Ham Read Free Page A

the nuptials. This was, no doubt, the first time the church entrance had been set up with such tight security, and the most eclectic guest list ever ambled through airport metal detectors and opened their pocketbooks for inspection. The enormous number of titanium hip replacements set off the detectors, which slowed the line considerably. Janet Leigh, Anthony Hopkins, Joan Collins, Kirk Douglas, Carol Channing, and Robert Goulet were there. In odd juxtaposition, so were Snoop Dogg, Donny Osmond, Martha Stewart, and Gloria Gaynor. In the same room. At the same time. I knew for a fact that Liza didn’t know most of these people or had met them only in passing.
    But then, she really only knew the groom in passing.
    She should have kept walking.
    I knew she had personally invited Lauren Bacall, Liz Smith, Mia Farrow, Cynthia McFadden, Mickey Rooney, Billy Stritch, and Gina Lollobrigida, but most of the others were acquaintances of the groom’s, PR invitations, or celebrities who had begged to be on the list. Like signing up to witness the launching of the Hindenburg.
    I forget sometimes that my friend Liza is, you know— Liza! Truth was that she would have been happy getting married in a private house with ten close friends, but the groom’s knack and desperate need for the spotlight had turned this into an epic extravaganza.
    I ran to a back room and found Liza, who seemed nervous. “Let’s sneak out of here and go to the movies,” I said. “No one will notice.”
    She laughed and then suddenly said, “What’s playing?” An odd doubt crept over her enormous brown eyes.
    â€œAre you okay?”
    â€œYes . . . I don’t know. That thing you said about recovering from brain encephalitis?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI’ve recovered,” she said, dryly.
    â€œOh, honey.”
    â€œBut I’m here and this is happening and I’m gonna make it be okay.”
    I kissed her on the cheek and ran out to join my partner, Danny, nestling into our reserved third-row pew. Jane Russell soon squeezed in beside me. Then we had to squeeze over even more so Donald Trump could fit in. And he has wide hips.
    The church was stunning. The entire wall behind the altar was blanketed in white orchids, probably to cover a giant bleeding Jesus, which would have been a downer. We waited. We chatted. Danny and I looked around the room to see whom we’d missed. I stood and waved to much more famous friends who were seated farther back, to show them I was among the chosen.
    We continued to wait. For about an hour.
    Then the news arrived, whispered from person to person, pew to pew, like the telephone game: Elizabeth Taylor had forgotten her shoes and had arrived at the church in hotel house slippers. No one in her entourage of seventy-two had noticed: terry cloth— The Plaza, so we had to wait while some gay lackey schlepped up thirty blocks to retrieve her shoes. Finally Elizabeth was shoed, everyone was ready, and the music began.
    Then a familiar voice shouted, “Wait for me!” The music stopped as Diana Ross flitted down the aisle, her hair over three feet in diameter, tickling aisle-seated guests as she flounced her way to the second row to take a seat.
    The music resumed. The enormous wedding party entered from the downstage left and right wings, I mean aisles, and made their way to the platformed stage, I mean altar. Elizabeth Taylor was the co-matron of honor and was helped to her seat by the other co-, Marissa Berenson. The groom was escorted by Michael Jackson and his brother, Tito or Tootie or Toyota, I couldn’t know or keep up.
    The music abruptly stopped again—and then started up, louder, as everyone turned to the back of the church for the star’s, I mean bride’s, entrance. Traditionally, when a bride walks down the aisle at her wedding, the guests rise in her honor. When Liza entered at the back of the house, I mean church, the