One summer afternoon in New York I was browsing in a bookshop. I was looking through the stacks of books with a deep concentration, not even thinking of my ferocious preoccupation with the great. Yet suddenly I was aware of another presence in the shop—“presence” is the very word. It wasn’t the bookseller, a typically dusty, foreign-looking man who padded back and forth between the narrow book-close aisles. It wasn’t any of the two or three other browsers; it wasn’t even anyone who had just entered the shop. The place had one of those bells above the door, and I had heard no ringing. I simply knew that someone great was in the shop with us, someone whom I had not seen before, who had been stooping perhaps in one of the dark corners when I entered the shop. I’m keenly sensitive to the great, of course, but I have no sixth sense; I see no visions, hear no voices. I am simply stage-struck to the point of sickness. I turned around. Behind me was Orson Welles. In other circumstances (if, for example, I had walked into the shop and come upon him) I would have invented some reason for talking to him. I admire Mr. Welles. We might even have had a successful gam. Now, however, all I did was confirm yet again the stunning validity of the impression I first had when I followed the campaign trains.
It is this. There is about great men a physical presence that always matches their symbolic one. They
look
like great men. They are like jewels set off against black velvet in a bright white light. But take away the black velvet of their deeds, the bright white light of their fame, and they are still like jewels, their worth as clear among broken bottles in an alley as in the jeweler’s case. Somehow, too, they seem smaller than they really are—like small, heavy bronze reproductions of famous statues. Like the reproductions, they have the air of impressive compactness. Their faces and bodies do not bleed into the surroundings as do our own; they preserve always a nimbus of self, of opaque and valuable and hard surfaces. I cannot account for the odd discrepancy between their reduced physical size and this clear impression of
weight,
except to speculate about the notion of solidity. There is something expensive about their queer compactness, their bronzy being. It is no wonder that we speak of men of
substance.
Mr. Welles is a big man, almost as large as myself, and yet, as he shuffled through the shop in his dark blue suit, the cigar he held between his fingers long-ashed but not burning, I had the impression that I could hold him in my hand.
The faces of the great are ruddier than ours, their strange health the physical manifestation, perhaps, of their symbolic immortality. Their bodies are fit. They are better tailored than we are, but that does not explain it. Nothing explains it, but I’m glad it’s so; it’s a confirmation of my way of life. No one need ever be ashamed of his expensive tastes.
Busy as I was following the campaign trains, concerned as I was for the success of my bad scheme, I saw all this in Eisenhower and in Stevenson. They were like heavy bags of precious coins, like treasure in firm caskets at the bottom of the sea.
(I have just thought of something. Perhaps cause and effect are somehow mixed up here. Perhaps we pick our leaders as we pick our actors—for their looks; perhaps the great are destined by nothing so much as their physical well-being; perhaps the world
is
all appearance. Is this the meaning of life? I may have stumbled onto something. I shall have to think about it.)
I was reminded of all this again last night when I met Dr. Morton Perlmutter.
Perlmutter was not yet at the Gibbenjoys’ when I arrived. When I am operating on a contraband invitation I take care to come after the other guests. In that way I am often unnoticed by the host, who, after all, doesn’t usually have any idea who I am. If you have to arrive at an affair late, it is important to be precisely as drunk as the other guests by the time you get there.
The Gibbenjoys were in the hall when I presented my invitation to their butler. I didn’t know they were the Gibbenjoys, of course. All I saw were some men and women in evening dress talking to each other, but I couldn’t take any chances. Indeed, it’s only logical that if someone is standing in the hall it’s probably the host or hostess. If I walked past without acknowledging them they might have blown the whistle on me immediately.
I walked by the group slowly and gazed warmly into their faces. It was my trickiest maneuver; with it I try to make it appear that I am personally known to all the group save the individual I am immediately looking at. It requires the nerves and timing of an acrobat. I look expectantly and just a shade blankly into a face, and at precisely the instant when recognition and intelligence must dawn or be abandoned, I flash a smile of recognition and overwhelming intimacy immediately to the person’s left. (Most people are right-handed so their peripheral vision is greater on their right than on their left side.) I may even wink. Frequently there is nothing to the person’s left except a statue or a piece of drapery. So precise and delicately off-center is this movement that even when someone actually is there he takes my look as intended for someone to
his
right. There are variations; sometimes I have tilted my head back, smiled, opened my mouth and exhaled an inaudible “Ah, there!” to pictures on the wall just behind and above the fellow in front of me.
I peered into the faces of the small gathering, nervous, as I say, that my host and hostess might be among them. If they were, my technique would flush a nod from one of them.
“Hello there,” a man said uncertainly. “Nice to see you.”
“Good evening, Irving,” I said without hesitation.
The man looked startled and for a moment I thought I might have made a mistake. Then he glanced in desperation toward a woman in a rose-colored evening gown and I knew I was all right. I turned to the woman quickly. “Eugenie,” I said. “How are you, darling?” I leaned down and brushed Mrs. Gibbenjoy’s confused face with a deft kiss. I turned back to Irving. “Perlmutter here yet?” I asked.
“Why no, not yet. We were waiting for him,” he said.
“He told me he’d be a little late,” I said, “but I thought he’d certainly be here by now.”
“No,” Irving Gibbenjoy said, “Not yet. We’re waiting for him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, look, I’ll go get a drink. When he comes in tell him Jim Boswell wants to see him.”
“Yes. Yes, I will, of course,” Irving brightened at once. “Oh, Mr. Boswell, forgive me for being so rude. You may not know all these other people.” I blew a kiss to a waiter serving drinks in a room behind Irving Gibbenjoy’s back; I waved the fingers on my left hand to an umbrella stand just as a woman walked by. She stopped, turned, and pointing to herself mouthed, “Who, me?” I looked back hastily at Irving Gibbenjoy. “Mr. and Mrs. Philo Perce,” Irving Gibbenjoy said.
I bowed to Mrs. Perce, shook Mr. Perce’s hand.
“General and Mrs. Bill Manara,” said Irving.
“General,” I said, “I go to all your wars.
Mrs.
Manara.”
“Hope Fayespringer.”
“Ah,” I said, “the Carnegie. How’s Granddad?”
“Mr. Jim Boswell, everybody,” Irving said a little uncomfortably.
“Are you a Philadelphian, Mr. Boswell?” the General asked me. Irving looked eager, thinking that now, perhaps, he might learn something about his guest.
“Not for some time, General,” I said.
“Where
do
you live now, Mr. Boswell?” Mrs. Gibbenjoy wanted to know. She was a tough one, Mrs. Gibbenjoy. It did not do actually to lie to these people. One hoped that the necessity for the truth simply did not come up.
“I’m at the Love right now, Eugenie.”
“The
love?”
said Hope Fayespringer.
“It’s a hotel,” I said.
“In Philadelphia?” the General asked.
“For some time, General.”
“Is that one of yours, Pilchard?” Mr. Gibbenjoy asked a man who had just joined us.
“What’s that, the Love? Lord, no, I wish it were. It’s a gold mine. It’s actually a kind of flophouse at the bad end of Market Street. Marvelous profits. Fresh linen just once a week. What do you pay, young man, a dollar a night?”
“One fifty.”
“There, you see? An enormously successful enterprise. Fellow named Penner owns it. He buys some of his supplies from us. There’s a motto on his letter head: ‘For We Have the Poor Always With Us.’ I tell you, Hilton and Sheraton and Pick and I are in the wrong field. A chain of flops, that’s the thing. Can’t you see it? ‘The Bowery Pilchard.’ ‘Skid Row East, a Pilchard Enterprise.’ It makes the mouth water. ‘For We Have the Poor Always With Us.’”
Mrs. Manara and Irving Gibbenjoy looked from Pilchard to me doubtfully. General Manara smiled, and Mrs. Gibbenjoy rubbed her cheek where I had kissed her.
“Do I
know
you, Mr. Boswell? When you came in and looked at our little group I had the impression we’d met,” Irving said.
“No, sir. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“Is Mr. Boswell your friend, Eugenie?”
“No. He’s not.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Boswell,” Irving said, “this must be embarrassing for you, but may I ask how you’re here?”
“I crashed.”
“Do people
do
that?” Mrs. Perce asked.
“But you had an invitation,” Irving said. “I saw you hand it to Miller.”
“It was an invitation to a
bar mitzvah,
Irving,” I said.
“Oh,” Irving said.
“You’ve not come to rob us, have you?” Hope Fayespringer asked, touching her necklace.
“Well, of course not,” I said.
“Well, you can’t stay,” Irving said.
“Why not?” I asked. “I probably know some of the people here.”
“You do?” Mrs. Manara said.
“From other parties,” I said.
“That makes no difference. You’ll have to leave,” Irving said.
“All right,” I said. “I hope I haven’t spoiled anything.”
“No, of course not,” Irving said. “Actually it’s rather flattering of you to try to crash, but… well, I just can’t have it. I’m sorry, but there it is.”
“I quite understand.”
I turned to leave, then looked back. “General Manara,” I said, “it’s been delightful.”
“Yes, it has,” General Manara said.
“Mrs. Manara,” I said, reaching for her hand. “And Mrs. Fayespringer. I’ve enjoyed meeting you. Don’t you worry—Nelton will get a town one day. I have hunches about these things.”
“Thank you, Mr. Boswell.” She seemed to understand what I meant.
“Pilchard,” I said crisply.
“Boswell,” Pilchard said.
“Perce, Mrs. Perce.”
“Goodbye,” they said together.
“Eugenie, goodbye.”
She didn’t answer.
“Irving. I really am sorry about all this.”
“It’s all right, Boswell.” He leaned forward. “You’ve money enough for a cab, haven’t you?” he said softly.
I frowned. “Please, Irving,” I said. “It’s a warm, lovely night. I may walk back to the Love.”
“You know best,” he said.
I retrieved my hat and coat from Miller and left.
When I stepped outside the Gibbenjoys’ big doors I saw that most of the party had moved outdoors. Although I had not noticed anyone when I came up the long drive, by now there were dozens of people strolling about through Gibbenjoy’s gardens. I took off my coat, folded it, put it and my hat in the low branch of a tree and lost myself among the other guests.
I was astonishingly content. I had been discovered, exposed, humiliated, but one can never be wholly miserable in a tuxedo. Indeed, one cannot be miserable at all in a tuxedo. At least I can’t. The tuxedo is a uniform, like any other. Inside one, the wearer’s emotions are dictated by the game that is to be played. In the case of the tuxedo this calls for charm and a disciplined lightness of step (after all, it’s the uniform of the dance). Why else had everyone been so agreeable? Gibbenjoy had thrown me out, of course, but because he had been wearing a tuxedo he threw me out with charm, with a disciplined lightness of step, with a man-of-the-worldiness which winked at the upsetting of convention. If either of us had been in a business suit we would have gotten down to business. I might have been arrested.
What is the gigolo? A manipulator, a liar, a thief, a cheat, a whore. But in a tuxedo! Redeemable, so long as he keeps his black pants on, his shoes shined, the velvet on his collar buffed. In a tuxedo his sins are comic, have nothing to do with the cellar, the ginny room, the unmade bed. Gibbenjoy had said, “Oh, it’s all right,” and the General, a man who understands uniforms, had chimed in, “It certainly is,” because all the world loves a prankster, a crasher. Crash is a funny word, even. It’s the word in comic books when two buffoons bang their heads together. I was a crasher. A clonker. A bang-smasher. A dealer in comical impacts. A cartoon cat who lost his fur in one reel, was whole again in the next. (A joke resurrection. No, a joke catastrophe, since all resurrections are serious, all second chances somber.)
So I walked immune, eternally young, in an oddly suspended autumn, foolish, forgiven, smiling, through the garden. I smiled at the brothers in the tuxedos and the sisters in the evening gowns on the marbled benches, and they smiled back at me. I took drinks from the trays of the servants. They were in formal dress themselves, a gay servitude. Princes, perhaps. In disguise, like myself. Masked playboys. I smiled in coded recognition.
A long-stemmed champagne glass in my hands, I walked through the garden of the Gibbenjoys, in weather preternaturally warm for the last day of October, among trees which had lost their leaves, but which seemed in the strange warm night to have lost them prematurely, like bald twenty-year-olds whose hairlessness—like my gaucheness—was just a joke.
I sat down next to a girl on a stone bench. “Why are you crying?” I said.
“I’m not crying.”
“Then why are you sitting alone?”
“I’m not doing that either,” she said.
“You’re tough,” I said. “All I get tonight are the tough ones. Isn’t anyone tender and vulnerable any more? How do you account for this warm weather? What’s the word you people use—unseasonable. How do you account for this unseasonable unseasonableness? This unreasonable unseasonable unseasonableness?”