“Yeah, that’s the only bad thing. I’ll be away from you. But we knew we’d have times like this, didn’t we? I mean, you get trips to places…”
“Oh, absolutely. We knew we’d have to be separated sometimes. But we’ll get back together when you come home. Won’t we?”
“Of course we will. You bet we will! I’ll miss you, baby.”
“I’ll miss you, too, sweetie. But we’ll write. And call.”
“Yeah, we’ll write and call. Are you all right?”
I felt really sick. And something was acting funny with my vision. I thought I saw some kind of big bug flitting across the room. A blue one.
“Excuse me, honey. I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
It seemed like the blue fairy was leading the way to the tiny bathroom, flitting down the dimly lit corridor. I closed the door and locked it, then leaned over and threw up what little of the swordfish I had managed to get down. Then I had an urge to sit, so I turned around, pulled down my pantyhose and sat. A spasm took me and I strained. I heard a small plop and when I wiped, it was blood. A lot of blood. I looked in the toilet and there in the bottom was a small clot of blood, about the size of a nickel. I looked around the room, but the tinkling sound had gone. The blue fairy, the little soul of the baby, had gone. I was all alone. I started to cry.
“Thank you. Thank you so much, Jesus. Forgive me, please forgive me. Please give me another chance. Please let this little baby come back to me again one day. I love it so much. I love you so much. Thank you, thank you. I’ll do better. I promise I will.”
I leaned against the wall and sobbed until there were no more sobs. I wadded up toilet paper and put it in my panties to catch the flow. Then I fixed my makeup and went back out.
“I’m not feeling so well, sweetheart. I started my period.”
“Oh, well, then let’s get the check. I’ll take you home.”
“You’re the best, Aurelius. I do love you. I really do.”
“And I love you, too, baby. I do.”
55
* * *
GOOD-BYE, FREDDY
There had never been so many good-looking women all in one place at one time. Campbell’s funeral home was packed with them, all wearing black, weeping, hugging, giggling behind their hands. The open coffin sat at the front of the room, black and shiny, like a limousine, ready to take Freddy to his eternal rest. Or whatever. The preacher was a pompous man with a balding horseshoe hairdo who looked like his shirt collar was a size too small. He had never met Freddy in his life, but stood at attention, goggle-eyed at all the models. He kept hugging Suzan, who caught my glance and rolled her eyes. Suzan had asked me to sit with her in the front row, along with Gina and Liz and the rest of the staff. I think when the chips are down, you need somebody you can trust, and I might have been the only one she knew for sure who hadn’t slept with ol’ Freddy. We were all totally in shock, of course. The morning of his death, Suzan said, she had come down and had her breakfast, thinking Freddy was still asleep, like he always was at that hour. When he wasn’t down by noon, she went to his room and saw his bed hadn’t been slept in. The car was in the garage, and there was fresh snow, no tracks leading anywhere. She ran from room to room, and finally went out to the pool house, where she saw him floating, blood on the side of the pool. A bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin was broken on the floor, along with one of his slippers, and it was pretty evident he’d been drunk and just tripped into the pool. His blood-alcohol level had been off the charts when they did the autopsy, and the coroner said the cut on his head had probably knocked him out. He’d drowned. After she found the body, Suzan, of course, went into hysterics and called the police. The doctor came and gave her a sedative, and Gina came out and helped her get back to the apartment. It was such a tragedy. Such a waste. But we’d all seen Freddy drunk around that pool, and knew he was an accident just waiting to happen. Nobody was that surprised.
After the preacher spoke, we all filed by and lay our hands on the casket one last time. Freddy looked good, all clean and shaved, wearing a nice Armani suit with a red silk tie. He had a little smile on his face. Suzan was the last to go up. I waited for her a few respectful feet back. She leaned down and kissed the cold face, then took something out of her bag and slipped it into his hands. It was a blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire. She turned, as they closed the lid, and waited while they rolled the coffin down the aisle. We walked out behind it, her holding on to my arm.
“Well, that’s over.”
“I’m so sorry, Suzan.”
“Are you?”
“Well, kind of. But I’m sorry it was such a shock to you.”
“Yes, it was a shock. But I’m not sorry at all. I’m free.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Oh, I’ll keep the agency. But I think I’ll go to Paris for a long holiday. Gina can keep things going until I get back. She runs it all anyhow. I might think about starting a branch of Suzan Hartman in Paris—who knows? Would you want to go with me? There’s a lot of work for girls like you in Paris. Can you imagine, the girls from Arkansas take on the City of Light?”
Paris! A lot of my friends in the agency had been to Paris. In fact, most girls went there for a year of seasoning when they first started. They came back home with fat portfolios of tear sheets and much more polish and sophistication than when they’d left. We’d just found out that Diana Vreeland had been fired from Vogue, which seemed impossible, like God being fired, but she had. My trip to Moscow was not going to happen. No white horses in snowy birch forests for me. Maybe a little time in Paris was just what I needed. Suzan’s eyes were shining. She looked a lot younger, somehow, softer, more relaxed. There was a quality in her I’d never seen before. She was happy.
“You know, Suzan, that sounds like fun. I’m kind of at loose ends right now. I’d love to go, if it wouldn’t be forever. I love New York so much, but then I’ve never seen Paris.”
“And Paris has never seen a couple of girls like us.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have helped me along the way to writing my second book, none more than my doctor, Arlan Fuller, who kept the old machine going to complete the task. Without him there would be no book and most likely no author. My sons, John Buffalo and Matthew; Matthew’s wife, Salina, and their daughter, Mattie James; my stepchildren, Susan, Danielle, Elizabeth, Kate, Michael, Stephen, Maggie, and their spouses and children; as well as my sister-in-law Barbara Wasserman, her son, Peter Alson, and his wife and daughter; are the best family there is. I couldn’t have done any of it without them. I thank my host of friends, Aurora Huston, Susan Shinn, Christina Pabst, Natasha Stoynoff, Sarah Keathley, Diane Fisher, Dwayne Prickett, Carol Mailer, and Carmel Borders, among many others, who told me with absolute sincerity that they stayed up until two reading my drafts, and Dan Skelton, who is a poet, a critic, and a friend. My dear father, James Davis, passed away while I was writing this book. I miss him and his dry wit and loving charm and wish he were here to read it. He would be shocked, but would be proud of me anyhow. My mother, Gaynell Davis, will read it and be proud, but will still be shocked.
Great thanks to the powerful Random House; its publisher, Gina Centrello; my beloved editor, David Ebershoff; Diana Fox; Jynne Martin; Carol Schneider; Janet Wygal; Stephanie Higgs; and all the rest of the gang, for giving me the tools and the freedom to do this book.
A special warm thanks to John Taylor Williams (ol’ Handsome Ike), my agent and friend, who believed in me before I did, and kept my courage up when the days got long. Thanks to Hope Denekamp, Ike’s assistant, who is always there for me.
What fun it was to relive that period when I was a young model, through the many books and magazines that went into the research of Cheap Diamonds. I am grateful to Jackie Thurik for finding the period magazines I needed. Besides D.V., Diana Vreeland’s autobiography, another book that was most helpful in researching Mrs. Vreeland was Diana Vreeland, by Eleanor Dwight. Thanks, also, to Michael
Gross and his wonderful book Model, and to Richard Kostelanetz for his book SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists’ Colony. High on Rebellion, by Yvonne Sewall-Ruskin, was a gold mine about Max’s Kansas City, where I have spent the odd evening or two. So many other books that I can’t enumerate them all added spice to the mix.
Last but not least, I thank Norman Mailer, my husband of thirty-two years, who showed me what being a writer means, and who had the wisdom to let me do it on my own. I love you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Most of the names, characters, locations, dialogue, and plot are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. There are, however, places in New York that once existed, and some that still exist. Several well-known figures are mentioned by their real names, and, with utmost respect, the author has taken the liberty of creating dialogue for these characters, most of whom she has known in at least a passing way. But their words should not be construed as actual comments by the character—with the exception of Diana Vreeland, whose exchange with Cherry on perfume was adapted from her autobiography, D.V. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). A writer of fiction has only three sources of information from which to draw: real-life experiences, research, and imagination. The author has drawn from them all, and, like Dr. Frankenstein, was inclined to occasionally borrow the odd characteristic from people and places in her life to toss into the mix of entirely different characters or situations. However, none of the fictitious characters in Cheap Diamonds is based on an actual person, and any resemblance to living people is entirely coincidental.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NORRIS CHURCH MAILER was the author of Windchill Summer, Cheap Diamonds, and A Ticket to the Circus. She was also the mother of two sons, two stepsons, and five stepdaughters, as well as grandmother to two and step-grandmother to nine. Mailer died in 2010 at the age of sixty-one.
ALSO BY NORRIS CHURCH MAILER
Windchill Summer
A Ticket to the Circus
Cheap Diamonds is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters, with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Norris Church Mailer
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Mailer, Norris Church.
Cheap diamonds: a novel / by Norris Church Mailer.
p. cm.
1. Young women—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A3824C47 2007
813'.54—dc22 2006037986
www.atrandom.com
246897531
eISBN: 978-1-58836-653-5
v3.0_r1
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