Sunday, March 4, 2007
The Bar - Adelaide's corner
The kids have come in this week with a mystery to solve. Head to table five and help them unravel the clues. Or sit at Table 1 where the second chapter of the Fashionable Folk unfolds. Cheers, Adelaide
Table 5 - The Kiddie Table, Prologue and Chapter One
The Star of India
Prologue
A man sat alone in his musty office. A courier packet lay before him unopened. Following the instructions he watched the silver face of his wall clock and waited the seven minutes till morning. Winter-quiet filled the museum, the kind of peace that visits Manhattan maybe twice a year following a heavy, cleansing snowfall.
The package was letter-sized and thick. He fingered the cardboard tag that would unzip it. There was nothing to stop him from opening it before the appointed time but his own conscience. He’d agreed to the terms of the letter by return post a week before. He had dealt with this donor before. The interaction was always anonymous and required trust on both sides. The items he received were sometimes lovely, sometimes strange, always mysterious and always rare. But this package did not contain a trinket or mere artifact, if his instincts were right, the contents of this package would change everything.
The tip of the long arm of the clock disappeared into the number twelve. The man tore the strip of cardboard from the package and gently removed a bubble-wrapped book. He placed it gingerly on his blotter. With trembling fingers he opened his desk drawer and ran his hand along its felt bottom. His fingers grasped a cold metal knife. Slipping the letter opener along the taped side of the bubble-wrap his excitement mounted. The bubble wrap unfolded.
Two hours later the Museum reverberated with the loud, insistent clanging of the fire alarm.
Chapter One
Alistair Frank slid his skateboard out of his backpack and dropped it on the pavement.
“You’re going to board there?” his younger sister Megan asked incredulously.
He nodded, his face set in a grim frown. It was probably twenty degrees Fahrenheit outside and the Museum of Natural History was about seventy blocks away but he was going to board the distance.
“You’re crazy. It’s freezing and it’ll take forever!” Megan protested.
Alistair looked at her and sighed. “Y-y-y-yeah, I know Megan, just go on ahead, I’ll m-m-m-meet you there.” He zipped up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder again. Clapping his hands together to warm them, he then rolled his skateboard back and forth under his foot.
“I’ll w-w-walk you to the subway,” he said to mollify her.
It was late Saturday morning; the sun had just begun its climb to high in the sky. They had gotten up and out of their aunt’s house by 8:00 and rode down to the southern tip of Manhattan to watch the skate kids do their tricks. Every Saturday by 10:00 the best boarders in the city collected just north of Castle Clinton where tickets for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are sold. These boarders take turns showing off for the tourists and practicing their jumps on the long stretch of pavement that ends in two wide sets of stairs girded by a thick metal railing. This morning the boarders had come especially early to clear away the snow and ice before performing.
Alistair picked up his board and they started walking to the underground entrance of Rector Street station. Warm air rose from the station. The ground shuddered beneath them, and Alistair’s skin prickled at the rumbling sound. He hated the subway. Underneath places in general terrified him ever since he’d been trapped in a train with his Papa during 9/11 on a visit from Virginia. No harm had come to him or anyone on the subway car. Their car had simply been stopped along with the others that horrible, horrible day. Because they were close to downtown it took the authorities’ hours to evacuate them after Mayor Guilianni closed down the subways. He would never forget that end of world feeling or the pale look of fear on his Papa’s face as the subway staff tried to explain and make sense of why the passengers were being held there. They just thought a subway tunnel had collapsed. They didn’t know the real reason until later, still, Alistair would now go to any lengths to avoid having to use public transportation that led underground.
When he and Megan still lived in Richmond, Virginia, which they had until four weeks ago, this fear rarely came up. The only trains to be seen in Virginia were above ground. But in New York they were the major form of transportation – at least for everybody else. He hated New York. Everything about the place depressed him – it was crowded and smelled of garbage. Even here, right by Battery Park and the water, where you’d think the air would be the freshest, he could smell the faint scent of urine that seemed to linger over everything even in the cold filtering air.
People spoke to him about the magic of the city since he was little. But since he’d been here nothing had gone right. He and Megan had barely spoken to their dad. Their dad, a doctor, had been in Iraq for over nine months. Their mom died in a car accident when Megan was four and Alistair six. Since their mom’s brothers and sister and both of sets of their grandparents lived in New York, it was decided that until the world was able to manage without their dad, Alistair and Megan would live with their Aunt Abigail in the Turtle Bay section of Midtown. To top it all off his stupid stutter had started up again, so he’d taken to grunting and nodding to avoid speaking at all. No small feat when your kid sister asks millions of questions every hour.
“It’ll take you forever, Alistair” Megan grabbed his arm to make him look at her when they stopped at the station steps leading down. She brushed his thick blond bangs out of his eyes. His nose and cheeks, like hers, were pink from the wind. Megan had always been a bit of a mother hen, which considering she'd never really had a mother was just irritating to Alistair. To hear the two of them talk, you’d think she was fourteen and he was twelve instead of the other way around.
“And we’re to meet Papa Joe for lunch at 1:00. He promised he would have something special to show us, something too special to even be exhibited,” she cajoled.
Their round, burly Papa was curator of the Museum of Natural History and tried to spend as much time with his two transplanted grandchildren as his job would allow.
Megs decided on the brusque approach instead. “You’ve got to get over this. This is New York City, if you can’t afford cabs; the subway is your only alternative.”
“N-n-nope,” Alistair said stubbornly as he shook her gloved hand away, “I’ve got my b-b-b-board, my scooter and my bike, I am comp-p-p-pletely mobile. I’ll see you there in less than an hour.”
He plopped down his board and pushed off with his foot along Wall Street, slush slowing his wheels. Megan stood staring at him as he rushed away. As if he could feel her eyes on his back he turned his head to look at her briefly and shouted, “I had one mom, I don’t need another.” But even as he said this his chest tightened to think how at fourteen he'd now lived longer without a mom than with one.
A man sat alone in his musty office. A courier packet lay before him unopened. Following the instructions he watched the silver face of his wall clock and waited the seven minutes till morning. Winter-quiet filled the museum, the kind of peace that visits Manhattan maybe twice a year following a heavy, cleansing snowfall.
The package was letter-sized and thick. He fingered the cardboard tag that would unzip it. There was nothing to stop him from opening it before the appointed time but his own conscience. He’d agreed to the terms of the letter by return post a week before. He had dealt with this donor before. The interaction was always anonymous and required trust on both sides. The items he received were sometimes lovely, sometimes strange, always mysterious and always rare. But this package did not contain a trinket or mere artifact, if his instincts were right, the contents of this package would change everything.
The tip of the long arm of the clock disappeared into the number twelve. The man tore the strip of cardboard from the package and gently removed a bubble-wrapped book. He placed it gingerly on his blotter. With trembling fingers he opened his desk drawer and ran his hand along its felt bottom. His fingers grasped a cold metal knife. Slipping the letter opener along the taped side of the bubble-wrap his excitement mounted. The bubble wrap unfolded.
Two hours later the Museum reverberated with the loud, insistent clanging of the fire alarm.
Chapter One
Alistair Frank slid his skateboard out of his backpack and dropped it on the pavement.
“You’re going to board there?” his younger sister Megan asked incredulously.
He nodded, his face set in a grim frown. It was probably twenty degrees Fahrenheit outside and the Museum of Natural History was about seventy blocks away but he was going to board the distance.
“You’re crazy. It’s freezing and it’ll take forever!” Megan protested.
Alistair looked at her and sighed. “Y-y-y-yeah, I know Megan, just go on ahead, I’ll m-m-m-meet you there.” He zipped up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder again. Clapping his hands together to warm them, he then rolled his skateboard back and forth under his foot.
“I’ll w-w-walk you to the subway,” he said to mollify her.
It was late Saturday morning; the sun had just begun its climb to high in the sky. They had gotten up and out of their aunt’s house by 8:00 and rode down to the southern tip of Manhattan to watch the skate kids do their tricks. Every Saturday by 10:00 the best boarders in the city collected just north of Castle Clinton where tickets for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are sold. These boarders take turns showing off for the tourists and practicing their jumps on the long stretch of pavement that ends in two wide sets of stairs girded by a thick metal railing. This morning the boarders had come especially early to clear away the snow and ice before performing.
Alistair picked up his board and they started walking to the underground entrance of Rector Street station. Warm air rose from the station. The ground shuddered beneath them, and Alistair’s skin prickled at the rumbling sound. He hated the subway. Underneath places in general terrified him ever since he’d been trapped in a train with his Papa during 9/11 on a visit from Virginia. No harm had come to him or anyone on the subway car. Their car had simply been stopped along with the others that horrible, horrible day. Because they were close to downtown it took the authorities’ hours to evacuate them after Mayor Guilianni closed down the subways. He would never forget that end of world feeling or the pale look of fear on his Papa’s face as the subway staff tried to explain and make sense of why the passengers were being held there. They just thought a subway tunnel had collapsed. They didn’t know the real reason until later, still, Alistair would now go to any lengths to avoid having to use public transportation that led underground.
When he and Megan still lived in Richmond, Virginia, which they had until four weeks ago, this fear rarely came up. The only trains to be seen in Virginia were above ground. But in New York they were the major form of transportation – at least for everybody else. He hated New York. Everything about the place depressed him – it was crowded and smelled of garbage. Even here, right by Battery Park and the water, where you’d think the air would be the freshest, he could smell the faint scent of urine that seemed to linger over everything even in the cold filtering air.
People spoke to him about the magic of the city since he was little. But since he’d been here nothing had gone right. He and Megan had barely spoken to their dad. Their dad, a doctor, had been in Iraq for over nine months. Their mom died in a car accident when Megan was four and Alistair six. Since their mom’s brothers and sister and both of sets of their grandparents lived in New York, it was decided that until the world was able to manage without their dad, Alistair and Megan would live with their Aunt Abigail in the Turtle Bay section of Midtown. To top it all off his stupid stutter had started up again, so he’d taken to grunting and nodding to avoid speaking at all. No small feat when your kid sister asks millions of questions every hour.
“It’ll take you forever, Alistair” Megan grabbed his arm to make him look at her when they stopped at the station steps leading down. She brushed his thick blond bangs out of his eyes. His nose and cheeks, like hers, were pink from the wind. Megan had always been a bit of a mother hen, which considering she'd never really had a mother was just irritating to Alistair. To hear the two of them talk, you’d think she was fourteen and he was twelve instead of the other way around.
“And we’re to meet Papa Joe for lunch at 1:00. He promised he would have something special to show us, something too special to even be exhibited,” she cajoled.
Their round, burly Papa was curator of the Museum of Natural History and tried to spend as much time with his two transplanted grandchildren as his job would allow.
Megs decided on the brusque approach instead. “You’ve got to get over this. This is New York City, if you can’t afford cabs; the subway is your only alternative.”
“N-n-nope,” Alistair said stubbornly as he shook her gloved hand away, “I’ve got my b-b-b-board, my scooter and my bike, I am comp-p-p-pletely mobile. I’ll see you there in less than an hour.”
He plopped down his board and pushed off with his foot along Wall Street, slush slowing his wheels. Megan stood staring at him as he rushed away. As if he could feel her eyes on his back he turned his head to look at her briefly and shouted, “I had one mom, I don’t need another.” But even as he said this his chest tightened to think how at fourteen he'd now lived longer without a mom than with one.
The C Line took Megan right into the underbelly of the museum. The train didn’t stop at the museum, instead it zoomed past it.
“Hey,” she said out loud in surprise, looking at the girl across from her questioningly. The girl shrugged, her brown dredlocs bouncing as her shoulders reached toward her ears.
Over the intercom a flat male voice announced that the Natural History Museum stop would be closed until further notice. Megan got out at the 82nd street stop and ran the three blocks down Central Park West to the Museum. A large crowd surrounded the steps of the building. A jumble of media vans and police cars lined the street. Yellow tape ran across the entrance into the Roosevelt rotunda. A fearful feeling spread coldly along the back of her neck. She ran up the stairs two at a time. Papa Joe had promised to meet her under the Barosaurus in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda. What on earth had happened?
She spotted a security guard with exceptionally wide-nostrils named Christoph. He grandfather had first introduced her to him a few weeks ago. She ran over to him. He was standing just outside the yellow tape.
“Hey Christoph,” she announced to him. “I’m supposed to meet Papa here for lunch. What’s going on?”
Christoph shook his head when he saw her. “No one is allowed in here until the detectives are done. I’m sorry Megan. I don’t know exactly where your Papa is.” Cold, cloudy air escaped from his lips as he spoke
The ‘detectives’ she wondered. What did that mean? What detectives? She looked up at Christoph’s nostrils again, they were a little pink from the cold. Apart from their enormous size the rest of his face looked regular and friendly, unlike the official New Yorkers she’d met up till now who seemed to view grumpiness as a municipal right. She didn’t think he’d mind a question or two.
“Christoph,” Megan spoke very politely, “What’s going on? Is my grandfather okay?”
Christoph smiled and nodded. “As far as I know. Nobody appears to be hurt Megan, a few security guards were tied up and locked in a room, but no one was hurt. The museum lost two big pieces – everybody’s freaking out. If you ask me, it’s gotta be an inside job. Most of these museum jobs – there’s somebody inside helping it along, security’s too tight otherwise.” Christoph’s chest puffed up a bit as he spoke the last phrase.
“Oh my goodness. That’s awful, Papa must be really upset. Can you tell him I’m here at least?”
The guard flared his nostrils and shook his head negatively. “Sorry, can’t leave my post. Just you wait here, stand close to the door, you must be freezing. That wind is really up. He’ll be out in a few minutes. The Museum has called a press conference for 1:00 p.m. I imagine he’ll probably be one of the guys doing the talking.”
Megan thanked him for his information and told him she was just going to get a cup of coffee to warm up. New Yorkers are so pro-caffeine that this didn’t strike Christoph as strange at all that a 12 year-old needed her Starbucks fix. It was one of the many things she loved about the city. She walked down the steps wondering what to do. She wanted to see Papa Joe now. She looked back at the entrance. The security guard was now speaking with a curly-haired young reporter. Megan wondered if the reporter had a hard time maintaining eye contact with the guard. Those were the cleanest nostrils she had ever seen. Not a hair in sight, maybe with such a big area to work in nose-maintenance was easier. Megan looked over on the other side of the stairs by the other taped entrance. No guard was posted there.
Christoph looked really enthralled by that pretty, curly-haired reporter. Megan got an idea. She ducked down a bit, dashed to the other side of the steps and ran up and under the yellow tape straight into the Rotunda.
There was no one around. Megan walked over to the Barosaurus. Its skeleton reached high toward the curved ceiling patterned with hundreds of octagons. Cowering beside the fierce skeleton’s tail was a baby Barosaurus one-eighth of its size. Megan spotted Papa Joe was examining the bones of the baby’s tail. Approaching him from behind, she observed his penguin-shaped figure topped by his baby-bald head. He had a reputation for being eccentric, which, near as Megan could tell, was what adults called nuts who could earn a living. He certainly did mad stuff that unnerved people who didn’t know him well. For example he talked to himself, even when he was with other people. When asked about it he said it served people right, if they couldn’t be counted on to say anything interesting he’d have to rely on his own conversation.
He also seemed to have an extra sense, a way of knowing things. Try as she might, Megan could never sneak up on him and she considered herself an excellent sneaker.
Papa Joe spun around and saw her “Megan!” He exclaimed, and captured her up in his arms. “I knew it was you. How’s my best girl?”
Megan kissed the side of his soft, round face. She grabbed a Cadbury chocolate bar out the breast pocket on his orange lab coat. He always had bars of chocolate stashed in his many-pocketed lab coat. He said chocolate helped him think clearly.
“Good Papa, how are you?” She managed to breathe out as he put her back down on her feet.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” That meant not good, not good at all. Papa was a very optimistic man who seemed to only have two moods, great and pretty good. So for him to say not bad was very bad.
“What happened last night, Papa? Why are you just standing here? I thought the detectives were here? Were you here? What did the thief take?” Megan lowered her voice toward the end of her barrage of questions. With no people in it the museum her voice was echoed hauntingly.
“Hey,” she said out loud in surprise, looking at the girl across from her questioningly. The girl shrugged, her brown dredlocs bouncing as her shoulders reached toward her ears.
Over the intercom a flat male voice announced that the Natural History Museum stop would be closed until further notice. Megan got out at the 82nd street stop and ran the three blocks down Central Park West to the Museum. A large crowd surrounded the steps of the building. A jumble of media vans and police cars lined the street. Yellow tape ran across the entrance into the Roosevelt rotunda. A fearful feeling spread coldly along the back of her neck. She ran up the stairs two at a time. Papa Joe had promised to meet her under the Barosaurus in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda. What on earth had happened?
She spotted a security guard with exceptionally wide-nostrils named Christoph. He grandfather had first introduced her to him a few weeks ago. She ran over to him. He was standing just outside the yellow tape.
“Hey Christoph,” she announced to him. “I’m supposed to meet Papa here for lunch. What’s going on?”
Christoph shook his head when he saw her. “No one is allowed in here until the detectives are done. I’m sorry Megan. I don’t know exactly where your Papa is.” Cold, cloudy air escaped from his lips as he spoke
The ‘detectives’ she wondered. What did that mean? What detectives? She looked up at Christoph’s nostrils again, they were a little pink from the cold. Apart from their enormous size the rest of his face looked regular and friendly, unlike the official New Yorkers she’d met up till now who seemed to view grumpiness as a municipal right. She didn’t think he’d mind a question or two.
“Christoph,” Megan spoke very politely, “What’s going on? Is my grandfather okay?”
Christoph smiled and nodded. “As far as I know. Nobody appears to be hurt Megan, a few security guards were tied up and locked in a room, but no one was hurt. The museum lost two big pieces – everybody’s freaking out. If you ask me, it’s gotta be an inside job. Most of these museum jobs – there’s somebody inside helping it along, security’s too tight otherwise.” Christoph’s chest puffed up a bit as he spoke the last phrase.
“Oh my goodness. That’s awful, Papa must be really upset. Can you tell him I’m here at least?”
The guard flared his nostrils and shook his head negatively. “Sorry, can’t leave my post. Just you wait here, stand close to the door, you must be freezing. That wind is really up. He’ll be out in a few minutes. The Museum has called a press conference for 1:00 p.m. I imagine he’ll probably be one of the guys doing the talking.”
Megan thanked him for his information and told him she was just going to get a cup of coffee to warm up. New Yorkers are so pro-caffeine that this didn’t strike Christoph as strange at all that a 12 year-old needed her Starbucks fix. It was one of the many things she loved about the city. She walked down the steps wondering what to do. She wanted to see Papa Joe now. She looked back at the entrance. The security guard was now speaking with a curly-haired young reporter. Megan wondered if the reporter had a hard time maintaining eye contact with the guard. Those were the cleanest nostrils she had ever seen. Not a hair in sight, maybe with such a big area to work in nose-maintenance was easier. Megan looked over on the other side of the stairs by the other taped entrance. No guard was posted there.
Christoph looked really enthralled by that pretty, curly-haired reporter. Megan got an idea. She ducked down a bit, dashed to the other side of the steps and ran up and under the yellow tape straight into the Rotunda.
There was no one around. Megan walked over to the Barosaurus. Its skeleton reached high toward the curved ceiling patterned with hundreds of octagons. Cowering beside the fierce skeleton’s tail was a baby Barosaurus one-eighth of its size. Megan spotted Papa Joe was examining the bones of the baby’s tail. Approaching him from behind, she observed his penguin-shaped figure topped by his baby-bald head. He had a reputation for being eccentric, which, near as Megan could tell, was what adults called nuts who could earn a living. He certainly did mad stuff that unnerved people who didn’t know him well. For example he talked to himself, even when he was with other people. When asked about it he said it served people right, if they couldn’t be counted on to say anything interesting he’d have to rely on his own conversation.
He also seemed to have an extra sense, a way of knowing things. Try as she might, Megan could never sneak up on him and she considered herself an excellent sneaker.
Papa Joe spun around and saw her “Megan!” He exclaimed, and captured her up in his arms. “I knew it was you. How’s my best girl?”
Megan kissed the side of his soft, round face. She grabbed a Cadbury chocolate bar out the breast pocket on his orange lab coat. He always had bars of chocolate stashed in his many-pocketed lab coat. He said chocolate helped him think clearly.
“Good Papa, how are you?” She managed to breathe out as he put her back down on her feet.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” That meant not good, not good at all. Papa was a very optimistic man who seemed to only have two moods, great and pretty good. So for him to say not bad was very bad.
“What happened last night, Papa? Why are you just standing here? I thought the detectives were here? Were you here? What did the thief take?” Megan lowered her voice toward the end of her barrage of questions. With no people in it the museum her voice was echoed hauntingly.
Table 1 - The Fashionable Seats, Chapter two
June 15, 1983 Tobormony, Ontario
When Perpetua Kelly boarded the Greyhound bus to Toronto she carried with her an imitation carpet bag, a tuna fish sandwich for lunch and a miniature leather paddock purse containing her brother’s address on Palmerston Avenue and five bright, green twenty dollar bills. At eighteen years old, she was pretty, clever and ambitious. She’d been to Toronto once before, when her eldest brother Francis had first moved. She and her dad lugged Gran’s mattress and bedframe to Francis’ freshman apartment on Spadina Road. Right in the heart of Chinatown, Francis’s two-room apartment seemed the epitome of sophistication to Pet. Francis could walk to the Royal Ontario Museum, ride his bike to the Art Gallery of Ontario, or simply meander down his street to Art 80, a collection of tiny galleries clustered in a non-descript building at the foot of Spadina. Not that the engineering-bound scholar would do any of the above, but she could picture herself doing so with perhaps a coffee in hand, a Canadian Holly Golightly, beautifully dressed wandering aimlessly amid chic, educated people.
The bus rambled along Highway 6, making a straight run to Wiarton before stopping. Pet had two seats to herself, the bus was barely half-full. At Wiarton, the driver pulled into the bus station and all the passengers got off for a quick break. The bus station smelled strongly of cigarettes. Pet flirted with the idea of purchasing a pack. She’d never smoked before, but then she’d never moved to the city before either. She opted for chocolate instead and withdrew coins from her purse for the candy vending machine. As the jaws of the machine released her Aero bar a well-dressed gentleman sidled up to her.
“Sweets for the sweet?” He smiled into her eyes. He was merely a few inches taller than her, maybe ten years older, light-eyed and fair. His suit was obviously city-made, the cut more self-consciously stylish than the Sunday best of Tobermory’s menfolk.
She laughed, not unkindly, “You should write that down, it’s a very clever.”
He laughed in return, and affected a courtly bow. “I thought an old-fashioned phrase for an old-fashioned young lady. My name is Robert Cratton, at your service.”
Perpetua stopped laughing. “What you do you mean old-fashioned?” Her blue eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just meant you were dressed nicely, like a young lady.”
“Meaning not very smartly? I suppose the women in Toronto dress very fashionably.” Pet looked down at her plain-navy pleated skirt and white blouse with dissatisfaction.
Robert Cratton followed her gaze down her fitted, neatly tucked blouse lingering before looking back into her eyes. The announcement for Bus 1029 leaving to Toronto in six minutes came over the P.A. system.
Robert shook his head, “Meaning that young women in Toronto don’t dress so formally anymore. It’s rare to see them in anything but jeans and a T-shirt.” He smiled briefly and said, “Well, that’s my bus, nice talking to you.”
She took in his words as he walked away. Instinctively she knew they may be wearing jeans, but not just any old jean. She looked around at the other passengers loitering in the station. She saw a couple of teenage girls boarding a bus. They looked a bit younger than she. Both had long, tousled heads of hair restrained by floppy lace bows. Compared to her shiny, straight hair they looked, not chic exactly, but more alive, fun even. She looked staid, and yes, old-fashioned. An announcer came over the system and made the last call for bus 1029. Pet checked her ticket with a start and ran for the bus.
She resumed her seat to find the seat beside hers now inhabited by Robert Cratton.
She looked at him suspiciously, “Were you on this bus earlier?”
He nodded, “I sat at the very back earlier. But since things are a lot more crowded now, and I hate traveling beside people I don’t know.”
“Won’t your reputation suffer, being seen with such an old-fashioned girl?” Pet responded tartly.
Robert shook his head good naturedly. “Whose gonna know, it’s a Greyhound, it’s not like it’s the elite’s traveling preference.”
When Perpetua Kelly boarded the Greyhound bus to Toronto she carried with her an imitation carpet bag, a tuna fish sandwich for lunch and a miniature leather paddock purse containing her brother’s address on Palmerston Avenue and five bright, green twenty dollar bills. At eighteen years old, she was pretty, clever and ambitious. She’d been to Toronto once before, when her eldest brother Francis had first moved. She and her dad lugged Gran’s mattress and bedframe to Francis’ freshman apartment on Spadina Road. Right in the heart of Chinatown, Francis’s two-room apartment seemed the epitome of sophistication to Pet. Francis could walk to the Royal Ontario Museum, ride his bike to the Art Gallery of Ontario, or simply meander down his street to Art 80, a collection of tiny galleries clustered in a non-descript building at the foot of Spadina. Not that the engineering-bound scholar would do any of the above, but she could picture herself doing so with perhaps a coffee in hand, a Canadian Holly Golightly, beautifully dressed wandering aimlessly amid chic, educated people.
The bus rambled along Highway 6, making a straight run to Wiarton before stopping. Pet had two seats to herself, the bus was barely half-full. At Wiarton, the driver pulled into the bus station and all the passengers got off for a quick break. The bus station smelled strongly of cigarettes. Pet flirted with the idea of purchasing a pack. She’d never smoked before, but then she’d never moved to the city before either. She opted for chocolate instead and withdrew coins from her purse for the candy vending machine. As the jaws of the machine released her Aero bar a well-dressed gentleman sidled up to her.
“Sweets for the sweet?” He smiled into her eyes. He was merely a few inches taller than her, maybe ten years older, light-eyed and fair. His suit was obviously city-made, the cut more self-consciously stylish than the Sunday best of Tobermory’s menfolk.
She laughed, not unkindly, “You should write that down, it’s a very clever.”
He laughed in return, and affected a courtly bow. “I thought an old-fashioned phrase for an old-fashioned young lady. My name is Robert Cratton, at your service.”
Perpetua stopped laughing. “What you do you mean old-fashioned?” Her blue eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just meant you were dressed nicely, like a young lady.”
“Meaning not very smartly? I suppose the women in Toronto dress very fashionably.” Pet looked down at her plain-navy pleated skirt and white blouse with dissatisfaction.
Robert Cratton followed her gaze down her fitted, neatly tucked blouse lingering before looking back into her eyes. The announcement for Bus 1029 leaving to Toronto in six minutes came over the P.A. system.
Robert shook his head, “Meaning that young women in Toronto don’t dress so formally anymore. It’s rare to see them in anything but jeans and a T-shirt.” He smiled briefly and said, “Well, that’s my bus, nice talking to you.”
She took in his words as he walked away. Instinctively she knew they may be wearing jeans, but not just any old jean. She looked around at the other passengers loitering in the station. She saw a couple of teenage girls boarding a bus. They looked a bit younger than she. Both had long, tousled heads of hair restrained by floppy lace bows. Compared to her shiny, straight hair they looked, not chic exactly, but more alive, fun even. She looked staid, and yes, old-fashioned. An announcer came over the system and made the last call for bus 1029. Pet checked her ticket with a start and ran for the bus.
She resumed her seat to find the seat beside hers now inhabited by Robert Cratton.
She looked at him suspiciously, “Were you on this bus earlier?”
He nodded, “I sat at the very back earlier. But since things are a lot more crowded now, and I hate traveling beside people I don’t know.”
“Won’t your reputation suffer, being seen with such an old-fashioned girl?” Pet responded tartly.
Robert shook his head good naturedly. “Whose gonna know, it’s a Greyhound, it’s not like it’s the elite’s traveling preference.”
Monday, February 26, 2007
Table 4 - Old coots with loot
The Gramercy Park
The press was having a blast. It was the type of story they liked best: exposing the rich and powerful at their pettiest and most peevish. Abbotsford’s story ran the gamut from front page headlines in the Post and a blow-up photo of the ‘Dead-door fish’ to a page nine blurb in the city section of the Times used to wrap dead fish. The New Yorker ignored it with it’s haughty air of propriety and New York magazine ate it up and regurgitated like a doting mommy penguin. It was a sexy story – surprising really because sexy is not a word usually associated with Gramercy Park. Other than the odd Julia Roberts sighting, Gramercy tends to be a haven for cotton-haired octogenarians and their silly, bitty pooches. Even the park tends to be more staid than glam because it’s gates remain, after a century of growth and change, locked except to a precious few.
In 1831 when real estate developer Samuel Ruggles purchased part of Peter Stuyvesant’s bowery - swampland really - he spun straw into gold, creating the model for future Manhattan moguls. He turned it into one of Manhattan’s most exclusive addresses (aren’t they all). When Ruggles sold the sixty-six building lots around Gramercy Park to the cash heavy, the deeds stipulated that only the lot owners could have access to the park. To ensure that, a fence and gate were erected and sixty-six skeleton keys were awarded to each of the lucky lot owners. Now one hundred and seventy-four years later the rule still applies. The sixty-six lots which lie beneath elegant row housing, the National Arts Club, The Players Club, a Synagogue and a gorgeous Queen Anne style coop apartment building each hold a key to unlock the cast iron gates of the private leafy oasis known as Gramercy Park. Today there are more than sixty-six keys, each co op owner in the lovely apartment building has one, the artists-in-resident at the National Arts Club each possess one, and several members of the Synagogue are key holders too. But in a city teeming with 10 million inhabitants even a few hundred keys is still extremely exclusive. Of course the original keys browned with age and crooked as an arthritic joint no longer work in the lock, but they are still held onto as dearly without their former use, a tangible memory of a history of privilege.
The park itself has hardly changed till this recent scuffle. It is reminiscent of a Parisian park. A smaller, bushier version of Parc Monceau, a shady variety of trees: Buckeyes, folksy Horse Chestnuts, cosmopolitan Norway maples, and stoic London plane trees line the wide, inviting gravel-filled walkways. The slatted benches that line the paths are painted a complimentary forest green so as not to jar the eye from the peaceful flora. Yet all one has to do is look up at the skyscrapers crowding the airspace beyond the gating to realize the greenery is an anomaly. But they suit each other well, the park and the skyscrapers, both feats of extraordinary effort and determined vision.
But there has never been a determined visionary that did not confront conflict. Some conflicts surprise like a mugging, little warning, lots of adrenaline and an added plank in your conversation platform. Others you recognize their potential at their inception, see the two participants incompatibility long before they do, and just wait to witness the developments. So it was with Gramercy Park. Abigail, from the perch of her lovely brown brick twelve-story on west 59th, when she thought of the park at all, thought about it in reference to her uncle, a holder of one of the elusive keys. Her uncle Abbotsford had lived in the picturesque Queen Anne-style coop on the park for forty years and held the honorary position of keeper of the gate. He was a trustee and longtime chairman of the Gramercy Park Trustees. Abigail suggested just before the tree debacle that her seventy-two year-old uncle designate a new lifetime gatekeeper from the neighborhood. She thought he didn’t need to mediate the constant bickering that was occurring between keyholders over things like pet pickup and what type of new-fangled lock to install. She worried, unnecessarily apparently, that a conflict would arise to which he would not be equal. True to the curmudgeonly manner earned by a New Yorker of his years, he told her to mind her own ‘God-damned business’ or he’d leave his ‘God- damned co op interest’ to a ‘God damned stray cat.’ She, in keeping with a successful 37-year old lifelong New Yorker, replied that she’d have the will invalidated but not before using it as proof of his insanity, have him committed, seize his apartment anyway and sell it to some nouveau riche, white-trash underwear model.
The discussion shut down after that. The type of conflict Abigail foresaw was the exacerbation of the classic tension between the haves and the have-nots – those in possession of a key and those who long to be, those who play inside the gilded cage, and those who watch – their faces pushed tightly against the bars, able to breath the same air, but not straddle the same ground. But she’d obviously romaticized the residents of her beloved city. In Manhattan those conflicts are strictly for the bridge and tunnel types. Manhattan 2005 has no have-nots. There are only haves. The have-nots were given the bum rush long ago, when Guiliani brought New York back from the brink and Times Square became home to Geoffrey the Toy’s R Us Giraffe.
The only conflict that could occur was the haves against the haves – Way more press worthy than the other kind anyway. By the time the full difficulty was exposed, rotten fish were smelling up fashionable stoops, lawyers (those enablers of the haves) were mass mailing letter-headed missives on creamy card stock and the op-ed pages of the New York Dailies were smudged with indignation.
It all started so simply, quietly, as befitted the Grecian Formula dawdlers of the park. A letter received by Mr. Abbotsford Gelding from an old lover of his who also lived in the coop at 34 Gramercy Park East.
Darlin’ Abby,
The English Elm that reaches outside my window has grown far too large. Thanks to its boughs my entire apartment is shrouded in darkness. Some mornings when I wake up I’m afraid for a moment I’ve been stuck in the family mausoleum before my time. Would you be a dear and bring this matter up at the key holder’s meeting. I shall be in Italy for the summer, and would love to see either the tree removed or the boughs trimmed. I’m quite sure it would affect the value of my apartment, not to mention the damage it does to my health. What is that depression caused by no light in the winter? Wel,l whatever the term, I am suffering from it all year long!! Thanks very much for your help; I promise to bring back something divine from Roma for you.
All my love and kisses, xoxoxoxoxox Bryan
Why were southern faggots more faggotty than northern fags, Abbotsford wondered, probably exposure to all that damn seersucker. Abbotsford knew, however, exactly what the old queen was complaining about. He too looked out onto the same tree, and it had grown into an unchecked behemoth these last two decades. He doubted the association would approve removing it entirely, nothing like that had ever really been done before, but the removal of a few offending boughs should not be an issue. The next meeting was scheduled for July 8 in the National Arts Council building, hosted by that flaky hippy Claire Chapin. He often missed the meetings where Ms. Chapin hosted, he did not know her well at all, but her appearance irritated him. She wore her long graying, auburn hair in a fortune- tellers bun and favored flowing, batik’d caftans - perfectly ridiculous, not to mention trite on a woman her age. To Abbotsford’s way of thinking a woman should age like a man, with dignity, in khakis, white turtlenecks, navy cardigans and deck shoes – just like Katharine Hepburn. Now there was a lady who knew what she was about. Abbotsford had seen her on several occasions when she came into the park with a member of the arts club, but had only met her once. That silly Claire had introduced them with an elaborate politesse that Abbotsford felt in retrospect may have been mocking. Still this was one meeting he would not miss, who knows he may be able to cut down the damn tree after all. Most of the keyholders should be away in the Hamptons or Vineyard, if he could convince the few who attended, he might have the tree cut down before many were the wiser, then he’d have a damn view too.
Dressed nattily in his khakis and topsiders and armed with photos of the sweeping limbs, he headed over to the arts building in the early evening. He left the letter at home, Bryan couldn’t write a business letter to save his life, he had to litter ‘loves’ and ‘darlins’ through it, as if he delighted in exposing his personal life to the busybodies in the association. He felt the crisp bite of the night air. It felt good and best of all it smelled good, or at least better than usual. New York never smelled good anymore, hadn’t really since the sixties, but some days the air seemed heavier with waste and decay. Most things in New York were better in the sixties, parking for example. One could still use one’s car instead of just renting it space and dusting it monthly. When he lived at 57th just off of Park he could park right in front of his building. Abbotsford shook his head, bringing present day back to his thoughts. He opened the cast iron gate of the park and moved slowly inside, his knee was bothering him again. He stretched it slowly then cut through the park. The trees cast soft grey shadows on the gravel and seemed to shake the weariness of the day from their limbs. He opened the gate not far from the front of the National Arts Club. Crossing the street he stepped down under the awning of 15 Gramercy Park South and pulled the heavy black and glass door of the Club. One of the bohemians-in-residence was in the foyer,
“Hullo?” The resident was scruffy-haired, but mercifully didn’t smell.
“I’m here to see Ms. Chapin please, I am Abbotsford Gelding.”
The hippy nodded, “She’s in the back parlor.” He thumbed vaguely to an area behind him.
Abbotsford twisted his lips, “Thank you that was helpful,” he grumbled, and made for the back of the building, assuming he’d either run into the ‘back parlor’ or another ruffian who could be more articulate. Paintings and photographs hung side by side on the flocked paper. The outlines of former pieces remained visible on the wallpaper around the art. Abbotsford stopped to inspect a photograph of his park, the green benches lit by twilight in the fall. He could almost feel the coolness of winter in the air.
“Mr. Gelding,” Claire Chapin called grandly from a faded velvet settee.
Abbotsford looked up to see her motioning him join her. She sat in a dark paneled room her caftan and bangles looking incongruous in the stifling Victorian setting. Why on earth, he wondered, wouldn’t the damn hippies have painted the hideous paneling and banished some of the gilt-frames? Maybe they thought it was kitschy, or worse ironic. Lord, how this generation stuck smugly to it’s irony. He looked at Claire, she was patting the space on the settee beside her. He sat down in an empty beige armchair instead, squinting.
“So glad you could be here, it seems there will be just a few of us this evening. Those without friends in the Hamptons I suppose,” she laughed ruefully.
Abbotsford didn’t find that at all amusing, he had many friends in the Hamptons, not that it was any of this lady’s business. His knee was aching keenly now, he’d better go back to the damn, useless doctor again. Why the quack couldn’t just give him a decent pain killer was beyond him. He smiled thinly at the six occupants of the back parlor. Beside hippy Claire on the settee sat Margaret Biggens, owner of 3 Gramercy Park West, one of the twin houses attributed to Alexander Jackson Davis, a big-deal architect from the early nineteenth century. Number 3 and 4 Gramercy Park West, with their intricate cast iron verandas generally represents Gramercy Park to most New Yorkers. In the uncomfortably short-looking armchair sat Fremont Scalia, a once-productive Broadway producer, who owned number 4, though if the scuttlebutt was true, not for long. Two very Versace’d ladies in their 50’s sat on the Louis XV reproduction, resting tea saucers on their laps, their important, hardware intensive handbags displayed casually at their feet. Abbotsford recognized them as representatives of the Brotherhood Synagogue at 28 Gramercy Park south. They returned his polite nod.
The meeting meandered along without point for about 30 minutes while the group gossiped about those absent and discussed the celebrity tabloids. After Abbotsford snuffled down his third stale sugar cookie he made his move.
He began, “If we could get down to business now, I’ve got some…”
“Yes, quite right,” Cecily cut him off loudly, “Let’s call this meeting to order.” Rather formal he thought, for a damned hippy. He began again.
“I’ve got a letter.” He reached down and shuffled with the file by his legs.
“Good, Mr Gelding. We will look at that shortly, but first I have something of dire importance to discuss.”
Abbotsford bristled, “Well, it couldn’t have been more important than Brad Pitt’s sex life, because I noticed that discussion was tabled first.”
Cecily looked at him sharply, then remembered to smile. “Well yes, Mr. Gelding, a little light conversation does make everyone feel comfortable, before attending to the bigger issues at hand.”
Pompous bitch. Well he wasn’t about to be railroaded. He had a keyholder’s concern in his hand and he was going to address it. Hell maybe he’d cut the damn limbs himself – what would her patchouli-touting highness have to say to that?
The press was having a blast. It was the type of story they liked best: exposing the rich and powerful at their pettiest and most peevish. Abbotsford’s story ran the gamut from front page headlines in the Post and a blow-up photo of the ‘Dead-door fish’ to a page nine blurb in the city section of the Times used to wrap dead fish. The New Yorker ignored it with it’s haughty air of propriety and New York magazine ate it up and regurgitated like a doting mommy penguin. It was a sexy story – surprising really because sexy is not a word usually associated with Gramercy Park. Other than the odd Julia Roberts sighting, Gramercy tends to be a haven for cotton-haired octogenarians and their silly, bitty pooches. Even the park tends to be more staid than glam because it’s gates remain, after a century of growth and change, locked except to a precious few.
In 1831 when real estate developer Samuel Ruggles purchased part of Peter Stuyvesant’s bowery - swampland really - he spun straw into gold, creating the model for future Manhattan moguls. He turned it into one of Manhattan’s most exclusive addresses (aren’t they all). When Ruggles sold the sixty-six building lots around Gramercy Park to the cash heavy, the deeds stipulated that only the lot owners could have access to the park. To ensure that, a fence and gate were erected and sixty-six skeleton keys were awarded to each of the lucky lot owners. Now one hundred and seventy-four years later the rule still applies. The sixty-six lots which lie beneath elegant row housing, the National Arts Club, The Players Club, a Synagogue and a gorgeous Queen Anne style coop apartment building each hold a key to unlock the cast iron gates of the private leafy oasis known as Gramercy Park. Today there are more than sixty-six keys, each co op owner in the lovely apartment building has one, the artists-in-resident at the National Arts Club each possess one, and several members of the Synagogue are key holders too. But in a city teeming with 10 million inhabitants even a few hundred keys is still extremely exclusive. Of course the original keys browned with age and crooked as an arthritic joint no longer work in the lock, but they are still held onto as dearly without their former use, a tangible memory of a history of privilege.
The park itself has hardly changed till this recent scuffle. It is reminiscent of a Parisian park. A smaller, bushier version of Parc Monceau, a shady variety of trees: Buckeyes, folksy Horse Chestnuts, cosmopolitan Norway maples, and stoic London plane trees line the wide, inviting gravel-filled walkways. The slatted benches that line the paths are painted a complimentary forest green so as not to jar the eye from the peaceful flora. Yet all one has to do is look up at the skyscrapers crowding the airspace beyond the gating to realize the greenery is an anomaly. But they suit each other well, the park and the skyscrapers, both feats of extraordinary effort and determined vision.
But there has never been a determined visionary that did not confront conflict. Some conflicts surprise like a mugging, little warning, lots of adrenaline and an added plank in your conversation platform. Others you recognize their potential at their inception, see the two participants incompatibility long before they do, and just wait to witness the developments. So it was with Gramercy Park. Abigail, from the perch of her lovely brown brick twelve-story on west 59th, when she thought of the park at all, thought about it in reference to her uncle, a holder of one of the elusive keys. Her uncle Abbotsford had lived in the picturesque Queen Anne-style coop on the park for forty years and held the honorary position of keeper of the gate. He was a trustee and longtime chairman of the Gramercy Park Trustees. Abigail suggested just before the tree debacle that her seventy-two year-old uncle designate a new lifetime gatekeeper from the neighborhood. She thought he didn’t need to mediate the constant bickering that was occurring between keyholders over things like pet pickup and what type of new-fangled lock to install. She worried, unnecessarily apparently, that a conflict would arise to which he would not be equal. True to the curmudgeonly manner earned by a New Yorker of his years, he told her to mind her own ‘God-damned business’ or he’d leave his ‘God- damned co op interest’ to a ‘God damned stray cat.’ She, in keeping with a successful 37-year old lifelong New Yorker, replied that she’d have the will invalidated but not before using it as proof of his insanity, have him committed, seize his apartment anyway and sell it to some nouveau riche, white-trash underwear model.
The discussion shut down after that. The type of conflict Abigail foresaw was the exacerbation of the classic tension between the haves and the have-nots – those in possession of a key and those who long to be, those who play inside the gilded cage, and those who watch – their faces pushed tightly against the bars, able to breath the same air, but not straddle the same ground. But she’d obviously romaticized the residents of her beloved city. In Manhattan those conflicts are strictly for the bridge and tunnel types. Manhattan 2005 has no have-nots. There are only haves. The have-nots were given the bum rush long ago, when Guiliani brought New York back from the brink and Times Square became home to Geoffrey the Toy’s R Us Giraffe.
The only conflict that could occur was the haves against the haves – Way more press worthy than the other kind anyway. By the time the full difficulty was exposed, rotten fish were smelling up fashionable stoops, lawyers (those enablers of the haves) were mass mailing letter-headed missives on creamy card stock and the op-ed pages of the New York Dailies were smudged with indignation.
It all started so simply, quietly, as befitted the Grecian Formula dawdlers of the park. A letter received by Mr. Abbotsford Gelding from an old lover of his who also lived in the coop at 34 Gramercy Park East.
Darlin’ Abby,
The English Elm that reaches outside my window has grown far too large. Thanks to its boughs my entire apartment is shrouded in darkness. Some mornings when I wake up I’m afraid for a moment I’ve been stuck in the family mausoleum before my time. Would you be a dear and bring this matter up at the key holder’s meeting. I shall be in Italy for the summer, and would love to see either the tree removed or the boughs trimmed. I’m quite sure it would affect the value of my apartment, not to mention the damage it does to my health. What is that depression caused by no light in the winter? Wel,l whatever the term, I am suffering from it all year long!! Thanks very much for your help; I promise to bring back something divine from Roma for you.
All my love and kisses, xoxoxoxoxox Bryan
Why were southern faggots more faggotty than northern fags, Abbotsford wondered, probably exposure to all that damn seersucker. Abbotsford knew, however, exactly what the old queen was complaining about. He too looked out onto the same tree, and it had grown into an unchecked behemoth these last two decades. He doubted the association would approve removing it entirely, nothing like that had ever really been done before, but the removal of a few offending boughs should not be an issue. The next meeting was scheduled for July 8 in the National Arts Council building, hosted by that flaky hippy Claire Chapin. He often missed the meetings where Ms. Chapin hosted, he did not know her well at all, but her appearance irritated him. She wore her long graying, auburn hair in a fortune- tellers bun and favored flowing, batik’d caftans - perfectly ridiculous, not to mention trite on a woman her age. To Abbotsford’s way of thinking a woman should age like a man, with dignity, in khakis, white turtlenecks, navy cardigans and deck shoes – just like Katharine Hepburn. Now there was a lady who knew what she was about. Abbotsford had seen her on several occasions when she came into the park with a member of the arts club, but had only met her once. That silly Claire had introduced them with an elaborate politesse that Abbotsford felt in retrospect may have been mocking. Still this was one meeting he would not miss, who knows he may be able to cut down the damn tree after all. Most of the keyholders should be away in the Hamptons or Vineyard, if he could convince the few who attended, he might have the tree cut down before many were the wiser, then he’d have a damn view too.
Dressed nattily in his khakis and topsiders and armed with photos of the sweeping limbs, he headed over to the arts building in the early evening. He left the letter at home, Bryan couldn’t write a business letter to save his life, he had to litter ‘loves’ and ‘darlins’ through it, as if he delighted in exposing his personal life to the busybodies in the association. He felt the crisp bite of the night air. It felt good and best of all it smelled good, or at least better than usual. New York never smelled good anymore, hadn’t really since the sixties, but some days the air seemed heavier with waste and decay. Most things in New York were better in the sixties, parking for example. One could still use one’s car instead of just renting it space and dusting it monthly. When he lived at 57th just off of Park he could park right in front of his building. Abbotsford shook his head, bringing present day back to his thoughts. He opened the cast iron gate of the park and moved slowly inside, his knee was bothering him again. He stretched it slowly then cut through the park. The trees cast soft grey shadows on the gravel and seemed to shake the weariness of the day from their limbs. He opened the gate not far from the front of the National Arts Club. Crossing the street he stepped down under the awning of 15 Gramercy Park South and pulled the heavy black and glass door of the Club. One of the bohemians-in-residence was in the foyer,
“Hullo?” The resident was scruffy-haired, but mercifully didn’t smell.
“I’m here to see Ms. Chapin please, I am Abbotsford Gelding.”
The hippy nodded, “She’s in the back parlor.” He thumbed vaguely to an area behind him.
Abbotsford twisted his lips, “Thank you that was helpful,” he grumbled, and made for the back of the building, assuming he’d either run into the ‘back parlor’ or another ruffian who could be more articulate. Paintings and photographs hung side by side on the flocked paper. The outlines of former pieces remained visible on the wallpaper around the art. Abbotsford stopped to inspect a photograph of his park, the green benches lit by twilight in the fall. He could almost feel the coolness of winter in the air.
“Mr. Gelding,” Claire Chapin called grandly from a faded velvet settee.
Abbotsford looked up to see her motioning him join her. She sat in a dark paneled room her caftan and bangles looking incongruous in the stifling Victorian setting. Why on earth, he wondered, wouldn’t the damn hippies have painted the hideous paneling and banished some of the gilt-frames? Maybe they thought it was kitschy, or worse ironic. Lord, how this generation stuck smugly to it’s irony. He looked at Claire, she was patting the space on the settee beside her. He sat down in an empty beige armchair instead, squinting.
“So glad you could be here, it seems there will be just a few of us this evening. Those without friends in the Hamptons I suppose,” she laughed ruefully.
Abbotsford didn’t find that at all amusing, he had many friends in the Hamptons, not that it was any of this lady’s business. His knee was aching keenly now, he’d better go back to the damn, useless doctor again. Why the quack couldn’t just give him a decent pain killer was beyond him. He smiled thinly at the six occupants of the back parlor. Beside hippy Claire on the settee sat Margaret Biggens, owner of 3 Gramercy Park West, one of the twin houses attributed to Alexander Jackson Davis, a big-deal architect from the early nineteenth century. Number 3 and 4 Gramercy Park West, with their intricate cast iron verandas generally represents Gramercy Park to most New Yorkers. In the uncomfortably short-looking armchair sat Fremont Scalia, a once-productive Broadway producer, who owned number 4, though if the scuttlebutt was true, not for long. Two very Versace’d ladies in their 50’s sat on the Louis XV reproduction, resting tea saucers on their laps, their important, hardware intensive handbags displayed casually at their feet. Abbotsford recognized them as representatives of the Brotherhood Synagogue at 28 Gramercy Park south. They returned his polite nod.
The meeting meandered along without point for about 30 minutes while the group gossiped about those absent and discussed the celebrity tabloids. After Abbotsford snuffled down his third stale sugar cookie he made his move.
He began, “If we could get down to business now, I’ve got some…”
“Yes, quite right,” Cecily cut him off loudly, “Let’s call this meeting to order.” Rather formal he thought, for a damned hippy. He began again.
“I’ve got a letter.” He reached down and shuffled with the file by his legs.
“Good, Mr Gelding. We will look at that shortly, but first I have something of dire importance to discuss.”
Abbotsford bristled, “Well, it couldn’t have been more important than Brad Pitt’s sex life, because I noticed that discussion was tabled first.”
Cecily looked at him sharply, then remembered to smile. “Well yes, Mr. Gelding, a little light conversation does make everyone feel comfortable, before attending to the bigger issues at hand.”
Pompous bitch. Well he wasn’t about to be railroaded. He had a keyholder’s concern in his hand and he was going to address it. Hell maybe he’d cut the damn limbs himself – what would her patchouli-touting highness have to say to that?
Table 3 - Where the swells sit - Chapter 3
“How are you going to get there?” Mutti asked.
“I thought I’d rent something grand, bold perhaps.” I widened my eyes and grinned.
Death Valley did not spell fun to most sixteen-year-olds for especially not in 1933. But then I was always on the cutting edge. It seemed romantic and larger than life to a city girl like me - a wide carved rough land of saltwater flats and alien moon landscapes. Death Valley had just been designated a National Monument in April. This meant in just a few months President Roosevelt was going to send in his newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps to build 343 miles of new roads as part of his New Deal works projects – but not before I got there. I would still need to figure out the best way to get there over meandering desert roads. People did it all the time, still it made Mutti nervous.
She tapped her cigarette into the tray. I got up to refill out coffee cups.
“Travelling by yourself…” She was skeptical. “There must be some Hoovervilles out that way.”
I shrugged, I didn’t care. I was sixteen, which translates to fearless in at least seven languages. During the dark days of the depression - the ones we were living through remarkably well, mainly because of Mutti’s new line of work which seemed to be depression-proof - camps of homeless people sprang up on the outskirts of lots of cities. It didn’t seem that Death Valley would be the most hospitable place for the homeless to set up – at ground level the salt flats in the summer could exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit
“Maybe if you took a bus?” She said pragmatically, running her hands over the soft folds of satin in her lap.
I shook my head, “That doesn’t seem too bold or adventurous at all.” I protested.
“Well, look into it.” She blew the steam from her coffee. “I suppose you will stay at the Furnace Creek Inn.”
I nodded. The Furnace Creek Inn was really the only place to stay in Death Valley in 1933. It was a snazzy resort that was getting some press. That old cat Hedda Hopper had mentioned it many times in her column. Unsophisticated whelp that I was I believed everything Hedda wrote in her column. I would for years till I became the victim of it.
Known as the Hollywood Hatchet, Hedda Hopper, whose real name was Elda Furry, was one of the most feared people in Hollywood. A gossip columnist and former starlet, she had a weekly column filled with the doings and don’tings (especially the don’tings) of everyone who mattered and a few who were expendable in the film world. She dished rumor, innuendo, and unfounded lies, pulverizing grammar along the way. She had a huge reservoir of background dish with which she avenged herself on anyone who displeased her. Imagine today’s Page Six with the authority of the Washington Post during Watergate. Awesome power, appalling judgment. If Hedda said the stars were glittering in Death Valley, I knew they would damn well be glittering.
In my mind’s eye I saw myself as a very daring bright, young thing off on a madcap adventure mingling with stars and wild creatures. So naturally my first plan of action was choosing my wardrobe.
Slipping the crisp bills into my powder blue pocket book I set off for Madame Sofia’s house at Mama’s suggestion. Madame Sofia was Mama’s nightclothes connection. One must dress for life’s great adventures.
Sofia lived in one of the fairy-cottages pocketed three miles from the ocean in Carmel. Tucked amid plush greenery and flowering bushes, it looked like the backdrop of some tepid romance novel, complete with white painted arbor and rustic, wooden swing. Being careful not to step on any errant garden sprites that no doubt hid in the blooms, I made my way across the paving stones to her hyacinth-colored door. I knocked rapidly in my excitement. She opened the door immediately.
“Come in Abigail, drágám! I’ve set a few things out you will look divine in.”
Sophia’s consignment shop in her basement was Carmel’s best kept secret. A former silent screen actress, she became one of the casualties of the ‘Talkies” thanks to her heavy Hungarian accent. Smarter than most of her contemporaries, Sophia knew her career was over, well before Jack Warner did. Thinking ahead she cut a deal with a woman in the Warner Brother’s wardrobe department to buy the used movie clothes for a small price and resell them in Carmel. Warner’s had no tracking system for its costumes back then so much of the stuff Sophia carried were ‘lost ‘goods. Their loss was my gain. For a fraction of the price I dressed in glorious designer knock-offs created by some of Hollywood’s best seamstresses.
I called ahead and told Sophia of my plans. She laid out her latest ‘steals,’ an apricot wool suit, with a fetching beret that set off my fair skin as prettily as Magnin’s walls. It was from Sophia, I refined my sense of style. I’d been learning bits and pieces from the customers I modeled for. But Sophia was different, she didn’t view clothes they way a forty-year-old matron from Pasadena would. She judged what I wore with a filmmaker’s eye. Clean lines, just like I. Magnins. No frills.
“No affektálás, drágám!” She bellowed, should my hand caress an unneccesary ruffle with desire. Because I was long and lean, the day clothes she chose for me were mannish in styling, sporty. 1920’s rather than ’30s style. After the First World War, women’s fashion evolved toward what was known in France as the Garconne Look. Women wore clothes that hung from shoulders and hips without any pretence of a waist. Their dress lengths were gradually shortened to reach just below the knees when standing. When they sat, well, that was shocking – almost a whole length of gam could be revealed.
At the beginning of the thirties, hemlines dropped to the ankle and remained there till the war. Since my legs are my star attraction, Sophia worked around this by stocking my suitcase with lots of tennis skirts. She told me to pack my racket to justify my exhibitionism. Necklines were my nemesis. They were lowered while torsos were molded beneath squared shoulders. I have no breasts to speak of. And in the thirties busts were a-blooming. Dress bodices were designed with inset pieces and yokes. Necklines were scallop-edged or ruffled, pleated or otherwise plumped. They hung on my adolescent chest. I was born a decade too late for fashion. I would have made a fabulous flapper. No breast binding necessary for this girl.
Sophia dressed me from the inside out. To help me out in the bosom department, I purchased my first bra. Underpinnings of the early thirties continued to include the body armor known as the corset – happily bone-free by then. Corsets were brassieres and girdles with garters combined. By the late thirties, the separate bra and girdle had become acceptable. Thanks to my insider status with Sophia, my undergarments were the latest and the puffiest and the separatist, though it was only 1933.
Sophia was completely approving of women’s sportswear during this period. She loaded me up with some beautiful pieces. Sport suits, a soft caramel leather jacket cut slimly around my waist. Three pairs of draping trousers. I felt so daring. I’d seen slacks on Kate Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich of course, but they weren’t acceptable daywear for regular folk. It was still considered cross-dressing. Sophia convinced me to try them on. I felt daring, naughty and, really, quite sexy. I bought everything she suggested, including shoes and a funny-looking handbag made of leather rather than beads or mesh. It was a three pocket clutch with a large flap over the front. She gave me the name of a local artisan who would emboss my initials on the front. Trés raffinee, Drágám!
By the time I left Sophia’s, my upcoming trip seemed superfluous. I had just spent three hours in a fantasy world. I drove back from Carmel in a mist, clothes-drunk and delighted with myself. I pulled into our apartment parking lot to discover some show-off had parked his shiny yellow Ford Model A cabriolet in our spot. Feeling self-important and grown-up – I’d just purchased ‘slacks’ after all, I parked directly behind the car and hopped out. I looked inside the car for any indication of who the joker was. The caramel, leather interior was the same shade as my newly-purchased, leather jacket. It was beautiful, so supple. This car was not made for a man, not really, it was too pretty. It was meant to be driven by a self-possessed girl in a beret. A trouser-wearing girl of independent means. Me dammit. I was meant to drive a car like that. I took a quick glance behind me.
It was mid-afternoon. Nobody was around. I felt a pang of desire so strong, it remained unequalled till I met the love of my life. I opened the driver’s seat and slipped across the upholstery. It was a 1931, but like brand new. My fingers played over the carved wooden steering wheel. I pretended I was crossing the Mojave Desert in this sunshine chariot.
“Abigail!” My mother’s call pulled my out of my reverie.
I looked up guilty, but defiant. “Some wise guy parked in our spot, Mutti.” Stating the obvious is rarely a good strategy for distraction. I hopped out of the car fast.
“Language, Abigail! Don’t be disrespectful.”
I looked around for the object of my disrespect, puzzled. I turned back to look at Mama. She obviously had dinner plans. Her low-cut dress was fashionably festooned with shimmering beads. I smiled at how pretty she looked.
“Mutti, you’re too nice, let’s block him in.” Remember I was feeling very powerful, clothing does make the woman.
“The him is a her and the her is me, or you, really. I rented this for you, my love, to drive across the desert. What do you think? Too flashy?”
I gulped back my excitement. “Oh Mutti, yes, yes indeed, way too flashy!” I laughed. “It’s too flashy for anyone else, but it belongs to me. It’s beautiful, it’s, it’s summer in the desert.” I was reaching for words, angling for poetry. “Thank you so much, I adore it.” If I hadn’t towered over her, I would have leapt into her arms.
“Wait a minute,” I looked at her curiously, “I thought you wanted me to investigate the bus.”
She smiled. “Well, I investigated a bus and a car for you, since you seemed to prioritize like a sixteen-year-old young woman and put clothing before transportation.” She glanced at my packages in the back of the car. “You could take a Tanner Tour car with a friend from downtown straight to the Inn for $64.50 each round trip. So by yourself, it would be over one hundred dollars!”
I shrugged.
“You could take that and it would still leave you with over three hundred,” She glanced again at my packages, “Well, under three hundred dollars to stay at the Inn. So then I went to see the bus, very cheap but,” she pinched her face in a grimace. “Very pedestrian, darling, not very bold at all. - so here it is, your grand transportation. It is in excellent condition, one of my ‘friends’ had his mechanic look it over for me.”
Her face grew more serious. “Now I want you to plan this car ride carefully, it is eight hundred miles from Los Angeles to the Inn. Two hundred of that is in Death Valley. And it’s the summer. You’ll need to wear a broad brimmed hat to protect you skin and plenty of water.”
“Oh no,” I exclaimed, “I just bought this darling little beret, it’s too beautiful and I just look a picture in it.”
She rolled her eyes, “Wear it when you arrive, it’s one thing to be bold, but trust me there is nothing glamorous about arriving at the Furnace Creek Inn burnt to a crisp and gasping for water.”
I nodded in agreement, and looked at my dazzling car. It was even more beautiful than my apricot suit. Life was wonderful.
***
Shortly before I died I watched a made-for-T.V. movie on the life of William Powell. Normally I loathed television. The idea of people sitting around a plastic box night after night watching shadows live rather than living themselves, depressed me. However Bill had been my particular friend and by the end of my life I was mostly immobile, so I was a captive audience. Interesting – at least for me - was a section of the show devoted to my ‘discovery’ in Death Valley. The show was atrocious, but it did sum up the beginning of my climb quite neatly. Unfortunately the woman playing me was chinless. I have a terrific chin and therefore think badly of those without. With the advances made in plastic surgery; you’d think the actress’s agent would have suggested slicing a bit off her bazoom and attaching it to her jaw line.
The flashback scene in the movie is particularly moronic. One character is an out of work actor sitting on a barstool talking to the other character, a journalist, about the famous Slim Keith, the dialogue is awful, but to the information is about as true as anything ever is. An unkempt character actor playing an unkempt character actor named William looks up at the narrator of the story, a perky actress playing girl-reporter, from the worn barstool and gestures to the seat beside him. He takes a long, contemplative haul on his cigarette, (his career is dead so he’s sucking drama from every moment).
“The first time I saw Sunny,” he smiles sardonically, no doubt realizing how many times those words had been spoken by many different people, “was at San Simeon, you know, the Hearst mansion. She was long, lanky and lovely.” He speaks like a movie detective in a forties flick, “She walked in to the foyer wearing khakis like crepe. Her blond streak kind of glinted in the sun. That was the strangest thing that blond streak, the rest of her hair was shiny light brown, but in the front she had this one gold hank of hair. Remember in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Audrey Hepburn had that skunk stripe in her hair? That was a reference to Sunny. All the women thought she bleached it just to stand out, but back then that wasn’t her style.”
Marta, my maid who was watching it with me, and I snorted in unison. I ordered her to get up and make us some more martinis. I had no desire to view my life sober, after all I hadn’t lived it that way.
“How’d she get there? A 19-year-old from Wilshire Blvd. with no apparent connections and no starlet aspirations stays at the Hearst mansion for the weekend?” Girl-reporter interjects, doing her damnedest to register an intelligent glint in her eye.
Insightful girl-reporter then has a voice over. “One thing I’d learned about interviewing people nobody tells the same story as anybody else and nobody tells the same story twice – unless it’s a lie.”
“Bill Powell, I guess. They met at a hotel in Death Valley. No romance, just pals. Anyway Bill was the one who first called her Slim. This was in the thirties, Bill was huge. He’d been married to Carole Lombard, was engaged to Jean Harlow and had just begun the Thin Man Series with Myrna Loy. He was one of Hollywood’s leading men. Slim met him one day at their hotel. They started talking and remained buddies forever. Men just loved her, both as a woman and a friend. She was easy to be with and soft on the eyes.” Unkempt man talking again.
“So she was pretty sophisticated even then.”
Man laughs. “Yeah, Sunny was sophisticated. But not in that fake uppity way so many actresses were aping back then. More in the smooth way, like good Italian leather. She had the right answer for everyone. She didn’t blush, lose her cool, nothing fazed her. You know that old joke?”
Girl-reporter shakes her head and signals to the bartender for another round.
“The definition of sophistication: a guy walks in on his wife and her lover making love in his bed and he says to the lover, ‘Oh pardon me, feel free to continue.’”
Girl-reporter says “That’s the definition of sophistication.”
“No, the lover replies ‘Thank you I will.’ and he does. That’s the definition of sophistication.”
Girl laughs appreciatively. Man laughs appreciating being appreciated.
“That was Sunny. She’d continue, and then ask you to light her cigarette after.”
Marta and I looked at each other and dissolved into laughter. She switched off the television, and then carried over the pitcher and glasses.
“To think, Cecily spent a fortune on therapy trying to capture my essence. She simply needed cable.” I shook my head. Sipping the drink I nodded, “Good job.”
Marta smiled her thank you. “I wonder what they’ll say about Truman, he’s at least twice as famous.”
“Then they’ll make him out to be twice the shit.” I raised my glass for a refill. “Which, when you think about it, is only fair.”
***
My adventure began when I arrived at the Furnace Creek Inn, ‘a golden vision,’ as the actor William Powell later put it, driving up in my glamorous yoke of a car.
The car ride was treacherous. At first I loved every minute of it, every second I drove I felt lighter and more powerful, like I was a Goddess just awakening to her powers. On my journey, I discovered my lifelong passion: motion. It sounds corny by I liked the rush of the wind, the control of the direction, the anticipation of going without the responsibility of arriving. Most people, certainly Christian, my second husband, and Hemingway, even occasionally Tru attributed it to fear of boredom. So much for those supposed empaths. My love of motion, be it in conversation, travel or party-hopping had more to do with optimism - the certain knowledge that there was something extraordinary around the corner.
I made it out of L.A. fairly well, got turned around a couple of times near Johannesburg but eventually found my way to RT. 190. Luckily I got a flat before I hit 190. Because there were still plenty of kind gentlemanly gentlemen to help me, after that I would have been lost for sure. California has more mountain ranges than you can shake a slimy, possibly poisonous snake at. I had no idea and all of them seem deserted. There’s the Coso range, the Argus range, the Slate range, the Panamint range, the mind reels. Then I neared the Valley. I guess I pictured big sky and glorious scenery. I hadn’t really counted on the heat. Remember there were no air conditioners in ‘33. My lovely yoke of a car was feeling more like a fried egg. The last bit of the journey I must have finished off two gallons of water, and all I wanted to do was pee. Too shy to stop at the side of the road I kept on going straight through to the Furnace Creek Inn. I stopped a few minutes before pulling into the Inn to fix my hair and fashion my pert little beret on top of my head. I flung my broad-brimmed hat in the backseat and checked myself in my compact. I looked lovely. That’s the best part of being young, the effortlessness of beauty. One can be older and beautiful, but never with the same insouciance.
Bill Powell sidled up to the passenger side door of my car, “Hey sunny princess, that’s some fancy omelet you’re driving.”
I sighed, “Isn’t she extraordinary?” looking over my dusty chariot.
“Yes, she certainly is.” Powell responded looking me right in the eye.
I had to pee really badly. “Mr. Powell your dialogue needs work,” my cockiness was purely bladder-inspired, “My bags are in the back, sir, if you don’t mind.” I smiled wide.
Bill looked mildly astonished at my cheek, after all this man was not just a matinee idol, he was also two decades my senior. Still, he did as I asked - a useful lesson for a girl like me. I was desperate for the ladies room. So I swept up quickly to the front desk at Furnace Creek Inn with William Powell as my bell hop. I left him with my bags as I asked for directions to the powder room to freshen up. I didn’t even look back at him.
Relief, as they say, is only a tinkle away.
Well Hedda was right, I thought as I washed my hands. The stars are here. I took a long time washing my hands, because now that my immediate needs were taken care of I felt a little shy.
“I thought I’d rent something grand, bold perhaps.” I widened my eyes and grinned.
Death Valley did not spell fun to most sixteen-year-olds for especially not in 1933. But then I was always on the cutting edge. It seemed romantic and larger than life to a city girl like me - a wide carved rough land of saltwater flats and alien moon landscapes. Death Valley had just been designated a National Monument in April. This meant in just a few months President Roosevelt was going to send in his newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps to build 343 miles of new roads as part of his New Deal works projects – but not before I got there. I would still need to figure out the best way to get there over meandering desert roads. People did it all the time, still it made Mutti nervous.
She tapped her cigarette into the tray. I got up to refill out coffee cups.
“Travelling by yourself…” She was skeptical. “There must be some Hoovervilles out that way.”
I shrugged, I didn’t care. I was sixteen, which translates to fearless in at least seven languages. During the dark days of the depression - the ones we were living through remarkably well, mainly because of Mutti’s new line of work which seemed to be depression-proof - camps of homeless people sprang up on the outskirts of lots of cities. It didn’t seem that Death Valley would be the most hospitable place for the homeless to set up – at ground level the salt flats in the summer could exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit
“Maybe if you took a bus?” She said pragmatically, running her hands over the soft folds of satin in her lap.
I shook my head, “That doesn’t seem too bold or adventurous at all.” I protested.
“Well, look into it.” She blew the steam from her coffee. “I suppose you will stay at the Furnace Creek Inn.”
I nodded. The Furnace Creek Inn was really the only place to stay in Death Valley in 1933. It was a snazzy resort that was getting some press. That old cat Hedda Hopper had mentioned it many times in her column. Unsophisticated whelp that I was I believed everything Hedda wrote in her column. I would for years till I became the victim of it.
Known as the Hollywood Hatchet, Hedda Hopper, whose real name was Elda Furry, was one of the most feared people in Hollywood. A gossip columnist and former starlet, she had a weekly column filled with the doings and don’tings (especially the don’tings) of everyone who mattered and a few who were expendable in the film world. She dished rumor, innuendo, and unfounded lies, pulverizing grammar along the way. She had a huge reservoir of background dish with which she avenged herself on anyone who displeased her. Imagine today’s Page Six with the authority of the Washington Post during Watergate. Awesome power, appalling judgment. If Hedda said the stars were glittering in Death Valley, I knew they would damn well be glittering.
In my mind’s eye I saw myself as a very daring bright, young thing off on a madcap adventure mingling with stars and wild creatures. So naturally my first plan of action was choosing my wardrobe.
Slipping the crisp bills into my powder blue pocket book I set off for Madame Sofia’s house at Mama’s suggestion. Madame Sofia was Mama’s nightclothes connection. One must dress for life’s great adventures.
Sofia lived in one of the fairy-cottages pocketed three miles from the ocean in Carmel. Tucked amid plush greenery and flowering bushes, it looked like the backdrop of some tepid romance novel, complete with white painted arbor and rustic, wooden swing. Being careful not to step on any errant garden sprites that no doubt hid in the blooms, I made my way across the paving stones to her hyacinth-colored door. I knocked rapidly in my excitement. She opened the door immediately.
“Come in Abigail, drágám! I’ve set a few things out you will look divine in.”
Sophia’s consignment shop in her basement was Carmel’s best kept secret. A former silent screen actress, she became one of the casualties of the ‘Talkies” thanks to her heavy Hungarian accent. Smarter than most of her contemporaries, Sophia knew her career was over, well before Jack Warner did. Thinking ahead she cut a deal with a woman in the Warner Brother’s wardrobe department to buy the used movie clothes for a small price and resell them in Carmel. Warner’s had no tracking system for its costumes back then so much of the stuff Sophia carried were ‘lost ‘goods. Their loss was my gain. For a fraction of the price I dressed in glorious designer knock-offs created by some of Hollywood’s best seamstresses.
I called ahead and told Sophia of my plans. She laid out her latest ‘steals,’ an apricot wool suit, with a fetching beret that set off my fair skin as prettily as Magnin’s walls. It was from Sophia, I refined my sense of style. I’d been learning bits and pieces from the customers I modeled for. But Sophia was different, she didn’t view clothes they way a forty-year-old matron from Pasadena would. She judged what I wore with a filmmaker’s eye. Clean lines, just like I. Magnins. No frills.
“No affektálás, drágám!” She bellowed, should my hand caress an unneccesary ruffle with desire. Because I was long and lean, the day clothes she chose for me were mannish in styling, sporty. 1920’s rather than ’30s style. After the First World War, women’s fashion evolved toward what was known in France as the Garconne Look. Women wore clothes that hung from shoulders and hips without any pretence of a waist. Their dress lengths were gradually shortened to reach just below the knees when standing. When they sat, well, that was shocking – almost a whole length of gam could be revealed.
At the beginning of the thirties, hemlines dropped to the ankle and remained there till the war. Since my legs are my star attraction, Sophia worked around this by stocking my suitcase with lots of tennis skirts. She told me to pack my racket to justify my exhibitionism. Necklines were my nemesis. They were lowered while torsos were molded beneath squared shoulders. I have no breasts to speak of. And in the thirties busts were a-blooming. Dress bodices were designed with inset pieces and yokes. Necklines were scallop-edged or ruffled, pleated or otherwise plumped. They hung on my adolescent chest. I was born a decade too late for fashion. I would have made a fabulous flapper. No breast binding necessary for this girl.
Sophia dressed me from the inside out. To help me out in the bosom department, I purchased my first bra. Underpinnings of the early thirties continued to include the body armor known as the corset – happily bone-free by then. Corsets were brassieres and girdles with garters combined. By the late thirties, the separate bra and girdle had become acceptable. Thanks to my insider status with Sophia, my undergarments were the latest and the puffiest and the separatist, though it was only 1933.
Sophia was completely approving of women’s sportswear during this period. She loaded me up with some beautiful pieces. Sport suits, a soft caramel leather jacket cut slimly around my waist. Three pairs of draping trousers. I felt so daring. I’d seen slacks on Kate Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich of course, but they weren’t acceptable daywear for regular folk. It was still considered cross-dressing. Sophia convinced me to try them on. I felt daring, naughty and, really, quite sexy. I bought everything she suggested, including shoes and a funny-looking handbag made of leather rather than beads or mesh. It was a three pocket clutch with a large flap over the front. She gave me the name of a local artisan who would emboss my initials on the front. Trés raffinee, Drágám!
By the time I left Sophia’s, my upcoming trip seemed superfluous. I had just spent three hours in a fantasy world. I drove back from Carmel in a mist, clothes-drunk and delighted with myself. I pulled into our apartment parking lot to discover some show-off had parked his shiny yellow Ford Model A cabriolet in our spot. Feeling self-important and grown-up – I’d just purchased ‘slacks’ after all, I parked directly behind the car and hopped out. I looked inside the car for any indication of who the joker was. The caramel, leather interior was the same shade as my newly-purchased, leather jacket. It was beautiful, so supple. This car was not made for a man, not really, it was too pretty. It was meant to be driven by a self-possessed girl in a beret. A trouser-wearing girl of independent means. Me dammit. I was meant to drive a car like that. I took a quick glance behind me.
It was mid-afternoon. Nobody was around. I felt a pang of desire so strong, it remained unequalled till I met the love of my life. I opened the driver’s seat and slipped across the upholstery. It was a 1931, but like brand new. My fingers played over the carved wooden steering wheel. I pretended I was crossing the Mojave Desert in this sunshine chariot.
“Abigail!” My mother’s call pulled my out of my reverie.
I looked up guilty, but defiant. “Some wise guy parked in our spot, Mutti.” Stating the obvious is rarely a good strategy for distraction. I hopped out of the car fast.
“Language, Abigail! Don’t be disrespectful.”
I looked around for the object of my disrespect, puzzled. I turned back to look at Mama. She obviously had dinner plans. Her low-cut dress was fashionably festooned with shimmering beads. I smiled at how pretty she looked.
“Mutti, you’re too nice, let’s block him in.” Remember I was feeling very powerful, clothing does make the woman.
“The him is a her and the her is me, or you, really. I rented this for you, my love, to drive across the desert. What do you think? Too flashy?”
I gulped back my excitement. “Oh Mutti, yes, yes indeed, way too flashy!” I laughed. “It’s too flashy for anyone else, but it belongs to me. It’s beautiful, it’s, it’s summer in the desert.” I was reaching for words, angling for poetry. “Thank you so much, I adore it.” If I hadn’t towered over her, I would have leapt into her arms.
“Wait a minute,” I looked at her curiously, “I thought you wanted me to investigate the bus.”
She smiled. “Well, I investigated a bus and a car for you, since you seemed to prioritize like a sixteen-year-old young woman and put clothing before transportation.” She glanced at my packages in the back of the car. “You could take a Tanner Tour car with a friend from downtown straight to the Inn for $64.50 each round trip. So by yourself, it would be over one hundred dollars!”
I shrugged.
“You could take that and it would still leave you with over three hundred,” She glanced again at my packages, “Well, under three hundred dollars to stay at the Inn. So then I went to see the bus, very cheap but,” she pinched her face in a grimace. “Very pedestrian, darling, not very bold at all. - so here it is, your grand transportation. It is in excellent condition, one of my ‘friends’ had his mechanic look it over for me.”
Her face grew more serious. “Now I want you to plan this car ride carefully, it is eight hundred miles from Los Angeles to the Inn. Two hundred of that is in Death Valley. And it’s the summer. You’ll need to wear a broad brimmed hat to protect you skin and plenty of water.”
“Oh no,” I exclaimed, “I just bought this darling little beret, it’s too beautiful and I just look a picture in it.”
She rolled her eyes, “Wear it when you arrive, it’s one thing to be bold, but trust me there is nothing glamorous about arriving at the Furnace Creek Inn burnt to a crisp and gasping for water.”
I nodded in agreement, and looked at my dazzling car. It was even more beautiful than my apricot suit. Life was wonderful.
***
Shortly before I died I watched a made-for-T.V. movie on the life of William Powell. Normally I loathed television. The idea of people sitting around a plastic box night after night watching shadows live rather than living themselves, depressed me. However Bill had been my particular friend and by the end of my life I was mostly immobile, so I was a captive audience. Interesting – at least for me - was a section of the show devoted to my ‘discovery’ in Death Valley. The show was atrocious, but it did sum up the beginning of my climb quite neatly. Unfortunately the woman playing me was chinless. I have a terrific chin and therefore think badly of those without. With the advances made in plastic surgery; you’d think the actress’s agent would have suggested slicing a bit off her bazoom and attaching it to her jaw line.
The flashback scene in the movie is particularly moronic. One character is an out of work actor sitting on a barstool talking to the other character, a journalist, about the famous Slim Keith, the dialogue is awful, but to the information is about as true as anything ever is. An unkempt character actor playing an unkempt character actor named William looks up at the narrator of the story, a perky actress playing girl-reporter, from the worn barstool and gestures to the seat beside him. He takes a long, contemplative haul on his cigarette, (his career is dead so he’s sucking drama from every moment).
“The first time I saw Sunny,” he smiles sardonically, no doubt realizing how many times those words had been spoken by many different people, “was at San Simeon, you know, the Hearst mansion. She was long, lanky and lovely.” He speaks like a movie detective in a forties flick, “She walked in to the foyer wearing khakis like crepe. Her blond streak kind of glinted in the sun. That was the strangest thing that blond streak, the rest of her hair was shiny light brown, but in the front she had this one gold hank of hair. Remember in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Audrey Hepburn had that skunk stripe in her hair? That was a reference to Sunny. All the women thought she bleached it just to stand out, but back then that wasn’t her style.”
Marta, my maid who was watching it with me, and I snorted in unison. I ordered her to get up and make us some more martinis. I had no desire to view my life sober, after all I hadn’t lived it that way.
“How’d she get there? A 19-year-old from Wilshire Blvd. with no apparent connections and no starlet aspirations stays at the Hearst mansion for the weekend?” Girl-reporter interjects, doing her damnedest to register an intelligent glint in her eye.
Insightful girl-reporter then has a voice over. “One thing I’d learned about interviewing people nobody tells the same story as anybody else and nobody tells the same story twice – unless it’s a lie.”
“Bill Powell, I guess. They met at a hotel in Death Valley. No romance, just pals. Anyway Bill was the one who first called her Slim. This was in the thirties, Bill was huge. He’d been married to Carole Lombard, was engaged to Jean Harlow and had just begun the Thin Man Series with Myrna Loy. He was one of Hollywood’s leading men. Slim met him one day at their hotel. They started talking and remained buddies forever. Men just loved her, both as a woman and a friend. She was easy to be with and soft on the eyes.” Unkempt man talking again.
“So she was pretty sophisticated even then.”
Man laughs. “Yeah, Sunny was sophisticated. But not in that fake uppity way so many actresses were aping back then. More in the smooth way, like good Italian leather. She had the right answer for everyone. She didn’t blush, lose her cool, nothing fazed her. You know that old joke?”
Girl-reporter shakes her head and signals to the bartender for another round.
“The definition of sophistication: a guy walks in on his wife and her lover making love in his bed and he says to the lover, ‘Oh pardon me, feel free to continue.’”
Girl-reporter says “That’s the definition of sophistication.”
“No, the lover replies ‘Thank you I will.’ and he does. That’s the definition of sophistication.”
Girl laughs appreciatively. Man laughs appreciating being appreciated.
“That was Sunny. She’d continue, and then ask you to light her cigarette after.”
Marta and I looked at each other and dissolved into laughter. She switched off the television, and then carried over the pitcher and glasses.
“To think, Cecily spent a fortune on therapy trying to capture my essence. She simply needed cable.” I shook my head. Sipping the drink I nodded, “Good job.”
Marta smiled her thank you. “I wonder what they’ll say about Truman, he’s at least twice as famous.”
“Then they’ll make him out to be twice the shit.” I raised my glass for a refill. “Which, when you think about it, is only fair.”
***
My adventure began when I arrived at the Furnace Creek Inn, ‘a golden vision,’ as the actor William Powell later put it, driving up in my glamorous yoke of a car.
The car ride was treacherous. At first I loved every minute of it, every second I drove I felt lighter and more powerful, like I was a Goddess just awakening to her powers. On my journey, I discovered my lifelong passion: motion. It sounds corny by I liked the rush of the wind, the control of the direction, the anticipation of going without the responsibility of arriving. Most people, certainly Christian, my second husband, and Hemingway, even occasionally Tru attributed it to fear of boredom. So much for those supposed empaths. My love of motion, be it in conversation, travel or party-hopping had more to do with optimism - the certain knowledge that there was something extraordinary around the corner.
I made it out of L.A. fairly well, got turned around a couple of times near Johannesburg but eventually found my way to RT. 190. Luckily I got a flat before I hit 190. Because there were still plenty of kind gentlemanly gentlemen to help me, after that I would have been lost for sure. California has more mountain ranges than you can shake a slimy, possibly poisonous snake at. I had no idea and all of them seem deserted. There’s the Coso range, the Argus range, the Slate range, the Panamint range, the mind reels. Then I neared the Valley. I guess I pictured big sky and glorious scenery. I hadn’t really counted on the heat. Remember there were no air conditioners in ‘33. My lovely yoke of a car was feeling more like a fried egg. The last bit of the journey I must have finished off two gallons of water, and all I wanted to do was pee. Too shy to stop at the side of the road I kept on going straight through to the Furnace Creek Inn. I stopped a few minutes before pulling into the Inn to fix my hair and fashion my pert little beret on top of my head. I flung my broad-brimmed hat in the backseat and checked myself in my compact. I looked lovely. That’s the best part of being young, the effortlessness of beauty. One can be older and beautiful, but never with the same insouciance.
Bill Powell sidled up to the passenger side door of my car, “Hey sunny princess, that’s some fancy omelet you’re driving.”
I sighed, “Isn’t she extraordinary?” looking over my dusty chariot.
“Yes, she certainly is.” Powell responded looking me right in the eye.
I had to pee really badly. “Mr. Powell your dialogue needs work,” my cockiness was purely bladder-inspired, “My bags are in the back, sir, if you don’t mind.” I smiled wide.
Bill looked mildly astonished at my cheek, after all this man was not just a matinee idol, he was also two decades my senior. Still, he did as I asked - a useful lesson for a girl like me. I was desperate for the ladies room. So I swept up quickly to the front desk at Furnace Creek Inn with William Powell as my bell hop. I left him with my bags as I asked for directions to the powder room to freshen up. I didn’t even look back at him.
Relief, as they say, is only a tinkle away.
Well Hedda was right, I thought as I washed my hands. The stars are here. I took a long time washing my hands, because now that my immediate needs were taken care of I felt a little shy.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Table 2 - Where the Swells Sit chapter 2
My funeral was not as well attended, as it should have been. Bad timing really. What a difference a decade makes, actually twenty-two years, I’m so used to shaving years off my birth date I shave them off my death date automatically.
Now I have fans, all of us do, the beautiful Babe Paley, the sophisticated Gloria Guinness, that whore Pamela Harriman and even little bad girl Brahmin C.Z.Guest. Vogue actually did a story on her original style. Hah! What was original about her style she stole from me. The rest was just laziness remembered as intentional. She had the good fortune to live just long enough for people to notice.
If I died today it would be a media event, gay and straight designers – are there any decent straight designers really, certainly not any male ones – would be genuflecting at my coffin. Perhaps they would even have bothered to discover the truth of my death.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t have settled for that ghastly couch my daughter Cecily picked for me to be buried in. I shouldn’t have left the choice up to her; poor thing’s always been so fragile I wanted to empower her. Babe was the clever one; she left nothing to chance, not even her own funeral. The one day she could be guaranteed off from being ‘Babe Paley’ and still, she orchestrated it. Do you know she not only left all the details in order, including guest list and instructions for the eulogy co-authored by Betsy and yours truly, she actually penned two menus for her funeral lunch, one for fall/winter the other for spring/summer?
‘A beacon of perfection in an era of casual convenience,” That’s what Babe’s sister Betsy Whitney and I wrote. So true, and utterly beside the point. We meant it kindly, the ultimate tribute – instead it was a life sentence. Bill was her warden. His demands, his standards, his liaisons – I was only one of many – cancer killed her, but despair was the penultimate villain. The Times did a better job by her “…a gracious woman with a ready and warm smile. Her friends readily noted her sense of humor, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness.” Now, why didn’t we write that, we were the friends that readily noted her kindnesses. We loved her. In many ways, we did her as great a disservice as Truman. No I take that back, nobody did her as great a disserve as Truman Capote.
A pine box, I should have expressly asked for a pine box. Sets the tone - a good quality pine - but pine nonetheless, austere, self-effacing perhaps, and utterly irreverent. Especially now that I know that death doesn’t hurt, and tufted cushions are completely superfluous. Especially pink, polyester satin ones – really what was Cecily thinking? I loathe pink.
That’s exactly what she was thinking: Mother loathes pink. She was still completely pissed off at me. I died in the summer of 1983 at the age 66. Another decade would have made all the difference. The public rediscovered Truman’s swans and our legendary charm in the ‘90s. There would have been legions of fans at my funeral in the 90’s.
With all that therapy Cecily has since squandered her inheritance on – my ill-gotten gains - she would now be emotionally ready to lay me to rest in a more becoming fashion. She’d have to, since she’s traded on my name to become this generation’s, generation X or is it Y now - who knows - a perfectly ridiculous thing to call a generation anyway, utterly unromantic or telling. The Lost Generation, now that’s a tasty label. However, I’m digressing; Cecily has become the home decorator, in the manner of Sister Parish or Billy Baldwin, for Manhattan’s moneyed. She would now do something graceful, understated and a touch provocative. Not just something effusive and impressive, reminiscent of the Gambino crime family.
My murder on the other hand was exquisite.
Elegant and well-planned, it remains undetected. I don’t even blame my grim reaper for ending my life, I suffered no pain, he saw to that. It might have been revenge, but he wasn’t vengeful. And truly by the time he slipped into my apartment my body was barely sputtering.
I designed a lovely bathroom, white. Arctic snow. A pure, clean gray white. Imagine white absent of warmth, completely tiled – even the ceiling – if my maid Marta cursed the grout once if she cursed it a thousand times. If we create our own heaven – I’m still not sure – then we create our own hell too. Marta’s hell is a room with endless white tiles and endless grout.
They found me on my bathroom floor, arranged on the oversized terrycloth bath mat. Truman was the one who called for help. He popped by to bring me a present, one of his famous snakebite kits. Accidental overdose, the coroner deemed it. No surprise really, considering all the meds I was on, and of course, I was a lavish drunk, nobody denied that. Truman was questioned of course. Our falling out was famous. But he easily proved we’d started up a friendship again, ‘made our peace.’ I had visited his apartment in recent years, as his doorman later attested.
Tru created hundreds of these snakebite kits, and gave them to the significant in his life. He covered each box with bits of colored and metallic paper. Very clever things – some astonishingly pretty. He glued images he snipped from magazines and newspapers or even art books - he was terribly irreverent about his books, odd for a writer. Sort of cannibalistic. Tru considered this gift an honor. Mine was covered in yellow paste stones and jet beads.
Post-death I’m simply delighted with how pre-occupied people are with me, how my name has become an adjective for American style. ‘The original California girl,’ that’s what they call me. America needs us now more than ever, icons to her industry and self-importance. Proof that all that glitters is gold – high-end, high-brow and precious. We weren’t exactly Grande dames, but we sure as hell were great dames. Even that Harriman whore, she wasn’t American of course, though she did manage to win the American Ambassadorship to France. With her talents she assimilated quickly – tea and fellatio. It’s all in the steeping I understand.
I don’t see Pamela Harriman here, but I know she must be. The space is quite white, noticeably white, not eggshell or ivory, but stark, high noon white. Which is strange, because I’d always envisioned Hell red, however, the white is more disturbing, even suffocating. I can see nothing else. I wonder how long I will be here. I expected I’d run into all sorts of folks in the afterlife. Kind of like a gauzy Piccadilly Circus or Gare St. Lazare, where you eventually run into everyone you know. Perhaps they are all here, maybe my version of hell is being alone – Christ, I hope I was more complicated than that. Yes, I take the Lord’s name in vain whenever I want to now. I’m kind of like one of those Scottish Covenanters who believes because of predestination that whatever act they commit is okay because they are either chosen by God to be saved or going to Hell anyway.
Have you noticed something does not have to be true for most people to believe it? It doesn’t even have to be an outright lie; it just has to capture the imagination. I learned that in my life – imagination is more important than truth. Profound? Sorry, philosophy isn’t really my forte. Nothing is, at least nothing you could name.
I did nothing to earn the privileges of fame or fortune – nothing real except capture people’s imagination – but I’ll be remembered anyway. A fair comment on the 20th century really.
I wasn’t the most attractive – that would be Babe – though I was pretty damn gorgeous. 5’9” (at death I measured 5’7” – too much bourbon, not enough Goddamn milk), skinny, skinny, skinny, with legs like muscled straws and brush loads of gold-colored hair marked by a platinum skunk-stripe right in the front, around my face. That skunk stripe was my claim to fame, completely natural, at least initially. Bazaar editor Carmel Snow rhapsodized about it, and my ability to wear clothes well. But as any mannequin will tell you, that gift has little to do with mythical style and everything to do with long, visible bones.
I would hate to be a young woman right now, too exhausting. All that jabber about having it all or not having it all. Terribly unattractive. Why should the ‘all’ involve a work ethic? Tiresome feminists. Anybody can work. It takes a lot of personal style to avoid it. Being interesting is a far greater accomplishment than reading a balance sheet. Who wants to talk about balance sheets? The only things worth talking about are people and art, after that it’s just administration.
I’ve been damn lucky. I met most of the celebrated folks of the century. Those I didn’t meet were either pricks or abstainers. Not that I minded the pricks, long as they were lively. Abstainers, however, I have no use for.
I just can’t figure out whom they are abstaining for? God? How enormously arrogant to assume God is watching their petty little sacrifices. Banal goodness seems both smug and fearful. God people in general strike me as a nasty lot, loving thy neighbor’s dirty little undies. I’m pretty sure they don’t meet St. Peter either. Then again, I didn’t get to meet him. Hell, unlike Walmart has no greeters. Otherwise I suspect there are similarities.
God-people and I parted ways when I was a child. I discovered their ever-ready bromides offered little comfort for real pain.
That being said, you should have a sense of where I came from – if only so you can be suitably impressed by where I went.
Why now? Why tell you about me twenty-two years later? Because you don’t know me really and you should. You want to. Your need to know me is why there are two, not one, but two Truman Capote films out. It’s why lovely buttery leather gloves are back in fashion for daytime, why brooches and garnets are enjoying a renaissance. It’s why my friend, society photographer Slim Aarons, that lanky, tall drink of water, re-released his book A Wonderful Life, a collection of photographs of the beautiful people from six decades and was able to sell it for $75. Seventy-five dollars. Outrageous. In 1948 Clark Gable filled my hotel room with flowers for $10; took me to a scrumptious dinner in New York City that I, of course would never finish, for $2.50; successfully seduced me in his full-floor terraced apartment at 57th and Park rented for a mere $63 a month.
Up until now I have been only a footnote in Truman Capote’s life story. Now I want him for a footnote to mine. My name is Abigail Gross Hayden Marcus, but you can call me Sunny.
Now I have fans, all of us do, the beautiful Babe Paley, the sophisticated Gloria Guinness, that whore Pamela Harriman and even little bad girl Brahmin C.Z.Guest. Vogue actually did a story on her original style. Hah! What was original about her style she stole from me. The rest was just laziness remembered as intentional. She had the good fortune to live just long enough for people to notice.
If I died today it would be a media event, gay and straight designers – are there any decent straight designers really, certainly not any male ones – would be genuflecting at my coffin. Perhaps they would even have bothered to discover the truth of my death.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t have settled for that ghastly couch my daughter Cecily picked for me to be buried in. I shouldn’t have left the choice up to her; poor thing’s always been so fragile I wanted to empower her. Babe was the clever one; she left nothing to chance, not even her own funeral. The one day she could be guaranteed off from being ‘Babe Paley’ and still, she orchestrated it. Do you know she not only left all the details in order, including guest list and instructions for the eulogy co-authored by Betsy and yours truly, she actually penned two menus for her funeral lunch, one for fall/winter the other for spring/summer?
‘A beacon of perfection in an era of casual convenience,” That’s what Babe’s sister Betsy Whitney and I wrote. So true, and utterly beside the point. We meant it kindly, the ultimate tribute – instead it was a life sentence. Bill was her warden. His demands, his standards, his liaisons – I was only one of many – cancer killed her, but despair was the penultimate villain. The Times did a better job by her “…a gracious woman with a ready and warm smile. Her friends readily noted her sense of humor, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness.” Now, why didn’t we write that, we were the friends that readily noted her kindnesses. We loved her. In many ways, we did her as great a disservice as Truman. No I take that back, nobody did her as great a disserve as Truman Capote.
A pine box, I should have expressly asked for a pine box. Sets the tone - a good quality pine - but pine nonetheless, austere, self-effacing perhaps, and utterly irreverent. Especially now that I know that death doesn’t hurt, and tufted cushions are completely superfluous. Especially pink, polyester satin ones – really what was Cecily thinking? I loathe pink.
That’s exactly what she was thinking: Mother loathes pink. She was still completely pissed off at me. I died in the summer of 1983 at the age 66. Another decade would have made all the difference. The public rediscovered Truman’s swans and our legendary charm in the ‘90s. There would have been legions of fans at my funeral in the 90’s.
With all that therapy Cecily has since squandered her inheritance on – my ill-gotten gains - she would now be emotionally ready to lay me to rest in a more becoming fashion. She’d have to, since she’s traded on my name to become this generation’s, generation X or is it Y now - who knows - a perfectly ridiculous thing to call a generation anyway, utterly unromantic or telling. The Lost Generation, now that’s a tasty label. However, I’m digressing; Cecily has become the home decorator, in the manner of Sister Parish or Billy Baldwin, for Manhattan’s moneyed. She would now do something graceful, understated and a touch provocative. Not just something effusive and impressive, reminiscent of the Gambino crime family.
My murder on the other hand was exquisite.
Elegant and well-planned, it remains undetected. I don’t even blame my grim reaper for ending my life, I suffered no pain, he saw to that. It might have been revenge, but he wasn’t vengeful. And truly by the time he slipped into my apartment my body was barely sputtering.
I designed a lovely bathroom, white. Arctic snow. A pure, clean gray white. Imagine white absent of warmth, completely tiled – even the ceiling – if my maid Marta cursed the grout once if she cursed it a thousand times. If we create our own heaven – I’m still not sure – then we create our own hell too. Marta’s hell is a room with endless white tiles and endless grout.
They found me on my bathroom floor, arranged on the oversized terrycloth bath mat. Truman was the one who called for help. He popped by to bring me a present, one of his famous snakebite kits. Accidental overdose, the coroner deemed it. No surprise really, considering all the meds I was on, and of course, I was a lavish drunk, nobody denied that. Truman was questioned of course. Our falling out was famous. But he easily proved we’d started up a friendship again, ‘made our peace.’ I had visited his apartment in recent years, as his doorman later attested.
Tru created hundreds of these snakebite kits, and gave them to the significant in his life. He covered each box with bits of colored and metallic paper. Very clever things – some astonishingly pretty. He glued images he snipped from magazines and newspapers or even art books - he was terribly irreverent about his books, odd for a writer. Sort of cannibalistic. Tru considered this gift an honor. Mine was covered in yellow paste stones and jet beads.
Post-death I’m simply delighted with how pre-occupied people are with me, how my name has become an adjective for American style. ‘The original California girl,’ that’s what they call me. America needs us now more than ever, icons to her industry and self-importance. Proof that all that glitters is gold – high-end, high-brow and precious. We weren’t exactly Grande dames, but we sure as hell were great dames. Even that Harriman whore, she wasn’t American of course, though she did manage to win the American Ambassadorship to France. With her talents she assimilated quickly – tea and fellatio. It’s all in the steeping I understand.
I don’t see Pamela Harriman here, but I know she must be. The space is quite white, noticeably white, not eggshell or ivory, but stark, high noon white. Which is strange, because I’d always envisioned Hell red, however, the white is more disturbing, even suffocating. I can see nothing else. I wonder how long I will be here. I expected I’d run into all sorts of folks in the afterlife. Kind of like a gauzy Piccadilly Circus or Gare St. Lazare, where you eventually run into everyone you know. Perhaps they are all here, maybe my version of hell is being alone – Christ, I hope I was more complicated than that. Yes, I take the Lord’s name in vain whenever I want to now. I’m kind of like one of those Scottish Covenanters who believes because of predestination that whatever act they commit is okay because they are either chosen by God to be saved or going to Hell anyway.
Have you noticed something does not have to be true for most people to believe it? It doesn’t even have to be an outright lie; it just has to capture the imagination. I learned that in my life – imagination is more important than truth. Profound? Sorry, philosophy isn’t really my forte. Nothing is, at least nothing you could name.
I did nothing to earn the privileges of fame or fortune – nothing real except capture people’s imagination – but I’ll be remembered anyway. A fair comment on the 20th century really.
I wasn’t the most attractive – that would be Babe – though I was pretty damn gorgeous. 5’9” (at death I measured 5’7” – too much bourbon, not enough Goddamn milk), skinny, skinny, skinny, with legs like muscled straws and brush loads of gold-colored hair marked by a platinum skunk-stripe right in the front, around my face. That skunk stripe was my claim to fame, completely natural, at least initially. Bazaar editor Carmel Snow rhapsodized about it, and my ability to wear clothes well. But as any mannequin will tell you, that gift has little to do with mythical style and everything to do with long, visible bones.
I would hate to be a young woman right now, too exhausting. All that jabber about having it all or not having it all. Terribly unattractive. Why should the ‘all’ involve a work ethic? Tiresome feminists. Anybody can work. It takes a lot of personal style to avoid it. Being interesting is a far greater accomplishment than reading a balance sheet. Who wants to talk about balance sheets? The only things worth talking about are people and art, after that it’s just administration.
I’ve been damn lucky. I met most of the celebrated folks of the century. Those I didn’t meet were either pricks or abstainers. Not that I minded the pricks, long as they were lively. Abstainers, however, I have no use for.
I just can’t figure out whom they are abstaining for? God? How enormously arrogant to assume God is watching their petty little sacrifices. Banal goodness seems both smug and fearful. God people in general strike me as a nasty lot, loving thy neighbor’s dirty little undies. I’m pretty sure they don’t meet St. Peter either. Then again, I didn’t get to meet him. Hell, unlike Walmart has no greeters. Otherwise I suspect there are similarities.
God-people and I parted ways when I was a child. I discovered their ever-ready bromides offered little comfort for real pain.
That being said, you should have a sense of where I came from – if only so you can be suitably impressed by where I went.
Why now? Why tell you about me twenty-two years later? Because you don’t know me really and you should. You want to. Your need to know me is why there are two, not one, but two Truman Capote films out. It’s why lovely buttery leather gloves are back in fashion for daytime, why brooches and garnets are enjoying a renaissance. It’s why my friend, society photographer Slim Aarons, that lanky, tall drink of water, re-released his book A Wonderful Life, a collection of photographs of the beautiful people from six decades and was able to sell it for $75. Seventy-five dollars. Outrageous. In 1948 Clark Gable filled my hotel room with flowers for $10; took me to a scrumptious dinner in New York City that I, of course would never finish, for $2.50; successfully seduced me in his full-floor terraced apartment at 57th and Park rented for a mere $63 a month.
Up until now I have been only a footnote in Truman Capote’s life story. Now I want him for a footnote to mine. My name is Abigail Gross Hayden Marcus, but you can call me Sunny.
Friday, February 9, 2007
The Bar - Adelaide's corner
The old coots are in this week and they're all a twitter. Their flapping about the doings in Gramercy Park. You all probably heard something about it - a feud, a fish, a garden, a and a hippy. Come join them in a sherry neat.
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