Too Much Money

by Dominick Dunne

  “I’m going to do my version of that when Elias gets out,” said Ruby. “Sunday night at the Renthals’. Dinner and a movie. I like the sound of it, don’t you?”

  “I can’t talk you into coming to my dinner Thursday night, can I? I could use a beauty like you,” asked Maisie.

  “Thanks, Maisie, but I’m not going out anymore until Elias gets out of the facility,” Ruby replied. She made no attempt to see old friends or meet new people. She wanted to reenter New York as the wife of Elias Renthal, and not a moment sooner. Ruby wanted to be half of a couple very much in the news. Elias would have served his time without complaint. He would be holding his head high. He would have made an enormous donation to the prison system of America. Most important, he would still be richer than most of the people he knew. Her days were occupied with meticulous preparations for the next phase of her life. “I lost my position in New York when my husband went to the facility. I don’t like to be seen about. I went to that damn opening of the Costume Institute at the Met, and women I used to have lunch with at Swifty’s looked at me and started whispering to each other. I’m not going to let that happen to me again.”

  “Please reconsider, Ruby,” said Maisie. “There’s a French couple I’ve just sold Cora Mandell’s old maisonette on Fifth Avenue to for them to use as a pied-à-terre when they’re here in New York, and I’m having the dinner for them.”

  Ruby, laughing, was shaking her red hair in a gesture that meant, No, I’m not going out these days, when she heard Maisie say the words Baron and Baroness de Liagra. Ruby stopped her gesture. Her face turned bright red. She turned away.

  “Oh, my god,” said Maisie. “I totally forgot. Didn’t you have an affair with him years ago, after you divorced Elias and before you remarried him? I never put that together.”

  “It was absolutely untrue that Baron de Liagra and I were having a romance. I don’t know who started that story. It could have been Toby Tilden, for all I know, or Dolores De Longpre, or it could have been in W, or in ‘Page Six,’ I don’t know, but it wasn’t true. Poor Elias, he even heard it in the facility.”

  “You must have met the baron at least,” said Maisie. “There was an awful lot of talk about you and him.”

  “Yes, I met him,” conceded Ruby. “Yes, I had an affair with him that didn’t end well. I never met the baroness.” She didn’t tell Maisie that one of the great embarrassments of her life was that she had behaved in such a trashy fashion when the baron had broken off with her. “Elias once told me he heard from Max Luby that the baroness was a dyke.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” said Maisie. “I’m only the real estate lady. She’s the chicest thing I ever saw, I’ll tell you that, and those wonderful French looks. If there were ever a movie about her, Jeanne Moreau would have been perfect thirty years ago.”

  “I’ll come,” said Ruby. “Will you seat me in the back room next to someone friendly and ask Dolores De Longpre not to list my name in her column? It drives Elias crazy when he reads my name in the columns.”

  “You can have either Jamesey Crocus or Addison Kent. I have Mayor Bloomberg on one side of the baroness, and I need a camp on the other side to make her laugh, so take your choice, Jamesey Crocus or Addison.”

  “I’ll take Jamesey. You take Addison. Jamesey never stopped being nice to me when other people did, after our public embarrassment,” said Ruby.

  MAISIE ALWAYS had sixty for dinner. Tables were set up in the living room, dining room, and library as the guests had cocktails. Maisie then expertly guided her guests to the right room after the tables were set up. The most famous people were seated in the living room. Christine Saunders, the television news star, and Dolores De Longpre, the society columnist, were always seated at the number one table. The dining room had the second echelon of guests. The wives or husbands who were considered less interesting than their mates were in the library. There had been a last-minute to-do when Baron de Liagra, who would have been the guest of honor, and who would have been seated to Maisie’s right, with Dolores De Longpre on the other side, backed out suddenly, explaining, falsely, that he had eaten a bad oyster at lunch and had been “sick-sick-sick” for the entire afternoon, as he said over the telephone in his charming French manner. The truth was that he had heard from Frieda, his wife’s manicurist, that she had to do Mrs. Elias Renthal’s nails after she finished the baroness’s nails, as Mrs. Renthal was making a rare New York appearance that evening at Maisie Verdurin’s party. Henri de Liagra, who considered himself a dashing figure, having had a succession of beautiful mistresses, had never forgotten that the very same Mrs. Elias Renthal had once criticized the size of his penis and told him he was a lousy fuck, which were her words, not his. He feigned illness to Charlotte when she returned from the hairdresser downstairs in the Rhinelander Hotel, where they were staying, and insisted that she go on alone to Maisie Verdurin’s party.

  The guests were to come eight o’clock. Forty-five minutes were allotted for cocktails, and they were asked to sit down to dinner at 8:45. Baroness de Liagra stood next to Maisie inside the entrance to the living room. She was gracious and charming to each person she met. “I simply adored your interview with President and Mrs. Obama. He is such an elegant man,” she said to Christine Saunders. “You like my dress? Oh, merci. It’s Valentino. He dresses me totally,” she said to Pauline Mendelson, who was visiting from Los Angeles. “We’ll probably be spending three months a year here. Henri’s bank bought Konstantin Zacharias’s bank after the murder and is opening a branch here in New York,” she said to Percy Webb.

  Ruby arrived five minutes before the guests sat down. She had heard from Frieda, the manicurist, that the baron had eaten a bad oyster and wouldn’t be attending. She chose to remain a background figure. She had dressed simply. “Oh, there you are at last,” said Maisie to Ruby. “I thought you were backing out on me. This is Charlotte de Liagra. Her husband has backed out on me.”

  “My poor darling husband. I’m always saying to him, ‘Don’t eat shellfish, Henri.’ Now look what’s happened. My dear Mrs. Renthal, he was green, simply green. He swallowed a bad oyster at lunch at the French consulate.” The baroness looked carefully at Ruby. “What wonderful red hair you have,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Ruby, touched by the unexpected compliment. Having heard Baron de Liagra’s wife referred to as a dyke by several people, including her own husband from his prison cell in Las Vegas, Nevada, she had imagined her to have a very different look than that of the stylish and aristocratic woman who was standing in front of her. Her clothes were perfection. Dolores De Longpre would write in her society column the next day about Maisie Verdurin’s party that Baroness de Liagra, visiting from Paris, was by far the best-dressed woman at the party. In time, Ruby would hear that in society she was called Charlotte and described as the daughter of a noble family. In certain circles, she was called Uncle Charlie.

  Ruby watched the baroness stare at her in the way that men often stared at her. She liked it when men gave her that look. She noticed that Baron de Liagra’s wife was wearing the same ruby bracelet he had given her as a kiss-off present when he had broken off their affair and that she had thrown at him when she had called him a lousy fuck. She realized she was not offended by the baroness’s stare.

  “Well, finally I am meeting the fascinating Mrs. Renthal,” said Charlotte.

  Ruby looked at her quickly to see if she was being sarcastic. “We hear about you in Paris, the glamorous Ruby Renthal flying out to Las Vegas on her husband’s G Five Fifty for weekend visits in the penitentiary.”

  “But it’s not a penitentiary. It’s a facility,” said Ruby quietly.

  “Penitentiary sounds better,” said the baroness. “I hope you don’t misunderstand me, Mrs. Renthal, but there’s something terribly glamorous about that to me. People say about you, ‘Her husband’s in the penitentiary.’ It’s far more distinctive than saying, ‘Her husband’s at Barclays or Deutsche Bank.’”

 
; Ruby laughed. “That’s a whole new way of looking at my situation. I can’t wait to tell Elias when I go out to Las Vegas again next week.”

  “Of all these famous people Maisie has gathered here tonight for me to meet, it was you whose acquaintance I was most interested in making.”

  “Good heavens,” said Ruby.

  “But my tastes have always been different, as you’ve probably heard,” said the baroness, arching an eyebrow.

  Ruby didn’t know how to answer her and remained silent. Undeterred, the baroness went on talking. “Isn’t it marvelous the way Maisie handles all these people, moving them here, moving them there, while the waiters set up the tables. She’s like a general. I hope you’re seated at my table.”

  “I’m not. I’m in this little room here, and you’ll be at Maisie’s table. I’m sure you’re seated next to Mayor Bloomberg. I’ll be sneaking out early. I rarely go to parties anymore, Baroness,” said Ruby. “I just came because of Maisie, who has been such a good friend to me.”

  “Charlotte is my name. I’ll leave when you do,” she said. “After all, I have a perfect excuse. A sick husband. I have a car and driver downstairs. I’d love to show you the new apartment. It’s empty. Not a stick of furniture in it yet. We’ve just closed the deal with Maisie.”

  “But your husband’s ill.”

  “Yes, so he’ll be out of the way then. We’re staying at the Rhinelander.”

  “I’m staying at the Rhinelander too,” said Ruby, surprised her former lover had been living in the same building she had.

  “I’ll come to you then, if it will make you more comfortable. Expect a knock on your door.” Her look lingered and Ruby allowed it to linger. Then they each turned and went to their own tables.

  “I ADORED the mayor. He couldn’t be nicer, and he made me feel so welcome in New York, although it drove me crazy that he wouldn’t let me smoke. And I thought his girlfriend was very nice and very smart. I like it that the mayor of New York City lives with a beautiful woman who is not his wife. It’s so French. Everyone at my table was talking about Mrs. Zacharias, who is giving so much money to charity. I didn’t say a word against the woman, although I could have. Henri, my husband, simply won’t see her in Paris, although she keeps inviting us. He was a business friend of Konstantin’s. He says there’s something wrong with the story. But I stayed mum at the table. Just listened. Such a nice view of the park from your suite here, Mrs. Renthal,” said the baroness, pouring champagne into glasses. As she handed one glass to Ruby, she leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. Ruby did not resist, nor did she participate.

  “You bring out the Sapphic desires in me, as Gertrude Stein used to say to Alice B. Toklas,” whispered the baroness.

  “Nobody ever said that to me before,” said Ruby, who couldn’t help but feel a little curious and a little turned on.

  “Are you telling me that a beautiful woman like you has never done it with another woman?” asked the baroness.

  “Yes. I mean no. I have never done it with another woman,” said Ruby.

  “Not even once to have had the experience?”

  “No. I’ve just never gone in for that dyke thing. I don’t have any objections, or anything like that. It’s just not my scene. I love men, it’s as simple as that.”

  “You don’t have to do a thing,” said the baroness. “I’ll do everything. You just lie back.”

  “I have to get a little drunker first. Pour me some more champagne,” said Ruby. She didn’t know if it was the woman or the title that she was giving in to.

  “Would you like to smoke a joint, as they say here in New York? My maid, Francine, rolls the most perfect joints,” said the baroness, pulling out a joint from a gold cigarette case she had fished out of her evening bag and lighting it. “I was simply terrified going through Customs, but, as you must have learned yourself by now, Mrs. Renthal, attitude is everything. And of course, it helps being with Henri. My husband gives off the appearance of being an ambassador, or some sort of diplomat, instead of just another baron visiting from Paris. This is awfully good pot. Francine gets it for me from a man she knows in Alsace-Lorraine. Oh. I already feel a buzz. Here, your turn.”

  “I haven’t smoked a joint in years,” said Ruby. “Sure, I’ll smoke one. A couple of tokes and you can go to town down there.”

  “Music to my ears, Mrs. Renthal. I simply adore red pubic hair,” said the baroness. “You almost never see it.” She pulled off her ten-thousand-dollar Valentino dress and threw it on the floor. She helped Ruby take off her dress and pull down her panties. She took her position to perform the act, rubbing her face into Ruby’s private hair. “Talk dirty, Ruby.”

  “I always heard that nobody can eat a pussy like another woman,” said Ruby, getting into it. She sank into the bed, letting the marijuana flood her head and the pleasure from what the baroness was doing between her legs make her body tingle. The combination was wonderful. “That’s really nice what you’re doing down there, Baroness. Give me directions. Tell me what to do. … Sure, of course I’ll sit on your face.”

  “THAT WAS great, but no seconds,” said Ruby, lying back after they had each come to completion. “I tried it. I enjoyed it, but it’s not my natural inclination, even though I came three times in twenty minutes.”

  The baroness roared with laughter. “I couldn’t talk you into doing a three-way with my husband? He’s very good-looking, and he loves watching two women making love.”

  “No,” said Ruby, suppressing a shudder at the memory of the baron. “I know that lying here nude and stoned is not the best place to have you believe this, but I’m going to play dutiful wife when Elias gets out of prison.”

  “How middle class,” said the baroness, joking.

  “At least that’s a step up from being called trashy, which is how some people in this town refer to me,” replied Ruby.

  “You’re adorable, Ruby. Can I give you a present?”

  “I love presents,” said Ruby.

  The baroness got up from the bed, still naked, and went to her evening bag on the dressing table. When she returned, she handed Ruby the ruby bracelet.

  “Oh, I can’t accept this,” said Ruby, blanching a bit as she recognized it as the bracelet the baron had given her and that she had thrown back at him in his secret apartment on the Rue du Bac years earlier.

  “Yes, you can, Ruby. I don’t know why, but I feel it belongs to you because of your name. Think of it as a remembrance of a unique experience.”

  Ruby put it on and admired it on her wrist. “I’ve always wanted a ruby bracelet. Just rubies. Not rubies and diamonds. Just rubies. Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

  “May I give you a kiss good-bye?” asked the baroness.

  “Of course,” said Ruby. As they kissed, she said, “Is that my pussy I taste on your tongue?”

  The baroness screamed with laughter.

  “You probably think I’m cheap,” said Ruby.

  “It can’t get too cheap for me,” replied the baroness. “Is it all right if I call you, Ruby?”

  DRESSED AGAIN in her Valentino gown and ready to go back to her own suite in the Rhinelander, Charlotte de Liagra waved good-bye from the door.

  “One thing before you go,” called out Ruby. “I have something I have to confess to you. After what’s happened between us, I would feel very shabby if you left here without knowing.”

  “Yes, I know. You had an affair with my husband. He always tells me after his little flings are over,” said the baroness.

  “You mean, you’re not angry with me?”

  “Darling, it’s me, remember? You recognized the ruby bracelet right away, didn’t you?”

  “Of course, but I kind of feel like a hooker taking it from you,” said Ruby, looking at the bracelet once again. She noticed that one of the rubies was chipped. She thought, Probably from when I threw it at Henri de Liagra at his love nest on the Rue du Bac in Paris.

  “We were meant to meet,” Baroness de Liagra assure
d her.

  “You’re a good-looking woman, Baroness,” said Ruby from her bed.

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” replied the baroness. “Greatest tits I ever saw.”

  “They used to be even bigger when I had the implants, but I had them removed. We can’t have sex in the facility, but Elias feels me up. He didn’t like the implants, so I got rid of them.”

  “Smart husband you’ve got, Ruby. Will you have lunch with me at Swifty’s the next time I come to New York?”

  “Hell, yes,” said Ruby. She got up out of bed and pulled on a dressing gown. “I just got an idea. Elias is getting out of prison in the next six months. Maisie Verdurin sold me a beautiful house on East Seventy-eighth Street, which is all being redone, but it’s a big secret. I’m going to need some new clothes. I can’t be at the couture collections and not expect to be photographed and written up, which is not good for a woman whose husband is in prison.”

  “What are you about to suggest?”

  “We’re the same size, only I’ve got bigger boobs. I know you’re a regular at the collections anyway. Pick me out a brand-new wardrobe,” said Ruby. “I want six evening dresses, six suits, and anything else you think I shouldn’t live without. I don’t care what it costs. Even after all the fines he’s had to pay, Elias still has a billion bucks, probably more. He has this friend named Max Luby who looks after his money when he’s in prison.”

  The baroness laughed. “We could be friends, you know,” said the baroness.

  “You’ve got the class, I’ve got the brass. We’d be perfect friends,” replied Ruby, laughing. “I want something extra special to wear on the day that Elias gets out of prison,” said Ruby. “Something with sable on the cuffs. I’m going to fly out in our plane to Las Vegas for the last time in my life, I hope. I can’t tell you how much I hate the sound of those doors clanking behind me. I get a chill every time I’m there. I’m taking our chauffeur with me to hire a limousine and pick Elias up as he leaves prison. There will be photographers there. You can count on that. I’m going to have Elias’s dark blue pinstripe suit taken in at the waist since he’s lost so much weight in prison. We’ll pose for pictures. Then we’ll go directly back to the plane.”