Bono

Chapter Thirty-two

BRANDY AND BIG NOTING

A cat can be led astray.

The author of Love Story, Erich Segal, couldn’t have been more wrong when he wrote, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Love means always saying sorry. Philip had been off the grid on a work retreat for a couple of days, but I figured he’d be back home by now. As soon as our time zones converged, I’d have another try at Skyping him.

Being the “least likely to stay married” couple had not always been easy, but it had compelled us to work harder for the relationship. Allowances had been made. He gave up encouraging me to train me for fun runs. I stopped trying to make him sing in tune. Most of our rifts were healed with laughter and chemistry. Whenever there were misunderstandings, we’d learned to let go and trust.

I pulled on my jacket and headed downstairs.

“Well, if it isn’t Miss Holly Golightly!” an unmistakable voice echoed up the stairwell.

Patrick was in his usual position, leaning against his doorframe, cigarette dangling from yellowed fingers. Plodding down the stairs toward him, I waited for him to change my name to Helen Goheavily.

“Wasn’t she some kind of call girl?” I said, trying to get the better of him for once.

When I first saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s I was irritated by Audrey Hepburn’s skittish character. Since watching my daughters grow through their twenties I recognized there’s something of Holly Golightly in every young woman’s struggle to find herself.

“Not at all! She was an American geisha,” he said flicking a confetti of ash on the floor. “She came from some backward place to better herself in New York, just like you.”

Patrick could hardly stop smiling at his own cleverness.

“And who does that make you?” I asked him. “Truman Capote?”

The author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s claimed to have based Holly Golightly on several women. Others said the character was more like his mother, or even Truman himself.

Capote has been a quiet obsession of mine for years. In fact, if someone offered me a trip in a time machine, I’d go back to the Black and White Ball he hosted in New York’s Plaza Hotel on November 28, 1966. Flush after the success of In Cold Blood, he threw the event in honor of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. There hasn’t been an occasion like it before or since. The guest list ranged from Frank Sinatra and Gloria Vanderbilt to Lynda Bird Johnson and the Maharani of Jaipur. Though the champagne was Taittinger, the midnight supper consisted of scrambled eggs and sausages.

“I was thinking more the romantic lead in the film,” Patrick said. “The man with the twinkling blue eyes. What was his name?”

“George Peppard.”

Peppard was great in the movie. He looked at Audrey in a way only a straight man could. It was a terrible waste he went on to become a B-movie action hack. Still, even if this was Patrick’s way of telling me he was straight, I wasn’t about to find a guitar and serenade him on the fire escape with a rendition of “Moon River” as Audrey did for Peppard.

It didn’t seem the right time to ask if he’d received my book. I rather hoped he hadn’t. Instead, I told him how Mum used to sing “Moon River” at weddings.

“You mean people asked her to sing it?” he asked, bemused.

It’s a mistake to tell another immigrant New Yorker about your past, unless you’re incredibly close. Someone else always has a better story. Besides, the whole purpose of moving there is to shed history.

“They’ve made a million movies about New York, but nothing beats Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Patrick said.

“I love how she stands in front of Tiffany’s shop window and tries to chomp through that Danish pastry,” I said. “She must’ve been in a panic wondering how she was going to squeeze into that black Givenchy gown.”

“I met him once,” Patrick said.

“Who, George Peppard?”

“Truman Capote.”

“No!?” If there was a law against name dropping, Patrick would be serving a life sentence.

“Well, not so much met,” Patrick added. “I handed him a coffee. Back in the seventies, I was working in the catering truck when they were filming Annie Hall in Central Park. Remember the part when Woody Allen says, “There goes the winner of the Truman Capote lookalike competition?”

I didn’t, but nodded because it seemed a shame to break Patrick’s flow.

“It was the real Truman Capote, you know. While he was hanging around waiting, someone told me to get him a coffee.”

“What was he like?”

Patrick drew on his cigarette and exhaled plumes through his nostrils, giving him the appearance of a small dragon.

“Short,” he said, after a long pause. “Now would you be coming in for that cup of tea?”

I hesitated. Even if Patrick had questionable intentions, he was a small man and I could probably fight him off. Still, the closest I’d ever come to being raped was by a very small man who turned out to be extremely wiry. That said, years of cigarettes and booze had taken their toll on Patrick’s physique. On the other hand, there was a chance he might have a gun, or at the very least a kitchen knife. With any luck it would be quick, I thought. Besides, I’d survived about a month in New York with an unlocked window, which was the equivalent of lying on a railway track hoping there wouldn’t be any trains.

The inside of Patrick’s apartment was as dusty and worn as he was. Everything in it was gray or brown. He beckoned me to sit on a decrepit sofa whose imperfections were concealed under a moth-eaten tartan rug. Mounds of plates piled beside the kitchen sink. The air was heavy with cigarettes and stale whiskey. I glanced at the walls and couldn’t help being charmed by the rows of old Penguin paperbacks. In the familiar shades of orange, red, yellow, and blue, their spines were pleated with use. A portable record player sat on top of a pile of ancient magazines and oozed Ella Fitzgerald singing “April in Paris.” I made a mental note to avoid the bathroom.

He handed me a mug of tea with a gilt-edged handle. The mug itself was porcelain and decorated with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, which he hastened to explain was ironic from his perspective.

From what I could work out, Patrick’s life had been a patchwork. Aside from the jobs in hospitality (which was an oxymoron, he said, considering how naturally inhospitable he was), he’d done a bit of teaching. He’d had a go at writing, too. With all that, it was hard to imagine how he’d found the time to rub shoulders with so much greatness. Maybe it happened as a matter of course when a person lived long enough in New York.

When he asked if I’d be tempted by a whiskey, I shook my head.

“You’ll be having a brandy then,” he said in a voice so airy it couldn’t be argued with.

It was a long time since I’d drunk brandy. The warmth surfed through my veins, unraveling knots of tension and arranging my whole body in a smile. Leaning back on a cushion of dubious pedigree, I wondered why I’d given up brandy. It was probably to fit in with Philip, who didn’t enjoy the effects of alcohol.

Reading my mind, Patrick asked my opinion of the husband in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I thought it a sympathetic portrayal by the actor who went on to become Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies.

“But he was mad trying to drag her back to Texas,” Patrick said, topping off my glass. “As if she was going to leave New York.”

My eye wandered to a black-and-white photo on the dust-laden mantelpiece. The two dark-haired men stood arm in arm, laughing into the lens. One was clearly a younger version of Patrick. The other had a softer, almost whimsical smile.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, just me and Frank.”

“The Angela’s Ashes guy?”

“Yes, that’s right. Did I not tell you about him? Let me pour you another . . .”