Slugfest

Nineteen

The St. George had one of the best bars in the city. The murals; the low ceiling, which held in decades of New York life; the music; the fashionable cocktails of the time; and the cigarette and cigar smoke from bygone days that had yellowed the walls and given the room a warm, cavelike quality. It was the kind of place that made me want to order a sidecar or a sloe gin fizz, even though I had no idea what they were. And the St. George had the best mixed nuts of any establishment in the city. I loved the place, despite the fact that the house detective once took me for a hooker. That was the anecdote I used as an icebreaker when I joined Connie at her corner table.

“He thought you were a pro?” Connie asked, temporarily halting her low-key gum chewing.

Just out of school, I had been working as an assistant buyer for a catalog company. An older salesman invited me for a drink, and I arrived early. I wasn’t there five minutes when a portly, florid guy in a baggy gray suit asked if I was waiting for someone. I was too clueless to know what he was really asking. Luckily the friend showed up and rescued me.

“What a jerk,” Connie said. “Nowadays, you could sue for that.”

“Maybe it was the attire. Probably a Melrose Place suit with a teeny skirt.” I let the wardrobe conversation dry up when I remembered who I was talking to. Tonight’s package was wrapped in fluffy white Mongolian lamb that mercifully covered another scene of embroidered marine life. Clearly the dress code at the St. George had loosened up.

Connie had loosened up, too. Lubricated by two drinks, she gave me her life story in broad strokes—born in Brooklyn, she and Guy were neighborhood sweethearts who married when she was barely eighteen. She was quick to point out it was not a shotgun wedding; although I wouldn’t have cared. She and Guy had two kids, but they came later at regulation intervals. Guy was making good money in his father’s landscaping business and didn’t see the need for more than two years of accounting classes at Kingsborough Community College, so he dropped out. Then he started his own business.

“Interlocking tumbled blocks,” she said. “It’s the way of the future.”

As a gardener I had a love-hate relationship with them. Lately it had been swinging to love. Most were obvious and plastic, kind of like fake boobs. And they came preweathered (the stones, not the boobs), like prewashed jeans. But recently manufacturers had improved the products, so they looked almost as good as the natural stone they replaced in gardens, driveways, and walls. Was I going over to the dark side?

Connie wriggled out of her jacket, revealing a tight white blouse with an oyster-shell design on each melon- sized breast. I did my best not to stare. She waved at the young waiter, this time ordering a full bottle. He was putty in her hands—clearly the man was a seafood fan. I nursed my first drink but made short work of the nuts. She signaled for another bowl, and in an instant they appeared.

Underneath the fish garb Connie Anzalone was an attractive woman in her early thirties with the figure of a Xena: Warrior Princess doll. Her wide blue eyes and pouty mouth all but guaranteed that wiggling her fingers was all she’d have to do to get whatever she wanted. It was fascinating to watch. Don’t get me wrong, I like my looks, but really beautiful women were practically a different species. I think it was the casual power they wielded. And did they wake up that way every morning? Or did it, as a friend used to say, “take a village”? It took me twenty minutes just to dry my hair, and even then one side always looked better than the other, so I usually hid it all under a hat. The bottle arrived and was opened and poured in overtheatrical fashion, no doubt to impress Connie.

“Guy doesn’t like me to drink so much at home, but I’m not home now, am I?”

No, she wasn’t. Home for the Anzalones was Coney Island in Brooklyn. The nice part, she’d said, although I’d hardly know which area that was. I was born in Brooklyn, so I’d been to Coney Island. It was more than a Brooklyn landmark. It was a state of mind. When I was a kid I remembered a long stretch of beach from the aquarium to a dive arcade called Eddie’s Fascination that had that seedy beach languor I’d since seen in resort towns from Bar Harbor to Miami and farther south in the Caribbean. The same sarongs, beach towels, and sunglass holders covered with flowers or imprinted with the town’s name and all made in China. On every corner there were Italian restaurants, where old men sat outside on folding chairs doing who knew what. Twenty years later, it probably still looked the same.

Connie’s husband, the Tumbled Stone King, made his fortune in landscaping, though he’d branched out into demolition and construction. She said it in a way that didn’t lend itself to further elaboration and suggested the rumor about his involvement in illegal activities might be true. We returned to the safer subject of the flower show.

Her face lost all of its hardness and she lit up when she talked about gardening.

“It was the only work Guy would let me do—and even then he sent some men to help me plant things or move materials.”

On my second drink and feeling comfortable, I pointed to her nails. “Gardening can’t be easy with those.”

“It’s not! But Guy likes them, and he’s, you know, king of the castle. I’m constantly taking them off and putting them on.” That couldn’t be healthy for the nail bed, but perhaps it was good for the marriage bed—and given the choice, most people would choose the latter.

“I think I’m helping the nail salon owner bring over her entire village. There used to be a real diamond on this one.” She showed me the perfectly sculpted, shell-colored nail on her left ring finger, inches from a rock as big as a muscari bulb. “Then I lost it in the garden. I accidentally buried it when I was planting a row of allium last fall. When the shoots come up, I’ll see if there’s a bare spot and poke around. Maybe if I fertilize it’ll grow into a tennis bracelet.”

Connie had read an article about the Big Apple Flower Show and asked Guy if it would be all right if she tried to exhibit. She’d been fantasizing about the black-tie gala reception ever since she’d sent in the application and the way she talked about it, it may have been the only reason she wanted to participate.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather when Guy said yes. I did trick him, though. I kept talking about redecorating the master bathroom, so he figured it was cheaper to let me do this. Wasn’t that clever? Now I’m finally here.”

Wherever here was. She was Cinderella at last invited to the ball. I wasn’t likely to make the society pages either, but I’d gone to black-tie galas—museum openings and screenings when I worked in television—and they were generally no big deal.

“You know, those parties are more boring than they look. And it’s not that hard to get invited. All you have to do is send a check to the organizations running them.”

“I didn’t realize.” She poured another drink with such a practiced hand, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d stood up and done a bunny dip.

“I’m usually good at making friends,” she said, “but people have been so cold. First that man yesterday. Of course I didn’t tell Guy about that. He’d have hit the ceiling, then hit the man. Then I overheard this nasty old broad—the one who smells like an ashtray but looks like she’s giving makeovers at Saks—talking behind my back. I know my entry isn’t the most sophisticated, but there must have been some reason the horticultural society accepted my application.”

I wondered silently if her husband or his company had anything to do with it.

“Every garden doesn’t have to look like Dr. Jekyll’s, does it?”

My Robert Louis Stevenson was rusty but I was fairly sure neither of his most famous creations, the good Doctor Jekyll nor his evil alter ego, had had gardens.

“The English lady,” Connie said.

The girl had done her homework, even if she did mangle the name. Should I correct her or let it go? Always a toss-up. “I think it’s pronounced Gee-kill, Gertrude Jekyll,” I said, gently, “just in case it comes up in conversation.”

“See, you know so much. You’re just the type of person I hoped I’d meet here.”

Her eyes got watery, but instead of letting the tears spill over, she threw her head back and drained her glass. I was dazzled by her speedy recovery—and her apparently wooden leg.

I repeated what I’d heard—that there had been other mishaps at the show. She perked up and even laughed about a quartet of plaster gnomes that had given up their lives. We decided their ashes should be spread at the Taj