Scruples Two (52 page)

Wrong, Spider thought, how wrong can a man be? On Sasha, sexy isn’t attitude, sexy is what is low-cut and fits like a second skin.
And
attitude. Women could always surprise him.

She’s up to something, Gigi thought in diverted apprehension … that Orloff-Nevsky magic they should all be arrested and put away for, she’s turned it up as far as I’ve ever seen it.

“Sasha, this is Josh Hillman,” Billy said, the only one of them with enough presence of mind to remember that they hadn’t met. “Josh, this is Sasha Nevsky, Gigi’s roommate and our co-conspirator in this project.”

“How do you do?” Sasha and Josh each said at the same time as they shook hands. They paused and then said again in chorus, “Fine, thank you.”

“Have we run out of small talk so quickly?” Sasha asked, looking up into Josh’s face with a breathtakingly intimate smile Gigi had never seen before.

“Uh … no … uh … I hope not … not so soon,” Josh stammered.

He looked as if he’d been hit over the head by a two-by-four, Billy noted with a touch of enchanted mischief. Her conservative lawyer could use a good shaking up, in her opinion, as could every other man, except Spider, who was like quicksilver.

“You’re Gigi’s roommate?” Josh asked Sasha, as if there were no one else in the room.

“We shared an apartment in New York for over two years. I’m so very, very much older than Gigi that I was acting as her chaperone.”

“How much older?” he asked, as if it were a matter of life or death.

“It feels like a decade,” Sasha sighed, swaying slightly closer to him. “Several decades, as a matter of fact.”

Why doesn’t she swoon? Gigi asked herself gleefully. Why doesn’t she just swoon dead away into his arms, when she tells lies like that?

“Where do you live?” Josh asked urgently.

“Gigi and I share a place in West Hollywood …” Sasha replied, her voice a private, unexpected note, like a cello string gently touched for the first time.

“Josh,” Gigi said, feeling mercy for him, “why don’t you come by for a drink tonight? Everybody’s seen our apartment but you, and we’re feeling house-proud at the moment.”

“That’s a great idea, Gigi,” Spider said crisply. This courtship ritual was wasting his time. “Maybe we’d better look at those papers now, Josh?”

“Papers?”

“The papers you brought to be signed?”

“Oh, those papers.… I have them right here. Ah … look, Spider, there’s no rush, I’ll just leave them with you and Billy. Gigi and … Sasha … I’ll come by for that drink tonight, if I may,” he said, and fled the room.

“He doesn’t know our address,” Gigi said.

“I think he’ll manage to find it out,” Billy laughed. “Back to work, ladies? Oh, and gentleman … come on, back to work, you guys.”

“Will you stop fiddling with the ice bucket and get out!” Sasha ordered Gigi impatiently.

“He’s not even due for fifteen minutes,” Gigi pointed out.

“What if he’s early? I don’t want that ghastly pink car of yours anywhere in the neighborhood!”

“I’m going, I’m going, but first you have to explain why you’re not wearing your lucky dress. If ever there was a time—”

“I don’t need it anymore.”

Gigi eyed Sasha wearing a high-necked black dress that was the most conservative and expensive item in her wardrobe, an utterly simple, clinging column of silk crepe.

“That dress makes you look.…”

“How?”

“Like a … oh, my God! Like a
nice girl!
Sasha, I accept that you’re the Great Slut of all time, but don’t do this, you can’t be so cruel,” Gigi implored. “I know men must suffer, but why victimize that sweet, kind, good man—he’s never in his life done anything half bad enough for you to make him think you’re a nice girl!”

“Never mind,” Sasha said loftily.

“And putting your hair up on top of your head in that prim way, you look
ancient
,” Gigi said wrathfully, giving a severe poke to the fire she’d lit in their fireplace.

“How ancient?”

“Almost … thirty-five.”

A gratified smile briefly illuminated Sasha’s ardent face.

“Good. Now
out
, Isadora, before I strangle you with your least favorite scarf.”

“Okay, okay, but first tell me … or I won’t leave,” Gigi said, backing away, “tell me, was it the words ‘top lawyer’ or the word ‘eligible’ that made you change into your lucky dress?”

“I honestly don’t remember. I think it was instinct, a reflex action, something about that name, Josh Hillman—it
resonated
. Oh, will you just please leave?”

“Sasha, you’re not, no, you can’t be … 
nervous …?”
Gigi came close and peered at her friend.

“Sasha Nevsky doesn’t even know how nervous feels,” Sasha said threateningly, “but you will if you’re still here in the next five seconds.”

“We’re out of wood,” Josh said as he and Sasha sat in front of the low-burning fire. “How can that be? There was plenty when I arrived.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s … almost ten. What happened to the time?”

“Did we spend it on the Hillmans?”

“And the Orloffs and the Nevskys?”

“I can’t sort it out,” Sasha answered dreamily. “The Hillmans sound exactly like a bunch of Nevskys who don’t happen to dance. It’s all a blur.”

“But we missed dinner,” Josh said in concern. “I made an eight-thirty reservation at Le Chardonnay.”

“For three?”

“For two. I was planning to separate you from Gigi one way or another. We’ve got to eat. I’ll call Robert and tell him we’re on our way.”

“Would you think I was crazy if I said I was in the mood for deli?”

Josh looked at this peerless woman in astonishment. He’d been craving a corned beef on rye for the last few minutes. He’d never before talked so much and so personally, never found such a sympathetic, understanding audience, and only Jewish soul food would hit the spot in his state of exaltation.

“I’m taking you to Art’s in the Valley, it’s the best deli in L.A.,” he promised her. “Say good-bye to Marcel.”

No one at Art’s was surprised to see the elegantly dressed couple enter. From spiffed-up teenagers after their proms to babies six weeks old; from groups of hale and well-nourished senior citizens to film-star refugees from celebrity restaurants—all forms of humanity eventually beat a path to Art’s. There, Art himself presided over his famous establishment decorated in a calming combination of beiges, walls hung with enormous photographs of each of its sandwiches, roomy booths spaced so that diners could eat in a privacy and relative quiet unknown in the other delicatessens of Hollywood.

Sasha and Josh were given a semicircular booth in a corner and presented with open menus that offered, besides eighteen appetizers, forty-four sandwiches and eight soups, six different kinds of hamburgers, thirty-eight varieties of hot or cold plates, thirteen salads, eighteen side orders, eight kinds of potatoes and eighteen desserts.

“Oh.” Sasha looked bewildered. “Gee whiz.”

“Shall I order for you?”

“Please. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“How hungry are you?”

“I’m not sure, but logically I must be perishing. I’ve barely eaten a thing since breakfast … the plans for the catalog were too exciting.”

Josh scanned the menu. “Do you like smoked fish?” he asked Sasha, and when she nodded assent, he looked up at the waitress. “First bring us some appetizers; sturgeon, lox, whitefish and, let’s see, oh, the herring in sour cream … hmmm.… and then a corned beef sandwich for me and a—Sasha, is corned beef okay for you? Right, make that two corned beefs, and maybe a brisket dip on a French roll with gravy, and one of your combo sandwiches—the Art’s Special, the triple-decker with rare roast beef, pastrami and Swiss. That should do to start. And potato pancakes with sour cream and plenty of applesauce. Maybe you’d better bring us a few extra plates so we can share. To drink? Club soda, Sasha? White wine? Beer? Champagne? It’s something called Rocar, must be Californian? Fine, a bottle of Rocar, please, and some plain water.”

As they waited for their appetizers, Josh and Sasha sipped their champagne thoughtfully, hunger a convenient explanation for the sudden silence that had fallen between them. Sasha was cursing herself for suggesting deli; even a hungry woman should remember that the harshest overhead light in the world is to be found in delicatessens. But he was so wonderful that she’d forgotten everything except the way his eyes slanted upward. To kiss him right there, on the outer corner of each eye, right on the laugh lines that appeared each time he smiled … oh, nothing like this had ever happened to her, and fluorescent lights or no, nothing like this would ever happen again. Her career was over, she thought in amazement, years of dedicated application to masculine torment brought to a dead stop by one grownup man for whom she felt ready, if need be, to stop a bullet.

Sasha brought an inner spotlight with her, Josh thought, trying not to stare. No matter how beautiful she’d been by firelight, she was more entrancing when he could see her clearly. When he’d been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her this morning, taken off-guard and looking wild and wicked, he hadn’t dreamed that she was perfection itself. No wonder Billy had confided Gigi to her—she had such modesty, such dignity, and a beautifully serene reserve, a deeply mysterious quality that only a rare woman still preserved in this blaring day and age. He felt that he had already glimpsed her personal signature of flowering grace combined with a crisp, adult clarity, an intense, soothingly silent, precise listening quality. But, my God, that upper lip, that lush upper lip, that pouting, curling upper lip … a man could stand only so much.…

“Here you go,” the waitress said, putting down four generous plates of smoked fish, accompanied by a heap of sliced rye bread, a plate of sliced tomatoes, onions and lemons, and an oval dish of pickles.

“You start,” Josh said, giving Sasha a serving fork. She transferred a slice of smoked sturgeon to an empty plate, added a piece of the smoked salmon, a bit of whitefish and a piece of lemon. She nibbled on a crust of rye bread while he served himself. Sasha took a morsel of whitefish, chewed with determination, and washed it down with champagne. Josh speared a bit of smoked salmon and managed to swallow it by sheer willpower.

“It’s odd, when you get too hungry … sometimes you can’t eat right away,” she murmured.

“I know … I think I may have over-ordered.”

“It just looks like so much.… food.”

“They’re famous for their large portions …”

“It’s not that the whitefish isn’t delicious …”

“Try some salmon,” Josh suggested.

“Oh, I couldn’t—I’m saving myself for the sandwich.”

“Herring?”

“No, thank you,” she said piteously.

“Have you ever been married?” His voice was calm.

“No, thank you.”

“I asked if you’ve ever been married.”

“Oh. No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve never met the right man. Only boys, immature boys. At least that was the way they seemed to me.”

“How could that be?”

“I haven’t any idea,” Sasha said in a bewildered voice, “I suppose they were all just too young for me. But you’ve been married. Why did you get divorced?”

“I wasn’t in love with my wife.”

“Was that enough reason?”

“I … fell in love with somebody else.”

“Who was she?” Sasha asked, feeling a sharply pointed shaft of pure jealousy slam into her stomach.

“Valentine, before she married Spider,” Josh said.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said softly.

“It’s all right now. I’ve never told anyone but you.” His voice was blankly amazed as he heard his admission.

“Is there something wrong with the fish, Mr. Hillman?” the waitress asked in a worried tone.

“No, we’re just not as hungry as we thought.”

“What should I do about the sandwiches?”

“Oh, go ahead and bring them. Maybe they’ll inspire us.”

The waitress cleared the table and returned to the kitchen, stopping to have a word with Art as she went. She returned laden with a large tray from which she deposited the four plates of sandwiches and the platter of potato pancakes. Each sandwich was a tower of thinly sliced meat, at least five inches high, mounded on specially baked rye bread, garnished with more pickles and onion slices.

“Good Lord,” Sasha said, appalled, “I’ve never seen anything like this in New York.”

“I split them in half and eat them like open-faced sandwiches, otherwise you can’t get them into your mouth. Here, I’ll fix yours for you.”

“I … could I just start with the applesauce?”

“Without the pancakes?”

She nodded, rapt in contemplation of his hands as they moved amid the plates, lifted the saucer of applesauce and placed it in front of her. She took a spoon and dipped it in. Babies eat applesauce, she told herself, little tiny babies with their undeveloped digestive tracts can do away with a ton of the stuff. Why couldn’t she?

“Sasha, eat your applesauce,” Josh commanded, and she put the spoon in her mouth. It went down fairly easily, and with diligence and champagne, she made herself swallow four small spoonfuls.

“There’s a picture at the bottom of the plate,” Josh said coaxingly, watching her eat.

“You must have children.”

“Three. They’re good kids.”

Sasha was skewered anew by a flight of visceral arrows of jealousy. A man with children had to maintain a relationship with their mother. She wished she hadn’t asked, she thought, putting her spoon down with a definite gesture of rejection. She looked at his corned-beef sandwich and at the sight of it her heart lifted. It hadn’t been touched. Not so much as one bite.

“Josh, eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.… unless … you’re really not going to finish that applesauce …”

“It’s all yours.”

He took a few spoonfuls and put down his spoon. Skillfully avoiding the sandwiches, he took both of her hands in his.

“I can’t eat. It’s hopeless. I’m in love with you.”

“Me too,” Sasha said faintly.

“You can’t eat or you’re in love with me?”

“Both,” she whispered.

“Will you marry me?”

“Of course.”