The Bonfire of the Vanities Read online

  Sherman laughed morosely. “Look, I’ll be right over.”

  The staircase of the town house sagged and groaned as Sherman walked up. On each floor a single bare 22-watt circular fluorescent tube, known as the Landlord’s Halo, radiated a feeble tubercular-blue glow upon the walls, which were Rental Unit Green. Sherman passed apartment doors with innumerable locks, one above the other in drunken columns. There were anti-pliers covers over the locks and anti-jimmy irons over the jambs and anti-push-in screens over the door panels.

  In blithe moments, when King Priapus reigned, with no crises in his domain, Sherman made this climb up to Maria’s with a romantic relish. How bohemian! How…real this place was! How absolutely right for these moments when the Master of the Universe stripped away the long-faced proprieties of Park Avenue and Wall Street and let his rogue hormones out for a romp! Maria’s one room, with its closet for a kitchen and another closet for a bathroom, this so-called apartment of hers, fourth floor rear, which she sublet from her friend Germaine—well, it was perfect. Germaine was something else again. Sherman had met her twice. She was built like a fire hydrant. She had a ferocious hedge of hair on her upper lip, practically a mustache. Sherman was convinced she was a lesbian. But so what? It was all real! Squalid! New York! A rush of fire in the loins!

  But tonight Priapus did not rule. Tonight the grimness of the old brownstone weighed on the Master of the Universe.

  Only the dachshund was happy. He was hauling his belly up the stairs at a merry clip. It was warm and dry in here, and familiar.

  When Sherman reached Maria’s door, he was surprised to find himself out of breath. He was perspiring. His body was positively abloom beneath the riding mac, his checked shirt, and his T-shirt.

  Before he could knock on the door, it opened about a foot, and there she was. She didn’t open it any farther. She stood there, looking Sherman up and down, as if she were angry. Her eyes gleamed above those remarkable high cheekbones of hers. Her bobbed hair was like a black hood. Her lips were drawn up into an O. All at once she broke into a smile and began chuckling with little sniffs through her nose.

  “Well, come on,” said Sherman, “let me in! Wait’ll I tell you what happened.”

  Now Maria pushed the door all the way open, but instead of ushering him inside, she leaned up against the doorjamb and crossed her legs and folded her arms underneath her breasts and kept staring at him and chuckling. She was wearing high-heeled pumps with a black-and-white checkerboard pattern worked into the leather. Sherman knew little about shoe designs, but it registered on him that this one was of the moment. She wore a tailored white gabardine skirt, very short, a good four inches above the knees, revealing her legs, which to Sherman’s eyes were like a dancer’s, and emphasizing her tiny waist. She wore a white silk blouse, open down to the top of her breasts. The light in the tiny entryway was such that it threw her entire ensemble into high relief: her dark hair, those cheekbones, the fine features of her face, the swollen curve of her lips, her creamy blouse, those creamy flan breasts, her shimmering shanks, so insouciantly crossed.

  “Sherman…” Shuhhh-mun. “You know what? You’re cute. You’re just like my little brother.”

  The Master of the Universe was mildly annoyed, but he walked on in, passing her and saying: “Oh boy. Wait’ll I tell you what happened.”

  Without altering her pose in the doorway, Maria looked down at the dog, who was sniffing at the carpet. “Hello, Marshall!” Muhshull. “You’re a wet little piece a salami, Marshall.”

  “Wait’ll I tell you—”

  Maria started to laugh and then shut the door. “Sherman…you look like somebody just…balled you up”—she balled up an imaginary piece of paper—“and threw you down.”

  “That’s what I feel like. Let me tell you what happened.”

  “Just like my little brother. Every day he came home from school, and his belly button was showing.”

  Sherman looked down. It was true. His checked shirt was pulled out of his pants, and his belly button was showing. He shoved the shirt back in, but he didn’t take off the riding mac. He couldn’t settle in here. He couldn’t stay too long. He didn’t know quite how to get that across to Maria.

  “Every day my little brother got in a fight at school…”

  Sherman stopped listening. He was tired of Maria’s little brother, not so much because the thrust of it was that he, Sherman, was childish, but because she insisted on going on about it. At first glance, Maria had never struck Sherman as anybody’s idea of a Southern girl. She looked Italian or Greek. But she talked like a Southern girl. The chatter just poured out. She was still talking when Sherman said:

  “You know, I just called you from a telephone booth. You want to know what happened?”

  Maria turned her back and walked out into the middle of the apartment, then wheeled about and struck a pose, with her head cocked to one side and her hands on her hips and one high-heeled foot slewed out in a carefree manner and her shoulders thrown back and her back slightly arched, pushing her breasts forward, and she said:

  “Do you see anything new?”

  What the hell was she talking about? Sherman wasn’t in a mood for anything new. But he looked her over dutifully. Did she have a new hairdo? A new piece of jewelry? Christ, her husband loaded her with so much jewelry, who could keep track? No, it must be something in the room. His eyes jumped around. It had probably been built as a child’s bedroom a hundred years ago. There was a little bay with three leaded casement windows and a window seat all the way around. He surveyed the furniture…the same old three bentwood chairs, the same old ungainly oak pedestal table, the same old mattress-and-box-spring set with a corduroy cover and three or four paisley cushions strewn on top in an attempt to make it look like a divan. The whole place shrieked: Make Do. In any event, it hadn’t changed.

  Sherman shook his head.

  “You really don’t?” Maria motioned with her head in the direction of the bed.

  Sherman now noticed, over the bed, a small painting with a simple frame of blond wood. He took a couple of steps closer. It was a picture of a nude man, seen from the rear, outlined in crude black brushstrokes, the way an eight-year-old might do it, assuming an eight-year-old had a notion to paint a nude man. The man appeared to be taking a shower, or at least there was what looked like a nozzle over his head, and some slapdash black lines were coming out of the nozzle. He seemed to be taking a shower in fuel oil. The man’s flesh was tan with sickly lavender-pink smears on it, as if he were a burn case. What a piece of garbage…It was sick…But it gave off the sanctified odor of serious art, and so Sherman hesitated to be candid.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “You like it? You know his work?”

  “Whose work?”

  “Filippo Chirazzi.”

  “No, I don’t know his work.”

  She was smiling. “There was a whole article about him, in the Times.”

  Not wanting to play the Wall Street philistine, Sherman resumed his study of this masterpiece.

  “Well, it has a certain…how can I say it?…directness.” He fought the urge to be ironic. “Where did you get it?”

  “Filippo gave it to me.” Very cheery.

  “That was generous.”

  “Arthur’s bought four of his paintings, great big ones.”

  “But he didn’t give it to Arthur, he gave it to you.”

  “I wanted one for myself. The big ones are Arthur’s. Besides, Arthur wouldn’t know Filippo from…from I don’t know what, if I hadn’t told him.”

  “Ah.”

  “You don’t like it, do you.”

  “I like it. To tell you the truth, I’m rattled. I just did something so goddamned stupid.”

  Maria gave up her pose and sat down on the edge of the bed, the would-be divan, as if to say, “Okay, I’m ready to listen.” She crossed her legs. Her skirt was now halfway up her thighs. Even though those legs, those exquisite shanks and flanks of hers, were b
eside the point right now, Sherman couldn’t keep his eyes off them. Her stockings made them shiny. They glistened. Every time she moved, the highlights shimmered.

  Sherman remained standing. He didn’t have much time, as he was about to explain.

  “I took Marshall out for a walk.” Marshall was now stretched out on the rug. “And it’s raining. And he starts giving me a very hard time.”

  When he got to the part about the telephone call itself, he became highly agitated even in the description of it. He noticed that Maria was containing her concern, if any, quite successfully, but he couldn’t calm down. He plunged on into the emotional heart of the matter, the things he felt immediately after he hung up—and Maria cut him off with a shrug and a little flick in the air with the back of her hand.

  “Oh, that’s nothing, Sherman.” That’s nuthun, Shuhmun.

  He stared at her.

  “All you did was make a telephone call. I don’t know why you just didn’t say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I was calling my friend Maria Ruskin.’ That’s what I woulda done. I never bother lying to Arthur. I don’t tell him every little thing, but I don’t lie to him.”

  Could he possibly have used such a brazen strategy? He ran it through his mind. “Uhmmmmmmmm.” It ended up as a groan. “I don’t know how I can go out at 9:30 at night and say I’m walking the dog and then call up and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m really out here calling Maria Ruskin.’ ”

  “You know the difference between you and me, Sherman? You feel sorry for your wife, and I don’t feel sorry for Arthur. Arthur’s gonna be seventy-two in August. He knew I had my own friends when he married me, and he knew he didn’t like them, and he had his own friends, and he knew I didn’t like them. I can’t stand them. All those old Yids…Don’t look at me as if I’ve said something awful! That’s the way Arthur talks. ‘The Yiddim.’ And the goyim, and I’m a shiksa. I never heard of all that stuff before I met Arthur. I’m the one who happens to be married to a Jew, not you, and I’ve had to swallow enough of this Jewish business over the past five years to be able to use a little of it if I feel like it.”

  “Have you told him you have your own apartment here?”

  “Of course not. I told you, I don’t lie to him, but I don’t tell him every little thing.”

  “Is this a little thing?”

  “It’s not as big a thing as you think it is. It’s a pain in the neck. The landlord’s got himself in an uproar again.”

  Maria stood up and went to the table and picked up a sheet of paper and handed it to Sherman and returned to the edge of the bed. It was a letter from the law firm of Golan, Shander, Morgan, and Greenbaum to Ms. Germaine Boll concerning her status as the tenant of a rent-controlled apartment owned by Winter Real Properties, Inc. Sherman couldn’t concentrate on it. He didn’t want to think about it. It was getting late. Maria kept going off on tangents. It was getting late.

  “I don’t know, Maria. This is something Germaine has to respond to.”

  “Sherman?”

  She was smiling with her lips parted. She stood up.

  “Sherman, come here.”

  He took a couple of steps toward her, but he resisted going very close. The look on her face said she had very close in mind.

  “You think you’re in trouble with your wife, and all you’ve done is make a phone call.”

  “Hah. I don’t think I’m in trouble, I know I’m in trouble.”

  “Well, if you’re already in trouble, and you haven’t even done anything, then you might as well do something, since it’s all the same difference.”

  Then she touched him.

  King Priapus, he who had been scared to death, now rose up from the dead.

  Sprawled on the bed, Sherman caught a glimpse of the dachshund. The beast had gotten up off the rug and had walked over to the bed and was looking up at them and switching his tail.

  Christ! Was there by any chance some way a dog could indicate…Was there anything dogs did that showed they had seen…Judy knew about animals. She clucked and fussed over Marshall’s every mood, until it was revolting. Was there something dachshunds did after observing…But then his nervous system began to dissolve, and he no longer cared.

  His Majesty, the most ancient king, Priapus, Master of the Universe, had no conscience.

  Sherman let himself into the apartment and made a point of amplifying the usual cozy sounds.

  “Attaboy, Marshall, okay, okay.”

  He took off his riding mac with a lot of rustling of the rubberized material and clinking of the buckles and a few whews.

  No sign of Judy.

  The dining room, the living room, and a small library led off the marble entry gallery. Each had its familiar glints and glows of carved wood, cut glass, ecru silk shades, glazed lacquer, and the rest of the breathtakingly expensive touches of his wife, the aspiring decorator. Then he noticed. The big leather wing chair that usually faced the doorway in the library was turned around. He could just see the top of Judy’s head, from behind. There was a lamp beside the chair. She appeared to be reading a book.

  He went to the doorway.

  “Well! We’re back!”

  No response.

  “You were right. I got soaking wet, and Marshall wasn’t happy.”

  She didn’t look around. There was just her voice, coming from out of the wing chair:

  “Sherman, if you want to talk to someone named Maria, why do you call me instead?”

  Sherman took a step inside the room.

  “What do you mean? If I want to talk to who?”

  The voice: “Oh, for God’s sake. Please don’t bother lying.”

  “Lying—about what?”

  Then Judy stuck her head around one side of the wing chair. The look she gave him!

  With a sinking heart Sherman walked over to the chair. Within her corona of soft brown hair his wife’s face was pure agony.

  “What are you talking about, Judy?”

  She was so upset she couldn’t get the words out at first. “I wish you could see the cheap look on your face.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  The shrillness in his voice made her laugh.

  “All right, Sherman, you’re going to stand there and tell me you didn’t call here and ask to speak to someone named Maria?”

  “To who?”

  “Some little hooker, if I had to guess, named Maria.”

  “Judy, I swear to God, I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve been out walking Marshall! I don’t even know anybody named Maria! Somebody called here asking for somebody named Maria?”

  “Uhhh!” It was a short, unbelieving groan. She stood up and looked at him square in the eyes. “You stand there! You think I don’t know your voice on the phone?”

  “Maybe you do, but you haven’t heard it tonight. I swear to God.”

  “You’re lying!” She gave him a hideous smile. “And you’re a rotten liar. And you’re a rotten person. You think you’re so swell, and you’re so cheap. You’re lying, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not lying. I swear to God, I took Marshall for a walk, and I come back in here, and wham—I mean, I hardly know what to say, because I truly don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re asking me to prove a negative proposition.”

  “Negative proposition.” Disgust dripped from the fancy phrase. “You were gone long enough. Did you go kiss her good night and tuck her in, too?”

  “Judy—”

  “Did you?”

  Sherman rolled his head away from her blazing gaze and turned his palms upward and sighed.

  “Listen, Judy, you’re totally…totally…utterly wrong. I swear to God.”

  She stared at him. All at once there were tears in her eyes. “Oh, you swear to God. Oh, Sherman.” Now she was beginning to snuffle back the tears. “I’m not gonna—I’m going upstairs. There’s the telephone. Why don’t you call her from here?” She was forcing the words out through her tears. “I don’t care. I
really don’t care.”

  Then she walked out of the room. He could hear her shoes clicking across the marble toward the staircase.

  Sherman went over to the desk and sat down in his Hepplewhite swivel chair. He slumped back. His eyes lit on the frieze that ran around the ceiling of the little room. It was carved of Indian redwood, in high relief, in the form of figures hurrying along a city sidewalk. Judy had had it done in Hong Kong for an astonishing amount…of my money. Then he leaned forward. Goddamn her. Desperately he tried to relight the fires of righteous indignation. His parents had been right, hadn’t they? He deserved better. She was two years older than he was, and his mother had said such things could matter—which, the way she said it, meant it would matter, and had he listened? Ohhhhh no. His father, supposedly referring to Cowles Wilton, who had a short messy marriage to some obscure little Jewish girl, had said, “Isn’t it just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl from a good family?” And had he listened? Ohhhhhh no. And all these years, Judy, as the daughter of a Midwestern history professor—a Midwestern history professor!—had acted as if she was an intellectual aristocrat—but she hadn’t minded using his money and his family to get in with this new social crowd of hers and start her decorating business and smear their names and their apartment across the pages of these vulgar publications, W and Architectural Digest and the rest of them, had she? Ohhhhhhhhh no, not for a minute! And what was he left with? A forty-year-old bolting off to her Sports Training classes—

  —and all at once, he sees her as he first saw her that night fourteen years ago in the Village at Hal Thorndike’s apartment with the chocolate-brown walls and the huge table covered with obelisks and the crowd that went considerably beyond bohemian, if he understood bohemian—and the girl with the light brown hair and the fine, fine features and the wild short skimpy dress that revealed so much of her perfect little body. And all at once he feels the ineffable way they closed themselves up in the perfect cocoon, in his little apartment on Charles Street and her little apartment on West Nineteenth, immune to all that his parents and Buckley and St. Paul’s and Yale had ever imposed on him—and he remembers how he told her—in practically these words!—that their love would transcend…everything—