East is East

Brie’s response registered somewhere on the scale between a yelp and a screech, before trailing off into frequencies audible only to more sensitive lifeforms. “Ruthie!” was the rough sense of the sound she produced, and then they were in each other’s arms, sisters torn asunder by the Fates and at long last reunited. After a moment they fell back a pace, still clutching one another but attaining enough distance for a quick but keen mutual appraisal. Brie looked good, Ruth had to admit it—but then why wouldn’t she, she was only twenty-six. “I’m knocked out,” Brie gasped, her dull gray gaze licking about the foyer, darting into the fuzzy purviews of the parlor where the dim forms of the cocktail crowd could be seen hanging protectively over their drinks, and then settling again on Ruth, “—I really am. I’m stunned. The place is fantastic, much tonier than I’d imagined even—”

“Yes,” Ruth agreed with a proprietary air, “it’s first class all the way here. Septima—that’s my boyfriend Saxby’s mother?—she keeps the place competitive, that’s for sure. They know how to spoil you. The food alone …” Ruth put three fingers together and waggled them in appreciation.

Brie was treating her to a broad open-faced look of wonder and unadulterated joy. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said in a kind of bark. “I thought I was going to be the only one—” Brie hesitated. “The only …”

Only what? Ruth wondered. Talking unicorn? Ditzy blonde? Rank amateur? Was Brie insulting her, was that it? Was she saying that she’d thought it would be all Grobian, Anserine, Kleinschmidt and Thalamus, all celebrity and anointed royalty, but that now she saw there was a peonage here as well and that Ruth was part of it? Like herself? Ruth could feel her ears turning red.

Brie never finished the thought. She squealed something unintelligible followed by “Oh, Ruthie, it’s so good to see you!” A second obligatory hug ensued, slightly less fervent than the first, and then Ruth led Brie into the parlor for cocktails.

At the bar, Ruth introduced her to Sandy, Regina, Ina and Bob, each of whom received in return a look of such awe and abasement they might have been Salinger, Nevelson, Welty and Ashbery. Brie then grilled them, as a group and individually both, about the minutest and most banal details of their personal histories, ending up with the verboten

question: “So what are you working on now?”

Ruth smiled serenely throughout, exchanging occasional glances with her friends and giving them the odd shoulder shrug for their unspoken commiseration. She was the undisputed queen here, after all—or she was so long as the pretender, Jane Shine, remained under wraps. And where was La Shine, with her flamenco hair and phony laugh—choking to death on a bit of pickled truffle in her lofty and well-appointed room? Out for a drive with her Nordic slave? No matter. In giving Brie the great good gift of her patronage—if she was all right in La Dershowitz’s eyes, she was all right, period—Ruth felt charitable, saintly even. It was the least she could do.

She let it go on a bit—“And you’re a Scorpio too?” Brie was gurgling at Ina in a battle of shoulders and flying hair—and then she cut in and took Brie by the elbow. “You’re going to want to unpack,” she said. “I’ll get Owen for you. But first”—a pause, casual as a yawn—“would you like to meet Irving Thalamus?”

Brie was a game-show contestant, second runner-up for the title of Miss America, she’d won the lottery and hit the jackpot at Vegas. The squeal of sheer wonder, amaze and delight shot directly out of the bounds of human hearing, and Sandy, Ina and Bob smiled softly to themselves, as they might have smiled at the antics of a child or a puppy; Regina fell back on her punk scowl. “Really?” Brie managed when she’d caught her breath, “Irving Thalamus? Is he here?”

Ruth led her over to where Irving sat propped up in an armchair with a double vodka and an issue of a literary magazine devoted exclusively to an appreciation of his work. It was good reading, and Irving was absorbed in it, oblivious, frowning behind his patriarchal eyebrows and the diminutive reading glasses perched like a toy on the end of his nose. He obliged them with a smile, and after Brie had made her obeisance—at the height of it Ruth thought she was going to roll on the floor and piss herself—he turned on the Thalamus charm and treated them to an in-depth, line-by-line assessment of the merits and failings of the critics the magazine had solicited to do honor to him.

Ruth got Brie a Calistoga and herself a bourbon, and she sat at Irving’s right hand while he went on about a certain Morris Ro-senschweig of Tufts University with all the wit, charm and self-deprecating irony of a man who still had something to live for. Ruth watched, and listened, and thought it was a pretty good act.