Bleeding Edge

In the lobby on the way out, she’s at the pay phone calling a cab when who does she run into but her old partner in wine theft, Randy, last seen driving away from the parking lot at the Montauk lighthouse. He seems a little preoccupied today. They withdraw to a settee beneath a mural-size screen grab from the opening of The Letter (1940) in which Bette Davis is pretending to pump six rounds into an uncredited though perhaps not altogether unthanked “David Newell.”

“Guess what, that son of a bitch Ice? Pulled my access to his house. Somebody must’ve took a wine inventory. Got my license plates off the closed-circuit video.”

“Bummer. No legal follow-ups, I hope.”

“Not so far. Tell the truth, I’m just as happy to be clear of the place. Been hearing about some weird shit lately.” Strange lights at dark hours, visitors with fu

“On the run’s the last I heard.”

“He’s out in Utah.”

“What?”

“The three of em, I got some snail mail yesterday, they’re getting married. To each other.”

“They didn’t just skip, they eloped?”

“Here, check this out.” An engraved card featuring flowers, wedding bells, cupids, some kind of not-all-that-easy-to-make-out hippie typeface.

Maxine, begi

“Probably not, but you know how it is, run into somebody in a bar, bullshit level starts to rise, pretty soon, crazy impulsive kids, they’re hoppin in the rig and headin out yonder.”

“You’re, ah, pla

“It’s tough enough figuring out what to give them. A His, His, and Hers bath ensemble? A triple-sink vanity?”

“Thirty-piece set of cookware.”

“There you go. Must be a federal fugitive warrant out on em, you could pick up some quick change, fly out there, maybe I could come along for muscle.”

“I’m not a bounty hunter, Randy. Just a bookkeeper who’s a little surprised the relationship lasted more than ten minutes after the money got frozen. In fact, I think it’s kinda cute. I must be turning into my mother.”

“Yeah, somethin how Shae and Bruno stepped up for ol’ Willy that way. You start feelin a little bitter about human nature, then people fool you.”

“Or in my business,” Maxine reminds herself more than Randy, “people fool you and then after a while you start to get bitter.”

She arrives back at Loehma

“You’re starved, let’s find something before you pass out,” and off they go looking for lunch. Back in the old Fordham Road era, as she recalls, you could at least find a decent knish in the neighborhood, a classic egg cream. Around here there’s a Domino’s Pizza and a McDonald’s, and a possibly make-believe Jewish delicatessen, Bagels ’n’ Blintzes, which is of course where Cornelia simply must do lunch, having heard of it no doubt from some Junior League newsletter, and where they are presently in a booth, surrounded by a dumpsterload of Cornelia’s purchases, which “impulsive” is maybe too kind a word for.

At least this isn’t some midtown ladies’ tearoom. The waitress, Lynda, is a classic deli veteran, who only needs to hear two seconds’ worth from Cornelia to start muttering, “Thinks I’m the downstairs maid,” Cornelia meantime making a point of asking for “Jewish” rye bread for her turkey-pastrami and roast-beef combo. Sandwich arrives, “And you’re quite sure this is Jewish rye bread.”

“I’ll ask it. Hello!” Holding the sandwich up to her face, “You’re Jewish? The customer wants to know before she eats you. What? No, she’s goyishe, but they don’t have kosher so maybe this pick-pick-pick is what they do instead,” so forth.

Maxine introduces Cornelia to Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray, pours it in a glass for her. “Here, Jewish champagne.”

“Interesting, a bit on the demi-sec side—excuse me, oh Lynda? would you happen to have this drier, brut perhaps . . . ?”

“Sh-shh,” goes Maxine, though Lynda, recognizing WASP jocularity here, ignores.

In the course of lunchtime yakking, Maxine gets an earful of Slagiatt marriage history. Though the attraction was perverse and immediate, Cornelia and Rocky, it seems, did not so much fall in love as stumble into a classic NYC folie à deux—she, charmed at the notion of marrying into an Immigrant Family, expecting Mediterranean Soul, matchless cooking, an uninhibited embrace of life including not-quite-imaginable Italian sex activities, he meanwhile looking forward to initiation into the Mysteries of Class, secrets of elegant dress and grooming and high-society repartee, plus a limitless supply of old money to borrow against without having to worry too much about debt collection, or not the kind he was used to anyway.

Imagine their mutual dismay on learning the real situation. Far from the Cha

As early as their honeymoon in Hawaii, Rocky and Cornelia were exchanging What-have-we-done gazes. But it was heaven there, with ukuleles for harps, and sometimes heaven has its way. One evening, as they watched a postcoital sunset, “WASP chicks,” declared Rocky, an adoring note already throbbing in his voice. “Well.”

“We are dangerous women. We have our own crime syndicate, you know.”

“Huh?”

“The Muffya.”

A sort of compassionate clarity dawned, and grew. Cornelia went on insisting dramatically that for Thrubwells most of the Social Register was rather too impossibly ethnic and arriviste, and Rocky went on singing “Do

“Your husband tends to run to extra dimensions,” Maxine supposes.

“Down in K-Town they call him ‘4-D.’ He’s also psychic, by the way. He thinks you’re having some trouble at the moment, but he’s reluctant to what he calls ‘put in.’” Cornelia with one of those WASP eyebrow routines, possibly genetic, sympathy with a subtext of please, not another loser to deal with . . .

Still, however unintended, a potential mitzvah should be looked into. “Without getting too cute, it’s some video I’ve come across. I wouldn’t even be wondering how worried I should get, except it’s political in the worst way, maybe international, and I guess I’m to the point where I really could use some advice.”

With no hesitation Maxine can see, “In that case you must get in touch with Chandler Platt, he has a genius for facilitating outcomes, and he’s really very sweet.”