People Like Us by Dominick Dunne

he corrected her, about his.
    “Ta, Lucien,” said Rochelle, moving off to her table. The unfriendly exchange between Rochelle Prud’homme and Elias Renthal was not lost on Lord Biedermeier.
    “Old friends, I take it,” he said, commenting on the scene he had just witnessed.
    “Old acquaintances would be a better description,” said Elias.
    “Business fallout?” asked Lord Biedermeier.
    “A corporate raid on Prud’homme Hairdryers. One of my few failures,” said Elias, smiling. “A tough cookie, Roxy Persky, for such a tiny little lady.”
    “It’s all this sort of thing, your takeovers, that I think the public will find so fascinating, Elias. Rags to riches is irresistible stuff for your American audiences. What you have done is the American dream,” said Lucien Biedermeier. He halted the conversation while he ordered the wine and the main course, asking Elias to defer to his culinary decisions because the chef, a Hungarian he had known in Budapest who later worked at the Ritz Hotel in London, knew how best to make a dish that was prepared especially for him every time he called ahead.
    “Have you ever written?” Lord Biedermeier asked.“Just checks for Ruby,” replied Elias, laughing, as if he had made a
bon mot
.
    Lord Biedermeier smiled appreciatively and then said, “No, seriously.”
    “I don’t have time to do all the things I’m doing,” said Elias. “How the hell am I ever to get the time to write my autobiography, Lord Biedermeier?”
    “It’s Lucien, Elias,” said Biedermeier. “You won’t have to write a word of your autobiography. I’ll make all the arrangements. All that you’ll have to do is give two hours a week to the writer I’ll hire for you. You just tell him or her your stories, and all the writing will be done for you. It’s that simple.”
    “As soon as I get back from London, I’ll meet the writer,” said Elias. He was beginning to warm to the idea of an autobiography.
    “How long will you be gone?”
    “Just a few days. We’ll be staying at the Claridge’s Hotel.”
    “No, no, no,” said Lord Biedermeier. “Simply say Claridge’s. Not
the
Claridge’s. Nor Claridge’s Hotel either. Oh, dear me, no. Just say Claridge’s.”
    “What difference does it make?” asked Elias.
    “These are the little signals by which people like us recognize each other,” said Lord Biedermeier.
    “Do you think I’ll ever learn all these ins and outs?”
    “Oh, certainly, Elias. Certainly.”
    “I had this idea, Lucien,” said Elias, taking out a comb from his pocket and combing his hair as he talked.
    “No, no, no, you mustn’t do that, Elias,” said Lucien.
    “Do what?”
    “Comb your hair at Clarence’s, I mean, it’s just not done.”
    “God, you sound like Ruby. She’s always telling me I don’t do things the right way. Except make money, of course. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.The profits from this book. There will be profits, I assume,” said Elias.
    “That is always the hope in publishing, Elias, and there is a great interest in tycoon biographies at the moment, especially self-made tycoons. We have every reason at Biedermeier and Lothian to think that there will be a major audience for the story of Elias Renthal, especially since your recent marriage. All that running around you did after your last divorce might not have gone over in middle America, especially for a man your age, but now, with Ruby, you will start to build a place for yourself here in New York. How is the divine Ruby?”
    With all his heart Elias Renthal wished he hadn’t once told Lord Biedermeier, in a moment of fraternal camaraderie aboard the Concorde from London to New York, that Ruby could take, as he put it at the time, both his nuts in her mouth at the same time. And with all his heart he wished he hadn’t added, “And I got big nuts,” when he shared that confidence with Lord Biedermeier. He hadn’t known at that point that he was going to marry Ruby