The Polka Dot Nude

by Joan Smith

  Brad hadn’t become a connoisseur of art at the gallery without some preparation. If the long-necked, red-haired beauty with the black ellipses for eyes wasn’t a genuine Modigliani, she was a better copy than even Rosalie could do. Modigliani was accompanied by other famous names.

  The sun-dappled lake bordered with trees reeked of Monet. Renoir was there, too, along with a saint who belonged in a stained-glass window. A Rouault, definitely. The oldest work in the room wasn’t an oil painting, but a sketch. It was of a hare cowering beneath a bush, ready to dart off. I took a liking to the hare immediately, felt akin to it, with its dark simple looks, trapped amidst all the finery. In the lower left corner the date 1508 was printed, with a capital D in a little framed box. I knew I was looking at an original Albrecht Dürer. The hair on the back of my neck crept with the sensation of awe. All the pictures wore embossed gilt frames twice as big as the actual painting required.

  “What’s this, your gilt-edged securities?” I joked, to cover my awe.

  “Yeah, how do you like them?”

  “Impressive,” I said, and looked idly around the rest of the room. I wasn’t personally acquainted with the furnishings, but they looked as if they might have names, like the Barcelona chair. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your acquisitions?” My voice was involuntarily beginning to take on its tone of irony used to conceal a rampant sense of jealousy and inferiority.

  He looked askance, and ignored the jibe. “Want something to drink?”

  “Sure, a beer, if you have one. Don’t bother with a glass. The bottle’s fine. Is it okay if I sit on this, or is it only for show?” I tossed a negligent nod toward a low-slung sofa in ivory suede. It was gorgeous. I would have killed for that sofa. The window above it overlooked Central Park.

  “It can take your weight. Just make yourself comfortable.”

  “I’ll try.” A small snort of derision escaped me.

  Brad’s jaw muscle quivered once before he said, “I’ll be right back.”

  It was hard to be comfortable in this temple. The old insecurities came storming over me, leaving me prey to my devices of sarcasm and put-down. And again I was besieged by the unfairness of Brad’s acquiring so much luxury with so little real effort and/or talent.

  I no sooner sat on the sofa than I heaved myself up and went to read the little bronze plates beneath the paintings. Genuine. Every one of them. I strolled round the room, lifting the decorative pottery to read the names on the bottoms. Bustelli, Meissen, Sèvres. When I’d determined their names and pedigrees, I went to the Renoir painting. I touched the blobs of impasto, and throbbed with envy.

  From the archway, Brad’s voice suddenly echoed in the room. “The people who know about these things don’t recommend playing with the pictures,” he said playfully.

  I jumped a foot. He came forward and handed me an open can of beer. “Thanks,” I said. “Those so-called books of yours must pay well.” Now why had I added that mean “so-called”?

  “My so-called books keep me in the style to which I have become accustomed—by the sweat of my own so-called brow.”

  “You have a very impressive apartment, Brad,” I said, and gave a condescending smile.

  “You’ve already paid that compliment. Glad you approve. Would you like a tour?”

  “Sure, if you’re eager to show it off.” I was on thorns to see the rest of it.

  “We’ll start with the library and office, where I do my so-called writing.” I sensed that his patience was wearing thin. He strode angrily down the hall that had the statue at the end, flung open a door, and pushed a light switch.

  By swallowing hard I suppressed the gasp that rose up in my throat. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair that he had such aids to his damnable, cheap writing. The first room was a library, a long room lined with oak shelves, on which rested five or six thousand books. There were matched sets of everything— Encyclopedia Britannica, Great Books of the Western World, the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary, and rows of classics. A whole section was devoted to history, which surprised me. There were rows of art books, gourmet cookbooks, books on writing and drama and poetry, all systematically arranged like a public library. I couldn’t even accuse him of conspicuous consumption. The books were well thumbed.

  “This must save you a lot of trips to the library,” I said, determined to be unimpressed.

  He had decided to retaliate. “My secretary does the leg work. She’s deductible.”

  “I didn’t realize Hume Mason was interested in history. You don’t write books about historical figures, do you?”

  “Like a lot of English lit majors, I minored in history. My office is in here,” he said, and opened a door into a computer room. “This is the one that really saves time. No retyping once the manuscript is done.”

  Jealousy escalated to black envy. It was a dream. I remembered urging him to buy an electric typewriter, and his modest answer that he intended to look into it. Laughing at me all the time!

  “A pity it didn’t fit in the trunk of your car with the Cuisinart; you could have used it for Rosalie’s book.” I turned to leave immediately. From the corner of my eye, I had an impression of a wall of filing cabinets, another desk with an electric typewriter, and more bookshelves.

  “It would have saved me some work, but it wasn’t practicable.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of using one myself. The final reworking is so important. Of course for some work it hardly matters.”

  His jaw muscle was hopping like a Mexican jumping bean; his voice was as thin and taut as a wire. “Shall we go back to the living room, or would you like to see the rest of the place?”

  “I’ve seen enough, thanks. I can imagine the rest—mirrored ceiling in the master bedroom, fur coverlet, a billiards room tucked away somewhere.” Stop it, Audrey! Stop now, before you go too far.

  “I don’t play billiards,” he said in an arctic voice, as we went back to the living room. I got a glimpse of the dining room in passing. It had a large oval table surrounded by a dozen or so carved chairs. There was a baroque silver epergne on the table.

  “Quite a collection,” was my faint praise.

  “I don’t intend to apologize for what I’ve got. I earned it,” he said simply.

  “Then it’s true you never go broke underestimating the taste of the public. Now, what are we going to do about Drew Taylor?” I asked, in a brisk businesslike manner.

  “We came here to change. Let’s do it, and discuss plans over dinner.”

  “It slipped my mind—your little French restaurant. You should have had it set up in your dining room, Brad. It’d save you even more time.”

  “Dining out is one of my simple pleasures,” he said, still with an effort at civility. Then he added, “I’ll show you to the guest room.”

  I followed him back down the hall to a room across from the library. It was done in Wedgwood blue, with white French furnishings. There was a bathroom en suite with a blue sunken tub and a chandelier.

  “It came with the apartment,” he said, when I slanted a look up at the chandelier.

  “It saved you the bother of having it installed. I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes. I can find my way back to the saloon. Hang a right at the end of the hall, I think?”

  “That’s one way. Or you can take the scenic route, hang a left just before you get to Zeus. It takes you through the conservatory,” he retaliated, and walked out, his posture rigid.

  If ever a visit was calculated to activate my feelings of inadequacy, this was it. Helen’s condo was a slum compared to this. Even the showerhead got in on the act. It was brass-plated—or gold for all I knew—and had about a dozen choices of spray. My own had two, slow drizzle and off. I selected the massage button and stood under a swirling barrage of water needles, trying to relax as the water beat against my back and across my knotted shoulder blades.

  I was tempted to climb back into my blue jeans for the trip to Le PavilIon d’Antibes. When you can’t compete, the nex
t best way is to mock the competitor’s efforts. But my jeans were a mess from the trip. They looked as if I were still in them, every wrinkle and crease deeply set; so I wore the white suit again, with my hair hanging loose, falling straight as a ruler to my shoulders.

  The face confronting me in the minor looked rebellious. There were circles under my eyes from the trip, and my hair looked awful. Did He who made Brook Shields make me? I tried to twist my hair up, but didn’t have enough pins to hold it. It only made me more annoyed.

  “Now isn’t that original, we’re going as the Bobbsey twins!” I exclaimed, when I saw Brad had on a white suit too. Actually he looked fantastic. He had enough panache to wear the suit without looking ridiculous.

  He refused to argue. “I can change if you like.”

  A momentary weakness assailed me; for about thirty seconds, I wanted to stop being such a bitch. “I was going to do my hair up, but I didn’t have enough pins.”

  His stiff jaws relaxed into an incipient smile. “Don’t change a hair for me.”

  “I’m a mess, Brad. You won’t want to be seen in public with me.”

  “I can probably drum up a few pins if you want to . . ."

  Another spurt of anger came upon me. Not because he failed to disagree about my being a mess, but because of the pins. What was he doing with hairpins if he didn’t entertain women here—entertain them in a way that made them let their hair down? The unreasonableness of my anger only made me madder still.

  “I won’t bother.” I flopped my hair back over my shoulder. “The place is probably dark anyway.”

  It was still daylight outside, however. “It’s a bit early for dinner,” he mentioned. “Too bad we got dressed. There’s a pool on the roof.”

  I widened my eyes in mock amazement. “You mean there’s none here, in your own apartment?”

  If you’ve ever seen a woman defending her housekeeping to her mother-in-law, you know the expression on Brad’s face. I watched as it hardened to rebellion. “Just the Jacuzzi. I usually spend my summers at Martha’s Vineyard. My place there has a pool. I have a few calls to make. Do you think you could entertain yourself for half an hour?”

  “Sure, just lead me to the games room.”

  “Your game is writing. I thought you’d like to browse in the library, or try out the computer. You’ll be getting one yourself eventually, I imagine.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, but I’ll browse around the library.”

  Rifling through friends’ bookshelves is one of my favorite things to do. You discover such interesting keys to a person’s mind by the books he keeps. Brad’s bookshelves were so organized and so broad in scope that they told me nothing, except that he was ashamed to have his Hume Mason works on display. There wasn’t a single copy in evidence. The Art of Eliot was there, in all its Moroccan-leather-and-gold-trim glory. There had to be one corner where he kept the tattered old paperbacks and clothbound ugly-but-wonderful books every writer I ever met keeps. In my own case this shelf was the most crowded in my apartment. South Wind was crammed in cheek by jowl with a cherished copy of the Sheik. Still a great read after all these years. There should be faded copies of old essays and poetry anthologies, of joke books and books of little-known facts.

  A man who read as much as Brad O’Malley had to have a collection like that. He just had them hidden away behind a door, since they didn’t match his decor. I opened a few cabinet drawers and came across his cache. Tattered, dog-eared books—a wonderful collection of miscellany. The DeQuincey Essays, old English novels by women who called themselves Mrs. Oliphant, or Mrs. McStead, instead of using their own Christian names.. More than one by “An Englishwoman”—ladies who had traveled abroad to India and the east with their menfolk. Emily Eden was there. Rather a concentration of books by women actually.

  I opened another cabinet door, and came across an even more surprising batch of books. These were brand new, and consisted of twenty or thirty thick paperback historical romances with passionate covers and the title in writhing gold letters—those sandwiches of sex and history that invariably hurtle to the top of booklists. Rosalie Wildewood’s Love's Last Longing is a good example. In fact, there were three of Rosalie’s earlier books here. My lips thinned in amusement to consider this ammunition. The intellectual lover of Popper and Eliot was a closet reader of women’s historical romance.

  Further rooting discovered nothing else of interest. I never did find his Hume Mason books. I just went to the sofa and looked idly around at the library, and through the open door into the office. It was unreasonable for me to be jealous of Brad’s financial success. It never bothered me that other writers no more talented had achieved the rarified, seven-figure atmosphere. Brad had promised not to write his book on Rosalie, so why did it sting like a nettle that he had this fantastic apartment, his summer place at Martha’s Vineyard, his artworks, everything?

  Was it that his material things removed him to that charmed circle beyond the touch of mere mortals like Audrey Dane? The only intersection of our lives was Rosalie Hart. If I hadn’t been doing a book on her, I’d never have met Brad O’Malley. His female friends would be models and actresses, successful designers and performers. Maybe a college professor or two, for variety.

  The sun refused to set. It was still bright as afternoon, and it was nearly seven o’clock. Our appointment with Drew was for nine. How many phone calls was he making anyway? While I impatiently lit a cigarette, the phone in his office rang. I assumed it was an extension, and he’d answer it in another room. When it rang the third time, it occurred to me it might be a separate business phone, so I ran in and picked up the receiver. Brad must have lifted the extension at the same time. I heard him say “Brad O’Malley here.” I lowered the receiver, but before it reached the cradle, a woman’s purring voice stopped my hand.

  “Darling, you’re back. It took you long enough!” My conscience went slack. I should have hung up, but I put the receiver to my ear and eavesdropped. That voice sounded vaguely familiar.

  “How’d the interview go, Rosalie?” Another Rosalie! That name—a fairly unusual name, too—kept cropping up with monotonous regularity. I felt my scalp prickle, as the identity of the caller dawned on me. It was Rosalie Wildewood! Brad actually knew her! That’s why he had her books.

  “You didn’t see me?” It was all I could do to keep from blurting out that I’d seen her. She looked marvelous, and I loved Love’s Last Longing.

  “I had to go to L.A. How’d it go? Did you get a good plug in for the latest book?”

  “I was fantastic. At least everyone tells me so. Will I be seeing you tonight, darling?”

  “I’m tied up tonight, Rosalie.”

  “Did you have any success with Dane? Or need I ask?” she added, and laughed. “She is a woman, after all.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said, very hurriedly.

  “I’ll be out all day. Autographing sessions at Dalton’s and various shopping malls. Maybe we can get together for a drink after your dinner date tonight.”

  “We’ll see. Bye.”

  I waited for the click of Brad’s receiver. What I heard was his voice in my ear. “You can hang up now, Audrey.”

  I set the receiver on the cradle, wondering if he really knew I’d been listening, or was only guessing. I felt a perfect fool, but before I had much time to think about it, he was at the door, with the keys jangling in his fingers. He looked wary—it would be the matter of his “handling Dane” that accounted for it. As Dane had “handled” him, however, I didn’t mean to rub his nose in it.

  “It’s early, but we’d better go if we want to be on time at Drew’s place,” he said.

  “I thought your office phone was probably a separate listing. When you didn’t answer, I just . . ."

  “My life’s an open book to you now. I guess you figured out that was Rosalie Wildewood on the phone?”

  “Yes. Odd you didn’t mention knowing her, when we talked about her earlier.”


  “I had the idea you thought I was always bragging, so I kept quiet. I met her at a booksellers’ convention a few years ago. We see each other once in a while.”

  “What’s she really like?” I asked, with all the enthusiasm of a groupie.

  “She’s a smart lady. Good-looking, too.”

  The car threaded slowly through the evening traffic to a side street on the Upper East Side. Le Pavillon wasn’t a large restaurant, but the dimness of the lights and the quantity of jacketed flunkies alerted me that it wasn’t cheap either. There was some obéissance to the French name in the fin-de-siècle elegance of chandeliers, red upholstery, and French paintings.

  The maitre d’ made a fuss over Brad, and sent off a waiter to alert Chef Pierre le patron was here. I looked around the room while Brad and the sommelier discussed wines, and told him I’d have whatever he recommended. To betray the least interest in, or approval of, the place was unthinkable.

  Dinner was good, but no better than we’d had at Brad’s cottage, and certainly not as enjoyable. I kept harking back, in my mind, to the cottage, and to what Rosalie Wildewood had said. His “handling Dane” obviously meant getting at my research. “After all, she is a woman.” That was why he’d courted me, then. Not that I didn’t know it already, but to have others know was humiliating. I hardly even glanced at Brad. I felt the dark-eyed, handsome man sitting across from me was a stranger.

  To break the silence, we reverted to the subject of Drew Taylor, and what we should do about getting back my painting.