Paulette went back to Switzerland. Andy, Fred, Ariel de Ravenel, and I were driven through the Alps to Turin, to see a protégé of Iolas, Luciano Anselmino whom we called Anselmino of Torino, because he looked more like a hairdresser than an art dealer. Andy had done an edition of one hundred prints of the Man Ray portrait for him and he had slipped in an extra thirty trial proofs. Andy complained, but he signed them the morning after we got there. Now Anselmino wanted to commission a larger edition of prints, and maybe paintings too. His idea: drag queens. Andy said drag queens were out, but Anselmino persisted, suggesting portraits of Candy, Jackie, and Holly. Andy said Candy was dead, and Jackie and Holly would drive him crazy, asking for more money every time they heard one had sold. “Can’t you think of another idea?” said Andy.
At dinner, Anselmino pushed his drag-queen idea again. His argument was constantly interrupted by the alarm going off on his parked Mercedes. He said it was Communists trying to rob it and sent his assistant, Dino, out on the street to chase them. Then he returned to his idée fixe: They shouldn’t be beautiful transvestites who could pass for women, but funny-looking ones, with heavy beards, who were obviously men trying to pass. “Well, maybe we could do it,” said Andy eventually. “We can put a wig on Bob. He has a heavy beard.” “Bravissimo,” said Anselmino of Torino.
“I’m not doing it,” I said, the second Anselmino was out of sight.
“But I’ll give you one,” Andy said, careful not to specify one what—big painting? little painting? print? autographed Polaroid?
“I don’t want one.”
“You can give it to your mother.”
“Andy!!!!!” I screamed across a deserted seventeenth-century piazza.
“Leave Bob alone,” said Fred, trying to calm things down.
“Maybe Ronnie Cutrone can do it. He has a heavy beard,” said Andy, stirring things up again. Ronnie Cutrone, a budding artist, who first came to the Factory as a dancer with the Velvet Underground, had been promoted to Andy’s art assistant in 1973, when Glenn O’Brien left Interview.
We fought all the way to Paris, Andy telling me it would be fun to have my portrait done in drag, me telling Andy I really didn’t want to be immortalized quite that way. At last he said, “Oh, I know what we should do. We should get those nutty-looking drag queens from that awful place we went to that night, remember? The one with all the blacks and Puerto Ricans, where I was robbed. What was it called?”
“The Gilded Grape.”
“What a great name. Well, you can go there and get the drag queens for me, because I can’t go there, it’s too crazy. And those drag queens are so dumb they won’t know they’re posing for me, so we won’t have to pay them a lot. Unless you tell them it’s me, Bob.”
“I won’t tell them it’s you, Andy.”
“Well, we have to be careful. You never know. And I was robbed there. But we’ll be on easy street if this deal with Anselmino goes through.”
The Gilded Grape was a bizarre little bar on Eighth Avenue at West 45th Street, frequented by black and Hispanic transvestites (average height: six feet two) and white truck-driver types (average weight: 275 pounds) who picked them up. We’d visited it a few weeks earlier with Kenny Jay Lane and a group of titled Parisians, sightseeing. But the people they had come to stare at stared at them. The ladies tucked their necklaces under their collars and turned their rings wrong way around. Andy hid his Brownie’s shopping bag, containing the usual Polaroid camera, film, flashbulbs, and tape cassettes, plus chapter one of the Philosophy book, under his chair. That was the last he saw of it.
Now we were on our way to Paris, where Marie-Hélène and Guy de Rothschild were giving a garden party at Ferrières, their weekend castle, to celebrate the engagement of their son, David, to Olympia Aldobrandini, the beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter of Count and Countess Aldobrandini of Venice. As we turned the last curve of their ten-mile driveway, we saw a fifty-foot portrait of David and Olympia hanging from the parapets. “Why didn’t they ask me to do their portrait, Fred?” asked Andy. “It’s a nineteenth-century painting they blew up,” Fred explained, “and they just cut the heads out and stuck photos of David and Olympia on top.” “That’s what I mean,” said Andy. “They could have just stuck my portraits on top. Did you ever think of asking Marie-Hélène that?”
A brigade of footmen dressed up like the Vatican’s Swiss Guards lined the staircase, and just inside the entrance a footman asked your name, then passed it to a second footman, who bellowed it out: “La Princesse de Polignac … le Prince de Furstenberg … le Prince et la Princesse de Beauvau-Craon … le Comte d’Estainville … Madame Hélène Rochas … le Baron de Redé … Monsieur et Madame John Heinz … Mademoiselle Bettina Graziani … Ses altesses royales le Prince et la Princesse Michel de Grèce … le Baron et la Baronne de Waldner … le Comte et la Comtesse de Brandolini … Monsieur Andy Warhol … Monsieur Bob Colacello … ” It did give me a bit of a rush.
Marie-Hélène, in a flowered chiffon garden-party dress by Saint Laurent, stood at the head of the receiving line, with her hairdresser, the legendary Alexandre, right behind her, adjusting the pearl-tipped pins that kept her hairdo up. Next were Baron Guy, Olympia in a white cotton garden-party dress by Valentino, David, and the Aldobrandinis. We shook hands with them all and went through the château to the rear entrance, over which another fifty-foot-high portrait of the engagement couple hung. “It’s a multiple, Fred,” said Andy, “just like my portraits. And I could have made them look so much more beautiful. David looks fat.” Fred dashed off with Ariel.
Just then a pack of paparazzi poured out of the house and into the garden, pursuing Jackie Onassis, sans Ari. “Hi, Andy,” she shouted breathlessly as she hurried by, looking for a hideout. “She didn’t say, ‘Hi, Bob,’ Bob,” said Andy. I was feeling a bit out of place as it was. My new black YSL suit had been perfect for the premiere in Monte Carlo, but was too formal for a garden party. Andy was wearing a black jacket over his blue jeans—the same thing he had worn everywhere from the Baron de Redé’s lunch to Princess Grace’s reception. “I’m not dressed right, either,” he said, to reassure me. Then he added, “But I’m an artist, so I can get away with it, right?” to throw me off again. Fred was wearing just the right thing, an impeccably cut white suit. “Fred always looks right,” Andy pointed out, in case I hadn’t noticed.
Despite the teasing, I enjoyed being with Andy at this kind of up-there extravaganza. He didn’t miss a trick and he brought it down to earth. “There’s Sydney Chaplin. Should we run over and ask him if Paulette was a good stepmother? Oh, and look, there’s poor Virginia Chambers. Do you think she came to ask Marie-Hélène not to evict her? That’s the Vicomtesse de Noailles, the really old one over there. She was in Proust and Cocteau loved her. You know, Bob, you went to college. I wish she would trade me some furniture for her portrait. Should we run over and pop the question? God, doesn’t Michael York look handsome? But his wife never lets him out of her sight for a second. That’s Marc Bohan over there, you know, from Dior. The one counting his dresses. He must be upset because everybody’s in Saint Laurent, right? That funny-looking lady in the black hat is Mrs. Lalanne. She and her husband make those sheep that everybody collects. It’s art, Bob, isn’t it? Remind me to ask Fred if we should ask them to trade. There’s Egon with Princess Minnie. I can never say her name right. It’s something like Bobo-Crayon.” It’s Beauvau-Craon. “Everyone says Egon wants to marry her, now that Diane’s going out with that Italian TV guy. The one with the Polish name. There’s Philip Niarchos. Should we say hello to him? I wonder why he didn’t bring Mary Russell, you know, the fashion girl we met in Monte Carlo. Oh, I know, because Giovanni Volpi is here, and Mary just broke up with him for Philip, or maybe Giovanni just broke up with her for Marina Schiano. Oh, don’t tell Fred I told you that. Oh, did you get a load of São’s brooch, the one that looks like a bunch of flowers—diamond flowers, Bob. I love the way it blows in the breeze. It must be an old Cartier. Or maybe Van Cleef. You could be on easy street, Bob. But she was with Pierre. He never comes to these things. This must be really important, right? But then the first person I ran right into was Count Mozzarella, so maybe it’s not. And we’re here, so how important can it be, right? Oh, let’s do who’s not here—that’s how you can tell if it’s a good party or not, by how important the left-out people are. Givenchy isn’t here and he’s important, right? Marisa Berenson isn’t here and she’s important, right? Well, she’s not here because she went out with David before Olympia came along, so that’s different.… Oh, I forgot to tell you the best thing. When you went over to the bar to get a drink, I had the best time with that snotty French kid who used to be in love with Robert Mapplethorpe. He told me that Bettina’s new boyfriend used to fuck his wife, while he hung out on street corners picking up boys. Isn’t that great? You’ve got to do our Modern Marriage script, Bob. And he told me that he had to do it every night with somebody different. Isn’t that fascinating? I told him I had to do it every night with nobody different. Is that a good line for the Philosophy book, Bob?”
That was Andy: standing at the edge of an up-there party, chattering it down into the gutter, then lifting it up again and turning it into work. People always asked me, “What do you and Andy talk about at parties? I can never seem to get him to utter a word.” Now they know.
Unfortunately, we were no longer staying at the Hôtel Crillon. The apartment on Rue de Cherche-Midi was ready. Well, the gold faucets only ran cold water, and the double-height French windows facing the Brandolini’s garden were covered with sheets, as were the sofas and chairs, and there were no lamps, just candelabras, lots of them, and candles, lots of them too. Fred considered this quasi-decorating job, which he did mostly himself, “romantic.” Andy considered it a lot cheaper than putting the three of us up at the Crillon. I hated it, especially since Fred had a chic little bedroom done in hand-painted paneling on the top floor, and Andy had a sumptuous big bedroom done in gilded paneling on the first floor, and I had a disgusting little bedroom done in cement paneling in the basement, right under the glasstiled floor of the dining room, which Andy stomped on early each morning to wake me up. “Time to get up, Bob. We’re late for lunch,” he’d shout, around 8 A.M. And to make matters worse, from my point of view, the first appliance we bought was a typewriter. “Time to type up the Sex tape we made in Monte Carlo, Bob. Why don’t you just sit down at the typewriter and type up fifty pages real quick on Modern Marriage, Bob?”
And while I typed, Andy sat there chewing gum, popping chocolates in and out, rattling on about whether Fred was really in love with Ariel and how I should call São and seduce her into commissioning the history of her hairdos. “Just stick it to her, just stick it in her,” he’d go on, proud of his play on words, insisting that I write it down to stick in the Philosophy book. If he told me I could be on easy street once, he told me a million times—there was no one like Andy to take a tired cliché and turn it into a broken record.
Did he mean what he was saying? Or did he just like to hear himself talk? Was he filling some desperate hole of loneliness? Or torturing me into submission? Did he need to believe his kids were the sought-after Romeos he wasn’t? Or was he trivializing our personal lives so that he could keep control? It was so confusing, and when I wasn’t laughing at the absurdity of it all, I wanted to cry or scream or shout, and sometimes I did. But that meant Andy won, and the one thing Andy always wanted was to win. When I said I wanted to stay in one night and curl up with a good book, instead of going to yet another dinner at yet another fancy restaurant with yet another variation on the In group list, he said, “You gotta live life to write it, Bob.” When I went out and lived life one night, all night, he said, “You’re never going to be a writer, Bob, because you’re more interested in kicking up your heels.”
After two and a half weeks on the road with Andy—Paris, Monte Carlo, Torino, Paris again—I was ready to go home. Or anywhere, as long as Andy wasn’t there.
A month later, Fred proposed my going along on another European trip—more and more, he liked having me there to free him from constantly attending to Andy. Fred made this trip sound like a vacation: two weeks in July on the Italian Riviera. Andy was going to be “artist-in-residence,” Fred said, “at a really up-there artists’ colony run by a marvelous old Swiss woman.” He hadn’t been there himself, but Paloma Picasso and Nicky Weymouth were coming along as Andy’s “art assistants—think of what fun you’ll have with those two.” And when I wasn’t having fun with the girls, I’d be dreaming up clever new maxims for the Philosophy book with Andy. He made it sound like Aristotle and Plato going off to summer camp with Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.
But where was he going to be while I was having so much fun in the sun? “I’ll be just down the road,” he explained, “stirring up some business in Monte Carlo. I suppose I’ll have to spend a lot of time with Hans and Kardi Smith. It’s just over the Italian border, this art colony, in a little town called Boissano. I’m sure it’s charming. And when you finish up there, we’ll have a few nights at Jimmy’z kicking up our heels.” Andy’s clichés were catching.
Boissano, a little town with one church and one pizzeria, was two hours further from Monte Carlo than Fred had estimated. And the artists’ colony really was up there—halfway between the beach and the mountains, too far from either for a cooling dip or a refreshing hike, among hills covered in fruit orchards and swarming with flies, which had a peculiar habit of drowning in our wine glasses. As for that marvelous old Swiss woman, she served us polenta three times a day and forced us to share every meal with the paying guests, who asked questions like “Why did you paint Marilyn Monroe’s lips orange?”
The artist and his three assistants resided in one large dormitory room, with one small bathroom, above the “museum,” which housed a (Pablo) Picasso, a Chagall, a Magritte, and a Miró, which meant it was locked up tight at night, from the outside, with us in it.
Fred had been right about one thing: Nicky Weymouth and Paloma Picasso, who hardly knew each other before Boissano, were both fun. Otherwise they were opposite in almost every way. Paloma was dark and low-key, Nicky was fair and high-strung. Nicky, who later briefly married Kenny Jay Lane, lived in London near the Jaggers and the Gettys. She gave constant parties, drawing everyone from David Hockney to Lady Diana Cooper. Paloma was doing her first collection of jewelry, for the Athens goldsmith Zolotas, a friend of Iolas. And she had just starred in her first (and only) movie, an artsy French-Czech horror called Immoral Tales. She played a Countess Dracula type, and Andy never stopped teasing her about the ads featuring a naked Paloma in a tub of virgins’ blood. Paloma just laughed, a great laugh, big and crackly and real.
Andy had a thing about Paloma. And Paloma’s father. As we sat around on our cots in the museum dormitory, he’d grill her for hours about her father, with Sony propped up on a pillow. What was Picasso really like? Nice? Mean? Funny? Smart? Did he paint as soon as he woke up, or did he wait until later in the day? How long did it take him to do a painting? How many did he do in a week? A month? When Paloma came up with a number, Andy would moan, “Oh, I’ve got to paint more. I’ve got to paint faster.” It was all about quantity, including the question Andy could never resist: How big was his cock? Paloma laughed that off too. Andy persisted, “I mean, didn’t you ever take a bath with your father when you were a little girl?” “Yes,” said Paloma, “in blood.”
Andy couldn’t get enough. What did he eat, what did he wear, how much money did he make? Paloma said that her father liked making money and liked spending money, especially on comfort and luxuries for himself. She said one of Picasso’s favorite guests was Jean Cocteau. “He would bring my father all the latest art-world and society gossip from Paris. My father liked to hear about those people, though he didn’t like to see them. My brother Claude and I liked Cocteau a lot too. He was good with children, like you, Andy.”
“Oh, really? I’d rather be like your father.”
Paloma only talked so much about her father to please Andy. She wasn’t the sort of celebrity child who bragged; neither did she recoil at his name. Her father was her father, and that was that.
Andy was sure she was much more affected by her father than she let on, and a couple of years later when he met her husband-to-be, Rafael Lopez Cambil, an Argentine playwright, Andy said the same thing over and over. “He looks just like her father. That’s why Paloma fell in love with him.”
At the end of our first week in Boissano, Andy had had enough. “Call Fred and tell him to come and get us,” he ordered. “I’ll give the money back, if I have to.” Now, that was a new line. Fred came scurrying down the coast, full of stories about how hard he had been working in the restaurants and discos of Monte Carlo. We wanted to string him up from a fruit tree and let the flies finish him off.
Fred had Anselmino of Torino along, who had a portrait for Andy to do in Genoa on the way to Monte Carlo: a twenty-year-old Italian ballerina, whom Andy had never seen before and never saw thereafter. It always amazed me when people commissioned Andy cold like that. And as more and more dealers in Europe pushed the portraits, there were more and more clients whose total relationship with their portraitist was the portrait sitting. Anselmino had another present for Andy that day: He had lined up the financing, several hundred thousand dollars, for the Drag Queen series, and a museum to show it in, the Palazzo di Diamante, a municipal art center in Ferrara. As we sped down the coast to Monaco, Andy begged me to pose in a wig. “We’ll just put on a little makeup,” he promised. “Anselmino wants your beard to show. Don’t you, Anselmino?” Anselmino said “Sí,” and so, after the excruciating boredom of Boissano, did I.
That night, we celebrated Fred’s thirty-first birthday and our freedom with a long table of Riviera rich kids at Le Pirate restaurant. It was the most expensive on the entire Côte d’Azur because after dinner everybody would throw their plates and glasses over their shoulders, smashing them Greek-style. As the rich kids got into it, Andy started calculating the cost—$5 a glass, $10 a plate. “This is going to be expensive, Bob,” he told me. “Don’t throw anything. It’s too silly.” I picked up the kerosene lantern on our table. “What are you doing, Bob?!?” And I threw it over my shoulder. Everybody screamed, especially Andy. His bill, with an extra $150 for the lantern, came to $2,000.
I did pose for Andy when we got back to New York, in a blond wig. Fortunately, Andy decided it was unusable. Ronnie Cutrone, Vincent, and I found most of the models at the Gilded Grape. We would ask them to pose for “a friend” for $50 per half hour. The next day, they’d appear at the Factory and Andy, whom we never introduced by name, would take their Polaroids. And the next time we saw them at the Gilded Grape, they invariably would say, “Tell your friend I do a lot more for fifty bucks.”
When the paintings, retitled Ladies and Gentlemen, were shown in Ferrara in 1975, Andy took me along for the opening, and for a minute I wished that my portrait had worked out: They looked so stunning in the High Renaissance Palazzo di Diamante. It was Andy’s second-most-beautiful exhibition, after the Maos at the Musée Galliera in Paris. The left-wing Italian art critics went wild, writing that Andy Warhol had exposed the cruel racism inherent in the American capitalist system, which left poor black and Hispanic boys no choice but to prostitute themselves as transvestites. At the press conference in Ferrara, a reporter wanted to know if Andy was a Communist. In Italy in the mid-seventies, the expected answer was yes. “Am I a Communist, Bob?” said Andy. “Well,” I said, “you just painted Willy Brandt’s portrait, but you’re trying to get Imelda Marcos.” “That’s my answer,” said Andy, as the translators scratched their bearded chins. But back at the hotel that night, he said, “Maybe I should do real Communist paintings next. They would sell a lot in Italy.” Thus was conceived the 1977 Hammers and Sickles series.
The Ladies and Gentlemen, or Drag Queen, paintings, like so many of Andy’s great seventies works, were never shown in the United States. Two years after his death, however, one large painting was auctioned at Christie’s New York from the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, fetching the highest price of anything in that sale: $176,000.
“I think it’s Spiro Agnew, Bob.” Andy and I were waiting for our flight to Paris in Pan Am’s first-class lounge at JFK, in October 1974. So was the former Vice President of the United States, who had resigned in disgrace the year before, followed by Nixon that August. They were the two most reviled figures in American politics at the time, but that wasn’t going to stop Andy. Or me. Fred was off checking some rolled-up portraits through customs, and Jed was getting us drinks from the bar. “Gee, I never knew Agnew was so handsome,” said Andy. I knew what he was getting to: “Why don’t you go ask him for his autograph, Bob?” I said I didn’t want to bother him. “Uh, it could mean a raise, Bob.”
I gulped down two Courvoisiers and, with Andy’s Magic Marker and my Time magazine in hand, headed for Agnew. “Excuse me, sir,” I fumbled, “but I’m traveling with Andy Warhol and we’re big admirers of yours, and we were wondering if you would give us your autograph.” I held out the Magic Marker and the Time magazine. Agnew gave me a stern look. “I’d be delighted to give you my autograph, but not on that magazine.” How could I forget that it was Time that had led the charge against him?
I ran back to where Andy was sitting, and said I needed another magazine. “How about Modern Screen?” “As long as it’s not political.” “Here, hurry, before Fred gets back. And see if he’ll write, ‘To Andy.’ ” I ran back to Agnew, who produced a gold fountain pen from his gray suit. “Do you think you could put, ‘To Andy’?” “My pleasure,” he said, signing his name with a flourish, across the cover photograph of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, together yet again.
Andy was in seventh heaven. I could do no wrong for at least twenty-four hours. Fred was furious. “Why are you and Bob sitting there like two cats who just drank the milk?” he wanted to know. Then he noticed Agnew on the other side of the lounge. “Andy! You got Bob to go over and ask for his autograph, didn’t you? Andy! If Hitler came back from the dead, you’d get Bob to ask for his autograph, wouldn’t you? And you’d do it, Bob, wouldn’t you?”
“You never let me ask people for autographs, Fred,” said Andy.
“Oh, God,” moaned Fred, “I can see this is going to be a great trip.”
“You wouldn’t let me ask Rebozo that time at the Crillon, you wouldn’t let me ask Tricia Nixon at Trader Vic’s, you … ”
“Andy!!!!”
In Paris, we went to the Cherche-Midi apartment, still exquisitely undone, Fred Hughes style. “Isn’t Fred ever going to get the furniture upholstered?” I asked.
“This is chic, Bob,” said Andy. “It’s the old-money look.”
“I wish we could have the new-money look.”
“Oh, I know,” sighed Andy, “hot water.”
“Broadloom.”
“Instead of splinters in my feet.”
“Lightbulbs.”
“Instead of worrying about Fred passing out with the candles burning.”
“Can’t I stay in a hotel, Andy? I hate that room in the basement. I hate pissing in the sink.”
“Pissing in the sink is chic, Bob.”
“Isabel Eberstadt told me about a very reasonable hotel right between here and São’s house. I could get the smallest room.”
Andy gave in, and from then on I usually stayed at the Hôtel de l’Abbaye when we came to Paris, sometimes as often as ten times a year, to and from Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland. On this trip, for example, we were on our way to Milan, for the Iolas Gallery opening of the Man Ray portraits and prints. And Paulette was meeting us there, to get some work done on the book, which had been on hold while she summered at the Villa Remarque.
In the meantime, there was plenty to do in Paris. Every morning, I’d stop at the bakery across from the apartment and buy fresh rolls and bread, enough for an army, because Andy always said it wasn’t enough. He liked to have extra to throw to the pigeons in the garden. He’d make his own toast and slather it with fresh fruit jams from Angelina’s—no butter, it was “bad for the gallbladder”—standing in the kitchen shivering in his shirttails and socks. Then he’d climb back into bed with his breakfast, and moan and groan about how hard it was to get going in the morning, all the while coming up with people for me to call about ads, covers, lunches, dinners, interspersed with admonitions to ask Fred first. “You better wake Fred up,” he’d say. “But be careful because I think he has somebody in bed with him. I heard noises when he came home in the middle of the night.” I’d shout up to Fred, who would stagger down the stairs alone.
We were usually out of the apartment by noon, shopping our way to lunch. Andy seemed to know every antique-jewelry shop on the Left Bank, and he’d pop in and out of them, asking if they had any “really big brooches from the forties, maybe citrine or, uh, aquamarine?” Big was always better with Andy and he’d rather have a huge garnet than a tiny ruby, though he’d take that too, in trade for art, if he could. After buying the latest jackets and shirts, more for Jed than Andy, at YSL’s men’s boutique on the Place Saint Sulpice, we’d taxi over to the Right Bank and hit the Faubourg St. Honoré and the Avenue Montaigne: first the dog store for Archie’s present, usually a new hand-tooled leather collar; then Guerlain for Andy’s perfumes, usually special tuberose and narcissus blends; Cerruti for Jed’s polo shirts; Hermès for Fred’s briefcases; Fauchon for Andy’s candies; Weston on the Champs Élysees for their Italian cowboy boots; and on to the Ungaro and Valentino boutiques for men, where we got good discounts and we all bought blazers and corduroys—except Fred, who had even those made to order in London or New York. Everywhere we went, Andy handed out copies of Interview and I tried to come up with a polite way to ask for an ad on top of the discount.
In the afternoons, the apartment would turn into the Paris Factory, and we’d have meetings over tea and champagne with William Burke, Fred’s Paris art assistant, and Joel le Bon, Interview’s new Paris correspondent. Photographers and models came by with their portfolios, and we’d dream up Interview assignments for them. Andy wanted to use everybody, but Fred and I were more selective. Clara Saint would bring reporters from Marie Claire or French Vogue and we’d all sit around making up answers for Andy, which Clara would then translate into French, emitting little squeaks of laughter when she realized what she was actually saying. And Andy would call Vincent in New York: “Did you turn the faucet in the bathroom off? Did you make sure those girls up at Interview put their cigarette butts out? Did you get the check from Anselmino yet? Fred, we didn’t get the check yet. You better call Milan and say we’re not coming.”
The check came, and we went on to Milan, where everyone was waiting for Andy at the Iolas Gallery—including fifty paparazzi and Paulette Goddard, looking icy in a white fox cape fringed in matching foxtails, and a white sequined suit with Dali’s diamond-and-ruby “Lips” brooch pinned to the lapel. “Ohhh, I’ve always wanted one of those,” sighed Andy, zeroing in on the Dali. He handed Paulette a miniature Mao painting wrapped in a page of Interview, and when she saw what it was, she melted. “Oh, I’ve always wanted one of these.” The book was on, and so was Sony.
Paulette, Andy, Jed, and I piled into a chauffeured Mercedes and went on to Andy’s second Milan opening, of the Hand-Colored Flowers, at the Galeria Multi-Centro, chased all the way by fifty paparazzi. As Andy and Paulette stepped out of the car, Jed stepped on Paulette’s dragging cape, tearing off a foxtail or two. He picked them up and gave them to her, and it was one of those cases where honesty didn’t pay. “My poor little babies,” she cried, stroking the torn-off tails as if they really were her pets, or kids.
There was a fur shop across the street, and before we knew what was happening, Paulette was heading for it. Andy, Jed, and I, plus the fifty paparazzi, dashed across the street after her. “I’d like to try on that coat in the window,” Paulette ordered the salesgirl, pointing at a white Russian lynx. “That’s the most expensive fur there is,” whispered Andy nervously. “What if Paulette wants me to pay?” Paulette tried it on and asked for the price. “Sixty million lire,” said the salesgirl. “Seventy-five thousand dollars,” said Paulette, with her calculator mind. “That’s not bad for white Russian lynx. It’s the most luxurious fur in the world.”
“Oh, I know,” said Andy, as white as the coat. Paulette pirouetted in the triple mirror. Andy turned a whiter shade of pale. “Well,” said Paulette, “whattaya think, Andy?”
“Oh, uh, it’s a little short,” said Andy, “isn’t it, Bob?” I said it was. Jed said it was. The salesgirl said that was the style this year. You could have heard a foxtail drop, if it hadn’t been for the paparazzi pounding on the window, shouting for Andy and Paulette to come out. Paulette pirouetted one more time. “It is short,” she said, sliding out of the coat. “That was a close call, Bob,” whispered Andy, regaining some of his normal color, off-white.
Andy had met his match in Paulette. Like him, she was an expert psychological torturer, a master manipulator of the first rank, a world-class hoarder of gems, gold, cash—and, in her case, furs. “I always say,” she always said, “if you get one great fur coat every year, in twenty years you’ll have a great closet.” And Andy always said, “I hope she doesn’t think this is the year she’s getting one from me.” Paulette had met her match in Andy.
We were in Milan three nights, and every night a fashionable industrialist gave a party full of industrious fashionables in an ancient palazzo decorated in the most up-to-the-minute style. Under gold-leaf ceilings there were sleek suede banquettes, oversized stainless-steel coffee tables bearing exotic orchids in terra-cotta pots, all-white Fontana canvases artfully slashed and torn. Andy and Paulette always sat together, with Sony as a chaperone, wooing and cooing over her jewels, the modern art around them, the white truffles that the rich Milanese grated with abandon over everything from pasta to salad. Clever Daniela Morera, Interview’s new Italian editor, got them all to advertise: The Milanese designers were our first real advertising base. She also got Armani, Versace, and Krizia to have their portraits done by Andy.
At one of these parties, Anselmino’s artist sidekick, who called herself Carolrama, announced that she was a palm reader and tried to take Andy’s hand. He recoiled, saying that he had a better idea: She should read Paulette’s for the book. “And then she’ll do yours, Andy, to go with it,” said Paulette. “Oh, okay,” muttered Andy into his button-down collar. Carolrama took Paulette’s hand in hers, and with Daniela Morera translating and Andy taping, pronounced her “strong, cynical, and cruel—to others and to yourself.” Then it was Andy’s turn. “Oh, Bob will do it for me,” he said, “and in the book we’ll say his hand was mine.”
That was the beginning of the end of HER. Paulette had been opening up in Milan, telling Andy sparkly Aldous Huxley and H. G. Wells stories. But after Andy got me to have my hand read as his, she went back to talking about where to get the best caviar in Milan, the best foie gras in Zürich, the best smoked salmon in New York. Paulette and Andy were too equally matched for creative collaboration, which obviously requires give and take, not tit for tat.