Ravelstein, who was as big as any of the bodyguards-even bigger but certainly not so strong-loved this brief moment of contact. He was like that-the pleasure of a moment consumed him.
On the main floor, the guards cleared a way for Jackson as if they were swimming, doing the breaststroke. There were lots of people in the lobby. The big crowd was outside, in the street beyond the police barrier. But we were pressed together and held back behind braided gilt cords. The star walked out delicately waving to the hundreds of shouting groupies. Abe Ravelstein didn't at all mind being behind the ropes. Paris today was Paris as it should be. The kings who had laid out Versailles directed the architects to build the magnificent public spaces of the capital. These, today, were Ravelstein's setting. He was the grandee in the new order of things, carrying his credit cards and checks, willing to spend his dollars-if there had been a better hotel than the Crillon, Abe would have gone there. These days, Ravelstein was a magnificent man. The bills were paid by credit card and charged to his account at Merrill Lynch. Ravel stein seldom checked his statements. From time to time, Nikki, who wasn't supposed to do it, looked them over. His only aim was to protect Abe. It was thanks to Nikki that a major swindler in Singapore was discovered. Someone there had used Abe's Visa card to run up a $30,000 tab. "The signature was an obvious forgery," said Abe, not too upset. "Visa took care of it. International electronic swindles are the order of the day. The crooks learn to get ahead of high technology like inventive bacteria that outwit the pharmaceuticals, while the brainy researchers in the labs figure out how to stay ahead. Little campus geniuses outsmarting the Pentagon."
On the rue St. Honorй, Ravelstein was perfectly happy. We went from one shop display to the next.
The French term for window shopping is _lиche-vitrines__-licking the plate glass. This requires perfect leisure, and our breakfast had used up most of the morning. Still we did linger over the displays of socks and neckties and made-to-order shirts. Then we walked a little faster. I said to Abe that these luxurious displays made me feel tense. Too many attractions. I couldn't bear to be pulled from all sides.
"I've noticed," said Ravelstein, "that since your marriage your dress standards have dropped. You once were something of a dude."
He said this with regret. From time to time he would buy me a necktie-never one that I would have chosen for myself. These gift-ties were something of a put-down, to remind me that I was becoming dowdy. But there was more in it than that. Ravelstein was a bigger man than me. He was able to make a striking statement. Because of his larger size, he could wear clothes with more dramatic effect. I wouldn't have dreamed of disputing this. To be really handsome a man should be tall. A tragic hero has to be above the average in height. I hadn't read Aristotle in ages but I remembered this much from the _Poetics__.
In the rue St. Honorй, loaded with all the glamour of French history and politics-with all the special claims made for French civilization-what came back to me was that old music-hall number called "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo." There is a _flвneur__ who strolls in the Bois de Boulogne with an independent air. And he is debonair. And of course the people stare.
Things don't happen at all if they don't happen in Paris, or are brought to the attention of Paris. That bursting old furnace, Balzac, established this as a first principle. What Paris hadn't vetted didn't even exist.
Of course Ravelstein knew too much about the modern world to agree with this. Ravelstein was, remember, the man at the private command post of telephones with complex keyboards and flashing lights and state-of-the-art stereo playing Palestrina on the original instruments. France, alas, was no longer the center of judgment, enlightenment. It was not the home of cyberspace. It no longer attracted the world's great intellects and all the rest of that cultural _schtuss__. The French had _had__ it. De Gaulle the human giraffe sniffing down his nostrils. Churchill saying about him that England's offense had been to help _la France__. The lofty military creature gazing on the treetops of the late-modern world could not suffer the thought that his country needed help.
Abe's mind was never short of items to fill out or document the times. '"France without an army is not France'-Churchill again. " My taste in conversation was similar. I couldn't do it but I loved to hear it done. Ravelstein did it infinitely better. He took a special interest in Great Politics. In that line, of course, France today was bankrupt. Only the manner was left, and they made the most of the manner but they were bluffing, they knew they were talking twaddle. What they were still good at were the arts of intimacy. Eats still rated high-e. g., last night's banquet at Lucas-Carton. In every _quartier__, the fresh-produce markets, the good bakeries, the charcuterie with its cold cuts. Also the great displays of intimate garments. The shameless love of fine bedding. "_Viens, viens dans mes bras, je te donne du chocolat. __" It was wonderful to be so public about the private, about the living creature and its needs. Slick magazines in New York imitated this but never got it right…. Yes, and then there was the French street life. "American residential streets are humanly nine-tenths barren. Here humankind is still acting up," said Ravelstein.
Ravelstein the sinner did have a taste for sexy mischief. He relished _louche__ encounters, the fishy and the equivocal. For certain kinds of conduct, or misconduct, Paris was still the best place. If Ravelstein walking, smiling, expounding, stammered, it was not from weakness but from overflow. The famous light of Paris was concentrated on his bald head.
"How far is the joint we're going to?"
"Don't be impatient, Chick. You make me feel you always have something more important to do than what you're doing now."
I didn't defend myself-didn't even try. Our destination, Lanvin, was close by but we were detained en route by various shops. Optometrists always held Ravelstein up. He was familiar with every sort of frame. There he wasn't alone. According to a survey, the average American woman has three pairs of sunglasses. "O, reason not the need!" — poor Lear's defense of superfluities. Abe loved specs; he bought them also as gifts. He gave me the folding kind that go into a small case made for an outer pocket. He swore off contact lenses after he lost one in a spaghetti sauce he was cooking. Rosamund and I had been his dinner guests that evening, and jokes were made about a new kind of hindsight.-Or was a contact lens humanly digestible? As hard iron was said to be, for ostriches.
"What does this Lanvin jacket have that your twenty others haven't?" I wanted to say. But I knew perfectly well that in Abe's head there were all kinds of distinctions having to do with prodigality and illiberality, magnanimity and meanness. The attributes of the great-souled man. I didn't want to get him started. Neither did he want to get started, this morning.
Back in the Middle West, not so long ago, when he was still hard up and complained about his wardrobe, I took him downtown to Gesualdo, my tailor, to get him measured for a suit. In Gesualdo's loft he picked a bold-looking flannel from a good Scotch mill. We had three or four fittings and in my opinion the final product was very handsome. I spent a good piece of change on it. Just then I had a book on the low end of the best-seller list; it never rose past the middle but I was more than satisfied. A child of the Great Depression, I was happy with middling returns. My standards had been set in the meager thirties. Fifteen hundred bucks should have bought us a top-of-the-line suit. Even in my dude days (I had a very short fashion-plate phase) I had never gone beyond five hundred bucks for a suit. This, at the time, was what students who had just passed the bar exam were paying. When they later became partners, they stopped going to Gesualdo's. They found themselves classier tailors, the kind used by surgeons, professional athletes, and racketeers.