The LeBaron Secret (19 page)

“At this point, I don't want any more of your goddamned scoops,” he says. “And may I ask why, when you want a story planted in my paper, you go around behind my back to Archie, and not directly to me? Let me take a quick guess at the answer to that one. For every story that Archie writes that shows Melissa, or one of her projects, in an embarrassing light, you can get
me
to write one about Assaria LeBaron and all her wonderful work in the city—restoring south of Market, or whatever it is you want that shows
you
in a good light—right? It's always the same old story with you, isn't it? Play one against the other. Why kill one bird with the stone, when you can kill two or three? Well, that little game is over, Sari.”

“Dear Gabe,” she says. “Dear old Gabe, dear old Polly. You're upset. Come for dinner tonight. We'll have champagne, we'll talk.”

“Fat chance of that!” he says, and, the minute the words are out of his mouth, he realizes he is beginning to sound a little childish. “What's up between you and Melissa, anyway? Not that it's any of my business, and not that I really give a damn.”

“I'm—just—trying—
to bring Melissa under control!
”

“You've been trying that for fifty-seven years without success. What makes you think you can do it now?”

“She's a loose cannon, Gabe!”

“So—what else is new?”

“This is my last-ditch effort. I've never tried it this way before. And if I succeed—”

“You're going to bring Melissa under control by getting people to snicker about her latest escapade with a rock group and a snake? You're full of bullshit, Sari.”

“I'm trying to get her, for once in her life, to listen to me, Gabe. I'm trying to get her to trust my judgment, to listen to my advice, to follow my suggestions—to do what, in the long run, can only be the best thing for her. That's all I want—what's best for her! I can't tell you too much about what's going on at Baronet right now because I don't know all the details myself. But I do know that, if there's a showdown, I'm going to have to have Melissa on my side, following my instructions, trusting my judgments, and doing—for her own good—as I say. She's got to see, in this business, that I'm wiser than she.”

“Well, I still don't see why newspaper stories like these are going to get her on your side.”

There is a pause, and then she says, “Perhaps you will when I tell you that—if things come to a showdown, and they may—I may have to explain to Melissa that I am sitting on a story that, if it were ever made public, would ruin her forever, everywhere. Not just in San Francisco,
everywhere
. And a story that would ruin a few other people in the bargain.”

“Well, I don't intend to let you use my newspaper as an instrument for blackmailing your daughter.”

“I'm not talking about the
Peninsula Gazette
. I'm talking about the networks, the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New York Times
.”

He says nothing.

“Now,” she says, “are you beginning to get an inkling of the scope of my concern? Dear old Gabe, you are my oldest friend in all the world. Please believe me, trust me that I know what I'm doing.”

“I thought at least we could be honest with each other, level with one another,” he says.

“I'm being as honest with you now as I can possibly be,” she says. “Now come for dinner tonight. We'll have dinner, just the two of us.”

“I can't tonight. Busy.”

“Well, at least try to trust me,” she says. “And remember that you owe me a lot. After all, where would you be if it weren't for me?”

“And where would
you
be if it weren't for
me?
”

“That's right. We owe each other. Tit for tat. More or less.”

“Are you implying that I owe you more than you owe me?”

She laughs softly. “Don't worry. I'm not calling in any of my markers. Dear old Gabe, I'm glad you're not upset with me anymore. Good-bye, dear Gabe. And—” she adds quickly, “print the story, Gabe.”

After he has hung up the phone, he stares for a moment or two at the typewritten sheet of yellow foolscap. Then, very quickly, he initials it in the upper left-hand corner, and places the copy in his “Out” box.

In room 315 of the airport Marriott, Melissa LeBaron and the young man named Maurice Littlefield are making love on one of the pair of queen-size beds. “Oh, fuck, baby … fuck … fuck … fuck …,” he is saying to her, clutching her roughly. “Oh, you fuck good, baby … like a fuckin' bunny … ball me, baby … ball me …,” in a hoarse, insistent voice.

But already Melissa is wondering, is wondering if this is what she wanted to have happen when she came out here this afternoon to discuss their compensation, if this is what she really planned, if she had secretly known, expected, that it could end up this way, making love with a young man less than half her age in a common motel room, in a motel full of transients and salesmen stranded by canceled flights. Had she expected this to happen, and somehow let him know that she expected it? And yet, when he had reached out and touched her, and whispered a coarse suggestion, she had been filled with such a yearning that she felt she must take him into her arms and into her body. He had seemed so sweet, so young and innocent, so lost and in need of comforting, that she had immediately complied with his request, and so it is happening whether she expected it to or not.

Now it is over, and he has pushed himself off her and lies on his side, with one elbow propped on a pillow, and Melissa turns herself slightly away from him, feeling disappointed and depressed. She had tried her best. But there had been no orgasm, no bursting rush of feeling, no charge or current through her body, nothing at all. Outside, the winter sun is going down, and there is again a light rain, which descends in drizzles across the windowpanes. In this light, the room itself looks grimy and unkempt, and even the bright chintz curtains, designer-chosen to make the room look cozy and inviting, now look dusty, faded. Outside, there is the slick hiss of tires on the wet pavement of the parking lot, and the sound of car doors slamming. I should be in Capri, she thinks, in Capri dancing with a Capriote. Behind her, she hears the sound of Littlefield lighting a cigarette, and a sharp exhale. His weight shifts slightly. His pale, skinny body and his narrow, bony, hairless chest are turned away from her, but they are still in her mind's eye. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but what is in the eye that the beholder beholds? His arm is still bandaged, but the bandage is soiled now, and gray, and there is an odor—a stale, medicinal odor of this, and of his cigarette smoke, and the sick-sweet smell of sweat and spent semen—in the air. She should get up now, hop into the shower, towel herself dry, slip into her clothes again, make a little joke, and be on her way. But she does none of these things, and continues to lie there in the growing darkness, where even the sight of her own white, dieted body, the belly kept flat through exercise, her breasts tipped slightly to one side, and the inevitable stretch marks, manages only to fill her with despair. Behind her there is more motion, as Littlefield pulls on his discarded underpants, Jockey shorts, the kind that little boys wear. There is the snap of the elastic waistband against his stomach.

Melissa's almost visionary inspiration of barely an hour ago seems to have disappeared. On her way out to the motel, in a taxi, she had had this crazy idea. This group had talent, there was no question about that; their young audiences loved them; their sound was right, their sound was now, their beat was new, and their message was today. But they probably had no sense of organization, no sense of business whatsoever. Off the stage, no doubt, they squabbled and bickered with one another. She could become their manager. She could handle their publicity, book their dates, plan their tours, and teach them how to handle money. The name they had chosen for themselves was, of course, quite simply awful, but she could insist that they change that. She would change it to something upbeat, lively, provocative but on the sly side, something memorable like The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones. In the taxi, she had thought of several such names, but they escape her now. She was certain that the group did drugs—didn't they all?—but when she became their manager she would change all that, too, for along that route did not lie the way to fortune and stardom, platinum record after platinum record. Oh, yes, that was one of the names she had thought of in the taxi. Call them The Platinums, and perhaps for a gimmick, have all their hair dyed platinum blond? Too much like David Bowie? Perhaps. Think young thoughts, she often told herself, keep up with what young people are talking about, doing, listening to—that is the way to stay young. The python was a tacky gimmick, as well as an unreliable one. Under her management of the group, there would be no more pythons. All this and more, she had thought of in the taxi, but all of it has lost its luster now.

Finally, she says, “I have something for you.” She leans over the edge of the bed and reaches for her purse, which lies near the heap of her clothes beside the bed. From an inside pocket, she fishes out the folded check and hands it to him, without comment.

Lying on his back with his cigarette clenched between his teeth, he examines it farsightedly, at arm's length, turning it this way and that until he can catch it in the light that remains. He whistles softly and says, “Oh, Mama!” Then he leaps to his feet, standing on the mattress, and cries, “Oh, Sugar Mama! You are my Sugar Mama! You are this boy's Sugar Mama, yes indeed!”

Melissa rolls off the bed, picks up her lace-trimmed bikini panties, and steps into them. She reaches for her bra. “I'm not your Sugar Mama!” she says angrily. “I'm not anything to you at all. Don't think I'm giving you that check for letting you go to bed with me! I was going to give it to you anyway. That check was written before I left my house. That check is to compensate you for your engagement here, and nothing more. I'm giving it to you because I thought your group deserved it, and because I felt responsible. I don't have to pay men for making love to me!”

But he has already leaped off the bed and is in the bathroom now, urinating noisily into the bowl beyond the open door, and probably can't even hear her.

She snatches up her blouse and skirt. “Listen to me!” she cries. “Don't call me your Sugar Mama! I'm paying you for a concert date, not for your lousy lovemaking! And don't think you can come back to me for any more. I don't pay for sex, and I don't ask for sex! So don't think you can come back to me and offer more sex, and get more money, or think because I've let you have sex with me you can come back and blackmail me! I didn't ask for sex with you! And your sex stinks—do you hear that? Your sex stinks, and I hate you! Do you hear that? Stinks!” The only reply is the sound of the toilet flushing.

“
Stinks!
You're a rotten lover!”

Of course this is all a far, far cry from the proposition she had thought of offering him, on her way over here in the taxi. And the only thing she is sure of now is that she will probably never see or hear from him again.

In the house at 2040 Washington Street, Assaria LeBaron has decided that she is finished with Archie McPherson. He has betrayed her confidence, and so that will be the end of him. He has served whatever usefulness he had, and now he will be dispensed with. Probably, knowing that she and Archie have been in cahoots, Gabe will fire him anyway, and he will move on to some other part of the country, out of her life, good riddance. And yet—and yet—there is one more way in which he might prove useful, and perhaps that one avenue should be explored. But she will think about that later. Right now, there is something else to occupy her mind. Her granddaughter Kimmie has dropped by for tea. They are moving through the long picture gallery now, side by side, toward the drawing room where Thomas has set out the tea service, a tray of little sandwiches, and the fixings for Sari's martini, which she usually prefers to tea.

“Great-Grandpa's wine barrel,” Kimberly LeBaron says, as they approach it.

“Your great-
great
-grandpa,” Sari corrects. “In a family, it's important to keep the generations straight. Your great-grandpa was Julius. Mario was his father, so that's two greats to you. And look,” she says suddenly, “it's weeping. See those tiny beads of moisture collecting between the staves? It happens in certain kinds of weather. And it means that something, some change, is going on inside. Wine, you see, never dies. It goes on growing, changing, for centuries—forever, if you let it. Someday I want to take you out to the vineyards, and give you a little wine history lesson. Count Haraszthy—everything. Would you like that?” Sari has always had a special place in her heart for this exquisite child.

What is it about little girls in their early teens that Assaria LeBaron has always found so beguiling? Papa LeBaron must have sensed it, too, wanting the children all to have their portraits painted at that age. With Kimmie, it is that little bunched business around her cheeks and eyes and chin—traces of baby fat that she still retains—a reminder that the face has not quite finished forming itself, has not quite made up its mind what it is going to be. It gives Kimmie a questioning, questing look—a look of puzzled, but pleasant, anticipation. The nose has not yet made up its mind, either, but already there is a hint of nostrils that will one day flare imperiously when the face takes command of a situation, and issues a polite but firm order. In Kimmie, sitting there in her fresh white blouse and neatly pressed green and white kiltie skirt with her carefully cut brown bangs across her forehead, it is possible for Sari to see herself at that age. Yes, Kimmie is destined to be a beauty, and Sari is pleased to see that Kimmie has inherited her own good looks. This may sound like vanity on Sari's part. So what? It is.