If they proved to be up to her standards, she made them confess their most cherished and powerful secret sexual desires to her, all their special needs, no matter how shameful they believed them to be, all the fantasies that they had never been able to act out with their wives. Just telling her what they wanted, just using the dangerous words while she lay there listening intently, her lips half open, her luscious body covered only by a transparent layer of the sheerest material, her hand—as if she were powerless to stop it—slowly straying between her legs as they spoke, made them wild with lust. After she’d allowed them to play out the forbidden acts with her, Victoria taught them other things their wives would never accept or permit. She made herself into a mistress of erotic practice. There was nothing she wouldn’t do except allow herself to be hurt, physically or emotionally. She always took time enough to firmly establish a taste they could never again satisfy, before she dismissed them, enjoying the thought of their future frustrations even more than she had enjoyed their bodies and their credulous adoration.
Victoria demanded that the men she picked satisfy her before they satisfied themselves, and insisted on their silence as she rode closer and closer to her threshing orgasm, her eyes tightly closed as she imagined Angus filling her body. Her appetite was always for new men, fresh men, the unknown, the pursuit and the capture, rather than for repetition or familiarity. She was never as wild as after she’d seen Angus, after she’d returned to California with her lust for him still alive and unsatisfied and her anger at him making her impatient and hungry, an addict desperate for a fix.
Each man she took, whether only twice or for a period of weeks of frenzied afternoons, was given his leave with the same words, words Victoria knew would keep him friendly and silent for life. “If I weren’t’ so crazy about your adorable wife, I’d never be able to stop seeing you, but I’m terribly afraid of her finding out. She’d divorce you in a minute, you know that, don’t you? We must never do anything to hurt her, to hurt your marriage … but I’ll never forget you, darling. You were simply wonderful … oh, yes, so very, very good … the best, the very best I’ve ever known.”
Victoria Frost, one year after she left New York, was one of the most sought-after single women in Los Angeles.
A week after the Indigo Seas pitch, Sasha and Gigi met for lunch. They’d been on the phone frequently since Gigi had left Scruples Two, but between their jobs and Sasha’s busy social weekends, this was the first time they’d actually managed to set aside enough time to see each other. They’d picked territory halfway between their offices, at the Bistro Gardens in Beverly Hills, where they had a prime seat on the long leather banquette facing the most coveted half of the long room as well as the French doors that opened out to the crowded, flower-filled terrace. There, under space heaters, large tables of elaborately suited and occasionally hat-wearing women were busily ordering chickenburgers with the sauce on the side and celebrating one another’s birthdays and anniversaries with piles of smallish, beautifully wrapped gifts.
“What a place for a food fight,” Gigi said, looking around at women, some of whose grooming drifted toward taxidermy. “Why do I imagine them throwing great gobs, absolute fistfuls, of caviar from one table to another? And then sloshing buckets of vodka over each other until they’re all dripping wet and their hair is ruined?”
“I’d pay cash on the barrelhead to see it,” Sasha agreed, her dry voice at variance with her manner of glowing self-confidence.
Gigi turned to inspect her friend. There was something odd about Sasha, she thought, although Gigi was familiar with Sasha’s boldest, highest, most lustrous presentation of herself, the gorgeous Lillie Langtry appearance she wore today so glowingly. She was sleek and vivid, her glossy hair swept high above her brow, her lipstick bright, seeming to fly a flag of undimmed success. She confronted the twittering mass of women with friendly indifference, waving here, smiling there, with a sort of benevolent social art that was new to Gigi.
“You look more … Edwardian … than ever,” she ventured.
“And you look more Left Bank.”
“Is that a compliment?” Gigi asked suspiciously. The Bistro Gardens was as far from the Left Bank in spirit as the Left Bank was from the Pyramids.
“Absolutely. Is ‘Edwardian’?”
“The best. Think about it. When was the last time in history that women were allowed to be utterly female, presented in a framework of glorification? Tiny waists, deep bosoms, glamorous entrances and exists in sweeping skirts, puffed sleeves, lace parasols, marvelous hats loaded with feathers—and then came World War I and skirts got shorter and then came Chanel and chests got flatter and now … well, just look around you. Rampant expensive respectability. Everyone’s sleek and proper, buttons have replaced ruffles. Women dressing for women. There’s nothing sexy about that.”
“I don’t feel Edwardian,” Sasha said, “and I don’t feel sexy.”
“Neither does Billy … it’s because you’ve had babies,” Gigi said with the confident expertise of an onlooker and nonparticipant. “Even though you’re back at work, there’s something about having a new baby at home that kills sexiness … but it can’t last long, can it, or why would anybody ever have a second child?”
“Beats me,” Sasha said, with such a tone of true despair in her voice that Gigi looked at her sharply. As marvelous as Sasha looked, she sounded miserable, and now that Gigi was alerted, there was something … unhappy? … something wrong? … about her eyes.
“Is Nellie all right?” Gigi asked, alarmed.
“Of course she is. I wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” Sasha said.
“I’ll believe anything,” Gigi said fervently, thinking of the past week, during which she and Davy had been forcing themselves to work on the myriad details of the actual Indigo Seas ads, their determination detoured by stolen kisses in spite of the office etiquette of leaving their door permanently open, not merely playing with fire but running back and forth through it, until the time came when they could decently leave for the day and rush back to her place.
“Josh found out about my brilliant career as a Great Slut.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Worse than that. Remember Tom Unger? The last time Josh was in New York, he met him, and that unutterable dirtball somehow managed to tell the whole story—in front of a group of men who had no idea that Josh and I are married.”
“I do not fucking believe this!” Never had Gigi so felt the limitation of the basic Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. There must be worse words for such a catastrophe.
“Ladies, today our luncheon specials—-”
“NO!”
“GO AWAY!”
“So what did Josh say?” Gigi gasped.
“Well, of course he believed it.”
“But after all, it was … ah … how can I put this? … true.”
“He had a choice.”
“As if there were two Sasha Nevskys?”
“He could have decided not to let it make a difference,” Sasha said gravely.
“Taken his knowledge to the grave?”
“Exactly. He didn’t have to come running home to me accusingly, as if the world had come to an end. He could have acted as if nothing had been said.”
“Look, you know I’m completely and forever on your side in everything, but isn’t that unrealistic? Aren’t you expecting too much, Sasha?”
“I don’t believe so, and I’ve thought about nothing else since it happened. Look here, Gigi, if I’d been reliably informed that Josh had screwed every last woman in town who had a pulse between his divorce and the time he met me, I would never have brought it up. Never. I would have accepted it as something he had every right to do. He’s an adult. I’d watch him like a hawk to make sure he wasn’t still fooling around, but that would have been that. Over and done with. Part of the past.”
“But …”
&nb
sp; “But what?”
“Sasha, he’s a man.”
“Oh God, Gigi, you too! Do you realize what you just said? It’s okay for him to play around because he’s a man, but not okay for me because I’m a woman. Admit you said that.”
“I said it,” Gigi agreed, shamefaced. “I can’t believe I said it, but I did.”
“So you have a double standard about sex, yes for men, no for women.”
“I—I’m not sure. How could I?”
“But you do,” Sasha said inexorably. “You’ve just never realized it. And that’s after all our years of discussion in New York, all the lessons I gave you in how to be a Great Slut … you never, ever lost your basic indoctrination in the double standard. You knew exactly what I was doing, but you didn’t truly believe that I was sleeping with three different men on three successive nights, did you? It was almost a sort of gag, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Gigi said slowly, “I guess it must have been. I never saw them, we kept it out of the apartment by a kind of mutual agreement … it was a …” She floundered. “Not a gag, no, that’s wrong … it was a … fantasy. I knew perfectly well what you were doing, but I didn’t believe it. Not deep down in my bones, not as if it were real. Knowing something … isn’t believing. But if I couldn’t believe it was true, how can Josh?”
“Oh, he’s the opposite. It’s completely different for him. He not only believes it, he can’t get away from it. He keeps seeing it happening in his mind. He goes from scenario to scenario, I can tell, just looking at his face. He’s consumed by it, he won’t talk to me about it, but I can tell that it’s killing him … he’s one step away from murder or suicide. We try to make conversation about the baby, we try to keep busy with friends so we won’t have to be alone together, and when we are, we read or we watch television or he makes business calls—”
“Couldn’t you force him to talk about it? Ventilate the whole thing? Wouldn’t some fresh air help?” Gigi cried.
“He says that talking about it makes it worse. He simply refuses to discuss it again, he walked out of the room the two times I tried to bring it up. Once I followed him, and he dashed out of the house and didn’t come back for hours.”
“Oh, Sasha, I’m so desperately sorry! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I thought he might change,” she said bleakly. “I thought that if I gave him a little time to absorb what I said, he’d be able to … to acknowledge, at least intellectually, that I had every right to live my own life. Now I know that intellect has nothing to do with it. Emotionally he’d prefer it if I’d committed a murder. Josh is twenty-five years older than I am—that’s not a question of different generations, it’s a question of light years. And it’s not just an age or generation thing. It’s gender; Would Zach think it was okay?”
“We’ve never discussed it—he’s never known word one about you—but no, I don’t think he’d ever be willing to grant a woman that freedom,” Gigi admitted reluctantly.
“And you, Gigi, now that you know that it wasn’t a fantasy, that it was a reality, do you still think it’s okay? If you aren’t sure, don’t say yes to make me feel better, because I’ll know you’re lying.”
“I’m trying to imagine it,” Gigi said intently. “Trying to put myself in your shoes.”
“Remember, there’s no Zach in your life, he doesn’t exist, you’ve never even met him, much less fallen in love with him, can you manage that?”
“No problem,” Gigi snapped.
“However, there are three men who adore you, three very attractive, unattached men, all crazy about you, and although you’re not in love with any of them, you like them very much. They each know about the other two and are willing to go along with your freedom of action. You don’t want to choose one among the three, you want all of them, and you give yourself permission to make love to all of them. Can you get that into your mind and hold it there?”
Gigi concentrated hard, her eyes almost crossed in concentration. “I’ve got to make it specific to make it real,” she said. “Just for the sake of argument, let’s say … Archie … and Byron … and … I guess, oh, Ben Winthrop. That would mean Archie on Monday, Byron on Tuesday, Ben on Wednesday, Archie on Thursday, Byron on Friday, Ben on Saturday, Sunday nobody. On Sunday it would be just you and me making dinner, the way it used to be.”
Gigi paused and her eyes closed as she surveyed the pictures in her mind. Finally she opened her eyes and nodded her head up and down. “Yep, I can see it. In fact … in fact I think I could get to really … enjoy it, once I gave myself that permission and got into the rhythm. Oh yes, indeed! Yummy! There’d be the fatigue factor—six nights a week sounds like too much—but as long as I wasn’t in love with any of them, well, why not?”
“Oh, Gigi, you understand!” Sasha took her hand and clung to it fiercely.
“As soon as I imagined … those three particular men …” Gigi said, amazed at herself. With Davy there would be four. It wasn’t in the cards, not for her, but it was certainly not unimaginable.
“You don’t know how much this means to me—especially because you’re so far beyond unhip about sex. But, Gigi, don’t do it! For heaven’s sake, promise me you won’t do it! You’ll ruin your life!”
“Idiot, of course I promise. But what are you going to do about Josh?”
“Wait. All I can do is keep my head above water and see what happens. He hasn’t come near me, he hasn’t touched me, he hasn’t even kissed me on the lips since I told him … and if he keeps on that way, and still won’t talk about it, won’t go to see a therapist, won’t do anything but endure it for the sake of God knows what … maybe the baby, maybe because he thinks it’s unfair to punish me retroactively or some other crazy idea—I’ll leave him. What else can I do? I can’t live like this for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, Sasha, no!”
“Can you think of an alternative?”
“If he doesn’t eventually change back into the old Josh … oh, Sasha, I can’t give you good advice, it’s not my call,” Gigi said cautiously. “Do what’s right for you. I’m always in your corner.”
“Well, enough about me, until further notice. Back to you,” Sasha said briskly, changing the subject with relief.
“Me?” Gigi had almost forgotten that she existed in her contemplation of Sasha’s problems. “What about me?”
“How come you didn’t put Davy in your list of three? What’s wrong with him? You tell me what a darling he is every time we speak, and suddenly Ben Winthrop, from left field, is on your list, but not Davy.”
“My God, what difference does it make? We were only talking hyp-hypo-hypothetically.”
“You’re stuttering.”
“I am not!”
“So.”
“Sasha, you know I can’t stand it when you say ‘so’ like that!”
“You’re blushing. Stuttering and blushing. Did you really think you could keep it from me? You and Davy. Well. How very interesting,” Sasha said, looking suddenly like her old triumphantly superior self. “You’re not as unhip as I thought, and just how did this happen?”
“Not until after I’d kicked your revoltingly self-centered, egomaniacal, inconsiderate, hateful beast of a brother out of my house! He doesn’t want a real woman in his life, he wants some braindead slave you’d get if you dialed 1-800-WIFE. I was going to tell you—”
“I always wondered how you put up with him. Just because I’m his sister doesn’t mean I don’t see his faults. Especially when he’s never around.”
“You sound like the person who says that not only does the restaurant have terrible food but, even worse, they serve such small portions.”
“That’s the perfect description of Zach. My God, I’m starving. Waiter! Waiter! Where the hell is he—just look, Gigi, this place is almost empty. We never got any lunch. Captain! Could you take our order, please, we’re faint from hunger.”
8
It was afternoon on Friday in Kalispell, Montana
, and when they had lost the light a few minutes ago in this fifteen-degrees-above-zero February afternoon, Zach Nevsky and his producer, Roger Rowan, had immediately repaired to the comfortable, well-heated offices they’d furnished in the Outlaw Inn, the largest motel in town, where headquarters had been established for the duration of the filming of The Kalispell Chronicles, now almost seven weeks into its fourteen-week production schedule.
Kalispell, a thriving city of some thirteen thousand people, boasts a number of charming Victorian houses and tree-lined streets, as well as dozens of authentic turn-of-the-century locations, including a twenty-six-room mansion. In 1980, Heaven’s Gate had been shot there, pumping millions into the friendly community, as well as making Kalispell a byword for budgetary disaster and career ruin. However, the author of Chronicles had set his book in Kalispell, making it the only place where the film could be properly made, in spite of the Cimino curse.
“Who said,” Zach asked, sitting down at his desk, “ ‘Show me a great actor and I’ll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress and you’ve seen the devil’?”
“I’d say George Bernard Shaw,” Rowan guessed, “except he wouldn’t have used the word ‘lousy’ in that context. Billy Wilder? Hitchcock? No? Okay, I give up, as usual.”
“W. C. Fields,” Zach said, “and he was long dead before Melanie Adams became the leading female star on the planet Earth. The man was a great prophet.”
“ ‘Prophet’? Hell, no, merely experienced. He worked with many of the greatest actresses of his time—nothing’s changed.”
“Who cursed us and put her in our picture?”
“You insisted on her,” Rowan said in patent boredom, “I wanted her, the studio wanted her, the author wanted her, the public worships at her feet, her marquee value alone—”
Lovers Page 19
