Love junkie, p.1
Love Junkie, page 1
ALSO BY ROBERT PLUNKET
My Search for Warren Harding
Walker Evans: Florida
Copyright © 1992, 2024 by Robert Plunket
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or be used to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies or develop machine-learning language models, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP1597) in 2024
Design by Eileen Bellamy
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Plunket, Robert, author.
Title: Love junkie / Robert Plunket.
Description: New York, NY : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2024.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024004570 | ISBN 9780811238472 (paperback) | ISBN 9780811238489 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Housewives--Fiction. | Midlife crisis—Fiction. | Pornography—Social aspects—Fiction. | LCGFT: Humorous fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3566.L798 L68 2024 | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20240209
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024004570
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
ndbooks.com
For Robert Rosecrans
As a novel, this book is entirely a work of fiction. Though it contains incidental references to actual people, these references are used merely to lend the fiction an appropriate cultural and historical context. All other names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.
PART ONE
TOM
CHAPTER ONE
The Duchess of Windsor begins her memoirs with the question “Is our fate in our stars or does it lie within ourselves?” and I don’t think there is any better way I could phrase it myself. Both she and I led “ordinary lives that became extraordinary,” so to speak. We both got our prince—hers of the UK, mine of the porn industry.
But why us?
Sometimes I sit here in my beautiful new apartment overlooking the river and my thoughts return to the moment it all began, the moment the wheels were set inexorably in motion. It was March 1981. Or was it 1982? Funny, I can’t even remember for certain. All I know is this: it seems like several million light years ago.
I was having a party for Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III and was, needless to say, rather nervous. I’ll never forget opening my front door and seeing Mrs. R. right on my very own doorstep. I knew it was her at once; she looked just like her pictures in Women’s Wear Daily. A little bedraggled, perhaps, as it was raining rather heavily, and squalls were predicted to continue throughout the evening. (I had checked the weather report.) The young man who had driven her up from the city was struggling with an umbrella that had blown itself inside out. But it was she. She was really here.
For any hostess this would be the pinnacle of a social career, and I was no exception. But strangely enough, I always knew something like this would happen. Even as a child I felt different. Luckily I had what my grandmother would call “good breeding.” My stepfather had been an astronomy professor at Texas Tech in Lubbock until he took early retirement in 1972 due to a “palace coup” in the physics department. And my mother’s family, the Kenners, have been prominent both socially and business-wise for generations back in Derwent, Oklahoma, where they own a bus company. My great-uncle was Horace Turville McCoy, whom you’ve probably never heard of unless you’re a lawyer. But if you’re a lawyer you surely have—he was the famous tax attorney who revolutionized the way wills are written. But still, nothing quite prepares you for the thrill of having Mrs. Rockefeller wipe her surprisingly large feet on your doormat and say, “How nice of you to have me come.”
Aside from me and my husband, Boyce, our little greeting party consisted of Roger and Gretchen Schiller, who live down the street. They were the ones who got us involved with the Arts Council in the first place. Roger is a lawyer for the Rockefeller Brothers, and Gretchen is on a first-name basis with Mrs. R. I must say all our nerves were showing as we vied for the honor of helping her off with her Burberry raincoat (which, frankly, could have used a trip to the cleaner’s). Roger won, and he all but yanked the garment from her shoulders, to reveal a Wedgwood- blue tailored suit, in wool, with frog clasps and a modified mandarin collar … very nice, beautifully made, but a little afternoonish for all the splendors I had in store. Whenever I had pictured her arrival—and I had, many times—I kept envisioning her the way I had seen her on television, when she accepted an honorary Oscar for preserving nitrate films in a black-and-blue Mollie Parnis.
People often say something when they first see my living room, usually “My, how beautiful!” or “I’ve never seen anything quite like it!” Granted, it is different. “Eclectic elegance,” I call it. And tonight it never looked better. It even smelled heavenly. Just minutes before I had dabbed patchouli oil on the light bulbs. Everywhere were flowers: graceful arum lilies adorned the inglenook, and on top of the Hepplewhite lowboy I had placed a stunning arrangement of laburnum. In the fireplace a cheerful fire blazed, smoking just the tiniest bit, casting its cozy glow on the silver picture frames that covered the top of the coffee table. I know you’re supposed to put the silver picture frames on top of the piano, but we don’t have a piano, and, besides, you know me: “Break the rules!”
Most of the pictures on display were of our dog, Baby. (He’s a Brussels griffon who was locked away in the attic for the evening.) We have no children, so we couldn’t have pictures of those. And my mother and stepfather, for all their social prominence back in Lubbock, are not a photogenic couple (something to do with my mother’s glasses); and as for Boyce’s widowed mother … well, all our photographs of that good and stolid woman were taken in front of her mobile home in Enchanted Acres just outside Oneco, Florida, so that was no good. The most beautiful frame on display was the one I had found at the Bargain Box over at Lawrence Hospital for eighteen dollars. It was gilt and malachite and had a photo of a very distinguished-looking older couple sitting in a New England garden circa 1935. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to get it out of the frame, so I just left it in.
I was hoping Mrs. Rockefeller might offer some comment, some little acknowledgment, some little compliment. But nothing prepared me for what really happened. She actually paused. She actually stopped in the doorway. Thank God everyone stopped with her, thus avoiding a massive pileup.
I watched her face for the three seconds it took her to case the room. The head never moved, only the eyes.
They shot from the Louis Quatorze fauteuils with their gold paint chipping off in the authentic manner over to my antique Korean pie safe, then on to the little bibelot case that once held sterilizing equipment in a beauty shop but was now crammed with my collection of faux-tortoise objets (combs, thimbles, tiny boxes, and a most unusual eyewash device), then on to all the little tables that I love so, scattered around the room, then to the pillows on the window seat (Scalamandré), and finally to the Andy Warhol poster over the mantel. That gets them every time, that poster. It undercuts the formality to have a big picture of a cow in your living room.
“How original!” Mrs. R. exclaimed. “You have a lovely home.” She turned to face me and took both my hands in hers. “And you’re very, very brave.”
“Rubbers, Blanchette, rubbers,” called out the young man who had accompanied her. His name was Potts. While she sat on the sofa and removed her galoshes we all hovered about in case we might be of help. Gretchen and Roger then briefed her on whom she was about to meet. It was her custom to arrive early to collect herself and, as she put it, “get the poop.” But all I could think was Blanchette Rockefeller, the widow of John D. the III, the president of the Museum of Modern Art, loves my living room. She thinks it’s “original.” And “brave” yet. Time stood still. The sounds of conversation became a buzz in my ears, and my body was filled with a warm heat. Some of you may know what I’m talking about.
I looked at her sitting on the couch (my couch!). That erect bearing. That classic hairdo with the bluish tint. Those discreet earrings (gold and white enamel). She radiated the real thing—old, old money and the steely self-confidence it brings. I had done a little research and discovered that before her marriage she had been a Hooker, one of the Hooker Chemical Hookers. (Paul Mellon also married a Hooker.)
Maybe … dare I even think it? … we would become friends … Maybe even more than friends … Why not? Stranger things had happened. All my life I had been waiting for someone like her—a mentor! She would take me under her wing and show me the ropes. Perhaps she would call me up. Invite me over for tea. Maybe, in her sitting room, she would pause in mid-conversation and look over at me and say, “You know, my dear—you have possibilities.”
She was looking around for something. What was it? My God, no one’s offered her a drink! I shot a look at my husband, Boyce—the drinks were his department. He was standing there frozen in awe, like one of those children in Portugal to whom the Virgin appeared.
“Blanchette,” I said, swooping down. “Can I get you something? A drink?”
She smiled up at me. “Aren’t you sweet?” Even her dentures were perfect. “Now tell the truth, dear. Would a daiquiri be too much trouble?”
_______
When we lived in Tehran I had acquired quite a little reputation as a local hostess. Twice I entertained the senior vice-president of Union Carbide International at sit-down dinners for twelve or less, and once a picture of one of my parties was featured in the Tehran Times, our English-language newspaper. It’s too bad about that typo, though. I was suicidal for months. “Pictured above during the curse of a lovely evening at the home of Boyce and Mimi Smithers …”
My real specialty was our Sunday-afternoon soirees. I would prepare my famous “Persian Paella” and Boyce would whip up pitcher after pitcher of his equally celebrated Bloody Marys. Everybody would drop by—the Union Carbide people, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass people, that fun crowd from the Canadian embassy—and we would all sit around and play raucous games of Scrabble. Sometimes, around five P.M., just as the sun was beginning to set behind the snow-covered Elburz Mountains, Boyce would get out his saxophone and play that song that goes “Cuban Pete, he’s the king of the rhumba beat.” Either that or “I Get Ideas.”
In the waning months of the Shah’s regime entertaining became more and more difficult. Hams—always a problem in Islamic countries—were as scarce as hen’s teeth. And I think we were all haunted by what happened to Gerald and Sandy Doerflinger. They were returning from a Theatre Workshop production of Same Time Next Year at the Cercle Sportif when an angry mob stopped their car at a red light right on Kohkilozeh Avenue. Gerald and Sandy were verbally abused in Farsi, and then their hood ornament was stolen. It was the talk of the town.
Bronxville, however, was not Tehran. The rules were different here, and for the life of me I couldn’t even figure out what they were. I had entertained exactly twice since we moved in: Boyce’s people from the office during Thanksgiving and that disastrous little party for the neighbors. “A Sunday Open House,” the invitation read. Well, exactly four people showed up. And they all thought they were being invited for coffee after church.
It wasn’t as though the neighbors didn’t entertain; they entertained like crazy. They just didn’t entertain us. The Cunninghams across the street were always having elegant little dinner parties for people like John Chancellor and the Harry Emerson Fosdicks. And our next-door neighbor Mrs. Dudleigh Garrett had been featured in the pages of Town & Country.
While no home in Bronxville could be called common, Mrs. Garrett’s was the least common of all. It crowned the hill—or “the Hill,” as it is known locally—and was so large that Sunday drivers were said to picnic on her lawn under the impression it was a public park. The old lady herself was a legendary figure, the widow of a railroad tycoon who shot himself in the billiard room after deregulation. She had been an intimate of both C. Z. Guest and the fabulous Lady Mendl. Needless to say, I was mad to meet her. But this little event of events had yet to take place. The closest I got was watching her tool down her driveway in a twenty-year-old Mercedes, looking very Millicent Fenwick in her gray cashmere and pearls. She never seemed to notice my wave.
Though her stone mansion was set on several acres of ground, it was actually but a few hundred feet from our own, much more modest home, which at one time had been an outbuilding on the Garrett estate. We were so close, in fact, that when she entertained, particularly in the summer, one could hear the laughter tinkle out of her leaded glass windows. Sometimes it tinkled so loudly I couldn’t sleep. I’ll never forget that evening last August when I paced my darkened living room, gin and tonic in hand, the bouncy beat of Lester Lanin driving me mad …
I have a small confession to make. I was not the Arts Council’s first choice to host this party. No, that honor fell to Saul and Edith Musselman, very wealthy hardware-store owners up in Mount Kisco, who live in a showplace with Frank Stellas on the walls. Fortunately for me, however, Mrs. Musselman had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and the entire household was in an uproar due to the introduction of round-the-clock private nurses. Plus the fact that every time she saw a flower she would begin to cry and try to rip it apart with her fingers and it was felt that this would wreak havoc on the floral arrangements, which were being supplied free of charge by Pernice & Tryforos.
This also meant I had nothing whatsoever to do with the guest list. Gretchen and Roger told me it was people the Arts Council owed a favor to. I took this to mean art collectors, patrons, philanthropists, and the society crowd. Of course I was hoping that at least a few artists had been invited, probably older men with museum shows under their belts and those bohemian wives with the salt-and-pepper hair and the squash-blossom jewelry. And lurking in my deepest heart was Mrs. Garrett, Mrs. Garrett … Well, why not? Stranger things have happened.
As I moved precariously back toward the living room, determined not to spill a drop of the extremely pathetic daiquiri that the bartender, a sullen Sarah Lawrence student named Liz, had concocted under protest, I saw the strangest sight. Gretchen Schiller was setting up a folding card table by the front door. It was a mystery where it had come from. It certainly didn’t belong to me.
Once she had completed her task, she sat down behind the table on a little folding chair and began writing something. As I got closer she looked up. “Here!” she said, waving it at me. It was one of those stick-on name tags. It said
Now, Gretchen Schiller was my best friend in Bronxville (make that “only friend”), but she was proving herself to be a rather inept woman when it came to the all-important nuances of entertaining. Didn’t she understand that name tags were totally inappropriate at a party for rich art collectors?
I stared at my badge. Didn’t she understand that this would brand me as a complete amateur? Didn’t she understand anything? If what she was wearing was any indication, I was in big trouble. It was one of those outfits that can only be procured by Mount Holyoke graduates: a full-length quilted skirt, navy blue, that wrapped around, and a white silk blouse with Tom Jones sleeves and a big bow at the neck. For the life of me I cannot figure out where they purchase these things, as I have never seen them offered for sale, even at Lord & Taylor.
Fighting off the most ominous feeling of dread, I took my name tag, did not put it on, and proceeded into the living room.
“Thank you, my dear,” Mrs. Rockefeller said as I handed her the daiquiri. She was not wearing a name tag, either—yet. Neither was Boyce or Roger or Tom Potts. Maybe there was still time. I hurried out to the hall. Cloaking my rage under my most playful manner, I ran up to Gretchen. “You’re working too hard!” I exclaimed. “Come, let’s have a drink.”
“Where’s your name tag?” she said.
“Oh, I don’t think we really need those, do you?”
“Oh, I think we do-oo,” she said sweetly, and the doorbell rang.
My first awful thought was that a terrorist group had arrived to kidnap Mrs. Rockefeller, for standing on my doorstep were four of the most menacing-looking people I’ve ever seen. Three of them were dressed in a way that reminded me of the Viet Vet Center over on Belcher—fatigues and camouflage jackets and “porkpie” hats adorned with badges. Only then did I realize—they were all women.
The fourth person was clearly the leader. She was even bigger than the rest, an enormous Black woman dressed in the peasant garb of many nations. In addition to a voluminous dashiki embroidered with texts, she sported a number of handwoven Guatemalan belts tied in all sorts of different ways, like faulty electrical wiring. On her head was a turban of red and yellow batik. Her extensive jewelry consisted mostly of Benares brass and colored beads, except for the stud in her nose, which was gold.
“Good evening,” she said in a voice so loud and booming I was terrified it might carry into the living room. “I am Shoshubah Mafundi.”
“Please,” I began. “We have a baby sleeping—”
“Shoshubah!” squealed Gretchen, running up and waving both hands. “Welcome!”
I soon found myself filling out name tags. It wasn’t easy. In a gesture of feminine solidarity Shoshubah’s companions had rejected the names they were born with and adopted new ones. It took me three tries before I got the spelling of “Irene Amerikkka” right.
