The Swans of Fifth Avenue(89)
“I started it, Truman, but then I fell asleep. And then someone threw the magazine away while I slept.”
“I can get you another one, you know—”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t have time for that right now. My wife is very sick.”
And then Bill hung up.
His wife! Not Babe, not their shared dream, not his dearest friend in the world. But simply “my wife.” As if Truman didn’t know her at all.
Oh, the bitches! Bitches, all! And he was glad, glad, glad that he’d stung them so. Look what it was doing to his career! Look at how many more people recognized him on the street!
“I simply don’t understand,” Truman said, with a sorrowful, superior sigh, to Jack, to Liz Smith, to C.Z., to anyone who would take his call these days, who were never the people he wanted, after all. “They knew I was a writer. They knew I’d remember everything. What did they expect? And Babe! I really thought she was smarter than that. More sophisticated. Doesn’t she get it, that I love her so, even if Bill never did? And now the world knows what a bastard he is. I did it for her! Doesn’t she understand that?”
“You did it for yourself, Truman,” was all Jack replied. He never, not once, said, “I told you so.”
“Well, so what? So what if I did? I have to look out for myself, don’t I? Nobody else ever has.”
And so he girded himself; he booked a facial, a manicure, he bought some new clothes and took a flight back to the East Coast, descending upon Manhattan like a potentate. Grandly, he granted interviews, cooperated with Liz Smith in her article—“Truman Capote in Hot Water”—and fanned the fires of scandal, dancing ever faster as the flames leapt ever higher. He lunched at La C?te Basque, accompanied by photographers; he grinned devilishly up at the camera as he brandished a knife and fork. When Esquire ran another story, Truman gleefully posed for the cover dressed in black, pretending to file his fingernail with a stiletto.
Truman Strikes Back! Another Excerpt from Answered Prayers!
And that was it for Answered Prayers. He didn’t have much of anything else written, and he knew, now, he never would. But he didn’t tell anyone, not even Jack.
His phone rang; it rang off the hook. Mostly it was people eager to tell him just whose party he hadn’t been invited to.
“Never mind,” he told one and all. “I’ve been thinking of giving another party myself, you know, even better than my famous Black and White Ball! And this time, I won’t invite any of those old dinosaurs, those ancient swans. This time, baby, it’s only the fabulous people!”
But he didn’t give another ball. For some reason, all he could picture was an image of himself standing in an empty ballroom, holding a lone balloon.
“Who needed the Plaza, anyway?” Truman told Johnny, told Dick, told the world; the world that still listened to him, at any rate. Why, disco was where it was at! What a thrilling, absolutely divine time to live! Truman Capote and Studio 54—soon the names were joined together, he was just as much a fixture as Halston and Liza and Bianca. He danced until his eyes rolled back in his head while the cameras flashed away; he had sweaty sex in the basement dungeons with anonymous young centaurs who didn’t hide their disgust at his bloated, decaying body, but who could be bought with handfuls of coke and a few dropped names. He told himself this was where it was at, baby; he was there, here, in, not out; he was dancing, spinning, twirling—top of the world, Ma!
So he wasn’t invited to spend an endless, pampered summer on Gloria’s yacht anymore, every whim catered to, Babe and Gloria and Loel and Bill hanging on his every word, applauding, adoring? So what?
So Mrs. Vreeland didn’t include him in her elegant dinners any longer, although she did at least have lunch with him in her office, on occasion, when no one else was around. So what?
So he spent too many nights passed out on his velvet couch, the television flickering ghostly images across his closed lids, dreaming of Babe, of lying next to her in her bed, not touching, not possessing, but belonging so thoroughly that he woke up sobbing, terrified he was in one of those locked hotel rooms of his childhood, his pulse racing, his skin clammy, his mouth so dry he couldn’t cry out despite the despair clawing its way out of his belly, up his throat, pounding his brain?
So what?
He saw the other swans sometimes. They couldn’t keep him from the Met Gala, even if they tried. He’d taken an excruciating elevator ride with Gloria at Bergdorf’s one day; she hadn’t seen him when she got in. “Hello, Truman,” she said icily, and that was that; La Guinness turned so that all he could see was her exquisite profile, her delicately etched face perched on that glorious neck. Her eyes flashed darkly, every muscle in that neck was clenched, but she didn’t say one more word. He got out on the very next floor and took another elevator back down, where he ran out on the street, flung himself on the edges of the Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza—the spray of the water splotched his linen suit—and he was unable to remember why he’d gone into Bergdorf’s in the first place. Then he put on his dark sunglasses and swept through the lobby of the Plaza, all the way back to the Oak Room Bar, where he had six martinis and had to be poured into a cab.
Once he telegrammed Slim—Big Mama, I’ve decided to forgive you. Now, how could she resist that? Big Mama, with her sense of humor, her love for her True Heart?