Free People Like Us by Dominick Dunne Page B

talk, really talk,” said Loelia.
    And Dolly handled it beautifully, just as Loelia had known Dolly would, with a discreet announcement that the Edward Potter Manchesters, of the New York
Social Register
, had agreed to disagree, much to the dismay of their family and friends. But it was young Florian Gray, just making a name for himself as a commentator in the world of high society, who called a great deal of attention to the hitherto undisclosed romance of Mrs. Manchester and the shoe designer Dimitri Minardos,known as Mickie, as well as a great deal of attention to himself.
    Hidden in Paris, incognito, on an outing of love, Loelia and Mickie instructed the telephone operator at the Ritz Hotel to take messages from everyone who called from America, and then decided between them which calls to return. Loelia found it irresistible that Dom Belcanto, the Hollywood ballad singer, who had promised to entertain at her benefit for the stroke center, called to wish her well, leaving a call-back number in New York.
    “So sweet of Dom to call, Mickie,” said Loelia, lying back in her chaise. “People say the worst sort of things about him, that he’s Mafia, or mob, or whatever you call people like that, but I don’t believe a word of it. When there’s good work to be done, like my benefit, Dom Belcanto is there every time.”
    When she returned the call, the voice that answered the telephone turned out to be that of Florian Gray, who was stealing a bit of Dolly De Longpre’s thunder in the New York press.
    “I just wanted to know, Mrs. Manchester, if you and Mr. Minardos are planning to marry after your divorce,” said Florian quickly, in the event that Loelia might hang up on him. All that he wanted was a single quote from her that would titillate his readers. Loelia, who had still not been able to bring herself to tell her children there was a new man in her life, turned ashen and mouthed to Mickie that it was Florian Gray and not Dom Belcanto on the telephone.
    “What a cheap trick this is, you little piece of shit,” screamed Mickie, who always became volatile in anger, into the receiver that he had pulled out of Loelia’s hand. His voice, beneath the glossy patina of its New York society sound, reverted to the accent of the Greek province where he was born.
    The dressing down that Mickie gave the upstart columnist was thought by both Loelia and Mickie to have been brilliant, as if their outrage would quell anythoughts Florian Gray might have had in printing their story before they could get a chance to tell Loelia’s family and a few close friends of their intentions.
    How wrong they were.
    HEIRESS LOELIA SOMERSET MANCHESTER ELOPES TO PARIS WITH HER COBBLER , read the headline in Florian Gray’s column the next morning. Florian Gray could have had no way of knowing how wounding to Mickie Minardos that headline was going to be.

7
    “Who’s that handsome young man I keep seeing with your daughter?” asked Baba Timson, during bridge.
    “A handsome young man with Justine?” replied Lil Altemus, surprised, but delighted. “You don’t mean Herkie Saybrook, do you?”
    “Oh, no, not Herkie,” said Baba. “Everyone knows Herkie.”
    “Not Thayer Good, I hope?” said Lil.
    “Heavens, no. Handsome, I said. Thayer Good looks like a premature baby at thirty-five.”
    “I don’t know,” said Lil, who intended to find out. “It’s your bid, Loelia.”
    Late at night, after Bernie took Justine home, or early in the morning, when they both woke up, Justine telephoned Bernie, or Bernie telephoned Justine. They seemed never to run out of things to talk about.
    “I haven’t the vaguest idea how much money I’m going to inherit,” said Justine. “I come from the kind of family that never fills the women in on things like that. My brother and I each have a trust, rather ample, and we live on that until Grandfather Van Degan dies,when we’ll come into something, and then the rest, I suppose, when Mother