Steve Katz: The Compleat Memoirrhoids: 137.n

The party was on 71st Street and Central Park West. I showered and walked there, through a light Manhattan drizzle. The air smelled like reheated Rice-a-Roni. I didn’t know anything about this party. I’d got a call from a woman who’d read a piece I’d published in New World Writing . She invited me to what she described as an informal gathering of people interested in theater. I thought maybe she was a student this was her college theater group. Her name was Jean Van den Heuvel. That didn’t ring any of my bells, but should have struck a huge gong. My first twinge of an idea that this might be activity in a different league than I’d anticipated occurred when I recognized that the building was across the street from, and just south of The Dakota. I was wearing sweats and carrying my gym bag. I felt like a rat sneaking into a kennel of poodles.

Six doormen engulfed me as soon as I entered the building. The lead doorman was politely incredulous when I told him I was going to Jean Van den Heuvel’s party, but he covered his ass, in case I was telling the truth. He asked my name, called her apartment, scanned me one last time, then had one of the doormen escort me to the elevator. “Second floor,” the doorman said with a slight middle European accent, as the elevator door opened. “Which apartment?” I asked. He blinked slowly, nodding his head. “You go to the second floor.” I wasn’t playing four-wall any more. I knew people who owned brownstones, but no one who had a whole floor of a huge apartment building. In front of the door I listened for several minutes to the rise and fall of conversation seeping through the cracks. I didn’t have to ring. The door opened.

As I faced the smile of the French maid, I began to feel the weight of my gym bag. Out of the handball court I’d suddenly been cut into the wrong movie. Jean Van den Heuvel rushed over and, as the gracious hostess she was, escorted me in, saw to the safe storage of my gym bag, and led me as far as the catered bar. She introduced me to another young writer in the orbit, and went off to tend to the rest of her guests. The writer’s face was flushed. He was the son of a preacher man, several drinks ahead of me, on his way to big success. My conversation box was locked. I took a single-malt on the rocks, floated to the ceiling, and drifted like a reconnaissance balloon. The room was lit by incredible luminaries of the radical chic. Norman Mailer was there, Arthur Schlesinger, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, though I didn’t see him. Tom Wolfe was present, in an impeccable white suit, dressed as if for a Chinese funeral. Gaggles of potent conversationalists surrounded each of them. Each moved through the room in a bubble of self-esteem. I didn’t know how to be there. I played pretty good handball, but was lousy at conversation. I looked for a place to come down. Rudy had told me how awful these gatherings were, and he knew because he was a Wurlitzer. Jim Dine had advised me once not to be intimidated by wealth and power. He was right. I was intimidated.

I finally came down into a niche between the buffet table and the bar, and stayed there with the servers. I had waited tables plenty myself, and knew how to be with these people, and talk to them. I realized from my position hiding among the help that this was one of those situations that could be called “My Big Chance,” if only I had the skills, if I knew how to work the room. Some people just have that instinct. It’s a separate skill, and has nothing to do with art. There were many Broadway people there, movie people too. I didn’t have the ammo to take my shots.

Jean Van den Heuvel gave me another chance in the next week. I found out much later that she was Jean Stein, daughter of Jules Stein, founder of MCA, and Universal Studios. She was a great philanthropist, patron of the arts. She invited me in the next week for tea. We sat uncomfortable in her parlor as she questioned me about my writing ambitions, and my interest in stage and film. The French maid brought hors d’oeuvres. Everything was a little too pickled, or too sweet. I felt like I wasn’t who I was, whoever that was. I’ve always been confident of my writing, but never of the person who writes it. I made some broad, ignorant comments about Faulkner in Hollywood, in response to her queries about how I’d like to write for film. I tried to sound like I knew something about him, but I was really blowing it. I hadn’t read the latest Paris Review . There was an interview by herself, with Faulkner. Someone later told me she’d been intimate with him. I can’t imagine how stupid I must have sounded to her, and can hardly describe how foolish I felt once I knew about her and Faulkner.

I crossed town to have dinner with B.H. and Abby Friedman. They were wealthy New Yorkers, B.H. a former businessman in Real Estate through the Uris family. I knew them for their kindness, himself a wonderful novelist and biographer and art collector. They were eager to know what went on with Jean Stein, like the wealthy waiting to glean some gossip about the super-wealthy. I spilled all the beans I had retained. Before long it dawned on me that I might have blown a big opportunity. These chances don’t come often, maybe once in a career. You have to be prepared. With the right handler, just giving me a few hints, showing me a few moves, cluing me to where I could go, I could have made something of this. I could have been a contender.

A rite of fire. Two women cross the room sterilizing steel bowls by swinging blue alcohol flames inside them. Jingle squeezes my hand with all the strength of our adopted Pugliese earth. “Breathe! Breathe!” The midwife insists. The waters burst. Rafael is born.

“You paid for a baby of the third class,” says Aurora, the midwife. The Putana, my landlady, stands behind her. She made her money as a whore during the second world war, and built these apartments. All the cab drivers, and everyone else call her La Putana, much easier than Signora Foti. These are two big women. “This is a baby of the first class.” The Putana, who found the midwife for us and acts as if she has my confidence, whispers “Si. Si. Justo. E vero. Si deve pagare il supplemento. Extra. Extra.” This is as ludicrous as a scene from Moliere. I don’t want to deny that Rafael is first class. He’s just born. Let him nurse. “And when the umbilical cord falls off, you pay then too. And on the first birthday, you pay again.” The Putana’s fiscal imagination is overstimulated. She knows how to milk Americans. She squeezed many American officers in WWII. “It’s our custom.” Aurora holds her hand. How about when he reaches 21, I think of asking, but I keep my mouth shut, smile stupidly, and shrug.

“Buh. Non capisce niente, povereto (doesn’t understand anything, poor little guy).” Aurora shrugs at the Putana, who shouts in my face, “Terza classe. No! Prima! Prima classe!” She gets louder. I continue to smile dumbly, my best defense. “Capisce niente, managgia.” Aurora turns her back. The putana slaps my face lightly. Jingle is in bed asleep with Rafael. The great thing about having Rafael at home with a midwife is that after he is born and everything is cleaned up, we all get to sleep together in the same bed. Putana pinches my cheeks, looks at Aurora, and leaves the apartment. The supplement issues don’t come up again.

Now Rafael is going to China again. He’s fluent in Mandarin, and has several job possibilities. It’s great to know he was no third class baby, though we were too broke to pay for the upgrade. His daughter, Charlotte, graduated from college, also fluent in Mandarin, is going as well on her own, bought a one-way ticket. She was Miss February on the Girls Of The Pac10 calendar in 2008. I believe she would have been a baby of the first class. They might have had to create a separate category. I wonder how The Middle Kingdom rates its babies, and what the toll is over there.