Too Much Money (2009) by Dunne Dominick

Too Much Money (2009) by Dunne Dominick

Author:Dunne, Dominick [Dominick, Dunne,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-26T18:08:50+00:00


OVER AT the Butterfield Club, Percy Webb turned to Herkie Saybrook, when they were playing backgammon, and said, “Elias is going to be pissed off at Gus Bailey about this show when he gets out of prison.” And, the next day, during lunch at the Rhinelander Hotel, Lorcan Styne turned to Perla Zacharias and said, “Elias Renthal is not going to be happy about that show of Gus Bailey’s last night.”

And Lil Altemus, who was having her dreaded lunch with her stepmother, Dodo Van Degan, at the corner table in the back room of Swifty’s, mentioned in passing that she’d heard someone had brought two TV sets into the dining room at a dinner party to watch the Elias Renthal story on Gus Bailey’s show. But Dodo didn’t seem very impressed, so Lil changed the subject, slightly.

Despite the considerable riches of her stepmother, of which she was envious, Lil was never able to think of her as anything but the poor relation she had once been.

“I do so hate the word common,” said Lil. “It’s so incredibly snobbish, and I’m not snobbish at all, as anyone who knows me can tell you, but sometimes, it’s the only word that fits the situation, and Mrs. Renthal, The Convict’s Wife Ruby Renthal, is common. That’s all I have to say on the matter. Imagine, she literally stole my cook. Gert was with me for more than twenty-five years. She’s going to let Gert use her husband’s private plane to take her to Ireland for her family visits. Now that’s common.”

“I have another interpretation of that story,” said Dodo, who was tired of hearing Lil repeat the story of Gert’s betrayal.

“Which is what?” asked Lil, in a disinterested voice.

“I bet Maisie Verdurin told Ruby you blackballed her and Elias from getting into your old Fifth Avenue apartment building, and she’s just getting even with you. Even a bitch like you, Lil, can’t blame poor Gert for grabbing up the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Dodo.

“I’ll never speak to Gert again, ever, ever, ever,” said Lil. “After all I’ve done for her.”

“From what I hear from Brucie Random, the florist at the Rhinelander Hotel, who always knows all the latest news about everybody, Gert’s also getting double what you paid her, and a sitting room all her own in the new Renthal mansion over on East Seventy-eighth Street. I don’t blame Gert for not wanting to sleep in that little rat’s hole of a maid’s room behind the kitchen in your apartment. You canceled her annual trip to Ireland, for economic reasons, and you counted the change when she came back with the groceries from Grace’s Marketplace. She’d have been a fool to turn down that job.”

Lil always pretended not to hear Dodo’s criticisms. “Such awful people, those Renthals. In my day, we didn’t know people who went to prison,” said Lil. “Now they’re all around us, and they all seem to think they can just pick right up again where they left off before going to prison, as if nothing untoward had happened.



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