The Fame Game (43 page)

Jared smiled and took her hand. “I’m glad to see you.”

“So you came to New York.”

“I told you I would.”

“Did you ride your motorcycle here?”

“No, I sold it to buy the plane ticket.” He squeezed her hand. “What are you going to drink?”

“A Navy Grog.” Might as well get stoned.

He motioned to the waiter. “Two.”

“Well,” Lizzie said.

“Are you glad to see me?”

She smiled. “Why are you in New York?”

“To see you. To seek my fortune.”

“Oh?”

“I told you I was coming.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I hope you’re not in the middle of a romance,” Jared said.

“I have no romances. Only mistakes.”

“Don’t say that.” He was squeezing her hand so hard he was hurting her, and Lizzie loosened his grip and took her hand away. The drinks came and he raised his glass in a toast, looking at her with those blue, blue eyes. She didn’t hate him as much as she wanted to. He hadn’t done anything really, just bang her, which was not exactly his unsolicited idea, and
she
was the one who had run out on
him
.

“Why did you run away?” he said.

“Me?”

“Yes. You. I waited for you.”

“I decided to go home.”

He looked down into his drink. “You thought I wasn’t good enough for you.”

“I never said that.”

“You don’t have to say it. You’re a sophisticated woman and I was just a bartender you picked up one day to play with and throw away.” He looked up and blasted her with those blue eyes. “Isn’t that so?”

“Why did you look me up, then?” Lizzie asked, her hands shaking.

“I’m a glutton for punishment.”

She laughed.

“I’m going to be somebody,” he said. “You wait and see. I’m going to make it here in New York. You’ll see. You’ll want me.”

“You don’t have to yell,” Lizzie said, although he was not yelling.

“I got in this afternoon, dumped my bags at a friend’s house, and came right over to find you,” he said. “I want you.”

“You can borrow me,” she said. “But you can’t have me.”

“Then I’ll borrow you.” He started feeling her knee under the table with his knee, and then he reached down and grabbed her knee with his hand. “Can I borrow you, Lizzie Libra?”

“I happen to be free for this entire evening,” she said.

He paid for the drinks and took her off to his friend’s apartment, a rather nice one-and-a-half with a big window and a double bed on the floor. Lizzie was so stoned at the idea that from nothing, absolutely nothing, she’d had two men in one day, and beauties at that, that she rather enjoyed it this time. He was nicer to her than he’d been in Vegas, more sentimental, and she thought the kid might actually have a crush on her. She watched him appreciatively as he walked around the room afterwards and she thought he would really be a catch if only he was somebody. Maybe he could act after all. But she wasn’t going to help him, no matter what he thought.

He gave her his phone number on a slip of paper. She folded it and slipped it into her wallet under the bills. “Let’s go out and have a drink,” he said. “I don’t want to drink my friend’s liquor.”

“Girl or boy?” Lizzie asked.

“What difference does it make if it’s just a friend?” he said.

Because it was just the right time to be seen she took him on a tour of a few of her favorite watering places. She nodded gaily at the people she knew and steered Jared quickly away without introducing him as if he really was Paul Newman and she wanted to protect him from the public. She was delighted to notice a few mouths drop open at the sight of them. Everyone just thought that she was with him for business, although they knew Paul Newman was not Sam Leo Libra’s client, but then when she and Jared began holding hands and whispering and looking very cuddly-cuddly in the corner they really stared. This wasn’t any potential client of Sam Leo Libra’s—this was a personal catch of his wife’s!

She felt euphoric. She let him jabber on about his ambitions now that he was in New York, and she tried to keep from smirking because it looked to everyone who was watching as if Paul Newman had found a woman to whom he could talk a blue streak. She saw one of the columnists looking at her and almost purred. Then just as the columnist started making his way toward them, she dragged Jared out of the bar on the pretext that it was one of her husband’s friends. She didn’t want to blow her act.

As they left she saw a couple she knew. She introduced Jared to them. “And you know Paul, of course …”

He stood there looking nonplussed, and before he could give it away Lizzie pushed him into a cab. The couple stood there on the sidewalk looking after them: the husband as if he’d never realized before that Lizzie Libra was a sexy woman, and the wife consumed with envy.

“What did you do that for?” Jared asked, angry.

“Oh, don’t be silly. I was just kidding.”

“I hate that,” he said. “I want to be me.”

“You
are
you, of course,” Lizzie purred, rubbing her face against his. She could see the driver looking at them through the rear-view mirror, and he seemed in shock.

The driver turned around. “Hey, ain’t you …?”

“No,” Jared said.

“Wow, I certainly thought you was him.”

“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” Lizzie said brightly.

It was time for Sam to be long since home, so Lizzie told Jared to take her to the hotel. She knew everybody would be talking about her tomorrow and she felt warm and serene. Sam would hear about it right away, of course, but he knew too much about publicity to believe a word of it. He’d been making up lies for the columns for years. He would think it was a great laugh.

“When will I see you?” Jared asked.

“Tomorrow?”

“Right.”

“
I’d
better call
you
,” she said.

“Can you get me an appointment to meet your husband?”

“My husband?”

“I’ll need a personal manager.”

“I’ll be your personal manager,” Lizzie said firmly, and smiled at him.

“But I’ll need a publicist …”

“I’ll be your publicist.”

“Do you know how?” he asked dubiously.

“Do I know how? Just you wait and see.”

“Well, maybe I should meet your husband …”

“Is that why you wanted to see me?” She threw the knife in and waited for him to pull it out.

“No, no, of course not! You know that, Lizzie!” He was bleeding to death and she wanted to laugh.

“Well, then, everything’s going to be all right,” she said.

Their cab pulled up in front of the Plaza. He stepped out and helped her out. She gave him a nice little kiss so everyone could see. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

Lizzie Libra sailed into the hotel like a super-star. Everyone bowed and scraped as she passed. When she got upstairs Sam was in his bed asleep. He had taken a couple of sleeping pills. Lizzie helped herself to two of them, removed her make-up while they were working, and crawled into her own bed. She was so glad she’d given Dr. Picker the bar rag. She hadn’t been this happy since the old days.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

As the jolly yuletide season approached, Bonnie Parker and a queen named Garbo were wandering down Third Avenue doing some Christmas shopping when they were approached by a cute boy. He said hello, so they said hello. The cute boy then pulled out a badge identifying him as a plainclothes policeman and arrested them on the charge of impersonating women. Luckily, Bonnie was wearing Mad Daddy’s raincoat, which he had lent to Gerry one night when it stormed and which Bonnie had mopped from the apartment, and it had a label in it from a men’s store. She was also wearing boy’s jeans. Therefore it was decided at the station house (where they were unceremoniously hauled, as Vincent/Bonnie later gleefully told Gerry, “along with all these rapists, muggers, Negroes, and other criminal types!”) that Vincent Abruzzi was not impersonating a woman after all, and just happened to have an unfortunate feminine appearance. As for his make-up, make-up was not illegal. He was let go, but poor Garbo had to raise bail. Neither Vincent nor Gerry told Mr. Libra, of course.

Gerry Thompson decided after some deliberation that she would not go home for Christmas, so she did her shopping early and mailed all the Christmas packages home by December fifteenth. She was busy planning her wedding to Mad Daddy. They decided it would be small and intimate, in a judge’s chambers, to be followed by a wild party at P. J. Clarke’s, which they would take over completely for the occasion. They thought a Third Avenue bar was just the right combination of informality and sophistication, although Mad Daddy rather leaned toward the zoo. (Gerry vetoed the zoo—Valentine’s Day would be too cold, and besides, who could get a permit?)

Sam Leo Libra was too fastidious to let anyone but himself do his Christmas shopping. He bought a white fox jacket with shoulder pads for Lizzie, because that was what she wanted, silver money clips with his own initials for each of the clients—except Sylvia Polydor, who got a silver goblet with his initials on it, to add to her collection—and a Gucci bag and wallet for Gerry. He had Gerry send out his usual five hundred Christmas cards, this year bearing a message of peace.

Although Bonnie Parker had not yet taken her screen test, Libra was negotiating for Dick Devere to direct her first film in a package deal, whatever it turned out to be. Libra was surprised and rather baffled when Dick flatly refused to direct Bonnie in
any
film, but after the success on Broadway of
Mavis!
, Dick could write his own ticket and there was nothing Libra could do. Dick Devere accepted a sophisticated tragi-comedy, and planned to leave for the Coast directly after the first of the year. He was going to spend Christmas in the Bahamas, where he had rented a bungalow on a deserted patch of beach.

The King James Version appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, doing two numbers from their hit album of the Songs of Solomon, and received 2451 letters of praise, 1552 letters of condemnation, and a fifty-dollar check for “their church” from a confused viewer.

Shadrach Bascombe started costume fittings for his first film, in which he played a former boxer who was now a spy, and Libra engaged a ghost writer to pen Bascombe’s memoirs, highly expurgated.

Lizzie Libra’s analyst, Dr. Picker, left for two weeks in Acapulco, where the in-analysts were going this year, and included Lizzie in his Christmas-card list so she would remember to come back.

Lizzie was seriously considering returning to her doctor because of the unfortunate turn of events with Jared–Paul Newman. The joke had been a great success and had made all the columns, but Jared, for some crazy reason, had been very annoyed. He had decided that being passed off as Paul Newman was going to be the death of his embryonic career as an actor, and he had walked out of Lizzie’s life forever with some very harsh words. Lizzie telephoned him repeatedly, but he refused to have anything more to do with her. She was not upset, only confused. She felt lonely after he was gone, and thought it would be nice to have someone to talk to, so she phoned Dr. Picker’s office, found he was away for the Christmas holidays, and made an appointment for the first week in January.

Silky Morgan wheedled money out of Mr. Libra from her account for Christmas and bought Bobby La Fontaine a mink-lined raincoat. She would have bought him a mink coat, but he wouldn’t wear it. She sent her family gifts costing ten dollars apiece, because they hadn’t been very nice to her lately, she decided.

Bobby La Fontaine, who’d given up his former clients, took a set of diamond studs he was particularly fond of and had them set into a dainty little bracelet for Silky. He’d managed to set aside a bit of money because Silky was paying all their living bills, but as it turned out he didn’t have to pay for the work on the bracelet after all because the jeweler liked him.

Mad Daddy wrote out his first of many future checks to Elaine, a down payment on her attorney’s fee. He was glad it was only one ex-wife now, plus child support, of course, for the others. He bought Gerry a huge Christmas tree that was too tall for her apartment and had to be cut off above the trunk so it looked silly, but neither of them minded, and they spent an entire night trimming it with every bauble and toy they could find in the Village. They even strung popcorn on it, the way Gerry remembered from her childhood, although Bonnie the Boy ate the popcorn almost as fast as they could pop it. That kid really could eat! No wonder he was growing. Mad Daddy could hardly wait until he was married to Gerry and they had an apartment of their own so they didn’t have to have these strange people hanging around. He was counting the weeks.

The B.P.’s were invited on a yacht belonging to a middle-aged millionaire couple, which was cruising the Greek islands for the Christmas holidays. Penny Potter was delighted that Mr. Nelson was also invited, for that meant he could do her hair every day after she went swimming. She was only sorry that her mother couldn’t come too, but her parents always went to Palm Beach this time of year to escape the holiday festivities because her father was not well.

A young man Franco knew inherited a good deal of money and took Franco and two other young men to Lake Tahoe for sun and gambling. While there, Franco ran into Elaine Fellin and went to bed with her, as a change from the three young men he was traveling with, who were becoming boring. He was furious when Elaine asked him afterwards for a free dress, but he spent several amusing evenings telling the story.

Sylvia Polydor spent Christmas in Beverly Hills, doing what she always did, going to the same parties, seeing the same people, and doing a half-hour documentary of her life and career which Sam had arranged for television.

Arnie Gurney spent the holidays performing in a New York night club, and Christmas Eve he and his wife gave a small, intimate party for fifty people in their apartment, which they kept all year because he had to have some place to vote from.

The Satins went home for Christmas and had a housewarming party for the new homes they had bought for their families.

Ingrid the Lady Barber packed up her hypodermic needles and went to Switzerland for a minor face lift around the eyes, sending a silent assistant to give her patients their shots so they would not suffer confusing withdrawal symptoms.