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Authors: Joan Collins
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fare. They dined on the moonlit terrace while Mina’s surplus entourage was placed at another hastily cobbled-together table in the main salon.
A dozen white-clad waiters busied about, including François from the Sénéquier Café. He gave Lara a knowing, saucy smile as he set her oysters before her.
‘What’s with him?’ asked Fabrizio, annoyed. Although a championship flirt in his own right, it irritated him when any man put the moves on Lara.
‘Nothing,
caro
,’ she mollified. ‘I have no idea who he is,’ she added with sincere befuddlement, as she indeed had no memory of that May morning at Sénéquier. She put her hand soothingly on what Fabrizio often referred to as ‘my noble tool’.
During the second course, a young magician entertained the guests at the table, because God forbid they’d have to rely on conversation. Brilliant bons mots at these parties usually consisted of celebrity gossip, scintillating questions such as, ‘When did you get here?’, ‘How long are you staying?’, and comments about the weather.
Carlotta was enthralled, Mina was bored, and Sophie was irritated. She hated magicians. Many years ago she had taken one as a lover and had had to watch over and over again as he practised his silly card tricks on her and the dogs. The dogs seemed far more interested in the tricks than she was, as he whisked playing cards from behind their ears and under their tails. Fed up one night, she rubbed his nether regions with bacon fat while he was sleeping and he woke up to find the entire menagerie fighting to get at his genitalia. Needless to say, she never saw him again.
The magician, aware of Sophie’s basilisk stare that telegraphed unequivocally
get near me, kid, and I will have your balls for dinner
, and recalling the fate of the hapless magician who had shacked up with her, instead opted for Mina as his foil
pour la nuit
and was directing most of his magic to her.
Mina yawned behind her big fan, always a useful device to deflect attention and to swat away over-eager fans if her entourage failed to jump to it. She feigned interest. For 250,000 euros, she could feign anything, and watching the conjurer was preferable to engaging in small talk with Harry, the ghastly arms-dealer host, or the even more ghastly oligarch Sergei Litvak sitting on the other side of her. The conjurer was taking control of the table, asking people to choose a card, which would magically appear, half-covered in saliva from under his tongue. After masticating several cards and regurgitating them in this fashion, which was met with limited applause, he started doing disgusting things with balloons.
‘
Regardez
,’ beamed the magician proudly as he blew up a red balloon into a long sausage shape and swallowed the entire thing as the guests watched in shock and amazement.
‘Revolting,’ growled Sophie, sitting the other side of Harry, who was like a pig in clover sandwiched between the two divas.
‘How does he do that?’ asked Carlotta.
‘Years of practice, my dear,’ Maximus grinned knowingly. He knew this kid. The conjurer had been in his stable of cute rent boys several years ago. No wonder he was good at what he did with balloons.
Sophie shot her ‘come near me at your peril’ look at Maximus, whom she also loathed. She had overheard his earlier comment to Carlotta about Mina’s vast fee. Last year, she had suggested that she might receive a little ‘present’ for attending an oligarch’s party that Maximus was organising. He had practically laughed in her face and told her she was far too old to be interesting to the Russians. He was a pig. A fat, faggoty pig, and one day he’ll get what’s coming to him, thought Sophie darkly.
Sophie and Maximus went back a long way. Back, in fact, to when they were young and gorgeous in Rome in the 1960s. They were both living the good life. Rome was known as Hollywood on the Tiber and the bustling studios of Cinecittà and Scalera thronged with
A dozen white-clad waiters busied about, including François from the Sénéquier Café. He gave Lara a knowing, saucy smile as he set her oysters before her.
‘What’s with him?’ asked Fabrizio, annoyed. Although a championship flirt in his own right, it irritated him when any man put the moves on Lara.
‘Nothing,
caro
,’ she mollified. ‘I have no idea who he is,’ she added with sincere befuddlement, as she indeed had no memory of that May morning at Sénéquier. She put her hand soothingly on what Fabrizio often referred to as ‘my noble tool’.
During the second course, a young magician entertained the guests at the table, because God forbid they’d have to rely on conversation. Brilliant bons mots at these parties usually consisted of celebrity gossip, scintillating questions such as, ‘When did you get here?’, ‘How long are you staying?’, and comments about the weather.
Carlotta was enthralled, Mina was bored, and Sophie was irritated. She hated magicians. Many years ago she had taken one as a lover and had had to watch over and over again as he practised his silly card tricks on her and the dogs. The dogs seemed far more interested in the tricks than she was, as he whisked playing cards from behind their ears and under their tails. Fed up one night, she rubbed his nether regions with bacon fat while he was sleeping and he woke up to find the entire menagerie fighting to get at his genitalia. Needless to say, she never saw him again.
The magician, aware of Sophie’s basilisk stare that telegraphed unequivocally
get near me, kid, and I will have your balls for dinner
, and recalling the fate of the hapless magician who had shacked up with her, instead opted for Mina as his foil
pour la nuit
and was directing most of his magic to her.
Mina yawned behind her big fan, always a useful device to deflect attention and to swat away over-eager fans if her entourage failed to jump to it. She feigned interest. For 250,000 euros, she could feign anything, and watching the conjurer was preferable to engaging in small talk with Harry, the ghastly arms-dealer host, or the even more ghastly oligarch Sergei Litvak sitting on the other side of her. The conjurer was taking control of the table, asking people to choose a card, which would magically appear, half-covered in saliva from under his tongue. After masticating several cards and regurgitating them in this fashion, which was met with limited applause, he started doing disgusting things with balloons.
‘
Regardez
,’ beamed the magician proudly as he blew up a red balloon into a long sausage shape and swallowed the entire thing as the guests watched in shock and amazement.
‘Revolting,’ growled Sophie, sitting the other side of Harry, who was like a pig in clover sandwiched between the two divas.
‘How does he do that?’ asked Carlotta.
‘Years of practice, my dear,’ Maximus grinned knowingly. He knew this kid. The conjurer had been in his stable of cute rent boys several years ago. No wonder he was good at what he did with balloons.
Sophie shot her ‘come near me at your peril’ look at Maximus, whom she also loathed. She had overheard his earlier comment to Carlotta about Mina’s vast fee. Last year, she had suggested that she might receive a little ‘present’ for attending an oligarch’s party that Maximus was organising. He had practically laughed in her face and told her she was far too old to be interesting to the Russians. He was a pig. A fat, faggoty pig, and one day he’ll get what’s coming to him, thought Sophie darkly.
Sophie and Maximus went back a long way. Back, in fact, to when they were young and gorgeous in Rome in the 1960s. They were both living the good life. Rome was known as Hollywood on the Tiber and the bustling studios of Cinecittà and Scalera thronged with
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