Bergdorf Blondes (19 page)

The Hotel du Cap in Antibes should be renamed the Hotel du Deals. Everyone who’s anyone in movies
stays there during the festival even though it’s a thirty-minute drive from the Croisette, where all the movies are, and it’s ninety minutes if the traffic’s murder, and the traffic is
homicidal
during the festival. Geography-wise, it’s a lot like choosing to stay at the Mark if all you want to do is shop in Mulberry Street.

The whole du Cap thing is like a bizarre cult or something. I mean, if I were Cameron Diaz and I was blonde and rich enough to stay anywhere I wanted, I’m not sure I’d choose a hotel that requires you to pay your bill
in advance, in cash
, has nothing on room service but club sandwiches and shamefully tiny scoops of sorbet, and where the TVs in the rooms are so old they should be on the History Channel.

That’s what I thought when we arrived in the pitch black at 6 AM this morning. It was something like 12 AM New York time—G-Vs get to Europe quicker than regular planes, which I guess is one of the advantages of a plane you can only just stand up in. We couldn’t get a morsel to eat or a bed until Patrick had handed over a wedge of cash the size of a shoe. Honestly, they should call it Motel du Cap.

Patrick is beyond gentlemanly. I had warned him in no uncertain terms on the way over that I was not available to him for trips to Brazil, in view of his marital status. Without actually saying it, I think I managed to communicate my real message: were he ever to be
a lot
closer to a real divorce, I
may
be convinced
to travel to South America with him. The great benefit of an ultra-chaste attitude is that your host is forced to book you into your own suite. Totally on the d-l, because I would hate Patrick to find out I said this, your own suite is a lot more relaxing than sharing with a man you hardly know who is trying to talk his way into your own personal Ipanema Beach all night long.

I woke at 11 AM feeling jet-lagged beyond belief. I dizzily threw open the shutters. Oh! I gasped.
That’s
why everyone’s here, I thought. Miles of impeccable green lawn stretched down to the Mediterranean, which sparkled like one of those antique cushion-cut blue diamonds they sell at Fred Leighton on Madison. Who cared if there was no food here! You could fill up on view. The ex-fiancé getting a new fiancée suddenly didn’t seem to matter quite so much anymore.

There was a knock at my door and a busboy entered. He was carrying a silver tray loaded up with baguette and orange pressé. A notecard was perched on top:

Remember that Eres bikini I was obsessing over for the thwarted cruise on the King of Spain’s boat? Well,
I wasn’t at all hysterical anymore about not getting to wear it there when it was even more perfect for here. The du Cap (everyone just says “the du Cap” here) is one giant fashion opportunity. It was the ideal place for a white two-piece with silver buckles at the hips.

I strolled through the bar and out to the pool which is on a cliff edge overlooking the ocean. I was just pulling up a chair when a voice yelled, “Hey, over here!”

It was Jazz Conassey. Of course it was. I walked over to where she was sprawled like a tanned pretzel on a white mat.

“Hi,” I said.

“Dev-a-station factor!” she said, staring at my bikini.

“What?” I said.

“I’m devastated,” said Jazzy.

“Why?”

“Your bikini.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“No! Noooo! I’m devastated in a good way, it’s a hot bikini. I’m paying you a compliment.”

“Well, thank you so much, Jazz. I’m
devastated
by your outfit, too,” I said.

She was in a batik-print swimsuit and had more diamonds wrapped around her neck than an entire red carpet of Hollywood starlets. I think she was acting out the FRG version of hippy chic.

“Jean-Jacques!” called Jazz to the poolman. “Bring my friend a mat?” Jazz turned to me and added, “You really don’t want to be in a
chair
at this particular pool. It’s all about the
white
mats here.”

“I was thinking of getting a cabana,” I said.

“Don’t,” replied Jazz. “Those cabanas are so, like,
secluded
. You can’t be seen there. You want to be seen.”

I followed Jazz’s order and lay down beside her on a white mat. The etiquette at the du Cap could inspire a whole new volume from Emily Post.

“I’m starving,” I said. “I’m going to order a club sandwich. Do you want anything?

“No, I’m on the du Cap diet,” replied Jazz.

The du Cap diet, it turns out, consists of peach Bellinis, peanuts, and Ritz cookies. As Jazz rightly said, the peanuts were way more delicious than the club sandwiches, which, frankly, are better at a Holiday Inn.

“So, have you written the story about me yet?” said Jazz.

“Yes,” I lied. The magazine wanted it right away. But I couldn’t bear the idea of going indoors and working when there was some world-class tanning to be done out here. “What are you doing here?” I asked Jazz.

“Doing? I’m not
doing
anything. I’m just hanging with this friend who’s got, like, six movies out.”

“Seen anything great?”

“Not yet, but there’s a screening this afternoon of
this really hot little indie movie out of LA that everyone’s talking about. I heard the director’s totally hot. You want to come with me?”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s it called?”

“
The Diary
. Everyone’s saying it’s as funny as Woody Allen was when he was still funny.”

We left the hotel at four. Jazz had somehow managed to secure the only driver in the whole of Antibes with an open-top jeep. We whizzed down the driveway of the hotel and onto the coast road.

“So what are you wearing to the ball tonight?” yelled Jazz, her hair swirling around her in the wind.

“McQueen. Patrick gave it to me.”

“Devastation factor! You’re here with Patrick Saxton
and
he got you a dress? Wow. Amazing.”

“I’m not ‘with’ with Patrick. I’m just with him. I don’t even know him.”

“Look here’s the info about the movie,” said Jazz.

I scanned the sheet of paper she handed over. It read,

Charlie? Charlie didn’t make successful, funny movies. He made depressing low-budget intellectual films no one ever saw. It was bad enough being dis
covered dead by a hopeless movie director, let alone the darling of the Cannes film festival.

“Jazz, I can’t come. I gotta turn in that story.” I tapped the driver on the shoulder and said, “Can you drop me here, please?”

He pulled up. I hopped out of the car.

“But you said you’d done the story!” said Jazz.

“See you tonight,” I said, walking back toward the hotel.

Just when I’d been feeling more cheerful about everything, the thought of Charlie’s stern, disapproving face in the Ritz bar came right back to me. He’d bring on a really negative Advil-type mood swing. Even worse, the story about Eduardo and me had done the gossip rounds, so he would be more unimpressed by me than ever. Anyway, I wanted to be on time with my story. It’s important to be super-duper reliable when you have a career, particularly when you’ve been somewhat unreliable for several weeks.

Later, as I was putting the finishing touches to my story on the laptop in my room, the telephone rang.

“Bonsoir,”
I said. I was determined to improve my hopeless fluent French.

“Hey! It’s Lara. Are you having the best time? Is George Clooney there?”

“It’s so nice here. You should come sometime,” I told her.

“Can you believe Charlie got that award?” said Lara. “We read about it in Cindy Adams.”

“He did?” I said. “Oh.”

Why do the best things always happen to the worst people, and the worst things, like premature balding, always happen to the nicest people? God, I hoped that didn’t mean Charlie would be at the amfAR party.

“Are you okay?” said Lara.

“I’m great,” I replied.

“Are you freaked about Zach and that airhead model?”

“A bit, I guess.”

“Try not to think about it. Those two are so over they don’t know how over they are. Call when you’re back.”

“I will.”

“
Au revoir
,” said Lara and hung up.

I e-mailed my story off at 6 PM. It was only midday in New York, so I was at least an hour ahead of my deadline. I ordered two peach Bellinis from room service to celebrate. Before a party, two Bellinis make you feel not at all nervous, you know, which is a brilliant pre-party ploy if you have a nonaddictive personality. In fact, after drinking both Bellinis I started feeling so wonderfully not-nervous that I began thinking that maybe I would
love
to bump into Charlie Dunlain at amfAR, in the gorgeous McQueen, as the date of a well-regarded movie producer. Then he’d see that I wasn’t a suicidal loser who attracted ghastly men.

The only issue I have with those Bellinis, in retrospect, is that when I put on that lovely floaty chiffon dress that Patrick had gotten me, I guess I wasn’t totally being 100 percent careful what with all those bubbles floating around my system. I got the frock over my head. I tried to pull it down. Oops. It was stuck, forming a cage from the top of my head to my belly button. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. My arms wouldn’t go down or up. I must have forgotten to undo the zip. I slowly tried to wriggle the dress off. As I was released I heard a violent ripping sound.

6:25
PM
. I undid the zip and started to put the dress back on. That was when I saw it: a devastating—and I mean that in the original sense of the word—wound gaped from the back of the dress. It was beyond un-wearable. It wasn’t even fixable.

Patrick would be here in thirty-five minutes. Desperate, I ran over to Jazz’s room and hammered at the door. FRGs always have exquisite backup dresses available.

“I’m having a party dress 911,” I gasped when Jazz let me in.

“Hey, no problemo, sweetie. You can wear my backup,” she said.

What a saint! Jazz was ready to party in a red vintage 1970s Valentino column scattered with silk roses. She looked awesome. I felt less freaked. If Jazz’s
backup dress was anything like this I doubted whether that mini-meltdown I’d anticipated would ever hit me. She glided to her closet and pulled out a silk gown.

“It’s Oscar. New season. Very now. Here,” she said.

I took the dress from her. It was steel gray taffeta. There was a lot of dress. I was secretly excited. I slipped it on. I ran to the mirror.

I looked like an iceberg. No, seriously, I did. Why did the only bad dress that Oscar had
ever
designed in his
entire
career end up on me on what potentially could have been the most glamorous night of my life? Now I know what Halle Berry must have felt like the night she won the Oscar. I mean, imagine, up she went to get that cute little gold thing in front of the whole world and she’s dressed like an ice skater. No wonder she was having an anxiety attack. I couldn’t say anything, I mean, it was so sweet of Jazz to lend me the dress, but she knew I was disappointed. She said, “Soooo, it’s a little WASPy. But French people don’t realize how uncool it is to be WASPy. They’ll never know, I promise.”

I didn’t have time to freak out. I raced back to my room and slipped on my black mules—which would have looked chic with the chiffon but looked like two anchors with the iceberg—and scooped up my black clutch. The phone went.

“I’m in the car downstairs,” said Patrick.

“Coming,” I said, as though there was nothing to be alarmed about at all.

He wouldn’t even notice what I was wearing, I told myself. Men never do. I sidled down the stairs—the dress seemed to be wider than the staircase—and tried to glide into Patrick’s car. In fact, I barely managed to force myself and the block of dress through the door. Sometimes fashion makes you feel like a wedge of pâté.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” said Patrick. His face fell as he regarded my outfit. “I thought you were going to wear the Alexander McQueen dress. That’s Oscar de la Renta.”

Weird. I am super-suspicious of men who know as much about fashion as me. I told Patrick what had happened.

“I’m sorry, this is Jazz Conassey’s backup dress!” I giggled.

Patrick didn’t exactly giggle back. In fact, Mr. G-V was not the slightest bit charmed by my tale. He barely spoke to me all night. That’s the problemo with gay men and straight guys who are too into fashion: they’re all over you when you’re in some really interesting
avant-garde
McQueen number, but show up in a WASPy iceberg and
they
turn into icebergs. Patrick was polite but cool all night. He was captivated by Jazz’s rose-strewn Valentino, but I drank so many peach Bellinis that my self-esteem barely noticed. The only thing I could congratulate myself on that night
was not seeing Charlie Dunlain. There was no sign of him all evening.

Another note arrived with breakfast the next morning.

He didn’t sound too pissed. Maybe Patrick didn’t mind about the iceberg after all. Maybe he wasn’t as superficial as I’d thought last night. Sometimes I can be way too judgmental.

The phone rang. Oooo-www!!! My head was hurting. My nails were agony. Even my
hair
was hurting, which is unique to a Bellini hangover. It was Jazz.

“Hi, I’m flying back to the city with you,” she said.

“Great. I think we leave at one.”

“I’ll see you at the airport,” she said.

See. Patrick wasn’t terrible. How kind of him to offer Jazz a ride home.

Still, if Jazz was travelling with us I needed to redeem myself with a top-class, private-jet outfit. Head aching, I gingerly pulled on a crisp white sundress. I put on flat gold sandals and gold hoop earrings and tied my hair in a ponytail with my favorite Pucci headscarf. Then I lay in bed with a bag of ice on my nails until the car arrived to pick me up at midday. Patrick
really was a saint, sending cars and notes 24–7. Maybe he’d send a new dress to replace the one I’d ruined when I got back to New York, though of course I wasn’t 100 percent expecting it.