Now he says, “Right, the Dark Lady sonnets. I remember them. Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder, but verse is cheaper: it certainly hooked you. You used to stagger into my barbershop enclave reeking of gutter sex, you stank like a week-old whitefish. You were cross-eyed over that dickhead the whole summer. I never could see it, myself.”
“Because he never would show it to you,” says Jorrie. She laughs at her own joke. “It was well worth the sight. You’d have been jealous!”
“Just don’t claim you were in love with him,” says Tin. “It was low, sordid lust. You were out of your mind on hormones.” He understands that kind of thing, he’s gone through similar infatuations. They’re always comic in the eyes of others.
Jorrie sighs. “He had a great body,” she says. “While it lasted.”
“Never mind,” says Tin. “It can’t be much of a great body any more, since it’s a corpse.” The two of them snicker.
“Will you come with me?” says Jorrie. “To the memorial service? Have a gawk?” She’s putting on a jaunty air, but she fools neither of them.
“I don’t think you should go. It would be bad for you,” says Tin.
“Why? I’m curious. Maybe a few of his wives will be there.”
“You’re too competitive,” says Tin. “You still can’t believe some other woman elbowed you out and you didn’t win the prize pig. Face it, you two were never meant for each other.”
“Oh, I know that,” says Jorrie. “We burnt out. Too hot to last. I just want to see the double chins on the wives. And maybe What’s-her-name will be there. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”
Oh please, thinks Tin. Not What’s-her-name! Jorrie’s still so knotted up over Constance, the live-in girlfriend whose mattress she’d defiled, that she won’t even pronounce her name.
Unfortunately Constance W. Starr has not faded into obscurity as her wispiness ought to have dictated. Instead she’s become obscenely famous, though for a ludicrous reason: as C. W. Starr, she’s the author of a brain-damaged fantasy series called Alphinland. Alphinland has made such a vast shitload of money that Gavin the Relatively Penurious Poet must have been revolving in his grave decades before he actually died. He must have cursed the day he allowed himself to be led astray by Jorrie’s overheated estrogens.
As the Starr star has risen, so has Jorrie’s own star faded: she no longer twinkles, she no longer monkey-shines. The C. W. Starr feeding frenzy generates long and clamorous lineups in bookstores on the publication days of new books, with children and adults both male and female dressed up like the villainous Milzreth of the Red Hand, or the blank-faced Skinkrot the Time-Swallower, or Frenosia of the Fragrant Antennae, the insect-eyed goddess with her entourage of indigo and emerald magic bees. All of this hoopla must get right up Jorrie’s nose, though she’s never confessed to having noticed.
From the few times he’d accompanied Jorrie to the Riverboat, Tin has a vague memory of Alphinland’s unlikely genesis. The saga began as a clutch of ersatz fairy tales of the sword-and-sorcery variety, published in two-bit magazines of the kind featuring semi-naked girls on the covers being leered at by Lizard Men. The Riverboat hangers-on – especially the poets – used to make fun of Constance, but he guesses they don’t do that much any more. Money fishes with a golden hook.
Of course he’s read the Alphinland series, or parts of it: he felt he owed it to Jorrie. In case she ever asks for his critical opinion, he can loyally tell her how bad it is. And of course Jorrie has read it too. She’d have been overcome by jealous curiosity, she wouldn’t have been able to restrain herself. But neither of them has admitted to having so much as cracked a spine.
Happily, thinks Tin, Constance W. Starr is said to be somewhat of a recluse; more so since her husband died, a newspaper obituary Jorrie had passed over in silence. In a perfect world, C. W. Starr won’t turn up at the funeral.
Odds of a perfect world? One in a million.
“If this Putnam funeral is going to be all about Constance W. Starr,” says Tin, “I am definitely vetoing it. Because it will not be, as you say, a hoot. It will be very destructive for you.” What he doesn’t say: You’ll lose, Jorrie. The same way you lost the last time. She’s got the high ground.
“It isn’t about her, I promise!” says Jorrie. “That was more than fifty years ago! How could it be about her when I can’t even remember her name? Anyway, she was so wispy! She was such a pipsqueak! I could have blown her over with a sneeze!” She gasps with laughter.
Tin considers. Such bluster, in Jorrie, is a sign of vulnerability; therefore, she needs his support. “Very well. I’ll go,” he says, with unfeigned reluctance. “But I’m not having a happy feeling about this.”
“Shake on it like a man,” says Jorrie. The phrase is from a Western matinee movie routine they used to do when they were kids.
“Where is the dreaded affair?” Tin asks on the morning of the memorial service. It’s a Sunday, the one day Jorrie is permitted to cook. Mostly her cooking is a matter of opening takeout containers, but when she gets ambitious there will be smashed crockery, swearing, and incinerations. Today is a bagel day, praise the lord. And the coffee’s perfect because Tin made it himself.
“The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse,” says Jorrie. “It offers a gracious atmosphere reminiscent of a bygone era.”
“Who wrote that?” says Tin. “Charles Dickens?”
“I did,” says Jorrie. “Years ago. Right after I went freelance. They wanted an archaic tone.” She hadn’t exactly gone freelance, as Tin recalls: there had been a civil war at the advertising company and she’d been on the defeated side, having unfortunately told her antagonists what she really thought of them. However, she’d collected a reasonable parachute, which had enabled her to go into real-estate speculation. That had kept her in designer foot-fetish objects and vulgar, overpriced winter vacations until one of her menopause-era lovers made off with her savings. Then she was overleveraged, had to sell in a down market, and lost a crock of gold, so what could Tin do but offer her a refuge? His house is big enough for the two of them, just barely: Jorrie takes up a lot of space.
“I hope this schoolhouse venue isn’t a hotbed of kitsch,” says Tin.
“Do we have a choice?”
After ferreting through her closet, Jorrie holds up three of her outfits on hangers so Tin can evaluate them. It’s one of his demands – one of his requests – on the days when he agrees to attend events with her. “What’s the verdict?” she says.
“Not the shocking pink.”
“But it’s Chanel – an original!” Both of them frequent vintage clothing stores, though only the upmarket end. They’ve kept their figures, at least: Tin can still wear the elegant three-piece ’30s ensembles he’s sported for some decades. He even has a lacquer cane.
“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “No one’s going to read the label, and you are not Jackie Kennedy. Shocking pink would draw undue attention.”
Jorrie wants to draw undue attention: that’s the whole idea! If any of Gavin’s wives are there, and especially if What’s-her-name shows up, she longs to have them notice her the moment she walks in. But she backs down, because if she doesn’t, she knows Tin won’t come with her.
“And not the faux-leopard stole either.”
“But they’re in fashion again!”
“Exactly. They’re far too in fashion. Don’t pout, you look like a camel.”
“So you’re voting for the grey. May I say yawn?”
“You may say it, but that won’t change reality. The grey has a beautiful cut. Understated. Maybe with a scarf?”
“To cover up my scraggy neck?”
“You said it, not me.”
“I can always depend on you,” says Jorrie. She means it: Tin saves her from herself, on those occasions when she takes his advice. By the time she walks out the door she’ll be confident in the knowledge that she’s presentable. The scarf he chooses for her is muted Chinese red: it will perk up the complexion.
“How do I look?” says Jorrie, turning before him.
“Stupendous,” says Tin.
“I love it when you lie for me.”
“I’m not lying,” says Tin. Stupendous: causing astonishment or wonder. From the gerund of stupere, to be astounded. That about covers it. After a certain moment, there is only so much a beautifully cut grey outfit can redeem.
At last they are ready to set forth. “You’ll have to wear your warmest coat,” says Tin. “It’s frore out there.”
“What?”
“It’s very cold. Twenty below, that’s the predicted high. Glasses?” He wants her to be able to read the program for herself, without pestering him to do it for her.
“Yes, yes. Two pairs.”
“Handkerchief?”
“Don’t worry,” says Jorrie. “I don’t intend to cry. Not over that bastard!”
“If you do, you can’t use my sleeve,” says Tin.
She sticks out her chin, the flag of battle. “I won’t need it.”