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Cont'd from last week's tale. Sorry, no recaps.
Daisy was, as I said, quite gregarious. She was also incredibly mischievous. She loved practical jokes. She would prank anyone and everyone and occasionally, the few jokes that I remember her telling me about, I found to be much less of a joke and actually a bit sadistic. For example, as teenagers, she and a girl friend had convinced a boy to water ski naked, saying they would ski naked if he did first (clearly not the brightest bulb) and when he fell, they didn't pick him up, but made him swim to shore and somehow bypass everyone in his nakedness. I didn't find it funny, but Daisy found it hilarious. Daisy's boyfriend, Basil, who was a lovely and delightful man, told me that he didn't think any of her pranks were funny, but that he could not stop her--he loved her and said he had to take the rough with the smooth. Furthermore,Daisy's father employed them both to do research for him and he was just wonderful--an executive recruiter with one client, J.P. Morgan. Her father knew my father (among the earliest recruiters in the business) and I would talk to her father about my father--it was always a pleasure to see him. So Daisy was passively supported in her mischief.
Daisy finally got around to aiming at me for a practical joke. She teased me all the time which I didn't mind, but as I said, practical jokes are not my thing. So one late January afternoon, when I was considering returning to my home in the suburbs, I received a call. It was Mrs. Getty's chauffeur who told me that Mrs. Getty would be coming by in the next twenty minutes and that I should get ready for her. This was exciting news for me as I saw the connection as one that I could grow--I was finding the kind of things that I felt certain would be of interest to her. (I was right as she did purchase a single chair from me for $22,000 that was in her sale at Christie's a year and a half ago where it made $48,000 bid.) In those days, really good things were popping up all over the place. (They still are, but not in the way they once were.) In any case, you can imagine my excitement.
Instead of going home which I sorely wanted to do as it was dark and snowing, I sat around in my shop until at least 7:00. No knock on the door, nothing. I went home thinking that I might be blowing off one of the better clients I could ever have by leaving, but I did want to get home. I told my wife about the call and she was sympathetic, but what could I have done? And so the next day, I drove back into New York and as I was sitting at my desk, the phone rang and it was Daisy laughing uproariously at the fact that I had stayed so late. She had gotten her brother to call and pretend to be the chauffeur. I was really, really annoyed. She had sliced and diced me quite neatly.
To be cont'd. Much more coming.
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