Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City

“Isn’t Norma’s just a breakfast place?”

“It’s open for you tonight, sir.”

Ironically, I hadn’t shaved or showered, failing to do for billionaires what Perkus had done on account of a hamburger waitress whom he couldn’t even bring himself to speak with-that is, primp. Or maybe it wasn’t ironic, since Perkus, in his feeble and conflicted way, was trying to make an impression, while I was just collecting my due, going through my regular paces. I saw everything in light of Perkus’s contempt, helplessly heard my self-loathing narrated in his scorning tones.

So the Danzigs had paid to have the place to themselves, impressive, I suppose, except it had probably cost a tenth of what they’d spent to secure my presence. The windows of Norma’s were shuttered, a dim light glowing from within. Escorted inside, I found Rossmoor and Arjuna already seated at a large round table in the restaurant’s center, spotlit like the set of a one-act. Each nodded and smiled as I approached, and neither rose.

“Mr. Insteadman,” said Rossmoor Danzig. “Truly an uncommon pleasure.” Rossmoor, leaning into the table’s light to reach for my hand with a chubby paw that extended from what appeared to be a maroon pinstriped pajama top, at first seemed a giant cherub, a scruffy grimacing infant in gigantic black-framed glasses and mad-flowing hair. Massive as his head was, his hair and glasses made it look small. Like me, the cherub needed a shave. Taking that flabby hand in mine, I felt woozy, dislocated, still stuck in my nap and even further behind, in my sidewalk conflagration with Perkus, his burger-girl’s phone number still nestled in my pocket, my tongue thick with afterthoughts. I’d need to collect myself, find some way to summon my charm to the occasion-a measure of charm, if not fifty grand’s worth.

“The feeling is mutual,” I said robotically. “You’ve… ensured we’ll… have the time tour selves.”

“I don’t like eating at restaurants that are open,” he said. “We’ve got a four-star chef in our basement, we never need visit a restaurant at all. But there’s a specialty here I thought might amuse you.” Rossmoor Danzig pronounced this word spesh-ee-ality . “I really do hope it will. It amuses me very much.”

Rossmoor Danzig wasn’t young, much less a homunculoid infant. He was old, his skin parchment, wrinkled and powdery, his magnified orbs eggy in their scrotal sockets, yet his barge of hair seemed naturally, even obscenely, thick and dark, barely salted, the stubble on his chin also mostly dark. He did wear, as I got a closer look, pajamas, top and bottom. They were beautiful pajamas, but still. Figures flitted at my vision’s edges, outside our table’s golden circle: waitstaff working after hours, slaves of weird opportunity. I wondered what they made of us. I had to remind myself it wasn’t midnight or three in the morning, but an ordinary dinner hour. All around outside this derelict brunch place Manhattanites dined, and waiters worked. Due to my haze and the winter light I was marooned in time. I couldn’t keep from wishing we were at Seppi’s instead, or some other restaurant teeming with ordinary happenings. Trapped alone with the Danzigs, I felt claustrophobically remote from life’s mainland, like, yes, a polar bear adrift on an ice floe. (I couldn’t quit rehearsing my blown encounter with Perkus. I wanted a retake on our afternoon, a chance to say I understood everything he felt.)

“Ross doesn’t eat anything except breakfast,” Arjuna Danzig explained painfully. Rossmoor’s wife seemed designed to compensate for his oddity, dressed with elegant simplicity, black high-necked dress and pearls, hair upswept, eyebrows sculpted into arches as persistently surprised as her eyes were infinitely weary, her olive skin a ghost of the exotic beauty her name had seemed to promise, all the rest of her defeated, folded neatly in its sarcophagus of makeup. Rossmoor was a desiccated toddler, age floating unfixed; Arjuna’s fifty-some years were pinned to her like a police-artist’s sketch, or an archaeologist’s reconstruction of flesh on an unearthed hominid’s skull. Years were all she had. She bore them patiently. Well, years and billions. I’ll admit she was a woman I might be seated beside at a party and flatter with half-assed remarks for hours, then not recognize next time we met. Now, in my state, and with no one to turn to apart from those waiters skittering through the outlying gloom, I felt reliant on Arjuna Danzig to protect me if the gargoyle in pajamas turned feral.

“At a certain point, Chase, I determined I didn’t have to eat anything I didn’t care to,” said Rossmoor. His self-regard was like a grand pipe organ visible in the air between us, which he played with shameless gusto. “And I don’t care to eat anything but breakfast. I eat it three or four times a day. Once a year I do a weeklong grapefruitjuice purge, again, simply for the pleasure it brings me.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Arjuna.

“Arjuna doesn’t countenance mention of poop,” said Rossmoor, merrily taunting. “We have such a number of toilets in our home, Chase, that you could go without flushing for a month if you liked. Conversely, my dear wife will frequently flush an empty toilet, just out of nervous energy.”

“I… I’ve done that myself,” I said stupidly.

“Have you? That’s interesting. It must be commoner than I’d realized.” Into the following silence, as if into one of Noteless’s chasms, my morale plunged, so Danzig’s next gambit was a life preserver. “You’ll notice we’re without menus, Thespian!”

“Uh, yes.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you the great speciality” -there it was again-“of the house. I wonder if you’ve heard of the ‘zillion-dollar frittata’?”

“It, uh, rings a bell.”

“Prepare to be amazed. The dish entails six eggs, one whole Maine lobster, and ten ounces of Sevruga caviar.” Danzig liked to enumerate every digit of his wealth: eggs, ounces, toilets, zillion-dollar frittatas eaten at fifty-thousand-dollar tête-à-têtes. Would we count turds afterward?

“We’ll share it,” I said, in fear. Despite barely touching my three o’clock cheeseburger, I couldn’t locate my appetite. The prospect of caviar swam before my eyes like oily black phosphenes.

“No, no, it’s entirely yours,” Danzig assured me. “I’ll derive pleasure watching you enjoy it. Arjuna’s not eating, I think, and I’ll be having French toast, which incidentally is superb here. And needless to say a round of mimosas for the table.”

“Needless to say.” Had I said this aloud? I ought to check my sarcasm, unless it sounded only in my head’s echo chamber. I fluttered fingers at the waiter, my arm seeming too heavy to lift. “Actually, I could use some coffee-”

“Certainly!” Danzig got one of those phantasms hopping to it. “And music, music,” he said. “Being a man of the theater…”

“I’m sorry?”

“I presume that as a man of the theater, you’d want there to be accompaniment, a soundtrack of some kind.” Had the evening fragmented to non sequiturs? Did I miss some transition? “Perhaps you’ll dance with my wife, she’s an outstanding tangoist. I can’t keep up with her!” Arjuna’s cheeks reddened with shame, her gaze riveted to some distance. Had Danzig secured a suite in the hotel? What privileges did he think he’d won at that auction?

“I…I thank you, please forgive me if, uh, I have to take a rain check, I’m sure you’d be a lovely dancing partner…” As I stammered out these words, silent hands deposited a cup of black coffee (tiny oil rainbow swirling at its center) at one corner of my vision, a flute of juice and champagne (orange seeds swirling at the bottom) at the other, then pushed my bread plate aside and swept a fuming calamity across the table and under the spotlight, filling my view. It was as though someone had dissected a creature whose fleece was pallid egg, to reveal a scalded skeleton of lobster and spilled vitals of glistening caviar. The dish’s oval tray resembled a medical basin, its contents seeming to stretch and bloat before me. I crossed my legs and reclined in my chair, my senses churning. “I… uh, I haven’t had such a great day,” I heard myself say. “I got some terrible news…” It was the last thing I’d meant to discuss. “Someone I love… very much…” I tested the coffee cup with my palms, but it was too hot to dare sip.