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It Could Have Happened Like This…

 Cherish Maree Vintage: 1950's Cocktail Parties

It Could Have Happened Like This…



December, 1959.


Betty and Truman on opposite ends


of a lime green polyester couch


at a party in The Village,


nodding in angular bebop time


with an eyes-closed piano player


who danced a nervous shuffle in his pork-pie hat.



Capote yawned: “Betty my dear, do you think


that I should fly to Provence with Jackie Kennedy?


Or take the train to see that bad boy in Kansas?”


Behind smudged glasses, his eyes strayed


as a well-muscled boy tangoed an empty tray through the crowd.



Betty kicked at him with a red pointy-toed shoe.


“Damn it, Truman, first fetch me another drink.


Two olives, lime twist and just a rumor of vermouth.”




Truman rubbed his sore ankle, rolled off the settee


and careened a rolling stumble across the room.



Martini in one hand, Old Crow and Lucky Strike in the other,


Capote returned, swayed and hiccuped back to her:


“Cannes or Kansas, Betty?”



Betty sipped in the smoky party, twirled the glass between her fingers,


“Kansas, Truman, Kansas. For a sensitive lad like you,


there’s far less trouble in the gray penitentiary.


Spend three weeks in France with this crowd,


it’ll come down to some damn fool Pomeranian prince


or pale, pathetic Truman.


You or he, betrayed and broken on


rough Roman cobblestones,


the shadows of the last pink sunset


falling in your cold, cold blood.”
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