Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

Patty served dinner, forgiving David for the carrying to and fro, the clearing, and so on, because of his blinded state. Tony dominated the dinner conversation. They asked endless questions when he dropped the fact that his mother was Maureen Winters. The hopelessly star-struck fascination of the Marx Brothers with show business never ceased to amaze and disgust David. Here were people who had dined with presidents and kings, oohing and aahing over stories of foolishly extravagant Hollywood: listening to Tony describe meetings with Bill Garth as though he were allowing them a peek at the lighter side of God.

And then, pathetically, Rounder tried to match Tony’s stories, telling of his encounters with stars. Rounder’s tales were of formal dinners, charity banquets, secondhand information from stories his reporters had filed. In short, they were boring. At least Tony’s stories were alive with absurd details, from the point of view of someone who knew these people when they were relaxed and off-guard.

David was sipping his coffee and squinting through his pounding headache while Rounder fumbled through a pointless anecdote about a charity banquet with Norman Lear as master of ceremonies when he put his coffee cup down and Patty did a double take and then burst out laughing.

Rounder stopped talking.

David stared at Patty, wondering if she’d lost her mind.

One by one the others looked at David. And laughed.

David quickly looked down at his shirt, expecting to find that he had spilled coffee all over it. But there was nothing there.

“Want a little sugar in your coffee. David?” Rounder said, and triggered another round of amusement.

David followed their eyes to his plate. He had shoved his chair back a foot and had to lean forward to see what they saw.

He had placed his coffee cup squarely on top of his German chocolate cake. The white china cup was sinking into the cake, a gentle coffee-fall washing over the tilted rim and making his dessert into a muddy mess.

He watched them laugh while Patty explained that David had broken his glasses. She described the scene in the kitchen vividly and the sight gag of the coffee cup was a perfect illustrated page. Their laughter increased.

The whole idea of the evening was in jeopardy. David had wanted to present himself, his life, as evidence of being adult, serious, responsible. He bore the burden, as well as the glamour, of being the youngest senior editor in Newstime’s history. To make himself a Marx Brother, he thought, required that he seem mature. David stared at them coldly. Faced with the collapse of his plan, he felt fatalistic. He had been a fool, anyway, to arrange the evening, he thought to himself. He deserved this exhibition. To try to make it through socializing — it was disgusting and merited humiliation and failure.

“I don’t know why you’re all laughing,” he said coolly.

They quieted, unsure of him. He wasn’t certain of his own mood, either. He had, for a moment, felt hurt. But the sight of the plate was amusing.

“I think it’ll make a great cover for our Health in America feature. You know — Can We Give This Up?” He pointed to the caffeine and sugar mixing: “I carefully arranged it for maximum effect, don’t you think? I mean, that picture says: heart attack.”

They relaxed and enjoyed his response. Chico winked at him. “You’re right. David. I was against that cover, didn’t think it had enough drama. But that sure persuades me.”

“I told you.” Rounder said to his wife, “he’s our most innovative senior editor.” They all smiled, but Rounder’s voice had an earnest tone.

“He is,” Chico said, now completely serious. “You’ve being doing terrific work. David. You made the Weekly look dull on the Conoco takeover.”

“Would have been even better if,” David said quickly, “you’d let me get that shot of their chief executive officer doing a pratfall into a vat of oil.” David turned to Tony Winters, chic Tony with his glib talk and winning smile, and said. “I have a slapstick view of the world.”

His heart began to thump again in his chest while they laughed and turned to him, warming his chilled soul back to the world and the things of it. The cold abstraction from them, the self-hatred of his own intentions and desires, melted back into the comfortable mush of life: the messy sugared world of acquisition and ambition.

Betty looked at her husband. He was a few feet away, sitting at a large round table next to the passageway that led to the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the unchic back room of Elaine’s Restaurant — New York’s best-known literary and show-business hangout. She had emerged from the small, cold, and rather dirty ladies’ room. A fat, unshaven fellow whose bottom button on his ‘shirt had popped off, exposing his navel, was standing in her way.

“Okay, Paulie. No problem,” Tony’s father, Richard Winters, was saying to the plump man.

Paulie had a small thick hand on Richard’s shoulder, massaging it while he spoke in a nervous voice, its tone alternating between loud joshing and low, secretive intensity, the shifts made abruptly, and not always with apparent cause. It was now intimate, suggestive: “’Cause, ya know, it’s no fuckin’ problem for me. I don’t like the guy. Jesus!” he said explosively into the air. “I’m exhausted. I was up at five to see my shrink!”

“Five in the morning?” Richard said, catching Betty’s eye and winking, as if apologizing for his participation in this conversation. “That’s when you see your psychiatrist?”

“Six. If I didn’t have him first thing in the morning.” Paulie said in an intimate whisper, and then burst out: “I’d never get out of bed!”

“This is my daughter-in-law. Betty,” Richard said, gently moving Paulie’s body aside so she could pass. “Paul Friedman.”

Paul Friedman had his hand out, ready to shake even before he knew where Betty was. As a result, he almost shook hands with the wall, since Betty went around him while Paul turned to where she had been standing.

“This way, this way,” Richard Winters said, turning Paul around. The hand stayed out until it caught up to Betty.

“Who are you?” Paul said when they at last made contact.

“She’s my daughter-in-law,” Richard said.

“My wife!” Tony called from the other side of the table.

“My name is Betty,” she said mildly, not wanting to make a feminist point, simply trying to give him a name to remember, rather than a category. Betty knew that to be identified other than as an attachment to Tony or his father at Elaine’s was hopeless, and she didn’t squirm or struggle against that indignity. At her blackest, she told herself that someday she would publish a wild-eyed and brilliant young novelist, and then she’d be identified as his — or her — editor, presumably a more worthwhile secondhand fame than being a wife. It is, it is, she assured herself.

But the restaurant made her feel inconsequential. Within the ten feet surrounding her were two of the most important writers in the country. One of them was eating with the best-known woman editor; the other was pawing a model. The editor, someone Betty admired enormously, was smiling girlishly and adoringly while her author pontificated; the model was doing the same at the next table. Was there a difference? Betty wounded herself with the question. There must be, she decided.

Paul Friedman, meanwhile, had decided Betty was inconsequential. He had turned back instantly after hearing she was someone’s wife — by now he couldn’t have said whose — and said to Tony. “How’s the script coming?”

“Fine,” Tony said. He sounded self-conscious. He was. He knew he was within the hearing of world-famous writers. He felt fraudulent discussing his own work in the same room, and hoped, by his one-word answer, to discourage Paul from asking more questions.