There was a pause, and we considered the drinks menu. Leander got scotch and soda, and I got a soda and bitters, which is nonalcoholic but not sweet. I didn’t want to order a sweet drink in front of Leander. Val would have done that; she would have had no sense of subtlety. Here we were at the Sherry-Netherland. I couldn’t sit there sipping a Shirley Temple for Lord’s sake.
It was starting to occur to me that for an old man Leander was rather handsome. He had a fine, sharp profile and his white hair had a kind of crispness to it. Actually he reminded me of the Sherry-Netherland itself. He had this old-time elegance, wearing white linen trousers and a brown seersucker blazer, a bit frayed around the cuffs. His butterscotch-colored loafers were old and obviously Italian. Since this summer in New York, I was beginning to be able to identify these things.
“Theo bought me these shoes,” he told me. “This one time, in Florence. She was always very generous with her money and I’ve never had a penny. She was having an affair with a count—”
“A count?”
“Why yes. And a handsome young waiter or two.” He laughed.
“How did you meet Theo?”
“In Paris. Spring of ’63, at a café under the flowering chestnut trees. Do you know the French word for chestnut tree, by the way? It’s very beautiful…”
“Le chataignier,” I answered promptly. Leander looked surprised, so “Val and I go to French school,” I explained.
“Of course you do, you creature of Salinger, you! Anyway, I met Theo in Paris in the spring of ’63 under the flowering chestnut trees. She had just graduated from Radcliffe and was in Paris working as a runway model. Now that I think of it, her hair was rather like your hair, the same haircut. Very becoming if a girl has good bones.”
I was about to tell him I’d gotten the haircut today and that it was Clover who’d suggested it, but then I decided to let him think I had come up with the idea all on my own. It was better that way.
“Her lips were pale and her eyes were dark. That was the fashion then. But what I remember most about Theo, that afternoon, apart from her considerable beauty, was that she had been crying. There were teardrops on those black Mod lashes of hers. I went up to her and introduced myself. She said, ‘It’s no good talking to me, whoever you are. I’ve been weeping.’ I said, ‘But I am always weeping.’ She laughed and after that we were fast friends.”
“Lovers?” I tried to make the word sound casual.
“Actually, no. Not that I wasn’t quite in love with her, at first. Any man would have been. But it was Paris in the spring in that golden era and love was mine for the taking. Oh, the girls crossing the avenues in their plaid skirts, their blue striped dresses! When it rained they wore trench coats…”
“What has become of the trench coat?” I asked, imitating Leander. He laughed his crazy laugh, and this time I liked it because I knew he thought I was being witty.
“What indeed? Well anyway. Theo and I were friends and friendship is something altogether different from love. In a way, one finds, it’s much rarer … more precious.”
Now this, this was incredible to me. Friendship rare? But back in San Francisco, Val and I had so many friends. Girlfriends were ordinary everyday entities. Love was the miracle. I tried saying so to Leander. He sighed and asked me: “How old are you again?”
“Fourteen. I’ll be fifteen in February.”
“Oh, you’ll live a lot between now and then, don’t worry. By the time February comes, you’ll feel as though you’ve aged decades. But permit me: fourteen is still very young. And what an enchanting age it is. You’ll find, as time goes on, that innocence is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
“What does that mean?” I had a vague idea that an “aprodisiac” was a fancy word having something to do with sex.
“Aphrodisiac, from the goddess Aphrodite. Presumably your schooling has encompassed the Greek myths? So an aphrodisiac is a substance that is said to heighten desire. Oysters are a rather clichéd example. But for me a better way to look at it is that an aphrodisiac heightens eros, love, beauty. And furthermore, an aphrodisiac must be personal. To each their own. So for me, an aphrodisiac might be a certain flavor bubble bath my Danish wife, Annebirgitte, used to use when we were first married. Annebirgitte, say it to yourself, Franny, it is a very beautiful name. The bubble bath she used was pine. It smelled of the woods and when I was first courting her.”
“I don’t think I have any yet,” I said.
“Any what?”
“Aphrodisiacs.”
“You do, or shall I say … you will soon. I should think that this summer…”
“What about this summer?”
“Well, being here, in New York, under Theodora Bell’s tender tutelage…”
“There was something you said earlier, Leander.”
“Yes?”
“You said that when you met Theo that afternoon in Paris in the café, she had been weeping. But I just can’t see Theo ever weeping.”
Leander laughed. “Precocious! How precocious this one is. You are quite right, Franny, quite right.”
“I think of Theo as being … almost inhuman. You know, terribly glamorous and sharp and jaded and all that.”