Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [40]
One of my neighbours, once a feared federal cabinet minister but now in his eighties, has gone gaga. He is still a natty dresser, never without his tweed hat, regimental tie, hacking jacket, and cavalry-twill trousers. But his eyes have emptied out. Weather permitting, his keeper, a cheerful young nurse, airs him out once a day, taking him for a turn round the courtyard. Then they subside onto a bench in the sun, the nurse dipping into a Harlequin paperback and the former cabinet minister sucking jellybeans, watching the cars come and go in the parking lot, and writing down their licence numbers on a pad. Whenever I pass, he smiles and says, “Congratulations.”
The senator who recently moved into our penthouse is none other than Harvey Schwartz, booze baron Bernard Gursky’s former consiglière. Harvey is worth kazillions. He and Becky own a Hockney, which I wish were mine; a Warhol; a painting by what’s-his-name, who used to ride a bicycle over his canvases;21 and a Leo Bishinsky, constantly rising in value. I stopped the Schwartzes in the lobby recently, the two of them obviously bound for a charity costume ball, tricked out like a twenties mobster and his moll. “Well, I’ll be gol-darned,” I said, “if it ain’t Bonnie and Clyde Schwartz. Don’t shoot.”
“Ignore him,” said Harvey. “He’s drunk again.”
“One minute,” I said. “You know that Bishinsky you own?”
“You’ve never been invited to our apartment,” said Harvey, “and you never will be. Forget it.”
“I thought you’d be delighted to know that I worked on it too. Let fly with a wet mop Leo handed me one day.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” said Becky.
“Ten to one you’ve never even met Bishinsky,” said Harvey, brushing past me.
We also boast a gaggle of divorcées of a certain age in The Lord Byng Manor. My favourite, an anorexic with a helmet of lacquered hair dyed blonde, breasts once as flat as yesterday’s flapjacks, and legs as thin as pipe cleaners, hasn’t spoken to me since we ran into each other after she had returned from a second-chance clinic in Toronto, where she had gone for a face-lift and a boob refill. I had greeted her in the lobby with a kiss on the cheek.
“What are you staring at?” she demanded.
“I’m waiting to see if the dent remains in place.”
“Bastard.”
I no longer really have to go into my production office, where I am considered a spent force. I could live anywhere. In London with Mike and Caroline. In New York with Saul and whoever is his latest squeeze. Or in Toronto with Kate. Kate’s my darling. But in Toronto I’d be bound to run into Miriam and Blair Hopper né Hauptman, Herr Doktor Professor of Nostrums.
CBC Radio, overjoyed to have Miriam back in Toronto, immediately found a niche for her. Reverting to her maiden name, Greenberg, by which she first came to national attention as an arts reporter, she now presides over a morning classical-music program called “By Special Request.” It enables listeners to ask for any recording they fancy, treating us to the insufferably cute stories behind their selection. I tape these shows, tracking the tunes most popular with Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch. They are, in no special order, “The William Tell Overture,” “The Moonlight Sonata,” “The Warsaw Concerto,” “The Four Seasons,” “The 1812 Overture.” I play these tapes back at night, seated in the dark, a Macallan in hand, savouring the voice of my one true love, pretending she is not on the radio but in our bathroom, going about her nightly ablutions, preparing for bed, where she will curl into me, warming my old bones, and I will cup her breasts until I fall asleep. Riding sufficient Macallan, my pretence will go so far as to even allow me to call out to her, “I know you’re worried about my smoking, darling, so I’m putting out my cigar right now and coming straight to bed.”
Poor Miriam. Her program’s a clunker. Between playing records, she is obliged to read her listeners’ letters aloud; once — to my everlasting glee — a letter that purported to come from a Mrs. Doreen Willis of Vancouver Island:
Dear Miriam,
I hope you don