Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [115]
When I went to claim my limo, Shelley’s pleasure, the doorman explained that Mrs. Katz had told the driver to go home. “In that case,” I said, my shirt stained with Beaujolais, Fiona Darling’s parting shot, “I’m going to need a taxi.”
“Where are you going, sir?”
“The Beverly Wilshire.”
The doorman summoned a blond, muscle-bound car jockey. “Clint will drive you there for twenty-five bucks,” said the doorman, “gratuity not included.”
Clint eased somebody else’s Rolls-Royce out of the parking lot and deposited me at the Beverly Wilshire in style. Agitated, grieving, I made right for Fernando’s Hideaway, settling into a bar stool and ordering a Courvoisier XO, which was foolish of me, as I had already had more than enough to drink and could no longer handle cognac late at night.
“And what happened to you, you bad boy?” asked the young woman seated next to me, indicating my shirt.
An attractive redhead she was, endearingly freckled, her smile saucy, and her tight jersey scooped low. She also wore an ankle-length skirt, a slit riding high up one side. “May I offer you a drink?” I asked.
“I’ll have a glass of French champagne.”
Petula (Pet for short, but not for long, she said) and I began to exchange banalities, even my most feeble wisecracks rewarded with a gentle squeeze of my knee. I signalled the bartender for another round.
“Lookee,” she said, “if we’re going to go on like interfacing together, you know, and why not, it’s a free country, why don’t we grab that little table in the corner, you know, before somebody else like beats us to it?”
Sucking in my stomach, I accepted her hand and trailed after her to the table, shlepping her inordinately heavy handbag, my delight enhanced because it seemed to me, in my sodden state, that other men in the room, younger men who had dismissed me as past it, the prerogative of the callow, were now regarding me with envy. Then it began to ring. Her handbag, for Christ’s sake. Startled, I thrust it at her. She dug into it and pulled out a cellular phone. “Yeah. Uh huh. No, like I’m with somebody. Tell them like I said howdy and he’ll adore Brenda,” she said, replacing the phone.
Two middle-aged men, both wearing Los Angeles Kings sweaters and blue jeans, huddled at the next table. “Is it true,” asked the one sporting number 99, whispering the name of a studio, “that the sale to the Japs is going through?”
“Just between you and I, I’ve seen the paperwork,” said his companion. “All that remains to be done is to cross the ‘t’s’ and slant the ‘i’s.’ ”
“Don’t tell me,” said Petula, stroking my knee, “you’re a producer. Not that I’m like looking for work, you know, so don’t worry. Like, guess my age.”
“Twenty-eight.”
“You kidder, you. Like I’m thirty-four, you know, my body clock going tickety-tick-tock even as we eyeball each other here. And let me look at you. Like I’d say you were, like, fifty-four years old, you know. Am I right?”
Unwilling to dip into my breast pocket for my compromising reading glasses, I pretended to study the wine list, a total blur, and ordered a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a Courvoisier XO.
“You’re positively evil,” she said, nudging me.
The brisket and latkes got to me, still sitting there, a stone, and I was hard-pressed to contain what I feared would be a resounding fart. Then, happily, she had to go to “the little girl’s room,” enabling me to let rip a sneaker, sighing with relief, but looking absolutely innocent when the man downwind, a table to my right, glowered at me, his wife ostentatiously fanning herself with her menu.
Petula, sashaying back my way, was