NOW AVAILABLE — Marty’s new short story collection, When Paris Beckons

Defenestration

EXCERPT FROM DEFENESTRATION

…Just months after he moved to Chelsea, Glenn’s parents filed for divorce. His dad was a Hollywood movie producer and his mom—have you heard of her? Belle Taylor?—was a cabaret singer of local renown, with a residency at the Carlyle.

The divorce was contentious, and Glenn needed Sarah’s sympathetic ear and that meant daily, late-night phone calls and emergency visitations. “Gotta go. Gonna talk him down off the ledge again,” she’d say, no matter the hour or day of the week. Her tight smile told me my permission was not expected, needed, or wanted.

And, time and time again, I’d amble down to Liffy II for a pint or seven while watching the Yankees. And I’m not ashamed to say that I’d stew about being a third wheel, left out of this tightly knit childhood army-of-two.

Six months after Sarah moved in with me, Glenn called to ask if Sarah and I cared to join him at the Carlyle to see his mother perform. Comped.

What I remember: Our Stoli martinis were very dry. Very large. Very potent.

What I remember: Warm waves of applause lapped the bandstand. The crystal clink of highball glasses. Stunning young women in red-soled Louboutins, squired by greying guys who flashed gold cufflinks. Snappy bow-tied waiters, hair slick with pomade. Gold-rimmed plates of Dover sole.

What I remember: Belle’s wisp of a smile. Red fingernails that caressed an onyx Neumann microphone. A sultry slit skirt. Tired eyes turned heavenward to receive her spotlight sacrament.

What I most remember: Belle’s encore, Jobim’s “Waters of March,” its playful melody a bikini bursting from lyrics ripe with life.

And so she sang: “A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road; it’s feeling alone, it’s the weight of your load ...”

Back stage. Belle’s dressing room. Her generous fuss over our bodega bouquet of red roses. A barren jar of Noxzema, the centerpiece in a coronation of crumpled tissues. Vise-tight hugs for Glenn and Sarah.

What I did not know: Belle was drowning in a confluence of indignities. Her divorce had become final. She had been dropped by her third record label in six years. Days after we saw her perform, Carlyle management called her agent. They were going in a “different direction.”

Upon hearing the Carlyle’s news, she opened a Provençal rosé and began to drink. She slipped Billie Holliday’s version of Arlen’s “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues” onto her turntable and, after the Barney Kessel guitar solo, opened her tenth floor living room window, inhaled sooty summer as it swept past her sheers, and leapt onto Eighty-Sixth Street in the pink silk kimono she bought in a Le Marais shop during her last Paris engagement…