Indiscretions (35 page)

“Hey,” called Rory, examining the pretty beribboned package with a pleased little grin, “hey, that’s real nice of you. What is it?”

Bob waved. “Open it,” he suggested. “See ya.”

Goddamn, thought Rory, nobody ever gave him presents just like that, except for all that Christmas stuff that he didn’t even count as presents, just bribes from those who were making money off his back. He ripped open the package and stared at the little jar of white powder. There must be half a goddamn ounce! His mouth pursed in a faint amazed whistle. Goddamn, that Bob was something else—and he’d bet it was good stuff too. The best. Pocketing the coke, he sauntered toward the driveway where his black Ferrari waited. He was a good guy, Bob, a good friend. They’d have some fun tonight, he’d make sure of that. He’d call Margie—he hadn’t seen her in ages—and maybe Joanne … yeah, that was it. Grinning happily he slung his bag in the backseat and climbed into the car. What more could a guy need than a black Ferrari, he wondered as he spun down the driveway, and half an ounce of the best stuff?

The four of them sat on cushions around the huge chunk of black-veined marble resting on four stone lions that was Rory’s coffee table. The wide picture-windows leading onto a small deck overlooking the Newport Beach marina were closed to keep out the fog that had blown in with a sudden drop in temperature from the day’s warm sun and the dimmers were down low, leaving just enough glow from the lamps to illuminate their faces as the four of them sipped white wine from oversize crystal glasses, dipping occasionally into the mound of white powder—arranged like caviar in a silver bowl, surrounded by twenty-dollar bills, which Rory always said were the best way to do it. Everyone dipped in except Bob.

Margie was having a ball. She lay back on the cushion, her pretty eighteen-year-old face loose and formless, her eyes gleaming, words spilling from her lips as she chattered endlessly about nothing. She had nice skin and straight blond hair cut in neat bangs, and she wore purple
Guess? jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt. She was, thought Bob sadly, somebody’s daughter, product of some nice middle-class family in Encino who’d given her everything, the credit cards so she could shop at the Galleria on Saturdays, the car on her sixteenth birthday because all the other kids had care—how else were you supposed to get to school unless Mom kept on driving you, and you could forget that! Margie had had her freedom and she’d blown it.

Joanne refilled the wineglasses and dragged deeply on her Marlboro. She was a different type, older, maybe twenty-four? An actress, a serious one, she’d told him. She was leaving this hick town next week and heading back for New York to do Shakespeare in Central Park for the summer season. Playing Juliet’s nurse was better than a dozen “cameos” or “also starring” on TV credits that went so fast nobody knew you were there but you, and the movies were too tough to crack. She was a Broadway chick, and that’s what she wanted—bright lights and applause.
“Reality!”
Joanne emphasized the word. “No more of this crap for me, Rory. Oh, it’s all right for
you
, you’re different—you look the way you look, custom made for the screen. My face doesn’t photograph that good, it’s too uneven.”

“What about you, Bob?” Rory arranged four immaculate lines of coke. “What are you into?”

Bob shrugged. “Nothing much. There’s the family garment business back East—I’m supposed to get things going here, but it’s too easy to get diverted.” He grinned at Rory. “I spend too much time playing tennis with guys like you, or hanging out at parties. I’ll have to get something going soon, or they’ll be on to me.”

“As long as it keeps the money flowing in,” said Rory, passing the stuff to Margie, “you gotta do that, Bob, you know. Take it from me, I’ve been poor and it’s not where it’s at!”

“You gonna do your Rory-when-he-was-poor story?” asked Margie cheekily. She sniffed happily and burst into laughter as Rory glared at her. “You were never poor,” she said, leaning around the table to pat his cheek. “There was always some old woman to make sure you didn’t starve. Like Jenny.”

“Bullshit!” Anger flared in Rory’s narrowed eyes. “And shut up about Jenny.”

“Why? Feeling guilty?” Margie’s peals of laughter rang across the room and Bob watched with interest as Rory’s temper rose.

“Come on, you two, stop bickering and pass that stuff over here.” Joanne took her line and passed it on to Bob. Bob slid it carefully back across the marble to Rory.

“Hey, Bob, why don’t you do this stuff? You buy me the best, and I never see you take any yourself.” A thought crossed Rory’s mind and he looked at Bob in alarm. “Hey, listen,” he said, bending closer and speaking quietly, “are you into something else … you know, hard stuff?”

Bob stared back at him and shrugged.

“Jesus, Bob, that’s
bad
, that can
kill
you! Come on, man, you don’t need that scene. This is where it’s at—it’s the only
safe
drug, anything else’ll fry your brains and fuck up your body. Look at us, Bob, we’re just a bit high, a bit happy, that’s all.”

“What about free basing?”

“What about it?” laughed Margie, who was now lying down across the cushions.

“Yeah, well, I don’t do that anymore, not since—”

“Since October?” said Margie, dreamily.

“Shut up, Margie, or I’ll send you home,” threatened Rory.

Margie giggled and shut up.

“I’m starving,” said Bob. “What about some food?”

“Sure.” Joanne fished around the floor for her bag. “I could eat.”

“Let’s go to La Scala.” Rory reached for the phone without waiting for their response. He liked La Scala; they’d be sure to have a table for him—they treated him right there, and besides, he could put the check on the studio’s account. And you never knew who might be there. It was good to be seen around. Not with Margie, though, she looked like stoned jailbait.

“You’re staying here,” he informed her. “We’ll bring you back a pizza.”

Margie rolled over on her stomach to turn up the sound on the stereo.

“Sure,” she said, “just as long as you leave this here.” She dipped a finger into the silver bowl and licked it, laughing.

“Margie’s getting to be too much,” grumbled Rory as they climbed into the Ferrari. “I’m gonna have to lose her. Send her back to the Valley.”

They were laughing as the car sped through the mist toward Santa Monica Boulevard.

Margie sat in a booth at Du Par’s on Ventura Boulevard eating a stack of buttermilk pancakes swimming in butter and floating in a pool of maple syrup. A double order of bacon on the side and a strawberry milkshake completed her after-midnight snack, and Bob turned his head away, unable to watch as she took a strip of bacon in her fingers and dunked it into the syrup, crunching it cheerfully.

“I didn’t realize I was starving,” she said contentedly. “That creep Rory should have remembered my pizza.”

“He’s a busy guy,” said Bob. “He can’t remember everything.”

“Yeah. That’s true, I guess.” Her laugh rippled through the surprisingly busy room. Du Par’s coffee shop was popular with the late-movie crowd and tired singles-bar
people, ready for a cup of coffee and a sandwich or their great pancakes. “But I think he just forgets when he wants to,” she said, crunching a second strip of bacon and passing one across the table to Bob. “Here, try this, it’s good.”

Bob laid the bacon on his plate next to the untouched slab of apple pie that he was planning on feeding Margie as dessert. He wanted to keep her here as long as he could. She was just high enough to talk without thinking, and yet not wiped out, as she had been when they’d left her at Rory’s place.

“What do you mean, forgets when he wants to?”

Margie pushed back her blond bangs with sticky fingers and concentrated on the pancakes.

“You know—like when it’s convenient.”

“Like?” suggested Bob.

“Oh, tonight with the pizza—he didn’t forget, he just wanted to punish me for talking about Jenny. He’s real sensitive about her, you know, especially since …” Margie pushed another section of pancake into her mouth, chewing, thinking.

“You mean because he was with her that night?” said Bob, taking a chance on her reaction.

Margie stopped chewing and stared at him in surprise. “Y’mean he
told
you?”

Bob shrugged. “We’re good friends.”

Margie remembered the half ounce of coke. “Right, of course. Well, I don’t know what went on there, but he came back in a hell of a state. He was sure stoned when he left, but he was straight by the time he got back.”

She laughed, remembering.

“What time was that?” asked Bob, pushing the apple pie toward her. “About three-thirty, I guess?”

“Yeah, it must have been … I remember she called about twelve-thirty and I was real mad. We’d been having such a great time up until then, and then Rory said he’d
have to go and talk to her. Shit.” She sucked the strawberry milkshake up through her straw, biting on the end so that it slurped. “Y’know how that made me feel? I mean, we were in
bed
, and then he goes out to meet this old woman! Jesus, Bob, he even took
my
car—said his Ferrari was too conspicuous. I thought that’s why he bought it in the first place.”

Out of the mouths of babes, thought Bob, calling for the check. He’d got all the wisdom he needed from Margie tonight. Now he knew how to tackle Rory.

“Come on,” he said, reaching in his pocket for his car keys, “I’ll drive you home. You look as though you could use some rest.”

“Home?” Margie gazed at him in dismay from beneath her childish fringe. “But I thought …”

“Forget it,” said Bob, striding toward the door. “I only go for older women.”

“Oh.” Margie picked up her bag and followed him quickly. Home! But it was only one-thirty. God, what a dud tonight had turned out to be after all.

18

The village of Marina di Montefiore lay in a pocket of Campania’s rocky blue coastline, fringed by a curve of clean white sand to the south and a small natural harbor to the north. A thin ribbon of road snaked up the pine- and chestnut-clad hillside behind, linking the village to the main coast road, far away in the distance. Too far for the tourist hordes in their buses and caravans yet to have bothered to discover it. Only those lucky enough to have spotted, in passing, the perfect curve of white beach, the little fishing boats in the harbor, and the faded ochre walls and terra-cotta-tiled roofs of the ancient palazzo perched on its hill overlooking the sea, and who had been curious enough to take the time to inch their way down the treacherous track, had been fortunate enough to discover its charms.

India had fallen in love with Marina di Montefiore the moment she saw it. The village had a timeless quality, with its tree-shaded square, gushing fountain, and old whitewashed fishermen’s houses. She loved the cool dimness and the pungent smells of the little shops that sold
salamis and sausages, wines and cheeses, and freshly baked bread, and she enjoyed poking around the drapery shop, unchanged since the beginning of the century. It sold wonderful hats, ancient straws in biscuit and cream, some of which had been there for sixty years, some perky with floating ribbons, or masculine with a trim band. In the back room there were glass-fronted drawers filled with serviceable underwear, voluminous white and pink knickers with elastic in the legs, demure camisoles of tucked cotton in sizes meant to cover ample bosoms, and shelves of the black nylon stockings that were worn by every woman in the village. Only visitors and children went bare legged, even on the hottest days. Cafés sprawled outward across the pavement beneath cool blue and green awnings, their rickety tables covered in scarlet oilcloth, each topped with its large white Cinzano ashtray, and fishermen and visitors sipped cappuccino and Peroni beer, comfortably soaking up the sunshine and the peace.

That was the trouble, thought India. Love always trapped you. Love of a place as much as love of a person. She parked the Fiat in the shade by the fountain and strolled across to the Café-Bar Ricardi. In the month she had been in Marina di Montefiore she’d taken to dropping in at the café every morning for a cup of espresso and a piece of their crusty bread dipped in local olive oil, grilled on the hot plate, and smothered in fresh anchovy paste. It served as both her breakfast and lunch and was one of the highlights of her day. You could keep all your fancy French restaurants, she thought, digging in enthusiastically. I’ll settle for this.

The fishermen at the next table nodded in greeting and she eavesdropped on their conversation of sea conditions and the weather farther north, and the possibilities of lobster that night. India felt perfectly at home, though she knew no one. She was, she realized suddenly, happy
here, happier than she could remember having felt for a long time. She had arrived at the palazzo to find that Aldo Montefiore had been called away to Milan—on family business, they said. He had been expected back in a week but so far he hadn’t shown up. India had been welcomed by his mother, Paola, the Contessa di Montefiore, a small, frail lady whose deep, booming voice had come as a shock. “Treat this place as yours, my dear,” she had said. “Do what you need to do. Aldo suggested that you might start by inspecting the pictures and the furniture. Then, as you familiarize yourself with the palazzo, you’ll see what can be done to convert it. I’m afraid I won’t be much help to you. It’s hard for me to imagine any changes, but I expect we’ll need more bathrooms. Maybe it won’t cost too much after all?” She had smiled hopefully at India and India had known it would be painful for the Contessa to part with any of the palazzo’s treasures—harder than for her son, because he already had one foot in another world. For the Contessa di Montefiore this place was her life and had been since she was married at seventeen.