“Well,” said Spider, handing a glass of Château Silverado to Valentine, “you can’t say that Billy has lost her capacity to astonish and confound us. How on earth are you ever going to upholster Miss Moon?”
“Oh, there is a way,” Valentine answered airily. “It’s merely a question of using one’s imagination. Obviously, it’s a little more difficult than the sort of thing you do all day, Elliott, but it can be done.” She put down her glass, took off her smock, and put on her coat, ready to leave.
“Wait a minute, Val. This dress for Dolly is something I could help you with, and, God knows, you’ve got enough on your plate already. Sit down for a few minutes and we can talk it over.”
“No thank you, Elliott. I can handle it and I’m late for a dinner engagement already. I can’t spend any more time here today.”
Spider stopped dead at her dismissive tone. “Can’t? My, my, this guy really makes you toe the line, it seems. Got you just right where he wants you, hasn’t he? Somehow, I never thought I’d live to see the day—Valentine tamed at last.” There was the slightest sneer in his tone, but Valentine picked it up instantly.
“What do you mean, Elliott? My private life is private. I thought we’d agreed about that weeks ago, but obviously you can’t leave well enough alone.”
“Oh, your little hole-in-the-corner arrangements don’t bother me, Valentine. I’m just rather amused by it all,” he said loftily.
Circles of. wrath appeared around Valentine’s eyes. “You are hardly one to speak of holes-in-the-corner—you spend your whole life in one, Elliott. I didn’t know, when I managed to get you this job, that I was providing Beverly Hills with its stud of the year. If I had, perhaps I might have persuaded Billy to give you a slightly higher salary.”
“Ah ha! I was waiting for that I knew the day would come when you’d take credit for keeping me off Welfare. Listen, my pet,” he snarled at her, “you would have been out of here on your ass in two weeks if I hadn’t come up with the ideas of how to change Scruples.”
“That was a year and a half ago. What have you done since then except act like some bloody floorwalker? A self-appointed arbiter of elegance. Ha! The thing that gives Scruples its cachet is my department; you’re just too mean-minded to admit it.” Her voice ripped the air.
“Your department! On the profits of your department we could barely pay the telephone bill.” He was caught in a rapture of rage. “You and that white smock, as if you were another Givenchy, giving yourself grand airs and graces because you’ve suckered a bunch of spoiled rich women into letting you design for them—it’s all supported by the rest of the store and I’m responsible for that—a store doesn’t run itself, or are you too much above it all in the fucking rarefied air you breathe to realize that?”
“You lousy, rotten—”
“Oh, ho, our Valentine’s about to embark on one of her famous temper fits; if she can’t get what she wants she gets all French and kicks her heels and foams at the mouth and frightens horses. Temper, temper.” He wagged a finger at her. He might just as well have shot an arrow into her face. Her hands and feet went numb with fury.
“You cheap prick. No wonder even Melanie Adams rejected you. And how typical of you, how typical of your standards, to have picked a hollow little creature like that to love, just another pretty face with nothing inside, all surface, no substance, a doll-child, as immature as you are—and that was the love of your life! I find that ‘amusing,’ Elliott. At least my lover is someone of substance—I wonder if you even understand what substance is?”
In a rusted, painful voice he said, “I hope he’s not another Alan Wilton, Valentine. I really couldn’t take it if I had to nurse you over a tragic love affair with a fag again.”
“WHAT!”
“You thought I wouldn’t hear about it? Half of Seventh Avenue knew—eventually the word got around to me.”
Valentine felt as if a weight like a great slab of stone had knocked her in the chest. She couldn’t speak. She crumpled in her chair, reaching blindly for her handbag. Suddenly Spider felt the greatest shame he’d ever known fall over him like a net. Never, never in his life had he been cruel to a woman. Good Christ, what had come over him? He couldn’t even remember how this had all started.
“Valentine—”
“I don’t want to talk to you again,” she interrupted, in a small, steady voice. “We can’t work together anymore.”
“Please, Val, I went crazy—I didn’t mean—it was a lie, nobody knew. Nobody. I met the guy once and figured it out for myself—Val, please—”
“One of us has to leave Scruples.” She said this in a way that allowed no room for apology or reason or discussion.
“That’s ridiculous. We can’t do that to Billy.”
“I’ll go.”
“No, you can’t. Nobody else can do your work. She can replace me.”
“Fine.” She was unmoved, frozen.
“I can’t tell her till after the Oscars. She’s got enough to worry about with Vito.”
“As you wish.” Valentine picked up her coat and left. Spider heard her taking the fire stairs, not waiting for the elevator. For an hour he sat there, rubbing his hands on the oxblood leather of the partner’s desk, as if the slight friction might make him warm again.
The documentary Maggie had done on Vito, A Day in the Life of a Producer, had never been shown on the network. Other, more controversial topics had superseded it for a few months and then it had languished in inventory waiting for an appropriate time slot. Maggie had almost forgotten it, particularly now, as she was bombarded by various studios competing for her attention as Academy Award time drew near.
A week after the nominations were announced, screenings of the five nominated pictures were begun in the Academy’s own marvelously comfortable Samuel Goldwyn Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard just east of Beverly Hills. With only three weeks left before the ballots were marked, Vito knew that whatever his last effort was, it had better be made soon. If Maggie’s show was ever to be helpful, it would be now. Vito telephoned her at her office.
“Maggie,” he asked, “who is your very favorite person in the whole world?”
“I am.”
“Who’s next?”
“Vito, have you no shame?”
“Certainly not,” he laughed.
“You want something,” she said suspiciously.
“Damn right, I do. I want you to schedule that piece you did on me before the voting for Best Picture takes place.”
“Jesus! Vito, do you realize how that would look? I mean, my God, that would be the most barefaced piece of propaganda—how could I do a thing like that even if I wanted to?”
“Which you do, don’t you, Maggie?” He was relentless.
“Well obviously, Vito, I mean I’d like to do whatever I could for you but—”
“Maggie, remember the night we all had dinner at the Boutique and you said you figured that you owed me?”
“Vaguely.”
“You’ve never been vague in your life. My Mexican dog made your career.”
“Yeah, but my quick thinking saved Ben Lowell’s ass.”
“So Ben Lowell owes you. Only you can never tell him. But now you have a chance to pay me back.”
“You’d really put the squeeze on me?” She could hardly believe this was Vito.
“Of course. What are friends for?”
There was a silence. Vito gave Maggie time to think, as he knew she would, that if she did this for a friend, she would have demonstrated her power so effectively that the demand for her friendship would be even greater, among the people who count in Hollywood, than it ever had been.
“Well,” she said finally, “I could talk to the vice-president in charge of Programming, I suppose, and maybe I might be able to con him into it, but I can’t promise anything.”
“It couldn’t be more topical,” said Vito helpfully.
“You Wop bastard! Topical! Political is what it is.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, Maggie, just one of the things I love about you is that I don’t have to beat around the bush.”
“If this does get on, you’ll owe me. Win or lose,”
“Fair enough. You’ve got a deal. We’ll go through life doing each other favors and paying them back.”
“Yeah,” said Maggie, suddenly wistful. “Well, I’d better get started. It’s going to mean a lot of reshuffling if I can make it happen. Shit Listen, Vito, give my love to Billy, will you? Know something funny, I truly like her, and I never thought I would.”
“She’s not envious of you anymore, Maggie, maybe that’s why.”
“Was she? Was she honestly?” Maggie sounded like someone who had just opened a fabulous and unexpected present.
“Didn’t you know that? I thought you were my smart Maggie.”
“That smart, Vito, no one is.”
Lester Weinstock found himself in a state of considerable confusion. Was he, floundering, a victim of a cultural time lag, out of touch with the Now Generation, a regressed fuddy-duddy from the 1950s, when he had not yet been born, or was Dolly Moon out of sync with reality? Did having an illegitimate—no, wrong word—a one-parent baby only happen in the wilder reaches of Bohemia or was it being done every day all over the United States, with the same happy, wacky abandon Dolly displayed? He pondered these questions while finishing his second helping of Henny Youngman’s Sweet and Sour Ragout. No, he decided, wiping up the last of the prune-and-apricotladen gravy with a piece of Dolly’s homemade challeh, he still didn’t think it was fair to the baby, no matter how good a mother Dolly would be.
Lester had now been Dolly’s public-relations man for two weeks. He’d gained six pounds from her cooking and his first gray hair from worrying over her plight. The only fixed bright spot in his suddenly troubled world was the thought of Dolly’s dear old Jewish grandmother, the one who had taught her how to cook so miraculously.
“Lester, you’ve simply got to let me give you a haircut.”
“I’ll go to the barber tomorrow.”
“You’ve been saying that for ten days. You never have time, you’re so busy making up excuses about why I can’t meet the press and arranging those hilarious telephone interviews.”
“Dolly, you know what the studio thinks. If there is the slightest chance that you might win an Oscar, you’d blow it if people knew you were pregnant. And if you told them about Sunrise—the rodeo—and don’t think they wouldn’t get it out of you—forget it. There’s still a lot of ol’-time morality around, you know.”
“Maybe I’d get the sympathy vote,” Dolly dimpled. “Sit down and I’ll put a towel over you. Now—where did I put my cuticle scissors?”
As if in a dream, Lester let her lead him to a chair. There was something so, so—immediate—about Dolly’s face. She simply refused to inhabit the safe distance between people. It was disgraceful, really, the way she just dove into him, feet first He’d already told her about his boyhood bed-wetting problem; the catastrophe of his first love affair; the time he cheated on an algebra final at Beverly Hills High School and got caught; his innermost feelings about owing his good fortune to portable toilet trailers, a subject he had learned to joke about many years ago, but which he had never really felt was all that funny to live with; the catastrophe of his second love affair; the near-miss of his third love affair; the potential he felt he had to make wonderful movies someday. Christ, he’d just about told her his life story. About the only thing he’d left out were the circle jerks at summer camp. And only because he’d forgotten, not because she’d be shocked.
“I think you’re getting it too short,” he complained.
“Not for all the world. It’s just taking me longer because it’s kind of hard to get close enough to you. There, it’s finished.” She sat down heavily on the chair. “Go look at yourself in the mirror and then tell me that’s not an improvement.”
Obediently, he took a nearsighted look and liked what he saw. Turning to compliment her, he caught sight of an unexpected expression of pain on her face.
“Hey, something wrong?”
“Just my back. You know, people shouldn’t have to be pregnant standing up; it puts too much strain on the back muscles. All pregnant women should go around on their hands and knees. Maybe someday they will.”
“Is there something I could do?”
“Well—”
“Really. In return for the haircut.”
“It’s kind of a drag, but I’ve run out of oil—for rubbing my stretch marks—oh, Lester, don’t you even know about stretch marks?”
“I’m an obstetrical innocent,” he said humbly.
“Could you go down to the all-night market and get some oil for me? That would really be a blessing.”
Ten minutes later Lester was back with a bottle of imported Italian olive oil, a bottle of domestic olive oil, a bottle of safflower oil, a bottle of peanut oil, and a bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s baby oil. A clinking Santa Claus, he deposited his brown paper bag on the table. Dolly had vanished.
“Where are you?”
“In the bedroom. Bring it on in.” Dolly, pink and burnished from her quick shower, was lying on her bed in a pair of lace and satin pajamas, one of Billy’s Chirstmas presents. Shyly, Lester emptied the heavy bag on her night table.
“I wasn’t sure which kind—”
Dolly contemplated the oils, biting her lip to keep from bursting into laughter. Gravely, her eyes brimming with tears of merriment, she pointed to the baby oil. He handed it to her. She opened it, poured some into his still outstretched hand and raised the top of her pajamas and lowered the bottoms. Her belly, magnificent, monumental, and velvety white, seemed to Lester to be the most extraordinary sight he’d ever seen. He averted his eyes, shocked and fascinated. Unable to resist, he looked at it again. Had there ever been so wondrous a work of nature? An alp dwindled by comparison. Art was a pastime for the dilettante. My goodness!
“Kind of a knockout, isn’t it?” Dolly asked, patting it lovingly.
“Splendid,” he choked.
“Don’t just stand there, Lester, the oil will drip. Sit down and rub.”
“Rub?”
“Lester, Don’t you know where stretch marks are?”
“I haven’t made a study of it, no.”
She took his hand and guided it to her side and slowly nudged it over the mound of her abdomen. “All around here, from one side to another. Oh, my, that feels so good. Just keep rubbing, Lester—and I’ll dribble the oil. You can use both hands if you like.” She sighed voluptuously. “It feels so much better when you do it for me. This is what I call luxury—sheer luxury. Take off your jacket, Lester, you look awfully hot. Mmmmmm. There—that’s better, isn’t it?”
Three hours later Lester woke up. Someone was pushing him slowly but relentlessly, like a large, soft, fist in the stomach. Who was in his bed, pushing him, he wondered in sleepy alarm. He groped around with his hand and encountered Dolly’s belly, or rather Dolly’s baby, turning a lazy somersault inside of Dolly. Then he realized that Dolly’s hair was tickling his nose, Dolly’s head was on his chest, and Dolly’s feet were mixed up with his legs. Pinned down, immobile and incredulous, he opened his eyes in the dim light of the bedroom. Without his glasses, everything was a blur, but his mind was clear. He, Lester Weinstock, had made love to a woman who was eight months’ pregnant! Furthermore, he, Lester Weinstock, had never ever had such a sublimely erotic, altogether delectable experience in his entire life, and he, Lester Weinstock, would like to repeat it immediately. He was a monster of depravity, no doubt about that, but he felt like a member of the Now Generation at last Why had he been so nervous about everything, he wondered? Dolly stirred in her sleep. He jiggled her a little. He supposed he really shouldn’t wake her up, but he wasn’t so far gone that he would make love to a sleeping pregnant woman! He jiggled her some more and played with her bountiful breasts with his free hand. Talk about good!
After the fight with Valentine, Spide
r Elliott started counting the days until the Oscars. They couldn’t pass fast enough to suit him. Since he was going to leave Scruples, he wanted to get it over with, but until Billy knew, he couldn’t start looking for another job. He had no doubt that he could almost write his own ticket in any number of large stores: His success with Scruples had been widely noted throughout retailing. Or, if he didn’t want to stay on in retailing, he could go back to photography, perhaps here on the West Coast. Or maybe the Harriet Toppingham vendetta was forgotten and he could go back to New York. In any case, he had saved his money. Why not go around the world on a slow boat? To China? And stay there? Oh, he had a number of options.
As far as Valentine was concerned, he had put the matter behind him. She was totally unreachable. He had tried to apologize half a dozen times and each time she’d left the room without even looking at him or letting him speak his piece. He was willing to take all the blame, in spite of her cheap shots, but she didn’t want to know about it. Whoever said that a man and a woman could never be real friends was right. It was a chapter in his life and it was over, finished, forgotten. On to something else. Naturally he felt bad about it, but that was a temporary state of affairs.
The weeks passed and still Spider couldn’t shake off the grayness of his inner landscape. This was nothing like the state of rage, grief, and loss that he had felt in New York when Melanie left him to come to Hollywood and Harriet Toppingham bitched up his career. Those emotions had had clear outlines; he had known why he felt the way he felt But lately he had taken to waking in the middle of the night and lying sleepless for hours, thinking thoughts that made no sense at all the following day, thoughts in a key Spider had never known before, thoughts that he judged as self-pitying even as he had them, absurd thoughts about who really cared about him, who gave a damn, why was he doing what he was doing, what difference did it make, what was there to look forward to, why, in short, was he alive?
In all his healthy, carefree, rambunctious, self-confident thirty-two years, Spider had never for one minute indulged in wondering about the meaning of life. As he saw it, he had had the great good fortune to have been the product of one lucky ripe egg and one aggressive sperm that met on just the right night at just the right time of the month in just the right woman. Chance, pure chance, dumb luck it could be called, had caused him to be born instead of that other child his mother and father would have had if they had not made love on that auspicious night. Having had the good fortune to be born, he took the world as he found it, riding it like a splendid horse. The meaning of life? To live it!
Scruples Page 55
