Scruples

by Judith Krantz

  “Because I know perfectly well that everyone will be after her and, inevitably, someone will get her. I’m resigned to losing her for the magazine sooner or later, but I want to be the one to decide to whom. She has a lot of faith in my advice, and I believe you’d be the best for her. Or, we can put it this way, Wells. I want to do someone a favor rather than look like a loser.”

  “And I’ll owe you?”

  “You’ll owe me,” she agreed. “I probably won’t ever collect, but it’s nice to know it’s there. You’ll honor the obligation and most wouldn’t—and we go back a long way.”

  “So we do.” He was wondering what the old dyke had been up to. She was acting like a fucking stage mother. This wasn’t Harriet’s style at all. But so what, if he got the girl.

  “I suppose it’s absurd to ask if she can act?”

  “That’s for me to know and for you to find out,” Harriet answered. When she got what she was after, she was capable of a little show of schoolmarmish high spirits.

  “I intend to. Next week. Could you possibly call her for me and arrange to get her on a plane as soon as possible?”

  “No, Wells, you’ll have to handle that end. Tell her anything you want to but don’t mention my name. I’ll give you her home phone number—say you got it over the grapevine—you’ll think of something. I don’t want anyone to know I’ve shown you these pictures. I’ll take the credit when the moment comes. That is a must, Wells. I’ve never been more serious. It wouldn’t help me at the magazine if they knew,”

  “Harriet, I understand perfectly. I give you my absolute assurance.” He didn’t understand at all, but he knew he would eventually. In any case, Wells Cope hadn’t built his Hollywood career on betraying trusts. Secrecy was one of his major talents.

  Harriet flew back to New York on Tuesday. Wells had persuaded her to stay over the extra day to keep him company in his hide-out vacation. His was one of the only houses in the world where a person could grow sick of pâté de foie gras, beluga malossol, canard à l’orange, great wines, and private screenings of unreleased movies in just three days. Harriet felt pleasantly cosseted and anxious to get back to work.

  On Wednesday morning Harriet made eight phone calls, two of them to women she considered the most important fashion editors in town, besides herself, and the other six to the art directors of huge advertising agencies. She set up lunch dates with them for what was left of that week and all of the following week.

  Long before the final lunch Spider was dead professionally.

  “But, Harriet, everyone’s heard he’s your new fair-haired boy.”

  “No one will ever know what I went through with him, Dennis. Talent isn’t enough to excuse everything. He’s simply incapable of being on time—it must be some sort of compulsion. He always kept us waiting around the studio for a minimum of two hours before he finally deigned to show up! More than half the time the models had to leave for other bookings before he got there. And then the retakes! There weren’t more than a handful of shots we didn’t have to retake once, sometimes twice. In fact, although I hate to give that bastard credit, if our art director hadn’t been there to hold his hand every step of the way, we wouldn’t have been able to use him at all.”

  “Christ, why did you put up with it?”

  “Because if you can possibly hang in there, he is good. But now I’m cutting my losses. You can imagine what it cost. I’m so far over budget for every issue I used him for that Lace is frankly ready to kill. He’s usually understanding about these things, but this time it’s way out of bounds. Spider Elliott just has a Stanley Kubrick complex. If I wasn’t such an old hand, I’d probably be out on my ass.”

  “Retakes, huh?”

  “That wasn’t all. I put up with his screwing the models in the dressing room, but now I find that his latest work is simply unusable. Just plain bad. We’ll have to re-shoot all of November with another photographer. It’s all my fault when you get right down to it. When will I learn not to give inexperienced kids a chance? But enough of my horror stories, Dennis. I’m sorry I had to cry on your shoulder, but this has been one of the worst experiments I’ve made in years. Let’s forget it—tell me about what’s going on over at your shop. How’s your new account coming along? I think the ads are smashing—who are you using?”

  “Really, Spider, I just don’t understand what you’re getting so upset about.” Melanie’s ice-sweet voice didn’t betray any anger, just a sort of plaintive wonder. “I still don’t know exactly how Wells Cope heard about me, but I checked it out with his office on the coast and there’s no doubt that it’s perfectly legitimate. He just wants me to come out and be tested. They said I’d only be gone about two weeks—that’s not forever—and anyway, it sounds sort of thrilling. You’re acting like he might be a white slaver when you know perfectly well he’s one of the top producers in Hollywood.” Melanie was speaking from Spider’s huge canvas chair, designed for lolling rather than sitting, but she retained her upright, demure poise. “Oh, Spider, I know it’s a million to one nothing will come of it, but all my expenses will be paid and I’ll get to see California, so how can you be so negative?”

  “But what if you don’t come back from the Casbah? Haven’t you heard tales of people who went to Hollywood for only two weeks and were never seen having lunch in Ghio’s again?”

  “Silly.” His fear and his need had showed plainly through his attempt at a joke. Nothing could have made Melanie more certain that she was right to leave. First, Spider had started making really ridiculous insinuations about Harriet, who had only been trying to comfort her—such insanely sinister hints—she was glad she’d refused to even listen—and now he was actually trying to prevent her from having a screen test. In the beginning, when they were shooting the September issue, she had thought that Spider was the most exciting and unpredictable man she’d ever met—so sure of his talent, able to help her be something she hadn’t known she could be, but lately he was getting just like all the others, wanting too much, wanting more than she ever intended to give. Because she’d let him make love to her, she’d let herself get into this position where he thought he had rights. Rights!

  Spider suddenly scooped her up out of the chair and gently laid her on his bed. “My love, my little love, let me be your slave—only what you want, darling, only what you want,” He was actually shaking in the shamelessness of his passion. Melanie, taken by surprise, realized that it wouldn’t be easy to slip away from Spider when he was this wild. He knew she was taking the first plane tomorrow morning. It seemed simpler to let him have his way.

  She lay back, offering herself docilely, while he undressed her and then hastily stripped himself naked, his graceful athlete’s body a shadowy bulk against the faint light of the room. She wouldn’t do a thing, she thought, not a single thing, just lie there and let him have his fun.

  Spider bent tenderly over her, all his weight on his knees and his elbows, staring at her composed wide-eyed face. His heavy cock was already so hard that it was horizontal, almost flat up against his belly as he knelt. She didn’t look at it. Slowly, never touching her except with his lips, he kissed her marvelous mouth, outlining her lips with the tip of his tongue as carefully as if he were creating them. When she didn’t open her lips to him, he thought that she was asking him, without words, to suck her nipples. He settled back on his heels, leaned forward, and cupped a small breast softly in each hand. He paid homage to each breast in turn, rimming the nipple with his tongue until it stood up, then sucking it with his mouth for long intent minutes—the silence unbroken except for his suckling sounds. Once he whispered, “Good? Is it good?” and she breathed quietly, “Hmm.” After a long while Spider gently pushed Melanie’s breasts together with both his hands so that the nipples were only inches apart. Holding them firmly, he darted his tongue from one to the other, now sucking, now nuzzling, now nipping her delicately with his teeth, now opening his mouth as wide as possible to take in as much of her breast as he could, the s
uction coming from his cheeks and throat as well as from his lips. Her breasts were wet and pink and suddenly they seemed bigger, fuller, than he’d ever felt them before. Spider hadn’t felt the touch of her hands anywhere on his body; her arms were still lying at her sides. Playing virgin, he thought tenderly. But she must be ready. He slid down the bed to enter her.

  “No,” she hissed. “You said you’d be my slave. You may not put it in me—I forbid you. Absolutely. You may not!”

  “Then you know what a good slave would have to do, don’t you,” he said deeply in his throat, on fire at the prohibition. “That thing you’ve never let me do to you—that’s what you have a slave for.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said tonelessly, giving him tacit permission.

  He cupped his hands under her buttocks. She hastily laced her hands together over her pubic hair but made no protest. After searching with his tongue, Spider found a tiny space between her fingers and pushed his strong, impatient tongue through it until he reached the silky hair and the warm skin. Still she said nothing. Victoriously, he spread her knees apart, firmly grasped her wrists and pinned her hands at her sides. He slid down further on the big bed and lay flat on his pulsating penis, his head held just above her pussy. The feathers of fine hair barely covered her deliciously white and childish-looking outer lips. He covered her pubic hair with long lappings of his tongue, so that the hair grew wet. Then, using only the tip of his tongue, he traced and retraced the indentation deep between the outer lips and the pinker inner lips, folded secretly inside. Finally his tongue found the furrow between those soft inner lips and pushed upward into her vagina. He curled and pointed his long tongue so that it was as firm as possible and plunged it in deeply.

  “No! Stop. Remember your promise—no farther,” she panted, beginning to wriggle away from him in earnest. Still holding her down with his hands he pulled his tongue back and sought the nub of her clitoris with his lips. It was tiny, almost hidden, but he sucked persistently on it once he had found it, stopping only to slowly rub his tongue back and forth across it several times before he resumed sucking. As he sucked he found that rhythmically, unconsciously, he was rubbing his hugely engorged penis on the sheets that covered the bed. Suddenly the silent girl started to make lunging movements toward his mouth as if she wanted him to take her whole pussy in his mouth at once. She pushed it in his face with total abandon, grunting, “Don’t put your cock in—whatever you do—keep your promise, slave.” As he sucked and licked frantically, increasing the pace, he heard her moaning and muted ferocity, as if she could hardly keep from screaming out loud. He forgot his own self so completely that it seemed as if all the world contained was this wide-open cunt, which he was not allowed to enter, only to pleasure. Suddenly she went very still, all her muscles rigid. Finally she was shaken by contractions and she shouted. As he felt this climax, Spider’s cock had been excited beyond endurance from the friction of the sheets as he worked on her. He felt himself shooting sperm convulsively, over the bed, unable to hold back another second.

  They fell apart, exhausted, as their orgasms subsided. After a minute Spider, still lying face down on the bed, felt her stir. “Don’t move—I’m just going to the bathroom.” She slipped away as he lay there, too happy and too drained to look after her. She’s finally made it, he thought, finally, finally. So that’s what she’d wanted all along. What a shy, repressed silly darling, afraid to do the thing that delighted her beyond all else—next time I’ll know what she really wants—and I’ll give it to her, and give it—His thoughts trailed off into a short sleep.

  When he woke up she was gone.

  “Val, darling Val, tell me the truth. Do you think I’m being paranoid?”

  Valentine looked carefully at Spider. He was huddled, as if he were cold, in her biggest chair, yet his hair was streaked with nervous sweat, his skin gray and tight-looking around his mouth and eyes. Why, she wondered, did she feel as if her heart might crack for him? He was her best friend, nothing more. Of course, friendship was an important thing, more important really than love, for it lasted, while love—just look where love had brought him. She could have warned him about Melanie, but it had been none of her business.

  “You are a bigger fool than I thought the first time I met you, Elliott,” she said softly.

  “Huh?”

  “Of course you’re not paranoid. One night you see Harriet Toppingham trying to make love to your little friend. Seven days later your little friend is in California and your new agent has called to tell you that all your bookings for this week have been canceled, not just for Fashion but for three different advertising agencies. And now he tells you that you have no bookings at all for next week and he can’t even get in anywhere to show your stuff. You’d have to be mad if you didn’t put two and two together.”

  “But it’s so fucking unbelievable. Why would anyone do something like this? What did Harriet think I was going to do? Tell people—broadcast it maybe? Blackmail her or challenge her to a duel at dawn? She has no reason to destroy me!”

  “Elliott, sometimes you are naive. You have told me a great deal about this Harriet Toppingham and her ways, and I can tell you, from being brought up in a world full of women most of my life, that she is evil. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you put yourself in her place and imagine how a woman like that must have felt about you when you didn’t bow down and kiss her ass like everyone else does?” Valentine’s bright, untidy head bobbed angrily to emphasize her words. “I have known many women who live for power and I know what wicked things they are capable of when they are threatened. You thought that because she was female she must have liked you? Elliott, I know you are considered delectable—but not to her.”

  “Is that what you think it’s all about? Her being a dyke?”

  “Not at all. It would have probably happened sooner or later even if there had been no Melanie. You didn’t give her what she wants from a man, every man she does business with.”

  “I just don’t see what you mean, Val. I always respected her—everyone does—and I did my best for her and she knew it.”

  “But did you fear her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Alors—” She said the one word with the dismissive, trailing-off sound the French make when they have scored an incontestable point, one that requires no further proof.

  “There’s something else, something very odd about the way Melanie sounds on the phone,” he finally mumbled, breaking the silence that had fallen over them. He was ashamed and humbled in his pain. “She doesn’t really say how things are going, just that she’s working hard, but she sounds a lot farther away than three thousand miles. I wonder if that old bitch told her some filthy lies—” He stopped, arrested by a fleeting expression of pity and disbelief on Valentine’s stubbornly logical little face. “You don’t think that’s why, do you? You think it’s something different. What? Tell me what!” He could not forget that last evening with Melanie, when he was convinced that he had finally found the secret that would make her surrender wholly to him, yet, when he spoke to her on the phone, she had seemed as noncommittal, as distantly poised as ever.

  “Elliott, it is none of my business, what goes on between you and Melanie. Perhaps she is being overwhelmed by it all. Why don’t we open some wine and I’ll heat up a little—”

  “Jesus, Val! You remind me of the story about the mother whose son came crawling into the house bleeding from five gunshot wounds. ‘Eat first, talk later,’ she told him. Now stop trying to feed me and tell me exactly what you think about Melanie. I always know when you’re lying, so don’t pull anything cute. And it is your business. You’re my only friend.”

  “And what are friends for?” Valentine said mockingly, stalling for time, trying to think of the right words to say.

  “Tell me,” he pleaded. “What do you think is happening—just give me your best guess—I won’t hold it against you—but someone has to talk to me.”

  “Elliott, I
don’t think it has anything to do with you. I think that Melanie wants something you can’t give her. I thought so from the first day I met her. She’s not a happy girl—even you didn’t make her happy. No, don’t interrupt. You would have made her happy if anybody could have, but it’s not a man she wants. Not a woman either. Not another person—something else.”

  “You just plain don’t like her very much,” said Spider, holding back a feeling of resentment.

  “Perhaps it is merely as Colette says, ‘Extreme beauty arouses no sympathy.’ ”

  “Colette!”

  Valentine continued, ignoring him, “Maybe it’s as simple as your typical American fantasy—to be a movie star. Why did she leave so quickly? She had to cancel a week’s bookings? Why should you think that Melanie wouldn’t have exactly the same ambitions as ten million other American girls? She’s beautiful enough—”

  “Enough!” he said savagely.

  “More, far more than enough. It is strange, is it not, how an accident of a millimeter here, a millimeter there, makes one face so important. Think about it, Elliott. She has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, just like everyone else. It’s all in tiny degrees of placement, such a small area of magic to make such a big difference. For me, Elliott, I must tell you it is a hard thing to understand—why these things, these millimeters, are so crucial to you, you of all men. How sublime it must be for her not to need charm. Did she make you laugh? Did she love you as much as you loved her? Did she protect you and warm you and keep you from suffering?” Valentine turned her eyes away from him, unable to face the empty answer in his face but not wanting to stop saying what she had thought for so long. “I saw how fascinating her mystery was to you. For my part, I think that the mystery is always greatest where there is the most—emptiness. A person full of life is never mysterious, on the contrary. If Garbo had had something to say for herself, she’d just be another woman now.”