High life
Suite success
Taki
s everyone who has ever been to Beverly Hills knows,—the shorter and bal- der the producer, the taller and more buxom the blonde. Come inauguration time this principle also applies to hotel suites. At the Ritz Carlton, the poshest of the posh watering holes of the nation's capital, the best suite went for 15,000 big ones, and the smallest billionaire in the world, Monsieur Henry Kravis, was the lucky man to get his bid in first.
Needless to say, it was the penthouse suite he got, and the mauvaises langues immediately began to speculate whether the management had substituted the furni- ture for miniatures in order to make him feel more at home. I was ensconced on the fourth floor, in a nice double room that cost somewhat less than the Soviet Union's annual military budget, the reason for this being that there were no celebrities staying on my floor. Well, none if you don't include the queen of cream, Mrs Estee Lauder, there with her son Ronald, cur- rently running for mayor of the Big Bagel.
Another great man staying at the Ritz was Donald Trump, or 'The Donald', as his Czechoslovak wife calls him. There were rumours that The Donald would try and buy the Ritz and everyone staying in it, but to the best of my knowledge they were just that. Not even Trump can buy Kravis and Lauder and half the state of Texas, which at times seemed to be staying at the hotel. What turned out not to be a rumour was the wonderful service the Ritz con- tinued to provide although bursting at the seams.
My host, Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor- in-chief of the Washington Times, the best paper in town and not to be confused with the mendacious Washington Post of Janet Cooke fame, proved something of a mira- cle man by getting me and two teenagers of the fair sex invited to the most exclusive of parties. In fact, so exclusive was the last one I attended that the mendacious Post described it in a headline as 'Last Dance at the Ritz'. It then gushed that 'it was the party to end all parties. Literally.' The bash was given by Mary Jane Wick, Fancy Nancy's best friend, and Buffy Cafritz, a socialite in the District of Columbia. It included every heavy hitter and, again in the words of the mendacious Post, 'the famous and the even more famous'. As far as I could tell it was a hell of a party, first of all because it included the Bush family, but also because I heard the best remark of the week during dinner. I was sitting next to Jane Ikard, a lady journalist and big insider, and heard her say, 'Thank God the Bushes came in, and I don't have to have a new neck.' Mrs Ikard is of a certain age, and was referring to her wrinkles. And speaking of wrinkles, I noticed that Barbara Walters had none, although she did have great trouble eating her soup with her mouth closed. I also noticed Senator John Warner in a Taki state, and I made friends with Senators Wilson, Stevens and Laxalt. But my NBF (new best friend) is William Webster, head of the CIA, a man who spent the entire evening whispering to Arnaud de Borchgrave and his wife. Given the fact that I was the only unknown in the room, I did get a bit tipsy, so much so in fact that when I spotted our noblest lord, George Weidenfleld, comi7g in with Lally Weymouth and five Israeli professors from Mossad University, I got uP oa a table and cheered loudly. That is when Arnold Scaasi, the Barbara Bush designer who was born Isaacs and now spells his name backwards, finally acknow- ledged me. He told me to sit down and io shut up.
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