by Mario Puzo
I laughed too.
“I was ducking your friend Osano,” she said. “He keeps calling me.”
I felt a sick feeling in my stomach. I wasn’t surprised. But
I liked Osano so much and he knew how I felt about Janelle.
I hated the idea that he would do that to me. And then I didn’t really give a shit. It was no longer important.
“Maybe he was just trying to find out where I was,” I said.
“No,” Janelle said. “Alter I put you on the plane, I called him and told him what happened. He was worried about you, but I told him you were OK. Are you?”
“Yes,” I said.
She didn’t ask me any questions about what had happened when I got home. I loved that about her. Her knowing I wouldn’t want to talk about it. And I knew she would never tell Osano about what happened that morning when I got the news about Artie, how I fell apart.
I tried to act cool. “Why are you ducking him? You enjoyed his company at dinner when we were together. I’d think you’d jump at the chance of meeting him again.”
There was a pause at the other end, and then I heard a tone in her voice that showed she was angry. It became very calm. The words were precise. As if she were pulling back a bow to send her words like arrows.
“That’s true,” she said, “and the first time he called I was delighted and we went out to dinner together. He was great fun.”
Not believing the answer I would get, I asked out of some remaining jealousy, “Did you go to bed with him?”
Again there was the pause. I could almost hear the bow’s twang as she sent off the arrow.
“Yes,” she said.
Neither of us said anything. I felt really lousy, but we had our rules. We could never reproach each other anymore, just take our revenge.
Very shiftily but automatically I said, “So how was it?”
Her voice was very bright, very cheery as if she were talking about a movie. “It was fun. You know he makes such a big deal out of going down on you that it builds up your ego.”
“Well,” I said casually, “I hope he’s better at it than I am.”
Again there was the long pause. And then the bow snapped and the voice was hurt and rebellious. “You have no right to be angry,” she said. “You have no goddamn right to be angry about what I do with other people. We settled that before.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I'm not angry.” And I wasn’t. I was more than that. At that moment I gave her up as someone I loved. How many times had I told Osano how much I loved Janelle? And Janelle knew how I cared about Osano. They had both betrayed me. There was no other word for it. The funny thing was that I wasn’t angry with Osano lust with her.
“You are angry,” she said, as if I were being unreasonable.
“No, really I’m not,” I said. She was paying me off for my being with my wife. She was paying me off for a million things, but if I hadn’t asked her that specific question about going to bed, she wouldn’t have told me. She wouldn’t have been that cruel. But she wouldn’t lie to me anymore. She had told me that once, and now she was backing it up. What she did was none of my business.
“I’m glad you called,” she said. “I’ve missed you. And don’t be mad about Osano. I won’t see him again.”
“Why not?” I said. “Why shouldn’t you?”
“Oh, shit,” she said. “He was fun, but he couldn’t keep it up. Oh, shit, I promised myself I wouldn’t tell you that.” She laughed.
Now, being a normal jealous lover, I was delighted to hear that my dearest friend was partially impotent. But I just said carelessly, “Maybe it was you. He’s had a lot of devoted females in New York.”
Her voice was gay and bright. “God,” she said, “I worked hard enough. I could have brought a corpse back to life.” She laughed cheerfully.
So now, as she meant me to, I had a vision of her ministering to an invalid Osano, kissing and sucking at his body, her blond hair flying. I felt very sick.
I sighed. “You hit too hard,” I said. “I quit. Listen, I want to thank you again for taking care of me. I can’t believe you got me in that tub.”
“That’s my gym class,” Janelle said. “I’m very strong, you know.” Then her voice changed. “I’m awfully sorry about Artie. I wish I could have gone back with you and taken care of you.”
“Me too,” I said. But the truth was that I was glad that she couldn’t. And I was ashamed that she had seen me break down. I felt in a curious way that she could never feel the same way about me again.
Her voice came very quietly over the phone. “I love you,” she said.
I didn’t answer.
“Do you still love me?” she said.
Now it was my turn. “You know I’m not allowed to say things like that.”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re the one that told me that a married man should never tell a girl he loves her unless he’s ready to leave his wife. In fact, he’s not allowed to tell her that unless he’s left his wife.”
Finally Janelle’s voice came over the phone. It was all choked with angered breaths.
“Fuck you,” she said, and I could hear the phone slamming down.
I would have called her back, but then she could let that phony French-accented voice answer. “Mademoiselle Lambert isn’t at home. Could you please leave your name?” So I thought, Fuck you, too. And I felt great. But I knew we weren’t through yet.
Chapter 46
When Janelle told me about her screwing Osano, she couldn’t know how I felt. That I had seen Osano make a pass at every woman he met unless she was absolutely ugly. That she had fallen for his sweeping approach, that she had been so easy for him, made her seem less in my eyes. She had been a pushover, like so many women. And I felt that Osano felt some contempt for me. That I had been so madly in love with a girl he had been able to push over in just one evening.
So I wasn’t heartbroken, just depressed. An ego thing, I guess. I thought of telling Janelle all this, and then I saw that that would be just a cheap shot. To make her feel trampy. And then too I knew she would fight back. Why the hell shouldn’t she be a pushover? Weren’t men pushovers for girls who fucked everybody? Why should she take into account that Osano’s motives were not pure? He was charming, he was intelligent, he was talented, he was attractive and he wanted to fuck her. Why shouldn’t she fuck him? And where was it any of my business? My poor male ego had its nose out of joint, that’s all. Of course, I could tell her Osano’s secret, but that would be a cheap, irrelevant revenge.
Still, I was depressed. Fair or not, I liked her less.
On the next trip West, I didn’t call Janelle. We were in the final stages of complete alienation, which is classic in affairs of this kind. Again, as I always did in anything I was involved with, I had read the literature and I was a leading expert on the ebb and flow of the human love affair. We were in the stage of saying good-bye to each other but coming back together once in a while to ward off the blow of final separation. And so I didn’t call her because it was really all over, or I wanted it to be.
Meanwhile, Eddie Lancer and Doran Rudd had talked me into going back to the picture. It was a painful experience.
Simon Bellfort was just a tired old hack doing the best he could and scared shitless of Jeff Wagon. His assistant, “Slime City” Richetti, was really a gopher for Simon but tried to give us some of his own ideas on what should be in the script. Finally one day after a particular asshole idea I turned to Simon and Wagon and said, “Get that guy out of here.”
There was an awkward silence. I’d made up my mind. I was going to walk out and they must have sensed it, because finally Jeff Wagon said quietly, “Frank, why don’t you wait for Simon in my office?” Richetti left the room.
There was an awkward silence and I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. But are we serious about this fucking script or not?”
“Right,” Wagon said. “Let’s get on with it.”
> On the fourth day, after working at the studio, I decided to see a movie. I had the hotel call me a taxi and had the taxi drive me to Westwood. As usual, there was a long line waiting to get in and I took my place in it. I had brought a paperback book along with me to read while waiting in line. After the movie I planned to go to a restaurant nearby and call a taxi to take me back to the hotel.
The line was at a standstill, all young kids talking about movies in a knowledgeable way. The girls were pretty and the young men with their beards and long hair prettier in a Christ like way.
I sat down on the curb of the sidewalk to read and nobody paid any attention to me. Here in Hollywood this was not eccentric behavior. I was intent on my book when I became conscious of a car horn honking insistently and I looked up. There was a beautiful Phantom Rolls-Royce stopped in front of me, and I saw Janelle’s bright rosy face in the driver’s seat.
“Merlyn,” Janelle said, “Merlyn, what are you doing here?”
I got up casually and said, “Hi, Janelle.” I could see the guy in the Rolls-Royce passenger seat. He was young, handsome and beautifully dressed in a gray suit and gray silk tie. He had beautifully cut hair, and he didn’t seem to mind stopping so that Janelle could talk to me.
Janelle introduced us. She mentioned that he was the owner of the car. I admired the car and he said how much he admired my book and how eagerly he was waiting for the picture. Janelle said something about his working at a studio in some executive position. She wanted me to know that she wasn’t just going out with a rich guy in a Rolls-Royce, that he was part of the movie business.
Janelle said, “How did you get down here? Don’t tell me you’re finally driving.”
“No,” I said. “I took a taxi.”
Janelle said, “How come you’re waiting in line?”
I looked by her and said I didn’t have beautiful friends with me with their Academy cards to get in.
She knew I was kidding. Whenever we had to go to a movie, she would always use her Academy card to get ahead. “You wouldn’t use the card even if you had it,” he said.
She turned to her friend and said, “That’s the kind of dope he is.” But there was a little bit of pride in her voice. She really loved me for not doing things like that, even though she did.
I could see that Janelle was stricken, pitied me having to take a taxi to go to the movies alone, forced to wait in line like any peasant. She was building a romantic scenario. I was her desolate, broken husband, looking in through the window and seeing his former wife and happy children with a new husband. There were tears in her gold-flecked brown eyes.
I knew I had the upper hand. This handsome guy in the Rolls-Royce didn’t know that he was going to lose out. But then I got to work on him. I got him in a conversation about his work and he started chatting away. I pretended to be very interested and he went on and on with the usual Hollywood bullshit and I could see Janelle getting very nervous and irritated. She knew he was a dummy, but she didn’t want me to know he was a dummy. And then I started admiring his Rolls-Royce and the guy really became animated. In five minutes I knew more about a Rolls-Royce than I wanted to know. I kept admiring the car and then I used Doran’s old joke that Janelle knew and I repeated it word for word. First I made the guy tell me how much it cost and then I said, “For that kind of money this car should give head.” She hated that joke.
The guy started to laugh and laugh, and he said, “That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.”
Janelle’s face was flushed. She looked at me and then I saw the line moving and I had to get into my place. I told the guy it was very nice meeting him and told Janelle that it was great to see her again.
Two and a half hours later I walked out of the movie and I saw Janelle’s familiar Mercedes parked in front of the theater. I got in.
“Hi, Janelle,” I said. “How did you get rid of him?’
She said, “You son of a bitch.”
And I laughed and I reached over and she gave me a kiss and we drove to my hotel and spent the night.
She was very loving that night. She asked me once, “Did you know I would come back to get you?”
And I said, “Yes.”
And she said, “You bastard.”
It was a wonderful night, but in the morning it was as if nothing had happened. We said good-bye.
She asked me how long I would be in town. I said I had three days more and then I would be back in New York.
She said, “Will you call me?”
I said I didn’t think I would have time.
She said, “Not to meet me, just call me.”
I said, “I will.”
I did, but she wasn’t in. I got her French-accented voice on the machine. I left a message and then I went back to New York.
The last time I ever saw Janelle was really an accident. I was in my Beverly Hills Hotel suite and I had an hour to kill before going out to dinner with some friends and I couldn’t resist the impulse to call her. She agreed to meet me for a drink at the La Dolce Vita bar, which was only about five minutes away from the hotel. I went right over there and in a few minutes she came in. We sat at the bar and had a drink and talked casually as if we were just acquaintances. She swung around on the barstool to get her cigarette lit by the bartender, and as she did so, her foot hit my leg slightly, not even enough to dirty the trousers, and she said, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
And for some reason that broke my heart, and when she lifted her eyes after lighting her cigarette, I said, “Don’t do that.”
And I could see the tears in her eyes.
It was in the literature on breaking up, the last tender moments of sentiment, the last flutters of a dying pulse, the last flush of a rosy cheek before death. I didn’t think of it then.
We held hands, left the bar and went to my hotel suite. I called my friends to cancel my appointment. Janelle and I had dinner in the suite. I lay back on the sofa, and she took her favorite position with legs tucked underneath her and her upper body leaning on mine so that we were always in touch with each other. In that way she could look down at my face and look into my eyes and see if I lied to her. She still thought that she could read somebody’s face. But also from my position, looking up, I could see the lovely line that her neck made between her chin and neck and the perfect triangulation of her face.
We just held each other for a while, and then, looking deep into my eyes, she said, “Do you still love me?”
“No,” I said, “but I find it painful to be without you.”
She didn’t say anything for a while, and then she repeated with a peculiar emphasis, “I’m serious, really I am serious. Do you still love me?”
And I said seriously, “Sure,” and it was true, but I said it in that way to tell her that even though I loved her, it didn’t make any difference, that we could never be the same again and that I would never be at her mercy again, and I saw that she recognized that immediately.
“Why do you say it like that?” she said. “You still don’t forgive me for the quarrels we had?”
“I forgive you for everything,” I said, “except for going to bed with Osano.”
“But that didn’t mean anything,” she said. “I just went to bed with him and then it was all over. It really didn’t mean anything.”
“I don’t care,” I said, “I’ll never forgive you for that.”
She thought that over and went to get another glass of wine, and after she had drunk a bit, we went to bed. The magic of her flesh still had its power. And I wondered if out of the silly romanticism of love stories there could be a basis of scientific fact. It could be true, that in the many millions of disparate cells a person met with a person of the opposite sex who had those very same cells and those cells responded to each other. That it had nothing to do with power or class or intelligence, nothing to do with virtue or sin. It was quite simply a scientific response of similar cells. How easy it would be then to understand.
We were in bed naked, makin
g love, when suddenly Janelle sat up and withdrew from me.
“I have to go home,” she said.
And it wasn’t one of her deliberate acts of punishment. I could see that she could no longer bear to be here. Her body seemed to shrivel up, her breasts became flatter, her face gaunt with tension as if she had suffered some frightful blow, and she looked me directly in the eyes without any attempt of apology or excuses, without any attempt to reassure me for my hurt ego. She said again as simply as before, “I have to go home.”
I didn’t dare touch her to reassure her. I started to dress and I said, “It’s OK. I understand. I’ll go downstairs with you to get your car.”
“No,” she said. She was dressed now. “You don’t have to.”
And I could see she couldn’t bear to be with me, that she wanted me out of her sight. I let her out of the suite. We didn’t attempt to kiss each other good-bye. She tried to smile at me before she turned away but could not.
I closed and locked the door and went to bed. Despite the fact that I had been interrupted in mid-course, I found that I had no sexual excitement left. The repulsion she had for me had killed any sexual desire, but my ego wasn’t hurt. I really felt I understood what had happened, and I was as relieved as she was. I fell asleep almost immediately without dreams. In fact, it was the best sleep I had had in years.
Chapter 47
Cully, making his final plans to depose Gronevelt, could not think of himself as a traitor. Gronevelt would be taken care of, receive a huge sum of money for his interest in the hotel, be allowed to keep his living quarters suite. Everything would be as it had been before except that Gronevelt would no longer have any real power. Certainly Gronevelt would have “The Pencil.” He still had many friends who would come to the Xanadu to gamble. But since Gronevelt “Hosted” them, that would be a profitable courtesy.
Cully thought he would never have done this had Gronevelt not had his stroke. Since that stroke the Xanadu Hotel had slid downhill. Gronevelt had simply not been strong enough to act quickly and make the right decisions when necessary.
