One morning as I sat across from Donald at his desk going over the details of our trip to Mar-a-Lago (Donald thought it would help me with the book if I saw his Palm Beach mansion firsthand) the phone rang. It was Philip Johnson.
As they chatted, Donald suddenly seemed to get an idea. He put the phone on speaker. “Philip!” he said. “You have to talk to my niece. She’s writing my next book. You can tell her all about the Taj.”
I introduced myself, and Philip suggested I come to his house in Connecticut the following week to discuss the book.
After Donald finished the call, he said to me, “That’ll be fantastic. Philip is a great guy. I hired him to design the porta-co-share for the Taj Mahal. It’s tremendous—I’d never seen anything like it.”
After we finished discussing the logistics of our trip to Florida, I left the office and headed to the library. I had no idea who Philip Johnson was, and I’d never heard of a “porta-co-share.”
In the limo on the way to the airport the following day, I told Donald that I’d arranged to meet Johnson at his home, which I’d learned at the library was the very famous Glass House that he, a very famous architect, had designed. I had also discovered that the thing Johnson had designed for the Taj—what Donald called a porta-co-share—was a porte cochere, basically a large carport. I understood why Donald had wanted Johnson to be involved in the project; he wasn’t just famous, he also traveled in the kind of circles Donald aspired to. I didn’t, however, understand why Johnson would bother designing the Taj’s carport. It was a very small-scale project that seemed not worth his while.
When Donald picked up a copy of the New York Post less than ten minutes into the car ride, I knew he had no intention of giving me information for the book. I’d begun to suspect that he’d hired me without consulting his publisher because he didn’t want to be micromanaged by the people there. It would also be a lot easier to put off his niece, who wasn’t under contract and was barely getting paid, than a professional writer, who would most likely have a significant stake in the success of the book. But we were about to be trapped together on a plane for two hours, so I hoped he might talk to me then.
When we got into the cabin of the jet that was waiting for us on the tarmac, Donald spread out his arms and asked, “So what do you think?”
“It’s great, Donald.” I knew the drill.
As soon as we reached cruising altitude and we could unbuckle our seat belts, one of his bodyguards handed him a huge stack of mail after setting a glass of Diet Coke next to him. I watched as he opened one envelope after another, then, after examining the contents for a few seconds, threw them and the envelope onto the floor. When a large pile accumulated, the same guy would reappear, pick up the wastepaper, and throw it into the garbage. That happened over and over again. I moved to another seat so I didn’t have to watch.
The staff were waiting as the car pulled up to the entrance at Mar-a-Lago. Donald went off with his butler, and I introduced myself to everybody else. The fifty-eight-bedroom mansion with thirty-three bathrooms outfitted with fixtures plated in gold and an eighteen-hundred-square-foot living room that sported forty-two-foot ceilings was as garish and uncomfortable as I’d expected.
Dinner that evening was just me, Donald, and Marla. She and I had met a few times before, but we had never had a chance to get to know each other one on one. I found her friendly, and Donald seemed relaxed with her. She was just two years older than I was and about as different from Ivana as a human being could be. Marla was down to earth and soft spoken where Ivana was all flash, arrogance, and spite.
The next day, I spent the morning exploring the property. There were no other guests, so the entire place felt empty and strangely quiet. I talked to the butler to see if he had any interesting stories, got to know some of the other guys who worked there, and then took a quick swim before lunch, which was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. As formal as Mar-a-Lago was in some ways, it was also much more casual than our usual family gathering places, so I felt comfortable wearing a bathing suit and a pair of shorts to lunch, which was being served on the patio.
Donald, who was wearing golf clothes, looked up at me as I approached as if he’d never really seen me before. “Holy shit, Mary. You’re stacked.”
“Donald!” Marla said in mock horror, slapping him lightly on the arm.
I was twenty-nine and not easily embarrassed, but my face reddened, and I suddenly felt self-conscious. I pulled my towel around my shoulders. It occurred to me that nobody in my family, outside of my parents and brother, had ever seen me in a bathing suit. Unfortunately for the book, that was about the only interesting thing that happened during my entire visit to Palm Beach.
Back in New York, Donald finally got sick of my asking him to sit for an interview and handed me a list of names. “Talk to these people.” Included were the presidents of his casinos and Maryanne’s husband,
