Erich Segal - The Class

Who knows how many units per week they’d be selling after this!

As Danny put the mosaic of his mind into place, he still could not account for the presence of all the gold statuettes glittering there in dawn’s early light.

Where the hell had the others come from?

But that, of course, might be explained once the mystery of why he was in this strange hotel room had been solved.

He heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. Someone was performing morning ablutions. He had clearly shared the room and — from the look of it — the bed with someone the night before. Why was his normally razor-sharp memory in such a haze?

Just then the crystal tones of a female voice sang out, “Good morning, honey.”

And making an impeccably coiffed and diaphanously clad entrance from the bathroom, triple Grammy Award winner Carla Atkins appeared.

“Hey, Carla,” Danny enthused, “you certainly were a hit last night.”

“You weren’t too bad yourself, baby,” she cooed, creeping under the covers next to him.

“I take it you’re not talking about the Grammies?” Danny asked with a smile.

“Hell,” Carla laughed in her lower register, “those little statues aren’t any good in bed. I think the two of us deserve a special award, don’t you?”

“I’m glad you think so,” Danny answered candidly. “I just wish I could remember more about my evening with America’s greatest vocalist. Did we drink anything?”

“Oh, a little bubbly downstairs. Then when we got up here I broke open a few amies,”

“Amies?”

“Yeah, honey. Amyl nitrite. You know, those little pills with the invigorating smell. Don’t tell me that was your first time?”

“It was,” Danny confessed. “Why can’t I remember if I enjoyed it or not?”

“Because, baby, you were higher than a rocket ship. I had to stuff you with downers or you would have danced on the ceiling. Are you interested in some breakfast?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it,” Danny replied. “What about five or six eggs and bacon and toast —?”

Carla Atkins smiled. “I get the picture,” she said and picked up the phone to room service and ordered breakfast for “a quintet.”

“Quintet?” Danny asked after she had hung up. “Yeah, baby — those little fellahs over there.” And she pointed at the five Grammies shining in a row.

The stewardess offered him champagne.

“No, thank you,” Danny said politely.

“But, Mr. Rossi, you should be celebrating your victories,” the flight attendant said, smiling invitingly. She was very pretty. “Well, call me if you change your mind — and congratulations.”

After lingering for yet another awkward second in the hopes that Danny would ask for her phone number, she went reluctantly off to attend to some of the other stars who were also flying that afternoon in the first-class cabin from Los Angeles to New York.

But Danny was deep in thought. He was racking his brain to reconstruct what had occurred after he had walked into Carla Atkins’s hotel room.

Little by little it was coming back to him. First, the thrill of being with the undisputed star of the evening. Then the thrill of being intimate with her. And then the sensation of those pills she had brought out.

Yes, he remembered he had felt a kind of wild exhilaration. His heart beat faster merely in retrospect. They had certainly made him feel … vigorous. But then the stuff she used to bring him “down” had really fogged his brain.

And he had forgotten to ask her what they were.

I’m getting married tomorrow. It should be very interesting.

Newall’s stuck in Hawaii with the navy and can’t make it. But otherwise all my buddies will be there — including Ted and Sara Lambros, and even that nutcase, George Keller.

Kind of because I admire him so, I’ve asked Jason Gilbert to be my best man. He agreed, but refused to wear his marine uniform, even though it would add flash to the occasion.

Our church ceremony will be followed by a cham pagne reception at the Beacon Hill Club. After which we’ll fly to Barbados for our honeymoon, and then return to New York, where I’ll be starting as a trainee with Downs, Winship, Investment Bankers.

I’m sure it will be a joyous experience — especially if I can figure out how this all happened to me so quickly.

From one standpoint, I could say it was parental pressure. Although in our family that doesn’t exist. My father merely suggests things.

When I was mustered from the navy last summer in time to join everybody up in Maine, he casually remarked that he supposed I’d be getting married one of these days.

To which I dutifully replied that I supposed so. And that sort of concluded the conversation, except for his observation that, “After all, a man shouldn’t wait until he’s over the hill.”

Seeing as there were no more decks to swab or naval reports to file, I was, to tell the truth, at a loss for things to do. Also, spending so much time at sea had only sharpened my desire to get more involved with the female sex. And I suppose marriage is as involved as you can get.

Up until this year I had the romantic notion that getting married had something to do with love. But then, of course, having been isolated — first by Harvard and then by the vast ocean — I had no real idea what life was all about.

Matter of fact, love is one of the few subjects on which my father had such strong feelings that he actually expressed them in a four-letter word. We were out fishing on the lake a few days later and I mentioned how touched I had been at Ted and Sara’s wedding. And how they were my ideal of what a loving couple should be.

Dad looked at me with eyebrow raised and said, “Andrew, don’t you know love is … bosh ?”

I can’t pretend that I didn’t hear stronger language in the navy, but never from my father’s lips. He then patiently explained that when he was a boy the best marriages were not made in heaven, but over lunch at the club. Pity that sort of thing was going out of style.

For example, his classmate, Lyman Pierce, chairman of Boston Metropolitan, had “an absolutely smashing daughter,” to whom, in the good old days, he would have arranged a splendid betrothal for me.

I allowed that I was in no way averse to meeting smashing women and would be glad to call this lady up as long as it was on a friendly basis — and without obligation.

To which my father replied that I wouldn’t regret it. And returned to his fishing.

I had no great expectations when I dialed Faith Pierce at the Wildlife Preservation Fund, where she was a full-time volunteer. I assumed she would be a vapid, overprivileged, snobbish Brahmin. Well, she may have been a lot of those things, but she wasn’t vapid. And what absolutely amazed me when we met was that she was so good-looking .

I mean, she was one of — the prettiest girls I’d ever seen. I thought she gave Marilyn Monroe a fair run for her money (except that she had more money).

What’s more, I liked her. She was that rare creature among the so-called bluebloods — a real enthusiast. Every activity to her was “a fun thing.” Whether it was tossing a football on the banks of the Charles, having a gourmet meal at Maître Jacques, or sex before marriage. Moreover, all her previous life could be subsumed under that same description.

Her mummy and daddy hadn’t gotten along too well. But when they divorced and she was sent to boarding school at the age of six, it turned out to be “a fun thing.” Likewise the finishing school in Switzerland, where she picked up a terrific French accent — and one or two words to say with it.