People Like Us by Dominick Dunne Read Free Book Online Page B

where he was curious to go, as-it was the hangout, as he called it, for all the people he read about in Dolly De Longpre’s column.
    “I’m not crazy about the way they cooked this fish,” said Bernie.
    “Oh, people don’t come to Clarence’s for the food. People come to Clarence’s to look at each other. Almost everybody here knows each other. We call it the club, although it isn’t a club at all. Of course, Mother says she won’t come anymore because her sable coat was stolen when she went to the ladies’ room, but she’ll be back. Just wait.”
    “Point out Clarence to me,” said Bernie.
    “Oh, there is no Clarence. That’s just a name. It’s Chick Jacoby who owns Clarence’s, and unless Chick likes you, or knows who you are, you’ll never get a table at Clarence’s,” said Justine.
    Bernie looked around him. “Looks like we have the best table.”
    “We do,” laughed Justine.
    “I guess Chick Jacoby likes you.”
    “He does.”
    “Tell me about your father,” said Bernie. “You never talk about him.”
    “Oh, Daddy,” said Justine. “He’s so sweet. Drinks a bit. More than a bit, if you want the truth. He married badly after he divorced my mother, and no one in the family sees him. He lives up in Bedford with his new wife in a house she got in her divorce settlement from one of her previous marriages. Belinda, she’s called, and she looks like a Belinda. Mother calls her a strumpet, but Mother would have called anyone a strumpetwhom Daddy married. She never got over the fact that Daddy left her.”
    “She loved him then?”
    “It’s not that she loved him that much. They used to fight all the time, and my brother and I were glad they got a divorce at the time. Mother thought she was calling the shots in the marriage because she was a Van Degan and had so much money. The Altemuses are what’s called good goods. Marvelous family. Goes way back, but no money to speak of, at least no money in the way the Van Degans have money. Look, there’s Violet Bastedo over there. Your old girlfriend.”
    “She’s not my old girlfriend,” said Bernie.
    “You went to bed with her.”
    “She told you that?”
    “Oh, she told me a lot more than that,” said Justine, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.
    “What else did she tell you about me?” asked Bernie, amused that this shy girl was embarrassed.
    “Oh, nothing.”
    “Don’t give me ‘oh-nothing,’ ” he persisted.
    “She said you had a huge you-know-what.” Justine covered her face with her hands.
    “At least she’s not a liar.”
    Justine laughed. “No, she’s not a liar.”
    “I didn’t know proper young ladies like you and Violet Bastedo talked about the size of men’s dicks.”
    Justine blushed. “She said it in French.”
    Bernie roared with laughter.
    “Were you serious about Violet?”
    “It was a one-night stand, for God’s sake. I never saw her again.”
    “I wonder if Maisie Verdurin knows that you are the terror of her parties. She thinks her parties are all about conversation, you know, and all the time it’s a launch pad for Bernard Slatkin’s assignations.”
    “We’re having a conversation right now. Maisie would be proud of us.”
    “Violet Bastedo is getting another divorce. That’s her new lawyer she’s having dinner with.”
    “I want to talk about Justine Altemus, not Violet Bastedo,” said Bernie. He put out his hand across the table and took hers. Whereas Violet Bastedo was flighty and silly, Justine, Bernie could see, was more serious. Although she was no less interested in the parties, travels, comings and goings of the people she knew than Violet was, she was also a great reader, of both books and newspapers, and could converse on issues of the day, which Violet couldn’t. Justine not only watched Bernie interview news figures on his daily newscast, but could remember specific details of the interviews, and this delighted Bernie. “I didn’t believe Assemblyman Walsh for a