Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel(17)

“Hey, Conrad. This is my wife, Julia.”

“Nice to meet you.” He does a quick up and down of her. Poor guy can’t help it. “Nick, this is my wife, Janice. Janice, Julia and Nick.” Conrad has a deep voice that pronounces the southern drawl.

We all shake hands as the doorman presses the button to call the elevator and tells us William and Jen are in 22C. We ride up in silence and Janice reeks of cigarette smoke. It’s in her clothes and I’m sure by the end of the night it will be in mine the way it was going to a bar in the nineties.

We get off on the twenty-second floor and ring the doorbell at C. William answers looking very sophisticated.

“Evening, gents. Ladies.” He’s wearing a blue blazer with a handkerchief neatly tucked in the breast pocket. He and Jen must be feeling very grown-up that they’re hosting a dinner party, like they’re a real couple.

We walk in, shake hands, and deliver the wine, and each of our wives gets a kiss on the cheek. Jerry’s already in the living room drinking from a bottle of Budweiser. His wife, Alison, is sitting on a two-seat sofa also drinking a beer. I’ve met her once before, so I go over to say hello and introduce Julia.

It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment and the living and dining rooms are combined into a single larger box of a room. William and Jen have put some extra leaves into the dining room table so it stretches across most of the space, and the sofas have been moved up against the wall. Julia and I circle the dining room table to get to Alison.

She’s better-looking as a woman than Jerry is as a man. She doesn’t have brittle-looking red hair for a start. She has short brown hair and a round face, round eyes, and dimples. She’s short and a little chubby but looks like she may have been athletic. Maybe a soccer player. Overall, cute, and nicely done for Jerry. She’s very pleasant and seems to have a go-along-with-it kind of attitude. Probably the kind of wife who doesn’t like football much but ends up watching it all day Sunday anyway.

As we’re talking, Jen walks into the room from the kitchen wearing an apron. “Hello, everyone. We’ll be serving dinner in about twenty minutes.”

William jumps in, raising his drink. “We ordered from Smith and Wollensky.”

I can’t imagine Jen planned to keep a secret that she’s reheating restaurant dinners from up the street, but she looks a little irritated at William’s interruption.

“In the meantime, William can fix you all a drink.”

“Yes, what can I get for you all?”

“Ya have any white wine?” Janice asks this in a tone as though she expects the answer to be no.

“We have sauvignon blanc.”

“Okay. One of those.”

“Julia?”

“That’s great for me too. Thanks, William.”

“Nick, bourbon?”

“Thanks.”

“Conrad?”

“Vodka soda, lime.”

Janice chirps up again. “You mind if I smoke?”

William’s face says please don’t do that in my apartment. “Sure, no problem.”

Jen is tugging and restraightening her apron. “Maybe you could just do it by the window. William, will you crack the window and get Janice an ashtray?”

“Sure.” William looks around for an ashtray, which they don’t have, and ends up coming back with a cereal bowl. The winter air through the window feels good. The living room isn’t meant for eight people and was getting stuffy already.

Most of us get to our second or third drink standing around the room. Conrad’s on his fourth vodka soda. I don’t know why it takes so goddamn long to reheat a dinner from a restaurant. Julia had started out talking with Janice but after suffering a few minutes of smoke had moved on to Alison and stayed there. Janice likes to talk with the cigarette still in her mouth. Her saliva has formed a sort of adhesive on her bottom lip so the cigarette can dangle from there even if the top lip isn’t holding it down. When she talks, the cigarette flips up and down so you can’t possibly pay attention to a word she’s saying, you just watch the cigarette move like you’re being put under hypnosis. She’s in the habit of starting to talk before the smoke has cleared her lungs, so the first words are accompanied by white vapor and she seems to like the effect. I think she’s somewhere between a college girl trying to look cool and true trailer trash.

William finally comes out with the first few platters and he and Jen ask us all to sit anywhere at the table. Jerry, Conrad, and I all instinctively pull back chairs for our wives. We know how to play the part of a gentleman. Wall Street guys may play around with strippers, but we know how to help our wives on with a coat, out of a cab, and into a chair. Maybe when the wives are rationalizing why they stay with us, this gives them something to hang on to.

Julia’s great in these situations. She has interesting things to say and she doesn’t have to talk too much or too little. If she’s next to someone who talks constantly, she doesn’t mind saying little. If she’s next to a shy person, she can take on more of the load.

Conrad keeps putting away the vodka and has gotten wrapped up in telling us about the year he lived in Tokyo. His voice has gotten so loud that it’s the only conversation at the whole table, and he seems to think we’re all fascinated.

“Japan is the best. Women are so subservient there. Every day a couple women would come over and clean my place, fold all the towels, lay my clothes out on the bed. In the evenings they’d give me a massage. Whenever they leave or enter a room, they bow to me.” He takes a drink and looks thoughtful. “I really developed an attraction for Asian women there. Seriously. Not just to the way they act to me, but physically. I really got to like the look. The funny thing is those Japanese guys love blond American women. Some low-rent blond model here can go make a fortune in a Tokyo strip joint.”