Scruples Two

by Judith Krantz

  “Josh! Shut up! I’ve made up my mind and I’m not interested in profit or loss.”

  “Look, you’ve got to absorb some of the shock. You’re not rational now, it’s normal to feel this way but if these orders are carried out, you’ll ruin the Scruples empire.”

  “The sooner the better,” she’d said in a tone of such arid, corrosive intensity that he’d stared at her incredulously, for no one knew better than he how much the triumphant success of the Scruples boutiques meant to her.

  “Billy, forgive me, but I just don’t understand,” he’d said, utterly at a loss.

  “Valentine would be alive today if I hadn’t asked her to design the costumes for Legend. I’m sure that was what she must have been doing in the store—she was overworked and trying to meet the deadline. It was my fault, Josh, and that’s all I’m ever going to say about it to anybody but you. The only reason I’m telling you is so that you’ll stop objecting and get to work. It was my fault. This is the only thing I can think of to do—I know it won’t bring her back, but … somehow.… it’s right.”

  “Billy—” he’d stopped, arrested in mid-protestation by her ghastly voice.

  “Josh, I expect you to work with the Ikehorn estate lawyers in New York, I want nothing more to do with it, I leave it in your hands. Pay six months’ salary to everyone who had worked in the Beverly Hills Scruples, two months’ to the people from Chicago and New York, and pay every outstanding bill of whatever nature at once, without discussion, Josh, without discussion. Never, under any circumstances do I intend to talk to you about this again. Scruples must cease to exist.”

  Billy had disappeared from his office even before he’d had a chance to tell her that he would follow her orders. He had accepted her crazed haste, her irrational feelings of guilt, but he had not acted without his customary thoughtful precision. It had been a year before all those orders could be carried out and finalized, down to the last comma on the last sheet of legal paper. Josh Hillman had liquidated the Scruples holdings, wherever they existed, at an efficient but businesslike pace. He knew that the market for choice retail locations had never been higher and was growing by the minute. By the time he’d finished disposing of the stores and the land he was able to take a grim satisfaction in the fact that the destruction of the Scruples empire had realized a substantial net profit, particularly in the case of the Chicago and New York stores, which he was able to sell immediately. The rest of the work was completed now and all that remained, although no one in the world knew it, was the piece of apricot marble with the Scruples name carved on it that had been fixed to the front door of the boutique on Rodeo Drive. It had been routinely delivered to him by the Beverly Hills Fire Department, in his capacity as Billy’s legal representative, and he had not been able to part with it.

  The nameplate was all that was left to him of Valentine, Valentine whom he had loved from the first instant he laid eyes on her; Valentine for whom he had divorced his wife of many years; Valentine who had intended to marry him, so he believed, until the very day she eloped with Spider Elliott. No one had ever known of their love, not even Joanne, his ex-wife. Josh Hillman had had to accept Valentine’s marriage in the same stoic, terrible silence in which he had grieved for her after her death. It was the only thing he could do for the woman who had given him such joy.

  Josh Hillman looked east from the windows of his twenty-second-story office. It was a smogless day and he could see as far as the outline of the tall apartment house in which Valentine had lived, first alone, and later, after her marriage with Spider. Where was Spider now, he wondered.

  The check for ten million dollars, which represented Spider and Valentine’s share of their partnership with Billy, had been delivered to Spider by messenger while he was still in Los Angeles, but no one had seen him since the memorial service for Valentine. Through a yacht broker at Marina del Rey who had called him before he accepted Spider’s check, hastily written on a local bank, Josh had learned that Spider had bought an ocean-going vessel, a battered, third-hand, but basically sound old sailing boat with no frills, a boat that could properly be termed anything from a yacht to a hulk. It was some fifty-five feet long, carried a reliable motor besides its sails, and possessed four cabins, enough for a small crew as well as the owner. Within the week Spider had moved a few belongings on board, hired two seasoned crew members, stocked the boat, and simply disappeared in the direction of Hawaii. Twice there had been word that someone had glimpsed him, but he communicated with nobody. He had been spotted at an anchorage off Kauai, and then he had been lost to view for months until he anchored at Raiatea, in the Society Islands of French Polynesia. There, in a region as large as western Europe, Josh supposed that Spider had remained, for lack of other news.

  He wished he could do the same, Josiah Isaiah Hillman thought, he wished he could just tell the world to continue on its way to perdition without him and sail away and try to come to some bearable terms with life, but he was forty-seven, the senior partner of a great law firm, a man with three children and duties to the community. The only romance in his orderly, upright, achieving life, a life of responsibility and probity, had been his passion for Valentine, and now that she was gone he would continue on as he had before he met her, knowing that he could count on habit to keep him going.

  Thank God, he thought, no one had dreamed of asking him to speak at the memorial service that had been held for Valentine in Billy’s gardens. He would not have been able to utter a word without breaking down, any more than Billy or Spider, who had sat withdrawn from each other and everyone else. He had not dared to look at Spider, but he had glanced at Billy and seen that her face was almost entirely hidden by the wide brim of the black hat with which she had sheltered herself from view. Dolly Moon had spoken, telling them of her magical experiences with Valentine with such overflowing love, and the control of the great actress that she was, that her words had been healing. And Jimbo Lombardi, Valentine’s great pal from her days as a New York fashion designer, had remembered her with his saving humor, recounting a trove of whimsical memories of the years in which Valentine had been the most vivid member of the coterie that swirled around her former employer, John Prince. Wells Cope had spoken too, in a grave, eloquent appreciation of Valentine’s talent, and finally Gigi had uttered a few short phrases in her clear, unfaltering voice, although she trembled visibly, speaking of the first day on which she had met Valentine, and of the other days on which they had been together, only happy days, only days of joy. And then it was over.

  Billy had closed the house on Charing Cross Road, leaving Josie Speilberg and Burgo O’Sullivan in charge of supervising its upkeep. A cleaning crew went in once a week, to keep the unused rooms spotless, the gardens continued to be tended, but Billy seemed to have deserted California forever when she had gone away a year ago, taking Gigi with her to spend the rest of the summer with Jessica Thorpe Strauss and her family in East Hampton.

  And he, Josh Hillman thought, had to go home now and dress for another dinner party at Susan Arvey’s, because, according to her, he was now the most eligible single man in Hollywood. He wished on no other man such a dreary, useless, pathetic fate.

  “I can’t believe the Labor Day weekend’s coming up,” Jessica said mildly, her famously sad lavender eyes wide, her famously enchanting mouth drooping in its famously irresistible way. She looked up from her book in the last week of August 1980, through the cloud of baby hair that still retained its Pre-Raphaelite vagueness. She and Billy had been sitting silently, reading on a screened porch. All summer long, from the time Billy and Gigi had arrived after Valentine’s funeral until today, two months later, Jessica had avoided any hint of a word that might seem to raise the question of Billy’s future activities, but now the end of summer was upon them, and something had to be settled.

  Three years older than Billy, Jessica had seen Billy through the most important changes of her adulthood, but never in sixteen years had she known her friend to be closed off from her i
n this granitelike grief, an inaccessible statue of a woman who had come half alive only when she threw herself into sailing and playing tennis with Jessica’s own five kids and Gigi, as if Billy had come to East Hampton instead of going to summer camp, seeking nothing more than the adolescents’ youthful spirits and joking company. She had avoided being alone with Jessica as much as possible.

  As if I’d ask her questions, Jessica thought, as if I’d try to give her sensible advice, as if I don’t know that there are some things that words can’t touch and that I can’t do anything to help her.

  But after Labor Day the Strausses would have to begin to think about packing up and organizing their yearly return to Manhattan, for the junior members of the family would all be returning to their various schools in September and there were clothes to be bought and arrangements by the dozen to be made.

  “Labor Day … oh, Jessie, no, not the end of the summer … I’ve always hated Labor Day, but this year …” Billy said slowly, lowering her book reluctantly. “I can’t remember when the approach of any holiday has made me so anxious.”

  “Hmmm.” Jessica made a neutral noise. She wasn’t going to interrupt, Jessica thought, not when it seemed as if Billy might finally be ready to have the discussion that was inevitable.

  “Jessie,” Billy said, sitting up straight and pushing the book aside, “I’ve been taking advantage of you all summer, don’t waste your time saying it isn’t true and other nice, well-meaning crap because we both know that all I’ve been doing here is trying to get myself back together. I’m so sick of kids I could scream, so I guess I’ll have to talk to you.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Billy smiled faintly. “You can go ‘hmmm’ all day, I won’t mind, so spare yourself, you need to save that energy for shopping for shoes with the twins, they’ve told me they plan to refuse to wear anything but sneakers all winter—oh, I know all your kids’ secrets, Jessie, including that David junior is insanely in love with Gigi, but since they’re the same age he might just as well have a crush on Jeanne Moreau in the maturity department, but I swore not to tell you, so promise you’ll pretend that you don’t know, all right?”

  “Hmmmmmmm.”

  “However, he’s so cute that she does let him make love to her.”

  “What!”

  “I knew I could get a rise out of you.” Billy actually laughed at the expression on Jessica’s face, and Jessica, hearing the laugh, relaxed. If Billy could tease her, things were beginning to get back to normal.

  “So what am I going to do with my life? That’s the question you’re asking yourself, aren’t you?”

  “It has crossed my mind,” Jessica said with mild encouragement.

  “Listen to this,” Billy said, “ ‘you just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless—there is just one thing to do … and that is to go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.’ Doesn’t that sound like good advice?”

  “For what? Navigating the Amazon?”

  “It’s some advice given to F. Scott Fitzgerald when he was having trouble with Tender Is the Night. I think it could apply to just about anything except eating a chocolate cake. So I’m going to follow it and just go ‘straight on through.’ ”

  “Through what?”

  “Through life, you know perfectly well that’s what I mean,” Billy said with such bravado that she sounded shrill. “I’m going to pretend that I’m an appallingly rich, not half-bad-looking, single and still young woman who can buy literally anything in the world that she wants. I’m going to own houses in the right places, meet the right people, fuck the right men, give the right parties, and be photographed at the right places at the right time of the year.” She paused, scrutinized Jessica’s unjudgmental expression and continued in a lower voice. “Only a very few people will know that I’ve utterly failed with my life because I refuse, from now on, to collaborate in my ruin. What people think about you ultimately depends on what you admit, and henceforth I admit nothing unless it looks, smells and sounds like triumph.”

  “Good grief,” Jessie murmured.

  “Well, what do you think?” Billy’s question was uneasy, defiant and touched with panic.

  “Why ask me? Nobody that triumphant would need my opinion.”

  “I mean it, Jessie, I really do intend to do just what I said, because I’ve got to have a plan and it’s the only one I can seem to imagine that won’t hurt anybody but myself. I’m aware that it’s not the prescription for getting to heaven—”

  “It involves only three of the Seven Deadly Sins, actually,” Jessica said thoughtfully. “Lust, greed and pride.”

  “What are the others?”

  “Envy, gluttony, sloth and anger, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, although I don’t know who appointed him.… but looked at that way, you’re marginally—just barely—on the side of the angels.”

  “I wouldn’t care if I committed six out of the seven. I couldn’t possibly do gluttony.… I just want to get out of this place I’m stuck at in my head, and the high life is all I can think of. I know I should be devoting myself to the betterment of humanity, but I can’t kid myself that I’d last long at that … I’ve given Josh carte blanche to use my money to do it for me, he’s so good about knowing how to give money where it’s needed.”

  “What about Gigi?”

  “We’ve talked quite a bit. She doesn’t really want to go to college, and I can’t blame her, I never went either, and I certainly can’t force her. She’s impatient to become independent as soon as possible, so she’s gotten herself an entry-level job with the fanciest caterer in New York, it’s called Voyage to Bountiful, Cora Middleton suggested them. Of course I’d like to keep her on a chain so that she’d never get far from me, but officially what can I do but be in favor of it, given Gigi’s abilities?”

  “But where will she live?”

  “I’ve rented an apartment for her in the building with the best security I could find. She’s going to share it with a girl named Sasha Nevsky. Sasha’s a very grown-up, responsible twenty-two, and her mother was friendly with Gigi’s mother. I arranged the whole thing over the phone with Mrs. Nevsky … she was thrilled because Sasha’s been living in a walk-up in a dubious neighborhood. Now the two girls will be almost around the corner from you, so at least I know Gigi can always drop in on you for advice when she needs it, and when she has a vacation she’ll come and visit me or I’ll come to New York to visit her.”

  “Coming to visit from where, for heaven’s sake? How come your high life doesn’t start in Manhattan?” Jessica asked, alarmed for the first time in this conversation.

  “I want to live outside of the United States for a while, Jessie,” Billy said slowly.

  “Oh, Billy, don’t go away,” Jessica pleaded. “Why do you have to leave New York?”

  “Ah, come on, I need a fresh start and New York is too public, I feel I’ve used it up, everyone knows everything about me … you understand, don’t you?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “And I won’t be any farther away than I was when I was in California,” Billy said in her most persuasive voice, “at least not at first. It’s the same three thousand miles either way, Paris or L.A.”

  “Paris! You’re not going back to live in Paris! Wilhelmina Hunnenwell Winthrop, I don’t believe it!”

  “French is the only foreign language I speak, and anyway I have unfinished business there.”

  “I’ll just bet I know what it is.”

  “Oh, Jessie, you don’t know everything, you only know almost everything.… oh, so what, maybe you’re right, I did leave Paris when I was poor and rejected, with my tail between my legs, and it is tempting to think of a grand return … and if you’re going to go in for the high life, you look for it where they’ve known how to do it right for hundreds of years, no?”

  “I suppose that was Cora’s idea too, no?”

  “She’s horrified. She wanted me to stay right here, just like you.”

&nbs
p; “Oh Christ. I’m being abandoned again. As if it weren’t tough enough being the discontinued woman.”

  “Huh?”

  “My glove size was the first to go,” tiny Jessica said mournfully, “or maybe it was my bra, it was so long ago I hardly remember. Nobody wears a 34A cup anymore, that I guarantee. Then came my panties … they stopped making size-four panties and didn’t even warn me so I could stock up. Forget shoes, they stopped designing size-five shoes for grownups years ago, and I even have to buy my tennis socks in the children’s department. As for clothes, what used to realistically be labeled a size eight is is now called a size four or six, you’d never believe my alteration bills. Am I shrinking, I wonder, or is there some growing prejudice against divinely delicate women? Just about the only thing I can still be sure of getting in the right size is prescription reading glasses. You can be too rich … like you … or too thin.… like me.… but you can never have enough reading glasses. They discontinued my lipstick color and my favorite mascara and—oh, there are the children.”

  “If a magnificent six-foot-two-inch lad can be termed a child. What’s David junior singing?”

  “His new ode to Gigi. It’s sung to the tune of ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’ … ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her shoes, her heels, her soles, her mules, hold no mystery for me now, her infinite variety is on the wane, it’s time I looked for different cooze again, I’ve grown accustomed to her shoes.’ Sweet, isn’t it, even if it doesn’t quite scan?” Jessica sang in her high, pure soprano, enjoying her revenge for Billy’s joke about Gigi and David.

  “Jessica! Cooze? How dare he? And where did he hear that word? Gigi didn’t say he was making love to her, but she didn’t say he wasn’t, either,” Billy hissed.

  “Then I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

  “Mothers of sons are insufferably smug!”