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Tips were only, as Mr. Ormund had explained, the tip of the iceberg. The real payoff came in the form of courtship, with all its immemorial perks — di
“Now I don’t want you to think, mignon—” That, or migniard, was his pet name for his current favorites. “—that I am some vile procurer. No boy has ever been asked to leave the Teatro for failing to put out, and all our patrons understand that. But you shouldn’t be so entirely standoffish, so arctically cold.”
“Did old Carshalton complain?” Daniel asked, in a grieved tone.
“Mr. Carshalton is a very obliging, amiable gentleman, with no other wish, bless him, than to be talked to. He realizes that age and corpulence—” Mr. Ormund heaved a sympathizing sigh. “—make any larger expectation unlikely of fulfillment. And in point of fact he did not complain. It was one of your own colleagues — I shall not say who — called the matter to my notice.”
“God damn.”
Then, as an afterthought: “That was directed at the u
“I see your point, of course. But you must expect, at this stage, to attract a certain amount of jealous attention. In addition to your natural advantages, you’ve got, as they say, carriage. Then too, some of the boys may feel — though it’s perfectly unfair, I know — that your reserve and shyness reflects on their too easy acquiescence.”
“Mr. Ormund, I need the job. I like the job. I don’t want to argue. What do I have to do?”
“Just be friendly. When someone asks you into their box, comply. There’s no danger of rape: you’re a capable lad. When someone in the casino offers you a flutter on the wheel, flutter. That’s simply sound business practice. And who knows, your number might come up! If you’re asked to di
“An arrangement? I’m sorry, but you’ll have to spell that one out a little more.”
“My dear, dear country mouse! An arrangement with the restaurant, of course. Good as the fare is at L’Engouement Noir, for instance, you don’t suppose there isn’t a certain latitude in the prices on the menu?”
“You mean they give rebates?”
“More often they’ll let you take it out in custom. If you bring them someone for di
“That’s news to me.”
“I daresay the boys will all be friendlier when they see you’re not entirely above temptation. But don’t think, mignon, that I’m asking you to peddle your ass. Only your smile.”
Daniel smiled.
Mr. Ormund lifted his finger to pantomime that he had remembered something forgotten. He wrote down a name and address on a memo pad, tore the paper loose with a flourish, and handed it to Daniel.
“Who is ‘Dr. Rivera’?” he asked.
“A good and not overly expensive dentist. You simply must get those molars looked after. If you don’t have the money now, Dr. Rivera will work something out with you. He’s a great lover of all things co
The dental work ended up costing almost a thousand dollars. He had to withdraw a larger sum from the bank than the total of all his previous borrowings, but it seemed so wonderful to have his teeth restored to their primal i
And such food it was! For he had taken Mr. Ormund’s advice to heart and was soon a familiar figure at all the relevant restaurants: at Lieto Fino, at L’Engouement Noir, at Evviva il Coltello, at La Didone Abbandonata. Nor did he pay for these banquetings with his virtue, such as it was. He only had to flirt, which he did anyhow, without trying.
His expanded social life meant, necessarily, that he had fewer evenings to spend at home with Mrs. Schiff, but they saw nearly as much of each other now in company as they had in private, for Mrs. Schiff was an old habituée of La Didone and Lieto Fino. To be seen at her table (which was also, often, the table of Ernesto Rey) was no small distinction, and Daniel’s stock rose higher among those patrons who paid heed to such things (and who would go there, except to pay heed to such things?), while in the usher’s changing room Daniel — or rather, Ben Bosola — had become the star of the moment, without an intervening stage of having been just one of the boys.
No one was more instrumental in Daniel’s wi
Lee’s mobile captivity was a source of much drama. Even to go to the toilet he had to have resort to Mr. Ormund, who was entrusted with one of the keys. Every night there were remarks, pleasantries, and playful attempts to see if the device might be circumvented without actually being removed. It couldn’t. Daniel, as laureate of the changing room, wrote the following limerick celebrating this situation:
To which Lee’s ostensible and probably heartfelt response was simply gratitude, for the attention. His enforced retirement was having the effect it usually does: people had stopped being actively interested. To be made the butt of a joke was still to be, for the nonce, a kind of cynosure.
This was a frail enough basis for friendship, but it developed that he and Daniel had something in common. Lee loved music, and though that love had been, like Daniel’s, unrequited, it smoldered on. He continued to take voice lessons and sang, Sunday mornings, in a church choir. Every night, no matter what the opera or its cast, he listened to what the Metastasio was offering, and could claim, as a result, to have seen over two hundred performances, each, of Orfeo ed Eurydice and of Norma, the two most enduringly popular of the company’s repertory. Whatever he heard seemed to register with a vividness and singularity that confounded Daniel, for whom all music, however much it might move him at the moment, went in one ear and out the other, a great liability during the endless after-hours post-mortems. By comparison, Lee was a veritable tape recorder.