Table 2 - Where the Swells Sit

Prologue
“Sunny, wait! Stop!” Babe dashed after me, her two-inch day heels clattered on Fifth. I breakfasted at a café on Museum mile across the park from my apartment. Knowing my routine, she caught me just as I was marching off, clasping Esquire in hand.
I whirled to face her. “That two-bit fucking little shit. That goddamn worm. Did you read this piece of filth?” I shouted. People quickly walked by, their eyes averted, not stopping to inquire why this lunatic in Ferragamos is berating the lovely Mrs. Paley.
“Where are you going?” She breathed heavily, when she reached me.
“To shove his words back where they belong, down his own goddamn throat.” I was so furious I was giving myself a headache. I reached to my forehead and rubbed my temples. “He is nothing but a back-stabbing cunt.”
Babe winced. I knew she loathed that word, but dammit she was too calm and collected for my taste. “Did you even read it?” I shouted.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “This morning, just like you.” Her calmness was affecting me. She had that wonderful ability to smother anxiety with determined complacency. I looked at her more closely. The lovely Mrs. Paley looked disheveled. Not by a normal persons standards of course, but remember, Babe operated at a heavenly zenith few mortals could attain, even now, at nearly sixty years old. Yet, today, her lipstick bled into the cracks around her mouth, obviously unrefreshed since first application, her nose was shiny and her hair slightly flat on one side. Even with the advent of the cancer that was slowly killing her, she had never appeared so vulnerable.
“You should be in bed.” I replied.
“I had to see you. To find out. . .” She left her sentence unfinished.
“Has Bill seen it?” I choked the words out. La Côte Basque, 1965 laid out very clearly my relationship with him and his extensive philandering ways.
“No.” Her gloved hands were shaking. “Why are you so angry?” She looked directly into my eyes, but her face was unreadable.
I gritted my teeth, “I am always angry at people I am about to sue.” She put her hand on my forearm.
“Please can we go back to your apartment? I need to ask you something.” Her façade looked close to cracking. Her eyes were glassy with tears. I wondered whether I should just take her back to her apartment. She really didn’t look well. Instead, I nodded, weary, tucking her hand beneath my arm and we hailed a cab to my building. Smiling to my doorman we clicked along the marble foyer to the elevator. The doors met with a whisper. My thoughts were clanging so loudly, I physically shook my head. Babe looked at me strangely. What was I going to say to her? I could only deny. It was the kindest response. I’d say our little Tru-Love had been overcome by a monumental meanness of spirit, enabling him to skewer us before the entire world.
We padded into my apartment. I headed straight for the bar. I didn’t give Babe a chance to wave me off. I poured orange juice into my crystal pitcher and doused it with vodka. Carrying a tray over to the ottoman I sat down. She took the highball glass I offered and asked again, “What are you so angry about?”
I snatched my offensive copy of Esquire from the table and read aloud. “’Lady Coolbirth’ a ‘big breezy peppy broad’ in her forties grew up in the west, her latest husband is a rich English knight.” I paused, still floored at his audacity. “That is me.”
“Yes I suppose it is. And the girl is of course Ann Woodward. Elsie is going to die after all her efforts; why would he resurrect it now?” Babe shook her head in disbelief, looking to me for an answer.
My phone rang. I ignored it. Elsie Woodward was Ann Woodward’s mother-in-law and a pillar of New York society. Babe was right, all of Elsie’s efforts to protect the family name and her grandchildren by pretending that Ann had accidentally shot her husband, Elsie’s son, were now in vain, thanks to Truman. He’d exposed the murder, Ann’s sordid past and her bigamous marriage to the Woodward scion. The phone rang again. I moved to pick it up. Babe placed her hand over the phone to stop me. Her eyes were wide and very dark.
“What I want to know, Sunny, is who the man is?”
I took a deep breath before responding.
The story begins with Lady Coolbirth, yours truly, being stood up by the Duchess of Windsor for lunch at La Côte Basque. Spotting her friend, the gossipy writer P.B. Jones, she grabs him to partner her at one of Henri’s sought-after front tables. Lady Coolbirth felt particularly chatty that afternoon, because she expounded on every rarefied patron who passed their table. It was an exemplary afternoon. That group included Babe and Betsy, the Bouvier sisters, Gloria Vanderbilt, Carol Matthau and the comings and goings of two fictitious characters: Ann Hopkins and Sidney Dillon, ‘a conglomateur’ and ‘advisor to Presidents.’
Sidney was a Jewish millionaire, married to the ‘most beautiful creative alive’ who longed for acceptance in the Wasp stratosphere on whose plane the Racquet Club, Le Jockey, the Everglades, and White’s existed. In pursuit of this goal, Sidney bedded the unappealing, but exceptionally Caucasian former governor’s wife who, in spite of the fact she ‘looked as though she wore tweed brassieres’ was a symbol of all he’d never attain. She, the governor’s wife, ‘punished him for his Jewish presumption’ by screwing him during her menses and leaving him with a helluva mess to clean up just hours before his wife was to join him. There could be no mistaking it, Sidney Dillon was Bill Paley, founder of CBS and Babe’s randy husband.
I gestured for her to sit down and poured our drinks. I tried to keep my face as impassive as possible and shrugged. “Honey, I don’t exactly know who that character’s supposed to be.” Her eyes narrowed at this answer, so I continued. “I’ve been pretty much focused on how he could use me so badly. But if you want me to guess - I would say it’s Averill Harriman or Jock Whitney.” Averill and Jock were part of our circle and had been known to step outside the bonds of marriage. Jock Whitney was married to Babe’s sister, society matron extraordinaire, Betsy Whitney.
Babe shook her head. “Neither Jock nor Averill are Jewish.” She said coldly. I pursed my lips in what I hoped was a thoughtful expression and replied “No, that’s true. Bill is Jewish, but Jock was the Ambassador and Averill is far more politically involved. Perhaps it’s an amalgam.” I put down my drink and started pacing. “It doesn’t matter, it’s all lies anyway, the little fink, not that anyone will believe us. How could he do this to us?”
“But it’s not all lies,” Babe persisted. “The Ann Woodward stuff is true, almost to the letter, and well, the Governor’s wife is obviously Marie Harriman and you were going to marry a Brit and well…” her voice trailed off.
I decided to hit her point dead on. “The part you’re worried about, Babe, is a lie.” I lied calmly. “I have never been to bed with your husband and neither has Marie.”
Her eyes searched mine, waiting for me to falter, but I kept my gaze steady. She held my gaze for several seconds, and then dropped hers. Her face reddened.
“No, of course not.” She sounded unconvinced. “I, just, it’s silly really. Rumors always fly about people like us. I’ve heard things . . . cruel things.”
I brazenly continued, unreasonably pleased with my skill at lying with conviction. “Of course you have, we all have, and I just wished I’d paid attention to the rumors with Christian.” Babe looked away, as I had intended. I didn’t mind shamelessly exploiting her guilt over setting up Pammy and Christian when necessary. The phone rang again, this time Babe answered it, glad for the distraction I think.
“Well, well, did you read it? Hmm, what do you think?” Truman Capote mewed into the phone, she told me later. She held the phone away from her ear, looked flabbergasted, and gestured to me. Her face visibly paled. I shook my head at her, indicating she should not tear into him over the phone, so instead, she told him I couldn’t speak to him at the moment.
“Come let’s meet for lunch then, I can’t wait to hear what you two think.”
“Truman would like to meet us for lunch to talk about his story,” she said, her voice tight. I wanted to dive through the telephone wires and pummel both his faces. But I nodded, keeping my voice as normal as possible, loud enough for him to hear over the phone wires, “Sure, tomorrow, how about La Côte Basque, say one’sh.”
Babe’s eyes widened and she mouthed, “Are you mad?” I nodded. She relayed the message and hung up.
“I do not want to meet with him,” She protested. “I don’t ever want to see that snake again. Someone will undoubtedly photograph us if we have lunch with him tomorrow. It will look like we endorse this trash.” Thankfully she was finally working up a head of steam about this. Talking to Truman must have been the kicker - no remorse, only self-aggrandizing arrogance.
“He sounded perfectly normal?” I questioned.
She nodded, sitting back on the sofa and sipping her drink. “Perhaps he thinks us too stupid. He certainly portrayed us as vapid.”
The phone rang again. I answered. This time it was Gloria Vanderbilt. “That fucking, cock-sucking little prick!”
“Hello, Gloria, done your morning reading, I gather,” I tucked the receiver between my chin and shoulder and poured another drink. I sank into the chair opposite Babe, uncertain of what exactly Gloria would rant and how loud, and took a deep breath to steady my nerves.
“I sound like a goddamn idiot,” Gloria seethed, “He portrayed me as a vacuous twit who can’t remember her first husband! I’m going to kill him!” She caught her breath long enough to ask, “Can you believe how he screwed Bill and Babe? Sunny, what will Babe say?”
“Babe is here right now, and outraged on my account, since he put all that filth in my mouth. Luckily she got off lightly, no bitchy reference to her,” I responded, turning away from Babe a bit.
Gloria cottoned on quick. “Oh that’s how we’re playing it, are we? Well, okay, fine by me, but you know as well as I do there is only one person Sidney Dillon could be.”
“Yes, I thought of Averell too.” I nodded into the receiver.
“Okay, well whatever, what are we going to do to the little fucker?”
“Lunch,” I replied
“Lunch?”
“Yes, at La Côte Basque at 1:00 tomorrow. Okay?”
“What have you got planned?” Her voice was low and conspiratorial.
“Right now, murder by castration, but I’m still working on it. Just be there.” I clicked down the receiver.
Read more next week.