We checked our New York early-spring wraps and as we fell in behind the two of them following the maître d’ leading us to our table, I was thinking that I also assumed that the way her eyes and lips moved as she spoke English with a throaty British-tinged Parisian accent would have a very similar effect on his U.S.A. schoolboy sensibility as it would have on mine.
So I nudged him and whispered, Hey, man, the way she gasps oui! is worth the whole price of the goddamn admission. To which he said, What can I tell you, fellow, what can I tell you?
He put his arm around my shoulder then and said, Look, I’m well aware that this thing of mine is only a matter of months, but even as ongoing as the excitement of the newness of it all, at this very moment I still have the feeling that this pas de quatre is long overdue. Which probably just goes to show what I’ve been putting myself through these last months.
Then when we were seated and Celeste had suggested choices from the menu, he turned to Eunice again and then turned to me and said, Incurable schoolboy as I myself also am I must point out a little academic detail that you and old Papa Joe left out: Nefertiti, fellow, Queen Nefertiti, sans the Egyptian headgear, of course.
Sans Egyptian headgear, to be sure, I said. And then I said, Because as my old roommate, who cut out before Miss You-Know-Who arrived, but who was the one who was reading the volume on art history in which I first saw a color photo of that famous bust, said, Who knows but the head beneath that ever so regal crown or whatever it is may be as hairless as a cue ball. So I concede the teacake tan skin, quibble the neck as artistic license, but no deal if Nefertiti’s hair is not Creole or Latino frizzly.
And he said, Deal, fellow. I never would have guessed central Alabama if you hadn’t already told me out in Hollywood when you first mentioned her. I would have guessed she was the one from Mobile and the Gulf Coast area and you were the one from central Alabama. But then your flesh-and-blood parents are from central Alabama, aren’t they? See, I remember you telling me about that, too. But anyway, fellow, old Papa Joe got it right. She is fine people. Extra-fine people. Extra-superfine people.
He turned to get her attention then, but I didn’t hear what he said because that was when Celeste asked me if a teacake was an American madeleine. And I said not really because it was really a very plain, not very sweet soft cookie, whereas a madeleine was very sweet like a down-home muffin and was baked in a muffin pan. You could bake teacakes on a cookie sheet, but since they were made from rolled dough like biscuits, a bread pan was better, but teacakes were not as spongy as biscuits.
When I paused I could follow what Eric was asking Eunice about campus life in central Alabama, but before he turned to me, our waiters arrived with our orders, and we all turned to Celeste, and Eric said having her as hostess was absolutely the next best thing to being in the region of France where each recipe came from.
When Eric asked me to tell Celeste about my trip to the Côte d’Azur and Paris and I mentioned Marquis de Chaumienne, she said she knew who he was but she had not become aware of his special interest in American music until she returned to Paris after her first trip to New York.
I was here on business, she said, an ambitious young upstart that I already was, I had spent all of my time in midtown on Fifth and Madison Avenues and down in the garment district. And at night there were the midtown restaurants, including this one. And also the Broadway and Times Square movie houses, which I’m afraid I had very little time for. But when I came back to Paris and said no when asked if I had been taken up to Harlem to hear American music not to mention dancing at its best and in unmatched variety, I was made to feel that I was deficient in an indispensable dimension of the spirit of the times. They were shocked. It was almost as if a supposedly sophisticated English-man had come to Paris and remained oblivious to what Montmartre, Montparnasse, and St. Germain des Près were all about!
Or so I felt, at any rate, she went on to say. And that was what led her to find out that the Hot Club of France was neither just another Parisian fad or cult, but included truly cosmopolitan people like the Marquis de Chaumienne, who regarded many of the jazz musicians they heard on recordings and in person, on tours that included Paris and other European capitals, as representative contemporary artists who transcended the context of popular show business entertainment that they most often worked in.
I’ve never met the marquis, she said, but I’m told that in addition to recordings, he also collects other American artifacts, especially of ranch life and the western frontier, which I’m told also includes paintings and bronzes by Frederic Remington.
To which I said I had also been told included a very special interest in quarter horse racing and rodeos, sporting events that required skills basic to cattle-herding. The quarter horse was a sporting version of the sprint-oriented, ever-so-maneuverable cow pony. And the rodeo also included such cowpuncher skills as roping, throwing, and binding calves for branding, as well as demonstrating the cowpuncher’s ability to hang on to a wildly bucking untamed horse, the first
