The Swans of Fifth Avenue(55)
“I think whoever it’s for will be unable to resist you for a second.”
“Then I’ll take it. And thank you, my dearest friend.” Slim ran to Babe and threw her arms about her, kissed her on the cheek, then fled back to the dressing room, leaving them both breathless and slightly dizzy from the unexpected physical contact.
They simply didn’t do that, normally. Friendship among their set was sedate, wry, at arm’s length.
But something about Babe today—how pale, how uncertain she had looked before Slim called out to her, her hesitancy in discussing Truman—touched Slim to the core. In taking Babe’s gift, Slim felt she was giving, instead. Giving Babe something she very much needed.
“Let’s go make sure Truman doesn’t forget us,” Slim urged, after Babe had paid for the gown. “Let’s go buy him the kind of present that he likes. Something shiny and garish and too damn expensive for him to ignore.”
“That’s a wonderful idea!” Babe’s eyes lit up. “Something for his new apartment; I know exactly what he needs—he saw the most exquisite foo dogs at this little antiques store on Seventh Avenue.”
“Seventh Avenue it is!” As the two women exited Bergdorf’s, the CBS limo was already waiting for them. Mr. Stevens had done his job well. They handed their purchases, wrapped up in the signature Bergdorf purple, to the driver, who carefully placed them in the trunk.
Then they sank down into the seats, and were driven two blocks west.
“It’s fun, sometimes, pretending,” Babe said.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, today. Today, I just pretended I was someone else. It was fun, in a way. Not to be me, just to be a person. A normal person.”
Slim gnawed her lip, watching her friend settle happily into the plush leather of the sedan. She looked outside the window; they were stuck in traffic, people walking briskly by. They could have strolled to the shop faster than their luxurious car was moving.
“Darling Babe,” Slim murmured, taking her friend’s hand.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just don’t pretend too often, please. I love you just the way you are. And so does Bill. And so does Truman.”
Babe blushed and folded her arms; she looked outside and didn’t say a word. But Slim glimpsed a tear rolling down her cheek, reflected in the discreetly tinted windows of the Town Car.
CHAPTER 12
…..
New York loved a parade.
For war heroes, baseball players, prizefighters, presidents, holidays. Ticker tape raining down from the tallest buildings; ridiculous giant balloons floating down Broadway for Thanksgiving. Fireworks over the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July.
But as much as he wanted to, longed to, ached to, Truman Capote could not give himself a parade. Or erect a statue in his own honor. Or name a park after himself. Or rent the Statue of Liberty.
Second to parades, statues, and parks, then, New York loved a party. A really splendid soiree. The Mrs. Astor’s famous Patriarch’s balls, admission only to the Four Hundred as determined by her little lapdog, Ward McAllister. Mrs. Vanderbilt’s costume ball to christen her new mansion, the one that the Mrs. Astor deigned to attend, thus allowing those upstart Vanderbilts into real Society and ushering in the excesses of the Gilded Age. The Bradley-Martins’ infamous Louis XIV party, given in the middle of one of the worst recessions in American history. The Bradley-Martins felt it necessary to leave the country soon after. But every single guest thought it a fabulous time.
Then there were the more recent parties before the war, given by the legendary Elsa Maxwell, that corpulent darling of society. Elsa invented the scavenger hunt: heiresses in their evening clothes accosting hobos for scraps of food, canned goods, whatever was on the list, screeching with laughter, running off with prizes. Treasure hunts in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, millionaires elbowing one another viciously for tin trinkets and plastic whistles.
Then there were the charity galas and openings galore, one practically every night during the season; socialites and their reluctant husbands dressed to the nines. But it was always for a good cause! It was work, really. One simply had to do her part, no matter how tiring it might be, planning a wardrobe for an entire season, spending hours before the mirror ensuring that each gown was flattering from any angle, because, really, one could not trust those photographers to capture the most beguiling aspect.
But there hadn’t been a truly grand party, an honest-to-God, “Honey, let’s get Grandmama’s tiara out,” fancy-dress party in decades. And Truman decided it was his duty to rectify this.
All summer long—the summer of 1966, the golden summer, as even then he knew he would look back on it; the summer of his ascendancy to the very top of the world, literary, popular, social—Truman sang a little tune to himself.
Well, didja evah, what a swell party, a swell party, a swellegant elegant party, this is….
For Truman was going to throw himself a party in lieu of a parade. A party so grand, so exclusive, it would keep him in the headlines for months. It would make those who weren’t invited weep and flee the country, or change their names and go into hiding. It would go down in history as the most, the cherry on top of the sundae, the caviar on top of the toast. The diamond as big as the Ritz.
And so that golden summer, as Truman lounged poolside at his friends’ mansions, sunned himself on their yachts in the Mediterranean, even on the rare occasions it was only him and Jack, silent but companionable on the beach between their adjacent houses in Southampton, he planned (when he wasn’t clipping reviews for his scrapbook, or giving interviews, or posing for photographs). He schemed. He was never without his notebook, a plain, black-covered lined notebook, and he wrote down and crossed out names, over and over and over again. For he was Ward McAllister and the Mrs. Astor and himself, Truman Capote, literary giant/social arbiter, all rolled into one.