"As I understand it, he was, and is, a very convinced Catholic. And for that reason he remained married to his first wife for twenty-seven loyal years, or until she died. Even though she was unable to give him a child, which seems to have been the crux of the matter, for he wanted a child, a son, to continue the Jaeger dynasty. That being the case, why didn't he do the obvious and marry a well-bred, wide-hipped German girl who could fill up a nursery bim-bam? Certainly a clever soigné beauty like Kate would hardly seem the ideal choice for a man of Herr Jaeger's constrained austerity. And, so far as that goes, it's incomprehensible that Kate would find herself attracted to such a person. Money? That couldn't have been as issue. Actually, after I first really got to know Kate, she told me that her first marriage had been such a trauma, she never intended to marry again. And yet, within a few months, and without any signal, without ever mentioning that she even knew this legendary tycoon, she obtained a papal annulment from her first marriage and marries Jaeger in a Catholic ceremony at the Dusseldorf Cathedral. One year later the prayed-for heir arrives. Heinrich Rheinhardt Jaeger. Heinie. And a year after that, less than a year, she seems to have been dismissed from the Jaeger chateau, luggage et al., leaving the boy in the father's custody-though granted certain highly limited visiting privileges."
"But you don't know why?"
Aces thumbnailed another kitchen match, and blew it out. "The fall-out, or whatever one may call it, was as enigmatic as the alliance itself. She disappeared for several months, and a doctor I know told me she had spent them cloistered at the Nestlé Clinic in Lausanne. But as for what happened, she's not confided in me, and I've never had the courage to inquire. I suppose the only person who really knows is Kate's maid, Corinne. And when it comes to Miss Kate, Corinne is as close-mouthed as an Easter Island monument."
"Well. But why didn't they get a divorce?"
"The Catholic hang-up, I suppose. He would never countenance divorce."
"For Christ sake, she could divorce him, couldn't she?"
"Not if she ever wanted to see Heinie again. That door would be shut forever."
"Sonofabitch. I'd like to shove a shotgun up his ass and pull the trigger. Bastard. But you mentioned danger. I can't see where she has anything to be afraid of."
"Kate thinks she does. So do 1. And it isn't any paranoid fantasy that Jaeger has agents following her, or gathering information on her wherever she goes, whatever she does. If she changes a Kotex, you can be sure the Grand Seigneur hears about it. Look," he said, snapping his fingers for a waiter "let's have a drink. It's too late for daiquiris. How about a Scotch-soda?"
"I don't care."
"Waiter, two Scotch-soda. Now, as to this offer I've made you—are the terms satisfactory, or would you like a few days to think it over?"
"I don't have to think it over. I've already decided."
The drinks arrived, and he lifted his glass. "Then we'll drink to your decision, whatever it is. Though I hope it's yes."
"Yes."
He relaxed. "You're a godsend, P. B. And I'm sure you'll not regret it." Seldom has a more untrue prophecy been prophesied.
"Yes, it's yes. But. If he doesn't want a divorce, what does he want?"
"I have a theory. It's only a theory, but I'd bet my last chip that it's accurate. He intends to kill her." Aces tinkled the ice in his glass. "Since the strictness of his Catholicism forbids divorce, and because as long as she's alive she represents a threat to him, a threat to him and the custody of his child. So he means to kill her. Murder her in a manner that will look like an accident."
"Aces. Oh, come on. You're crazy. Either you're crazy. Or he is."
"On this particular subject, yes, I believe he is crazy. Hey," he said, "I just noticed something. Where's your dog?"
"I gave her to the lady upstairs."
"Well, well, well. I can see you really were quite impressed."
I walked all the way home from the Proustian-ghosted corridors of the Ritz to the rickety rat-trap halls of my hotel near the Gare du Nord. An elation lightened the journey—at last I wasn't a deadbeat expatriate, an aimless loser; I was a man with a mission in life, an assignment; and like some cub scout about to embark on his first overnight hike, my mind childishly churned with preparations. Clothes; I would need shirts, shoes, some good new suits, for nothing in my wardrobe would survive scrutiny in strong sunlight. And a weapon; tomorrow I would buy a.38 revolver and start practice at a shooting range. I walked fast, not simply because it was cold with that Seine-damp misty coldness peculiar to Paris, but because I hoped the exercise would so exhaust me that I would fall into dreamless sleep as soon as I put my head against a pillow. And I did.
But it was not a dreamless sleep. I well understand why analysts demand high payment, for what can be more tedious than listening to another person recount his dreams? But I'll chance boring you with the dream I dreamt that night, because in future time it came to be realized in almost every detail. In the beginning the dream was motionless, a seaside scene like a Boudin painting at the turn of the century. Still figures on a vast beach with an aquamarine sea just beyond them. A man, a woman, a dog, a young boy. The woman is wearing an ankle-length taffeta dress—sea breezes seem to be teasing its skirt; and she is carrying a green parasol. The man sports a straw boater; the boy is outfitted in a sailor suit. Eventually the picture comes into much closer focus, and I recognize the woman under the parasol—she's Kate McCloud. And the man, who now reaches to hold her hand, is myself. Suddenly the sailor-suited child seizes a stick and throws it into the waves; the dog rushes to retrieve it, and races back, shaking itself and shimmering the air with crystals of sea water.
III
LA CÔTE BASQUE
Overheard in a cowboy bar in Roswell, New Mexico… FIRST COWBOY: Hey, Jed. How are you? How you feeling? SECOND COWBOY: Good! Real good. I feel so good I didn't have to jack off this morning to get my heart started.
"Carissimo!" she cried. "You're just what I'm looking for. A lunch date. The duchess stood me up."
Black or white?" I said.
"White," she said, reversing my direction on the sidewalk.
White is Wallis Windsor, whereas the Black Duchess is what her friends call Perla Apfeldorf, the Brazilian wife of a notoriously racist South African diamond industrialist. As for the lady who also knew the distinction, she was indeed a lady—Lady Ina Coolbirth, an American married to a British chemicals tycoon and a lot of woman in every way. Tall, taller than most men, Ina was a big breezy peppy broad, born and raised on a ranch in Montana.
"This is the second time she's canceled," Ina Coolbirth continued. "She says she has hives. Or the duke as hives. One or the other. Anyway, I've still got a table at Côte Basque. So, shall we? Because I do so need someone to talk to, really. And, thank God, Jonesy, it can be you."
Côte Basque is on East Fifty-fifth Street, directly across from the St. Regis. It was the site of the original Le Pavillon, founded in I940 by the honorable restaurateur Henri Soulé. M. Soulé abandoned the premises because of a feud with his landlord, the late president of Columbia Pictures, a sleazy Hollywood hood named Harry Cohn (who, upon learning that Sammy Davis, Jr., was «dating» his blond star Kim Novak, ordered a hit man to call Davis and tell him: "Listen, Sambo, you're already missing one eye. How'd you like to try for none?" The next day Davis married a Las Vegas chorus girl-colored). Like Côte Basque, the original Pavillon consisted of a small entrance area, a bar to the left of this, and in the rear, through an archway, a large red-plush dining room. The bar and main room formed an Outer Hebrides, an Elba to which Soulé exiled second-class patrons. Preferred clients, selected by the proprietor with unerring snobbisme, were placed in the banquette-lined entrance area-a practice pursued by every New York restaurant of established chic: Lafayette, The Colony, La Grenouille, La Caravelle. These tables, always nearest the door, are drafty, afford the least privacy, but nevertheless, to be seated at one, or not, is a status-sensitive citizen's moment of truth. Harry Cohn never m
ade it at Pavillon. It didn't matter that he was a hotshot Hollywood hottentot or even that he was Soulé's landlord. Soulé saw him for the shoulder-padded counter-jumper Cohn was and accordingly ushered him to a table in the sub-zero regions of the rear room. Cohn cursed, he buffed, puffed, revenged himself by upping and upping the restaurant's rent. So Soulé simply moved to more regal quarters in the Ritz Tower. However, while Soulé was still settling there, Harry Cohn cooled (Jerry Wald, when asked why he attended the funeral, replied: "Just to be sure the bastard was dead"), and Soulé, nostalgic for his old stamping ground, again leased the address from the new custodians and created, as a second enterprise, a sort of boutique variation on Le Pavillon: La CôteBasque.
Lady Ina, of course, was allotted an impeccable position-the fourth table on the left as you enter. She was escorted to it by none other than M. Soulé, distrait as ever, pink and glazed as a marzipan pig.
"Lady Coolbirth…" he muttered, his perfectionist eyes spinning about in search of cankered roses and awkward waiters. "Lady Coolbirth… umn… very nice… umn… and Lord Coolbirth?… umn… today we have on the wagon a very nice saddle of lamb.
She consulted me, a glance, and said: "I think not anything off the wagon. It arrives too quickly. Let's have something that takes forever. So that we can get drunk and disorderly. Say a soufflé Furstenberg. Could you do that, Monsieur Soulé?"
He tutted his tongue—on two counts: he disapproves of customers dulling their taste buds with alcohol, and also: "Furstenberg is a great nuisance. An uproar."
Delicious, though: a froth of cheese and spinach into which an assortment of poached eggs has been sunk strategically, so that, when struck by your fork, the soufflé is moistened with golden rivers of egg yolk.
"An uproar," said Ina, "is exactly what I want," and the proprietor, touching his sweat-littered forehead with a bit of handkerchief, acquiesced.
Then she decided against cocktails, saying: "Why not have a proper reunion?" From the wine steward she ordered a bottle of Roederer's Cristal. Even for those who dislike champagne, myself among them, there are two champagnes one can't refuse: Dom Pérignon and the even superior Cristal, which is bottled in a natural-colored glass that displays its pale blaze, a chilled fire of such prickly dryness that, swallowed, seems not to have been swallowed at all, but instead to have turned to vapors on the tongue and burned there to one damp sweet ash.
"Of course," said Ina, "champagne does have one serious drawback: swilled as a regular thing, a certain sourness settles in the tummy, and the result is permanent bad breath. Really incurable. Remember Arturo's breath, bless his heart? And Cole adored champagne. God, I do miss Cole so, dotty as he was those last years. Did I ever tell you the story about Cole and the stud wine steward? I can't remember quite where he worked. He was Italian, so it couldn't have been here or Pav. The Colony? Odd: I see him clearly-a nut-brown man, beautifully flat, with oiled hair and the sexiest jawline-but I can't see wbere I see him. He was a southern Italian, so they called him Dixie, and Teddie Whitestone got knocked up by him-Bill Whitestone aborted her himself under the impression it was his doing. And perhaps it wasin quite another context-but still I think it rather dowdy, unnatural, if you will, a doctor aborting his own wife. Teddie Whitestone wasn't alone; there was a queue of gals greasing Dixie's palm with billetsdoux. Cole's approach was creative: he invited Dixie to his apartment under the pretext of getting advice on the laying in of a new wine cellar-Cole! who knew more about wine than that dago ever dreamed. So they were sitting there on the couch the lovely suede one Billy Baldwin made for Cole-all very informal, and Cole kisses this fellow on the cheek, and Dixie grins and says: 'That will cost you five hundred dollars, Mr. Porter.' Cole just laughs and squeezes Dixie's leg. 'Now that will cost you a thousand dollars, Mr. Porter.' Then Cole realized this piece of pizza was serious; and so he unzippered him, hauled it out, shook it, and said: 'What will be the full price on the use of that?' Dixie told him two thousand dollars. Cole went straight to his desk, wrote a check and handed it to him. And he said: 'Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today. Now get out.'
The Cristal was being poured. Ina tasted it. "It's not cold enough. But ahhh!" She swallowed again. "I do miss Cole. And Howard Sturgis. Even Papa; after all, he did write about me in Green Hills of Africa. And Uncle Willie. Last week in London I went to a party at Drue Heinz's and got stuck with Princess Margaret. Her mother's a darling, but the rest of that family! — though Prince Charles may amount to something. But basically, royals think there are just three categories: colored folk, white folk, and royals. Well, I was about to doze off, she's such a drone, when suddenly she announced, apropos of nothing, that she had decided she really didn't like 'poufs'! An extraordinary remark, source considered. Remember the joke about who got the first sailor? But I simply lowered my eyes, très Jane Austen, and said: 'In that event, ma'am, I fear you will spend a very lonely old age.' Her expression! — I thought she might turn me into a pumpkin."
There was an uncharacteristic bite and leap to Ina's voice, as though she were speeding along helter-skelter to avoid confiding what it was she wanted, but didn't want, to confide. My eyes and ears were drifting elsewhere. The occupants of a table placed catty-corner to ours were two people I'd met together in Southampton last summer, though the meeting was not of such import that I expected them to recognize me-Gloria Vanderbilt de Cicco Stokowski Lumet Cooper and her childhood chum Carol Marcus Saroyan Saroyan (she married him twice) Matthau: women in their late thirties, but looking not much removed from those deb days when they were grabbing Lucky Balloons at the Stork Club.
"But what can you say," inquired Mrs. Matthau of Mrs. Cooper, "to someone who's lost a good lover, weighs two hundred pounds, and is in the dead center of a nervous collapse? I don't think she's been out of bed for a month. Or changed the sheets. 'Maureen'-this is what I did tell her-'Maureen, I've been in a lot worse condition than you. I remember once when I was going around stealing sleeping pills out of other people's medicine cabinets, saving up to bump myself off. I was in debt up to here, every penny I had was borrowed…'»
"Darling," Mrs. Cooper protested with a tiny stammer, "why didn't you come to me?"
"Because you're rich. It's much less difficult to borrow from the poor."
"But, darling…"
Mrs. Matthau proceeded. "So I said: 'Do you know what I did, Maureen? Broke as I was, I went out and hired myself a personal maid. My fortunes rose, my outlook changed completely, I felt loved and pampered. So if I were you, Maureen, I'd go into hock and hire some very expensive creature to run my bath and turn down the bed.' Incidentally, did you go to the Logans' party?"
"For an hour."
"How was it?"
"Marvelous. If you've never been to a party before."
"I wanted to go. But you know Walter. I never imagined I'd marry an actor. Well, marry perhaps. But not for love. Yet here I've been stuck with Walter all these years and it still makes me curdle if I see his eye stray a fraction. Have you seen this new Swedish cunt called Karen something?"
"Wasn't she in some spy picture?"
"Exactly. Lovely face. Divine photographed from the bazooms up. But the legs are strictly redwood forest. Absolute tree trunks. Anyway, we met her at the Widmarks' and she was moving her eyes around and making all these little noises for Walter's benefit, and I stood it as long as I could, but when I heard Walter say 'How old are you, Karen?' I said 'For God's sake, Walter, why don't you chop off her legs and read the rings?'"
"Carol! You didn't."
"You know you can always count on me."
"And she heard you?"
"It wouldn't have been very interesting if she hadn't."
Mrs. Matthau extracted a comb from her purse and began drawing it through her long albino hair: another leftover from her World War II debutante nights—an era when she and all her compères, Gloria and Honeychile and Oona and Jinx, slouched against El Morocco upholstery ceaselessly raking their Veronica Lake locks.
&n
bsp; "I had a letter from Oona this morning," Mrs. Matthau said.
"So did I," Mrs. Cooper said.
"Then you know they're having another baby."
"Well, I assumed so. I always do."
"That Charlie is a lucky bastard," said Mrs. Matthau.
"Of course, Oona would have made any man a great wife."
"Nonsense. With Oona, only geniuses need apply. Before she met Charlie, she wanted to marry Orson Welles… and she wasn't even seventeen. It was Orson who introduced her to Charlie; he said: 'I know just the guy for you. He's rich, he's a genius, and there's nothing that he likes more than a dutiful young daughter.'"
Mrs. Cooper was thoughtful. "If Oona hadn't married Charlie, I don't suppose I would have married Leopold."
"And if Oona hadn't married Charlie, and you hadn't married Leopold, I wouldn't have married Bill Saroyan. Twice yet."
Answered Prayers Page 11