The Chrysanthemum Palace

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MIRIAM SURPRISED US BY FLYING out early. She phoned on Friday evening to ask if I wanted to have a drink at the hotel; she was staying at Shutters for the weekend, “as a treat.” She would check into the Chateau on Monday.

I was at the club when she called. I finished my workout, showered, and drove to the beach. When Miriam opened the door to her suite, she was in a thongy Victoria’s Secret number. Drinks were postponed. I’d never seen her this passionate — not even the first time we fucked. It was more than exciting because the funny thing was, if I really thought about it, I couldn’t recall a woman in the past five years who seriously came. I somehow remembered the girls of summer being more vocal, spontaneous, lubricated, what have you. Lately, I connected an overall waning of erotic impulse not just to growing older but to my unthrilled partners themselves. (A friend had palmed off a couple of blue, baseball-diamond shaped Viagras which I’d yet to try; a watershed moment I was willing to postpone.) Anyhow, my unhappy assessment of the current state of affairs — at least my own — was that sex seemed to be in a sort of cross-culturally, dumbed-down, or should I say numbed-down, state. As if the whole world had forgotten how to climax, and was content merely to grope its way toward the funky, muddled, middle-aged light at the end of whatever tunnel it found itself stumbling down.

A few hours with the new, improved Miriam shot my depressing little theory to hell, and it wasn’t just a reinvigorated sense of my own powers: something elemental had been aroused that was instinctively attached to making babies. It’s incredible how simply we’re wired. In the days that followed, Miriam became my A1 breeding candidate, alpha bitch and repository of all manner of marital fantasies. I imagined us betrothed in elaborately catered affairs in Angkor Watt or New Zealand, lovingly captured in the New York Times Weddings/Celebrations section. Dad would happily pay through the nose; the bliss of it might even heal Gita of her tremors, allowing her to walk again. (Sorry, folks, but it’s true — at the root of everything is the need to please one’s parents.) Miriam would be a few months pregnant during the ceremonies, a saucy zitz and added delight to the gathered tribes. Oh, did I mention those tribes would be flown in by chartered jet? Knowing Perry, elaborate trust funds would already be in place, ensuring cushy futures for hordes of children, as Miriam would undoubtedly prove herself to be in possession of a shockingly fertile womb. HBO would pick up Holmby Hills and I’d settle into “the life,” that of a proper man and mogulian force to be reckoned with. I’d give great amounts to expunging this and that disease, enshrined and honored at black-tie galas, just like Dad. How would Clea react? Sure, she’d be hurt — at first. There’d be some fireworks… where’s the fun without fireworks? Besides, Miriam totally got it, understood from the beginning that Clea and I were contentious, harmlessly amorous siblings. To soften the blow, god-motherhood would thus be conferred. Clea would prove herself a natural, spurred on to drop a few kids of her own (by anonymous donor). If it was too late, I’d spring for a Mongolian, hiring a pro to arrange trips to orphanages and facilitate paperwork.

That’s how I walked around — wearing the scent of Miriam’s ovulations like a dreamy cologne, in full acceptance that the tidal tug emanated from the dictates of social order, not soul mate. But sometimes they seemed damn hard to tell apart.