Too Much Money (15 page)

“Yes, you can, Ruby. I don’t know why, but I feel it belongs to you because of your name. Think of it as a remembrance of a unique experience.”

Ruby put it on and admired it on her wrist. “I’ve always wanted a ruby bracelet. Just rubies. Not rubies and diamonds. Just rubies. Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

“May I give you a kiss good-bye?” asked the baroness.

“Of course,” said Ruby. As they kissed, she said, “Is that my pussy I taste on your tongue?”

The baroness screamed with laughter.

“You probably think I’m cheap,” said Ruby.

“It can’t get too cheap for me,” replied the baroness. “Is it all right if I call you, Ruby?”

D
RESSED AGAIN
in her Valentino gown and ready to go back to her own suite in the Rhinelander, Charlotte de Liagra waved good-bye from the door.

“One thing before you go,” called out Ruby. “I have something I have to confess to you. After what’s happened between us, I would feel very shabby if you left here without knowing.”

“Yes, I know. You had an affair with my husband. He always tells me after his little flings are over,” said the baroness.

“You mean, you’re not angry with me?”

“Darling, it’s me, remember? You recognized the ruby bracelet right away, didn’t you?”

“Of course, but I kind of feel like a hooker taking it from you,” said Ruby, looking at the bracelet once again. She noticed that one of the rubies was chipped. She thought,
Probably from when I threw it at Henri de Liagra at his love nest on the Rue du Bac in Paris
.

“We were meant to meet,” Baroness de Liagra assured her.

“You’re a good-looking woman, Baroness,” said Ruby from her bed.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” replied the baroness. “Greatest tits I ever saw.”

“They used to be even bigger when I had the implants, but I had them removed. We can’t have sex in the facility, but Elias feels me up. He didn’t like the implants, so I got rid of them.”

“Smart husband you’ve got, Ruby. Will you have lunch with me at Swifty’s the next time I come to New York?”

“Hell, yes,” said Ruby. She got up out of bed and pulled on a dressing gown. “I just got an idea. Elias is getting out of prison in the next six months. Maisie Verdurin sold me a beautiful house on East Seventy-eighth Street, which is all being redone, but it’s a big secret. I’m going to need some new clothes. I can’t be at the couture collections and not expect to be photographed and written up, which is not good for a woman whose husband is in prison.”

“What are you about to suggest?”

“We’re the same size, only I’ve got bigger boobs. I know you’re a regular at the collections anyway. Pick me out a brand-new wardrobe,” said Ruby. “I want six evening dresses, six suits, and anything else you think I shouldn’t live without. I don’t care what it costs. Even after all the fines he’s had to pay, Elias still has a billion bucks, probably more. He has this friend named Max Luby who looks after his money when he’s in prison.”

The baroness laughed. “We could be friends, you know,” said the baroness.

“You’ve got the class, I’ve got the brass. We’d be perfect friends,” replied Ruby, laughing. “I want something extra special to wear on the day that Elias gets out of prison,” said Ruby. “Something with sable on the cuffs. I’m going to fly out in our plane to Las Vegas for the last time in my life, I hope. I can’t tell you how much I hate the sound of those doors clanking behind me. I get a chill every time I’m there. I’m taking our chauffeur with me to hire a limousine and pick Elias up as he leaves prison. There will be photographers there. You can count on that. I’m going to have Elias’s dark blue pinstripe suit taken in at the waist since he’s lost so much weight in prison. We’ll pose for pictures. Then we’ll go directly back to the plane.”

“You know, Ruby, when this prison part of your life is all over, you should talk about what it’s been like at dinner parties,” said the baroness. “Talk about the prison doors clanking shut behind you. You’ll be the only one at the table who can say that. Everyone will be riveted by your stories, and you’ll beat them to the draw of talking about you behind your back.

“You’ll be the best-dressed woman in New York when I come back from the collections. I’ll e-mail you from Paris.”

“T
HANK
G
OD YOU’RE NOT IN THAT GHASTLY
orange jumpsuit again this time,” said Ruby, after kissing Elias. She held back and didn’t say one word about his breath. “You look so much thinner in the blue one. I’ve had about six of your old suits sent to Huntsman on Savile Row in London to be taken in at the waist. I told that nice man, Mr. Hope-Davies, he’s such fun on the telephone, how much weight you’ve lost and he’s personally overseeing the adjustments.”

Elias was inattentive that day, as if he had something on his mind. Ruby wanted Elias to show more interest in the magnificent house that was being completed for them on East Seventy-eighth Street in New York. She had brought plans and photographs and some swatches that she was thinking of for the chairs and curtains in Elias’s dressing room.

“Guess what, Elias? You’re going to love this one. I’m having a urinal put on the wall of your bathroom, right next to the toilet. Charlotte has suggested this color green for the bathroom walls.”

“Is there anything going on between you and the baron’s dyke wife?” asked Elias, who wasn’t interested in the swatches for his dressing room.

“Don’t call her that, Elias,” said Ruby, in an angry voice.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I meant to ask if there was anything going on between you and the daughter of Belitas,” asked Elias.

“What I’m saying is, and listen carefully, don’t ever refer to Charlotte de Liagra as the ‘baron’s dyke wife.’”

“Max Luby says she’s your new best friend.”

“God, I hate Max Luby. No, there’s nothing going on with Charlotte de Liagra. I met her at Maisie Verdurin’s. She’s very chic. Very elegant. She looks like Jeanne Moreau thirty years ago. She came on to me.”

“See? I told you. Max Luby says in some circles they call her Uncle Charlie.”

“I let her go down on me,” said Ruby.

“You what?”

“You heard me. Just once. She likes hair pie, as you would say. She said she especially liked red hair. It’s not my scene, she knows that. Now I’ve had the experience, the curiosity’s gone,” said Ruby.

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” said Elias, shaking his head incredulously. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Let me put it this way. It was not altogether unpleasant. As muff divers go, Baroness de Liagra is at the top of the charts,” said Ruby. “She liked me to talk dirty when she was down there doing her thing. There, you satisfied? Is that what you wanted to hear? Did it turn you on?”

Elias, who did have an erection, roared with laughter. “I always loved you the best when you were cheap and trashy, Ruby.”

“Charlotte says that’s what makes me unique, when I talk trash. She said it couldn’t get too low for her. She said I was cheap, but she said she meant it as a compliment. Charlotte’s at the collections in Paris. She’s helping me with my clothes for when you get out of here.”

“Does the baroness know you used to fuck her husband while your husband was in prison?” asked Elias.

“You and I were divorced at the time, Elias, so I was free to do anything I wanted to do. Charlotte does know. She mentioned it once,” said Ruby, glad she had decided to leave the ruby bracelet back in the plane.

D
INNER-PARTY LIFE WENT ON IN
N
EW
Y
ORK
, even though the economy was on the skids. Rich people talked about money—who was making it, who was losing it. What were once considered great fortunes were evaporating. “The Lelands have had to put the Southampton house up for sale,” said Dinkie Winthrop to Addison Kent at Matilda Clarke’s dinner for Ormolu Webb’s birthday in the back room of Swifty’s. Unprincipled financiers were being indicted. Others were receiving bailouts and bonuses, attracting the anger of the public.

At Maisie Verdurin’s dinner for Dolores De Longpre, who was retiring from writing her society gossip column after forty years, Muffy de la Roche said, to the table at large, “Shouldn’t Elias Renthal be getting out of prison any month now?”

“In my day, we didn’t know people who went to prison,” said Lil Altemus to Percy Webb at Kay Kay Somerset’s dinner.

“Ferdy Trocadero is painting the walls of Ruby Renthal’s indoor swimming pool room that she copied from the indoor pool at Hearst Castle,” said Addison Kent to Petal Wilson at Teddy Vermont’s dinner at the Butterfield Club.

“Has anyone heard that the small Vigée Le Brun painting of Marie Antoinette that was Adele Harcourt’s favorite painting is missing from her bedroom wall, according to George, the old butler that the nephew from Wyoming fired?” asked Figgy Watson at Pauline Mendelson’s small dinner in the back room of Swifty’s.

“I hear Lorcan Styne lost three hundred million in that Ponzi scheme,” said Percy Webb to Cricket Williams at the Epstein-Barr Ball at the St. Regis Roof. “I always got a bad feeling from that guy.”

“Lorcan Styne had to give up his plane,” replied Cricket.

“And the helicopter,” said Percy. “His own board of directors took it away from him.”

“It nearly killed him, Christine told me,” said Cricket.

“Strictly between us, no repeats, I mean, let’s be practical. That plane was what Lorcan had to offer. I mean, Lorcan’s perfectly nice and all that, at least to people like us, although not necessarily to his employees is what they say. He once flew us back from Paris, after we ran into him at the de Ravenals’ dance, which was terribly nice of him, and so much more comfortable than first class on Air France, believe me, but Lorcan’s not everyone’s cup of chamomile, as we all know. When you have a plane to take your friends anywhere, and Lorcan’s plane was divine, the last word, Nicky Haslam did it up for him in that rich Russian look, you become very popular and you get invited to all the parties. And now he doesn’t have it anymore.”

G
US WAS
dining with Loelia Minardos and her shoe designer husband, Mickie Minardos, at their Park Avenue apartment, a rare occurrence indeed, as Loelia and Mickie felt they had been portrayed unkindly in Gus’s much-publicized novel
Our Own Kind
. A rapprochement of sorts had taken place, engineered by
the television news star Christine Saunders. It developed that there was a purpose to the dinner invitation, as there often is at society dinners. Gus was seated next to Constance Sibley, a rich and rarefied figure in social New York, who was a member of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of New York society’s most prestigious honors. She limited her acquaintances to a very small and select group, among them Loelia and Mickie, on whom she doted. She had suggested to Loelia that Gus be invited.

“I hear you’re writing about Perla Zacharias,” said Constance into Gus’s ear, once the general conversation had started about the divorce of Tina and Ted Dudley, to which everyone at the table had something to contribute. The conversational buzz was loud enough so that Constance knew she would not be overheard. Normally not loquacious with people she did not know, Constance monopolized Gus’s ear through the entire dinner.

“Now I know why I was invited,” Gus said, laughing. “Actually, I’m writing about Konstantin’s death, which I find very mysterious. The confession of the male nurse is too preposterous. I’m not specifically writing about Perla. I was to meet with her in Paris, but her lawyer called that off.”

“She lives in my building when she’s in New York, which is more and more. I heard that Konstantin hated the dinner parties that Perla so enjoyed throwing. He was only interested in money, not their social life. The man was also obsessed with security, and yet that night, none of the surveillance equipment was working. He built a barracks on the grounds for the twenty-five guards he had on the payroll. All that I want to know is, why were there no guards on duty on the night Konstantin was murdered?”

“That’s one of the mysteries of the story,” replied Gus.

“Is it true that the Biarritz police handcuffed the guard who
finally arrived with the key to Konstantin’s room when he still might have saved him?”

“Yes. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m writing about in the novel.”

L
ORD
C
UDLIP
was late for Ormolu Webb’s dinner at the Rhinelander Hotel, where Ormolu and Percy Webb were living temporarily since their cook, subsequently dismissed, had accidentally set fire to the kitchen stove, causing smoke damage and blackening the walls of the dining room, “ruining, simply ruining,” as Ormolu told anyone who sympathized, the seventeen coats of persimmon paint that Ferdy Trocadero had taken three weeks to apply when they bought the apartment. And, worse, Ormolu couldn’t get Ferdy Trocadero back to repaint the dining room in time for the dinner party, because Ferdy Trocadero, thank you very much, was tied up for months to come by Ruby Renthal in the refurbishing of the mansion on East Seventy-eighth Street that was being readied for the homecoming of Elias Renthal from prison.

Percy Webb, who always deferred to his wife, suggested to her that perhaps they should go in to dinner in the private dining room beyond the hotel dining room, where the tables had been set with Ormolu’s own dishes and glasses and candlesticks, brought over from the apartment to the hotel for the occasion.

“We shouldn’t wait any longer,” said Percy. “People were asked for eight, with dinner at eight forty-five, and now it’s nine fifteen. They’ll be leaving if we don’t sit down.”

“I think it’s so odd that Stanford Cudlip hasn’t called me, or hasn’t had one of his secretaries call me,” said Ormolu, beckoning her guests toward the dining room. “I have him seated to my right, forgodssake. Perhaps there’s a crisis in the world we haven’t heard about yet. You know how he’s always going on about terrorist attacks. Do you think anything’s happened?”

Just then Lord Cudlip rapidly walked in, assuming a supplicant’s pose, full of apologies. “My dear Ormolu, do please forgive me. The phone was out on my plane, if you can imagine, or I would have called before I left Las Vegas.”