Too Much Money (2 page)

“I’ve heard through the grapevine that it’s your birthday too, Lil,” said Gus, teasing his old friend a bit. Lil also needed a hearing aid, but Gus wasn’t about to go that far with her, as she might get upset.

“Yes, but we won’t speak about that, please.” She mouthed
but did not speak the word
seventy
, at the same time rolling her eyes at the ancientness of the decade she was entering.

“You’d never know it,” said Gus, although he knew for a fact she was seventy-five, the same age as Antonia von Rautbord, who was still in a coma.

“You’re so sweet, Gus,” said Lil. “How are things coming along on that ridiculous lawsuit of yours?”

“Don’t minimize it to me,” said Gus. “It’s not ridiculous at all. I’m living it. It is time-consuming, expensive, and extremely nerve-racking, and I hate to talk about it.”

“I can’t imagine that awful man suing you,” said Lil.

“The terrible thing is that it’s my own fault. I fell hook, line, and sinker for a fake story. I honestly thought I had the scoop of my career, and I made the fatal mistake of repeating it on a radio show of no importance, and the consequences have been dire. But let’s not speak about Kyle Cramden, or his terrifying lawyer. Even the mention of his name puts me into a despairing mood.”

“Poor darling Gus,” said Lil.

“I went to communion at Easter Mass this morning, a rare event for me, and prayed that something catastrophic, like a fatal auto accident, would happen to him.”

“You didn’t!” said Lil, screeching with laughter.

“No, I didn’t, but I thought of it. I don’t see a place card for Justine,” said Gus.

He had listened while Lil spoke, but at the same time he was discreetly taking in the seating arrangement at the table. It was this kind of attention to the finer points that allowed him to write the articles that everyone talked about for
Park Avenue
. He couldn’t turn it off. He was always searching for more details to round out a story—or, even better, the kinds of details that might start a new one.

“She’s not coming,” said Lil. “Justine doesn’t like you, Gus.”

“I know. I don’t like her either,” said Gus.

“She thinks she was a character in one of your books.”

“She was.”

“She thinks you went to Bernie Slatkin for information after the divorce, and he told you things.”

“She’s wrong. I never discussed anything with Justine’s ex-husband. I wouldn’t put Bernie Slatkin in that position. He’s a friend of mine.”

“She thinks you did.”

“That’s her problem,” said Gus, shrugging. “Surely I’m not the reason she’s not coming today.”

“No, of course not. She moved to Paris with her brand-new husband number three, Henri de Courcy, who paints fashionable ladies. Actually, he’s quite good. He wanted to paint me, but I said no, thank you very much, I’m much too old to be painted, and besides, Cecil Beaton painted me years and years ago, and so did Vidal-Quadras one winter in Palm Beach, and what was his name who was so divine looking who did that wonderful painting of Babe Paley?”

“René Bouché?” said Gus.

“Oh, yes. René Bouché. He was such a flirt. I can barely remember anyone’s name anymore, but René painted me too, and that’s quite enough paintings for this old lady.”

Gus studied his friend as she moved nervously around the room, tweaking and straightening, trying to ensure perfection. Lil Altemus was tall and aristocratic. Most of her friends described her as handsome but not beautiful. Gus could see why a painter would be inclined to want her as his subject. There was something almost royal about her. She dressed in the manner of grand ladies of a certain age who once shopped from Miss Hughes at Bergdorf’s. Her clothes were both conservative and expensive, mostly in blue and black shades. As Gus looked more closely, he noticed a degree of melancholy in her expression.

“Isn’t this supposed to be your last party in this apartment?” he asked.

“Yes; that’s why it’s so sad Justine’s not here. She and Hubie literally grew up in this apartment. I’ve lived here almost forty-five years. Hubie’s dead, and Justine lives in Paris. I said to Justine on the phone last week, ‘Why don’t you fly over for a couple of days? It’s the last party in the apartment, and you grew up here.’

“I told her everyone would love to see my granddaughter, Cordelia, and I even suggested they could drive up to Farmington and register Cordelia for two years from now. After all, my mother went to Farmington; I went to Farmington; Justine went to Farmington; and now Cordelia’s going to go to Farmington. I tell you, that granddaughter of mine is simply divine. I can’t wait for her to move back to New York, where she belongs. Of course, it seems there’s no changing Justine’s mind. She says she doesn’t want to be away from Henri, but I say it’s not as if she can’t afford a quick trip over and back. After all, she got all of the Altemus money when her father died last year.”

Lil Altemus stopped fiddling with the table, rested her hands on the back of one of the twenty-four Chippendale chairs, and sighed, looking around the room, her eyes welling up with nostalgia.

“Gus, I have such lovely memories here. Justine had her coming-out dance in this apartment. Oh, it was so pretty. The
magic
that Mark Hampton wrought. Peonies everywhere. Two orchestras. He tented in the terrace for the disco and lined the tent with blue and white toile. The oldies all danced in the hall, and Peter Duchin’s orchestra was on the stairs. So many violins. It was heavenly. Peter was so good-looking in those days. Dolores De Longpre wrote in whatever paper she was writing for back then that it was the prettiest party she’d ever been to.”

“I used to read about people like you in Dolores De Longpre’s column,” said Gus.

“And now you write about people like us, and not always kindly my friends say, and your name is in the papers more than any of ours.” Not to be diverted from her reverie, Lil continued.

“Oh, Gus—if you knew how much I miss Hubie. He was always such a comfort in family situations.” Although Gus knew that not to be true, he said nothing. “If Hubie were alive, he’d have gotten Justine here for Easter lunch today. They were the closest brother and sister I ever saw. Damn that Epstein-Barr. I so wish they’d find a cure for it. They’ve asked me to be on the committee for the Epstein-Barr dinner dance benefit at the St. Regis Roof this year. I haven’t decided.”

She reached out and halfheartedly picked up a place card from the table. Still lost in her own thoughts and grief for the past, she let it dangle from her fingers, a task forgotten.

“Lil,” said Gus, “the place cards are fine. The table’s beautiful, and the white lilies centerpiece is a work of art. I bet Queen Elizabeth’s Easter lunch table at Windsor Castle is not as pretty as yours. Now, listen to me for a minute. Your son, Hubie Altemus, died of
AIDS
. He did
not
die of Epstein-Barr, no matter how many times you say he did. Someday you have to face up to that fact.”

Lil looked squarely at Gus. “It’s Easter Sunday. It’s also my birthday. And it’s my last party in this apartment before I move to that God’s Waiting Room, as everyone calls it, over on East Sixty-sixth Street that my nephew insisted I buy. I so miss my brother managing my money. Young Laurance Van Degan always makes me feel like I’m going to end up in the poorhouse. He has too much control and is making me do things I don’t want to. Forgodssake, you know how much I simply can’t stand my stepmother, Dodo, and I didn’t want to invite her today to the family lunch, but young Laurance said I had to. As you well
know, she’s twenty-five years younger than I am. I don’t know what my father was thinking when he married her.”

Gus pulled one of the twenty-four Chippendale dining chairs away from Lil’s Easter table and sat down and crossed his legs, as if settling in for a long stay. He had heard Lil’s rant about her wicked stepmother getting all the family money so many times, he could repeat it word for word. He hoped the first guest would ring the bell.

Lil went on.

“Dodo was a poor distant Van Degan relation that
I
was responsible for bringing into the household after her father jumped off the
Queen Elizabeth
in the mid-Atlantic following a mortifying episode with a deckhand in the engine room that I’d be too embarrassed to go into details about. Her own mother was too drunk to take care of her, in and out of Silver Hill, she practically kept them in business. My poor father paid for all of her stays at great expense. As we all know, no good deed goes unpunished.

“After Daddy’s stroke, Dodo pushed him around in the wheelchair, and when he became incontinent she didn’t mind cleaning up, and he married her without telling any of us. And then, he left her
everything
, including the Van Degan trust, which, by all rights, should have come to me. She only got the money for life, thank the good lord, but I’ll be long gone by the time the awful Dodo dies, and Justine will inherit everything that I should have inherited, and Justine has already inherited all the Altemus money. I’m the only one left out in the cold without anything. So, Gus Bailey, today is
not
the day to talk about the cause of Hubie’s death.”

“You’ve put me in my place,” said Gus. “But, tell me, aren’t there other reasons for you moving from this fabulous apartment, Lil?”

“I can’t walk up that beautiful stairway since the hip replacement,
so I have to go out in the hall and ring the elevator man to take me up to the next floor so I can get to my bedroom. And it takes five or six in help to take care of an apartment this size. It’s gotten out of hand. But those are just excuses. I would hold on to this place regardless, but my nephew tells me I’m running out of money. If you had any idea of how those words terrify me, Gus.”

Lil caught herself before she got too emotional and smoothed down the front of her skirt. “I’m going to miss this place, but I’m certainly not going to miss living in the same building as Perla Zacharias, thank you very much, with all her guards in the lobby, and her limousines blocking the parking space in front of the building, so that my driver has to double-park on Fifth Avenue, and I have to walk sideways between her Rolls-Royces, which are taking up all the room. It’s such a nuisance, especially when it rains. Really, the nerve of that woman. I cut her dead in the elevator, and she still tries to speak to me.”

Gus leaned in.

“Do you want to hear an Easter Sunday secret that nobody knows?”

“Of course I do,” said Lil.

“Not for repetition.”

“You can count on me not to repeat it to a single soul,” replied Lil.

“I just made a deal to write a novel based on Perla’s life and the tragedy in Biarritz … for lots of bucks,” said Gus.

“Oh, my dear. Brave you. Perla’s not going to be happy with you. Don’t you ever worry about how people will respond?”

Gus smiled.

“All the time.”

“Someday, when we have lunch, just the two of us, you
must
tell me about the fire at the villa in Biarritz. I’ve heard you tell it
at dinner parties several times, but I think you’re holding back. There’s something fishy about that story, don’t you think? I mean, the Zachariases had all those guards, and there wasn’t a single one on duty the night of the murder. Pul-eeze. And didn’t I read in your diary in
Park Avenue
that the poor male nurse who’s in the Biarritz jail signed the confession in French, a language he doesn’t speak? Pul-eeze again.” As Lil paused to ponder this, across the apartment she saw her butler, Dudley, hasten to open the door to her first guests. “Oh, look, Gus, here comes Adele Harcourt. Doesn’t she look divine, bless her heart? Look at those high heels. Don’t you love it? Doesn’t she limp well for someone her age? She doesn’t look a hundred and four, does she?”

Lil kept speaking as she moved to receive her honored guest, “that perfect darling,” Adele Harcourt.

“Oh, I didn’t know she was going to bring Addison Kent. That’s her walker. He takes her to the movies in the afternoon. Adele loves the movies. The
on-dit
on Addison Kent is that he used to be Winkie Williams’s boyfriend, and probably still is for all I know. By the way, Winkie has cancer. Riddled, poor sweet Winkie. He called and canceled lunch today about an hour ago. Gus, be a darling and tell Gert in the kitchen to write a place card for Addison. You’d better spell it for her.

“Oh, Adele, your hat is so marvelous. Perfect for Easter. Wasn’t the music heavenly at St. James’ this morning? Oh, hello, Addison. It’s so nice to see you. Happy Easter!”

A
DDISON
K
ENT
was one of those pretty society boys on whom fashionable women doted. He had only been in New York for five years, but Winkie Williams, who had been everyone’s favorite extra man for the past forty years, had more or less sponsored him, taken him about in the beginning to meet people when he first arrived in town from Grosse Pointe, Michigan,
after having graduated from Brown University, which were considered good credentials. What only Winkie Williams knew, and not another soul, was that Addison’s family was from South Detroit, Michigan, that Addison had attended Brown Junior College in Willis, Michigan, for two terms, and that he’d been working as a waiter in a Red Lobster restaurant in Pensacola, Florida, when they’d met six years earlier. The Red Lobster was an unlikely place for such an elegant fellow as Winkie Williams to stop for lunch.

Later, Addison told certain of his friends that fate had brought them together. Actually, Winkie had prostate cancer at the time and had to urinate a great deal. He had no intention of eating at Red Lobster after his emergency bathroom visit, but Addison, who had an eye for spotting class, put down the tray of lobster dinners he was carrying and followed Winkie into the men’s room. That’s where the whole thing started.

Addison brought with him great looks and a natural aptitude for assessing beautiful things. It was Winkie Williams who helped him get the job under Prince Simeon of Slovakia, the head of the jewelry department of Boothby’s auction house on the Upper East Side, after Addison recognized a tiara worn by Perla Zacharias on the opening night of the opera as having originally been designed for Empress Eugénie of France. It was the sort of surprising thing Addison knew.