Hilary’s laugh came back at me again, and an order to “slow down, there, what’s all this about Julie Weintraub and a dining room? If I understand you correctly, you are looking for a broken pelvis, and just bought Julie Weintraub’s dining room, or you bought Julie’s pelvis, and broke your dining room . . . and do I have a what? A pelvis or a dining room? I have both, but you are welcome to neither, my dear, and it is quite clear that New York is too much for you.”
By then I was laughing harder than Hilary, and trying to unsnarl the whole thing which I knew she understood perfectly well anyway.
“Actually, Gillian, I’ve never met Julie Weintraub, but I’m delighted you have the job; it sounds like just your cup of tea. By the way, I have a very old friend who works on the magazine, fellow by the name of Gordon Harte. Have you met him yet? Though I suppose one could hardly expect you would have in two days.”
“Actually, we did meet. He seems nice enough. Kind of a sarcastic bastard though. I didn’t know he was a friend of yours; you’ve never said anything about him.”
“Oh, not that kind of friend. I knew his wife years ago, when she was a model and I had just arrived in New York. They were getting divorced, and he was on his way to Spain to make like the Ernest Hemingway of the art world, or some such. Then I bumped into him myself in Spain years later, and afterward we began meeting at official functions for the magazine types. He’s one of the few redeeming features of those events. He’s a very capable man. And a nice one; the sarcasm is . . . well, something he uses to keep the world at bay. . . . There’s a wall around him a mile high. . . . In any case, Gillian dear, how’s your Christopher, the Big Romance?” Like Peg, I had written to her from California.
Silence at my end, and brief paralysis of the mouth, or was it my heart? “Hilary, I don’t know for the time being. Can’t talk about it.”
“Good enough. The less said the better for now. But if you need me, you know where to find me. Why don’t you come up for drinks on Thursday night, after work, and we’ll have a good long chat about anything you do want to talk about, and I’ll see who I can get for dinner. Maybe Gordon, and four or five others. It’s awfully short notice though. Anyone special you’d like me to ask?”
“No, I’ll leave it to you. It sounds marvelous. But will you think about a dining room for me too, please, genius lady? Hilary, you really are super. And thanks. What time on Thursday?”
“Six?”
“Fine. I’ll be there.”
Now that would be an invitation worth accepting. Hilary gave the best goddam dinner parties in New York. And she was also a marvelous scavenger. She called me back that afternoon to say that she had remembered “just the dining room!” It belonged to a couple who were both actors, and in the course of taking a class on scenery design the wife had attacked their dining room with brush and paint. She called it an environment; Hilary’s description was more specific: “. . . looks like the whole goddam jungle looking over your shoulder while you eat.” But she convinced me it was worth a try. So I called and made an appointment to see the place on my way home.
It was a wow. It looked like a movie set for a jungle scene: trees and fruit and flowers were painted everywhere, clouds hung overhead, the floor was a lake, and animals peered out from behind the painted shrubbery. The furniture was like the kind you’d use on safari, with the exception of a handsome glass table and an immense network of candles. It was really something else.
After that, I called it a day. At least there was one mission accomplished for the magazine. I headed for the Regency with the intention of having a nice, cold glass of white wine and a nap before Sam came home from the park.
As I unlocked the door to our suite the phone was ringing, and for once I didn’t even think about it being Chris. Which was just as well, because it wasn’t. It was Gordon Harte.
“Hello. I understand from Hilary that we’re to be dinner partners tomorrow night. Can I give you a lift?” His voice sounded mellower than it did at the office, and more like it had during our walk the day before.
“That would be nice, but I’m going over early for a drink. I haven’t seen Hilary since I left New York.”
“Then I won’t intrude. How are you finding the job?”
“Great fun, and a wee bit hectic. I’m out of practice.”
“I’m sure you’re doing fine. I was going to ask you to lunch today, but you vanished. We’ll make up for it another time.”
“I’d like to do that.”
“Then consider it done. Have a good evening, Gillian. See you tomorrow.”
“Good-bye.” Strange call, strange man, it was as though there was an enormous gulf between him and the rest of the world. He seemed cold even when his words were friendly, and it was a little bit confusing. But at least there seemed to be more to him than to Matthew Hinton. Gordon Harte had spirit and texture and soul. And you could tell that somehow, somewhere, at some time in his life, he had suffered. But over what? Or whom? I fell asleep on my bed as I mulled it over.
I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing again and reached out groggily, not quite aware of what I was doing, and far from awake. This time it was Chris. And all I could think of were warm thoughts, and kind things, and how much I loved him. I smiled sleepily, blew kisses, listened to the sound of his voice. And then rolled over and looked at the clock to see what time it was . . . four-fifteen . . . that’s one-fifteen in San Francisco . . . and then, for some reason, I remembered Marilyn, and before I could stop it I had let loose with a bitchy sounding “And where’s Marilyn? Doesn’t she come home for lunch?” . . . Ouch. I blew it. I could feel Chris bounce back as though I had slapped him. After that, we talked about my job, the weather, Chris’s projects, his films, and we pointedly stayed off the subject of Marilyn, or anything else of any importance. It was a lousy conversation. We played our little games, and Marilyn was as much with us as though she had been listening on the extension. We were ill at ease, I was angry and hurt, and Christopher felt awkward. He should have. He should have felt much worse than that. But he didn’t know how.
20
On Wednesday, the opening of the horse show was similar to the opening of the opera, from a social standpoint. It was something to see, and someplace to be seen. Matt was as charming as ever, but I thought the polish was beginning to wear a bit thin. I was already bored with his scene. Afterward, we dined at La Caravelle, where again everyone bowed and scraped to “Monsieur Eeentone.” And the newspapers were kinder this time than they had been the first, though they didn’t ignore us entirely. They merely made note of our existence by publishing a photograph of our attendance. But this time Peg didn’t call.
On Thursday, I appeared for my interview with Milt Howley. He was living in a penthouse at the United Nations Plaza and for a brief moment, as I braced myself for the interview, I stood on the sidewalk and gazed upward, impressed once again with the towering heights of New York. Everything was up, everything was big. There was a breathless, overwhelming bitchiness to it, and every minute of every day you knew that you were “there.” It was the Mecca. It was Sodom, it was Hell and the Garden of Eden, and, like any other human being with a thrill for life, I was enthralled. And I knew then that even if I left the city the next day, never to return, for one brief moment I had looked at a building fifty stories high, and New York and I had come to terms. It was just what I had said I would do as our plane had landed in New York. I had the city by the balls. But it had me by the throat.
I was let into Milt Howley’s apartment by a tiny, blonde girl who was Howley’s current “old lady,” as he put it. His mistress. And from that point on, a whirlwind day began. He ran from Rockefeller Center for a meeting to Doubleday’s to autograph records, to his agent’s office to sign contracts, to a three o’clock lunch at Mama Leone’s, where between the salad and the spumoni I managed to squeeze in some interview time. He was an interesting man. He had started singing blues in Chattanooga, Tennessee, ten years before and had made a mi
nor hit in Hollywood before being lured into the protest scene which landed him in jail thirty-seven times and kept him so busy he let his career slip. But now he was up, Mr. Superstar, three albums in one year that had sold over a million copies each, two movie contracts, and appearances in Las Vegas, Hollywood, and New York. The whole bit.
After lunch, I rode to the airport with him in a rented limousine. He was going to the White House for dinner. It was exhausting and exhilarating and I liked him. He was all man, and he had been good to interview. He was direct and human and had a raucous sense of humor which made the pressure of his schedule more bearable.
His valet had put his suitcase in the car during the afternoon, and as we drove to the airport he calmly answered my questions as he checked its contents and took care of a double bourbon, seeming totally unflustered by the fact that he was in a moving car, having a drink, being interviewed, and on his way to have dinner with the President. He had a lot of style.
The last I saw of him was as he went through the gate to his plane and stooped to kiss my cheek while he purred in my ear. “You’re one all right woman, Gillian . . . for a honky chick.”
I laughed and waved as he got on the plane. I had exactly seventy-one minutes to get to Hilary’s.
When Hilary opened the door, she looked wonderful. A mixture of Henri Bendel and Paris and Hilary. Put together to perfection, the kind of woman other women envy but that make men feel a little uncomfortable—they wouldn’t want to get her hair messed up. She is the kind of woman who spends a lot of time with homosexuals, other women, and old friends. All her lovers are temporary, some of them indecently young, but very attractive, and most become friends eventually. Hilary must be hard to love. I would have felt sorry for her, except I wouldn’t have dared. Pity was something you did not dare to think about in the company of Hilary Price. Respect was more like it. In fact, a feeling akin to what my grandmother had inspired. Tough, ballsy women like that make you stand taller, command their due. These are the women whom friends put on pedestals, the same women who would do anything for those friends with one hand while castrating their men and their sons with the other.
Hilary has an incredible amount of style. Everything she touches is done to perfection: her manicure, her home, the dinners she prepares, her work, and her friendships. There is another side of Hilary which is cold, and could be very cruel, but she reserves that for the people who cross her. I have never had the occasion to incur her wrath, and for that I’m grateful. I have seen her take people apart verbally, and it is formidable and terrifying to watch. Perhaps it is that that men sense, which makes them keep their distance, or move on quickly.
Hilary and I have never had the sloppy ease with each other that I share with Peg or some of my other friends. I wouldn’t pick my teeth, use all the curse words I might otherwise, or show up at her house in blue jeans and a ragged sweat shirt. But I share something else with Hilary which I do not share with the others. The others have known me as a child, and there is still much of the schoolgirl in all of us when we meet—we still look upon our relationships with each other in the same spirit that they began. The friendship with Hilary, however, began when we were both grown up, so perhaps we expect more of each other. Besides, Hilary as a schoolgirl is unthinkable, unless she went to school in Chanel suits, with perfectly arranged hair. I just can’t imagine Hilary playing hockey. In the drawing room of Mme. de Sevigne surely, but not on the hockey field looking the way we had.
We had an hour and a half to talk before the first guest arrived, and we covered most of what we wanted to know and say. Hilary mentioned briefly and without much passion that she had a new beau. A young German boy named Rolfe. He was a poet, younger than she, and a “beautiful child,” according to Hilary. He was expected for dinner. She continued to live alone because it suited her better. And I envied her that. That sort of thing would never suit me better. Hilary’s dream princes were all dead and gone, if they had ever existed. Mine was still waiting in the wings of my dreams. For however much I may have loved Chris, he was a far cry from a dream prince, even to me.
I had planned not to talk about Chris, but Hilary brought it up while she was making her second drink. “Gillian, if it’s going to work out, it will. And better yet, if it works out on your terms. And if not, hard as it is for you to think that way, try and believe that you haven’t lost a great deal. I’m sure Chris is a charming boy, but I don’t think he’s for you. Frankly, I think you deserve better. And you need the kind of things Chris will never be able to give you. He’s too much like me, he doesn’t believe in the kind of things you believe in, and I don’t think you’re ready to stop believing in them either. But whichever way you go, I want you to know I’m around to help, or to listen. I can’t tell you much more than that.”
Hilary’s words touched me, but it disturbed me that she should think Chris wasn’t good enough for me. He was, he was . . . I wanted him to be, no matter how much I had to swallow, or bend over backward. I still wanted it to work.
Hilary then walked over to her library, looked for something for a few minutes while I gathered my thoughts, and came back with a book in her hands. Leather bound and very old, it looked like something Hilary, or my grandmother, would have. “Here, this may sound trite to you, but there’s a great deal of truth in that,” and she held it out, open to the fly leaf, where a strong hand had written in brown ink:
He who bends to himself a joy,
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.
and it was signed with the initial L., and a date.
“That was the first man I ever slept with, Gillian. He was thirty years older than I, I was seventeen at the time. He was the greatest concert violinist in Europe, and I loved him so much I thought I’d die when he told me that I was ‘a big girl now’ and he felt I didn’t need him anymore. I wanted to die, but I didn’t. One never does, and I have learned that there’s a great deal of truth in those words. I live by them.”
I was moved, and was still holding the book in my hands when the doorbell rang. Hilary got up to answer it, and in walked a tall good-looking boy about three years younger than I, with blond hair and big green eyes. He had the grace of a very young boy, with none of the awkwardness. It was a totally sensual pleasure to watch him, and a little embarrassing to watch him stare adoringly at Hilary. This was Rolfe. He kissed my hand, called me “Madame,” and made me feel a thousand years old. Except this was what Hilary expected, what she liked. It put no strain on her. And in a brief flashback, I realized that she had become her concert violinist, the man she had loved twenty years before. She sent all these little boys on their way when she felt they didn’t need her anymore, like a dancing mistress at a finishing school. It was an odd realization, and I wondered if she gave them each a bronze plaque inscribed with the lines I had just read as their graduation present. It was a funny thought, and I giggled, which snapped Hilary’s attention toward me and made Rolfe look confused, as though he might have said something he shouldn’t have. Poor Rolfe.
The rest of the guests arrived shortly thereafter. Another editor from Hilary’s office, an extremely elegant Italian girl, Paola di San Fraschino, the daughter of some nobleman or other. She spoke charming English and was obviously very well-bred. After her, a lively girl who looked very horsey, had a rather odd laugh, but a kind face. She had just published her second book and didn’t look at all the type. She had a very definite sense of humor and livened up the group considerably. Her husband was a music critic for an English paper, and they had the air of country squires about them. She wore some kind of caftan with Moroccan jewelry, had none of the super chic of either Paola or Hilary, but nevertheless a certain style. And her husband had none of the ethereal qualities of Rolfe, which was refreshing. I was beginning to find the golden poet a little hard to talk to. The doorbell rang twice more after that, once for a terribly pompous but good-looking Frenchman w
ho owned an art gallery on Madison Avenue, and the last time for Gordon Harte, who seemed to know Paola and Rolfe. He and Hilary embraced, and he then proceeded to the bar to make his own drink, looking very much at home. Much more so than Rolfe, who looked as though he was not allowed to touch anything without Hilary’s permission. Before doing anything, or opening his mouth to speak, Rolfe seemed to check with Hilary first, and it made me nervous. It reminded me of the way I had been when I got married, and it was embarrassing to watch someone else doing it.
The evening passed delightfully. It was like flying back and forth on a trapeze, being part of an acrobatic act. We rushed from Japanese literature to French tapestries, to the new rages in Paris, to Russell Baker’s latest editorials, to the political implications of American literature vs Russian literature at the turn of the century, on to homosexuality in Italy, and speculation as to the demise of the Church and organized religion in our society . . . on to Oriental cults, yoga philosophy, and the I Ching. It was exhausting and exhilarating, the kind of evening you can only stand about once every six months. It takes you that long to get all your faculties refurbished afterward. It was a typical evening chez Hilary, with people from the arts, and publishing, and a smattering of literati.
The lady writer and Gordon impressed me the most. They seemed knowledgeable, and informed, but more down to earth than the others. Infinitely more aware of “reality,” something which had become important to me since my days with Chris. My days of enjoying the purely theoretical were over. And I had come to have a healthy respect for the real.
Gordon took me back to the hotel, and we spoke of nothing in particular, the excessive intellectualism of the evening having been dispelled when the group disbanded to go home. As we reached the hotel I expected him to invite me for a drink. But he didn’t. Instead, he looked down at me and said, “How about dinner tomorrow?” He looked suddenly vulnerable, and kind. And I wanted to have dinner with him.
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