GEORGE STANDISH WAS big—Carrie figured he was at least six-five—and he probably weighed in at around three hundred pounds. He was bald, except for a fringe of gray curls that circled his head, and he wore thick glasses with dark frames. He was dressed all in black; black slacks, a black leather belt with a discreet black buckle, and a black collarless shirt. The look just missed being clerical because of the accessories he sported: a four-inch gold cuff on his right wrist, several gold earrings in both lobes, and rings on most of his fingers. George was into bling. And although he had to be in his eighties, he was, as Uncle Paulie had said, as sharp as a tack.

He lived in a majestic pre-war apartment house on West Fifty-seventh Street, across from the Russian Tea Room.

“Of course, I knew it back when it really was the Russian Tea Room,” he sniffed to Carrie as an elevator, which was heavy on wood paneling, with a plush carpet and a huge gilt-edged mirror on the back wall, whisked them up to the seventeenth floor and the co-op he had referred to as his hideaway. “When I moved into this neighborhood, the Russian Tea Room was the place to be, baby. Stanley Marks took his lunch calls there every day—from his booth across from the coat check.” He glanced at Carrie. “You don't know who I'm talking about, do you?” Carrie shook her head. “Stanley was the biggest talent agent in Manhattan. He repped Lu for years. I thought you'd know… But I keep forgetting about that mother of yours.” George looked heavenward. “Anyway, the Russian Tea Room was Stanley's office away from the office. Everyone ate there: Woody and Kissinger, Nureyev and Jackie O. And it wasn't for the food, let me tell you, because on a good day it was mediocre. But the city had soul back then. People went to the Russian Tea Room because Lenny Bernstein wrote the first bars of Fancy Free by the reflected light of the samovars in that dining room. We went for the sentiment, baby—we appreciated the glam. Today people think glamour means a drunken little TV star going into rehab.” The elevator stopped and the doors opened. George glided out—he was light on his feet given his bulk and age—and headed down a carpeted hallway without missing a beat in his lecture. “Fifty-seventh Street used to be Showbiz Alley. There were dance classes, singing teachers, and agents’ offices all up and down the street. You'd see the actors with their headshots and résumés going into Chock Full o’ Nuts for an olive-and-cream-cheese sandwich. There was a health food place where the ballet girls would grab their celery juice between classes at the Carnegie Rehearsal Hall, and the kids who were trying to be Beverly Sills would walk along humming ‘Vissi d'Arte.’