“Most boring game ever created, with the possible exception of curling!” Betty groaned. “Plus, there’s gotta be something deeply Freudian about wanting to get a tiny ball in a tiny hole over and over and over again. Don’tchya think?”
“Frankly, it’s the same thing as wanting to get a little ball across a net all the time,” Gil countered. “I mean, I used to like tennis all right. But then one day I had this overwhelming feeling of futility about the game. I saw the ball coming at me and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, didn’t I just hit that little sucker?’ I put down my racket and I never picked it up again.”
“Oh, that’s such a big, fat lie!” Betty said irritably. “I played with you twice last summer and I beat you both times.”
Betty and Gil were like the proverbial Bickersons, but beneath their bantering was real affection.
We finally reached the dock. A large tender was there, ready to take us out to the yacht. We were helped on board the motorboat one at a time by two crew members wearing white T-shirts on which THE LADY C was discreetly embroidered in red, along with a little crest. The motor revved up and we glided over the darkening water toward the huge, white boat, aglow with a kind of ethereal light. Alone on the sea, set against a purple sky, the massive craft looked like a surreal apartment building. As we approached, the bouncy Latin rhythms of a famous salsa band, flown in from New York just for the occasion, wafted through the air, getting everyone in the mood for an evening of fun and sentiment. Missy squeezed her father’s hand and put her head affectionately on his shoulder as we skimmed along the water.
There was limited space on The Lady C, which meant that only a hundred guests could be accommodated for the dinner. Once on board, we all trooped up a flight of steps to the main deck where Carla Cole, blazing with turquoise and diamonds, greeted us effusively.
“Welcome! Welcome to our little home, everyone!” she said.
“She means her little house on the water prairie,” Betty whispered to me, making fun of Carla’s overly humble description of the magnificent yacht.
Some of the other guests were already there, including Ethan Monk and Miranda Somers. Ethan sidled up to me and said, “You think we can get a look at the collection?”
“I don’t know. Ask Gil. He’s dying to see it.”
Carla was a good hostess, introducing everyone to everyone, and making us all feel welcome. I looked around for Max, but didn’t see him. Stewards wearing the more formal white-and-gold uniform of the yacht passed around silver trays loaded with a sublime concoction made of champagne and fresh mango juice and some other unidentifiable liquor, which Betty and I later figured out must have been absinthe because it was so strong. I had two sips and my head started spinning. Betty was working on her second glass before I could warn her to watch her step.
“These things are lethal,” I said.
“Good, I need something lethal to get me through this evening. Where the fuck is Max?” she said.
More and more guests arrived, ferried out to the yacht in groups of ten. Soon there was a large crowd, including several new faces—lots of young people, who were friends of Missy and Woody’s, plus friends of the Watermans and the Brills who had flown in just for the wedding. Most of the guests were from New York, but several were from England, Europe, and South America, and every so often the hum of the festive atmosphere was pierced by cries of delight from friends who hadn’t clapped eyes on one another in some time.
I said hello to Russell, who was standing off in a corner by himself. He seemed to be very distant and distracted. He was holding a drink and at one point he raised his glass to me and said, “To green monkeys—human and otherwise.”
I had no idea what he meant and I thought he might have been a bit drunk.
Gil came over to us with Carla, who said, “Russell, darling, Gil is dying to see the collection. Can we give him a little tour?”
Russell looked at her dourly. “I guess.”
“We will sneak away for a few moments. . . . No one will miss us,” Carla said.
Gil was beside himself with excitement. He particularly wanted us to see Russell’s latest acquisition, a Cézanne portrait of a woman in a red hat, which he had obtained for the Coles from a private collection in France. Believed to have been lost in the war, it was considered to be one of the artist’s greatest pictures. Ethan, Miranda, and I all accompanied the Coles and the Watermans on the speedy private tour. We went inside and walked through the hallways, suites, and cabins of the yacht, marveling at the compact gracefulness of the boat, and at the great pictures. First-rate examples of artists like Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, plus a scattering of slightly lesser luminaries like de Vlaminck, Van Dongen, and Sisley, hung in immovable frames, all of which, we were quickly told, had alarms attached. Lit by unseen lights, the paintings shone like jewels against the dark mahogany paneling, gracing the interiors with a profound and unexpected beauty. Russell, a shy man who clearly didn’t like showing off his wealth or even the collection of which he was so proud, hurried us along without any commentary, forcing Gil to surreptitiously point out various works, whispering, “I sold them that,” or, “They got that from me.”
Carla and Russell each had their own unconnected living quarters, large, lavishly appointed suites with walk-in closets, huge marble bathrooms with gold fixtures, and separate dressing and sitting rooms. In order to get from one cabin complex to the other, you had to walk out into a private corridor.
Russell’s suite was sleekly furnished in shades of beige and gray. Curiously enough, there was almost no art in his cabin—just one picture, a stark gray-and-black Rothko above the bed, which I found depressing, and a miniscule Giacometti bronze sculpture, the skeletal figure of a man with a tormented face. Despite its luxury, the cabin had the impersonal feeling of a hotel room.
Carla’s quarters were just the opposite. Her suite was decorated like a boudoir in an eighteenth-century hôtel particulier. No dark mahogany for her. The walls of her cabin were paneled with pale blue-and-white wood, distressed to make them look antique. In contrast to her husband, Carla preferred to live with watercolors depicting pretty country scenes and detailed interiors of royal rooms. In her dressing room hung a lovely little study of a woman seated on a chair wearing a flowing white dress and a large straw hat covered with a gauzy veil that partially obscured her face. The picture’s initial charm turned macabre on closer inspection, as the viewer realized that the faint outline beneath the veil was not, in fact, a face, but a skull. Carla stopped in front of the little oddity, explaining that it was an anonymous Dutch vanitas picture of the eighteenth century she had picked up for a pittance in a flea market in Paris.
“I think it is most amusing, no?” Carla said as we passed it.
“No,” Betty blurted out. “I mean yes,” she quickly corrected herself, rolling her eyes at me. If Carla heard the slip, she ignored it.
The tour concluded, we all trooped up to the main deck. There was still no sign of Max. Betty, who was fearless and at this point rather tipsy, said to Carla, “So where the hell is Lord Vermilion?”
Carla smiled sweetly. “I am afraid that Max could not come tonight.”
“What?” Betty screeched. “Why the hell not? We talked about the seating this morning! You were supposed to put him next to Jo, remember?”
“I do not know,” Carla said with a shrug. “He canceled at the last moment.”
Betty and I looked at each other. I have to admit, I felt somewhat of a letdown. Betty pressed Carla, asking her if Max had given any reason for the cancellation, but Carla was oddly evasive. She walked off saying she had to attend to her other guests. Later on, Miranda Somers, who knew the scoop on everybody, and who had in fact been the one who broke the story that Russell had left his wife of twenty-some years and had run off with Carla, told us the real reason that Max Vermillion wasn’t there that night.
“The reaso
n Max isn’t here is because Russell disinvited him,” Miranda said. “Russell practically had a conniption fit when he found out Max was coming.”
“Why?” Betty asked.
Miranda paused for effect. “Because Max has been dating Lulu,” she said with a knowing air.
Lulu Cole, of course, was Russell Cole’s vindictive ex-wife.
Betty’s jaw dropped. “You are fucking kidding me! He’s dating the Chiffon Bulldozer? I don’t fucking well believe it. How did she get her claws into him so fast?”
Betty always referred to Lulu as “the Chiffon Bulldozer” because of Lulu’s airy determination to control whatever environment she was in. Lulu Cole was just the opposite of her ex-husband. A taut, resolute woman with a strict sense of style, Lulu threw herself into everything she did and at everyone she met—particularly when it was in her best interests. This quality was both her strength and her weakness. Lulu got a lot done, but made many enemies in the process. She had a knack of stepping on other people’s toes and not saying “excuse me.” However, even her detractors—of which there were many—said she was a “capable” woman, brimming with generosity, energy, and organizational talents.
As Betty and Miranda discussed this new development, my mind drifted back to the days when the billionaire Coles first moved to Manhattan in the early nineties. Russell was then married to Marylou Cole, or Lulu, as she was called. Primed in the ways of social climbing, they bought an expensive apartment in one of the best buildings on Fifth Avenue, hired a chic decorator, donated ostentatiously to “fashionable” charities, and, most importantly, gave grand parties to which everyone yearned to go, if only to see Van Gogh’s Irises, for which Russell Cole had paid a record sixty-five million dollars at auction. Lulu discovered Paris couture and became a great supporter of the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. She bought signed vintage jewelry from Pearce, the glittery shop on Madison Avenue that was then in its heyday, and she arrived on the Best Dressed List in short order.
Photographed at chic opening nights and benefit galas, the Coles quickly became stars in Nous magazine, society’s scrapbook. In her “Daisy” column for the magazine, Miranda herself had recoined the phrase “a Lulu of a party,” paying homage to Lulu Cole’s formal dinners. In short, the Coles made all the right moves and soon reached the highest-level social life in the city, in a position to judge newcomers with the same catty eye by which they themselves had once been judged.
But as anyone who has ever endured the charity ball circuit will tell you, the smiles of social life are often masks for deep unhappiness. And Russell Cole was not happy. His rugged, midwestern good looks were bruised by melancholy. In conversation, his considerable charm was tainted by detachment.
As Lulu’s interest in social life increased, Russell’s interest waned. It seemed the more he marched, the more he tired of the parade. People who saw the Coles together often remarked on the lack of intimacy between them, and on the fact that Russell looked terminally bored. Betty said to me way back when, “You’d be bored, too, if you were treated like an accessory.”
Then, six years ago, Russell Cole bolted, with no warning. He left his chic and proper wife to marry Carla, who was then Carla Hernandez, an exotic widow with a murky past, more than twenty years his junior. Rumor had it Russell fell for Carla at a gala benefit when she flirtatiously started a bread fight with him from across the dinner table. He had asked her to dance and that apparently was that.
But Lulu was a fighter with a lot to fight for. She’d been married to Russell for over twenty-five years and she was the mother of his only child, a daughter named Courtney. When it became clear that Carla was not a passing fancy, Lulu hired a bomber lawyer who sicced a pack of private detectives on the flagrant couple. Lulu’s hatred of Carla, already in full bloom, was fertilized by what she found out about Carla’s background. The divorce dragged on for two gruelling years. Lulu eventually settled out of court for a rumored two hundred and fifty million dollars, plus real estate, plus artwork, on the strict condition she would never speak about the case, the settlement, or the past of the future Mrs. Cole.
The exact nature of the dirt she’d uncovered on Carla remained a topic of gossip in the social world for years, although people assumed that Carla was simply one more in that long line of courtesans and call girls who quickly launder their pasts once they marry rich men. And no one much cared whether Carla had been a call girl or not—no one except my other best friend, June Kahn, that is, who remained steadfastly loyal to Lulu and who always referred to Carla as “the hookerina.”
Carla’s wedding to Russell famously divided New York. “To go or not to go—” that was the question. Obviously, those who went would incur Lulu’s wrath. And those who did not go had little hope of joining the charmed circle of the notorious newlyweds. June Kahn had no problem. She boycotted the wedding. June was a foul-weather friend who loved taking up lost causes. She became an even greater friend of Lulu’s after Russell left her. Betty was in a trickier situation because not only was Russell Cole the godfather of her child, he was one of her husband’s biggest clients. Betty and Gil went to the wedding. Lulu never forgave them.
As for myself, I was invited and I very much appreciated the invitation—particularly because at that period in my life I was down on my luck and invitations to anything other than clearance sales were in short supply. I would have liked to have gone, but it was a period when I was just too depressed to attend social functions. I heard from Betty that it had been quite a shindig. She said that Russell Cole looked years younger, and his entire toast to his bride was a single whoop of joy.
“Hey, that’s what happens when you finally get laid,” Betty had said at the time.
And now Lord Max Vermilion was dating the first Mrs. Cole, which supposedly was why Russell was in a bad mood. But why? I wondered. Why would he give a damn?
The bridal dinner took place two flights up on the sun deck, amid a little topiary forest, the theme of which was Wonderland because Alice in Wonderland was Missy’s favorite childhood book. There were boxwood bushes cut in the shapes of the characters from the Lewis Carroll classic—the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Dormouse, the Caterpillar, and Alice herself. It was cozy and spectacular at the same time. A real tour de force.
Ten round tables seating ten guests each were elegantly set with votive candles, antique silver, cut crystal glasses, and blue-and-white Chinese export vases brimming with fresh tropical flowers. At the place of each guest was a telltale red box tied prettily with white ribbon. One eager person at our table immediately opened the gift, inspiring the rest of us to do likewise. The boxes contained small gold Cartier desk clocks with diamond hands, each one individually engraved with the date of the wedding-to-be.
Later on, Betty and I figured out the little favors had to have cost a few hundred thousand dollars, probably more, prompting Betty to remark, “I always say there’s nothing like a Cartier clock to count the minutes until the revolution.”
I was seated across the table from Russell Cole, who was flanked by Betty and Mina Brill. He looked morose throughout the dinner, and when the time came, he gave a tepid toast. He and Carla didn’t look at each other all evening. Something had happened between the two of them, and Betty and I figured it must have had something to do with Max, although I still found it a little hard to believe that Russell would care who was going out with his ex-wife, especially after all these years.
“They should have told me they didn’t want him in the first place,” Betty said. “Poor old Maxy—all alone at the Sandy Lane Hotel. Although, if I know Max, he’s probably found ample companionship.”
Visible in the distance, across an expanse of black sea, was King’s Fort, the rented villa where the Watermans and I were staying. The sky was sprinkled with stars. A pale moon hovered just above the horizon. I thought how nice it would have been t
o get to know Max better under those circumstances, but fate had obviously had other plans for us.
In any case, no one had any idea what was in store the next day, nor that what happened after that bridal dinner was to become the stuff of legend, as well as one of the great mysteries of the social world of New York.
Chapter 3
At nine the next morning—the wedding day—Betty and I staggered out onto the terrace for breakfast. Betty was wearing a loud, flower-print caftan, a thatched roof masquerading as a hat, and a pair of extremely large, extremely dark sunglasses. I was once again in my beloved terry cloth robe. I looked out over the ocean where the Coles’ big white yacht gleamed like an evil smile on the horizon—a floating reminder of where I got my headache. Betty walked very slowly toward one of the chaises and eased herself down onto the long, striped cushion with great care. She kept the upper half of her body very still as she moved, as if she were trying to balance her head on her shoulders to keep it from falling off. Dermott, the tall, reed-thin, coffee-colored majordomo, was standing by with her usual—vodka and papaya juice—Betty’s own “homeopathic” remedy for a hangover. She took a long sip, then let out the most enormous groan.
“Don’t worry, Betts. It’ll all be over soon,” I said.
“What? Me or the wedding? Just bury me here, okay? Under a palm tree. Because I’m dead. Why I said I’d give this lunch today is beyond me. . . . Oh well, I have to go over the seating for the wedding dinner with Mina anyway. Tonight you are definitely getting a crack at Max. I wonder where the old bugger went last night. Probably to find ‘a bit of strange.’ ”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s that wonderful expression the English have for extracurricular sexual activity.”
“ ‘A bit of strange.’ I like that.”
“So does Max, from what I hear.”
With that, Betty turned her face up to the sun and lay still. I sat motionless in my chair, staring out at the sun-spangled water. Hazy memories of the previous alcohol-drenched evening were tumbling through my mind in slow motion when my eyes gradually focused on a motorboat hurtling toward us. At first I dismissed it as just another pleasure craft out for a jaunt on a Saturday morning. Then I realized it was aiming straight for our little dock. As it neared, I recognized it as one of the tenders from The Lady C.
One Dangerous Lady Page 3
