selling you the quilt,” said the Director stiffly, fearful of admitting (to a lawyer) any failure in the museum’s procedures. “We will only require you to meet the price the museum paid for it.” Success!
“How much?” asked Mimi, suspiciously.
“Twenty-five,” answered Leggy.
“Twenty-five dollars?! Trust John to sell it for—”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Leggy corrected, the eyebrow rising ominously again before she and the Director shared a classic Laurel and Hardy nod of mutual approbation.
Next thing I knew, we were in the museum shop, where a reddened Mimi bought ten bucks’ worth of postcards, her mouth a tiny dot of fury. To cool us both down, I took her to MoMA to see Matisse: to MoMA with MiMI! She studied one of his odalisques for some time before saying, “Was that Sherlock Holmes you were trying for in there?”
“Sherlock Holmes!? I’m wounded. That, Mimi, was my best James Bond impression! I thought I’d never get a chance to use it.”
Then we did crack up.
We went back to her place in Grove Street afterwards, to her cramped kitchen with its view of a brick wall opposite. Mimi fixed us huge Scotch and sodas and we sat at her bashed-up kitchen table, talking shyly about things. I think profiteroles came up, and their (debatable) relation to vol-au-vents. After a while she said she had to go have a shower, and left me sitting there all alone, making whirly patterns on the table with my wet glass. When I got tired of that, I wandered around the apartment, a funky little place with an unexpected sunken living room that must have seemed the hottest thing in about 1964. The bedroom was surprisingly spacious. It seemed dark and calm in there. Hours passed, or so it felt. “Mimi?” I called out, but she couldn’t hear me over the sound of running water. I went back to the kitchen and poured myself another whiskey and wandered with it into the bathroom.
There was Mimi, in a towel, reaching up for something, one breast exposed. She looked just like Delacroix’s Liberty leading the people! A brave, sturdy dame with freedom on the brain—bayonet rifle in one hand (or, in Mimi’s case, a damp towel), French flag in the other (comb), a load of dead supporters or enemies at her heels (pile of discarded clothing), and one big foot peeking out like the Statue of Liberty’s (minus the questionable sandal). If I didn’t shave, I could have been the Abe Lincoln lookalike, standing protectively by with a gun my own (glass of whiskey). There was none of the fragility of Gertrude about this gal. Nor were those the delicate flower-sewing hands of Puccini’s Mimì. This Mimi was no vulnerable waif or stray, no flower-girl. In fact, she wasn’t my type.
It was really that bathroom of hers I first fell in love with! The one thing my apartment lacked, a great old-fashioned New York bathroom with white hexagonal floor tiles, squared black towel rails, black-and-white tiling around the walls, a white china toilet-paper recess, and that great wide square sink with its mammoth X-shaped faucets. Mimi had it all!
She’d now gone into the bedroom, and I thought I heard her say, “Why don’t you kiss me?” This request seemed highly unlikely, so I went back into the kitchen, but there were too many circles in there. A few fireflies too. So I went to join Mimi instead, walked right up to her in her towel in her dark bedroom and her miasma of mayhem, and suddenly thought, I must kiss this woman before one of us dies .
Our four lips met, like the four corners of the earth, the four elements, a foregone conclusion. I didn’t see stars but there were skyscrapers and my mother’s raspberry jam and bulldozers and dachshunds. Some Matisse odalisques too, and cops, news flashes of politicians and flood victims, a quilt or two, Schubert, a Grecian pillar. . . and Gertrude. Yes, some lingering guilt toward Gertrude tried to throw me—misplaced, an error, a reflex, a shield against the unknown, the
“How much?” asked Mimi, suspiciously.
“Twenty-five,” answered Leggy.
“Twenty-five dollars?! Trust John to sell it for—”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Leggy corrected, the eyebrow rising ominously again before she and the Director shared a classic Laurel and Hardy nod of mutual approbation.
Next thing I knew, we were in the museum shop, where a reddened Mimi bought ten bucks’ worth of postcards, her mouth a tiny dot of fury. To cool us both down, I took her to MoMA to see Matisse: to MoMA with MiMI! She studied one of his odalisques for some time before saying, “Was that Sherlock Holmes you were trying for in there?”
“Sherlock Holmes!? I’m wounded. That, Mimi, was my best James Bond impression! I thought I’d never get a chance to use it.”
Then we did crack up.
We went back to her place in Grove Street afterwards, to her cramped kitchen with its view of a brick wall opposite. Mimi fixed us huge Scotch and sodas and we sat at her bashed-up kitchen table, talking shyly about things. I think profiteroles came up, and their (debatable) relation to vol-au-vents. After a while she said she had to go have a shower, and left me sitting there all alone, making whirly patterns on the table with my wet glass. When I got tired of that, I wandered around the apartment, a funky little place with an unexpected sunken living room that must have seemed the hottest thing in about 1964. The bedroom was surprisingly spacious. It seemed dark and calm in there. Hours passed, or so it felt. “Mimi?” I called out, but she couldn’t hear me over the sound of running water. I went back to the kitchen and poured myself another whiskey and wandered with it into the bathroom.
There was Mimi, in a towel, reaching up for something, one breast exposed. She looked just like Delacroix’s Liberty leading the people! A brave, sturdy dame with freedom on the brain—bayonet rifle in one hand (or, in Mimi’s case, a damp towel), French flag in the other (comb), a load of dead supporters or enemies at her heels (pile of discarded clothing), and one big foot peeking out like the Statue of Liberty’s (minus the questionable sandal). If I didn’t shave, I could have been the Abe Lincoln lookalike, standing protectively by with a gun my own (glass of whiskey). There was none of the fragility of Gertrude about this gal. Nor were those the delicate flower-sewing hands of Puccini’s Mimì. This Mimi was no vulnerable waif or stray, no flower-girl. In fact, she wasn’t my type.
It was really that bathroom of hers I first fell in love with! The one thing my apartment lacked, a great old-fashioned New York bathroom with white hexagonal floor tiles, squared black towel rails, black-and-white tiling around the walls, a white china toilet-paper recess, and that great wide square sink with its mammoth X-shaped faucets. Mimi had it all!
She’d now gone into the bedroom, and I thought I heard her say, “Why don’t you kiss me?” This request seemed highly unlikely, so I went back into the kitchen, but there were too many circles in there. A few fireflies too. So I went to join Mimi instead, walked right up to her in her towel in her dark bedroom and her miasma of mayhem, and suddenly thought, I must kiss this woman before one of us dies .
Our four lips met, like the four corners of the earth, the four elements, a foregone conclusion. I didn’t see stars but there were skyscrapers and my mother’s raspberry jam and bulldozers and dachshunds. Some Matisse odalisques too, and cops, news flashes of politicians and flood victims, a quilt or two, Schubert, a Grecian pillar. . . and Gertrude. Yes, some lingering guilt toward Gertrude tried to throw me—misplaced, an error, a reflex, a shield against the unknown, the
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