Free Too Much Money by Dominick Dunne

Madison Avenue. He went straight to Jonsie, his old pal Jonsie, who had been selling him wine for a couple of decades for his little lunch parties in his “small and terribly chic” apartment, as
Quest
magazine had described it, just around the corner.
    “I want the most expensive bottle of champagne in this overpriced shop,” said Winkie to Jonsie, who was once, when they met back in the 1940s, the substitute piano accompanist for Mabel Mercer, the nightclub chanteuse beloved by unmarried men of the period. Winkie was one of the few people who eversaw Jonsie accompany Mabel Mercer when she sang “You Are Not My First Love” at Tony’s on West Fifty-second Street.
    “What are you celebrating? It’s not your birthday?”
    “Special occasion, Jonsie,” said Winkie.
    “I’ve got just the bottle of Cristal champagne, although it’s six hundred dollars.”
    “Money is no object today, Jonsie. And I’ll be paying in cash, if that’s okay.”
    “Fine by me. Did you read Gus Bailey on Perla Zacharias?” asked Jonsie as he rang up the bottle of champagne.
    Winkie nodded agreement. “Now he’s writing a book about the whole situation. Perla hasn’t found out yet, but she will be crazed over it. I wouldn’t want to have Perla for an enemy, I’ll tell you that. I saw Gus yesterday making notes on the corner of Eighty-first and Madison. Gus has got an inside source on that story, and it’s driving Perla mad because it’s so accurate. She can’t figure out who in her employ is talking to him.”
    Winkie grabbed his change and reached for the bottle.
    “Listen, sorry to rush, but I’ve got to run. So long, Jonsie.”
    Jonsie, hoping he’d linger just a bit more, said, “Let me give you a holiday hug.”
    Later, after it happened, Jonsie told people he’d hugged Winkie good-bye. “He was just skin and bones. I knew it was for the last time.”
    From the liquor store Winkie walked through the lobby of the Rhinelander Hotel into the florist shop at the rear of the hotel.
    “Hi, Winkie.”
    “Hi, Brucie,” said Winkie. “Oh, it looks so festive in here. Look at the color of those roses. Too beautiful.”
    “Tangerine, you know, my trademark,” said Brucie. “From this marvelous man in Peru.”
    “Give me a dozen of those to take with me. Actually, make ita dozen and a half. I’m here to spend a great deal of money,” said Winkie.
    “Music to my ears,” said Brucie, who had been an understudy in the original cast of
Company
, and had gone on one time in the two-year run, when the leading man was sick, singing and dancing to Stephen Sondheim’s music. Winkie sometimes had Jonsie play the piano and Brucie sing Sondheim selections when he had a cocktail party for his society friends.
    “This order is to go out in the morning two days from now. I want the best orchid plants in full bloom that you can find. Beautiful ones. Nothing skimpy. White phalaenopsis, like Lil Altemus used to have when she still lived on Fifth Avenue. I want them wrapped dramatically, in cellophane with blue and lavender ribbons. I have the addresses here on the envelopes.”
    “My God, Winkie, this is going to cost you a fortune,” said Brucie.
    “I have a check here made out to the shop and signed by me. Just fill in the amount.”
    “Are you going away?” asked Brucie.
    Winkie sang in a camp voice from the old Negro spiritual, “To a better land I know.”
    Brucie joined in singing the spiritual, “I hear the gentle voices calling, Old Black Joe.”
    They roared with laughter. “I used to cry for poor Old Black Joe when they sang that in school when I was a little boy about a hundred years ago,” said Winkie.
    “I wouldn’t advise singing it in public these days,” said Brucie.
    Brucie put green tissue paper in a white cardboard box and carefully laid a dozen and a half tangerine roses one by one inside.
    “Do you want a card for this?” asked Brucie.
    “No, the roses are for me, for the table next to my bed,”