Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “My God, she gave us her whole column!” Mark Segal says.

  “Well, it looks as though Mimi has another hit on her hands,” Granny Flo Myerson says to her friend Rose Perlman, after Mrs. Perlman has finished reading the Post story to her. The two have met for lunch at what is their favorite meeting place, the top-floor Charleston Gardens coffee shop at B. Altman & Company. “I’m going to have the tomato surprise,” she says. “That’s always good here. Of course, nothing can ever replace Schrafft’s, but this is next best.”

  “That’s with tuna, isn’t it?” Rose Perlman says. “I think I’ll have the same.”

  “Actually,” Granny Flo says, “I didn’t think those naked people in the film were all that unrecognizable. I could have sworn that one of those men was Edwee.”

  “Why, Flo!” Rose Perlman says, putting down the newspaper. “Your eyesight is getting better! How could you have recognized anybody in that film?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Granny Flo says impatiently. “I smelled him, the way I always can.”

  “You can even smell him in a film?”

  “Certainly. Why not? He’s always smelled the same—a kind of vegetable-soupy smell. My little Henny-Penny, on the other hand—he was the sweetest-smelling baby on the whole East Side. Just thinking of him, I can remember how he smelled.”

  “Really, Flo, you are remarkable!”

  “It’s what happens when you lose your eyesight. All your other senses get better. My hearing, for instance. Did you hear that?” She points. “I just heard someone drop something. It sounded like a napkin.”

  Rose Perlman follows the direction of Granny’s pointed finger and sees another diner at a nearby table reach down and retrieve a napkin from the floor. “Amazing!” she says.

  Their waitress arrives to take their order. “We don’t want to be too surprised by the tomato surprise,” Granny Flo says. “It is with tuna, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.…”

  “Speaking of Edwee,” Rose Perlman says when the waitress has departed, “what did you do with your Goya?”

  “I gave it to Nonie.”

  “Really, Flo?”

  “Yes. When Nonie told me what Edwee was up to, trying to have that painting declared a fake when it’s not a fake, I decided Nonie should have it.”

  “And Edwee wanted that painting so badly.”

  “Well, that’s just hard cheese on Edwee, isn’t it? You see, poor Nonie really was stiffed by Adolph in his will. He really stiffed her, Rose, and I really wanted to right that wrong. Of course, if Mimi’s plan to take the company private goes through, Nonie will finally have some money of her own. But having … sponsored, I guess, is the word—having sponsored Nonie in some of her other business ventures, I’m a little worried about this new one of hers, and I didn’t like the smell of that man she’s going into it with. She’s always been unlucky in business, and unlucky with men. I’m afraid she’s going to lose her shirt again, but I know there’s no stopping Nonie when she decides she wants to do something. Meanwhile, that painting is worth a lot of money. When I gave it to Nonie, I said to her, ‘This is for your insurance. If this new business of yours fails, Nonie, the Goya will be your insurance.’”

  “I wish I could say I thought you’d done the right thing, Flo,” Rose Perlman says.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s so much bad feeling between Edwee and his sister already. Won’t this just make everything that much worse?”

  Granny Flo sighs. “Let me tell you something, Rose,” she says. “Something that may help explain Edwee to you. Something I’ve never, never told anyone else before.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In my family, there’s something called the bad Guggenheim gene. That bad gene pops up in every generation or so. My cousin Peggy had it. You know what a rip she was. She even wrote a book about it—about all her love affairs, and the illegitimate children she had by different men. She had so many lovers at one time that she had no idea who her children’s fathers were! Peggy was crazy. Then there was Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob had the bad Guggenheim gene. He’s the one who died of a heart attack getting out of his taxi in front of his mistress’s house in Washington, D.C.—it was in all the papers at the time. He was really a rip. At dinner parties, he used to reach down inside the fronts of women’s dresses and say, ‘Just checking your cup size.’ There was also Uncle Bill. William Guggenheim was crazy as a bedbug. He was two people—really! He had two names, and you never knew when you ran into him which one of his selves he was going to be. Some days he called himself William Guggenheim. Other times, he went by Gatenby Williams. When he was in his William Guggenheim phase, he was a very pious Jew who was studying to be a rabbi. When he turned into Gatenby Williams, he became an anti-Semite who claimed he’d come up with the Final Solution for Hitler! He wrote a book, too. His book was written by his Gatenby Williams self, but it was a book about his William Guggenheim self—all about how his William Guggenheim self, and all the other wealthy Jews, were plotting to take over the world and then exterminate all the Christians. I mean, he was really crazy, Rose. So you see, even though the family had a lot of money, there was always that bad Guggenheim gene that kept popping up and spoiling things for everybody. And that’s how I’ve always explained Edwee:—it’s the bad Guggenheim gene again, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Of course, in a way, I have to blame myself for it: it came down to him, from me, in my family bloodline.”

  Rose Perlman studies her old friend’s face quietly for a moment. Then she says softly, “You know, you said that Edwee was in your apartment when your poor little Itty-Bitty had her … accident. You don’t suppose, do you, that Edwee—”

  Granny Flo’s fingers fly to her throat. “Oh, no,” she cries. “Don’t say that! Oh, I’ve thought of it, yes, but I can’t let myself think that! I can’t let myself think that my own son, one of my own flesh and blood, would ever do a thing like that—harm a poor little innocent animal who never would have hurt anyone, who never had anything but loving, gentle thoughts for everyone. I just couldn’t bear to go on living if I let myself think a thought like that. I think I’d die if I believed that! Besides, I have a new Itty-Bitty now, you know. You’ve got to come by and meet my new Itty-Bitty. She’s so adorable, so cute and cuddly and fun-loving and sweet and playful. She has a little rubber ball, and I toss it to her, and she fetches it and brings it back and drops it in my hand. So sweet! You see, Rose, that’s what we have to remember. We have to replace the things we loved and lost as quickly as possible—the way you did with your little Fluffy, remember? We have to remember, always, that everything we’re given in this life is replaceable—everything. Everything in our lives is replaceable, Rose, except our lives themselves, and God takes care of that. Next time we have lunch, I want you to come to my apartment and meet my new Itty-Bitty. We’ll have a nice room service lunch.”

  “I’d love that, Flo,” Rose Perlman says.

  “And as for what happened to the other Itty-Bitty, I have a theory. To begin with, the day was warm, and all the windows in my sitting room were open, and there was a little slipper chair that I’d moved close to the window so I could sit in the breeze. Edwee came and started to carry on. He carried on, carried on, and Itty-Bitty was barking at him—Itty-Bitty never really liked Edwee—and finally Edwee was carrying on so much that I marched into my bedroom and closed the door and turned the bolt. Edwee kept carrying on, pounding on my door, and Itty-Bitty was still barking. Then Edwee’s carrying-on stopped, and the barking stopped, and I waited in the bedroom for a few minutes to make sure that Edwee was gone. Then, when I came out, Edwee was gone, and Itty-Bitty was nowhere to be found. But there was that little slipper chair, too close to the open window. I think what happened was that after Edwee left, and Itty-Bitty was all alone in the room, she thought she’d been abandoned. She thought I’d abandoned her, since I was nowhere in sight, behind a locked bedroom door. She thought I’d locked her out—locked her out of
my life. All alone there, like that, feeling she’d been abandoned by the one person she loved the most, she became terribly depressed. She saw the little slipper chair, hopped up on it, saw the open window … and jumped. At least that’s what I believe is what must have happened. Oh,” she says, patting the tabletop in front of her, “I just heard someone set a plate down in front of me, and I can smell tuna. It smells like Chicken of the Sea. This must be our tomato surprise.”

  From the New York Times, two days later:

  FIRST: A “MYSTERY” MODEL … NOW A “MYSTERY” VIDEOTAPE

  The cosmetics industry, long fraught with secrecy and intrigue, has a new and intriguing riddle on its hands. First, there was the secret identity of the mysterious “Man with the Scar” who makes his elusive debut in a series of arresting and industry-acclaimed print ads and television commercials this week for “Mireille,” a new fragrance from the Miray Corporation. Guests at a gala benefit Thursday night to launch the scent were promised they would “meet” the mystery “Mireille Man.” They did, sort of. But when the blond male model made his appearance on stage, he was wearing the now-familiar chalk-white mask that Michael Crawford, the actor, wears in “Phantom of the Opera,” the Broadway musical hit from London.

  Now a second mystery has evolved. The capstone of the evening’s festivities at the Hotel Pierre was the screening of a short videotape, a parody of the sexually suggestive advertising campaign that was used to promote Calvin Klein’s perfume “Obsession.” Diane Sawyer, the television personality, who was a guest at the launching party, pronounced the videotape “the cleverest, wittiest send-up of a competitor’s advertising I’ve ever seen.” And, the following evening, Dan Rather, another guest, made a humorous reference to the tape on the CBS Evening News, calling it a “must see.”

  Meanwhile, what amounts to a celebrity guessing game has begun among New Yorkers fortunate enough to have viewed the tape. Several guests at the “Mireille” launch claim to have been able to identify the unclad participants in the mock commercial as men and women prominent in New York’s business, social, and artistic communities. The “commercial,” those who have seen it told the Times, featured three people, a younger, fair-haired man, an older man with silver hair, and a young blond or red-headed woman, and a number of people at the party insist they know exactly who those three people are. The only problem: no one quite agrees with anyone else.

  The younger man, for instance, has been variously “positively” identified as the film and rock star Sting; as rock star David Bowie; and as either singer Billy Joel or rock star Mick Jagger “with a wig.” As for the young woman, a number of votes have been cast for Ivana Trump, the wife of Donald J. Trump, the real-estate developer and casino owner. Others, however, are casting their ballots in favor of Mrs. Trump’s sister-in-law, Blaine Trump, who is married to Donald Trump’s brother Robert. Other prominent New York women who are suspected of playing the “role” include Tina Brown, editor of Vanity Fair, Grace Mirabella of Vogue, and New York mega-editor Fredi Friedman. Fran Lebowitz, who was at the Pierre party, told the Times, “I know it was either Susan Gutfreund or Gayfryd Steinberg, unless Susan Gutfreund and Gayfryd Steinberg are the same person, which is a possibility.”

  There are nearly as many candidates who might have played the role of the older man as there are for the young woman. “It was definitely Felix Rohatyn,” says Helen Gurley Brown, another guest. “Even though you could only see the back of his head, I recognized Felix’s curls.” Others insist that the older man was portrayed by Senator Patrick Moynihan. Since the event on Thursday benefited the New York Public Library, a number of guests believe that the man in question was the library’s director, Vartan Gregorian. Mr. Gregorian roared with laughter when the question was put to him on the telephone today.

  All this has created something of a popular demand for copies of the videotape. But the mystery has deepened, and the question now is: Where is it? At the Miray Corporation, no one is saying. Mark Segal, the company’s advertising director, is insisting that he knows nothing about it. “It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to everybody else,” Mr. Segal told the Times, managing to keep a straight face as he did so. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Jones, the projectionist who screened the film at the Pierre, and who is not employed by Miray, says only that “a Miray executive” collected the tape from him after it was screened. Miray’s president and chief executive officer, Mimi Myerson, could not be reached for comment, and repeated telephone calls to her office were not returned.

  But Miss Myerson’s husband, Bradford Moore, a prominent New York attorney, did come to the phone at his Wall Street office and provided an answer of sorts. “My wife’s business,” he told the Times, “is a business of unknowns. Mystery is always a part of it. The word cosmetics comes from the Greek kosmetikos, meaning arrangement, or adornment, through artifice. What are cosmetics, after all, but beautiful disguises, gentle deceptions, creating illusions by changing appearances to obscure and soften realities? Mystery is part of the fun—you know, does she, or doesn’t she? Cosmetics are about how human beings change, and rearrange, their senses and feelings about one another. But I’ll tell you one thing, since I was there Thursday night. My wife was as taken by surprise as everyone else when that little gem flashed on the screen, and so, to me, this narrows the maker of this tape down to a field of one: our son, Brad Jr., who’s Miray’s Director of Sales.

  “Brad’s nickname is Badger,” Mr. Moore went on. “The badger is a very sturdy, industrious, and resourceful little animal, with more tricks up his sleeve than most people give him credit for. I suggest that if you want to get to the bottom of this, you should try tracking the badger to his lair.”

  The younger Mr. Moore was in Tulsa today at a Miray sales conference and could not be reached for comment.

  Meanwhile, the plot thickens. Stay tuned.

  “Mark?” Mimi says, when she reaches him on the intercom. “Have you read this? Isn’t it wonderful? Didn’t you love what Brad said—giving all the credit to Badger? We could never buy publicity like this!”

  “Listen, I’ve got both Time and Newsweek on the phone,” he says.

  “Have you been following me?” she asks him. She has just looked up to see him standing beside her, waiting for the light to change at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street.

  “Of course,” he says.

  “I often walk home on nights like this.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you always know everything?”

  “Of course.”

  The light changes, and they start across the street. “When I didn’t hear any more about Palm Beach, I thought I’d give it one more try,” he says.

  They continue walking northward on Fifth Avenue.

  “We’re almost there,” he says.

  “Almost where?”

  “The skating pond … remember?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Shall we go and take a look at it?”

  “All right.”

  At the next light, they cross the avenue and move into the park.

  “It was right there,” he says. “That bench, there.”

  “Are you sure? Wasn’t it—?”

  “I’m positive. It was this one.”

  “It has a broken back.”

  “We can sit on this end. Shall we sit here for just a minute?”

  “All right.”

  The skating pond is just a pond again, its surface riffled by a westerly breeze and scattered with a few early-falling autumn leaves. Two gulls settle on the water, arching their wings and nestling their bills into their wingblades’ cavities, probing and preening. The gulls move like a pair of plows across the water.

  “That means a storm’s coming,” she says. “Whenever a storm’s coming, the seagulls fly in from the Atlantic. The gulls are a barometer. It’s nice to be reminded that we live in a seaport. Did you feel the wind change just then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And look: a rabbi
t.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there.” She points.

  “Oh, yes. You know, I’ve always thought it was too bad this park can’t be developed. High-rises, garden apartments. A guy could make a fortune.”

  She looks at him briefly, just to be sure he isn’t being serious.

  “Well,” he says at last, “I guess I know what your answer is.”

  “Yes, I think you do, Michael.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” he says. “Did you ever love me?”

  “Oh, yes. Terribly. Didn’t you know that? Unbearably. And …”

  “And what?”

  “And in some ways, I still do. And probably always will. But there are different kinds of love, Michael, you know that.”

  “You’re saying you love him more.”

  “It’s not a question of degree. It’s not a question of quantity. It’s more a question of quality, I guess.”

  “His love is better, then.”

  “No, not even that. It’s just … I mean, look at us, sitting here, two middle-aged people—”

  “You still look eighteen years old to me.”

  “I told you I was nineteen.”

  “You were lying.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you look just the same to me, too,” she says. “But underneath, we’re not the same. I think you know that. And for me—I just don’t think I could bear it, to go back to the kind of love I felt for you. It was too … grueling, I guess the word is. I’m not saying I regret any of it, because I don’t.”

  The wind picks up, and there is definitely the smell of rain in the air. “Let me tell you what it was like,” she says. “Three winters ago, Brad and I went on a horse safari in Africa. Ten days on horseback through the Masai Mara. Eight, nine hours a day of hard, rough riding, across rivers and mountains and rock slides, in the most uncomfortable Australian saddle I’ve ever sat on. It was wonderful, out there in the middle of the herds of animals, but by the third day I wondered if I’d ever walk again without a limp! I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything, but nothing could persuade me to live through it again. It’s the same with you. I don’t want to repeat the experience, even though I know I could, because I’ve felt perilously close to it in the past few weeks.”