One Thousand Chestnut Trees. Mira Stout
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off – the marquee lights of the Coronet stayed on all night, bathing the curtainless apartment in ice-blue illumination. Since my small epiphany about Korea, I felt quite restless, unable to block out the usual nocturnal serenade. Traffic noise roared down Twenty-third Street. I was roused by the shout of a wino, the sound of a taxi honking. Around four am, someone’s newly discovered favourite song boomeranged around the building’s airshaft. The loud noise had a pointless, sad defiance to it, like a prisoner shaking the bars of his cell. It repeated three times more and abruptly stopped. Just before dawn, I slept.
At six o’clock the next morning I was awakened, as usual, by the hydraulic twangs of the industrial elevators delivering shipments to the storage basement below the funeral parlour. Feeling jetlagged from sleep-interruption, I dozed on until nearly nine. Standing in the narrow, gloomy kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil I remembered that Oliver had given me a month’s notice. Familiar financial fear started to spread through my lungs like camphor.
Obviously, rents and utilities had to be paid; food, drink, and art supplies had to be bankrolled, and a surreally large college loan needed repaying. I had difficulty swallowing my toast. I took a scorching swig of coffee and glanced around the apartment; Laura had not come home last night. The apartment looked dusty and neglected in daylight. It was dusty and neglected.
That afternoon Laura rang me at Cadogan Books and asked me to meet her for a drink at the Algonquin. Harry also called, back from his business trip to Philadelphia. He would join us there later. Laura and I met at six-thirty, and sat on a sofa trying to look nonchalant. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of days. She looked tired.
‘It’s my birthday,’ she said brushing a lock of wavy blond hair out of her martini glass. I had forgotten her birthday. So had Philip, the married lover.
‘About Philip,’ she said, ‘I think I’m in trouble.’
‘Not pregnant.’
‘No. In love,’ she said.
‘It’s not an affliction, you know.’
‘But it wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to just like his company. Appreciate the square meals. Now I really mind; I mind that he’s married; I mind that I mind. And of course …’ she trailed off, ‘It’s tacky, I know …’
‘Maybe you could bail out now, before you get hurt any more.’
‘Easier said than done, old thing.’
‘Yeah, I know. But you’ve got to think about the big picture. Meals come and go.’
Laura looked upset.
‘Well, I’ve lost my job; Oliver’s going out of business.’
Laura raised an eyebrow. A balding waiter politely brought us our second round of martinis and another dish of greasy mixed nuts.
I had known Laura since university. Since before she had become an unknown actress. She hadn’t met anyone nice since her junior year, when she’d gone out with Charlie Downs. It was widely assumed that they would get married. Charlie surprised everyone by getting engaged to the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Senator for whom he’d worked in Washington.
Across the room I noticed a couple of preppy-looking boys, probably around our age. One of them was long and droopy, and the other had curly hair and wore a cream-coloured Irish fisherman’s sweater draped around his neck. Unexpectedly, the droopy one made his way over to our sofa.
‘Would you ladies condescend to have a drink with us?’
‘Suave,’ Laura said, smirking, ‘I guess I wouldn’t mind another.’
I shot her a questioning look. One worried almost equally about Laura’s man-judgement as about her drinking-judgement. She tended neither to eat enough to avoid instant drunkenness, nor to get enough decent male attention to repulse dodgy advances. However a diversion from the adultery question was welcome. Noting his friend’s success, the boy in the fisherman’s sweater rose from his corner, and sauntered over to our table.
‘Hi there. Wen Stanley. Tommy introduced himself? Tom Morgan. Morgan-Stanley, I know, I know … Mind if we sit down?’ he asked.
‘What kind of a name is “Wen”?’ said Laura.
‘Short for Wendell,’ said Wen, visibly warming to his subject. He and Tommy smiled conspiratorially. ‘Waiter! Another round please. Put these on my tab, will you?’ said Wen, untying his sweater sleeves.
I don’t remember a great deal of the ensuing conversation, nor was any of it surprising. Condensed version: them; Groton, Middlebury, Manufacturer’s Hanover training program, Fisher’s Island. Laura knew Tommy Morgan’s sister from St Pauls. Wen knew a few people from Brown, including my old boyfriend, Fred, and a slew of friends of my friends’ cousins. Wen lived on the upper East Side in his maiden aunt’s apartment. Would we like to go up there for a nightcap?
Laura said she’d like to, and excused herself to go to the Ladies’ Room. I sat there between the boys, smashed. We had eaten some nuts and pretzels. I counted having drunk five martinis. (A first.)
Just then Harry entered the hotel and looked around inquisitively. He spotted me sandwiched between two strange men, and his face hardened a fraction. I had forgotten that Harry was coming.
‘How was Philadelphia?’
‘Fine,’ he said, scrutinizing me. ‘Harry Palmer. Pleased to meet you,’ he said, shaking hands insincerely with Morgan-Stanley. He fired me another look and settled heavily into Laura’s seat. The boys exchanged men-of-the-world glances.
‘Not Palmer, of Palmer’s Peanut Butter, I trust?’ said Tommy, in an inspired gambit.
‘’Fraid so,’ said Harry, looking about distractedly.
‘Weh-hey! Palmer’s Peanut Butter! The King of Peanut Butters. That makes you … what, King Peanut?’ said Wen.
Harry flinched. ‘My father’s the boss.’
‘So what do you do, crack the shells?’ Tommy drained his martini glass languidly.
Harry ignored him.
‘So you must be an incredibly rich guy. Plus all the peanut butter you could ever desire.’
‘I’m flattered at your interest in the family business. Why, what does your father do?’
‘Here are the drinks. Cheers, Mr Peanut!’ Wen raised his glass. Harry’s jaw tightened again, and he looked at me with distaste.
‘I’d better go see what’s happened to Laura,’ I excused myself. As I walked to the Ladies’ Room the force of the martinis asserted itself in a blaze of dizziness and acidic hunger. Legs, which felt like they belonged to someone else, carried me to the little wood-panelled bar with the grouchy bartender. Ignoring his eyeballing intimidation tactics, I crammed a handful of mini-pretzels from the napkinned bowl into my mouth and walked away, crunching, pleased to be able to negotiate the crowded reception area without mishap. I found Laura behind a locked cubicle in the Ladies’ Room.
‘Are you all right, Laur?’ I got down on all fours onto the spotless black-and-white checkerboard floor and looked under the door.
‘Absolutely not,’ came a weak voice above her familiar feet, ‘I’ve been sick.’
Worried that I might get sick as well, I started to do some light jumping-jacks and toe-touching calisthenics, hoping that violent blood circulation might speed the alcohol-processing and chatted with some difficulty to Laura as I performed them.
The sound of Laura retching ripped through the echoey sanctum. It was so hushed in the Algonquin that one could imagine being ejected for making audible bodily function noises. A middle-aged woman in a fur coat entered and looked