"Mr. and Mrs. Schrawtz." My face, I'm sure, is ashen and I say the name mechanically, but the maitre d' is too busy to not buy it and I don't even bother to face Jean, who I'm sure is totally bewildered by my behavior as we're led to the Schrawtzes' table, which I'm sure probably sucks though I'm relieved anyway.
Menus already lie on the table but I'm so nervous the words and even the prices look like hieroglyphics and I'm completely at a loss. A waiter takes our drink order - the same one who couldn't locate the ice - and I find myself saying things, without listening to Jean, like "Protecting the ozone layer is a really cool idea" and telling knock-knock jokes. I smile, fixing it on my face, in another country, and it takes no time at all - minutes, really, the waiter doesn't even get a chance to tell us about the specials - for me to notice the tall, handsome couple by the podium conferring with the maitre d', and after sighing very deeply, light-headed, stammering, I mention to Jean, "Something bad is happening."
She looks up from the menu and puts down the iceless drink
she's been sipping. "Why? What's wrong?"
The maitre d' is glaring over at us, at me, from across the room as he leads the couple toward our table. If the couple had been short, dumpy, excessively Jewish, I could've kept this table, even without the aid of a fifty, but this couple looks like they've just strolled out of a Ralph Lauren ad, and though Jean and I do too (and so does the rest of the whole goddamn restaurant), the man is wearing a tuxedo and the girl - a totally fuckable babe - is covered with jewels. This is reality, and as my loathsome brother Sean would say, I have to deal with it. The maitre d' now stands at the table, hands clasped behind his balk, unamused, and after a long pause asks, "Mr. and Mrs... Schrawtz?"
"Yes?" I play it cool.
He just stares. This is accompanied by an abnormal silence. His ponytail, gray and oily, hangs like some kind of malignancy below his collar.
"You know," I finally say, somewhat suavely, "I happen to know the chef."
He continues staring. So, no doubt, does the couple behind him.
After another long pause, for no real reason, I ask, "Is he... in Aspen?"
This is getting nowhere. I sigh and turn to Jean, who looks completely mystified. "Let's go, okay?" She nods dumbly. Humiliated, I take Jean's hand and we get up - she slower than I - brushing past the maitre d' and the couple, and make our way back through the crowded restaurant and then we're outside and I'm utterly devastated and murmuring robotically to myself "I should have known better I should have known better I should," but Jean skips down the street laughing, pulling me along, and when I finally notice her unexpected mirth, between giggles she lets out "That was so funny" and then, squeezing my clenched fist, she lets me know "Your sense of humor is so spontaneous." Shaken, walking stiffly by her side, ignoring her, I ask myself "Where... to... now?" and in seconds come up with an answer - Arcadia, toward which I find myself guiding us.
After someone who I think is Hamilton Conway mistakes me for someone named Ted Owen and asks if I can get him into Petty's tonight - I tell him, "I'll see what I can do," then turn what's left of my attention to Jean, who sits across from me in the near-empty dining room of Arcadia - after he leaves, only five of the restaurant's tables have people at them. I've ordered a J&B on the rocks. Jean's sipping a glass of white wine and talking about how what she really wants to do is "get into merchant banking" and I'm thinking: Dare to dream. Someone else, Frederick Dibble, stops by and congratulates me on the Larson account and then has the nerve to say, "Talk to you later; Saul." But I'm in a daze, millions of miles away, and Jean doesn't notice; she's talking about a new novel she's been reading by some young author - its cover, I've seen, slathered with neon; its subject, lofty suffering. Accidentally I think she's talking about something else and I find myself saying, without really looking over at her, "You need a tough skin to survive in this city." She flushes, seems