Waiting for Bojangles Read online

  • • •

  Three nights a week, we had the same guest, who had his own room at our place: the Senator, who would come up from his region in the center of France to take his seat in Parliament. My father affectionately called him “the Creep.” I never did find out how they’d met—the story changed with every cocktail—but they were always as thick as thieves.

  The Creep had an angled haircut—not a fancy one, like a girl’s, but a crew cut with right angles—on top of a round, red face divided by a bushy moustache, and thin steel-framed glasses looped over strange shrimp-shaped ears. He explained to me that rugby did that to your ears after a few years. I didn’t really understand how, but in any case, I decided that “gym & tonic” was less dangerous than rugby, at least for your ears. The color, the texture, the crushed cartilage . . . they really looked just like shrimp. That’s just how it was, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  When he laughed, the Creep’s body shook with spasms, and since he laughed all the time, his shoulders had a permanent tremor. His voice was loud, and it crackled like an old transistor. He always had an enormous cigar that he never lit. He’d have it in his hand or his mouth when he arrived, and he’d slip it into a case when he left. As soon he crossed our threshold, he’d start shouting, “Caipiroska, Caipiroska!”

  I used to think he was calling for his Russian girlfriend. Since she was never there, my father would serve him a frosty cocktail with mint to cheer him up, and that always seemed to do the trick. My mother liked the Creep because he was funny, because he rained compliments on her and because he had helped us earn heaps of money, and I liked him for exactly the same reasons, no more, no less.

  At our parties, he would try to kiss all of my mother’s friends. My father said he would jump at any chance he got. Sometimes it worked, and he would go jump his chances in his room. A few minutes later, he’d come back out, redder than ever, shouting for his Russian girlfriend, because he must have realized that something wasn’t right. “Caipiroska! Caipiroska!” he’d bellow gleefully, as he hooked his glasses back over his shrimp ears.

  During the day, he’d go to work at the Luxembourg Palace, which was in Paris, for some reason I could never really understand. He would say he was going to work late, but he always came back pretty early. The Senator had a strange lifestyle. When he came back from work, he’d say that his job had been a lot more interesting before the wall came down, because you could see things more clearly.

  I figured he meant that they’d done construction work in his office, and that they must have knocked down a wall and used the stones to block some windows. So it made sense that he left work early, because no one would want to work in conditions like that, not even a creep. Dad would say, “The Creep is my dearest friend, because his friendship is priceless!” That I understood perfectly.

  • • •

  With the garage money, Dad had purchased a beautiful castle in the air. It was in Spain, far south of Paris. You had to drive a little, fly a little, drive a little more, and be very patient. Perched on a mountainside, floating above an all-white village where the streets were empty in the afternoon and full of people at night, all you could see from the castle was pine forests. Well, practically all. In a corner on the right, there were terraced groves with rows of olive, orange and almond trees dropping all the way down to the shore of a milky-blue lake formed by a magnificent dam. Dad told me that he had built the dam himself, and that if it weren’t for him, all the water would have run away. I wasn’t sure I believed him: there weren’t any tools in the house, and I’m nobody’s fool.

  The seashore wasn’t far off, and the beaches, apartment buildings, restaurants and traffic jams were jam-packed with people. Mom said she couldn’t understand why people would exchange one crowded place for another on vacation. She said that the beaches were fouled with the grease that people slathered on their skin to tan, even though they were already fat and greasy without it. But that didn’t keep us from sunbathing on the pint-size beaches around our lake. With just enough room for three beach towels, they were perfect for us, and never foul.

  On the roof of the castle there was a big terrace with wispy clouds of jasmine. Unlike the crowds on the beaches, the jasmine smelled really nice. The view was so spectacular that it made my parents thirsty, so they drank wine with pieces of fruit in it. We ate tons of fruit by day, and drank it as we danced at night. “Mr. Bojangles” came with us, of course, and Mademoiselle Superfluous joined us a little later; we had to go pick her up at the airport, because she had a special status. She traveled in a box with a hole for her long neck to stick out of, so of course she squawked her little head off, with good reason for once. My parents would invite all their friends to come and eat fruit, dance and sunbathe at their castle in the air. They all said it was absolutely heavenly, and we had no reason to think any differently. Whenever I wanted to go to heaven, I could, but usually we went when my parents decided we should.

  • • •

  Mom used to love to tell me the story of Mr. Bojangles. His story was like his song: lovely, melancholy and nice and long. That’s why my parents loved slow-dancing to it. It had feeling, and it went on and on. Mr. Bojangles lived in New Orleans, although it was a really long time ago. He used to travel with his dog and his ragged shirt and baggy pants. But his dog up and died, he up and died, and Bojangles cried and cried. Then he had to dance with just his ragged shirt and baggy pants. He’d dance at honky-tonks, minstrel shows and county fairs; Mr. Bojangles danced all the time and everywhere, just like my parents. People gave him drinks and tips, so he’d dance for them in his worn-out shoes; he’d jump so high, he’d jump so high and he’d lightly touch down. Mom said he danced to bring his dog back, she’d heard it from someone who knew. As for her, well, she danced to bring Mr. Bojangles back. That was why she danced all the time. To bring him back, that’s all.

  * * *

  I. Claude François died in 1978 of accidental electrocution in his bathtub.

  2.

  “Call me what you will! But please, entertain me, conjure up stardom. Everybody here has sprayed themselves with boredom!” she said theatrically, as she snatched two glasses of champagne from the buffet. “The only reason I’m here at all is to find myself a life-insurance policy,” she declared emphatically, before knocking back the first glass in a single gulp, her slightly wild eyes plunging straight into mine. And as I reached for the glass I naively believed was intended for me, she downed it as quickly as she had the first. Then she looked me up and down, stroking her chin, informing me with a laugh and a saucy grin, “And you are assuredly the best-looking policy I’ve seen at this god-awful gala!” Common sense should have urged me to flee her siren call. For that matter, I never should have met her at all.

  To celebrate the opening of my tenth garage, my banker had invited me to a two-day-long cocktail party at a five-star hotel on the Riviera. The event was called a “success weekend” but it was really just a seminar for up-and-coming young entrepreneurs. In addition to the absurd name, there were lots of morose people and all sorts of workshops run by fleabag experts with faces worn down by knowledge and data.

  Ever since I was a child visiting friends’ houses, I would pass the time by dreaming up wild tales about myself to entertain my companions. At dinner the first night, I served up my family’s lineage right from the first course: I was descended from a Hungarian prince whose distant ancestor had been a close friend of Count Dracula. “Contrary to what they have tried to make us believe ever since, he was actually a man of rare courtesy, a real prince! I have in my home certain documents which prove that the poor gentleman was the victim of a terrible smear campaign, as many other noblemen were, explicably, despicably jealous of him.”

  Now, in situations like that, you always have to ignore the skeptical glances and stay as focused as a shark on the most gullible people at the table. You overwhelm them with minute details until they take the bait and make a remark that confirms your fable. On the night
in question, the wife of a wine grower from Bordeaux nodded her head and declared, “I knew it! That story always struck me as being a bit much, too ghastly to be true! It’s a myth!” She was followed by her husband, who brought everyone else along, and that was all anyone talked about for the rest of dinner. Everyone shared their own wisdom, the doubts they’d always had. They convinced themselves and each other that what I’d said was true, spinning an entire scenario from my initial falsehood. By the end of the meal, no one would have dared to confess that they had ever believed, even for a moment, in the story of Count Dracula the Impaler, which happens to be true.

  Giddy with success, I committed a new offense with a different set of marks at lunch the next day. This time, I was the son of a rich American carmaker with automotive plants in Detroit, who had grown up within earshot of the racket of the assembly line. I raised the stakes by saddling myself with a severe case of autism that had kept me speechless until the age of seven. Winning hearts through compulsive lying that plucks at your victims’ heartstrings really is the easiest thing in the world to do.

  “But what could your first word possibly have been?” the woman on my right wondered out loud.

  “Tire,” I answered, looking proud.

  “Tire?!” my dining companions echoed in unison.

  “Yes, tire,” I said once again.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it? So that’s why you own so many garages. It figures. Life really is crazy sometimes,” my neighbor said, staring into space with a sigh. Her untouched plate was spirited back to the kitchen by and by. The rest of the lunch chatter was devoted to life’s little coincidences, people’s fates, and how their heritage can color their whole existences. I was basking in the almond cognac and the crazy, selfish pleasure of briefly monopolizing a group’s attention with stories as sturdy as the wind.

  But I digress. I was about to take my leave from that charming assembly—before my madcap tales crashed into each other at the Flailing Wall, by the pool where the whole group was supposed to meet up for a mini society ball—when a young woman in a feathered cap and gossamer dress began to dance with great finesse. She held a long slim cigarette in one gloved hand, and while her other hand whipped her sheer white shawl into a frenzy of movements that a living breathing partner might have envied, I remained fascinated by the undulations of her body, the cadence that made the feathers in her headdress endlessly sway and swish, like one of those wheels Tibetans use to pray with. Shifting with the rhythm from the regal grace of a swan to the swift precision of a raptor, she had me nailed to the spot: I feared I had met my captor.

  I assumed that she was being paid to entertain the guests and enliven an otherwise mundane event. Like a Roaring Twenties floozy and a Cheyenne on peyote rolled into one, she skipped from group to group, grabbing the men’s hands without so much as a howdy-do, spinning them ’til they were dizzy, throwing their spouses into a tizzy. Then without further ado, she’d fling them back to their sad lives and the bitter gaze of their jealous wives. I don’t know quite how long I had been standing there under the grape arbor, smoking my pipe and downing the glasses the waiters brought with swiftness and ardor. I was already at least two sheets to the wind when her gaze came to rest on my shy, glazed-over eyes, and I was pinned. Hers were the exact shade of celadon, deep enough to drown every shred of wit I could claim, causing me to stutter out a phrase that was tragically mundane: “What’s your name?”

  “Do you know I’ve got a painting of a handsome Prussian cavalry officer hanging over the mantel at home?” she replied. “Believe it or not, your haircut is just like his! I have met everyone in the world, and I can assure you that no one, absolutely no one, has had a haircut like that since World War I! Where have you been getting your hair done since Prussia ceased to exist?”

  “My hair doesn’t grow. It never has. Since you asked, I can tell you that I was born with this dratted haircut several centuries ago by now. As a child, I looked like an old man, but as time goes by, my haircut is starting to suit my age. I’m counting on fashion’s way of making everything old be new again to send me to my grave looking up-to-date!”

  “I’m serious! You, my dear, are the exact doppelganger of that Prussian cavalier. I’ve been madly in love with him since I was a child, and I’ve married him a thousand times by now. Since your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, we decided to get married every day, to make our lives a perpetual paradise.”

  “Now that you mention it, I do vaguely remember a military campaign when I was in the cavalry lines. I had my portrait painted after a battle crowned with success. I’m thrilled to learn that I now live over your mantel and have married you a thousand times.”

  “You can laugh all you want, but I swear it’s true! For reasons you can easily construe, the marriage has never been consummated; I’m still a virgin, though it’s a bit outdated. It’s not for want of dancing in the nude before the fireplace, but my poor horseman seems to be something of a prude, despite his fierce warrior’s face!”

  “I’m stunned. I would have thought that your sensual grace could raise an entire army! Your soldier must be a eunuch. But tell me, where did you learn to trip the light so fantastically, and in such a tunic?”

  “This is terribly awkward. I have yet another shocking confession, one that’s truly wild. Believe it or not, dear friend, but my father was Josephine Baker’s secret love child!”

  “By Jove, this is incredible! Josephine Baker was a close friend of mine before. We stayed at the same hotel in Paris during the war.”

  “Don’t tell me that you and Josephine . . . !? Hmm, you know what I mean.”

  “Well, actually, she did come to my room when the bombs were dropping one warm summer’s night. What with the fear, the heat and the closeness, it simply felt right.”

  “Sweet Jesus, then you might be my grandfather! Let’s have heaps of drinks to celebrate our finding each other!” she proposed while, I should mention, waving her hands to attract a waiter’s attention.

  We spent the entire afternoon in that spot near the woods, twittering like goldfinches, shifting only a few inches, outdoing each other’s nonsense and silly theories, feigning belief in each other’s stories. Behind her I saw the sun begin its ineluctable path toward setting—it even crowned her for a fleeting moment before dropping behind the rocks, gracing us with the halo of its celestial netting. Having reached out repeatedly, and in growing misery, for the glasses of champagne I still thought were meant for me, I finally became resigned to her custom. Since it required taking two glasses in one fell swoop, I started ordering my scotch on the rocks by the pair as well. That breakneck pace soon led to her subjecting me to an inverted questionnaire: she would inform me as matter-of-factly as could be of the praise she was craving, then tack a question tag onto the end of the phrase she was waving. “You’re thrilled to meet me, aren’t you?” or “I would make a wonderful spouse, wouldn’t I?” and then she added, “I’m sure you’re wondering if I’m out of your league, am I right? But don’t torture yourself, my dear, you have me intrigued, so I’m on sale until midnight tonight. Don’t miss your chance!” she announced, shimmying her bosom to make it dance.

  I had arrived at that peculiar moment when you can still choose, still choose your future feelings. I was perched at the top of the slide. It wasn’t too late to decide to scurry back down the ladder, hurry away before I had her. I could find a flimsy pretext to flee the whimsy of our context. Or I could let go, swing my legs over and let gravity take over, bask in the heady feeling of not being able to stop, of losing control, of steering my life toward a shining unknown goal, like sinking into a box of soft golden quicksand.

  I could see perfectly well that she wasn’t all there, that her delirious green eyes hid secret fault lines, and I ought to beware. That her plump, childish cheeks concealed a painful past, and that this beautiful young woman, who at first glance was droll and dazzling, had been through the mill and had emerged bruised and unraveling. I was think
ing that that had to be why she danced so madly—both gladly and sadly—to forget her troubles, that’s all.

  Stupidly, I was thinking that my professional life had been crowned with success, that I was almost rich and fairly good-looking, right? So I could easily find myself a normal wife, have a quiet life: a drink before dinner and lights out by midnight. I was thinking that I was already a bit of a loon, so perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea for me to fall for a complete loony tune; that like a single amputee dating a double, our pairing would necessarily lead us into trouble. In a word, I was starting to cave like a coward. While she flickered like a flame, tossing her mane, my shoulders were stooped. The prospect of an inscrutable life, rife with incomputable strife, had me spooked.

  And then, at the first notes of a jazzy tune, she tossed her gauzy shawl, as pale as the moon, around my neck, yanking me toward her with a gesture neither weak nor meek, and we found ourselves dancing cheek to cheek. Into her eyes I looked, and I knew right away I was hooked. I had been mulling a question that was already settled: I belonged to that lovely green-eyed lady. I had swung my legs up and over and was sliding into the mist, without having realized it, before we’d even kissed.

  “Nature calls, I’m bursting from all that drink. Wait here, don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t even blink!” she begged me, fiddling her long pearl necklace nervously, while her knees knocked impatiently at the door of this emergency.

  “Why would I move? I haven’t been in a better place since I can’t remember when!” I reassured her, with one hand signaling a waiter to quench my thirst yet again.

  As I watched her head toward the ladies’ room, with hurried but happy steps, I found myself face-to-face with my neighbor from lunch, one of the sales reps. Furious, drunk and out of control, she wagged a threatening finger at me, trying to inspire fear. “So you know Dracula, do you?” she shrieked, as the others drew near.