When he left the building, the whatever-it-was was in the air, just about level with Bennis’s living-room window, where he had been standing only moments before. He crossed the street to Lida’s and stopped in front of Bennis.
“How do I look? Is my tie on straight?”
“When have you ever cared about your ties?” Bennis asked, straightening anyway, because she always did. “You look very nice. You went to more trouble than you needed to. Jimmy never notices what he wears.”
“When you do business, it’s good to be businesslike. Are you sure you won’t come with me? I doubt if he’d mind, no matter what you say. After all, he called you. And I could use the support.”
“You don’t need any support,” Bennis said. “You’re a lot alike, actually. Big ethnic guys with unwavering moral compasses. The same unwavering moral compass. If anything, I’d say he was far less sophisticated than you, even now. But no, I would not like to come along. His lady friend might object.”
“She’s not going to be there.”
“This meeting is going to be in the National Enquirer, and don’t you think it won’t. There’s no real way for people like Jimmy to keep things secret. I should know. I was once one of his not very well kept secrets.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Agreed. It was. But it’s not like she doesn’t know. The lady friend, I mean. And I don’t care how intellectual she is, she wouldn’t like it. Just go and listen to what he has to say. You’ll be fine.”
Gregor looked around. The whatever-it-was was now level with his own living-room window, which did have furniture in it, mostly Bennis’s. She had put the stuff he’d had when she moved in into storage, and would have done worse than that (this stuff deserves to be ritually burned) if he’d let her.
“What is that thing?” he asked. “It’s not a piano.”
“It’s a Peter Redstone harpsichord. That’s what the moving men said. Donna asked. She’s got Peter Redstone virginals, too. Mother and child virginals. They’re still in the van. It’s all musical instruments, everything that’s been moved in so far this morning. I don’t think there’s even been a bed.”
“Why isn’t she coming with him?” Gregor asked. “The lady friend, I mean. This is supposed to concern her, isn’t it?”
Bennis sighed. “Go ask him,” she said. “I don’t know anything but what I told you and that stuff I showed you from the Enquirer and the Star, and I wouldn’t have known that if he hadn’t brought it up. Just be glad it’s Elizabeth Toliver who’s got the problem and not that idiot he was married to before. The supermodel, you know. She’s congenitally brain dead. I don’t understand why men like that always do that sort of thing. I mean, can’t they count? Those women reach forty like the rest of us, and then what do you have? Nothing at all in the head and not much left in the body. You’d think—”
“That’s a cab,” Gregor said.
He leaned over and pecked her on the cheek, eliciting a loud “bravo!” from Donna Moradanyan. There was indeed a cab turning onto Cavanaugh Street, and not just going through but pulling up to the curb right in front of where he was. He hurried down Lida’s steps to the sidewalk and got there just as a small, dark-haired, painfully thin young woman got out, fumbling with a purse almost half her size.
“Oh,” she said, seeing him come toward her. “It’s Mr. Demarkian. Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Gregor said, and then the next thing he knew he was in the cab and the cab was moving, and he still couldn’t remember who that young woman was or where he had seen her before. That he did know who she was and that he had met her before was not in doubt, but when he turned around to get another look at her from the cab’s rear window, she had disappeared into a huddle of Cavanaugh Street women. He turned back around again. They’d know her shoe size, her favorite dessert, and her blood type by the time he got home, and they’d either be for her or against her.
Then he wished, for the fortieth time since Thursday, that he had not let Bennis talk him into meeting with Jimmy Card and listening to his problem.
2
It wasn’t true, as Bennis liked to claim, that Gregor Demarkian had a prejudice against celebrities. For almost twenty years of his life, he had worked with them more often than not, although they had been the high-government-official type of celebrity rather than the been-seen-on-TV-a-lot kind. There was less of a difference than he had expected there to be. All of the ones he could remember, including the presidents of the United States, had been vain, in that anxious, uncertain, panicky way that indicated that, deep down, they didn’t much like what they really looked like. They were people who had placed their trust in the illusions they were able to create. If they were really good at it, like Bill Clinton, they could do anything they wanted to do and get away with it. If they were really bad at it, like Richard Nixon, they might as well never have gotten out of bed. Gregor had been a fairly senior agent in the FBI during Richard Nixon’s last year in office. He could remember watching the man on TV, the jerky movements, the paranoia so palpable it glistened on his skin like sweat. Gregor had never been able to understand it. Usually, a man that badly fitted for celebrity never got near to public office, except maybe on the most local level, where it was possible for personal loyalties to outweigh appearances. The miracle of Richard Nixon was that he’d managed to last as long as he had in national office. Gregor didn’t think it could be done anymore, when everything was television, and the only people who got their news from newspapers were fussy academics in the more progressive colleges who thought even PBS was dangerous to the mental health of our nation’s youth. Except, Gregor thought vaguely, as he got out of the cab in front of Le Cirque Blanc, they wouldn’t say “our nation’s youth” these days. They’d say “young people” or “the young” or maybe even “teenagers.” It was like Hillary Clinton’s vast right-wing conspiracy. It was everywhere, and it changed the words on you, just when you thought you knew what to say.