When Shelly Gaines had gone to the bar, Daniel approached his old friend Claude Durkin, who was having a conversation with one of the more imposing priests at the party, a falcon-eyed man with an iron-grey crewcut and a loud, likeable laugh.
“Hi,” said Daniel.
Claude nodded to him and went on talking, eyes averted from this unexpected embarrassment. Daniel stood his ground. The priest looked at him with amused interest, until Claude finally did a double-take.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Ben!”
Daniel held out his hand, and Claude, with just the slightest hesitation, took it. In (as an afterthought) both of his.
“Claude, if you’ll excuse me,” said the priest, according Daniel a neutral but somehow still friendly smile, which Daniel returned with one of his best.
“I didn’t recognize you,” Claude said lamely, when they were left to themselves.
“I’m not recognizable.”
“No. You’re not. It is nice to… For God’s sake.”
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here either.”
“It’s my last night in town.”
“Not on my account I hope.”
Claude laughed. “No, of course not. But it is startling, your warpaint. How long has it been since I last saw you? Not since you retrieved your suit from my closet, I think.”
“Thank you for the loan of your tie, by the way. I see you got it back all right.”
Claude looked down at his tie, as though he’d spilled something on it. “I did try to phone. They said they didn’t know what had become of you either. Then when I called again, a while later, the number was disconnected.”
“Yeah. The doughnut shop went out of business a long time ago. How have you been? And where are you going?”
“I’ve been fine. In fact, I’m a changed man. And I’m going to Anagni, south of Rome. Tomorrow.”
Daniel looked at Claude and tried to rethink him as the author of Tales of Terror and the destroyer of the Alaska pipeline. He couldn’t. “And what will you do in Anagni?”
“Build a cathedral?”
“You’re asking me?”
“It sounds ridiculous, even to me, even now, but it’s the God’s truth. There was a cathedral there, one of the best Romanesque cathedrals. Frederick Barbarossa was excommunicated there. It was bombed, and I’m going there to help rebuild it. As one of the stone masons. I’ve joined the Franciscans, you see. Though I haven’t taken my final vows. It’s a long story.”
“Congratulations.”
“It’s what I’ve always wanted. We’ll be using almost the original technology, though we do cheat a little as to actually lifting the stones. But it will be a step up from just scrabbling about in the rubble for souvenirs. Don’t you think?”
“I do. That’s what I meant — congratulations.”
“And you, Ben — what are you doing?”
“The same, pretty much. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted. You’ll see, if you stay for the whole evening.”
“You know, I don’t think you’ve changed an iota.”
“Does anyone, ever?”
“I hope so. I sincerely do hope so.”
A bell rang, the signal for Daniel to change.
“Gotta go now. But can I ask you a question first? Strictly between ourselves.”
“So long as you won’t be offended if I don’t answer it.”
“On second thought, I’ll just go on wondering. Anyhow, you’d pretty well have to say no, even if the answer was yes.”
“Those are always good questions to avoid, I agree. What a pity there’s so little time left. It would be nice to get together for a more formal good-bye. Anyhow — good luck with your cathedral.”
“Thanks, Claude. The same to you.”
He offered his hand again, but Claude went him one better. He grasped him by the shoulders and solemnly and unpassionately, as though he were awarding the Legion of Honor, kissed each of his cheeks.
For the first time that evening Daniel blushed.
While Rey sang his own brief offering, a Carissimi cantata abridged and ornamented by the trusty hand of Mrs. Schiff, Daniel changed into his costume, an old tux from the back of Rey’s closet, which he had, with the help of Mrs. Galamian, the Metastasio’s wardrobe mistress, meticulously tattered and torn. He still wasn’t feeling more than agreeably nervous. Maybe he was one of those fortunate few who just weren’t fazed by performing. Maybe he’d actually enjoy it. He tried to concentrate on Rey’s roulades, but for all the brilliance of the singing the music was almost impossible to fix one’s attention on. Carissimi had had his off days, no doubt about it. He was, however, one of the Cardinal’s particular favorites, so the propriety of Rey’s choice could not be called into question. If Rey’s impeccable pyrotechnics nevertheless left the audience (pared down now to a bare fifty or so) somewhat restive and willing to be cajoled into simply enjoying themselves, who could complain, except possibly Carissimi?
Rey finished and was applauded. He joined Daniel briefly in the green room, went out to take a second bow, and returned. “I shall go sit beside the Cardinal now,” he advised Daniel. “Don’t enter for another couple of minutes.”
Daniel watched the two minutes disappear on his wristwatch, then put on his ever-so-dented top hat, and made his entrance, smiling. Aside from the mildest tingling in his legs and lower back he had no symptoms of stagefright. The Cardinal was sitting in the third row of chairs with Rey, benignly impassive, beside him. Claude was in the first row next to the nun from Cleveland. Many of the Cardinal’s other guests were familiar to Daniel from the Metastasio. One or two had taken him to dinner.
He lifted his hands, fingers spread wide, to frame his face. He let his eyes roll, slowly, to the back of his head. He began to sing. “Mammy!” he sang. “How I love ya, how I love ya! My dear old Mammy.” He kept very close, vocally, to the authorized Jolson version, while exaggerating the body language. It was a polite version of the fractured minstrel-show he would perform to freak out selected strangers. He finished suddenly and, before there could be applause, moved right in to the next number, “Nun wandre Maria” from Wolf’s Spanisches Liederbuch. Daniel accompanied its tortured and rather schizzy pieties with the same overwrought gestures he’d used for “Mammy.” They seemed, in this context, more like kabuki than schmaltz.
“The next song I’d like to sing for you,” Daniel announced, removing his top hat and reaching into his pocket for a pair of rabbit ears, “needs a bit of introduction, but only a little bit. The lyrics are my own, though the idea behind them originates with the woman who wrote the music, Alicia Schiff. It’s Bunny Honeybunny’s opening number from a little musical we’re putting together called Honeybunny Time.” He fixed the rabbit ears in place. “There’s nothing much you need to know about honeybunnies that the song doesn’t pretty well explain, except that they’re very lovable.” He smiled. “So, without more ado—” He nodded to the pianist. The rabbit ears wobbled on their wire stems and went on wobbling to the end of the song.
He sang as if transfigured by delight, negotiating the various vocal hurdles with room to spare. The music was ravishing, a chocolate box of a song that managed to make his dopey lyrics seem not only sincere but even, in a disturbing way, devotional. Where it really came alive was at the refrain, a long, looping chain of alleluias and la-la-la’s that soared and swooped and skittered around the steady swirling compulsions of the piano. Wonderful music, and here he was, standing in front of Cardinal Rockefeller and all his guests and singing it. He was aware, all the while he sang, of faces beginning to break into smiles, and aware, as he took in their reactions, of the music, and there was no disjunction between these two awarenesses.