Lovers

by Judith Krantz

  “Don’t try me. Good-bye.”

  Angus Caldwell hung up the phone without another word. He shut the library door and closed himself in, still hearing Victoria’s voice in his ears. This was the day he’d postponed and postponed, hoping—no, believing—that something would keep it at bay. She’d meet somebody out there, or she’d outgrow him, lose interest … God knows what thoughts he’d entertained, but he’d never convinced himself that this moment would really come.

  Suddenly, unable to endure being shut up indoors with his fearful musing, Angus Caldwell walked quickly out of the great house, which had been built a few hundred yards back from the ocean. He walked down across the perfect greenness of the lawn and onto the sand, stopping only when he reached the lapping waves that were gentle this morning.

  Angus Caldwell looked about him in every direction, and surveyed the gauzy, opaline morning mists lifting quickly over the ocean as the pearly blue light of another superb autumnal Southampton day grew brighter. As he looked up and down the wide beige beach, he named to himself the residents of each magnificently tended mansion, set well apart from one another behind clipped green privet hedges, on a stretch of coast that had no equal in the world. Each neighboring home belonged to a good friend, in each of them he was the most welcome of guests, just as he was at the Maidstone Club and the Meadow Club, membership in which created the special knowledge of an absolute privilege that could only be found in Southampton, a privilege that none of the other, lesser, new-rich Hamptons could ever match.

  Angus took deep gulps of air, the clean tonic salt air of the Atlantic, and looked at his own weathered, shingled, white-trimmed mansion, a landmark house of deep bay windows and wide porches and intensely comfortable, deliberately casual rooms, to which he took a helicopter each Friday night with longing anticipation—the same anticipation he felt on Sunday night when the time came to return to his vast, art-filled, elegant Fifth Avenue apartment, knowing that a good week’s work awaited him. He felt, with each pulsing beat of his heart, how much it meant to him when the elevator door opened and he entered the magnificent reception room of the agency where he and Millicent had been in charge of hundreds of employees for so long. He relived the ritual of each morning’s progression down the corridor to his own office, interrupted many times to speak to many people, never abusing his keen awareness that everyone in sight depended on them for their livelihood. Angus Caldwell scanned the vast horizon of the Atlantic Ocean and contemplated his half-ownership of an agency that would soon bill a billion dollars a year. He and Millicent were good bosses, he reflected as he bent to pick up a piece of driftwood; they’d honestly earned every one of the millions they’d made.

  He enjoyed the best life of any man he knew, Angus Caldwell thought, but upstairs Millicent was still sleeping in her bedroom, Millicent, who allowed him all freedoms but the one he craved so persistently. If Victoria were here right now, he would have to find a place where he could have her, where he could find the release only she could give him, for the sound of her voice on the phone had aroused him unbearably, to the point of pain. No, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, even if he had to throw her down on the beach in full view of the house.

  If you don’t tell her, I will, she’d said. When the waves retreated, Angus made a sizable hole in the sand with the toe of his tennis shoe and watched as the returning waves gradually filled it up. He shrugged at this inevitable phenomenon and started jogging down the wide beach, moving smoothly and easily, a man who looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world except getting enough exercise to prolong his enviable life.

  Vito and Zach broke for coffee while the editor looked over the takes of a scene they were working on in the temporary editing room that had been set up in a motel not far from the Malibu Colony location.

  “There were a couple of takes in there that looked better to me than what we just saw,” Zach said hopefully. “We can make that last shot substantially better.”

  “I know we can,” Vito said. “In fact, the more film you shoot the better this picture looks. There was a day last week when I thought the only thing we could do with this film was burn the negative and hope that the arson squad wouldn’t catch us, but now it’s turned into an interestingly mellow stew, an oddball semi-black comedy mixed with pure sentiment and a sexy dash of madcap romance. I hear Siskel and Ebert now. ‘A Valentine to Hollywood—two thumbs up.’ ”

  “If you’re right, Vito, it will be because of some lucky breaks and the chemistry of the actors. I haven’t been up to speed, don’t think I don’t realize it. I keep seeing Siskel and Ebert with their middle fingers up, and we wrap on Friday.”

  Vito laughed comfortably. “It’s only a movie, as I keep telling you, Zach. Don’t take it so to heart, kid. Each of us has had more than one project that didn’t seem to work out right from the beginning. And sometimes everything can be going great and you’ve produced a stink bomb. Ever see The WASP? No, forget I asked! I don’t want to embarrass you.”

  Vito laughed again and poured another cup of coffee. “Long Weekend started with a jinx on it. The people who live in the Colony were probably getting together every weekend, making little wax figures of us, and sticking pins in them and boiling them in oil. They never wanted this film located here, this place is their own incestuous secret. But they couldn’t beat us, and by now they’ve given up. Long Weekend should have been called Black Mass in Malibu. In fact, I think I’ll register that title with the Guild tomorrow.”

  “Vito, why are you so relaxed? You make me nervous. Ever since I started working with you, every minute has seemed like a matter of life and death, and suddenly I’ve fucked up and you’re taking it calmly—well, relatively calmly. This is not the Vito Orsini I know.”

  “One, you haven’t fucked up, we’ve got a picture here. Two, I’m not the Vito Orsini you knew, and you have your sister to thank. When I go home to Sasha, it puts my life in perspective. And if I’m in time to burp Nellie, the pages we’ve shot during the day don’t matter as much as they used to.”

  “You really adore that baby, don’t you?” Zach asked curiously.

  “What’s not to adore? The only thing I feel terrible about is that I wasn’t there when Gigi was that age. But now Gigi’s such a pain in the ass, such a worry to me, that I’m frankly glad it never worked out for the two of you. Between her flakiness and your flakiness, it would have been a doomed combination.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Listen, kid, you don’t blame me for wanting to see Gigi settle down with Ben Winthrop, do you? He’s pushing it hard, but Gigi won’t discuss the idea, hasn’t even let me meet him. Sasha says I’m mercenary, but what father wouldn’t enjoy the thought of his daughter marrying a guy who’s young, rich, handsome, and, as far as I know, halfway decent? Sasha says there isn’t a chance in hell of it happening because Gigi’s such a sentimental mess, and even if she did marry Winthrop, he’d be taking advantage of her unstable condition, and what’s more, it’d never last, because she’d only be marrying him on the rebound from you.”

  “Sasha’s out of her mind!” Zach exclaimed in bitterness. “Christ, what’s wrong with her? She’s never dropped her sisterly attitude, her sick notion that I’m irresistible to women. That’s because I remind her of herself, if you ask me. I thought maybe marriage would cure her … but apparently not.”

  “You know something, Zach? You and your sister are both menaces to society. Now that I’ve taken Sasha out of circulation, someone ought to keep you locked up. No man ever really got Sasha out of his blood—look at that miserable slime Josh Hillman. And my daughter, one of the most down-to-earth people I know, is still so touchy about you that I don’t dare mention your name in front of her or she gets this little vulnerable hurt look on her face and makes me feel like a thoughtless beast. She’s never even asked me how this shoot is going, just because you’re involved. Talk about a lack of consideration for your father! I invited her to come out to the set to visit, now that she’s no
t working, and she wouldn’t consider it. On other pictures, she used to bug me to let her see me work, even though I explained how dull it was. She’s not emotionally able to cope with seeing you.”

  “Then I certainly won’t come to the party.” Zach’s voice was abrupt.

  “You have to come, Zach, you know you do. Sasha and I wouldn’t forgive you if you didn’t. Gigi’s mentally ready for that. In fact she’s physically prepared, she’s even stopped living her life in the bedroom, like a recluse, and forced herself to use the rest of the house. I think that’s a good sign. On the other hand, she spends the entire morning reading ‘Dear Abby,’ Ann Landers, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and her horoscope in every magazine she can buy. Does she think she’ll find the answer to her problems with you in those columns? I expect her to start sleeping with a teddy bear any day now.”

  “Vito, damn it, I didn’t break up with her, she broke up with me. It’s not my fault that she’s—whatever she is.”

  “I know, Zach. None of my former ladies behaved in Gigi’s sloppy, lovelorn way. Hell, even Billy and I get along now. I’m producing my next picture for Susan Arvey, and Maggie MacGregor and I have a genuinely friendly relationship.”

  “You and Susan Arvey! No shit!”

  “Sure. What’d you think? I’m reformed now … but I had my day. And a majestic, glorious day it was. Thank God Sasha doesn’t want to know about it or I’d have to tell her, and I suspect that she wouldn’t appreciate the truth.”

  “What about Maggie?” Zach asked, fascinated.

  “That’s a really long-time thing, started way before Billy. How do you suppose I talked her into doing that special on you in Kalispell?”

  “I didn’t think. Or if I did, I figured it was because the situation was so hot. I should have been more suspicious.”

  “Not at all, things like that don’t show up to the naked eye, only the informed one. Take it from a reformed and experienced fellow. I see Gigi, and I see a girl who hasn’t got a clue to why she bought the video of The Way We Were and watches it almost every night she’s alone at home.”

  “The Way We Were?”

  “Okay, you’re no Redford and she’s no Streisand, but the theme, Zach, the theme of two people who can’t live together, but who have a love that won’t die—it’ll get to you every time you watch, even if you know it by heart. Twenty hankies. Ever see the picture?”

  “Yeah, once … it didn’t make much of an impression,” Zach lied uneasily. He rented The Way We Were whenever he felt he had to see it again, about once a week, maybe again on the weekends. He wouldn’t let himself buy it. That way lay enslavement.

  The night of Gigi’s wedding reception for Vito and Sasha still held a touch of the sultry heat of the day, which had been unseasonably warm for late October. A full moon, truly orange, a moon that would be called a harvest moon in any other part of the country, hung low in the sky even before the sun had set.

  Gigi had rehearsed her party for several nights, darkening the house and putting new bulbs in her small lamps that now all gave a soft pink glow. With the lamps on, she padded about, placing countless candlesticks and votive lights until she’d achieved an effect that was as festive as it was flattering. The areas of shadow were equally successful—mysterious, alluring, and promising. Everywhere the house issued a significant invitation. All the tree branches and all the vines that could be seen from the various courtyards of the three-story, up-and-downstairs house had been hung with lanterns that glowed in pinkish luminescence, and the balconies had been entwined with strings of tiny white twinkle lights.

  Gigi had first considered decorating the house in an all-white bridal theme that would be doubly effective against the colorful confusion of her own multipatterned floral chintzes, but discarded the idea after some thought, in view of the fact that these were hardly first nuptials for either Sasha or Vito. Instead she’d gone to the wholesale flower market downtown and loaded a borrowed van with twenty dozen pots of the palest pink cyclamen and twenty dozen pots of the white and pink English primroses that had just come into full bloom. She’d made another trip to the Farmer’s Market to buy pink fruit, but except for pink grapefruit, if it existed, it was hiding from her.

  Apples, Gigi decided, crates and crates of them, in every variety of red. She could conceal the bottoms of the crates with flower pots, Gigi reflected, but some final grace note was still lacking. She wandered through the market, smelling and touching, until she found tiny bunches of green-leaved, pink and white radishes that looked pretty enough to be pinned on a lapel. She bought every last bunch available, hundreds of them, and tucked them, like frilly grace notes, into the crates of apples that her caterers piled up in carefully picturesque disorder wherever she found an appropriate spot.

  Where to put the bar, Gigi wondered. Her catering experience at Voyage to Bountiful had taught her that every bar was a potential traffic jam. There were so many unnecessary rooms in her house that she was able to set up bars in four different doorways, in spots too small to encourage people to linger.

  After much searching for something original to serve, Gigi had decided to be sensible and fall back on the time-tested safety of a classic hearty Italian buffet, Vito’s favorite food. Was there anybody who wouldn’t find something to his liking amid the variety of hot and cold antipasti, the five kinds of pasta, the osso bucco, the chickens with black olives, the sausages with peppers, and the roasted legs of lamb? And wedding cake, of course. If so, let those picky souls drag themselves out to eat after the party, she decided.

  Gigi had been able to find rental tablecloths that had boughs of flowering pink and white apple blossoms printed on a deeper pink background; the napkins were pale pink, the candles were white, and more clay pots of low white primroses made the simple centerpieces. She’d told her caterer to use forty-eight-inch tables for each group of eight people, and set them up all over the rambling house. Tight tables, as Emily Gatherum had said, gave animation to any group.

  Animation. Gigi moaned out loud in an excess of preparty nerves. Why had she, who knew the sheer terrifying hell of hostessing from the viewpoint of a dispassionate professional, volunteered to give a party herself? A party for hundreds of people, half of whom had absolutely nothing in common with the other half?

  The people Sasha had invited from Scruples Two had never encountered anyone on Vito’s list of Le Tout Hollywood. No wonder Sasha and her father had never met earlier; the only single guest they knew in common would be Zach. And Josie Speilberg and Burgo, Gigi amended. She could count on Josie and Burgo, both lively talkers, to work to make small bridges across the vast gap between the two groups, but certainly not on Zach, who would, she hoped, have the good taste to make a token appearance and then disappear.

  Zach had once told her that the only thing to concern herself with in planning a party was the enjoyment of the guests, that the happiness of the hosts was unimportant because they were nothing more than the producers of an evening.

  That had sounded reasonable at the time, but now that she was giving a huge party on her own, and a family wedding reception to boot, the philosophical distance he’d conjured up was impossible to achieve. On the other hand, the house, much too big for her, was much too small for all the guests, and maybe sheer physical proximity would give the party the joie de vivre it needed. Elsa Maxwell, the famed party-giver of the world between the wars, had always insisted on overcrowding as the key to any good party. Gigi prayed fervently for the ghost of Elsa Maxwell to bless her as she jittered with anticipatory “klung.” This useful word that Sasha had taught her, even if it couldn’t be found in any dictionary, meant a swift rush of shit to the heart.

  As Gigi confirmed the twelve valet parkers from Chuck’s Parking, and the eight violinists who would play romantic melodies from the largest of her balconies, and the dance band that would alternate with them in the courtyard, she blessed the day that Sasha had negotiated a contract with poor Mr. Jimmy for his reproductions of her antique lingerie. Aft
er his death, that contract had been taken over by Scruples Two, and her royalties, religiously saved for years, now amounted to a sum she’d never have dreamed she could call her own. It was no longer possible to think of it as a nest egg, unless the nest belonged to a particularly enormous and fertile dinosaur who laid huge eggs in large batches. Even if this party was the expensive disaster she expected it to be, she could afford to pay for it without thinking twice.

  Gigi dressed for the party with cold hands that fumbled with every button and almost caused her zipper to jam. At Neiman-Marcus she’d found a chiffon dress of a color she called “waternixie green,” a light green that made her think of mermaids disporting themselves mischievously with a school of lusty mermen on the banks of a river in the early springtime. It had a closely cut bodice with tight, concealing sleeves that ended in tiny cuffs at her wrists, and a deeply cut neckline that somehow managed to begin exactly where the pink of her nipples abruptly interrupted the blue-veined whiteness of her breasts. The bodice clasped her torso tightly all the way to her slim waist, where it was secured by a simple chiffon belt. The skirt, made of three layers of chiffon cut on the bias, undulated as she moved, to reveal every curve of her lower body, although its slightly flared hemline gave her the freedom to move easily. It ended a hair above the middle of her knee, at exactly the length that proclaimed that it was late 1984, not a day earlier, not a day later.

  When your father marries a woman who is only three years older than you are, Gigi told herself, as she bought the most audaciously daring and provocative dress she’d ever owned, you have a duty to make sure that your new stepmother won’t feel that she’s been burdened by a stepchild who’s too innocent to take care of herself. Or too modest. This dress would be modest only for a woman who believed that her arms were her primary erogenous zone.

  Anyway, who’d ever heard of a modest waternixie, Gigi wondered, as she layered her eyelashes with more mascara than usual and stood in front of her full-length mirror looking as poised as she wished she felt. Perhaps it was obvious for a green-eyed girl to wear green, but this was Hollywood, after all, where a subtle effect might be wasted.