Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [62]
Van Gogh is the perfect artist for André to own, because van Gogh is André’s polar opposite. This tormented artist who never sold a painting—except, as a sort of mercy fuck, to his brother—but was driven by an inner frenzy to produce them represents everything André will never be and therefore hopes he can either buy or destroy: inner fire, inner certainty, the driving force of genius.
“How are you, Tsatskeleh?” says André, opening the door himself and characteristically not waiting for any answer. (André affects Yiddishkeit to shock the goyim. He piles it on with a trowel, particularly in the presence of Gettys, du Ponts, and Mellons, who find him cute. Sort of the pet Jew.)
Sally rushes up to admire my dress.
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Zoran? Karan? Koos?”
“No. Guess again.”
“Krizia?”
“No.”
“You made it yourself? So clever of you.”
“It’s an ancient Zandra Rhodes.”
“I should have known.” Sally is thin enough to have flunked selection at Auschwitz. She and André have one of those marriage-is-a-business marriages so dear to the hearts of New York’s New Money Elite. They own things together rather than fuck. This is their form of sex.
Sally wears a size-two dress, and going to bed with her would be like going to bed with a bicycle. Her hair is raving red—though expensively done, at Monsieur Marc, no doubt—and her Art Deco jewelry is always dazzling. It covers her breastbones, which otherwise would show. She wears a Scaasi pouf over her pick-up-stick legs, and she is the mistress of the touch-me-not kiss. She turns her smile on and off like a bare lightbulb in a cheap hotel. You will never know what she’s thinking. André is more transparent.
Even at his own party, André’s eyes scan the room to see if there’s a more important person to talk to than the one he’s with. When André is with you, you always have the sense he’s just about to dart away. Dart. Everything reminds you of Dart.
“How’s Dart?” says André.
“Gone,” I say.
“It was only a matter of time,” says André. “What are you drinking?”
“Tab, Perrier . . .”
“Roberto will get it,” he says, waving a hand at the South American butler, and he sprints off across the room to talk to someone who looks like Princess Di but isn’t. André has the chutzpah of an elephant, and the attention span of a gnat.
The room seems to swim. All these people laughing mirthlessly, all these darting eyes working the room.
André’s parties always have a smattering of royalty, a hint of Hollywood, a major media celebrity who mouths the news, a press lord or two, a Wall Street tycoon or two, a real estate baron or two—all appropriately wived in women who come (like certain designer dresses) only in sizes two to eight. Double digits are out. The artists are there, of course, André’s artists, but they are sort of like zoo animals on their best behavior. At André’s parties, they always have the sense that their endeavors are vaguely peripheral to the main event: buying and selling. They often get quietly drunk or stoned, pass out in the guest room or discreetly throw up in the powder room, perhaps nauseated by so much proximity to the beau monde to which their success has entitled them.
Sally takes me by the hand and leads me over to a little nest of ninnies: six size-six women who look just like her—except for the hair color (they are all straw-into-gold blond) and the skinny legs perched upon spikes.
I recognize the names from Liz Smith’s column and the faces from the central hatchery: some plastic surgeon is turning out that chin this year. They all have the razor-sharp jawline not even nature bestows on a twenty-two-year-old. Each one of them looks delighted to meet me. It isn’t long before I am recruited to do