Dirt

Chapter 14

On Friday evening Amanda stood naked before her dressing room mirror and regarded her body. She had exercised her whole life, and never more regularly than during the past ten years. The effort showed in her trim figure; what few defects had appeared with age she had had adjusted – a little off the tops of the thighs, a slight lifting and augmentation of the breasts, and she was not all that different from the girl she had been at eighteen, during her first year at Barnard.

She had been born Ida Louise Erenheim in Delano, Georgia, to a father and mother who had both worked their whole lives at Delano Mills, one of a group owned by the prominent Delano family of Atlanta, who had founded her home town and for whom it had been named. The girl’s earliest memories were of her mother picking lint from her hair after a ten-hour day among the looms.

Ida Louise had discovered early the importance of her beauty, at first to the girls who were her social betters in the town and later to the boys from the better families. She had also been a very bright child, good in school and mature beyond her years. At a time when her girlfriends were giggling about sex at pajama parties, Ida Louise had been enthusiastically practicing it in various back seats, usually of Cadillacs and Lincolns. Word had quickly spread among the richer boys that Ida Louise responded well to shows of wealth.

By the time her girlfriends were thinking of offering up their virginity, Ida Louise had acquired a sexual repertoire that had astonished a number of athletic stars and one teacher. The teacher had filled out her scholarship application for Barnard and written his proposal letter while she had knelt under his desk and fellated him to higher flights of endorsement. Shortly after she had foolishly confided this incident to an athlete lover, she had found herself trapped in a locker room with the first string, and, faced with gang rape, had decided to enjoy the experience. She had, indeed, enjoyed it right up to the moment when they had beaten her senseless and left her naked and battered on the cold cement floor, to be discovered by a janitor, who had called the coach. The business had been hushed up, and Ida Louise had missed giving her valedictory address at graduation, departing early for New York and Barnard, caring not who saw her bruises in the day coach of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. For the rest of her life, the smell of sweaty athletic clothing would cause her to have unreasoning panic attacks. She had never again entered any sort of locker room, preferring to exercise outdoors or at home. The event had, though, instilled in her the iron determination that for the rest of her life it would be she who controlled every aspect of her sex life. She had made the mistake of allowing someone else to do that, and she would never make that mistake again.

Her first act on arriving in New York had been to find a lawyer and legally change her name to Amanda Delano, which name her cooperating high school teacher had already placed in her school records and scholarship application. Amanda had a much nicer ring than Ida Louise, and thereafter she had not disabused her college friends from thinking that she was one of the mill-owning Atlanta Delanos.

At Barnard, Amanda had remained celibate for a year while pouring her sexual frustration into her studies and the school newspaper, for which she wrote a column on campus social life. When she could no longer tolerate a life without sex, she began to seek out older, often married men – assistant professors, usually, who demanded no full-time relationship and who could recommend her for the best classes and teachers. After graduation from Barnard she got a job on the old Journal-American and, very soon afterward, began an affair with a forty-year-old assistant managing editor, one Robert Dart, who she knew was headed for a top job at the paper. Within a year he had promoted her twice, given her her own column, and divorced his wife of fifteen years to marry Amanda.

The marriage was hell for both of them, but it had ended well for Amanda when Bob Dart had dropped dead on a squash court and left her his name, a cooperative apartment in a good neighborhood, and two hundred thousand dollars in life insurance. She had hardly been set for life, but now she had a career, a certain respect as the widow of a well-known journalist, and, above all, the column. When the Journal-American had folded, Dick Hickock’s predecessor had recruited her and syndicated the column. Amanda Delano Dart had made herself powerful.

Amanda pulled on a pair of stockings and secured them to her garter belt. Her legs were too long for most pantyhose, and she felt somehow more alluring in a garter belt anyway. She slipped silk panties over the stockings and stepped into a short, low-cut black dress from her favorite, Chanel, that showed off both her good legs and her firm breasts. She needed no bra, and with the twitch of a shoulder she could give a properly attentive man a glimpse of nipple. A pair of black alligator Ferragamos and a modest diamond necklace and earrings completed her outfit.

She walked into the living room and gave it a quick once-over. She had long since trained her housekeeper, Bela, to perfection, but knowing that Amanda noticed kept her that way. She strolled into the dining room and checked the place settings, then toured the kitchen to see how the caterers were coming along. The television was on in the kitchen, and she was stopped in her tracks by the lead story on Gossip Tonight, which followed the evening news. An “anchorman” was saying:

“Word is out around New York and L.A. that two of gossip’s leading figures have figured unflatteringly in a newsletter-by-fax called DIRT, which has been going out to a list of movers and shakers over the past week. The lady was allegedly caught in a most compromising position in a New York hotel, and the gentleman, who has taken part in a number of public outings of gay men and women, was said to have been photographed during a sex act with a pizza deliveryman. Can libel suits be far behind? It will be interesting to see.”

Amanda kept moving, but her heart was pounding. She glanced at her Cartier watch. Stone Barrington was due for an early drink in fifteen minutes.

Stone was knotting his tie when Gossip Tonight followed the news and Amanda’s indiscretion was mentioned. Not by name, though, thank God. That would have certainly played hell with Amanda’s dinner party. He didn’t know who all her guests would be, but chances were at least some of them would have seen DIRT.

He slipped into his jacket and surveyed himself in the mirror. Dark, chalk-striped suit by Ralph Lauren, black baby calf shoes from E. Vogel, an old family shoemaker in Chinatown, a cream-colored silk shirt from Turnbull & Asser in London, and a reasonably sober necktie and pocket square from the same people. His cufflinks were old gold, his wristwatch a Cartier Tank. Perfect East Side dinner party garb, he thought. He gave his hair a final brush, tucked his gold reading glasses into his jacket’s breast pocket, and let himself out of the house, whistling down a passing cab. That loud whistle, learned in boyhood, had served him well in New York City.

Amanda heard the elevator chime as it stopped in her foyer. She smoothed down her dress and banished nervousness. She was ready for her first guest.