Still Talking by Joan Rivers, Richard Meryman Read Free Book Online Page B

America, a man to be cultivated.
    Sam Spiegel’s yacht was in Monaco, and he invited Edgar and the little wife aboard. It was huge, part of a herd of white trillion-dollar whales docked side by side. Onassis’s yacht was there too. On the blue water the yachts were like scudding white birds. As dusk flowed across the hills of Monaco, topped by the Palace, the green slopes were laced with lights.
    Spiegel’s upper-deck salon was packed with the international crowd-people telling amusing stories about the Windsors, Onassis, everybody witty in several languages.
     
    STILL TALKING 37
     
    David Niven and his wife were aboard-and Nureyev, who had just defected and was on the cover of Time magazine.
    Edgar could deal with Niven by talking about history. He remembered what Nureyev had danced. It was natural that he went off and talked business with Spiegel. This was one reason I had married him. But I was left alone with those tall, thin, wonderfully coiffed and made-up women who to this day make me feel dumpy and intimidated. As I have done ever since I was a fat child, I played the Shadow and pretended I was invisible and just watched.
    Nureyev was beautiful, his white shirt open, goldenbrown skin, perfectly muscled, wearing white ducks and loafers with no socks-as though a Greek god had come aboard, charming and laughing, just returned from visiting Bacchus for a while. Suddenly the hostess plopped him next to me. He said something in French. I tried out, “Le livre est sur la table. ” He got up and left.
    David Niven was the grand, elegant movie star with mustache and ascot. The missus was a society woman, exquisitely groomed, perfectly dressed in silk slacks and silk shirt, thin as a rail with that smooth Riviera tan that comes from months of being outside for just twelve minutes a day. She was in a group next to me talking about vacations, about New Year’s Eve at the Plaza Athenee in Paris, Easter with Grace and Rainier. Suddenly Mrs. Niven turned to me with a gracious smile and said, “If we’re not in Marrakech, it just isn’t Christmas.”
    I did not know what to say, except “Me, too.” The smile never left her face, but her gaze passed over my left shoulder and never returned. There was no way I could cry out, “Would somebody please ask me about Henry James-or Ed McMahon? And I can tell funny stories about my father and his patients. “
    From below deck came two goldenbrown girls with long blond hair and beautiful lithe bodies, no bras, and little boobies poking against see-through shirts. Sam Spiegel never introduced these languid water girls.
    I was agog, sitting there so proper, in my head feeling as though I were wearing a hat and gloves and holding a handbag.

38 JOAN RIVERS
    As we drove back to the hotel, Edgar said, “I feel sorry for Sam, he’s such a lonely man.”
    I said, “If he wants to be happy, that crowd is never going to do it. If he wants happy, I’ve got my aunt Lucy who’s living in New York. She’s sixty-four and a really well-to-do widow. And she’s got a pair of deck shoes. “
    Edgar told me I didn’t understand. Sam was a man who couldn’t let anybody get close. I now realize he was identifying strongly with Spiegel. I said, “You don’t understand. There’s a fool back there on that boat with those stupid girls and those senseless people. ” We had a major fight-really because I was furious that I could not handle that crowd, and Edgar was furious that I had not clicked with them. We always pretended we did not care if we fit in-but we both desperately wanted to be accepted.
     
    I could only stay with Edgar in Monaco for a week; I had performance dates in the United States and was glad to leave. On my flight back alone from Nice, I changed planes in Paris and, while I waited, through the lounge swept a fabulous woman in a beige turban, a beige cape, long beige gloves, a radiant rush of glamour. I did not know who she was.
    I boarded the plane and was sitting in first