Free Gilded Lily by Isabel Vincent Page A

headed back into his familiar nightly routine. He frequented Sacha’s in Copacabana and hosted all-night poker games at his beachfront penthouse, which was considered the largest apartment in Rio at the time with over 10,000 square feet of space and stunning views of the ocean on the city’s fabled Avenida Atlantica, next to the elegant Copacabana Palace hotel.
    â€œWe’d be playing poker at his penthouse on Avenida Atlantica when a little after midnight Caruso would put out this magnificent buffet feast that was simply fantastic,” said Alfredo’s friend Al Abitbol, a French émigré, who began to build his clothing empire in Rio at the same time that Alfredo started Ponto Frio.
    â€œHe was a crazy genius,” said his friend Marcelo Steinfeld, who recalled how Alfredo once lost $200,000 at a poker game. “In those days, that was a staggering amount of money. Alfredo got up and calmly informed his opponents that he would indeed pay out what he owed, but he insisted upon doing it at the local police station. Of course, after that, everyone just begged off and told him not to worry, that it was just a game, after all.”
    After his failed marriage to Scarlett, the handsome thirty-eight-year-old businessman once again became Rio de Janeiro’s most eligible playboy.
    â€œEvery woman in Rio turned her head when Seu Alfredo walked by,” recalled Alvaro Pães, a flower vendor who managed the large flower market below Alfredo’s office on the Rua do Rosario—Ponto Frio’s new headquarters in the 1960s. “He was rich and he was good looking, and he had what every woman wanted. He knew how to make them crazy.”
    Although he could have any woman he desired in Rio, true happiness eluded him. “He talked in riddles about his life,” said Alvaro. “It was as if he was searching for something he couldn’t find.”
    Alvaro didn’t get involved in Alfredo’s personal problems although he always knew when he was in the grips of a new romance. For Alvaro, it always coincided with the times that Alfredo ordered copious amounts of flowers. He ordered yellow roses for his third wife—the blonde divorcée Alvaro knew only from a distance as the elegant Dona Lily.
    â€œHe was in love, but then he was always in love,” said Alvaro. It’s true that Alfredo often wore his heart on his sleeve.
    In his euphoric states, Alfredo would drive up to the flower market, throw the keys of his car to Alvaro, and tell him he could take the car wherever he wanted, provided it was back by the time he needed to drive home at the end of the day. Some days, he would invite Alvaro up to his office for coffee and chocolate. The two would talk about politics and listen to music.
    Ironically, just as he sensed his life spinning out of control, Alfredo would take up his favorite samba. “Everything is in its place / Thank God, thank God,” he used to sing out loud to Alvaro. “When I come home from work / I say to God, many thanks / I sing samba the whole night / And on Sundays and holidays.”
    The harmony celebrated in the samba he loved so much would elude Alfredo for the rest of his life. It was not available to him at any price.
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    YET HE SEEMED so happy in February 1965 when he walked out of the Office of the City Clerk in lower Manhattan with his beautiful new bride on his arm. In fact, friends recalled that he was deliriously happy after the marriage to Lily Watkins Cohen. Alfredo celebrated their wedding by taking Lily to the French jeweler Boucheron and buying one of the biggest diamond rings in the store.
    In the early days of their marriage, they acted like a happy, upper-class family. The four children—Alfredo’s adopted son, Carlos, and Lily’s two sons and daughter—were enrolled in good schools in Rio, and Lily hosted wonderful dinner parties for family and friends. Most weekends, the Monteverde clan headed to