Monkey Suits Read online

  Monkey Suits

  a novel

  by

  Jim Provenzano

  All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2003-2012 Jim Provenzano

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

  First Edition published by iUniverse, Inc.

  www.myrmidude.org

  ISBN: 1-58348-XXX-X

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgements to my family, particularly

  Mary Perillo for the computer loan, Stephen Leblanc,

  Mike Salinas, Alex Gildzen, Mark Kendrick, Trebor Healey, and other writers and friends who supported my efforts, the readers of my first book, and my former banner-painting fellow rebels and co-workers.

  Thanks for waiting.

  for

  John Avino, Jr.

  “The men who worked as laborers and craftsmen ...employed by the throne to dig, carve, decorate, and maintain the tombs in the necropolis of western Thebes, decided, after several years of what they believed to be disregard by the government, to make a number of demands. These demands were granted, but for reasons of inefficiency or shortage, the workmen’s daily salary, paid in grain, suddenly stopped. For sixty days the men received nothing, and in mid-November 1170 B.C., they went on strike. They left the necropolis in a group and refused to return.”

  – James E. Harris, Kent R. Weeks,

  X-Raying the Pharaohs

  “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars

  But in ourselves that we are underlings.”

  - William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

  “This is New York. We wear black; and that’s only until something darker comes along.”

  – ‘Marsha Bickner,’ Welcome to New York

  1 At sunset, the Eastern towers became golden spires. The West Side brooded under their angled shadows. Between them, each Central Park leaf hissed in expiration, releasing the scent of autumn’s crumble.

  Half a dozen early evening strollers with baby carriages, tourists with backpacks and maps, gawked beyond a glass wall into what seemed an exhibit in a gargantuan terrarium. Holding their babies aloft and nibbling on fat pretzels, they peered into a world of the residents of the golden spires, who were gathering for a party.

  Hidden away in a hallway of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, behind the Temple of Dendur’s solemnity, Lee Wyndam nervously searched his tux pockets for a light. He didn’t know the reason behind his overwhelming unease.

  Maybe it was the shoes; black, shiny as plastic, unbending. His suspenders pinched his shoulders. The shirt collar and the ridiculous bow tie felt like a noose. Two people had commented how baggy his tux pants looked.

  But the shoes. Police shoes, they called them; patent leather, clunky, thick-soled to pad against the hard floors. His feet still hurt. He just wanted to hide for a while, but footsteps ascended toward him in the back stairway. He was caught.

  “Leeway! You’re missing all the fun. It’s the Deb Ball of the Living Dead.”

  “Got a cig?” Lee asked Brian, his ex-sort-of-boyfriend, and the only one to ever nickname him Leeway. Away from the din of the nearby cocktail reception, the two resembled young executives or designers finding a moment alone in the sprawling museum.

  “You’ve already found the second-best hiding place,” Brian scolded as he withdrew a pack of Dunhills and handed one over before lighting his own. “I’m concerned.”

  Lee exhaled with the awkwardness of a reluctant smoker. “Just a little stage fright.” He pondered Brian’s striking Connecticut profile, the face that had nuzzled parts of his body only months ago. Now it looked almost severe, as if their intimacy had never happened. Lee watched his own cloud of smoke ascend the staircase. How many Early American portraits would such secret puffs assist in discoloring, he wondered? He adjusted his wire-rim glasses, which tended to slide down his blunt nose.

  “Relax,” Brian soothed. “Just enjoy it. Pretend you belong.”

  “I’m getting nauseous. How can I enjoy it? When do we eat? I ought to punch you just for getting me into this.”

  Brian smirked. “Don’t get me excited. My boxers are quite loose.”

  Their flirtations were interrupted by a voice from below. At the foot of the stairs, another young man in a tux called out. “When you’ve finished, gentlemen, I’d like to remind you that there are guests to serve.” The familiar voice coiled Brian’s face into mock agony.

  “Yes, Neil, we’ll be right down.”

  Lee glanced at the back of Brian’s neck, a place he considered the most beautiful in men. Brian turned back.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.” Lee was still recovering from his embarrassment when, only an hour after shuffling chairs to the great hall, he’d walked up the platform to the Temple itself with another new guy (a dare perhaps. Did he expect a kiss?), and wandered inside the tiny corridor to admire the ancient handiwork. He felt oddly comfortable in the tomb, as if he’d merely shown up for work.

  The humiliation of being shouted down by his captain, Neil Pynchon, reduced him to a four-year-old in front of anyone who was watching, which included about forty of his new co-workers.

  Brian faced him. “Well, bud, we’ve got nouveau-riche mouths to feed.”

  The world refused to leave them, the world Brian had brought Lee into, the world he would learn to observe with fascination in the coming months.

  Lee bent over to stretch his hamstrings. He’d been at his first catering job a mere four hours, but already his calves were aching. Brian flicked his cigarette butt against a wall. It nearly ricocheted against Lee’s back.

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry,” he said, planting a light kiss on Lee’s neck. “Fix your tie,” Brian said before preceding him down the stairs. “And don’t forget: Serve on the left ...”

  “ ... and clear on the right.”

  As they approached the bronze doors, the back entrance to the Temple, Brian led him by the hand. Although Lee had been through the passageway a dozen times on this, his first night, it was as if Brian were leading him through a gate. Brian effortlessly stepped through without looking back, and Lee followed, swept into the cloud of noise that filled the party in the huge shrine to the Dead, enveloping him, taking him into its heights, commencing its first nibbling night of feeding on him. He passed through the doors and into a charming abyss.

  2 In September 1988, parts of America felt certain it would never stop raining money, and their president drooled in agreement.

  The Temple of Dendur, a yawning stone and glass cathedral of Egyptian power, was probably the largest, loudest and crudest slab of a party space on the Upper East Side. An addition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the entire north wall of squared glass panes displayed a faint autumnal bleed of Central Park trees. Those who inhabited the towers surrounding the uptown park had been whisked down to street level, yet carefully ensconced for the evening.

  Dozens of tuxedoed waiters, mostly handsome gay white men, a few blacks and women, one Asian and one Latino stood stiffly by their assigned tables or lined against walls, waiting to pour a glass of red or white wine as guests slowly gravitated toward their tables. Along the entrance, a low granite pool of water glowed from the flame of a thousand glass votive candles.

  Hands were shaken. Rouge-blended cheeks were air-kissed at a dinner to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of a Swiss banking corporation. The five hundred-dollar a plate dinner was held to benefit a wildlife foundation fighting for preserves in Alaska. The shores of the same preserves had only days before been devastated by a massive
oil spill. The European oil company responsible for the spill maintained a majority of its financial holdings in the Swiss bank that was throwing the party.

  Yet, the topic never passed the lips of the guests, who nibbled salmon en croute and sipped cocktails. Well-bred stiffness constituted the men, recognizable from the waiters in girth and baldness, despite their similar tuxedoes. Few male guests were under forty. Those few clung to their colorfully dressed dates/wives/girlfriends/secretaries with forced joviality.

  Lee stood bone still by his table. His hand crimped as it gripped a napkin-draped bottle of red. The coterie bled in toward the Temple’s base, admiring, chatting, and moving so very slowly.

  “When are they going to sit down?” Lee said aloud.

  “After they’ve played the game some more,” said a Latino waiter.

  “Jeez, my arm is killing me,” Lee sighed.

  The waiter glared at him. “So switch arms, girl.”

  Lee watched silently as the guests swarmed in around the temple’s base, making for a power meal thousands of years strong.

  “That one is a major mess,” the Latino waiter commented to Lee, nodding toward a woman whose Bill Blass gown adorned her like a lamp shade, her head of hair bright as fluorescent cotton candy. Lee watched them slowly swirl past the totems of waiters, who scanned the crowd. Next to him, the Latino fellow leaned toward a blonde waiter to his left, dishing the Scaasi gown on the rail thin matron approaching their table. They would know who she was, even say where she’d been the previous night. Some waiters followed the lives of these people in all the gossip columns with an almost groupie-like devotion.

  “Why does she wear sunglasses?” Lee asked.

  “Her latest tuck job didn’t come out too well,” he confided.

  “Oh. I’m Lee.” They shook hands.

  “Of course you are, dear, my precious B waiter for the eve. Miss Burns has told me all about you. Marcos Tierra.”

  “How ya doin’?”

  “I’d be better if I was working the bar, but life is full of little disappointments. Have you checked our table yet?”

  “Huh?”

  “Number twelve, dear. Make sure we aren’t missing any flatware.”

  “Oh, okay.” He went off to find their table, then stood near it, guarding it, afraid Marcos would make more demands of him. Remembering his table number was a difficult enough task for Lee’s wandering mind, let alone who was the guest of honor, or the fact that two of the people at his table that night had a combined wealth of over forty-seven million deutschemarks and owned hundreds of Austrian country acres and a chateau on the Seine, their summer home. He concentrated on not spilling wine on their clothes and stood by his table, not leaning against anything or slumping to one side. He knew better than to fall into any traps of bad behavior.

  “It looks better if you hold ze tray like ziss,” a familiar voice came from behind. It was Philipe Berget, co-owner of Fabulous Food and thirty year professional in the order of food service. His gaunt face and pallid complexion was topped by thin yet distinguished gray hair.

  Philipe turned the tray up under Lee’s arm, his hand resting on the young man’s shoulder for a moment.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Thanks,” Lee stuttered, surprised by Philipe’s politeness. He had acted like a commandant in the training session at the company’s office, and his accent didn’t help. Before Lee had a chance to speak again, Philipe was off to correct another fraction of imperfection in a flower arrangement, then to tell another waiter to adjust a candle at table sixteen that burned askew.

  Marcos appeared beside him. “Ready for the onslaught?”

  “I guess.”

  “Have you worked a big party before?” Marcos asked.

  “No.”

  “These are easy. Just pretend they’re all naked sitting on the pot. And do everything I say.”

  “Right.”

  3 “Hey sexy, how ya doin’?”

  Brian whisked past Lee, who was retrieving another bottle of wine.

  “Okay,” Lee shrugged, turning to watch Brian whisk past him.

  By doing so, he broke a cardinal rule at such parties: always watch where you’re going. Guests move quite slowly, especially the women, who were usually bundled into constricting garments that not only impeded walking, but sitting, dancing and digestion.

  Lee nearly slammed into what he at first swore was a drag queen he’d seen perform at the Pyramid. She turned out to be an actual woman, and a rather perturbed one at that. He suddenly jolted away to avoid crashing into her, sloshing a dollop of red wine on his white shirt.

  “You should be more careful!” the woman snapped, her jewelry distracting Lee from actually making eye contact. Her lengthy fingernails clutched a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her face, beneath an excessive use of almost appropriately Egyptian eye makeup and base, was a sagging portrait of wrinkles, obviously brought on by the two drugs at either end of her thin arms. Yet, despite the ravages of time and gravity, she managed to display a certain air of grace and grandeur, like a fallen yet still presentable soufflé.

  “What do you think you’re doing, running around like that? What kind of people is Philipe hiring these days?” She stormed off before Lee could manage an apology. He looked down as the crimson stain spread over his shirt.

  “Don’t you know who that is?” Neil Pynchon, the cardboard-handsome captain, stood next to Lee, who wiped the wine with one hand. Neil didn’t offer his service napkin.

  “No, who was it, Osiris’s mother-in-law?”

  “That was Trish Fuller. Mrs. Winston Fuller. You do know who that is?”

  “It rings a bell.” Lee shifted his black lapel to hide the spreading stain.

  “You better pick somebody lower on the food chain to run into.”

  “Can I use your napkin, Neil?” He held out his hand.

  “Oh, I need it for dinner. There’s more in the back.” Neil turned away. “You should get some club soda for that stain,” he added.

  “Thanks, Neil. I appreciate the help.”

  Brian caught up with Lee in the back hall as he frantically wiped his shirt by a sallow portrait of a Colonial heiress.

  “The architect must have been deaf when he designed this horror.” Lee tossed away the wet napkin. His shirt was soaking wet, but the bleeding red stain had faded.

  “Who?”

  “The architect. I wonder if he had any idea how many people would be nightly trashing this place.”

  “Are you kidding?” Brian said. “They had all this old money in mind from day one.”

  “No doubt.”

  “You’re wet.”

  “You’re brilliant. I’m gonna dry it off in the bathroom.”

  “How ’bout I meet ya in there and give you blow job?” Brian grinned. Working over a year at such parties, weaving through the back walkways and changing clothes in clammy halls, had gradually erased the charm of the immense museum for Brian, and with it any trace of decorum.

  “Why don’t you–”

  Their jokes were cut off by louder talk further down the back hall. A burly man in kitchen clothes had cornered a young waiter who was backing away from him, edging close to an Early American dresser from President Adams’ home. The thick red rope cordoning it off jiggled precariously. The uniformed guard, a fiftyish Black man, edged closer, concerned more about the fate of the furniture.

  “It’s just a piece of bread!” the young guy pleaded.

  “You’re too sloppy,” the chubby man barked. “Everybody steals, I know that. You, however, are exceptionally sloppy. Look at those crumbs! Jesus!” Lee and Brian watched as he swatted the side pocket of the young waiter. Imprints of the white dust coated his black jacket, a telltale sign of his snatching sourdough bread.

  “That’s Lenny Zehuti,” Brian whispered. “Beware his wrath.”

  “Lenny Zawhati?”

  Think of him as our Sergeant.”

  “I got no choice,” Lenny shook his head at th
e young waiter.

  “It’s not like I stole silverware or anything!”

  “Look,” Lenny took him aside, then turned to glare at Lee and Brian. “Don’t you two have tables to attend to?” They retreated to the rest room but peeked from around a corner. Lenny returned his attentions to the quivering young thief. “Go get yer things. The guard’ll escorcha out.”

  “But ...”

  “Go on.” Lenny nodded to the guard, who mumbled something into his walkie-talkie, which crackled an unintelligible response.

  “Did you see that?” Lee whispered in the men’s room as Brian turned the blower down toward Lee’s unbuttoned wet shirt. The black tile rest room was twice the size of Lees’ apartment.

  “Yeah, it happens.” Brian leaned against the wall, glancing down at Lee’s bare stomach.

  “But he just fired him.”

  Brian sipped the glass he’d hidden from Lenny and handed it to Lee. “Drink me.” Lee gulped it down, then noticed the vodka.

  “Shit! Was there -?” He grinned.

  “Not to worry.” Brian set the glass atop a urinal.

  “But I could end up like that guy.”

  “Look, he was a mess anyhow. Made even me look good.” Brian reached his hand to rub Lee’s belly. His stomach muscles contracted at the touch.

  A toilet flushed behind them. Brian pulled back. Lee hurriedly buttoned his shirt as a white-haired gentleman exited the stall and washed his hands, glancing at them through the mirror. The gentleman happened to be the CFO of Brian’s bank, a fact that, had he known it, would not have particularly impressed Brian, since he had less than a hundred dollars in it. The man left.

  “C’mon, I’ve got a dizzy rookie like you at my table.” They once again adjusted their ties.

  “What if I do something like that?”

  Brian led him out the door before remarking with the elan of a cat burglar. “Just don’t get caught.”