serious young man, Alberto.” She rolled the “r” in Alberto. “An architect working with Venturi. Dirt poor but very handsome. Give me your number, dear, and I’ll pass it on.”
“How have things changed?” I asked.
“We’re separated, Victor. I moved out. Well, really Sam moved out, but I would have been the one to leave if my father hadn’t bought the house for us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I lied. “How’s Guthrie taking it?”
“Not well, I’m afraid.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, fighting the smile.
Beth was rifling through her small red handbag.
“And Victor,” said Lauren. “You know that crack about the jealous husband, it was not so far off.”
“Guthrie?”
“He can be brutal. Violent. An absolute beast. I should have known from the first. Anyone who sweats as much as he.”
“You married him,” I said accusingly.
“I thought it was charmingly masculine at the start, those subtle beads of perspiration. He is very athletic, you know. But it kept on coming. Like Niagara Falls. Finally I had him go to the doctor about it, but there was nothing to be done.”
“And so Rodolpho,” I said.
“For tonight, at least. Have you smelled him? He wears the most marvelous scent.”
“Turn around, Victor,” said Beth. I did as she ordered and, using my back as an easel, she scratched out something on a business card. “My home number’s on the back,” said Beth as she handed the card to Lauren.