Scruples Two

by Judith Krantz

  “The Beautiful People,” Sam remarked to Henri. “They give new meaning to the expression ‘the world is your oyster,’ whatever that means. Maybe you have to love oysters to get it.”

  “Just so. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be them.”

  “We’ll never know, pal,” Sam answered incuriously, looking away.

  “What a beauty!” Henri pulled on Sam’s arm. “Look! That blonde in the red gown, that’s the one for me. What do you think of my taste in broads?”

  Sam focused on a luscious blonde who was deep in conversation with the man next to her.

  “Not bad, Henri, not to be sneezed at, you wouldn’t want to kick her out of bed, but probably not a broad.”

  “And the redhead in green velvet? Not to be coughed at either, eh, Sam?”

  “Sneezed at, pal, not coughed at, don’t try to improve on our slang,” Sam grinned.

  “I can see one woman at that table who is not a beauty, the older one in black, in profile, and even she is a jolie laide. Shall I go and try to pick her up? Perhaps with her I’ll be lucky.”

  “I’ll hold your coat, Henri. Only the brave deserve the fair.”

  A brunette, her back to Sam, who wore her hair pulled up high on her head and caught into a knot of white roses, clinked glasses with the man flanking her. She had on a strapless gown of white satin, the boned bodice clasping her tightly at her waist. As she moved to touch her glass with the man seated on her right, blue-white flecks of light scattered from the huge diamond drops that hung from her ears and glinted from the great clasp of her heavy diamond necklace.

  The nape of her neck. The shape of her shoulders. The lift of her arms. Impossible.

  “Sam!” Henri cried in dismay as his American friend pushed his way through the mob, straight toward the center table. “Sam! Stop! I was just kidding!”

  Sam plowed toward the table, unaware of the loud complaints of the people whose glasses he tripped, whose burning cigarettes he knocked aside. He halted abruptly behind the brunette, mute, suddenly unable to move. The girl in red looked up at him curiously.

  “Billy,” she said in French, “either the monsieur behind you wishes to say good evening or he plans to eat the roses from your hair.”

  Billy half turned, smiling in amusement, looked up and froze so completely that only the fragments of light broadcast by her diamonds continued to move.

  “Oh no! No! Sam, I was going to tell you,” she gasped.

  “Who are you? Who the hell are you?”

  “Sam. … I was going to tell you as soon as the show …”

  “What the hell are you doing here with these people? What the fuck is going on?”

  “Sam, please.” Billy stood up hastily. “They’re listening to every word,” she said with difficulty, speaking under the hubbub. “Go away, I beg you, go away, right now! I’ll meet you at home in half an hour. For Christ’s sake, go!”

  Sam turned on his heel and fled the room, ran down the vast, endless staircase, and made his way out of the Opéra. He sat in a cab hearing nothing, seeing nothing but Billy’s face, her diamonds, her bare shoulders. Nine months, he thought, over and over, counting them on his fingers, nine months, from April till now, nine whole months. At each second he felt his utter bewilderment changing into a pure rage. Whatever the explanation, he’d been played for a fool. A total, utter, complete fool.

  Five minutes after Sam had entered his studio, Billy walked through the open door, wrapped in dark sable, her white satin skirts billowing wide over her silver slippers, every diamond still defiantly in place.

  “What’s your story?” he asked roughly, standing in the middle of the empty studio.

  “Sam, you have to listen to me—”

  “Let’s get this straight right now. I don’t have to do anything.”

  “I know how angry you must be,” Billy said, as calmly as she could, “but, Sam, I swear to you that I’ve been planning for weeks to tell you right after the show, when you wouldn’t be dreading the opening—”

  “Thanks for your concern. I really appreciate that one hell of a lot. It’s always great to be made into a stupid fucking fool on somebody’s timetable.”

  “Does the name Billy Ikehorn mean anything to you?”

  “Yeah. Even in Marin County the hicks have heard of Billy Ikehorn.”

  “I’m Billy Ikehorn. I’m also Honey Winthrop—I was Honey Winthrop for twenty years.”

  “Okay. Big fucking deal. So I know one true thing about you. That’s nothing at all when everything else is a bunch of filthy, stinking lies.”

  “Sam, you’ve got it all wrong, the reason—”

  “Bullshit! Why didn’t you tell me who you were after the first weekend we spent together? Because you never trusted me enough, not for one minute, that’s the reason, there’s no other possible reason. Nine months! How long does it take you to trust somebody? The truth is that it wasn’t safe for me to know about Billy Ikehorn and all her damn money. What the fuck did you think I’d do with it if I’d known? Steal it? Spend it? Extort it? Blackmail you?”

  “You don’t understand how it happened, you’re not giving me a fair chance to explain—”

  “You don’t have to explain the only essential thing. You’ve never considered me an equal—I’m your fling with bohemia, your secret amusement, your roll in the gutter. The people you were with tonight—that’s your crowd. Just look at you, look in the mirror and you’ll know who you are! If this whole thing weren’t so Stella Dallas, I could laugh. I didn’t know women like you had pet sculptors—but live and learn. Just get the fuck out of here and don’t come back.”

  “Sam, I want to marry you. I love you.”

  “What utter crap! How can you stand there and say a thing like that? Even if you meant it, and I’ll never believe anything you say again, do you think I’d ever consider marrying a woman who didn’t trust me enough to tell me who she really was for nine whole months? A woman who played all sorts of sickening games with me, games I can’t begin to add up, a woman who didn’t dare let me know that she had money and lied over and over about where she was at night? I don’t know one true thing about you, the person you really are, if there is such a person. Do you think it matters if you call yourself Honey Winthrop or Billy Ikehorn when you never trusted me? How many other times have you done this in your life? How many other men have there been all along? You and your sacred independence—I fell for that line. Have you any idea how insulted I feel? How deeply, permanently insulted? I didn’t know anyone could make me feel this way. I told you to leave. I’m telling you again. You disgust me. Get out.”

  “I won’t go! Not until you hear me out—”

  Billy stood in the empty studio and listened to the sound of Sam’s footsteps clattering down the stairs.

  13

  She wouldn’t dream of spying on her best friend, Sasha told herself as she waited in a nondescript Second Avenue restaurant for Zach to join her for lunch, she was protecting her. Last Monday, when Gigi had left for her date with Zach, she had had such a pathetic, vulnerable, trusting look on her dear, innocent little face that, after intense soul-searching and deep thought, Sasha had come to the conclusion that close women friends owed each other a higher, finer loyalty than they owed to mere male members of their families.

  If women had developed this kind of admirable solidarity in the past, they wouldn’t be stuck with the cads who made up the vast majority of today’s male population. Yes, even her darling Zach was a cad, a better kind of cad than most, but, to face facts, deeply spoiled, bad to the core, Sasha thought sadly. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been idolized by womankind since the first time his diaper had needed changing. It wasn’t his fault that women had been offering themselves to him freely for as long as she could remember. It was worse now than it had been during the years when high school and drama students had taken up yards of space loitering about under his feet for a mere look from him. As a director in the hothouse atmosphere of Off B
roadway, he naturally inspired the most potent possible sexual fantasies. What actress didn’t want to drag her director into bed? Nor was it Zach’s fault that he had so often let himself be entrapped in a series of highly visible love affairs—what red-blooded director could help being aroused by his actresses? Off Broadway was poorly paid but, in compensation, it reeked of sex.

  Now that Gigi had realized she didn’t have the qualities it took to become a Great Slut, she must not be allowed to become contaminated by Zach. Gigi was too tender, her heart too open to illusions of love. She, Sasha, must take action in her capacity as the older and wiser roommate. As Gigi’s duenna, her chaperone, her guardian, her designated barrier against involvement with the wrong kind of man, she had a clear-cut duty to warn off her brother, who, without realizing what he was doing, would take advantage of a sweet, good woman who hadn’t been able to effectively put away her old-fashioned romantic ideals. A woman like Gigi.

  Zach kissed Sasha lingeringly on the back of her neck and slid into the seat opposite her. “If you weren’t my kid sister, I’d say you were a fine-looking figure of a woman.”

  “But I am, Zach,” Sasha said as severely as she could, considering that she worshiped him.

  “Then I have to say that you’re outtasight gorgeous. Lip-smackin’, finger-lickin’ good. If Ma could see you now, she’d be a candidate for immediate cardiac care. When are you going to stop showing up for family parties done up like a postulant about to take her final vows?”

  “Not till my wedding day, if I ever have one, given that I’ve never met a man worthy of me. The guys I know are just a bunch of housebroken puppies. I can’t imagine marrying any of those brats.”

  Zach grinned and ignored Sasha’s familiar complaint about the immaturity of the male sex. “Kid, Ma knows what you do for a living. Do you think she imagines you wear a body stocking under the undies?”

  “She doesn’t want to know any more than she has to. Trust me on that. Anyway, Zach, I didn’t make this date to discuss my childish boyfriends or my voluntary nonentity status in the Orloff-Nevsky circle.”

  “So why are we here? Aside from our normal incestuous urge to be together?” He smiled at her, a man in a billion. He had something rough and ready, something both demanding and kind, something clever and humorous in his dark eyes, that told every woman who looked into them that he was good for a laugh, a fuck, a stage direction, or a shoulder to cry on, or all four, if need be, although not necessarily simultaneously. Zach Nevsky was built like a longshoreman, wide and tall, with a muscular neck that carried his arrogantly set head in a way that made him dominate every group he was in. His nose was big and crooked and would have been the most noticeable feature in his reckless, high-cheekboned face if it hadn’t been perfectly counterbalanced by his mouth, which was sardonic, generous and determined. At twenty-eight, Zach Nevsky was a stud with brains.

  “Oh, Zach,” Sasha sighed, looking at him wistfully, “don’t rub it in.”

  “Sasha, that little incestuous tickle is the only way for siblings to really appreciate each other as friends, given that they’re natural enemies.”

  “You and your theories,” Sasha said gloomily.

  “You sound like a girl with a problem. Tell Daddy.”

  “I’m worried about Gigi.”

  “What about her?” He sounded alarmed, Sasha thought. A guilty conscience, no doubt. She was just in time.

  “Zach, you know that Gigi isn’t just another girl, don’t you?”

  “I’ve never met another Graziella Giovanna Orsini,” he said stiffly.

  “She told you her names!”

  “I asked. Why, are they some kind of secret?”

  “It took me months to pry them out of her. She thinks they’re too formal.”

  “I think they suit her,” Zach said with an uneasy defensiveness in his voice. “So what’s her problem?”

  “She’s a very sensitive person, Zach.” As if he didn’t know, Sasha thought. Men were such shits.

  “Sensitive is good. Would you want her to be insensitive? To put on and take off sensitivity like a sweater?”

  “Her feelings could easily be hurt.”

  “That’s something you could say about almost every member of the human race. We could all easily be hurt, even you, even me. I’m highly sensitive too. Even Ma’s feelings could be hurt. We’ve just never dared to find out.”

  “Zach, you’re being deliberately dumb. You’re trying to stop me from saying what I came here to say because you don’t want to listen to it. Now pay attention! Gigi has a lousy father and a mother who went and died on her at a difficult time in her adolescence. Her stepmother seems to have disappeared into the depths or heights of Paris, we’re not quite sure which. All Gigi gets from her is an occasional, wildly happy phone call. It sounds as if she’ll never be back. So, except for me, she’s more or less alone in the world and she’s not all that happy with her job—so you and I have an obligation to treat Gigi very, very carefully. We have to be gentle with her. Am I getting through to you, Zach?”

  “A lousy father, huh?”

  “The real article. She hasn’t heard a word from him in more than a year. Not even a postcard. She’s just a babe in the woods. And I think she’s developing a little crush on you, a kind of transference.”

  “No way,” Zach said forcefully. “You’re imagining things.”

  “You only say that because you’ve become hardened to women’s finer emotions, Zach. You’ve had so many easy victories over the female population that you don’t even notice it when a demure little person like Gigi starts taking every word from your mouth as if it were coming from an oracle. You have no idea how many times she quotes you to me as the ultimate authority.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Zach said disbelievingly. “Authority on what exactly? Her job problems?”

  “Basically, yes, but that’s just a smokescreen for her craving to say your name. When you begin to have an irresistible urge to say another person’s name, when you drag it into every conversation even when it’s not about that person—well, even you have to know what that means. It’s a dead giveaway, the absolute sign of a developing crush.”

  “What is this ‘crush’ business?” Zach said, deeply irritated. “A schoolgirl inclination? A mild preference? A little bit of pastel nonsense? It’s not a word that I ever expected to hear from you, kid. A crush is essentially harmless and juvenile, like something out of Little Women.”

  “I was employing a shorthand way of saying that I think that these conversations you’ve been having with Gigi about her job are leading her to take you more seriously than you intend.”

  “Sasha, spit it out! Stop beating around the bush, don’t give me long sentences that don’t mean anything,” Zach exploded.

  “If you don’t stop listening to her and giving her advice, she’ll fall in love with you,” Sasha said portentously.

  “That’s a laugh!”

  “I know Gigi and I tell you it’s happening. It may even be too late.”

  “Very funny,” Zach said furiously. “This is all part of it, isn’t it? This lunch is all part of the plot you two have hatched against me, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sure, Sasha, go ahead and play the innocent friend! She sent you here to say all this, didn’t she? Or was it your idea? Which one of you figured out this fiendish twist? Which one of you decided that I wasn’t suffering enough? Oh, I know how you two think, I know all about how men must suffer, but I never realized that it applied to your own brother! Don’t you have a speck of family loyalty?”

  “You … you’re suffering? Did you say you were suffering?”

  “Right, rub salt in my wounds. Stretch me on the rack and listen to my bones crack one by one, bury me in the sand and let the fire ants start in on my eyeballs, enjoy yourself! What did I ever do to you to merit such treatment, that’s what I’d like to know!”

  “Zach, shut up. I have to think,” Sasha said fra
ntically.

  “There’s nothing to think about. You and your little pal have won. Enjoy your victory, wallow in it, what the hell do I care? ‘Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ Well, I have news for Shakespeare, he didn’t know for sure, did he? He didn’t take a poll, he sure as hell never asked me.”

  “You’re dying for love?” Sasha gasped.

  “Not yet, not just yet, but it could go that way if I don’t get hold of myself. Not that she hasn’t told you all about it! I suppose the two of you sit around and laugh at me, two witches and their victim. Oh, she started out according to the book, all those timid questions, with a sort of quaver in her voice, making me feel so big and protective and important. And that look of hers, as if I knew the secret of the universe, did you train her to zap me with that look? And then asking to come to my place last Saturday night when she was troubled—troubled, honest to God, that was the word she used—and somehow or other, half an hour later I found myself tasting the best food I’d ever had in my life while she sat as far away from me as possible and looked so fucking beautiful in that fucking stage-prop apron that I couldn’t even eat—and the whole time she’s telling me about what happened with her and that Englishman back in California, the guy who broke her heart when she was a virgin, the lousy bastard who was going to sneak out on her without saying good-bye—she probably invented that whole story just to make me even more jealous than I am already. And then all those nights she told me she couldn’t go out with me because she had other dates, but she won’t tell me one single word about them, not a breath, not a hint—that’s another thing you taught her, didn’t you? All I can say is I’ll get you for this, Sasha. One day I’ll get you!”

  “Tell me I’m not hearing what I’m hearing,” Sasha implored the heavens.

  “That’s right, gloat! And not letting me lay a hand on her—that’s your doing too. I recognize your touch, you ought to be put away. First get the sucker into a condition where he can’t see straight, then deny him anything but a kiss on the tip of your wonderful pointed little nose or the top of your silky little tangerine head, and if he’s very good, let him kiss your soft little cheek, but that’s it! Not another inch! And tell him it’s because you’re afraid that you might get too fond of him—fond!—if he kissed your lips … lips, she actually stopped at the lips! Yeah, that was the killer, all right. And what the fuck is so terrible about fond? That blew me out of the water. I’ve never heard that in my whole life—where do you come up with these tricks? Do you find it in Jane Austen? Henry James? The Kama Sutra?”