Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [108]
“Have you got an M.A. from McGill?”
“No.”
“Am I embarrassed?”
I began to growl.
“We’ve already been sitting here for maybe an hour and I think you’ve said maybe eight words to me. I don’t want to appear ungrateful for so much attention, but how much longer do we sit here?”
“One more drink.”
“That makes eleven words. I didn’t come here to mourn the death of your first wife.”
“Neither did I.”
“You keep saying my father is such a snob, but you think I’m a lesser person because I thought it was a footbath. Look at yourself in the mirror, why don’t you?”
“I don’t dare.”
“Well, I’m not going to sit here any longer, watching you stare into space, because we’ve only got four more days here, and I’ve still got lots to do,” she said, pulling those cards out of her handbag, with a check-list divided into three categories: Must Do’s, Optionals, and If There’s Time. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel at seven. And it would be nice if you were still sober when we went to dinner. Let’s just say it would be a welcome change.”
As our hotel room filled with her purchases, I began to feel like a character in that play by the Romanian, you know who I mean.52 He wrote one in which Zero Mostel turned into an elephant.53 No, a hippopotamus. The play was called Chairs, yes, that’s it, and the author’s first name was the same as that guy who managed the Expos in their early years. Gene Mauch it was. The baseball manager, not the playwright. A Romanian called Gene? Oh, what does it matter? In the play, the set fills up with furniture, until there is no room for the characters, and so it seemed in our obstacle course of a hotel room.
I watched, bemused, as our dresser top became covered end to end with bottles of perfume, eau-de-Cologne, shampoos, and body oils; lipsticks lined up like bullets; cartons of variously scented soaps; boxes containing sprays, bath salts, and powders; a sea sponge; jars of restorative creams and tubes of mysterious ointments; eyebrow pencils; compacts and compact fillers. Here, there, and everywhere, I stumbled over boxes and bags from shops on the boulevard de la Madeleine, the rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré, the rue de Rivoli, the avenue George-V, and the boulevard des Capucines. Outfits, with matching accessories, acquired at Courrèges, Cardin, Nina Ricci. An evening bag from Lanvin. And not for nothing was The Second Mrs. Panofsky a McGill M.A. Long after I had gone to bed, she sat up carefully razoring out tell-tale couturier labels to be mailed home, and sewing in labels from Eaton’s, Ogilvy’s, and Holt Renfrew that she had brought with her from Montreal.
We did do the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, the Musée Rodin, where, forearmed with a list of the major works, she would have a quick glance, check it off her list, and move on to the next. We had only been in Paris for four days when, to her delight, we were able to start in on Optionals.
I’m an impulsive man, a guy who believes in making his own mistakes rather than regretting things not done, and one of the worst was my lightning courtship and marriage to The Second Mrs. Panofsky, which doesn’t excuse my atrocious behaviour on our honeymoon. She had to be confused, as I vacillated between being morose and then, prompted by guilt, attentive beyond compare, resolved to make our union work. One night, simulating enthusiasm for her latest acquisition from Dior or Lanvin, which she had modelled for me in our room, I took her to dinner at one of the restaurants on her list, and then slyly inquired about relatives of hers I had met at our wedding, monied alrightniks I hoped never to see again, feigning interest in her garrulous responses, and, finally, as an afterthought, I said, “Oh yeah, and then it seems to me there was that girl, I forget her name, wearing a layered blue chiffon cocktail dress, who obviously considered herself quite a number, not that I did.”
“Miriam Greenberg?”
“Yeah, I think that was her name. Is she also a relative?”
“Hardly. She wasn’t even invited.”
“You mean she had the audacity to crash our —? Now I find that awfully pushy.”
“My