Olympia enjoyed his enthusiasm. What fun it would be to show him around. She only wished they had more time.
Nanny Mabel and Brigette were due to leave two days before they did, and then Olympia came up with a brilliant idea. Why not send Alice with them? At least the child would behave herself with Alice along.
She told Lennie her plan, and he quickly said, ‘Forget it.’
But somewhere along the way word leaked out, Alice got to hear, and she confronted Lennie immediately with bright red cheeks and shaking hands. ‘You can’t deny me this chance,’ she stated dramatically. ‘You’ve kept me off the Griffin Show – I know that. I’m not some schlump you can push in the background, I’m your mother, Lennie, your mother!’
As if she didn’t tell him ten times a day. Reluctantly he agreed that she could make the trip, although he had a horrible suspicion they would all live to regret it – especially him.
The rest of the week in Vegas passed quickly. He and Vitos Felicidade were doing sell-out business, and the reviews that came out sounded as if he’d written them himself. Variety was particularly flattering. They described him as having a multitude of talent, with the timing of Carlin, the irreverence of Bruce, and the comic madness of Chevy Chase. Not bad. Jess clipped it out and put it with the stack of newspaper stuff she was saving for scrapbooks.
Matt threw a small dinner party the night before they left. He didn’t have a date and neither did Jess. They sat sedately beside each other both thinking private thoughts that remained unsaid.
Vitos attended with a svelte brunette who licked his ear throughout dinner.
Make the most of his ear, Olympia thought, there’s not much else.
Vitos was scrupulously charming to all and sundry, one would never have imagined Olympia had jilted him less than a week before.
Lennie got drunk, and Olympia got stoned.
In the morning he decided to give up drinking. He didn’t like what it did to him, or the hangovers he endured.
Olympia was busy packing. Jess came by for lunch, she was all set to return to L.A. the next morning.
‘Why don’t you drive back with us tonight?’ Lennie asked.
She shook her head. She wanted one more night in Vegas. All the better to give Matt one last chance.
* * *
Olympia received special treatment wherever she went, it didn’t take Lennie long to discover that fact of life. In America he was starting to get VIP treatment, too – how potent fame was, not to mention the power of television. In Europe nobody had heard of him, and all of a sudden he was Mr Stanislopoulos. The first time he was called that he laughed. The second time wasn’t so funny. And the third time he failed to see the humour in it at all.
Olympia tossed blonde curls and told him to get used to it.
‘I’ll never get used to it, lady,’ he replied angrily.
London was just like he’d imagined, although it was warmer than he’d expected. A dry smokey heat rose from the asphalt streets like steam. A white Bentley met them at the airport and a matching white-haired chauffeur drove them to the Connaught Hotel.
‘My father always stays here,’ Olympia announced. ‘It has the best restaurant in town.’
Best restaurant or not they ventured out for dinner to an exclusive club, Annabel’s, in Berkeley Square, where Olympia met up with some English friends. They were a strange group with even stranger names like Muffy, Pinko, Nigel and Poopsie.
‘The English county set,’ Olympia whispered.
The men had braying accents, and the girls – although delicately pretty – looked untouchable with their perfect pink and white skin, and artfully styled Princess Di haircuts. He danced with one of them. The record playing was Sinatra’s ‘Come Fly With Me’ and everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. The girl smelt of stale roses as she pressed her bony body hard against his.
‘Let’s move on,’ Olympia suggested after a delicious dinner of crab cocktail, steak Diane, and bitter-chocolate ice cream.
‘Aren’t you tired?’ he asked quizzically. Jet lag was catching up.
‘Not at all’, she replied, and wondered if she should have offered him some of the great coke she had snorted before coming out. No – it was her supply, and she wasn’t about to share it. Once they were on the boat she didn’t know where she could get hold of any more – so hanging on to what she had seemed important. Besides, Lennie wasn’t into drugs, he had told her, so why waste it on him?
Briefly she thought of Flash. Now with Flash there was never any problem. He was a doper supreme. Who knew – maybe they’d run into him in the south of France. He was lurking in a villa above Cannes with his teenage pregnant wife – probably both stoned out of their heads.
From Annabel’s they proceeded on to Tramp in Jermyn Street – another private club, but more laid back and fun than the sedate Annabel’s.
Tramp was run by an affable Englishman called Johnny Gold. He greeted Olympia like a long-lost friend, although she had only been in the club once before, with Flash. And he was equally friendly to Lennie – in fact he even seemed to know who he was, which pleased him. Instinctively Lennie knew Tramp was his kind of hangout. He took off his tie, loosened the top buttons of his shirt, and felt instantly better.
Johnny led them into the jammed discotheque and squeezed them around an already full table. He introduced them to his wife, Jan, a striking ex-model. And some of the other people sitting along the comfortable banquette seating, including Ringo Star, Jack Nicholson, and British football star, George Best.
Lennie shifted into second gear, suddenly he wasn’t tired at all.
He and Olympia staggered from the club at four in the morning, tried to dodge hovering paparazzi, collapsed into the waiting car, and slept all the way back to the Connaught.
It was a memorable evening, and by noon the next day they were on yet another plane, this time to the south of France and Dimitri’s summer cruise.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Lucky established attitude and position from day one. She sat back quietly and watched, feeling like a reluctant but accurate observer of life’s great charade.
Actually, she was quite used to observing people and situations – having spent four long years in Washington when married to the annihilatingly boring Craven Richmond.
Now she was Mrs Dimitri Stanislopoulos, and sometimes she found herself wondering if this one would be any better. Maybe married life was not for her. Being free and single seemed a more appealing prospect every day – because everyday she felt she knew Dimitri less. He had become arrogant and overbearing – a tyrant to his minions. Once he had been an exciting and skilled lover. Since they were married he seemed to have lost all interest in sex.
Francesca Fern arrived amid a blaze of hysterics. The driver bringing her to the yacht had had the bad manners to suffer a stroke and die, mid-journey. She was suitably outraged. She blamed her unhappy husband, Horace, for the entire incident.
Horace accepted her wrath as his due.
Dimitri consoled her with champagne and roses and a great deal of solicitous attention.
Lucky – who knew of his long-time affair with Madame Fern – found herself wondering if it was indeed over as he had assured her when they were discussing the guest list. ‘Francesca was once my passion,’ he had openly confessed. ‘But now she is merely my good friend, and I want to invite her.’
‘Sure,’ Lucky had said, not being of a jealous nature. And quite frankly – she hardly saw Francesca as any kind of threat – just a very famous, middle-aged woman, with a face like a horse.
After the Ferns were installed, Saud Omar, an extraordinarily wealthy Arab, and his socialite girlfriend, Contessa Tania Zebrowski – came aboard. One look and Lucky inwardly groaned. The short fat man with the ‘soaked in oil’ brown eyes was a definite lech, and his girlfriend – dripping diamonds and gold – was a hard, face-lifted woman, whose beauty had seen better days.
Next came Jenkins Wilder, the Texas oil ty
coon, a flamboy-ant man in his fifties, with Fluff, his eighteen-year-old wife who called him ‘daddy-pie’ and ‘bumpkins’.
That was the first day.
The next morning brought Nanny Mabel, Brigette, and an outlandishly dressed Alice, who threw her arms around a chagrined Dimitri, kissed him lasciviously, and announced, ‘I feel I’ve known you all my life. We’re family now. Let’s get acquainted properly.’
Gino and Susan arrived at noon, and the yacht set sail shortly after.
The cruise had begun.
* * *
Friendships were formed.
The Contessa and Susan hit it off immediately.
Fluff and the Arab lech found they had snorkelling in common.
Francesca and Dimitri parried words and lingering looks.
Alice took a shine to Horace.
Jenkins Wilder spent most of his time on the phone.
Which left Lucky and Gino.
‘How’re you doing?’ she asked.
‘Why’d you run off from L.A.?’ he asked.
‘Susan looks well,’ she said – for the sake of something to say.
‘This guy, Dimitri, he’s too old for you,’ he grumbled.
What the hell are we doing here? she wanted to ask. We don’t fit in at all.
‘Hey, kid, what are we doing here?’ he spoke the words aloud. Good old Gino, always ready to say what was on his mind.
She shrugged and gazed out to sea. The boat was moving smoothly through the azure blue water as they headed for St Tropez, where they were due to pick up Olympia and her latest husband. She and Gino lay on a top deck sunning themselves. Below them – on another level, Dimitri and Francesca played a boisterous game of gin rummy.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said at last.
‘You know something?’ Gino reflected. ‘I think we both made mistakes this last couple of years.’
She looked at him intently. It was unlike her father to make that kind of statement. What was he trying to tell her? That he, too, was having second thoughts about his marriage?
She wanted to ask him, but before she could, a servant appeared and announced that lunch was served. Whenever she and Gino were due to embark on a serious conversation, something interrupted. She hoped he would hang back, let the others go to lunch. But he didn’t, he arose, pulled on a polo shirt, and offered her his hand.
‘Let’s go, kid,’ he said. ‘The more meals we eat, the sooner we can get off this floating crap shoot – and I, for one – can’t wait!’
* * *
The Stanislopoulos yacht arrived in St Tropez harbour at seven. Dimitri made the decision that as most of his guests were probably suffering jet lag, they would remain on the boat for dinner.
Lucky was restless as she changed into a long white dress and fastened her new diamond choker around her neck, she brushed her hair vigorously and shook it into a cloud of jet curls. Next she applied a light make-up.
Dimitri changed into a dark-suit, white shirt and silk tie, then preened in front of the full-length mirror, dousing himself with cologne.
‘This is really ridiculous,’ Lucky commented. ‘We’re in St Tropez – on a boat – on vacation – and we’re dressing up as if we’re going to the first night of the opera!’
‘It may seem ridiculous to you,’ he replied pompously. ‘However, my dear, this is the way I do things.’
‘What about me?’ she blazed. ‘Don’t I have a say in how things are done?’
He looked her up and down. ‘That dress is excessively low cut,’ he remarked. ‘And you have on too much eye shadow.’
It was the first time he had ever criticized her appearance. ‘Screw you!’ she replied heatedly.
Dimitri stared at her, and realized with deep regret that they should never have married. Lucky was too young, too wild, and certainly too outspoken. He had hoped that when she became his wife, she would accept his authority, guidance, and superior knowledge of life. This was obviously not to be.
They were hardly on the best of terms when they sat down for dinner in the grand dining room. Dimitri was seated at one end of the table with Francesca on his left and Susan on his right. Lucky found herself at the other end with Saud Omar and Horace Fern. Gino was somewhere in the middle next to Fluff. Lucky was not pleased. Who had arranged the seating?
She picked up a silver place-card holder and discovered Dimitri’s scrawl on the white card.
Damn him. She was getting good and tired of his calling every shot. As Mrs Stanislopoulos, wasn’t she supposed to have some clout too?
Dinner conversation was stilted to say the least. Lucky loathed Saud, with his lecherous eyes and greasy hair; Horace was a nonentity; and the women were all boring – their conversation concerned only with clothes, designers, jewellery, gossip and servant problems.
What am I doing here? she thought. Have I flipped out or what? Because this is just not my scene.
Francesca had a laugh like a buzz saw. She used it often, as she and Dimitri seemed to be having a wonderful time together. Susan was all but ignored. Gino was unusually silent.
Dinner passed slowly. Caviar to begin with. Then Chateaubriand with puréed potatoes and a choice of vegetables. All this served by three Filipino maids in starched white uniforms.
This is archaic, Lucky thought, picking at her food.
By dessert she was bored out of her mind. And so was Gino – in spite of the fact that Fluff was doing her best to keep him entertained. He had given up on eighteen-year-olds many decades ago.
They looked at each other across the table. He shook his head as if to say What is this crap? She pantomimed a How the hell would I know? They grinned conspiratorially. God, she missed him!
Dessert was richly coated chocolate profiteroles, and as Lucky made desultory conversation with Horace, she noticed Francesca feeding the round, cream-filled delicacies to Dimitri, one at a time – while their eyes exchanged heated looks, and Francesca laughed throatily and licked her darkly painted lips with a snake-tongue.
That sonofabitch is still sleeping with her.
Lucky knew it for sure, and she was furious.
Of course, she had known it from the moment Francesca arrived on board. It was glaringly obvious. The long intimate looks, the hand touching, the attention he paid her. All conclusive evidence. Lucky was no idiot. She was also not in love with him, in fact she never had been. Oh sure, for a moment she had fooled herself that maybe he was the man for her. But looking at things clearly, she had married Dimitri because it seemed the right thing to do for Roberto’s sake, and also – she couldn’t shirk facts – because she wanted to build her hotel more than anything in the world.
Damn! Whatever happened to love? After Marco she was certain she could never love again. Not that white-hot all-consuming passion. And she was right.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Horace was repeating some inane question. She wished he would shut up. What kind of man was he anyway? He must know what was going on.
She narrowed her eyes and tried to formulate a plan of action. First of all, she decided, she was not going to humiliate herself and make a scene. That’s probably what they were all waiting for, this illustrious group.
No, she would bide her time and wait for the right moment to strike.
Why couldn’t Marco have lived?
Her eyes threatened to fill with tears. She blinked them away. Crying was a weakness, and above all else, Lucky Santangelo was strong.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Carrie and Steven arrived in L.A. late in the afternoon. As usual Steven was silent, allowing his resentment and fury to bubble loudly beneath the surface. After checking into the hotel, he turned to Carrie and said, ‘I’ll see you at ten in the morning.’ And that was it. She was on her own. He didn’t care that a long, lonely evening loomed ahead of her.
‘Very well, Steven,’ she replied quietly, walking toward the elevator.
He went to his room – watched the phone for a while, shaved, showered, or
dered a half bottle of Scotch from room service, stared at the phone.
At a quarter to seven he picked it up and dialled. A woman answered.
‘This is an emergency,’ he said, his voice controlled. ‘I have to speak to Gino Santangelo at once.’
‘Oh, dear.’ The woman sounded flustered. ‘What kind of emergency? Mr and Mrs Santangelo left the country yesterday. They will be in Europe for two weeks.’
‘Europe?’ he questioned blankly.
‘France,’ the woman said. ‘I can try to contact—’
She was still speaking as he hung up.
Later that night he rented a car and drove past the Santangelo residence. That’s when he became aware of what a protected life these people led, and realization dawned. There was no way Gino Santangelo would listen to him even if he was in town. Why was he fooling himself?
Dejected, he drove around for a while, headed back to Sunset, and finally pulled into the parking lot of a bar. He had no idea it was a strip joint until he got inside, and by that time he felt like a drink and really didn’t care what kind of a dump he got it in.
The place was full of men staring at a regal-looking Scandinavian woman who took it off suggestively on a scuffed runway snaking between the chipped tables. Red satin stripped away to reveal smooth flesh, jutting breasts and a thick bush.
Steven ordered a double Scotch from a topless waitress in a grass skirt. She had stringy hair and perky breasts. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He felt sorry for her, and when she returned with his drink he dropped her a big tip.
She looked at him with stoned eyes and whispered, ‘I take a break at nine-thirty. I can give you a blow job in the parking lot for twenty bucks.’
Lucky Page 35
