‘Be? Where you’ll be? You’ll be on the lot by nine tomorrow morning.’
‘I’m terribly sorry, Darryl, but I’ll be gone by then.’
‘Need I remind you that you’re under contract?’
‘Yes, that is a shame—and I’m sorry about that.’
‘You’ll never work again, if you do this.’
‘Well, thank Gahhhh-d for that.’
‘Lucy honey, listen—’
‘Goodbye for now, Darryl. I’ll let you know, as soon as I get where I’m going.’
With a satisfied smile she hung up the telephone and stepped out of the booth, going in search of a libation to celebrate her liberation.
VIGNETTE
ALT: 37,000 FEET
AIR SPEED: 560 M.P.H. (486 KNOTS)
ETA: 55 MINS
TRUMAN TURNED HIS head, looking for the stewardess, nowhere to be found. Left with little choice, he reached in the inner pocket of his linen jacket and pulled out a silver flask.
C.Z. raised a judgmental brow. ‘Really… ?’
‘Well, dear heart, what was I supposed to do, continue to hide it and let us go parched? Besides, they’ll only confiscate it when they strip-search me tomorrow, so I figure why not live it up now… ?’
‘Lahst. Hurrah. Do you hear me?’ She found him hard to resist when he was Old Truman. Happy, chatty. He had been himself so seldom of late.
‘Whatever you say, boss lady. But until such time, would you care for a li’l refresher?’
She pushed her glass toward him on the tray table and he opened the flask, taking the greatest care to steady his hands.
‘You know, bustah… soon you’ll be a changed man. You’ve ghat to be.’
He shrugged in return, taking a greedy sip. ‘Got to? What for?’
‘Truman, you have great things left to write, my dahling.
You’re a champion.’ Then, with fierce conviction, ‘You’re a win-ahhhh.’
He looked at her, his eyes wide. ‘My sweetest Sis, do you really think… ? After all that’s… ?’ His small voice trailed away.
She set her drink aside, gripping his arm, shaking him force-fully. ‘You, Truman Streckfus Persons Capote, are the greatest writer I’ve ever known, and you’ve got more of that left in you. You go and show them—show them all how wrong they are. You make the most beautiful gawddamn piece of ahhhhh-rt they ever laid eyes on.’
‘But Sissy. Nobody cares. Not anymore. It’s too late.’
‘Now you listen to me— It’s nevah too late to come from behind to win the whole damn race.’ She held his gaze until he fluttered his butterfly lids away, looking into his drink.
‘Less Truman, more Lucy.’
‘Fuck Lucy,’ said she who used to be her.
‘Sissy—you promised.’
‘Oh Truman, it was so long ago. I’m me—Lucy was another lifetime ago.’
‘You’re both my heroines. She’s no less real than you. No less real than Nina or Slim, or Holly Golightly or Babe…’ At the sound of Babe’s name his eyes clouded. ‘Please, Sissy, more Lucy. She is you and I love you both so…’
‘Ahlright, Truman. But only this once.’
‘So. Where does a gal go after walking out on Hollywood?’
‘She picks a place at random.’
‘In Lucy’s case?’
‘Mexico.’
Act IV
IN VINO VERITAS
SHE WAS SITTING in ciro’s bar in the Hotel Reforma. That much she remembered.
She had chosen Mexico for the sole reason that she had never been there—she had seen an ad in a magazine at Union Station as she sat with her Brandy Alexander and thought that it looked festive. Plenty of sky, of white sandy beaches. Photos of tourists waterskiing and skydiving. Lush hills. Flowers of every variety. She bought a ticket to Mexico City for no other reason than it happened to strike her fancy, and having no one to answer to but herself, she telegrammed home once she’d installed herself in the Hotel Reforma.
It was there she sat one afternoon, sipping a daiquiri, flipping through the racing forms for the Hipódromo de las Américas, that her next role found her. It approached in the most unlikely of forms—a bull of a man in workman’s overalls, splattered with color.
‘Buenas tardes, señorita.’
Lucy looked up from her racing form. ‘Buenas tardes, señor.’
It was an off hour, the bar nearly empty.
‘¿Tu eres americano?’
‘Sí.’
‘¿Cómo se llama?’
‘Mi nombre es Lucy… Lucy Cochrane.’ She smiled, vaguely apologetic. ‘I’m afraid that’s the extent of my Spanish.’
He smiled in return, an open, confident grin. ‘Well, we shall see how we get on with my English. May I join you?’ His face would have been comical, had his gaze been less sincere. Wide-set eyes at a disconcerting distance. Grooves beneath—permanent bags, too deeply set to budge.
Lucy hesitated. She just wanted to read her racing forms in peace, but she nodded and folded the paper. He called to the barman, ‘Una botella de vino y dos copas.’
She motioned toward her daiquiri. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘No.’ He settled into the leather chair opposite, in a seated position, gut rising almost as high as his chin. Not a bit of him seemed concerned that this might dampen his ability to charm. His dark eyes flashed with merriment. Enjoying his patriarchal show.
‘“No”?’ she challenged. ‘I’m accustomed to ordering my own drinks, Señor… ?’
‘Rivera.’
‘I’m accustomed to ordering for myself, Señor Rivera. And a cool daiquiri was my preference, as you can see.’
‘Yes. But. Today, together, we will drink wine.’
‘And why should I alter my afternoon plans?’
‘Because I am very interesting. And I can see you are very interesting too.’
She laughed, as a gold-vested waiter delivered two glasses and a bottle of Rojo.
‘Why wine?’
The big man leaned forward, uncorked the bottle, and poured. Lucy thought his great distended belly looked as if it might pop.
‘There is a phrase in Latin in which I happen to hold credence— in vino veritas.’
‘I took Latin in school but I never paid attention.’
‘It means: “in wine, truth.”’
‘In that case…’ She lifted her glass to him. ‘A tu salud.’
‘To your beauty,’ he returned. ‘For surely someone so radiant is in possession of health already.’ He knocked back a glass in a long, deliberate guzzle. ‘So, Señorita Cochrane. You are American. From where do you come?’
‘From Los Angeles, I suppose… by way of Boston and Manhattan.’
‘Ah—I too was in Manhattan. For a brief time.’
‘And what were your impressions?
‘Lo odio! It is full of capitalist pigs, Manhattan. Do you know the son of Rockefeller? Nelson? He commissioned a work from me in his building.’
‘You’re a painter, I presume.’ She nodded to the splatters that covered his overalls.
‘A muralist. He commissioned a mural for the lobby of his Treinta Rockefeller Plaza.’
‘I know it well.’ Lucy brightened, recalling the magic of the Rainbow Room’s carousel floor, its spectrum of shades. She had a vague memory of a scandal in the press… ‘Do go on.’
‘He knew my work—had seen the kind of thing I painted. Political work. Work with una conciencia… The work of the people. And he commissioned my services.’
‘And… ?’
‘He shied away from the truth. He wanted me to paint the common man. A portrait of man striving… Man at the Cross-roads, it was to be called. It was a celebration of technology. Of human effort. A battle of class. I gave him the cosmos… the universe. Well, the rica puta was much too much a chicken. He ran scared when Lenin appeared in the mural.’
‘Appeared?’
‘He told me he wanted to be there.’
‘And
Mr. Rockefeller?’
‘He demanded that I change it. I refused.’
‘Whatever did you say?’
‘I said I would rather see my mural destroyed than ruined by a capitalist conejillo de pollo! And so he took his chisels and his hammers to my work. It was shattered into a thousand pieces.’
‘I apologize for my countrymen.’
‘Gracias, señorita. I painted it again. Here, in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The very next year. I renamed it Man Controller of the Universe. Because the universe was in my hands once more.’ He lifted his hands where she might admire them. They indeed looked capable. ‘I favor the new work. It is bold, as it should be. It captures the chaos of the modern world.’ His fat face wrinkled with a wicked pleasure. ‘I added yet another portrait that demanded inclusion…’
‘Let me guess. Mr. Rockefeller?’
‘I place him with a young pedazo de culo… a microscope slide of syphilis hovering just above his head.’ He chortled, pleased with himself.
‘I would love to see your work, Señor Rivera.’
He refilled his glass of wine, topping up hers in the process.
‘Tell me, Señorita Cochrane, what do you make of the portraits on these walls?’
Lucy looked around the bar. Hanging at regular intervals were portraits of women. Sensual portraits. All nudes. Romanticized female forms, for the most part enveloped in floral cocoons. Lilies as big as their heads, some discreetly covering faces, masking the sitter’s identity, some draped over the subject’s sex. Some bared their bodies, hands laced in their hair, breasts pointed proud toward the viewer. There was something simple in the style of them. Folk art… yet seductive.
‘They’re very sensual,’ she said. ‘They celebrate the female form in a way that is unique.’
‘In what way unique?’
‘Well, the style is uniform… so at first glance the women seem interchangeable. But…’
‘But… ?’
‘When one looks closer, each woman is uniquely worshipped. Their attitudes toward their nakedness come through in their positioning… in their relation to the flowers.’
‘Well, Señorita Lucy. You have just assessed my work.’
‘Your work? But you said you were a political muralist.’
‘I am also an admirer of the female form.’
‘Good thing that I liked them.’
‘Señorita Cochrane, one honest critic is more valuable than a hundred false flatterers.’
‘They really are quite beautiful.’
‘Would you like one?’
‘Would I—? Goodness, I would love to have one! But I hardly have a home at the moment to hang— —’
‘No. I’ve not been clear. Would you like one… of you?’
Lucy stared at him. Slowly, ‘Are you asking me to pose for you, Señor Rivera?’
‘Diego.’ He attempted to lean closer, a supplicatory gesture, but his balloon gut prevented it. ‘I see you, as I once saw the women on these walls, in your purest form.’
‘Naked, in other words.’
‘You see, I can tell—in an instant—when a woman needs to be painted. When she possesses something I want to immortalize. I know the female form… and I know who must be captured for the ages.’ He watched as she reached for the bottle of wine, pouring them each a full glass. ‘Have I offended you, señorita?’
A smile found its way into her inscrutable expression. ‘Would it matter if you had?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘Well, Diego,’ taking a long sip of her wine, ‘I think you’d better call me Lucy.’
HE SAW HER, he said, as an odalisque. Odalisca… a concubine in a harem.
While his other portraits in Ciro’s were vertical studies, posed upright against surreal bouquets of simple callas, of regional flora, Lucy’s would be horizontal, five times the scale. He would design it to mimic the dimensions of the Reforma bar, where it would be hung in pride of place. One glance at bonita Señorita Cochrane and the management agreed, for all were in accord that hers was the most beautiful of faces. And while grown men, many with wives and children, they blushed to think of the beauty that Señorita Cochrane’s clothing concealed.
Lucy’s portrait would be a departure from the folk art tradition of Diego’s previous nudes. Hers would be an ode to Renaissance portraiture—a reclining Venus. In the tradition of Titian’s Venus of Urbino with her classical grace. Of Manet’s Olympia, with her radical lack of modesty. He even tried to procure a peacock feather fan to replicate the pose in Ingres’s LaGrande Odalisque, but settled instead for a hand mirror as her prop, so that she might see herself throughout the sittings and thus enjoy the process.
For this she traveled to his studio in San Ángel—two houses, joined by a bridge. Modernist structures, a rare sight amid ado-bes and haciendas. One white and pink (for Diego), one cobalt blue (for Frida, his wife), a hedgerow of cacti and a shared gate between them.
In Diego’s studio the streamlined shell of the structure faded in a farrago of traditional Mexican artifacts. Los Judás figures crowded around the space, papier-mâché devils of every shape and size. Looming human puppet suits, massive in scale—mojigangas, he said they were called. The weight of their giant limbs balanced by the strength of those who wore them brought back visions of the torment of C.Z.’s Ziegfeld cages, which she told him about with a shudder. He’d laughed his robust laugh and his enormous belly wobbled.
‘Well, Señorita Lucy, I assure you, posing here will be far less arduous. The opposite of a cage.’ He motioned to a sheet of whit-est silk, draped over a chaise. Two down pillows awaited her platinum curls like a bed fit for a princess, or a courtesan, or a combination thereof. She’d been given a pale kimono to change into when she arrived. When she rejoined him, having shed her sweater and skirt and stockings and underthings, she saw on the table behind the chaise a goblet of wine. White this time—to match her hair, he’d later explain. He held a goblet of his own, which he raised to her.
‘In vino veritas.’
She smiled and sipped, enjoying the sensation of the cool liquid sliding down her throat.
‘How would you like me to… ?’
He nodded toward the chaise.
‘I’d like you to be free.’
She slid out of her robe and settled on her side—the left—half turned toward the painter. She could feel the warmth of the sun as it streamed in through the high windows in the space. Watched the particles of dust suspended in its shaft.
‘Perfection, Señora Lucy…’
‘“Señora”?’
‘Yes…’ he intoned with a kind of reverence. ‘For you came here as a girl. Now I see you as a woman.’ Lucy felt herself flush. ‘Do you see the mirror there?’ She nodded. ‘Take it and look at yourself. See yourself as I see you. Clothed in nothing but beauty.’
She lifted the mirror and held it up, studying her own reflection. She wasn’t the mutinous debutante, nor the painted actress. She thought, as she studied her face, that perhaps this was indeed Lucy, the woman. Free of expectations, of ambitions. Just a body, a brain, a soul.
‘Lucy…’ the painter called. Almost a whisper.
Without moving, she cut her eyes to his and held them until he stood, stretching his giant girth, and informed her there were tamales for lunch.
It was Lucy’s gaze—that very image that hung above the bar in the Hotel Reforma, confronting the patrons who ordered their drinks with the sexuality that simmered beneath the cool surface of the reclining odalisque—which Rivera christened Veritas.
VIGNETTE
ALT: 21,000 FEET
AIR SPEED: 465 M.P.H. (404 KNOTS)
ETA: 32 MINS
‘AND THAT’S THE portrait that hung for years at Templeton—in the pool house?!’
‘Yes, my dahling. The very same. Frankly, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.’
‘You were buck naked, honey. The Mayflower maids must be spinning in their graves… !’
&nbs
p; ‘Nothing we haven’t seen before… Two eggs, sunny sideup.’
‘Oh, but the lower half is quite risqué… But if memory serves me, wasn’t the snatch primly covered with a garland of flowers… ?’
‘Lilies. Pink Renoirs. They were added after the fact.’
‘And how did this scandalous portrait get from the Hotel Reforma to a pool house in a very private residence… ? Do I detect a jealous husband’s hand at play… ? Is this where the strapping Mr. Guest makes his entrance?’
Her expression softened. ‘Winston didn’t have a problem—at least he said he didn’t. He didn’t want to traumatize the family anymore than my carefully plotted wayward past already would. He didn’t want the Phipps and Churchill clans up in arms over the brazen harlot bride.’
‘How much did he have to shell out… ?’ Truman asked.
‘Fifteen thousand pesos. Just about three grand.’
‘A bargain!’
‘Three grand to buy back the reputation I tried so hard to sully. Ironic, isn’t it?’
‘Well, let’s face it, Sis, you didn’t do a very good job in that department. You ended up right back where you started… Ten-fold! The English banking Guests would make those Boston Brahmins practically weep with envy.’
‘Hmmmmmm.’
‘So you traveled all that way to end up a paradigm of society anyway.’
She smiled.
‘No. I traveled all that way to find home.’
Act V
MRS. GUEST
SHE SHOULD HAVE known, she’d later say, that it would have been horses that gave her a life back.
Bored by her acts of rebellion, C.Z.—who had ditched ‘Lucy’ in favor of her childhood nickname—had made her way back to Boston. She found purpose once more in sport, in the discipline of training. She loved the pungent smell of leather in the reins, loved the soft jangle of metal hardware. She thought the finest of sensations was the touch of a new filly’s coat. She had become quite serious in equestrian circles both in dressage and as a jumper. She was passionate about the fox hunt, and welcomed its formal rituals. She was invited to the hunts in Middleburg regularly, where she crossed paths with the then Jacqueline Bouvier, though she never quite took to her, Miss Bouvier being more focused on hunting husbands than foxes. C.Z. was there for the sport itself. Around the tables that inevitably followed the hunts, she preferred to forgo the societal chitchat and speak in numbers and statistics—the odds on racing forms. The pedigree of a Quarter Horse. The score on a polo board.
Swan Song Page 33