astride her blond Kneissl skis, streak by in speeding profile, her backward-slanting angle an attitude as elegant and precise as the cool Clichy crystal itself.
IT RAINED NIGHT BEFORE LAST; by morning an autumnal flight of dry Canadian air had stopped the next wave, so I went for a walk, and whom should I run into but Woodrow Hamilton!—the man responsible, indirectly anyway, for this last disastrous adventure of mine. Here I am at the Central Park Zoo, empathizing with a zebra, when a disbelieving voice says: “P. B.?” and it was he, the descendant of our twenty-eighth President. “My God, P. B. You look …”
I knew how I looked inside my grey skin, my greasy seersucker suit. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Oh. I see. I wondered if you were involved in that. All I know is what I read in the paper. It must be quite a story. Look,” he said when I didn’t reply, “let’s step over to the Pierre and have a drink.”
They wouldn’t serve me at the Pierre because I wasn’t wearing a tie; we wandered over to a Third Avenue saloon, and onthe way I decided I wasn’t going to discuss Kate McCloud or anything that happened, not out of discretion, but because it was too raw: my spilled guts were still dragging the ground.
Woodrow didn’t insist; he may look like a neat nice celluloid square, but really, that’s the camouflage that protects the more undulating aspects of his nature. I had last seen him at the Trois Cloches in Cannes, and that was a year ago. He said he had an apartment in Brooklyn Heights and was teaching Greek and Latin at a boys’ prep school in Manhattan. “But,” he slyly mused, “I have a part-time job. Something that might interest you: if appearances speak, I expect you could use some extra change.”
He consulted his wallet and handed me first a hundred-dollar bill: “I earned that just this afternoon, playing ring around the maypole with a Vassar graduate, class of ’09”; then a card: “And this is how I met the lady. How I meet them all. Men. Women. Crocodiles. Fuck for fun and profit. At any rate, profit.”
The card read: THE SELF SERVICE. PROPRIETOR, MISS VICTORIA SELF . It listed an address on West Forty-second Street and a telephone number with a circle exchange.
“So,” said Woodrow, “clean yourself up and go see Miss Self. She’ll give you a job.”
“I don’t think I could handle a job. I’m too strung out. And I’m trying to write again.”
Woodrow nibbled the onion in his Gibson. “I wouldn’t call it a
job
. Just a few hours a week. After all, what kind of service do you think The Self Service provides?”
“Stud duty, obviously. Dial-a-Dick.”
“Ah, you
were
listening—you seemed so fogbound. Stud duty, indeed. But not entirely. It’s a co-ed operation. La Self is always ready with anything anywhere anyhow anytime.
“Strange. I would never have pictured you as a stud-for-hire.”
“Nor I. But I’m a certain type: good manners, grey suit, horn-rimmed glasses. Believe me, there’s plenty of demand. AndLa Self specializes in variety. She has everything on her roster from Puerto Rican thugs to rookie cops and stockbrokers.”
“Where did she find you?”
“That,” said Woodrow, “is too long a tale.” He ordered another drink; I declined, for I hadn’t tasted liquor since that final incredible gin-crazed session with Kate McCloud, and now just one drink had made me slightly deaf (alcohol first affects my hearing). “I’ll only say it was through a guy I knew at Yale. Dick Anderson. He works on Wall Street. A real straight guy, but he hasn’t done too well, or well enough to live in Greenwich and have three kids, two of them at Exeter. Last summer I spent a weekend with the Andersons—she’s a
real
good gal; Dick and I sat up drinking cold duck, that’s this mess made with champagne and sparkling burgundy; boy, it makes me churn to think of it. And Dick said: ‘Most of the times I’m disgusted.
Just disgusted
. Goddamn, what a man
IT RAINED NIGHT BEFORE LAST; by morning an autumnal flight of dry Canadian air had stopped the next wave, so I went for a walk, and whom should I run into but Woodrow Hamilton!—the man responsible, indirectly anyway, for this last disastrous adventure of mine. Here I am at the Central Park Zoo, empathizing with a zebra, when a disbelieving voice says: “P. B.?” and it was he, the descendant of our twenty-eighth President. “My God, P. B. You look …”
I knew how I looked inside my grey skin, my greasy seersucker suit. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Oh. I see. I wondered if you were involved in that. All I know is what I read in the paper. It must be quite a story. Look,” he said when I didn’t reply, “let’s step over to the Pierre and have a drink.”
They wouldn’t serve me at the Pierre because I wasn’t wearing a tie; we wandered over to a Third Avenue saloon, and onthe way I decided I wasn’t going to discuss Kate McCloud or anything that happened, not out of discretion, but because it was too raw: my spilled guts were still dragging the ground.
Woodrow didn’t insist; he may look like a neat nice celluloid square, but really, that’s the camouflage that protects the more undulating aspects of his nature. I had last seen him at the Trois Cloches in Cannes, and that was a year ago. He said he had an apartment in Brooklyn Heights and was teaching Greek and Latin at a boys’ prep school in Manhattan. “But,” he slyly mused, “I have a part-time job. Something that might interest you: if appearances speak, I expect you could use some extra change.”
He consulted his wallet and handed me first a hundred-dollar bill: “I earned that just this afternoon, playing ring around the maypole with a Vassar graduate, class of ’09”; then a card: “And this is how I met the lady. How I meet them all. Men. Women. Crocodiles. Fuck for fun and profit. At any rate, profit.”
The card read: THE SELF SERVICE. PROPRIETOR, MISS VICTORIA SELF . It listed an address on West Forty-second Street and a telephone number with a circle exchange.
“So,” said Woodrow, “clean yourself up and go see Miss Self. She’ll give you a job.”
“I don’t think I could handle a job. I’m too strung out. And I’m trying to write again.”
Woodrow nibbled the onion in his Gibson. “I wouldn’t call it a
job
. Just a few hours a week. After all, what kind of service do you think The Self Service provides?”
“Stud duty, obviously. Dial-a-Dick.”
“Ah, you
were
listening—you seemed so fogbound. Stud duty, indeed. But not entirely. It’s a co-ed operation. La Self is always ready with anything anywhere anyhow anytime.
“Strange. I would never have pictured you as a stud-for-hire.”
“Nor I. But I’m a certain type: good manners, grey suit, horn-rimmed glasses. Believe me, there’s plenty of demand. AndLa Self specializes in variety. She has everything on her roster from Puerto Rican thugs to rookie cops and stockbrokers.”
“Where did she find you?”
“That,” said Woodrow, “is too long a tale.” He ordered another drink; I declined, for I hadn’t tasted liquor since that final incredible gin-crazed session with Kate McCloud, and now just one drink had made me slightly deaf (alcohol first affects my hearing). “I’ll only say it was through a guy I knew at Yale. Dick Anderson. He works on Wall Street. A real straight guy, but he hasn’t done too well, or well enough to live in Greenwich and have three kids, two of them at Exeter. Last summer I spent a weekend with the Andersons—she’s a
real
good gal; Dick and I sat up drinking cold duck, that’s this mess made with champagne and sparkling burgundy; boy, it makes me churn to think of it. And Dick said: ‘Most of the times I’m disgusted.
Just disgusted
. Goddamn, what a man
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