Scruples

by Judith Krantz

  Jessica walked over to kiss Billy on the top of her head. “It’s just post-honeymoon depression. Everybody has it,” she said. “You wait, in a few months you won’t even remember this. Listen, let’s have something incredibly fattening for dinner and fast tomorrow, or at least till lunchtime. We both need it.”

  “How can you use the word ‘need’ about something fattening?” Billy asked incredulously.

  “Simple. Haven’t you heard that European theory about dieting? If your metabolic system is used to never getting fattening foods, and you suddenly give them to it, your body goes into shock and immediately loses weight. Of course you can’t make a habit of it.”

  “You’re positive you’re right about that?” asked Billy, eyeing the small but unmistakable potbelly her friend had sprouted.

  “Absolutely. I’d weigh a ton if I didn’t do it from time to time.”

  Both women laughed and dropped the subject of marriage for the rest of Jessica’s visit. At the end of the week she returned to Easthampton, reluctant to leave Billy to go back to menu planning but rather shamefacedly lonely for her sunburned mob. She had, in spite of her earlier threats, telephoned them every night and her husband had spent enough time on dry land during her absence to find an Oriental couple who treated David Jr.’s kosher kitchen with respect and even brought their own woks in which to cook for the vegetarian members of the family.

  “Billy, darling,” Jessica said, as they both stood outside the Learjet saying good-bye, “I’m afraid I wasn’t much help, but what I told you was the best advice I know. Remember, ‘All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act—is founded on compromise and barter.’ ”

  “Now where on earth did you find that little homily—stitched on a pillow?”

  “Edmund Burke, if I’m not mistaken.” Jessica smirked wickedly. She had always been proud of her summa cum laude memory for quotations, which permanently kept her one step ahead of her terrifying mother-in-law.

  “Vassar girl, get out of here,” laughed Billy, hugging her tiny friend one last time. “Go and sin no more, or some such thing. Remember, I’m the only person in the world who knew you when you weren’t so beastly virtuous and bloody tolerant.”

  Back in Mendocino the dailies were over and Vito and Fifi Hill had driven back to Vito’s house in heavy silence, not speaking until they poured themselves drinks and settled into the sagging, slip-covered chairs in the damp living room.

  “It’s gone, Fifi,” Vito finally said.

  “Even a blind man would know that,” Fifi answered, “just from their voices—”

  “It’s been two days. Yesterday I thought maybe she wasn’t feeling well, but today on the set, I’ve been watching—”

  “So when don’t you watch?” said Fifi mildly, too sunk in gloom to attempt sarcasm.

  “—and hoping they’d come out of it. But we can’t kid ourselves another minute; there’s not one foot of film we can use. So. We’re two days behind schedule now and those fucking kids are giving us turds for performances.”

  “I’ve used every trick I’ve ever learned. Nothing, nothing, Vito. Sandra won’t talk, Hugh won’t talk, they say they’re doing their best, she cries, he cries—a firing squad is what we need!”

  “A picture, Fifi, we need a picture. I didn’t have time to tell you before we ran the dailies, but right after dinner they both grabbed me, separately, and announced that they weren’t going to do the scenes we’ve set up for the next two days.”

  “Weren’t going to do—!!” Fifi rose from his chair like a madman.

  “Yeah, the nude scene, the big, fat love scene we have to have to make the whole picture add up, the most important scene in the whole fucking thing. They will not, repeat not, appear together in a nude scene.”

  “Vito! What did you say? What did you do? They can’t do this! For Christ’s sake—do something!”

  “Fifi, cancel the shoot for tomorrow morning. There’s no point. You and I will go and talk to each of those two moronic kids together. Well get to the bottom of it. We will fix it. Worse things happen on pictures and they still get made, you know that.”

  “Sure, sure, but when you have a love story and your boy and girl come across like the other is a piece of rotten meat, it’s not like having a shark that doesn’t work or rain when you want sun. Come on, Vito, you know that everything, everything in this picture depends on believing that those two love each other more than Romeo and Juliet. And till two days ago they even had me convinced that they did.”

  “Fifi, let’s get some sleep. Meet you for breakfast at the hotel. Then we’ll get down to it.”

  After Fifi took his gloomy departure, Vito sat down to think some more. If Fifi was deeply worried about the quality of the acting he was getting from those two brats, Vito was confronted with a far graver problem. When Maggie had been in Mendocino two weeks before, she had told him news he had hardly been able to believe.

  “Vito,” she had insisted, “I can’t tell you who told me, but believe me, it’s no mere rumor. Arvey has said that he intends to exercise the Take-over Provision on Mirrors if he gets the slightest opportunity.”

  “Why, Maggie, why?” As they both knew, the Take-over Provision, which is standard in most contracts, provides that the minute a producer goes over budget he can be replaced by the studio. This provision is almost never exercised, and many hundreds of producers less highly regarded than Vito Orsini go over-budget and over-schedule without more than a few rumbles from the studio.

  “From what I could make out, he’s been doing a slow burn about putting up the money for Mirrors ever since Cannes. He gave you the go-ahead on it to shove a broomstick up the ass of that bitch of a wife of his, to let her know who ran the studio. He was just showing off, as far as I can understand it, and then when you and Billy got married, he felt he’d been conned. He makes a grandiose gesture to spite his wife and a week later you walk off with one of the richest women in the world and lie’s left with that Philly snob who never let him have a dime without reminding him of it a hundred times.”

  “Billy’s money—it has nothing to do with me!”

  “Yeah, try telling Arvey that. He thinks you should be financing your own pictures with her dough instead of his studio’s money. I know, I know, you don’t operate that way, but he’s in a rage. He’s a mean, envious man and he’s out to get your balls, Vito, if he can.”

  Yes, thought Vito, remembering what Maggie had told him; he should have been much more suspicious when Arvey gave him the green light so quickly. He believed everything Maggie had told him. It fit entirely too well. Unfortunately, it made perfect sense.

  The next day, shortly before noon, Fifi Hill and Vito sought out a secluded corner of the Mendocino Hotel and sat amid the Victorian clutter, lace antimacassars, and potted palms, like two defeated samurai, trying to decide on the proper place for ritual self-slaughter.

  “It’s insane,” Vito grunted. “Fifi, if Sandra had been stone cold dead, she would have come back to life with what I said to her. I used it all, the truth, but even the truth didn’t work! I told her this was the chance of a lifetime; I told her it would make a star out of her; I told her she couldn’t do this to me and to you; I told her she’d never work again; I told her, her mother would die from the disappointment; I told her she’d be blacklisted with every casting director and producer in the world; I begged, I screamed, I did everything but fuck her. I would have done that, too, but she was like ice.”

  “Vito, I was there, please spare me.”

  Vito paid no attention to the weary director. “And that little cock-sucker Hugh Kennedy, he should have his prick rot off, he was just as bad. ‘Call my agent!’ I’ll call his agent, all right. Doesn’t he know he’s committing professional suicide?”

  “He’s not smart enough to figure it out—not one of your brighter people, Vito. And there’s another thing. Even if we could get them to play the nude scene, what good would it do u
s, in the mood they’re in?”

  “Maybe it’s only a lovers’ quarrel. I’m going back alone to talk to Sandra—”

  He was interrupted by a timid voice at his elbow. “Mr. Orsini?”

  “Dolly, Dolly darling, the only sane person left on earth. Go away, sweetheart, we’re talking.”

  “I thought I should tell you. It’s not like I’m a snitch, but I’d tell Billy so she could tell you, only she’s not here, so I thought—”

  “What?”

  “See, it’s not what you said. I heard you say ‘lovers’ quarrel,’ but it’s worse. I heard it all through the wall—never got around to buying earplugs—it started when Sandra accused Hugh of upstaging her, stealing scenes. And—”

  Fifi interrupted. “He was. I caught him at it and warned him, but he kept trying.”

  “And then Hugh turned nasty and said she couldn’t act, a lousy soap queen, and he’s a real stage actor, you know, and then she said he had a cock as big as a baby’s thumb but, unfortunately, not as hard, and then he said you wouldn’t even know where her tits were unless you could find her nipples, and she said he had pimples on his ass with pus in them, and he said she was the worst fuck he’d ever had—and her cunt smelled like a fish market—and it got a lot worse. I can’t even repeat most of the things they said—I’d be embarrassed.”

  “I get the general drift,” said Fifi.

  “So,” finished Dolly, “it’s not a lovers’ quarrel because they aren’t lovers anymore. They really hate each other. I mean, they went too far. The thing is, he really does have a tiny cock; she’d mentioned it a lot before, but not like that, more like, she’d say, ‘it’s small but it’s in the right place,’ that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah, they definitely went too far, Dolly. Thanks. It’s a help to know what’s going on. Now, beat it, honey, we need to talk.”

  “We’ve had it, Vito,” said Fifi. “A man can’t forget that sort of thing even if he wants to, and this kid doesn’t want to.”

  There was a long silence. The ornate Victorian hotel lobby filled up slowly with thirsty tourists, who were served by pretty female bartenders.

  “We’ll use photo-doubles,” announced Vito. “It’s doable Fifi.”

  “In a nude scene? You’re mad!”

  “I didn’t say it was sane. I just said we’d do it. There are enough kids in this town so we can find one who can be made up to look like Sandra from the back and the same for Hugh. Wigs, Fifi, wigs. We’ll find them this afternoon. Then we’ll shoot the scenes twice, once with a photo-double of Sandra with Hugh and then the other way around. Well never see the photo-doubles’ faces, just the backs of their head and their bodies. And we’ll intercut.”

  “You can’t get away with that!”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  Svenberg was enchanted with the idea. To him flesh was flesh, light was light, and the challenge was the real game. While Sandra played her scenes with Hugh’s photo-double, Vito read her the lines Hugh would have been saying, and she responded to them. While Hugh played his scene with Sandra’s photo-double, Dolly read Sandra’s lines. Later, this would all be incorporated into a single scene with corrected sound. Vito insisted that Hugh be present on the set while Sandra worked and that Sandra be there while Hugh worked. The two former lovers engaged, as he had hoped, in an Olympics of acting, competing with each other to see which one could put more fervor and pathos and sensuality into the scene, abandoning their totally naked bodies to equally naked strangers with flaunting erotic wildness he had never seen on any set. They were on fire, dangerous in their desire to act each other into the ground. He and Fifi didn’t need the dailies to know they had made film history, if only in that one scene.

  When the two draining days were over, Fifi reminded Vito that they still had those two days of film, shot before the nude scene, which had to be redone. All the rest of the script involved scenes in which Sandra and Hugh were not alone together, so he didn’t anticipate trouble there, but What about those two missing days?

  “I’ve been rewriting the script at night,” said Vito. “Here—it’s a new way around but we come out at the same place. I’ve just given Dolly more to do—it’ll work with the changes I’ve made.”

  Quickly Fifi read the new pages. “It works, it works. But where do we get the time?” Vito handed him another batch of pages.

  “These scenes we don’t shoot, we don’t absolutely need them. I’ve provided for the gaps, the transitions. It all makes sense. So now we’re only one day behind schedule, Fifi, and if you can’t make that up, they’ll kick you out of the Directors Guild.”

  “Feeling good, you old bastard?”

  “Just the normal joys of being in show business.”

  Having been a victim of poison oak, Billy discovered, when she finally returned to Mendocino for the last week of the shoot, was the magic leveler. Many of the grips, lighting crew, set dressers, and camera crew had had nasty touches of the vile disease themselves. From being The Producer’s Wife, she was transformed into the wounded comrade who had returned from the field hospital to the front to carry on the war side by side with the troops. Everyone from Svenberg, wrapped in his dreamy isolation, to the drivers of the honey wagons, as the indispensable portable toilets are called, hailed her and wanted to know how she felt. Many of them could hardly wait to compare symptoms, and often Billy found herself the center of a brotherly knot of assorted crew members discussing the virtues of cortisone shots, verus plain calamine lotion.

  Dolly and Billy managed to have lunch together every day. Billy, who still counted, and always would, every calorie she put into her mouth, couldn’t help but notice that Dolly, whose Rabelaisian bosom and bottom were flourishing superbly, was eating a sandwich that combined slices of avocado with Russian dressing, piled on a layer of brie, a layer of pastrami, and a layer of chopped liver, between two thick halves of a buttered, seeded roll, and on the side, potato salad with an order of extra mayonnaise.

  “Damn,” said Dolly, scraping up the last of the bowl of potato salad, “we don’t have time for another sandwich, do we?”

  “Are you still hungry?” Billy asked in awe mingled with reproof.

  “Starving. See, after I throw up breakfast, it’s a long wait till lunch.”

  “Throw up—?”

  “Sure. But it won’t last. I’m just in the very beginning of the third month and everyone says that’s the worst time for morning sickness.”

  “Oh, Dolly! Oh, good heavens—how did it happen?”

  Dolly rolled her huge eyes heavenward. The sounds of her heavenly chortling mingled with Billy’s half-repressed yelps. Eventually, Billy quieted down enough to ask, “What are you going to do?”

  “Gee, I guess I should do something, but somehow I just want to have the baby. It’s kinda crazy but it feels right, you know. I’ve been pregnant before and I didn’t even consider going through with it, but this time—”

  It seemed to Billy that her friend was confused in a way she wasn’t trying to clarify. It was as if Dolly was as willing as she was slightly slaphappy.

  “What about the father?” Billy aked, trying to get Dolly to focus.

  “Sunrise? He’d marry me tomorrow, but I don’t see spending the rest of my life around rodeos. Why’d they have to play L.A. on the Fourth of July anyway? I’ll tell him afterward. Who would think that forgetting to take the pill for just two days could do the trick?”

  “Any gynecologist. Dolly, what about money? It takes money to have a baby and pay for a nurse and buy maternity clothes—” Billy’s voice trailed off. She knew there were other expenses connected with having a baby, but she couldn’t itemize them offhand. Maternity had never been one of her interests.

  “I can live for a year, year and a half, on what I’m making on Mirrors, and then I’ll worry about it. If I can’t get work, there’s always Sunrise. Gosh Billy, that’ll all sort of take care of itself, like things always do if you want them enough.” She seemed marvelously c
asual, almost disoriented, in a fuzzy, purring kind of way.

  Billy eyed her friend, whose pleasure in her pregnancy could scarcely be contained. If ever she’d seen a cockeyed optimist, Dolly was it. “Could I be—do you think—the baby will need a godmother—?”

  “Oh, yes! Yes!” Dolly hugged Billy so enthusiastically that she engulfed her. “I wouldn’t want anybody but you.”

  At least, Billy thought, this would give her a chance to make sure that things would be taken care of properly. Her godchild would not be born without certain amenities. Visions of Bostonian christenings popped into her head. Silver cups and old sherry, bishops and biscuits and tiny sets of sterling spoons and forks; perhaps a subscription to a diaper service would be more welcome. A crib, a layette, a baby carriage? All of them, to begin with. And then she’d see.

  Work on Mirrors finished on schedule, on Tuesday, August 23rd, and the wrap party was scheduled for the next night. Vito and Fifi, both totally worn out and yet dancing with nervous exultation, explained to Billy that the close of any film production traditionally calls for a wrap party, which serves a dual function; it celebrates the completion of the weeks of work and gives everyone a chance to get drunk and bury the many hatchets that have been waving around during the course of any shoot, even the rare harmonious one.

  The Mirrors production had taken over the private rooms of the Mendocino Hotel for the party and by ten o’clock it was in full swing. The elaborate buffet had been demolished, replenished, and demolished again. The bar would stay open until the last man or woman decided to go to sleep. With the picture finished, there was no need for anyone to turn in that night, but two people nevertheless, seemed to be leaving rather early, with an unmistakable intention in their attitudes.

  “Vito,” said Fifi, almost stuttering with outrage “do you see what I see?”

  “If what you see is Sandra Simon and Hugh Kennedy together making for bed, yes.”

  “TONIGHT they made up?”