About Schmidt - Louis Begley [58]
On the other hand, I will never again need to order a dinner jacket or an overcoat. The ones I have will see me through. Their remaining useful life is longer than mine.
VII
THE INVITATION is extended over the telephone by Mr. Gilbert Blackman’s assistant, new on the job or for other reasons unknown to Schmidt, although, having heard her speak, he might have sworn to Sergeant Smith that he could describe her in all relevant detail: medium height, a trifle on the heavy side, baby fat in all likelihood; ash-blond hair cut in a pageboy; gray eyes; blond fuzz on cheeks and upper lip; black crew-neck sweater with short sleeves, Black Watch kilt, pale stockings with seams straight as a rail, and black calf pumps. Except that he was all wrong. The Boston debutante Schmidt had beheld in his mind’s eye—a graduate, in that order, of Miss Porter’s, Smith College, and Katharine Gibbs’s starchy establishment—who had spent some time working as a movie mogul’s social secretary because the oaf who hadn’t as yet managed to give her an orgasm thought they should wait to get married until he got his diploma from the Harvard Law School, indeed could have been, as a matter of generations, the mother of Mr. Blackman’s employee. But she wasn’t. According to our information, the daughter of the Boston debutante so well known to Schmidt teaches aerobic dancing on the Upper West Side and lives with an African-American photographer. Gil’s current assistant is a brunette of Greek extraction, alone among her siblings, every one of them a college graduate, to have acquired a well-bred voice and perfect diction. When she makes the telephone call, she wears a red leather miniskirt, so short it makes it rather awkward to sit down. She prefers knitted silk to cashmere and has no immediate marriage prospects, among other reasons because—unbeknownst to Schmidt, months having passed since he and Gil last exchanged confidences of that nature at lunch—Mr. Blackman regularly bangs her on the sofa in the sanctum sanctorum accessible only through a discreet door in the office, graced by a Miró, where Mr. Blackman conducts the common run of his business. No matter: the vision induced great affability in the nostalgic Mr. Schmidt. Wordlessly, he forgave the slight (Gil could have come to the telephone himself; he knows very well I no longer have a secretary), and agreed to have dinner at eight in the country on the following Saturday. How lovely, rejoiced the perfect voice. Gil and Elaine will be so glad; I believe it will be just you and them.
Thus at five before the hour, in order to be neither early nor unduly late, in his better blue blazer, too stylish for O’Henry’s but exactly right for the Blackmans’, equipped with presents (CDs for the parents and the elder, presumably absent daughters, and a cologne spray for Lilly, in Schmidt’s opinion sexually advanced and much maligned), Schmidt stepped into his ice-cold car. Under a moon so fine and bright it could have shone over the palace of Osman Pasha, he drove to Geórgica. There stood Gil’s cottage. Not a car in sight—neither on the circular drive nor among the giant azaleas where a guest fearful of blocking others and indifferent to the welfare of the lawn might have parked. They would, in fact, be alone. Schmidt sniffed the greenery wired to the brass knocker, rang the doorbell, and entered. In the hall, under a majestic tree, packages had accumulated. He added his shopping bag. Was this a new extravagance of the Wandering Jew, to hang a wreath and dress the tree during Advent each time he pitched his tent for the night, or were the Blackmans actually planning to spend Christmas in Wainscott? Schmidt directed his steps to the library. Ho, ho, ho, he called out, here comes Schmidtie, the ruddy-nosed