was a pipe slightly shorter than the span of the Golden Gate Bridge. The ever-hovering Chauncey struck a match for Sabrina and as the pair made eye contact over the flickering flame, I fought the temptation of lighting an English Oval and lost.
As Sabrina basked in the glow of recognition I recalled that my only previous encounter with the literary set was with the poet Roderick Gillsworth whose book, The Joy of Flatulence, was ignored by the reading public and therefore lauded by the critics. Our relationship was cut short when Mrs. Gillsworth was murdered and I fingered Roderick for the crime.
Enthusiastically indulging our vices, Sabrina told me her story, that was old and trite but, as she stated, “It’s new when it happens to you.” What happened was a brief encounter with a college boy when Sabrina was eighteen, resulting in the birth of Gillian some nine months later. Once again borrowing from Hollywood royalty, Sabrina put her baby girl in an orphanage and then legally adopted the infant.
“And the father?” I questioned.
“The father was the scion of American nobility, their coat of arms consisting of crossed oil wells over a sea of gilt-edged securities. To form an alliance with the likes of me would have been his ruin. Besides which, he was engaged to a young lady who was Main Line Philadelphia or Back Bay Boston, I forget which, but I do know it was rumored that her family kept in their safe-deposit box a splinter from the deck of the Mayflower.
“He paid me handsomely to keep a low profile. Very handsomely, Mr.
McNally. I was able to brush up my Shakespeare, as the song goes, live comfortably, and travel extensively. London, Paris, Antibes, Monte Carlo in and out of season, Zurich, and Rome were my playgrounds. I rubbed shoulders, among other things, with the well-to-do, and became au fait with the ways of the world, which is to say the ways of the rich, the super rich, and the mega rich. Darling Desire was the child of my wanderlust. The rest, Mr. McNally, is history.”
I tossed her a curve with, “And what of the child of your womb, Ms Wright?”
“Gillian?” Sabrina said as if amazed that I would ask. “Gillian had the best of everything. I enrolled her in a fancy Swiss school from day one.”
“You sent your daughter to the first grade in Switzerland?” I exclaimed.
“What’s wrong with that? Little Swiss children go to the first grade in Switzerland.”
“They live there, Ms Wright.”
“My daughter lived there, Mr. McNally. You don’t think she got on a little yellow jet every morning toting a lunch pail.”
The woman was insufferable, but I have to add, infectious. Sabrina Wright was a package. By that I mean there were no loose ends no ifs, buts, or maybes. Like Faust, she would sell her soul to the devil in return for a bestseller and then buy it back with ten percent of the gross. “How often did you see your daughter?” I asked.
Puffing on her onyx holder, she said, “We met frequently at airports when our connecting flights crisscrossed. We dined in the V.I.P
lounge. I always paid.” She gave it a beat and then burst into a raspy guffaw. Chauncey, giving the impression that he was in on the joke, joined in. Moments later everyone in the bar was sporting a grin. Yes, Sabrina Wright was infectious.
“Why did you suddenly decide to tell her the truth?”
“It wasn’t sudden. I had been thinking about it. And then one night oh, you know a couple of white chicks sitting around talking. I was trying to talk her into giving up Zachary Ward. He writes under the name Zack Ward.”
“Writes?”
“In a manner of speaking. He’s a reporter for a dreadful tabloid of the “I Was Impregnated by a Martian at the Church Rummage Sale’
variety. They met at a writers’ workshop where he was the guest lecturer, which gives you some idea of the workshop’s caliber.”
I wanted to remind her of the precarious position of those who reside in glass houses but refrained. I know it’s popular, especially in bombastic Palm Beach, to put down anything popular with the common folks, be it literature, music, or a hit film, and label it bourgeois.
I refuse to go along with this line, not only because I am a member in good standing of the bourgeoisie, but because all art is valid and appealing to the masses doesn’t make it less so.
If Gillian was enrolled in a writers’ workshop, that meant she aspired to emulate her famous mother. Was Sabrina unhappy over her daughter’s career choice? Testing the waters, I said, “I assume Gillian aspires to be an author. As is the mother, so is her daughter, the Old Testament tells us.”
Quick as a cobra on the offensive, she snapped, “In this case, Mr.
McNally, it would be more a case of a bastard emulating a bitch.”
The lady had wit, however acerbic, and I was beginning to enjoy her company, but then I have always been an easy mark for well-turned ankles and calves. With anyone else, the black-tipped cigarette might have been construed as overplaying her hand, but Sabrina Wright overplayed every move, making the Mata Hari weed almost unnecessary.
Reluctantly I extinguished my English Oval in an ashtray and encouraged Sabrina to go on with her story. “You told Gillian you were her natural mother and she fled. Is that more or less what happened?”
It was Sabrina’s turn to douse her smoke and she did so by first removing it from the holder before tamping it in the ashtray. Chauncey, ever helpful, removed it and provided us with a clean one. Would he save Sabrina’s black- tipped butt and press it into his memory book?
Sabrina told Gillian the truth because she thought her case against Zack Ward would be more compelling coming from a flesh-and-blood mother than from a surrogate parent. “I wanted her to know how sincerely I had her best interests at heart,” Sabrina explained.
“What have you got against Ward, other than his profession?”
“I believe,” Sabrina said, ‘that his only interest in Gillian is to pump her for information about me for his rag. Gillian is a rather plain girl and Zack is very attractive, if you get my drift. She has had beaus but never one as comely as Zack, or as ardent. When I made my confession she was, of course, surprised but pleased. We had a good cry and celebrated the occasion with champagne.”
Sabrina didn’t say that getting rid of Ward was in her best interests, too. She did say that it was several days later when Gillian began to pester her mother to disclose the name of her father. “I know she told Zack her news, and he immediately saw in it the scandal about me he was longing to write about. Of course the story would be worth twice as much in dollars and notoriety if it named the father. You see, I told Gillian that her father was a man of great wealth and pedigree. Given the combination of my name and her father’s, the story would not only make Zack’s career, but his fortune. A week later Gillian and Zack left New York for Palm Beach.”
“Why Palm Beach?”
With a gesture that said she had gone this far so why not go all the way, she answered, “Because I told her she was conceived here and that her father still lived here. At the time, I was in Fort Lauderdale on spring break. Gillian’s father was slumming.”
“Zack notwithstanding, why, after all this time, are you reluctant to tell Gillian who her father is?”
“Because I struck a bargain, Mr. McNally, and I intend to comply with the rules. I was given a great deal of money by my paramour, as I told you. Enough to raise my daughter in style and live a life that granted me the time and the experience to write and become the darling of publishers as well as investment bankers.” Sticking out her chin, she added, “And I will go to any length to honor his anonymity. Any length,” she repeated.
“What are the odds of Gillian and Zack finding what they came looking for?”
A million to one, but even those odds are too close for comfort. That’s why I sent Robert to see what they were up to and to wheedle Jill into returning home.”
I forgot all about the missing Robert. “Is he Robert Wright?”
“No, he’s Robert Silvester, but he is my Mr. Right. Robert is my editor and was fresh out of college when they assigned him to my first book. You know how it is with a first book. When we weren’t lunching together, we were on the phone. To cut expenses, he moved in. When Darling Desire was published to great acclaim we celebrated by eloping to Las Vegas.”
As she filled me in on her marital exploits, I began doing a little arithmetic. She was eighteen when she had
