The Ghost of Greenwich Village Read online

  “This is so strange,” she said, leaning over the counter. “I was thinking about you just this morning. We got in some new stuff I think you might like. Haven’t had time to unpack it yet. You got a minute?”

  “I have lots of minutes.”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon trying on the choicest pieces whenever there were no customers. After closing time, Gwendolyn lowered the shades and made some tea while Eve described her magical date with Alex. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to call, but it’s awful waiting.”

  “Why don’t you just call him?” asked Gwendolyn.

  “I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Why not?”

  Eve stirred some honey into her tea as she pondered this. She’d learned how to send back a weak scotch and soda to the bartender, even at the Plaza. She’d learned how to get the best of anyone who tried to poach her taxi. She’d learned how to talk on the phone with all kinds of people. Maybe she would call Alex.

  • • •

  When she arrived home, she found an envelope made of thick, luxurious paper with her name on it on the small table in the vestibule. There was no stamp; it seemed to have been delivered by messenger. She opened it quickly.

  Dear Miss Eventual,

  I fear I ended our lunch some weeks ago rather rudely. May I make up for it by asking you to join me at Lincoln Center for La Bohème a week from Friday?

  MK

  The surprise was enough to make her plop down on the stairs and reread the note three times, hand on cheek.

  • • •

  Mark assigned her a cooking segment, her first since the bouillabaisse.

  “I think someone’s ready for panini!” he trilled, handing her the folder with the recipes and the dossier of the chef who would be demonstrating them. He seemed to think this was a sign of well-deserved esteem. “I told you you’d work your way back to covering food. Good job.”

  This was patently ridiculous. Eve had done well on the writing of the bouillabaisse segment; her only problem had been with the cooking. The show had long since hired a new food producer, so she wouldn’t be expected to actually grill the panini. She gave Mark a look that evidently he chose not to see.

  “Feel free to have fun with this one,” he said, picking up the phone to make a call.

  “What about new trends at Montessori schools?” Eve asked.

  Mark checked a phone number and began dialing. “Quirine’s got that.”

  “I know, but she’s also got two other stories. Let me take one of hers. How about the latest on cap and trade?” She knew all about it now.

  “No, really, she’s fine. Just do the panini.” His tone said, “On your way now.” Eve turned to leave, shaking her head. What was the problem? She was better than panini; she knew she was. Yet after several months of good work, her status in the department remained stuck at the bottom.

  Along with Cassandra.

  Klieg’s box offered a perfect view of the stage and the glittering audience below.

  “This is spectacular,” said Eve, gazing at the enormous modernist snowflake chandeliers overhead. She’d chosen a deep purple Claire McCardell dress with a fitted bodice and a tulle ballerina skirt for the evening and fantasized that she’d detected a nod of approval when she and Klieg had met in the lobby, though in fact his greeting was terse.

  He surreptitiously opened a bottle of champagne with practiced ease if little enthusiasm and handed Eve a glass. He drank without toasting.

  “Thank you so much for inviting me tonight,” said Eve.

  “It was Maxine’s idea,” he said, setting the bottle down and pulling out his libretto. Just then, the box’s door opened. In stepped a young man with conservatively cut dark blond hair. He looked at Eve for a moment, then he and Klieg spoke several sentences to each other in rapid German. After a slightly unpleasant pause, he sat on the chair behind Eve.

  Klieg focused once again on his libretto. “This is Günter. My nephew.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Eve, turning around in her seat. Günter inclined his head slightly but said nothing.

  “Günter is a veterinarian,” said Klieg. “In America to work at Plum Island for the year. Helping to understand foreign animal diseases. He is supposed to be some kind of expert. My brother insists he spend time in the city with me to absorb some culture. I’m not sure he can be converted to opera in his mid-thirties, but I said I would try.”

  Eve turned to Günter again, tilting her head to try to look into his downcast eyes. “Do you speak English?”

  Günter nodded.

  “He speaks it very well but thinks it’s not good enough,” said Klieg. “He is a perfectionist.” Klieg did not make this sound like a compliment.

  Eve gave up and opened her own program. She thought of Alex. She hadn’t had to call him, after all. He’d called the previous week to apologize, saying he’d been spending every night working. They’d since gone out twice more, late, after she got off from work. Alex had taken her to late night jazz at the Blue Note and a midnight poetry reading in the East Village. His kisses had made her swoon but both nights he’d gone back to Brooklyn to work on the magazine, which was a couple of weeks away from going to press.

  She wished she were at the opera with Alex. This private little nook was just the place for a stolen kiss in the dark. At least they were going out again in a few days. Dinner with Bix and Paul, then a birthday party for some friend of theirs and then …? Back to his place, she hoped. Denise had agreed to take Highball for the night. It would be forty dollars well spent.

  Klieg remained buried in his libretto. There were a good ten minutes to go before curtain-up, and Eve couldn’t bear to spend the entire time mute. And why should they? They’d gotten along well enough the two times they’d met. Though for some reason, Klieg seemed to find it slightly painful to be near her. Probably after so many years as a recluse, it was difficult to be around new people.

  She decided to take matters into her own hands. “I interviewed a young actress last week,” Eve began. Klieg nodded but kept reading. “Not a particularly talented one. She told me she’s about to launch a clothing line. She seemed to think it quite easy to reinvent herself as a designer.”

  Klieg didn’t take his eyes off his program. “Such ventures constitute an affront. The added insult is that she will likely do very well, at least at first. Until distributors realize she’s not talented at this, either.” Finally he looked at her. “The traditional way is to fail first and then work one’s way up. It was good enough for me.”

  “Did you ever fail? Really?”

  “My first collection very nearly ended my career.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “When was this?”

  “In the early sixties.”

  “Well—what happened?” Eve felt frustrated at having to pull every morsel out of him.

  Finally, Klieg closed his libretto. “I had taken every centime of my money from street sweeping and fixing shoes and even selling my blood, and poured it into one show, at a local park. It contained my first experiments with spheres and other shapes. There was a clumsy but promising trapezoid, I remember. The collection had to do well and bring in at least a few orders, or I would have to go back home to Germany. I cannot tell you how much this idea pained me. The word of mouth before the show was favorable and I believed I had a very good chance of success.” Klieg shifted in his chair, facing her slightly more directly.

  Eve put her glass down and leaned in.

  “The big day came. A handful of critics, mostly there to catch a glimpse of my rather notorious friends, took the front row. I sent my garments down the runway. There were gasps from the audience; this I expected. It was something new and they would rely on the critics to decide what they felt. But the critics just sat with crossed arms and blank faces. Then they went home and wrote the worst reviews you can imagine: They called my work silly. Childish. Not scandalous, which would have been all right. People will buy
clothes that shock. But when you are dubbed ridiculous, this is almost impossible to recover from.” Klieg took a sip of champagne and coughed as if some had gone down the wrong pipe.

  “How awful. What did you do?”

  “I turned to my friends, of course. Only they did not provide as much comfort as I had hoped. Perhaps they thought failure was contagious. The only one who stood by me was Donald. He spent a week sleeping on my floor, lent me money, and did his best to cheer me up. In the end, though, I had to return to Germany. I had to earn some real money, so with my ‘tail between my legs,’ as they say, I went to work for my father. Delivering heating oil.”

  Eve was so wrapped up in the story that she’d almost missed it: Donald. Donald? It must be a coincidence. There were thousands and thousands of Donalds in the world. But she had to ask.

  “Mr. Klieg—” Just then the lights dimmed, the orchestra began its overture, and the curtain lifted, revealing the Parisian garret of Marcello and Rodolfo. The players took the stage but Eve barely saw them. In her mind, she ran a quick calculation: In the early sixties, Donald would have been in his early thirties. He’d mentioned once in passing that he’d spent time in Europe. Had it been Paris?

  An hour later, when the lights finally came back on, Günter excused himself to the bathroom. Klieg launched into a critique of the costumes, but Eve stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, I’m just curious. What you said earlier …” she began.

  Klieg’s expression indicated he’d noted the urgency she’d tried to conceal in her voice. “Yes?”

  “You said you had a friend who helped you in your hour of need. Was it the same friend you mentioned at the gala?”

  “I am not sure.…”

  “The one who explained to Pierre Cavel and René LaForge and the others about what it meant to be a designer? Who helped them appreciate your work?”

  “Oh … yes.”

  “You said his name was Donald.”

  “Yes.”

  “Donald what?”

  “Donald Béliveau.” Eve’s shoulders sank, but Klieg went on, seemingly caught up in memories. “He was the only American in our group. Full of lingering postwar bravado that only the Americans had. Hubris, really.”

  Eve reached into her bag for her compact. “He was what, a painter? Sculptor?”

  “Heavens, no. Donald had no visual sense. He couldn’t even pick out a necktie.”

  “What, then?”

  “He was a writer.”

  “What kind?” she asked, dabbing her nose lightly.

  “Experimental, he insisted on calling it. His work was a mass of symbols and deconstructions. Nursery rhymes for the insane.” The hairs stood up on the back of Eve’s neck and she put the compact down. “A nightmare for the reader,” Klieg continued.

  “What happened to him?” asked Eve.

  The lights dimmed and Günter slipped back into the box.

  “I think the opera’s about to begin again,” said Klieg.

  But Eve couldn’t help herself. “Please.” She could feel Günter glaring at her from behind. She had no idea what his problem was, and right now, she didn’t care.

  Klieg furrowed his brow. “My goodness, why is this so interesting? I can’t think of another young person who’s ever asked so many questions about things that happened before her time.” He picked up his glass and put it down again without drinking. “Well, if you must know, it was not a happy story. He died suddenly. Here in New York.” He sighed. “I was still living in Paris at the time.”

  “Mr. Klieg?” Eve couldn’t keep her hunch to herself a moment longer. “Are you sure you’re not talking about Donald Bellows?”

  Klieg’s eyes widened. “Why—yes, actually. I always forget that he’d used a different surname in Paris. Americans were still hailed as heroes on the Continent back then, and most of them couldn’t resist taking advantage of this. Not Donald. He enjoyed doing things the hard way, didn’t want any special favors. So he took a French name and, since he spoke beautiful French, often got away with it. Only his intimates knew his real identity. But …” He blinked now in astonishment. “How could you know? I didn’t think anyone as young as you would have heard of Donald.”

  Eve, trying to keep her voice even, explained about living in Donald’s apartment, making it sound as though the landlord had told her. “So I’ve become interested in him.”

  “I suppose I can understand that,” Klieg said. “But what exactly do you find intriguing?”

  “I guess it’s just that it feels so intimate, to live where someone else once did. I stare up at the same bedroom ceiling he did and hang my clothes where he hung his. I feel”—she shrugged—“connected to him.”

  “I see.” For the first time Klieg held her gaze. “I admire your sensitivity, I must say. Perhaps this is why you are such a good interviewer.” He smiled, just a little.

  Eve was bursting with questions. She remembered how Donald disappeared during Klieg’s segment on Smell the Coffee. Had he been pulled away by the forces he couldn’t control or had he departed on purpose? And if so, why? Was there bad blood between them? She was just deciding what to ask next when the second act began. The orchestra played a lilting melody and the performers took their places. The story of Paris’s young artists, passionate and poor, jealous and heroic, powerless in the face of fate, unfolded in a swirl of music, color, and light. Eve glanced at Klieg. His eyes were glossy. She felt a wave of compassion come over her and it was all she could do to stop herself from putting her arms around his neck right there in their box, high up in the dark.

  • • •

  Late in the evening, the end finally came, and with it, Mimi’s death. The audience rose for three standing ovations before shuffling out. Even Günter seemed moved, either that or he had something in his eye. He and his uncle spoke in German and then he turned to go. As an afterthought, he offered his hand to Eve. She expected it to be limp in keeping with his mood, but his grasp was strong and warm.

  “A pleasure,” he said, but did not wait for her to reply before going.

  Klieg remained in his seat. Eve found a tissue in her bag and handed it to him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think all this time in America has robbed me of my stoicism. My brother in Cologne would be horrified.”

  “I think the opera got to everyone,” Eve offered, seeing a woman down below put her head on her husband’s shoulder and weep openly.

  “I’ve seen La Bohème many times. But tonight, your questions, they made me think of my own time in Paris, my own friends.”

  “How did you and Donald meet, if I may ask?” Eve asked quietly, after he seemed to collect himself.

  They’d first laid eyes on one another at a dinner party in the Sixth Arrondissement in ’61. “I was just twenty-one. Everyone had brought elaborate flower arrangements or chocolate. I had made the faux pas of bringing wine, which you never do at a French dinner party. It didn’t help that it was a cheap bottle, all I could afford. But Donald walked in, and with great ceremony set a silver bowl on the table. We looked inside and found not food, but tiny pieces of paper, each with a different word on it. He called it a ‘word salad.’ ” Eve smiled. That was so Donald. “He served each guest with great fanfare and there was general delight. Except for our hostess, I’m afraid. She was at a loss for what wine to serve with it.”

  This image of Donald was charming, so different than his often surly pose now. Eve poured the last of the champagne for them.

  “What did you think of his work?”

  “He certainly tried very hard.”

  “But did you think he had talent?”

  Klieg twisted his glass, watching the golden liquid swirl in the bottom. “I’m afraid not.”

  This was the answer Eve had been expecting, even hoping for. It confirmed she had a right to be impatient with Donald, to be frustrated by his demands that she help with his work. And yet, she felt pained by the revelation,
too. Donald had died too young; apparently without even having a legacy worth preserving.

  “I take it you weren’t a fan of his ‘deconstructed style’?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Too clever, too self-conscious?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t put any emotion into his work?” Eve pressed, unable to help herself. “Isn’t that strange for an artist? I mean, look at your designs. Especially the early ones. They overflowed with exuberance and humor and optimism.”

  Klieg folded his libretto in half and pushed it into the pocket of his jacket, which hung on a wall hook overhead. He stood.

  Eve, puzzled, stood too. “I mean, isn’t art supposed to move us as well as challenge us?” she asked. “I get the idea he had no emotions at all. Like he was just some kind of word machine without a heart.”

  Klieg took a step toward the door, and when he spoke, he did not look at her. “You probably should not offer opinions on that which you do not fully understand,” he said softly.

  • • •

  As soon as Eve got home, she took Highball and headed out in the direction of the river. She didn’t want to risk thinking about Klieg in Donald’s presence. Instinct told her to keep this development to herself, at least for now. For one thing, it was delicious to finally have a secret, to know something about Donald that he didn’t know she knew. It was still rare for her to come across anything even tangentially about him in any library books. Spending time with somebody who’d known Donald well could provide a wealth of information. But this would make Donald feel vulnerable, which would doubtless make him even more fractious than usual. And there were endless ways he could retaliate if he felt his power slipping.

  It was early September now and the ginkgo leaves, shaped like little geisha fans, began to scatter themselves on the sidewalk. The air smelled earthen and damp, like the inside of a cave. She enjoyed these late-night ambles through the quiet streets. Without the traffic and tourists, this was when the Village felt most timeless.

  The evening with Klieg, like their lunch in the spring, had ended strangely. But despite this, it represented something of a breakthrough. It was the first time she’d been with Klieg and not felt awed. Even though several people in the audience had spotted him and nudged one another, she had all but forgotten she was sitting next to someone famous.