Toscanini and the Cellist (Part III)

 

"I need a beer," Leoni said.

Jeff laid money on the table and took Leoni’s arm. "You don’t drink beer. But if I didn't know better, I would think you had already had one." He pulled her along the sidewalk in the direction they had come.

"What was wrong with that story?"

"It was coarse."

"Are you trying to tell me Ella is a prude? Because if you are, maybe you never heard her say Lady Chatterley's Lover was penetrating in more ways than one. She said that at our wedding reception. My mother was mortified."

"Ella's remark was mildly racy, not coarse."

"Maybe I don't know the difference."

"Maybe you should learn the difference."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"To please me?"

"To please your mother, you mean. Did you see her flick her eyes when you invited her to spend another night? ‘Thanks but no thanks, dahling. I cahn’t. This is not Luxor.�?I don't know why you married me. There must be plenty more like her where you come from."

He stopped and turned her to face him. It was cool in the shade of a live oak that stretched halfway across the river. "I married you because you're the first woman I ever met who never tried to manipulate me. And because you have long, sexy legs."

"The first?"

"The first."

"No meek girlfriends?"

"The meek ones are the worst. They tie you up in subtle knots." They began to walk again.

"I’m glad Ella could joke about Lady Chatterley. She married her Mellors."

"Ella did? Married a gamekeeper?"

"A journalism student she met in the Bobby Kennedy campaign. They eloped."

"Your father was a journalist?"

"Her first marriage. She married my father after."

"Mellors didn't use the right fork?"

"I don't think she minded that. He borrowed money from her friends. He treated her like the little woman in front of his friends. One day when they had guests, he told her to start dinner."

"He told her to start dinner?"

"They lived the way we do. This was before she came into the money from her trust fund, and she wouldn’t take money from Granddad because Granddad took a dim view of Mellors."

"Are you making this up?"

"I wish I could have seen it. When she got to the hallway, she turned left to the bedroom instead of right to the kitchen and called a taxi. She took her cello and left by the back door. Granddad had the marriage annulled."

"I can’t believe this. Ella married to a commoner? I didn’t know she was political."

"She went to school with Bobby Kennedy's daughter, but it was a phase. She got over it."

They passed under a bridge.

"In a melodrama Ella would have been pregnant when she left. You would be the son of Mellors, and I would be Mellors�?daughter by his second marriage. That wasn't his name, was it?"

"I was born five years after she left him. I never knew his name, and I’m not sure Dad ever knew of his existence."

"She would marry a man and not tell him she’d been married before?"

"You couldn’t do that. You're an open book, with big black type. But I love Ella. She’s got a rebellious streak, like ours. It’s buried, but it’s there. If you could just lighten up."

They had come to the Paseo del Alamo and were climbing the steps to the street.

"Oh, all right. I’ll keep my mouth shut, but you’ll be in debt to me."

"I’ll be your slave."

"I’ll try to remember not to pick my nose too."

***

The Iberian Ballroom of the Mansion del Rio was crowded when Jeff and Leoni arrived for the party that night after the opera. Sconces and chandeliers shed light on the green Persian carpet, and the white louvered folding doors had been opened to extend the room all the way to the windows that overlooked the River Walk.

"I can see why you wanted to escape the life of the Rich and Famous," Leoni said. "All these jewels would put your eyes out after a while, like looking into the sun. At the North Pole. In a crowd of penguins."

"South Pole. There aren’t any penguins at the North Pole. What you do is just live through it, somehow, like summers in Texas."

Leoni spotted Placido Domingo talking to Henry Cisneros, Clinton’s dashing Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who had been the first Hispanic mayor of San Antonio. In a white dress, Jessye Norman bent toward them like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She was six feet tall, about the same height as Cisneros, but her hair was piled up about a foot above that. As Jeff and Leoni passed, a woman in a red-sequined dress said, "They had to carve out the entrance to the tomb in the last act so Jessye could slip through it without losing her hair." The group laughed. "Jessye’s voice is not as good as Leontyne’s," the penguin next to her said, "but she’s a better Aida because her nose is the size of a pyramid."

Leoni turned to stare at them, and Jeff pulled her along.

"There's Henry Gonzalez." He nodded toward the former Congressman, a short man in a blue suit, standing in a group of low-wattage people. "You could have worn your prom dress after all."

"I wish I had. Let’s go talk to them."

"Mother first. She’s seen us."

Ella was wearing a sky blue silk dress, and her long black hair flowed over her shoulders. "She is really beautiful," Leoni breathed. "Who’s that man she’s talking to? He looks like Christopher Plummer."

"That’s Maximilian Hildebrand. Don’t tell her I told you, but she’s been trying to marry him for three years."

"He’s that good, huh?"

"He’s a pompous ass, but he’s got houses everywhere, even in Cairo. The blonde goddess next to him is Celeste Stromberg, Ella’s newest rival."

Celeste was tall, Max’s height, and they both towered over Ella.

"How many of these people do you own?" Celeste was asking Max as Jeff and Leoni approached.

"I would never own anyone as far down the evolutionary scale as a Texan," Max said. "One can take only so much of their crude remarks, uttered in those appalling animal sounds that pass for speech."

Celeste tittered. Max caught sight of Leoni and beamed.

"Who is this vision of loveliness?"

"This is Leoni, Jeff's wife," Ella said.

"Enchante." Max kissed Leoni’s hand.

She grinned at him. "Likewise, I'm sure."

"You can take the girl out of the country," Celeste murmured.

"Quite," Max said coldly, and dropped her hand.

Jeff threw his arm around Max’s shoulders. "Max, old boy! How they hangin�? Do you want to hear the story about Toscanini and the cellist?"

Ella put her hand on Jeff's arm. "Darling, no!" Her alabaster face bloomed rose.

Jeff looked down at her, waiting.

"You always bungle the punchline." She took Leoni’s hand and turned her glittering eyes on Max. "Let me tell it."

--THE END--

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