Scruples Two (31 page)

The small hotel would be a kind of dressing room, a way station between identities. She’d keep her teacher clothes and cosmetics there, and if Sam ever wanted to see her place, he could do so without surprise or suspicion. She’d keep books and magazines there, trinkets, underwear and shoes … all appropriate, all things she could buy in a few hours.

Blowing out a breath of relief, Billy got undressed so that she could take a long, hot bath. She watched the tub fill, wrapped in a peignoir, too relaxed by her solution of her problem to do anything but watch the water spill out of the golden swans, when suddenly, after two days of utter forgetfulness, she remembered the house on the Rue Vaneau.

Shit, no!
She’d missed an appointment with the contractor to see the man who had drawn up a final floor plan for the new kitchen; the expert in charge of restoring the molding throughout the house was expected in an hour; the dreaded inspectors from the city electrical department were coming today to check the new wiring—and that was only the beginning of the things that she had undertaken to supervise.

Billy turned off the taps abruptly and ran to a phone barefoot. She’d been avoiding the intrusion of a decorator, but one name had remained in her head, Jean-François Delacroix, a young man who had started out on his own several years ago after intensive training at the side of Henri Samuel, the dean of Parisian decorators. Several women whose taste she respected had waxed enthusiastic about his originality. Within minutes, with the aid of her favorite concierge, she had him on the line.

“Monsieur Delacroix, this is Billy Ikehorn. I’m—oh, good, you know who I am, that simplifies things. Now tell me, are you prepared to take over the remaining renovation and all the interior decoration of a good-sized house on the Rue Vaneau, a house of twenty rooms? Can you start right now? Today?”

“But, Madame … Madame Ikehorn, surely it is first essential that we meet, that we go over the house and find out if we have a rapport, if we see things in the same light?”

“Not at all,” Billy said brusquely. “I’ve heard excellent things about you. The question is, can you begin
immediately?
If you’re occupied with another project, just tell me.”

“Madame, I will make the time, but there are so many questions only the client can answer—the parameters of the budget, the questions of contemporary or period, country or urban, minimalist or classical, elegant or informal, understatement or bold, space for art, the role of fantasy—I could go on for hours—”

“Please, Monsieur, do not. I don’t want formal French furniture, gilt, minimalist, or anything aggressively modern. As for the budget, use your own judgment. Spend whatever is necessary. I will have my bankers at the Chase open an account for you. Other than that, Monsieur Delacroix,
surprise me!
”

“But, Madame—”

“Yes?”

“We will—meet—one day?”

“Of course. Soon, unquestionably soon, but … I can never say in advance. The essential thing is that you take charge at once, today, just as soon as you can get there. I’ll call my contractor and he’ll be expecting you. I must warn you, the electrical inspectors are coming this afternoon.”

“Such functionaries hold no terror for me, Madame.”

“Then you’re the man I want. Good-bye, Monsieur.”

“A bientôt. Madame,”
Jean-François Delacroix said hopefully, as Billy hung up.

The man probably thinks I’m eccentric, she said to herself, as she turned on the taps again. Which of her skirts and pants could seem suitable for a teacher? Which of her blouses and sweaters were believable? Was her underwear too elegant, or could she say it had been a going-away gift from the other teachers? Her shoes? Could she have inherited a little money to explain her indispensable cosmetic case? Or should she buy plastic bottles and jars, throw them all in a soft carryall and explain her watch, a few pairs of simple earrings and a pearl necklace by inventing a legacy from Aunt Cornelia? Aunt Cornelia would understand. Have understood.…
Robert!

Billy gasped as she contemplated the weak link in the chain. Robert, her driver, who spent the time when he wasn’t at the wheel gossiping with the other drivers and the doormen in front of the Ritz. She had to get around town somehow, from the little hotel she had yet to choose, down to the Marais, back to the Ritz, and eventually to the Rue Vaneau, for she couldn’t let Monsieur Delacroix begin to wonder out loud about his lunatic client.

Good God, had any woman ever had to extricate herself from so many complications? How did other people manage secret affairs? It would be so much easier if she could be herself, instead of Honey Winthrop. For a minute Billy let herself try to imagine telling Sam the truth, but the picture she attempted to create in her head wouldn’t form, the words wouldn’t come.

She’d tell him eventually, she couldn’t keep this up forever, but not now, not until they knew each other so well that the truth simply wouldn’t matter. Or perhaps this love, if it was love, wasn’t destined to last and the question of telling him would become moot. In any case she couldn’t do it now, which meant that Robert had to go. If she kept her driver, he would be the only person in the world besides herself who knew what she was doing, where and with whom. He’d be quick to put it all together, and who could believe that he wouldn’t tell his fellow drivers?

Poor Robert … she’d give him a bonus heavy with guilt when she told him she no longer needed his services. And she’d find a new chauffeur from an agency, with a rented car, who would pick her up at various spots she designated, get his instructions about when to pick her up, and watch her vanish around the corner. If she aroused his curiosity, if he ever attempted to follow her, she’d know at once and change drivers that same day. He would be paid in cash, he’d never know her name. She sighed in relief, her problems solved.

Billy found herself standing in the bathroom looking at the half-filled tub, not at all sure whether she’d taken a bath or not. Either way, it didn’t matter. She was dizzy with renewed need, hungry with the heavy sexual buzz of excruciating desire, a quivering, newly engorged appetite that only Sam Jamison could slake, that only his authoritative hand and mouth could begin to satisfy, that only his body within her could quiet.

11

C
hopped liver
. Dolly Moon stood in front of the closed refrigerator door in her kitchen and thought deeply and emotionally about chopped liver. She would never consider dipping into the large covered bowl of chopped liver that sat on the second shelf of the fridge, since it was intended for tonight, when she and Lester were giving the traditional Yom Kippur dinner that broke the fast of the Jewish Day of Atonement. Lester and his parents were all at their synagogue, praying, listening to the rabbi, and, as they had been since sundown the night before, fasting, so how could she even be thinking about chopped liver, Dolly asked herself. How could anybody be depraved enough to stand here and obsess over the thought of a very small taste of the chopped liver she had made this morning?

Using a recipe from
The Celebrity Kosher Cookbook
, her favorite, she had pan-fried three pounds of livers in chicken fat ever so carefully, so that they didn’t get tough, pan-fried nine finely chopped onions in more chicken fat, until they reached a point of brownness that was just this side of being burnt. She had chopped the livers and onions with a dozen hard-boiled eggs and much, much more chicken fat, with a double-bladed chopper in a big wooden bowl, until the well-moistened mixture had reached the precise degree of texture that was neither too finely nor too coarsely chopped.

Little tears came into the corners of Dolly’s huge blue eyes and dimmed their natural look of perpetually astonished happiness when she thought how incredibly good she’d been. She hadn’t even
tasted
the chopped liver to see if it needed more salt. She’d delegated that task to her cook, because she knew what would happen if she got started on the huge mound. Half of it would disappear in minutes, Dolly thought pathetically.
Minutes
.

She was wearing a peignoir of lavender satin and old lace, her blond hair was up in rollers, and she had no makeup on her sad but still rosy face. Her world-famous too-big mouth turned down at the corners; even her too-big breasts and her too-big bottom, without which she would not be the same Dolly Moon, the world’s best-loved comic actress, seemed to express melancholy. Behind her the huge kitchen bustled with staff paying no attention to her silent vigil, for tonight’s dinner was a joyous occasion and there were briskets to make and roast chickens to stuff, dozens of side dishes to prepare and elaborate pies and cakes to bake. Dolly and Lester had invited a large group of friends to celebrate the breaking of the fast with them, as well as all of Lester’s family.

For ten days, Dolly told herself as she visualized the beautiful bowl of beautiful chopped liver, with chopped parsley sprinkled on top, for ten whole days, ever since the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, her in-laws, who were observant of the religious laws, had been taking stock of the ethical quality of their personal lives, seeking atonement for their sins and forgiving those who had wronged them.

She hoped her mother-in-law hadn’t included her in that last category. How could she, when Dolly had produced a set of twins last year, legitimate Weinstocks, both boys, Lester junior and Henry. She knew that at the time of her marriage the elder Weinstocks had accepted her and her newborn Wendy Wilhelmina, Billy’s godchild, with some natural reservations. Dolly was not the daughter-in-law of their dreams. She didn’t come close. Not the same ballpark. No matter that she had just won an Oscar, they had been far from joyful when they attended their only son’s wedding to a bride who was still nursing a baby whose father was a rodeo rider she had never bothered to marry.

Yet now, in September of 1981, three-year-old Wendy was their adored darling, and little Lester and Henry were their princes. And they loved Dolly, she was sure, and they were proud of her. Her last movie, in which she’d starred with Dustin Hoffman, had earned the largest grosses of any comedy of the year, and her in-laws had personally accounted for at least twelve of the tickets sold, for they had seen it six times, going to the movie house in Westwood and standing in line just like civilians, because they wanted to watch it with an audience and hear the laughs with their own ears. No, they really loved her, and anyway, the state of her in-laws’ affections was not the reason she was standing here in front of the fridge, fighting her compulsion to open the door and sample, just on the tip of a fork, the tiniest bit of that chopped liver.

There was every chance that the cook hadn’t salted it properly
. No one would criticize it to her face, but after they came home from temple, joyous, mentally cleansed of their sins, physically ravenous, and swallowed the customary glass of orange or tomato juice to replace their electrolytes, drained by twenty-four hours of fasting, and then attacked the chopped liver, wouldn’t they be horribly disappointed if it was undersalted?

“Dolly, you’re going to be late.” The interrupting, self-assured voice came from a young woman who had just walked boldly into the kitchen.

“Please leave me alone for just a few more minutes,” Dolly begged her personal publicist, Janie Davis, a skinny brunette who could devour a double order of barbecued ribs and burn them up in half an hour on the phone. But that wasn’t amazing, she thought broodingly, all female PR people were aggressively thin, it must be part of the job description.

“But, Dolly, the kids are waking up. You know the twins have only one good hour a day.”

“They have twenty-four good hours,” Dolly sniffed.

“You know what I mean,” Janie insisted, implacable. “One
good
hour—one!”

Dolly considered the facts. Outside on the lawn was a photographer from
Good Housekeeping
, who, with two assistants, was waiting to take the cover photograph for the March 1982 issue, a picture of Dolly and her three children. He had already taken the shots of Dolly herself that would accompany the cover story on Dolly Moon’s life, which so brilliantly combined marriage, career and motherhood. Three publicity people from the Arvey Studio, where Dolly was shooting her new film with Robert de Niro, were standing around talking to the photographers and hoping to be helpful. Upstairs, in her dressing room, a makeup man and a hairdresser were waiting to get their hands on her. Hanging on a special hanger in her closet was the dress Nolan Miller had made for her, a delicious dress that would be perfect for the world’s sexiest milkmaid, a dress Nolan had delivered in person just an hour ago, after it had required a last-minute adjustment to let it out at the waist.

“Maybe you should stop eating between meals, Dolly,” he’d said to her warningly, and she’d looked way, way up into his handsome, kind face and promised, yes promised, to stop eating. Yes, Nolan, yes, you sweet man who told me I was almost as pretty as Jaclyn Smith, I promised you to stop eating between meals, and if I don’t, the next time I go to your place to be fitted, you’ll know if I did or didn’t.

But Nolan wasn’t frightening enough, that was the problem. He’d manage to make her look wonderful even if she did taste a tad of the chopped liver right this minute. And he’d been adorable to her, although there was no disputing that she’d gained a half-inch at her waistline, that little waist that, along with her nose, were the only small things about her. God should have arranged it so that when you gained weight the first place to show it would be the tip of your nose, Dolly thought wistfully. A ballooning nose would provide a real incentive to stick to water-packed tuna and fake cheese made of tofu.

She lacked incentive, Dolly admitted morosely. Lester loved to eat, they’d met over her strudel and courted over Chinese food, and slept together the first time when she’d been at least eight months pregnant, so how could he not like her round?

Just thinking about Lester made her feel better. Not less interested in the chopped liver, but more cheerful. He’d given up his publicity job after their wedding and gone to work briefly for his father. However, he’d soon become fascinated by the financial possibilities of tracking down and buying up as many of the great old black-and-white television series as possible. With the aid of a bank loan he’d gone into business for himself, and as she understood it, his future prospects were excellent.

They had far more money than they needed anyway. Dolly couldn’t believe how much her agent had managed to get her—on her firm instructions—when she’d recently signed a three-picture contract with the Arvey Studio. It was ridiculous, all that money being paid to her, money that was, in her own unvoiced opinion, basically based on her giggle, no matter how the critics raved on about her acting, but there it was, and here she was, aching, quivering, intent, with the madness of an addict, on obtaining a quick fix of chopped chicken liver. On a Ritz cracker.

Incentive? If Billy were around she’d call her up and get a quick, good old-fashioned lecture on the exact number of very seriously bad calories in one ounce of chopped liver that would set her straight, but Billy hadn’t been back in the United States for close to a year. She wrote from time to time, and phoned on the odd occasion, but somehow she seemed to have … floated away … for the last six months or so. There had been a slackening off in their communication, nothing to get alarmed about, since Billy seemed to be so delighted with her Parisian life, in fact she seemed downright overjoyed every time she and Dolly talked. There must be something very wonderful about Paris, Dolly decided, for Billy had sounded quite unlike herself. She had sounded
relaxed
, and if there was one thing she knew about Billy Ikehorn, it was that she didn’t relax, not ever. She couldn’t, it was genetically impossible. Something to do with Boston, perhaps, or having been fat until she was twenty. Oh, Billy, where are you when I need you?

“Dolly, the twins are being dressed. Dolly, come upstairs and get made up and combed out. The photographer is ready, everything is ready, and from three to four Nanny says we can count on the twins to be angels.
Dolly
,” Janie Davis demanded, ready to call for help if necessary, “it’s two-fifteen now.”

“Hold my hand, Janie,” Dolly said, closing her eyes tightly on the door to the fridge, behind which stood the ultimate object of her amorous fantasies. “Hold my hand and lead me out of the kitchen. Pull as hard as you have to. I’ll be okay as soon as I get upstairs.”

Spider Elliott looked up from the letter he was having so much difficulty writing and ordered another bottle of SeyBrew, the local beer he’d discovered in a comfortable café in Victoria, on the island of Mahe, the crossroads of the Seychelles. The islands were scattered throughout an archipelago in the Indian Ocean some thousand nautical miles off the east coast of Africa, and the day before, Spider and his two-man crew had anchored off Victoria with the intention of spending a few nights ashore while they restocked the ship with the excellent local produce.

Although Victoria was a few degrees south of the equator, it was a good place from which to send mail with a certainty that it would be delivered, for the town was an international tourist destination. Mahe was as far away as you could travel, going around the globe from the United States, before you found yourself started on a return route, a dream of still-unspoiled beauty with famous bird sanctuaries and some of the best snorkeling and scuba diving in the world. English, French and other European languages were being spoken by the many visitors sitting at the tables around him.

When he’d dated his letter October 1981, Spider realized that he’d been gone almost a year and a half. He’d trained himself not to keep track of time, although days, weeks, even months had mercifully started to melt for him a long time ago. He had put so much space behind him that he had finally reached that place at which the past was indeed another country, the future was unimportant, only today existed, and even today merely unfolded, minute by minute.

He had still not communicated with anyone, this was the first letter he had written since he’d sailed from Los Angeles. Last night he’d ventured into the casino at the Beau Vallon Bay Hotel, inspired by a minor curiosity about how it would feel to find himself among a crowd again. He’d bought some rupees, played a little roulette, lost the rupees, and discovered that he felt irritated, jumpy and itchily uncomfortable amid so many people. He’d been about to leave when he’d come across a group of people off the cruise ship that was anchored in the harbor. A woman he vaguely remembered had come up to him, greeted him with amazement, and told him her name. Spider had realized that she was a minor Scruples customer, someone who shopped there for Christmas presents. It was from her that he’d first learned that every one of the Scruples, from Munich to Hong Kong, existed no longer.

Spider hadn’t been able to sleep that night as he pondered the meaning of this news. He’d finally decided that he wouldn’t try to find out any more about it, just let it be, when an idea came into his mind that wouldn’t leave, no matter how hard he tried to persuade himself that it wasn’t possible. Eventually he’d promised himself to write to Billy so that he could put the idea out of his mind and go on with his life, almost—but not yet entirely—peacefully drugged into painlessness by the sea, the sky and the sun.