She Likes Ron for Ron!

By CALVIN TRILLIN

I wish I could rid myself of the premonition that somebody's going to get killed trying to measure Ron Perelman's waist. In August, Perelman, a billionaire who normally avoids speaking to the press, granted an interview to the New York Times. Apparently trying to alter the widespread public impression of him as a pudgy little bald guy surrounded by glowering security guards, Perelman said, "I do take a fat picture, but I've got a 28-in. waist!"

It's not the sort of quote we've traditionally associated with financial titans. I can't imagine Andrew Carnegie calling in the press to insist that his buns were in fact a lot tighter than photographs made them appear. Still, times have changed. Personally, I took Perelman at his word. Also the Times reporter, Rick Marin, provided some confirmation in the story: "Short he is; fat no."

For a couple of weeks I pretty much lost interest in Perelman's midsection. Then the press began to dwell on his divorce case with Patricia Duff and his new romance with Ellen Barkin--both women who have been the object of fervent male desire. We've always assumed, it occurred to me, that the attraction Perelman held for such women was, not to put too fine a point on it, $4.2 billion. Was his Times quote meant to indicate otherwise? Was Ron Perelman positioning himself to be considered a hunk?

How would pudgy little bald guys who'd never been within hailing distance of a famously glamorous woman react to the implication that Ron Perelman's edge in such matters is not his billions but six or eight inches in the breadbasket? I began to picture such a guy, hunched over his fourth or fifth gin in a cheap saloon. On the bar in front of him is a well-worn copy of the Times interview and a magazine with Ellen Barkin on the cover. The guy is insisting that Ron Perelman does not have a 28-in. waist.

"That little butterball is lying," he mutters.

But how will he prove it? Perelman's tailor? No, the Times said everyone on the payroll signs a confidentiality agreement. After weeks of stewing, the pudgy little bald guy comes to a desperate decision: he will snatch Perelman, take him to a secret location and measure both his waist and his inseam. The second measurement is just in case Perelman calls the Times next year to say that despite the misleading impression left by photographs taken in dark clubs among leggy women, he is in fact 5 ft. 11 1/2 in. tall.

"Forget about it," the bartender advises. "It says right in the Times story that the man is such a nut about security that boaters who get too close to his dock in East Hampton may get told to buzz off by a guard with a submachine gun."

But the pudgy little bald guy can't forget about it. He does manage to get close to Perelman--the security guards apparently assume from his appearance that he's a relative--but then a burst of automatic gunfire nearly cuts him in half. The security guards later tell police that they shot because one of them thought he'd spotted a Javanese garroting device inside the pudgy little bald guy's jacket. When the police turn him over, of course, it turns out to have been a tape measure.