Ham Read Free Page B

entire who’s who audience, I mean congregation, jumped to their feet and yelped and applauded like it was Carnegie Hall. They cheered, “Liza! Liza!” I was certain the orchestra was going to launch into “And the World Goes ’Round.” It was mayhem. Cindy Adams stood on top of Mickey Rooney and still couldn’t see.
    Liza was escorted by her longtime music director/drummer/father figure Bill “Pappy” Lavorgna, who was perhaps the only real “family” in the wedding party. She’d made a lot of entrances in her career, but as she glided down the aisle in a fitted white Bob Mackie gown, this was Liza at her most dazzling.
    Naturally, like at any wedding, all the attention should be paid to the bride and groom, so I tried, I tried, I tried tried tried not to stare at Michael, but I just couldn’t not. He was wearing a rigorously tailored black suit, festooned with velvet and sequined piping and a darling Peter Pan collar centered with a diamond brooch. His hair was flat-ironed into a flirty Marlo Thomas flip. His face couldn’t have been whiter if he’d been an Irishman locked in a windowless basement his entire life.
    I’d met Michael on several previous occasions since the mid-eighties and he’d become less and less human each time—not only in appearance but in manner. His very person. The man was on his own planet: Michael Planet. His eyes, darkly lined in black, remained closed throughout the service and his head bobbed and wobbled from side to side to the rhythm of a music no one else could hear. Occasionally, he would titter to himself at an internal joke, showing his teeth, just a shade less white than his face, and raise his shoulders like a five-year-old girl who’d just said the word “penis” for the first time.
    On the other side of the altar sat Elizabeth Taylor. She was wearing an ensemble that made me think she’d looked in her closet that morning and said, “What shall I wear? . . . Everything!” But she was still Liz Taylor and somehow it worked on her, down to the veiled black tulled and feathered hat, set slightly askew on her head.
    Or was she tilting to one side?
    I’d also met Elizabeth on many occasions since the eighties and I truly adored and admired her as an actor, humanitarian, and one of the great purveyors of nasty, nasty dirty jokes. But she was clearly exhausted from the trauma of the shoe ordeal, and when the priest requested we lower our heads in prayer, she did. And she never came back up.
    She. Never. Came. Back. Up.
    She remained slumped, ever leaning to the left, threatening to topple onto the floor at any moment. Even unconscious, she created a sense of mystic tension—like when you lean too far back on the hind legs of a chair and there is that split second when you don’t know if you’re going to fall backward or forward. It was like she, and we, were living there for thirty minutes.
    Between Michael’s Planet and Liz’s teetering, it was impossible to fully engage in the ceremony.
    While we, mercifully, did not have to rise and sit numerous times like at some Catholic services, which would have been impossible for a third of the congregation and annoying to the rest, we were required to pray frequently. And every time— every time—Jane Russell heard the words “Please bow your heads in prayer,” she viewed it as an opportunity to reapply her lipstick. Stuffed in her slot, glued shoulder to shoulder between me and Donald Trump, the only movable part of her body was her arms from the elbows down. Like a crab, she plucked the lipstick and mirror from her bag and, unable to raise her upper arms, hunched over and pooched her lips toward the ruby-red stuff while the priest gave thanks to God. I, personally, could not have been more grateful. After the fifth or sixth prayer, Jane’s lips could have served as a location device should it have been