LITMIR.BIZ

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up in the small town of Rhinebeck, New York, in a big Italian family that included an Italian grandmother and three aunts all within spitting distance of each other, Peter was a natural cook. When I returned home from a day at the agency and night school, I was greeted by the homey smells of a big pot of red sauce simmering on the stove or a roast in the oven. With Hanna, I don’t even remember eating.

      When my ex-girlfriend Marie came to stay with us for a few days that August, she enjoyed Peter’s domesticity almost as much as I, and the two girls got along like sisters. Although I hadn’t seen Marie since we were caught naked and guilty by her mother, who had shipped her off to a French lycée after deciding that Georgia was not far enough away, we continued to exchange letters, and when Marie returned to New York City it was straight back into my apartment (except this time, only as friends).

      During her visit, she went to dinner with Peter, me, and an editor I knew named Claus Kimbel, a recent Yale grad (magna cum laude) and a very angry person. At a certain point that evening, Peter and I grew tired of Claus’s tirades and decided to head home. Marie, however, accepted Claus’s invitation for a nightcap and would return to the apartment later. But Marie never came home that night. Returning from work the next evening, I found a note from her: “Sorry I missed you. Headed back to Georgia.”

      That was all I heard from Marie until the following November when she sent a note that she was getting married . . . to Claus Kimbel. She wanted to know if Peter would be her bridesmaid at a small ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The whole thing was so completely bizarre—Marie hardly knew Peter, or Claus for that matter—that it warranted a long-distance phone call.

      “Boy, what a surprise,” I said to her. “When did all this happen?”

      “I’m pregnant,” she said.

      “Are you sure you want to get married? You don’t even know Claus,” I said. “Have you thought about an abortion?”

      Abortion, still illegal, was complicated but not impossible, especially if you had money. Marie, who was barely nineteen, had considered it, but Claus was adamant. He was Catholic, so they were getting married. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Plus, her mother had said she wouldn’t let her get an abortion.

      “Your mother won’t let you? You’re the one who’s pregnant,” I said. “If you need help, I will do whatever I can.”

      “No, I’m going through with the marriage,” she said. “Will Peter stand up for me?”

      Peter did stand up for Marie, who married Claus in a side chapel at St. Patrick’s with a small group, including her mother, looking on. But two days after the wedding, while they were on their honeymoon in Mt. Snow, Vermont, Peter and I were visiting my parents at their country house when Marie called. Marie, a real intellect, was friendly with my father and had become close to my mother, who picked up the phone. Whatever Marie said to her was enough for my mother and father to jump in the car and make the half-hour drive to Mt. Snow to rescue her.

      They brought Marie back to my parents’ house, crying and in complete distress. I didn’t get the details, but it was clear she couldn’t stand being married to Claus. At some point during the long night of hugs and tears, it was decided that Marie would stay with my parents until the baby was born. My mother was always protecting people in need. Happy to leave the problem for her to sort out, Peter and I returned to the city.

      Ten days later, our peaceful existence was shattered by violent banging on our front door at two o’clock in the morning. Peter and I jumped out of bed, but whoever was trying to break the door down was too close for me to see through the viewfinder. Fortunately, I had a Fox Police Lock (I’d been robbed a couple of times already), because the bar that came down from the door was the only thing holding it up and keeping this lunatic outside. This had to be one of Monti Rock’s jilted lovers, I thought. Who else would act so crazy?

      Our neighbor and TV personality Monti Rock III was a very strange guy. Raised as Joseph Moses Montanez, Jr., in the Bronx by Puerto Rican Pentecostal evangelists, Monti was a classic tale of American reinvention. In the 1950s, he quit school after the ninth grade and became Mr. Monti, a well-known hairdresser at Saks Fifth Avenue, where he charged the small fortune of $50 for his celebrated blunt and asymmetrical cuts. At nights, when he wasn’t cutting hair, he performed an act that had some singing and dancing but was mostly just him regaling audiences with stories about sex and drugs.

      During his next phase, he put a “sir” before his name, Roman numerals after, grew out his hair, and wore white jumpsuits, makeup, and a lot of jewelry. His talent was still unclear, but he became a celebrity nonetheless, appearing on many talk shows, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson eighty-four times. And he happened to live right below our apartment.

      Just as one might imagine with a guy who kept highbred poodles and donned a lot of gold lamé, his world was one endless party (several years later, he hosted a suicide party with a coffin and organ music for 600 people, where he downed a lethal combo of alcohol, Quaaludes, and amphetamines, although he didn’t die). There would always be people, in the morning, afternoon, or middle of the night, pounding on his door and shouting, “Monti! Monti! Let me in! Let me in!” Sometimes they were women; sometimes they were men. But in our little building, there was a constant cry for Monti.

      “Monti lives downstairs,” I shouted through the door. “Wrong floor!”

      “I’m looking for you,” the man said.

      It was Claus Kimbel.

       Shit.

      “What do you want? It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

      “I’m going to kill you. I have a gun.”

      “Why?”

      “I know Marie’s in there. I need to talk to her.”

      “She’s not here,” I said. “Just cool down, and I’ll open the door.”

      Even with the police lock, the door was barely holding. He’d almost broken the hinges, and I didn’t want him to break down the whole door. Thinking I could talk him down, I let him in.

      “You sit down over there!” he shouted at Peter and me. “Where’s Marie?”

      “She’s with my parents.”

      “Get your mother on the phone.”

      I didn’t see a gun but did just as he asked.

      After my mother picked up, he started screaming into the phone, “You goddamn interfering bitch!”

      If he thought that was going to scare my mother, he was wrong. She had experienced a lot worse than an enraged, drunken editor. I imagined her replying in her coolly authoritative German accent, “Marie vill stay here as long as she vants.”

      I hadn’t been wrong about my mother. His wild emotions were no match for her steely will. Eventually he put the phone down, and then he started to cry. He was a mess.

      “I’m sorry about your problems,” I said, “but you know you’re going to have to pay for the door.”

      “Hello?”

      The voice on the phone was thin and crackling, as if it had traveled from the past. My father had never come close to the booming presence of, say, a Shumlin, but in the last year he had grown so physically weak that even his words were frail.

      “Dad, I wanted to find out what time the movers should come tomorrow to the office to move your stuff.”

      “About that,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind.”

      “You’ve what?”

      “I’ve changed my mind,” he repeated.

      “The night before you’re supposed to move, you change your mind?” I said in total disbelief. “We discussed this at great length. You agreed

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