Princess Daisy (51 page)

Fane Hall was the scene of Sarah’s own dance, catered by the venerable firm of Searcy Tansley, a dinner dance under a series of elaborate tents, flung out from all sides of the rosy, Tudor grandeur of the great house. A number of young people had been invited to spend the night at Fane Hall and the other guests, unless they drove back to London, were all to be accommodated at the homes of various neighbors. The entire proceedings were almost as complicated and detailed as in the planning of a coronation, Sarah observed with a merry laugh, as if they had nothing to do with her. Hers was to be the sort of party that was rarely held in the straitened, stingy 1970s, a party that was a comforting throwback to the good old days. The Fanes could afford it, people thought to themselves, and added another layer of respect for Sarah to her already glowing aura.

The date was the first weekend in July, 1976, after all the university and university-entrance exams were over, and it would mark the beginning of the very height of the Season, as all of England’s wellborn youths were freed from the prison of academia.

Sarah ruled over her ball in a strapless gown of white silk, tied with satin ribbons below her breasts, at her waist, with more ribbons twice restraining the enormously full skirt, so that it fell in three billowing tiers. She wore her grandmother’s tiara on her neat, lovely head; she wore a smile that was as kind and pleased and unaffected for a duke as it was for another debutante; she wore an air of being a living part of a great tradition of aristocracy without stiffness or self-consciousness; she wore her flawless prettiness as if she were so accustomed to it that nothing could ever fade or dimmish it. As any debutante is, she was the queen of her own ball, but there was something in the air which tipped her reign over into the realm of the legendary, something that told everyone there that Sarah Fane’s ball would go down in the history of great debuts. She reached a summit that night as she danced with more than two hundred men, whirling and whirling with tireless grace, never faltering in her command of the occasion. Ram was able only to capture her for a moment or two and he spent the evening dancing with many other girls, observed favorably by mothers and
daughters alike. He was almost tempted, that night, to propose to her, but he held back. On a night of such victory, such self-importance, he estimated that his proposal would not be accorded the total value it should be given. It would be just too much icing on the cake for Sarah Fane … he’d let her have the run of her Season. It would do her good to wonder for a few months more why he continued to favor her with his attention and still said nothing.

“Just give me a for-instance,” Kiki invited. It was a Sunday morning in Luke’s apartment, specifically in Luke’s bed, and she really
didn’t
want a for-instance, she wanted Luke to kiss her again. Luke kissed her again.

“For instance,” he said, “Christ, you’re never as delicious as you are in the morning
before
you’ve brushed your teeth … ‘morning mouth,’ I
love
it! And then you look at the camera with those big pussycat eyes and that foxy focused sensuality around your nose and lips, and we hear your voice off camera saying, ‘What man wants to kiss the smell of mint the minute he wakes up? A little Scope the night before … that’s
my
secret.’ And then I kiss you again, like this, and I say, ‘Yum, yum … don’t you dare get out of bed.’ ”

“But that’s terrific! Why can’t you use it?” Kiki asked. “It even makes
me
want to buy Scope so it must be a good idea.”

“It’s a great idea but it could never get on the air. The sponsor doesn’t want animal sexuality, the network won’t allow it, the public would be shocked. Also it probably isn’t true and we have to worry about truth in advertising.”

“Do you mean I should brush my teeth?” Kiki said, worried.

“No, darling idiot, only that not every man may be queer for morning mouth, the way I am.” He kissed her again. “You can’t claim that Scope works all night long, and if you have two people in bed, one of them must be suffering from acid indigestion or stuffed sinuses and the other should be Florence Nightingale, not a couple of happy lovers who obviously just woke up—America’s not ready for that.”

“But it’s real,” Kiki protested.

“ ‘Real’ isn’t why we make commercials. If we wanted ‘real’ we’d do documentaries,” he mumbled, kissing her
under her arm. “I think I like morning armpit more than even morning mouth.”

“Give me another for-instance,” Kiki purred.

“There’s this one woman and she says, straight to camera, ‘I
hate
Howard Cosell!’ And then there’s another and another until you have the screen split sixteen ways, all types of women all saying, with increasing hysteria, ‘I hate Howard Cosell!’ And then you hear a voice over—a calm woman’s voice saying, ‘Monday-Night Football getting to you? Try Bufferin. It won’t make
him
shut up, but
you’ll
feel better.’ ”

“Now, what’s wrong with that? You’re not saying anything that isn’t true.”

“No, but Howard Cosell just might have grounds for legal action, and the network wouldn’t run it during the game which is the only time it could play to maximum effectiveness, and all the Howard Cosell fans would never buy Bufferin again.”

“Are there Howard Cosell fans?”

“I’ve never met one, but it figures,” Luke said morosely.

“But what if you hired Howard Cosell to say, Try Bufferin—it won’t make
me
shut up but
you’ll
feel better’?” Kiki wondered. “I bet he’d do it—he’s probably dying to be a spokesperson like Don Meredith and Frank what’s-his-name.”

“Kiki,” Luke said, almost sitting up in excitement, “I think we’ve just stolen the Bufferin account!”

“Come back here,” Kiki ordered. “It’s Sunday—you can’t snatch accounts on Sunday.” Luke settled back under the covers and continued his list of dream commercials.

“I’ve also got a great one for Tampax. You get someone like Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis, an authority figure with total moxie, and you just shoot her straight, and she’s saying something like, ‘If women didn’t menstruate there wouldn’t be any human race at all so why don’t we stop being so coy about it and realize what a marvelous thing it is that women have ovaries that release an egg each month and that since they do, it’s only sensible to use Tampax when the egg isn’t fertilized, because Tampax is comfortable and does the job.’ ”

“Hmmm,” said Kiki.

“Yeah, you see, even
you’re
shocked. Women don’t have menstrual periods or ovaries or vaginas or any of their equipment on television—except in the soap operas when they’re always taking out everything in the hospital—
hysterectomy city—it’s the biggest fucking taboo—even if you can discuss it in detail on a soap, you have to use little hints like ‘difficult days’ in a commercial. We’re the last bastion of the Puritan fathers.”

“Poor sweetheart—you must be so frustrated.”

“Sometimes I am, but generally I just forget what I’d like to do and do what I can as well as possible. It’s a living,” he grumbled.

Kiki flung her arms around Luke and held him as tightly as she could. “Listen, it’s more than just a living, you dope. Don’t you ever realize that without advertising there wouldn’t be any newspapers or magazines or televisions except whatever the government paid for? Advertising is what supports all that information and entertainment, so don’t get all snooty about it. You do a job that has to be done and you do it better than anyone else!”

“I’d forgotten that I was talking to a native-born capitalist,” Luke laughed. “I’m so used to girls who put down advertising that it’s a pleasure to hear from the delegate from Grosse Pointe.”

Kiki, who already had him firmly in her grasp, tried to shake him, but he was too big for her to move satisfactorily, so she contented herself with hissing, “No gratitude. No class. No taste. To even
mention
other girls at a time like this—I’m getting out of bed, Luke Hammerstein, you goat.”

“Ah, don’t—I’m sorry, I was just kidding, honest.”

“I have to pee,” she said haughtily.

“How about this? This great-looking girl, beautifully dressed in the height of fashion, says, ‘Excuse me, but I really have to pee,’ and the other beautiful girl—they’re having lunch at La Grenouille—says, ‘What toilet paper do you prefer?’ and the first one says, ‘Lady Scott of course, because even the best people have to pee—so you might as well do it in style.’ ”

“Brilliant,” Kiki sneered, “I think you should be teaching English at Harvard. Your mind is sick, Luke Hammerstein,
sick.
”

“Just because I mentioned Grosse Pointe?” he said wickedly.

“Go fuck yourself!” Kiki said angrily.

“Not while you’re around.”

“I suppose I’m to take that as a compliment?” she huffed.

“Damn right. Now will you go pee and make it
snappy. And don’t brash your teeth while you’re in there!” He stretched lazily and happily in bed. There was only one problem on his mind. Bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon first and fucking later, or fucking first and bagels after? Even Maimonides wouldn’t be able to decide that one.

“What’s it all about, Theseus?” Daisy asked her dog, scratching his ears in a way which he particularly enjoyed. “Just tell me what’s it’s all about.”

“If I weren’t here,” said Kiki, “I’d understand your asking him, but since this great wisewoman is available, I’m rather offended.”

“I thought you were too busy changing your nail polish to talk.”

“One thing has nothing to do with another.” Kiki bent over her hands rapidly, using polish remover on the deep red, almost brown polish she had been affecting recently. “How many manicurists are tongue-tied?”

“I’ve never been to one—how would I know? I thought maybe they operated in holy silence.”

“Wash your own hair, do your own nails—no wonder you have to ask a dog for advice,” Kiki snorted.

“How can I talk to you?” Daisy said reasonably. “You’re so happy and excited that you can’t possibly be intelligent. You see everything through the eyes of true love, than which there is nothing so distorted … your perceptual apparatus is anesthetized, your judgmental functioning is paralyzed, your free will has been taken away from you and you’re operating on a set of premises which no one in this world understands but you—at least Theseus isn’t in love.”

“Ever since you came back from Venice,” Kiki said, thinking out loud, “—it’s November now, so that means two months ago—you haven’t been yourself. My perceptual apparatus, as you see, is as sharp as ever, as long as you don’t ask me about Luke. You’re semi-miserable, semi-demi-tormented, mini-pleased with yourself, major-mini-yearning of a somewhat sentimental nature toward North. Why didn’t you ask me before you got involved with the man you work for?”

“There was a phone strike,” Daisy reminded her.

“Excuses, excuses. What is the exact status of the relationship, if I may use such a word about something so sacred?”

“Shifty,” said Daisy.

“A
shifty
relationship? You mean there’s something not kosher about it, something sinister?”

“Oh, God, Kiki, you’ve missed the point again. Shifty like the wind blowing from the east and then blowing from the west, shifty like the mist forming and then dissipating and then coming back, shifty like I don’t know which way is up, quicksand-type shifty.”

Kiki glanced sharply at Daisy. She had lost weight, Kiki thought, which she certainly didn’t need to lose, and her temper had suffered, not that she was ever bitchy, but she was strung very tightly these days, and she spent too much time grooming Theseus and taking him for runs around the neighborhood and too little time with North, in Kiki’s opinion.

“Could you be more specific?” Kiki asked, unwrapping a new bottle of pale pink polish and beginning to apply it

“It’s hard to point to any one particular thing. When we got back, I knew that everything had to change. After all, the circumstances in Venice were totally abnormal—I don’t think North’s had that much time off in his life before. And, of course, I was right—everything piled up afterward and we had to work twice as hard as usual to make up for the week we’d lost, but I understand that—I’m part of it, hell, without me they couldn’t have done it And the working together felt good. He treated me the same as he always had in front of the others—I certainly don’t want Nick and Wingo and the rest to be leering at us—and when we were alone he’s … fun … and he wants me physically … and he’s loving … I guess …”

“But …” Kiki prodded.

“But … that’s as far as it’s gone.”

“I don’t see how that makes it shifty.”

“It’s something in the
way
he’s loving, something that doesn’t firm up, something that isn’t going anywhere, something hanging, incomplete, something unconsolidated, something tentative …”

“Is it in you or is it in him?” Kiki asked shrewdly. Daisy stopped fluffing up an unfluffable Theseus and considered the question as if
it
hadn’t occurred to her before.

“I think—in both of us, now that you ask,” she said slowly, sounding surprised.

“Then you really can’t complain. No, I take that back, you
can
complain! If you can’t complain to me, what kind of friend am I? So go on, complain!”

Daisy cocked a loving eye at Kiki who, now that she noticed, was looking very strange. Her ruffle of hair was brushed neatly down around her face and even her bangs had been arranged to fall quite calmly across her forehead. Her eyes looked two sizes smaller without the exaggerated make-up she always used on them. She had on just a touch of mascara, and her lipstick matched her nails. Her gypsy quality was minimal, replaced by a subdued, quiet, well-kept, and somehow diminished manner, as she sat there in her underwear waiting for her nails to dry. Which was also strange. Since when had Kiki taken to wearing half-slips and bras?

“Go on. I won’t be satisfied, if you don’t complain now,” Kiki urged again.

“I have this feeling inside …”

“Yes? Oh, come on Daisy. I’m good with feelings.”