Cheat and Charmer (39 page)

I
n his room at the Dorchester, Jake was restless and jumpy all right, but it wasn’t because of what he had to do tomorrow. Tomorrow would be interesting but hardly difficult—a full day of newspaper, radio, and television interviews with Wynn Tooling and Glynis Carleton. He loved being back in London. No, it wasn’t the picture; he expected rave reviews here. Ever since he had arrived in London two weeks ago, he had known that he simply did not want to go back to Los Angeles. He wanted to spend some time alone, in a lovely little flat, working on his new project. Only then would he be ready to go back to L.A., where he planned to sell the house and bring Dinah and the kids to Europe as soon as possible and make London his base of operations. It was time to get out of Hollywood, that goddamn company town.

It had to be London, though, not Paris. Paris was dangerous for him. It was too seductive, and he would allow himself to become something he couldn’t afford to be—he felt this instinctively and with complete certainty, having flown back tonight from his second trip to Paris this weekend. It had been even more of a revelation than the first. That lunch yesterday with Gerry Tuttle and Veevi: the pleasure of it, the gaiety. Veevi had seemed a little sad, but it hadn’t prevented her from having a good time. They’d been talking about Bill Nemeth, who had been shot to death by a sniper in Indochina last year. The two women toasted Bill, weeping a little and dabbing their eyes with white handkerchiefs. Veevi had laughed at some meshuga story of Gerry’s that Bill had told her—about a dead American soldier found in a church cellar in France, nothing left of him but a skeleton and a dog tag, and how the office in charge of getting bodies back to the families had called every one of his relatives and none of them wanted him because he
had been such a pain in the ass. Ben Knight had turned it into a short story for
The New Yorker
and everybody loved it. Seeing Gerry Tuttle again brought back that moment during his first trip when he had turned his head in Veevi’s car and seen Gerry straddling Nemeth, her skirt drawn up to her thighs. He and Veevi had just looked at each other as if to say, “You and I aren’t bothered by this. We know this kind of thing goes on all the time, and neither of us is a square or a bore about it.” Now, once again, he was overwhelmed by a desire to live in this world. This time, too, he’d had a drink at the Ritz with Willie Weil, who had laid out for him every single advantage of making movies in Europe, with him as executive producer.

Saturday night in Paris had been clear and cool, and, Jake felt, alive with an exquisite understanding and acceptance of every human appetite. This was a city indifferent both to shame and self-control, and he felt all too comfortable there with Veevi and her friends as they migrated from Fouquet’s to dinner to some after-hours jazz club where they knew all the musicians. This time Veevi called him, in front of the others, “Uncle J.,” displaying for all the familial tie between them, with its hint of secrets and special understandings.

At two o’clock on Sunday morning, Jake and Veevi were back at her place, sitting on her worn brocade sofa and talking about the evening—and Veevi’s plans.

“Has Dinah said anything to you?” she asked.

“About what?” He wouldn’t have admitted it, but Dinah and his children were very far from his mind right now.

“About my coming home?”

“You can come whenever you like, honey. Just say when.”

His spirits drooped a little. It was convenient to have a member of the family in Paris. He didn’t have to be told what her situation was. Her friends cared for her, and wouldn’t dream of excluding her or cutting her off. But in this set (as in all others, he thought), a woman had to have a man. Even Veevi, beautiful Veevi, was there because she had been, until now, Mike Albrecht’s wife. It wasn’t easy, and despite everyone’s esprit de corps, her situation had become more and more awkward.

She took a sip of cognac and looked frankly at him. “One thing is sure,” she said without emotion. “I’ll never find another Michael Albrecht. Unless he comes back.”

“Is that a real possibility? He wants a divorce. He’s going to marry the girl.”

“Oh, Uncle J. After so many years, I know him well. He loves me,” she said. “He can’t possibly love anyone else. But it’s not going to happen overnight. I might as well go home to California.”

“You mean, that way he’ll know where to find you?”

“Well, yes,” she said, and smiled ruefully. “I guess I’ve failed with Mike, but you know, really, I should have been a king’s mistress.”

He searched her face to see if she was being ironic. “What makes you think of yourself that way?” He was trying to get her to say more by adopting the neutral but encouraging tone his analyst used.

“Because I could have, that’s all. I have the talent. The skills.”

It was an odd thing for a rejected woman to say, Jake thought. “So it’s power you want?” he said.

“God no. I don’t want to be
bored
,” she answered quickly. “I want to be amused. I want every day to be interesting and new. I hate monotony and routine and the bloody sameness of things.”

But you and your friends live the same way every day, he thought.

“Crunched,” she continued. “Christ, how crunched and squeezed we all were—Pop and Mom and Dinah and me in that little box of a house where you could hear every word any of us said.”

“The petit bourgeoisie?”

“Lower! The fucking proletariat! God, just the thought of going back to L.A. makes me feel buried alive.”

“Then why give Paris up? These people love you, I can tell. Stay here and keep out of Mike’s way. You’re still gorgeous, you’ll find someone else. Why exile yourself from the world you love? Hollywood is just going to be hell for you if you love it here. Nothing in L.A. will ever be good enough for you—including us, I’m afraid.”

She shook her head and her brown hair undulated in languid waves along the crest of her shoulders. “It’s shit, you know, running into them everywhere. I don’t want to be always trying to avoid him, always finding out whether it’s my night or his night to have dinner with Hunt and Felicity or the Knights or Gerry and Walter Tuttle. And the worst of it is, I’m always getting paired with Rue now that Bill’s dead. Rue and me, without men. Oh God, how dreary. She’s got this wispy girlish little voice”—hers became soft and childlike in mimicry—“and she thinks the way to compete with me is to say nasty things about everyone. A real Malice in Wonderland.”

He laughed. “If it’s any consolation, you’re going to do fine in Hollywood if you come back.”

“But wouldn’t I be just as much of a sad old broad out there as I am here? Why would it be any different?” She’d been drinking all night, but she spoke clearly.

“You’d have us. We’d take you everywhere. Have everyone over to meet you.”

She looked at him. “Uncle J.,” she said with a tilt of her head. He got it: his idea of “everyone” wasn’t hers.

“Has Mike suggested this to you? Does he want you to leave?”

“Yes,” she said. “He says it kills him to see me in pain.”

“And you believe him?”

She shrugged.

“Has it occurred to you that he’s a first-class prick?”

“Even first-class pricks can feel guilty,” she said with equanimity.

He kissed her on the cheek. “You’re brave and wonderful,” he said. “And I’d love it if we could just move here and live together in a big house somewhere.”

“Oh, Uncle J., you’re a panic,” she said, using one of her pet phrases. It was slightly acidic, the way she said it, but the look on her face brought him into the exclusive society that they alone shared. It suggested that of all the people in the world, they were the only ones who understood everything, including his own extravagant fancies.

She walked Jake to the door, folding her arms and smiling sleepily. “Listen, if you want to come home, do you think it would be soon?” he asked.

“Oh, I guess so. I’ve written to Dinah, so she knows. But talk it over with her. I can’t possibly come unless it’s all right with her. I was pretty mean to her, not answering when she wrote. And now you say she’s having another baby. A real breeder, my sister.”

“Dinah would do anything to help you,” Jake said. “You know that, Veevi. Especially after—”

“Shh,” Veevi said. “Good night.”

If he had been sleeping, his good ear would have been pressed against the pillow and he wouldn’t have heard the hotel telephone ringing its insistent,
British, double-trilled ring. But he was pacing the room in his shorts and pajama top, thinking—he enumerated his points to himself and jutted out a finger for each—that (1) it made no sense for Veevi to come to California, where her passport problem and her status in the industry would make it almost impossible for him to do anything for her, and (2) it was especially pointless now, just when he was thinking of getting out of California and moving to London, where (3) perhaps he really could find something for her to do and where (4), most important, she could, simply by remaining in Paris, be useful to him both socially and professionally. She could be—and he loved this idea immediately—his Paris office.

There was another thing on his mind. He couldn’t get the image of Gerry Tuttle and Bill Nemeth in the backseat of the car out of his mind. If he lived in London, but flew often to Paris, there would be possibilities for him—interesting possibilities, without having to incur the guilt of being in the same city with Dinah. With Felicity, for instance! He could fly to Paris on a Saturday for a morning meeting with Willie Weil but spend the afternoon with Felicity. Where? Well, he’d have to invest in a pied-à-terre. It would be beautifully deductible, and maybe he and Weil could work things out so that it would in fact be Weil who paid for it. Dinah could fly from London to Paris whenever she wanted to see Veevi and do a little shopping.

It was at this point of inspiration, when every detail was effortlessly falling into place, that the phone rang. “There’s a telegram for you, sir,” a woman’s voice said. “Would you like it to be delivered to your room now, sir, or in the morning?”

T
hat was great, Mr. Perrin,” Peter Lasker said, gently placing the separate parts of his clarinet in the red-velvet compartments of his clarinet case. Mr. Perrin smiled and put his own clarinet down. Peter’s lesson had gone well, so he had rewarded the child by playing the clarinet solo to “Sing Sing Sing.” “Ask your mother to get you the album for this,” he said. “It’s the 1938–39 Carnegie Hall concert. Listen to the Jess Stacy piano solo, too. It’s thrilling.” He smiled at Peter again, and his expression grew serious. “I guess one day you’re going to have to decide whether you want to be a classical musician or a jazz player,” he said. “Here,” he added, writing something down on a slip of paper and handing it to Peter. “Tell your mother to get you the Rubank Intermediate book. We’ll keep on playing the folk song duets, but it’s time for you to move on to Mozart.”

Mr. Perrin had given up jazz and big-band music in order to support his family. He was now a studio musician at Marathon, and Peter was well into his second year of taking lessons with him.