“Have you . . . ?”
“Oh, ages and ages ago. I remember a lovely swivel to his hips and a cock you could write home to Mother about—if, that is, you had a mother like Auntie Mame. But he’s too reptilian to be my type. I remember Southern men
just
like Renzo. I prefer them less pretty, more
serious
. You always did have a thing for bounders, fortune hunters, gigolos, and knaves. So what if this one’s Jewish. (And as Spanish as Don Giovanni.) You still can’t bring him home to Mother!”
“I haven’t
always
had knaves. . . .”
“Well, not always. But since you got
really
famous. Honey, I understand it better than anyone. The Cher syndrome, the Sunny von Bülow complex . . . I could write a book. And he is a
great
lay.
Tout le monde
knows that. I seem dimly to remember superhuman endurance. But don’t get hooked. And what about your nice Julian?”
“We’re pals—nothing more.”
“Impotent?”
“I don’t know what that means anymore. Julian vibrates to the music of the spheres.”
“Won’t or can’t?”
“Who knows? Does it matter? We’re brother and sister. Don’t knock it. It has its own strange allure. And it lasts longer than sex.”
“Lord, it’s the new successful men’s disease: Impaired Desire. Either they can’t or won’t get it up—or they get it up and then refuse to come. Refuse to succumb to the
indignity
of orgasm. On strike against women’s liberation. It’s just
awful
, that’s what it is.”
I glance over at Renzo, and my heart skips several beats.
Maybe he’ll leave her for you,
the devil whispers in my ear.
“He won’t,” says Cordelia, reading my thoughts.
“Am I
that
transparent?” I ask.
“
Every
one is when they’re moonstruck. And let’s be fair, Venice is Venice, an’ Italian men make American men seem like Louie, Huey, and Dewey. They
move
like jellied consommé,
speak
like Pinot Grigio, and
fuck
with all those verbal pyrotechnics. Whispered lines of verse—pilfered, no doubt, from the libretti of Lorenzo Da Ponte, another Venetian Renzo. I
do
like the name. Renzo Pisan. It has a certain ring to it.”
“He never told me about
her
. Or mamma.”
“He
will
, just as soon as you make the mistake of asking him to spend a night, or take you to lunch, or a little weekend in Asolo, or Porto Ercole. He
always
comes home by six. Turns into a pumpkin, you just take my word for it. And the more you get under his skin, the more he’ll eventually run. Take my word for that too. He’s as scared of commitment as any of these American swains, but he’s got the family as a buffer. That’s Italian.”
“So what’s the difference between your situation with Guido and this one?”
“All the difference in the world, honey. Guido and I are practically married, Renzo plays the field. And we’re talking about
field!
Beautiful Americans, French, Italians, here on holiday, all just dyin’ to be swept away by the fatal charm of Italy. Read Luigi Barzini. Renzo and his type ought to be on
pension
from the Italian ministry of tourism! A moonlit roll in the
bateau
for every lovely
straniera
. Brings ’em back to Italy year after year. Do you know, my friend Luke, the painter, has a friend—a married lady sex therapist from L.A.—who comes to the Danieli for two weeks every summer just to fuck the hotel guitarist? He’s a rotten guitarist, but obviously a great lay.
Super
well-endowed, I hear.”
I look at Cordelia, suddenly despising her. She’s just
jealous
, I think. How could Renzo
not
care about me, at least a
little?
Could anyone fuck like that and really not care?
Isadora: Reader, you
know
the answer.
Leila: Stop leading the witness.
Just then he walks over with the principessa and their entourage.
“The noted painter Leila Sand,” he says to the princess, who looks me over coldly, assessing the risk. Then Renzo kisses my hand in that dizzying Continental manner in which lips touch skin only in your wildest fantasy. From the way he looks at me—knowing
she
is assessing the way he is looking at me—I see he is a practiced dissembler. He seems to look through me, as though he had no wish to penetrate any part of me, body even less than soul. But just before they walk away, Renzo turns and looks at me again, his oceanic eyes glittering. “Leila,
apri, apri, apri
.”
Julian and I lie awake all night, talking about how we might remake our lives.
“We’ll go to Bali,” he says, “or Fiji. Or the Trobriands. We’ll buy a little island.”
“Can you really
buy
islands?”
“Absolutely. We can live the rest of our lives without ever writing another bar of spooky space music or painting another canvas. I’ll get you two beautiful Balinese boys to service you—and we’ll drink coconut milk, eat tropical fruits, and read Proust.”
“Lovely,” I say, neglecting to point out that I’d go crazy if I didn’t paint—and that I don’t do it for money. Nor do I want to be “serviced.”
I don’t say this. All I say is: “Julian, you forget that your religion is
room
service.”
“I can convert to coconuts,” says Julian. “The point is, I’ll never have to work for Hollywood again. I’ll write fugues or symphonies, even poetry. . . . Do you know that before I became a Hollywood hooker, I used to write poetry?”
“I think I knew that. Recite me a poem.”
“Okay—here’s one I wrote once in Florence, when I was a mere pup:
In the poplars’ lengthening shadows on this hill, Amid the rows of marigolds and earth, and through the boxhedge labyrinth we walk, together to the choiring twilight bells. . . .”
“Lovely. Can you say the rest?”
Julian thinks. His intelligent agate eyes roll skyward. He is communicating with his planet. E=mc
4
. “No.”
“Julian, I love you with all my heart—but do you know how
neglected
poets are? You say you hate Hollywood, but you’re
used
to the limousines, the private jets, the secretaries; you don’t
know
what it’s like to be ignored. You haven’t even been on the subway in thirty years. I bet you don’t know what a token costs.”
“Fifty dollars?”
“I’m not going to
tell
you! The fact is, you’re always running from your agent, your business manager, your lawyers, the phone, the phone, the phone. Do you know what it’s like when the phone
never
rings?”
“We won’t have phones; we’ll have palm fronds.”
“When the palm frond never rings?”
“Palm fronds are not
supposed
to ring.”
“Yes—but you go crazy when they don’t.”
“We’re crazy already.”
“True. And how do we educate the twins?”
“Tutors, private tutors. School is a crock. It’s just a way of getting kids socially indoctrinated, breaking them in to the values of their parents’ social class. Private tutors are
much
better. We’ll raise them like the Trobriand islanders—the only people who have the perfect answer to love and sex.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, the kids are totally sexually free from prepuberty till the age of eighteen or so. They fuck each other like mad, get all their curiosity out of their systems. Then, at the age of eighteen, they marry and remain monogamous—except for the three-day-a-year Yam Festival, when all bets are off!”
“What if you have the flu during the Yam Festival?”
“In the Trobriands, you don’t
get
the flu.”
“Do you think Mike and Ed would be ready for civilized life, growing up that way?”
“And where, pray tell, do you
find
civilized life? Hollywood? New York? Venice? The truth is that the best little girls are raised
outside
the brainwashing of our culture. Beryl Markham, for example, raised with African warriors. All civilization does for girls is teach them that they’re supposed to be inferior. Better to have palm fronds and yam festivals. You’d be doing them a great favor, really. Think about it, Leila; I’m not kidding.”
“Do you know what Gandhi said when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization?”
“No.”
“It would be a good idea!”
And we laugh and hug each other and eventually, still giggling and hugging, fall asleep.
At some point during the night, the phone rings. I roll over and grab it.
“Leila, baby,” says Dart. “Leila, baby.”
I wake up all in a rush. This is like a telephone call from the dead.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Just miss you, baby.”
“You’ll get over it,” I say.
“I was walking down Madison Avenue, baby, and what do I see in a gallery window but the Lone Ranger! Remember the Lone Ranger, baby?”
“How can I ever forget?” (Dart is alluding to one of my film stills, in which he was dressed as the Lone Ranger, and his gun was tucked into his pants rakishly and seemed to bulge like a cock.)
“Because of you,” Dart says, “everyone knows about my big gun. . . .”
Now wide awake and pulled into a world I had let go of, I say jauntily: “Darling—the whole world knew
before
.”
“Only a select few,” says Dart.
“A select few hundred
thousand
,” I say.
Dart laughs, despite himself. The manipulation isn’t working.
“Good night, darling,” I say brightly, and go back to sleep.
The afternoon before the Viva Venezia Ball, I am in the lagoon with Renzo, making love in the Riva.
So besotted am I that I ask the forbidden question. “Do you love me at all?” I ask.
He covers my mouth with his hand.
“Don’t ask about the most important things in life,” he says.
20
Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues
Now, when you’ve got a man don’t ever be on the square.
If you do he’ll have a woman everywhere.
I never was known to treat one man right,
I keep ’em working hard both day and night,
Because wild women don’t worry.
Wild women don’t have the blues.
T
he Viva Venezia Ball has been preceded by luncheons, teas, dinners, during which skeletal New York socialites with porcine husbands (or fashionably slim walkers) circulated amid the Italian (and Austrian and French and English) skeletal socialites with porcine husbands (or fashionably slim walkers), kissing the air near each other’s cheeks. Since they are in Italy, they have kissed the air near
both
cheeks. (In New York, they would kiss the air near only one.)
The crowd is very
Town & Country
, very
Vanity Unfair
. The marchesa of this kisses the principessa of that. The walker of Park Avenue cuts the walker of the Via Veneto or the walker of Avenue Foch. Platitudes are plumbed in three or four languages. Yes, we have all been to Venice before. No, we were not in Cortina or Gstaad this year; we were in Vail. Yes, it was beastly hot in Lindos. No, the Orient Express to Bangkok has not yet opened. Mustique in January? Saint Barts in February? Autumn in New York? Christmas in Saint Moritz? Kenya? Aspen?
Who
ran off with her best friend’s son? Right out of Le Rosey? She didn’t
really
leave that nice Piero. She did? And what of James? Is he still ambassador to . . . what country is it anyway? And are they still married? Well, thank heavens for that at least. She’ll get over it—but will
he
?
And so the ball begins!
It is a sweltering night on the Grand Canal, and the Palazzo Pisani-Moretta—a great sixteenth-century pile—once the scene of ducal fetes and intrigues, has now, alas, been turned into Rent-a-Palazzo.
People step out of their rented gondolas and
motoscafi
, looking outrageously
pleased
with themselves. They have packed and unpacked. They have tipped and tippled. Topped and toppled each other and their friends—poor dears—still in the predictable Hamptons or Litchfield, Kennebunkport, Newport, or (God forbid) Westport. Venice is
always
chic. (At least from September first to September fifteenth.) Before that, one isn’t caught
dead
. And after, well, it’s time to catch up with New York, with London, with L.A.
Down they step from their boats—Lacroix rustling Givenchy, Ungaro fluttering past Lagerfeld, Rhodes glittering near Valentino, Ferre flitting past Saint Laurent.
Darling, darlina, tesoro,
my love, my darling, my sweetest, sweetie, you calculating little cunt. . . .
Here we all are in Italy, with all the people we always see in New York! We will not talk to them
here
any more than we talk to them
there
. We are here to be seen. We are here because it is the finish line of a race we have been running since we were two. (How did we get into this race, anyway? We sure don’t know.) We are here because
we’re here.
Is that perfectly
clear
?
Since I grew up poor in Washington Heights, this sort of thing ought to impress me more. And it
did
at the start, when my face became a ticket to ride, my name an open sesame, my paintings the magic combination that released the lock.
A world of winners! Then why are they so
grim
? And why so harried, married, nervous? Shouldn’t being rich be
fun
?
I’ve read F. Scott Fitzgerald. I know the rich are different from you and me. But they seem so nail-bitingly tense, so frantic, so fearful. Perhaps in the twenties they had fun. Now being rich seems like a
job
. Where did the adjective “idle” go?