“It's nothing complicated. Just if they're good with each other.”
“I'm a pretty terrific judge too. Unblemished record. I've never been right once. I'm my own Nixon.”
“This time it's going to be different”
“How did I know you were going to say that? The only time that line works is in a song.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and he played valet to her in the removal of her boots. “Work for it.”
“What's depressed you?”
She bunched her hair in a rubber band. It always fell into her mouth.
“Nothing. My head gets filled with silly questions. Like why are we really doing this?” He continued to undress her. “Don't you stop for lunch?”
Her leather miniskirt, held together by an enormous copper buckle, yielded quietly, and now in skin-toned panty hose and white lace bra she stretched out on the bed. He unzipped his fly and dropped his trousers.
“I guess there's no stopping you,” she said. “I may as well give in gracefully. My mother gave me that useful bit of advice.”
A couple of emyl nitrates were introduced before long by Alan. He was troubled by his inability to determine whether they were fresh or stale. Jane broke one open.
“What do you think?”
“Let's stick to airplane glue.”
“Jane, cut it out.”
She gave ground and he slipped inside of her.
“I've got to talk,” she protested. “If this isn't funny, I'll start to cry. Don't you see, it doesn't mean anything to you.”
He plunged deeper, his breathing a series of hiccups.
“I've found a home,” he said.
“For the night, anyway, you bastard.”
She pushed him away, slipped over on her side and tried not to cry. He didn't deserve the satisfaction. No one ever would, she thought, and that was the trouble.
* * * *
“You still haven't told me why you've come down,” Conlon asked, “or would you prefer not to? I can keep my mouth shut, if it's something very personal.”
“I have to see my parents, nothing complicated.”
She trusted Conlon—they were friends—but the prospect of bearing witness against her mother, and in a sense herself, for she had watched without intruding, made her a party to Nancy's guilt. And in any case, her animosity toward her mother had a way of becoming diffused, spraying like buckshot, hitting nothing. She had never been short of confidantes, but she had not discovered a graceful method of spilling her guts, so she retained the secrets that troubled her until they mysteriously dissolved within her. Even as a child she had found that telling, although filled with the promises of relief, had nothing whatever to do with solving the practical difficulties they concealed. She avoided controversy and never admitted to confusion, virtues of a kind, but perhaps best suited to a religious life. Unshockable, she could never fall very far.
For years she had been the unpaid, unwilling referee in the endless, humiliating sexual warfare her parents engaged in. The emissary had developed a remarkable degree of detachment, thrust, as she was, into the role of settler of arguments, a skill she despised more in herself than others. It made the possibility of an emotional reaction virtually impossible; a child judge unable to take sides. She was forced to conclude that the failures of an older generation, her parents', were inexcusable. The latent threat of a divorce always brought Jim and Nancy together. Jane couldn't imagine why. For weeks they'd become sickeningly affectionate, pay each other hollow compliments which Jane would believe—until the cycle repeated itself, and out of the blue she'd be present at an evening of silent, staring anger. Effects with invisible causes.
Nancy liked to drink, always had, seldom without destructive results. The nondrinking periods were frightening to Jane, for then Nancy became absent-minded, with a disturbing habit of wandering for hours around the estate, hiding herself, as if filled with an unutterable grief which only death might relieve. In the end, Jim also preferred her drunk. He moaned about it to Jane, but it was better than the silent specter condition. In a way, Nancy herself enjoyed the day periods, for they enabled her to affect a martyrdom that nothing in her experience entitled her to, and in a sense was overpoweringly tragic; suffering without a reason cast the onus on the observer. Jane would have to imagine the reason.
In one of Nancy's infrequent lucid weeks, Jane spent hours after school searching for her. The hundred acres, some of it cultivated as a wild English garden, the rest undisturbed woodland, was a perfect sanctuary. She found her mother at last in the apple orchard, sitting behind a tree with an unopened book. Nancy always took a book, always the same one, on her prowls, just in case she wanted to read. She never did, merely stared listlessly at the sky. Jane had been warned not to go looking for her, as a search always carried the accusation of spying. The two looked at each other without speaking for some minutes, then Nancy turned her head, feigned interest in the book.
“You're so quiet when you creep around,” she said finally, for Jane refused to give ground. “If you've come for help with your homework ... well, you know, I'm no damn good.”
Hardly an invitation to remain, but Jane sat down.
“What time is it?”
“After five.”
“Shouldn't you be having your dinner or something?”
“I'm not hungry.”
“That makes two of us.” Mealtimes for Nancy had about them the unpredictability of English weather. “You can stay with me if you promise not to talk.”
Unable to concentrate on the book she never read, Nancy grew restless and got to her feet, leaving Jane sitting. They were some distance from the house and she started to walk back, the girl trailing at a safe distance.
“You can walk with me.” Nancy relented and the two continued side by side. “You know what I've been thinking all afternoon ...?”
“No, Mother.”
“Well, why haven't I got any friends?”
“I can't answer that,” Jane replied, truthfully, since she hardly knew where to begin.
“I always thought my home would resound with people's voices—laughter. It's just so empty. Sometimes when the servants laugh I get scared. I don't understand it. I had friends, but I can't any more.”
“Why not?”
“Why?” She seized Jane's arm and squeezed it hard. “Your father always sleeps with them. If he wants girlfriends he can find them himself. I don't have to be his madam. My friends....”
They came to a clearing, the house in sight on top of the hill.
“I'm thirty-six and I ask myself where's it all gone? I remember when I was twelve. When you're twenty, I'll be forty-four. Well, I'm not going to lie down and die just to suit that son of a bitch.”
Drops of blood dribbled down Jane's leg, and Nancy, horrified by what she imagined to be a bullet wound, thought she'd be sick.
“Christ, you're bleeding.”
“It started at school. That's what I came to ask you ... I don't know what to do.”
“Get you home and into a bath. This is awful.”
She pulled Jane along, but Jane fell back.
“I can't run.”
“Didn't you ever discuss this with the other girls?”
“Yes, of course I did. But it never happened to me before,” she protested. It seemed to her insane that she'd been forced to defend herself.
They walked quickly up to the house, Jane to the bathroom and Nancy to the bar. Eventually a servant appeared with cotton and a message from Nancy; she was feeling too ill to be of any help.
* * * *
“Why didn't you get permission to go home?” Conlon was asking. “Jane?”
“I just couldn't be bothered. “What's it matter?”
“I think you're hoping you'll be thrown out.”
Maybe that was true. The tedious procedure of quitting Saranac, or taking a leave of absence in midsemester, involved too many explanations which would not withstand logical probing.
“Okay, I'm being unreasonable,
” Jane said. “So what? Does everyone have to have a cause? I'm my own cause.”
“Is it Alan?” Conlon asked. In love, she now assumed all decisions sprang from affairs of the heart.
“No, not Alan. But that's over.”
“Jane, I don't understand. I saw the two of you last night, and he didn't act like he was exactly broken up. Just the opposite.”
“I haven't broken off with him. I haven't anything with him, except gone to bed. That came first and last with him.”
“Well, if you didn't like it, you could have stopped.”
“I have. And it wasn't not liking it ... it was just that there was nothing more to it. A dead end. You know what they said about Esther Williams—‘Wet she was a star.’ Well, in bed so was Alan. Dressed, he was ridiculous, cheap, and a fake, without a single conviction worth even disagreeing with. So, what was there to discuss?”
He had wanted one thing from her, compliance. She gave it, willingly, until it became little more than an athlete's post-game shower. He had more energy than passion and treated her as a vessel designed merely to remove the poisons from his system. Sometimes they smoked grass together when it was available, but he preferred instant coffee, fearing that drugs or alcohol would interfere with his usual smooth performance.
“One night we were watching TV afterwards, and an ad came on. This guy in a raincoat doing his pitch in a racing car. Andy Granatelli. STP. And I turned to Alan and said, ‘Maybe that's what you need.’ I meant for when he was dressed.
“I also got tired of endangering his career. He used to remind me about that all the time. I wanted to feel some sense of danger on my side, you see. Some nights I didn't want to go to bed and he'd try to make me feel guilty. We'd drive into town and all I wanted really was to get back and go to sleep, and he'd start whining about how he'd get thrown out and never get a job at a decent school ... even when I was unwell. Oh, he was terrifically generous.”
They entered the Saint Laurent shop and were ignored by the quasi-models who filled in their time working as salesgirls, until they were discovered by Vogue or some shaving-cream company looking to move suds to weak-minded men. They were all playing with their makeup or on the phone trying to make appointments at Vidal Sassoon. Nobody bothered the customers. Conlon picked up a black-velvet trouser suit.
“I don't know what I am in a French size. Forty-four or something.” She was about to ask a girl seated at the register, but she was pretending to read Do It. “I'll try it. Mel likes suits on me.”
The shop was a blur of color and light to Jane and she felt a bit giddy. Conlon reappeared, a study in haute couture, but the pants were a little short.
“Shit, my long legs. Do you think they could let down the bottoms? What're you looking so depressed about, Jane?” She shook her friend gently by the shoulders. “We'll go to the Carlyle for a drink; who knows, we might even run into Margaret Truman. Come on, give Conlon a smile.”
“I don't know what's wrong with me. I just feel odd. I've got to do something important, and I can't remember what it is.”
“Why don't you call your father?”
“He's on the pro tour.”
“Do you know where?”
“Somewhere in California.”
Jane wondered if she ought to call her father to talk things over. He never failed to give her advice and cash. He'd gone to California for the Kaiser International Golf Tournament. She might even fly there for a few days.
Conlon looked at herself in the mirror with approval. “Missus Fitter, be a nice lady and see if you can lengthen the pants.”
“It's a little tight around the hips,” the fitting lady said professionally.
“I can live with it. It's just that my freckled ankles are showing and that's not nice.”
“I can give you two inches.”
“That should see me through the evening. Could you have it ready by five o'clock?” The woman gave her a sulky look. “I'm not asking for the world.”
“You rich kids are all the same.”
“You're really a nice person. Five o'clock, please.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
“God bless you.”
* * * *
At Mel's suite in the Tower, hors d'oeuvres were flying fast and furious; a barman was stacking vintage California champagne in an ice tub, and the catering manager was supervising the placement of smoked salmon wrapped around mock caviar in a geometric design on a table with some ferns. Expense meant nothing to Mel, he was boldness itself, even writing threatening letters to Con Edison, who had started first with the threatening letters. New York Telephone had also known Mel's wrath when he informed their representative that he would unload his AT&T if they didn't stop trying to collect his three-hundred-dollar bill until his accountant had completed his investigation; it appeared that a burglar had made long-distance calls during a robbery. That was Mel's story and he was sticking to it. American Express could drop dead and Diner's Club could whistle for their money. He was inflexible. “Bankrupt me and you get nothing. Work with me,” he told a group of hysterical credit managers preparing legal proceedings. “Shit-list me and we'll all wind up collecting relief.” His wife's father, his former source of income, had wished him cancer when he found out that Mel had sold her Dreyfus Fund to cover straddles on Xerox, settle bookmaker's debts (those people threw acid in your face or murdered you in lots in Jackson Heights), and procure an abortion for the Jamaican maid. His explanation for the latter generosity—“All I did was help a human being in trouble”—was viewed with some skepticism, since this occurred during Iris’ bout with hepatitis.
He had attended the Wharton School of Business on a scholarship and was obviously not a lightweight, as his father-in-law learned. This evening's cocktail party was to celebrate a new takeover in Mel's growing empire of shell companies. As an underwriter—the firm was known as Malcolm Davis, Associates, Underwriters—during four years in the trade, Mel was worth about nineteen million dollars and change in unregistered stock. Practically speaking, despite the nifty double-breasted six-buttoned suit from Barney's International shop, he was a fingernail away from receivership. His bank manager unwillingly kept him afloat, since Mel had a series of Polaroid-color action snapshots of the aging executive when he had drifted away from the gaming tables on the Puerto Rican junket Mel had arranged for services rendered.
“In the event of my death or disappearance these photographs will be sent to David Rockefeller, Joe Namath, Police Commissioner Leary, and Gil Hodges so that they receive the maximum exposure,” he had warned the bank manager, who was preparing for a visit from the state auditors.
“But you're overdrawn $75,000 and I can't cover you,” he explained to the forceful financier.
A model of succinctness, Mel abruptly replied:
“Finagle!”
“How can I?”
“Listen, I'm a busy man. Talk to me of Charles Bludhorn, Ling Tempco, Irving Trust, Howard Hughes, but don't waste my time about a shitass personal loan which isn't even in six figures, when you're holding twelve million dollars’ worth of securities as collateral. If you're not careful, Mr. Dunhill, I'll absorb your organization an you'll find yourself out on your keista, pensionless.”
A master of the threat, Mel had at one time or another offered to take over the Copacabana, Snyder's catsup, Hebrew National, Pepsi-Cola, and Getty Oil. Meanwhile he was involved in gym franchises, hoping to kick off with one atop the Seagram building, which he considered a good location, and was setting up meetings with the owners.
The girls arrived in the suite after five, and Mel, speaking on three phones, waved them to the sofa.
“Dynamic, isn't he?” Conlon said, planting a kiss on his forehead.
Premature baldness had begun an insidious attack the previous year, and he was undergoing hair transplants. His sideburns now flourished like Amazon foliage. He was too young for dignity. He slammed down a phone, barked into another, and pointed to an announcement in the Ne
w York Post: “Health Corporation of America, 250,000 shares Common Stock (without par value). Price per share $3.00. Malcolm Davis, Associates, Underwriters.” Affectionately known as headstones on Wall Street, these announcements nevertheless impressed those who succumbed to his charms.
He kissed her loudly.
“Conlon, am I glad to see you.”
“This is Jane Siddley.”
Mel kissed her, too, ever gallant to women.
“So this is Jane.”
“And you're Mel.” He released her from his embrace and examined her like a serious buyer. For months he had nagged Conlon for an introduction. With dizzying regularity he kept track of her millions, hoping by some lucky chemistry to get his hands in the till, or her signature to guarantee a bank loan. Friends did favors for friends.
“Beautiful and rich. How's it feel to have so much money?”
“I don't get it till I'm thirty.”
“Well, I'll be damned. Twenty million dollars.”
“It's being held in trust.”
“What's the matter, didn't they trust your parents?”
“My grandfather had foresight.”
“You know, I used to read about you on the society pages.”
“We got our share of coverage.”
“You've got a middle name, too. Teller, am I right?”
“My mother was a Teller,” Jane said.
“I can't go to sleep without reading Suzy. Can you get your hands on any of the stock now?”
“Why?”
“I just thought ... now what did I think? Let me ask you something, Jane, if it's not personal that is. How long is your position in Invictor?”
“Long.”
“That's right, long. How long, if I'm not getting personal?”
“I think something in the neighborhood of a half a million shares.”
Mel picked up a phone that was still dangling.
“Give me a close on Invictor.” He waited. “Fifty-two. Up a half. Jane, do you get dividends?”
“I'm a major stockholder.”
“And you're on an allowance now?”
“It's not really very much.”
Making Love Page 4
