West of Paradise

by Gwen Davis

  She took it. It was warm.

  “I heard you were here,” he said.

  “Me? You heard I was here?”

  “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s granddaughter,” he said. “The greatest regret of my whole career is that Redford made Gatsby.”

  She felt touched by the fact that even with the heavy turn his career had taken because of the transformation in his face, Jake imagined he could play an innocent. He never stopped making movies now. But if he essayed being a hero, it was always one who was slightly askew, scarred by circumstances as his skin would be if the town wasn’t crowded with plastic surgeons. Skilled as they were, they hadn’t been able to bring back the perfection. “You could make it again,” she said.

  “What was he like, old Scott?”

  “I never knew him,” she said, grateful for being able to speak that truth, at least.

  “I’m a little too beefy for the part, even if they would consider doing it over. I always imagined Gatsby like Fitzgerald himself. Slender. That lost, blond, glazed blue-eyed look. Dark men can’t do that.”

  “You could do anything,” she said, believing it, accepting along with him that he could seem as ingenuous as before.

  “Maybe I could thin down like De Niro fatted up for Raging Bull. Wear contacts. Become an alcoholic.” He looked at the mineral water in his hand. “You could disappoint me, and then I could blame you.”

  “Disappoint you how?”

  “Turn out to be an airhead. No substance.”

  “I’ll try not to do that,” she said.

  “I bet you couldn’t even if you wanted to.”

  “But I could disappoint you in other ways,” she said, wondering why she felt on the verge of tears. She had not realized that a man like Jake Alonzo could be vulnerable in other than physical ways, open to disillusion, or that someone like Kate herself—or what he thought Kate was—was capable of doing him in. Just being there had taken a gouge out of her emotionally, frazzled her with the unreality of the situation. What seemed like only a moment before she had been the Little Match Girl, nose pressed against the bakery window. Now she’d been shot through the glass, straight into the cakes and breads, the fragrance of freshly baked dough in her nose. It would have been overwhelming even without this, this actor admired by everyone, including her. This man who had publicly denounced his own weakness, healing on the inside while his face did, looking at her like something might really be possible between them.

  She wanted desperately to set him straight, clear the air, dispense with the lie, and have him admire her for her honesty. Her hands clenched into fists. She felt something cutting softly into her palm. She looked down and saw the card from the woman from East magazine, looked up and saw Jake Alonzo’s eyes. Really interested. How perceptive was he? With all the women in the world who were throwing themselves at him, would he bother to take the time, have the curiosity to find out who she was, if he didn’t already think she was somebody?

  “What other ways?” he asked.

  The question hung on the air, unanswered. She couldn’t risk it.

  “Hey,” Linus Archer said, bobbing up to them, a Coke in his hand, conspicuously nonalcoholic, still in its bottle. “What are you doing moving in on my territory, Jake?”

  “Your territory?”

  “She’s my ex-wife.”

  “Is that true?” Jake asked.

  “I never met him before today.”

  “My next wife then.”

  “She’s too young for you.”

  “No one’s too young for me. I’m in my prime. They celebrate me in Paris.”

  “No one said the French were smart about everything,” Jake said.

  “I hear you’re Hemingway’s granddaughter,” Linus said.

  “You hear wrong.”

  “He was my hero.” He set down his Coke, took the scarf from his neck, and making it into a miniature cape, did a miniature veronica. “Toro! Toro!”

  “Takes one to know one,” Jake said.

  “Are you interested in this putz?” Linus asked Kate.

  She could feel herself blushing.

  “Well?” Jake said.

  A moment passed. “Who wouldn’t be?” she said. An honest answer.

  “Okay,” said Linus. “You’ve made your choice. But you’ll be sorry.” He whispered in her ear, as he went by her, quoting. “‘It was a hell of a way to be wounded.’”

  * * *

  There was a commotion by the doorway. “Don’t give me that shit,” a raucous woman’s voice yelled out. “I’m the only one who really belongs here.” Lila Darshowitz pushed her way past security, and burst into the room. “Who do you have to double-cross to get a drink around here?”

  A waiter came over with champagne and chardonnay. “I like red,” she said churlishly.

  “I’ll get it for you,” he said, and backed away.

  “Doesn’t this place have a bouncer?” Wilton came over to Jake and Kate, taking the two of them in. His eyes sparkled, avuncular, pleased.

  “You can’t keep Drayco’s own mother out of his funeral,” said Kate.

  “Larry would have. The only reason she got in is that he’s dead,” said Wilton.

  “I’ll be right back.” Jake indicated his empty glass. “Can I get you something, Kate?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You certainly are,” beamed Wilton, as soon as Jake was gone. He started singing, like Ethel Merman, the introduction to a Sondheim-Styne song. “I had a dream…” He stopped. “But it wasn’t this good. This fast.” He hugged her around the neck. “I’m so proud of you!”

  “Why?”

  “You’re going to find out for sure what everyone only speculates about.”

  It took her a minute to understand he was saying that Jake Alonzo wanted to take her to bed. Did he? Could she risk disappointment with him if the rumors were true? Could she put aside her own duplicity, which she found to her chagrin she was starting to do? “He heard the Fitzgerald thing. I have to tell him.”

  “You tell him nothing,” Wilton said. “He’s obviously taken with you.”

  “Not who and what I really am.”

  “So what? We’re all just the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. People don’t want to know the truth: it’s the illusion that captures them. The illusion that they think is the truth. Illusion is truth in Hollywood.”

  “What are you two buzzing about?” Perry Zemmis came back over to them.

  “Plato’s cave,” said Wilton.

  “I remember that place,” said Perry. “It was where everybody went to fuck.”

  “That was Plato’s Retreat,” said Wilton, disgusted.

  Perry waved the correction away. “It’s not like we can risk going anymore, whatever it’s called. It’s the same reason they had to close the bathhouses.”

  Lila Darshowitz walked past them, a glass of red wine in both hands. A little of it had already spilled down the front of her dress, which was not exactly funereal, black being only a part of the print. The rest was white and a fuchsia that nearly blended with the wine spill, but not quite. The print seemed to exaggerate her already enormous form: breasts the size of pumpkins and a stomach that was girdled to no effect, other than to push a roll of fat above her waist. She was a two-fisted drinker, finishing the glass in her right hand and heading for the buffet table.

  “What a slob,” said Wilton.

  “I feel sorry for her,” said Kate.

  “How long have you been in Los Angeles?” asked Perry.

  “Two months.”

  “You’ll get over it,” he said.

  Lila took a plate. People made a wider circle around her than they seemed to be making around Arthur Finster. Only Sarah Nash, piling her plate high with salad and pasta, seemed unperturbed at standing next to him. “So much for the rumor that you’re anorexic,” said Arthur.

  “So much for the rumor that you can’t pronounce words of more than one syllable,” Sarah said. “I heard you followed
Brandy into the ladies’ room and offered her a contract on a book exposing Charley Best.”

  “Actually, it was the men’s room,” he said, biting into a miniature pizza. A string of the cheese hung between his teeth and the crust in his hand. “I think she’s a transvestite.”

  “Are there no depths to which you won’t sink?”

  “At least I don’t betray my friends,” he said.

  “That’s because you don’t have any.”

  There was a huge tray of guacamole molded into the shape of a Mexican hat, a bowl at its base filled with blue corn chips. “Is it all right to eat this?” Lila Darshowitz asked no one in particular.

  “Only if you’re not kosher,” said Arthur.

  “Where’s that guy with the wine,” Lila said, loading her plate, spooning the chunky green paste into her mouth in what would have been fistfuls, had she used her hands.

  “Garçon!” Arthur snapped his fingers in the air. A waiter headed for them, bringing a tray with wine.

  “You’re being pretty solicitous…” Sarah murmured under her breath, “… for a guy who murdered her son.”

  “He OD’d, and the whole town knows it.”

  “He was clean,” Sarah said.

  “He was a driven man with compulsive habits.” Arthur ate another pizza, licked his fingers, took another. “Materialistic and greedy.”

  “And you’re here to make the world a better place. A safe haven for literacy.”

  “At least I didn’t publish O.J. books. Or juror books. Or Faye Resnick books.”

  “Only because Michael Viner got there first.”

  He drew himself up to his full height, which was still eight inches shorter than Sarah’s. “I am in competition with no one.”

  “You’re forgetting Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, and Sleazy.”

  “I like red,” Lila said to the waiter. “Save yourself a trip. Bring two.” She handed him her empty glass, then wolfed a calzone. A piece of the spinach fell on her dress.

  “That poor woman,” Kate observed from where she was standing. “She’s spilling things all over her dress.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Wilton.

  “I really have to talk to her.”

  “What for?” asked Perry.

  “I have a project. An idea.”

  “What about the unpublished Fitzgerald?” Perry said. “When can I get a look at that?”

  “Never,” Kate said.

  “Aw, come on. You’re just playing hardball. Trying to make me more interested. Well, it’s working.” He put his hand on her shoulder.

  She took it off.

  “Okay,” he said. “What’s your price?”

  “There is no price,” she said.

  “How about if I optioned both of them. Grandpa’s and yours.”

  “You don’t even know what mine is.”

  “So tell me.”

  “She’s going to examine the life of Larry Drayco,” Wilton said. “Search it out for meaning.”

  “Forget it,” said Zemmis, and went to get a drink.

  * * *

  Mortimer Schein, who was shortly to produce the duchess’s clothing line, felt awkward at parties, especially this one. There was no question it was a party. Entertainment Tonight and the E cable channel were both covering it, even though someone was screaming at their minicams that they had no respect.

  Mortimer, or Mort, as he was called by his friends, who were mostly still in New York and East Hampton, had come to the funeral because he’d played cards with the dead man. That was a kind of bond, even though Mort suspected he’d cheated. Larry Drayco couldn’t help stealing: it was in his character, or lack of same, as Mort’s mother might have said. Once one of the men in the regular game, a producer, had come in raving about a new book he’d read in galleys and announced that he was going to buy the rights. Drayco excused himself to go to the toilet, called the agent who represented the author, and made a deal from the bathroom.

  So he couldn’t help being a shit, even when pretending to take one. Still, there had been something stylish about him, like a highwayman. And Mort always admired style.

  He’d come to the funeral because that’s what a nice guy did when he’d known a guy. Besides, she might be there. He longed, more than getting out of the rag business, to be in a place where he could look at her, and just watch her move, and not be under pressure to talk. He knew he had nothing to say to her really. She was a blueblood. His own blood was Jewish, and he was nervous about that, as he would have been even if there hadn’t been a Pat Buchanan. But to be in a room with a genuine duchess, this particular duchess, even if she was divorced from the title, all the while he hungered to be near her, was almost more than Mort could bear.

  “Duchess Wendy,” he said, bowing as she passed him.

  “Morty,” she said gently. “I told you. I’m not allowed to use the title anymore except on our clothes.”

  “It’s not good enough for you anyway. It should be Princess. Queen, maybe. Goddess.” His face and neck shone bright red.

  “Why, Morty. I’ve never heard you talk so.” Her hair was dark and softly waved, close to her skull, marcelled as it would have been in the era she better belonged in. “I thought you only spoke cuts and fabrics and prices.”

  “I’ve had a little champagne. Can I get you some?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He hesitated for a moment. “I should give it to you in a glass slipper.”

  She looked away. “Glass slippers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

  * * *

  It had been noted that because of their fashion model washboard slimness, Carina, Norman Jessup’s fiancée, and Chen Lippton, Victor’s wife, looked strangely alike, in spite of facial dissimilarities. Chen was markedly Chinese, round-faced and black-eyed, while Carina, whose origins were South American, had a pointed chin, and almond-shaped, brilliantly sea-green eyes. But they both had thick, dark hair, blunt cut to the jaw, and incredibly slender bodies. And of course they both dressed in the highest of high-fashion clothes.

  The Lipptons, newly come to the scene as they were, set an example of elegance and fidelity, which Norman Jessup and Carina voiced every intention of following. So it pleased Norman that the women not only complemented each other physically, but genuinely seemed to like each other. He encouraged Carina to take Chen shopping and whatever else it was that women did when they were not joining their mates for dinner. And the four dined together at least once a week, two of the town’s great power couples, which they were now considered, since the women, in their way, had as much potency as the men, as one could see clearly from how often they appeared in W.

  The Jessup-Carina nuptials were planned for October, to be held at the Hotel Bel-Air. Carina had already asked Chen to be her matron of honor. Norman had as best man lawyer Fletcher McCallum, who had stood up for him under all the important circumstances of his life, including the odious lawsuit. So he couldn’t have Victor Lippton as his best man. But he would be among the groom’s men, knowledge of which had sent everybody in town clamoring for invitations, trying to politick their way in. The guest list was already fuller than the cemetery in Westwood, presenting some problems for the hotel, which could accommodate only a hundred and fifty guests. Norman had suggested he could perhaps build an annex for the occasion, as Larry Drayco had redecorated three meeting rooms of a Vegas hotel for one of his weddings.

  The Lipptons, Jessup, and Carina, or as they were known now, the Beautiful Four, were so affable they usually did everything at a similar pace, including leave parties, or a funeral like this one, at the same time. But because Norman, like many others at the event, wanted to show his affection for Darcy, who’d organized it, he stayed longer than the Lipptons.

  So he was there when Lila Darshowitz threw up all over herself and had to be carried to the ladies’ room. And he was there when the E reporter and crew, having run out of stars, trained their camera on Carina and asked to interview her.

&nbs
p; “You’ll have to call my office,” he said, “and speak to our publicity director.”

  “But we were hoping for a spontaneous…” said the tiny blonde who’d majored in communications, holding her microphone in his freckled face.

  “You’ll have to call my office,” he said. And that was that.

  There was an authoritative but innocent nobility in his carriage, as though Tom Sawyer had grown up to be Abe Lincoln. He looked very much the country boy he wasn’t, with his great thatch of strawberry hair, cowlick, and freckles, an image added to and made more convincing by a kind of “down home” accent. That had been developed since the trial, where he’d spoken much too quickly, and said far more than had benefited him. Panic had stripped him of his customary confidence, and he’d turned into a blunderer, spilling over as he hadn’t since he was a boy. So he’d slowed himself down with a deliberate drawl. Too late to save him from the jury verdict, but maybe in time to save him from ever making the same mistake again, including trusting a woman like Sarah Nash.

  It was his fault for ever believing her, that she’d leave him out of the book. It was his fault for telling her who was screwing whom, who was taking what drugs, who embezzled, who covered up, really believing they had an understanding she would not involve him. She had been his buddy. The last bitch he’d ever buddy up to. She had proven once again, too late, that women were the enemy. He would never let one close into his life again. Except of course Carina. But she was another story.

  “Well, well, well,” Sarah Nash said, coming over to them at the buffet table. “If it isn’t the pseudocouple.”