The Barge
Max had two kinds of friends.
Jacaranda was in the handful of people he took up with because he was in Los Angeles.
But the main group belonged in the world, and were not tied down to any particular geography. They were mostly the names you read in W and on lists at weddings in Vogue or Queen, only instead of being in black-and-white, they were in color and moved. And instead of looking extremely uneasy and “public,” they looked extremely relaxed and protected. A childhood of privacy seemed to buffer them against the cruel fates of flash bulbs. Max gathered these public people and, through his laughter and money and his “amusing” penthouses, he brightened their lives and made the simplest things seem framed in gold. The women who organized charity bazaars, operas, festivals, and museum openings just fell into Max’s open “You’re here!” arms. (“You’re here!” was how he greeted every single guest at every single party Jacaranda ever saw him host—Max was a host: it was in his genetic code.) “You’re here!” he’d delight, and into his arms would fall an elegantly poised lady, suddenly a child of sorrow and joy, who’d say, “Oh, thank God, Max, yes, I am!”
They all knew where they all ate in Paris and where to go to in New York and whom to see if they went to Stockholm and they referred to each other as “dear friends.”
They demanded the same French food (what Jacaranda called “kosher fillet of sole”) in every city on earth, and were suckers for going to bars and nightclubs and restaurants because their “dear friends” went, no matter how much better the place next door was. They were perfectly ready to talk about airports for hours and not be bored.
When Jacaranda realized that these people were the ones meant by the words “jet set,” she was sure there must be a mistake. Why travel if it’s always going to be fillet of sole every night? If it hadn’t been for Max, the “dear friends” would have been stuck with each other in French restaurants forever.
But then, most people like even bad French restaurants. They’re used to them. And besides, one can always compare the food to the way it ought to have been, because one knows. French restaurants are not like art or love, after all; they’re like money, standard.
The women in this group were never quite in the mood for Los Angeles and often got tired in one day of Rodeo Drive and shopping. Besides, they had done it all before. Now and then, they would turn to Jacaranda and say, “You live here, don’t you? How can you live in L.A.? What do you do?”
The men all wanted to become movie producers and questioned her on what she thought they should do in order to make movies.
“Get some film,” she said once.
The idea that these people spent their whole lives outside of the movie business seemed exotic to her, but by the time she realized that the “dear friends” only recognized each other, and only ate French food, and would never have known her had it not been for Max, it was too late, because by that time she knew that fillet of sole is usually the safest bet. And that in general, as far as groups of strangers were concerned, the “dear friends” were probably the least impossible.
JACARANDA THOUGHT OF the “dear friends” living on a drifting, opulent barge where peacock fans stroked the warm river air and time moved differently from the time of everyplace else. Everything was better on the barge, the same kind of ease seemed to scent the nights. The barge passed through cities, along the countryside, and through major events without ever disturbing the thick layer of ease between it and the rest of the world. Perhaps the reason was that, surrounded by the Nile as it was, the barge was protected from most disturbances by hungry crocodiles waiting, like logs, in the river.
Max, Max
People said that his family paid him six thousand dollars a month to stay out of Alabama. Others said that he was just rich, pure and simple. Jacaranda never saw Max do anything but empty ashtrays and cook. When she first knew him, Jacaranda asked, straight out, “Max, do you do something, or what?”
“‘Do?’” he replied. “You mean like work?”
“Sort of,” she said. She’d read, of course, that people with manners never asked other people how they got money, but she didn’t believe it.
“Well,” Max said, “I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, you know.”
“What, though?” she insisted.
There was a rumor that, as a sort of “social director” for the Beautiful People on the barge, he was kept in finery and not allowed to worry his pretty head about money; that his friend Etienne Vassily (and God knew where he came from) paid for everything.
Jacaranda could not even figure out how much money he’d have to have to live in the Sacramento and smell like vanilla and have Duchamp on the wall, and white ironed napkins. Sometimes she got the impression that he was just a figure in a landscape who began moving into the festivities the instant he knew someone was looking.
But other times she felt very, very close to him and heard him breathing and saw exactly what he saw and knew exactly why he did things and understood everything without a hitch. When he cooked in his kitchen, she forgot to wonder about who Max was and was overcome with instinct as she anticipated every move he was going to make and brought him the right wire whisk and herb or spice and put it nearby where he would find it easily.
Most of the time, Max wasn’t even in L.A. He was in New York where, he said, “They’re so provincial.”
Max usually served food so delicious that for itself alone people could have gone home satisfied. There needn’t have been unending champagne, fellow guests who seemed hand-picked to transport you into the kind of heaven you loved best, or Max himself, who never let the ball drop for a moment, and was always ducking in and out of silences, laughing at how brilliantly things were going. You could have just had the food and gone home happy.
He always made everything himself, and when Jacaranda was in the thick of the barge’s evenings, she’d go early to Max’s and watch. (When Etienne Vassily was handling things, servants were imported who knew how, or else he brought them with him and installed them in the servants’ bedrooms of his “bungalow” mansion. Once he brought ten along for a special nerve-racking occasion to entertain forty people who had been invited to stop by around eight for “something to eat and a chat.” Etienne relied on simple opulence like fresh caviar to settle the question of food.) Watching Max cook was when Jacaranda came closest to thinking Max came from someplace, had a childhood, and might have brothers or sisters, sisters especially.
“Where are you from?” she asked once while Max was expertly measuring out olive oil for salad dressing.
“The Old South,” he drawled.
“Come on,” she said.
“Louisiana,” he replied. “Really. That’s where I was really born and lived till I ran away.”
“My mother’s from Louisiana!” Jacaranda said.
“Your mother.” Max shrank back as though from a loud cannon noise. “That woman. My stars.”
“You’re the only man I’ve ever known who didn’t fall in love with my mother,” she observed.
Max loosened up and set about chopping thin slices of celery.
“Mmm,” he said.
He chopped celery like a Chinese professional.
Max knew so well what he was doing in that kitchen at the Sacramento that Jacaranda seldom intruded until it came time to wash the dishes the next morning. (The morning following most of those parties, Jacaranda stopped by to help Max and listen to his version of the night before.)
But it was