But he didn’t give another ball. For some reason, all he could picture was an image of himself standing in an empty ballroom, holding a lone balloon.
“Who needed the Plaza, anyway?” Truman told Johnny, told Dick, told the world; the world that still listened to him, at any rate. Why, disco was where it was at! What a thrilling, absolutely divine time to live! Truman Capote and Studio 54—soon the names were joined together, he was just as much a fixture as Halston and Liza and Bianca. He danced until his eyes rolled back in his head while the cameras flashed away; he had sweaty sex in the basement dungeons with anonymous young centaurs who didn’t hide their disgust at his bloated, decaying body, but who could be bought with handfuls of coke and a few dropped names. He told himself this was where it was at, baby; he was there, here, in, not out; he was dancing, spinning, twirling—top of the world, Ma!
So he wasn’t invited to spend an endless, pampered summer on Gloria’s yacht anymore, every whim catered to, Babe and Gloria and Loel and Bill hanging on his every word, applauding, adoring? So what?
So Mrs. Vreeland didn’t include him in her elegant dinners any longer, although she did at least have lunch with him in her office, on occasion, when no one else was around. So what?
So he spent too many nights passed out on his velvet couch, the television flickering ghostly images across his closed lids, dreaming of Babe, of lying next to her in her bed, not touching, not possessing, but belonging so thoroughly that he woke up sobbing, terrified he was in one of those locked hotel rooms of his childhood, his pulse racing, his skin clammy, his mouth so dry he couldn’t cry out despite the despair clawing its way out of his belly, up his throat, pounding his brain?
So what?
He saw the other swans sometimes. They couldn’t keep him from the Met Gala, even if they tried. He’d taken an excruciating elevator ride with Gloria at Bergdorf’s one day; she hadn’t seen him when she got in. “Hello, Truman,” she said icily, and that was that; La Guinness turned so that all he could see was her exquisite profile, her delicately etched face perched on that glorious neck. Her eyes flashed darkly, every muscle in that neck was clenched, but she didn’t say one more word. He got out on the very next floor and took another elevator back down, where he ran out on the street, flung himself on the edges of the Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza—the spray of the water splotched his linen suit—and he was unable to remember why he’d gone into Bergdorf’s in the first place. Then he put on his dark sunglasses and swept through the lobby of the Plaza, all the way back to the Oak Room Bar, where he had six martinis and had to be poured into a cab.
Once he telegrammed Slim—Big Mama, I’ve decided to forgive you. Now, how could she resist that? Big Mama, with her sense of humor, her love for her True Heart?
But all he heard was silence. Everywhere he went in Manhattan—and he haunted the places he still held dear, Tiffany’s and the Plaza and Bergdorf’s and 21; to tell the truth, he loathed Studio 54. It was so hot and the music hurt his ears—all he encountered were icy stares. The time-honored social “cut” he himself had practiced so many times.
But never had Babe used it, he realized. No, Babe had been too kind ever to do that to anyone. He wondered how she was doing. He’d heard that she wasn’t getting any better. He picked up the phone to call her, dozens of times a day. But he always put the phone back on the receiver before he could.
And then, one day, he saw her again.
CHAPTER 22
…..
There once was an old woman who lived in a shoe….
No, this couldn’t be her, the woman he saw at lunch one day at Quo Vadis. No, this couldn’t possibly be his Bobolink, not this frail, terribly aged creature who was so thin the clothes, for the first time in her life, did not look fabulous. No amount of expensive tailoring could make this woman look as if she belonged in anything but a hospital gown.
But it was Babe, after all; her beauty still shone, gallantly, through the grim mask of pain. And Truman, who had been lunching alone—none of his new “friends” ever got up before three in the afternoon—felt his heart beat wildly at the sight of her. For the first time in months he felt whole, perfect, and beautiful. As beautiful as he once had been—with her.
“Hello, Babe.” He rose, his napkin clutched in his sweaty hand.
Babe paused; she was with her sister Betsey, who looked down at Truman as if she might want to eat him. “Hello, Truman.” Babe didn’t look at him; she didn’t break into the joyful, delighted smile that he had been used to seeing.
Once upon a time.