What happens to Jerry Hall now?

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the supermarket checkout line, another boomer lothario married to a career-oriented blonde canoodles with a younger brunette and lands on the cover of every tabloid in the world. Of course, that’s where the similarities between Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger end. Even the president of the United States didn’t have the chestnuts to suggest that he isn’t really married. And while everyone’s wondering about Hillary’s post–White House plans, no one has asked first lady of rock and roll Jerry Hall to leave the U.K. and run for Pat Moynihan’s Senate seat in New York (though, in fact, it would be a gas; who could resist a campaign commercial that began, “Good-bye, Super Tuesday . . .”?).

Still, the question of what the Gonzales-born model will do next—and where she’ll do it—is very much on the minds of those of us back home. The answer, her mother says, should be obvious. “She likes England, and the children are in a private school, so they’ll stay there,” Marjorie Hall says. “Here in Texas we have all these guns and dope problems in our schools, so she has no intention of returning.” Although Mrs. Hall says Jerry “must be quite upset” by the prospect of getting divorced, she has no hard feelings toward her son-in-law. “He’s always been very nice and respectful to me, and he’s always been very good to the kids,” she says. At the same time, she professes to be not at all shocked that the cause of the split was Mick’s catting around (with another model, Brazilian Luciana Morad, who is reportedly, ahem, pregnant). “We knew what was happening,” Mrs. Hall says. “He’s always been like this. He hasn’t changed.” Nor is she surprised at Mick’s assertion that he and Jerry are still single: “She suspected it. She had to talk him into a wedding. He kept telling her they really were married, but he never signed the license. It’s probably not legal.”

Jerry’s pals are less accepting of Mick’s ploy. “This is a real cheap shot. She’s a sweet, generous, gracious person, and his arrogance is overwhelming,” says Dallas lawyer Karen McRae, her best friend from high school. “To try to save $50 million”—the amount Jerry is supposedly seeking from Mick in her divorce filing—“he was going to try anything,” says Linda Attaway, who taught her French at North Mesquite High in the early seventies and remains an amie to this day. But for unstinting loyalty, no one can touch Shannon Murchison, who met the Hall family at a baby shower a decade ago and has been close to them ever since (in July 1997 she and her husband, Clint Murchison III, the son of the onetime Dallas Cowboys owner and the grandson of the venerable oilman, spent her fortieth birthday with Mick and Jerry at their château in France’s Loire Valley). “There’s something about being king of the world,” Shannon sniffs. “There’s something about the fact that for the past forty years, every gorgeous woman has thrown herself at him. He thinks he has a hall pass for bad behavior. I would do exactly what Jerry’s doing. I would get him where it counts: in his bank account. And then I would kill him!”

And what of Jerry’s life after? “Somebody will snap her up,” Shannon says. “She’s a very smart woman, and she’s a joy to be around. She will have men falling at her door.” One imagines that Mick would rather not think about his longtime love in someone else’s arms, but as a wise man once said, you can’t always get what you want.