My first assignment, and I wasn’t even close to getting anything new or exclusive or especially gripping on her quite extraordinary life. The editor had called twice. Patient, he was, admirably so. But you sensed there in his voice a distinct edge, as if he was wondering to himself just what he’d gotten in me. You know, the way a major league baseball owner feels who signs a starting pitcher for fifteen million for three years and is then informed the guy has a sore arm or can’t get his curve ball over the plate. When Walter Anderson hired a contributor, he expected contributions. I tried to shrug off Leo Brass and The Gut and Mr. Pincus and his armed guards and even being scared by speedboats as mere distractions. I’d catch up to Brass one of these days and have it out. Let the rest of it lay. Please do not think that after Labor Day East Hampton simply empties out like a draining bathtub. Martha Stewart and Streisand and the Swami might be leaving or already have left but there remained a small yet resilient permanent population plus a few new celebrities dropping by, some drawn by the horse show, others by the upcoming Film Festival, some here simply to enjoy September.
