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“We don't have bathing suits,” Woody said.

“You can go skinny dipping,” Cukor replied.

“Should we?” Woody asked.

All I could picture was the opening scene in
Sunset Boulevard
with the corpse of the screenwriter Joe Gillis floating in Norma Desmond's pool. “You're crazy,” I told him. “Cukor might kill you.” We started to laugh and couldn't stop. We were still laughing as we climbed into our rental car and drove back to our Sherman Oaks rental apartment.

Several days later, Woody introduced me to his best friend, Warren, who lived in a magical 1930s Hollywood bungalow partially hidden in a maze of bougainvillea. Warren could have easily stepped out of an old movie; he was tall and handsome, with enough family money to allow him to indulge his various hobbies, which included collecting vintage movie posters. When I noticed
Holiday
and
The Philadelphia Story
mounted prominently on the wall, I told him my Cukor story, which by then had taken on a life of its own.

“Yes, I can see why he thought you looked like Katharine Hepburn,” he said.

“Oh, it was probably just the oxfords,” I replied modestly.

Warren had a separate photography studio on his property, where he took pictures of rock singers and aspiring actresses. He asked if he could do a shoot with me, and I agreed, although my previous experience with photographers had not been overly positive. My father's picture-taking efforts frequently ended in tears because my mother usually had something critical to say. Scott conveniently lost all our photographs after we split up. Warren's pictures of me exuded a 1930s glamour that was all the more remarkable because I hated being in front of a camera. Warren had a great eye. He also had a motivation problem, which didn't bode well for a sustained photography career, but at heart, he was a true collector, not only of movie posters but vintage photographs and postcards and anything that evoked the romantic past.

Woody and Warren had known each other in high school, cementing their friendship as film students at NYU. The two had a “bromance” long before the term existed. Not only did they share a love of movies and collecting, but they were also hysterically funny, each trying to outdo the other. Often they'd laugh so hard that tears would run down Woody's cheeks. It was hard not to feel like a third wheel. Woody got along better with Warren than he did with me. They were “pals” in the truest sense.

After nine months of being on the road, Woody and I finally settled back in New York, where we cemented our relationship with a wire fox terrier named Katie. Eager to avoid any behavior issues, Woody immediately hired the “Dog Commander.” With her porcelain skin and cascading curls, the Commander looked as if she'd come straight from a Renaissance fair, but behind the Pre-Raphaelite exterior lurked a canine dominatrix. Snapping Katie's leash like a whip, she barked orders in a cool, firm voice. Terriers, she cautioned, have a stubborn streak, and it was important to establish who was boss. To help regulate the dog's schedule, we had to make sure she ate her meals at a set time every day. The minute she finished, one of us had to take her outside. Beginning at seven
P.M
., we had to withhold water so she wouldn't need to urinate in the middle of the night. During the day, the Commander ordered us to keep a sharp eye on her to avoid any accidents. The best way to do that, she explained, was to attach a long lead to her collar and then place it around one of our ankles.

Woody posted a weekly “Dog Schedule” in the kitchen, specifying who would walk the dog and when; who would keep the dog fastened to his or her leg; and who would practice the Dog Commander's lessons. Woody believed in an equal division of labor, which was perfectly fair, but I began to view him as the Human Commander.

Meanwhile, Warren sublet an apartment for six months in Woody's building. While Woody cooked his signature dish—Spaghetti Woody—Warren would discuss his love life with me. He had been in therapy for years and was the epitome of the new cultural icon: the “sensitive man.” Yet he was totally unrealistic when it came to women, expecting them to live up to a movie star ideal, but since no woman could compare to the celluloid Katharine Hepburn or his other favorite star, the helmet-haired Louise Brooks, he was always disappointed. It kept him safe from having to commit to a relationship, as did his unfortunate habit of becoming infatuated with his friends' girlfriends. After I once told him that he looked better without his glasses, he'd whip them off whenever we got together, and then bat his blue eyes.

One night, as we were all sitting on Woody's bed eating Spaghetti Woody and watching Katharine Hepburn in
The Philadelphia Story
for the umpteenth time, I began to weigh the pros and cons of both men. Woody was a hard worker. Warren didn't like to work. Woody had to watch his money. Warren watched it fly out the window. Woody was short. Warren was tall. Woody lived in the real world. Warren lived in a fantasy. My polygamous fantasy ended, however, when Warren returned to L.A. and fell in love with a singer/songwriter who fulfilled his twin fantasies: She looked like Louise Brooks
and
she'd been involved with one of his friends.

After a lavish wedding at Tavern on the Green, the newly married couple moved from L.A. to New York, where Warren opened a movie poster gallery. The gallery's logo was based on his favorite poster: a spectacular life-size one-sheet of a sultry Louise Brooks in G. W. Pabst's
Diary of a Lost Girl.
As for the real Louise, she was a total free spirit who found herself caught up in a whirl of mandatory parties. Warren's extended family was a large one, and now that the “prodigal son” had returned, he was expected to attend all the black-tie bar mitzvahs and other events he'd moved to L.A. to avoid. With her aspiring singing career in limbo, Louise was truly a lost girl; she spent her days getting facials and buying shoes. I wasn't envious of the family parties, but as a struggling writer, I was definitely envious of the shoes.

By the early 1980s, oxfords had fallen out of fashion in favor of “look-at-me” footwear. The Reagan presidency, with tax policies that favored the upper class, resulted in a period of conspicuous consumption not seen since the Gilded Age. Nothing was considered too over-the-top, from Lacroix $15,000 “pouf” dresses, to financier Saul Steinberg's fiftieth birthday party, featuring actors posing as re-creations of famous Old Masters paintings. Money was increasingly fracturing Manhattan, with artists being driven from SoHo lofts to make room for investment bankers who wanted to live like artists.

Women's shoes exemplified the growing class divide. The 1980 New York City transit strike prompted thousands of female employees to don sneakers. For a “working girl,” like Melanie Griffith in the Mike Nichols movie of the same name, the trend continued after the strike because they couldn't afford to take taxis, and sneakers were more comfortable when dealing with subways, buses, and ferries. Women who didn't need or want to work could indulge in fantasy shoes that mirrored their rarefied lifestyles.

The designer Maud Frizon best captured the era's over-the-top frivolity. With their eye-popping metallic colors, scalloped edges, and butterfly appliqués, Frizon's shoes had a rock star/fairy princess quality that appealed to the imagination. Her personal story was equally seductive. A former Parisian model, she'd married an Italian shoe salesman who'd fallen in love with her “perfect” size 6 feet. With their two children, they lived in a chateau in the Loire Valley, where she dreamed up fanciful shoe designs while he handled the business. When I later described Frizon's enviable life to my therapist, she said, “Ah! The ‘unseen hands'!” She was referring to Jean Cocteau's film
Beauty and the Beast,
in which invisible hands catered to Beauty's every need. Frizon's whimsical creations, with their astronomical price tags, symbolized a life where I could write without intrusions—a room of one's own, with invisible servants, and a massive shoe closet.

I was then working in a small back room in Woody's apartment, where I had to climb a Matterhorn of periodicals to reach my desk. Living in a pseudo library should have been conducive to writing, but it wasn't. Woody could toss off a story in a matter of hours, while I'd labor over each sentence. Though I wanted to be equally productive, I constantly fell short, and Woody would then lecture me on developing better organizational skills. I realized I needed a place of my own. I'd loved his back room for the comfort it gave me, just as I loved Spaghetti Woody and regular Woody. I adored his brilliant mind, vast knowledge of history, wonderful sense of humor, and huge heart. He was totally unique, and I knew I'd never find anyone quite like him. And then there was Warren, who had recently purchased the actor William Powell's 1930s velvet smoking jacket; he was trying to remake himself and Louise into the urbane husband-and-wife team, played by Powell and Myrna Loy, in the
Thin Man
movies. If Woody and I split up, who'd gain custody of Warren?

Woody and I had always had a fairly combustible relationship, but as I'd outgrown my protégé role and he'd grown tired of mentoring me, we began to bicker over stupid things—who'd walk the dog, do the dishes, buy the spaghetti. I wanted to move back into my old apartment, but Emily, who'd followed me to New York, was living in it. She'd become a talented jewelry designer but wasn't making a lot of money and I felt responsible for her. As a result, I didn't want to evict her from my Upper West Side apartment and she didn't want to leave. This caused a lot of tension between us and prolonged my deteriorating relationship with Woody.

The tipping point finally happened when I accidentally caused Woody's dishwasher to overflow, flooding the kitchen. He claimed I nearly drowned the dog. That night, I left his apartment and moved in with Emily. I immediately called Warren to tell him, but he was on the phone with Woody. I wanted to call Woody, but I'd just broken up with him.

This was during the Christmas season, which is a terrible time to break up with someone. Before heading to Andover for the holidays, I went to Macy's to buy presents for everyone. I'd always been careful never to carry large sums of money, but I had $700 in cash for the presents and to repay Woody for groceries and supplies, including $300 worth of toilet paper. Apparently, I was unduly extravagant with it. While dawdling in the shoe department, someone stole my pocketbook, and I lost the money, my credits cards, and my license. It was all too much. I called Warren and cried into the pay phone. A few hours later, he showed up at my apartment with $700 in cash. “I've always wanted to be a knight in shining armor,” he said sweetly.

In January, Woody asked me to come over to pack up the rest of my things. It was my thirtieth birthday, and I'd spent the day cleaning the apartment and suggesting to Emily that she might want to contact a real estate agent. I walked over to Woody's dressed in dirty sweat clothes, with unwashed hair and no makeup. When I opened the door, I heard “Surprise!” Woody had planned a birthday party for me before we'd split up. He didn't think it was honorable to cancel.

“This is totally embarrassing,” I said when I got him alone. “What could you have been thinking?”

“You told me you'd always wanted a surprise birthday party.”

“But we've split up.”

“So?” he said.

“Which means we're no longer together.”

“Yes, we are,” he said. “It's just that now we're pals.”

I looked at his sweet face, rumpled plaid shirt, and innocent smile. For once, I couldn't argue with him. We were—and there was no better word for it—“pals.”