And everywhere you looked, there was somebody famous! Lauren Bacall! Joan Fontaine, so big on the movie screen but so tiny in person! Margaret Truman and Alice Roosevelt Longfellow and Lynda Bird Johnson, swapping confidences about what it was like to live in the White House!
Of course there were so many Vanderbilts and Astors and Whitneys that the Deweys simply couldn’t keep them straight, so they didn’t try. And Truman’s friends, who were always so kind—the Paleys and the Guinnesses and the Agnellis, all complimenting Marie on her gown, her hair. They’d dined at the Paleys’ before the party and had been stunned by their apartment in one of those fancy buildings overlooking Central Park. It had a real doorman, and a private elevator, and an honest-to-God Picasso hanging in the hallway! It was like a museum, really, but Babe’s kindness had put them at ease. She and Bill made such an elegant couple! They were both so tall and glamorous, and they seemed deeply devoted to each other, but…well, Marie couldn’t quite believe it, what Truman had told her about them.
Truman loved to shock her, that was true; he loved to tell her somewhat salacious tidbits about these rich and famous people who were his friends. So Marie wasn’t sure if she should believe what he’d told her about the Paleys, how they didn’t sleep together, and Bill had many affairs, and Babe had wanted to leave him more than once. Oh, Marie did love hearing the gossip from Truman; he had a way of making her feel like she was his very best friend, part of his world, too. And he was so funny about it, arching his eyebrows and making a great show of whispering while he told her simply awful things! So maybe it was true about the Paleys. But she did hope it wasn’t; why, Babe had lent her a necklace to wear tonight! And Bill had been so nice in introducing them to the CBS cameras outside the Plaza, and Bill and Babe had drawn them in so that Alvin and Marie could have their pictures taken, too, in all the crush; the photographers’ flashbulbs had practically blinded her! They’d fallen on Truman and Mrs. Graham in the receiving line, laughing, hanging on to them for dear life until Babe ushered Marie into a dressing room, where they could adjust their masks, fix their hair, before meeting up with the men and entering the Grand Ballroom, ablaze with light.
And while Alvin was content to sit and watch all night, Marie now wanted to dance. She gazed longingly at the dance floor; Truman was circulating, shaking hands. Most of the masks were off now—although at first it had been stunning, just stunning, to gape at the creations—someone named Billy had on a mask and headpiece that looked just like a white unicorn! But soon people discarded them, so that the tables looked as if they were littered with the corpses of a glittering zoo. And now the dancing was in earnest, and Marie’s toe tapped, her hips shimmied, and she met Alvin’s disapproving gaze with a defiant smirk.
“I don’t care, Alvin Dewey! I want to dance. This is a ball, isn’t it?”
Some young man passing by heard her, turned on his heel, held out his hand, and before she knew it, she was being whirled about in a fox-trot while the orchestra played “The Way You Look Tonight,” spun around and around until she felt her head snap back, and there were many eyes on the two of them, this intense-looking, dark young man with mischievous eyes and herself, plain little Marie Dewey of Kansas, all dressed up and twirling around in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel!
When the dance was over, everyone clapped, and the young man extended his hand toward her, and Marie bowed, giggling, and then she sat down and took a big gulp of champagne while Alvin glowered next to her, tugging at his tie, grumbling about some people making spectacles of themselves.
The next morning, Marie Dewey found out that the young man who’d spun her about so expertly was Rudolf Nureyev.
—
GLORIA GUINNESS’S NECK ACHED. Her head, too. For she was wearing such a heavy diamond necklace—the jewels the size of small eggs—that she knew, she told her friends solemnly, that she’d have to stay in bed all day tomorrow, to recover.
Truman found this hilarious for some reason. He laughed and laughed, and rushed off to tell everyone else what Gloria had said.
She narrowed her eyes, took a drag on her cigarette, and smiled at Bill and Babe, Slim, Gianni and Marella. Coolly, she surveyed her friends’ gowns and found hers to be the most elegant, a simple silk column with jeweled sleeves, not too fussy. Babe—who had also chosen a Castillo gown, knowing full well that he was designing Gloria’s—had gone a little too far, she decided, with her hairstyle and her mask. Supposedly she’d had three masks made, just in case. That sounded like Babe.