Sandy covered our Academy Awards party for Time at the time of The Pretenders’ bestsellerdom, and I visited her almost every place she was assigned after that, all of them exotic, from Paris to Hong Kong. In Paris I know she was in love with a married man, high in government I believe. “The fifth time the croissants are stale because he didn’t come for breakfast," she told me, "you know his saying he’ll leave his wife is a lie. Oh, but there’s something about that ‘head over heels.’
She was murdered in Bali by her journalist boyfriend, though he was too old to be thought of with that word. But he got away with it, probably with money. It was Bali, after all. He put on a suit and tie for her memorial in New York where he came, looking for work, as opposed to her incineration in Bali where he came in shorts and a dirty shirt. He went to the front of the room Time had invited her colleagues to in Manhattan, got up and said “Things were so great between Sandy and I.” And I thought, Not bad enough he killed her, he doesn’t know grammar.
Probably he has made a comfortable life for himself with her money, which she likely left him. When I suffer over whether or not there is an afterlife, I hope with what part of my soul is not into forgiveness that nothing good falls into his lap on this side of the divide at least.
So it was painful to go through the Awards last night, because they weren’t that good, t still miss her, and probably there is no justice.
