The Swans of Fifth Avenue(49)

But who hadn’t f*cked something up at some time in her life? She certainly had. How eager had she been, as a young debutante, to distance herself from her privileged life? She remembered how she’d cringed to see her name added to the Social Register—Miss Lucy Douglas Cochrane, and nobody called her that, ever; from childhood she was C.Z., because her idiot brother couldn’t pronounce Sissy—and to see her real name, her proper Bostonian name, printed like that had been like having a brand ironed into her flesh, like she was simply part of a breed. A special, rarefied, privileged breed, but still. So she’d vowed to do something, anything, to be kicked out of it, to be different, to stand alone as brave as a solitary dandelion in a well-tended lawn.

So she ran. With her money, her youthful bravado, and her good looks—in those days, she did tend to linger in front of mirrors more than she should (and as, she had to admit, most of her friends still did). She admired her profile the most, that sharply etched cameo, all her features both strong and delicate at the same time. Her hair was always a champagne blond (although, yes, she used a rinse now to maintain it). She was tall and leggy, and she made the most of that, first by appearing in the forties as a showgirl in one of the last editions of the Ziegfeld Follies—oh, Christ, how Mama and Papa had seethed! But not to the point of disinheriting her, which, she had to admit, would have brought her home in a flash. C.Z. loved money. She just didn’t love the pretentious crap that went along with it.

After the Follies—where she had enjoyed being pawed over by stage-door Johnnies—she’d fled to Hollywood; she’d taken some acting lessons, landed a contract at Twentieth Century–Fox but ultimately never appeared in anything. Movie work wasn’t for her, the lights and costumes and makeup and all that. She felt as if her skin couldn’t really breathe; she felt fake and more pretentious than she had as a debutante. Plus, as she soon discovered, being a movie star required discipline. She’d been dismayed to find that no party lasted past nine or ten P.M., as everyone had to go home and get enough rest to appear fresh in front of the cameras early in the morning.

So off she went to Mexico. That was a time! Bullfights and languid, sultry nights full of festive music and carpets of bougainvillea, vivid even under the stars. Drifting and dancing and fishing and drinking, losing herself, shedding her patrician skin, her stiff clothes and calfskin shoes replaced by peasant blouses, skirts, and huaraches. Abandoning herself altogether; C.Z. grinned as she bent over to pull up an impudent dandelion from her lawn, remembering how she had reclined on a dusty couch in Diego Rivera’s study for a couple weeks, letting his lascivious gaze wash over her as he painted her nude form, preserved it for posterity.

The portrait now hung in her Florida home, in a room no one ever used. For C.Z. had found, to her horror, that she could not completely shed her pedigreed skin, after all. After those wandering couple of years, she’d hightailed it home, back to the safety of money and privilege and class, married Winston Guest, much older but so damn handsome, a polo player of international renown and possessor of a great fortune and even greater pedigree, and she’d resumed the life mapped out for her from birth. Rather happily, she thought. As long as she could still have a little—proper—fun.

But she’d sown her wild oats, at least. She couldn’t say that for everyone in her acquaintance—Babe, for instance. The poor soul wouldn’t know a wild oat if it were wrapped in a Louis Vuitton handbag. She never had the chance, C.Z. supposed. Something in her personality, something closed off and timid. The wildest oat Babe had ever sown, C.Z. mused, was in allowing herself to become so besotted with Truman that she dropped her guard, for the first and now, probably, last time in her life.

Oh, Truman! The little devil! C.Z. plopped down in a chaise longue and stared at her long, narrow feet, toenails painted a vivid fuchsia. Dammit. C.Z. still liked Truman, would even if he had used her in that damn story, which he had not. But he had gone off the rails, rather. He’d always been charming, amusing, gossipy, but never downright bitchy. His self-importance, his astonishing self-confidence, had been benign.

Until In Cold Blood.

Yes, it all came back to that, didn’t it? His greatest achievement. His greatest failure. Because the only thing he’d written since was this; this bitchy little story in Esquire that apparently was bringing hellfire and brimstone down around Truman’s pudgy little head. And that had murdered one of her tribe, if all the gossip was to be trusted. At least that’s what Slim had said this morning when she’d called, furious, to ask if C.Z. had read it.

“La C?te Basque 1965.” Christ. Even the title was dreadful.

Well, she’d have him down here when he was finished shooting that terrible movie in California, make a fuss over him, coddle him, protect him. For a while, anyway. But he’d have to sink or swim on his own, as she had, as she’d taught her children to do. She rather doubted that he’d swim, however.

He didn’t have the breeding, the pedigree. He wasn’t a thoroughbred. It was a damn shame, but there it was.

C.Z. shook her head, rose, and went off to find the gardener.

That dandelion simply didn’t belong.





CHAPTER 11


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Babe put down her signed copy of In Cold Blood, which Truman had pressed into her hand only last night. His own hands had trembled; his entire body had pulsated with pride, accomplishment, and, perhaps, a touch of fear?