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and well liked. But lonely. Always lonely.
    Lonely in spite of the fact that everyone seemed to know who she was, her life having been made public through the press coverage of her father’s death, her huge inheritance, and her New York City debut.
    Still, she continued to be thoughtful, pleasant, and to make a conscious effort to play down her wealth. In college, she took buses instead of limos, always paid in cash, and joined her classmates at the cheap restaurants they prized. Still, she was not a normal coed and she made no real friends.
    She cut short her stay in college to try Hollywood, a place that at first seemed to be ideal for her. Here, finally, it didn’t make a difference that she was one of the richest women in the world. She settled into a life as normal as she ever had.
    Except, of course, for the men. They were all over her. Attractive, young, talented, clever, monied. They were wonderful, and she fell in love again and again. Frightened by her own hunger for affection, and for sex, she made a foolish, disastrous first marriage to a young Adonis. And when it crumbled, Uncle Bob and the studio bailed her out quickly.
    Then the studio system itself began to crumble. By the time she saw that the American market was more youth oriented, she knew her popularity was waning.
    She was too formal, oldfashioned. Her calls were not returned. Her agent dumped her. For once, her money couldn’t protect her or buy her acceptance. It was at the Cannes Film Festival that she met French film director Francois Truffaut, who encouraged her to work in the European movie industry. She found it a surprisingly difficult decision to make, but once it was made, she adjusted to her new world beautifully. Truffaut saw to it that Elise met the most brilliant, avant-garde thinkers of the day. Gentle and brotherly, his nurturing affected her deeply. Finally finding a man who wanted nothing from her, only wanted for her to be the best she could be, she bloomed as an actress under his tutelage. Her only trouble came when an affair with one of her costars, and one of France’s top sex symbols, got out of hand.
    She’d escaped that trouble by turning to Bill Atchison. And now Bill was the trouble. She sighed. They had been married now for almost twenty years, but it was all too obvious he had tired of her long ago.
    For years she had turned a blind eye to Bill’s ever more frequent infidelities, even when they were too obvious to ignore—the calls from women ‘clients,” the late ‘working” nights-because she wanted this marriage. Their home was in East Hampton, and he spent weeknights in the city. Lately, however, he hadn’t come out even on the weekends.
    Then yesterday she couldn’t reach him with the news of Cynthia’s death, so she had no idea where he was sleeping. So far her humiliations had been private, but they were threatening to explode publicly. Now she was afraid Bill was going to leave her.
    The truth was, she loved Bill, and their life together. She’d tried so hard for years, but it had all been a waste. Now she saw that she shouldn’t have given up the career, shouldn’t have buried herself in his life.
    He took her for granted, he ignored her. He hadn’t touched her for how long now? Since Acapulco? She tried to count backward. Eleven months. And how long had it been before that?
    Perhaps it was just a new phase in the marriage, she reasoned.
    Perhaps. But she was more frightened than she had ever been. And she had been drinking even more than usual to keep that fear down. It churned in her stomach, it made her hands shake.
    Maurice, Bemelman’s day bartender, someone she had known for a dozen years, approached the table. She ordered a Courvoisier, hoping it wouldn’t make her sick. She’d only have one, she promised herself, as she always did. Only one.
    But when Maurice brought the brandy, she drank it straight off and ordered another. As she always did.
    She hoped that, if Bill left, she would not