What I found next was a forty-five-minute video labeled “Norman Mailer Documentary Interview Outtake.” The still above the link was of a slim woman, white-haired, in a skirt suit, cream-colored, possibly linen. She was sitting in a leather armchair; beside her, a wooden side table held a bucket of ice, a crystal decanter partially filled with brown liquid, and a square glass, it too partially filled with liquid, though of a lighter brown color, the color of whiskey or bourbon diluted by ice. Her left hand was at her neck, two fingers touching a string of pearls. I clicked. As the video buffered, I read the description: “Outtake from Mailer: An American Life (2005). Raw footage, interview subject unknown.” The first comment below was irate: “who is this woman is and why did they interviewed her?? skimmed whole video (to long)) and she doesnt seem to kno anything about mailer just complains about her husband dont watch if ur interested in mailer hes is a great american writer (and check out his movies to!!) this woman is just some old bitch!!!” There was a reply immediately below from the same commenter. “In case you’re wondering I do know how to spell and also all the rules of grammar, in fact I’m very well read, I was just too infuriated to care. Lol. :)” In the fourteen days since the video had been posted, one hundred and twelve people had watched it. Seventy had given it a thumbs-down. The video was done buffering.
“Tell me,” a voice offscreen said, “about the party.”
“Yes,” the woman onscreen said, “there was a party. It was Norman Mailer’s party. It was 1960 and I was dating a man named Bill and Bill said Norman Mailer was throwing a party and we were invited.” She was wearing coral-colored lipstick on slim, wrinkled lips. Lipstick the color of Florida, the color of retirement and open-toed orthopedic sandals and parchment-thin skin, cool and dry in the air-conditioning. “I put on a silk sheath dress,” she said, “peach-colored with flowers embroidered in bronze and cream thread. Bill said Norman was running for mayor.” Her right ankle was crossed over her left. With her right thumb and index finger, she turned the glass in a circle on its coaster. “Bill said, Everyone important is going to be there. Bill said, George Plimpton is going to be there, and I said, Does George like a girl in gloves?”
“What happened,” a voice offscreen said, “at the party?”
“It was a joke,” the woman onscreen said. No acknowledgment of the question, not even a dismissive wave. “It was a joke but also I didn’t know who George Plimpton was, only that I was supposed to be impressed with him. Bill laughed. I barely knew who Norman was. I brought my gloves, just in case. The dress was decorated, at the waist, with a flat little bow, also pink, and the flowers were abstracted. Very chic, very Rothko.” She smiled. “That’s what I thought. Actually they looked like eggs from a distance. Like single eggs, mid-fry.” She turned her head to cough.
“When you got—”
“My hair was straight as a board and I’d spent twenty minutes, before the party, curling the ends under. George Plimpton did end up being there, though he was gone by the time it happened.”
“Yes, if you could—”
“With the ends curled under my hair just grazed the tops of my shoulders. It was auburn then, my hair was”—the woman touched her soft white bun—“in the right light. Bill knew Norman,” she continued, “because he’d been at Rinehart when The Naked and the Dead came out. He’d been the novel’s copy editor, which mostly meant changing all the fucks to fugs and all the fuckings to fuggings and also getting yelled at by Norman. Every time he saw a typo in the proofs, Norman would call Bill up and start yelling. No use explaining to Norman that it was the typesetter’s fault. Years passed”—she took a sip from the glass—“and then they ran into each other again, at a party in the Village, or maybe it was in fact a Village Voice party, I forget. Norman was gesticulating and he bumped Bill’s hand and Bill said, Watch your fugging hands, prick, and Norman turned, his mouth a kind of snarl—Bill always made this funny face when he told the story—and said, Who the fuck are you, and Bill said, It’s fug, Mr. Mailer, I’m afraid we can’t print fuck, and Norman said, Where do I know that— And then he was laughing and his arms were around Bill’s torso, wrestling him into a bear hug. Bill’s drink got all over Norman’s shirt but Norman wasn’t angry, took off his shirt, good-natured, went and got him another drink. Anyway, after that, Norman started inviting Bill to parties—”
“Speaking of parties, if we could—”
“—calling him from the phone booth outside the Fire Spot or the Open Door.” She spoke a bit louder, was the only indication that she’d been aware of the interruption. “And sometimes when Norman called I was with Bill and then we went together. This was fifty-eight or fifty-nine. At first Norman liked when I showed up with Bill. I was twenty in fifty-eight, long legs and high breasts, a little bitty waist cinched in between. I was”—her eyes were aimed at a spot to the left of the camera and here they narrowed—“gorgeous though I suppose it’s hard to tell now, back then a young man would have at least pretended to—”
“I’m sorry, of course, it’s only with our schedule, I’m sure you understand, Ms.—”
“Never mind, never mind,” one hand waving. “What was I—right, I was going to say that I was taller than Norman in stocking feet, which is true. He was a short man. I towered over him in heels. I think he thought I was a WASP, which I wasn’t, though my family did live in Connecticut and it was true that I didn’t own a pair of dungarees”—eyes narrowing—“I mean jeans. My father worked fixing cars, wore coveralls at the shop and dungarees at home, but my mother dressed me like the little girls who lived in the houses she cleaned, darling boat-necked numbers with pleated skirts, pinafores, smock fronts. Not a closetful but two or three that she let out at the waist when I grew wider and at the hem when I grew longer. My mother was a good seamstress, she added bows at the back when the fashions changed, sewed in Peter Pan collars. It was my mother who bought me my first pair of gloves, told me a lady always wears gloves to drinks, to dinner. Never leave the house after four o’clock without your gloves, she told me. White gloves, and don’t let them get dirty. My mother was Italian, southern, dark, but my father was fair and I was too, didn’t look—the word then was ethnic. Thirteen or fourteen years old, I remember being in the bathroom with my mother, my mother dusting my cheeks with white powder, telling me to stay out of the sun. I played with the girls whose houses my mother cleaned, indoor games only. At least until I was eleven or twelve. Then it became unseemly.” She cleared her throat. “Once, at P.J. Clarke’s he—Norman—came up from behind and grabbed me not quite around the waist. I was wearing a mauve skirt that hit at mid-calf, tight around the hips, and a white blouse, high-necked, cap sleeves trimmed with lace, buttons down the back. In my ear he said, What would your daddy say if he could see you now, and then he laughed. Where he got the idea that my family—I mean I don’t know who, exactly, he thought my daddy was, but— Maybe he also kissed my neck but his lips were so close to my ear it could have been accidental, just”—she flicked an invisible piece of lint from her skirt—“damp brushing.” She pursed her lips. “I could look rich, that’s true, or rich enough. When I say, At first Norman liked when I showed up, I mean at first I did. Then Bill came out of the bathroom and said, Now, Norman, you know that’s my girl, and Norman pinched my ass, released me, winked. Winked at Bill, I mean. Can you hear the smile in Bill’s voice? He wanted to be hip, Norman did, and that was the problem, that was what made him so square. When I say, I barely knew who Norman was, I mean I knew him as a creep. I mean I played dumb. I was young and pretty and I hadn’t gone to college and I didn’t have artistic ambitions, wasn’t an actress or a painter or a poet, it was easy enough. The man who wrote the bestsellers, who went on television, who won prizes, accolades, the man of whom my boyfriend stood in awe. That man. Didn’t know him”—these words less said than spit—“didn’t want to.”