“We may never know what’s going on with him, since man is not an animal that chooses to communicate with its mate,” Jessica sidestepped, too angry with Vito to trust herself to speculate further on him without saying something Billy might never forgive her for. “Tell me more about Gigi.”
“I can see that she’s mourning her mother, even though she keeps so busy that someone else might not realize it,” Billy said slowly. “It’ll be a long time before she gets over that loss … maybe you never do. I never knew my mother, but I have such respect for the woman Gigi’s mother must have been … she brought her up to be so self-reliant, so straightforward, she’s interested in the whole world, at ease with all kinds of people. She fit into her new school right away. She’s wildly popular already, and thank God, she’s not interested in boys yet. That’s when I’ll have to start to worry.”
“Just don’t come to me for advice about adolescents,” Jessica said. “Each one of mine presents a revoltingly different set of problems. They ought to meet Gigi, it might shape them up.”
“Wait a minute, Jessie! Wouldn’t David junior be just about the right age for Gigi, not now, but when she gets interested in boys? They could get married, have lots of children and we’d be the joint grandmothers!”
“If she’d take David junior off my hands, consider it done.” Jessica laughed, delighted to have taken Billy’s mind off Vito for a minute. She went to make more tea, remembering how worried she had been when her friend had decided to marry someone she had known for only a week. Talk about asking for trouble!
Last summer, when Billy had been so unhappy, feeling like an outsider on the Mirrors location, she had spoken to her sagely of the necessity of making compromises in married life, even quoting Edmund Burke to her. But now, Jessica thought savagely, she’d be incapable of advising Billy to compromise with a man who had, by Gigi’s own account, spent almost no time at all with her during her entire childhood. If he hadn’t given a damn about his first child, why should he turn into a good father to Billy’s child? What a brutal bastard he was to abuse her verbally at this vulnerable time in her life. How could Billy not be as furious at him as she was herself? Or was Billy unconsciously preventing herself from getting as enraged as she damn well should be, because she was pregnant by the son of a bitch and didn’t dare admit to herself how bad the prospects looked?
If she really spoke her mind, Jessica thought, turning off the electric kettle as it boiled, she’d have to tell Billy that Vito had become a shit because of his success, not because he was afraid of it. She’d have to say that he’d behaved decently so long as he was in a down position, but now that he was top dog, he was able to express his resentment of Billy’s wealth. Few men, if any, wore well in marriage to women who were far richer than they, much less a woman as rich as Billy. But she wasn’t going to speak her mind, because maybe, just maybe, she was wrong and everything was going to work out. Maybe the Oscar wasn’t a curse.
“Mint or chamomile, Billy?”
“I’ll live dangerously. Make it instant espresso this time, dearie. Decaf, of course.”
Josie Speilberg’s relationship with Vito’s secretary, Sandy Stringfellow, was a cautious one. Sandy had worked for Vito for seven years, almost as many as Josie had worked for Billy, and they treated each other with all the punctilious protocol of ambassadors from neighboring countries that live in peace with each other yet remain on guard for any power play, any frontier invasion. They were too totally loyal to their respective bosses for them to regale each other with the inside gossip that made the mafia of Hollywood secretaries so strong, yet they kept each other informed of Billy’s and Vito’s whereabouts as a matter of course, without specific instructions to do so. Hollywood secretaries need to know, on a twenty-four-hour basis, where to reach people, and after hearing from Billy the morning after her arrival, Josie called Sandy to tell her that Billy would be in New York for a few more days.
“Shopping for maternity clothes?” Sandy asked.
“I imagine Mrs. O.’ll have them made at Scruples,” Josie answered.
“And why not?” Sandy was tart.
“That’s what I’d do, if I weren’t beyond my childbearing years.”
“I can’t wait to be safely postmenopausal like you, Josie. It’s such a bore to have to worry about getting pregnant, even with the Pill.”
“Cheer up, it won’t be long. A year or two, maybe three at the outside?”
“I’ll get you for that someday. ’Bye, Josie. Keep in touch.”
Three days later, Josie called Sandy again, to tell her that Billy was arriving home sometime that evening.
“Mrs. O.’s planning to leave New York after dinner, so even with the three-hour time change, she’ll be in late. She told me to go on home after dinner with Gigi. I guess she doesn’t want Mr. Orsini to wait up, she didn’t say one way or the other.”
“He’s out for dinner with Maggie MacGregor anyway.”
“Right. ’Bye, Sandy,” Josie said, thinking that it was interesting to know where Mr. Orsini was dining for a change. He’d been out for dinner every night since Mrs. O. had left, although without information to the contrary, Jean-Luc had prepared dinner as if he were going to be there. Each morning of Billy’s absence, by the time Josie Speilberg made her way downstairs for breakfast, Vito had left for his office. Although he’d called once to say hello to Gigi, she hadn’t seen him come in at night before she’d retired to watch television while Gigi finished her homework in her own room. The upstairs maid had reported to Josie that Mr. Orsini had moved from the master bedroom to one of the guest rooms, although the house had so many that Josie hadn’t laid eyes on him.
Mrs. O. must have been having trouble sleeping, Josie thought, although she hadn’t mentioned it. Her own parents had never shared a room except on their brief honeymoon because her father snored so loudly. She understood that the Queen of England and Prince Philip’s bedrooms weren’t even on the same floor of Buckingham Palace. Even for royalty, that was just a bit odd, but separate bedrooms were a luxury she thoroughly understood and approved of, even for heavy sleepers. They kept the romance in the marriage as nothing else could except separate bathrooms, Josie concluded. If she’d ever been married, she would have insisted on the bathrooms even if she’d had to do without a closet.
When Vito had discovered that Billy had left for New York, he’d called Maggie for dinner. He had no intention of eating with Gigi and Josie and playing daddy, no inclination to eat out alone, no dinner meeting planned that night, and he could count on Maggie to sense his mood and not ask him questions he didn’t want to answer.
They’d gone to Dominick’s, the dark, smoky, cramped, uncomfortable, undistinguished grill without a sign over its door that was one of the best-kept secrets in Hollywood. Dom’s served only a short list of basic steaks and chops, although on rare days a favorite customer could get grilled chicken. Its limp tableclothes were authentically red and white checked, you had to pay cash or have a house account, they wouldn’t take a reservation unless you were a regular, you left there with your hair smelling of cooking, wondering why you’d gone, but every night a number of the power players in Hollywood congregated at Dom’s, where there were no civilians to be seen. Like the Polo Lounge, it was a place at which you were guaranteed to be noticed, and when Maggie and Vito had dinner there three days in a row, nobody, not even Dom, thought anything of it. You couldn’t carry on anything you shouldn’t at Dom’s because it was a part of the industry, and you couldn’t carry on with Maggie MacGregor for the same institutional reason.
Or so people reasoned, Vito thought. The first night he’d had dinner with Maggie, he’d gone back to her house for a drink, and there they had resumed the affair that had kept Maggie in Rome for two weeks in the fall of 1974, supposedly interviewing him for Cosmo. They had both known, all through dinner, that it was going to happen, and the clubby, nothing-to-hide atmosphere of Dom’s had only enhanced an anticipation that had needed no questions o
r answers to guarantee it.
Vito had never forgotten how lusciously erotic Maggie was, once she took off her clothes. In the four years since he’d last seen her naked, she had learned how to dress but she had lost nothing of her voluptuousness. There was not an inch missing of Maggie’s ripe, heavy breasts, and her plump, inviting bottom was as round and creamy as ever. She was wonderfully quick to attain her orgasm, coming almost as soon as he started to touch her clitoris, even before he entered her, and then insisting that he take her just as quickly and ruthlessly as he chose, urging him on without words, her movements unmistakable, her body juicy and open. Making love to Maggie was like fucking the best whore in the world, Vito thought, and he found himself capable of coming more often than he did with Billy because he could please Maggie so quickly and frequently, with so little preliminary attention. Between bouts of lovemaking they gossiped and laughed casually, in an offhand camaraderie he relished, without any of the sticky palaver of two people who are in love. And all along Vito was aware, with a lordly assurance, that if and when he chose to feel Maggie’s soft lips close around the tip of his cock, all he had to do was put his hand on the back of her neck and push it down between his legs. She liked it like that, she liked it any way he gave it to her, she wanted him hard and she wanted him soft, so that she could make him hard, and thinking about her readiness to please aroused him at odd times during the day in an urgent, inconvenient way that hadn’t happened to him since he was in high school. Fucking Maggie MacGregor involved no big fucking deal, Vito thought, and that was what made it so exquisitely addictive.
When Sandy informed him of Billy’s plan to return to California late that evening, Vito knew that he would be at Maggie’s house that night. Fed up with the limited cuisine at Dominick’s, they had decided to eat pizza at her place. He sat at the desk, wondering if he should leave Maggie sleeping, as he had been doing, to return very late to the guest room in the house on Charing Cross Road where he still slept, dressed and breakfasted, or whether or not he intended to be at home at a reasonable hour. A “reasonable” hour of return, for anyone out for dinner in Hollywood, would be eleven or eleven-thirty at the latest. People didn’t linger in restaurants here as they did in all civilized cities of the world. They ate no later than seven-thirty, and parties broke up soon after eleven; even successful parties held on weekends were over by midnight.
He couldn’t make up his mind what he was going to do, Vito realized at last. If he came home by eleven-thirty he would probably see Billy, and if he saw Billy they would have to talk and if they talked, he didn’t know what they’d end up saying. If he came home at three in the morning, there would be no explanation but the obvious one. Perhaps something would happen during the day to make him make up his mind one way or another, but right now it was in the laps of the gods, if there were any of them still hanging around, he thought, and picked up the phone on which Sandy had been buzzing him patiently.
It was nine o’clock by the time Billy reached her bedroom. There was no sign of Vito, and she had no inclination to look for him. The flight had been smooth, she’d done nothing but sit and read, yet she felt extraordinarily tired, too depleted to even tiptoe into Gigi’s room, where the light was out, and take the peek at her that she’d promised herself during the trip. She was simply too frazzled to do anything but strip off her clothes, put on a nightgown and crawl into the bed. It was midnight in New York, Billy realized, but it was some other, utterly drained hour in her body. Could a mere three-hour time difference produce jet lag, she wondered, as she drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, Billy woke in the dark, woke abruptly, as if from a bad dream, with her heart pounding, and the absolute conviction that something was wrong. She listened intently for a second, wondering if the house was on fire, until a fearsome cramping ache began to mount in her belly. She wrapped her arms around herself as tightly as she could, pressing into her stomach with all her power, and the ache, which felt like a very severe menstrual cramp, gradually receded. Now Billy knew what had awakened her, and a rush of fear enabled her to get out of bed and switch on the light. There was blood on the bottom sheet, and another cramp was beginning. Billy shut her eyes and bowed her head and waited, moaning, until it was over and she could move again. She had to get to the hospital, and quickly, was all she could think. Vito! No, she didn’t know where he was. She dialed Gigi on the intercom.
“Hello … hello, who is it?” Gigi’s voice said confusedly.
“Gigi, it’s Billy. I’m back, but I’m in trouble. Wake up whoever drives you to school on the intercom and tell him to have a car downstairs right away. I’m going to the UCLA hospital, got that, tell him UCLA, it’s the nearest.”
“Okay, hang on, I’ll be right in.”
“No, Gigi, no, I don’t want you to see this.”
“Billy, just put on your slippers and a warm robe,” Gigi said and hung up.
A minute later, as Billy was in the bathroom, stuffing Kleenex into a pair of panties she’d put on under her nightgown, she heard Gigi open the bedroom door.
“Do you need me in there?” Gigi called.
“No, I’ll be right out.” Billy emerged, ready to go, and saw Gigi standing watchfully by her bathroom door, clad in jeans and a sweater she’d pulled over her pajamas, slippers on her feet.
“Lean on me,” Gigi said. “Burgo’s waiting downstairs. I didn’t think you’d want him up here in your room.”
“Oh, Gigi, Gigi, I’m losing the baby.”
“It’s probably not certain, not yet. Come on, put your arm around my shoulders, we have to walk downstairs and get to a doctor.”
“Oh God, why did this happen?”
“Come on, Billy, just put one foot in front of the other, you can lean on me, I’m strong.”
“Wait … wait, I can’t move.… all right now, hurry, before I have another cramp.”
Together they quickly managed the stairs and walked through the house, stopping only once when another cramp hit Billy. Burgo took over as soon as they appeared at the front door, helping Billy into the car. Gigi slid in next to Billy, her arm around her protectively, as they sped the short distance to the emergency room of the hospital. But although they reached the UCLA emergency room in minutes and every measure was taken to save Billy from having a miscarriage, within an hour it was over. Dr. Wood, Billy’s own doctor, arrived too late to do anything but confirm the fact.
“But why, why?” Billy asked again and again.
“It’s not at all unusual, Mrs. Orsini. You were barely three months pregnant, perhaps a week more at the most. If a miscarriage is going to occur, it’s most likely to happen during these first three months. It doesn’t compromise your future capacity to have children. There was some good reason for this pregnancy not to continue. We doctors consider it nature’s way of correcting a mistake.”
“Oh God,” Billy said flatly. She would never ask again.
“If you feel strong enough, I’d advise you to go home in an ambulance. The hospital will only depress you. I’ll send you a private nurse to care for you there. A few days in bed and you’ll be as good as new.”
“Don’t bother about the ambulance. I have Gigi, and Burgo’s still waiting. They got me here, they can certainly take me back.”
The doctor looked at Gigi sharply. She was holding Billy’s hand, as she had been for the last hour. No one had been able to prevent her from staying by Billy’s side. “Fine, Mrs. Orsini, but stay here for another hour at least. I’ll wait outside and go home with you and settle you down. May I ask who this young lady is?”
“My daughter,” Billy said.
“At least you have one child, and you’ll certainly have another. You’re only thirty-five.”
“Yes,” Billy agreed, “this one … at least.”
4
After her return home from the hospital, Billy stayed in bed, sleeping deeply, waking to a half-doze, and then sleeping again. Several times she rang for orange juice and toast with jam, oc
casionally she read for a half hour, but for two days and one night she managed to lull herself into forgetfulness, into a willed calm, a sheltered place where nothing was allowed to enter her consciousness but the smoothness of the sheets, a few pages of an unmemorable book, and the rapid recuperation of her body.
Long after midnight following the second day of rest, she opened her eyes, feeling strong and so wide awake that it was impossible to stay in bed for another minute. She looked out of the windows and saw that the moon was full and high in the sky, the night was unclouded, and the garden paths were softly illuminated by the concealed lights that went on automatically every night. Billy hastily pulled on a warm sweater, slacks, a trench coat and waterproof boots, picked up a key and went outside to prowl around and try to walk off her alertness so that she could go back to sleep again till morning.
She walked slowly but deliberately out onto the terrace, testing her body’s willingness, and found that the motion felt welcome, necessary. She began to stride briskly, enjoying the sound of her firm tread on the paths that lay bathed in the heavy dew that came in from the ocean every night. Taking the long gardeners’ walk that had been planned to circle the outer borders of the property, passing the cutting gardens, the vegetable gardens, the greenhouses, the tennis courts and the pool, occasionally exchanging a silent nod with one of her security men, she headed toward the hidden garden, to which only she and Gavin, the head gardener, had keys.
Within ten minutes, Billy unlocked the wooden door to the walled garden that lay concealed behind a screen of dark cypress. It was an all-white garden at every season of the year. Tonight the first roses of spring bloomed, flinging their new canes high over the twelve-foot-high stone walls, their sprays mixed with climbing trumpet vines and rampant jasmine that was in its full glory. The square garden had been Billy’s special request of Russell Page. She had first seen an all-white garden at Sissinghurst Castle, in Kent, on a day in earliest spring when she had visited there with Ellis Ikehorn. The only bloom at that time of the year in England had been a bed of enormous white pansies with violet centers. They had given her more of a shock of beauty than if the entire garden had been at its summertime peak.
Scruples Two Page 9
