“That depends on the woman,” said the client. He was late thirties, looked German but spoke with a Spanish accent—an Argentinian.
“I don’t get it,” said the woman.
The Argentinian looked at her. “You middle-class American women who always want to hook a man, you’re the ones who must play by the rules. You can’t afford to make a mistake. But there is a certain type of woman—very beautiful and from a certain class—who can do whatever she wants.”
At just that moment, Amalita walked in. There was quite a stir at the door as the maître d’ embraced her—“Look at you!” she said. “So slim. Are you still running five miles a day?”—and her coat and packages were whisked away. She was wearing a tweedy Jil Sander suit (the skirt alone cost over a thousand dollars) and a green cashmere shell. “Is it hot in here?” she said, fanning herself with her gloves. She removed her jacket. The entire restaurant gaped. “Sweetpea!” she said, spotting Carrie at the bar.
“Your table is ready,” said the maître d’.
“I have so many things to tell you,” Amalita said. “I have just barely escaped with my life!”
Sometime in April, Amalita had gone to London to attend a wedding, where she met Lord Skanky-Poo—not his real name—“but a real lord, darling,” she said, “related to the royal family and with a castle and foxhounds. He said he fell in love with me instantly, the idiot, the moment he saw me in the church. ‘Darling, I adore you,’ he said, coming up to me at the reception, ‘but I especially adore your hat.’ That should have been a dead giveaway. But I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. I was staying with Catherine Johnson-Bates in London and she was driving me crazy, she kept complaining about my stuff all over her fucking flat . . . well, she’s a virgo, so what can you expect? Anyway, all I could think about was finding another place to stay. And I knew Catherine had had a crush on Lord Skanks—she used to knit him scarves out of that horrendous worsted wool—and he wouldn t give her the time of day, so naturally, I couldn’t resist. Plus, I needed a place to stay.”
That night, after the wedding, Amalita basically moved into the Eton Square house. And, for the first two weeks, everything was great. “I was doing my geisha routine,” Amalita said. “Back rubs, bringing him tea, reading the newspapers first so I could point out what was interesting.” He took her shopping. They entertained, throwing a shooting party at the castle. Amalita helped him with the guest list, got all the right people, charmed the servants, and he was impressed. Then, when they got back to London, the trouble began.
“You know, I’ve got all of my lingerie that I’ve been collecting over the years?” Amalita asked. Carrie nodded. She knew all about Amalita’s vast collection of designer clothing, which she’d been acquiring over the past fifteen years—knew it well, in fact, because she had had to help Amalita wrap it up in special tissues to be put in storage, a job that had taken three days. “Well, one evening he comes in when I’m dressing,” she said. “‘Darling,’ he says, ‘I’ve always wondered what it would be like to wear one of those merry widows. Mind if I . . . give it a try? Then I’ll know what it feels like to be you.’
“Fine. But the next day he wants me to spank him. With a rolled-up newspaper. ‘Darling, don’t you think you’d get more out of life if you read this instead?’ I asked. ‘No! I want a good thrashing,’ he said. So I complied. Another mistake. It got to the point where he would wake up in the morning, put on my clothes, and then he wouldn’t leave the house. This went on for days. And then he insisted on wearing my Chanel jewelry.”
“How did he look in it?” Carrie asked.
“Pas mal,” Amalita said. “He was one of those beautiful English types, you know, you can never really tell if they’re gay or straight. But the whole thing just got so pathetic. He was crawling around on his hands and knees, exposing his bum. And to think that before this I was considering marrying him.
“Anyway, I told him I was leaving. He wouldn’t let me. He locked me in the bedroom, and I had to escape out the window. And I was stupidly wearing Manolo Blahnik spike heels instead of the more sensible Gucci ones because I let him fondle my shoes and the Manolos were the only ones he didn’t like—he said they were last year. Then he wouldn’t let me back in the house. He said he was holding my clothes ransom because of some stupid, itsy-bitsy phone bill I’d racked up. Two thousand pounds. I said, ‘Darling, what am I supposed to do? I have to call my daughter and my mother.’
“But I had my trump card. I took his cellular phone. I called him from the street. ‘Darling,’ I said, ‘I’m going to meet Catherine for tea. When I get back, I expect to see all my suitcases, neatly packed, on the front stoop. Then I’m going to go through them. If anything’s missing—one tiny earring, one G-string, the rubber on the heel of any shoe—I’m going to call Nigel Dempster.’”
“Did he do it?” Carrie asked, somewhat in awe.
“Of course!” Amalita said. “The English are scared to death of the press. If you ever need to bring one to heel, just threaten to call the papers.”
Just then, the Argentinian walked by the table. “Amalita,” he said, extending his hand and giving her a little bow.
“Ah Chris. Cómo está?” she asked, and then they said a bunch of stuff in Spanish that Carrie couldn’t understand, and then Chris said, “I’m in New York for a week. We should get together.”
“Of course, darling,” Amalita said, looking up at him. She had this way of crinkling her eyes when she smiled that basically meant bug off.
“Argh. Rich Argentinian,” she said. “I stayed on his ranch once. We rode polo ponies all over the campos. His wife was pregnant, and he was so cute I fucked him and she found out. And she had the nerve to be upset. He was a lousy lay. She should have been happy to have someone take him off her hands.”
“Miss Amalfi?” the waiter asked. “Phone call for you.”
“Righty,” she said triumphantly, returning to the table after a few minutes. Righty was the lead guitarist in a famous rock band. “He wants me to go on tour with him. Brazil. Singapore. I told him I’d have to think about it. These guys are so used to women falling at their feet, you have to be a bit reserved. It sets you apart.”
Suddenly, there was again a flurry of activity at the door. Carrie looked up and quickl
y ducked her head, pretending to examine her fingernails. “Don’t look now,” she said, “but Ray’s here.”
“Ray? Oh, I know Ray,” Amalita said. Her eyes narrowed.
Ray wasn’t a man but a woman. A woman who could be classified, loosely anyway, as being in the same category as Amalita. She was also an international beauty, irresistible to men, but a nut case. A late-seventies model, she had moved to L.A., ostensibly to pursue an acting career. She hadn’t landed any roles, but she had reeled in several well-known actors. And, like Amalita, she had a love child, rumored to be the offspring of a superstar.
Ray scanned the restaurant. She was famous for her eyes—among other things—which were huge, round, the irises of such a light blue they appeared almost white. They stopped on Amalita. She waved. Walked over.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, seemingly delighted, even though the two were rumored to be sworn enemies in L.A.
“I just got in,” Amalita said. “From London.”
“Did you go to that wedding?”