Wry Martinis (5 page)

6-6:30: E
VENING
N
EWS WITH
B
RIT
H
UME
—American Addenda: Liberals who drive expensive foreign cars.

6:30—7:30: I
RV
—Irving Kristol demands that Daniel Patrick Moynihan personally apologize for black illegitimacy; guest Hilton Kramer denounces French Impressionism.

7:30-8: C
ROSSHAIR
—R. Emmett Tyrrell calls Donna Shalala a “Druze dwarf”; Florence King goads ACLU head Ira Glasser by repeatedly mispronouncing his name.

8-8:30: D
ESTINATION
: S
INGAPORE
—Tour guide Margaret Thatcher takes you behind the scenes in the best-run country in the world, where sneezing in public brings a ten-thousand-dollar fine.

8:30-11: B
IOGRAPHY
: N
EWT
(“The Gathering Storm,” Part 6 of 12)—Despite his anguished pleas that they can “work it out together,” Newt’s first wife shocks him by serving him with divorce papers as soon as she comes out of the anesthesia after her cancer operation.

11-12: B
EDTIME WITH
B
ILL
B
ENNETT
—Virtue czar reads from his favorite Brothers Grimm tales and talks about his one date with Janis Joplin.

12-12:30: M
ARY AND
S
ERPENTHEAD
—Mary throws up in a tony restaurant when she accidentally learns that Serpenthead has agreed to manage Clinton’s Presidential campaign. (Mild profanity.)

12:30-1: P
ERSPIRING
L
INE
—Liddy Dole tests the new NordicTrack 2000.

1-2: T
HE
G
REAT
B
OOKS
—Tom Clancy talks about how he has grown as a writer.

2-3: O
H
Y
EAH
, W
ELL
, W
HAT
A
RE
Y
OUR
S
HOES
M
ADE
O
F
?—Talking back to PETA activists.

3-3:30: C
APITAL
G
ANG
—Tonight: Utah’s crack firing squad. Also, Florida State Prison’s Old Sparky electric chair. Host: Pat Boone. (Mature.)

3:30—4: L
ETHAL
I
NJECTION
—More executions. (Mature.)

4-5: J
IM
B
AKER
III

For Jay McInerney

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by stress

frazzled overtired burnt-out,

jogging through suburban streets at dawn

as suggested by the late James Fixx,

career-minded yupsters burning for an Amstel Light

watching Stupid Pet Tricks,

who upwardly mobile and designer’d and bright-eyed and high sat up

working in the track-lit glow of the Tribeca loft skimming

through the Day Timer while padding the expense account,

who passed through universities and saved their asses hallucinating Grateful

Dead posters and eating Sara Lee while watching the war on TV,

who were graduated and went on to law schools burning to save the world,

who brewed decaffeinated coffee doing their yoga in alligator shirts and

listening to the latest Windham Hill Sampler,

who ate chocolate croissants in outdoor cafés and drank blush

wine on Columbus Avenue washed down with a little Percodan

with Dove bars with Diet Coke with Lean Cuisine,

stopping by on the way home for a pound of David’s cookies

telling each other of their fears of intimacy and their need

for space and inability to commit—for now,

who watched Mary Tyler Moore reruns and wept for Rhoda and worried about

acid rain and the mercury in the swordfish while strung out on cyclamates

faces flushed with MSG even after specifically making a point of mentioning to the waiter not to put it in,

who prowled through uncertain money markets chewing Turns and

doing lines with the Hispanics in the mail room

sitting in the gents with baby-laxative runs while the boss buzzes

and the secretary says you’re on the phone to Bonn,

who stayed up too late working out their relationships ’n’ things feeling

the gnawing rat-fear that they hadn’t been communicating lately and

the urgent pounding screaming need to think about their priorities,

yacketayakking analyzing thinking it through making constructive

suggestions as the eastern sky flamed in raw Ralph Lauren pastels,

got to get away for a few days but the Hartmann luggage is being repaired oh,

who needs this wandering through Needless-Markup wailing (inside) for

the baby seals and the bunnies slaughtered for lipstick

remembering all the unanswered antivivisection junk mail on the

way to the appliances section to beg another blade for the Cuisinart,

who subscribed to
Gourmet
and the
American Lawyer
and after an exhausting

search found Jamaica time-shares in the classifieds for only

$1200 a month coping as best they could with the Negro beach boys

wanting to sell them ganja,

paying outrageous sums for bottled water and having to complain

about the maid service and the warm orange juice knowing they should

have gone to Cape Cod instead where the Peugeot mopeds fart carbon

monoxide and the half-eaten lobster rolls rot in wax paper on the

sidewalks and the Republican men in lime-green corduroys with little

orange elephants bray as their wives buy overpriced scrimshaw,

who nudged and nuzzled over margaritas and dreamed of endless

throbbing hot sticky sex but Not tonite dear I have a yeast infection,

running on spongy Reeboks to sublimate their lust

then plunging into
Bright Lights, Big City
,

who upped their nightly hits of Valium from two to five mgs and

worried if they were going to be groggy in the morning,

who hollow-eyed and febrile read the theater reviews in unread

issues of
The New Yorker yes The New Yorker
,

who watched re-reruns of Mary Tyler Moore and decided they hated Rhoda,

who skimmed the Banana Republic catalog with brain-dead gaze

wondering if they really needed Ethiopian saddlebags,

who padded back and forth to the John for endless glasses of water while

worrying about refinancing at ten and an eighth and waited for the

fiendish tweet of birds and the thud of
The Wall Street Journal
on the porch,

who took a little tootsky after their Yoplait just to get going

and buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzed along in the carpool

yattering to the gray-flannelled bottisatvas in the backseat

about rowing machines and Eddie Murphy’s homo jokes,

ah Jay while you are not safe I am not safe and now
Ransom

is remaindered at Waldenbooks and you’re really in a bind—

and who therefore drown in butter-flavored popcorn at the Cineplex as the

answering machines cutely speak to strangers and Discover cards are

mailed to the incorrect addresses while Mohawked clerks at Tower

Records with little crucifixes in their ears play “Pillow Talk” and

everything you want they only have in Beta.

Yuck! Gross! Eeewww! Buying crack from the zombies in the

park! Closing out the trust fund! Checking into the rehab!

Jay McInerney! I’m with you at Area

where the shark swims on the wall

I’m with you David Letterman on the tower

where you drop watermelons and TVs and bowling balls

I’m with you Gary Hart in New Hampshire

where you stammer and yammer about New Ideas

I’m with you Don Johnson in Miami

where you don’t wear socks

I’m with you Jerry Rubin on Wall Street

where you only hear yippie when the Dow hits a high

I’m with you Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue

where Steven Spielberg has an apartment in your building

I’m with you John McEnroe in England

where you appear on world television treating people like scum

I’m with you Maria Shriver in Hyannisport

where a wedding gift from Kurt Waldheim has arrived

I’m with you John Zaccaro at Middlebury

where you pursue independent study projects

I’m with you Doctor Ruth on cable

where you giggle with your guests about orgasm

I’m with you Ron Jr. cavorting

in your underwear on national television

I’m with you Mike Deaver in Bitburg

where your mind was on buying a car

I’m with you Billy Crystal in too many places

where your routines have not aged well

I’m with you Brooke Shields at Princeton

where you—but who cares?

I’m with you on the Upper East Side

pricing modems

I’m with you on the Upper East Side

stopping into the Food Emporium for a quart of lo-fat milk

I’m with you on the Upper East Side

eating sushi and Ecstasy

I’m with you on the Upper East Side

looking for myself in
People
magazine

Well-placed observers convincingly argued that the 1989
recording [of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles]
must have been made by the national security agency MI5—
the elite service whose duties include state security—and
speculated about other tapes said to exist.

—
People
, February 1, 1993

C
HARLES
: Gladys?

C
AMILLA
: Fred! Darling, I’ve been sitting by the phone all afternoon.

C
HARLES
: Couldn’t get away. They had me—God, if I have to “inspect” another bloody milk pasteurizing bloody facility again I’m going to bloody well let Wills
have
the bloody throne.

C
AMILLA
: Oh darling, it’s not fair, the things they make you do.

C
HARLES
: I’m off milk for a month, that’s a bloody fact.

C
AMILLA
: Don’t you want to know what I’m wearing?

C
HARLES
: “Inspection tour,” what am I supposed to be “inspecting” for? Rogue bacilli? Anthrax spores? Dirt under their bloody fingernails?

C
AMILLA
: I’m lying here in my Wellies, and not a stitch else.

C
HARLES
: Well, I suppose it’s better than what they’ve got me “inspecting” tomorrow, at seven-bloody-fifteen in the bloody a.m. Bloody poultry plant.

C
AMILLA
: I was thinking of our last meeting and—

C
HARLES
: Have you ever
smelled
a poultry plant? My God, how people can live like that is beyond me. It’ll be no chicken for a month after tomorrow and that’s another bloody fact.

C
AMILLA
: Darling, I can’t bear to hear you like this. Why don’t you just hop into the Range Rover and pop over for a spot of … tea.

C
HARLES
: Tea and strumpet? (Laughs) Sorry. Don’t tempt me. They’ve got me scheduled for another bloody “morale-boosting” pop-in at the bloody Salvation Army in an hour. Won’t boost my morale, I can tell you. (Imitates sound of “Now We Gather at the River” being played badly on a Sousaphone)

C
AMILLA
: But it’s so lonely here. Just me and my Wellies.

C
HARLES
: What, home alone? Where’s the Silver Stick in Waiting?

C
AMILLA
: Here somewhere, I suppose. That’s the nice thing about big houses, isn’t it? You’re not cheek by jowl. What I mean is, it
feels
so empty without you.
I
feel empty when you’re not—

C
HARLES
: I’ll tell you what
empty
is. The inside of her skull. Last night I tried to explain to her why modern architecture is so bloody awful. Might as well explain organic farming to one of those bloody heads on bloody Easter Island. “Knock, knock, anyone bloody
home?
”

C
AMILLA
: Oh darling, how
frustrating
for you.

C
HARLES
: Then she announced she was going to kill herself—

C
AMILLA
: What, again? With the lemon peeler?

C
HARLES
: Oh no, a soup ladle. This time she meant business.

C
AMILLA
: Well, I never understood what the fascination was in the first place.

C
HARLES
: Oh, spiffing, rub it in.

C
AMILLA
: Speaking of which, guess what
I’ve
got on my bedside table? A jar of Marmite. Family size.

C
HARLES
: Um. (Sound of lapping)

C
AMILLA
: Oh stop, you
know
what that does to me.

C
HARLES
: What time is it? I’ve got a good mind to tell the Salvation Army to sod off. (Clicking sound, followed by dialing) Is that you?

C
AMILLA
: I’m on the pho-one.

M
AN’S
V
OICE
: Oh, sorry, ducks.

C
AMILLA
: Andrew, I said I’m on that bloody phone.

A
NDREW
P
ARKER
-B
OWLES
: All right, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Is that Charles?

H
IGH-PITCHED
, N
ASAL
V
OICE
: Neow. It’s … Wiltshire Telecom.

A
NDREW
: Who?

H
IGH-PITCHED
, N
ASAL
V
OICE
: The phone company. Someone reported a thing with the line. A problem sort of thing.

A
NDREW
: Oh. How odd.

C
AMILLA
: Andrew, will you get
off
the phone? (Sound of phone being cradled)

C
HARLES
: God, that was so close.

C
AMILLA
: Darling, you were
inspired.

C
HARLES
: Well, I—do you think so?

C
AMILLA
: You were brilliant. He didn’t suspect a thing.

C
HARLES
: Splendid chap. Mum thinks he’s a pip.

C
AMILLA
: A
pimp
?

C
HARLES
:
Pip.
We really ought to get one of those, what do you call them, cellulite phones. Where were we?

C
AMILLA
: You were about to spread Marmite all over me and (clicking sound)—
Andrew!
I’m
still on!
Hello? Hello? Well, I don’t know what that was.

C
HARLES
: Bloody country phones.