We’re talking infatuation here, my man, he said. That’s why it’s taking me this long to call up and report. I was in bad shape when I called you that morning and I’m glad I did, but afterward I was so embarrassed because I must have sounded so unhip. But then I finally said what the hell, my man has got to meet this trillie. He’s got to see for himself what made Old Mice hit the panic button like that.
Man, every time I think about how I must have sounded to you. All ready to plunge into class B movie international intrigue because a goddamn Hollywood studio that’s running a routine background check on a classy Paris fashion designer who is already established in New York and who has no special interest in working on flicks in the first goddamn place.
Look pal, he said, the more I thought about that, the more embarrassed I became until this morning, when I finally said, Goddamn, here I go again. And that’s when I said, What the hell is all this? I’ve gotta call him. That’s my man and all I did after not seeing him for that long was to lay that on him. So here’s Old Mice, pal. What can I tell you?
That’s when I said, Ah, come on, Mice. You’re the professional musician, not me. I’m just the schoolboy. You’re not only an arranger, you also love to jam, catching as catch can. And when you hit a goddamn clinker, which everybody, including the Bossman Himself, does from time to time, you don’t stop playing. You riff right on beyond it.
Hey, yes, he said, and I visualized him looking down at the keyboard because I already assumed that he was calling from the phone he kept on the piano, when you’re rehearsing you can stop and hack at it until you make it something you feel you can live with, but when you’re out there with a mike and footlights on, it’s the real thing and the metronome is still clicking and clocking you. You’ve got to get with it.
And besides, I said, don’t nobody know anything about this but you and me, man. The main person has no idea what you put yourself through. So come on, man.
And he said, Hey, fellow, you said it, man. That’s exactly what this is all about. So look, the main reason I’m finally making this call is to get us back to what I thought my other trip to New York was going to be about. I’ve got to get the four of us together. Man, you’ve got to meet this lady, and my stock-in-trade with her will go up when she meets you. As for your fine people, as Joe States calls her, tell her how sorry I am that I got too tangled up to meet her on my last trip to town. But don’t tell her why, as of course you wouldn’t anyway. See you soon, fellow, real soon. As soon as I can get this recording studio backlog out of the way of that movie thing. So expect me, fellow. Any minute.
XX
Guess who? Eric Threadcraft said as soon as he heard my voice answering the phone. And when I said, Maestro, what say, Mice? You back in town, Mice? He said, Just checked back in across Fifth from old you know who southbound. Haven’t even unpacked yet. First item being your earliest availability for that too-long-overdue foursome for lunch or preferably dinner and music. Music afterward, that is. And then I said, Hey, sounds absolutely top-notch to me, Mice, and I myself happen to be fairly flexible this week, but I can’t speak for the family. So call me back for the official estimate of the situation—say, round about midnight. Which he did and when he gave the date, time, and place he said, Celeste chose the restaurant and you and I will decide whose group to check out afterward.
Hey, man, he said then. This is great, fellow, just great. Not only am I finally going to meet Miss-All-Them-Fine-People rolled into one that old Papa Joe has made me so curious about. And not only are you going to see what the goddamn French hit Old Mice with right out there in the world’s most over populated briar patch of starlets trying to become movie queens. And man, you yourself are just going to enhance the idiomatic authenticity of Old Mice’s musicianship. Man, you know how the French are about the natural history of this stuff. Remember what I told you about taking her over to West L.A. that first night? Elementary, as your Sherlockian roommate used to say, elementary.
We saw them as soon as we came into the four-star midtown French restaurant that mild midspring Friday night. We were not quite ten minutes early, but they were already there waiting for us near the short line to the coat-check counter, and when he saw us coming he waved, and as we joined them he said, So here at long last is her fantastic self in person. And this is Celeste, also in person. But also a part of Old Mice’s world of fantasy even so.
And I said, Who else, maestro, who else but, my man? Man, my confidence in your piano vamping applies to these matters, too.
From the very first time he mentioned her, he had been so busy telling me how he felt about her that he had never got around to describing any of her physical features at all, not even the color of her eyes and hair. But she looked just about like I
