One Dangerous Lady

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “Nonsense! The only decision Betty’s ever agonized over in her life is whether to start drinking in the morning or the afternoon. She did this to spite me because she’s angry we didn’t come to Missy’s wedding! She thinks I faked my injury because I wasn’t invited to that vulgar bridal dinner which, by the way, I wouldn’t have gone to anyway—even if we had been invited.”

  “I really think you’re wrong,” I said, lying, knowing she’d hit the nail on the head.

  “I’m not wrong! Gil mentioned something about it to Charlie when they were playing golf last week. She feels hurt. Well, that’s no reason for her to ruin my life, for heaven’s sakes! Jo, I feel like sending her divine Dr. Newman’s report about my foot. I really did bang it up and he really did advise me not to travel. . . . Well, anyway, I know Betty thinks I’m willful and imperious. And maybe I am. But it’s my building, after all. It’s not enough that I have to see Carla Cole at social functions. Now I have to share an elevator with her? Not on your life! But never you mind,” she said just as Cyril offered her the glass of white wine on a silver tray. “Thank you, Cyril.” June chugged down nearly half the glass before resuming. “She’s not getting in, thank God! I’ve taken a poll and it’s fifty-fifty. Guess who breaks the tie?”

  “I can’t,” I said facetiously.

  “Me!” she said with the smug air of a minor bureaucrat.

  “I figured, Junie. And I think Betty knows that, too. She just did Carla a favor because Carla did so much for her at the wedding. But she knows Carla can’t get into your building if you don’t want her to.”

  “That’s right! And she’s not getting in—no matter what that old fart Hadley Grimes says. I have the final say! Take that, Marcy Ludinghausen!”

  “Okay, but just calm down for a moment and try to think about it another way.”

  She glared at me. “What are you talking about, Jo?”

  I was trying to play Eisenhower here, appeasing the egos of my two best friends.

  “Junie, can’t you just forget about it and vote for Carla just for the sake of peace in the building, and for Betty, for that matter? Think about it. You’ll never run into Carla. I never see any of my neighbors.”

  “Oh, you sound just like Charlie,” June said, giving me an irritable flick of her wrist. “He wants me to forget about it, too. But how can I? Among other things, Lulu would never forgive me if I let Carla in.”

  “Why does Lulu have to know? Tell her you were outvoted.”

  “Oh, don’t be absurd. People know everything. Jo, the truth is, I’m just thankful that I’m in a position of great power. I will crush her.”

  June Kahn, the George S. Patton of New York society.

  I could see it was no use arguing with her.

  “Where is Charlie, by the way?” I asked, thinking that I might be able to talk more rationally to him. Charlie Kahn was sometimes a temperate influence on his socially militant wife.

  “In Europe on business,” she said. “He doesn’t get back until tomorrow.”

  “What does he say about all this?”

  “Oh, he thinks I’m obsessed. He couldn’t care less whether she moves in or not.”

  “Well, maybe he has a point.”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “Junie, just forget Carla. She’s not worth it, believe me. It’s a waste of energy. So she does get into the building. So what? If we all band together, we can freeze her out of New York. She’ll be just another woman in a couture suit looking for a lunch date. Eventually, she’ll leave town.”

  June crossed and uncrossed her arms, then fidgeted with the fur on her cuffs, her birdlike face even more twittery than usual.

  “No, Jo, it’s just not that simple. I can’t back down now. I’m voting against her and that’s that. And I’ll never forgive Betty for writing that letter. I feel so betrayed,” she said in a sad little voice. “Betty’s supposed to be sitting at my table tonight. I don’t know how I’m even going to look at her—the snake!” She sighed deeply and rose to her feet. “Well, I’d better go.”

  I got up, too.

  “How did you get here, Junie? You didn’t walk here by yourself, did you?”

  I knew how cheap June and Charlie were when it came to transportation. They never dreamed of hiring a car for the night, even when June was dressed to the nines in a gown and jewels. A taxi was as close as they got to luxury, and they walked whenever possible. Betty and I were always afraid the two of them would get mugged one day if they weren’t careful.

  “Of course, I walked. I only live three blocks from here, for heaven’s sakes.”

  “Let me have Caspar take you to the Plaza.”

  “Thanks. That’d be great.”

  As I escorted her to the door, she said, “Did I tell you that Marcy Ludinghausen sent me quite a pretty little pin from Pearce to try and butter me up? I returned it, of course.” She shook her thin little finger at me. “There are some people in this world who still cannot be bought!”

  I made one last stab at getting her to drop the cudgel.

  “Junie, listen to me. You’re already not speaking to Trish. If you stop speaking to Betty, it’s going to have a ripple effect. No one’s going to be speaking to anyone by the time this is over—if it ever is over. Is there no way I can convince you not to make a big issue out of this?”

  She thought for a brief moment and then said simply, “No.”

  She headed for the hall closet, where Cyril had hung her cape. Pulling it off the hanger, she threw it around her, pulled up the hood, and opened the front door. I grabbed her muff and followed her into the vestibule, where I pleaded with her.

  “Junie, come on, you’re being so unreasonable.”

  She glared at me. “Don’t tell me you’re on Carla’s side, too, Jo!”

  “I most certainly am not! In fact, I refused to write a letter for her.” I offered her the muff. “I was supporting you.”

  “Well, you’re not supporting me now!” Grabbing the moth-eaten thing, she turned her back on me and rang for the elevator.

  One could never win with June.

  I was so exasperated I could hardly see straight. “I am supporting you by giving you good advice. I just don’t want you to shoot yourself in that wounded foot of yours, that’s all. Think of what Clara Wilman always used to say, ‘No matter how right you are, bad behavior can make you look wrong.’ ”

  She didn’t answer—a first for June.

  “Well, take the car,” I said, sighing. “I don’t want you walking alone at night.”

  “Screw you and your car,” she said without turning around.

  “Don’t tell me you’re mad at me now, Junie? What the hell have I done?”

  June maintained a stony silence until the elevator arrived. She stepped inside the wood-paneled car and faced front with a glacial expression.

  “Et tu, Jo?” she said at last.

  Her grand display of indignity was severely compromised by the white fur around her face and her 1930s snow queen outfit. The elevator door slid shut. If she hadn’t looked quite so ridiculous, I would have felt more sympathetic.

  Chapter 15

  Betty called me early the next morning. I was dozing in bed, unable to sleep. I knew exactly why she was calling, of course, and was rather amazed at her restraint. I’d expected her to ring me from the party to tell me that June had refused to speak to her and made a huge scene.

  “Jo? I’m sorry to wake you.” Her voice sounded very shaky indeed.

  “Are you kidding? I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I take it you’ve heard.”

  “Yes. It’s too awful. I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Charlie just called Gil. He’s beside himself.”

  “Betty, I tried to reason with her, I really did. Don’t you think everybody’s overreacting just a bit?”

  “Overrea
cting?!” Betty cried. “June’s in a coma! Goddamn right, I’m overreacting!”

  When people say someone is in a coma in New York, it usually means they’ve been demoted to the C list. But this time I had the ghastly feeling that Betty meant coma in the cosmic sense, as in no longer functioning.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Her tone became conciliatory. “Oh, Jo, you haven’t heard, have you? Junie was hit by a car last night. She’s in a coma in Carnegie Hill Hospital.”

  Betty started to cry. I listened to her soft sobbing, thinking this was a bad dream.

  “Oh my God, no. That’s not possible. I just saw her.”

  “When?” Betty sniffled.

  “Last night, I told you. She came by to see me before the ball. She was upset because of the letter you wrote for Carla.”

  “Oh, Christ! I was at her table. She tried not to speak to me, but then we got into a fight. And guess who was there? Carla!”

  “Oh my God. Who was she with?”

  “Bootsie Baines, who else? June threatened to bolt like she did at Trish’s lunch. I told her she absolutely couldn’t think of leaving because she was the chairman. Anyway, Gil and I managed to calm her down. And Carla was at another table pretty far away. We got through the meal, at least—ghastly as it was. God, I loathe knockwurst. Then came time for the door prizes. Because she’s the head of the thing, June draws the tickets and gives out the certificates. So she goes up to the microphone, starts the drawing, and the third winner is—guess who?”

  “Carla.”

  “You got it.”

  “Jesus, Betty. What are the odds of that?”

  “They’re good if you buy five hundred fucking chances! Which is apparently what Carla did.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I mean, Carla probably thought she was doing it to be nice to June because she wants so desperately to get into that building. I mean, the more chances they sell, the more money the hospital makes, after all. But when June announced the number and then saw Carla coming up to the stage, she lost it. Just turned on her heel and walked off. I thought she’d come back, but she didn’t. She up and left the party.”

  I shook my head in dismay. “Oh, June, June, June . . . !”

  “Everyone felt sort of sorry for Carla because June had acted so badly. . . . Anyway, when Junie didn’t come back, Gil and I figured she’d probably gone home. I called to check on her. No answer. So I thought, okay, she’s just not picking up her phone. Jo, I was so pissed off at her for making a scene with me, I didn’t care where the hell she was,” Betty said, her voice cracking with emotion.

  “Did they catch the driver?”

  “No . . . hit and run. But you know June. She was so angry, she probably just bolted out into the middle of the street. I’m sure it was nobody’s fault. Oh, Jo, now I wish I hadn’t written that damn letter!”

  Betty broke down, unable to continue. I listened to her sobbing for a few moments. Finally, she went on. “Anyway, this morning Colleen called me. She said the police were there and that June was in the hospital in a coma, hit by a car. Poor Colleen was hysterical. Charlie isn’t getting back until this afternoon. Think of Charlie! He has no idea what’s happened. Anyway, they wanted Colleen to come down and see her. But Colleen can’t cope. Anyway, she has to get the apartment ready for when Charlie comes home. She called me and I’m going there now. Want to come?”

  “I’ll be dressed in ten minutes. Meet you there.”

  A New York definition of irony: June had fled a benefit for the very hospital in which she was now fighting for her life. On our way to the special wing of Carnegie Hill, where rich patients supposedly enjoyed medical care along with all the amenities of a first-class hotel, Betty commented, “All I can say is they better treat her like the fucking queen, she’s raised so many millions for them.” It crossed my mind that had June not been so rash, she might not have been hit by a car, and consequently she might not be lying in a coma now. But history does not disclose its alternatives and it was heartwrenching to see her there, lying in bed with the diamond sparkles still in her hair and bruises on her narrow, pale face, breathing with the aid of a respirator.

  Betty and I stayed together in a silent vigil at June’s bedside for most of the morning. The bleeping and humming of many machines, plus the antiseptic smell pervading the atmosphere, made the confined room feel a little like a space ship. For once in our lives, we were both too stricken to speak.

  That afternoon, Charlie Kahn arrived back from Europe. Betty and I were waiting for him in his apartment. We broke the news to him gently, trying to put a positive spin on the situation, telling him what the nice, young doctor at the hospital had told us—namely, that June had a good chance of coming out of the coma, that she had sustained no other serious internal injuries, and that only time would tell. Charlie stared at us with almost total incomprehension, fueled by the fatigue of a long flight. He didn’t utter a word. He sank down into a chair in slow motion and stared at the ground for a long time. Then he looked up at us and said, “There must be some mistake. It can’t be June. Not my June,” as if there were someone else’s June it might be.

  We then took him over to the hospital where he stayed, camping out in her room, refusing to leave her side.

  “Charlie would die without her,” I said to Betty as we left the hospital.

  “That’s what you think. Rich men all mourn for about a week and then they become merry widowers with every woman in the world calling them.”

  “I think Charlie’s different.”

  “I doubt it. But let’s pray we never find out,” Betty said.

  Hadley Grimes, old stickler for protocol that he was, refused to postpone the meeting of the co-op board that afternoon, despite the fact that June was in a coma.

  “That whole board’s been in a coma for years, so how would he know the difference?” Betty said.

  According to Betty, who got it from Trish, who got it from Hadley’s wife, Ellen, Hadley maintained that as president of the board, June would have wanted things to go on “as usual” in her absence. This was a fiction, if ever there was one. Everyone who knew June knew that she was the kind of person who wanted to be in on everything—even funerals. Betty once observed that June was the only person she knew who wasn’t altogether against nuclear war.

  “Let’s be honest here, Jo, June doesn’t want the party to go on without her—even if it means blowing up the whole world,” Betty said.

  That night, Betty called to tell me that the Coles had passed the board. Carla was now an official resident of 831 Fifth Avenue. And June was an official resident of the Carnegie Hill Hospital.

  A few days later, Page Six in the New York Post confirmed the sale in an item that said that Carla and “the missing Russell Cole” had successfully purchased the Wilman apartment—“a sprawling triplex that mouthwash heiress Marcy Ludinghausen has been trying to unload for two years”—for the third-highest price ever paid for an apartment in Manhattan, twenty-eight million dollars. After a brief sketch of the Coles’ scandal-ridden marriage and the current mystery involving Russell’s disappearance, the article said that the co-op was notoriously difficult to get into, but that the “controversial Coles” had “breezed through the building’s stuffy board” because the board’s president, June Kahn, was in a coma and had not been there to veto their approval. Page Six really got it right this time.

  Betty called me and said, “Come to think of it, Jo, I think June’s much safer in a coma because if she comes out of it and finds out Carla’s passed the board, she’s going to kill herself.”

  “Or Carla,” I added.

  “Gil now refers to that building as the Gaza Strip,” Betty said.

  “With less chance of a peace agreement,” I added.

  Chapter 16

  There are memorable moments in social life when a
convergence of scandals and bad news cause what Betty Waterman terms, “the perfect shit storm.” This was such a moment. Russell Cole was missing, presumed murdered or mentally impaired, depending on your like or dislike of Carla Cole. June Kahn was in a coma. Carla was moving to New York. The wags had it that Max Vermilion had jilted Lulu Cole for me. And now, to top it all off, Dick Bromire was finally going on trial for income tax evasion and other money-related crimes. Expressions of supposed deep concern dominated all conversation. But as Betty said: “You can’t cut the Schadenfreude with a chainsaw!”

  The night before Dick’s trial, Trish gave a dinner party at their apartment on Park Avenue. There were those, however, who didn’t think that Dick Bromire should be either having parties or going to them, given the disgrace of being indicted. In New York, one is guilty until proven innocent, even if one hasn’t been formally charged with anything, not to mention when one has. And even if one is charged and acquitted, the odor of some scandals never entirely fades. It was quickly pointed out by his loyal friends that Dick hadn’t killed anyone, like some erstwhile members of New York society. But that didn’t seem to mollify those who discover their own piety in the sins of others. There was a lot of talk about the dinner and how inappropriate and shameful it was—particularly among those who hadn’t been invited.

  Larry Locket called me to tell me he was back in town. He’d heard about June, of course, and about Carla buying the Wilman apartment.

  “How’s poor June doing?” he asked me.

  “The same.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jo. I know how close you two are,” he said.

  “Thank you, Larry. It’s been awful, I must say.”

  “Will she pull through?”

  “It’s impossible to tell. Betty and I go visit her almost every day. We just keep praying. Tell me how you are. Did you see Hernandez’s son?”

  “Did I ever! I had a riveting time with him and I’m dying to tell you about it, Jo. By any chance, will I be seeing you later tonight?” he asked me.