Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls (31 page)

She had coffee waiting for him the next morning. Dylan watched television, Jenn did the cooking. She found an extra bedsheet and draped it over the card table.

“The cornbread stuffing is the best,” Dylan said. He hadn’t put on a shirt. Jenn could barely bring herself to look at him. “You know, I don’t think my mother ever cooked a single Thanksgiving dinner the whole time I was growing up.”

“She was so busy,” Jenn said.

“Busy fucking up,” he said. “You know she ran through over a
million dollars in less than a year? And if you ask her how, she says she doesn’t remember. And it wasn’t just the drugs. She would go shopping to cheer herself up, she would drop like twenty thousand dollars in one afternoon at Armani, and then a few weeks later she’d have gained all this weight and nothing fit anymore, so she’d go out and do it again. She would buy all this jewelry, and then when she was high she would give it away. And the money she spent on pills. That stuff is more expensive than cocaine. You know where some of it comes from? People steal it from their own families. Someone has some horrible disease, or they’ve been in a car crash, whatever, and their doctor prescribes all this stuff for them, and then someone in their own family, someone who is theoretically taking care of them, steals it for resale. Brutal. The government can say whatever it wants about this,” he said, waving at the bag of marijuana, “but the pill business is much worse.”

“It’s a sickness,” Jenn said. “Isn’t it?”

“Don’t make excuses for her. She’s a bitch. You had it easy.”

“My mother isn’t exactly perfect,” Jenn said.

“Isn’t she? Lyon thinks so. ‘Miss Perfect,’ that’s what he calls her.” He got up to put in a new CD. “What do you want to hear?” he asked.

“Whatever you want.” All he ever played was Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen.

“She ever going to marry that guy?” Dylan asked.

“Nope. If you ask me, they’re permanently engaged. It’s been years, right? I think they only got engaged because everyone knew they were sleeping together.”

“How old is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, your mother is still a fox. I saw her on TV last week, she looks good.”

“Stop!” Jenn said. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“You have good genes. You’ll hold up well.”

“I guess.” She had read somewhere that men always wanted to meet the mother, to see how their future wives would age.
Consuelo Casablanca
, she thought.

The turkey made them sleepy. They fell asleep on the bed, too tired to turn off the television. When they woke up it was almost dark.

“What do you want to do,” Dylan asked.

“I don’t know. Go see a movie?”

But that was too complicated for Dylan. “Hey, I have a little bit of X left from last week. We can split it.”

“You go ahead,” Jenn said. She had never taken Ecstasy.

“You’ll love it, it isn’t scary or anything,” Dylan said. “It just makes you happy.”

They washed the pills down with cranberry juice and waited.

“Oh,” Jenn said. “This is nice. This is very nice.” She put on an old Rolling Stones CD and began to dance. “Come on,” she said, pulling him up. She felt as though she could dance all night. Every so often Dylan brought her a glass of water.

“You have to stay hydrated,” he said.

She sat on the edge of the bed and drank the water, thinking how lovely he was, to be taking such good care of her. She didn’t know why she had felt so nervous the night before. Being with Dylan was the easiest thing in the world. Everything he said was wonderful, and everything she said was wonderful, and everything he did was wonderful, and everything she did was wonderful.

She lay down on the bed and took off her socks. “Look,” she said. Her toenails were painted silver.

He lay down next to her. “Cool,” he said. He nudged her bare foot with his. They lay there, laughing, kicking each other gently. Their shoulders and hips were touching. Dylan turned onto his side and looked at her.

“You really are beautiful,” he said.

“So are you.”

A slow song came on. He put his arm around her and held her close. “We’re all lined up,” he said. They lay there for a long time, just breathing. Jenn wasn’t used to being held. She walked her fingers up his spine, counting the bones. The only light in the apartment was the green glow of the stereo equipment.

“If you weren’t my sister,” he whispered in her ear.

“I’m not your sister. I’m practically not even your stepsister, when you think about it. We were pretty old when our parents got together.”

“True,” he said, “true.” He kissed her on the neck, a slow kiss, and then another. “Your skin is so soft.”

He pulled his head back and they stared at each other, listening to the music, not talking. She felt she could look into his eyes forever. At last he kissed her. It felt like the kiss she had been waiting for her whole life.

“We can’t do this,” he said.

“We already are doing this.”

“We haven’t really done anything yet,” Dylan said.

She kissed him on the ear. “It’s okay,” she said, “everything is okay.”

“We can’t,” he said. “But we can do other things.”

“Like what.”

He smiled. “It doesn’t count if we keep our clothes on.”

He unbuttoned her flannel shirt but left her bra on. “Just hands,” he said, pressing his knee between her legs. Eventually their jeans came off, but their underwear stayed on. There was baby oil in the night table. They poured it onto each other’s bodies: across their bellies, over their backs, down the lengths of their legs. They took turns massaging each other, and then they found positions where they could massage each other at once. He was hard the whole
time. She curled up behind him and worked his neck, hooking a leg over his back so that he could rub her foot. They lay head to toe, toe to head, kneading each other’s thighs.

He poured oil into her palm and guided her hand into his shorts.

“Harder,” he said. He unhooked the front of her bra and pressed a hand against her breast. She moved her hand in time to the music. She could tell he was about to come, but he wasn’t making a sound. Then there was a quick gasp, as if she had just delivered a piece of shocking news, and he came across her chest. She cleaned herself off with the edge of a pillowcase.

Then it was her turn. She was quiet, too. He used both his hands, playing with her slowly until she was wet. “Come on,” he whispered, “come on, Jenn.” She felt warm, and wonderful, and happy. She squeezed herself around his fingers.

Afterward they lay on their backs, just their shoulders touching.

“Did you,” he said, “you know.”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t tell,” he said.

She wished she had made some noise. “I don’t,” she began, “I don’t really … not big ones.”

“What does it feel like,” he asked.

She described it: how it felt warm, and as if her insides were rolling over.

“That isn’t an orgasm,” he said. “But you’ve … I mean, you’re not …”

“I’ve been with other men,” she said. “It’s … they’re just small ones, I think. I don’t know.”

“If it was an orgasm, you would know,” Dylan said. “Close your eyes. Lean back. Here, here’s a pillow. Relax. Relax. There you go.… Here we go.…” His tongue was all soft now. He moved his mouth slowly. It wasn’t like the other times, when men had used their mouths just to warm her up. He wasn’t going to stop.
It’s happening
,
she thought,
it’s finally happening, it’s happening to me
. She came hard around his fingers. He rested his cheek on her thigh. Just as her head started to clear, he made her come again.

“
That
was an orgasm,” he said. He went to wash his face and came back with more water.

The Ecstasy was beginning to wear off, but it wasn’t crash-y at all, it was like floating down into soft feathers. She microwaved a plate of leftover stuffing and brought it to bed with two forks. The telephone rang.

“What time is it?” Dylan asked.

“Almost ten.”

“Shit.” He answered the phone. “Hey.… Okay.… Nothing.… Yeah, I know where that is.… My stepsister is here.… Right … sure, okay.” He began to get dressed. “I have to go,” he told her. “I’m supposed to meet these people, I forgot all about it.”

“Can I come?” she asked.

“I wish, but … maybe later, I’ll call you later.” He sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her shoulder. “You are so beautiful right now.”

She sat up and gave him a hug. The stone-y part of the drug was over, but the warm part was left. She felt so close to him, so wonderfully close. He held her a long time. Maybe he wouldn’t leave. Maybe he was going to come back to bed.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too, little sister.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your little stepsister anymore.” She pouted.

“Hey,” he said. “I was just joking. Don’t be mad.” He offered his hand. “Friends?”

She shook her head. “I love you, Dylan.”

“I love you too. Like a … okay, not like a sister. Like a friend.”

“More than like a friend,” she said.

“No, just like a friend.” He tousled her hair. “That’s the X talking. You’ll see. In the morning it’ll be different.”

“But it won’t be different. I’ve always loved you. Ever since I was eleven years old. Remember that first summer in East Hampton? I still remember exactly what you were wearing. I remember everything about you.” She described his old purple T-shirt, and the music he used to listen to, and she recited slang he hadn’t heard in years.

“Hey, come on, you’re not serious,” he said.

She waved at the bed. “What about this? What about all of this?”

“That was just sex,” Dylan said.

“Just sex?”

“Technically, it wasn’t even sex. Don’t be such a … Oh, never mind.”

“A what? Don’t be such a
girl
, is that what you were going to say?”

“Don’t be such a kid,” he said, and then he was gone.

Jenn waited up until just before dawn. She slept past noon on Friday, then spent the rest of the day watching soap operas and old movies, waiting for the phone to ring. On Saturday morning she packed up her bag, making sure that she left nothing behind.

She took a taxi to the airport. The radio was turned to a top-forty station. It was a relief to hear hip-hop blasting after Dylan’s depressing music. She had figured him out, it was just the way the articles in
Gloss
described it: he couldn’t love anybody because he didn’t love himself. Dylan had used her. Just like all those other men, using a beautiful girl for their own pleasure. To build themselves up. And then tossing her aside when they were through.

The photographers used her, too, and the designers, and the magazines. She was only someone who helped them make money. No one really cared about her. There was no point in being angry about it, that was simply how the world worked. Everybody was
always using everybody else. She wasn’t going to give herself away so easily again. She deserved to get what she wanted. How many years did she have left? Fifteen, twenty at most. She wasn’t going to end like her mother, all alone, looking for a man to live up to her romantic daydreams, eternally disappointed. She was smarter than that.

The flight attendant brought her a glass of champagne before takeoff. They were always so nice in first class, and why shouldn’t they be, it cost a fortune. The more you paid, the more you got.

Life could be just like this: you figured out what you wanted, and you decided what you needed to do to get it, how high a price you were willing to pay. Jenn remembered something Neely had once told her: No one ever looks back and says, “I wish I’d been nicer.” What women regretted was this: that they hadn’t tried for more, that they hadn’t put their whole hearts into following their dreams. Being nice is what held a woman back. Dylan never worried about being nice, and neither did her father.

It was Jenn’s turn now. The plane lifted off the runway, and she watched the city grow small below. She signaled for another glass of champagne, and this time she didn’t say please.

1997.

N
eely was staying at the Stanhope, in a two-room suite that overlooked Central Park. She had been asked to present an award at a charity fund-raiser for Project Serenity, an organization that funded research on substance abuse. It was her first public appearance since leaving rehab.

She called Anne in the early afternoon. “You gotta come over,” she said. “I’m a wreck, I can’t decide what to wear.”

“I’m at work, Neely, I can’t just up and leave. I’ve got piles of things to do.”

“But I need you,” said Neely. “Lyon won’t be here until seven, and anyway, men are never any help, they always say you look wonderful even if you’re wearing the worst dress in the world. Can’t you sneak away early? Or you could go home and change and then swing by here on your way over. Remember when we used to get ready for parties together? It’ll be just like old times, only without the hooch, of course.”

Anne arrived just after four. The suite was filled with flowers. Neely was lying on the bed, watching television. She was wearing a hotel bathrobe, and her hair was tucked up in a plastic clip.

“I changed my mind, I’m not going,” Neely said. “Look at me. I can’t go out like this. Everyone is just going to talk about how fat I am.”

“People are counting on you,” Anne said. “You have to go.”

“No I don’t.”

“I thought someone was coming up to do your hair,” Anne said.

“I canceled that, too,” Neely said.

“Neely, you have to do this.” Anne read some of the cards that had come with the flowers. It was a who’s who of Manhattan. Nancy Bergen had sent the costliest arrangement: a dozen peach roses from the most expensive florist in the neighborhood.

“But I’m scared,” Neely said. “You should see the list of who’s gonna be there. I didn’t know Sandy Dunbar was on the board! I thought it was just going to be a bunch of rich doctors and businessmen, but she’s invited all these Hollywood people, and of course they all have to come, just because Sandy wiggled her skinny little finger. She never liked me anyway. She’s probably expecting me to cancel, just so she can tell her friends ‘I told you so.’ ”