Sex & Rage. Eve Babitz

Sacramento, a market nobody from L.A. ever went to because it was too expensive.

      But for Max to be in the Sacramento meant it had been misunderstood and that it, and the part of Hollywood it was in, were both perfectly fine, after all.

      It was one of those apartment-hotels with a lobby and a front desk and a manager, an elevator, thick walls, and high ceilings. Max lived in the penthouse, or what he called the penthouse, though it was hard for most people to think of a five-story building as having a penthouse.

      It was eight, exactly, when she knocked on his penthouse door.

      The door was flung open.

      “You’re here!” Max said, his blue eyes alight with how wonderful she was. “You dressed! You look marvelous. The best-dressed woman in Los Angeles!”

      “Except for the purse,” she said, showing him her car keys and cigarettes, which she’d brought along in her hand.

      Max was still tall and wore a caramel-colored polo shirt and denim pants that were almost, but not quite, jeans that were white. He wore espadrilles that were worn out. Everything about him looked clean and bright. His hair, which was still wet, had been combed back off his face but the same strand that fell down when it was dry had already begun falling, wet or no. He smelled like a birthday party for small children, like vanilla, crêpe paper, soap, starch, and warm steam and cigarettes.

      Anyone would have liked being hugged by him.

      Only she, so far, had arrived. But there was a folly of luxury the likes of which Jacaranda couldn’t believe. There it was smack in the middle of a geography that was All Wrong. (If she’d come in later through the back parking lot, she would have seen limousines lined up—limousines looking startled at slumming in such an unlikely spot. Hollywood wasn’t exactly a slum—it was just Not Right.)

      “I’m just fixing the salad,” Max said. “Tell me what you think.”

      On a buffet of white-tablecloth tables were the most beautiful dishes, all white, with stainless-steel Italian-designed silverware (a little finer than anyone else’s silverware, she noticed). There were perfectly folded and ironed white napkins, and white ceramic pots filled with white flowers. There were wineglasses and Scotch glasses and gin-and-tonic glasses. The bottles, all Windexed into a high gloss, stood full of Scotches and gins and sherries and vodkas, and there were white wines in the refrigerator and red wines open and out. The wooden floor was polished and glowing beyond the rug and the whole penthouse was without a trace of grime or dirt anywhere.

      There was art all over the walls. Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, a David Hockney swimming pool, and a huge pornographic watercolor by John Altoon. In the front to the right, where people came in, was a carefully framed photograph by Julian Wasser of Marcel Duchamp playing chess with a naked girl. The contrast between Duchamp’s dried-out ancient little person and the large young girl’s Rubenesque flesh was not (unlike chess) at all subtle. This photograph was the only thing on Max’s walls that people actually looked at; even Altoon’s pornography was a little too tasteful to arouse real interest.

      “You’ve got a print of this,” she said, her voice filled with hurt surprise. She’d never imagined that anyone might own a print and not have to tear it out of an art magazine as she had had to do.

      “You know this photograph?” Max asked.

      “Well, I mean . . .” (She’d have to be an idiot to spend all her time around artists and not know this photograph.)

      “How would a friend of Gilbert’s know Duchamp?” Max said.

      “Yes,” she said, looking at him now, “how would you?”

      “Gilbert is a wonderful person,” Max said, “but I just didn’t think . . . Well, how do you like my apartment?”

      “Why have you done this to the poor Sacramento?” she asked.

      “What do you mean?” he said.

      “Turned it into . . . the Plaza Hotel,” she said, taking a stab at it, since it looked exactly as she imagined the Plaza Hotel must look.

      “Oh,” he said, turning to look at her with deep seriousness for the first time since they’d met, holding her in his gaze, “how wonderful you are!”

      The doorbell rang.

      “How wonderful you are,” she replied, smiling.

      He looked at her just once over his shoulder from the front door, which he was about to open, and the whole world was filled with questions before them. The bell rang again.

      “You’re here!” he cried.

      “Darling!” someone said. “Is this Hollywood?”

      Max’s laugh was like a dragnet; it picked up every living laugh within the vicinity and shined a light on it, intensified it, pitched it higher. It was a dare—he dared you not to laugh with him. He dared you to despair. He dared you to insist that there was no dawn, that all there was was darkness, that there was no silver lining, that the heart didn’t grow fonder by absence. He dared you to believe you were going to die—when you at that moment knew, just as he did, that you were immortal, you were among the gods.

      JACARANDA COULDN’T QUITE remember when it was that she had glided from the banks of the Nile onto the barge. Perhaps because even that first night nothing had looked very different from the rest of the world. Well, of course, things were a little finer at Max’s, better silverware. Ease. But other than that, she saw nothing different; after all, it wasn’t as if money had been poured into the place, or that money was no object.

      It was just that Max, and all of Max’s things, were so carefully chosen—like his friends—so perfect. Other than a sort of seamless wicked, sarcastic, teasing temperament about it all, one could hardly tell the barge was moving. Or that there was a Nile.

      Or that on the banks of the Nile an unfortunate population was forced to go through life with brick walls and learned lessons, rather than simply float while catching tossed grapes, until with practice, one day, it became habit.

      There was something special about Max’s parties, those first two years at the Sacramento, that she could never think about afterward without condensing it into one particular night.

      As usual, in those days, the people who were from Los Angeles entered doubtfully, unsure about the Sacramento and wondering who Max was and what he wanted and why he’d invited them.

      Within the first few moments after they’d arrived, they’d be drenched in Max’s delight with them and everything would become smooth and golden, and soon (this was what Jacaranda afterward never forgot) the whole place would ascend to heaven.

      Max’s food was divine. His guests—all his other guests suddenly realized—were simply pillars of kindness, goodness, and beauty. The napkins were so fresh and bright. The salad was springtime in each bite.

      “Have you seen his ice thing?” a guest might ask another.

      “Ohhh,” the second guest would say, “isn’t it beautiful?”

      And all it would be was an ice cooler, the kind one can buy in Milan, just slightly better than an ordinary ice cooler.

      On this particular night, Jacaranda’s first, Max’s penthouse had filled up and people were sitting everywhere, humming and purring, a tight golden roll running through the air.

      Gilbert was standing, leaning against the same wall that Jacaranda leaned against, and the two of them had been watching in smooth dreamy pleasure for nearly twenty minutes, not saying a word to each other. Finally, Gilbert cleared his throat.

      “You know,” he said, “I think we ought to petition the Pope for a special dispensation—a year’s suspension of disbelief.”

      When Jacaranda began to laugh, Gilbert turned and looked at her with an expression of puzzled concern, as though he didn’t know what was so funny.