Man, Eric Threadcraft said as the Algonquin waiter brought more tea, I never felt so lucky in all my life, and when I took her to her hotel just before dawn the next morning, all I could think of was that I was going to be with her again that very night, which, by the way, turned out to be no letdown whatsoever from the night before, and I was on cloud nine for the rest of her stay in Hollywood. And when she went back to New York that next week, I had just about decided that we were made for each other, although, by that time, she had mentioned the fact that she had been married some time ago. Man, all that mattered to me was her future availability, which I was hoping, really fantasizing, would be exclusive. And actually I had already followed up with a brief visit here as if on urgent music business just before Joe States gave me your number. Which is why I dropped that crack in there about some anticipated changes chez Mice, just before hanging up. And you picked right up on it, fellow, because I sure as hell did have my fingers, toes, and everything else crossed.
So anyway, he went on, when old Joe States gave me your number, the renewal of our friendship on purely personal, or in any case, nonbusiness or transactional terms, gave me another perfect means of making another pseudo-urgent visit to New York to see her seem somewhat incidental withal, if you get what I mean. Man, I was really looking forward to seeing you again, but I was absolutely dying to see that fantastic and unbelievably receptive woman again, and also as often as possible without seeming overeager.
Then he went on to explain why she was not making any return trips to California. First of all, his trips were not to be taken by her as visits, but pop-ins incidental to other very urgent matters, which, as luck would have it, coincided with his admitted desire to see her as often as possible, circumstances being what they were. Which was the fact that the big Hollywood production was already very much under way, as he very well knew. But she didn’t have to leave her exclusive fashion enterprise in New York to come back out to California until time for the in-person cast fittings for the actual wardrobes.
Hey, man, Old Mice has been in there doing what he can to keep any possibility from fading—as coolly as possible, you understand. Which just about brings us up to why I am here talking to you about why I am here talking to you. Man, there I was with my hotel reservations all set and my airline ticket all laid out along with my all-purpose Manhattan-bound travel gear, and when I go out to the studio two days before I’m booked to leave, there are whispers about a security check on all new foreigners under contract, and on the list to be investigated is French high-fashion designer Celeste Delauny, known in the trade as Celeste. Man, I don’t know what the hell any of this has to do with designing a chic wardrobe for a super-sleek drawing room comedy. But a routine background check seems to have turned up evidence that she’s being blackmailed and they’re going to be digging in to find out if there’s any connection with any questionable political affiliation past or ongoing.
Man, he said, shaking his head, I never felt so much like I was one of those frail-looking kids wearing thick glasses and carrying a violin case. Man, I never felt so unhip and unwith-it since way back in my preteen days when I was a conservatory-bound piano prodigy and a scholarship shoo-in and heard my first jazz records on radio and snuck off to my first chitlin circuit theater to hear some musicians playing it in person in one of those matinee vaudeville variety shows. Man, I don’t remember ever being so unwith-it about anything in my life before.
And when I said what I said about that kind of idiomatic initiation adding up to the maestro that Joe States put me in touch with in Hollywood, he said, Man, that was the music scene. Man, this stuff sounds like some international intrigue involvement that I never thought of as being related to me on any personal level. Man, the only personal concerns I ever really had about international relations have been with keeping my passport up to date and getting my stuff through customs, duty-free or not, it’s all the same to me.
So here he was back in New York to see her again, but now the cover story about being in town to reestablish his special schoolboy-to-schoolboy relationship with me also covered the fact that he was also in town to get some expert advice from some of his old local show business contacts
