Four Blondes

“Of course not. But those pants, darling. Dolce & Gabbana.”

I walk to the back of the restaurant and sit down. D.W. follows. “You should only wear American, dear. It’s soooo important. I was thinking about putting you in some Bentley.”

“Bentley hasn’t had a client under sixty in fifty years.”

“But I’m making him hot. He’s going to be hot, hot, hot again. Those young S. sisters are wearing him.”

I roll my eyes. “I want a martini,” I say. “You don’t have any pills, do you?”

“What kind of pills? Allergy pills? I don’t know . . .”

“Can I get off on them?”

“Oh my dear, what has happened to you? You’re turning into a little Courtney Love. I sooooo wish you’d become friends with those lovely, lovely S. sisters. They adore you. And think of the parties you could throw together. Toute New York would be abuzz. It would be just like the old days.”

Why can’t I be like those darling S. sisters?

They are perfect. They never give anyone trouble. Not even their husbands. They’re twins, and one of them (I always get them mixed up, and so does everyone else) got married when she was something like eighteen. She invited me over for tea once, and I went because my husband said I had to go. “My husband married me because of my hips,” she said, even though I hadn’t asked her. “I have childbearing hips,” she said. “What can I do?” I wanted to ask her where she’d gone for brainwashing, but I couldn’t. She seemed so sad. And so lost. And so tiny in a large checkered dress from Valentino.

“How is it that you’ve never lost your hair, D.W.?” I ask, lighting a cigarette.

“Oh. You’re such a card. My grandfather had a full head of hair when he died.”

“But don’t you think . . . that you had less hair three months ago?”

D.W. looks around the restaurant and slaps my hand. “You naughty. I did have a tiny bit of work done. But everybody does these days. You know, times have really changed. Everybody is photographed. I mean, the awful people whose photographs appear in magazines . . . but I don’t have to tell you about that. Now P., she does it the right way. Do you know that nobody’s, I mean nobody’s, picture appears in the society pages without her approval? And, of course, they have to be the right sort of person. She has the highest standards. She can spot quality a mile away.”

P. is that editor at Vogue.

I yawn loudly.

“Did you see that featurette they did on you last month? The one where they analyzed your hemline lengths? That’s why the long skirt is so big this season.”

“That was only because,” I say, tapping my ash on the floor, “the hem on that skirt came unraveled and I was too lazy to have it sewn back up.”

“Oh, but my dear,” D.W. says. “Don’t you see? That attitude, that insouciance, it’s genius. It’s like when Sharon Stone wore the Gap turtle-neck to the Oscars.”

I fix D.W. with an evil eye. I’ve been trying to get rid of him for two years, but every now and again I have this AWFUL feeling that D.W. is never going to go away, that people like D.W. don’t go away, especially not when you know them the way D.W. and I know each other.

“I threw up today. And I still think someone is trying to poison me.”

D.W. lowers his martini glass. “We know you’re not pregnant,” he says, with this cozy intimacy that gives me the creeps.

“And how do we know that?”

“Come on, my dear. You’re not pregnant. You never have been and you never will be. Not with your body fat hovering at thirteen percent. Your husband may be stupid enough to buy that crap, but I’m not.”

“Fuck you.”

D.W. looks around the restaurant. “Keep your voice down. Unless you want to see yet another item in Star magazine—Princess Cecelia engaged in a lover’s spat with the older man with whom she’s secretly having an affair.”

I start laughing. “Everyone knows you’re gay.”

“I was married. Twice.”

“So?”

“So as far as the press is concerned, my dear, I might be anything.”