Pacing, he was not amused. “But it was who went down. ‘Top Drawer on Ocean Bottom.’ It was all the people who could afford to invest in the promise their own brochure made. ‘Unsinkable.’ Survivors say that what you heard as the bow went under was ‘the sound of a world of china breaking.’ One crew member had to use his empty revolver to keep men out of the women-and-children-first lifeboat ‘collapsibles.’ Mothers were setting their own hats on pretty sons, thirteen years old, disguised as girls to save their lives. You can’t imagine how it felt! I mean, even if you jumped off, the water was three degrees below freezing and already full of deckchairs and barrels, and suction from the generators belowdecks could get you and hold you against the louvers till …”

Angie gave me a look. It said, This child is just barely afloat here. Needs to get out more. “And what,” she started, “is the name of your Titanic support group?” She sounded strict and overhelpful; he lowered his eyes, guessing we wouldn’t understand.

“‘Lifeboat Number Thirteen.’”

“Honey, we love you but you are getting into such deep … trouble here.” (Every metaphor about the shipwreck seemed applicable and loaded, but applicable to what … ? Our crew had enjoyed such clear sailing so far.)

“And who comes to it, your wreck-fest? Who has time, of a busy Thursday evening in Manahatta?”

“Three Wharton investment bankers, a sweet old gay archivist from the New York Public Library, one crew member from the America’s Cup winner last year who teaches girls’ gym at the Dalton School, and two ancient English women who lost an aunt on it and are as polite and frumpy and dentally deformed as most Brit royalty. Those are the regulars.”

“What, do you guys end meetings by holding hands and singing ‘Nearer My God to Thee’? You actually have them up here?” She looked around. I understood then—Angie was jealous.

Of a shipwreck. 1912.

Street Crime Hurts Everyone

ne night, with me carrying the “centerpiece” from a party, we waded home from Studio 5-. It was either Bianca’s birthday bash for Liza, or vice versa, or Halston’s for Truman’s, I forget. They blurred. Even during the parties. So much beautiful blurring of so much immediate drug-bright beauty. We’d later say, “If you think you remember a party, you probably weren’t at that one.”

Tonight our Mr. Gustafson, the sadistic imp, had convinced me to filch this table arrangement. Because there were magnolias in it. I’ve always hated the sight of dignified matrons leaving some bash after pulling each others’ hair to snag a $7.98 “floral spray.” As usual I lacked the strength to out-argue Robert, and so—sweet smells drifting up from waxy blooms—I carried forth this Carmen Miranda clot of leaves. Like so much else of that decade, it’d been spray-painted gold.