High life
Without reason
Taki
New York My old friend Randall Crawley recently gave a dinner here in New York in honour of Olivier Chandon, whose father owns a champagne. Randall chose to give it at Mortimer's, the most chic restaurant of the moment, and the place all broken down nobs go to when the hunger pains get too bad. The owner of Mortimer's is a nice man who thinks well-born young men who refuse to work for a living should not be allowed to starve. The result, in the early days, was that the place was always full of sons of English lords eating for free, while he picked up their bills and lost a fortune.
But after those early years his generosity paid off. The place suddenly caught on when American Park Avenue types realised they could learn to speak better by mixing with the broken down Englishmen. In order to get to Mortimer's now one either has to go to bed with the owner, be the son of an English earl, or have a lot of money but not look too American, Crawley and myself pretend to qualify as the latter.
The Dinner was for twelve, Olivier Chan don is rather unusual for a French young man with money: he is very friendly and polite and he is a very tough practitioner of the martial arts. He is an old friend of mine, and so is Coco Brown, an American who is the son of an old Hollywood producer called Harry Brown. Coco and Olivier had brought along two models and I accompanied my two constant companions, Miss Warner and Miss Moynihan. Despite the taciturn nature of the models, the dinner was going well when suddenly we were rudely interrupted by a glass which crashed on our table, spilling its contents all over Miss Warner. 'This is no way to treat a Senator's daughter,' I shouted, and jumped up ready to do battle with the dastardly coward who had thrown it. Then I suddenly sat down.
Walking towards our table was a man wearing a black leather jacket, blackleather trousers, weighing approximately 220 pounds, about six feet tall, four feet wide, and the closest thing I have ever seen to a Gestapo thug. He had close-cropped blond hair, and was obviously very angry. When he got to Coco he reached down, picked him up by the throat, and told him that he should appreciate the food he was having because it was to be his last meal for quite a while. He then let go of him, smirked at us, and walked away. It seems that Coco and he had had some business differences, and that the Gestapo-like blond had come off second best. I've known Coco a long time, and although a close friend, he has been known to drive a hard bargain. We all agreed that Coco might have been a bit greedy, but we also agreed that this was no way for a manto behave in the commercial world. After 811, we cried simultaneously, that is the reason we have courts of law. The reason we reasoned so reasonabilid was, of course, that the man simply looke ac• unbeatable. We decided unanimously in like gentlemen and ignore him. But it vial not to be. As we were leaving he emerge' suddenly before us, blocking the doorwaYA' He wanted Coco, who was now sheekeu and trembling. We tried to reason with hittlti 'Nein,' he screamed. `Giff me de Brown all you can all go afay.' Then he turned towards me, looked ifle,. up and down, and suggested I go out WO him alone to Third Avenue and settle the matter. My heart sank; the girls stared at me, so did my friends. I went out and got kicked in the face for my foolishness. The° fear really crept in and I managed to getna stranglehold and just about did him in, f,,Y the time everyone arrived we were WM, 71 mess. The interesting point was Ma, throughout the fight nobody in the stree' stopped even to look. A few days late' another Nazi type shot four people inele"ing the President. I was not surprised.
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