Aftermath of Dreaming(53)
It was horrendous and there was no way I was going to dinner like that. I was all ready to call Peg to cancel, but Carrie convinced me that would be a bad move—all those important men’s schedules arranged for one night to meet me. Just go and explain what happened, they’ll understand, she was sure. So off I went in an outfit that I felt great in, at least, because the left side of my face still had tears running down it, but hopefully it would be too dark in the restaurant for anyone to really see.
The loud, chic Italian restaurant was perfectly lit for the patrons to look great, but especially to be seen by everyone else since that, more than eating, was the point of the place. In the well-lit space, I had to zigzag through closely packed tables while everyone craned their heads to see who had come in, which added to the ersatz runway experience of walking in. Tory’s table was in a private room in the back with two men in dark suits standing at each side of the door. They appeared to be on guard, and eventually I realized they were—one of the seven men was from a large prominent family in Milan that controlled all kinds of things, is one way to say it, and they belonged to him. Tory spoke to him only in Italian, and seemed to covet his bodyguards the way a person does a private plane. The seven dwarfs were all different ages and heights, but all horrendously sophisticated about art: a critic, a few huge collectors, a prominent artist, and a couple of curators at museums. At various times in the evening, each man turned to me, bearing down with his elegant and educated brain, and gave me a question or two, which I answered while doing my best to hide my still-tearing eye. Though to the man on my left, it was impossible to camouflage, and he kept glancing at the tears as if they were contagious, so I tried to explain what happened, but he was the Italian and didn’t understand. He kept confusing “eye” for “I,” thinking I was cut somewhere else, but only magically expressing it on one side. I gave up, and did my best to converse with him in the little English he knew, but it didn’t go anywhere. Tory was ignoring my eye or didn’t notice, so busy was she at the other end of the table talking in French, Italian, English, and sometimes in all three. Once she said, “From the South; Alabama, I think,” among other words I couldn’t discern, though I definitely heard “Andrew” a few times.
At the end of the evening as we were dispersing on the street, Tory came up to me, grabbed both of my shoulders, and said, “For God’s sake, get some rest.” I started to tell her what happened to my eye with the Village Voice, but she thought I was talking about getting publicity, then one of the men tapped her shoulder to say goodbye, causing her smile to be reborn when she turned to him.
My cab ride home was an exercise in reliving the whole thing and wishing it had gone a lot better—as in great. I told Carrie all about it when I got home. She thought it sounded fine, but I kept wishing I had been more “on.”
“How much could they expect? You’re eighteen, for Christ’s sake, in a show at Sexton Space. That’s plenty cool enough, and you looked great tonight. Okay, the eye, I know, but other than that, you did. They probably all wanted to have sex with you and were just putting up that disinterested front the way boys do. Don’t worry about it.” And she poured me another glass of wine.
Lying in bed that night, waiting for sleep to come, I wished to God that Andrew was at the Ritz-Carlton—or even just reachable by phone—so I could tell him about the dinner, get his reaction, hear his comforting voice, and his reassuring, “You big f*cking art star.”
Then for the first time, I doubted it might come true. Andrew had always made it sound so much a fait accompli that I hadn’t really questioned it. Just trusted him and what he knew. And he was so confident about it, why shouldn’t I be? But suddenly in the dark of my tiny bedroom on my lonely twin bed, I realized that there were a lot more hoops to go through than I ever could have imagined before that could come true.
On the following Tuesday, I went into work for the eleven-to-eight shift and found the restaurant in a state of total doom, as if the entire city of New York had died, and as I soon found out, it pretty much had. It was October 20, the morning after Black Monday, the worst stock market crash since 1929. Lunch reservations were being canceled nonstop, including standing reservations for men whose names held court on the pages of the long leather ledger every day of the week, representing a booth along the wall in the barroom or a table by the pool in the main room held only for them until and if their secretary called to let it go. None were coming in. Though a few out-of-towners showed up and I watched Claitor do his best job ever of hiding his disdain for that sort; tourists were not his thing.
One horrendously hot and humid summer day toward the end of lunch, an obviously touristy couple—looking as if they came from Nebraska, but had walked all the way—straggled up the stairs. The dining rooms had already begun clearing out, some tables were empty, and there was enough time to seat them before the kitchen closed. Claitor smiled in his most charming way, and explained that he would love for them to have lunch, but unfortunately, he couldn’t seat the gentleman without a jacket and tie, house rules. A host who was very new and unused to interpreting Claitor’s many tones immediately piped up, Wasn’t that what all those navy jackets and striped ties in the closet were for? Claitor kept the same small smile fixed on his face as if no words had been spoken, and thanked the couple for coming in, then suggested they try La Chanteuse up the street. When the rejected tourists were well down the stairs, Claitor turned to the offending host, saying, “And did you like the way they looked?” Then walked into the kitchen to order his meal.