Four Blondes

by Candace Bushnell

  “Well?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  I stared at her, slitty-eyed. I took the shoes out of the box.

  “Put them on my feet, please,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is America. We don’t treat people like servants here.” And I stormed out of the dressing room and bumped into a tall, still good-looking middle-aged but WASPy man who said, “I’m looking for a something. For my wife.” And I said, “Is that MY problem?” And he said, “If you work here it is,” and I said, “It isn’t because I’m about to get fired.”

  “Really?” he said.

  And sure enough, I broke into sobs.

  “I know a famous art dealer who’s looking for an assistant for his new SoHo gallery,” the man said.

  “Will he treat me like a PROSTITUTE?” I said.

  “Prostitutes are very in right now. Everyone wants to be one. No woman wants to pay for her own Christian Lacroix and shouldn’t have to.”

  Naturally, the man turned out to be D.W.

  And now he’s sitting at an outside table at La Goulue, trying to work his cell phone. I slip onto the rickety white metal chair and say, “You’re wearing . . . seersucker?”

  He says, “It’s Valentino. Italian WASP.”

  “Ooooh. The newest thing, I suppose.”

  “As a matter of fact, it is. What’s your problem? Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?”

  “Can you get Bentley to lend Dianna a dress for the film festival?”

  “Dianna,” D.W. says, “is from Florida.”

  “You go to Florida.”

  “I go to Palm Beach. Palm Beach is not Florida.” D.W. pauses while the waiter pours fizzy water. “I’ve heard she’s from somewhere like . . . Tallahassee? I mean, who is from Tallahassee? That we know.”

  “No one,” I say.

  “Why does Dianna Moon want to wear Bentley, anyway? She could wear something from Fredricks of Hollywood and it would look the same.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “I don’t like this friendship with Dianna Moon. You understand, don’t you, that she’s just like Amanda. A more successful version of Amanda, if you can call what girls like Dianna Moon do ‘successful.’”

  “She’s a famous actress . . .”

  “Her career is, most likely, going nowhere. For some bizarre reason, possibly due to magazines like Vogue, this little upstart wants to come to New York and become the Leader of Society. And she’s going to use you to get there. She wants to be you. Just like Amanda.”

  “D.W.,” I sigh. “Society is dead.”

  He just looks at me.

  “She doesn’t want to be me. Maybe I want to be her,” I say.

  “Oh please,” D.W. says.

  “She’s enormously rich. And she doesn’t have . . . a husband.”

  “Because she killed him.”

  “He was killed by . . . evil forces. And parts of his body were carried off by aliens.”

  “Why are you hanging out with a Jesus freak?” D.W. asks calmly, signaling to the waiter.

  Good question. Because my mother is . . . strange?

  “It’s a very bad look for you. Very bad,” D.W. says.

  My mother came from a normal, upper-middle-class family, and her dad was a lawyer in Boston, but even today, years after she left the commune, she still refuses to dye her hair and wears Birkenstock sandals.

  “Dianna Moon could ruin everything,” D.W. says.

  “Your mother is so . . . charming,” Hubert said the first time he met her. But the implication was there: We don’t really want the press interviewing her, do we, darling? We don’t really want the press scratching around in your backyard.

  And in a lot of other places as well.

  “Dianna Moon is . . . fine,” I say.

  D.W. looks at me. “Well, just make sure you don’t get rid of Dianna the way you got rid of Amanda. That might be rather . . . obvious.”

  For some reason, we find this hysterically funny.

  VIII

  I’m in a car and Dianna’s driving way too fast and I know something bad is going to happen and sure enough, the car flies off the curve, launching itself over a cliff. We’re airborne forever and below is a giant slab of cement and even though this is a dream and we’re going to die, I can’t believe I haven’t woken up yet. Dianna turns to me and says, “I just want you to know that I love you. I really love you,” and she grabs me and hugs me and I can’t believe that I’m having a dream and I’m actually going to die in the fucking dream, which isn’t supposed to happen, and I say, “I love you too,” wondering what it’s going to feel like when we hit the cement. We plunge down and down and I’m going to die in this dream and doesn’t that mean you’re supposed to die in real life? And we hit the cement but it doesn’t feel as bad as I imagined it would, we just sort of squish through it and tumble out into this other place that is corridors and blue light.

  Okay. Now we’re dead, but we have to make a decision about whether or not we want to go back.

  I don’t know what to do.

  “I’m going back,” Dianna says.

  “What about me?” I say. “Should I go back?”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you, darling,” she says. “Your face is kind of . . . messed up.”

  She laughs meanly.

  It’s probably eleven A.M. and I do wake up, curled in the fetal position, wearing one of Dianna’s silk negligees with my white Gucci jacket on top and no underwear. Dianna is on the other side of the bed, lying on her back, breathing heavily through her mouth, and in between us is a small French man, whose name, I think, is Fabien, whom we picked up last night on some other yacht. There’s a spilled bottle of Dom Perignon on the carpet. I roll off the bed and crawl toward the bottle. There’s still some left in the bottom, and I sit up and polish it off sloppily so champagne dribbles down my chin. I look over at the small Frenchman, who might actually be Swiss, and note that he is wearing blue Ralph Lauren boxer shorts and has too much hair on his chest.

  My thoughts: I hate the French, so why should I go to Saint-Tropez?

  I get up and stumble out of Dianna’s cabin and into my own stateroom, which is littered with clothes (mostly tiny see-through Prada pieces with the labels prominently displayed) and Louis Vuitton luggage. I kick a small hard-sided suitcase out of the way and lurch into the bathroom, where I sit on the toilet and take what feels like an endless crap. As usual, the toilet doesn’t flush, and my shit, light brown and in the shape of a large cowpat, sits there defiantly.

  “Fuck you,” I say to the shit. I look in the mirror and pluck some eyebrow hairs, even though there’s supposedly a makeup artist on board who takes care of these things, and while I’m plucking and thinking that one of these days I’m probably going to need Botox, I’m also wondering if I did anything with the small Frenchman, but I’m quite sure I didn’t because it isn’t the kind of thing I WOULD do.

  I’ve only HAD four boyfriends.

  Officially.

  Dianna, on the other hand, will fuck anyone.

  I didn’t know that about her.

  And, I realize, I didn’t want to.

  Why am I here? For that matter, why am I anywhere?

  I go upstairs, reeling from the sudden impact of relentless white light. I’d forgotten about the white light in the south of France, so blinding that you always need sunglasses, and even then, it reveals too much. The captain, Paul, a good-looking Australian who is always wearing khaki shorts and a navy blue polo shirt with the name of the boat, Juniper Berry, discreetly stitched on the pocket, is fiddling with some instruments. “Good morning,” Paul says, like he’s surprised to see me but is prepared to ignore whatever went on the night before. “Oh, your husband called. Hubert? He says he can’t make it today, but he’s going to try to get here tomorrow.”

  My HUSBAND is coming?

  Did I KNOW about this?

  I am so hungover, I
can only nod numbly. After a few seconds I manage to stutter, “Are there any more cigarettes?”

  “You smoked the last one an hour ago.”

  I just stare at him, realizing that is probably some kind of JOKE that I don’t get and never will, and I say, “I think I’ll just go and buy some.”

  “There are photographers outside.”

  “Paul,” I say wearily. “There are always photographers outside.”

  I walk down the gangplank clutching my Prada wallet, still barefoot and wearing the negligee and the Gucci jacket, which, in the bright sunlight, I see is stained with large patches of what might be wine or raspberry puree or even vomit. I suddenly remember that I have no money because I’m in France and foreign money confuses me, so I stop and ask one of the photographers, all of whom have huge telephoto lenses in hopes of getting a topless shot of Dianna Moon (and maybe me, but I’m not as famous as Dianna is in France), for beaucoup d’argent.

  I smile fakely, and the photographers are so surprised they don’t take any pictures.

  “Comment?” says one, who is short with floppy gray hair and bad teeth.

  “Pour fume,” I say badly.

  “Ah, pour fume,” they say, and nudge one another jocularly. One of them hands me twenty francs and winks at me and I wink back and then I set off, walking down the red carpet that lines the sidewalk of the harbor in honor of the festival, thinking: Every day this carpet gets dirtier and dirtier and I get more and more polluted, and why is Hubert coming, he’s doing it on purpose. Again.

  I wander into the narrow streets of Cannes, which are filled, predictably, with French people, all of whom seem to be smoking. I pass a small café filled with gay men, who, unlike gay men in New York, have long hair and are trying desperately to be women. One of them looks at me and says, “Bonjour.”

  And that’s when I realize I may or may not be being followed.

  I turn around.

  A small girl with long blond hair, clutching three red roses wrapped in cellophane, stops and stares back at me.

  I glare at her and move on.

  I find a tabac and go in. More French people smoking and laughing. Near the entrance, a Frenchwoman says something to me which I automatically tune out, although I believe she’s asking me if I want a croissant or maybe a ham sandwich, so I snap, ”fe ne parle pas Francais.” Then I ask the man behind the counter for Marlboro Lights, and once outside, I light up a cigarette, fumbling with the awkward French matches and I look up and there’s the little girl.

  Again.

  “Madame . . .,” she says.

  “Vous etes un enfant terrible,” I say. Which is basically all the French I can remember that has anything to do with children. She says, ”Vous êtes tres jolie.”

  I begin walking quickly back to the boat. “Madame, madame,” she calls after me.

  “What?” I say.

  “You would like to buy a rose? A lovely red rose?”

  “Non,” I say. “fe n’aime pas les fleurs. Got it? Get it, kid?” And I can’t believe I am being so mean to a small street urchin, but I am.

  “Madame. You come with me,” the child says.

  “No,” I say.

  She tries to take my hand. “You come with me, Madame. You must come with me.”

  I shake my head, holding the cigarette up to my lips.

  “Come, Madame. Come. Follow me.”

  “Non,” I say weakly. And then for some reason, standing on the crowded street in the middle of Cannes during the film festival in the terrible heat, I begin crying, shaking my head, and the small child looks at me and runs away.

  Another evening, on the—what?—third or fourth day in the south of France, and Dianna Moon and I are riding in the back of an air-conditioned Mercedes limousine with The Verve blaring as we crawl along the crowded streets of Cannes toward the Hotel du Cap, where we have been invited to have dinner with prominent movie people. Dianna won’t stop talking, and I keep thinking about how, when Hubert and I first started secretly seeing each other, my phone was tapped.

  “The thing about it,” Dianna says, once again oblivious to anything but herself, “I mean the thing about this whole movie star business which no one gets is that you have to work so hard. You’re my best friend, Cecelia, so you know I’m not being an asshole about this, because God knows, Jesus knows actually, that I was always going to be a star and I think I make a fucking good star, but it’s never-ending. So, you know, people ought to understand why I get fucked up. Getting fucked up . . . it’s like a minivacation. It’s the only way I can ever get any fucking relaxation.” And she takes a swig out of a bottle of champagne and I want to tell her to stop talking because I’m still so hungover I’m going to get sick or kill someone.

  “What did you think of Fabien?” she says.

  “Oh. Was that his name?” I say. I look out the window at the white tents of the festival as the Mercedes crawls to a stop.

  “I thought he was adorable. I’ve always wanted to sleep with a Frenchman,” she says. And I do not point out that she must have already slept with four or five. Not counting the one in the bathroom at Jimmy’z in Monte Carlo.

  Through the window, I see that the small girl with the flowers is standing by the side of the car.

  “I wonder if I should import him. To L.A.,” Dianna says, laughing loudly as the girl taps on the window with the flowers.

  “Madame,” she mouths. “Madame, you must come with me.”

  The Mercedes lurches forward. I turn to stare out the back window at the little girl, who waves sadly.

  “Ohmigod,” I say.

  Dianna takes a moment to focus on me, and I find, sadly, that I am grateful. “I can’t believe Hubert is coming,” she says. “I told you my plan would work. As soon as you left, he realized he was a complete fuckwad, and now he’s crawling back. Aren’t you happy?”

  She takes my hand and kisses it as I open the window a crack to let out some of the smoke.

  In the bar of the Hotel du Cap, it’s the same scene as it was the night before and the night before that and lunch the day before and lunch the day before that. Everyone is drunk on champagne and raspberry cocktails. There’s the same group of twenty-five-year-old women, all tall, all good-looking, dressed in evening clothes, who spend half their time in the bathroom and half their time trying to pick up anyone famous. There are the badly dressed up-and-coming English movie directors. The perfectly dressed German distributors. Kate Moss. Elizabeth Hurley, whom I hate more than any of them because she’s “overexposed.” And Comstock Dibble, the five-foot-tall mega-movie producer who, even though he must be at least forty-five, still has acne. Out on the balcony, he’s mopping his face with a napkin and shouting at the waiters to put two tables together and to take chairs away from other patrons. Dianna is dressed in Goth. We sweep through the lobby the same as we always do. We are someone and we will always be someone, especially when we come to places like this.

  “Comstock! Caro! Darling!” Dianna screams, in case anyone hasn’t noticed her. She’s already too drunk, tottering on black strappy sandals, steadying herself on a stranger’s shoulder who pats her arm and rolls his eyes.

  “Hello, Dianna,” Comstock says. “You were in the papers today.”

  “I’m in the papers every day. If I’m not in the papers, it’s not a good

  day.”

  “You were in the papers too,” Comstock says to me, sweating inexplicably, since the temperature has cooled down to about seventy. “But I know you hate being in the papers.” He leans in intimately, as if we are the only two people in the place. “That’s the difference between you and Dianna.”

  “Is it?” I say, lighting what is probably my fiftieth cigarette of the day.

  Suddenly there are other people at the table, but no one introduces anyone.

  “They say you’re here without your husband.”

  “He has to work.”

  “You should have an affair. While you’re here. In France. Everybody
else is.”

  “Hey Comstock. I hear you’ve been looking for a mistress,” Dianna says loudly. “I hear you’ve propositioned every French actress under the age of twenty-five.”

  “I’m casting. What can I say?” Comstock says, and I put my napkin on my lap and wonder what the hell I’m doing here.

  But where else is there?

  “Tanner is the one who’s fighting off the girls,” Comstock says.

  I look up and see that it is indeed Tanner Hart, my Tanner, who is older but thanks to the wonders of plastic surgery doesn’t look much different than he did five years ago when he was selected as one of People magazine’s Fifty Most Beautiful People, and he sits down and puts his hands up and says, “Don’t hassle me, baby,” as I stare at him in a sort of alcoholic shock.

  “Have a bellini,” he says, pushing one toward me.

  “When this festival is over, Tanner is going to come out the big winner. We sold Gagged all over the world today,” Comstock says. “I’m thinking nominations. Best Actor. Best Picture.”

  “Hey Comstock,” Dianna says. “How come you never propositioned me?”

  “Because you’re a Jesus freak and I’m a nice Polish boy?” Comstock says.

  “I could convert you,” Dianna says.

  “Baby. You’re a star. We all know that,” Comstock says. “Right, Tanner?”

  But Tanner isn’t listening. He’s staring at me intently and I remember why, after we split up, I climbed up a fire escape and broke into his apartment to have sex with him.

  Without taking his eyes off me, Tanner says, “By the way, is anyone going to Saint Tropez? After this?”

  There’s a full moon as I excuse myself, ostensibly to go to the bathroom. Instead, I hurry down the long marble staircase out to the manicured gravel walkway that leads to the pool. The summer she died, Amanda had decided to “get into the movie business,” and she came here with a middle-aged character actor who sent her home after she stayed out all night with an up-and-coming young screenwriter. It was just so Amanda to get everything wrong.

  I veer off to the left and into a small enclosed garden with a fountain of turtles in the middle. I sit on a bench.