Dolly Young (who had come to New York from Bristol, Massachusetts, to be a Conover model but who failed, not for want of oblique facial planes but for lack of length, being only five feet four). The key point here is that in her entire life, Dolly never said “Hi.” Always “Hello.” She also said “think yew” for “thank you.” In both instances, her speech patterns had to do with regional usage rather than social class. As she and Leonard were looking over the Pincus Notions and Trimmings invoice, Dolly said, “They rob us blind and they don’t even say think yew,” impulsively, Leonard kissed her.
Thus began an affair that lasted for decades.
Five
I f I’m right in believing that I’m typical of most American women, then there’s got to be millions of bottles of used-but-once hair conditioner abandoned on the floors of showers and the ledges of bathtubs from Maine to Hawaii. Makeup kits must hold so many unfinished mascara wands that each house in the United States could supply a company of Rockettes. And as for the national glut of rejected moisturizers: Better forgotten in medicine cabinets than tossed onto the country’s landfills where they could trigger an ecological calamity.
Is this another tirade about how the beauty industry exploits the low self-esteem of American women? Nope, just the opposite. All those social critics: they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. They carry on about the insecurities of American women and completely ignore the extravagant self-confidence we display. Critics! Listen to the female ego. It’s not saying: I loathe myself. No, it’s telling you: I am a mere taupe eye shadowaway from gorgeousness. Each of us has a breathtaking creature locked inside. And all we need to break through to infinite desirability is a new brand of thigh cream.
Take me, for instance. You’d think, having lived forty-five years, I’d have picked up on God’s message: “Lee White, Esq., is not going to be a sex goddess in her lifetime.” But no, I don’t hear it. Nor do the rest of my sister Americans. Because nothing except death can kill that ravishing dame who walks in beauty inside us. If a normal adult female’s just-before-sleep dream is a sweeter, more graceful, poreless version of herself, then what woman does the one-in-a-million true beauty fantasize about? A flatulent, bezitted battle-ax? Right now, you may be tempted to tap me on the shoulder and ask: Hey, what does all this have to do with the Torkelson case? So I’ll tell you: All this is a prelude to Mary Dean walking into my office.
It didn’t hit me right away that she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen in my life. No, keeping pace with my secretary, Sandi, who was ushering her in, she was just a tall young woman, twenty-two or so, with a ton of makeup on, wearing … The man in my life once told me there was no one in the world more mean-spirited than a New York clothes snob. So I censored my nasty thoughts about her kelly-green suit with forest-green velveteen lapels. I stood to greet her. “Have a seat, Ms. Dean.”
“Thanks,” she said, speaking with nervous quickness. Instead of realizing that my right hand was extended in order to shake hers, she thrust a tightly stuffed envelope into it.
“Oh,” I said, taken aback by her nervousness. I’d assumed Norman would have himself a cooler cookie. The envelope, no doubt, contained my retainer: fifteen thousand dollars. Cash, and from the heft of it, probably hundreds. A not unusual method of payment, since many of my clients weren’t interested in check writing—not if the check was going to diminish their ownassets. They liked paying by check only if the assets belonged to somebody else. (Soon after we became partners, Chuckie Phalen told me a precautionary tale: One year out of law school, he’d taken a check from some client. When he went to cash it—after the jury had come back with an acquittal—he happened to glance at
Thus began an affair that lasted for decades.
Five
I f I’m right in believing that I’m typical of most American women, then there’s got to be millions of bottles of used-but-once hair conditioner abandoned on the floors of showers and the ledges of bathtubs from Maine to Hawaii. Makeup kits must hold so many unfinished mascara wands that each house in the United States could supply a company of Rockettes. And as for the national glut of rejected moisturizers: Better forgotten in medicine cabinets than tossed onto the country’s landfills where they could trigger an ecological calamity.
Is this another tirade about how the beauty industry exploits the low self-esteem of American women? Nope, just the opposite. All those social critics: they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. They carry on about the insecurities of American women and completely ignore the extravagant self-confidence we display. Critics! Listen to the female ego. It’s not saying: I loathe myself. No, it’s telling you: I am a mere taupe eye shadowaway from gorgeousness. Each of us has a breathtaking creature locked inside. And all we need to break through to infinite desirability is a new brand of thigh cream.
Take me, for instance. You’d think, having lived forty-five years, I’d have picked up on God’s message: “Lee White, Esq., is not going to be a sex goddess in her lifetime.” But no, I don’t hear it. Nor do the rest of my sister Americans. Because nothing except death can kill that ravishing dame who walks in beauty inside us. If a normal adult female’s just-before-sleep dream is a sweeter, more graceful, poreless version of herself, then what woman does the one-in-a-million true beauty fantasize about? A flatulent, bezitted battle-ax? Right now, you may be tempted to tap me on the shoulder and ask: Hey, what does all this have to do with the Torkelson case? So I’ll tell you: All this is a prelude to Mary Dean walking into my office.
It didn’t hit me right away that she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen in my life. No, keeping pace with my secretary, Sandi, who was ushering her in, she was just a tall young woman, twenty-two or so, with a ton of makeup on, wearing … The man in my life once told me there was no one in the world more mean-spirited than a New York clothes snob. So I censored my nasty thoughts about her kelly-green suit with forest-green velveteen lapels. I stood to greet her. “Have a seat, Ms. Dean.”
“Thanks,” she said, speaking with nervous quickness. Instead of realizing that my right hand was extended in order to shake hers, she thrust a tightly stuffed envelope into it.
“Oh,” I said, taken aback by her nervousness. I’d assumed Norman would have himself a cooler cookie. The envelope, no doubt, contained my retainer: fifteen thousand dollars. Cash, and from the heft of it, probably hundreds. A not unusual method of payment, since many of my clients weren’t interested in check writing—not if the check was going to diminish their ownassets. They liked paying by check only if the assets belonged to somebody else. (Soon after we became partners, Chuckie Phalen told me a precautionary tale: One year out of law school, he’d taken a check from some client. When he went to cash it—after the jury had come back with an acquittal—he happened to glance at
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