Genius Page 10

  “I’m sorry,” my wife was saying, “I don’t smoke, but my husband has some Filtrons someplace around the house.”

  “I suppose they’re some Mexican imitation of American filtered cigarettes. It’s amazing how people all copy us. Look at the Japanese.”

  “Not now, if you don’t mind,” my wife said.

  Far from the fluffy, slightly disheveled, endearing child she had been the night before, Emily was got up in something very white and starched and crisp that made me think somehow of a dietician or a domestic-science teacher or a public health official. Not that she wasn’t still pretty, she was, but there was a sort of antiseptic, touch-me-not, no-nonsense-please quality about her that struck me as far from pleasing.

  “Oh, good morning,” she said, eyeing my rather casual outfit. “Do people dress like that for church in Mexico?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose there are any Protestant churches down here, but then with a name like Dennis you’re probably . . .”

  “There are several—Episcopal, Lutheran, Christian Science, you name it.”

  “We are Episcopalians,” she said primly.

  “I thought as much. However, this morning I have been worshipping at the shrine of Leander Starr.”

  With that she perked up a bit. “Oh, was he surprised?”

  “Surprised hardly describes your father’s emotions, Emily.”

  She gave me a look as though I had been overly familiar by not addressing her as Miss Starr and then said, “I can’t see the attraction of a country so inefficient that important telegrams aren’t delivered.”

  “Have you tried to dial Washington from Philadelphia recently, Emily?” I said.

  “We don’t know anyone in Washington nowadays. We’re Republicans.”

  “We’re not,” my wife said. “More coffee?”

  “No, thank you. I find it rather strong. But I suppose it’s quite stale by the time it gets down here.”

  My wife looked as though she were about to explode.

  “No, Emily,” I said. “It’s grown in Latin America, so we’re really a lot closer to the source than Philadelphia is. In fact, it’s mixed and ground to order at the tienda every day. We like it strong.”

  “I see,” Emily said, somewhat chastened. I believe that she sensed for once that she had been rude, and no daughter of Caroline Morris’ would ever be rude—unintentionally.

  “You’re very like your mother, Emily,” I said, not entirely meaning it as a compliment.

  “Oh, do you know Mummy?” she said with some surprise. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard her mention you.”

  “Probably not. You see I introduced her to your father.”

  Emily snickered, caught herself, and stopped. I could well imagine what Caroline had had to say about Starr during the girl’s formative years. “How did you know Mummy?” Emily asked with just a hint of suspicion.

  “She was in school with my sister.”

  “Boarding school or college?”

  “Both.”

  Emily thought that over for a moment and then became slightly warmer. As with her mother, if you had ever shared the same school, the same dentist, or, I suppose, the same bed, you became more respectable if only because of sheer proximity. She gave me a chilly little smile of approval. “And I thought you were just a friend of Daddy’s.” Then she turned to my wife and said, “Did you know Mummy, too?”

  “No. She’s years older.”

  There was a lull. Then Emily looked at her wrist watch and said to no one in particular, “I wonder what can be keeping Daddy?”

  “I suspect that he wanted to shave and dress and spruce up a bit to see you after all these years,” I said. For all I knew he’d cut his throat and I wouldn’t have blamed him.

  She looked at her watch again. “Does he always sleep this late?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never slept with him.”

  Emily looked horrified, and my wife, ever the conscientious hostess, said, “As you know it was quite late when he got in. The hours down here are somewhat more Spanish. No one dines before nine or ten and . . .”

  Her travelogue was interrupted by Emily. “I suppose he runs around with a lot of women. Mummy said . . .”

  “Actually, your father leads a very quiet life,” I said. “Yesterday was the first time he’s left his apartment since he came to Mexico. He hasn’t been well,” I added lamely, my sympathies suddenly having switched from daughter to father.

  “What seems to be the matter with him?” Emily asked in the tones of a consulting specialist who suspects a patient of malingering.

  I was about to add, “You, for one thing,” when a shadow fell across the breakfast table. We all turned, and there was Starr standing majestically in the doorway, white at the temples and corseted to a fare-thee-well. From his imposing height, I also suspected lifts in his shoes. He was dressed as a happy compromise between a corpse and an undertaker in a morning suit that, like Starr, in spite of its age and general dilapidation, still had a good deal of dash. Pressed to his heart he carried a small prayerbook.

  “Forgive me, my darling baby, for not rushing here in dishabille as was my first instinct. But then I thought, No, and betook myself instanter to our sweet little Anglican chapel to offer up a humble father’s prayer of thanks to Our Lord for delivering safely to me my adorable girl-baby daughter.”

  I could have thrown up.

  “Oh, Daddy!” Emily said, rising weakly to her feet.

  Starr advanced three giant steps into the room. Emily rushed to him, and the old fraud let the prayerbook (which I noticed upon later examination was inscribed “To Albert Schmackpfeffer with love from Aunt Bessie”) fall with a leathery plop, and gathered Emily expertly into his arms. I gave my wife a sharp kick under the table, but when she looked in my direction I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. I excused myself.

  When I returned, St. Regis, in full butler’s regalia, had been added to the dramatis personae and was gathering up Emily’s matched luggage while saying a lot of tiresome things about how he hadn’t seen her since she was crawling and how he’d have known her anywhere. If Starr had been staging an Oscar Wilde revival, the role of the paterfamilias couldn’t have been played with a higher gloss or greater élan. Emily, while still reserved, was obviously charmed by the stagey mannerisms of the old phony.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what, my darling daughter, how would you feel about seeing a bullfight?”

  “Oh, Daddy, I never have. Have you?”

  “Constantly. A real aficionado. As a boy, in fact, I seriously considered a career in the ring.”

  “The ring, Daddy?”

  “Bull!” I said. “The bull ring.”

  “Just so, dear boy,” Starr said a bit uneasily. “And then we might dine at that place Mr. Dennis is so fond of. Del Paseo, dear boy?”

  “El Paseo. And it’s closed on Sundays.”

  “What a pity. Well, some other place. St. Regis, after you’ve stowed Miss Emily’s luggage away, do get out the car.”

  “The car, sir?”

  “Oh, drat! I forgot that the Rolls is being serviced. Dear Dennis, do you suppose we could borrow the voiture de maison?”

  “The what?”

  “You know that old pile that belongs to our gracious hostess, Señorita Ximinez.”

  “Well, after all you’ve done for her, Leander, I’m sure she’d be enchanted. I believe you have some things to return to her anyhow.”

  “Um . . . yes . . .” he said edgily. “St. Regis, would you just take . . . uh . . . Miss Ximinez’s belongings round to her flat and ask if her car is available. Surely you could drive it.”

  “That old foreign . . .”

  “The very one. Now be quick about it, St. Regis. A father doesn’t get to greet his long-lost daughter every day. Come along with me, darling, and Daddy will show you to your room. You must forgive this jiggery-pokery old place. It’s just a temporary pied-à
-terre until my agents find a suitable house. Good-by, mes chers, and thanks so much for looking after my little girl.”

  “Good-by, Mr. Dennis, Mrs. Dennis,” Emily said with almost a curtsy. “Thank you very much, and I do hope that we’ll meet soon again.”

  “I’m almost certain that we will,” my wife said. “Good-by, and have a pleasant afternoon.”

  “Good-by, Daddy Warbucks,” I said.

  Starr closed the door and we were, at last, alone.

  “Well,” I said with a sigh.

  “Miss Emily is something of a prig,” my wife said.

  “Come again?”

  “Prig. P-R-I-G.”

  “Oh.”

  “But even so she’s not really bad.”

  “Indeed she’s not. She’s dreadful! Just like her mother.”

  “Yes, but at least she’s had the guts to escape from Mummy.”

  “Mummy is right, and Emily is just like her: Embalmed.”

  “No, not quite. What you say is correct, and there were times this morning when I could have reached across the table and slapped her arrogant little face. I’ll grant that she’s narrow, snobbish, disapproving, and a lot of other unpleasant things, but that’s simply because of the way she’s been brought up. Underneath there’s something lively that’s just itching to be let out. I can tell. Remember, I’m a woman and I know other women.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.

  “But what amazed me was Starr himself. The change that having his daughter here has made in him. I was moved almost to tears.”

  “I was moved even further.”

  “I had no idea that he was such a deeply religious man.”

  “Such a what?”

  “Well, that bit about dropping into the Anglican chapel for a prayer. Where is the Anglican chapel, by the way?”

  “Did you come down in the last rain? There isn’t any Anglican chapel. The nearest thing to it is Christ Church, and that’s miles from here on Artícolo 123 right in the heart of town. And Starr wasn’t there. He was in the sack with none other than Madame X—for old times’ sake, I suppose.”

  “I find that impossible to believe. There was such a . . . well, spiritual quality to him this morning. I could almost smell it.”

  “That was the spirit gum holding on his hairpiece. And the odor of sanctity came from the moth crystals in his morning suit. I’m amazed that anyone like you—on to the old charlatan for years—could fall for such a performance. The cutaway, the prayerbook. Really!”

  “I feel,” my wife said piously, “that he wanted only to show his daughter that he was a well-bred and religious man—if only to counteract the terrible things her mother must have said about him.”

  “Well, he doesn’t happen to be either. He’s a self-centered old megalomaniac, and when the novelty of this heavy father act wears off—as it will in about two hours—he’ll be the same shabby deadbeat he always was. Remember, I’m a man and I know other men—especially this one.”

  My soliloquy was interrupted by the coughing and choking of Madame X’s old Hispano-Suiza pulling up out in front of the Casa Ximinez. St. Regis, in archaic chauffeur’s livery, was at the wheel looking terrified. In a moment Starr appeared with Emily on his arm. She was very white gloves and picture hatty, while Starr was still in his courtly Adolph Menjou phase. He helped Emily into the car with an air of gallantry and a little half bow that made me want to kick him in the pants. Then he climbed aloft—and considering the age and height of that old touring car, I mean just what I say—and executed an airy gesture of command. The car lurched hideously and leaped forward with such violence that their heads were snapped backward to the folded-down roof. Then they were off in a cloud of white dust. “There they go,” I said, “Elsie Dinsmore and Daddy-dear.”

  “I still think it’s sweet,” my wife said with a little less certainty.

  “I only hope that St. Regis can afford this little family outing. I also hope that we might be left alone just long enough for me to take a bath.” I started up the stairs, unbuttoning my shirt at the same time. When I was about halfway up, our bell started clanging.

  “I knew it was too good to last,” I said, trudging the long, long route to the door at the front of the building. I undid all of the locks and bolts and opened up. Standing there was a small, rather untidy-looking man. He wore rimless glasses, a small wispy mustache, and he carried a shabby, bulging briefcase that looked as though it had seen a lot of travel.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Mr. Starr?”

  “Now don’t tell me that you’re his long-lost son?”

  “You are Mr. Starr, aren’t you?”

  “No, thank God, I’m not.” I had the feeling that I was sitting through a motion picture—possibly one written, produced, and directed by Leander Starr—for a second time.

  “Isn’t this the Casa Zzzziminezzz?”

  “This is the Casa Hhhhiminez, but you have the wrong apartment. Mr. Starr is in Number Two—straight through the patio and then to your right.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But he’s not there. He’s just left.”

  “Left the country?” the man asked rather too sharply.

  “No, alas, left the Casa Ximinez. I don’t know what time he’ll be back, and what’s more, I don’t . . .”

  “Maybe you can tell me, is there any kinda ho-tel or tourist home—a motel like—around here?”

  “Not really. The San Angel Inn is fairly close, but I don’t know if they can take any guests at the moment.”

  “You suppose there’d be a vacancy here? I mean in the Casa Zzzziminezzz?”

  “I think there may be. I’m not sure. You’d have to ask Miss Hhhhiminez. Her apartment is across the whole back of the patio. You can’t miss it. Good . . .”

  “Expensive?”

  “Miss Ximinez?”

  “No, this place. The Casa Zzzziminezzz.”

  “I think so.”

  “About how much?”

  “You’d have to take that up with Miss Hhhhiminez. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “You know this Leander Starr?”

  “Certainly. Who doesn’t?”

  “Has he been livingue here longue?”

  “Mr. Starr? I really couldn’t tell you. I’m afraid I can’t help you at all, Mr. . . . uh . . .”

  “Guber.”

  “Goober?” He did look rather like the Planter’s Peanut man, only not as jaunty.

  “Yes,” he said, handing me a business card. “Mr. Guber of the Department of Internal Revenue. Be seeingue you.”

  VI

  In her definitive book The Death and Life of American Cities, Jane Jacobs deplores the sterile, planned, lifeless neighborhoods and favors those sections that just “grew” and throb with people and activity twenty-four hours a day. Mrs. Jacobs would jump for joy if she could see our barrio. Although Casa Ximinez presents a blank face to the street and exudes a totally false air of somnolence and tranquillity, the rest of the neighborhood absolutely seethes with activity. On one corner is the tienda, reeking of coffee and garlic and onions and cabbages. Opposite is the Corazón de Jesús Farmacia, which I also suspect of being a numbers parlor. The Nueva Mil Preguntas variety store occupies a choice corner on the way to the Insurgentes, and in between are the Vog (sic) Salón de Belleza, where my wife’s back hair was singed to steel wool, two doctors, a dentist, a public bath, a flower stall, a dressmaker, and a sordid bar. In other words, there are always plenty of people around, and it takes very little to collect a crowd at any hour.

  It was the lavender hour of that same Sunday when one of the largest mob scenes in the history of our barrio gathered around the biggest, most thoroughly awful Cadillac limousine ever created. One could hardly blame the locals for staring. The car, like the hour, was lavender—but with an iridescent finish—and almost as long as an ocean liner. It had chromium in all of the usual places and in about twice as many unusual places, plus two radio and telepho
ne antennae soaring upward like buggy whips. This infernal machine was manned by a crew of two—chauffeur and footman—dressed in blue-violet liveries that made me think mostly of the old Northwestern University band. On the doors of the tonneau were violet initials, C. P. (Cerebral Palsy? Communist Party?), large enough to read at a hundred yards. It was some sight.

  The footman leaped out, forced a clearing in the crowd, and opened a rear door, revealing to the admiring multitudes an interior of fuchsia tufted satin. A loquacious giggle was heard, and from this amaranthine excrescence stepped Leander Starr, looking disheveled and furious. He was followed by Emily, who still looked prim and starchy but with a certain thin-lipped, irritated expression that reminded me more of her mother than of the girl-with-a-crush who had sallied forth with her psalm-singing Prince Charming a few hours earlier. Last but not least emerged a vision even more striking than the automobile itself—a woman of indeterminate years wearing a short pleated skirt, a white cardigan lavishly trimmed with multicolored paillettes and mink, and bracelets to each elbow.

  Through the open window I could hear Starr, for once almost at a loss for words. “Um . . . well, uh, thank you very much, uh, Mrs. Pomeroy. It was most kind of you.”

  “Why, Leander,” the woman shrilled. “You certainly know me well enough to call me Clarice. And you must, too, Emmy.”

  “Uh, yes,” Emily said in a voice you could chip with an ice pick.

  “Well, uh, Clarice,” Starr spoke the word as though it were an obscenity, “after your great kindness we mustn’t detain you any longer. Thank Mrs. Pomeroy, Emily.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t, Leander,” the woman said with a soubrettish wag of the index finger. “Now that I’ve saved you, I demand my little tribute. You’ve gotta ask Clarice in for a wee droppy. One for the road.” She giggled inordinately.

  My wife joined me at the window. “Who’s the comic Valentine?”

  Suddenly it came to me exactly who it was. “That is California’s answer to Bunty Maitland-Grim. Her name is Mrs. Worthington Pomeroy and she is the sole heiress to Wonderlax, whose famous motto, ‘Down and Out’ once won for me a ten-dollar raise.”