Stanley Elkin - Boswell

I peered into the faces of the small gathering, nervous, as I say, that my host and hostess might be among them. If they were, my technique would flush a nod from one of them.

“Hello there,” a man said uncertainly. “Nice to see you.”

“Good evening, Irving,” I said without hesitation.

The man looked startled and for a moment I thought I might have made a mistake. Then he glanced in desperation toward a woman in a rose-colored evening gown and I knew I was all right. I turned to the woman quickly. “Eugenie,” I said. “How are you, darling?” I leaned down and brushed Mrs. Gibbenjoy’s confused face with a deft kiss. I turned back to Irving. “Perlmutter here yet?” I asked.

“Why no, not yet. We were waiting for him,” he said.

“He told me he’d be a little late,” I said, “but I thought he’d certainly be here by now.”

“No,” Irving Gibbenjoy said, “Not yet. We’re waiting for him.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, look, I’ll go get a drink. When he comes in tell him Jim Boswell wants to see him.”

“Yes. Yes, I will, of course,” Irving brightened at once. “Oh, Mr. Boswell, forgive me for being so rude. You may not know all these other people.” I blew a kiss to a waiter serving drinks in a room behind Irving Gibbenjoy’s back; I waved the fingers on my left hand to an umbrella stand just as a woman walked by. She stopped, turned, and pointing to herself mouthed, “Who, me?” I looked back hastily at Irving Gibbenjoy. “Mr. and Mrs. Philo Perce,” Irving Gibbenjoy said.

I bowed to Mrs. Perce, shook Mr. Perce’s hand.

“General and Mrs. Bill Manara,” said Irving.

“General,” I said, “I go to all your wars. Mrs. Manara.”

“Hope Fayespringer.”

“Ah,” I said, “the Carnegie. How’s Granddad?”

“Mr. Jim Boswell, everybody,” Irving said a little uncomfortably.

“Are you a Philadelphian, Mr. Boswell?” the General asked me. Irving looked eager, thinking that now, perhaps, he might learn something about his guest.

“Not for some time, General,” I said.

“Where do you live now, Mr. Boswell?” Mrs. Gibbenjoy wanted to know. She was a tough one, Mrs. Gibbenjoy. It did not do actually to lie to these people. One hoped that the necessity for the truth simply did not come up.

“I’m at the Love right now, Eugenie.”

“The love?” said Hope Fayespringer.

“It’s a hotel,” I said.

“In Philadelphia?” the General asked.

“For some time, General.”

“Is that one of yours, Pilchard?” Mr. Gibbenjoy asked a man who had just joined us.

“What’s that, the Love? Lord, no, I wish it were. It’s a gold mine. It’s actually a kind of flophouse at the bad end of Market Street. Marvelous profits. Fresh linen just once a week. What do you pay, young man, a dollar a night?”

“One fifty.”

“There, you see? An enormously successful enterprise. Fellow named Penner owns it. He buys some of his supplies from us. There’s a motto on his letter head: ‘For We Have the Poor Always With Us.’ I tell you, Hilton and Sheraton and Pick and I are in the wrong field. A chain of flops, that’s the thing. Can’t you see it? ‘The Bowery Pilchard.’ ‘Skid Row East, a Pilchard Enterprise.’ It makes the mouth water. ‘For We Have the Poor Always With Us.’”

Mrs. Manara and Irving Gibbenjoy looked from Pilchard to me doubtfully. General Manara smiled, and Mrs. Gibbenjoy rubbed her cheek where I had kissed her.

“Do I know you, Mr. Boswell? When you came in and looked at our little group I had the impression we’d met,” Irving said.

“No, sir. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Is Mr. Boswell your friend, Eugenie?”

“No. He’s not.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Boswell,” Irving said, “this must be embarrassing for you, but may I ask how you’re here?”

“I crashed.”

“Do people do that?” Mrs. Perce asked.

“But you had an invitation,” Irving said. “I saw you hand it to Miller.”

“It was an invitation to a bar mitzvah, Irving,” I said.

“Oh,” Irving said.

“You’ve not come to rob us, have you?” Hope Fayespringer asked, touching her necklace.

“Well, of course not,” I said.

“Well, you can’t stay,” Irving said.

“Why not?” I asked. “I probably know some of the people here.”

“You do?” Mrs. Manara said.

“From other parties,” I said.

“That makes no difference. You’ll have to leave,” Irving said.

“All right,” I said. “I hope I haven’t spoiled anything.”

“No, of course not,” Irving said. “Actually it’s rather flattering of you to try to crash, but… well, I just can’t have it. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

“I quite understand.”

I turned to leave, then looked back. “General Manara,” I said, “it’s been delightful.”

“Yes, it has,” General Manara said.

“Mrs. Manara,” I said, reaching for her hand. “And Mrs. Fayespringer. I’ve enjoyed meeting you. Don’t you worry — Nelton will get a town one day. I have hunches about these things.”

“Thank you, Mr. Boswell.” She seemed to understand what I meant.

“Pilchard,” I said crisply.

“Boswell,” Pilchard said.

“Perce, Mrs. Perce.”

“Goodbye,” they said together.

“Eugenie, goodbye.”

She didn’t answer.

“Irving. I really am sorry about all this.”

“It’s all right, Boswell.” He leaned forward. “You’ve money enough for a cab, haven’t you?” he said softly.

I frowned. “Please, Irving,” I said. “It’s a warm, lovely night. I may walk back to the Love.”

“You know best,” he said.

I retrieved my hat and coat from Miller and left.

When I stepped outside the Gibbenjoys’ big doors I saw that most of the party had moved outdoors. Although I had not noticed anyone when I came up the long drive, by now there were dozens of people strolling about through Gibbenjoy’s gardens. I took off my coat, folded it, put it and my hat in the low branch of a tree and lost myself among the other guests.

I was astonishingly content. I had been discovered, exposed, humiliated, but one can never be wholly miserable in a tuxedo. Indeed, one cannot be miserable at all in a tuxedo. At least I can’t. The tuxedo is a uniform, like any other. Inside one, the wearer’s emotions are dictated by the game that is to be played. In the case of the tuxedo this calls for charm and a disciplined lightness of step (after all, it’s the uniform of the dance). Why else had everyone been so agreeable? Gibbenjoy had thrown me out, of course, but because he had been wearing a tuxedo he threw me out with charm, with a disciplined lightness of step, with a man-of-the-worldiness which winked at the upsetting of convention. If either of us had been in a business suit we would have gotten down to business. I might have been arrested.

What is the gigolo? A manipulator, a liar, a thief, a cheat, a whore. But in a tuxedo! Redeemable, so long as he keeps his black pants on, his shoes shined, the velvet on his collar buffed. In a tuxedo his sins are comic, have nothing to do with the cellar, the ginny room, the unmade bed. Gibbenjoy had said, “Oh, it’s all right,” and the General, a man who understands uniforms, had chimed in, “It certainly is,” because all the world loves a prankster, a crasher. Crash is a funny word, even. It’s the word in comic books when two buffoons bang their heads together. I was a crasher. A clonker. A bang-smasher. A dealer in comical impacts. A cartoon cat who lost his fur in one reel, was whole again in the next. (A joke resurrection. No, a joke catastrophe, since all resurrections are serious, all second chances somber.)