“But it’s the first time I’ve been out. I can’t wear red.”
“Wear it,” I said. On the bathroom window sill, by an open window with no screen on it, I saw the big diamond ring Mike had given her, left there unnoticed. I took it in to her. “Did you miss this?”
She glanced at her fingers. “Oh yes. My ring. Thanks.”
“You’ve got to watch things like this, Elizabeth.”
There was not much else to be said then and there to do her any good. We rolled down to Romanoff’s in her Rolls an hour and a half late. Everybody clustered around her as though she were a queen. I am sure she believed she was.
That night she’d taken me up to see Liza, who was quartered in a crib in a room of Arthur Loew’s house no bigger than a closet, with its only ventilation provided by a skylight that could be pulled open by a thin chain. The room was sizzling. “Good Lord, Liz,” I cried. “She can’t get enough air in here.”
“Oh, she’s all right,” her mother said, turning on the light to wake her. The baby woke silently—I have never heard her cry. She opened her eyes wide and looked straight into mine. It was impossible to believe she didn’t know what I was thinking. My own eyes lowered in self-protection.
Liz spread the word that she was getting ready to go off on a long vacation in Europe with Mike’s long-time Japanese secretary, Midori Tsuji. Eddie talked about having business to attend to that kept him in New York. Debbie Reynolds believed both of them. Through the closeness of Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth and Debbie had become what Hollywood called “best friends.” Liz, in fact, looked down her nose at Debbie and usually referred to her as “that little Girl Scout.”
Debbie and I went together to an “all young” party at Arthur Loew’s home in a new car Eddie had bought her. Elizabeth was away in New York, restless, without the remotest idea of what she really wanted. One thing she was sure of—she didn’t want Arthur Loew much longer, though she knew he was deeply in love with her.
The only guests at that party who would acknowledge to being middle-aged without a battle were Milton Berle and myself. The house rocked to the blare of records by Sammy Davis, Jr. There was nothing else to play. He had sneaked in early and hidden every other album. Most of the girls had squeezed themselves into Capri pants as tight as their skins and a hundred times more brilliant.