Vito pinched her sharply, bringing her back to the vast, crowded auditorium. He hissed in her ear, “What the hell is Dolly doing?” and pointed to Dolly who had, until now, been seated a few rows in front of them.
The two presenters for the Best Supporting Actress Award had just arrived at the podium. They stood still, without speaking, gorgeous faces fixed in expressions of paralyzed confusion, watching the floor of the theater where Dolly Moon was on her feet, saying something into the hush. A big man was lumbering up from the seat next to hers. It was unimaginable. Perhaps it was some sort of protest, a Marlon Brando number only with bad timing? All over the auditorium people were looking at Dolly, aware that something had gone wrong with the smooth functioning of the Awards. This was the moment of sacred suspense. Tradition dictated that, like all nominees, she was supposed to be sitting quietly, with a serene, unfocused look on her face, every feature in disciplined repose, ready to smile falsely when the winner was announced, or crumble slowly into disbelieving joy. Instead, she was standing and speaking at length in a tone of some mild agitation. Maggie’s producer got both the minicam and the mike on her in seconds. The audience in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion couldn’t all hear what the television audience heard, so many of them half rose to their feet to crane in Dolly’s direction.
“Now Lester, Lester, darling, don’t be so upset—it’s only the waters breaking—there’s still plenty of time—oh, my goodness, poor Valentine, I’ve ruined the dress—” She was walking up the aisle now, the minicam right behind her, the mike man next to her. As Billy said later, it would have looked neater and unquestionably more glamorous if the camera had been in front, but the cameraman knew a classic shot when he saw one and Dolly’s rear view, the huge wet patch on her sea-foam dress, the copious rivulet of amniotic fluid that she left behind her on the carpet as she made her unhurried progress to the exit, were worth a thousand glimpses of her face. Anyway, she wasn’t rushing anywhere, she was turning her head from side to side, talking to the amazed audience.
“Would you all look and see if there’s an earring on the floor? I seem to be missing one—it’s probably rolling around under your feet—now, stop it Lester, there’s nothing to worry about—just everybody look for an earring—it’s a nine-karat diamond and I’m not sure it’s insured—what Lester?—no, don’t be silly, why should I say it’s a rhinestone, Billy wouldn’t wear rhinestones. No, Lester, I can’t walk any faster, it’s uphill, don’t you see, no, please don’t try to carry me, I weigh more than you do—oh my, this wasn’t supposed to happen for a week—honestly—but it just went ‘pop’—I didn’t mean to do it here—” and she giggled. And giggled and giggled. In millions of living rooms, all over the world, people were laughing. More people were laughing together at that one time than at any time since history began as Dolly Moon made her historic exit from the Oscars.
Billy sat through it all in a state of shock. Dolly’s face as she walked past her! She’d never forget that look of expectant rapture as she passed by, intent on one important task, even as she dealt with the embarrassment of the moment in her own artless fashion, which always seemed to work in the end. Dolly, her own Dolly, knew the secret. She waited patiently and eventually it all happened—even if her timing was just a little off. What did it matter? No one, Billy realized, not even she, could make her life “come out even.” Perhaps it was all for the best? Not that she had a choice. How interesting to realize, finally, that even with all her vast options there were areas in which she had no choice. Just like everyone else. It was such a relief. She felt rigid bands loosening somewhere in the area she had always thought of as her stomach but which she would now have to treat with a little more respect.
While the great earring scramble died down, the presenters announced Dolly’s Oscar, and Fifi, tears of laughter streaming down his face, hastily accepted it for her. Now the presenters had come to the awards for the Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture. Vito squeezed Billy’s hand tightly. As they waited for the Best Actor Award to be presented, Vito was also casting the male leads in The WASP, in the event that Redford or Nicholson wasn’t available, while Billy was blown here and there in her balloon, the wind deciding the direction. Was there a history of twins in Vito’s family? And while the Best Actress made her acceptance speech, in one tiny corner of her balloon Billy had started to wonder if the word Scruples should be translated into Spanish for the Rio store or should it remain in English, and Vito was thinking about many points of profit he was going to be able to negotiate on his new film.
In the momentary wait, during which Oscar fever reaches its height, while the presenters walked out of the wings and downstage to read the list of nominations for Best Picture, Vito began to sweat What if Maggie had been wrong? Jesus—he’d have to buy the rights to the book out of his own profits on Mirrors, which were beginning finally to mount up. But what the hell. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Right or wrong, and when had Maggie ever been wrong, he had to have that book. It had been written for him to produce. He knew it.
Billy had no such last-minute panic. Dolly had called her first thing that morning, unable to hold back the good news, and told her the whole mad yarn. But Billy hadn’t wanted to tell Vito because she suspected that he might feel that in some way it diminished his Oscar to have had the envelope opened by two sets of people before the actual presentation. Just as she wouldn’t tell him about the baby until tomorrow, when the glory of this night was less fresh. The news, for bambino-loving Vito, would upstage whatever industry recognition he could ever be given. And, as she felt Vito’s hand tense more firmly than ever over her own, she told herself to be honest. Wilhelmina Hunnenwell Winthrop Ikehorn Orsini did not have the faintest intention of sharing that particular spotlight with any little gold-plated statuette that the Academy, in its infinite wisdom, might ever bestow.
“Will anyone ever find your earring?” Vito suddenly whispered in her ear as the presenters started to read the list of five pictures and their producers.
“Forget my earring,” said Billy, kissing him full on the lips. “We’ve got better things to think about.”
For Steve
With all my love
Always
Look for Judith Krantz’s
THE JEWELS OF TESSA KENT
Available now in paperback
From the bestselling author who brought us SCRUPLES, DAZZLE, and PRINCESS DAISY comes a deeply moving mother-daughter tale set amid the elegance of a famed New York Ruction house and the glamour of Hollywood.
Here is a peek at this novel.
Books by Judith Krantz
Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed
SCRUPLES
SCRUPLES TWO
PRINCESS DAISY
MISTRALS DAUGHTER
I’LL TAKE MANHATTAN
TILL WE MEET AGAIN
DAZZLE
LOVERS
SPRING COLLECTION
And the spellbinding novel
THE JEWELS OF TESSA KENT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Since the publication of her first novel, Scruples, JUDITH KRANTZ has been one of the world’s best-selling novelists. Born and raised in New York City and a graduate of Wellesley College, she and her husband, Steve Krantz, live in Bel Air and Newport Beach, California. They have two sons and two grandchildren.
Prologue
Quickly, Tessa Kent stepped out of the bank and crossed the strip of New York pavement. The door of her parked limo was held open by the driver. She slid inside, grateful that she’d left a coat on the seat when she’d entered the bank much earlier in the day. It had been a morning of indecisive weather, early fall weather, but now the afternoon sun had disappeared behind clouds that promised rain before nightfall on this mid-September day in 1993.
“Where to, Miss Kent?” Ralph, the driver, asked.
“Wait right here for a while, Ralph, there’s something I want to see,” she answered impulsively, surprising herself, and pulled
the coat over her shoulders.
All through the endless afternoon at the bank, she’d kept going by promising herself that the instant she was able to leave, she’d return as quickly as possible to her apartment at the Carlyle, take a long, lavishly perfumed bath, put on her oldest, softest, most familiar peignoir, have a great fruitwood fire—the first of the year—lit in the generous fireplace of her bedroom, and stretch out on the pile of pillows flung down on the carpet. She intended to put the past three days firmly behind her, sipping a distinctly alcoholic drink and looking straight into the flames until she was so dazzled by them that her mind would unclench and a pleasant emptiness would take over.
Yet, as soon as she entered the limo, Tessa Kent abruptly understood that it was still too soon to escape into that peaceful moment. Something was missing, a sight that would put an absolute punctuation to the process she had just completed, the witnessing of a three-day inventory of every last one of her jewels except the few she was wearing.
She needed to see her jewels actually leave the protection of the bank, Tessa realized. She needed to watch them being brought out onto the street and whisked away in three taxis and three ordinary cars by six couriers and a twelve-man armed security team that would carry tens of millions of dollars worth of jewels in the scruffy briefcases and sturdy shopping bags that had been selected to attract no attention.
If she didn’t see that final scene of the drama, she’d still be able to imagine that her jewels slept in the darkness of their velvet cases, piled high in their vaults, ready for her to come and pick out those she would wear to an opening night at the theater or a black-tie party or dinner in a favorite restaurant. Something deep in Tessa’s psyche demanded that she recognize, with her own eyes, the fact that her jewels no longer belonged to her, that now they were gone. Gone for good.
Since her marriage, eighteen years earlier, Tessa Kent, the most internationally adored of American movie stars, had never been seen in public unadorned by magnificent jewels. Even in a bikini she wore ropes of seashells inset with gems. Jewels, on Tessa Kent, were never out of place, no matter the year or the hour or the style of the moment. They had become part of her persona, in private as well as in public, a signature as utterly specific to her as the sound of her voice, the shape of her mouth, the color of her eyes.
Suddenly Tessa saw the first of the couriers, carrying three shopping bags, appear at the entrance to the bank. On either side of him, seemingly busy in conversation, were two of the armed guards, clad in banker’s gray. One of the taxis that had been circling the block for hours pulled up beside Tessa’s limo, paused briefly as the three men got in, and then continued up Madison Avenue.
She hadn’t watched the process of transfer on any of the two previous days. She hadn’t felt any need to view it until today, when the last box had been entered into the inventory and sealed. Now, as she watched more couriers and guards walk out of the busy bank and disappear into their carefully choreographed transportation, she felt such a complex mixture of feelings that she couldn’t sort them out: loss, excitement, relief, anticipation, disbelief, and nostalgia, all jumbled together. Dominating every emotion was hope.
“You can take me back to the hotel, please, Ralph,” Tessa told the driver as soon as she realized that all of the couriers had left the bank. Traffic was heavy and the limo had barely covered two blocks when a heavy rain began to fall.
“Oh, perfect!” Tessa exclaimed. “Stop wherever you can.” As her driver knew, rain was her friend. With a big black umbrella skillfully deployed, she could roam the streets of New York without being recognized. This liberty was impossible in good weather; even wearing sunglasses and a scarf over her hair seemed, perversely, to attract the most attention of all from eager autograph seekers.
Today, after spending so many hours in an air-conditioned strong room, deep underground, Tessa yearned for a hard, private, cleansing walk more than for a bath or a drink.
Blessing the foul weather, she pulled a beret down until it reached her eyebrows, kicked off her shoes, and put on the boots that lay waiting in the back of the limo. She shrugged into the light raincoat, buttoned up the collar, and burrowed into it so that it hid her chin, and then picked up the umbrella that lay under her coat.
“Let me out at the corner, Ralph. I’ll walk all the way back.”
As soon as the limo came to a stop, Tessa hopped out, opened her umbrella, and strode rapidly across the street in the direction of Fifth Avenue. At any time of the year she loved walking up along Central Park, particularly now, as the lights of the city grew brighter against the darkening afternoon.
She found herself at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street and she struck out uptown at a fast pace, breathing deeply and freely. It was wonderful to know that no one could possibly care about her in this humid confusion of burdened shoppers and people leaving their offices and seeking transportation home.
Enjoying herself in a way so frequently denied her, Tessa continued up Fifth Avenue past St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was three good blocks beyond it when she abruptly stopped, and changed direction. At the age of thirty-eight, she hadn’t been inside a church in years. She didn’t want to calculate how many it had been, but today … something about today … drew her back to the great bulk of the cathedral, drew her up the steps to the doors of the cathedral, drew her inside. She closed her umbrella. Old habit took over as she dipped her fingertips in the font of holy water, crossed herself, and genuflected before slipping into one of the pews at the back.
She would just sit here for a few seconds and then flee, back out to the delicious freedom of the busy, dripping streets, Tessa thought. Sit and bask in the vast singing hum of busy silence that had a color and a texture and a scent uniquely its own, so that if she had been set down here blindfolded she would have known instantly where she was.
Without willing it, Tessa found herself on her knees, her head bent. She was praying, she who no longer believed in prayer, praying as ardently as when she’d been a girl, but praying without words, praying purely for the sake of prayer.
And then, homework done, at least twice a week they’d “engage in an adult experience,” as Mimi called it. The Petersons’ bar was crammed with bottles of everything any liquor store could supply.
Teresa and Mimi, sharing Mimi’s bathroom glass, would pour three jiggers full of whatever drink took their fancy, replacing what they took with water, and carry the glass up to Mimi’s room. They’d lock the door and sip slowly, taking turns, giggling like maniacs as each reported the fascinating alterations they felt in themselves.
They hadn’t yet used the same bottle more than once and they’d never dared make a second trip downstairs for more, just in case they couldn’t handle more than one generous drink each. They were always careful to brush their teeth and use mouthwash before Mimi’s mother was expected home.
The Petersons were a couple in their mid-thirties who, Mimi reported proudly, still loved a good time. On their exploration of her parents’ bedroom they easily found a large collection of Penthouse and a smaller-sized publication called Variations, which contained erotic short stories and wild letters to the editor. Two drawers of Mrs. Peterson’s dresser were filled with underwear that it was impossible to imagine her wearing for anything but sex. Mimi and Teresa would select several pieces at a time—tiny, lacy panties; garter belts that attached to slinky black stockings; dainty push-up bras; or transparent chiffon teddies—and carry their loot swiftly back to Mimi’s room, where they’d try on everything, using old pairs of her mother’s high-heeled shoes to see themselves at best advantage.
Of course, even Mimi had to admit that, although the two of them were as tall as most women, at twelve, they were still too young and too undeveloped to look right in sexy underwear. But if you squinted your eyes and lifted your nipples in cupped hands, and stuck out your ass, you could get a pretty good idea of how you’d look in a couple of years.
As for Penthouse and Variations, they pored ove
r one issue at a time, discovering that some of the subject matter was heart-pounding and passionately fascinating. Teresa couldn’t keep from thinking about all the forbidden, unutterably exciting things a man and a woman could do together—except when she was brooding on the certainty that she was going to go to Hell after she died.
It was amazing, Teresa thought grimly, that she was able to lie with such calm to the priest at confession, producing a normal series of venial sins as she tried not to breathe the stale air in the red velvet, padded phone booth of the confessional that the old church still used in spite of Vatican II. But she knew the truth. She was unquestionably guilty of at least four of what her catechism class had been taught were the seven deadly or mortal sins. She was guilty of lust, the sin of impurity, and of gluttony, the sin of drinking too much. When she and Mimi dressed up and admired themselves she was guilty of the sin of pride … their sessions certainly didn’t conform to the “normal pride in a neat appearance” the nuns talked of.
Every single week of her life, as she left any of these three mortal sins unconfessed, by name and number of times it had happened, she was committing yet another mortal sin by not confessing, so her sins were not forgiven but lay on her heavily and painfully, almost too much to endure. Yet, to rid herself of them would have been worse. If she’d ever been tempted to make a full confession, she’d be kneeling in front of a pew doing penance for hours—for days!—before she could receive absolution and the sacrament of penance. Since her mother waited to drive her home from church, praying quietly in a pew not far from the confessional, any such penance would cause an inquisition.
Scruples Page 62
